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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In the Valley
+
+Author: Harold Frederic
+
+Posting Date: November 19, 2011 [EBook #9787]
+Release Date: January, 2006
+First Posted: October 16, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE VALLEY ***
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+
+In the Valley
+
+By
+
+Harold Frederic
+
+Copyright 1890
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dedication.
+
+
+
+_When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
+was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
+would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
+the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
+upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
+was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
+thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
+adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
+Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
+welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
+this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
+Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
+bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
+affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
+grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour._
+
+London, _September 11_, 1890
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Chapter I.      "The French Are in the Valley!"
+Chapter II.     Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+Chapter III.    Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly
+Chapter IV.     In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+Chapter V.      How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+Chapter VI.     Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+Chapter VII.    Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+Chapter VIII.   Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+Chapter IX.     I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+Chapter X.      The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+Chapter XI.     As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+Chapter XII.    Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.
+Chapter XIII.   To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+Chapter XIV.    How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+Chapter XV.     The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+Chapter XVI.    Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+Chapter XVII.   I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+Chapter XVIII.  The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+Chapter XIX.    I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+Chapter XX.     A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.
+Chapter XXI.    Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+Chapter XXII.   The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+Chapter XXIII.  How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+Chapter XXIV.   The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+Chapter XXV.    A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+Chapter XXVI.   I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+Chapter XXVII.  The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+Chapter XXVIII. An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.
+Chapter XXIX.   The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+Chapter XXX.    From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+Chapter XXXI.   The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+Chapter XXXII.  "The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+Chapter XXXIII. The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+Chapter XXXIV.  Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+Chapter XXXV.   The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+Chapter XXXVI.  A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully
+                Spared.
+Chapter XXXVII. The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+
+
+In The Valley
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+"The French Are in the Valley!"
+
+
+
+It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
+since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
+to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
+son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
+to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
+parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
+good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
+nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
+recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
+fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
+the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
+might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
+and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
+great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
+waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
+its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
+If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
+become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
+mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.
+
+Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
+keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
+I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
+confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
+their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
+so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
+the story:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.
+
+The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
+that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
+now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
+than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
+dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
+were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
+floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
+the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
+thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
+the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
+or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
+winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
+lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
+not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.
+
+I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
+whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
+did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
+their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
+and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
+women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
+for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
+mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
+behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
+after rains.
+
+Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
+longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
+kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
+time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
+duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
+bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
+the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
+me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
+and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
+too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
+sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
+flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
+hated them.
+
+The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
+these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
+knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
+ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
+commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
+vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
+inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
+snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
+the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
+timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
+our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
+nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
+lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
+I held my breath.
+
+It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
+dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
+set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
+noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
+hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
+great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
+heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):
+
+"The French are in the Valley!"
+
+I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
+and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.
+
+Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
+what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
+I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
+his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
+clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
+with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
+Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
+which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
+to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
+husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
+portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
+small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.
+
+How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
+considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
+Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
+mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
+my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
+fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
+aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
+momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
+suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.
+
+When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
+another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
+gravely from within the door:
+
+"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
+and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
+Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."
+
+Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
+Valley.
+
+These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
+to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
+great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
+the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
+all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.
+
+If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
+explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
+I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
+master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
+with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
+my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
+both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
+Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
+conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
+while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
+first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
+hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
+reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
+content to return to his sleep.
+
+I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
+dreamed at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+
+
+
+When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
+small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
+original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
+might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
+late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
+Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
+fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
+white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
+could sop my bread.
+
+During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
+housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
+upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
+which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
+well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
+command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
+cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
+employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
+heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
+Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
+any other large matter, I would have valued.
+
+Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
+apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
+air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
+the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
+on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
+with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
+cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
+almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.
+
+He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
+themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
+pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
+labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
+speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
+French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
+notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
+me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
+better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
+look up and down the Valley.
+
+It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
+forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
+edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
+the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
+through the cold night.
+
+To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
+or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
+not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
+its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
+its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
+logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
+upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
+grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
+in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
+been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
+French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
+our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
+Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
+being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
+still by contrast.
+
+Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
+adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
+were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
+and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
+houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.
+
+It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
+men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
+wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
+Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
+part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
+tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
+than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
+little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
+to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
+religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
+I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
+I trust there can be no doubt.
+
+While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
+these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
+of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
+dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
+there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
+the hill.
+
+As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
+his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
+to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
+attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
+mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
+westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.
+
+After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
+cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."
+
+All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
+stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
+the commotion.
+
+Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
+and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
+also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
+yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
+about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
+household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
+we saw on the highway.
+
+What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
+terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
+generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
+or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
+somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.
+
+Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
+phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
+out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
+before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
+French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
+above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
+Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
+auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
+had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
+in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
+answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
+the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
+others had become calm.
+
+As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
+cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:
+
+"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
+had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"
+
+To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
+in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.
+
+With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
+straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
+cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!
+
+He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
+put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
+in the face, and laughed again.
+
+All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
+all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
+himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
+puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
+staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
+with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
+some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
+wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
+comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.
+
+The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
+the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:
+
+"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
+embrace."
+
+The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
+two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
+face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
+the rending of an ice-gorge.
+
+"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
+came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
+my breath.
+
+It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
+foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
+the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
+and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
+despatched onward to the fort.
+
+While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
+and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
+eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
+eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
+(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
+long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
+their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
+reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
+the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.
+
+The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
+backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
+the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
+I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
+showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
+full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
+pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
+being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
+weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
+it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
+swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
+ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
+warrior should be.
+
+It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
+troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
+and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
+as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
+Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
+roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.
+
+For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I
+believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the
+frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was
+not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did
+not get into my favor after we came inside.
+
+Under this Master Philip's commands the negro squatted on his haunches and
+unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this
+bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps
+between three and four years of age.
+
+This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and
+looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her
+eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long,
+tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her
+feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure.
+She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face
+was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to
+me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the negro smiling upon
+us both.
+
+I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was
+already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly
+spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward
+the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone.
+
+"Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude
+behavior and at his words.
+
+"I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child.
+
+He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him,
+clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to
+one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little
+girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great
+wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have
+her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus
+you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood
+finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But
+I had the girl.
+
+"What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing,
+Douw, and what child is this?"
+
+"It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions,
+and red with color.
+
+The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that
+Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even
+feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for
+me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one
+might feel the heat, and said nothing.
+
+"Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as
+much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven."
+
+The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously:
+
+"She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village
+only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the
+other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When
+Bellêtre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first
+attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in
+the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange
+enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered?--the infant was in
+some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
+great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
+for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
+to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
+friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
+frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
+cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
+start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
+Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
+brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
+said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
+saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
+one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
+bundled her in."
+
+"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
+yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.
+
+"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
+friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
+young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
+people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
+Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
+that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
+not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?"
+
+"Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed.
+
+"Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly.
+
+"You are Tom Lynch, and your grandfather was a king----"
+
+"No more," interposed Mr. Stewart, frowning and lifting his finger. "That
+folly is dead and in its grave. Not even so fair a youth as you must give
+it resurrection."
+
+"Here, Bob," said the Major, with sudden alacrity. "Go outside with these
+children, and help them to some games."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly.
+
+
+
+My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty
+years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see
+him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there
+would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above
+forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame,
+yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist
+and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He
+was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much,
+let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain,
+ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a
+swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals,
+much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness
+when agreed with.
+
+All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many
+other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers.
+He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he
+loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great
+warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be
+said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and
+evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns
+in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most
+instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he,
+so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the
+profession of arms.
+
+A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward
+prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and
+I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here,
+although at the time I was in ignorance of it.
+
+In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had
+been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was
+the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who
+loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and
+sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court,
+of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the
+father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles
+the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch
+names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany.
+
+Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins,
+got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared
+meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew
+old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not
+forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast
+of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now,
+and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue
+and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a
+sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of
+Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse.
+
+With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had
+dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in
+a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally.
+After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the
+conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving
+himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to
+France, never to return.
+
+He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This
+boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court,
+now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting
+in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant
+existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon
+destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless
+alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous
+gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover,
+and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an
+injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts.
+
+Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a
+priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about
+Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the
+religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier,
+for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit
+to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the
+emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did
+Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning,
+honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the
+Jacobite gentleman.
+
+One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a
+young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony
+Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with
+ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke.
+He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that
+his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the
+daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had
+gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this
+exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from
+the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence.
+
+Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The
+two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the
+lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance
+and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced,
+and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he
+never forgot her till his death.
+
+Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for
+striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's
+lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his
+generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more
+selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among
+those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh
+and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of
+Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph,
+its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the
+Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was
+able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig
+influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to
+live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had
+fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to
+Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and
+peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of
+Stewart, and set sail to the New World.
+
+This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which
+perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish
+recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on
+which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the
+succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I
+still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to
+acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the
+question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out:
+
+"Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me
+a fort!"
+
+Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and
+I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in
+the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the
+little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks
+and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no
+work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was
+to his mind, he said:
+
+"Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the
+Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to
+drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he
+must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we
+must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come
+up.--Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!"
+
+Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing
+his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against
+my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt.
+
+"Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a
+Frenchman than you are yourself."
+
+"You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All
+foreigners are the same."
+
+"It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a
+foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?"
+
+He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of
+course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even
+speak English properly."
+
+This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr.
+Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to
+hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont
+to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English
+correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was
+true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by
+Philip's criticism.
+
+"Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a
+Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself
+when I _do_ come," or words to that purport.
+
+We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all
+better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were
+some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic
+fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is
+enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls
+which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my
+head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I
+forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling
+him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down,
+with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would
+be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead,
+mumbling with his mouth full of snow:
+
+"Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know."
+
+My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
+little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
+unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
+two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
+Philip said:
+
+"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
+My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
+besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
+weren't Dutch."
+
+When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
+eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
+a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
+and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.
+
+The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
+know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
+They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
+disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
+senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
+deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
+of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
+knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.
+
+"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
+some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
+trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
+estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a
+single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be
+damned to them!"
+
+"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and
+now!"
+
+"No, I'll _not_ think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I
+too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of
+'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit
+to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"
+
+"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no
+doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is,
+and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I
+dream--precisely what pleases me best."
+
+"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"
+
+"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk
+with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw,
+yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a
+second self."
+
+The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but
+without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon
+his plate:
+
+"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"
+
+"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.
+
+The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to
+be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help
+one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."
+
+Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."
+
+Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing
+furiously. He smiled and said:
+
+"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."
+
+My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.
+
+"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie
+over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow,
+struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school
+for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him.
+We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless
+grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut
+out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."
+
+The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.
+
+"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the
+lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life,
+dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for
+my bride."
+
+Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.
+
+The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with
+moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in
+this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and
+thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty
+despatches.
+
+While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over
+his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little
+waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore
+over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily
+and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.
+
+"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm,
+Bob, for the journey."
+
+The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's
+arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.
+
+"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.
+
+"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could
+Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his
+fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine
+country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again.
+What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"
+
+I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr.
+Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him
+pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence
+which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.
+
+"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.
+
+As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I
+walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with
+deep joy.
+
+"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a
+load off my mind.--Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."
+
+"And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked,
+vehemently.
+
+"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the
+question."
+
+The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat
+pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which
+Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips,
+and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me,
+red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at
+his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my
+apron, besides.
+
+With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face,
+knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst
+into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a
+wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and
+screaming that he _would_ have the child.
+
+I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle
+by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and
+then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob
+enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on
+the horse.
+
+Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a
+salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:
+
+"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when
+once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of
+him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade,
+a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."
+
+"God bless you--and yours, _mon frère_!"
+
+We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the
+river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly
+back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:
+
+"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their
+mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a
+father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the
+present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."
+
+To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the
+melting snow by his side.
+
+Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log
+structure critically over.
+
+"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this
+house--to me?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Stewart."
+
+"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan
+out still another room for our abode."
+
+Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically
+begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+
+
+
+The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage
+and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could
+scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the
+year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near
+the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that
+their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they
+did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in
+constant alarm. No household knew, on going to bed, that they would not be
+roused before morning by savage war-cries. No man ventured out of sight of
+his home without entertaining the idea that he might never get back alive.
+Hence, when the long-expected blow was really struck, and the town on the
+German Flatts devastated, everybody was in an agony of fear. To make
+matters worse, Sir William was at his home ill in bed, and there was some
+trouble between him and the English commanders, which stood in the way of
+troops being sent to our aid.
+
+Those few days following the dreadful news of the attack above us seem
+still like a nightmare. The settlers up the river began sending their
+household goods down to Albany; women and children, too, passed us in
+great parties, to take refuge in Fort Hunter or at Schenectady. The river
+suddenly became covered with boats once more, but this time representing
+the affrighted flight of whole communities instead of a peaceful commerce.
+
+During this season of terror I was, as may be conceived, indeed unhappy. I
+had no stomach even for play with the new addition to our household, yet
+scarcely dared to show my nose outside the stockade. Mr. Stewart spent his
+days abroad, either with Sir William, or up at Caughnawaga concerting
+means of defence with our friends the Fondas. He did, however, find time
+to cross the river and reassure my mother, who trembled with apprehension
+for her great brood of young, but was brave as a lion for herself. Weeks
+afterward, when I visited her once more, I saw baskets of lime in the
+attic which this devoted woman had stored there, to throw with water on
+the Indians when they came. This device she had learned from the family
+traditions of her ancestors' doings, when the Spaniards were in Holland.
+
+Gradually the alarm wore away. The French and Indians, after killing fifty
+Palatines and taking thrice that number prisoners, turned tail and marched
+back to the Lake again, with some of Honikol Herkimer's lead in their
+miserable bodies. The Valley was rarely to be cursed with their presence
+again. It was as if a long fever had come to its climax in a tremendous
+convulsion, and then gone off altogether. We regained confidence, and
+faced the long winter of '57 with content.
+
+Before the next snowfall succeeded to that first November flurry, and the
+season closed in in earnest, Mr. Stewart was able, by the aid of a number
+of neighbors, to build and roof over two additions to his house. The
+structure was still all of logs, but with its new wings became almost as
+large, if not as imposing, as any frame-house round about. One of these
+wings was set aside for Dame Kronk and the little girl. The other, much to
+my surprise, was given to me. At the same time my benefactor formally
+presented me with my little black playmate, Tulp. He had heretofore been
+my friend; henceforth he was my slave, yet, let me add, none the less
+my friend.
+
+All this was equivalent to my formal adoption as Mr. Stewart's son. It was
+the custom in those days, when a slave child came of a certain age, to
+present it to the child of the family who should be of the same age and
+sex. The presentation was made at New Year's, ordinarily, and the white
+child acknowledged it by giving the little black a piece of money and a
+pair of shoes. My mother rather illogically shed some tears at this token
+that I was to belong henceforth to Mr. Stewart; but she gave me a bright
+Spanish dollar out of her small hoard, for Tulp, and she had old William
+Dietz, the itinerant cobbler of Schoharie, construct for him a very
+notable pair of shoes, which did him no good since his father promptly
+sold them over at Fort Hunter for rum. The old rascal would have made
+away with the coin as well, no doubt, but that Mr. Stewart threatened him
+with a hiding, and so Tulp wore it on a leather string about his neck.
+
+I did not change my name, but continued to be Douw Mauverensen. This was
+at the wish of both Mr. Stewart and my mother, for the name I bore was an
+honorable one. My father had been for years a clergyman in the Valley,
+preaching now in Dutch, now in German, according to the nationality of the
+people, and leading a life of much hardship, travelling up and down among
+them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is
+certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many
+people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly
+remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very
+small boy.
+
+As he had had no fixed charge during life, but had ministered to half a
+dozen communities, so it was nobody's business in particular to care for
+his family after his death. The owner of the horse did send my mother a
+bushel of apples, and the congregation at Stone Arabia took up a little
+money for her. But they were all poor people in those days, wresting a
+scanty livelihood from the wilderness, and besides, I have never noticed
+that to be free with their money is in the nature of either the Dutch or
+the Palatines. The new dominie, too, who came up from Albany to take my
+father's place, was of the opinion that there was quite little enough
+coming in for the living pastor, without shearing it, as he said, to keep
+alive dead folk's memories. Thus sadly a prospect of great destitution
+opened before my mother.
+
+But she was, if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain
+Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the
+knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my
+grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years
+his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or
+by crook to collect his old credits outstanding, and maintained at least
+enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after
+his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with
+her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie
+Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she
+was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the
+youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means
+of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new
+dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time
+he visited our village. To add to the wretchedness of her plight, at this
+very time her sister Margaret came back in destitution and weakness to
+her, having been both widowed and sorely shaken in wits by the small-pox.
+
+It was then that Mr. Stewart, who had known my father, came to our relief.
+He first lent my mother a small sum of money--she would take no more, and
+was afterward very proud to repay him penny for penny. He further
+interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and
+others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort
+Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch.
+
+This language, which I have lived to see almost entirely fade from use,
+was even then thought to be most probably the tongue of the future in the
+colony, and there was the more need to teach it correctly, since, by the
+barbarous commingling of Rhenish peasant dialects, Irish and Scotch
+perversions of English, Indian phrases, the lingo of the slaves, and the
+curious expressions of the Yankees from the East, the most villanous
+jargon ever heard was commonly spoken in our Valley. My mother knew the
+noble language of her fathers in all its strength and sweetness, and her
+teaching was so highly prized that soon the school became a source of
+steady support to us all. Old "Uncle" Conrad--or Coonrod as we used to
+call him--the high-shouldered old pedagogue who was at once teacher,
+tithing-man, herb-doctor, and fiddler for our section, grumbled a little
+at the start; but either he had not the heart to take the bread from our
+mouths, or his own lips were soon silenced by the persuasion of
+our patrons.
+
+It was out of respect for one of these, good old Douw Fonda, who came from
+Schenectady to live at Caughnawaga when I was two years old, that I had
+been named. But even more we all owed to the quiet, lonely man who had
+built the log house opposite Aries Creek, and who used so often to come
+over on Sunday afternoons in the warm weather and pay us a
+friendly visit.
+
+My earliest recollections are of this Mr. Stewart, out of whom my boyish
+fancy created a beneficent sort of St. Nicholas, who could be good all the
+year round instead of only at New Year's. As I grew older his visits
+seemed more and more to be connected with me, for he paid little attention
+to my sisters, and rarely missed taking me on his knee, or, later on,
+leading me out for a walk. Finally I was asked to go over and stay with
+him for a week, and this practically was the last of my life with my
+mother. Soon afterward my aunt was engaged as his housekeeper, and I
+tacitly became a part of the household as well. Last of all, on my eighth
+birthday, in this same November of '57, I was formally installed as son of
+the house.
+
+It was a memorable day, as I have said, in that Tulp was given me for my
+own. But I think that at the time I was even more affected by the fact
+that I was presented with a coat, and allowed to forever lay aside my
+odious aprons. These garments, made by my mother's own hands, had long
+been the bane of my existence. To all my entreaties to be dressed as the
+other boys of my age were, like Matthew Wormuth or Walter Butler instead
+of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter
+Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he
+was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been
+my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my
+humiliation.
+
+Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same
+pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and
+plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel
+any more like the other boys than before.
+
+It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual
+contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the
+history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the
+neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other
+countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's
+possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the
+_Gentleman's Magazine,_ which I studied with delight. I had also from him
+_Roderick Random_, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now
+understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found
+favor with sensible people.
+
+My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little
+boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd
+sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the
+boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant
+as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the
+Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years
+after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's
+mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and
+fish and hunt instead. Young Butler was of a better sort mentally, but he
+too never cared to read much. Both he and the Groats, the Nellises, the
+Cosselmans, young Wormuth--in fact, all the boys of good families I knew
+in the Valley--derided education, and preferred instead to go into the
+woods with a negro, and hunt squirrels while he chopped, or to play with
+their traps.
+
+Perhaps they were not to be blamed much, for the attractions of the rough
+out-of-door life which they saw men leading all about them might very
+easily outweigh the quiet pleasures of a book. But it was a misfortune
+none the less in after-years to some of them, when they allowed uninformed
+prejudices to lead them into a terrible course of crime against their
+country and their neighbors, and paid their estates or their lives as the
+penalty for their ignorance and folly.
+
+Fortunately, things are better ordered for the youth of the land in these
+days.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+
+
+
+It was on the morrow after my birthday that we became finally convinced of
+the French retreat. Mr. Stewart had returned from his journeys, contented,
+and sat now, after his hot supper, smoking by the fire. I lay at his feet
+on a bear-skin, I remember, reading by the light of the flames, when my
+aunt brought the baby-girl in.
+
+During the week that she had been with us, I had been too much terrified
+by the menace of invasion to take much interest in her, and Mr. Stewart
+had scarcely seen her. He smiled now, and held out his hands to her. She
+went to him very freely, and looked him over with a wise, wondering
+expression when he took her on his knee. It could be seen that she was
+very pretty. Her little white rows of teeth were as regular and pearly as
+the upper kernels on an ear of fresh sweet corn. She had a ribbon in her
+long, glossy hair, and her face shone pleasantly with soap. My aunt had
+made her some shoes out of deer-hide, which Mr. Stewart chuckled over.
+
+"What a people the Dutch are!" he said, with a smile. "The child is
+polished like the barrel of a gun. What's your name, little one?"
+
+The girl made no answer, from timidity I suppose.
+
+"Has she no name? I should think she would have one," said I. It was the
+first time I had ever spoken to Mr. Stewart without having been addressed.
+But my new position in the house seemed to entitle me to this much
+liberty, for once.
+
+"No," he replied, "your aunt is not able to discover that she has a
+name--except that she calls herself Pulkey, or something like that."
+
+"That is not a good name to the ear," I said, in comment.
+
+"No; doubtless it is a nickname. I have thought," he added, musingly, "of
+calling her Desideria."
+
+I sat bolt upright at this. It did not become me to protest, but I could
+not keep the dismay from my face, evidently, for Mr. Stewart
+laughed aloud.
+
+"What is it, Douw? Is it not to your liking?"
+
+"Y-e-s, sir--but she is such a very little girl!"
+
+"And the name is so great, eh? She'll grow to it, lad, she'll grow to it.
+And what kind of a Dutchman are you, sir, who are unwilling to do honor to
+the greatest of all Dutchmen? The Dr. Erasmus upon whose letters you are
+to try your Latin this winter--his name was Desiderius. Can you tell what
+it means? It signifies 'desired,' as of a mother's heart, and he took a
+form of the Greek verb _erao_, meaning about the same thing, instead. It's
+a goodly famous name, you see. We mean to make our little girl the truest
+lady, and love her the best, of all the women in the Valley. And so we'll
+give her a name--a fair-sounding, gracious, classical name--which no
+other woman bears, and one that shall always suggest home love--eh, boy?"
+
+"But if it be so good a name, sir," I said, gingerly being conscious of
+presumption, "why did Dr. Erasmus not keep it himself instead of turning
+it into Greek?"
+
+My patron laughed heartily at this. "A Dutchman for obstinacy!" he said,
+and leaned over to rub the top of my head, which he did when I specially
+pleased him.
+
+Late that night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling
+of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I
+determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was
+brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the
+fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. Mr.
+Stewart was reading by the candles on the table. Save for the singing of
+the kettle on the crane--for the mixing of his night-drink later on--and
+the click of my aunt's knitting-needles, there was perfect silence. I
+mustered my bravery, and called my wee playmate "Daisy."
+
+I dared not look at the master, and could not tell if he had heard or not.
+Presently I spoke the name again, and this time ventured to steal an
+apprehensive glance at him, and fancied I saw the workings of a smile
+repressed in the deep lines about his mouth. "A Dutchman for obstinacy"
+truly, since two days afterward Mr. Stewart himself called the girl
+"Daisy"--and there was an end of it. Until confirmation time, when she
+played a queenly part at the head of the little class of farmers' and
+villagers' daughters whom Dominie Romeyn baptized into full communion,
+the ponderous Latin name was never heard of again. Then it indeed emerged
+for but a single day, to dignify a state occasion, and disappeared
+forever. Except alone on the confirmation register of the Stone Church at
+Caughnawaga, she was Daisy thenceforth for all time and to all men.
+
+The winter of 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of
+great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the
+roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good
+crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying
+settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to
+get food.
+
+I do not remember that our household stood in any such need, but
+occasionally some Indian who had been across the hills carrying venison
+would come in and rest, begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a
+strong smell like that of a tame bear as he toasted himself by the fire.
+Mr. Stewart was often amused by these fellows, and delighted to talk with
+them as far as their knowledge of language and inclination to use it went,
+but I never could abide them.
+
+It has become the fashion now to be sentimental about the red man, and
+young people who never knew what he really was like find it easy to extol
+his virtues, and to create for him a chivalrous character. No doubt there
+were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few
+just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion
+to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail
+me. But as a whole the race was a bad one--full of laziness and lies and
+cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and
+I know what I say.
+
+Probably there was no place on the whole continent where these Indians
+could be better studied than in the Mohawk Valley, near to Sir William's
+place. They came to him in great numbers, not only from the Six Nations,
+but often from far-distant tribes living beyond the Lakes and north of the
+St. Lawrence. They were on their best behavior with him, and no doubt had
+an affection for him in their way, but it was because he flattered their
+egregious vanity by acting and dressing in Indian fashion, and made it
+worth their while by constantly giving them presents and rum. Their liking
+seemed always to me to be that of the selfish, treacherous cat, rather
+than of the honest dog. Their teeth and claws were always ready for your
+flesh, if you did not give them enough, and if they dared to strike. And
+they were cowards, too, for all their boasting. Not even Sir William could
+get them to face any enemy in the open. Their notion of war was midnight
+skulking and shooting from behind safe cover. Even in battle they were
+murderers, not warriors.
+
+In peace they were next to useless. There was a little colony of them in
+our orchard one summer which I watched with much interest. The men never
+did one stroke of honest work all the season long, except to trot on
+errands when they felt like it, and occasionally salt and smoke fish
+which they caught in the river.
+
+But the wretched squaws--my word but _they_ worked enough for both! These
+women, wrinkled, dirty, sore-eyed from the smoke in their miserable huts,
+toiled on patiently, ceaselessly, making a great variety of wooden
+utensils and things of deer-hide like snow-shoes, moccasins, and shirts,
+which they bartered with the whites for milk and vegetables and rum. Even
+the little girls among them had to gather berries and mandrake, and, in
+the fall, the sumach blows which the Indians used for savoring their food.
+And if these poor creatures obtained in their bartering too much bread and
+milk and too little rum and tobacco, they were beaten by their men as no
+white man would beat the meanest animal.
+
+Doubtless much of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and
+hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all
+sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a
+score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp,
+that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs
+which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in
+the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, who herded
+together in a shanty at the edge of the clearing back of us, had their
+faults, no doubt; but they would work when they were bid, and they were
+grateful to those who fed and clothed and cared for them. These were
+reasons for their being despised by the Indians--and they seemed also
+reasons why I should like them, as I always did.
+
+There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a
+queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical
+sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably
+believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors
+or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge
+of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his
+ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over
+collecting tulip-bulbs.
+
+His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the
+possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened
+Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought
+him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the
+day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in
+his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing
+his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had
+some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could
+have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this
+warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living
+up to it.
+
+I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In
+truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season
+of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for
+me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head;
+that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close
+to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy,
+until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long
+months I never saw my mother and sisters, or went to church? It was very
+pleasant inside.
+
+I seem still to see the square, home-like central room of the old house,
+with Mr. Stewart's bed in one corner, covered with a great robe of pieced
+panther skins. The smoky rafters above were hung with strings of onions,
+red-peppers, and long ears of Indian corn, the gold of which shone through
+pale parted husks and glowed in the firelight. The rude home-made table,
+chairs, and stools stood in those days upon a rough floor of hewn planks,
+on projecting corners of which an unlucky toe was often stubbed. There
+were various skins spread on this floor, and others on the log walls, hung
+up to dry. Over the great stone mantel were suspended Mr. Stewart's guns,
+along with his sword and pistols. Back in the corners of the fireplace
+were hung traps, nets, and the like, while on the opposite side of the
+room was the master's bookcase, well filled with volumes in English,
+Latin, and other tongues. Three doors, low and unpanelled, opened from
+this room to the other chambers of the house--leading respectively to the
+kitchen, to my room, and to the room now set apart for my aunt and
+little Daisy.
+
+No doubt it was a poor abode, and scantily enough furnished, judged by
+present standards, but we were very comfortable in it, none the less. I
+worked pretty hard that winter on my Latin, conning Cæsar for labor and
+Dr. Erasmus for play, and kept up my other studies as well, reading for
+the first time, I remember, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. For the
+rest, I busied myself learning to make snow-shoes, to twist cords out of
+flax, to mould bullets, and to write legibly, or else played with
+Daisy and Tulp.
+
+To confess how simply we amused ourselves, we three little ones, would be
+to speak in an unknown tongue, I fear, to modern children. Our stock of
+playthings was very limited. We had, as the basis of everything, the
+wooden works of the old clock, which served now for a gristmill like that
+of the Groats, now for a fort, again for a church. Then there were the
+spindles of a discarded spinning-wheel, and a small army of spools which
+my aunt used for winding linen thread. These we dressed in odd rags for
+dolls--soldiers, Indians, and fine ladies, and knights of old. To our
+contented fancy, there was endless interest in the lives and doings of
+these poor puppets. I made them illustrate the things I read, and the
+slave boy and tiny orphan girl assisted and followed on with equal
+enthusiasm, whether the play was of Alexander of Macedon, or Captain Kidd,
+or only a war-council of Delaware Indians, based upon Mr. Colden's book.
+
+Sometimes, when it was warm enough to leave the hearth, and Mr. Stewart
+desired not to be disturbed, we would transport ourselves and our games to
+my aunt's room. This would be a dingy enough place, I suppose, even to my
+eyes now, but it had a great charm then. Here from the rafters hung the
+dried, odoriferous herbs--sage, summer-savory, and mother-wort; bottles of
+cucumber ointment and of a liniment made from angle-worms--famous for cuts
+and bruises; strings of dried apples and pumpkins; black beans in their
+withered pods; sweet clover for the linen--and I know not what else
+besides. On the wall were two Dutch engravings of the killing of Jan and
+Cornelis de Wit by the citizens of The Hague, which, despite their hideous
+fidelity to details, had a great fascination for me.
+
+My childhood comes back vividly indeed to me as I recall the good old
+woman, in her white cap and short gown (which she had to lift to get at
+the pocket tied over her petticoat by a string to her waist), walking up
+and down with the yarn taut from the huge, buzzing wheel, crooning Dutch
+hymns to herself the while, and thinking about our dinner.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+
+
+
+If I relied upon my memory, I could not tell when the French war ended. It
+had practically terminated, so far as our Valley was concerned, with the
+episode already related. Sir William Johnson was away much of the time
+with the army, and several of the boys older than myself--John Johnson,
+John Frey, and Adam Fonda among them--went with him. We heard vague news
+of battles at distant places, at Niagara, at Quebec, and elsewhere. Once,
+indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did
+bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic
+in the lower settlements.
+
+Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in
+the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes.
+
+I remember one body of Highlanders in particular whose dress and mien
+impressed me greatly. Mr. Stewart, too, was much excited by the memories
+this noble uniform evoked, and had the officers into the house to eat and
+drink with him. I watched and listened to these tall, fierce, bare-kneed
+warriors in awe, from a distance. He brought out bottles from his rare
+stock of Madeira, and they drank it amid exclamations which, if I mistake
+not, were highly treasonable. This was almost the last occasion on which I
+heard references made to his descent, and he did his best to discourage
+them then. Most of these fine red-haired men, I learned afterward laid
+their bones on the bloody plateau overlooking Quebec.
+
+Far fresher in my recollection than these rumors of war is the fact that
+my Tulp caught the small-pox, in the spring of '60, the malady having been
+spread by a Yankee who came up the Valley selling sap-spouts that were
+turned with a lathe instead of being whittled. The poor little chap was
+carried off to a sheep-shed on the meadow clearing, a long walk from our
+house, and he had to remain there by himself for six weeks. At my urgent
+request, I was allowed to take his food to him daily, leaving it on a
+stone outside and then discreetly retiring. He would come out and get it,
+and then we would shout to each other across the creek. I took up some of
+our dolls to him, but he did not get much comfort out of them, being
+unable to remember any of the stories which I illustrated with them, or to
+invent any for himself. At his suggestion I brought him instead a piece of
+tanned calf-skin, with a sailor's needle and some twine, and the little
+fellow made out of this a lot of wallets for his friends, which had to be
+buried a long time before they could be safely used. I have one of these
+yet--mildewed with age, and most rudely stitched, but still a very
+precious possession.
+
+Tulp came out finally, scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward
+repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that
+Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than
+ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because
+women are more delicately made, and must perforce shudder at ugliness.
+
+How happily the years went by! The pictures in my memory, save those of
+the snug winter rooms already referred to, are all of a beautiful Valley,
+embowered in green, radiant with sunshine--each day live-long
+with delight.
+
+There was first of all in the spring, when the chorus of returning
+song-birds began, the gathering of maple-sap, still sacred to boyhood. The
+sheep were to be washed and sheared, too, and the awkward, weak-kneed
+calves to be fed. While the spring floods ran high, ducks and geese
+covered the water, and muskrats came out, driven from their holes. Then
+appeared great flocks of pigeons, well fattened from their winter's
+sojourn in the South, and everybody, young and old, gave himself up to
+their slaughter; while this lasted, the crack! crack! of guns was heard
+all the forenoon long, particularly if the day was cloudy and the birds
+were flying low--and ah! the buttered pigeon pies my aunt made, too.
+
+As the floods went down, and the snow-water disappeared, the fishing
+began, first with the big, silly suckers, then with wiser and more valued
+fish. The woods became dry, and then in long, joyous rambles we set traps
+and snares, hunted for nests among the low branches and in the
+marsh-grass, smoked woodchucks out of their holes, gathered wild flowers,
+winter-green, and dye-plants, or built great fires of the dead leaves and
+pithless, scattered branches, as boys to the end of time will delight
+to do.
+
+When autumn came, there were mushrooms, and beech-nuts, butter-nuts,
+hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of
+elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened
+the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the
+wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the
+combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by
+our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being
+boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk
+by my aunt.
+
+Ah, they were happy times indeed!
+
+Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early
+in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no
+reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are
+wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being
+invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew
+quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly
+upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular
+progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the
+pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high,
+uncompromising back made all my bones ache.
+
+Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was
+a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the
+best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own
+to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on
+me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me
+personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed
+to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist
+clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of
+the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even
+to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree
+were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and
+spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst
+in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads.
+
+When at last I could escape without discredit, and get across the river
+again, it was with the consoling thought that the next Sunday would be Mr.
+Stewart's Sunday.
+
+This meant a good long walk with my patron. Sometimes we would go down to
+Mount Johnson, if Sir William was at home, or to Mr. Butler's, or some
+other English-speaking house, where I would hear much profitable
+conversation, and then be encouraged to talk about it during our leisurely
+homeward stroll. But more often, if the day were fine, we would leave
+roads and civilization behind us, and climb the gradual elevation to the
+north of the house, through the woodland to an old Indian trail which led
+to our favorite haunt--a wonderful ravine.
+
+The place has still a local fame, and picnic parties go there to play at
+forestry, but it gives scarcely a suggestion now of its ancient wildness.
+As my boyish eyes saw it, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The
+creek, then a powerful stream, had cut a deep gorge in its exultant leap
+over the limestone barrier. On the cliffs above, giant hemlocks seemed to
+brush the very sky with their black, tufted boughs. Away below, on the
+shadowed bottomland, which could be reached only by feet trained to
+difficult descents, strange plants grew rank in the moisture of the
+waterfall, and misshapen rocks wrapped their nakedness in heavy folds of
+unknown mosses and nameless fern-growths. Above all was the ceaseless
+shout of the tumbling waters, which had in my ears ever a barbaric message
+from the Spirit of the Wilderness.
+
+The older Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot
+was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here,
+for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered
+about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had
+assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain,
+for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown.
+Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen
+or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this
+council place. Even the trail, winding its tortuous way from the Valley
+over the hills toward the Adirondack fastnesses, had been deserted for
+another long before--so long, in fact, that the young brave who chanced to
+follow the lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge,
+or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to
+learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the
+council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the
+chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part
+of his ancestral history.
+
+Mr. Stewart told me that when he first settled in the Valley, a
+disappointed and angry man, this gulf had much the satisfaction for him
+that men in great grief or wrath find in breasting a sharp storm. There
+was something congenial to his ugly unrest in this place, with its violent
+clamor, its swift dashing of waters, its dismal shadows, and damp
+chilliness of depths.
+
+But we were fallen now upon calmer, brighter days. He was no longer the
+discouraged, sullen misanthropist, but had come to be instead a pacific,
+contented, even happy, gentleman. And lo! the meaning of the wild gorge
+changed to reflect his mood. There was no stain of savagery upon the
+delight we had in coming to this spot. As he said, once listened rightly
+to, the music of the falling waters gave suggestions which, if they were
+sobering, were still not sad.
+
+This place was all our own, and hither we most frequently bent our steps
+on Sundays, after the snow-water had left the creek, and the danger of
+lurking colds had been coaxed from the earth by the May sun. Here he would
+sit for hours on one of the stones in the great Druid-like circle which
+some dead generation of savages had toiled to construct. Sometimes I
+would scour the steep sides of the ravine and the moist bottom for curious
+plants to fetch to him, and he would tell me of their structure and
+design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his
+pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and
+this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his
+past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable
+wealth of reminiscence, reflection, and helpful anecdote.
+
+On this spot, with the gaunt outlines of mammoth primeval trunks and
+twisted boughs above us, with the sacred memorials of extinct rites about
+us, and with the waters crashing down through the solitude beneath us on
+their way to turn Sir William's mill-wheel, one could get broad,
+comprehensive ideas of what things really meant. One could see wherein the
+age of Pitt differed from and advanced upon the age of Colbert, on this
+new continent, and could as in prophecy dream of the age of Jefferson yet
+to come. Did I as a lad feel these things? Truly it seems to me that
+I did.
+
+Half a century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle,
+its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan
+tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the
+blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound
+to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that not
+even the horrors of this death could shake his will, or wring a groan
+from his heaving breast. Here, too, above the unending din of the
+waterfall and the whisper of these hemlocks overhead, had often risen some
+such shrill-voiced, defiant deathsong, from the smoke and anguish of the
+stake, as that chant of the Algonquin son of Alknomuk which my
+grandchildren still sing at their school. This dead and horrible past of
+heathendom I saw as in a mirror, looking upon these council-stones.
+
+The children's children of these savages were still in the Valley. Their
+council fires were still lighted, no further distant than the Salt
+Springs. In their hearts burned all the old lust for torture and massacre,
+and the awful joys of rending enemies limb by limb. But the spell of
+Europe was upon them, and, in good part or otherwise, they bowed under it.
+So much had been gained, and two peaceful white people could come and talk
+in perfect safety on the ancient site of their sacrifices and cruelties.
+
+Yet this spell of Europe, accomplishing so much, left much to be desired.
+It was still possible to burn a slave to death by legal process, here in
+our Valley; and it was still within the power of careless, greedy noblemen
+in London, who did not know the Mohawk from the Mississippi, to sign away
+great patents of our land, robbing honest settlers of their all. There was
+to come the spell of America, which should remedy these things. I cannot
+get it out of my head that I learned to foresee this, to feel and to look
+for its coming, there in the gorge as a boy.
+
+But there are other reasons why I should remember the place--to be told
+later on.
+
+The part little Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is
+hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can
+recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade,
+and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds
+these old memories. We were happy together--that is all.
+
+I taught her to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from
+toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs.
+For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call
+her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I
+learned in turn to be merciful to helpless creatures, and to be honest and
+cleanly in my thoughts and talk. She would help me to seek for birds'
+nests with genuine enthusiasm, but it was her pity which prevented their
+being plundered afterward. Her pretty love for all living things, her
+delight in innocent, simple amusements, her innate repugnance to coarse
+and cruel actions--all served to make me different from the rough
+boys about me.
+
+Thus we grew up together, glad in each other's constant company, and
+holding our common benefactor, Mr. Stewart, in the greatest love and
+veneration.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+
+
+
+As we two children became slowly transformed into youths, the Valley with
+no less steadiness developed in activity, population, and wealth. Good
+roads were built; new settlements sprang up; the sense of being in the
+hollow of the hand of savagery wore off. Primitive conditions lapsed,
+disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven
+faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh
+outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began
+to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the
+common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the
+Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a
+pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore
+ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained
+hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that
+some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more
+attractions.
+
+There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was
+sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the
+gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London
+clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him.
+
+The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people
+all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the
+hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown
+how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be
+courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who
+fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses
+and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and
+close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed
+children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love
+for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others,
+the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his
+influence in London.
+
+They never liked him entirely; he in turn had so little regard for them
+and their pretensions that, when they came, he would suffer none of them
+to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom indeed they had often
+to meet as an associate and equal. Yet this bold, independent, really
+great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded
+water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to
+value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their
+painted spectacles--and thus to come to grief.
+
+Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr. Stewart all at once decided
+that he too would have a new house; and before snow flew the handsome,
+spacious "Cedars," as it was called, proudly fronted the Valley highway.
+Of course it was not, in size, a rival of the Hall at Johnstown, but it
+none the less was among the half-dozen best houses in the Mohawk Valley,
+and continued so to be until John Johnson burned it to the ground fifteen
+years later. It stood in front of our old log structure, now turned over
+to the slaves. It was of two stories, with lofty and spacious rooms, and
+from the road it presented a noble appearance, now that the old stockade
+had given place to a wall of low, regular masonry.
+
+With this new residence came a prodigious change in our way of life. Daisy
+was barely twelve years old, but we already thought of her as the lady of
+the house, for whom nothing was too good. The walls were plastered, and
+stiff paper from Antwerp with great sprawling arabesques, and figures of
+nymphs and fauns chasing one another up and down with ceaseless, fruitless
+persistency, was hung upon them, at least in the larger rooms. The floors
+were laid smoothly, each board lapping into the next by a then novel
+joiner's trick.
+
+On the floor in Daisy's room there was a carpet, too, a rare and
+remarkable thing in those days, and also from the Netherlands. In this
+same chamber, as well, were set up a bed of mahogany, cunningly carved and
+decorated, and a tall foreign cabinet of some rich dark wood, for linen,
+frocks, and the like. Here, likewise, were two gilt cages from Paris, in
+which a heart-breaking succession of native birds drooped and died, until
+four Dublin finches were at last imported for Daisy's special delight; and
+a case with glass doors and a lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her
+books; and, best of all, a piano--or was it a harpsichord?--standing on
+its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and
+bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling
+old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk,
+sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing
+to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that
+of the cherubim.
+
+Mr. Stewart and I lived in far less splendor. There was no foreign
+furniture to speak of in our portions of the house; we slept on beds the
+cords of which creaked through honest American maple posts; we walked on
+floors which offered gritty sand to the tread instead of carpet-stuffs.
+But there were two great stands laden with good books in our living-room;
+we had servants now within sound of a bell; we habitually wore garments
+befitting men of refinement and substance; we rode our own horses, and we
+could have given Daisy a chaise had the condition of our roads made it
+desirable.
+
+I say "we" because I had come to be a responsible factor in the control of
+the property. Mr. Stewart had never been poor; he was now close upon being
+wealthy. Upon me little by little had devolved the superintendence of
+affairs. I directed the burning over and clearing of land, which every
+year added scores of tillable acres to our credit; saw to the planting,
+care, and harvesting of crops; bought, bred, and sold the stock; watched
+prices, dickered with travelling traders, provisioned the house--in a
+word, grew to be the manager of all, and this when I was barely twenty.
+
+Mr. Stewart bore his years with great strength, physically, but he readily
+gave over to me, as fast as I could assume them, the details of out-door
+work. The taste for sitting indoors or in the garden, and reading, or
+talking with Daisy--the charm of simply living in a home made beautiful by
+a good and clever young girl--gained yearly upon him.
+
+Side by side with this sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second
+growth of old-world, mediæval notions--a sort of aristocratic aftermath.
+It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by
+ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the
+wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under
+the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to dwell
+upon this change, or rather upon its results, at this stage of the story.
+
+Social position was now a matter for consideration. With improved means of
+intercourse and traffic, each year found some family thrifty enough to
+thrust its head above the rude level of settlers' equality, and take on
+the airs of superiority. Twenty years before, it had been Colonel Johnson
+first, and nobody else second. Now the Baronet-General was still
+preeminently first; but every little community in the Valley chain had its
+two or three families holding themselves only a trifle lower than
+the Johnsons.
+
+Five or six nationalities were represented. Of the Germans, there were the
+Herkimers up above the Falls, the Lawyers at Schoharie, the Freys (who
+were commonly thus classed, though they came originally from Switzerland),
+and many others. Of important Dutch families, there were the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, the Mabies and Groats at Rotterdam, below us, and the
+Quackenbosses to the west of us, across the river. The Johnsons and
+Butlers were Irish. Over at Cherry Valley the Campbells and Clydes were
+Scotch--the former being, indeed, close blood relatives of the great
+Argyll house. Colonel Isaac Paris, a prominent merchant near Stone Arabia,
+came from Strasbourg, and accounted himself a Frenchman, though he spoke
+German better than French, and attended the Dutch Calvinistic church.
+There were also English families of quality. I mention them all to show
+how curious was the admixture of races in our Valley. One cannot
+understand the terrible trouble which came upon us later without some
+knowledge of these race divisions.
+
+Mr. Stewart held a place in social estimation rather apart from any of
+these cliques. He was both Scotch and Irish by ancestry; he was French by
+education; he had lived and served in the Netherlands and sundry German
+states. Thus he could be all things to all men--yet he would not. He
+indeed became more solitary as he grew older, for the reasons I have
+already mentioned. He once had been friendly with all his intelligent
+neighbors, no matter what their nationality. Gradually he came to be
+intimate with only the Johnsons and Butlers on the theory that they were
+alone well born. Hours upon hours he talked with them of the Warrens and
+the Ormund-Butlers in Ireland, from whom they claimed descent, and of the
+assurance of Dutch and German cobblers and tinkers, in setting up for
+gentlemen.
+
+Sir William, in truth, had too much sense to often join or sympathize with
+these notions. But young Sir John and the Butlers, father and son, adopted
+them with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and
+German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these
+reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed
+lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for the friendship, of
+their critics.
+
+But let me defer these painful matters as long as possible. There are
+still the joys of youth to recall.
+
+I had grown now into a tall, strong young man, and I was in the way of
+meeting no one who did not treat me as an equal. It seems to me now that I
+was not particularly popular among my fellows, but I was conscious of no
+loneliness then. I had many things to occupy my mind, besides my regular
+tasks. Both natural history and botany interested me greatly, and I was
+privileged also to assist Sir William's investigations in the noble paths
+of astronomy. He had both large information and many fine thoughts on the
+subject, and used laughingly to say that if he were not too lazy he would
+write a book thereon. This was his way of saying that he had more labor to
+get through than any other man in the Colony. It was his idea that some
+time I should write the work instead; upon the Sacondaga hills, he said,
+we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our
+book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of
+planets. Alas! I also was too indolent--truly, not figuratively; the book
+was never written.
+
+In those days there was royal sport for rod and gun, but books also had a
+solid worth. We did not visit other houses much--Daisy and I--but held
+ourselves to a degree apart. The British people were, as a whole, nearer
+our station than the others, and had more ideas in common with us; but
+they were not of our blood, and we were not drawn toward many of them. As
+they looked down upon the Dutch, so the Dutch, in turn, were supercilious
+toward the Germans. I was Dutch, Daisy was German: but by a sort of tacit
+consent we identified ourselves with neither race, and this aided our
+isolation.
+
+There was also the question of religion. Mr. Stewart had been bred a
+Papist, and at the time of which I write, after the French war, Jesuit
+priests of that nation several times visited him to renew old European
+friendships. But he never went to mass, and never allowed them or anybody
+else to speak with him on the subject, no matter how deftly they
+approached it. This was prudent, from a worldly point of view, because the
+Valley, and for that matter the whole upper Colony, was bitterly opposed
+to Romish pretensions, and the first Scotch Highlanders who brought the
+mass into the Valley above Johnstown were openly denounced as idolaters.
+But it was certainly not caution which induced Mr. Stewart's backsliding.
+He was not the man to defer in that way to the prejudices of others. The
+truth was that he had no religious beliefs or faith whatever. But his
+scepticism was that of the French noble of the time, that of Voltaire and
+Mirabeau, rather than of the English plebeian and democrat, Thomas Paine.
+
+Naturally Daisy and I were not reared as theologians. We nominally
+belonged to the Calvinistic church, but not being obliged to attend its
+services, rarely did so. This tended to further separate us from our
+neighbors, who were mainly prodigious church-goers.
+
+But, more than all else, we lived by ourselves because, by constant
+contact with refined associations, we had grown to shrink from the
+coarseness which ruled outside. All about us marriages were made between
+mere children, each boy setting up for himself and taking a wife as soon
+as he had made a voyage to the Lakes and obtained a start in fur-trading.
+There was precious little sentiment or delicacy in these early courtships
+and matches, or in the state of society which they reflected--uncultured,
+sordid, rough, unsympathetic, with all its elementary instincts bluntly
+exposed and expressed. This was of course a subject not to be discussed by
+us. Up to the spring of 1772, when I was twenty-three years of age and
+Daisy was eighteen, no word of all the countless words which young men and
+women have from the dawn of language spoken on this great engrossing topic
+had ever been exchanged between us. In earlier years, when we were on the
+threshold of our teens, Mr. Stewart had more than once thought aloud in
+our hearing upon the time when we should inherit his home and fortune as a
+married couple. Nothing of that talk, though, had been heard for a
+long while.
+
+I had not entirely forgotten it; but I carried the idea along in the attic
+of my mind, as a thing not to be thrown away, yet of no present use or
+value or interest.
+
+Occasionally, indeed, I did recall it for the moment, and cast a diffident
+conjecture as to whether Daisy also remembered. Who shall say? I have been
+young and now am old, yet have I not learned the trick of reading a
+woman's mind. Very far indeed was I from it in those callow days.
+
+And now, after what I fear has been a tiresome enough prologue, my story
+awaits.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+
+
+It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were
+entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness
+of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve
+upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times,
+there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief
+inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and
+her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations.
+
+I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she
+stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson
+Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight.
+I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my
+companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise.
+
+We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first
+visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this
+morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion
+behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly
+along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this
+full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued
+hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever
+under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean
+face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown
+sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together,
+from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of
+himself and of the beautiful girl behind him.
+
+And she _was_ beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed
+with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance
+as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in
+its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's
+thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought
+that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so
+delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and
+thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the
+edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the
+hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun.
+
+She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought,
+as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was
+she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And
+I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my
+head a little, too.
+
+It would have been strange otherwise, for the day and the scene must have
+stirred the coldest pulse. We moved through a pale velvety panorama of
+green--woodland and roadside and river reflections and shadows, all of
+living yet young and softening green; the birds all about us filled the
+warm air with song; the tapping of the woodpeckers and the shrill chatter
+of squirrels came from every thicket; there was nothing which did not
+reflect our joyous, buoyant delight that spring had come again. And I rode
+by Daisy's side, and thought more of her, I'm bound, than I did of the
+flood-dismantled dike on the river-bend at home which I had left
+unrestored for the day.
+
+Over the heads of the negroes, who, spying us, came headlong to take our
+horses, we saw Sir William standing in the garden with an unknown lady.
+The baronet himself, walking a little heavily with his cane, approached us
+with hearty salutations, helped Daisy to unmount, and presented us to this
+stranger--Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+I am not so sure that people can fall in love at first sight. But never
+doubt their ability to dislike from the beginning! I know that I felt
+indignantly intolerant of this woman even before, hat in hand, I had
+finished my bow to her.
+
+Yet it might well have been that I was over-harsh in my judgment. She had
+been a pretty woman in her time, and still might be thought well-favored.
+At least _she_ must have thought so, for she wore more paint and ribbons,
+and fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since.
+Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in
+outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids
+and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet
+so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that
+it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous
+black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an
+unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin.
+
+I may say that I was a wholesome-enough looking young fellow, very tall
+and broad-shouldered, with a long, dark face, which was ugly in childhood,
+but had grown now into something like comeliness. I am not parading
+special innocence either, but no woman had ever looked into my eyes with
+so bold, I might say impudent, an expression as this fine lady put on to
+greet me. And she was old enough to be my mother, almost, into
+the bargain.
+
+But even more than her free glances, which, after all, meant no harm, but
+only reflected London manners, her dress grated upon me. We were not
+unaccustomed to good raiment in the Valley. Johnson Hall, which reared its
+broad bulk through the trees on the knoll above us, had many a time
+sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us.
+But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place--like her
+feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains
+and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet,
+whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and
+Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and
+knowing our position, were also genuine parts of the scene. The English
+lady was pinchbeck by contrast with all about her.
+
+"Will you give the ladies an arm, Douw?" said Sir William. "We were
+walking to see the lilacs I planted a year ago. We old fellows, with so
+much to say to each other, will lead the way."
+
+Nothing occurred to me to say to the new acquaintance, who further annoyed
+me by clinging to my arm with a zeal unpleasantly different from Daisy's
+soft touch on the other side. I walked silent, and more or less sulky,
+between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily.
+
+"And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks
+so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you
+content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet!
+And you never weary of it--never sigh when it is time to return to it from
+New York?"
+
+"I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer.
+
+Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment.
+
+"Never to New York! nor even to Albany! _Une vraie belle sauvage!_ How you
+amaze me, poor child!"
+
+"Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily. "My father
+and brother are so good to me--just like a true father and brother--that
+if I but hinted a wish to visit the moon, they would at once set about to
+arrange the voyage. I do not always stay at home. Twice I have been on a
+visit to Mr. Campbell, at Cherry Valley, over the hills yonder. And then
+once we made a grand excursion up the river, way to Fort Herkimer, and
+beyond to the place where my poor parents lost their lives."
+
+As we stood regarding the lilac bushes, planted in a circle on the slope,
+and I was congratulating myself that my elbows were free again, two
+gentlemen approached us from the direction of the Hall.
+
+Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady
+Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There,
+that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler."
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we
+came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his
+rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke
+pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake
+country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until his return, at
+Johnson Hall.
+
+His companion was Walter Butler, and of him I ought to speak more closely,
+since long generations after this tale is forgotten his name will remain
+written, blood-red, in the Valley's chronicles. I walked away from the
+lilacs with him, I recall, discussing some unremembered subject. I always
+liked Walter: even now, despite everything, there continues a soft spot in
+my memory for him.
+
+He was about my own age, and, oh! such a handsome youth, with features cut
+as in a cameo, and pale-brown smooth skin, and large deep eyes, that look
+upon me still sometimes in dreams with ineffable melancholy. He was
+somewhat beneath my stature, but formed with perfect delicacy.
+
+In those old days of breeches and long hose, a man's leg went for a good
+deal. I have often thought that there must be a much closer connection
+between trousers and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man
+like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a
+Whig in the Revolutionary time--as if by natural prejudice against the
+would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and
+dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own
+country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still
+largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World
+ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the
+symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and
+silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction
+of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of
+republican trousers--a popular decree that henceforth all men should be
+equal as to legs?
+
+To return. Walter Butler was most perfectly built--a living picture of
+grace. He dressed, too, with remarkable taste, contriving always to appear
+the gentleman, yet not out of place in the wilderness. He wore his own
+black hair, carelessly tied or flowing, and with no thought of powder.
+
+We had always liked each other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn
+and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he
+was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he
+held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also
+be able to revere them for upholding a false-tongued king against the
+rights of his people. For my own part, I did not pin much faith upon his
+descent, being able to remember his grandfather, the old lieutenant, who
+seemed a peasant to the marrow of his bones.
+
+Nor could I see any special value in the fact of descent, even were it
+unquestioned. Walter, it seemed to me, would do much better to work at the
+law, to which he was bred, and make a name for himself by his own
+exertions. Alas, he did make a name!
+
+But though our paths would presently diverge we still were good friends,
+and as we walked he told me what he had heard that day of Lady Berenicia
+Cross. It was not much. She had been the daughter of a penniless,
+disreputable Irish earl, and had wedded early in life to escape the
+wretchedness of her paternal home. She had played quite a splendid part
+for a time in the vanities of London court-life, after her husband gained
+his wealth, but had latterly found her hold upon fashion's favor loosened.
+Why she had accompanied her serious spouse on this rough and wearisome
+journey was not clear. It might be that she came because he did not care
+for her company. It might be that he thought it wisest not to leave her in
+London to her own devices. In any case, here she indubitably was, and
+Walter was disposed to think her rather a fine woman for her years,
+which he took to be about twoscore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We strolled back again to the lilacs, where the two women were seated on a
+bench, with Mr. Cross and Colonel Claus--the brighter and better of Sir
+William's two sons-in-law--standing over them. Lady Berenicia beckoned to
+my companion with her fan.
+
+"Pray come and amuse us, Mr. Butler," she said, in her high, mincing
+tones. "Were it not for the fear of ministering to your vanity, I might
+confess we two have been languishing for an hour for your company.
+Mistress Daisy and I venerate these cavaliers of ours vastly--we hold
+their grave wisdom in high regard--but our frivolous palates need lighter
+things than East India Companies and political quarrels in Boston. I
+command you to discourse nonsense, Mr. Butler--pure, giddy nonsense."
+
+Walter bowed, and with a tinge of irony acknowledged the compliment, but
+all pleasantly enough. I glanced at our Daisy, expecting to discover my
+own distaste for this silly speech mirrored on her face. It vexed me a
+little to see that she seemed instead to be pleased with the London lady.
+
+"What shall it be, my lady?" smiled Walter; "what shall be the
+shuttlecock--the May races, the ball, the Klock scandal, the--"
+
+If it was rude, it is too late to be helped now. I interrupted the foolish
+talk by asking Colonel Claus what the news from Boston was, for the
+post-boy had brought papers to the Hall that morning.
+
+"The anniversary speech is reported. Some apothecary, named Warren, held
+forth this year, and his seems the boldest tongue yet. If his talk stinks
+not of treason in every line, why then I have no smelling sense. They are
+talking of it in the library now; but I am no statesman, and it suits me
+better out here in the sun."
+
+"But," I replied, "I have heard of this Dr. Warren, and he is not reputed
+to be a rash or thoughtless speaker."
+
+Young Butler burst into the conversation with eager bitterness:
+
+"Thoughtless! Rash! No--the dogs know better! There'll be no word that can
+be laid hold upon--all circumspect outside, with hell itself underneath.
+Do we not know the canters? Oh, but I'd smash through letter and seal of
+the law alike to get at them, were I in power! There'll be no peace till
+some strong hand does do it."
+
+Walter's deep eyes flashed and glowed as he spoke, and his face was
+shadowed with grave intensity of feeling.
+
+There was a moment's silence--broken by the thin voice of the London lady:
+"_Bravo_! admirable! Always be in a rage, Mr. Butler, it suits you so
+much.--Isn't he handsome, Daisy, with his feathers all on end?"
+
+While our girl, unused to such bold talk, looked blushingly at the young
+grass, Mr. Cross spoke:
+
+"Doubtless you gentry of New York have your own good reasons for disliking
+Boston men, as I find you do. But why rasp your nerves and spoil your
+digestion by so fuming over their politics? I am an Englishman: if I can
+keep calm on the subject, you who are only collaterally aggrieved, as it
+were, should surely be able to do so. My word for it, young men, life
+brings vexations enough to one's very door, without setting out in
+quest of them."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Cross," languidly sneered my lady, "what is there in the
+heavens or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, which could
+stir your blood by one added beat an hour, save indigo and spices?"
+
+There was so distinct a menace of domestic discord in this iced query that
+Butler hastened to take up the talk:
+
+"Ah, yes, _you_ can keep cool! There are thousands of miles of water
+between you English and the nest where this treason is hatched. It's close
+to us. Do you think you can fence in a sentiment as you can cattle? No: it
+will spread. Soon what is shouted in Boston will be spoken in Albany,
+whispered in Philadelphia, winked and nodded in Williamsburg, thought in
+Charleston. And how will it be here, with us? Let me tell you, Mr. Cross,
+we are really in an alien country here. The high Germans above us, like
+that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for
+the King? And these damned sour-faced Dutch traders below, have they
+forgotten that this province was their grandfathers'? The moment it
+becomes clear to their niggard souls that there's no money to be lost by
+treason, will they not delight to help on any trouble the Yankees contrive
+to make for England? I tell you, sir, if you knew these Dutch as I know
+them--their silent treachery, their jealousy of us, their greed--"
+
+This seemed to have gone far enough. "Come, you forget that I am a
+Dutchman," I said, putting my hand on Butler's shoulder.
+
+Quivering with the excitement into which he had worked himself, he shook
+off my touch, and took a backward step, eying me angrily. I returned his
+gaze, and I dare say it was about as wrathful as his own.
+
+Lady Berenicia made a diversion. "It grows cool," she said. "Come inside
+with me, Mistress Daisy, and I will show you all my chests and boxes. Mr.
+Cross made a great to-do about bringing them, but--"
+
+As the ladies rose, Walter came to me with outstretched hand. "I was at
+fault, Douw," said he, frankly. "Don't think more about it."
+
+I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his
+words.
+
+Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with
+disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks.
+
+"My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+
+
+
+In the library room of the Hall, across from the dining-chamber, and at
+the foot of the great staircase, on the bannister of which you may still
+see the marks of Joseph Brant's hatchet, we men had a long talk in the
+afternoon. I recall but indifferently the lesser topics of conversation.
+There was, of course, some political debate, in which Sir William and I
+were alone on the side of the Colonist feeling, and Mr. Stewart, the two
+Butlers, and Sir John Johnson were all for choking discontent with the
+rope. Nothing very much to the point was said, on our part at least; for
+the growing discord pained Sir William too deeply to allow him pleasure in
+its discussion, and I shrank from appearing to oppose Mr. Stewart, hateful
+as his notions seemed.
+
+Young Sir John stood by the window, I remember, sulkily drumming on the
+diapered panes, and purposely making his interjections as disagreeable to
+me as he could; at least, I thought so. So, apparently, did his father
+think, for several times I caught the wise old baronet glancing at his son
+in reproof, with a look in his grave gray eyes as of dawning doubt about
+the future of his heir.
+
+Young Johnson was now a man of thirty, blond, aquiline-faced, with cold
+blue eyes and thin, tight lips, which pouted more readily than they
+smiled. His hair was the pale color of bleached hay, a legacy from his low
+born German mother, and his complexion was growing evenly florid from too
+much Madeira wine. We were not friends, and we both knew it.
+
+There was other talk--about the recent creation of our part into a county
+by itself to be named after the Governor; about the behavior of the French
+traders at Oswego and Detroit, and a report from Europe in the latest
+gazettes that the "Young" Pretender, now a broken old rake, was at last to
+be married. This last was a subject upon which Mr. Stewart spoke most
+entertainingly, but with more willingness to let it be known that he had a
+kinsman's interest in the matter than he would formerly have shown. He was
+getting old, in fact, and an almost childish pride in his equivocal
+ancestry was growing upon him. Still his talk and reminiscences were
+extremely interesting.
+
+They fade in my recollection, however, before the fact that it was at this
+little gathering, this afternoon, that my career was settled for me. There
+had been some talk about me while I remained alone outside to confer with
+Sir William's head farmer, and Mr. Cross had agreed with Mr. Stewart and
+Sir William that I was to accompany him on his trip to the far Western
+region the following week. My patron had explained that I needed some
+added knowledge of the world and its affairs, yet was of too serious a
+turn to gather this in the guise of amusement, as Mr. John Butler advised
+I should, by being sent on a holiday to New York. Mr. Cross had been good
+enough to say that he liked what he had seen of me, and should be glad of
+my company.
+
+Of all this I knew nothing when I entered the library. The air was heavy
+with tobacco-smoke, and the table bore more bottles and glasses
+than books.
+
+"Find a chair, Douw," said Sir William. "I have sent for my man, Enoch
+Wade, who is to go westward with Mr, Cross next week. If he's drunk enough
+there'll be some sport."
+
+There entered the room a middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame,
+with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He
+bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian in his clothes
+of deer-hide.
+
+"This is Enoch Wade, gentlemen," said the baronet, indicating the
+new-comer with a wave of his glass, and stretching out his legs to enjoy
+the scene the more. "He is my land-sailor. Between his last sale at
+Albany, and his first foot westward from here, he professes all the vices
+and draws never a sober breath. Yet when he is in the woods he is
+abstemious, amiable, wise, resourceful, virtuous as a statue--a paragon of
+trappers. You can see him for yourselves. Yet, I warn you, appearances are
+deceitful; he is always drunker than he looks. He was, I know, most
+sinfully tipsy last night."
+
+"It was in excellent good company, General," said the hunter, drawling his
+words and no whit abashed.
+
+"He has no manners to speak of," continued the baronet, evidently with
+much satisfaction to himself; "he can outlie a Frontenac half-breed, he is
+more greedy of gain than a Kinderhook Dutchman, he can drink all the
+Mohawks of both castles under the bench, and my niggers are veritable
+Josephs in comparison with him--wait a moment, Enoch!--this is while he is
+in contact with civilization. Yet once on the trail, so to speak, he is
+probity personified. I know this, since he has twice accompanied me
+to Detroit."
+
+"Oh, in the woods, you know, some one of the party must remain sober,"
+said Enoch, readily, still stiffly erect, but with a faint grin twitching
+on the saturnine corners of his mouth.
+
+This time Sir William laughed aloud, and pointed to a decanter and glass,
+from which the trapper helped himself with dignity.
+
+"Look you, rogue," said the host, "there is a young gentleman to be added
+to your party next week, and doubtless he will of needs have a nigger with
+him. See to it that the boat and provision arrangements are altered to
+meet this, and to-morrow be sober enough to advise him as to his outfit.
+For to-night, soak as deep as you like."
+
+Enoch poured out for himself a second tumbler of rum, but not showing the
+first signs of unsteadiness in gait or gesture.
+
+"This young gentleman"--he said, gravely smacking his lips--"about him; is
+he a temperate person, one of the sort who can turn a steadfast back upon
+the bottle?"
+
+A burst of Homeric laughter was Sir William's reply--laughter in which
+all were fain to join.
+
+"It's all right, General," said Enoch, as he turned to go; "don't mind my
+asking. One never can tell, you know, what kind of company he is like to
+pick up with here at the Hall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My surprise and delight when I learned that I was the young gentleman in
+question, and that I was really to go to the Lakes and beyond, may be
+imagined. I seemed to walk on air, so great was my elation. You will not
+marvel now that I fail to recall very distinctly the general talk
+which followed.
+
+Conversation finally lagged, as the promptings of hunger, not less than
+the Ethiopian shouting and scolding from the kitchen below, warned us of
+approaching dinner.
+
+The drinking moderated somewhat, and the pipes were one by one laid aside,
+in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were
+persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against
+tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of
+hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence
+of interest in the fitful talk.
+
+There came a sharp double knock on the door, which a second later was
+pushed partly open. Some of us rose, pulling our ruffles into place, and
+ready to start at once, for there were famous appetites in the wild Valley
+of those days. But the voice from behind the door was not a servant's, nor
+did it convey the intelligence we all awaited. It was, instead, the
+sharp, surface voice of Lady Berenicia, and it said:
+
+"We are weary of waiting for you in civilized quarters of the Hall. May we
+come in here, or are you too much ashamed of your vices to court
+inspection?"
+
+Walter Butler hastened to open the door, bowing low as he did so, and
+delivering himself of some gallant nonsense or other.
+
+The London lady entered the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of
+carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer.
+
+If her morning attire had seemed over-splendid, what shall I say of her
+appearance now? I looked in amazement upon her imposing tower of whitened
+hair, upon the great fluffs of lace, the brocaded stomacher and train, the
+shining satin petticoat front, the dazzling, creamy surfaces of throat and
+shoulders and forearms, all rather freely set forth.
+
+If the effect was bewildering, it was not unpleasant. The smoke-laden air
+of the dim old room seemed suddenly clarified, made radiant. A movement of
+chairs and of their occupants ran through the chamber, like a murmur of
+applause, as we rose to greet the resplendent apparition. But there came a
+veritable outburst of admiration when my lady's companion appeared
+in view.
+
+It was our Daisy, robed like a princess, who dawned upon our vision. She
+was blushing as much from embarrassment as from novel pride, yet managed
+to keep her pretty head up, smiling at us all, and to bear herself
+with grace.
+
+Lady Berenicia, from the wealth of finery in those bulky chests which
+honest Mr. Cross in vain had protested against bringing over the ocean and
+up to this savage outpost, had tricked out the girl in wondrous fashion.
+Her gown was not satin, like the other, but of a soft, lustreless stuff,
+whose delicate lavender folds fell into the sweetest of violet shadows. I
+was glad to see that her neck and arms were properly covered. The laces on
+the sleeves were tawny with age; the ribbon by which the little white
+shawl was decorously gathered at the bosom carried the faint suggestion of
+yellow to a distinct tone, repeated and deepened above by the color of the
+maiden's hair. This hair, too, was a marvel of the dresser's art--reared
+straight and tight from the forehead over a high-arched roll, and losing
+strictness of form behind in ingenious wavy curls, which seemed the very
+triumph of artlessness; it was less wholly powdered than Lady Berenicia's,
+so that the warm gold shone through the white dust in soft gradations of
+half tints; at the side, well up, was a single salmon tea-rose, that
+served to make everything else more beautiful.
+
+Picture to yourself this delicious figure--this face which had seemed
+lovely before, and now, with deft cosmetics, and a solitary tiny patch,
+and the glow of exquisite enjoyment in the sweet hazel eyes, was nothing
+less than a Greuze's dream--picture our Daisy to yourself, I say, and you
+may guess in part how flattering was her reception, how high and fast rose
+the gallant congratulations that the Valley boasted such a beauteous
+daughter. Sir William himself gave her his arm, jovially protesting that
+this was not the Mohawk country, but France--not Johnson Hall, but
+Versailles.
+
+I came on at the tail of the dinner procession, not quite easy in my mind
+about all this.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+
+
+
+There were, in all, ten of us at the table. Sir William beamed upon us
+from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the
+London dame on the other--in the place of distinction to which she was, I
+suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and
+Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come
+back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner.
+
+I could not see Daisy from where I sat, but all through the meal I watched
+the effect she was producing upon those opposite us. To do her justice,
+Lady Berenicia seemed to have no alloy of jealousy in the delight with
+which she regarded the result of her handiwork. Mr. Stewart could not keep
+his fond eyes off the girl; they fairly glowed with satisfied pride and
+affection. Both Sir John and Walter gave more attention to our beautiful
+maiden than they did to their plates, and both faces told an open tale of
+admiration, each after its kind.
+
+There was plenty of gay talk at the head of the table--merry chatter of
+which I recall nothing, save vaguely that it was about the triumph of art
+over unadorned nature at which we were assisting.
+
+Mr. Cross and I bore our small part in the celebration in silence for a
+time. Then we fell to talking quietly of the journey upon which we were so
+soon to embark; but our minds were not on the subject, and after a little
+its discussion lapsed. All at once he said, as if speaking the thoughts
+which tied my tongue:
+
+"To my mind the young woman is not improved by these furbelows and
+fal-lals my wife has put upon her. What wit or reason is there in a
+homely, sensible little maiden like this--a pretty flower growing, as God
+designed it to, in modest sweetness on its own soil--being garnished out
+in the stale foppery of the last London season?"
+
+"But it is only a masquerade, sir," I pleaded--as much to my own judgment
+as to his--"and it does make her very beautiful, does it not?"
+
+"She _was_ beautiful before," he replied, in the same low tones. "Can a
+few trumpery laces and ribbons, a foolish patch, a little powder, affect
+what is real about a woman, think you? And do any but empty heads value
+unreal things?"
+
+"True enough, sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry.
+Women are that way. See how pleased she is--how full of smiles and
+happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor
+Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to begrudge her
+this innocent pleasure."
+
+"Innocent--yes, no doubt; but, do you know, she will never be the same
+girl again. She will never feel quite the same pretty little Mistress
+Daisy, in her woollen gown and her puttical kerchief. She will never get
+the taste of this triumph out of her mouth. You do not know women, young
+man, as I do. I have studied the sex in a very celebrated and costly
+school. Mark my words, ideas have been put into her head that will never
+come out."
+
+I tried to believe that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other
+women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself--so prudent
+and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem
+all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books--never
+anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr.
+Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn her
+dear head."
+
+He smiled, somewhat compassionately I thought, and made no answer.
+
+Was I so firm in my faith, after all? The doubt rose in my thoughts, and
+would not down, as the gallant talk flowed and bubbled around me. _Would_
+this Daisy be quite the same next day, or next week, singing to us at the
+old harpsichord in the twilight, with the glare of the blaze on the hearth
+making red gold of that hair, plaited once more in simple braids? I tried
+with all my might to call up this sweet familiar figure before my mental
+vision: it would not freely come.
+
+She was laughing now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing
+quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom
+employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting
+things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other than
+Daisy laughing.
+
+I was still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the
+ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to
+ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand,
+to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see
+the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with
+Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent
+of powder left on the air annoyed me, as something stifling those thoughts
+of the good little adopted sister, whom I had brought to the Hall and lost
+there, which I would fain dwell upon.
+
+We sat over our Madeira and pipes longer than usual. Candles were brought
+in by Sir William's young body-servant Pontiac, for there was a full moon,
+and we might thus prolong our stay after nightfall. The talk was chiefly
+about our coming trip--a very serious undertaking. Sir William and Mr.
+Butler had adventures of their own early trading days to recall, and they
+gave us great stores of advice drawn from experience, and ranging from
+choice of shirts and spirits to needful diplomacy with the Algonquins
+and Sakis.
+
+Then the company drank the health of Mr. Cross, and were good enough to
+couple mine with it. A comical little yellow boy danced for us before the
+hearth--an admiring wall of black faces and rolling white eyeballs filling
+up the open door meanwhile. Walter Butler sang a pretty song--everybody,
+negroes and all, swelling the chorus. Rum was brought in, and mixed in hot
+glasses, with spice, molasses, and scalding water from the kettle on the
+crane. So evening deepened to night; but I never for a moment, not even
+when they drank my health, shook off the sense of unrest born of Daisy's
+masquerade.
+
+It was Molly Brant herself, nobly erect and handsome in her dark, sinister
+way, who came to us with word that the moon was up over the pine-ridged
+hills, and that Mistress Daisy was attired for the homeward ride,
+and waiting.
+
+Of all the pictures in Memory's portfolio, none is more distinct than this
+of the departure that evening from the Hall. A dozen negroes were about
+the steps, two or three mounted ready to escort us home, others bearing
+horn lanterns which the moonlight darkened into inutility, still others
+pulling the restive horses about on the gravel. Mr. Stewart swung himself
+into the saddle, and Daisy stepped out to mount behind him. She wore her
+own garments once more, but there was just a trace of powder on the hair
+under the hood, and the patch was still on her chin. I moved forward to
+lift her to the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she
+did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John
+and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight,
+flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held
+Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of
+even this.
+
+So we rode away, pursued down the path to the lilacs by shouts of
+"Good-night! Safe home!" Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I
+saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his
+hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing
+above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on
+either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark
+front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky.
+
+As I recall the scene, it seems to me that then and there I said farewell,
+not alone to pleasant friends, but to the Daisy of my childhood and youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Hall slaves rode well ahead in the narrow road; we could just hear
+faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears
+the murmur of an Æolian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous:
+the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping
+helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly
+safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness,
+not danger.
+
+I did indeed rest my free hand on the pistol in my holster as I jogged
+along close behind the old gray horse and his double burden; but the act
+was more an unconscious reflection of my saturnine mood, I fear, than a
+recognition of need. There was every reason why I should dwell with
+delight upon the prospect opening before me--upon the idea of the great
+journey so close at hand; but I scarcely thought of it at all, and I was
+not happy. The moon threw a jaundiced light over my mind, and in its
+discolored glare I saw things wrongly, and with gratuitous pain to myself.
+
+In fact, my brooding was the creature of the last few hours, born of a
+childish pique. But as I rode gloomily silent behind my companions, it
+seemed as if I had long suffered a growing separation from them. "Three is
+a clumsy number," I said to myself, "in family affection not less than in
+love; there was never any triad of friends since the world began, no
+matter how fond their ties, in which two did not build a little interior
+court of thoughts and sympathies from which the third was shut out. These
+two people whom I hold dearer than everything else on earth--this good
+gentleman to whom I owe all, this sweet girl who has grown up from
+babyhood in my heart--would scout the idea that there was any line of
+division running through our household. They do not see it--cannot see it.
+Yet they have a whole world of ideas and sentiments in common, a whole
+world of communion, which I may never enter."
+
+This was what, in sulky, inchoate fashion, I said to myself, under the
+spur of the jealous spirits which sometimes get rein over the thoughts of
+the best of us. And it was all because the London woman had tricked out
+our Daisy, for but a little hour or two, in the presentment of a
+court lady!
+
+Conversation went briskly forward, meanwhile, from the stout back of the
+gray horse.
+
+"Did you note, papa, how white and soft her hands were?" said Daisy.
+"Mine were so red beside them! It is working in the garden, I believe,
+although Mary Johnson always wore gloves when she was out among the
+flowers and vegetables, and her hands were red, too. And Lady Berenicia
+was so surprised to learn that I had never read any of the romances which
+they write now in England! She says ladies in London, and in the provinces
+too, do not deem themselves fit to converse unless they keep abreast of
+all these. She has some of them in her chests, and there are others in the
+Hall, she has found, and I am to read them, and welcome."
+
+"You are old enough now, my girl," replied Mr. Stewart. "They seem to me
+to be trivial enough things, but no doubt they have their use. I would not
+have you seem as inferior to other ladies in knowledge of the matters they
+talk of, as they are inferior to you in honest information."
+
+"How interested she was when I told her of the serious books I read, and
+of my daily occupations--moulding the candles, brewing the beer, carding
+wool, making butter, and then caring for the garden! She had never seen
+celery in trenches, she said, and would not know beans from gourds if she
+saw them growing. It seems that in England ladies have nothing to do with
+their gardens--when, indeed, they have any at all--save to pluck a rose
+now and then, or give tea to their gentlemen under the shrubbery when it
+is fine. And I told her of our quilting and spinning bees, and the
+coasting on clear winter evenings, and of watching the blacks on Pinkster
+night, and the picnics in the woods, and she vowed London had no
+pleasures like them. She was jesting though, I think. Oh, shall we ever go
+to London, papa?"
+
+"By all means, let us go," chuckled Mr. Stewart. "You would see something
+there she never saw--my grizzled old head upon Temple Bar. Shall we be off
+to-morrow? My neck tingles with anticipation."
+
+"Old tease!" laughed Daisy, patting his shoulder. "You know there have
+been no heads put there since long before I was born. Never flatter
+yourself that they would begin again now with yours. They've forgotten
+there was ever such a body as you."
+
+"Faith! the world doesn't go round so fast as you young people think. Only
+to-day I read in the London mail that two months ago one of the polls that
+had been there since '46 fell down; but if it was Fletcher's or Townley's
+no one can tell--like enough not even they themselves by this time. So
+there's a vacant spike now for mine. No, child--I doubt these old bones
+will ever get across the sea again. But who knows?--it may be your fortune
+to go some time."
+
+"Lady Berenicia says I must come to the Hall often, papa, while she is
+there," said the girl, returning to the subject which bewitched her; "and
+you must fetch me, of course. She admires you greatly; she says gentlemen
+in London have quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your
+bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep
+each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and
+Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them--the two
+solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness."
+
+The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection
+of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less
+malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on
+my ears.
+
+"It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be
+disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy.
+
+"What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and
+glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all
+the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to
+your liking?"
+
+"Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go."
+
+It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody
+would specially miss me, but I held it back.
+
+"He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured
+sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has
+when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at
+dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he
+would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I
+looked well in the--the citified costume."
+
+"Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for."
+
+She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and
+went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes:
+
+"And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable
+Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the
+lilacs, this very morning--and in the presence of ladies, too."
+
+"No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied.
+
+"Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was
+before a lady too--or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own
+eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and
+run at him with both fists out--and all on your account, too, my lady;
+and then--"
+
+"Oh, I am reminded!"
+
+It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped
+her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said:
+
+"Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come
+out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up
+at the Hall--Lady Berenicia's husband--is a cousin to the old Major who
+brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?"
+
+"Is _that_ your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago."
+
+"How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then
+a General, and died last winter, poor man."
+
+"Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all
+walk that way."
+
+Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year,
+papa. And now tell me, did not this Major--_my_ Major, though I do not
+remember him--take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir
+William, while he was on this side of the water?"
+
+"Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the
+horse.
+
+We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he
+knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a
+tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched
+beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked
+by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the
+property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water
+running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock
+wall, farther down, of which I have already written.
+
+"Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you
+ask, girl?"
+
+"_Now_ for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits
+the English house and lands. The other son, Philip--the boy you fought
+with, Douw--is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it.
+He sailed with the others--he is in New York--he is coming here to live!"
+
+"We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily.
+
+"I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest
+comment I could screw my tongue to.
+
+Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we
+quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+
+
+
+When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the
+searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and
+slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was
+high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my
+aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum
+between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be
+vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its
+inmates, now that the hour had arrived.
+
+I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day,
+dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but
+without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the
+adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins
+while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home--my true home--my heart
+quivered and sank at thought of departure.
+
+"I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than
+Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all
+things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is
+different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed
+after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod.
+You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be
+at a good school with him."
+
+He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred
+indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental
+order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my
+feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have
+preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet
+coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet
+felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I
+listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts
+vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside.
+
+Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with
+advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key.
+Their shouts and wailing--they could not have made more ado if he had just
+been sold to Jamaica--came through the open door. It was not of this din I
+thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were
+piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond.
+
+I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to
+gather a nosegay for me.
+
+Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending
+in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden
+filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing
+more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit,
+the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts
+of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad
+thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much--this dear
+girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the
+tears _were_ coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned
+my head away.
+
+There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices.
+Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman
+had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to
+the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption.
+
+Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the
+wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden,
+presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with
+her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of her neck she
+was blushing.
+
+There was enough for her to blush at. The stranger was bowing very low,
+putting one hand up to his breast. With the other he had taken her fingers
+and raised them formally to his lips. This was not a custom in our parts.
+Sir William did it now and then on state occasions, but young men,
+particularly strangers, did not.
+
+As we advanced, this gallant morning-caller drew himself up and turned
+toward us. You may be sure I looked him over attentively.
+
+I have seen few handsomer young men. In a way, so far as light hair, blue
+eyes, ruddy and regular face went, he was not unlike Sir John. But he was
+much taller, and his neck and shoulders were squared proudly--a trick
+Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a
+fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the
+shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl
+buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run
+into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in
+one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in
+its ruffles, he stretched out now toward Mr. Stewart with a free,
+pleasant gesture.
+
+"With my father's oldest friend," he said, "I must not wait for ceremony.
+I am Philip Cross, from England, and I hope you will be my friend, sir,
+now that my father is gone."
+
+That this speech found instant favor need not be doubted. Mr. Stewart
+shook him again and again by the hand, and warmly bade him welcome to the
+Valley and the Cedars a dozen times in as many breaths. Young Cross
+managed to explain between these cordial ejaculations, that he had
+journeyed up from New York with the youthful Stephen Watts--to whose
+sister Sir John was already betrothed; that they had reached Guy Park the
+previous evening; that Watts was too wearied this morning to think of
+stirring out, but that hardly illness itself could have prevented him,
+Cross, from promptly paying his respects to his father's ancient comrade.
+
+The young man spoke easily and fluently, looking Mr. Stewart frankly in
+the eye, with smiling sincerity in glance and tone. He went on:
+
+"How changed everything is roundabout!--all save you, who look scarcely
+older or less strong. When I was here as a boy it was winter, cold and
+bleak. There was a stockade surrounded by wilderness then, I remember, and
+a log-house hardly bigger than the fireplace inside it. Where we stand now
+the ground was covered with brush and chips, half hidden by snow.
+Now--_presto!_ there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden
+neatly made, and"--turning with a bow to Daisy--"a fair mistress for them
+all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as
+a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would have
+held her entire."
+
+"I saw the cart laden outside," put in Sir John, "and fancied perhaps we
+should miss you."
+
+"Why, no," said Mr. Stewart; "I had forgotten for the moment that this was
+a house of mourning. Douw is starting to the Lake country this very day.
+Mr. Cross, you must remember my boy, my Douw?"
+
+The young Englishman turned toward me, as I was indicated by Mr. Stewart's
+gesture. He looked me over briefly, with a half-smile about his eyes,
+nodded to me, and said:
+
+"You were the Dutch boy with the apron, weren't you?"
+
+I assented by a sign of the head, as slight as I could politely make it.
+
+"Oh, yes, I recall you quite distinctly. I used to make my brother Digby
+laugh by telling about your aprons. He made quite a good picture of you in
+one of them, drawn from my descriptions. We had a fort of snow, too, did
+we not? and I beat you, or you me, I forget which. I got snow down the
+back of my neck, I know, and shivered all the way to the fort."
+
+He turned lightly at this to Mr. Stewart, and began conversation again. I
+went over to where Daisy stood, by the edge of the flower-bed.
+
+"I must go now, dear sister," I said. The words were choking me.
+
+We walked slowly to the house, she and I. When I had said good-by to my
+aunt, and gathered together my hat, coats, and the like, I stood
+speechless, looking at Daisy. The moment was here, and I had no word for
+it which did not seem a mockery.
+
+She raised herself on tiptoe to be kissed. "Good-by, big brother," she
+said, softly. "Come back to us well and strong, and altogether homesick,
+won't you? It will not be like home, without you, to either of us."
+
+And so the farewells were all made, and I stood in the road prepared to
+mount. Tulp was already on the cart, along with another negro who was to
+bring back my horse and the vehicle after we had embarked in the boats.
+There was nothing more to say--time pressed--yet I lingered dumb and
+irresolute. At the moment I seemed to be exchanging everything for
+nothing--committing domestic suicide. I looked at them both, the girl and
+the old man, with the gloomy thought that I might never lay eyes on them
+again. I dare say I wore my grief upon my face, for Mr. Stewart tried
+cheerily to hearten me with, "Courage, lad! We shall all be waiting for
+you, rejoiced to welcome you back safe and sound."
+
+Daisy came to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned
+upon my lapel some of the pale blue blossoms she had gathered.
+
+"There's 'rosemary for remembrance,'" she murmured. "Poor Ophelia could
+scarce have been sadder than we feel, Douw, at your going."
+
+"And may I be decorated too--for remembrance' sake?" asked handsome young
+Philip Cross, gayly.
+
+"Surely, sir," the maiden answered, with a smile of sweet sorrowfulness.
+"You have a rightful part in the old memories--in a sense, perhaps, the
+greatest part of all."
+
+"Ay, you two were friends before ever you came to us, dear," said Mr.
+Stewart.
+
+So as I rode away, with smarting eyes and a heart weighing like lead, my
+last picture of the good old home was of Daisy fastening flowers on the
+young Englishman's breast, just as she had put these of mine in
+their place.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Old-Time Politics Pondered Under the Forest Starlight.
+
+
+
+Among the numerous books which at one time of another I had resolved to
+write, and which the evening twilight of my life finds still unwritten,
+was one on Fur-trading. This volume, indeed, came somewhat nearer to a
+state of actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have
+yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in
+earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical
+Delusions--which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary--and
+the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point
+of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation
+now in deciding not to put into this narrative a great deal about my
+experiences in, and information concerning, the almost trackless West of
+my youth. My diary of this first and momentous journey with Mr. Jonathan
+Cross, yellow with age and stained by damp and mildew, lies here before
+me; along with it are many odd and curious incidents and reflections
+jotted down, mirroring that strange, rude, perilous past which seems so
+far away to the generation now directing a safe and almost eventless
+commerce to the Pacific and the Gulf. But I will draw from my stock only
+the barest outlines, sufficient to keep in continuity the movement of
+my story.
+
+When we reached Caughnawaga Mr. Cross and his party were waiting for us at
+the trading store of my godfather, good old Douw Fonda. I was relieved to
+learn that I had not delayed them; for it was still undecided, I found,
+whether we should all take to the river here, or send the boats forward
+with the men, and ourselves proceed to the Great Carrying Place at Fort
+Stanwix by the road. Although it was so early in the season, the Mohawk
+ran very low between its banks. Major Jelles Fonda, the eldest son of my
+godfather, and by this time the true head of the business, had only
+returned from the Lakes, and it was by his advice that we settled upon
+riding and carting as far as we could, and leaving the lightened boats to
+follow. So we set out in the saddle, my friend and I, stopping one night
+with crazy old John Abeel--he who is still remembered as the father of the
+Seneca half-breed chieftain Corn-Planter--and the next night with
+Honnikol Herkimer.
+
+This man, I recall, greatly impressed Mr. Cross. We were now in an
+exclusively German section of the Valley, where no Dutch and very little
+English was to be heard. Herkimer himself conversed with us in a dialect
+that must often have puzzled my English friend, though he gravely forbore
+showing it. I had known Colonel Herkimer all my life; doubtless it was
+this familiarity with his person and speech which had prevented my
+recognizing his real merit, for I was not a little surprised when Mr.
+Cross said to me that night: "Our host is one of the strongest and most
+sagacious men I have ever encountered in the Colonies; he is worth a
+thousand of your Butlers or Sir Johns."
+
+It became clear in later years that my friend was right. I remember that I
+regarded the hospitable Colonel, at breakfast next morning, with a closer
+and more respectful attention than ever before, but it was not easy to
+discern any new elements of greatness in his talk.
+
+Herkimer was then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and
+sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no
+time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the
+Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side.
+One thing which he said, in his effort to make my friend understand the
+difference between his position and the more abstract and educated
+discontent of New England and Virginia, sticks in my memory.
+
+"We Germans," he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers
+remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and
+wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some
+scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector
+might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of
+their daughters, worked to death, frozen by the cold in their nakedness,
+dragged off into the armies to be sold to any prince who could pay for
+their blood and broken bones. The French who overran the Palatinate were
+bad enough; the native rulers were even more to be hated. The exiles of
+our race have not forgotten this; they have told it all to us, their
+children and grandchildren born here in this Valley. We have made a new
+home for ourselves over here, and we owe no one but God anything for it.
+If they try to make here another aristocracy over us, then we will die
+first before we will submit."
+
+The case for the Mohawk Valley's part in the great revolt has never been
+more truly stated, I think, than it was thus, by the rough, uneducated,
+little frontier trader, in his broken English, on that May morning years
+before the storm broke.
+
+We rode away westward in the full sunshine that morning, in high spirits.
+The sky was pure blue overhead; the birds carolled from every clump of
+foliage about us; the scenery, to which Mr. Cross paid much delighted
+attention, first grew nobly wild and impressive when we skirted the Little
+Falls--as grand and gloomy in its effect of towering jagged cliffs and
+foaming cataracts as one of Jacob Ruysdael's pictures--and then softened
+into a dream of beauty as it spread out before us the smiling, embowered
+expanses of the German Flatts. Time and time again my companion and I
+reined up our horses to contemplate the charms of this lovely scene.
+
+We had forded the river near Fort Herkimer, where old Hon Yost Herkimer,
+the father of the Colonel, lived, and were now once more on the north
+side. From an open knoll I pointed out to my friend, by the apple and pear
+blossoms whitening the deserted orchards, the site of the Palatines'
+village where Daisy's father had been killed, fifteen years ago, in the
+midnight rout and massacre.
+
+"It was over those hills that the French stole in darkness. Back yonder,
+at the very ford we crossed, her poor mother was trampled under foot and
+drowned in the frightened throng. It was at the fort there, where we had
+the buttermilk and _Kuchen,_ that your cousin, Major Cross, found the
+little girl. I wonder if he ever knew how deeply grateful to him we
+were--and are."
+
+This brought once more to my mind--where indeed it had often enough before
+intruded itself--the recollection of young Philip's arrival at the Cedars.
+For some reason I had disliked to speak of it before, but now I told Mr.
+Cross of it as we walked our horses along over the rough, muddy road,
+under the arching roof of thicket.
+
+"I'll be bound Mr. Stewart welcomed him with open arms," said my
+companion.
+
+"Ay, indeed! No son could have asked a fonder greeting."
+
+"Yes, the lad is very like his mother; that of itself would suffice to
+warm the old gentleman's heart. You knew he was a suitor for her hand long
+before Tony Cross ever saw her?"
+
+I didn't know this, but I nodded silently.
+
+"Curious creature she was," mused he, as if to himself. "Selfish,
+suspicious, swift to offence, jealous of everything and everybody about
+her--yet with moods when she seemed to all she met the most amiable and
+delightful of women. She had her fine side, too. She would have given her
+life gladly for the success of the Jacobites, of that I'm sure. And
+proud!--no duchess could have carried her head higher."
+
+"You say her son is very like her?"
+
+"As like as two leaves on a twig. Perhaps he has something of his father's
+Irish openness of manner as well. His father belonged to the younger, what
+we call the Irish, branch of our family, you know, though it is as English
+in the matter of blood as I am. We were only second cousins, in point of
+fact, and his grandfather was set up in Ireland by the bounty of mine. Yet
+Master Philip condescends to me, patronizes me, as if the case had been
+reversed."
+
+Mr. Cross did not speak as if he at all resented this, but in a calm,
+analytical manner, and with a wholly impersonal interest. I have never
+known another man who was so totally without individual bias, and regarded
+all persons and things with so little reference to his own feelings. If he
+had either prejudices or crotchets on any point, I never discovered them.
+He was, I feel assured, a scrupulously honest and virtuous gentleman, yet
+he never seemed to hate people who were not so. He was careful not to let
+them get an advantage over him, but for the rest he studied them and
+observed their weaknesses and craft, with the same quiet interest he
+displayed toward worthier objects. A thoroughly equable nature was
+his--with little capacity for righteous indignation on the one side, and
+no small tendencies toward envy or peevishness on the other. There was not
+a wrinkle on his calm countenance, nor any power of angry flashing in his
+steadfast, wide-apart, gray eyes. But his tongue could cut deep
+on occasion.
+
+We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the
+Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that
+crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and
+the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along,
+partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had
+been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under
+a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the
+brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground.
+We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer
+wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and
+crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up
+the fires.
+
+We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well
+wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep
+the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard
+the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the
+moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises
+and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London
+companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very
+acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no
+degree nervous.
+
+We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer
+had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we
+talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying
+on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting,
+wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle,
+under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank
+affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon
+this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with
+fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves
+we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly
+halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my
+friends and comrades.
+
+We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully,
+contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the
+air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank,
+uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer
+heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form,
+with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side?
+
+"I spoke about Philip's having some of his father's adopted Irish traits,"
+said Mr. Cross, after a longer interval of silence than usual. "One of
+them is the desire to have subordinates, dependents, about him. There is
+no Irishman so poor or lowly that he will not, if possible, encourage some
+still poorer, lowlier Irishman to hang to his skirts. It is a reflection
+of their old Gaelic tribal system, I suppose, which, between its chiefs
+above and its clansmen below, left no place for a free yeomanry. I note
+this same thing in the Valley, with the Johnsons and the Butlers. So far
+as Sir William is concerned, the quality I speak of has been of service to
+the Colony, for he has used his fondness and faculty for attracting
+retainers and domineering over subordinates to public advantage. But then
+he is an exceptional and note-worthy man--one among ten thousand. But his
+son Sir John, and his son-in-law Guy Johnson, and the Butlers, father and
+son, and now to them added our masterful young Master Philip--these own no
+such steadying balance-wheel of common-sense. They have no restraining
+notion of public interest. Their sole idea is to play the aristocrat, to
+surround themselves with menials, to make their neighbors concede to them
+submission and reverence. It was of them that Herkimer spoke, plainly
+enough, though he gave no names. Mark my words, they will come to grief
+with that man, if the question be ever put to the test."
+
+I had not seen enough of Englishmen to understand very clearly the
+differences between them and the Irish, and I said so. The conversation
+drifted upon race questions and distinctions, as they were presented by
+the curiously mixed population of New York province.
+
+My companion was of the impression that the distinctly British
+settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more
+powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his
+point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I
+cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this
+Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their wonderful
+patriotism and intelligence, and of the tremendous part they played in the
+Revolution, without smashing my pipe in wrath. Yet I am old enough now to
+see that all this is largely the fault of the New Yorkers themselves. We
+have given our time and attention to the making of money, and have left it
+to others to make the histories. If they write themselves down large, and
+us small, it is only what might have been expected. But at the time of
+which I am telling I was very young, and full of confidence in not only
+the existing superiority but the future supremacy of my race. I could not
+foresee how we were to be snowed under by the Yankees in our own State,
+and, what is worse, accept our subjugation without a protest--so that
+to-day the New York schoolboy supposes Fisher Ames, or any other of a
+dozen Boston talkers, to have been a greater man than Philip Schuyler.
+
+I remember that I greatly vaunted the good qualities of the Dutch that
+night. I pointed out how they alone had learned the idea of religious
+toleration toward others in the cruel school of European persecution; how
+their faith in liberty and in popular institutions, nobly exemplified at
+home in the marvellous struggle with Spain, had planted roots of civil and
+religious freedom in the New World which he could find neither to the east
+nor to the south of us; and how even the early Plymouth Puritans had
+imbibed all they knew of clemency and liberty during their stay
+in Holland.
+
+I fear that Mr. Cross inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and
+extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded
+the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable
+resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed
+always in Europe. But then he went on to declare that the Dutch could not
+hope to hold their own in strange lands against the extraordinary
+conquering and colonizing power of the more numerous English, who, by
+sheer force of will and energy, were destined in the end to dominate
+everything they touched. Note how Clive and the English had gradually
+undermined or overthrown French, Portuguese, and Dutch alike in the
+Indies, he said; the same thing has happened here, either by bloodshed or
+barter. No nation could resist the English in war; no people could
+maintain themselves in trade or the peaceful arts against the English.
+
+"But you yourself predicted, not an hour ago, that the young gentry down
+the Valley would come to grief in their effort to lord it over the Dutch
+and Palatines."
+
+"Oh, that indeed," my friend replied. "They are silly sprouts, grown up
+weak and spindling under the shadow of Sir William; when he is cut down
+the sun will shrivel them, no doubt. But the hardier, healthier plants
+which finally take their place will be of English stock--not Dutch
+or German."
+
+I hope devoutly that this lengthened digression into politics has not
+proved wearisome. I have touched upon but one of a hundred like
+conversations which we two had together on our slow journey, and this
+because I wanted to set forth the manner of things we discussed, and the
+views we severally had. Events proved that we both were partially right.
+The United States of the Netherlands was the real parent of the United
+States of America, and the constitution which the Dutch made for the
+infant State of New York served as the model in breadth and in freedom for
+our present noble Federal Constitution. In that much my faith was
+justified. But it is also true that my State is no longer Dutch, but
+English, and that the language of my mother has died out from among us.
+
+Before noon next day we reached Fort Stanwix, the forest-girdled
+block-house commanding the Great Carrying Place. Here we waited one day
+for the boats to come up, and half of another to get them through the
+sluices into Wood Creek. Then, as the horses and carts returned, we
+embarked and set our faces toward the Lakes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+
+
+
+We had left what it pleases us to call civilization behind. Until our
+return we were scarcely again to see the blackened fields of stumps
+surrounding clearings, or potash kettles, or girdled trees, or chimneys.
+
+Not that our course lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we
+for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed
+westward farther and farther to be alone--to get away from their fellows.
+The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and
+honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. They traded a little,
+in a careless, desultory fashion, with the proceeds of their traps and
+rifles. But their desires were few--a pan and kettle, a case of needles
+and cord, some rum or brandy from cider or wild grapes, tobacco, lead, and
+powder--chiefly the last three. They fed themselves, adding to their own
+fish and game only a little pounded maize which they got mostly from the
+Indians, and cooked in mush or on a baking stone. In the infrequent cases
+where there were women with them, we sometimes saw candles, either dips or
+of the wax of myrtle-berries, but more often the pine-knot was used.
+Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story
+above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their
+habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires.
+They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally
+disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of
+view, but I judge both industrious and contented from their own.
+
+We should have had little favor or countenance from these fellows, I doubt
+not, but for Enoch Wade. He seemed to know all the saturnine, shaggy,
+lounging outcasts whom we met in unexpected places; if he did not, they
+knew him at a glance for one of their own kidney, which came to the same
+thing. It was on his account that we were tolerated, nay, even advised and
+helped and entertained.
+
+Enoch had been a prodigious traveller--or else was a still more prodigious
+liar--I never quite decided which. He told them, when we chanced to sit
+around their fires of an evening, most remarkable stories of field and
+forest--of caribou and seals killed in the North; of vast herds of bison
+on far Western prairies; of ice-bound winters spent in the Hudson Bay
+Company's preserves beyond the Lakes; of houses built of oyster-shells and
+cement on the Carolina coast. They listened gravely, smoking their
+cob-and-reed pipes, and eying him attentively. They liked him, and they
+did not seem to dislike Coppernol and our other white servants. But they
+showed no friendliness toward my poor Tulp, and exhibited only scant,
+frigid courtesy to Mr. Cross and me.
+
+The fact that my companion was a power in the East India Company, and a
+director in the new Northwestern Fur Company, did not interest them, at
+least favorably. It was indeed not until after we had got beyond the
+Sandusky that Enoch often volunteered this information, for the trappers
+of the East had little love for companies, or organized commerce and
+property of any sort.
+
+I like better to recall the purely physical side of our journey. Now our
+little flotilla would move for hours on broad, placid, still waters,
+flanked on each side by expanses of sedge and flags--in which great broods
+of water-fowl lived--and beyond by majestic avenues formed of pines,
+towering mast-like sheer sixty feet before they burst into intertwining
+branches. Again, we would pass through darkened, narrow channels, where
+adverse waters sped swiftly, and where we battled not only with deep
+currents, but had often to chop our way through barriers of green
+tree-trunks, hickory, ash, and birch, which the soft soil on the banks had
+been unable to longer hold erect. Now we flew merrily along under sail or
+energetic oars; now we toiled laboriously against strong tides, by poles
+or by difficult towing.
+
+But it was all healthful, heartening work, and we enjoyed it to the full.
+Toward sundown we would begin to look for a brook upon which to pitch our
+camp. When one was found which did not run black, showing its origin in a
+tamarack swamp, a landing was made with all the five boats. These
+secured, axes were out with, and a shelter soon constructed, while others
+heaped the fire, prepared the food and utensils, and cooked the welcome
+meal. How good everything tasted! how big and bright the stars looked! how
+sweet was the odor of the balsam in the air, later, as we lay on our
+blankets, looking skyward, and talked! Or, if the night was wild and wet,
+how cheerily the great fires roared in the draught, and how snugly we lay
+in our shelter, blinking at the fierce blaze!
+
+When in early July we drew near the country of the Outagamis, having left
+the Detroit settlement behind us, not to speak of Oswego and Niagara,
+which seemed as far off now as the moon, an element of personal danger was
+added to our experiences. Both white hunters and Indians were warmly
+affected toward the French interest, and often enough we found reason to
+fear that we would be made to feel this, though luckily it never came to
+anything serious. It was a novel experience to me to be disliked on
+account of the English, whom I had myself never regarded with friendship.
+I was able, fortunately, being thus between the two rival races, as it
+were, to measure them each against the other.
+
+I had no prejudice in favor of either, God knows. My earliest
+recollections were of the savage cruelty with which the French had
+devastated, butchered, and burned among the hapless settlements at the
+head of the Mohawk Valley. My maturer feelings were all colored with the
+strong repulsion we Dutch felt for the English rule, which so scornfully
+misgoverned and plundered our province, granting away our lands to court
+favorites and pimps, shipping to us the worst and most degraded of
+Old-World criminals, quartering upon us soldiers whose rude vices made
+them even more obnoxious than the convicts, and destroying our commerce by
+selfish and senseless laws.
+
+From the Straits west I saw the Frenchman for the first time, and read the
+reasons for his failure to stand against the English. Even while we
+suspected grounds for fearing his hostility, we found him a more courteous
+and affable man than the Englishman or Yankee. To be pleasant with us
+seemed a genuine concern, though it may really have been otherwise. The
+Indians about him, too, were a far more satisfactory lot than I had known
+in the Valley. Although many of our Mohawks could read, and some few
+write, and although the pains and devotion of my friend Samuel Kirkland
+had done much for the Oneidas, still these French-spoken, Jesuit-taught
+Indians seemed a much better and soberer class than my neighbors of the
+Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively
+plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived
+most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and
+this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going
+on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the
+English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So much for
+the good side.
+
+The medal had a reverse. The Frenchman contrived to get on with the
+Indian by deferring to him, cultivating his better and more generous side,
+and treating him as an equal. This had the effect of improving and
+softening the savage, but it inevitably tended to weaken and lower the
+Frenchman--at least, judged by the standard of fitness to maintain himself
+in a war of races. No doubt the French and Indians lived together much
+more quietly and civilly than did the English and Indians. But when these
+two systems came to be tested by results, it was shown that the
+Frenchman's policy and kindliness had only enervated and emasculated him,
+while the Englishman's rough domineering and rule of force had hardened
+his muscles and fired his resolution. To be sure, measured by the received
+laws of humanity, the Frenchman was right and the other wrong. But is it
+so certain, after all, that the right invariably wins?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well along in September when, standing on the eminence to the east
+of Fort Stanwix, I first looked again on my beloved Mohawk.
+
+The trip had been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four
+bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries,
+including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the
+remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of
+his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and
+silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied its value
+twenty-fold.
+
+Of course, this was of secondary importance. The true object of the
+journey had been to enable Mr. Jonathan Cross to see for himself the
+prospects of the new Northwestern Company--to look over the territory
+embraced in its grants, estimate its probable trade, mark points for the
+establishment of its forts and posts, and secure the information necessary
+to guard the company from the frauds or failings of agents. He professed
+himself vastly gratified at the results, physical as well as financial, of
+his experience, and that was the great thing.
+
+Or no!--perhaps for the purposes of this story there was something more
+important still. It is even now very pleasant to me to recall that he
+liked me well enough, after this long, enforced intimacy, to proffer me
+the responsible and exacting post of the company's agent at Albany.
+
+To say that the offer made me proud and glad would be to feebly understate
+my emotions. I could not be expected to decide all at once. Independent of
+the necessity of submitting the proposition to Mr. Stewart, there was a
+very deep distaste within me for fur-trading at Albany--of the meanness
+and fraudulency of which I had heard from boyhood. A good many hard
+stories are told of the Albanians, which, aside from all possible bias of
+race, I take the liberty of doubting. I do not, for instance, believe all
+the Yankee tales that the Albany Dutchmen bought from the Indians the
+silver plate which the latter seized in New England on the occasions of
+the French and Indian incursions--if for no other reason than the absence
+of proof that they ever had any plate in New England. But that the
+Indians used to be most shamefully drugged and cheated out of their
+eye-teeth in Albany, I fear there can be no reasonable doubt. An evil
+repute attached to the trade there, and I shrank from embarking in it,
+even under such splendid auspices. All the same, the offer gratified
+me greatly.
+
+To be in the woods with a man, day in and day out, is to know him through
+and through. If I had borne this closest of all conceivable forms of
+scrutiny, in the factor's estimation, there must be something good in me.
+
+So there was pride as well as joy in this first glance I cast upon the
+soft-flowing, shadowed water, upon the spreading, stately willows, upon
+the far-off furrow in the hazy lines of foliage--which spoke to me of
+home. Here at last was my dear Valley, always to me the loveliest on
+earth, but now transfigured in my eyes, and radiant beyond all dreams of
+beauty--because in it was my home, and in that home was the sweet maid
+I loved.
+
+Yes--I was returned a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the
+heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the
+swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of
+their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder.
+Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper
+breath for their absence. I had almost wept with excess of boyish feeling
+when I left the Valley--my fond old mother and protector. I gazed upon it
+now with an altogether variant emotion--as of one coming to take
+possession. Ah, the calm elation of that one moment, there alone on the
+knoll, with the sinking September sun behind me, and in front but the
+trifle of sixty miles of river route--when I realized that I was a man!
+
+Perhaps it was at this moment that I first knew I loved Daisy; perhaps it
+had been the truly dominant thought in my mind for months, gathering vigor
+and form from every tender, longing memory of the Cedars. I cannot decide,
+nor is it needful that I should. At least now my head was full of the
+triumphant thoughts that I returned successful and in high favor with my
+companion, that I had a flattering career opened for me, that the people
+at home would be pleased with me--and that I should marry Daisy.
+
+These remaining twenty leagues grew really very tedious before they were
+done with. We went down with the boats this time. I fear that Mr. Cross
+found me but poor company these last three days, for I sat mute in the bow
+most of the time, twisted around to look forward down the winding course,
+as if this would bring the Cedars nearer. I had not the heart to talk.
+"Now she is winding the yarn for my aunt," I would think; "now she is
+scattering oats for the pigeons, or filling Mr. Stewart's pipe, or running
+the candles into the moulds. Dear girl, does she wonder when I am coming?
+If she could know that I was here--here on the river speeding to
+her--what, would she think?"
+
+And I pictured to myself the pretty glance of surprise, mantling into a
+flush of joyous welcome, which would greet me on her face, as she ran
+gladly to my arms. Good old Mr. Stewart, my more than father, would stare
+at me, then smile with pleasure, and take both my hands in his, with warm,
+honest words straight from his great heart. What an evening it would be
+when, seated snugly around the huge blaze--Mr. Stewart in his arm-chair to
+the right, Daisy nestling on the stool at his knee and looking up into my
+face, and Dame Kronk knitting in the chimney-shadow to the left--I should
+tell of my adventures! How goodly a recital I could make of them, though
+they had been even tamer than they were, with such an audience! And how
+happy, how gratified they would be when I came to the climax, artfully
+postponed, of Mr. Cross's offer to me of the Albany agency!
+
+And then how natural, how easy, while these dear people were still smiling
+with pride and satisfaction at my good fortune, to say calmly--yes, calmly
+in tone, though my heart should be beating its way through my breast:
+
+"Even more, sir, I prize the hope that Daisy will share it with me--as my
+wife!"
+
+What with the delay at Caughnawaga, where Mr. Cross debarked, and Major
+Fonda would have us eat and drink while he told us the news, and Tulp's
+crazy rowing later, through excitement at nearing home, it was twilight
+before the boat was run up into our little cove, and I set my foot on
+land. The Cedars stood before us as yet lightless against the northern
+sky. The gate was open. The sweet voice of a negro singing arose from the
+cabins on the dusky hill-side. Tears came to my eyes as I turned to Tulp,
+who was gathering up the things in the boat, and said:
+
+"Do you see, boy? We're home--home at last!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+
+
+
+I could hear the noisy clamor among the negroes over the advent of Tulp,
+whom I had sent off, desiring to be alone, while I still stood irresolute
+on the porch. My hand was on the familiar, well-worn latch, yet I almost
+hesitated to enter, so excited was I with eager anticipations of welcome.
+
+The spacious hall--our sitting-room--was deserted. A fire was blazing on
+the hearth, and plates were laid on the oak table as in preparation for a
+meal, but there was no one to speak to me. I lighted a candle, and opened
+the door to the kitchen; here too there was a fire, but my aunt was not
+visible. Mr. Stewart's room to the right of the hall, and mine to the
+left, were alike unoccupied. I threw aside my hat and watch-coat here, and
+then with the light went up-stairs, whistling as was my wont to warn Daisy
+of my coming. There was no sound or sign of movement. The door of her
+outer room stood open, and I entered and looked about.
+
+The furniture and appointments had been changed in position somewhat, so
+that the chamber seemed strange to me. There were numerous novel objects
+scattered through the rooms as well. A Spanish guitar which I had never
+seen before stood beside the old piano. There were several elegantly bound
+books, new to me, on the table; on the mantel-shelf were three miniatures,
+delicately painted, depicting a florid officer in scarlet, a handsome,
+proud-looking lady with towering powdered coiffure, and a fair-haired,
+proud-looking youth. This last I knew in an instant to be the likeness of
+Master Philip Cross, though it seemingly portrayed him at an age half-way
+between the two times I had seen him as boy and man. His resemblance to
+the lady, and then my own recurring recollection of the officer's
+features, helped me to place them as his parents.
+
+I called out "Daisy!" My voice had a faltering, mournful sound, and there
+was no answer.
+
+I came down the stairs again, burdened with a sudden sense of mental
+discomfort. Already the visions I had had of an enthusiastic welcome were
+but vague outlines of dreams. There had sprung up in my mind instead a
+sudden, novel doubt of my position in this house--a cruel idea that
+perhaps the affection which had so swelled and buoyed my heart was not
+reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the
+same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and
+the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic
+aspect, instead of the bright, honest glow of greeting.
+
+While I stood before the fire-place, still holding the candle in my hand,
+my aunt entered the room from the kitchen door. At sight of me the good
+soul gave a guttural exclamation, dropped flat an apronful of chips she
+was bringing in, and stared at me open-mouthed. When she was at last
+persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to
+be kissed by me--it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add--but
+it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were
+a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she
+brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that
+she had been out in the smoke-house.
+
+"Philip sent down two haunches yesterday by Marinus Folts," she said,
+apologetically, "and this muggy weather I was afraid they wouldn't keep."
+
+"This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not
+help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's
+infirmities. Aloud I said:
+
+"How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have
+the farms been doing?"
+
+"Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is
+the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course
+it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings
+alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor."
+
+"But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?"
+
+"But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did
+before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some,
+bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more
+elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just
+breaking the branches. And the--"
+
+"Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?"
+
+"Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they
+left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to
+the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything
+but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer
+but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I
+was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One
+of them is for you."
+
+Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working
+for me. My heart felt lighter.
+
+"But where _are_ they?" I repeated.
+
+"Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just
+built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the
+Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's
+made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and
+he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it.
+Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd
+had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."
+
+I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the
+home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when
+they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and
+began to find comfort of mind again.
+
+My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she
+came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm
+going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then,
+or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I
+would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I
+was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing
+it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with:
+
+"Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the
+trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs
+and toads?"
+
+This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had
+answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to
+the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended.
+
+I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled
+myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight
+at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him
+off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his
+jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his.
+This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck,
+and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could
+hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking
+strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of
+child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine----
+
+Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear
+ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate
+my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old
+slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with
+small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach
+upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether
+it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the
+matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the
+nights of my life!
+
+At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of
+voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and
+on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the
+slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly,
+enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark;
+but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and,
+judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party,
+I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night
+of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of
+the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these
+roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a
+time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of
+the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for
+the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them
+in any disguise.
+
+I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival--for
+which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads
+together--but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact,
+they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I
+learned afterward.
+
+All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as
+sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself
+almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and
+wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing
+me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my
+breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be
+kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation.
+
+And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour
+later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks
+flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on
+both sides.
+
+Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem
+very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another
+with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not
+possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for
+people nowadays.
+
+But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and
+quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable
+Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained.
+Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in
+fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed
+had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father.
+Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's.
+It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New
+York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very
+melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the
+house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir
+William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall--an ambitious enough name,
+surely, for a forest fishing-cottage.
+
+Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which
+they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were
+the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms,
+while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had
+ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its
+being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing
+there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been
+a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at
+pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain
+she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly
+laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen
+had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other
+habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough
+that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down.
+
+I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of
+uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under
+his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the
+house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the
+food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear.
+They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but
+to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I
+looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age
+and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep,
+nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies'
+boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had
+parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but
+still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there.
+
+It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady
+Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought
+forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but
+for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly
+cover of his simple middle life.
+
+If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them
+this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair
+cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile
+which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and
+more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of
+me, for I did not notice it.
+
+I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great
+swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion,
+fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which
+crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the
+bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all
+accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail,
+this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for
+Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr.
+Stewart was evidently much captivated by the young man's spirit and social
+qualities and demeanor generally.
+
+"He is his father's own boy, ay, and his mother's too," said the old man,
+with sparkling eyes. "Not much for books, perhaps, though no dullard. But
+he can break a wild colt, or turn a bottle inside out, or bore a
+pencilled hole with a pistol-bullet at thirty paces, or tell a story, or
+sing a song, or ride, dance, box, cross swords, with any gentleman in the
+Colony. You should have seen him stand Walrath the blacksmith on his head
+at the races a fortnight ago! I never saw it better done in the
+Tweed country."
+
+"A highly accomplished gentleman, truly," I said, with as little obvious
+satire as possible.
+
+"Ah, but he has mind as well as muscle," put in Mr. Stewart. "He is a very
+Bolingbroke with the ladies. It carries me back to my days at the play, I
+swear, to hear him and Lady Berenicia clashing rapiers in badinage. You
+shall hear them, my boy, and judge. And there's a sweet side to his
+tongue, too, or many a pretty, blushing cheek belies the little ear
+behind it."
+
+The old gentleman chuckled amiably to himself as he spoke, and poured more
+Madeira into my glass and his. Daisy somewhat hurriedly rose, bade us
+"good-night," and left us to ourselves.
+
+Oh, if I had only spoken the word that night!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+
+
+
+I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season
+of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all
+unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and
+occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign
+barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness.
+
+Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too,
+there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had
+treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with
+affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever
+disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade
+himself that it was all for the best.
+
+But these five months had created a certain change in the social
+conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening,
+here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my
+absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now
+manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no
+doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social,
+part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible
+glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than
+elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through
+houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family
+fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers,
+husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the
+existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the
+man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it
+and I on the other.
+
+This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his
+manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had
+made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof
+of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance
+of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I
+ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to
+me, for the first time.
+
+"Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said.
+"If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing
+aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go
+to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's
+content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!"
+
+This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance
+with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded,
+looking at him. He went on:
+
+"What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these
+people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood.
+Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been,
+given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed,
+by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and
+people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would
+have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must,
+forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of
+their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence
+worth of goods!"
+
+What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a
+heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard
+to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from
+Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for
+irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have
+visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had
+engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear.
+
+Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me.
+Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even
+toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my
+poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time
+up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and
+elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of
+her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old.
+
+If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence,
+it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new
+Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft
+with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear
+girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or
+twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to
+confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she
+suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices,
+or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to
+her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me.
+
+I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long
+afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress
+at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her
+judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating
+between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with
+their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive,
+idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate,
+womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license,
+beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly
+watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind
+those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure
+might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different!
+
+But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was
+by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky.
+
+For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose,
+tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the
+old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch
+herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the
+joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us
+of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young
+Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a
+bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast,
+and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and
+gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning,
+when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see
+her cheerful once more.
+
+And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love.
+
+One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion
+she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a
+luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering
+mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise,
+and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy
+seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled
+insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter.
+
+To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to
+understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing
+but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his
+old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to
+me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no
+longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or
+say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the
+fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised
+to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or
+not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called.
+
+Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for
+the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready.
+She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my
+part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been
+invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed
+so much annoyed that I hastened to join them.
+
+It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the
+air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale
+changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way
+approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely
+red through the smoky haze.
+
+Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and
+I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the
+gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in
+fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the
+mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new
+bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep
+zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark
+rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to
+be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he
+would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side
+of the gulf was Philip's property.
+
+"It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth
+clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building
+a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the
+waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You
+know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek."
+
+Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking
+measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of
+erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the
+skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing
+edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have
+quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering,
+hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and
+about the structure.
+
+At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level,
+high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were
+assembled, and thither we bent our steps.
+
+Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my
+companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded,
+and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed
+sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly
+was handsome.
+
+He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the
+hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real
+delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers
+with his lips.
+
+"You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he
+murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with
+pleasure at him.
+
+To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is
+true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that
+he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention
+whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle
+outside the tent.
+
+Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others.
+By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was
+distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who
+took the trouble only to nod at me.
+
+Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was
+confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being
+nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was
+monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more
+discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall
+occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr.
+Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was
+chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she
+was telling.
+
+"Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to
+Tulp to follow me, I started.
+
+It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which
+forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage
+comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a
+profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon
+him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen
+and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very
+rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred
+dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no
+other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I
+made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an
+unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth
+I was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the
+very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of
+the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others,
+of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not
+been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well
+tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel
+above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I
+stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing.
+
+He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come,
+and what company I had quitted to visit him.
+
+"So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more
+vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple
+has fallen with less shaking than I thought for."
+
+I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have
+been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long,
+heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and
+saw nothing.
+
+At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day:
+
+"You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross
+asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From
+what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know
+it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'"
+
+This time I know I kept silence for a long time.
+
+I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying,
+in a voice which sounded like a stranger's:
+
+"I will go to Albany whenever you like."
+
+I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my
+path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+
+
+
+Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road
+which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter
+weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track
+straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As
+it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a
+wayside stump, dead beat.
+
+"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick,"
+he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best
+I can."
+
+The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had
+put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention.
+"Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water
+which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at
+their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I
+stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I
+cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had
+not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the
+Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection
+as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop,
+and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale
+Adirondack outlines.
+
+As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze
+had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east
+and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them
+upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its
+cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his
+infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.
+
+"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody
+is waiting for me--nobody wants me."
+
+The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long
+afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion
+that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.
+
+"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of
+my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."
+
+Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He
+humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going
+by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road,
+and the rain was coming on.
+
+Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the
+distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.
+
+Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the
+settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a
+controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the
+hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not
+much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the
+vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my
+brain, almost frightened me.
+
+I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had
+spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah,
+fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in
+contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still
+nourished in my heart a hope--and these _were_ happiness! I laughed aloud
+at my folly in having deemed them less.
+
+She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes
+open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent
+cub!--so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I
+pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her
+grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile,
+the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed
+against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him--brawling
+dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and
+proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken
+wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration! Where were their eyes, that
+they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when
+he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?
+
+Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of
+his class, or of his pretence to class?
+
+Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could
+not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing,
+everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other
+friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John
+Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from
+boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class,"
+these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had
+never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me,
+grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink
+and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the
+gentry--save the mark!--of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never
+so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid,
+fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her;
+it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their
+congratulations.
+
+And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other
+affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge
+their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered
+stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action,
+my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before
+their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their
+hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time
+out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on
+my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as
+worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet
+with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a
+moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!
+
+Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.
+
+Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the
+self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute,
+tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal
+notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn
+to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little
+country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed
+rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed
+also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this
+Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive
+expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an
+intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all
+my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to
+employment!
+
+It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was
+more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three
+bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman
+was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the
+blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia
+was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel
+gilt, the gaudier the better!
+
+But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing
+pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason
+runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours'
+wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh
+murderous in its fierceness.
+
+The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of
+thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat.
+The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood.
+
+On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from
+the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn,
+rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A
+half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars,
+and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it
+was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart
+and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and
+that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to
+accompany them.
+
+"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's
+human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty
+beckon the other way."
+
+I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We
+resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily
+pelting upon our backs.
+
+When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the
+waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail
+was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you
+could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct
+mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly
+and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears,
+and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.
+
+At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.
+
+He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a
+walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion;
+yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a
+song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that
+neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on
+this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!
+
+He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not
+interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility
+toward me.
+
+"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I
+see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this
+"--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.
+
+I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I
+could only hope he failed to note:
+
+"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you
+like--here! now!"
+
+He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are
+drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"
+
+"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him
+square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was
+ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner
+that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."
+
+The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his
+surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his
+great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of
+mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.
+
+If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration.
+There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his
+knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my
+superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing,
+there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over,
+he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his
+coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully.
+I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and
+was vexed with myself for it.
+
+We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a
+final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not
+only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood
+upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift
+movement past me from behind.
+
+I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that
+followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful
+slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus
+place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.
+
+To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.
+
+There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close
+before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow
+in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side
+of the cliff!
+
+Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips
+over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very
+moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end,
+one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the
+Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which
+recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had
+chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till
+the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed
+me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he
+said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than
+poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless
+morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my
+readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled
+the Englishman.
+
+The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight
+out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.
+
+With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as
+possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty
+masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the
+far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably
+sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught
+sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine,
+limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but
+it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my
+antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked
+at him.
+
+The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently,
+for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had
+been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him.
+
+I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin
+defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and
+stood for a moment frowning down at me.
+
+"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a
+new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see
+you again."
+
+"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break
+every bone in your body."
+
+With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I
+continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp
+was waiting for me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+
+
+
+The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding
+his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic.
+
+He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had
+from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been
+more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines.
+He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and
+some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though
+all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my
+neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as
+by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over
+the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall
+came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet
+and miserable affair.
+
+When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise
+to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what
+to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had
+overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far
+from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my
+part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word
+or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far
+as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest.
+Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage
+feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon
+the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive
+way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my
+fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my
+mortification and rage.
+
+When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself
+by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart;
+both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in
+the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as
+this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat
+at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then
+sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather,
+lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room.
+
+"Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened?
+There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?"
+
+I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her:
+
+"The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie
+it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by
+the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!"
+
+Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room,
+closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting
+over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them
+for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining
+at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for
+making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon
+as possible leave the Cedars.
+
+When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper.
+Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude,
+with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a
+complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the
+simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone
+to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt
+the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his
+curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the
+dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not
+ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was
+impendent.
+
+Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily:
+
+"Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your
+wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness
+in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been
+only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of
+truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet.
+But his scornful sternness hardened me.
+
+"Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper."
+
+More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred
+fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the
+chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I
+knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again:
+
+"Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association
+has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by
+want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back."
+
+I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly
+ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved
+toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the
+apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over
+now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He
+seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile,
+and he was some time in finding them.
+
+"In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my
+equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small
+matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment
+which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find
+myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person
+who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the
+appearance of respect for my gray hairs."
+
+He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender,
+ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on:
+
+"In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being
+wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has
+come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily
+observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I
+will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful,
+respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you
+developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of
+your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way,
+virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your
+credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much
+consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I
+had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken
+altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of
+my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours."
+
+"Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he
+paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you."
+
+He went on as if I had not spoken:
+
+"Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your
+voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position
+and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to
+dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not
+forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my
+disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your
+education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of
+what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting
+and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to
+me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her
+chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would
+fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my
+duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed."
+
+The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered
+under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul
+and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell.
+
+Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and
+foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct
+or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long,
+stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my
+actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly
+stood my ground.
+
+"If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly
+be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and
+to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can
+the simple truth affront?"
+
+"What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being
+thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose
+to describe him thus."
+
+"I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor
+devil escaped with his life."
+
+"How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days
+slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason."
+
+"Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not
+understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with
+rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as
+we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need
+for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off."
+
+"Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?"
+
+"I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have
+killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not
+put other things in our heads."
+
+"My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time,
+then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in
+apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than
+before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in
+this than I thought. Explain it to me."
+
+I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference,
+than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel.
+
+"What am I to explain?" I asked.
+
+"Why were you quarrelling with Philip?"
+
+"Because I felt like it--because I hate him!"
+
+"Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two?
+I demand to know!"
+
+"If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth
+in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he
+has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be
+worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his
+fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you
+and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to
+deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My
+throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might
+not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes.
+
+My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in
+the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed
+them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since
+familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing
+sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my
+voice came back to me.
+
+"If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first
+looked on the Valley--_our_ Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could
+only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from
+this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you
+could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that
+evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah,
+then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning
+with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and
+her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and
+sullen, _that_ is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and
+upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the
+displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if
+I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess
+of tenderness trampled underfoot."
+
+At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all
+events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old.
+He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly.
+
+"My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time
+gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not
+have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset,
+the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right
+in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go
+aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies
+and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a
+melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these
+sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to
+Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would
+be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the
+beginning."
+
+I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth.
+
+"Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them.
+
+He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly
+with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have,
+waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my
+heart--to have Daisy for my wife."
+
+As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether
+strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she
+and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we
+were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not
+infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and
+all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness
+of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a
+lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious,
+civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image
+of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the
+delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home
+that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now
+with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should
+crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover,
+that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as
+innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child
+approaching to kiss its mother.
+
+"Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom
+it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you
+will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling."
+
+His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly
+enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no
+fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the
+very wisest to bestow.
+
+He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments
+exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world.
+In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of
+every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other
+distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just
+the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he
+essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent.
+He added, I remember, a personal parallel:
+
+"I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my
+grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young
+Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other
+thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of
+her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and
+hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I
+verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket
+this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony
+Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are
+kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns
+sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if
+you would deny her the gallant of her choice?"
+
+"If I believed," I blurted out, "that it _was_ her own free choice!"
+
+"Whose else, then, pray?"
+
+"If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not
+been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--"
+
+"Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning
+testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all
+these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the
+youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had
+spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it
+might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We
+who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred
+bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be
+no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own
+judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I
+mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony.
+Perhaps--who knows?--he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of
+these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon
+enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow
+freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way."
+
+My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never
+abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went
+to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came.
+
+The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent
+down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal
+for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we
+hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task.
+
+It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the
+wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told
+Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and
+take up the proffered agency.
+
+He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong
+opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the
+best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or
+made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with
+my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by
+my perseverance in the project.
+
+Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences
+with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he
+was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with
+voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and
+much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among
+others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon,
+who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I
+never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of
+more utility.
+
+In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a
+departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few
+times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of
+that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the
+incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to
+Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I
+fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.
+At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with
+my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not
+sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.
+
+It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began
+life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried
+with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of
+compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of
+the Cedars.
+
+As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+
+
+
+The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new
+world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with
+but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this
+distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost
+at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had
+left behind.
+
+For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.
+I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter
+was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was
+pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager
+national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places,
+to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly
+the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to
+prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as
+possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to
+encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome
+settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was
+easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from
+scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then,
+however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.
+
+Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in
+it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most
+delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were
+to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were
+equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed
+brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting
+water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I
+had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the
+Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses,
+here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New
+England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a
+pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the
+conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.
+
+And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There
+were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen
+had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had
+weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told
+of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the
+hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie
+Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great
+town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its
+population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four
+hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and
+were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect
+was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the
+grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The
+wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is
+thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps
+of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.
+Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from
+the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.
+
+Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when
+men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The
+only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to
+barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and
+occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his
+representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.
+For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and
+comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even
+to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea
+fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other
+town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our
+own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted
+slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.
+
+There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the
+firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the
+Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old
+age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass
+unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know
+how neither to rest nor to play.
+
+But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in
+the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already
+sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of
+books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself
+almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances
+were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was
+repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for
+them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies
+were mine.
+
+But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and
+rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the
+outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the
+uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost
+citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others
+not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen
+before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon
+terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger
+men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age,
+and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.
+
+These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not
+inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or
+to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had
+seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were
+masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had
+suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my
+surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with
+loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another
+name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen
+disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the
+ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence
+the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its
+citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political
+life, were of my way of thinking.
+
+More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against
+England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in
+our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth,
+and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and
+social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act
+crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly
+discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in
+our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious
+of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked
+the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret
+these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found
+myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils
+of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it,
+as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.
+Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became
+the most ardent of Whigs?
+
+Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established,
+there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole
+current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There
+were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern,
+to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a
+considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of
+provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at
+Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and
+there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped
+hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no
+obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare
+expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had
+entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind
+and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting
+alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking
+of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the
+Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching
+completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.
+Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for
+me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the
+collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against
+Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.
+The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my
+disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of
+myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon
+other things.
+
+Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her
+ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had
+established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.
+I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed
+me, which was not at all.
+
+The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the
+company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business,
+push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English
+charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run
+over here."
+
+So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.
+
+It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held
+me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true
+that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city,
+for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always
+seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the
+town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This
+made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I
+am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who
+came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in
+estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.
+
+I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each
+quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the
+company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went
+to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my
+progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased
+at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But
+that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than
+the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year
+than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have
+learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my
+companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of
+mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden,
+and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.
+
+So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently
+rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped
+meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling
+tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs,
+twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent
+position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to
+mortal man.
+
+Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this
+correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of
+the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+
+
+
+We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night
+not to be forgotten while memory remains to me.
+
+There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons,
+and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian
+lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon
+was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business
+which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer
+mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country
+roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been
+despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite
+the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson
+had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir
+John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this
+opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he
+had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in
+company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with
+more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and
+flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was
+I at last to meet Daisy?
+
+Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and
+decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the
+most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more
+beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening
+return to me.
+
+You may still see for yourselves how noble, one might say palatial, was
+the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on
+the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no
+power of fancy can restore for _you_--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic
+people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad,
+fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome;
+the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights,
+hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the
+stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their
+passengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich
+velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright
+eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair breasts--all radiant in the
+hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of
+gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the
+horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of
+color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the
+spacious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her
+son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests.
+No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You
+shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy.
+
+The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all,
+pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the
+best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery
+beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead.
+
+This round, lustrous orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to
+every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that
+this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm
+was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost
+stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman,
+when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the
+formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see
+sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one
+another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust
+over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it.
+
+It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess.
+She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The
+Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before
+her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my
+roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is
+trouble brewing."
+
+I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left,
+but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words
+with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of
+whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then
+rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all
+liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it
+would not do to pass him by unheeded.
+
+While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of
+the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the
+hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space
+clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I
+perforce followed.
+
+I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book
+had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been
+equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects.
+Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was
+now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of
+English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his
+office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered
+me his hand.
+
+It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his
+great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had
+Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his
+long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few
+words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I passed to make room for
+others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood.
+
+"The old fox!" he said, smilingly nodding toward Colden. "One may not but
+like him, for all his tricks. If England had had the wit to keep that rude
+boor of a Tryon at home, and make Colden governor, and listen to him,
+matters would have gone better. Who is that behind him? Oh, yes,
+De Lancey."
+
+Oliver de Lancey was chiefly notable on account of his late brother James,
+who had been chief justice and lieutenant-governor, and the most
+brilliant, unscrupulous, masterful politician of his time. Oliver was
+himself a man of much energy and ambition. I observed him curiously, for
+his mother had been a Van Cortlandt, and I had some of that blood in my
+veins as well. So far as it had contributed to shape his face, I was not
+proud of it, for he had a selfish and arrogant mien.
+
+It was more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of
+the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their
+characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip
+Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite
+forty years of age, almost of my stature--that is to say, a tall man. He
+held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air,
+which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under
+the powder, helped to confirm. But no one could speak in amity with him
+without finding him to be the most affable and sweet-natured of men. If he
+had had more of the personal vanity and self-love which his bearing seemed
+to indicate, it would have served him well, perhaps, when New England
+jealousy assailed and overbore him. But he was too proud to fight for
+himself, and too patriotic not to fight for his country, whether the just
+reward came or was withheld.
+
+Colonel Schuyler had been chosen as one of the five delegates of the
+Colony to attend the first Continental Congress, now sitting at
+Philadelphia, but ill-health had compelled him to decline the journey. He
+had since been to New York, however, where he had learned much of the
+situation, and now was in receipt of tidings from the Congress itself. By
+a compromise in the New York Assembly, both parties had been represented
+in our delegation, the Whigs sending Philip Livingston and Isaac Low, the
+Tories James Duane and John Jay, and the fifth man, one Alsopp, being a
+neutral-tinted individual to whom neither side could object. The
+information which Schuyler had received was to the effect that all five,
+under the tremendous and enthusiastic pressure they had encountered in
+Philadelphia, had now resolved to act together in all things for the
+Colonies and against the Crown.
+
+"That means," said he, "that we shall all adopt Massachusetts's cause as
+our own. After Virginia led the way with Patrick Henry's speech, there was
+no other course possible for even Jay and Duane. I should like to hear
+that man Henry. He must be wonderful."
+
+The space about Mr. Colden had shifted across the room, so that we were
+now upon its edge, and Schuyler went to him with outstretched hand. The
+two men exchanged a glance, and each knew what the other was thinking of.
+
+"Your excellency has heard from Philadelphia," said the Colonel, more as a
+statement of fact than as an inquiry.
+
+"Sad, sad!" exclaimed the aged politician, in a low tone. "It is a grief
+instead of a joy to have lived so long, if my life must end amid
+contention and strife."
+
+"He is really sincere in deploring the trouble," said Schuyler, when he
+had rejoined me. "He knows in his heart that the Ministry are pig-headedly
+wrong, and that we are in the right. He would do justice if he could, but
+he is as powerless as I am so far as influencing London goes, and here he
+is in the hands of the De Lanceys. To give the devil his due, I believe
+Sir William Johnson was on our side, too, at heart."
+
+We had talked of this before, and out of deference to my sentiments of
+liking and gratitude to Sir William, he always tried to say amiable things
+about the late baronet to me. But they did not come easily, for there was
+an old-time feud between the two families. The dislike dated back to the
+beginning of young Johnson's career, when, by taking sides shrewdly in a
+political struggle between Clinton and De Lancey, he had ousted John
+Schuyler, Philip's grandfather, from the Indian commissionership and
+secured it for himself. In later years, since the Colonel had come to
+manhood, he had been forced into rivalry, almost amounting to antagonism
+at times, with the baronet, in Colonial and Indian affairs; and even now,
+after the baronet's death, it was hard for him to acknowledge the
+existence of all the virtues which my boyish liking had found in Sir
+William. But still he did try, if only to please me.
+
+As we spoke, Sir John Johnson passed us, in company with several younger
+men, pushing toward the room to the right, where the punch-bowl
+was placed.
+
+"At least, _he_ is no friend of yours?" said Schuyler, indicating the
+red-faced young baronet.
+
+"No man less so," I replied, promptly. Two years ago I doubt I should have
+been so certain of my entire enmity toward Sir John. But in the interim
+all my accumulating political fervor had unconsciously stretched back to
+include the Johnstown Tories; I found myself now honestly hating them all
+alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude
+toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish
+dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to
+make him the chief object of my aversion.
+
+We talked of him now, and of his wife, a beautiful, sweet-faced girl of
+twenty, who had been Polly Watts of New York. My companion pointed her out
+to me, as one of a circle beyond the fire-place. He had only soft words
+and pity for her--as if foreseeing the anguish and travail soon to be
+brought upon her by her husband's misdeeds--but he spoke very slightingly
+and angrily of Sir John. To Schuyler's mind there was no good in him.
+
+"I have known him more or less since he was a boy and followed his father
+in the Lake George campaign. The officers then could not abide him, though
+some were submissive to him because of his father's position. So now,
+fifteen years afterward, although he has many toadies and flatterers, I
+doubt his having any real friends. Through all these score of years, I
+have yet to learn of any gracious or manly thing he has done."
+
+"At least he did gallop from the Fort to the Hall at news of his father's
+death, and kill his horse by the pace," I said.
+
+"Heirs can afford to ride swiftly," replied the Colonel, in a dry tone.
+"No: he has neither the honesty to respect the rights of others, nor the
+wit to enforce those which he arrogates to himself. Look at his management
+in the Mohawk Valley. Scarce two months after the old baronet's
+death--before he was barely warm in his father's bed--all the Dutch and
+Palatines and Cherry Valley Scotch were up in arms against him and his
+friends. I call that the work of a fool. Why, Tryon County ought, by all
+the rules, to be the Tories' strongest citadel. There, of all other
+places, they should be able to hold their own. Old Sir William would have
+contrived matters better, believe me. But this sulky, slave-driving cub
+must needs force the quarrel from the start. Already they have their
+committee in the Palatine district, with men like Frey and Yates and Paris
+on it, and their resolutions are as strong as any we have heard."
+
+Others came up at this, and I moved away, thinking to pay my respects to
+friends in the rooms on the left. The fine hall was almost overcrowded.
+One's knee struck a sword, or one's foot touched a satin train, at every
+step. There were many whom I knew, chiefly Albanians, and my progress was
+thus rendered slow. At the door I met my kinsman, Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn.
+
+"Ha! well met, Cousin Sobriety!" he cried. "Let us cross the hall, and get
+near the punch-bowl."
+
+"It is my idea that you have had enough," I answered.
+
+"'Too much is enough,' as the Indian said. He was nearer the truth than
+you are," replied Teunis, taking my arm.
+
+"No, not now! First let me see who is here."
+
+"Who is here? Everybody--from Hendrik Hudson and Killian the First down.
+Old Centenarian Colden is telling them about William the Silent, whom he
+remembers very well."
+
+"I have never heard any one speak of Teunis the Silent."
+
+"Nor ever will! It is not my _métier_, as the French students used to say.
+Well, then, I will turn back with you; but the punch will all be gone,
+mark my words. I saw Johnson and Watts and their party headed for the bowl
+five-and-twenty minutes ago. We shall get not so much as a lemon-seed. But
+I sacrifice myself."
+
+We entered the room, and my eyes were drawn, as by the force of a million
+magnets, to the place where Daisy sat.
+
+For the moment she was unattended. She was very beautifully attired, and
+jewels glistened from her hair and throat. Her eyes were downcast--looking
+upon the waxed floor as if in meditation. Even to this sudden, momentary
+glance, her fair face looked thinner and paler than I remembered it--and
+ah, how well did I remember it! With some muttered word of explanation I
+broke away from my companion, and went straight to her.
+
+She had not noted my presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood
+before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had
+expected. She smiled in a wan way, and gave me her hand.
+
+"I knew you were here," she said, in a soft voice which I scarcely
+recognized, so changed, I might say saddened, was it by the introduction
+of some plaintive, minor element. "Philip told me. I thought that sooner
+or later I should see you."
+
+"And I have thought of little else but the chance of seeing you," I
+replied, speaking what was in my heart, with no reflection save that this
+was our Daisy, come into my life again.
+
+She was silent for a moment, her eyes seeking the floor and a faint glow
+coming upon her cheeks. Then she raised them to my face, with something of
+the old sparkle in their glance.
+
+"Well, then," she said, drawing aside her skirts, "sit here, and see me."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust Upon Me.
+
+
+
+I sat beside Daisy, and we talked. It was at the beginning a highly
+superficial conversation, as I remember it, during which neither looked at
+the other, and each made haste to fill up any threatened lapse into
+silence by words of some sort, it mattered not much what.
+
+She told me a great deal about Mr. Stewart's health, which I learned was
+far less satisfactory than his letters had given reason to suspect. In
+reply to questions, I told her of my business and my daily life here in
+Albany. I did not ask her in return about herself. She seemed eager to
+forestall any possible inquiry on this point, and hastened to inform me as
+to my old acquaintances in the Valley.
+
+From her words I first realized how grave the situation there had suddenly
+become. It was not only that opposition to the Johnsons had been openly
+formulated, but feuds of characteristic bitterness had sprung up within
+families, and between old-time friends, in consequence. Colonel Henry
+Frey, who owned the upper Canajoharie mills, took sides with the Tories,
+and had fiercely quarrelled with his brother John, who was one of the Whig
+Committee. There was an equally marked division in the Herkimer family,
+where one brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, and his nephew, outraged the others
+by espousing the Tory cause. So instances might be multiplied. Already on
+one side there were projects of forcible resistance, and on the other ugly
+threats of using the terrible Indian power, which hung portentous on the
+western skirt of the Valley, to coerce the Whigs.
+
+I gained from this recital, more from her manner than her words, that her
+sympathies were with the people and not with the aristocrats. She went on
+to say things which seemed to offer an explanation of this.
+
+The tone of Valley society, at least so far as it was a reflection of
+Johnson Hall, had, she said, deteriorated wofully since the old baronet's
+death. A reign of extravagance and recklessness both as to money and
+temper--of gambling, racing, hard drinking, low sports, and coarse
+manners--had set in. The friends of Sir John were now a class by
+themselves, having no relations to speak of with the body of Whig farmers,
+merchants, inn-keepers, and the like. Rather it seemed to please the Tory
+clique to defy the good opinion of their neighbors, and show by very
+excess and license contempt for their judgment. Some of the young men whom
+I had known were of late sadly altered. She spoke particularly of Walter
+Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the
+evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a
+sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to distinguish sometimes
+from madness.
+
+In all this I found but one reflection--rising again and again as she
+spoke--and this was that she was telling me, by inference, the story of
+her own unhappiness.
+
+Daisy would never have done this consciously--of that I am positive. But
+it was betrayed in every line of her face, and my anxious ear caught it in
+every word she uttered as to the doings of the Johnson party. Doubtless
+she did not realize how naturally and closely I would associate her
+husband with that party.
+
+Underneath all our talk there had been, on both sides, I dare say, a sense
+of awkward constraint. There were so many things which we must not speak
+of--things which threatened incessantly to force their way to the surface.
+
+I thought of them all, and wondered how much she knew of the events that
+preceded my departure--how much she guessed of the heart-breaking grief
+with which I had seen her go to another. It came back to me now, very
+vividly, as I touched the satin fold of her gown with my shoe, and said to
+myself, "This is really she."
+
+The two years had not passed so uncomfortably, it is true; work and
+pre-occupation and the change of surroundings had brought me back my peace
+of mind and taken the keen edge from my despair--which was to have been
+life-long, and had faded in a month. Yet now her simple presence--with the
+vague added feeling that she was unhappy--sufficed to wipe out the whole
+episode of Albany, and transport me bodily back to the old Valley days. I
+felt again all the anguish at losing her, all the bitter wrath at the
+triumph of my rival--emphasized and intensified now by the implied
+confession that he had proved unworthy.
+
+To this gloom there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition,
+the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air
+about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence.
+The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping
+us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as
+I did?
+
+I looked up into her face. She had been silent for I know not how long,
+following her thoughts as I had followed mine. It was almost a shock to me
+to find that the talk had died away, and I fancied that I read a kindred
+embarrassment in her eyes. I seized upon the first subject which
+entered my head.
+
+"Tulp would be glad to see you," I said, foolishly enough.
+
+She colored slightly, and opened and shut her fan in a nervous way. "Poor
+Tulp!" she said, "I don't think he ever liked me as he did you. Is
+he well?"
+
+"He has never been quite the same since--since he came to Albany. He is a
+faithful body-servant now--nothing more."
+
+"Yes," she said, softly, with a sigh; then, after a pause, "Philip spoke
+of offering to make good to you your money loss in Tulp, but I told him he
+would better not."
+
+"It _was_ better not," I answered.
+
+Silence menaced us again. I did not find myself indignant at this
+insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly
+close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near
+Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts of him whatsoever.
+
+"You do Tulp a wrong," I said. "Poor little fellow! Do you remember--" and
+so we drifted into the happy, sunlit past, with its childish memories for
+both of games and forest rambles, and innocent pleasures making every day
+a little blissful lifetime by itself, and all the years behind our parting
+one sweet prolonged delight.
+
+Words came freely now; we looked into each other's faces without
+constraint, and laughed at the pastimes we recalled. It was so pleasant to
+be together again, and there was so much of charm for us both in the time
+which we remembered together.
+
+Sir John Johnson and his party had left the punch--or what remained of
+it--and came suddenly up to us. Behind the baronet I saw young Watts,
+young De Lancey, one or two others whom I did not know, and, yes!--it was
+he--Philip Cross.
+
+He had altered in appearance greatly. The two years had added much flesh
+to his figure, which was now burly, and seemed to have diminished his
+stature in consequence. His face, which even I had once regarded as
+handsome, was hardened now in expression, and bore an unhealthy, reddish
+hue. For that matter, all these young men were flushed with drink, and had
+entered rather boisterously, attracting attention as they progressed. This
+attention was not altogether friendly. Some of the ladies had drawn in
+their skirts impatiently, as they passed, and beyond them I saw a group of
+Dutch friends of mine, among them Teunis, who were scowling dark looks at
+the new-comers.
+
+Sir John recognized me as he approached, and deigned to say, "Ha!
+Mauverensen--you here?" after a cool fashion, and not offering his hand.
+
+I had risen, not knowing what his greeting would be like. It was only
+decent now to say: "I was much grieved to hear of your honored father's
+death last summer."
+
+"Well you might be!" said polite Sir John. "He served you many a good
+purpose. I saw you talking out yonder with Schuyler, that coward who dared
+not go to Philadelphia and risk his neck for his treason. I dare say he,
+too, was convulsed with grief over my father's death!"
+
+"Perhaps you would like to tell Philip Schuyler to his face that he is a
+coward," I retorted, in rising heat at the unprovoked insolence in his
+tone. "There is no braver man in the Colony."
+
+"But he didn't go to Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty
+scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list."
+
+"He did not go for a reason which is perfectly well known--his illness
+forbade the journey."
+
+"Yes," sneered the baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance;
+"too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told,
+he has been most of the time since your--what d'ye call it?--Congress
+assembled."
+
+I grew angry. "He went there to bury General Bradstreet. That, also, is
+well known. Information seems to reach the Valley but indifferently, Sir
+John. Everywhere else people understand and appreciate the imperative
+nature of the summons which called Colonel Schuyler to New York. The
+friendship of the two men has been a familiar matter of knowledge this
+fifteen years. I know not your notions of friendship's duties; but for a
+gentleman like Schuyler, scarcely a mortal illness itself could serve to
+keep him from paying the last respect to a friend whose death was such an
+affliction to him."
+
+Johnson had begun some response, truculent in tone, when an interruption
+came from a most unexpected source. Philip Cross, who had looked at me
+closely without betraying any sign of recognition, put his hand now on Sir
+John's shoulder.
+
+"Bradstreet?" he said. "Did I not know him? Surely he is the man who found
+his friend's wife so charming that he sent that friend to distant
+posts--to England, to Quebec, to Oswego, and Detroit--and amused himself
+here at home during the husband's absence. I am told he even built a
+mansion for her while the spouse was in London _on business._ So he is
+dead, eh?"
+
+I had felt the bitter purport of his words, almost before they were out.
+It was a familiar scandal in the mouths of the Johnson coterie--this foul
+assertion that Mrs. Schuyler, one of the best and most faithful of
+helpmates, as witty as she was beautiful, as good as she was diligent, in
+truth, an ideal wife, had pursued through many years a course of deceit
+and dishonor, and that her husband, the noblest son of our Colony, had
+been base enough to profit by it. Of all the cruel and malignant things to
+which the Tories laid their mean tongues, this was the lowest and most
+false. I could not refrain from putting my hand on my sword-hilt as
+I answered:
+
+"Such infamous words as these are an insult to every gentleman, the world
+over, who has ever presented a friend to his family!"
+
+Doubtless there was apparent in my face, as in the exaggerated formality
+of my bow to Cross, a plain invitation to fight. If there had not been,
+then my manner would have wofully belied my intent. It was, in fact, so
+plain that Daisy, who sat close by my side, and, like some others near at
+hand, had heard every word that had passed, half-started to her feet and
+clutched my sleeve, as with an appeal against my passionate purpose.
+
+Her husband had not stirred from his erect and arrogant posture until he
+saw his wife's frightened action. I could see that he noted this, and that
+it further angered him. He also laid his hand on his sword now, and
+frigidly inclined his wigged head toward me.
+
+"I had not the honor of addressing you, sir," he said, in a low voice,
+very much at variance with the expression in his eyes. "I had no wish to
+exchange words with you, or with any of your sour-faced tribe. But if you
+desire a conversation--a lengthy and more private conversation--I am at
+your disposition. Let me say here, however,"--and he glanced with fierce
+meaning at Daisy as he spoke--"I am not a Schuyler; I do not encourage
+'friends.'"
+
+Even Sir John saw that this was too much.
+
+"Come, come, Cross!" he said, going to his friend. "Your tongue runs away
+with you." Then, in a murmur, he added: "Damn it, man! Don't drag your
+wife into the thing. Skewer the Dutchman outside, if you like, and if you
+are steady enough, but remember what you are about."
+
+I could hear this muttered exhortation as distinctly as I had heard
+Cross's outrageous insult. Sir John's words appealed to me even more than
+they did to his companion. I was already ashamed to have been led into a
+display of temper and a threat of quarrelling, here in the company of
+ladies, and on such an occasion. We were attracting attention, moreover,
+and Teunis and some of his Dutch friends had drawn nearer, evidently
+understanding that a dispute was at hand. The baronet's hint about Daisy
+completed my mortification. _I_ should have been the one to think of her,
+to be restrained by her presence, and to prevent, at any cost, her name
+being associated with the quarrel by so much as the remotest inference.
+
+So I stood irresolute, with my hand still on my sword, and black rage
+still tearing at my heart, but with a mist of self-reproach and indecision
+before my eyes, in which lights, costumes, powdered wigs, gay figures
+about me, all swam dizzily.
+
+Stephen Watts, a man in manner, though a mere stripling in years, had
+approached me from the other group, a yard off, in a quiet way to avoid
+observation. He whispered:
+
+"There must be no quarrel _here_, Mr. Mauverensen. And there must be no
+notice taken of his last words--spoken in heat, and properly due, I dare
+say, to the punch rather than to the man."
+
+"I feel that as deeply as you can," I replied.
+
+"I am glad," said Watts, still in a sidelong whisper. "If you must fight,
+let there be some tolerable pretext."
+
+"We have one ready standing," I whispered back. "When we last met I warned
+him that at our next encounter I should break every bone in his skin. Is
+not that enough?"
+
+"Capital! Who is your friend?"
+
+By some remarkable intuition my kinsman Teunis was prompted to advance at
+this. I introduced the two young men to each other, and they sauntered
+off, past where Sir John was still arguing with Cross, and into the outer
+hall. I stood watching them till they disappeared, then looking aimlessly
+at the people in front of me, who seemed to belong to some strange
+phantasmagoria.
+
+It was Daisy's voice which awakened me from this species of trance. She
+spoke from behind her fan, purposely avoiding looking up at me.
+
+"You are going to fight--you two!" she murmured.
+
+I could not answer her directly, and felt myself flushing with
+embarrassment. "He spoke in heat," I said, stumblingly. "Doubtless he will
+apologize--to you, at least."
+
+"You do not know him. He would have his tongue torn out before he would
+admit his wrong, or any sorrow for it."
+
+To this I could find no reply. It was on my tongue's end to say that men
+who had a pride in combining obstinacy with insolence must reap what they
+sow, but I wisely kept silence.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Promise me, Douw, that you will not fight. It chills my heart, even the
+thought of it. Let it pass. Go away now--anything but a quarrel! I
+beseech you!"
+
+"'Tis more easily said than done," I muttered back to her. "Men cannot
+slip out of du--out of quarrels as they may out of coats."
+
+"For my sake!" came the whisper, with a pleading quaver in it, from behind
+the feathers.
+
+"It is all on one side, Daisy," I protested. "I must be ridden over,
+insulted, scorned, flouted to my face--and pocket it all! That is a
+nigger's portion, not a gentleman's. You do not know what I have
+borne already."
+
+"Do I not? Ah, too well! For my sake, Douw, for the sake of our memories
+of the dear old home, I implore you to avoid an encounter. Will you
+not--for me?"
+
+"It makes a coward out of me! Every Tory in the two counties will cackle
+over the story that a Dutchman, a Whig, was affronted here under the
+Patroon's very roof, and dared not resent it."
+
+"How much do you value their words? Must a thing be true for them to say
+it? The real manhood is shown in the strength of restraint, not the
+weakness of yielding to the impulse of the moment. And you can be strong
+if you choose, Douw!"
+
+While I still pondered these words Teunis Van Hoorn returned to me, having
+finished his consultation with Watts, whom I now saw whispering to Sir
+John and the others who clustered about Cross.
+
+The doctor was in good spirits. He sidled up to me, uttering aloud some
+merry commonplace, and then adding, in a low tone:
+
+"I was a match for him. He insisted that they were the aggrieved party,
+and chose swords. I stuck to it that we occupied that position, and had
+the right to choose pistols. You are no Frenchman, to spit flesh with a
+wire; but you _can_ shoot, can't you? If we stand to our point, they
+must yield."
+
+I cast a swift glance toward the sweet, pleading face at my side, and made
+answer:
+
+"I will not fight!"
+
+My kinsman looked at me with surprise and vexation.
+
+"No," I went on, "it is not our way here. You have lived so long abroad
+that duelling seems a natural and proper thing. But we stay-at-homes no
+more recognize the right of these English fops to force their fighting
+customs upon us than we rush to tie our hair in queues because it is
+their fashion."
+
+I will not pretend that I was much in love with the line of action thus
+lamely defended. To the contrary, it seemed to me then a cowardly and
+unworthy course; but I had chosen it, and I could not retreat.
+
+There was upon the moment offered temptation enough to test my resolution
+sorely.
+
+Many of the ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let
+it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust
+upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson
+stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost our sole
+observers.
+
+Philip Cross shook himself loose from the restraining circle of friends,
+and strode toward me, his face glowing darkly with passion, and his
+hands clinched.
+
+"You run away, do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where
+you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?--here, where you stand!"
+
+"I hear you," I made answer, striving hard to keep my voice down and my
+resolution up. "Others hear you, too. There are ladies in the room. If you
+have any right to be among gentlemen, it is high time for you to show it.
+You are acting like a blackguard."
+
+"Hear the preaching Dutchman!" he called out, with a harsh, scornful
+laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his
+hiding-place behind the petticoats.--Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and
+I'll break that sword of yours over your back!"
+
+Where this all would have ended I cannot tell. My friends gathered around
+beside me, and at my back. Cross advanced a step or two nearer to me, his
+companions with him. I felt, rather than saw, the gestures preceding the
+drawing of swords. I cast a single glance toward the group of women across
+the room--who, huddled together, were gazing at us with pale faces and
+fixed eyes--and I dare say the purport of my glance was that I had borne
+all I could, and that the results were beyond my control--when suddenly
+there came an unlooked-for interruption.
+
+The dignified, sober figure of Abraham Ten Broeck appeared in our wrathful
+circle. Some one had doubtless told him, in the outer hall, of the
+quarrel, and he had come to interfere. A hush fell over us all at
+his advent.
+
+"What have we here, gentlemen?" asked the merchant, looking from one to
+another of our heated faces with a grave air of authority. "Are you well
+advised to hold discussions here, in what ought to be a pleasant and
+social company?"
+
+No ready answer was forthcoming. The quarrel was none of my manufacture,
+and it was not my business to explain it to him. The Tories were secretly
+disgusted, I fancy, with the personal aspects of the dispute, and had
+nothing to say. Only Cross, who unfortunately did not know the new-comer,
+and perhaps would not have altered his manner if he had known him, said
+uncivilly:
+
+"The matter concerns us alone, sir. It is no affair of outsiders."
+
+I saw the blood mount to Mr. Ten Broeck's dark cheeks, and the fire flash
+in his eyes. But the Dutch gentleman kept tight bit on his tongue
+and temper.
+
+"Perhaps I am not altogether an outsider, young sir," he replied, calmly.
+"It might be thought that I would have a right to civil answers here."
+
+"Who is he?" asked Cross, contemptuously turning his head toward Sir John.
+
+Mr. Ten Broeck took the reply upon himself. "I am the uncle and guardian
+of your boy-host," he said, quietly. "In a certain sense I am myself your
+host--though it may be an honor which I shall not enjoy again."
+
+There was a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to
+impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant,
+and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on
+the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the
+principals changed his posture with a sense of relief.
+
+Philip Cross presently went over to where the ladies stood, exchanged a
+few words with them, and then with his male friends left the room,
+affecting great composure and indifference. It was departing time; the
+outer hall was beginning to display cloaks, hoods, and tippets, and from
+without could be heard the voices of the negroes, bawling out demands for
+carriages.
+
+I had only a momentary chance of saying farewell to Daisy. Doubtless I
+ought to have held aloof from her altogether, but I felt that to be
+impossible. She gave me her hand, looking still very pale and distrait,
+and murmured only, "It was brave of you, Douw."
+
+I did not entirely agree with her, so I said in reply: "I hope you will
+be happy, dear girl; that I truly hope. Give my love and duty to Mr.
+Stewart, and--and if I may be of service to you, no matter in how exacting
+or how slight a matter, I pray you command me."
+
+We exchanged good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left
+me to join Lady Johnson and to depart with their company.
+
+Later, when I walked homeward with Teunis, sauntering in the moonlight, he
+imparted something to me which he had heard, in confidence of course, from
+one of the ladies who had formed the anxious little group that watched
+our quarrel.
+
+"After Ten Broeck came in, Cross went over to his wife, and brusquely said
+to her, in the hearing of her friends, that your acquaintance with her was
+an insult to him, and that he forbade her ever again holding converse
+with you!"
+
+We walked a considerable time in silence after this, and I will not essay
+to describe for you my thoughts. We had come into the shadow of the old
+Dutch church in the square, I know, before Teunis spoke again.
+
+"Be patient yet a little longer, Douw," he said. "The break must come soon
+now, and then we will drive all these insolent scoundrels before us
+into the sea!"
+
+I shook hands with him solemnly on this, as we parted.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+
+
+
+To pass from October, 1774, to mid-June of 1775--from the moonlit streets
+of sleeping Albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the Mohawk
+Valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. To
+us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully
+long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement.
+
+War was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister
+conditions. Dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting
+themselves in Parliament, at London, by declaring that the Americans were
+cowards and would not fight. We boasted little, but we knew ourselves
+better. There was as yet small talk of independence, of separation.
+Another year was to elapse before Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_ should
+flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us
+both our real goal and the way to attain it. But about fighting, we had
+resolved our purpose.
+
+We should have been slaves otherwise.
+
+Turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable
+at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now
+it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North--all tediously
+alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of
+determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. To get justice, or
+even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. They
+listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of
+officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too
+worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England--who lied us
+impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the
+musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we
+were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition;
+the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town
+to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched
+under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and
+stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the Crown
+authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest
+men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up
+our substance in wanton taxation.
+
+There had been a chance that the new Parliament, meeting for the first
+time in the January of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to
+honestly set matters right. We had appealed from Crown and Commons to the
+English people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. But
+the hope speedily fell to the ground. The English, with that strange
+rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds
+their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal
+courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the
+cart-tail.
+
+To this we said no!
+
+In Albany, on this day in the latter part of June, when the thread of the
+story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague,
+tidings. Following upon the blow struck at Concord in April, a host of
+armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were
+investing Boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the
+beleaguered British General Gage. A great battle had been fought near the
+town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. But it meant
+War, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of
+excited comment.
+
+The windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming
+sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. Men had
+gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the
+Berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the
+mountains of how the fight had gone. No one talked of anything else.
+Assuredly I too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and
+discuss the news from Boston, but that my old friend Major Jelles Fonda
+had come down from Caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence
+from the Mohawk Valley.
+
+How well I remember him still, the good, square-set, solid
+merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm,
+resourceful, masterful air! He sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the
+day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and
+deliberate whiffs of his pipe. I listened with growing interest, until at
+last I forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which
+before had so absorbed me. He had much to tell.
+
+More than a month before, the two contending factions had come to
+fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the Whigs in and in front of John
+Veeder's house, at Caughnawaga. They were to raise a liberty pole there,
+and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. While they were
+deliberating, up rides Guy Johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in
+the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage.
+Back of him rode a whole company of the Hall cabal--Sir John Johnson,
+Philip Cross, the Butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the
+meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed.
+Many of these were drunk. Colonel Guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and
+began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had
+summoned them thither. Young Jake Sammons, with the characteristic
+boldness of his family, stood up to the Indian superintendent and answered
+him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the Johnson men fell upon
+Jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. Some insisted that it
+was peppery Guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded
+riding-whip, but on this point Major Jelles was not clear.
+
+"But what were our people about, to let this happen?" I asked, with some
+heat.
+
+"To tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away.
+Only a few of us held our place. Our men were unarmed, for one thing.
+Moreover, they are in awe of the power of the Hall. The magistrates, the
+sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office
+in Tryon County--take orders from the Hall. You can't get people to forget
+that. Besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down."
+
+Major Jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed
+force on the side of the Johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper
+of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. Sir
+John had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the Hall, and his Roman
+Catholic Highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as
+a military body. All sorts of stories came down from Johnstown and up from
+Guy Park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their
+retainers. Peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were
+Philip Cross and Walter Butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with
+the most violent party of the Tories. To them, indeed, was directly
+traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the Valley tribes proved to have
+been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder Indians were to be
+called down from the headwaters of the Three Rivers, and from the Lake
+plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if
+rebellion was persisted in.
+
+"But they would never dare do that!" I cried rising to my feet.
+
+"Why not?" asked Jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "After all,
+that is their chief strength. Make no mistake! They are at work with the
+red-skins, poisoning them against us. Guy Johnson is savage at the
+mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at Guy Park,
+and he has already procured orders from London to remove Dominie Kirkland,
+the missionary who has kept the Oneidas heretofore friendly to us. That
+means--You can see as well as the rest of us what it means."
+
+"It means war in the Valley--fighting for your lives."
+
+"Well, let it! My customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. I will
+give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from
+the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this Johnson nonsense any
+longer. And my old father and my brothers say it with me. My brother Adam,
+he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work,
+his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple
+for gun-stocks, and making bullets. That reminds me--Guy Johnson took all
+the lead weights out of the windows at Guy Park, and hid them, to keep
+them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away."
+
+"Before he ran away? Who ran away?"
+
+"Why, Guy, of course," was the calm reply.
+
+I stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "You never mentioned
+this!" I managed to say at last.
+
+"I hadn't got to it yet," the Dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly.
+"You young people hurry one so."
+
+By degrees I obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had
+purposely come down, I believe, to tell me. As he progressed, my fancy ran
+before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great
+Hall on the hill which I knew so well.
+
+I needed not his assurances to believe that Molly Brant, who had come down
+from the upper Mohawk Castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred
+on all the rest into malevolent resolves.
+
+I could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the
+table where in Sir William's time she had been mistress, and now was but a
+visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. I could see her watching with
+silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, Sir John,
+Colonel Guy, the Butlers, Cross, and Claus, and then her own brother
+Joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her,
+engrafting upon his full wolf-totem Mohawk blood the restraints of tongue
+and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. No one of the males,
+Caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. Each
+in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to
+them meant London--would think of their acts. No one, not even Joseph
+Brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to
+wit: that the recalcitrant Valley should be swept as with a besom of fire
+and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. This, when
+it came her time, the Indian woman said for them frankly, and with
+scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. I could fancy
+her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away
+from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest
+the powers with which the king had intrusted them.
+
+It was not hard, either, to imagine young Walter Butler and Philip Cross
+rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot
+and fast upon the echo of Mistress Molly's contemptuous rebuke, should
+have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed
+all to the use of the Indians.
+
+So that day, just a week since, it had been settled that Colonel Guy and
+the two Butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a
+council near Fort Schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against
+their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they
+had departed. Guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great
+Sir William, she would be of use in the work; but Mrs. John Butler had
+gone to the Hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower
+Indian Castle.
+
+The two houses thus deserted--Guy Park and the Butlers' home on Switzer's
+Hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their
+contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in
+their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity,
+or hidden.
+
+"My brother Adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest Jelles
+Fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. So their thoughts were on bullets
+as well as his. He has his eye now on the church roof at home."
+
+Here was news indeed! There could be no pretence that the clandestine
+flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. To the
+contrary, Colonel Guy, as Indian superintendent, had fully five hundred
+fighting men, Indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. They
+had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to
+assist Sir John, Sheriff White, and their Tory minions to hold Tryon
+County in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood.
+
+We sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a
+situation. At last I said:
+
+"Can I do anything? You all must know up there that I am with you, heart
+and soul."
+
+Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.
+
+"Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve
+us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and
+to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use
+here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things
+would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson
+is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying
+to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts
+and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to
+advise you. What do you think?"
+
+While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major
+Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul
+never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with
+tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he
+could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of
+his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that
+story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of
+vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!
+
+An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.
+
+He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County
+part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.
+
+It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found
+how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital,
+tidings for the last.
+
+"Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention
+it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the
+Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he
+deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+
+
+
+There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry
+scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by
+this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome
+_ego_, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it
+essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be
+familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent
+enough as the tale unfolds.
+
+Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall
+at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be
+placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of
+the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and
+gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from
+the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom
+which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and
+warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as
+if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond
+its strength.
+
+Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled
+hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it
+was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these
+last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the
+erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone,
+the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair
+is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the
+neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face.
+The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the
+mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now
+to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still
+calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the
+querulous in tone.
+
+"I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is
+Philip."
+
+"Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays."
+
+Here the change _is_ in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy
+who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the
+other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the
+smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty
+efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take
+up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to
+emphasize her loneliness.
+
+"The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in
+comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders.
+"If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem
+home-like."
+
+The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no
+more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must
+be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a
+mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to
+them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday
+was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be.
+
+The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two.
+The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to
+accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this
+calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results
+without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two
+up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart
+beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the
+Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong
+ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see
+differently. And this was the saddest thing of all.
+
+Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his
+boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the
+two before the fire.
+
+"I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so
+uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?"
+
+"I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at
+the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers.
+He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He
+walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and
+neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair
+showed almost white--which both knew too well.
+
+"Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart.
+
+"There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all
+in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God!
+they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not
+whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!"
+
+Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held
+up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.
+
+"Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt,
+and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down
+from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would
+have none of her."
+
+"Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too,
+to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things
+will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful
+and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to
+God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!"
+
+Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift
+glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young
+wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
+Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:
+
+"Things are moving, you say. What is new?"
+
+"Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment,
+and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of
+milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will
+master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of
+rebellion!"
+
+"Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough,
+since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years
+younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of
+misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest
+enough, but they have small cunning."
+
+"That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We
+will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!"
+
+An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke,
+and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the
+stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over
+his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at
+bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries
+of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights
+lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it
+mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the
+prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his
+surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander,
+true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of
+thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly
+from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch
+were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing
+with types.
+
+"Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the
+tomahawk!"
+
+The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.
+
+"You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes,
+and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to
+interrogate her husband.
+
+He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed
+with his papers.
+
+After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet,
+walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.
+
+"I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting
+for me, and the evenings grow cold."
+
+"Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a
+perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever
+welcome here."
+
+"Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
+"But old bones are best couched at home."
+
+There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand
+affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.
+
+"I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I
+pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you,
+God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at
+which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day
+for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the
+counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words
+of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no
+good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first
+came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have
+known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push
+steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand
+its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
+Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err
+cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of
+the savages."
+
+"All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to
+these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man.
+
+"You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,"
+continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were
+too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley,
+of Bellêtre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you.
+Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk
+yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in
+terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world
+men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a
+willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is
+that you would do!"
+
+"It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot
+on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to
+fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I
+have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they
+deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you."
+
+"Go with them? Where are they going?"
+
+"Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego;
+perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and
+hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it
+really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that,
+you know."
+
+"And this flight is actually resolved upon?"
+
+"If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the
+Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They
+have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely
+pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at
+his command to shake my will."
+
+"Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr.
+Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive
+concert of thought.
+
+She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she
+had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her,
+she signified it not by glance or gesture.
+
+"No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged
+me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on
+Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming
+as possible."
+
+"Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon
+their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I
+have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he
+glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it
+_should_ be so little!"
+
+The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his
+papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts:
+
+"It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel
+scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to
+our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady
+and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to
+disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You
+yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by
+the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by
+those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now
+that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as
+well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany
+conspirators are pushing their schemes."
+
+"I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire
+to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon
+reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw
+regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany
+committee."
+
+Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture.
+Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who
+knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his
+manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke.
+
+"Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold
+regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy.
+Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked
+overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side
+and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other
+subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to
+recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second,
+and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to
+his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were
+pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!"
+
+The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first
+haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences
+followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now
+erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the
+shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young
+Mr. Cross full in the face.
+
+"Death of my life!" he stammered. "_You_ are saying these things to _me_!
+It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and _her_ son--the young man to
+whom I gave my soul's treasure!"
+
+Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling
+lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute
+the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What
+he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance
+came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then,
+seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously
+stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep
+his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room.
+
+When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned
+about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to
+be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling
+were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+
+
+
+"You are, then, not even a gentleman!"
+
+The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as
+husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could
+not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the
+mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the
+strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also
+affronted.
+
+Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her
+first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had
+discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered,
+acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the
+burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have
+been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her
+nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young
+Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her
+tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her
+the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance.
+
+He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the
+instinct of combat in his scowl.
+
+"Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for
+folly."
+
+"Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You
+should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and
+done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the
+moment pierced even his thick skin.
+
+"He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for
+his interest. I intended no offence."
+
+"Will you follow him, and say so?"
+
+"Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of
+mine."
+
+"Then _I_ will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!"
+
+The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the
+position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined
+and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom,
+was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough
+countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay.
+
+"Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is
+not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer."
+
+The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence,
+you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives,
+and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you
+like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer
+whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your
+tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman
+in Albany!"
+
+The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words
+did not come readily with which to repel it.
+
+"I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I
+have been badly reared for such purposes."
+
+She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn
+with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being
+with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection
+came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's
+strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now,
+and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but
+the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And
+then the softness came to her voice too.
+
+"How _can_ you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real
+self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old
+self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she
+was mistaken.
+
+"Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?"
+
+"Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for
+me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal.
+
+"I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing
+himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture
+upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but
+I am not Dutch, and I don't like it."
+
+She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in
+the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly
+or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the
+house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to
+take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly
+interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very
+hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its
+improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing
+him again, yet was it not right that she should do so?
+
+The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to
+draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a
+motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of
+the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the
+foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward,
+head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily:
+
+"Get away! When I want you, I'll call!"
+
+The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat
+in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife
+approached him, and stood at the back of his chair.
+
+"You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be
+some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves
+all this misery?"
+
+"What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of
+having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on
+the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At
+least once in a while he points my way."
+
+"Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me
+aright, seeing my errors?"
+
+"There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or
+that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but
+ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money,
+position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house
+of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
+Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans,
+gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty
+face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins
+gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and
+distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of
+mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and
+chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit
+me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass.
+She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on
+the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be
+the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like
+a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I
+might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission
+in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure
+and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'"
+
+"You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if
+only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is
+not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame."
+
+"Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as
+temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it."
+
+"What folly!"
+
+"Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--"
+
+"Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly
+again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain
+fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years
+has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the
+same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body
+into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you
+really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you
+accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but
+please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you
+could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy
+of a wife!"
+
+Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at
+her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.
+
+"There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not
+like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are
+thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing
+to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in
+my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal
+and my wife is a rebel."
+
+"Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
+Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only
+wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more
+than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me
+I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers
+and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood;
+but as to my having ever spoken--"
+
+"Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words.
+"I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a
+Dutch foundling!"
+
+She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it
+had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That
+it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he
+the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished
+sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.
+
+While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the
+bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth
+papers from its recesses with angry haste.
+
+"Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared.
+
+The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons
+was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half
+trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the
+cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most
+trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his
+black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored
+hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance
+at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting
+papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be
+a long one; it may not."
+
+"It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar.
+
+"Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals
+with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things
+I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have
+the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like,
+properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in
+the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
+When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters
+which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of
+the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when
+the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them
+saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead
+Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be
+ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then."
+
+The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.
+
+"Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked.
+
+"Damnation! No!" growled Philip.
+
+"_If you do not, they shall be thrown after you_!"
+
+It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to
+keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The
+words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers.
+There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near
+upon swooning to think at all.
+
+Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory
+was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and
+of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and
+fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the
+self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry,
+motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about
+her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already
+dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet
+hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else
+besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought.
+
+Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her,
+and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of
+packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two
+negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they
+had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door
+was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward
+the gulf.
+
+It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this
+melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted
+and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging
+before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless,
+hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought
+and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage
+across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder
+ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these
+vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had
+passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the
+approaching rest.
+
+Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate.
+The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to
+awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before,
+but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising
+zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing.
+
+"They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured.
+
+A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a
+swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting
+from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her.
+
+The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on
+the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up
+at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness
+of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips.
+
+"I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily.
+
+He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning.
+
+"I have no longer any other home," she added.
+
+She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and
+brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then
+fell inert.
+
+Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see
+Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form
+lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the
+world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+The Night Attack upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+
+
+
+Of these sad occurrences it was my fortune not to be informed for many
+months. In some senses this was a beneficent ignorance. Had I known that,
+under the dear old roof which so long sheltered me, Mr. Stewart was
+helplessly stricken with paralysis, and poor Daisy lay ill unto death with
+a brain malady, the knowledge must have gone far to unfit me for the work
+which was now given into my hands. And it was work of great magnitude and
+importance.
+
+Close upon the heels of the Bunker Hill intelligence came the news that a
+Continental army had been organized; that Colonel Washington of Virginia
+had been designated by Congress as its chief, and had started to assume
+command at Cambridge; and that our own Philip Schuyler was one of the four
+officers named at the same time as major-generals. There was great
+pleasure in Albany over the tidings; the patriot committee began to
+prepare for earnest action, and our Tory mayor, Abraham Cuyler,
+sagaciously betook himself off, ascending the Mohawk in a canoe, and
+making his way to Canada.
+
+Among the first wishes expressed by General Schuyler was one that I
+should assist and accompany him, and this, flattering enough in itself,
+was made delightful by the facts that my friend Peter Gansevoort was named
+as another aide, and that my kinsman Dr. Teunis was given a professional
+place in the general's camp family. We three went with him to the
+headquarters at Cambridge very shortly after, and thenceforward were too
+steadily engrossed with our novel duties to give much thought to
+home affairs.
+
+It was, indeed, a full seven months onward from the June of which I have
+written that my first information concerning the Cedars, and the dear folk
+within its walls, came to me in a letter from my mother. This letter found
+me, of all unlikely places in the world, lying in garrison on the frozen
+bank of the St. Lawrence--behind us the strange, unnatural silence of the
+northern waste of snow, before us the black, citadel-crowned,
+fire-spitting rock of Quebec.
+
+Again there presses upon me the temptation to put into this book the story
+of what I saw there while we were gathering our strength and resolution
+for the fatal assault. If I am not altogether proof against its wiles, at
+least no more shall be told of it than properly belongs here, insomuch as
+this is the relation of my life's romance.
+
+We had started in September with the expedition against Canada, while it
+was under the personal command of our general; and when his old sickness
+came unluckily upon him and forced his return, it was at his request that
+we still kept on, under his successor, General Richard Montgomery. It was
+the pleasanter course for us, both because we wanted to see fighting, and
+because Montgomery, as the son-in-law of Mr. Livingston, was known to us
+and was our friend. And so with him we saw the long siege of St. John's
+ended, and Chambly, and then Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, one by one
+submit, and the _habitants_ acclaim us their deliverers as we swept the
+country clean to the gates of Quebec.
+
+To this place we came in the first week of December, and found bold Arnold
+and his seven hundred scarecrows awaiting us. These men had been here for
+a month, yet had scarcely regained their strength from the horrible
+sufferings they encountered throughout their wilderness march. We were by
+this time not enamoured of campaigning in any large degree, from our own
+experience of it. Yet when we saw the men whom Arnold and Morgan had led
+through the trackless Kennebec forest, and heard them modestly tell the
+story of that great achievement--of their dreadful sustained battle with
+cold, exhaustion, famine, with whirling rapids, rivers choked with ice,
+and dangerous mountain precipices--we felt ashamed at having supposed we
+knew what soldiering was.
+
+Three weeks we lay waiting. Inside, clever Carleton was straining heaven
+and earth in his endeavor to strengthen his position; without, we could
+only wait. Those of us who were from the Albany and Mohawk country came to
+learn that some of our old Tory neighbors were within the walls, and the
+knowledge gave a new zest to our eager watchfulness.
+
+This, it should be said, was more eager than sanguine. It was evident from
+the outset that, in at least one respect, we had counted without our host.
+The French-Canadians were at heart on our side, perhaps, but they were not
+going to openly help us; and we had expected otherwise. Arnold himself,
+who as an old horse-dealer knew the country, had especially believed in
+their assistance and sympathy, and we had bills printed in the French
+language to distribute, calling upon them to rise and join us. That they
+did not do so was a grievous disappointment from the beginning.
+
+Yet we might have been warned of this. The common people were friendly to
+us--aided us privily when they could--but they were afraid of their
+seigneurs and curés. These gentry were our enemies for a good reason--in
+their eyes we were fighting New England's fight, and intolerant New
+England had only the year before bitterly protested to Parliament against
+the favor shown the Papist religion in Quebec. These seigneurs and priests
+stood together in a common interest. England had been shrewd enough to
+guarantee them their domains and revenues. Loyalty meant to them the
+security of their _rentes et dîmes_, and they were not likely to risk
+these in an adventure with the Papist-hating Yankees. Hence they stood by
+England, and, what is more, held their people practically aloof from us.
+
+But even then we could have raised Canadian troops, if we had had the
+wherewithal to feed or clothe or arm them. But of this Congress had taken
+no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our
+clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our
+food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the
+most desperate assault of known warfare.
+
+The weeks went by swiftly enough. Much of the time I was with the
+commander at our headquarters in Holland House, and I grew vastly attached
+to the handsome, gracious, devoted young soldier. Brigadier-General
+Montgomery had not, perhaps, the breadth of character that made Schuyler
+so notable; which one of all his contemporaries, save Washington, for that
+matter, had? But he was very single-minded and honorable, and had much
+charm of manner. Often, during those weeks, he told me of his beautiful
+young wife, waiting for his return at their new home on the Hudson, and of
+his hope soon to be able to abandon the strife and unrest of war, and
+settle there in peace. Alas! it was not to be so.
+
+And then, again, we would adventure forth at night, when there was no
+moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered
+force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the
+ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots
+filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than
+the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon,
+and once the General had his horse killed under him.
+
+I should say that he was hardly hopeful of the result of the attack
+already determined upon. But it was the only thing possible to be done,
+and with all his soul and mind he was resolved to as nearly do it as
+might be.
+
+The night came, the last night but one of that eventful, momentous year
+1775. Men had passed each day for a week between our quarters and Colonel
+Arnold's at St. Roch, concerting arrangements. There were Frenchmen inside
+the town from whom we were promised aid. What we did not know was that
+there were other Frenchmen, in our camp, who advised Carleton of all our
+plans. The day and evening were spent in silent preparations for the
+surprise and assault--if so be it the snow-storm came which was agreed
+upon as the signal. Last words of counsel and instruction were spoken.
+Suppressed excitement reigned everywhere.
+
+The skies were clear and moonlit in the evening; now, about midnight, a
+damp, heavy snowfall began and a fierce wind arose. So much the better for
+us and our enterprise, we thought.
+
+We left Holland House some hours after midnight, without lights and on
+foot, and placed ourselves at the head of the three hundred and fifty men
+whom Colonel Campbell (not the Cherry Valley man, but a vain and cowardly
+creature from down the Hudson, recently retired from the British army)
+held in waiting for us. Noiselessly we descended from the heights, passed
+Wolfe's Cove, and gained the narrow road on the ledge under the mountain.
+
+The General and his aide, McPherson, trudged through the deep snow ahead
+of all, with Gansevoort, and me keeping up to them as well as we could.
+What with the very difficult walking, the wildness of the gale, and the
+necessity for silence, I do not remember that anything was said. We panted
+heavily, I know, and more than once had to stop while the slender and less
+eager carpenters who formed the van came up.
+
+It was close upon the fence of wooden pickets which stretched across the
+causeway at Cape Diamond that the last of these halts was made. Through
+the darkness, rendered doubly dense by the whirling snowflakes with which
+the wind lashed our faces, we could only vaguely discern the barrier and
+the outlines of the little block-house beyond it.
+
+"Here is our work!" whispered the General to the half-dozen nearest him,
+and pointing ahead with his gauntleted hand. "Once over this and into the
+guard-house, and we can never be flanked, whatever else betide."
+
+We tore furiously at the posts, even while he spoke--we four with our
+hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay
+a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep
+in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur
+from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's
+troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more
+pickets. Somebody--it may have been I--said, "Cowards!" Some one else,
+doubtless the General, said, "Forward!"
+
+Then the ground shook violently under our feet, a great bursting roar
+deafened us, and before a scythe-like sweep of fire we at the front
+tumbled and fell!
+
+I got to my feet again, but had lost both sword and pistol in the snow. I
+had been hit somewhere--it seemed in the side--but of that I scarcely
+thought. I heard sharp firing and the sound of oaths and groans all around
+me, so it behooved me to fight, too. There were dimly visible dark forms
+issuing from the guard-house, and wrestling or exchanging blows with other
+forms, now upright, now in the snow. Here and there a flash of fire from
+some gun or pistol gave an instant's light to this Stygian hurly-burly.
+
+A heavy man, coming from the door of the block-house, fired a pistol
+straight at me; the bullet seemed not to have struck me, and I leaped upon
+him before he could throw the weapon. We struggled fiercely backward
+toward the pickets, I tearing at him with all my might, and striving with
+tremendous effort to keep my wits as well as my strength about me, in
+order to save my life. Curiously enough, I found that the simplest
+wrestling tricks I tried I had not the power for; even in this swift
+minute, loss of blood was telling on me. A ferocious last effort I made to
+swing and hurl him, and, instead, went staggering down into the drift with
+him on top.
+
+As I strove still to turn, and lifted my head, a voice sounded close in my
+ear, "It's you, is it? Damn you!" and then a great mashing blow on my face
+ended my fight.
+
+Doubtless some reminiscence in that voice caused my mind to carry on the
+struggle in the second after sense had fled, for I thought we still were
+in the snow wrestling, only it was inside a mimic fort in the clearing
+around Mr. Stewart's old log-house, and I was a little boy in an apron,
+and my antagonist was a yellow-haired lad with hard fists, with which he
+beat me cruelly in the face--and so off into utter blackness and void
+of oblivion.
+
+One morning in the latter half of January, nearly three weeks after, I
+woke to consciousness again. Wholly innocent of the lapse of time, I
+seemed to be just awakening from the dream of the snow fort, and of my
+boyish fight with little Philip Cross. I smiled to myself as I thought of
+it, but even while I smiled the vague shadows of later happenings came
+over my mind. Little by little the outlines of that rough December night
+took shape in my puzzled wits.
+
+I had been wounded, evidently, and had been borne back to Holland House,
+for I recognized the room in which I lay. My right arm was in stiff
+splints; with the other hand I felt of my head and discovered that my hair
+had been cut close, and that my skull and face were fairly thatched with
+crossing strips of bandage. My chest, too, was girdled by similar
+medicated bands. My mental faculties moved very sedately, it seemed, and I
+had been pondering these phenomena for a long time when my cousin Dr.
+Teunis Van Hoorn came tip-toeing into the room.
+
+This worthy young man was sincerely delighted to find me come by my
+senses once more. In his joy he allowed me to talk and to listen more than
+was for my good, probably, for I had some bad days immediately following;
+but the relapse did not come before I had learned much that was gravely
+interesting.
+
+It is a story of sufficient sorrow and shame to American ears even
+now--this tale of how we failed to carry Quebec. Judge how grievously the
+recital fell upon my ears then, in the little barrack-chamber of Holland
+House, within hearing of the cannonade by which the farce of a siege was
+still maintained from day to day! Teunis told me how, by that first volley
+of grape at the guard-house, the brave and noble Montgomery had been
+instantly killed; how Arnold, forcing his way from the other direction at
+the head of his men, and being early shot in the leg, had fought and
+stormed like a wounded lion in the narrow Sault-au-Matelot; how he and the
+gallant Morgan had done more than their share in the temerarious
+adventure, and had held the town and citadel at their mercy if only the
+miserable Campbell had pushed forward after poor Montgomery fell, and gone
+on to meet those battling heroes in the Lower Town. But I have not the
+patience, even at this late day, to write about this melancholy and
+mortifying failure.
+
+Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman,
+and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right,
+and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the
+headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken
+prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still
+keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our
+operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance
+among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to
+prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that
+when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw
+in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up.
+
+All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as
+if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did
+it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us.
+
+It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared
+that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at
+the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my
+ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm.
+They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which
+was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into
+an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed
+fist or a pistol-butt.
+
+"Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some
+of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and
+McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he
+and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels.
+You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with
+the rest, next morning."
+
+"Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?"
+
+"Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a
+colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are
+to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to
+travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if
+you please."
+
+"I have been dangerously ill, have I not?"
+
+"Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after
+the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody
+must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these,
+and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever.
+But I never feared for you."
+
+Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided
+to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that
+confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a
+week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a _son marquee_.
+But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that
+encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection.
+Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once
+it came to me.
+
+"Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who
+broke my head with his pistol-butt?"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for
+my confidence.
+
+"Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that
+gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into
+fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your
+whole carcass!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+
+
+
+For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was
+nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious
+slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it
+became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my
+progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have
+come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and
+every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of
+what use is all this now, alas!"
+
+These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came
+in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing
+the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with
+re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many
+letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The
+physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin
+relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them.
+
+One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of
+the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English
+trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease
+concerning what remained of its interests.
+
+The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat,
+painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in
+no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document,
+which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame
+Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not
+inherited by her son.
+
+"_January 9,_ A. D. 1776.
+
+"Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most
+part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen
+you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you
+no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to
+be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a
+God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I
+surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do
+not reproach you.
+
+"The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars,
+was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was
+both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour
+with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the
+Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being
+dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in
+the way, and where others can help him to weep.
+
+"When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been
+deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with
+paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The
+burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it,
+but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her
+fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his
+wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful
+belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her
+from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal
+named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels,
+essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms
+that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant
+from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained
+nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at
+best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence.
+
+"Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief,
+and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign
+matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were
+still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I
+knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying
+that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out
+of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the
+matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads
+are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I
+was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as
+sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go
+her own gait, and so she may for all of me.
+
+"She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work
+when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a
+worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck
+of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying
+that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame
+Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my
+company was not desired longer.
+
+"I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry
+other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the
+Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If
+the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be
+peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all
+say matters will be worse before they mend.
+
+"Affectionately, your mother,
+
+"Katharine Mauverensen."
+
+As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated
+and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of
+Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to
+laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of
+my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its
+humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no
+more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided
+always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for
+everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing
+in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done
+for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the
+moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their
+own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing
+was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how
+she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to
+me, unconsciously revealing her pique.
+
+Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her,
+and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars
+since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a
+fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants;
+she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and
+foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a
+large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the
+fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and
+fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her
+bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring.
+
+From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day
+counts now. The sooner I get home the better."
+
+"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to
+Sorel to-morrow morning."
+
+"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"
+
+"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves
+are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion,
+like you, I should fear nothing."
+
+"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means
+of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my
+restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I
+gave him my mother's letter.
+
+My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient
+details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
+allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
+over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
+whistle softly.
+
+"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"
+
+"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
+great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
+his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
+credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
+potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
+much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
+too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
+God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"
+
+I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
+upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.
+
+"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
+seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
+from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
+doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
+Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
+well as fast as you like, and we will be off."
+
+This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
+judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
+Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
+accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his
+arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From
+our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of
+many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter
+jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of
+turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense
+of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and
+that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was
+impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small
+disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and
+attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled
+districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt
+that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for
+their courtesies.
+
+Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had
+evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it
+was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy
+preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General
+Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full
+fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he
+had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and
+difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with
+books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during
+my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the
+General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy.
+
+But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole
+spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with
+anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied
+and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his
+case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring
+illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that
+it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home.
+It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was
+really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk
+duty at such a time.
+
+But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed
+that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one
+morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform
+with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he
+called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans:
+
+"John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his
+Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came
+down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the
+woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month
+much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead
+near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots
+day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue
+for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who
+followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington
+is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no
+reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to
+send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the
+thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs
+them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and
+all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the
+neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest.
+
+"You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for
+you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached
+to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go
+with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near
+place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You
+need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you.
+But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative
+in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the
+prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further."
+
+When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+
+
+
+I rode beside Colonel Elias Dayton one forenoon some ten days later, up
+the Valley road, my pulses beating fast at the growing familiarity of the
+scene before us. We had crossed the Chuctenunda Creek, and were within
+sight of the gray walls of Guy Park. Beyond rose the hills behind which
+lay Fort Johnson. I was on the very threshold of my boyhood's
+playfield--within a short hour's walk of my boyhood's home.
+
+The air was full of sounds. Birds sang with merry discordance all through
+the thicket to our right, flitting among the pale green tangle of spring's
+foliage. The May sunshine had lured forth some pioneer locusts, whose
+shrill cries came from who could tell where--the tall swale-grass on the
+river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown
+broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the
+squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers
+along the willow-fringed water--the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad
+small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears
+took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of
+armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road before us, behind us,
+at our side.
+
+For my second return to the Valley was at the head of troops, bringing
+violence, perhaps bloodshed, in their train. I could not but contrast it
+in my mind with that other home-coming, four years before, when I sat
+turned to look eastward in the bow of Enoch's boat, and every soft dip of
+the oars timed the glad carol in my heart of home and friends--and the
+sweet maid I loved. I was so happy then!--and now, coming from the other
+direction, with suggestions of force and cruel purposes in every echo of
+our soldiers' tread, I was, to tell the plain truth, very
+miserable withal.
+
+My talk with Colonel Dayton had, in a way, contributed to this gloomy
+feeling. We had, from choice, ridden side by side for the better part of
+two days, and, for very need of confiding in some one, I had talked with
+him concerning my affairs more freely than was my wont. This was the
+easier, because he was a contemplative, serious, and sensible man, whose
+words and manner created confidence. Moreover, he was neither Dutchman nor
+Yankee, but a native Jerseyman, and so considered my story from an equable
+and fair point of view, without bias.
+
+It was, indeed, passing strange that this man, on his way to seize or
+crush the Johnson clique, as the case might be, should have been the one
+to first arouse in my mind the idea that, after all, the Tories had their
+good side, and were doing what to them seemed right, at tremendous cost
+and sacrifice to themselves. I had been telling him what a ruffian was
+Philip Cross, and what grounds I had for hating him, and despitefully
+describing the other chief Tories of the district. He said in reply,
+I remember:
+
+"You seem to miss the sad phase of all this, my friend. Your young blood
+feels only the partisan promptings of dislike. Some day--soon, perhaps--
+you will all at once find this youthful heat gone; you will begin to walk
+around men and things, so to speak, and study them from all sides. This
+stage comes to every sober mind; it will come to you. Then you will
+realize that this baronet up yonder is, from his own stand-point, a
+chivalrous, gallant loyal gentleman, who imperils estates, power, peace,
+almost life itself, rather than do what he holds to be weak or wrong. Why,
+take even this enemy of yours, this Cross. He was one of the notables of
+these parts--rich, popular, influential; he led a life of utmost luxury
+and pleasure. All this he has exchanged for the rough work of a soldier,
+with its privations, cold, fatigue, and the risk of death. Ask yourself
+why he did it."
+
+"I see what you would enforce," I said. "Your meaning is that these men,
+as well as our side, think the right is theirs."
+
+"Precisely. They have inherited certain ideas. We disagree with them; we
+deem it our duty to silence them, fight them, drive them out of the
+country, and, with God's help, we will do it. But let us do this with our
+eyes open, and with the understanding that they are not necessarily
+scoundrels and heathen because they fail to see things as we see them."
+
+"But you would not defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages
+against their neighbors--against helpless women and children. That must be
+heathenish to any mind."
+
+"Defend it? No! I do not defend any acts of theirs. Rid your mind of the
+idea that because a man tries to understand a thing he therefore defends
+it. But I can see how they would defend it to their own consciences--just
+as these thrifty Whig farmers hereabout explain in their own minds as
+patriotic and public-spirited their itching to get hold of Johnson's
+Manor. Try and look at things in this light. Good and bad are relative
+terms; nothing is positively and unchangeably evil. Each group of men has
+its own little world of reasons and motives, its own atmosphere, its own
+standard of right and wrong. If you shut your eyes, and condemn or praise
+these wholly, without first striving to comprehend them, you may or may
+not do mischief to them; you assuredly injure yourself."
+
+Thus, and at great length, spoke the philosophical colonel. I could not
+help suspecting that he had too open a mind to be a very valuable fighter,
+and, indeed, this proved to be true. He subsequently built some good and
+serviceable forts along the Mohawk, one of which to this day bears his
+name, but he attained no distinction as a soldier in the field.
+
+But, none the less, his words impressed me greatly. What he said had never
+been put to me in clear form before, and at twenty-seven a man's mind is
+in that receptive frame, trembling upon the verge of the meditative
+stage, when the presentation of new ideas like these often marks a
+distinct turn in the progress and direction of his thoughts. It seems
+strange to confess it, but I still look back to that May day of 1776 as
+the date of my first notion that there could be anything admirable in
+my enemies.
+
+At the time, these new views and the tone of our talk helped to disquiet
+me. The swinging lines of shoulders, the tramp! tramp! in the mud, the
+sight of the guns and swords about me, were all depressing. They seemed to
+give a sinister significance to my return. It was my home, the dearest
+spot on earth--this smiling, peaceful, sunlit Mohawk Valley--and I was
+entering it with soldiers whose mission was to seize and despoil the son
+of my boyhood's friend, Sir William. More than one of my old play-mates,
+now grown to man's estate, would note with despair our approach, and curse
+me for being of it. The lady of Johnson Hall, to whom all this would be
+horrible nigh unto death, was a close, warm friend of Daisy's. So my
+thoughts ran gloomily, and I had no joy in any of the now familiar sights
+around me.
+
+The march up from Schenectady had been a most wearisome one for the men,
+owing to the miserable condition of the road, never over-smooth and now
+rendered doubly bad and difficult by the spring freshets and the oozing
+frost. When we reached the pleasant little hollow in which Fort Johnson
+nestles, a halt was accordingly ordered, and the tired soldiers prepared
+to refresh themselves with food by the banks of the creek. It was now
+afternoon; we were distant but a short mile from the Cedars, and I could
+not abide the thought of lingering here, to no purpose, so close to the
+goal of all my longings. I therefore exchanged some plans and suggestions
+with Colonel Dayton and his companion Judge Duer, who represented the
+civil law in the expedition, and so clapped spurs and dashed forward
+up the road.
+
+"It seems ten years, not four, since I was last here," I was saying to
+Daisy half an hour later, and unconsciously framing in words the thoughts
+which her face suggested.
+
+I know not how to describe the changes which this lapse of time had
+wrought upon her countenance and carriage. In the more obvious, outward
+sense, it had scarcely aged her. She was now twenty-three years of age,
+and I doubt a stranger would have deemed her older. Yet, looking upon her
+and listening to her, I seemed to feel that, instead of being four years
+her senior, I was in truth the younger of the two. The old buoyant,
+girlish air was all gone, for one thing. She spoke now with gentle,
+sweet-toned gravity; and her eyes, frankly meeting mine as of old, had in
+their glance a soft, reposeful dignity which was new to me.
+
+Almost another Daisy, too, she seemed in face. It was the woman in her
+features, I dare say, which disconcerted me. I had expected changes,
+perhaps, but not upon these lines. She had been the prettiest maiden of
+the Valley, beyond all others. She was not pretty now, I should say, but
+she _was_ beautiful--somewhat pallid, yet not to give an air of unhealth;
+the delicate chiselling of features yielded now not merely the pleasure
+of regularity, but the subtler charm of sensitive, thoughtful character.
+The eyes and hair seemed a deeper hazel, a darker brown, than they had
+been. The lips had lost some, thing of their childish curve, and met each
+other in a straight line--fairer than ever, I thought, because more firm.
+
+I am striving now, you see, against great odds, to revive in words the
+impressions of difference which came to me in those first hours, as I
+scanned her face. They furnish forth no real portrait of the dear lady:
+how could I hope they should? But they help to define, even if dimly, the
+changes toward strength and self-control I found in her.
+
+I was, indeed, all unprepared for what awaited me here at the Cedars. My
+heart had been torn by all manner of anxieties and concern. I had hastened
+forward, convinced that my aid and protection were direly needed. I sat
+now, almost embarrassed, digesting the fact that the fortunes of the
+Cedars were in sufficient and capable hands.
+
+Mr. Stewart's condition was in truth sad enough. He had greeted me with
+such cordiality and clear-wittedness of utterance and manner that at first
+I fancied his misfortunes to have been exaggerated in my mother's letter.
+His conversation for a moment or two was also coherent and timely. But his
+mind was prone to wander mysteriously. He presently said: "Assuredly I
+taught you to shave with both hands. I knew I could not be mistaken." I
+stole a glance toward Daisy at this, and her answering nod showed me the
+whole case. It was after old Eli had come in and wheeled Mr. Stewart in
+his big chair out into the garden, that I spoke to Daisy of the
+differences time had wrought.
+
+"Ay," she said, "it must be sadly apparent to you--the change in
+everything."
+
+How should I approach the subject--the one thing of which I knew we were
+both thinking? There seemed a wall between us. She had been unaffectedly
+glad to see me; had, for the instant, I fancied, thought to offer me her
+cheek to kiss--yet was, with it all, so self-possessed and reserved that I
+shrank from touching upon her trouble.
+
+"Perhaps not everything is sad," I made answer, falteringly. "Poor Mr.
+Stewart--that is indeed mournful; but, on the other hand--" I broke
+off abruptly.
+
+"On the other hand," she took up my words calmly, "you are thinking that I
+am advantaged by Philip's departure."
+
+My face must have showed that I could not deny it.
+
+"In some respects," she went on, "yes; in others, no. I am glad to be able
+to speak freely to you, Douw, for you are nearest to me of all that are
+left. I do not altogether know my own mind; for that matter, does any one?
+The Philip to whom I gave my heart and whom I married is one person; the
+Philip who trampled on the heart and fled his home seems quite another and
+a different man. I hesitate between the two sometimes. I cannot always say
+to myself: 'The first was all fancy; the second is the reality.' Rather,
+they blend themselves in my mind, and I seem to see the fond lover
+remaining still the good husband, if only I had had the knowledge and
+tenderness to keep him so!"
+
+"In what are you to be reproached, Daisy?" I said this somewhat testily,
+for the self-accusation nettled me.
+
+"It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom
+from the beginning."
+
+"It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with
+melancholy conviction.
+
+"Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My
+heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for
+finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest. I
+dreamed to be called 'My lady,' too, in good time. I forgot that I came
+from the poor people, and that I belonged to them. So well and truly did I
+forget this that the fact struck me like a whip when--when it was brought
+to my notice."
+
+"He taunted you with it, then!" I burst forth, my mind working quickly for
+once.
+
+She made no answer for the time, but rose from her chair and looked out
+upon the group in the garden. From the open door she saw the van of
+Dayton's soldiers trudging up the Valley road. I had previously told her
+of their mission and my business.
+
+"Poor Lady Johnson," she said, resting her head against her hand on the
+door-frame, and looking upon the advancing troops with a weary expression
+of face. "Her trouble is coming--mine is past." Then, after a pause:
+"Will they be harsh with Sir John, think you? I trust not. They have both
+been kind to me since--since Philip went. Sir John is not bad at heart,
+Douw, believe me. You twain never liked each other, I know. He is a bitter
+man with those who are against him, but his heart is good if you touch
+it aright."
+
+I had not much to say to this. "I am glad he was good to you," I managed
+to utter, not over-graciously, I fear.
+
+The troops went by, with no sound of drums now, lest an alarm be raised
+prematurely. We watched them pass in silence, and soon after I took my
+leave for the day, saying that I would go up to see the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, and cross the river to my mother's home, and would return
+next morning. We shook hands at parting, almost with constraint.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+
+
+
+Early the next day, which was May 20th, we heard to our surprise and
+consternation that on the preceding afternoon, almost as Colonel Dayton
+and his soldiers were entering Johnstown, Sir John and the bulk of his
+Highlanders and sympathizers, to the number of one hundred and thirty, had
+privately taken to the woods at the north of the Hall, and struck out
+for Canada.
+
+Over six weeks elapsed before we learned definitely that the baronet and
+his companions had traversed the whole wilderness in safety and reached
+Montreal, which now was once more in British hands--our ill-starred Quebec
+expedition having finally quitted Canada earlier in the month. We could
+understand the stories of Sir John's travail and privations, for the snow
+was not yet out of the Adirondack trails, and few of his company were
+skilled in woodmen's craft. But they did accomplish the journey, and that
+in nineteen days.
+
+I, for one, was not very much grieved at Johnson's escape, for his
+imprisonment would have been an embarrassment rather than a service to us.
+But Colonel Dayton was deeply chagrined at finding the bird flown, and I
+fear that in the first hours of his discomfiture he may have forgotten
+some of his philosophical toleration for Tories in general. He had,
+moreover, the delicate question on his hands of what to do with Lady
+Johnson. Neither Judge Duer nor I could advise him, and so everything was
+held in suspense for the better part of a week, until General Schuyler's
+decision could be had.
+
+Meanwhile my time was fairly occupied in the fulfilment of matters
+intrusted to me by the General. I had to visit Colonel Herkimer at his
+home below Little Falls, and talk with him about the disagreeable fact
+that his brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, had deserted the militia command
+given him by the Whigs and fled to Canada. The stout old German was free
+to denounce his brother, however, and I liked the looks and blunt speech
+of Peter Bellinger, who had been made colonel of the deserted battalion of
+German Flatts. There were also conversations to be had with Colonel Klock,
+and Ebenezer Cox, and the Fondas, at their several homes, and a day to
+spend with my friend John Frey, now sheriff in place of the Tory White. It
+thus happened that I saw very little of the people at the Cedars, and had
+no real talk again with Daisy, until a full week had passed.
+
+It was a cool, overcast forenoon when I alighted next at the familiar
+gate, and gave my horse into Tulp's charge. The boy, though greatly
+rejoiced to see me back again, had developed a curious taciturnity in
+these latter years--since his accident, in fact--and no longer shouted out
+the news to me at sight. Hence I had to ask him, as I neared the door,
+what strange carriage was that in the yard beyond, and why it was there.
+As I spoke, a couple of men lounged in view from the rear of the house,
+and I recognized them as of Dayton's command. Tulp explained that Lady
+Johnson was being taken away, and that she had tarried here to rest on
+her journey.
+
+If I had known this at the gate, I doubt I should have stopped at all; but
+I had been seen from the window, and it was too late now to turn about. So
+I entered, much wishing that I had left off my uniform, or, still better,
+that I had stayed away altogether.
+
+There were present in the great room Daisy, Lady Johnson, a young lady who
+was her sister, two children--and a man in civilian's garb, with some few
+military touches, such as a belt and sword and a cockade, who sat by the
+window, his knees impudently spread apart and his hat on his head. I
+looked at this fellow in indignant inquiry.
+
+Daisy came eagerly to me, with an explanation on her lips:
+
+"It is the officer who is to take Lady Johnson to Albany. He insists upon
+forcing his presence upon us, and will not suffer us to be alone together
+in any room in the house."
+
+"Who are you?--and off with your hat!" I said to the man, sharply.
+
+My uniform was of service, after all. He looked me over, and evidently
+remembered having seen me with his colonel, for he stood up and took off
+his hat. "I am a lieutenant of the Connecticut line," he said, in a
+Yankee snarl, "and I am doing my duty."
+
+"I am a major in the Continental line, and I should be doing _my_ duty if
+I sent you back in irons to your colonel," I answered. "Get out of here,
+what time Lady Johnson is to remain, and leave these ladies to
+themselves!"
+
+He was clearly in two minds about obeying me, and I fancy it was my
+superior size rather than my rank that induced him to go, which he did in
+as disagreeable a fashion as possible. I made my bow to Lady Johnson, and
+said something about being glad that I had come, if I had been of use.
+
+She, poor young woman, was in a sad state of nervous excitement, what with
+her delicate condition and the distressing circumstances of the past week.
+She was, moreover, a very beautiful creature, naturally of soft and
+refined manners, and this made me the readier to overlook the way in which
+she met my kindly meant phrases.
+
+"I marvel that you are not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly,
+"to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that
+man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of
+calling such low fellows officers, or consorting with them!"
+
+I answered as gently as I could that, unfortunately, there were many such
+ill-conditioned men in every service, and pointed out that the man, by his
+speech, was a New Englander.
+
+"And who fetched them into this province, I should like to know!"
+
+Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hold a political discussion
+with this poor troubled wife, who saw her husband's peril, her own plight,
+and the prospective birth of her first child in captivity constantly
+before her eyes! So I strove to bring the talk upon other grounds, but not
+with much success. She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a
+fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady
+Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather
+those of her husband. She seemed not to have very clear notions of what
+the trouble was all about, but ascribed it loosely, I gathered, to the
+jealousy of Philip Livingston, who was vexed that the Scotch did not
+settle upon his patent instead of on Sir John's land, and to the malice of
+General Schuyler, whose feud with the Johnsons was notorious.
+
+"And to think, too," she added, "that Mr. Schuyler's mother and my
+mother's mother were sisters! A very pleasant and valuable cousin he is,
+to be sure! Driving my husband off into the forest to perhaps die of
+hunger, and dragging me down to Albany, in my condition, and thrusting a
+low Connecticut cobbler into my carriage with me! If my sickness overtakes
+me on the road, and I die, my blood will be on the head of Philip
+Schuyler."
+
+I read in Daisy's eyes a way out of this painful conversation, and so
+said: "Lady Johnson, it will perhaps render your journey less harrowing if
+I have some talk with this officer who is your escort. Let me leave you
+women-folk together here in peace, the while"--and went out into the
+garden again.
+
+I found the lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping
+in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some
+private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed
+out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been,
+through no fault of her own, nurtured in aristocratic ideas and ways; that
+those of whatever party who knew her well most heartily esteemed her; and
+that, moreover, she was nearly related by blood to General Schuyler--he
+professed himself ready to behave toward her with more politeness.
+
+The trouble with him really lay in his abiding belief that people
+underestimated his importance, and hence he sought to magnify his position
+in their eyes by insolent demeanor. Therein I discerned the true Yankee.
+
+That the men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would
+be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome,
+intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during
+the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how
+their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened
+poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too,
+of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices
+against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So
+mischievous did this attitude become at last--when old General Wooster
+came to us with his Connecticut troops, and these set themselves up to be
+independent of all our plans or rules, refusing even to mess with the
+others or to touch Continental provisions and munitions--that Congress had
+to interfere and put them sharply back into their proper places.
+Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and men from the Carolinas will
+bear me out in saying these things about the New England soldiery. I speak
+not in blame or bitterness. The truth is that they were too much akin in
+blood and conceit to the English not to have in themselves many of the
+disagreeable qualities which had impelled us all to revolt against
+British rule.
+
+When the lieutenant had ordered the horses to be brought out for a start,
+I went back into the house. The women had been weeping, I could see. Lady
+Johnson had softened in her mood toward me, and spoke now some gentle
+words of thanks for the little I had done. When I told her, in turn, that
+her escort would henceforth be more considerate in his conduct toward her,
+she was for a moment pleased, but then tears filled her eyes at the
+thoughts of the journey before her.
+
+"When I am out of sight of this house," she said, sadly, "it will seem as
+if my last friend had been left behind. Why could they not have left me at
+the Hall? I gave them the keys; I yielded up everything! What harm could I
+have done them--remaining there? I had no wish to visit my relatives in
+Albany! It is a trick--a device! I doubt I shall ever lay eyes on my dear
+home again."
+
+And, poor lady, she never did.
+
+We strove to speak words of comfort to her, but they came but feebly, and
+could not have consoled her much. When the lieutenant opened the door, the
+women made a tearful adieu, with sobs and kisses upon which I could not
+bear to look. Lady Johnson shook hands with me, still with a pathetic
+quivering of the lips. But then in an instant she straightened herself to
+her full height, bit her lips tight, and walked proudly past the obnoxious
+escort down the path to the carriage, followed by her weeping sister and
+the two big-eyed wondering children.
+
+"Will she ever come back?" said Daisy, half in inquiry, half in despairing
+exclamation, as we saw the last of the carriage and its guard. "How will
+it all end, Douw?"
+
+"Who can foresee?" I answered. "It is war now, at last, war open and
+desperate. I can see no peaceful way out of it. These aristocratic
+landlords, these Johnsons, Butlers, Phillipses, De Lanceys, and the rest,
+will not give up their estates without a hard fight for them. Of that you
+may be sure. _They_ will come back, if their wives do not, and all that
+they can do, backed by England, to regain their positions, will be done.
+They may win, and if they do, it will be our necks that will be put into
+the yoke--or the halter. At all events, it has gone too far to be patched
+over now. We can only stand up and fight as stoutly as we may, and leave
+the rest to fate."
+
+"And it really was necessary to fight--I suppose it could not have been in
+reason avoided?"
+
+"They would have it so. They clung to the faith that they were by right
+the masters here, and we the slaves, and so infatuated were they that they
+brought in English troops and force to back them up. There was no
+alternative but to fight. Would you have had me on the other side--on the
+English side, Daisy?"
+
+"Oh, no, Douw," she answered, in a clear voice. "If war there must be,
+why, of course, the side of my people is my side."
+
+I was not surprised at this, but I said, "You speak of your people,
+Daisy--but surely mere birth does not count for more than one's whole
+training afterward, and you have been bred among another class altogether.
+Why, I should think nine out of every ten of your friends here in the
+Mohawk district must be Tories."
+
+"Not so great a proportion as that," she went on, with a faint smile upon
+her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. "You do not know the value of
+these 'friends,' as you call them, as closely as I do. Never have they
+forgotten on their side, even if I did on mine, that my parents were
+Palatine peasants. And you speak of my being bred among them! In what way
+more than you were? Was I not brought up side by side with you? Was there
+any difference in our rearing, in our daily life until--until you left us?
+Why should I not be a patriot, sir, as well as you?"
+
+She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it. We both
+were thinking, I felt, of the dear old days gone by, and of the melancholy
+fate which clouded over and darkened those days, and drove us apart.
+
+We still stood by the open door, whence we had watched the carriage
+disappear. After some seconds of silence I essayed to bring back the
+conversation to Lady Johnson, and talked of her narrow, ill-informed,
+purely one-sided way of regarding the troubles, and of how impossible it
+was that the class to which she belonged, no matter how amiable and good
+they might be, could ever adapt themselves to the enlarging social
+conditions of this new country.
+
+While I talked, there burst forth suddenly the racket of fifes and drums
+in the road. Some militia companies were marching past on their way to
+join Colonel Dayton's force. We stood and watched these go by, and in the
+noise that they made we failed to hear Mr. Stewart's tottering footsteps
+behind us.
+
+The din of the drums had called him out of his lethargy, and he came
+forward to watch the yeoman-soldiery.
+
+"They march badly--badly," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with
+his hand. "I do not know the uniform. But I have been away so long, and
+everything is changed since the King of Prussia began his wars. Yet I am
+happier here as I am--far happier with my fields, and my freedom, and my
+children."
+
+He had spoken in the tone, half-conversational, half-dreamy, which of late
+strangely marked most of his speech. He turned now and looked at us; a
+pleasant change came over his wan face, and he smiled upon us with a
+curious reflection of the old fond look.
+
+"You are good children," he said; "you shall be married in due time, and
+come after me when I am gone. There will be no handsomer, happier twain in
+the province."
+
+Daisy flushed crimson and looked pained at the old gentleman's childish
+babbling, and I made haste to get away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles.
+
+
+
+A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of
+unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business
+to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and
+encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice
+which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to
+time, assurance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler,
+and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these
+pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole
+Continental service no more unenviable post than mine.
+
+I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of
+fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the
+satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in
+which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the
+most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen
+Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing;
+but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning
+powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be
+posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly
+peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection.
+
+I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all
+the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley
+neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see
+now that they were not altogether without excuse.
+
+The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No
+sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental
+independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the
+declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden
+halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had
+been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the
+magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in
+New York, General Washington could not hold his own, and Congress lost the
+nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service,
+disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force
+became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and
+almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming
+numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally
+lamentable.
+
+There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift
+strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud
+which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening,
+before spring came.
+
+The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and
+intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side
+this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money,
+without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in
+their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and
+resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence
+and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German
+auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispassionately these two opposing
+forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General
+Washington would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London.
+
+I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or
+not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me
+in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was,
+but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for
+rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of
+1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no
+visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending
+danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month.
+I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my
+bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an
+irritable mind.
+
+The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small
+outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up
+communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the
+time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of
+disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a
+somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress.
+Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding
+them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim
+their sails that they should ship no water whichever way the wind blew.
+
+Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people
+had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Washington evacuated
+Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was
+wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively,
+then with less concealment, to drink the King's health.
+
+Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower
+district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all
+east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga.
+They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights
+to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British
+color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the
+county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig
+sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories,
+confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time passed, the dry-rot of
+doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that
+nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from
+home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and
+scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the
+other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King.
+
+It was my function to watch this shifting public opinion, to sway it where
+I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been
+conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I
+turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their
+sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with
+intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of
+promises to speedily glut the passions of war, circulated stealthily all
+about us. How it came, how it was passed from hearth to hearth, defied our
+penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and
+strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens.
+
+For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so
+long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the
+Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was
+more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of
+these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others
+flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that
+the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages
+to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly,
+over our heads.
+
+And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and
+selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and
+turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke.
+
+Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us
+if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to
+Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and
+patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of
+Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very
+gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted.
+
+It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that
+gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story
+was forged.
+
+Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Washington's call
+for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his
+poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York.
+The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in,
+and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told.
+Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New
+York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the
+Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an
+auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of
+our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once
+this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared
+not think!
+
+I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To
+comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter,
+but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife.
+Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this
+horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New
+England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a
+fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's
+pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the
+militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by
+suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and
+means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he,
+with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud
+just then.
+
+I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep,
+for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud
+pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and
+the messenger had thus found me out promptly.
+
+Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in
+response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on
+some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered
+from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could
+tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had
+been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see
+him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my
+sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous.
+
+Daylight broke before we crossed the river, and the sunrise gun sounded as
+we rode up into the court-house square at Johnstown. Soldiers were already
+to be seen moving about outside the block-houses at the corners of the
+palisade which, since Sir John's flight, had been built around the jail.
+Our coming seemed to be expected, for one of the soldiers told us to wait
+while he went inside, and after a few minutes John Frey came out, rubbing
+his eyes. As I dismounted, he briefly explained matters to me.
+
+It seemed that a Tory spy had made his way in from the woods, had
+delivered letters both at Cairncross and at the Cedars, and had then
+started to return, but by the vigilance of one of the Vrooman boys had
+been headed off and taken.
+
+"He is as close as the bark on a beech-tree," concluded the sheriff. "We
+could get nothing out of him. Even when I told him he would be hanged this
+morning after breakfast, he did not change color. He only said that if
+this was the case he would like first to see you; it seems he knows you,
+and has some information for you--probably about Philip Cross's wife.
+Perhaps he will tell _you_ what was in the letter he brought to her."
+
+It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my
+being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy
+sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy.
+
+"All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail.
+
+When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our
+interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the
+shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to
+accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at
+our presence.
+
+"Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as
+freely as the manacles would admit.
+
+I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded
+neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the
+open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as
+leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on
+me. I stepped forward, and said:
+
+"Is that you, Enoch Wade?"
+
+He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion.
+
+"It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried
+right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to
+make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a
+palaver with you, all by yourself?"
+
+"What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff.
+
+I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying
+"talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told
+Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon
+the sheriff and the soldier left us.
+
+"It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic
+smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that."
+
+"Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could.
+
+"Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't
+wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest
+Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young
+Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?"
+
+I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not
+prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more
+his conduct mystified me.
+
+"Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit
+down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all
+about it."
+
+The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep
+interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its
+essential points were these:
+
+After Sir William's death Enoch had remained on at the Hall, not feeling
+particularly bound to the new baronet, but having a cat's attachment to
+the Hall itself. When Sir John finally resolved to avoid arrest by flight,
+Enoch had been in two minds about accompanying him, but had finally
+yielded to the flattering reliance placed by all upon the value and
+thoroughness of his knowledge as a woodsman. It was largely due to his
+skill that the party got safely through the great wilderness, and reached
+Montreal so soon. Since his arrival in Canada, however, things had not
+been at all to his liking. There was but one thought among all his refugee
+companions, which was to return to the Mohawk Valley and put their old
+neighbors to fire and sword--and for this Enoch had no inclination
+whatever. He had accordingly resisted all offers to enrol him in the Tory
+regiment which Sir John was raising in Canada, and had looked for an
+opportunity to get away quietly and without reproach. This chance had only
+come to him a week or so ago, when Philip Cross offered to pay him well to
+take two letters down the Valley--one to his servant Rab, the other to
+Mrs. Cross. He had accepted this errand, and had delivered the letters as
+in duty bound. There his responsibility ended. He had no intention to
+return, and had allowed himself to be arrested by a slow and uninventive
+young man, solely because it seemed the best way of achieving his purpose.
+
+"What is your purpose, Enoch?"
+
+"Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from
+Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know
+who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory,
+with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel--Sillinger they called
+him--and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet
+the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians.
+Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come
+down the Valley!"
+
+You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch
+gave--details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west
+to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I
+returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query:
+
+"But why get yourself arrested?"
+
+"Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given
+you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can
+contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the
+Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+
+
+
+The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to
+the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come
+to us.
+
+For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as
+well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing
+Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we
+despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam
+and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels.
+
+Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of
+the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs--skilled marksmen
+recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class--and that
+Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war
+party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the
+Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's
+regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of
+men we had long known in the Valley--men whose brothers and kinsmen were
+still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons
+could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was
+mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green"
+uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their
+own blood.
+
+"You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he
+shouted fiercely at Enoch.
+
+"Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly.
+
+But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the
+hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother,
+Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another
+brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were
+with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped.
+
+More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the
+position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and
+despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to
+Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at
+Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel,
+and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt
+of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred
+men--the Third New York Continentals--and I took it upon myself to urge
+now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him.
+
+This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the
+military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action,
+there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no
+word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun,
+and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most
+important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any
+question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he
+were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested
+that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination.
+
+Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down
+the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he
+walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the
+pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown
+followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and
+picking berries by the way.
+
+The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my
+thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents--which it turned
+out he did not--but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating
+upon them.
+
+During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her
+recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of
+her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for
+a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and
+maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually
+wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak
+of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole
+subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed
+the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have
+added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for
+revenge should come.
+
+That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl,
+I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the
+dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with
+no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For
+the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the
+neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting
+that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes
+of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.
+
+"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked
+Enoch.
+
+"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver
+it into her hands."
+
+"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"
+
+"Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood--his old accustomed
+temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most
+generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he
+is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition
+fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they
+started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts
+of themselves."
+
+I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I
+said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside
+of you."
+
+"No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is
+still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt
+these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon--it is
+rest itself--when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your
+task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see
+these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard
+fighting to come. It made me uneasy."
+
+"And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know."
+
+"Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift--it's more my way
+of thinking than the other--and you seem to need it powerfully, too.
+But"--here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to
+boot-tops--"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any
+regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,'
+but it would gag me from the first minute."
+
+We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort
+without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly
+Wemple appeared to let me in.
+
+"We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her
+apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little
+breathing-spell."
+
+The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had
+fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon.
+
+Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in
+hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness.
+
+"Oh, I am _so_ glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent
+Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never
+would come."
+
+"Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from--from----"
+
+"You know, then!"
+
+"Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger--he is
+an old friend of ours--told me that much, nothing more."
+
+Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The
+pleased excitement at my arrival--apparently so much desired--was
+succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment.
+
+"Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or--or how to
+tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea
+that nothing could be done without your advice and help--and yet, now you
+have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She
+paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to
+Cairncross."
+
+I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!"
+
+She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the
+truth, none the less."
+
+"You must be crazy!"
+
+"No, Douw, only very, very wretched!"
+
+The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the
+glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front
+through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with
+the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her.
+
+"Tell me about it all, Daisy--if you can."
+
+Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to
+me. She would have recalled it an instant later.
+
+"No--give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you
+should not see."
+
+But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again.
+
+"No--read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no
+difference--between _us_. You might as well know all!"
+
+The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded
+sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold
+character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature
+scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least:
+
+"Madam:--It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you
+are not to publish it.
+
+"If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I
+shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act
+accordingly.
+
+"I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my
+back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with
+ruffian foes to law and order generally.
+
+"All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including
+without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a
+major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me.
+After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to
+listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make
+no promise.
+
+"I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as
+your further instructions.
+
+"Philip."
+
+One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a
+letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading
+lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence,
+until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce
+to speak my mind.
+
+"I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband
+of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!"
+
+There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying,
+that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has
+convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the
+inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed;
+so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this
+narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women
+folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do
+it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must
+be written.
+
+This is what Daisy actually said:
+
+"But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but
+indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has
+done, and that he still loves me?"
+
+"I certainly see nothing of the kind!"
+
+She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his
+home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly
+with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared
+nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that
+by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he
+as much as says that he will forgive me."
+
+"Yes--perhaps--when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at
+the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after
+all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you."
+
+"He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything.
+
+"Yes, he is your husband--a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first
+makes your life wretched at home--you know you _were_ wretched, Daisy!
+Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes,
+humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty
+of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years--having
+you watched meanwhile, it seems--yet never vouchsafing you so much as a
+word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help
+enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down
+and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this
+letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his
+coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if
+you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your
+chief friends. And all this you take kindly--sifting his brutal words in
+search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished
+at you! I credited you with more spirit."
+
+She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases
+than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little
+pause, said to me quite calmly:
+
+"I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality."
+
+"You know him better than I--a thousand times better, more's the pity.
+Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of
+the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!"
+
+"Have you forgotten that he saved my life?"
+
+"No; but he forgot it--or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place
+of soft thoughts."
+
+"And he loved me--ah! he truly did--for a little!"
+
+"Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar;
+and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride."
+
+"How you hate him!"
+
+"Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?"
+
+"He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the
+gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a
+quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and
+as for Tulp--why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?"
+
+"Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia
+over the cliff, and left me _you_--I--I----"
+
+The words were out!
+
+I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers.
+Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have
+uttered--what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was
+covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over
+this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and
+finally--after what had seemed an age of silence--I stammered on:
+
+"What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever
+met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the
+ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany--in the Patroon's mansion,
+you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I
+went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery
+fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here,"
+I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was
+his doing."
+
+I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling
+that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the
+older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility
+overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder,
+and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind.
+
+"My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed
+superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest
+nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem
+sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your
+feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given
+me. I know what you would have said----"
+
+"It was exactly what I most of all would _not_ have said," I broke in
+with, in passing.
+
+"Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of
+course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it
+was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"--her voice softened
+and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in
+every detail of our youth--"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be,
+my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the
+two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter
+and sister."
+
+There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and
+self-sustained enough.
+
+She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross
+at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned
+out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to
+convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself
+accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown
+road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make
+assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that
+very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff
+at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX.
+
+From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+
+
+
+And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that
+mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion.
+
+The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us.
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the
+approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude,
+with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort,
+working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the
+dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for
+supplies, for more men, and for militia support.
+
+At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for
+Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of
+Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this
+little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that
+this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more
+was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves.
+
+It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now
+stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the
+spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had
+disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and
+doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their
+grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or
+suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors.
+And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help
+was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be
+welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our
+blood--the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our
+midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail.
+
+General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia,
+apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen
+and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall.
+Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared
+raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming
+forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we
+must meet them!
+
+It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of
+that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley
+bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came
+out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their
+order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the
+forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield
+that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered
+and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine
+danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month
+hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling
+drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the
+early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in
+bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear;
+and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find
+them again at work upon some other farm.
+
+There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together
+to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we
+had grown selfish and solitary--each man for himself. We had forgotten, in
+the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that
+fine old word "neighbor"--the husbandman, or _boer_, who is nigh, and to
+whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was
+in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared
+everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as
+to fight for one another--each for all, and all for each. Forty years have
+gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk
+Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The
+poor _bauers_ and squatters from the bush came out then and did their
+share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings
+and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to
+this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the
+well-to-do than I know of anywhere else.
+
+When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly
+built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle
+for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the
+drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and
+filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was
+no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned,
+flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones
+threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the
+little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of
+their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix.
+
+By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to
+meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to
+be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might
+have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice
+of his day--grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under
+Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular
+troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said
+to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose
+to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory
+neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own
+fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets
+in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling,
+hissing stone.
+
+I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that
+in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great
+campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that
+strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last
+at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French
+overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical
+enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages
+or of the Don Cossacks--in none of these records, I aver, can you find so
+much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born
+Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter
+cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest
+painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian
+peasant was a nobleman.
+
+Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon
+these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of
+duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than
+once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of
+them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my
+generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this
+philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an
+army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their
+relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be
+slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at
+their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars
+apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one
+pretend not to hate such monsters?
+
+At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had
+never known before to marshal our yeomanry together.
+
+Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night--to
+Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in
+the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East
+Creek--organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a
+little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district
+regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at
+Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched
+forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to
+Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather
+together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better
+than a fortnight ago had seemed possible.
+
+They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard
+of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and
+Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the
+bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and
+villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among
+them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and
+imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher
+estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call
+such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many
+of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform,
+such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied
+largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply
+their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their
+hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their
+sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might
+well have shrunk from.
+
+These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else,
+though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They
+had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine
+friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence,
+though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above
+at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were
+richer in hate.
+
+At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to
+start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late
+in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her
+roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the
+Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on
+our horses.
+
+I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty
+toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole
+distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I
+yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear,
+after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly
+prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and
+who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again?
+
+I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my
+mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out
+for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I
+ought instead to be going toward Cairncross.
+
+Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very
+woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had
+apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me.
+
+"Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me--to say good-by?"
+asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of
+your starting to-morrow--for the battle."
+
+I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it
+in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in
+my words.
+
+"Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come--all day I have been thinking of
+little else--yet I feared that my visit might--might----"
+
+Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a
+superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow
+prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she
+showed now by leaving the room.
+
+"I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet
+with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to
+live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without
+a sign."
+
+We stood thus facing each other for a moment--mumbling forth some
+commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with
+a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "_Must you truly
+go_?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my
+shoulder and weeping violently.
+
+It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I
+would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence--as being too sacred a
+thing for aught of disclosure or speculation--were it not that some might,
+in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung
+by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of
+soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable.
+
+We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand,
+or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot.
+
+We talked of impersonal things--of the coming invasion, of the chances of
+relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a
+good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young
+commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted
+together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back--as we had
+so often returned before during these latter hateful months--to the sweet
+companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr.
+Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at
+Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary
+of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in
+the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these
+long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of
+yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the
+strange quality of the Roman faith--that its forms and customs, learned in
+youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after
+many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab
+Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the
+tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may
+linger pleasantly.
+
+Thus our conversation ran--decorous and harmless enough, in all
+conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a
+forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet
+influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole
+world of meaning evaded in our talk--were we to blame?
+
+I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you!
+This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we
+could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in
+common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly,
+the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman
+now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These
+had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time
+when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this
+we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor
+and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our
+thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and
+without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own
+choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of
+love's cherubim.
+
+We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her
+hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the
+white forehead she as gently inclined to me.
+
+"Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a
+soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!"
+
+"I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come
+back."
+
+The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and
+Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night
+with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she
+shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning.
+
+The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough
+made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There
+were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me
+searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was
+as mystified as I then thought.
+
+At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch
+and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her
+during my absence--and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI.
+
+The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+
+
+
+I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm
+yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about
+the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said,
+they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it
+would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had
+flooded the kitchen with tears.
+
+Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for
+the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the
+narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous
+personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one
+another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.
+
+During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each
+other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had
+got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her
+letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that
+she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my
+vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from
+it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be;
+for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household
+of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen
+management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her
+own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not
+one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting
+respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction
+as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to
+manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was
+within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and
+anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a
+veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never
+marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly
+unattainable ideal.
+
+I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I
+was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at
+all deceived.
+
+The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed
+bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender,
+high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my
+hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me
+in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives
+before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the
+horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back.
+After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form
+that I was going.
+
+And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come
+to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving
+homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could
+save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and
+scalping-knife.
+
+I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the
+reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I
+should not take this ride for nothing!
+
+"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the
+scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."
+
+"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who
+through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that
+you are a Van Hoorn!"
+
+"I shall not forget."
+
+"And is that young Philip Cross--_her_ husband--with Johnson's crew?"
+
+"Yes, he is."
+
+"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your
+grandfather Baltus was!"
+
+These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had
+joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to
+overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was
+nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.
+
+We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked
+road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by
+the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the
+highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and
+children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall
+corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine
+with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were
+gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the
+Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while
+there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in
+every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to
+Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.
+
+We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth,
+near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine
+from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry
+Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the
+Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that
+Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General
+Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her
+promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when
+I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major
+John Frey.
+
+It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment,
+which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle.
+The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were
+sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting
+low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a
+refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for
+the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to
+find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves,
+Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.
+
+Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of
+the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly
+proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but
+the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might
+have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly
+Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living
+there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and
+that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless
+if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that
+messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we
+look backward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton
+was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia
+was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more
+were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There
+were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan
+volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations,
+and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in
+excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to
+perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting
+force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about
+seven hundred strong.
+
+It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered
+together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called
+into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the
+Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors,
+the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country
+larger than any one of several European monarchies.
+
+As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue
+and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and
+linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and
+huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and
+equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen
+different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch
+Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and
+here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who
+with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and
+Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the
+bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.
+
+Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled
+together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone
+Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had
+children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in
+bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his
+strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives
+down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never
+forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good
+clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of
+the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a
+Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all
+looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been
+always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.
+
+Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had
+small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer
+the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout
+Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock,
+and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of
+Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but
+others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel
+Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of
+the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a
+familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my
+business to check off.
+
+Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells,
+all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were
+five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it
+may well be five of more than one other family.
+
+The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the
+first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But
+soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts,
+and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer
+palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in
+the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new,
+deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force
+greater and more to be dreaded than was Bellêtre's, but because we were
+encamped on historic ground.
+
+From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort
+Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine
+settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth;
+and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in
+a low voice as the daylight faded.
+
+The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of
+northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night,
+and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing
+tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay
+the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow
+ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the
+wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the
+widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the
+current, drowned!
+
+How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should
+have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary
+of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how
+marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the
+captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I
+should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was
+food enough for thought.
+
+But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest
+were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river
+against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in
+emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was
+called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the
+fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that
+Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the
+place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was
+there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith,
+who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was
+Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept
+in our interest.
+
+The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas
+could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of
+savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly
+neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the
+foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded,
+they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their
+Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the
+savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for
+him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to
+say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep
+sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives.
+Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had
+the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of
+forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and
+ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland,
+whom for half a century he had loved so well.
+
+There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with
+their war-party, by all means.
+
+After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of
+stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of
+the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these
+do not concern the story.
+
+It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been
+blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in
+his quaint German dialect:
+
+"Come, walk with me outside the fort."
+
+We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom
+we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound
+to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank.
+There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple
+militia gathering.
+
+We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where
+we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the
+sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest
+old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.
+
+"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.
+
+I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this
+brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?"
+feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew
+not of.
+
+"_I_ am wrong," he said, simply.
+
+"I do not understand you, Brigadier."
+
+"Say rather that _they_, who ought to know me better, do not understand
+me."
+
+"They? Whom do you mean?"
+
+"All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own
+regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me.
+Nothing could be worse than that."
+
+"Suspect _you_, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"
+
+"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It
+has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a
+colonel with Johnson--up yonder."
+
+The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights
+of day were paling over the black line of trees.
+
+"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too,
+my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us,
+and his son _is_ with the Tories--up yonder."
+
+"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march
+to-morrow."
+
+"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and
+another married to Hendrick Frey, and _he_ is a Tory, too. All this is
+thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I
+feel they are talking of this."
+
+"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter
+Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe
+me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."
+
+"You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here.
+Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."
+
+"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I
+different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are
+all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours
+as well."
+
+"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and
+lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you
+get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now.
+Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are
+going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do.
+Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you
+leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to
+save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them
+and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here
+in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank
+in the State line."
+
+"I cannot credit that."
+
+"Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up
+my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"
+
+Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long
+after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying
+my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.
+
+To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling
+existing against him, it to a degree did exist.
+
+The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a
+few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered
+old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our
+Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who
+spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike.
+There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies,
+none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized
+their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the
+Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but
+still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some
+of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that
+matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it
+was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and
+suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once
+begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.
+
+All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy
+which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian
+fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into
+rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and
+wooden-headed Braddock.
+
+We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians
+bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of
+the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded
+the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed
+slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the
+Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which
+bears the name Oriskany.
+
+Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching,
+on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate
+to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with
+our attack.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII.
+
+"The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+
+
+
+A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the
+never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking
+rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the
+hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler
+darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.
+
+Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in
+the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close
+neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals
+prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It
+might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for
+we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of
+these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final
+six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently.
+Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter.
+Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the
+threshold of so grave an adventure.
+
+I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the
+spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some
+dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night
+of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely
+brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store
+of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the
+Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some
+sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of
+food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with
+a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized
+cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on
+their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed
+so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise
+there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"
+
+No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.
+
+Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All
+preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers
+were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had
+been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last
+look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the
+General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses
+harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!
+
+The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the
+prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day,
+instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's
+inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's
+faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days'
+stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay.
+
+The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the
+headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice
+before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands.
+I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident
+impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were
+not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six
+miles distant.
+
+The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of
+sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre
+of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees,
+bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during
+the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now,
+after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in
+camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers.
+These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front
+sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or
+six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with
+one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious
+to hear what was going on.
+
+I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the
+Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling
+differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and
+majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had
+the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every
+day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the
+only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served
+further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me
+only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the
+square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry
+Valley way.
+
+"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his _friseur_
+with him."
+
+"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers.
+Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.
+
+"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing,
+half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence.
+When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and
+fight next spring!"
+
+All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to
+hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.
+
+The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer
+for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the
+sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions
+upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if
+with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired
+we must have heard them.
+
+I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough
+stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the
+dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that
+either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and
+that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he
+held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he
+kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The
+beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to
+one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in
+Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and
+munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus
+supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them,
+unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort.
+In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.
+
+"But I say the sortie _will_ be made! They are waiting for us--only we are
+too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.
+
+"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the
+case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that
+fort two miles farther back."
+
+"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult
+travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's
+Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."
+
+"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or
+some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?"
+I asked.
+
+"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is
+to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."
+
+"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a
+great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"
+
+Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a
+swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be
+looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.
+
+His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.
+
+"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with
+his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.
+
+"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is
+not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here,
+as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the
+parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers
+in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."
+
+"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel
+Cox, angrily.
+
+He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered
+four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a
+loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came
+running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with
+difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one
+place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.
+
+"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall,"
+said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his
+feet as he spoke.
+
+"_Will_ you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone,
+pitched even higher.
+
+"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a
+general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back,
+misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.
+
+"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.
+
+Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.
+
+"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like
+this? Know you not your duty better?"
+
+"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least _we_
+are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.
+
+"_You_!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "_You_ will be the first to
+run when you see the British!"
+
+There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited
+farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising
+momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had
+no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we
+could hear nothing clearly.
+
+There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier,
+Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous
+colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and
+"coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and
+dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I
+could scarce bear to look upon it.
+
+There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the
+crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously
+drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.
+
+Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If
+you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool
+at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred
+could hear:
+
+"VORWÄRTS!"
+
+The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.
+
+There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To
+rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no
+dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back
+in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a
+hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps
+somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene
+before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the
+efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring
+their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his
+Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was
+ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of
+it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to
+bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles
+Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and
+Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.
+
+So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in
+the morning.
+
+The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of
+August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of
+the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the
+world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading
+to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut
+through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line,
+regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances
+bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when
+Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this
+time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough
+spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress
+was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.
+
+There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls
+of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled
+undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to
+be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us,
+and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.
+
+Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van.
+Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had
+been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but
+without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely
+there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of
+an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.
+
+We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in
+the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in
+part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We
+in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were
+resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon
+in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards
+farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in
+the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.
+
+While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This
+is where we camped five years ago."
+
+Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall
+headlong upon the neck of his horse.
+
+There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell,
+a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII.
+
+The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+
+
+
+Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still
+not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed.
+
+I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his
+horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I
+saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the
+gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the
+dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental
+numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at
+all to comprehend it.
+
+Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his
+mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead
+of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming
+footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement.
+
+The air was filled now with shouts--what they were I did not know. The
+solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together
+like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking
+to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends
+off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had
+jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the
+mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the
+stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at
+random into the underbrush.
+
+All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier.
+
+As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange
+barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther
+side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the
+whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the
+Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all
+directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the
+causeway. It was a horrible spectacle--of naked, yelling devils, daubed
+with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and
+flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and
+neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence
+they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants
+with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the
+sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept
+pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush.
+
+By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine,
+here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis.
+
+Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and
+calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His
+orders I forget now--or what part I played at first in carrying them
+out--but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our
+needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the
+attack, our forces--or what was left of them--had been drawn out of the
+cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This
+could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his
+self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest.
+
+Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing
+to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired
+their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the
+fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the
+Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the
+ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again
+from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of
+the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see
+the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment--these Petries, Weavers,
+Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts--fight their path backward
+through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been
+egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and
+returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie
+regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the
+rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber
+as well as they could, north and south of the road.
+
+While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had,
+strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to
+ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was
+struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from
+his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General
+Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The
+Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the
+rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a
+step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball
+which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood.
+
+It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man
+was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two
+rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and
+bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well
+sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and
+resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at
+a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of
+the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely
+brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the
+maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly
+lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him.
+
+"Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked.
+
+"No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I
+will face the enemy till I die."
+
+All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the
+hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated.
+Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more
+than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little
+mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough,
+half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for
+the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob
+Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of
+his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across
+the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a
+captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat,
+and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the
+Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay.
+
+The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead
+and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist
+of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time,
+forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk
+was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and
+tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he
+missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming--and
+there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes.
+
+"Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when
+one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running
+forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better
+for us.
+
+There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An
+hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its
+clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting
+among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence
+upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet
+ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of
+dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as
+with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk
+stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by
+swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the
+shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible.
+Yes--horrible is the right word!
+
+A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy
+perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a
+compound is man!--we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its
+purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood
+in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!
+
+I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while
+others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now
+these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness
+and with a plenitude of minutiæ which surprise me, the more that I
+remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight
+for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he
+isn't, and that is about all he thinks of.
+
+I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the
+struggle--the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on
+the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of
+the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our
+rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade,
+sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories,
+meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and
+drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been
+wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately
+St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started;
+this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed
+too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action
+cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where
+the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our
+centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way
+backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories
+came upon us.
+
+The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point,
+where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of
+the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the
+hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts,
+crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy,
+shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small
+firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs.
+
+Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which
+promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse,
+perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body
+of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent
+Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and
+cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac
+Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be
+handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence.
+
+Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute
+bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril!
+
+We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things
+were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague
+intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now
+drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells
+of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed
+to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of
+some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which
+side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our
+vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep
+ourselves alive.
+
+All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great
+storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had
+been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the
+darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared
+through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed
+in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the
+blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight
+hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements.
+
+We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched
+under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for
+the fight, it ceased utterly.
+
+While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report
+from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder;
+there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from
+the fort!
+
+I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping
+brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance
+that the Brigadier had not heard the reports.
+
+The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had
+left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches
+above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to
+have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or
+no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied
+their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had
+heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it.
+
+"I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young
+men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off."
+
+The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree,
+avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof,
+told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred,
+nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward
+toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large
+part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to
+say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so
+broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest
+fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.
+
+What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who
+recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain.
+Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great
+catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.
+
+"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel
+Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll
+there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.
+
+Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only
+knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my
+brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry
+eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.
+
+I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of
+Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were
+saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were
+said to be dead already.
+
+The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew
+lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of
+white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at
+once the sun was shining.
+
+On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The
+fight began again.
+
+The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a
+few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what
+food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength.
+They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance
+they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their
+hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now.
+
+The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear
+the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties
+now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms,
+dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke
+arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe.
+Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable
+paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and
+with clinched fists.
+
+A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing
+through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us
+afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could
+reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this
+side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke
+bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses
+of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before
+us as we ran.
+
+Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and
+underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga
+men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the
+bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were
+looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old
+Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:
+
+"Help is here from the fort!"
+
+Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose
+musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the
+bushes, as they advanced in regular order.
+
+I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen
+shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear,
+the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the
+new-comers.
+
+"Who's there?" he roared at them.
+
+"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.
+
+Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to
+the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we
+clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all
+confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them
+to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.
+
+Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.
+
+Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a
+mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and
+left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet,
+and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as
+a shield.
+
+While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing
+with excitement.
+
+"In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"
+
+"Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his
+vast might. "These art Tories. _Fire_! you fools! _Fire_!"
+
+It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former
+friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their
+guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many
+more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.
+
+How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets
+seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a
+score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men
+had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade,
+dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These
+latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire
+to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with
+a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in
+wild pursuit.
+
+Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled
+tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our
+faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore
+forward, loading and firing as we ran.
+
+The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were
+driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of
+renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all
+our ears.
+
+I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying
+piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of
+some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening
+of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the
+Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and
+left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion
+for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood
+in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.
+
+I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where
+the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall
+rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch
+farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently
+attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed
+thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we
+came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.
+
+While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground
+for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:
+
+"They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a
+tree."
+
+I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me,
+his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back
+of his head, his long rifle over his arm.
+
+"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"
+
+"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he
+spoke.
+
+We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet
+struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.
+
+"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and
+leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps
+from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching
+almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.
+
+A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a
+momentary twinge of pain in my arm.
+
+"Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted
+excitedly from the bush.
+
+There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong
+upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting
+forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.
+
+"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars,
+resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his
+gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.
+
+I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained
+grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and
+looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV.
+
+Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+
+
+
+My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to
+speak, but no sound came from them.
+
+For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed
+upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this
+strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or
+over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I
+remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and
+scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay.
+
+There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look
+in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For
+all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing
+whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarrassed me. For relief I
+turned to Enoch, and said sharply:
+
+"You haven't told me yet what you were doing here."
+
+The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned
+his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me.
+
+"You can see for yourself, can't ye?" he said. "What do people mostly do
+when there's shooting going on, and they've got a gun?"
+
+"But how came you here at all? I thought you were to stay at--at the place
+where I put you."
+
+"That was likely, wasn't it! Me loafing around the house like a tame cat
+among the niggers while good fighting was going on up here!"
+
+"If you wanted to come, why not have marched with us? I asked you."
+
+"I don't march much myself. It suits me to get around on my own legs in my
+own way. I told you I wouldn't go into any ranks, or tote my gun on my
+shoulder when it was handier to carry it on my arm. But I didn't tell you
+I wouldn't come up and see this thing on my own hook."
+
+"Have you been here all day?"
+
+"If you come to that, it's none of your business, young man. I got here
+about the right time of day to save _your_ bacon, anyway. That's enough
+for _you_, ain't it?"
+
+The rebuke was just, and I put no further questions.
+
+A great stillness had fallen upon the forest behind us. In the distance,
+from the scrub-oak thickets on the lowlands by the river, there sounded
+from time to time the echo of a stray shot, and faint Mohawk cries of
+"Oonah! Oonah!" The battle was over.
+
+"They were beginning to run away before I came down," said Enoch, in
+comment upon some of these dying-away yells of defeat which came to us.
+"They got handled too rough. If their white officers had showed themselves
+more, and took bigger risks, they'd have stood their ground. But these
+Tory fine gentlemen are a pack of cowards. They let the Injuns get killed,
+but they kept darned well hid themselves."
+
+The man on the ground broke silence here.
+
+"You lie!" he said, fiercely.
+
+"Oh! you can talk, can you?" said Enoch. "No, I don't lie, Mr. Cross. I'm
+talking gospel truth. Herkimer's officers came out like men, and fought
+like men, and got shot by dozens; but till we struck you, I never laid
+eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good,
+too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there,
+within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ain't
+pretty fair shooting."
+
+The cool brutality of this talk revolted me. I had it on my tongue to
+interpose, when the wounded man spoke again, with a new accent of gloom
+in his tone.
+
+"What have I ever done to you?" he said, with his hand upon his breast.
+
+"Why, nothing at all, Mr. Cross," answered Enoch, amiably. "There wasn't
+any feeling about it, at least on my part. I'd have potted you just as
+carefully if we'd been perfect strangers."
+
+"Will you leave us here together for a little while, Enoch?" I broke in.
+"Come back in a few minutes; find out what the news is in the gulf--how
+the fight has gone. I desire some words with this--this gentleman."
+
+The trapper nodded at this, and started off with his cat-like, springing
+walk, loading his rifle as he went. "I'll turn up in about a quarter of
+an hour," he said.
+
+I watched his lithe, leather-clad figure disappear among the trees, and
+then wheeled around to my prostrate foe.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I said, hesitatingly, looking down
+upon him.
+
+He had taken his hand away from his breast, and was fumbling with it on
+the grass behind him. Suddenly he raised it, with a sharp cry of--
+
+"I know what to say to you!"
+
+There was a pistol in the air confronting me, and I, taken all aback,
+looked full into the black circle of its barrel as he pulled the trigger.
+The flint struck out a spark of flame, but it fell upon priming dampened
+by the wet grass.
+
+The momentary gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died
+piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would
+have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his
+nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which
+cold sweat stood out, and groaned aloud.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I went on, the episode of the pistol
+seeming, strangely enough, to have cleared my thoughts. "For two
+years--yes, for five years--I have been picturing to myself some such
+scene as this, where you should lie overthrown before me, and I should
+crush the life out of your hateful body with my heel, as one does with
+snakes. But now that it has come about, I am at a strange loss for words."
+
+"That you were not formerly," said the wounded man. "Since I have known
+you, you have fought always exceedingly well with your mouth. It was only
+in deeds that you were slow."
+
+He made this retort with a contemptuous coolness of tone which was belied
+by his white face and drawn brows, and by the troubled, clinging gaze in
+his eyes. I found myself looking with a curious impersonal interest upon
+this heavy, large-featured countenance, always heretofore so deeply
+flushed with color, and now coarsely blotched with varying depths
+of pallor.
+
+"Doubtless it would be best to leave you here. None of your party will
+straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and think of your
+misdeeds until-----"
+
+"Until the wolves come, you mean. Yes, go away. I prefer them to you."
+
+The sky to the west was one great lurid, brassy glare, overhung with banks
+of sinister clouds, a leaden purple above, fiery crimson below. The
+unnatural light fell strongly upon us both. A big shadow passed for an
+instant across the sunset, and we, looking instinctively up, saw the
+circling bulk of some huge bird of prey. I shuddered at the sight.
+
+"Yes, leave me to _them_!" he said, bitterly. "Go back and seize my lands,
+my house. While the beasts and the birds tear me to bits here in the
+forest, do you fatten upon my substance at home. You and they are of
+a kidney."
+
+"You know I would touch nothing of yours."
+
+"No--not even my wife!"
+
+The thrust went home. There was a world of sardonic disdain in his voice
+as he spoke, but in truth I thought little of his tone. The words
+themselves seemed to open a gulf before my feet. Was it indeed true, in
+welcoming this man's death, that I was thinking of the woman it would set
+free--for me?
+
+It seemed a long, long time before I found tongue again. I walked up and
+down among the small cedars, fighting out in my own mind the issue of
+honor which had been with such brutal frankness raised. I could not make
+it seem wholly untrue--this charge he so contemptuously flung at me. There
+was no softening of my heart toward him: he was still the repellent, evil
+ruffian I had for years held him to be. I felt that I hated him the more
+because he had put me in the wrong. I went back to him, ashamed for the
+source of the increase of temper I trembled under, yet powerless to
+dissemble it.
+
+"Why should I not kill you where you lie?" I shouted at him.
+
+He made an effort at shrugging his shoulders, but vouchsafed no other
+reply.
+
+"You"--I went on, in a whirl of rage at myself, at him, at the entire
+universe--"you have made my whole manhood bitter. I fought you the first
+time I saw you, when we were little boys. Even then you insulted, injured
+me. I have always hated you. You have always given me reason to hate you.
+It was you who poisoned Mr. Stewart's mind against me. It was you who
+stole my sweet sister away from me. Did this content you? No. You must
+drive the good old gentleman into paralysis and illness unto death--out of
+his mind--and you must overwhelm the poor, gentle girl with drunken
+brutality and cruelty, and to cap all, with desertion. And this is not
+enough--my God! think of it! _this_ is not enough!--but you must come with
+the others to force Indian war upon our Valley, upon your old neighbors!
+There are hundreds lying dead here to-day in these woods--honest men whose
+wives, parents, little children, are waiting for them at home. They will
+never lay eyes on them again. Why? Because of you and your scoundrel
+friends. You have done too much mischief already. It is high time to put
+an end to you."
+
+The wounded man had listened to me wearily, with his free hand clutched
+tight over his wound, and the other tearing spasmodically at the grass
+beside him.
+
+"I am bleeding to death," he said, with a voice obviously weakened since
+his last preceding words. "So much the better for you. You would like it
+so. You are not bold enough to knock me on the head, or merciful enough to
+go about your business and leave me in peace. I ought to be above bandying
+words with you; nor would I if it did not take my mind from my hurt. You
+are right--you have always been my enemy. You were jealous of me as a
+little boy. You had an apron, and you envied me my coat. When, like a
+fool, I came again to this cursed wilderness, your sour face rose up in
+front of me like an ugly dream. It was my first disagreeable thing. Still
+you were jealous of me, for I was a gentleman; you were a skin-pedler. I
+married a maiden who had beauty and wit enough to grace my station, even
+though she had not been born to it. It was you who turned her mind against
+me, and incited her to unhappiness in the home I had given her. It was you
+who made a damned rebel out of her, and drove me into going to Canada. She
+has ever been more your friend than mine. You are of her sort. An English
+gentleman could rightly have had no part or lot with either of you. Go
+back to her now--tell her you left me here waiting for the wolves--and
+that my dying message was--"
+
+He followed with some painfully bitter and malignant words which I have
+not the heart to set down here in cold blood against him.
+
+"Let me see your wound," I said, when he had finished and sank back,
+exhausted.
+
+I knelt beside him and opened his green coat, and the fine, ruffled shirt
+beneath it. Both were soaked with blood on the whole right side, but the
+soft cambric had, in a measure, checked the flow. He made no resistance,
+and I spread over the ugly aperture some of the plaster with which my
+mother had fitted me out, and bound it fast, with some difficulty, by
+passing my sash under his body and winding it about his chest.
+
+He kept his eyes closed while I was doing this. I could not tell whether
+he was conscious or not. Nor could I explain to myself why I was
+concerning myself with his wound. Was it to save, if possible, his life?
+Was it to lengthen out his term of torture here in the great final
+solitude, helplessly facing the end, with snarling wolves and screaming
+kites for his death-watch? I scarcely knew which.
+
+I try now to retrace the courses by which my thoughts, in the confused
+searchings of those few moments, reached finally a good conclusion; but
+the effort is beyond my powers. I know only that all at once it became
+quite clear to my mind that I must not leave my enemy to die. How much of
+this was due to purely physical compassion for suffering, how much to the
+higher pleadings of humanity, how much to the feeling that his taunts of
+baseness must be proved untrue, I cannot say.
+
+I was still kneeling beside him, I know, when Enoch suddenly stood in
+front of me. His practised footsteps had made no sound. He glanced gravely
+at me and at the white, inanimate face of Cross. Emotions did not play
+lightly upon Enoch's leather-like visage; there was nothing in his look to
+tell whether he was surprised or not.
+
+"Well, what news? How has the day gone?" I asked him.
+
+"Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were
+attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men."
+
+"What is Herkimer going to do?"
+
+"They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home
+again--down the Valley."
+
+"So, then, we have lost the fight."
+
+"Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded
+man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin
+with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?"
+
+"But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the
+fort?"
+
+"Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that
+both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want
+to rest for a spell."
+
+I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous
+carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on:
+
+"They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must
+be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along
+with 'em."
+
+"Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?"
+
+"I ain't quite a fool, young man," said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of
+smile. "If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to
+explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that
+strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an
+opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers
+were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a
+fortnight ago."
+
+All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed.
+He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our
+conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice:
+
+"I know you now--damn you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I
+gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in
+hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now.
+You make a good rebel."
+
+"Now look here, Mr. Cross," put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in
+his tone. "You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that
+way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and
+you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me
+to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and
+smoke it!"
+
+"Come, Enoch," I here interrupted, "enough of that. The man is suffering.
+You must not vex him further by words."
+
+"Suffering or not," returned the trapper, "he might keep a civil tongue in
+his head.--Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for," he went on,
+scowling down at the prostrate soldier. "I delivered your message here to
+this man" (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--"all that, you
+know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a
+Missisague dog."
+
+Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: "There
+may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't
+look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong
+to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck."
+
+The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered
+at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which
+helped me the better to make up my mind.
+
+Enoch had turned to me once more:
+
+"Come," he said, "we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so
+long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting
+from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them.
+As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long
+anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too
+many litters to carry already."
+
+"No," I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. "We will make
+our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the
+river--away from the others."
+
+"The hell you say!" said Enoch.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV.
+
+The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+
+
+
+In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were
+wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the
+trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was
+never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and
+conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few,
+indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight
+later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my
+pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they
+all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at
+the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey.
+
+This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he
+protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my
+plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting,
+which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once
+embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal.
+
+The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went
+on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said,
+yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was
+not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings,
+covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side
+to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke:
+
+"Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you
+touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough
+for you."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand
+along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't
+know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help
+we want from you is for you to hold your jaw."
+
+"You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man,
+raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring
+affrightedly straight ahead of him.
+
+There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the
+swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had
+returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away
+from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group.
+
+A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and,
+on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion
+mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The
+savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were
+fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in
+an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had
+laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering.
+If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent
+upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned
+in spirit.
+
+"Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the
+sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help
+me God, I will not!"
+
+The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They
+looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not
+materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were
+all on the other side.
+
+"Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep
+cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give
+'em the word."
+
+Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into
+his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his
+arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast.
+
+"It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be
+tortured--scalped--by these devils!"
+
+I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said,
+bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from
+the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps."
+
+"Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your
+canting tongue to deny it."
+
+It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have
+their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending
+their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe
+them to take scalps."
+
+"Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me
+up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain."
+
+"Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for
+you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you
+here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going
+to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to _hide_ you at
+Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. _Now_
+will you keep still?"
+
+He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of
+mystification and utter weakness.
+
+Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my
+project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went,
+down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as
+a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him
+explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a
+magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress.
+
+Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical
+arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward
+should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey.
+
+"They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't
+help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one
+of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will
+be enough."
+
+The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired,
+together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the
+river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to
+the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my
+home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and
+lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done,
+and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the
+rude litter and started for the trail.
+
+I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last
+time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore
+still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of
+this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of
+fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of
+prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air
+stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no
+sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away.
+Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon
+this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly
+past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the
+leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in
+the sunset radiance, watching us gravely.
+
+We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field
+to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the
+forest primeval.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I
+recall no other equally wretched five days in my life.
+
+The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and
+fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be
+accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the
+sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing
+myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their
+sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced
+me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly
+along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face
+and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles,
+my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have
+wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on
+the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on
+the ground utterly worn out.
+
+We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on
+the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter
+we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had
+a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes,
+and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not
+build a fire.
+
+Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in
+a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous
+activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the
+fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we
+lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe,
+floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less
+and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at
+least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more
+than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed
+sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our
+ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man
+ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal
+service and attention for granted.
+
+After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night
+out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able
+to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful
+woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark,
+while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe
+well enough.
+
+The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We
+were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new
+pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there
+was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the
+white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks,
+the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black
+against the pale sky.
+
+There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows
+hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my
+glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at
+one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly
+to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the
+voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses
+stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue.
+
+"Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at
+best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more
+commodious boat."
+
+"Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made
+answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low,
+musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the
+wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at
+Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if
+we were going through a dead country."
+
+Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly
+blurted it out.
+
+"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I
+said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these
+brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really
+understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom!
+Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue."
+
+He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he
+had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression
+of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental.
+
+"Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat.
+"I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day
+long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there
+just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my
+friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out
+of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are
+the wolves!"
+
+He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous
+quaver.
+
+"These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child
+awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get
+where you can have rest and care."
+
+It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as
+powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and
+weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his
+face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it.
+
+He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled
+through a stretch of still water, in silence.
+
+"You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally.
+
+I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered:
+
+"Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches,
+in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?"
+
+"What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman."
+
+I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind.
+"For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that
+either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I
+remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van
+Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have
+brought you back."
+
+"Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily.
+
+After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not
+gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the
+alternate moonlight and shadow.
+
+The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of
+thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only
+not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation
+of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed
+upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless,
+stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not
+so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and
+happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive.
+
+More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the
+reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even
+now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me,
+but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary
+spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent
+before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the
+bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as
+one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent
+impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon
+the man himself.
+
+His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his
+character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the
+existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man
+strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and
+sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable,
+generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty,
+and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been
+two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one
+because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other.
+
+Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story.
+To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have
+behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain
+wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was
+plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable
+husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class
+of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new
+land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon
+himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he
+had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as
+he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of
+his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to
+dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common
+herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led
+him down the fell incline.
+
+I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I
+had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a
+knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other
+circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the
+same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of
+his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine.
+
+Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home
+as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of
+gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI.
+
+A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.
+
+
+
+Just before daybreak of the fifth day we stole past the sleeping hamlet of
+Caughnawaga, and as the sun was rising over the Schoharie hills I drew up
+the canoe into the outlet of Dadanoscara Creek, a small brook which came
+down through the woods from the high land whereon Cairncross stood. Our
+journey by water was ended.
+
+Enoch was waiting for us, and helped me lift Cross from the canoe. His
+body hung inert in our arms; not even my clumsy slipping on the bank of
+the rivulet startled him from the deep sleep in which he had lain for
+hours in the boat.
+
+"I have been frightened. Can he be dying?" I asked.
+
+Enoch knelt beside him, and put his hand over the patient's heart. He
+shook his head dubiously after a moment, and said: "It's tearing along
+like a racehorse. He's in a fever--the worst kind. This ain't
+sleep--it's stupor."
+
+He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his
+life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can
+make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to
+his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be
+different. As it is, I don't see but you will have to risk it, and bring
+somebody here."
+
+For once in my life my brain worked in flashes. I actually thought of
+something which had not occurred to Enoch!
+
+"Why not carry him in this canoe?" I asked. "It is lighter than any litter
+we could make."
+
+The trapper slapped his lank, leather-clad thigh in high approval. "By
+hokey!" he said, "you've hit it!"
+
+We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate
+the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and
+we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it
+over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course
+two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in
+the Valley an absolute secret. His life would have been in deadly peril
+hereabouts, even before the battle. How bitterly the hatred of him and his
+traitor-fellows must have been augmented by the slaughter of that cruel
+ambuscade, I could readily imagine. With what words could I have protected
+him against the righteous rage of a Snell, for example, or a Seeber, or
+any one of a hundred others who had left kinsmen behind in that fatal
+gulch? No! There must be no risk run by meeting any one.
+
+With the scanty meal finished our rest was at an end. We ought to lose no
+time. Each minute's delay in getting the wounded man under a roof, in
+bed, within reach of aid and nursing, might be fatal.
+
+It was no light task to get the canoe upon our shoulders, after we had put
+in it our guns, covered these with ferns and twigs, and upon these laid
+Philip's bulky form, and a very few moments' progress showed that the work
+before us was to be no child's play. The conformation of the canoe made it
+a rather awkward thing to carry, to begin with. To bear it right side up,
+laden as it was, over eight miles of almost continuous ascent, through a
+perfectly unbroken wilderness, was as laborious an undertaking as it is
+easy to conceive.
+
+We toiled along so slowly, and the wretched little brook, whose bed we
+strove to follow, described such a wandering course, and was so often
+rendered fairly impassable by rocks, driftwood, and overhanging thicket,
+that when the sun hung due south above us we had covered barely half our
+journey, and confronted still the hardest portion of it. We were so
+exhausted when this noon hour came, too, that I could make no objection
+when Enoch declared his purpose of getting some trout from the brook, and
+cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and
+from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly
+I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper
+stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity,
+tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under the stones.
+
+Soon he had enough for a meal--and, my word! it was a feast for emperors
+or angels. We stuffed the pink dainties with mint, and baked them in balls
+of clay. It seemed as if I had not eaten before in years.
+
+We tried to rouse Cross sufficiently to enable him to eat, and in a small
+way succeeded; but the effect upon him was scarcely beneficial, it
+appeared to us. His fever increased, and when we started out once more
+under our burden, the motion inseparable from our progress affected his
+head, and he began to talk incoherently to himself.
+
+Nothing can be imagined more weird and startling than was the sound of
+this voice above us, when we first heard it. Both Enoch and I
+instinctively stopped. For the moment we could not tell whence the sound
+came, and I know not what wild notions about it flashed through my mind.
+Even when we realized that it was the fever-loosed tongue of our companion
+which spoke, the effect was scarcely less uncanny. Though I could not see
+him, the noise of his ceaseless talking came from a point close to my
+head; he spoke for the most part in a bold, high voice--unnaturally raised
+above the pitch of his recent faint waking utterances. Whenever a fallen
+log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the
+prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe
+down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult
+connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of his
+disordered brain.
+
+For a long time--of course in a very disconnected way--he babbled about
+his mother, and of people, presumably English, of whom I knew nothing,
+save that one name, Digby, was that of his elder brother Then there began
+to be interwoven with this talk stray mention of Daisy's name, and soon
+the whole discourse was of her.
+
+The freaks of delirium have little significance, I believe, as clews to
+the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary
+speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching
+shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words
+addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to
+be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he was resting his
+head upon her bosom. Over and over again, with tiresome iteration, he kept
+entreating plaintively: "You _are_ glad to see me? You do _truly_ forgive
+me, and love me?"
+
+Nothing could have been sadder than to hear him. I reasoned that this
+ceaseless dwelling upon the sweets of a tender welcome doubtless reflected
+the train of his thoughts during the journey down from the battle-field.
+He had forborne to once mention Daisy's name during the whole voyage, but
+he must have thought deeply, incessantly of her--in all likelihood with a
+great softening of heart and yearning for her compassionate nursing. It
+was not in me to be unmoved by this. I declare that as I went painfully
+forward, with this strangely pathetic song of passion repeating itself in
+my ears, I got fairly away from the habit of mind in which my own love for
+Daisy existed, and felt myself only an agent in the working out of some
+sombre and exalted romance.
+
+In Foxe's account of the English martyrs there are stories of men at the
+stake who, when a certain stage of the torture was reached, really forgot
+their anguish in the emotional ecstasy of the ideas born of that terrible
+moment. In a poor and imperfect fashion I approached that same strange
+state--not far removed, in sober fact, from the delirium of the man in
+the canoe.
+
+The shadows were lengthening in the woods, and the reddening blaze of the
+sun flared almost level in our eyes through the tree-trunks, when at last
+we had crossed the water-shed of the two creeks, and stood looking down
+into the gulf of which I have so often spoken heretofore.
+
+We rested the canoe upon a great rock in the mystic circle of ancient
+Indian fire worship, and leaned, tired and panting, against its side. My
+arm was giving me much pain, and what with insufficient food and feverish
+sleep, great immediate fatigue, and the vast nervous strain of these past
+six days, I was well-nigh swooning.
+
+"I fear I can go no farther, Enoch," I groaned. "I can barely keep my feet
+as it is."
+
+The trapper himself was as close to utter exhaustion as one may be and
+have aught of spirit left, yet he tried to speak cheerily.
+
+"Come, come!" he said, "we mustn't give out now, right here at the
+finish. Why, it's only down over that bridge, and up again--and there
+we are!"
+
+I smiled in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a
+final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest,
+and we'll at it again."
+
+While we stood half reclining against the bowlder, looking with
+trepidation at the stiff ascent before us on the farther side of the gulf,
+the scene of the old quarrel of our youth suddenly came to my mind.
+
+"Do you see that spruce near the top, by the path--the one hanging over
+the edge? Five years ago I was going to fight this Philip Cross there, on
+that path. My little nigger Tulp ran between us, and he threw him head
+over heels to the bottom. The lad has never been himself since."
+
+"Pretty tolerable fall," remarked Enoch, glancing down the precipitous,
+brush-clad wall of rock. "But a nigger lands on his head as a cat does on
+her feet, and it only scratches him where it would kill anybody else."
+
+We resumed our burden now, and made our way with it down the winding path
+to the bottom. Here I was fain to surrender once for all.
+
+"It is no use, Enoch," I said, resolutely. "I can't even try to climb up
+there with this load. You must wait here; I will go ahead to Cairncross,
+prepare them for his coming, and send down some slaves to fetch him the
+rest of the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great square mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front.
+The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no
+wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life
+visible, Cairncross might have been uninhabited a twelve-month.
+
+It was only when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within
+view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not
+been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday,
+church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass,
+intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep
+that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they
+became aware of my presence.
+
+They looked for a minute at me in a perplexed way--my mud-baked clothes,
+unshaven face, and general unkempt condition evidently rendering me a
+stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's
+ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like
+scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of the great house.
+
+So I was supposed to be dead! Curiously enough, it had not occurred to me
+before that this would be the natural explanation of my failure to return
+with the others. The idea now gave me a queer quaking sensation about the
+heart, and I stood stupidly staring at the back balcony of the house, with
+my mind in a whirl of confused thoughts. It seemed almost as if I _had_
+come back from the grave.
+
+While I still stood, faint and bewildered, trying to regain control of my
+ideas, the door opened, and a white-faced lady, robed all in black, came
+swiftly out upon the porch. It was Daisy, and she was gazing at me with
+distended eyes and parted lips, and clinging to the carved balustrade
+for support.
+
+As in a dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was
+gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in
+the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer
+exhaustion and rapture.
+
+When at last I could stand up, and felt myself coming back to something
+like self-possession, a score of eager questions and as many outbursts of
+deep thanksgiving were in my ears--all from her sweet voice. And I had
+tongue for none of them, but only looked into her dear face, and patted
+her hands between mine, and trembled like a leaf with excitement. So much
+was there to say, the sum of it beggared language.
+
+When finally we did talk, I was seated in a great chair one of the slaves
+had brought upon the sward, and wine had been fetched me, and my dear girl
+bent gently over me from behind, softly resting my head against her waist,
+her hands upon my arms.
+
+"You shall not look me in the face again," she said--with ah! such
+compassionate, tender playfulness--"until I have been told. How did you
+escape? Were you a prisoner? Were you hurt?"--and oh! a host of
+other things.
+
+Suddenly the sky seemed to be covered with blackness, and the joy in my
+heart died out as by the stroke of death. I had remembered something. My
+parched and twitching lips did their best to refuse to form the words:
+
+"I have brought Philip home. He is sorely wounded. Send the slaves to
+bring him from the gulf."
+
+After a long silence, I heard Daisy's voice, clear and without a tremor,
+call out to the blacks that their master had been brought as far as the
+gulf beyond, and needed assistance. They started off helter-skelter at
+this, with many exclamations of great surprise, a bent and misshapen
+figure dragging itself with a grotesque limping gait at their tail.
+
+I rose from my chair, now in some measure restored to calmness and cold
+resolution. In mercy I had been given a brief time of blind happiness--of
+bliss without the alloy of a single thought. Now I must be a man, and walk
+erect, unflinching, to the sacrifice.
+
+"Let us go and meet them. It is best," I said. The poor girl raised her
+eyes to mine, and their startled, troubled gaze went to my heart. There
+must have been prodigious effort in the self-command of her tone to the
+slaves, for her voice broke down utterly now, as she faltered:
+
+"You have--brought--him home! For what purpose? How will this all end? It
+terrifies me!"
+
+We had by tacit consent begun to walk down the path toward the road. It
+was almost twilight. I remember still how the swallows wheeled swiftly in
+the air about the eaves, and how their twittering and darting seemed to
+confuse and tangle my thoughts.
+
+The situation was too sad for silence. I felt the necessity of talking, of
+uttering something which might, at least, make pretence of occupying these
+wretched minutes, until I should say:
+
+"This is your husband--and farewell!"
+
+"It was clear enough to me," I said. "My duty was plain. I would have
+been a murderer had I left him there to die. It was very strange about my
+feelings. Up to a certain moment they were all bitter and merciless toward
+him. So many better men than he were dead about me, it seemed little
+enough that his life should go to help avenge them. Yet when the moment
+came--why, I could not suffer it. Not that my heart relented--no; I was
+still full of rage against him. But none the less it was my duty to save
+his life."
+
+"And to bring him home to _me_." She spoke musingly, completing my
+sentence.
+
+"Why, Daisy, would you have had it otherwise? Could I have left him there,
+to die alone, helpless in the swamp?"
+
+"I have not said you were not right, Douw," she answered, with saddened
+slowness. "But I am trying to think. It is so hard to realize--coming like
+this. I was told you were both dead. His name was reported in their camp,
+yours among our people. And now you are both here--and it is all so
+strange, so startling--and what is right seems so mingled and bound up
+with what is cruel and painful! Oh, I cannot think! What will come of it?
+How will it all end?"
+
+"We must not ask how it will end!" I made answer, with lofty decision.
+"That is not our affair. We can but do our duty--what seems clearly
+right--and bear results as they come. There is no other way. You ought to
+see this."
+
+"Yes, I ought to see it," she said, slowly and in a low, distressed voice.
+
+As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my
+wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coarse-fibred male animal,
+returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my
+hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and
+gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my title to do this?--to rebuke
+her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I
+not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought
+pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought
+much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and
+fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of
+my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from
+trouble and grief?
+
+My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not
+have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so
+well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence,
+feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better
+than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong.
+
+Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as
+to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange
+question of our far-away youth.
+
+There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of
+the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell,
+like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the
+thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds
+of other voices, excited and vibrant.
+
+Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some
+formless fear of she knew not what.
+
+"It is Tulp," she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. "Oh, I should have
+kept him back! Why did I not think of it?"
+
+"What about Tulp?" I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the
+narrow path. "I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among
+the others, was he?"
+
+"He has gone mad!"
+
+"What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange
+and slow of wit for years, but--"
+
+"Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you
+were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you
+came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father
+pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened?
+Who is this man?"
+
+In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of
+Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him
+huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was
+the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the
+common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean?
+
+When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.
+
+"Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness.
+
+"Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do
+not understand. I will join you in a moment.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him.
+"Tell me quick."
+
+"Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a
+nigger. That's about what it comes to."
+
+"Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?"
+
+"It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side
+nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs
+over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream
+like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it
+went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!"
+
+The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and
+clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh
+horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to
+where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed
+my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.
+
+Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall
+grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII.
+
+The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon
+the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted.
+Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would
+never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places
+which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play
+and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest
+farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the
+dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of
+death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more
+new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre
+in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to
+bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and
+tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.
+
+So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People
+listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the
+cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true
+that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?"
+
+In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast
+of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in
+the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information
+by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated.
+Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been
+hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately
+follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much
+later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to
+Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the
+men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done.
+
+To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this
+truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have
+chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus
+it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for
+Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered
+to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but
+think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of
+the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper
+Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own
+Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there
+at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That
+failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had
+been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the
+forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory
+gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done,
+he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies
+from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first
+the Yankees, then the others at his leisure.
+
+Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of
+Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of
+things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the
+heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was
+compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no
+doubt who would in the long-run triumph.
+
+Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great
+souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch
+at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live.
+
+But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much
+of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and
+wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around
+the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and
+general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange
+occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf.
+
+I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret
+returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as
+might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the
+stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with
+material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as
+possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the
+scene's sad suggestions.
+
+From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the
+soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the
+other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent
+stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not
+visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the
+waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream.
+
+During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely
+engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to
+represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old
+Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful
+amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold
+and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood
+of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort,
+the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the
+hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant,
+and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from
+confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It
+was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the
+exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a
+hospital than for the saddle.
+
+I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the
+Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year
+1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and
+neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the
+children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact
+date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the
+knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the
+sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not
+less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to
+gather over it.
+
+Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part
+thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came
+to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I
+was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of
+the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so.
+
+Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the
+hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into
+the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled
+and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This
+meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place
+were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly
+as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the
+grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation.
+
+But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John
+personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home
+of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought,
+alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to
+steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife,
+and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very
+melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days
+of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn
+of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though
+they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to
+the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with
+Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also
+have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old
+Douw Fonda!
+
+There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it
+touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter
+Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief
+Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the
+old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood
+upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the
+lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely
+wish him alive again.
+
+Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child
+whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He
+bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the
+Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably.
+
+In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which
+the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was
+born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as
+sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's
+breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him
+accordingly, as is the wont of parents.
+
+When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's
+bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny,
+fair babe nestled upon her arm.
+
+"Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names,
+'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked.
+
+Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy
+into my eyes.
+
+"I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all
+so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much
+our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking,
+dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip."
+
+I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we
+had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of
+Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle
+sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet
+whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and
+fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any
+harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the
+room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in
+my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though
+the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal
+from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was
+easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which
+prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child
+because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and
+tragic romance.
+
+In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious
+little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and
+slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in
+particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could
+bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty
+spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even
+now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely
+obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of
+his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart
+smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath
+his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our
+fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to
+resist him.
+
+The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month
+Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it
+seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old
+man. He literally staggered and died under the blow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as
+peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of
+a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large
+advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having
+always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort,
+and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come
+to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We
+seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our
+childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof,
+where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very
+near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less
+peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of
+a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this
+interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for
+us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to
+both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and
+fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in
+happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts
+from scars.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In the Valley
+
+Author: Harold Frederic
+
+Posting Date: November 19, 2011 [EBook #9787]
+Release Date: January, 2006
+First Posted: October 16, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE VALLEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h1>In the Valley</h1>
+
+<p align="center" class="smallcaps">By</p>
+
+<h2>Harold Frederic</h2>
+
+
+
+<h4>Copyright 1890</h4>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Dedication.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><i>When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
+was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
+would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
+the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
+upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
+was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
+thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
+adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
+Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
+welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
+this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
+Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
+bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
+affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
+grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour.</i></p>
+
+<p>London, <i>September 11</i>, 1890</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Contents.</h1>
+
+
+
+<p>Chapter I.      <a href="#01">"The French Are in the Valley!"</a><br />
+Chapter II.     <a href="#02">Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.</a><br />
+Chapter III.    <a href="#03">Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly</a><br />
+Chapter IV.     <a href="#04">In Which I Become the Son of the House.</a><br />
+Chapter V.      <a href="#05">How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.</a><br />
+Chapter VI.     <a href="#06">Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.</a><br />
+Chapter VII.    <a href="#07">Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.</a><br />
+Chapter VIII.   <a href="#08">Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.</a><br />
+Chapter IX.     <a href="#09">I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.</a><br />
+Chapter X.      <a href="#10">The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.</a><br />
+Chapter XI.     <a href="#11">As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.</a><br />
+Chapter XII.    <a href="#12">Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.</a><br />
+Chapter XIII.   <a href="#13">To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.</a><br />
+Chapter XIV.    <a href="#14">How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.</a><br />
+Chapter XV.     <a href="#15">The Rude Awakening from My Dream.</a><br />
+Chapter XVI.    <a href="#16">Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.</a><br />
+Chapter XVII.   <a href="#17">I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.</a><br />
+Chapter XVIII.  <a href="#18">The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.</a><br />
+Chapter XIX.    <a href="#19">I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.</a><br />
+Chapter XX.     <a href="#20">A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.</a><br />
+Chapter XXI.    <a href="#21">Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.</a><br />
+Chapter XXII.   <a href="#22">The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.</a><br />
+Chapter XXIII.  <a href="#23">How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.</a><br />
+Chapter XXIV.   <a href="#24">The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.</a><br />
+Chapter XXV.    <a href="#25">A Crestfallen Return to Albany.</a><br />
+Chapter XXVI.   <a href="#26">I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.</a><br />
+Chapter XXVII.  <a href="#27">The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.</a><br />
+Chapter XXVIII. <a href="#28">An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.</a><br />
+Chapter XXIX.   <a href="#29">The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.</a><br />
+Chapter XXX.    <a href="#30">From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXI.   <a href="#31">The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXII.  <a href="#32">"The Blood Be on Your Heads."</a><br />
+Chapter XXXIII. <a href="#33">The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXIV.  <a href="#34">Alone at Last with My Enemy.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXV.   <a href="#35">The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXVI.  <a href="#36">A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXVII. <a href="#37">The Peaceful Ending of It All.</a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>In The Valley</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="01"></a>Chapter I</h2>
+
+<h3>"The French Are in the Valley!"</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
+since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
+to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
+son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
+to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
+parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
+good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
+nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
+recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
+fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
+the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
+might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
+and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
+great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
+waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
+its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
+If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
+become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
+mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.</p>
+
+<p>Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
+keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
+I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
+confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
+their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
+so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
+the story:</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
+that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
+now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
+than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
+dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
+were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
+floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
+the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
+thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
+the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
+or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
+winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
+lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
+not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.</p>
+
+<p>I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
+whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
+did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
+their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
+and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
+women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
+for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
+mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
+behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
+after rains.</p>
+
+<p>Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
+longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
+kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
+time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
+duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
+bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
+the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
+me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
+and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
+too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
+sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
+flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
+hated them.</p>
+
+<p>The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
+these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
+knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
+ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
+commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
+vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
+inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
+snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
+the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
+timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
+our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
+nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
+lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
+I held my breath.</p>
+
+<p>It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
+dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
+set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
+noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
+hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
+great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
+heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):</p>
+
+<p>"The French are in the Valley!"</p>
+
+<p>I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
+and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.</p>
+
+<p>Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
+what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
+I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
+his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
+clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
+with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
+Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
+which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
+to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
+husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
+portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
+small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.</p>
+
+<p>How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
+considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
+Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
+mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
+my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
+fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
+aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
+momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
+suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
+another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
+gravely from within the door:</p>
+
+<p>"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
+and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
+Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."</p>
+
+<p>Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
+Valley.</p>
+
+<p>These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
+to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
+great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
+the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
+all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.</p>
+
+<p>If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
+explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
+I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
+master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
+with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
+my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
+both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
+Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
+conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
+while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
+first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
+hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
+reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
+content to return to his sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
+dreamed at all.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="02"></a>Chapter II</h2>
+
+<h3>Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
+small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
+original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
+might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
+late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
+Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
+fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
+white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
+could sop my bread.</p>
+
+<p>During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
+housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
+upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
+which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
+well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
+command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
+cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
+employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
+heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
+Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
+any other large matter, I would have valued.</p>
+
+<p>Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
+apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
+air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
+the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
+on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
+with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
+cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
+almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.</p>
+
+<p>He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
+themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
+pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
+labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
+speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
+French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
+notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
+me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
+better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
+look up and down the Valley.</p>
+
+<p>It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
+forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
+edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
+the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
+through the cold night.</p>
+
+<p>To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
+or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
+not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
+its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
+its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
+logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
+upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
+grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
+in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
+been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
+French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
+our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
+Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
+being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
+still by contrast.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
+adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
+were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
+and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
+houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.</p>
+
+<p>It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
+men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
+wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
+Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
+part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
+tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
+than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
+little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
+to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
+religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
+I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
+I trust there can be no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
+these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
+of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
+dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
+there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
+the hill.</p>
+
+<p>As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
+his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
+to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
+attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
+mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
+westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.</p>
+
+<p>After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
+cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."</p>
+
+<p>All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
+stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
+the commotion.</p>
+
+<p>Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
+and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
+also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
+yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
+about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
+household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
+we saw on the highway.</p>
+
+<p>What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
+terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
+generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
+or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
+somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
+phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
+out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
+before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
+French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
+above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
+Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
+auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
+had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
+in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
+answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
+the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
+others had become calm.</p>
+
+<p>As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
+cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
+had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"</p>
+
+<p>To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
+in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.</p>
+
+<p>With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
+straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
+cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!</p>
+
+<p>He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
+put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
+in the face, and laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
+all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
+himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
+puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
+staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
+with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
+some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
+wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
+comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.</p>
+
+<p>The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
+the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:</p>
+
+<p>"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
+embrace."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
+two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
+face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
+the rending of an ice-gorge.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
+came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
+my breath.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
+foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
+the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
+and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
+despatched onward to the fort.</p>
+
+<p>While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
+and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
+eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
+eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
+(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
+long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
+their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
+reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
+the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.</p>
+
+<p>The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
+backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
+the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
+I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
+showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
+full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
+pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
+being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
+weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
+it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
+swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
+ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
+warrior should be.</p>
+
+<p>It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
+troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
+and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
+as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
+Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
+roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I
+believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the
+frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was
+not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did
+not get into my favor after we came inside.</p>
+
+<p>Under this Master Philip's commands the negro squatted on his haunches and
+unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this
+bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps
+between three and four years of age.</p>
+
+<p>This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and
+looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her
+eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long,
+tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her
+feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure.
+She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face
+was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to
+me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the negro smiling upon
+us both.</p>
+
+<p>I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was
+already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly
+spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward
+the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude
+behavior and at his words.</p>
+
+<p>"I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child.</p>
+
+<p>He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him,
+clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to
+one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little
+girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great
+wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have
+her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus
+you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood
+finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But
+I had the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing,
+Douw, and what child is this?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions,
+and red with color.</p>
+
+<p>The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that
+Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even
+feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for
+me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one
+might feel the heat, and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as
+much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven."</p>
+
+<p>The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously:</p>
+
+<p>"She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village
+only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the
+other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When
+Bell&ecirc;tre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first
+attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in
+the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange
+enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered?--the infant was in
+some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
+great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
+for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
+to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
+friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
+frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
+cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
+start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
+Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
+brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
+said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
+saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
+one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
+bundled her in."</p>
+
+<p>"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
+yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
+friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
+young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
+people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
+Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
+that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
+not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Tom Lynch, and your grandfather was a king----"</p>
+
+<p>"No more," interposed Mr. Stewart, frowning and lifting his finger. "That
+folly is dead and in its grave. Not even so fair a youth as you must give
+it resurrection."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Bob," said the Major, with sudden alacrity. "Go outside with these
+children, and help them to some games."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="03"></a>Chapter III</h2>
+
+<h3>Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty
+years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see
+him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there
+would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above
+forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame,
+yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist
+and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He
+was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much,
+let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain,
+ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a
+swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals,
+much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness
+when agreed with.</p>
+
+<p>All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many
+other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers.
+He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he
+loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great
+warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be
+said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and
+evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns
+in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most
+instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he,
+so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the
+profession of arms.</p>
+
+<p>A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward
+prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and
+I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here,
+although at the time I was in ignorance of it.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had
+been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was
+the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who
+loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and
+sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court,
+of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the
+father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles
+the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch
+names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany.</p>
+
+<p>Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins,
+got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared
+meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew
+old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not
+forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast
+of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now,
+and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue
+and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a
+sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of
+Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse.</p>
+
+<p>With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had
+dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in
+a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally.
+After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the
+conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving
+himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to
+France, never to return.</p>
+
+<p>He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This
+boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court,
+now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting
+in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant
+existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon
+destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless
+alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous
+gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover,
+and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an
+injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts.</p>
+
+<p>Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a
+priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about
+Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the
+religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier,
+for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit
+to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the
+emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did
+Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning,
+honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the
+Jacobite gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a
+young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony
+Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with
+ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke.
+He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that
+his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the
+daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had
+gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this
+exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from
+the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The
+two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the
+lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance
+and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced,
+and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he
+never forgot her till his death.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for
+striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's
+lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his
+generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more
+selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among
+those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh
+and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of
+Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph,
+its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the
+Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was
+able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig
+influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to
+live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had
+fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to
+Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and
+peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of
+Stewart, and set sail to the New World.</p>
+
+<p>This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which
+perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish
+recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on
+which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the
+succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I
+still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to
+acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the
+question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out:</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me
+a fort!"</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and
+I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in
+the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the
+little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks
+and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no
+work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was
+to his mind, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the
+Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to
+drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he
+must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we
+must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come
+up.--Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing
+his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against
+my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a
+Frenchman than you are yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All
+foreigners are the same."</p>
+
+<p>"It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a
+foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of
+course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even
+speak English properly."</p>
+
+<p>This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr.
+Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to
+hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont
+to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English
+correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was
+true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by
+Philip's criticism.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a
+Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself
+when I <i>do</i> come," or words to that purport.</p>
+
+<p>We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all
+better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were
+some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic
+fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is
+enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls
+which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my
+head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I
+forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling
+him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down,
+with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would
+be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead,
+mumbling with his mouth full of snow:</p>
+
+<p>"Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know."</p>
+
+<p>My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
+little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
+unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
+two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
+Philip said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
+My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
+besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
+weren't Dutch."</p>
+
+<p>When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
+eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
+a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
+and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.</p>
+
+<p>The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
+know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
+They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
+disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
+senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
+deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
+of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
+knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.</p>
+
+<p>"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
+some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
+trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
+estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a
+single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be
+damned to them!"</p>
+
+<p>"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and
+now!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll <i>not</i> think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I
+too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of
+'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit
+to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no
+doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is,
+and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I
+dream--precisely what pleases me best."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk
+with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw,
+yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a
+second self."</p>
+
+<p>The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but
+without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon
+his plate:</p>
+
+<p>"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to
+be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help
+one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."</p>
+
+<p>Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing
+furiously. He smiled and said:</p>
+
+<p>"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."</p>
+
+<p>My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie
+over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow,
+struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school
+for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him.
+We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless
+grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut
+out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."</p>
+
+<p>The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the
+lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life,
+dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for
+my bride."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.</p>
+
+<p>The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with
+moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in
+this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and
+thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty
+despatches.</p>
+
+<p>While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over
+his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little
+waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore
+over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily
+and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm,
+Bob, for the journey."</p>
+
+<p>The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's
+arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could
+Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his
+fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine
+country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again.
+What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"</p>
+
+<p>I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr.
+Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him
+pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence
+which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I
+walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with
+deep joy.</p>
+
+<p>"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a
+load off my mind.--Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."</p>
+
+<p>"And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked,
+vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the
+question."</p>
+
+<p>The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat
+pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which
+Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips,
+and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me,
+red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at
+his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my
+apron, besides.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face,
+knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst
+into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a
+wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and
+screaming that he <i>would</i> have the child.</p>
+
+<p>I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle
+by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and
+then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob
+enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on
+the horse.
+
+Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a
+salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when
+once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of
+him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade,
+a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you--and yours, <i>mon fr&egrave;re</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the
+river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly
+back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their
+mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a
+father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the
+present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."</p>
+
+<p>To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the
+melting snow by his side.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log
+structure critically over.</p>
+
+<p>"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this
+house--to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Stewart."</p>
+
+<p>"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan
+out still another room for our abode."</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically
+begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="04"></a>Chapter IV</h2>
+
+<h3>In Which I Become the Son of the House.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage
+and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could
+scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the
+year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near
+the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that
+their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they
+did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in
+constant alarm. No household knew, on going to bed, that they would not be
+roused before morning by savage war-cries. No man ventured out of sight of
+his home without entertaining the idea that he might never get back alive.
+Hence, when the long-expected blow was really struck, and the town on the
+German Flatts devastated, everybody was in an agony of fear. To make
+matters worse, Sir William was at his home ill in bed, and there was some
+trouble between him and the English commanders, which stood in the way of
+troops being sent to our aid.</p>
+
+<p>Those few days following the dreadful news of the attack above us seem
+still like a nightmare. The settlers up the river began sending their
+household goods down to Albany; women and children, too, passed us in
+great parties, to take refuge in Fort Hunter or at Schenectady. The river
+suddenly became covered with boats once more, but this time representing
+the affrighted flight of whole communities instead of a peaceful commerce.</p>
+
+<p>During this season of terror I was, as may be conceived, indeed unhappy. I
+had no stomach even for play with the new addition to our household, yet
+scarcely dared to show my nose outside the stockade. Mr. Stewart spent his
+days abroad, either with Sir William, or up at Caughnawaga concerting
+means of defence with our friends the Fondas. He did, however, find time
+to cross the river and reassure my mother, who trembled with apprehension
+for her great brood of young, but was brave as a lion for herself. Weeks
+afterward, when I visited her once more, I saw baskets of lime in the
+attic which this devoted woman had stored there, to throw with water on
+the Indians when they came. This device she had learned from the family
+traditions of her ancestors' doings, when the Spaniards were in Holland.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the alarm wore away. The French and Indians, after killing fifty
+Palatines and taking thrice that number prisoners, turned tail and marched
+back to the Lake again, with some of Honikol Herkimer's lead in their
+miserable bodies. The Valley was rarely to be cursed with their presence
+again. It was as if a long fever had come to its climax in a tremendous
+convulsion, and then gone off altogether. We regained confidence, and
+faced the long winter of '57 with content.</p>
+
+<p>Before the next snowfall succeeded to that first November flurry, and the
+season closed in in earnest, Mr. Stewart was able, by the aid of a number
+of neighbors, to build and roof over two additions to his house. The
+structure was still all of logs, but with its new wings became almost as
+large, if not as imposing, as any frame-house round about. One of these
+wings was set aside for Dame Kronk and the little girl. The other, much to
+my surprise, was given to me. At the same time my benefactor formally
+presented me with my little black playmate, Tulp. He had heretofore been
+my friend; henceforth he was my slave, yet, let me add, none the less
+my friend.</p>
+
+<p>All this was equivalent to my formal adoption as Mr. Stewart's son. It was
+the custom in those days, when a slave child came of a certain age, to
+present it to the child of the family who should be of the same age and
+sex. The presentation was made at New Year's, ordinarily, and the white
+child acknowledged it by giving the little black a piece of money and a
+pair of shoes. My mother rather illogically shed some tears at this token
+that I was to belong henceforth to Mr. Stewart; but she gave me a bright
+Spanish dollar out of her small hoard, for Tulp, and she had old William
+Dietz, the itinerant cobbler of Schoharie, construct for him a very
+notable pair of shoes, which did him no good since his father promptly
+sold them over at Fort Hunter for rum. The old rascal would have made
+away with the coin as well, no doubt, but that Mr. Stewart threatened him
+with a hiding, and so Tulp wore it on a leather string about his neck.</p>
+
+<p>I did not change my name, but continued to be Douw Mauverensen. This was
+at the wish of both Mr. Stewart and my mother, for the name I bore was an
+honorable one. My father had been for years a clergyman in the Valley,
+preaching now in Dutch, now in German, according to the nationality of the
+people, and leading a life of much hardship, travelling up and down among
+them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is
+certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many
+people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly
+remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very
+small boy.</p>
+
+<p>As he had had no fixed charge during life, but had ministered to half a
+dozen communities, so it was nobody's business in particular to care for
+his family after his death. The owner of the horse did send my mother a
+bushel of apples, and the congregation at Stone Arabia took up a little
+money for her. But they were all poor people in those days, wresting a
+scanty livelihood from the wilderness, and besides, I have never noticed
+that to be free with their money is in the nature of either the Dutch or
+the Palatines. The new dominie, too, who came up from Albany to take my
+father's place, was of the opinion that there was quite little enough
+coming in for the living pastor, without shearing it, as he said, to keep
+alive dead folk's memories. Thus sadly a prospect of great destitution
+opened before my mother.</p>
+
+<p>But she was, if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain
+Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the
+knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my
+grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years
+his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or
+by crook to collect his old credits outstanding, and maintained at least
+enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after
+his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with
+her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie
+Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she
+was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the
+youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means
+of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new
+dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time
+he visited our village. To add to the wretchedness of her plight, at this
+very time her sister Margaret came back in destitution and weakness to
+her, having been both widowed and sorely shaken in wits by the small-pox.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Mr. Stewart, who had known my father, came to our relief.
+He first lent my mother a small sum of money--she would take no more, and
+was afterward very proud to repay him penny for penny. He further
+interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and
+others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort
+Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch.</p>
+
+<p>This language, which I have lived to see almost entirely fade from use,
+was even then thought to be most probably the tongue of the future in the
+colony, and there was the more need to teach it correctly, since, by the
+barbarous commingling of Rhenish peasant dialects, Irish and Scotch
+perversions of English, Indian phrases, the lingo of the slaves, and the
+curious expressions of the Yankees from the East, the most villanous
+jargon ever heard was commonly spoken in our Valley. My mother knew the
+noble language of her fathers in all its strength and sweetness, and her
+teaching was so highly prized that soon the school became a source of
+steady support to us all. Old "Uncle" Conrad--or Coonrod as we used to
+call him--the high-shouldered old pedagogue who was at once teacher,
+tithing-man, herb-doctor, and fiddler for our section, grumbled a little
+at the start; but either he had not the heart to take the bread from our
+mouths, or his own lips were soon silenced by the persuasion of
+our patrons.</p>
+
+<p>It was out of respect for one of these, good old Douw Fonda, who came from
+Schenectady to live at Caughnawaga when I was two years old, that I had
+been named. But even more we all owed to the quiet, lonely man who had
+built the log house opposite Aries Creek, and who used so often to come
+over on Sunday afternoons in the warm weather and pay us a
+friendly visit.</p>
+
+<p>My earliest recollections are of this Mr. Stewart, out of whom my boyish
+fancy created a beneficent sort of St. Nicholas, who could be good all the
+year round instead of only at New Year's. As I grew older his visits
+seemed more and more to be connected with me, for he paid little attention
+to my sisters, and rarely missed taking me on his knee, or, later on,
+leading me out for a walk. Finally I was asked to go over and stay with
+him for a week, and this practically was the last of my life with my
+mother. Soon afterward my aunt was engaged as his housekeeper, and I
+tacitly became a part of the household as well. Last of all, on my eighth
+birthday, in this same November of '57, I was formally installed as son of
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>It was a memorable day, as I have said, in that Tulp was given me for my
+own. But I think that at the time I was even more affected by the fact
+that I was presented with a coat, and allowed to forever lay aside my
+odious aprons. These garments, made by my mother's own hands, had long
+been the bane of my existence. To all my entreaties to be dressed as the
+other boys of my age were, like Matthew Wormuth or Walter Butler instead
+of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter
+Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he
+was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been
+my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my
+humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same
+pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and
+plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel
+any more like the other boys than before.</p>
+
+<p>It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual
+contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the
+history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the
+neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other
+countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's
+possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the
+<i>Gentleman's Magazine,</i> which I studied with delight. I had also from him
+<i>Roderick Random</i>, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now
+understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found
+favor with sensible people.</p>
+
+<p>My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little
+boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd
+sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the
+boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant
+as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the
+Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years
+after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's
+mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and
+fish and hunt instead. Young Butler was of a better sort mentally, but he
+too never cared to read much. Both he and the Groats, the Nellises, the
+Cosselmans, young Wormuth--in fact, all the boys of good families I knew
+in the Valley--derided education, and preferred instead to go into the
+woods with a negro, and hunt squirrels while he chopped, or to play with
+their traps.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps they were not to be blamed much, for the attractions of the rough
+out-of-door life which they saw men leading all about them might very
+easily outweigh the quiet pleasures of a book. But it was a misfortune
+none the less in after-years to some of them, when they allowed uninformed
+prejudices to lead them into a terrible course of crime against their
+country and their neighbors, and paid their estates or their lives as the
+penalty for their ignorance and folly.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, things are better ordered for the youth of the land in these
+days.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="05"></a>Chapter V</h2>
+
+<h3>How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It was on the morrow after my birthday that we became finally convinced of
+the French retreat. Mr. Stewart had returned from his journeys, contented,
+and sat now, after his hot supper, smoking by the fire. I lay at his feet
+on a bear-skin, I remember, reading by the light of the flames, when my
+aunt brought the baby-girl in.</p>
+
+<p>During the week that she had been with us, I had been too much terrified
+by the menace of invasion to take much interest in her, and Mr. Stewart
+had scarcely seen her. He smiled now, and held out his hands to her. She
+went to him very freely, and looked him over with a wise, wondering
+expression when he took her on his knee. It could be seen that she was
+very pretty. Her little white rows of teeth were as regular and pearly as
+the upper kernels on an ear of fresh sweet corn. She had a ribbon in her
+long, glossy hair, and her face shone pleasantly with soap. My aunt had
+made her some shoes out of deer-hide, which Mr. Stewart chuckled over.</p>
+
+<p>"What a people the Dutch are!" he said, with a smile. "The child is
+polished like the barrel of a gun. What's your name, little one?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl made no answer, from timidity I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>"Has she no name? I should think she would have one," said I. It was the
+first time I had ever spoken to Mr. Stewart without having been addressed.
+But my new position in the house seemed to entitle me to this much
+liberty, for once.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he replied, "your aunt is not able to discover that she has a
+name--except that she calls herself Pulkey, or something like that."</p>
+
+<p>"That is not a good name to the ear," I said, in comment.</p>
+
+<p>"No; doubtless it is a nickname. I have thought," he added, musingly, "of
+calling her Desideria."</p>
+
+<p>I sat bolt upright at this. It did not become me to protest, but I could
+not keep the dismay from my face, evidently, for Mr. Stewart
+laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Douw? Is it not to your liking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Y-e-s, sir--but she is such a very little girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the name is so great, eh? She'll grow to it, lad, she'll grow to it.
+And what kind of a Dutchman are you, sir, who are unwilling to do honor to
+the greatest of all Dutchmen? The Dr. Erasmus upon whose letters you are
+to try your Latin this winter--his name was Desiderius. Can you tell what
+it means? It signifies 'desired,' as of a mother's heart, and he took a
+form of the Greek verb <i>erao</i>, meaning about the same thing, instead. It's
+a goodly famous name, you see. We mean to make our little girl the truest
+lady, and love her the best, of all the women in the Valley. And so we'll
+give her a name--a fair-sounding, gracious, classical name--which no
+other woman bears, and one that shall always suggest home love--eh, boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"But if it be so good a name, sir," I said, gingerly being conscious of
+presumption, "why did Dr. Erasmus not keep it himself instead of turning
+it into Greek?"</p>
+
+<p>My patron laughed heartily at this. "A Dutchman for obstinacy!" he said,
+and leaned over to rub the top of my head, which he did when I specially
+pleased him.</p>
+
+<p>Late that night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling
+of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I
+determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was
+brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the
+fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. Mr.
+Stewart was reading by the candles on the table. Save for the singing of
+the kettle on the crane--for the mixing of his night-drink later on--and
+the click of my aunt's knitting-needles, there was perfect silence. I
+mustered my bravery, and called my wee playmate "Daisy."</p>
+
+<p>I dared not look at the master, and could not tell if he had heard or not.
+Presently I spoke the name again, and this time ventured to steal an
+apprehensive glance at him, and fancied I saw the workings of a smile
+repressed in the deep lines about his mouth. "A Dutchman for obstinacy"
+truly, since two days afterward Mr. Stewart himself called the girl
+"Daisy"--and there was an end of it. Until confirmation time, when she
+played a queenly part at the head of the little class of farmers' and
+villagers' daughters whom Dominie Romeyn baptized into full communion,
+the ponderous Latin name was never heard of again. Then it indeed emerged
+for but a single day, to dignify a state occasion, and disappeared
+forever. Except alone on the confirmation register of the Stone Church at
+Caughnawaga, she was Daisy thenceforth for all time and to all men.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of
+great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the
+roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good
+crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying
+settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to
+get food.</p>
+
+<p>I do not remember that our household stood in any such need, but
+occasionally some Indian who had been across the hills carrying venison
+would come in and rest, begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a
+strong smell like that of a tame bear as he toasted himself by the fire.
+Mr. Stewart was often amused by these fellows, and delighted to talk with
+them as far as their knowledge of language and inclination to use it went,
+but I never could abide them.</p>
+
+<p>It has become the fashion now to be sentimental about the red man, and
+young people who never knew what he really was like find it easy to extol
+his virtues, and to create for him a chivalrous character. No doubt there
+were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few
+just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion
+to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail
+me. But as a whole the race was a bad one--full of laziness and lies and
+cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and
+I know what I say.</p>
+
+<p>Probably there was no place on the whole continent where these Indians
+could be better studied than in the Mohawk Valley, near to Sir William's
+place. They came to him in great numbers, not only from the Six Nations,
+but often from far-distant tribes living beyond the Lakes and north of the
+St. Lawrence. They were on their best behavior with him, and no doubt had
+an affection for him in their way, but it was because he flattered their
+egregious vanity by acting and dressing in Indian fashion, and made it
+worth their while by constantly giving them presents and rum. Their liking
+seemed always to me to be that of the selfish, treacherous cat, rather
+than of the honest dog. Their teeth and claws were always ready for your
+flesh, if you did not give them enough, and if they dared to strike. And
+they were cowards, too, for all their boasting. Not even Sir William could
+get them to face any enemy in the open. Their notion of war was midnight
+skulking and shooting from behind safe cover. Even in battle they were
+murderers, not warriors.</p>
+
+<p>In peace they were next to useless. There was a little colony of them in
+our orchard one summer which I watched with much interest. The men never
+did one stroke of honest work all the season long, except to trot on
+errands when they felt like it, and occasionally salt and smoke fish
+which they caught in the river.</p>
+
+<p>But the wretched squaws--my word but <i>they</i> worked enough for both! These
+women, wrinkled, dirty, sore-eyed from the smoke in their miserable huts,
+toiled on patiently, ceaselessly, making a great variety of wooden
+utensils and things of deer-hide like snow-shoes, moccasins, and shirts,
+which they bartered with the whites for milk and vegetables and rum. Even
+the little girls among them had to gather berries and mandrake, and, in
+the fall, the sumach blows which the Indians used for savoring their food.
+And if these poor creatures obtained in their bartering too much bread and
+milk and too little rum and tobacco, they were beaten by their men as no
+white man would beat the meanest animal.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless much of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and
+hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all
+sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a
+score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp,
+that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs
+which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in
+the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, who herded
+together in a shanty at the edge of the clearing back of us, had their
+faults, no doubt; but they would work when they were bid, and they were
+grateful to those who fed and clothed and cared for them. These were
+reasons for their being despised by the Indians--and they seemed also
+reasons why I should like them, as I always did.</p>
+
+<p>There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a
+queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical
+sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably
+believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors
+or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge
+of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his
+ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over
+collecting tulip-bulbs.</p>
+
+<p>His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the
+possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened
+Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought
+him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the
+day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in
+his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing
+his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had
+some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could
+have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this
+warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living
+up to it.</p>
+
+<p>I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In
+truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season
+of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for
+me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head;
+that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close
+to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy,
+until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long
+months I never saw my mother and sisters, or went to church? It was very
+pleasant inside.</p>
+
+<p>I seem still to see the square, home-like central room of the old house,
+with Mr. Stewart's bed in one corner, covered with a great robe of pieced
+panther skins. The smoky rafters above were hung with strings of onions,
+red-peppers, and long ears of Indian corn, the gold of which shone through
+pale parted husks and glowed in the firelight. The rude home-made table,
+chairs, and stools stood in those days upon a rough floor of hewn planks,
+on projecting corners of which an unlucky toe was often stubbed. There
+were various skins spread on this floor, and others on the log walls, hung
+up to dry. Over the great stone mantel were suspended Mr. Stewart's guns,
+along with his sword and pistols. Back in the corners of the fireplace
+were hung traps, nets, and the like, while on the opposite side of the
+room was the master's bookcase, well filled with volumes in English,
+Latin, and other tongues. Three doors, low and unpanelled, opened from
+this room to the other chambers of the house--leading respectively to the
+kitchen, to my room, and to the room now set apart for my aunt and
+little Daisy.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt it was a poor abode, and scantily enough furnished, judged by
+present standards, but we were very comfortable in it, none the less. I
+worked pretty hard that winter on my Latin, conning C&aelig;sar for labor and
+Dr. Erasmus for play, and kept up my other studies as well, reading for
+the first time, I remember, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. For the
+rest, I busied myself learning to make snow-shoes, to twist cords out of
+flax, to mould bullets, and to write legibly, or else played with
+Daisy and Tulp.</p>
+
+<p>To confess how simply we amused ourselves, we three little ones, would be
+to speak in an unknown tongue, I fear, to modern children. Our stock of
+playthings was very limited. We had, as the basis of everything, the
+wooden works of the old clock, which served now for a gristmill like that
+of the Groats, now for a fort, again for a church. Then there were the
+spindles of a discarded spinning-wheel, and a small army of spools which
+my aunt used for winding linen thread. These we dressed in odd rags for
+dolls--soldiers, Indians, and fine ladies, and knights of old. To our
+contented fancy, there was endless interest in the lives and doings of
+these poor puppets. I made them illustrate the things I read, and the
+slave boy and tiny orphan girl assisted and followed on with equal
+enthusiasm, whether the play was of Alexander of Macedon, or Captain Kidd,
+or only a war-council of Delaware Indians, based upon Mr. Colden's book.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, when it was warm enough to leave the hearth, and Mr. Stewart
+desired not to be disturbed, we would transport ourselves and our games to
+my aunt's room. This would be a dingy enough place, I suppose, even to my
+eyes now, but it had a great charm then. Here from the rafters hung the
+dried, odoriferous herbs--sage, summer-savory, and mother-wort; bottles of
+cucumber ointment and of a liniment made from angle-worms--famous for cuts
+and bruises; strings of dried apples and pumpkins; black beans in their
+withered pods; sweet clover for the linen--and I know not what else
+besides. On the wall were two Dutch engravings of the killing of Jan and
+Cornelis de Wit by the citizens of The Hague, which, despite their hideous
+fidelity to details, had a great fascination for me.</p>
+
+<p>My childhood comes back vividly indeed to me as I recall the good old
+woman, in her white cap and short gown (which she had to lift to get at
+the pocket tied over her petticoat by a string to her waist), walking up
+and down with the yarn taut from the huge, buzzing wheel, crooning Dutch
+hymns to herself the while, and thinking about our dinner.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="06"></a>Chapter VI</h2>
+
+<h3>Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>If I relied upon my memory, I could not tell when the French war ended. It
+had practically terminated, so far as our Valley was concerned, with the
+episode already related. Sir William Johnson was away much of the time
+with the army, and several of the boys older than myself--John Johnson,
+John Frey, and Adam Fonda among them--went with him. We heard vague news
+of battles at distant places, at Niagara, at Quebec, and elsewhere. Once,
+indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did
+bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic
+in the lower settlements.</p>
+
+<p>Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in
+the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes.</p>
+
+<p>I remember one body of Highlanders in particular whose dress and mien
+impressed me greatly. Mr. Stewart, too, was much excited by the memories
+this noble uniform evoked, and had the officers into the house to eat and
+drink with him. I watched and listened to these tall, fierce, bare-kneed
+warriors in awe, from a distance. He brought out bottles from his rare
+stock of Madeira, and they drank it amid exclamations which, if I mistake
+not, were highly treasonable. This was almost the last occasion on which I
+heard references made to his descent, and he did his best to discourage
+them then. Most of these fine red-haired men, I learned afterward laid
+their bones on the bloody plateau overlooking Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>Far fresher in my recollection than these rumors of war is the fact that
+my Tulp caught the small-pox, in the spring of '60, the malady having been
+spread by a Yankee who came up the Valley selling sap-spouts that were
+turned with a lathe instead of being whittled. The poor little chap was
+carried off to a sheep-shed on the meadow clearing, a long walk from our
+house, and he had to remain there by himself for six weeks. At my urgent
+request, I was allowed to take his food to him daily, leaving it on a
+stone outside and then discreetly retiring. He would come out and get it,
+and then we would shout to each other across the creek. I took up some of
+our dolls to him, but he did not get much comfort out of them, being
+unable to remember any of the stories which I illustrated with them, or to
+invent any for himself. At his suggestion I brought him instead a piece of
+tanned calf-skin, with a sailor's needle and some twine, and the little
+fellow made out of this a lot of wallets for his friends, which had to be
+buried a long time before they could be safely used. I have one of these
+yet--mildewed with age, and most rudely stitched, but still a very
+precious possession.</p>
+
+<p>Tulp came out finally, scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward
+repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that
+Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than
+ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because
+women are more delicately made, and must perforce shudder at ugliness.</p>
+
+<p>How happily the years went by! The pictures in my memory, save those of
+the snug winter rooms already referred to, are all of a beautiful Valley,
+embowered in green, radiant with sunshine--each day live-long
+with delight.</p>
+
+<p>There was first of all in the spring, when the chorus of returning
+song-birds began, the gathering of maple-sap, still sacred to boyhood. The
+sheep were to be washed and sheared, too, and the awkward, weak-kneed
+calves to be fed. While the spring floods ran high, ducks and geese
+covered the water, and muskrats came out, driven from their holes. Then
+appeared great flocks of pigeons, well fattened from their winter's
+sojourn in the South, and everybody, young and old, gave himself up to
+their slaughter; while this lasted, the crack! crack! of guns was heard
+all the forenoon long, particularly if the day was cloudy and the birds
+were flying low--and ah! the buttered pigeon pies my aunt made, too.</p>
+
+<p>As the floods went down, and the snow-water disappeared, the fishing
+began, first with the big, silly suckers, then with wiser and more valued
+fish. The woods became dry, and then in long, joyous rambles we set traps
+and snares, hunted for nests among the low branches and in the
+marsh-grass, smoked woodchucks out of their holes, gathered wild flowers,
+winter-green, and dye-plants, or built great fires of the dead leaves and
+pithless, scattered branches, as boys to the end of time will delight
+to do.</p>
+
+<p>When autumn came, there were mushrooms, and beech-nuts, butter-nuts,
+hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of
+elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened
+the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the
+wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the
+combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by
+our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being
+boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk
+by my aunt.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, they were happy times indeed!</p>
+
+<p>Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early
+in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no
+reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are
+wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being
+invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew
+quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly
+upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular
+progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the
+pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high,
+uncompromising back made all my bones ache.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was
+a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the
+best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own
+to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on
+me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me
+personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed
+to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist
+clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of
+the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even
+to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree
+were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and
+spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst
+in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I could escape without discredit, and get across the river
+again, it was with the consoling thought that the next Sunday would be Mr.
+Stewart's Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>This meant a good long walk with my patron. Sometimes we would go down to
+Mount Johnson, if Sir William was at home, or to Mr. Butler's, or some
+other English-speaking house, where I would hear much profitable
+conversation, and then be encouraged to talk about it during our leisurely
+homeward stroll. But more often, if the day were fine, we would leave
+roads and civilization behind us, and climb the gradual elevation to the
+north of the house, through the woodland to an old Indian trail which led
+to our favorite haunt--a wonderful ravine.</p>
+
+<p>The place has still a local fame, and picnic parties go there to play at
+forestry, but it gives scarcely a suggestion now of its ancient wildness.
+As my boyish eyes saw it, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The
+creek, then a powerful stream, had cut a deep gorge in its exultant leap
+over the limestone barrier. On the cliffs above, giant hemlocks seemed to
+brush the very sky with their black, tufted boughs. Away below, on the
+shadowed bottomland, which could be reached only by feet trained to
+difficult descents, strange plants grew rank in the moisture of the
+waterfall, and misshapen rocks wrapped their nakedness in heavy folds of
+unknown mosses and nameless fern-growths. Above all was the ceaseless
+shout of the tumbling waters, which had in my ears ever a barbaric message
+from the Spirit of the Wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>The older Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot
+was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here,
+for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered
+about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had
+assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain,
+for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown.
+Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen
+or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this
+council place. Even the trail, winding its tortuous way from the Valley
+over the hills toward the Adirondack fastnesses, had been deserted for
+another long before--so long, in fact, that the young brave who chanced to
+follow the lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge,
+or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to
+learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the
+council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the
+chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part
+of his ancestral history.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart told me that when he first settled in the Valley, a
+disappointed and angry man, this gulf had much the satisfaction for him
+that men in great grief or wrath find in breasting a sharp storm. There
+was something congenial to his ugly unrest in this place, with its violent
+clamor, its swift dashing of waters, its dismal shadows, and damp
+chilliness of depths.</p>
+
+<p>But we were fallen now upon calmer, brighter days. He was no longer the
+discouraged, sullen misanthropist, but had come to be instead a pacific,
+contented, even happy, gentleman. And lo! the meaning of the wild gorge
+changed to reflect his mood. There was no stain of savagery upon the
+delight we had in coming to this spot. As he said, once listened rightly
+to, the music of the falling waters gave suggestions which, if they were
+sobering, were still not sad.</p>
+
+<p>This place was all our own, and hither we most frequently bent our steps
+on Sundays, after the snow-water had left the creek, and the danger of
+lurking colds had been coaxed from the earth by the May sun. Here he would
+sit for hours on one of the stones in the great Druid-like circle which
+some dead generation of savages had toiled to construct. Sometimes I
+would scour the steep sides of the ravine and the moist bottom for curious
+plants to fetch to him, and he would tell me of their structure and
+design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his
+pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and
+this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his
+past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable
+wealth of reminiscence, reflection, and helpful anecdote.</p>
+
+<p>On this spot, with the gaunt outlines of mammoth primeval trunks and
+twisted boughs above us, with the sacred memorials of extinct rites about
+us, and with the waters crashing down through the solitude beneath us on
+their way to turn Sir William's mill-wheel, one could get broad,
+comprehensive ideas of what things really meant. One could see wherein the
+age of Pitt differed from and advanced upon the age of Colbert, on this
+new continent, and could as in prophecy dream of the age of Jefferson yet
+to come. Did I as a lad feel these things? Truly it seems to me that
+I did.</p>
+
+<p>Half a century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle,
+its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan
+tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the
+blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound
+to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that not
+even the horrors of this death could shake his will, or wring a groan
+from his heaving breast. Here, too, above the unending din of the
+waterfall and the whisper of these hemlocks overhead, had often risen some
+such shrill-voiced, defiant deathsong, from the smoke and anguish of the
+stake, as that chant of the Algonquin son of Alknomuk which my
+grandchildren still sing at their school. This dead and horrible past of
+heathendom I saw as in a mirror, looking upon these council-stones.</p>
+
+<p>The children's children of these savages were still in the Valley. Their
+council fires were still lighted, no further distant than the Salt
+Springs. In their hearts burned all the old lust for torture and massacre,
+and the awful joys of rending enemies limb by limb. But the spell of
+Europe was upon them, and, in good part or otherwise, they bowed under it.
+So much had been gained, and two peaceful white people could come and talk
+in perfect safety on the ancient site of their sacrifices and cruelties.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this spell of Europe, accomplishing so much, left much to be desired.
+It was still possible to burn a slave to death by legal process, here in
+our Valley; and it was still within the power of careless, greedy noblemen
+in London, who did not know the Mohawk from the Mississippi, to sign away
+great patents of our land, robbing honest settlers of their all. There was
+to come the spell of America, which should remedy these things. I cannot
+get it out of my head that I learned to foresee this, to feel and to look
+for its coming, there in the gorge as a boy.</p>
+
+<p>But there are other reasons why I should remember the place--to be told
+later on.</p>
+
+<p>The part little Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is
+hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can
+recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade,
+and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds
+these old memories. We were happy together--that is all.</p>
+
+<p>I taught her to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from
+toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs.
+For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call
+her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I
+learned in turn to be merciful to helpless creatures, and to be honest and
+cleanly in my thoughts and talk. She would help me to seek for birds'
+nests with genuine enthusiasm, but it was her pity which prevented their
+being plundered afterward. Her pretty love for all living things, her
+delight in innocent, simple amusements, her innate repugnance to coarse
+and cruel actions--all served to make me different from the rough
+boys about me.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we grew up together, glad in each other's constant company, and
+holding our common benefactor, Mr. Stewart, in the greatest love and
+veneration.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="07"></a>Chapter VII</h2>
+
+<h3>Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>As we two children became slowly transformed into youths, the Valley with
+no less steadiness developed in activity, population, and wealth. Good
+roads were built; new settlements sprang up; the sense of being in the
+hollow of the hand of savagery wore off. Primitive conditions lapsed,
+disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven
+faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh
+outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began
+to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the
+common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the
+Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a
+pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore
+ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained
+hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that
+some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more
+attractions.</p>
+
+<p>There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was
+sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the
+gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London
+clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people
+all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the
+hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown
+how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be
+courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who
+fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses
+and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and
+close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed
+children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love
+for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others,
+the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his
+influence in London.</p>
+
+<p>They never liked him entirely; he in turn had so little regard for them
+and their pretensions that, when they came, he would suffer none of them
+to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom indeed they had often
+to meet as an associate and equal. Yet this bold, independent, really
+great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded
+water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to
+value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their
+painted spectacles--and thus to come to grief.</p>
+
+<p>Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr. Stewart all at once decided
+that he too would have a new house; and before snow flew the handsome,
+spacious "Cedars," as it was called, proudly fronted the Valley highway.
+Of course it was not, in size, a rival of the Hall at Johnstown, but it
+none the less was among the half-dozen best houses in the Mohawk Valley,
+and continued so to be until John Johnson burned it to the ground fifteen
+years later. It stood in front of our old log structure, now turned over
+to the slaves. It was of two stories, with lofty and spacious rooms, and
+from the road it presented a noble appearance, now that the old stockade
+had given place to a wall of low, regular masonry.</p>
+
+<p>With this new residence came a prodigious change in our way of life. Daisy
+was barely twelve years old, but we already thought of her as the lady of
+the house, for whom nothing was too good. The walls were plastered, and
+stiff paper from Antwerp with great sprawling arabesques, and figures of
+nymphs and fauns chasing one another up and down with ceaseless, fruitless
+persistency, was hung upon them, at least in the larger rooms. The floors
+were laid smoothly, each board lapping into the next by a then novel
+joiner's trick.</p>
+
+<p>On the floor in Daisy's room there was a carpet, too, a rare and
+remarkable thing in those days, and also from the Netherlands. In this
+same chamber, as well, were set up a bed of mahogany, cunningly carved and
+decorated, and a tall foreign cabinet of some rich dark wood, for linen,
+frocks, and the like. Here, likewise, were two gilt cages from Paris, in
+which a heart-breaking succession of native birds drooped and died, until
+four Dublin finches were at last imported for Daisy's special delight; and
+a case with glass doors and a lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her
+books; and, best of all, a piano--or was it a harpsichord?--standing on
+its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and
+bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling
+old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk,
+sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing
+to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that
+of the cherubim.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart and I lived in far less splendor. There was no foreign
+furniture to speak of in our portions of the house; we slept on beds the
+cords of which creaked through honest American maple posts; we walked on
+floors which offered gritty sand to the tread instead of carpet-stuffs.
+But there were two great stands laden with good books in our living-room;
+we had servants now within sound of a bell; we habitually wore garments
+befitting men of refinement and substance; we rode our own horses, and we
+could have given Daisy a chaise had the condition of our roads made it
+desirable.</p>
+
+<p>I say "we" because I had come to be a responsible factor in the control of
+the property. Mr. Stewart had never been poor; he was now close upon being
+wealthy. Upon me little by little had devolved the superintendence of
+affairs. I directed the burning over and clearing of land, which every
+year added scores of tillable acres to our credit; saw to the planting,
+care, and harvesting of crops; bought, bred, and sold the stock; watched
+prices, dickered with travelling traders, provisioned the house--in a
+word, grew to be the manager of all, and this when I was barely twenty.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart bore his years with great strength, physically, but he readily
+gave over to me, as fast as I could assume them, the details of out-door
+work. The taste for sitting indoors or in the garden, and reading, or
+talking with Daisy--the charm of simply living in a home made beautiful by
+a good and clever young girl--gained yearly upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with this sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second
+growth of old-world, medi&aelig;val notions--a sort of aristocratic aftermath.
+It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by
+ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the
+wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under
+the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to dwell
+upon this change, or rather upon its results, at this stage of the story.</p>
+
+<p>Social position was now a matter for consideration. With improved means of
+intercourse and traffic, each year found some family thrifty enough to
+thrust its head above the rude level of settlers' equality, and take on
+the airs of superiority. Twenty years before, it had been Colonel Johnson
+first, and nobody else second. Now the Baronet-General was still
+preeminently first; but every little community in the Valley chain had its
+two or three families holding themselves only a trifle lower than
+the Johnsons.</p>
+
+<p>Five or six nationalities were represented. Of the Germans, there were the
+Herkimers up above the Falls, the Lawyers at Schoharie, the Freys (who
+were commonly thus classed, though they came originally from Switzerland),
+and many others. Of important Dutch families, there were the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, the Mabies and Groats at Rotterdam, below us, and the
+Quackenbosses to the west of us, across the river. The Johnsons and
+Butlers were Irish. Over at Cherry Valley the Campbells and Clydes were
+Scotch--the former being, indeed, close blood relatives of the great
+Argyll house. Colonel Isaac Paris, a prominent merchant near Stone Arabia,
+came from Strasbourg, and accounted himself a Frenchman, though he spoke
+German better than French, and attended the Dutch Calvinistic church.
+There were also English families of quality. I mention them all to show
+how curious was the admixture of races in our Valley. One cannot
+understand the terrible trouble which came upon us later without some
+knowledge of these race divisions.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart held a place in social estimation rather apart from any of
+these cliques. He was both Scotch and Irish by ancestry; he was French by
+education; he had lived and served in the Netherlands and sundry German
+states. Thus he could be all things to all men--yet he would not. He
+indeed became more solitary as he grew older, for the reasons I have
+already mentioned. He once had been friendly with all his intelligent
+neighbors, no matter what their nationality. Gradually he came to be
+intimate with only the Johnsons and Butlers on the theory that they were
+alone well born. Hours upon hours he talked with them of the Warrens and
+the Ormund-Butlers in Ireland, from whom they claimed descent, and of the
+assurance of Dutch and German cobblers and tinkers, in setting up for
+gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>Sir William, in truth, had too much sense to often join or sympathize with
+these notions. But young Sir John and the Butlers, father and son, adopted
+them with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and
+German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these
+reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed
+lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for the friendship, of
+their critics.</p>
+
+<p>But let me defer these painful matters as long as possible. There are
+still the joys of youth to recall.</p>
+
+<p>I had grown now into a tall, strong young man, and I was in the way of
+meeting no one who did not treat me as an equal. It seems to me now that I
+was not particularly popular among my fellows, but I was conscious of no
+loneliness then. I had many things to occupy my mind, besides my regular
+tasks. Both natural history and botany interested me greatly, and I was
+privileged also to assist Sir William's investigations in the noble paths
+of astronomy. He had both large information and many fine thoughts on the
+subject, and used laughingly to say that if he were not too lazy he would
+write a book thereon. This was his way of saying that he had more labor to
+get through than any other man in the Colony. It was his idea that some
+time I should write the work instead; upon the Sacondaga hills, he said,
+we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our
+book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of
+planets. Alas! I also was too indolent--truly, not figuratively; the book
+was never written.</p>
+
+<p>In those days there was royal sport for rod and gun, but books also had a
+solid worth. We did not visit other houses much--Daisy and I--but held
+ourselves to a degree apart. The British people were, as a whole, nearer
+our station than the others, and had more ideas in common with us; but
+they were not of our blood, and we were not drawn toward many of them. As
+they looked down upon the Dutch, so the Dutch, in turn, were supercilious
+toward the Germans. I was Dutch, Daisy was German: but by a sort of tacit
+consent we identified ourselves with neither race, and this aided our
+isolation.</p>
+
+<p>There was also the question of religion. Mr. Stewart had been bred a
+Papist, and at the time of which I write, after the French war, Jesuit
+priests of that nation several times visited him to renew old European
+friendships. But he never went to mass, and never allowed them or anybody
+else to speak with him on the subject, no matter how deftly they
+approached it. This was prudent, from a worldly point of view, because the
+Valley, and for that matter the whole upper Colony, was bitterly opposed
+to Romish pretensions, and the first Scotch Highlanders who brought the
+mass into the Valley above Johnstown were openly denounced as idolaters.
+But it was certainly not caution which induced Mr. Stewart's backsliding.
+He was not the man to defer in that way to the prejudices of others. The
+truth was that he had no religious beliefs or faith whatever. But his
+scepticism was that of the French noble of the time, that of Voltaire and
+Mirabeau, rather than of the English plebeian and democrat, Thomas Paine.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally Daisy and I were not reared as theologians. We nominally
+belonged to the Calvinistic church, but not being obliged to attend its
+services, rarely did so. This tended to further separate us from our
+neighbors, who were mainly prodigious church-goers.</p>
+
+<p>But, more than all else, we lived by ourselves because, by constant
+contact with refined associations, we had grown to shrink from the
+coarseness which ruled outside. All about us marriages were made between
+mere children, each boy setting up for himself and taking a wife as soon
+as he had made a voyage to the Lakes and obtained a start in fur-trading.
+There was precious little sentiment or delicacy in these early courtships
+and matches, or in the state of society which they reflected--uncultured,
+sordid, rough, unsympathetic, with all its elementary instincts bluntly
+exposed and expressed. This was of course a subject not to be discussed by
+us. Up to the spring of 1772, when I was twenty-three years of age and
+Daisy was eighteen, no word of all the countless words which young men and
+women have from the dawn of language spoken on this great engrossing topic
+had ever been exchanged between us. In earlier years, when we were on the
+threshold of our teens, Mr. Stewart had more than once thought aloud in
+our hearing upon the time when we should inherit his home and fortune as a
+married couple. Nothing of that talk, though, had been heard for a
+long while.</p>
+
+<p>I had not entirely forgotten it; but I carried the idea along in the attic
+of my mind, as a thing not to be thrown away, yet of no present use or
+value or interest.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, indeed, I did recall it for the moment, and cast a diffident
+conjecture as to whether Daisy also remembered. Who shall say? I have been
+young and now am old, yet have I not learned the trick of reading a
+woman's mind. Very far indeed was I from it in those callow days.</p>
+
+<p>And now, after what I fear has been a tiresome enough prologue, my story
+awaits.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="08"></a>Chapter VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were
+entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness
+of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve
+upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times,
+there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief
+inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and
+her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she
+stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson
+Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight.
+I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my
+companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first
+visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this
+morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion
+behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly
+along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this
+full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued
+hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever
+under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean
+face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown
+sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together,
+from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of
+himself and of the beautiful girl behind him.</p>
+
+<p>And she <i>was</i> beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed
+with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance
+as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in
+its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's
+thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought
+that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so
+delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and
+thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the
+edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the
+hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought,
+as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was
+she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And
+I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my
+head a little, too.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been strange otherwise, for the day and the scene must have
+stirred the coldest pulse. We moved through a pale velvety panorama of
+green--woodland and roadside and river reflections and shadows, all of
+living yet young and softening green; the birds all about us filled the
+warm air with song; the tapping of the woodpeckers and the shrill chatter
+of squirrels came from every thicket; there was nothing which did not
+reflect our joyous, buoyant delight that spring had come again. And I rode
+by Daisy's side, and thought more of her, I'm bound, than I did of the
+flood-dismantled dike on the river-bend at home which I had left
+unrestored for the day.</p>
+
+<p>Over the heads of the negroes, who, spying us, came headlong to take our
+horses, we saw Sir William standing in the garden with an unknown lady.
+The baronet himself, walking a little heavily with his cane, approached us
+with hearty salutations, helped Daisy to unmount, and presented us to this
+stranger--Lady Berenicia Cross.</p>
+
+<p>I am not so sure that people can fall in love at first sight. But never
+doubt their ability to dislike from the beginning! I know that I felt
+indignantly intolerant of this woman even before, hat in hand, I had
+finished my bow to her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it might well have been that I was over-harsh in my judgment. She had
+been a pretty woman in her time, and still might be thought well-favored.
+At least <i>she</i> must have thought so, for she wore more paint and ribbons,
+and fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since.
+Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in
+outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids
+and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet
+so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that
+it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous
+black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an
+unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin.</p>
+
+<p>I may say that I was a wholesome-enough looking young fellow, very tall
+and broad-shouldered, with a long, dark face, which was ugly in childhood,
+but had grown now into something like comeliness. I am not parading
+special innocence either, but no woman had ever looked into my eyes with
+so bold, I might say impudent, an expression as this fine lady put on to
+greet me. And she was old enough to be my mother, almost, into
+the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>But even more than her free glances, which, after all, meant no harm, but
+only reflected London manners, her dress grated upon me. We were not
+unaccustomed to good raiment in the Valley. Johnson Hall, which reared its
+broad bulk through the trees on the knoll above us, had many a time
+sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us.
+But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place--like her
+feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains
+and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet,
+whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and
+Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and
+knowing our position, were also genuine parts of the scene. The English
+lady was pinchbeck by contrast with all about her.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you give the ladies an arm, Douw?" said Sir William. "We were
+walking to see the lilacs I planted a year ago. We old fellows, with so
+much to say to each other, will lead the way."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing occurred to me to say to the new acquaintance, who further annoyed
+me by clinging to my arm with a zeal unpleasantly different from Daisy's
+soft touch on the other side. I walked silent, and more or less sulky,
+between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks
+so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you
+content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet!
+And you never weary of it--never sigh when it is time to return to it from
+New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Never to New York! nor even to Albany! <i>Une vraie belle sauvage!</i> How you
+amaze me, poor child!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily. "My father
+and brother are so good to me--just like a true father and brother--that
+if I but hinted a wish to visit the moon, they would at once set about to
+arrange the voyage. I do not always stay at home. Twice I have been on a
+visit to Mr. Campbell, at Cherry Valley, over the hills yonder. And then
+once we made a grand excursion up the river, way to Fort Herkimer, and
+beyond to the place where my poor parents lost their lives."</p>
+
+<p>As we stood regarding the lilac bushes, planted in a circle on the slope,
+and I was congratulating myself that my elbows were free again, two
+gentlemen approached us from the direction of the Hall.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady
+Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There,
+that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we
+came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his
+rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke
+pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake
+country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until his return, at
+Johnson Hall.</p>
+
+<p>His companion was Walter Butler, and of him I ought to speak more closely,
+since long generations after this tale is forgotten his name will remain
+written, blood-red, in the Valley's chronicles. I walked away from the
+lilacs with him, I recall, discussing some unremembered subject. I always
+liked Walter: even now, despite everything, there continues a soft spot in
+my memory for him.</p>
+
+<p>He was about my own age, and, oh! such a handsome youth, with features cut
+as in a cameo, and pale-brown smooth skin, and large deep eyes, that look
+upon me still sometimes in dreams with ineffable melancholy. He was
+somewhat beneath my stature, but formed with perfect delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>In those old days of breeches and long hose, a man's leg went for a good
+deal. I have often thought that there must be a much closer connection
+between trousers and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man
+like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a
+Whig in the Revolutionary time--as if by natural prejudice against the
+would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and
+dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own
+country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still
+largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World
+ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the
+symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and
+silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction
+of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of
+republican trousers--a popular decree that henceforth all men should be
+equal as to legs?</p>
+
+<p>To return. Walter Butler was most perfectly built--a living picture of
+grace. He dressed, too, with remarkable taste, contriving always to appear
+the gentleman, yet not out of place in the wilderness. He wore his own
+black hair, carelessly tied or flowing, and with no thought of powder.</p>
+
+<p>We had always liked each other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn
+and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he
+was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he
+held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also
+be able to revere them for upholding a false-tongued king against the
+rights of his people. For my own part, I did not pin much faith upon his
+descent, being able to remember his grandfather, the old lieutenant, who
+seemed a peasant to the marrow of his bones.</p>
+
+<p>Nor could I see any special value in the fact of descent, even were it
+unquestioned. Walter, it seemed to me, would do much better to work at the
+law, to which he was bred, and make a name for himself by his own
+exertions. Alas, he did make a name!</p>
+
+<p>But though our paths would presently diverge we still were good friends,
+and as we walked he told me what he had heard that day of Lady Berenicia
+Cross. It was not much. She had been the daughter of a penniless,
+disreputable Irish earl, and had wedded early in life to escape the
+wretchedness of her paternal home. She had played quite a splendid part
+for a time in the vanities of London court-life, after her husband gained
+his wealth, but had latterly found her hold upon fashion's favor loosened.
+Why she had accompanied her serious spouse on this rough and wearisome
+journey was not clear. It might be that she came because he did not care
+for her company. It might be that he thought it wisest not to leave her in
+London to her own devices. In any case, here she indubitably was, and
+Walter was disposed to think her rather a fine woman <b>for her years</b>,
+which he took to be about twoscore.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>We strolled back again to the lilacs, where the two women were seated on a
+bench, with Mr. Cross and Colonel Claus--the brighter and better of Sir
+William's two sons-in-law--standing over them. Lady Berenicia beckoned to
+my companion with her fan.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray come and amuse us, Mr. Butler," she said, in her high, mincing
+tones. "Were it not for the fear of ministering to your vanity, I might
+confess we two have been languishing for an hour for your company.
+Mistress Daisy and I venerate these cavaliers of ours vastly--we hold
+their grave wisdom in high regard--but our frivolous palates need lighter
+things than East India Companies and political quarrels in Boston. I
+command you to discourse nonsense, Mr. Butler--pure, giddy nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>Walter bowed, and with a tinge of irony acknowledged the compliment, but
+all pleasantly enough. I glanced at our Daisy, expecting to discover my
+own distaste for this silly speech mirrored on her face. It vexed me a
+little to see that she seemed instead to be pleased with the London lady.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall it be, my lady?" smiled Walter; "what shall be the
+shuttlecock--the May races, the ball, the Klock scandal, the--"</p>
+
+<p>If it was rude, it is too late to be helped now. I interrupted the foolish
+talk by asking Colonel Claus what the news from Boston was, for the
+post-boy had brought papers to the Hall that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"The anniversary speech is reported. Some apothecary, named Warren, held
+forth this year, and his seems the boldest tongue yet. If his talk stinks
+not of treason in every line, why then I have no smelling sense. They are
+talking of it in the library now; but I am no statesman, and it suits me
+better out here in the sun."</p>
+
+<p>"But," I replied, "I have heard of this Dr. Warren, and he is not reputed
+to be a rash or thoughtless speaker."</p>
+
+<p>Young Butler burst into the conversation with eager bitterness:</p>
+
+<p>"Thoughtless! Rash! No--the dogs know better! There'll be no word that can
+be laid hold upon--all circumspect outside, with hell itself underneath.
+Do we not know the canters? Oh, but I'd smash through letter and seal of
+the law alike to get at them, were I in power! There'll be no peace till
+some strong hand does do it."</p>
+
+<p>Walter's deep eyes flashed and glowed as he spoke, and his face was
+shadowed with grave intensity of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence--broken by the thin voice of the London lady:
+"<i>Bravo</i>! admirable! Always be in a rage, Mr. Butler, it suits you so
+much.--Isn't he handsome, Daisy, with his feathers all on end?"</p>
+
+<p>While our girl, unused to such bold talk, looked blushingly at the young
+grass, Mr. Cross spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless you gentry of New York have your own good reasons for disliking
+Boston men, as I find you do. But why rasp your nerves and spoil your
+digestion by so fuming over their politics? I am an Englishman: if I can
+keep calm on the subject, you who are only collaterally aggrieved, as it
+were, should surely be able to do so. My word for it, young men, life
+brings vexations enough to one's very door, without setting out in
+quest of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, Mr. Cross," languidly sneered my lady, "what is there in the
+heavens or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, which could
+stir your blood by one added beat an hour, save indigo and spices?"</p>
+
+<p>There was so distinct a menace of domestic discord in this iced query that
+Butler hastened to take up the talk:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, <i>you</i> can keep cool! There are thousands of miles of water
+between you English and the nest where this treason is hatched. It's close
+to us. Do you think you can fence in a sentiment as you can cattle? No: it
+will spread. Soon what is shouted in Boston will be spoken in Albany,
+whispered in Philadelphia, winked and nodded in Williamsburg, thought in
+Charleston. And how will it be here, with us? Let me tell you, Mr. Cross,
+we are really in an alien country here. The high Germans above us, like
+that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for
+the King? And these damned sour-faced Dutch traders below, have they
+forgotten that this province was their grandfathers'? The moment it
+becomes clear to their niggard souls that there's no money to be lost by
+treason, will they not delight to help on any trouble the Yankees contrive
+to make for England? I tell you, sir, if you knew these Dutch as I know
+them--their silent treachery, their jealousy of us, their greed--"</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to have gone far enough. "Come, you forget that I am a
+Dutchman," I said, putting my hand on Butler's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Quivering with the excitement into which he had worked himself, he shook
+off my touch, and took a backward step, eying me angrily. I returned his
+gaze, and I dare say it was about as wrathful as his own.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia made a diversion. "It grows cool," she said. "Come inside
+with me, Mistress Daisy, and I will show you all my chests and boxes. Mr.
+Cross made a great to-do about bringing them, but--"</p>
+
+<p>As the ladies rose, Walter came to me with outstretched hand. "I was at
+fault, Douw," said he, frankly. "Don't think more about it."</p>
+
+<p>I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his
+words.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with
+disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="09"></a>Chapter IX</h2>
+
+<h3>I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>In the library room of the Hall, across from the dining-chamber, and at
+the foot of the great staircase, on the bannister of which you may still
+see the marks of Joseph Brant's hatchet, we men had a long talk in the
+afternoon. I recall but indifferently the lesser topics of conversation.
+There was, of course, some political debate, in which Sir William and I
+were alone on the side of the Colonist feeling, and Mr. Stewart, the two
+Butlers, and Sir John Johnson were all for choking discontent with the
+rope. Nothing very much to the point was said, on our part at least; for
+the growing discord pained Sir William too deeply to allow him pleasure in
+its discussion, and I shrank from appearing to oppose Mr. Stewart, hateful
+as his notions seemed.</p>
+
+<p>Young Sir John stood by the window, I remember, sulkily drumming on the
+diapered panes, and purposely making his interjections as disagreeable to
+me as he could; at least, I thought so. So, apparently, did his father
+think, for several times I caught the wise old baronet glancing at his son
+in reproof, with a look in his grave gray eyes as of dawning doubt about
+the future of his heir.</p>
+
+<p>Young Johnson was now a man of thirty, blond, aquiline-faced, with cold
+blue eyes and thin, tight lips, which pouted more readily than they
+smiled. His hair was the pale color of bleached hay, a legacy from his low
+born German mother, and his complexion was growing evenly florid from too
+much Madeira wine. We were not friends, and we both knew it.</p>
+
+<p>There was other talk--about the recent creation of our part into a county
+by itself to be named after the Governor; about the behavior of the French
+traders at Oswego and Detroit, and a report from Europe in the latest
+gazettes that the "Young" Pretender, now a broken old rake, was at last to
+be married. This last was a subject upon which Mr. Stewart spoke most
+entertainingly, but with more willingness to let it be known that he had a
+kinsman's interest in the matter than he would formerly have shown. He was
+getting old, in fact, and an almost childish pride in his equivocal
+ancestry was growing upon him. Still his talk and reminiscences were
+extremely interesting.</p>
+
+<p>They fade in my recollection, however, before the fact that it was at this
+little gathering, this afternoon, that my career was settled for me. There
+had been some talk about me while I remained alone outside to confer with
+Sir William's head farmer, and Mr. Cross had agreed with Mr. Stewart and
+Sir William that I was to accompany him on his trip to the far Western
+region the following week. My patron had explained that I needed some
+added knowledge of the world and its affairs, yet was of too serious a
+turn to gather this in the guise of amusement, as Mr. John Butler advised
+I should, by being sent on a holiday to New York. Mr. Cross had been good
+enough to say that he liked what he had seen of me, and should be glad of
+my company.</p>
+
+<p>Of all this I knew nothing when I entered the library. The air was heavy
+with tobacco-smoke, and the table bore more bottles and glasses
+than books.</p>
+
+<p>"Find a chair, Douw," said Sir William. "I have sent for my man, Enoch
+Wade, who is to go westward with Mr, Cross next week. If he's drunk enough
+there'll be some sport."</p>
+
+<p>There entered the room a middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame,
+with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He
+bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian in his clothes
+of deer-hide.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Enoch Wade, gentlemen," said the baronet, indicating the
+new-comer with a wave of his glass, and stretching out his legs to enjoy
+the scene the more. "He is my land-sailor. Between his last sale at
+Albany, and his first foot westward from here, he professes all the vices
+and draws never a sober breath. Yet when he is in the woods he is
+abstemious, amiable, wise, resourceful, virtuous as a statue--a paragon of
+trappers. You can see him for yourselves. Yet, I warn you, appearances are
+deceitful; he is always drunker than he looks. He was, I know, most
+sinfully tipsy last night."</p>
+
+<p>"It was in excellent good company, General," said the hunter, drawling his
+words and no whit abashed.</p>
+
+<p>"He has no manners to speak of," continued the baronet, evidently with
+much satisfaction to himself; "he can outlie a Frontenac half-breed, he is
+more greedy of gain than a Kinderhook Dutchman, he can drink all the
+Mohawks of both castles under the bench, and my niggers are veritable
+Josephs in comparison with him--wait a moment, Enoch!--this is while he is
+in contact with civilization. Yet once on the trail, so to speak, he is
+probity personified. I know this, since he has twice accompanied me
+to Detroit."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, in the woods, you know, some one of the party must remain sober,"
+said Enoch, readily, still stiffly erect, but with a faint grin twitching
+on the saturnine corners of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>This time Sir William laughed aloud, and pointed to a decanter and glass,
+from which the trapper helped himself with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Look you, rogue," said the host, "there is a young gentleman to be added
+to your party next week, and doubtless he will of needs have a nigger with
+him. See to it that the boat and provision arrangements are altered to
+meet this, and to-morrow be sober enough to advise him as to his outfit.
+For to-night, soak as deep as you like."</p>
+
+<p>Enoch poured out for himself a second tumbler of rum, but not showing the
+first signs of unsteadiness in gait or gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"This young gentleman"--he said, gravely smacking his lips--"about him; is
+he a temperate person, one of the sort who can turn a steadfast back upon
+the bottle?"</p>
+
+<p>A burst of Homeric laughter was Sir William's reply--laughter in which
+all were fain to join.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, General," said Enoch, as he turned to go; "don't mind my
+asking. One never can tell, you know, what kind of company he is like to
+pick up with here at the Hall."</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>My surprise and delight when I learned that I was the young gentleman in
+question, and that I was really to go to the Lakes and beyond, may be
+imagined. I seemed to walk on air, so great was my elation. You will not
+marvel now that I fail to recall very distinctly the general talk
+which followed.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation finally lagged, as the promptings of hunger, not less than
+the Ethiopian shouting and scolding from the kitchen below, warned us of
+approaching dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The drinking moderated somewhat, and the pipes were one by one laid aside,
+in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were
+persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against
+tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of
+hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence
+of interest in the fitful talk.</p>
+
+<p>There came a sharp double knock on the door, which a second later was
+pushed partly open. Some of us rose, pulling our ruffles into place, and
+ready to start at once, for there were famous appetites in the wild Valley
+of those days. But the voice from behind the door was not a servant's, nor
+did it convey the intelligence we all awaited. It was, instead, the
+sharp, surface voice of Lady Berenicia, and it said:</p>
+
+<p>"We are weary of waiting for you in civilized quarters of the Hall. May we
+come in here, or are you too much ashamed of your vices to court
+inspection?"</p>
+
+<p>Walter Butler hastened to open the door, bowing low as he did so, and
+delivering himself of some gallant nonsense or other.</p>
+
+<p>The London lady entered the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of
+carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer.</p>
+
+<p>If her morning attire had seemed over-splendid, what shall I say of her
+appearance now? I looked in amazement upon her imposing tower of whitened
+hair, upon the great fluffs of lace, the brocaded stomacher and train, the
+shining satin petticoat front, the dazzling, creamy surfaces of throat and
+shoulders and forearms, all rather freely set forth.</p>
+
+<p>If the effect was bewildering, it was not unpleasant. The smoke-laden air
+of the dim old room seemed suddenly clarified, made radiant. A movement of
+chairs and of their occupants ran through the chamber, like a murmur of
+applause, as we rose to greet the resplendent apparition. But there came a
+veritable outburst of admiration when my lady's companion appeared
+in view.</p>
+
+<p>It was our Daisy, robed like a princess, who dawned upon our vision. She
+was blushing as much from embarrassment as from novel pride, yet managed
+to keep her pretty head up, smiling at us all, and to bear herself
+with grace.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia, from the wealth of finery in those bulky chests which
+honest Mr. Cross in vain had protested against bringing over the ocean and
+up to this savage outpost, had tricked out the girl in wondrous fashion.
+Her gown was not satin, like the other, but of a soft, lustreless stuff,
+whose delicate lavender folds fell into the sweetest of violet shadows. I
+was glad to see that her neck and arms were properly covered. The laces on
+the sleeves were tawny with age; the ribbon by which the little white
+shawl was decorously gathered at the bosom carried the faint suggestion of
+yellow to a distinct tone, repeated and deepened above by the color of the
+maiden's hair. This hair, too, was a marvel of the dresser's art--reared
+straight and tight from the forehead over a high-arched roll, and losing
+strictness of form behind in ingenious wavy curls, which seemed the very
+triumph of artlessness; it was less wholly powdered than Lady Berenicia's,
+so that the warm gold shone through the white dust in soft gradations of
+half tints; at the side, well up, was a single salmon tea-rose, that
+served to make everything else more beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Picture to yourself this delicious figure--this face which had seemed
+lovely before, and now, with deft cosmetics, and a solitary tiny patch,
+and the glow of exquisite enjoyment in the sweet hazel eyes, was nothing
+less than a Greuze's dream--picture our Daisy to yourself, I say, and you
+may guess in part how flattering was her reception, how high and fast rose
+the gallant congratulations that the Valley boasted such a beauteous
+daughter. Sir William himself gave her his arm, jovially protesting that
+this was not the Mohawk country, but France--not Johnson Hall, but
+Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>I came on at the tail of the dinner procession, not quite easy in my mind
+about all this.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="10"></a>Chapter X</h2>
+
+<h3>The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>There were, in all, ten of us at the table. Sir William beamed upon us
+from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the
+London dame on the other--in the place of distinction to which she was, I
+suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and
+Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come
+back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner.</p>
+
+<p>I could not see Daisy from where I sat, but all through the meal I watched
+the effect she was producing upon those opposite us. To do her justice,
+Lady Berenicia seemed to have no alloy of jealousy in the delight with
+which she regarded the result of her handiwork. Mr. Stewart could not keep
+his fond eyes off the girl; they fairly glowed with satisfied pride and
+affection. Both Sir John and Walter gave more attention to our beautiful
+maiden than they did to their plates, and both faces told an open tale of
+admiration, each after its kind.</p>
+
+<p>There was plenty of gay talk at the head of the table--merry chatter of
+which I recall nothing, save vaguely that it was about the triumph of art
+over unadorned nature at which we were assisting.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cross and I bore our small part in the celebration in silence for a
+time. Then we fell to talking quietly of the journey upon which we were so
+soon to embark; but our minds were not on the subject, and after a little
+its discussion lapsed. All at once he said, as if speaking the thoughts
+which tied my tongue:</p>
+
+<p>"To my mind the young woman is not improved by these furbelows and
+fal-lals my wife has put upon her. What wit or reason is there in a
+homely, sensible little maiden like this--a pretty flower growing, as God
+designed it to, in modest sweetness on its own soil--being garnished out
+in the stale foppery of the last London season?"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is only a masquerade, sir," I pleaded--as much to my own judgment
+as to his--"and it does make her very beautiful, does it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"She <i>was</i> beautiful before," he replied, in the same low tones. "Can a
+few trumpery laces and ribbons, a foolish patch, a little powder, affect
+what is real about a woman, think you? And do any but empty heads value
+unreal things?"</p>
+
+<p>"True enough, sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry.
+Women are that way. See how pleased she is--how full of smiles and
+happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor
+Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to begrudge her
+this innocent pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Innocent--yes, no doubt; but, do you know, she will never be the same
+girl again. She will never feel quite the same pretty little Mistress
+Daisy, in her woollen gown and her puttical kerchief. She will never get
+the taste of this triumph out of her mouth. You do not know women, young
+man, as I do. I have studied the sex in a very celebrated and costly
+school. Mark my words, ideas have been put into her head that will never
+come out."</p>
+
+<p>I tried to believe that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other
+women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself--so prudent
+and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem
+all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books--never
+anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr.
+Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn her
+dear head."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, somewhat compassionately I thought, and made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Was I so firm in my faith, after all? The doubt rose in my thoughts, and
+would not down, as the gallant talk flowed and bubbled around me. <i>Would</i>
+this Daisy be quite the same next day, or next week, singing to us at the
+old harpsichord in the twilight, with the glare of the blaze on the hearth
+making red gold of that hair, plaited once more in simple braids? I tried
+with all my might to call up this sweet familiar figure before my mental
+vision: it would not freely come.</p>
+
+<p>She was laughing now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing
+quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom
+employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting
+things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other than
+Daisy laughing.</p>
+
+<p>I was still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the
+ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to
+ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand,
+to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see
+the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with
+Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent
+of powder left on the air annoyed me, as something stifling those thoughts
+of the good little adopted sister, whom I had brought to the Hall and lost
+there, which I would fain dwell upon.</p>
+
+<p>We sat over our Madeira and pipes longer than usual. Candles were brought
+in by Sir William's young body-servant Pontiac, for there was a full moon,
+and we might thus prolong our stay after nightfall. The talk was chiefly
+about our coming trip--a very serious undertaking. Sir William and Mr.
+Butler had adventures of their own early trading days to recall, and they
+gave us great stores of advice drawn from experience, and ranging from
+choice of shirts and spirits to needful diplomacy with the Algonquins
+and Sakis.</p>
+
+<p>Then the company drank the health of Mr. Cross, and were good enough to
+couple mine with it. A comical little yellow boy danced for us before the
+hearth--an admiring wall of black faces and rolling white eyeballs filling
+up the open door meanwhile. Walter Butler sang a pretty song--everybody,
+negroes and all, swelling the chorus. Rum was brought in, and mixed in hot
+glasses, with spice, molasses, and scalding water from the kettle on the
+crane. So evening deepened to night; but I never for a moment, not even
+when they drank my health, shook off the sense of unrest born of Daisy's
+masquerade.</p>
+
+<p>It was Molly Brant herself, nobly erect and handsome in her dark, sinister
+way, who came to us with word that the moon was up over the pine-ridged
+hills, and that Mistress Daisy was attired for the homeward ride,
+and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the pictures in Memory's portfolio, none is more distinct than this
+of the departure that evening from the Hall. A dozen negroes were about
+the steps, two or three mounted ready to escort us home, others bearing
+horn lanterns which the moonlight darkened into inutility, still others
+pulling the restive horses about on the gravel. Mr. Stewart swung himself
+into the saddle, and Daisy stepped out to mount behind him. She wore her
+own garments once more, but there was just a trace of powder on the hair
+under the hood, and the patch was still on her chin. I moved forward to
+lift her to the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she
+did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John
+and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight,
+flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held
+Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of
+even this.</p>
+
+<p>So we rode away, pursued down the path to the lilacs by shouts of
+"Good-night! Safe home!" Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I
+saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his
+hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing
+above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on
+either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark
+front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky.</p>
+
+<p>As I recall the scene, it seems to me that then and there I said farewell,
+not alone to pleasant friends, but to the Daisy of my childhood and youth.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The Hall slaves rode well ahead in the narrow road; we could just hear
+faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears
+the murmur of an &AElig;olian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous:
+the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping
+helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly
+safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness,
+not danger.</p>
+
+<p>I did indeed rest my free hand on the pistol in my holster as I jogged
+along close behind the old gray horse and his double burden; but the act
+was more an unconscious reflection of my saturnine mood, I fear, than a
+recognition of need. There was every reason why I should dwell with
+delight upon the prospect opening before me--upon the idea of the great
+journey so close at hand; but I scarcely thought of it at all, and I was
+not happy. The moon threw a jaundiced light over my mind, and in its
+discolored glare I saw things wrongly, and with gratuitous pain to myself.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, my brooding was the creature of the last few hours, born of a
+childish pique. But as I rode gloomily silent behind my companions, it
+seemed as if I had long suffered a growing separation from them. "Three is
+a clumsy number," I said to myself, "in family affection not less than in
+love; there was never any triad of friends since the world began, no
+matter how fond their ties, in which two did not build a little interior
+court of thoughts and sympathies from which the third was shut out. These
+two people whom I hold dearer than everything else on earth--this good
+gentleman to whom I owe all, this sweet girl who has grown up from
+babyhood in my heart--would scout the idea that there was any line of
+division running through our household. They do not see it--cannot see it.
+Yet they have a whole world of ideas and sentiments in common, a whole
+world of communion, which I may never enter."</p>
+
+<p>This was what, in sulky, inchoate fashion, I said to myself, under the
+spur of the jealous spirits which sometimes get rein over the thoughts of
+the best of us. And it was all because the London woman had tricked out
+our Daisy, for but a little hour or two, in the presentment of a
+court lady!</p>
+
+<p>Conversation went briskly forward, meanwhile, from the stout back of the
+gray horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you note, papa, how white and soft her hands were?" said Daisy.
+"Mine were so red beside them! It is working in the garden, I believe,
+although Mary Johnson always wore gloves when she was out among the
+flowers and vegetables, and her hands were red, too. And Lady Berenicia
+was so surprised to learn that I had never read any of the romances which
+they write now in England! She says ladies in London, and in the provinces
+too, do not deem themselves fit to converse unless they keep abreast of
+all these. She has some of them in her chests, and there are others in the
+Hall, she has found, and I am to read them, and welcome."</p>
+
+<p>"You are old enough now, my girl," replied Mr. Stewart. "They seem to me
+to be trivial enough things, but no doubt they have their use. I would not
+have you seem as inferior to other ladies in knowledge of the matters they
+talk of, as they are inferior to you in honest information."</p>
+
+<p>"How interested she was when I told her of the serious books I read, and
+of my daily occupations--moulding the candles, brewing the beer, carding
+wool, making butter, and then caring for the garden! She had never seen
+celery in trenches, she said, and would not know beans from gourds if she
+saw them growing. It seems that in England ladies have nothing to do with
+their gardens--when, indeed, they have any at all--save to pluck a rose
+now and then, or give tea to their gentlemen under the shrubbery when it
+is fine. And I told her of our quilting and spinning bees, and the
+coasting on clear winter evenings, and of watching the blacks on Pinkster
+night, and the picnics in the woods, and she vowed London had no
+pleasures like them. She was jesting though, I think. Oh, shall we ever go
+to London, papa?"</p>
+
+<p>"By all means, let us go," chuckled Mr. Stewart. "You would see something
+there she never saw--my grizzled old head upon Temple Bar. Shall we be off
+to-morrow? My neck tingles with anticipation."</p>
+
+<p>"Old tease!" laughed Daisy, patting his shoulder. "You know there have
+been no heads put there since long before I was born. Never flatter
+yourself that they would begin again now with yours. They've forgotten
+there was ever such a body as you."</p>
+
+<p>"Faith! the world doesn't go round so fast as you young people think. Only
+to-day I read in the London mail that two months ago one of the polls that
+had been there since '46 fell down; but if it was Fletcher's or Townley's
+no one can tell--like enough not even they themselves by this time. So
+there's a vacant spike now for mine. No, child--I doubt these old bones
+will ever get across the sea again. But who knows?--it may be your fortune
+to go some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Berenicia says I must come to the Hall often, papa, while she is
+there," said the girl, returning to the subject which bewitched her; "and
+you must fetch me, of course. She admires you greatly; she says gentlemen
+in London have quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your
+bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep
+each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and
+Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them--the two
+solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness."</p>
+
+<p>The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection
+of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less
+malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on
+my ears.</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be
+disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and
+glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all
+the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to
+your liking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go."</p>
+
+<p>It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody
+would specially miss me, but I held it back.</p>
+
+<p>"He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured
+sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has
+when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at
+dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he
+would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I
+looked well in the--the citified costume."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for."</p>
+
+<p>She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and
+went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes:</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable
+Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the
+lilacs, this very morning--and in the presence of ladies, too."</p>
+
+<p>"No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was
+before a lady too--or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own
+eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and
+run at him with both fists out--and all on your account, too, my lady;
+and then--"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am reminded!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped
+her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come
+out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up
+at the Hall--Lady Berenicia's husband--is a cousin to the old Major who
+brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?"
+
+"Is <i>that</i> your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago."</p>
+
+<p>"How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then
+a General, and died last winter, poor man."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all
+walk that way."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year,
+papa. And now tell me, did not this Major--<i>my</i> Major, though I do not
+remember him--take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir
+William, while he was on this side of the water?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he
+knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a
+tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched
+beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked
+by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the
+property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water
+running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock
+wall, farther down, of which I have already written.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you
+ask, girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i> for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits
+the English house and lands. The other son, Philip--the boy you fought
+with, Douw--is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it.
+He sailed with the others--he is in New York--he is coming here to live!"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest
+comment I could screw my tongue to.</p>
+
+<p>Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we
+quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="11"></a>Chapter XI</h2>
+
+<h3>As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the
+searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and
+slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was
+high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my
+aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum
+between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be
+vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its
+inmates, now that the hour had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day,
+dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but
+without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the
+adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins
+while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home--my true home--my heart
+quivered and sank at thought of departure.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than
+Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all
+things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is
+different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed
+after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod.
+You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be
+at a good school with him."</p>
+
+<p>He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred
+indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental
+order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my
+feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have
+preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet
+coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet
+felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I
+listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts
+vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside.</p>
+
+<p>Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with
+advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key.
+Their shouts and wailing--they could not have made more ado if he had just
+been sold to Jamaica--came through the open door. It was not of this din I
+thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were
+piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond.</p>
+
+<p>I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to
+gather a nosegay for me.</p>
+
+<p>Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending
+in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden
+filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing
+more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit,
+the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts
+of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad
+thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much--this dear
+girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the
+tears <i>were</i> coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned
+my head away.</p>
+
+<p>There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices.
+Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman
+had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to
+the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption.</p>
+
+<p>Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the
+wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden,
+presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with
+her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of her neck she
+was blushing.</p>
+
+<p>There was enough for her to blush at. The stranger was bowing very low,
+putting one hand up to his breast. With the other he had taken her fingers
+and raised them formally to his lips. This was not a custom in our parts.
+Sir William did it now and then on state occasions, but young men,
+particularly strangers, did not.</p>
+
+<p>As we advanced, this gallant morning-caller drew himself up and turned
+toward us. You may be sure I looked him over attentively.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen few handsomer young men. In a way, so far as light hair, blue
+eyes, ruddy and regular face went, he was not unlike Sir John. But he was
+much taller, and his neck and shoulders were squared proudly--a trick
+Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a
+fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the
+shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl
+buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run
+into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in
+one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in
+its ruffles, he stretched out now toward Mr. Stewart with a free,
+pleasant gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"With my father's oldest friend," he said, "I must not wait for ceremony.
+I am Philip Cross, from England, and I hope you will be my friend, sir,
+now that my father is gone."</p>
+
+<p>That this speech found instant favor need not be doubted. Mr. Stewart
+shook him again and again by the hand, and warmly bade him welcome to the
+Valley and the Cedars a dozen times in as many breaths. Young Cross
+managed to explain between these cordial ejaculations, that he had
+journeyed up from New York with the youthful Stephen Watts--to whose
+sister Sir John was already betrothed; that they had reached Guy Park the
+previous evening; that Watts was too wearied this morning to think of
+stirring out, but that hardly illness itself could have prevented him,
+Cross, from promptly paying his respects to his father's ancient comrade.</p>
+
+<p>The young man spoke easily and fluently, looking Mr. Stewart frankly in
+the eye, with smiling sincerity in glance and tone. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"How changed everything is roundabout!--all save you, who look scarcely
+older or less strong. When I was here as a boy it was winter, cold and
+bleak. There was a stockade surrounded by wilderness then, I remember, and
+a log-house hardly bigger than the fireplace inside it. Where we stand now
+the ground was covered with brush and chips, half hidden by snow.
+Now--<i>presto!</i> there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden
+neatly made, and"--turning with a bow to Daisy--"a fair mistress for them
+all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as
+a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would have
+held her entire."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw the cart laden outside," put in Sir John, "and fancied perhaps we
+should miss you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no," said Mr. Stewart; "I had forgotten for the moment that this was
+a house of mourning. Douw is starting to the Lake country this very day.
+Mr. Cross, you must remember my boy, my Douw?"</p>
+
+<p>The young Englishman turned toward me, as I was indicated by Mr. Stewart's
+gesture. He looked me over briefly, with a half-smile about his eyes,
+nodded to me, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You were the Dutch boy with the apron, weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>I assented by a sign of the head, as slight as I could politely make it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I recall you quite distinctly. I used to make my brother Digby
+laugh by telling about your aprons. He made quite a good picture of you in
+one of them, drawn from my descriptions. We had a fort of snow, too, did
+we not? and I beat you, or you me, I forget which. I got snow down the
+back of my neck, I know, and shivered all the way to the fort."</p>
+
+<p>He turned lightly at this to Mr. Stewart, and began conversation again. I
+went over to where Daisy stood, by the edge of the flower-bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go now, dear sister," I said. The words were choking me.</p>
+
+<p>We walked slowly to the house, she and I. When I had said good-by to my
+aunt, and gathered together my hat, coats, and the like, I stood
+speechless, looking at Daisy. The moment was here, and I had no word for
+it which did not seem a mockery.</p>
+
+<p>She raised herself on tiptoe to be kissed. "Good-by, big brother," she
+said, softly. "Come back to us well and strong, and altogether homesick,
+won't you? It will not be like home, without you, to either of us."</p>
+
+<p>And so the farewells were all made, and I stood in the road prepared to
+mount. Tulp was already on the cart, along with another negro who was to
+bring back my horse and the vehicle after we had embarked in the boats.
+There was nothing more to say--time pressed--yet I lingered dumb and
+irresolute. At the moment I seemed to be exchanging everything for
+nothing--committing domestic suicide. I looked at them both, the girl and
+the old man, with the gloomy thought that I might never lay eyes on them
+again. I dare say I wore my grief upon my face, for Mr. Stewart tried
+cheerily to hearten me with, "Courage, lad! We shall all be waiting for
+you, rejoiced to welcome you back safe and sound."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy came to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned
+upon my lapel some of the pale blue blossoms she had gathered.</p>
+
+<p>"There's 'rosemary for remembrance,'" she murmured. "Poor Ophelia could
+scarce have been sadder than we feel, Douw, at your going."</p>
+
+<p>"And may I be decorated too--for remembrance' sake?" asked handsome young
+Philip Cross, gayly.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, sir," the maiden answered, with a smile of sweet sorrowfulness.
+"You have a rightful part in the old memories--in a sense, perhaps, the
+greatest part of all."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, you two were friends before ever you came to us, dear," said Mr.
+Stewart.</p>
+
+<p>So as I rode away, with smarting eyes and a heart weighing like lead, my
+last picture of the good old home was of Daisy fastening flowers on the
+young Englishman's breast, just as she had put these of mine in
+their place.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="12"></a>Chapter XII</h2>
+
+<h3>Old-Time Politics Pondered Under the Forest Starlight.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Among the numerous books which at one time of another I had resolved to
+write, and which the evening twilight of my life finds still unwritten,
+was one on Fur-trading. This volume, indeed, came somewhat nearer to a
+state of actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have
+yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in
+earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical
+Delusions--which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary--and
+the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point
+of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation
+now in deciding not to put into this narrative a great deal about my
+experiences in, and information concerning, the almost trackless West of
+my youth. My diary of this first and momentous journey with Mr. Jonathan
+Cross, yellow with age and stained by damp and mildew, lies here before
+me; along with it are many odd and curious incidents and reflections
+jotted down, mirroring that strange, rude, perilous past which seems so
+far away to the generation now directing a safe and almost eventless
+commerce to the Pacific and the Gulf. But I will draw from my stock only
+the barest outlines, sufficient to keep in continuity the movement of
+my story.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached Caughnawaga Mr. Cross and his party were waiting for us at
+the trading store of my godfather, good old Douw Fonda. I was relieved to
+learn that I had not delayed them; for it was still undecided, I found,
+whether we should all take to the river here, or send the boats forward
+with the men, and ourselves proceed to the Great Carrying Place at Fort
+Stanwix by the road. Although it was so early in the season, the Mohawk
+ran very low between its banks. Major Jelles Fonda, the eldest son of my
+godfather, and by this time the true head of the business, had only
+returned from the Lakes, and it was by his advice that we settled upon
+riding and carting as far as we could, and leaving the lightened boats to
+follow. So we set out in the saddle, my friend and I, stopping one night
+with crazy old John Abeel--he who is still remembered as the father of the
+Seneca half-breed chieftain Corn-Planter--and the next night with
+Honnikol Herkimer.</p>
+
+<p>This man, I recall, greatly impressed Mr. Cross. We were now in an
+exclusively German section of the Valley, where no Dutch and very little
+English was to be heard. Herkimer himself conversed with us in a dialect
+that must often have puzzled my English friend, though he gravely forbore
+showing it. I had known Colonel Herkimer all my life; doubtless it was
+this familiarity with his person and speech which had prevented my
+recognizing his real merit, for I was not a little surprised when Mr.
+Cross said to me that night: "Our host is one of the strongest and most
+sagacious men I have ever encountered in the Colonies; he is worth a
+thousand of your Butlers or Sir Johns."</p>
+
+<p>It became clear in later years that my friend was right. I remember that I
+regarded the hospitable Colonel, at breakfast next morning, with a closer
+and more respectful attention than ever before, but it was not easy to
+discern any new elements of greatness in his talk.</p>
+
+<p>Herkimer was then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and
+sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no
+time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the
+Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side.
+One thing which he said, in his effort to make my friend understand the
+difference between his position and the more abstract and educated
+discontent of New England and Virginia, sticks in my memory.</p>
+
+<p>"We Germans," he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers
+remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and
+wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some
+scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector
+might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of
+their daughters, worked to death, frozen by the cold in their nakedness,
+dragged off into the armies to be sold to any prince who could pay for
+their blood and broken bones. The French who overran the Palatinate were
+bad enough; the native rulers were even more to be hated. The exiles of
+our race have not forgotten this; they have told it all to us, their
+children and grandchildren born here in this Valley. We have made a new
+home for ourselves over here, and we owe no one but God anything for it.
+If they try to make here another aristocracy over us, then we will die
+first before we will submit."</p>
+
+<p>The case for the Mohawk Valley's part in the great revolt has never been
+more truly stated, I think, than it was thus, by the rough, uneducated,
+little frontier trader, in his broken English, on that May morning years
+before the storm broke.</p>
+
+<p>We rode away westward in the full sunshine that morning, in high spirits.
+The sky was pure blue overhead; the birds carolled from every clump of
+foliage about us; the scenery, to which Mr. Cross paid much delighted
+attention, first grew nobly wild and impressive when we skirted the Little
+Falls--as grand and gloomy in its effect of towering jagged cliffs and
+foaming cataracts as one of Jacob Ruysdael's pictures--and then softened
+into a dream of beauty as it spread out before us the smiling, embowered
+expanses of the German Flatts. Time and time again my companion and I
+reined up our horses to contemplate the charms of this lovely scene.
+
+We had forded the river near Fort Herkimer, where old Hon Yost Herkimer,
+the father of the Colonel, lived, and were now once more on the north
+side. From an open knoll I pointed out to my friend, by the apple and pear
+blossoms whitening the deserted orchards, the site of the Palatines'
+village where Daisy's father had been killed, fifteen years ago, in the
+midnight rout and massacre.</p>
+
+<p>"It was over those hills that the French stole in darkness. Back yonder,
+at the very ford we crossed, her poor mother was trampled under foot and
+drowned in the frightened throng. It was at the fort there, where we had
+the buttermilk and <i>Kuchen,</i> that your cousin, Major Cross, found the
+little girl. I wonder if he ever knew how deeply grateful to him we
+were--and are."</p>
+
+<p>This brought once more to my mind--where indeed it had often enough before
+intruded itself--the recollection of young Philip's arrival at the Cedars.
+For some reason I had disliked to speak of it before, but now I told Mr.
+Cross of it as we walked our horses along over the rough, muddy road,
+under the arching roof of thicket.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be bound Mr. Stewart welcomed him with open arms," said my
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, indeed! No son could have asked a fonder greeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the lad is very like his mother; that of itself would suffice to
+warm the old gentleman's heart. You knew he was a suitor for her hand long
+before Tony Cross ever saw her?"</p>
+
+<p>I didn't know this, but I nodded silently.</p>
+
+<p>"Curious creature she was," mused he, as if to himself. "Selfish,
+suspicious, swift to offence, jealous of everything and everybody about
+her--yet with moods when she seemed to all she met the most amiable and
+delightful of women. She had her fine side, too. She would have given her
+life gladly for the success of the Jacobites, of that I'm sure. And
+proud!--no duchess could have carried her head higher."</p>
+
+<p>"You say her son is very like her?"</p>
+
+<p>"As like as two leaves on a twig. Perhaps he has something of his father's
+Irish openness of manner as well. His father belonged to the younger, what
+we call the Irish, branch of our family, you know, though it is as English
+in the matter of blood as I am. We were only second cousins, in point of
+fact, and his grandfather was set up in Ireland by the bounty of mine. Yet
+Master Philip condescends to me, patronizes me, as if the case had been
+reversed."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cross did not speak as if he at all resented this, but in a calm,
+analytical manner, and with a wholly impersonal interest. I have never
+known another man who was so totally without individual bias, and regarded
+all persons and things with so little reference to his own feelings. If he
+had either prejudices or crotchets on any point, I never discovered them.
+He was, I feel assured, a scrupulously honest and virtuous gentleman, yet
+he never seemed to hate people who were not so. He was careful not to let
+them get an advantage over him, but for the rest he studied them and
+observed their weaknesses and craft, with the same quiet interest he
+displayed toward worthier objects. A thoroughly equable nature was
+his--with little capacity for righteous indignation on the one side, and
+no small tendencies toward envy or peevishness on the other. There was not
+a wrinkle on his calm countenance, nor any power of angry flashing in his
+steadfast, wide-apart, gray eyes. But his tongue could cut deep
+on occasion.</p>
+
+<p>We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the
+Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that
+crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and
+the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along,
+partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had
+been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under
+a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the
+brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground.
+We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer
+wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and
+crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up
+the fires.</p>
+
+<p>We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well
+wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep
+the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard
+the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the
+moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises
+and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London
+companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very
+acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no
+degree nervous.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer
+had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we
+talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying
+on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting,
+wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle,
+under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank
+affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon
+this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with
+fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves
+we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly
+halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my
+friends and comrades.</p>
+
+<p>We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully,
+contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the
+air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank,
+uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer
+heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form,
+with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side?</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke about Philip's having some of his father's adopted Irish traits,"
+said Mr. Cross, after a longer interval of silence than usual. "One of
+them is the desire to have subordinates, dependents, about him. There is
+no Irishman so poor or lowly that he will not, if possible, encourage some
+still poorer, lowlier Irishman to hang to his skirts. It is a reflection
+of their old Gaelic tribal system, I suppose, which, between its chiefs
+above and its clansmen below, left no place for a free yeomanry. I note
+this same thing in the Valley, with the Johnsons and the Butlers. So far
+as Sir William is concerned, the quality I speak of has been of service to
+the Colony, for he has used his fondness and faculty for attracting
+retainers and domineering over subordinates to public advantage. But then
+he is an exceptional and note-worthy man--one among ten thousand. But his
+son Sir John, and his son-in-law Guy Johnson, and the Butlers, father and
+son, and now to them added our masterful young Master Philip--these own no
+such steadying balance-wheel of common-sense. They have no restraining
+notion of public interest. Their sole idea is to play the aristocrat, to
+surround themselves with menials, to make their neighbors concede to them
+submission and reverence. It was of them that Herkimer spoke, plainly
+enough, though he gave no names. Mark my words, they will come to grief
+with that man, if the question be ever put to the test."</p>
+
+<p>I had not seen enough of Englishmen to understand very clearly the
+differences between them and the Irish, and I said so. The conversation
+drifted upon race questions and distinctions, as they were presented by
+the curiously mixed population of New York province.</p>
+
+<p>My companion was of the impression that the distinctly British
+settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more
+powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his
+point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I
+cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this
+Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their wonderful
+patriotism and intelligence, and of the tremendous part they played in the
+Revolution, without smashing my pipe in wrath. Yet I am old enough now to
+see that all this is largely the fault of the New Yorkers themselves. We
+have given our time and attention to the making of money, and have left it
+to others to make the histories. If they write themselves down large, and
+us small, it is only what might have been expected. But at the time of
+which I am telling I was very young, and full of confidence in not only
+the existing superiority but the future supremacy of my race. I could not
+foresee how we were to be snowed under by the Yankees in our own State,
+and, what is worse, accept our subjugation without a protest--so that
+to-day the New York schoolboy supposes Fisher Ames, or any other of a
+dozen Boston talkers, to have been a greater man than Philip Schuyler.</p>
+
+<p>I remember that I greatly vaunted the good qualities of the Dutch that
+night. I pointed out how they alone had learned the idea of religious
+toleration toward others in the cruel school of European persecution; how
+their faith in liberty and in popular institutions, nobly exemplified at
+home in the marvellous struggle with Spain, had planted roots of civil and
+religious freedom in the New World which he could find neither to the east
+nor to the south of us; and how even the early Plymouth Puritans had
+imbibed all they knew of clemency and liberty during their stay
+in Holland.</p>
+
+<p>I fear that Mr. Cross inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and
+extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded
+the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable
+resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed
+always in Europe. But then he went on to declare that the Dutch could not
+hope to hold their own in strange lands against the extraordinary
+conquering and colonizing power of the more numerous English, who, by
+sheer force of will and energy, were destined in the end to dominate
+everything they touched. Note how Clive and the English had gradually
+undermined or overthrown French, Portuguese, and Dutch alike in the
+Indies, he said; the same thing has happened here, either by bloodshed or
+barter. No nation could resist the English in war; no people could
+maintain themselves in trade or the peaceful arts against the English.</p>
+
+<p>"But you yourself predicted, not an hour ago, that the young gentry down
+the Valley would come to grief in their effort to lord it over the Dutch
+and Palatines."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that indeed," my friend replied. "They are silly sprouts, grown up
+weak and spindling under the shadow of Sir William; when he is cut down
+the sun will shrivel them, no doubt. But the hardier, healthier plants
+which finally take their place will be of English stock--not Dutch
+or German."</p>
+
+<p>I hope devoutly that this lengthened digression into politics has not
+proved wearisome. I have touched upon but one of a hundred like
+conversations which we two had together on our slow journey, and this
+because I wanted to set forth the manner of things we discussed, and the
+views we severally had. Events proved that we both were partially right.
+The United States of the Netherlands was the real parent of the United
+States of America, and the constitution which the Dutch made for the
+infant State of New York served as the model in breadth and in freedom for
+our present noble Federal Constitution. In that much my faith was
+justified. But it is also true that my State is no longer Dutch, but
+English, and that the language of my mother has died out from among us.</p>
+
+<p>Before noon next day we reached Fort Stanwix, the forest-girdled
+block-house commanding the Great Carrying Place. Here we waited one day
+for the boats to come up, and half of another to get them through the
+sluices into Wood Creek. Then, as the horses and carts returned, we
+embarked and set our faces toward the Lakes.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="13"></a>Chapter XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>We had left what it pleases us to call civilization behind. Until our
+return we were scarcely again to see the blackened fields of stumps
+surrounding clearings, or potash kettles, or girdled trees, or chimneys.</p>
+
+<p>Not that our course lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we
+for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed
+westward farther and farther to be alone--to get away from their fellows.
+The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and
+honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. They traded a little,
+in a careless, desultory fashion, with the proceeds of their traps and
+rifles. But their desires were few--a pan and kettle, a case of needles
+and cord, some rum or brandy from cider or wild grapes, tobacco, lead, and
+powder--chiefly the last three. They fed themselves, adding to their own
+fish and game only a little pounded maize which they got mostly from the
+Indians, and cooked in mush or on a baking stone. In the infrequent cases
+where there were women with them, we sometimes saw candles, either dips or
+of the wax of myrtle-berries, but more often the pine-knot was used.
+Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story
+above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their
+habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires.
+They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally
+disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of
+view, but I judge both industrious and contented from their own.</p>
+
+<p>We should have had little favor or countenance from these fellows, I doubt
+not, but for Enoch Wade. He seemed to know all the saturnine, shaggy,
+lounging outcasts whom we met in unexpected places; if he did not, they
+knew him at a glance for one of their own kidney, which came to the same
+thing. It was on his account that we were tolerated, nay, even advised and
+helped and entertained.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch had been a prodigious traveller--or else was a still more prodigious
+liar--I never quite decided which. He told them, when we chanced to sit
+around their fires of an evening, most remarkable stories of field and
+forest--of caribou and seals killed in the North; of vast herds of bison
+on far Western prairies; of ice-bound winters spent in the Hudson Bay
+Company's preserves beyond the Lakes; of houses built of oyster-shells and
+cement on the Carolina coast. They listened gravely, smoking their
+cob-and-reed pipes, and eying him attentively. They liked him, and they
+did not seem to dislike Coppernol and our other white servants. But they
+showed no friendliness toward my poor Tulp, and exhibited only scant,
+frigid courtesy to Mr. Cross and me.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that my companion was a power in the East India Company, and a
+director in the new Northwestern Fur Company, did not interest them, at
+least favorably. It was indeed not until after we had got beyond the
+Sandusky that Enoch often volunteered this information, for the trappers
+of the East had little love for companies, or organized commerce and
+property of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>I like better to recall the purely physical side of our journey. Now our
+little flotilla would move for hours on broad, placid, still waters,
+flanked on each side by expanses of sedge and flags--in which great broods
+of water-fowl lived--and beyond by majestic avenues formed of pines,
+towering mast-like sheer sixty feet before they burst into intertwining
+branches. Again, we would pass through darkened, narrow channels, where
+adverse waters sped swiftly, and where we battled not only with deep
+currents, but had often to chop our way through barriers of green
+tree-trunks, hickory, ash, and birch, which the soft soil on the banks had
+been unable to longer hold erect. Now we flew merrily along under sail or
+energetic oars; now we toiled laboriously against strong tides, by poles
+or by difficult towing.</p>
+
+<p>But it was all healthful, heartening work, and we enjoyed it to the full.
+Toward sundown we would begin to look for a brook upon which to pitch our
+camp. When one was found which did not run black, showing its origin in a
+tamarack swamp, a landing was made with all the five boats. These
+secured, axes were out with, and a shelter soon constructed, while others
+heaped the fire, prepared the food and utensils, and cooked the welcome
+meal. How good everything tasted! how big and bright the stars looked! how
+sweet was the odor of the balsam in the air, later, as we lay on our
+blankets, looking skyward, and talked! Or, if the night was wild and wet,
+how cheerily the great fires roared in the draught, and how snugly we lay
+in our shelter, blinking at the fierce blaze!</p>
+
+<p>When in early July we drew near the country of the Outagamis, having left
+the Detroit settlement behind us, not to speak of Oswego and Niagara,
+which seemed as far off now as the moon, an element of personal danger was
+added to our experiences. Both white hunters and Indians were warmly
+affected toward the French interest, and often enough we found reason to
+fear that we would be made to feel this, though luckily it never came to
+anything serious. It was a novel experience to me to be disliked on
+account of the English, whom I had myself never regarded with friendship.
+I was able, fortunately, being thus between the two rival races, as it
+were, to measure them each against the other.</p>
+
+<p>I had no prejudice in favor of either, God knows. My earliest
+recollections were of the savage cruelty with which the French had
+devastated, butchered, and burned among the hapless settlements at the
+head of the Mohawk Valley. My maturer feelings were all colored with the
+strong repulsion we Dutch felt for the English rule, which so scornfully
+misgoverned and plundered our province, granting away our lands to court
+favorites and pimps, shipping to us the worst and most degraded of
+Old-World criminals, quartering upon us soldiers whose rude vices made
+them even more obnoxious than the convicts, and destroying our commerce by
+selfish and senseless laws.</p>
+
+<p>From the Straits west I saw the Frenchman for the first time, and read the
+reasons for his failure to stand against the English. Even while we
+suspected grounds for fearing his hostility, we found him a more courteous
+and affable man than the Englishman or Yankee. To be pleasant with us
+seemed a genuine concern, though it may really have been otherwise. The
+Indians about him, too, were a far more satisfactory lot than I had known
+in the Valley. Although many of our Mohawks could read, and some few
+write, and although the pains and devotion of my friend Samuel Kirkland
+had done much for the Oneidas, still these French-spoken, Jesuit-taught
+Indians seemed a much better and soberer class than my neighbors of the
+Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively
+plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived
+most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and
+this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going
+on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the
+English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So much for
+the good side.</p>
+
+<p>The medal had a reverse. The Frenchman contrived to get on with the
+Indian by deferring to him, cultivating his better and more generous side,
+and treating him as an equal. This had the effect of improving and
+softening the savage, but it inevitably tended to weaken and lower the
+Frenchman--at least, judged by the standard of fitness to maintain himself
+in a war of races. No doubt the French and Indians lived together much
+more quietly and civilly than did the English and Indians. But when these
+two systems came to be tested by results, it was shown that the
+Frenchman's policy and kindliness had only enervated and emasculated him,
+while the Englishman's rough domineering and rule of force had hardened
+his muscles and fired his resolution. To be sure, measured by the received
+laws of humanity, the Frenchman was right and the other wrong. But is it
+so certain, after all, that the right invariably wins?</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>It was well along in September when, standing on the eminence to the east
+of Fort Stanwix, I first looked again on my beloved Mohawk.</p>
+
+<p>The trip had been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four
+bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries,
+including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the
+remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of
+his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and
+silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied its value
+twenty-fold.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, this was of secondary importance. The true object of the
+journey had been to enable Mr. Jonathan Cross to see for himself the
+prospects of the new Northwestern Company--to look over the territory
+embraced in its grants, estimate its probable trade, mark points for the
+establishment of its forts and posts, and secure the information necessary
+to guard the company from the frauds or failings of agents. He professed
+himself vastly gratified at the results, physical as well as financial, of
+his experience, and that was the great thing.</p>
+
+<p>Or no!--perhaps for the purposes of this story there was something more
+important still. It is even now very pleasant to me to recall that he
+liked me well enough, after this long, enforced intimacy, to proffer me
+the responsible and exacting post of the company's agent at Albany.</p>
+
+<p>To say that the offer made me proud and glad would be to feebly understate
+my emotions. I could not be expected to decide all at once. Independent of
+the necessity of submitting the proposition to Mr. Stewart, there was a
+very deep distaste within me for fur-trading at Albany--of the meanness
+and fraudulency of which I had heard from boyhood. A good many hard
+stories are told of the Albanians, which, aside from all possible bias of
+race, I take the liberty of doubting. I do not, for instance, believe all
+the Yankee tales that the Albany Dutchmen bought from the Indians the
+silver plate which the latter seized in New England on the occasions of
+the French and Indian incursions--if for no other reason than the absence
+of proof that they ever had any plate in New England. But that the
+Indians used to be most shamefully drugged and cheated out of their
+eye-teeth in Albany, I fear there can be no reasonable doubt. An evil
+repute attached to the trade there, and I shrank from embarking in it,
+even under such splendid auspices. All the same, the offer gratified
+me greatly.</p>
+
+<p>To be in the woods with a man, day in and day out, is to know him through
+and through. If I had borne this closest of all conceivable forms of
+scrutiny, in the factor's estimation, there must be something good in me.</p>
+
+<p>So there was pride as well as joy in this first glance I cast upon the
+soft-flowing, shadowed water, upon the spreading, stately willows, upon
+the far-off furrow in the hazy lines of foliage--which spoke to me of
+home. Here at last was my dear Valley, always to me the loveliest on
+earth, but now transfigured in my eyes, and radiant beyond all dreams of
+beauty--because in it was my home, and in that home was the sweet maid
+I loved.</p>
+
+<p>Yes--I was returned a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the
+heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the
+swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of
+their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder.
+Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper
+breath for their absence. I had almost wept with excess of boyish feeling
+when I left the Valley--my fond old mother and protector. I gazed upon it
+now with an altogether variant emotion--as of one coming to take
+possession. Ah, the calm elation of that one moment, there alone on the
+knoll, with the sinking September sun behind me, and in front but the
+trifle of sixty miles of river route--when I realized that I was a man!</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was at this moment that I first knew I loved Daisy; perhaps it
+had been the truly dominant thought in my mind for months, gathering vigor
+and form from every tender, longing memory of the Cedars. I cannot decide,
+nor is it needful that I should. At least now my head was full of the
+triumphant thoughts that I returned successful and in high favor with my
+companion, that I had a flattering career opened for me, that the people
+at home would be pleased with me--and that I should marry Daisy.</p>
+
+<p>These remaining twenty leagues grew really very tedious before they were
+done with. We went down with the boats this time. I fear that Mr. Cross
+found me but poor company these last three days, for I sat mute in the bow
+most of the time, twisted around to look forward down the winding course,
+as if this would bring the Cedars nearer. I had not the heart to talk.
+"Now she is winding the yarn for my aunt," I would think; "now she is
+scattering oats for the pigeons, or filling Mr. Stewart's pipe, or running
+the candles into the moulds. Dear girl, does she wonder when I am coming?
+If she could know that I was here--here on the river speeding to
+her--what, would she think?"</p>
+
+<p>And I pictured to myself the pretty glance of surprise, mantling into a
+flush of joyous welcome, which would greet me on her face, as she ran
+gladly to my arms. Good old Mr. Stewart, my more than father, would stare
+at me, then smile with pleasure, and take both my hands in his, with warm,
+honest words straight from his great heart. What an evening it would be
+when, seated snugly around the huge blaze--Mr. Stewart in his arm-chair to
+the right, Daisy nestling on the stool at his knee and looking up into my
+face, and Dame Kronk knitting in the chimney-shadow to the left--I should
+tell of my adventures! How goodly a recital I could make of them, though
+they had been even tamer than they were, with such an audience! And how
+happy, how gratified they would be when I came to the climax, artfully
+postponed, of Mr. Cross's offer to me of the Albany agency!</p>
+
+<p>And then how natural, how easy, while these dear people were still smiling
+with pride and satisfaction at my good fortune, to say calmly--yes, calmly
+in tone, though my heart should be beating its way through my breast:</p>
+
+<p>"Even more, sir, I prize the hope that Daisy will share it with me--as my
+wife!"</p>
+
+<p>What with the delay at Caughnawaga, where Mr. Cross debarked, and Major
+Fonda would have us eat and drink while he told us the news, and Tulp's
+crazy rowing later, through excitement at nearing home, it was twilight
+before the boat was run up into our little cove, and I set my foot on
+land. The Cedars stood before us as yet lightless against the northern
+sky. The gate was open. The sweet voice of a negro singing arose from the
+cabins on the dusky hill-side. Tears came to my eyes as I turned to Tulp,
+who was gathering up the things in the boat, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see, boy? We're home--home at last!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="14"></a>Chapter XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I could hear the noisy clamor among the negroes over the advent of Tulp,
+whom I had sent off, desiring to be alone, while I still stood irresolute
+on the porch. My hand was on the familiar, well-worn latch, yet I almost
+hesitated to enter, so excited was I with eager anticipations of welcome.</p>
+
+<p>The spacious hall--our sitting-room--was deserted. A fire was blazing on
+the hearth, and plates were laid on the oak table as in preparation for a
+meal, but there was no one to speak to me. I lighted a candle, and opened
+the door to the kitchen; here too there was a fire, but my aunt was not
+visible. Mr. Stewart's room to the right of the hall, and mine to the
+left, were alike unoccupied. I threw aside my hat and watch-coat here, and
+then with the light went up-stairs, whistling as was my wont to warn Daisy
+of my coming. There was no sound or sign of movement. The door of her
+outer room stood open, and I entered and looked about.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture and appointments had been changed in position somewhat, so
+that the chamber seemed strange to me. There were numerous novel objects
+scattered through the rooms as well. A Spanish guitar which I had never
+seen before stood beside the old piano. There were several elegantly bound
+books, new to me, on the table; on the mantel-shelf were three miniatures,
+delicately painted, depicting a florid officer in scarlet, a handsome,
+proud-looking lady with towering powdered coiffure, and a fair-haired,
+proud-looking youth. This last I knew in an instant to be the likeness of
+Master Philip Cross, though it seemingly portrayed him at an age half-way
+between the two times I had seen him as boy and man. His resemblance to
+the lady, and then my own recurring recollection of the officer's
+features, helped me to place them as his parents.</p>
+
+<p>I called out "Daisy!" My voice had a faltering, mournful sound, and there
+was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>I came down the stairs again, burdened with a sudden sense of mental
+discomfort. Already the visions I had had of an enthusiastic welcome were
+but vague outlines of dreams. There had sprung up in my mind instead a
+sudden, novel doubt of my position in this house--a cruel idea that
+perhaps the affection which had so swelled and buoyed my heart was not
+reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the
+same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and
+the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic
+aspect, instead of the bright, honest glow of greeting.</p>
+
+<p>While I stood before the fire-place, still holding the candle in my hand,
+my aunt entered the room from the kitchen door. At sight of me the good
+soul gave a guttural exclamation, dropped flat an apronful of chips she
+was bringing in, and stared at me open-mouthed. When she was at last
+persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to
+be kissed by me--it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add--but
+it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were
+a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she
+brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that
+she had been out in the smoke-house.</p>
+
+<p>"Philip sent down two haunches yesterday by Marinus Folts," she said,
+apologetically, "and this muggy weather I was afraid they wouldn't keep."</p>
+
+<p>"This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not
+help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's
+infirmities. Aloud I said:</p>
+
+<p>"How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have
+the farms been doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is
+the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course
+it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings
+alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor."</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did
+before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some,
+bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more
+elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just
+breaking the branches. And the--"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they
+left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to
+the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything
+but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer
+but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I
+was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One
+of them is for you."</p>
+
+<p>Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working
+for me. My heart felt lighter.</p>
+
+<p>"But where <i>are</i> they?" I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just
+built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the
+Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's
+made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and
+he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it.
+Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd
+had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."</p>
+
+<p>I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the
+home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when
+they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and
+began to find comfort of mind again.</p>
+
+<p>My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she
+came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm
+going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then,
+or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I
+would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I
+was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing
+it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the
+trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs
+and toads?"</p>
+
+<p>This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had
+answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to
+the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended.</p>
+
+<p>I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled
+myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight
+at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him
+off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his
+jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his.
+This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck,
+and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could
+hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking
+strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of
+child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine----</p>
+
+<p>Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear
+ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate
+my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old
+slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with
+small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach
+upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether
+it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the
+matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the
+nights of my life!</p>
+
+<p>At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of
+voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and
+on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the
+slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly,
+enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark;
+but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and,
+judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party,
+I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night
+of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of
+the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these
+roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a
+time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of
+the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for
+the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them
+in any disguise.</p>
+
+<p>I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival--for
+which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads
+together--but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact,
+they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I
+learned afterward.</p>
+
+<p>All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as
+sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself
+almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and
+wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing
+me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my
+breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be
+kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation.</p>
+
+<p>And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour
+later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks
+flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on
+both sides.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem
+very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another
+with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not
+possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for
+people nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and
+quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable
+Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained.
+Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in
+fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed
+had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father.
+Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's.
+It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New
+York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very
+melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the
+house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir
+William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall--an ambitious enough name,
+surely, for a forest fishing-cottage.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which
+they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were
+the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms,
+while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had
+ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its
+being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing
+there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been
+a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at
+pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain
+she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly
+laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen
+had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other
+habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough
+that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down.</p>
+
+<p>I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of
+uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under
+his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the
+house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the
+food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear.
+They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but
+to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I
+looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age
+and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep,
+nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies'
+boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had
+parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but
+still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there.</p>
+
+<p>It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady
+Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought
+forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but
+for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly
+cover of his simple middle life.</p>
+
+<p>If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them
+this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair
+cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile
+which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and
+more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of
+me, for I did not notice it.</p>
+
+<p>I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great
+swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion,
+fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which
+crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the
+bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all
+accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail,
+this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for
+Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr.
+Stewart was evidently much captivated by the young man's spirit and social
+qualities and demeanor generally.</p>
+
+<p>"He is his father's own boy, ay, and his mother's too," said the old man,
+with sparkling eyes. "Not much for books, perhaps, though no dullard. But
+he can break a wild colt, or turn a bottle inside out, or bore a
+pencilled hole with a pistol-bullet at thirty paces, or tell a story, or
+sing a song, or ride, dance, box, cross swords, with any gentleman in the
+Colony. You should have seen him stand Walrath the blacksmith on his head
+at the races a fortnight ago! I never saw it better done in the
+Tweed country."</p>
+
+<p>"A highly accomplished gentleman, truly," I said, with as little obvious
+satire as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but he has mind as well as muscle," put in Mr. Stewart. "He is a very
+Bolingbroke with the ladies. It carries me back to my days at the play, I
+swear, to hear him and Lady Berenicia clashing rapiers in badinage. You
+shall hear them, my boy, and judge. And there's a sweet side to his
+tongue, too, or many a pretty, blushing cheek belies the little ear
+behind it."</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman chuckled amiably to himself as he spoke, and poured more
+Madeira into my glass and his. Daisy somewhat hurriedly rose, bade us
+"good-night," and left us to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if I had only spoken the word that night!</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="15"></a>Chapter XV</h2>
+
+<h3>The Rude Awakening from My Dream.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season
+of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all
+unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and
+occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign
+barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too,
+there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had
+treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with
+affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever
+disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade
+himself that it was all for the best.</p>
+
+<p>But these five months had created a certain change in the social
+conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening,
+here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my
+absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now
+manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no
+doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social,
+part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible
+glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than
+elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through
+houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family
+fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers,
+husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the
+existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the
+man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it
+and I on the other.</p>
+
+<p>This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his
+manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had
+made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof
+of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance
+of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I
+ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to
+me, for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said.
+"If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing
+aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go
+to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's
+content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance
+with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded,
+looking at him. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these
+people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood.
+Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been,
+given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed,
+by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and
+people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would
+have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must,
+forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of
+their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence
+worth of goods!"</p>
+
+<p>What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a
+heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard
+to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from
+Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for
+irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have
+visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had
+engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear.</p>
+
+<p>Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me.
+Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even
+toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my
+poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time
+up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and
+elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of
+her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old.</p>
+
+<p>If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence,
+it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new
+Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft
+with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear
+girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or
+twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to
+confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she
+suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices,
+or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to
+her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me.</p>
+
+<p>I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long
+afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress
+at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her
+judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating
+between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with
+their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive,
+idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate,
+womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license,
+beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly
+watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind
+those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure
+might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different!</p>
+
+<p>But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was
+by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky.</p>
+
+<p>For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose,
+tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the
+old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch
+herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the
+joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us
+of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young
+Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a
+bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast,
+and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and
+gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning,
+when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see
+her cheerful once more.</p>
+
+<p>And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion
+she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a
+luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering
+mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise,
+and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy
+seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled
+insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to
+understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing
+but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his
+old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to
+me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no
+longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or
+say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the
+fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised
+to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or
+not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for
+the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready.
+She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my
+part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been
+invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed
+so much annoyed that I hastened to join them.</p>
+
+<p>It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the
+air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale
+changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way
+approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely
+red through the smoky haze.</p>
+
+<p>Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and
+I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the
+gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in
+fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the
+mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new
+bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep
+zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark
+rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to
+be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he
+would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side
+of the gulf was Philip's property.</p>
+
+<p>"It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth
+clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building
+a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the
+waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You
+know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek."</p>
+
+<p>Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking
+measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of
+erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the
+skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing
+edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have
+quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering,
+hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and
+about the structure.</p>
+
+<p>At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level,
+high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were
+assembled, and thither we bent our steps.</p>
+
+<p>Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my
+companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded,
+and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed
+sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly
+was handsome.</p>
+
+<p>He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the
+hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real
+delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers
+with his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he
+murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with
+pleasure at him.</p>
+
+<p>To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is
+true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that
+he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention
+whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle
+outside the tent.</p>
+
+<p>Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others.
+By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was
+distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who
+took the trouble only to nod at me.</p>
+
+<p>Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was
+confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being
+nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was
+monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more
+discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall
+occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr.
+Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was
+chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she
+was telling.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to
+Tulp to follow me, I started.</p>
+
+<p>It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which
+forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage
+comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a
+profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon
+him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen
+and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very
+rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred
+dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no
+other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I
+made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an
+unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth
+I was.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the
+very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of
+the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others,
+of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not
+been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well
+tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel
+above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I
+stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come,
+and what company I had quitted to visit him.</p>
+
+<p>"So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more
+vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple
+has fallen with less shaking than I thought for."</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have
+been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long,
+heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and
+saw nothing.</p>
+
+<p>At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day:</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross
+asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From
+what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know
+it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'"</p>
+
+<p>This time I know I kept silence for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying,
+in a voice which sounded like a stranger's:</p>
+
+<p>"I will go to Albany whenever you like."</p>
+
+<p>I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my
+path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="16"></a>Chapter XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road
+which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter
+weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track
+straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As
+it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a
+wayside stump, dead beat.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick,"
+he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best
+I can."</p>
+
+<p>The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had
+put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention.
+"Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water
+which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at
+their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I
+stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I
+cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had
+not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the
+Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection
+as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop,
+and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale
+Adirondack outlines.</p>
+
+<p>As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze
+had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east
+and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them
+upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its
+cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his
+infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody
+is waiting for me--nobody wants me."</p>
+
+<p>The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long
+afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion
+that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of
+my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."</p>
+
+<p>Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He
+humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going
+by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road,
+and the rain was coming on.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the
+distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.</p>
+
+<p>Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the
+settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a
+controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the
+hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not
+much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the
+vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my
+brain, almost frightened me.</p>
+
+<p>I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had
+spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah,
+fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in
+contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still
+nourished in my heart a hope--and these <i>were</i> happiness! I laughed aloud
+at my folly in having deemed them less.</p>
+
+<p>She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes
+open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent
+cub!--so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I
+pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her
+grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile,
+the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed
+against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him--brawling
+dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and
+proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken
+wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration! Where were their eyes, that
+they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when
+he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?</p>
+
+<p>Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of
+his class, or of his pretence to class?</p>
+
+<p>Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could
+not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing,
+everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other
+friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John
+Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from
+boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class,"
+these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had
+never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me,
+grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink
+and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the
+gentry--save the mark!--of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never
+so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid,
+fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her;
+it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their
+congratulations.</p>
+
+<p>And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other
+affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge
+their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered
+stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action,
+my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before
+their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their
+hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time
+out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on
+my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as
+worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet
+with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a
+moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!</p>
+
+<p>Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the
+self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute,
+tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal
+notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn
+to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little
+country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed
+rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed
+also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this
+Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive
+expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an
+intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all
+my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to
+employment!</p>
+
+<p>It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was
+more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three
+bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman
+was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the
+blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia
+was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel
+gilt, the gaudier the better!</p>
+
+<p>But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing
+pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason
+runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours'
+wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh
+murderous in its fierceness.</p>
+
+<p>The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of
+thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat.
+The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood.</p>
+
+<p>On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from
+the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn,
+rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A
+half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars,
+and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it
+was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart
+and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and
+that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to
+accompany them.</p>
+
+<p>"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's
+human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty
+beckon the other way."</p>
+
+<p>I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We
+resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily
+pelting upon our backs.</p>
+
+<p>When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the
+waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail
+was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you
+could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct
+mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly
+and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears,
+and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.</p>
+
+<p>At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.</p>
+
+<p>He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a
+walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion;
+yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a
+song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that
+neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on
+this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not
+interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility
+toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I
+see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this
+"--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.</p>
+
+<p>I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I
+could only hope he failed to note:</p>
+
+<p>"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you
+like--here! now!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are
+drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him
+square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was
+ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner
+that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."</p>
+
+<p>The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his
+surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his
+great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of
+mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.</p>
+
+<p>If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration.
+There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his
+knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my
+superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing,
+there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over,
+he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his
+coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully.
+I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and
+was vexed with myself for it.</p>
+
+<p>We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a
+final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not
+only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood
+upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift
+movement past me from behind.</p>
+
+<p>I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that
+followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful
+slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus
+place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.</p>
+
+<p>To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.</p>
+
+<p>There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close
+before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow
+in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side
+of the cliff!</p>
+
+<p>Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips
+over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very
+moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end,
+one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the
+Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which
+recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had
+chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till
+the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed
+me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he
+said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than
+poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless
+morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my
+readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled
+the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight
+out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as
+possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty
+masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the
+far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably
+sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught
+sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine,
+limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but
+it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my
+antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked
+at him.</p>
+
+<p>The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently,
+for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had
+been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him.</p>
+
+<p>I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin
+defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and
+stood for a moment frowning down at me.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a
+new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see
+you again."</p>
+
+<p>"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break
+every bone in your body."</p>
+
+<p>With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I
+continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp
+was waiting for me.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="17"></a>Chapter XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding
+his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic.</p>
+
+<p>He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had
+from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been
+more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines.
+He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and
+some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though
+all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my
+neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as
+by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over
+the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall
+came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet
+and miserable affair.</p>
+
+<p>When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise
+to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what
+to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had
+overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far
+from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my
+part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word
+or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far
+as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest.
+Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage
+feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon
+the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive
+way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my
+fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my
+mortification and rage.</p>
+
+<p>When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself
+by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart;
+both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in
+the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as
+this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat
+at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then
+sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather,
+lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened?
+There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?"</p>
+
+<p>I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her:</p>
+
+<p>"The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie
+it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by
+the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!"</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room,
+closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting
+over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them
+for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining
+at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for
+making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon
+as possible leave the Cedars.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper.
+Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude,
+with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a
+complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the
+simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone
+to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt
+the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his
+curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the
+dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not
+ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was
+impendent.</p>
+
+<p>Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your
+wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness
+in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been
+only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of
+truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet.
+But his scornful sternness hardened me.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper."</p>
+
+<p>More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred
+fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the
+chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I
+knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association
+has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by
+want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back."</p>
+
+<p>I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly
+ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved
+toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the
+apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over
+now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He
+seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile,
+and he was some time in finding them.</p>
+
+<p>"In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my
+equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small
+matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment
+which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find
+myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person
+who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the
+appearance of respect for my gray hairs."</p>
+
+<p>He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender,
+ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on:</p>
+
+<p>"In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being
+wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has
+come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily
+observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I
+will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful,
+respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you
+developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of
+your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way,
+virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your
+credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much
+consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I
+had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken
+altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of
+my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he
+paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you."</p>
+
+<p>He went on as if I had not spoken:</p>
+
+<p>"Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your
+voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position
+and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to
+dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not
+forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my
+disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your
+education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of
+what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting
+and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to
+me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her
+chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would
+fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my
+duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed."</p>
+
+<p>The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered
+under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul
+and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell.</p>
+
+<p>Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and
+foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct
+or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long,
+stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my
+actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly
+stood my ground.</p>
+
+<p>"If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly
+be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and
+to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can
+the simple truth affront?"</p>
+
+<p>"What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being
+thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose
+to describe him thus."</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor
+devil escaped with his life."</p>
+
+<p>"How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days
+slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not
+understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with
+rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as
+we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need
+for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off."</p>
+
+<p>"Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have
+killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not
+put other things in our heads."</p>
+
+<p>"My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time,
+then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in
+apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than
+before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in
+this than I thought. Explain it to me."</p>
+
+<p>I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference,
+than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to explain?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why were you quarrelling with Philip?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I felt like it--because I hate him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two?
+I demand to know!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth
+in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he
+has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be
+worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his
+fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you
+and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to
+deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My
+throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might
+not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in
+the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed
+them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since
+familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing
+sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my
+voice came back to me.</p>
+
+<p>"If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first
+looked on the Valley--<i>our</i> Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could
+only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from
+this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you
+could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that
+evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah,
+then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning
+with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and
+her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and
+sullen, <i>that</i> is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and
+upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the
+displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if
+I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess
+of tenderness trampled underfoot."</p>
+
+<p>At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all
+events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old.
+He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time
+gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not
+have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset,
+the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right
+in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go
+aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies
+and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a
+melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these
+sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to
+Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would
+be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the
+beginning."</p>
+
+<p>I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them.</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly
+with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have,
+waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my
+heart--to have Daisy for my wife."</p>
+
+<p>As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether
+strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she
+and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we
+were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not
+infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and
+all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness
+of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a
+lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious,
+civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image
+of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the
+delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home
+that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now
+with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should
+crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover,
+that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as
+innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child
+approaching to kiss its mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom
+it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you
+will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling."</p>
+
+<p>His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly
+enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no
+fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the
+very wisest to bestow.</p>
+
+<p>He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments
+exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world.
+In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of
+every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other
+distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just
+the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he
+essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent.
+He added, I remember, a personal parallel:</p>
+
+<p>"I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my
+grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young
+Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other
+thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of
+her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and
+hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I
+verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket
+this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony
+Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are
+kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns
+sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if
+you would deny her the gallant of her choice?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I believed," I blurted out, "that it <i>was</i> her own free choice!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whose else, then, pray?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not
+been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--"</p>
+
+<p>"Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning
+testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all
+these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the
+youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had
+spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it
+might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We
+who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred
+bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be
+no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own
+judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I
+mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony.
+Perhaps--who knows?--he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of
+these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon
+enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow
+freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way."</p>
+
+<p>My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never
+abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went
+to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent
+down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal
+for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we
+hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task.</p>
+
+<p>It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the
+wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told
+Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and
+take up the proffered agency.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong
+opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the
+best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or
+made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with
+my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by
+my perseverance in the project.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences
+with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he
+was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with
+voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and
+much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among
+others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon,
+who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I
+never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of
+more utility.</p>
+
+<p>In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a
+departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few
+times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of
+that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the
+incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to
+Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I
+fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.
+At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with
+my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not
+sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began
+life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried
+with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of
+compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of
+the Cedars.</p>
+
+<p>As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="18"></a>Chapter XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new
+world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with
+but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this
+distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost
+at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had
+left behind.</p>
+
+<p>For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.
+I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter
+was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was
+pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager
+national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places,
+to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly
+the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to
+prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as
+possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to
+encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome
+settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was
+easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from
+scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then,
+however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.</p>
+
+<p>Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in
+it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most
+delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were
+to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were
+equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed
+brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting
+water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I
+had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the
+Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses,
+here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New
+England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a
+pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the
+conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.</p>
+
+<p>And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There
+were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen
+had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had
+weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told
+of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the
+hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie
+Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great
+town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its
+population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four
+hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and
+were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect
+was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the
+grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The
+wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is
+thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps
+of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.
+Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from
+the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.</p>
+
+<p>Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when
+men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The
+only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to
+barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and
+occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his
+representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.
+For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and
+comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even
+to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea
+fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other
+town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our
+own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted
+slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.</p>
+
+<p>There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the
+firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the
+Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old
+age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass
+unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know
+how neither to rest nor to play.</p>
+
+<p>But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in
+the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already
+sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of
+books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself
+almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances
+were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was
+repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for
+them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies
+were mine.
+
+But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and
+rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the
+outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the
+uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost
+citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others
+not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen
+before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon
+terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger
+men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age,
+and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.</p>
+
+<p>These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not
+inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or
+to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had
+seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were
+masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had
+suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my
+surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with
+loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another
+name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen
+disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the
+ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence
+the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its
+citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political
+life, were of my way of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against
+England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in
+our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth,
+and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and
+social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act
+crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly
+discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in
+our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious
+of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked
+the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret
+these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found
+myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils
+of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it,
+as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.
+Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became
+the most ardent of Whigs?</p>
+
+<p>Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established,
+there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole
+current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There
+were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern,
+to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a
+considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of
+provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at
+Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and
+there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped
+hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no
+obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare
+expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had
+entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind
+and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting
+alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking
+of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the
+Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching
+completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.
+Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for
+me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the
+collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against
+Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.
+The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my
+disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of
+myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon
+other things.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her
+ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had
+established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.
+I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed
+me, which was not at all.</p>
+
+<p>The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the
+company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business,
+push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English
+charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run
+over here."</p>
+
+<p>So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.</p>
+
+<p>It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held
+me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true
+that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city,
+for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always
+seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the
+town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This
+made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I
+am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who
+came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in
+estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.</p>
+
+<p>I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each
+quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the
+company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went
+to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my
+progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased
+at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But
+that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than
+the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year
+than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have
+learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my
+companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of
+mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden,
+and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.</p>
+
+<p>So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently
+rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped
+meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling
+tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs,
+twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent
+position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to
+mortal man.</p>
+
+<p>Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this
+correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of
+the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="19"></a>Chapter XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night
+not to be forgotten while memory remains to me.</p>
+
+<p>There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons,
+and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian
+lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon
+was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business
+which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer
+mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country
+roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been
+despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite
+the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson
+had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir
+John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this
+opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he
+had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in
+company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with
+more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and
+flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was
+I at last to meet Daisy?</p>
+
+<p>Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and
+decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the
+most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more
+beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening
+return to me.</p>
+
+<p>You may still see for yourselves how noble, one might say palatial, was
+the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on
+the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no
+power of fancy can restore for <i>you</i>--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic
+people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad,
+fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome;
+the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights,
+hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the
+stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their
+passengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich
+velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright
+eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair breasts--all radiant in the
+hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of
+gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the
+horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of
+color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the
+spacious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her
+son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests.
+No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You
+shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all,
+pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the
+best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery
+beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead.</p>
+
+<p>This round, lustrous orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to
+every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that
+this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm
+was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost
+stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman,
+when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the
+formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see
+sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one
+another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust
+over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it.</p>
+
+<p>It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess.
+She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The
+Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before
+her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my
+roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is
+trouble brewing."</p>
+
+<p>I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left,
+but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words
+with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of
+whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then
+rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all
+liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it
+would not do to pass him by unheeded.</p>
+
+<p>While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of
+the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the
+hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space
+clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I
+perforce followed.</p>
+
+<p>I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book
+had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been
+equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects.
+Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was
+now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of
+English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his
+office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered
+me his hand.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his
+great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had
+Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his
+long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few
+words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I passed to make room for
+others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood.</p>
+
+<p>"The old fox!" he said, smilingly nodding toward Colden. "One may not but
+like him, for all his tricks. If England had had the wit to keep that rude
+boor of a Tryon at home, and make Colden governor, and listen to him,
+matters would have gone better. Who is that behind him? Oh, yes,
+De Lancey."</p>
+
+<p>Oliver de Lancey was chiefly notable on account of his late brother James,
+who had been chief justice and lieutenant-governor, and the most
+brilliant, unscrupulous, masterful politician of his time. Oliver was
+himself a man of much energy and ambition. I observed him curiously, for
+his mother had been a Van Cortlandt, and I had some of that blood in my
+veins as well. So far as it had contributed to shape his face, I was not
+proud of it, for he had a selfish and arrogant mien.</p>
+
+<p>It was more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of
+the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their
+characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip
+Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite
+forty years of age, almost of my stature--that is to say, a tall man. He
+held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air,
+which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under
+the powder, helped to confirm. But no one could speak in amity with him
+without finding him to be the most affable and sweet-natured of men. If he
+had had more of the personal vanity and self-love which his bearing seemed
+to indicate, it would have served him well, perhaps, when New England
+jealousy assailed and overbore him. But he was too proud to fight for
+himself, and too patriotic not to fight for his country, whether the just
+reward came or was withheld.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Schuyler had been chosen as one of the five delegates of the
+Colony to attend the first Continental Congress, now sitting at
+Philadelphia, but ill-health had compelled him to decline the journey. He
+had since been to New York, however, where he had learned much of the
+situation, and now was in receipt of tidings from the Congress itself. By
+a compromise in the New York Assembly, both parties had been represented
+in our delegation, the Whigs sending Philip Livingston and Isaac Low, the
+Tories James Duane and John Jay, and the fifth man, one Alsopp, being a
+neutral-tinted individual to whom neither side could object. The
+information which Schuyler had received was to the effect that all five,
+under the tremendous and enthusiastic pressure they had encountered in
+Philadelphia, had now resolved to act together in all things for the
+Colonies and against the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>"That means," said he, "that we shall all adopt Massachusetts's cause as
+our own. After Virginia led the way with Patrick Henry's speech, there was
+no other course possible for even Jay and Duane. I should like to hear
+that man Henry. He must be wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>The space about Mr. Colden had shifted across the room, so that we were
+now upon its edge, and Schuyler went to him with outstretched hand. The
+two men exchanged a glance, and each knew what the other was thinking of.</p>
+
+<p>"Your excellency has heard from Philadelphia," said the Colonel, more as a
+statement of fact than as an inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Sad, sad!" exclaimed the aged politician, in a low tone. "It is a grief
+instead of a joy to have lived so long, if my life must end amid
+contention and strife."</p>
+
+<p>"He is really sincere in deploring the trouble," said Schuyler, when he
+had rejoined me. "He knows in his heart that the Ministry are pig-headedly
+wrong, and that we are in the right. He would do justice if he could, but
+he is as powerless as I am so far as influencing London goes, and here he
+is in the hands of the De Lanceys. To give the devil his due, I believe
+Sir William Johnson was on our side, too, at heart."</p>
+
+<p>We had talked of this before, and out of deference to my sentiments of
+liking and gratitude to Sir William, he always tried to say amiable things
+about the late baronet to me. But they did not come easily, for there was
+an old-time feud between the two families. The dislike dated back to the
+beginning of young Johnson's career, when, by taking sides shrewdly in a
+political struggle between Clinton and De Lancey, he had ousted John
+Schuyler, Philip's grandfather, from the Indian commissionership and
+secured it for himself. In later years, since the Colonel had come to
+manhood, he had been forced into rivalry, almost amounting to antagonism
+at times, with the baronet, in Colonial and Indian affairs; and even now,
+after the baronet's death, it was hard for him to acknowledge the
+existence of all the virtues which my boyish liking had found in Sir
+William. But still he did try, if only to please me.</p>
+
+<p>As we spoke, Sir John Johnson passed us, in company with several younger
+men, pushing toward the room to the right, where the punch-bowl
+was placed.</p>
+
+<p>"At least, <i>he</i> is no friend of yours?" said Schuyler, indicating the
+red-faced young baronet.</p>
+
+<p>"No man less so," I replied, promptly. Two years ago I doubt I should have
+been so certain of my entire enmity toward Sir John. But in the interim
+all my accumulating political fervor had unconsciously stretched back to
+include the Johnstown Tories; I found myself now honestly hating them all
+alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude
+toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish
+dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to
+make him the chief object of my aversion.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of him now, and of his wife, a beautiful, sweet-faced girl of
+twenty, who had been Polly Watts of New York. My companion pointed her out
+to me, as one of a circle beyond the fire-place. He had only soft words
+and pity for her--as if foreseeing the anguish and travail soon to be
+brought upon her by her husband's misdeeds--but he spoke very slightingly
+and angrily of Sir John. To Schuyler's mind there was no good in him.</p>
+
+<p>"I have known him more or less since he was a boy and followed his father
+in the Lake George campaign. The officers then could not abide him, though
+some were submissive to him because of his father's position. So now,
+fifteen years afterward, although he has many toadies and flatterers, I
+doubt his having any real friends. Through all these score of years, I
+have yet to learn of any gracious or manly thing he has done."</p>
+
+<p>"At least he did gallop from the Fort to the Hall at news of his father's
+death, and kill his horse by the pace," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Heirs can afford to ride swiftly," replied the Colonel, in a dry tone.
+"No: he has neither the honesty to respect the rights of others, nor the
+wit to enforce those which he arrogates to himself. Look at his management
+in the Mohawk Valley. Scarce two months after the old baronet's
+death--before he was barely warm in his father's bed--all the Dutch and
+Palatines and Cherry Valley Scotch were up in arms against him and his
+friends. I call that the work of a fool. Why, Tryon County ought, by all
+the rules, to be the Tories' strongest citadel. There, of all other
+places, they should be able to hold their own. Old Sir William would have
+contrived matters better, believe me. But this sulky, slave-driving cub
+must needs force the quarrel from the start. Already they have their
+committee in the Palatine district, with men like Frey and Yates and Paris
+on it, and their resolutions are as strong as any we have heard."</p>
+
+<p>Others came up at this, and I moved away, thinking to pay my respects to
+friends in the rooms on the left. The fine hall was almost overcrowded.
+One's knee struck a sword, or one's foot touched a satin train, at every
+step. There were many whom I knew, chiefly Albanians, and my progress was
+thus rendered slow. At the door I met my kinsman, Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! well met, Cousin Sobriety!" he cried. "Let us cross the hall, and get
+near the punch-bowl."</p>
+
+<p>"It is my idea that you have had enough," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Too much is enough,' as the Indian said. He was nearer the truth than
+you are," replied Teunis, taking my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not now! First let me see who is here."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is here? Everybody--from Hendrik Hudson and Killian the First down.
+Old Centenarian Colden is telling them about William the Silent, whom he
+remembers very well."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never heard any one speak of Teunis the Silent."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor ever will! It is not my <i>m&eacute;tier</i>, as the French students used to say.
+Well, then, I will turn back with you; but the punch will all be gone,
+mark my words. I saw Johnson and Watts and their party headed for the bowl
+five-and-twenty minutes ago. We shall get not so much as a lemon-seed. But
+I sacrifice myself."</p>
+
+<p>We entered the room, and my eyes were drawn, as by the force of a million
+magnets, to the place where Daisy sat.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment she was unattended. She was very beautifully attired, and
+jewels glistened from her hair and throat. Her eyes were downcast--looking
+upon the waxed floor as if in meditation. Even to this sudden, momentary
+glance, her fair face looked thinner and paler than I remembered it--and
+ah, how well did I remember it! With some muttered word of explanation I
+broke away from my companion, and went straight to her.</p>
+
+<p>She had not noted my presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood
+before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had
+expected. She smiled in a wan way, and gave me her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you were here," she said, in a soft voice which I scarcely
+recognized, so changed, I might say saddened, was it by the introduction
+of some plaintive, minor element. "Philip told me. I thought that sooner
+or later I should see you."</p>
+
+<p>"And I have thought of little else but the chance of seeing you," I
+replied, speaking what was in my heart, with no reflection save that this
+was our Daisy, come into my life again.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a moment, her eyes seeking the floor and a faint glow
+coming upon her cheeks. Then she raised them to my face, with something of
+the old sparkle in their glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," she said, drawing aside her skirts, "sit here, and see me."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="20"></a>Chapter XX</h2>
+
+<h3>A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust Upon Me.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I sat beside Daisy, and we talked. It was at the beginning a highly
+superficial conversation, as I remember it, during which neither looked at
+the other, and each made haste to fill up any threatened lapse into
+silence by words of some sort, it mattered not much what.</p>
+
+<p>She told me a great deal about Mr. Stewart's health, which I learned was
+far less satisfactory than his letters had given reason to suspect. In
+reply to questions, I told her of my business and my daily life here in
+Albany. I did not ask her in return about herself. She seemed eager to
+forestall any possible inquiry on this point, and hastened to inform me as
+to my old acquaintances in the Valley.</p>
+
+<p>From her words I first realized how grave the situation there had suddenly
+become. It was not only that opposition to the Johnsons had been openly
+formulated, but feuds of characteristic bitterness had sprung up within
+families, and between old-time friends, in consequence. Colonel Henry
+Frey, who owned the upper Canajoharie mills, took sides with the Tories,
+and had fiercely quarrelled with his brother John, who was one of the Whig
+Committee. There was an equally marked division in the Herkimer family,
+where one brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, and his nephew, outraged the others
+by espousing the Tory cause. So instances might be multiplied. Already on
+one side there were projects of forcible resistance, and on the other ugly
+threats of using the terrible Indian power, which hung portentous on the
+western skirt of the Valley, to coerce the Whigs.</p>
+
+<p>I gained from this recital, more from her manner than her words, that her
+sympathies were with the people and not with the aristocrats. She went on
+to say things which seemed to offer an explanation of this.</p>
+
+<p>The tone of Valley society, at least so far as it was a reflection of
+Johnson Hall, had, she said, deteriorated wofully since the old baronet's
+death. A reign of extravagance and recklessness both as to money and
+temper--of gambling, racing, hard drinking, low sports, and coarse
+manners--had set in. The friends of Sir John were now a class by
+themselves, having no relations to speak of with the body of Whig farmers,
+merchants, inn-keepers, and the like. Rather it seemed to please the Tory
+clique to defy the good opinion of their neighbors, and show by very
+excess and license contempt for their judgment. Some of the young men whom
+I had known were of late sadly altered. She spoke particularly of Walter
+Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the
+evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a
+sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to distinguish sometimes
+from madness.</p>
+
+<p>In all this I found but one reflection--rising again and again as she
+spoke--and this was that she was telling me, by inference, the story of
+her own unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy would never have done this consciously--of that I am positive. But
+it was betrayed in every line of her face, and my anxious ear caught it in
+every word she uttered as to the doings of the Johnson party. Doubtless
+she did not realize how naturally and closely I would associate her
+husband with that party.</p>
+
+<p>Underneath all our talk there had been, on both sides, I dare say, a sense
+of awkward constraint. There were so many things which we must not speak
+of--things which threatened incessantly to force their way to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of them all, and wondered how much she knew of the events that
+preceded my departure--how much she guessed of the heart-breaking grief
+with which I had seen her go to another. It came back to me now, very
+vividly, as I touched the satin fold of her gown with my shoe, and said to
+myself, "This is really she."</p>
+
+<p>The two years had not passed so uncomfortably, it is true; work and
+pre-occupation and the change of surroundings had brought me back my peace
+of mind and taken the keen edge from my despair--which was to have been
+life-long, and had faded in a month. Yet now her simple presence--with the
+vague added feeling that she was unhappy--sufficed to wipe out the whole
+episode of Albany, and transport me bodily back to the old Valley days. I
+felt again all the anguish at losing her, all the bitter wrath at the
+triumph of my rival--emphasized and intensified now by the implied
+confession that he had proved unworthy.</p>
+
+<p>To this gloom there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition,
+the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air
+about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence.
+The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping
+us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as
+I did?</p>
+
+<p>I looked up into her face. She had been silent for I know not how long,
+following her thoughts as I had followed mine. It was almost a shock to me
+to find that the talk had died away, and I fancied that I read a kindred
+embarrassment in her eyes. I seized upon the first subject which
+entered my head.</p>
+
+<p>"Tulp would be glad to see you," I said, foolishly enough.</p>
+
+<p>She colored slightly, and opened and shut her fan in a nervous way. "Poor
+Tulp!" she said, "I don't think he ever liked me as he did you. Is
+he well?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has never been quite the same since--since he came to Albany. He is a
+faithful body-servant now--nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, softly, with a sigh; then, after a pause, "Philip spoke
+of offering to make good to you your money loss in Tulp, but I told him he
+would better not."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>was</i> better not," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>Silence menaced us again. I did not find myself indignant at this
+insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly
+close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near
+Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts of him whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>"You do Tulp a wrong," I said. "Poor little fellow! Do you remember--" and
+so we drifted into the happy, sunlit past, with its childish memories for
+both of games and forest rambles, and innocent pleasures making every day
+a little blissful lifetime by itself, and all the years behind our parting
+one sweet prolonged delight.</p>
+
+<p>Words came freely now; we looked into each other's faces without
+constraint, and laughed at the pastimes we recalled. It was so pleasant to
+be together again, and there was so much of charm for us both in the time
+which we remembered together.</p>
+
+<p>Sir John Johnson and his party had left the punch--or what remained of
+it--and came suddenly up to us. Behind the baronet I saw young Watts,
+young De Lancey, one or two others whom I did not know, and, yes!--it was
+he--Philip Cross.</p>
+
+<p>He had altered in appearance greatly. The two years had added much flesh
+to his figure, which was now burly, and seemed to have diminished his
+stature in consequence. His face, which even I had once regarded as
+handsome, was hardened now in expression, and bore an unhealthy, reddish
+hue. For that matter, all these young men were flushed with drink, and had
+entered rather boisterously, attracting attention as they progressed. This
+attention was not altogether friendly. Some of the ladies had drawn in
+their skirts impatiently, as they passed, and beyond them I saw a group of
+Dutch friends of mine, among them Teunis, who were scowling dark looks at
+the new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>Sir John recognized me as he approached, and deigned to say, "Ha!
+Mauverensen--you here?" after a cool fashion, and not offering his hand.</p>
+
+<p>I had risen, not knowing what his greeting would be like. It was only
+decent now to say: "I was much grieved to hear of your honored father's
+death last summer."</p>
+
+<p>"Well you might be!" said polite Sir John. "He served you many a good
+purpose. I saw you talking out yonder with Schuyler, that coward who dared
+not go to Philadelphia and risk his neck for his treason. I dare say he,
+too, was convulsed with grief over my father's death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you would like to tell Philip Schuyler to his face that he is a
+coward," I retorted, in rising heat at the unprovoked insolence in his
+tone. "There is no braver man in the Colony."</p>
+
+<p>"But he didn't go to Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty
+scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list."</p>
+
+<p>"He did not go for a reason which is perfectly well known--his illness
+forbade the journey."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," sneered the baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance;
+"too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told,
+he has been most of the time since your--what d'ye call it?--Congress
+assembled."</p>
+
+<p>I grew angry. "He went there to bury General Bradstreet. That, also, is
+well known. Information seems to reach the Valley but indifferently, Sir
+John. Everywhere else people understand and appreciate the imperative
+nature of the summons which called Colonel Schuyler to New York. The
+friendship of the two men has been a familiar matter of knowledge this
+fifteen years. I know not your notions of friendship's duties; but for a
+gentleman like Schuyler, scarcely a mortal illness itself could serve to
+keep him from paying the last respect to a friend whose death was such an
+affliction to him."</p>
+
+<p>Johnson had begun some response, truculent in tone, when an interruption
+came from a most unexpected source. Philip Cross, who had looked at me
+closely without betraying any sign of recognition, put his hand now on Sir
+John's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Bradstreet?" he said. "Did I not know him? Surely he is the man who found
+his friend's wife so charming that he sent that friend to distant
+posts--to England, to Quebec, to Oswego, and Detroit--and amused himself
+here at home during the husband's absence. I am told he even built a
+mansion for her while the spouse was in London <i>on business.</i> So he is
+dead, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>I had felt the bitter purport of his words, almost before they were out.
+It was a familiar scandal in the mouths of the Johnson coterie--this foul
+assertion that Mrs. Schuyler, one of the best and most faithful of
+helpmates, as witty as she was beautiful, as good as she was diligent, in
+truth, an ideal wife, had pursued through many years a course of deceit
+and dishonor, and that her husband, the noblest son of our Colony, had
+been base enough to profit by it. Of all the cruel and malignant things to
+which the Tories laid their mean tongues, this was the lowest and most
+false. I could not refrain from putting my hand on my sword-hilt as
+I answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Such infamous words as these are an insult to every gentleman, the world
+over, who has ever presented a friend to his family!"</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless there was apparent in my face, as in the exaggerated formality
+of my bow to Cross, a plain invitation to fight. If there had not been,
+then my manner would have wofully belied my intent. It was, in fact, so
+plain that Daisy, who sat close by my side, and, like some others near at
+hand, had heard every word that had passed, half-started to her feet and
+clutched my sleeve, as with an appeal against my passionate purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband had not stirred from his erect and arrogant posture until he
+saw his wife's frightened action. I could see that he noted this, and that
+it further angered him. He also laid his hand on his sword now, and
+frigidly inclined his wigged head toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"I had not the honor of addressing you, sir," he said, in a low voice,
+very much at variance with the expression in his eyes. "I had no wish to
+exchange words with you, or with any of your sour-faced tribe. But if you
+desire a conversation--a lengthy and more private conversation--I am at
+your disposition. Let me say here, however,"--and he glanced with fierce
+meaning at Daisy as he spoke--"I am not a Schuyler; I do not encourage
+'friends.'"</p>
+
+<p>Even Sir John saw that this was too much.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Cross!" he said, going to his friend. "Your tongue runs away
+with you." Then, in a murmur, he added: "Damn it, man! Don't drag your
+wife into the thing. Skewer the Dutchman outside, if you like, and if you
+are steady enough, but remember what you are about."</p>
+
+<p>I could hear this muttered exhortation as distinctly as I had heard
+Cross's outrageous insult. Sir John's words appealed to me even more than
+they did to his companion. I was already ashamed to have been led into a
+display of temper and a threat of quarrelling, here in the company of
+ladies, and on such an occasion. We were attracting attention, moreover,
+and Teunis and some of his Dutch friends had drawn nearer, evidently
+understanding that a dispute was at hand. The baronet's hint about Daisy
+completed my mortification. <i>I</i> should have been the one to think of her,
+to be restrained by her presence, and to prevent, at any cost, her name
+being associated with the quarrel by so much as the remotest inference.</p>
+
+<p>So I stood irresolute, with my hand still on my sword, and black rage
+still tearing at my heart, but with a mist of self-reproach and indecision
+before my eyes, in which lights, costumes, powdered wigs, gay figures
+about me, all swam dizzily.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Watts, a man in manner, though a mere stripling in years, had
+approached me from the other group, a yard off, in a quiet way to avoid
+observation. He whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"There must be no quarrel <i>here</i>, Mr. Mauverensen. And there must be no
+notice taken of his last words--spoken in heat, and properly due, I dare
+say, to the punch rather than to the man."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel that as deeply as you can," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad," said Watts, still in a sidelong whisper. "If you must fight,
+let there be some tolerable pretext."</p>
+
+<p>"We have one ready standing," I whispered back. "When we last met I warned
+him that at our next encounter I should break every bone in his skin. Is
+not that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"Capital! Who is your friend?"</p>
+
+<p>By some remarkable intuition my kinsman Teunis was prompted to advance at
+this. I introduced the two young men to each other, and they sauntered
+off, past where Sir John was still arguing with Cross, and into the outer
+hall. I stood watching them till they disappeared, then looking aimlessly
+at the people in front of me, who seemed to belong to some strange
+phantasmagoria.</p>
+
+<p>It was Daisy's voice which awakened me from this species of trance. She
+spoke from behind her fan, purposely avoiding looking up at me.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to fight--you two!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>I could not answer her directly, and felt myself flushing with
+embarrassment. "He spoke in heat," I said, stumblingly. "Doubtless he will
+apologize--to you, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know him. He would have his tongue torn out before he would
+admit his wrong, or any sorrow for it."</p>
+
+<p>To this I could find no reply. It was on my tongue's end to say that men
+who had a pride in combining obstinacy with insolence must reap what they
+sow, but I wisely kept silence.</p>
+
+<p>She went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me, Douw, that you will not fight. It chills my heart, even the
+thought of it. Let it pass. Go away now--anything but a quarrel! I
+beseech you!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis more easily said than done," I muttered back to her. "Men cannot
+slip out of du--out of quarrels as they may out of coats."</p>
+
+<p>"For my sake!" came the whisper, with a pleading quaver in it, from behind
+the feathers.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all on one side, Daisy," I protested. "I must be ridden over,
+insulted, scorned, flouted to my face--and pocket it all! That is a
+nigger's portion, not a gentleman's. You do not know what I have
+borne already."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I not? Ah, too well! For my sake, Douw, for the sake of our memories
+of the dear old home, I implore you to avoid an encounter. Will you
+not--for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It makes a coward out of me! Every Tory in the two counties will cackle
+over the story that a Dutchman, a Whig, was affronted here under the
+Patroon's very roof, and dared not resent it."</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you value their words? Must a thing be true for them to say
+it? The real manhood is shown in the strength of restraint, not the
+weakness of yielding to the impulse of the moment. And you can be strong
+if you choose, Douw!"</p>
+
+<p>While I still pondered these words Teunis Van Hoorn returned to me, having
+finished his consultation with Watts, whom I now saw whispering to Sir
+John and the others who clustered about Cross.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was in good spirits. He sidled up to me, uttering aloud some
+merry commonplace, and then adding, in a low tone:</p>
+
+<p>"I was a match for him. He insisted that they were the aggrieved party,
+and chose swords. I stuck to it that we occupied that position, and had
+the right to choose pistols. You are no Frenchman, to spit flesh with a
+wire; but you <i>can</i> shoot, can't you? If we stand to our point, they
+must yield."</p>
+
+<p>I cast a swift glance toward the sweet, pleading face at my side, and made
+answer:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not fight!"</p>
+
+<p>My kinsman looked at me with surprise and vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I went on, "it is not our way here. You have lived so long abroad
+that duelling seems a natural and proper thing. But we stay-at-homes no
+more recognize the right of these English fops to force their fighting
+customs upon us than we rush to tie our hair in queues because it is
+their fashion."</p>
+
+<p>I will not pretend that I was much in love with the line of action thus
+lamely defended. To the contrary, it seemed to me then a cowardly and
+unworthy course; but I had chosen it, and I could not retreat.</p>
+
+<p>There was upon the moment offered temptation enough to test my resolution
+sorely.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let
+it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust
+upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson
+stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost our sole
+observers.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross shook himself loose from the restraining circle of friends,
+and strode toward me, his face glowing darkly with passion, and his
+hands clinched.</p>
+
+<p>"You run away, do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where
+you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?--here, where you stand!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you," I made answer, striving hard to keep my voice down and my
+resolution up. "Others hear you, too. There are ladies in the room. If you
+have any right to be among gentlemen, it is high time for you to show it.
+You are acting like a blackguard."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear the preaching Dutchman!" he called out, with a harsh, scornful
+laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his
+hiding-place behind the petticoats.--Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and
+I'll break that sword of yours over your back!"</p>
+
+<p>Where this all would have ended I cannot tell. My friends gathered around
+beside me, and at my back. Cross advanced a step or two nearer to me, his
+companions with him. I felt, rather than saw, the gestures preceding the
+drawing of swords. I cast a single glance toward the group of women across
+the room--who, huddled together, were gazing at us with pale faces and
+fixed eyes--and I dare say the purport of my glance was that I had borne
+all I could, and that the results were beyond my control--when suddenly
+there came an unlooked-for interruption.</p>
+
+<p>The dignified, sober figure of Abraham Ten Broeck appeared in our wrathful
+circle. Some one had doubtless told him, in the outer hall, of the
+quarrel, and he had come to interfere. A hush fell over us all at
+his advent.</p>
+
+<p>"What have we here, gentlemen?" asked the merchant, looking from one to
+another of our heated faces with a grave air of authority. "Are you well
+advised to hold discussions here, in what ought to be a pleasant and
+social company?"</p>
+
+<p>No ready answer was forthcoming. The quarrel was none of my manufacture,
+and it was not my business to explain it to him. The Tories were secretly
+disgusted, I fancy, with the personal aspects of the dispute, and had
+nothing to say. Only Cross, who unfortunately did not know the new-comer,
+and perhaps would not have altered his manner if he had known him, said
+uncivilly:</p>
+
+<p>"The matter concerns us alone, sir. It is no affair of outsiders."</p>
+
+<p>I saw the blood mount to Mr. Ten Broeck's dark cheeks, and the fire flash
+in his eyes. But the Dutch gentleman kept tight bit on his tongue
+and temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I am not altogether an outsider, young sir," he replied, calmly.
+"It might be thought that I would have a right to civil answers here."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" asked Cross, contemptuously turning his head toward Sir John.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ten Broeck took the reply upon himself. "I am the uncle and guardian
+of your boy-host," he said, quietly. "In a certain sense I am myself your
+host--though it may be an honor which I shall not enjoy again."</p>
+
+<p>There was a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to
+impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant,
+and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on
+the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the
+principals changed his posture with a sense of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross presently went over to where the ladies stood, exchanged a
+few words with them, and then with his male friends left the room,
+affecting great composure and indifference. It was departing time; the
+outer hall was beginning to display cloaks, hoods, and tippets, and from
+without could be heard the voices of the negroes, bawling out demands for
+carriages.</p>
+
+<p>I had only a momentary chance of saying farewell to Daisy. Doubtless I
+ought to have held aloof from her altogether, but I felt that to be
+impossible. She gave me her hand, looking still very pale and distrait,
+and murmured only, "It was brave of you, Douw."</p>
+
+<p>I did not entirely agree with her, so I said in reply: "I hope you will
+be happy, dear girl; that I truly hope. Give my love and duty to Mr.
+Stewart, and--and if I may be of service to you, no matter in how exacting
+or how slight a matter, I pray you command me."</p>
+
+<p>We exchanged good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left
+me to join Lady Johnson and to depart with their company.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when I walked homeward with Teunis, sauntering in the moonlight, he
+imparted something to me which he had heard, in confidence of course, from
+one of the ladies who had formed the anxious little group that watched
+our quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>"After Ten Broeck came in, Cross went over to his wife, and brusquely said
+to her, in the hearing of her friends, that your acquaintance with her was
+an insult to him, and that he forbade her ever again holding converse
+with you!"</p>
+
+<p>We walked a considerable time in silence after this, and I will not essay
+to describe for you my thoughts. We had come into the shadow of the old
+Dutch church in the square, I know, before Teunis spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Be patient yet a little longer, Douw," he said. "The break must come soon
+now, and then we will drive all these insolent scoundrels before us
+into the sea!"</p>
+
+<p>I shook hands with him solemnly on this, as we parted.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="21"></a>Chapter XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>To pass from October, 1774, to mid-June of 1775--from the moonlit streets
+of sleeping Albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the Mohawk
+Valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. To
+us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully
+long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement.</p>
+
+<p>War was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister
+conditions. Dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting
+themselves in Parliament, at London, by declaring that the Americans were
+cowards and would not fight. We boasted little, but we knew ourselves
+better. There was as yet small talk of independence, of separation.
+Another year was to elapse before Thomas Paine's <i>Common Sense</i> should
+flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us
+both our real goal and the way to attain it. But about fighting, we had
+resolved our purpose.</p>
+
+<p>We should have been slaves otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable
+at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now
+it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North--all tediously
+alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of
+determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. To get justice, or
+even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. They
+listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of
+officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too
+worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England--who lied us
+impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the
+musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we
+were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition;
+the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town
+to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched
+under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and
+stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the Crown
+authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest
+men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up
+our substance in wanton taxation.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a chance that the new Parliament, meeting for the first
+time in the January of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to
+honestly set matters right. We had appealed from Crown and Commons to the
+English people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. But
+the hope speedily fell to the ground. The English, with that strange
+rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds
+their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal
+courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the
+cart-tail.
+
+To this we said no!</p>
+
+<p>In Albany, on this day in the latter part of June, when the thread of the
+story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague,
+tidings. Following upon the blow struck at Concord in April, a host of
+armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were
+investing Boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the
+beleaguered British General Gage. A great battle had been fought near the
+town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. But it meant
+War, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of
+excited comment.</p>
+
+<p>The windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming
+sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. Men had
+gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the
+Berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the
+mountains of how the fight had gone. No one talked of anything else.
+Assuredly I too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and
+discuss the news from Boston, but that my old friend Major Jelles Fonda
+had come down from Caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence
+from the Mohawk Valley.</p>
+
+<p>How well I remember him still, the good, square-set, solid
+merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm,
+resourceful, masterful air! He sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the
+day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and
+deliberate whiffs of his pipe. I listened with growing interest, until at
+last I forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which
+before had so absorbed me. He had much to tell.</p>
+
+<p>More than a month before, the two contending factions had come to
+fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the Whigs in and in front of John
+Veeder's house, at Caughnawaga. They were to raise a liberty pole there,
+and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. While they were
+deliberating, up rides Guy Johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in
+the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage.
+Back of him rode a whole company of the Hall cabal--Sir John Johnson,
+Philip Cross, the Butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the
+meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed.
+Many of these were drunk. Colonel Guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and
+began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had
+summoned them thither. Young Jake Sammons, with the characteristic
+boldness of his family, stood up to the Indian superintendent and answered
+him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the Johnson men fell upon
+Jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. Some insisted that it
+was peppery Guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded
+riding-whip, but on this point Major Jelles was not clear.</p>
+
+<p>"But what were our people about, to let this happen?" I asked, with some
+heat.</p>
+
+<p>"To tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away.
+Only a few of us held our place. Our men were unarmed, for one thing.
+Moreover, they are in awe of the power of the Hall. The magistrates, the
+sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office
+in Tryon County--take orders from the Hall. You can't get people to forget
+that. Besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down."</p>
+
+<p>Major Jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed
+force on the side of the Johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper
+of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. Sir
+John had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the Hall, and his Roman
+Catholic Highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as
+a military body. All sorts of stories came down from Johnstown and up from
+Guy Park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their
+retainers. Peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were
+Philip Cross and Walter Butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with
+the most violent party of the Tories. To them, indeed, was directly
+traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the Valley tribes proved to have
+been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder Indians were to be
+called down from the headwaters of the Three Rivers, and from the Lake
+plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if
+rebellion was persisted in.</p>
+
+<p>"But they would never dare do that!" I cried rising to my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "After all,
+that is their chief strength. Make no mistake! They are at work with the
+red-skins, poisoning them against us. Guy Johnson is savage at the
+mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at Guy Park,
+and he has already procured orders from London to remove Dominie Kirkland,
+the missionary who has kept the Oneidas heretofore friendly to us. That
+means--You can see as well as the rest of us what it means."</p>
+
+<p>"It means war in the Valley--fighting for your lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let it! My customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. I will
+give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from
+the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this Johnson nonsense any
+longer. And my old father and my brothers say it with me. My brother Adam,
+he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work,
+his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple
+for gun-stocks, and making bullets. That reminds me--Guy Johnson took all
+the lead weights out of the windows at Guy Park, and hid them, to keep
+them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away."</p>
+
+<p>"Before he ran away? Who ran away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Guy, of course," was the calm reply.</p>
+
+<p>I stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "You never mentioned
+this!" I managed to say at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I hadn't got to it yet," the Dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly.
+"You young people hurry one so."</p>
+
+<p>By degrees I obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had
+purposely come down, I believe, to tell me. As he progressed, my fancy ran
+before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great
+Hall on the hill which I knew so well.</p>
+
+<p>I needed not his assurances to believe that Molly Brant, who had come down
+from the upper Mohawk Castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred
+on all the rest into malevolent resolves.</p>
+
+<p>I could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the
+table where in Sir William's time she had been mistress, and now was but a
+visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. I could see her watching with
+silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, Sir John,
+Colonel Guy, the Butlers, Cross, and Claus, and then her own brother
+Joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her,
+engrafting upon his full wolf-totem Mohawk blood the restraints of tongue
+and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. No one of the males,
+Caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. Each
+in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to
+them meant London--would think of their acts. No one, not even Joseph
+Brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to
+wit: that the recalcitrant Valley should be swept as with a besom of fire
+and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. This, when
+it came her time, the Indian woman said for them frankly, and with
+scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. I could fancy
+her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away
+from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest
+the powers with which the king had intrusted them.</p>
+
+<p>It was not hard, either, to imagine young Walter Butler and Philip Cross
+rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot
+and fast upon the echo of Mistress Molly's contemptuous rebuke, should
+have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed
+all to the use of the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>So that day, just a week since, it had been settled that Colonel Guy and
+the two Butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a
+council near Fort Schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against
+their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they
+had departed. Guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great
+Sir William, she would be of use in the work; but Mrs. John Butler had
+gone to the Hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower
+Indian Castle.</p>
+
+<p>The two houses thus deserted--Guy Park and the Butlers' home on Switzer's
+Hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their
+contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in
+their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity,
+or hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother Adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest Jelles
+Fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. So their thoughts were on bullets
+as well as his. He has his eye now on the church roof at home."</p>
+
+<p>Here was news indeed! There could be no pretence that the clandestine
+flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. To the
+contrary, Colonel Guy, as Indian superintendent, had fully five hundred
+fighting men, Indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. They
+had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to
+assist Sir John, Sheriff White, and their Tory minions to hold Tryon
+County in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood.</p>
+
+<p>We sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a
+situation. At last I said:</p>
+
+<p>"Can I do anything? You all must know up there that I am with you, heart
+and soul."</p>
+
+<p>Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve
+us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and
+to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use
+here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things
+would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson
+is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying
+to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts
+and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to
+advise you. What do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major
+Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul
+never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with
+tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he
+could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of
+his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that
+story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of
+vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!</p>
+
+<p>An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.</p>
+
+<p>He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County
+part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.</p>
+
+<p>It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found
+how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital,
+tidings for the last.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention
+it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the
+Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he
+deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="22"></a>Chapter XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry
+scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by
+this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome
+<i>ego</i>, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it
+essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be
+familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent
+enough as the tale unfolds.</p>
+
+<p>Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall
+at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be
+placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of
+the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and
+gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from
+the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom
+which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and
+warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as
+if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond
+its strength.</p>
+
+<p>Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled
+hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it
+was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these
+last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the
+erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone,
+the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair
+is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the
+neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face.
+The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the
+mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now
+to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still
+calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the
+querulous in tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is
+Philip."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>Here the change <i>is</i> in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy
+who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the
+other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the
+smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty
+efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take
+up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to
+emphasize her loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>"The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in
+comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders.
+"If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem
+home-like."</p>
+
+<p>The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no
+more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must
+be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a
+mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to
+them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday
+was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be.</p>
+
+<p>The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two.
+The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to
+accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this
+calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results
+without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two
+up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart
+beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the
+Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong
+ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see
+differently. And this was the saddest thing of all.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his
+boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the
+two before the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so
+uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at
+the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers.
+He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He
+walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and
+neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair
+showed almost white--which both knew too well.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart.</p>
+
+<p>"There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all
+in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God!
+they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not
+whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held
+up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt,
+and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down
+from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would
+have none of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too,
+to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things
+will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful
+and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to
+God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!"</p>
+
+<p>Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift
+glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young
+wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
+Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Things are moving, you say. What is new?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment,
+and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of
+milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will
+master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of
+rebellion!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough,
+since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years
+younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of
+misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest
+enough, but they have small cunning."</p>
+
+<p>"That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We
+will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!"</p>
+
+<p>An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke,
+and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the
+stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over
+his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at
+bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries
+of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights
+lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it
+mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the
+prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his
+surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander,
+true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of
+thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly
+from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch
+were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing
+with types.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the
+tomahawk!"</p>
+
+<p>The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes,
+and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to
+interrogate her husband.</p>
+
+<p>He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed
+with his papers.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet,
+walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting
+for me, and the evenings grow cold."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a
+perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever
+welcome here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
+"But old bones are best couched at home."</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand
+affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I
+pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you,
+God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at
+which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day
+for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the
+counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words
+of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no
+good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first
+came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have
+known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push
+steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand
+its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
+Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err
+cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of
+the savages."</p>
+
+<p>"All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to
+these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,"
+continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were
+too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley,
+of Bell&ecirc;tre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you.
+Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk
+yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in
+terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world
+men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a
+willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is
+that you would do!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot
+on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to
+fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I
+have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they
+deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you."</p>
+
+<p>"Go with them? Where are they going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego;
+perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and
+hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it
+really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And this flight is actually resolved upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the
+Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They
+have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely
+pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at
+his command to shake my will."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr.
+Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive
+concert of thought.</p>
+
+<p>She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she
+had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her,
+she signified it not by glance or gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged
+me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on
+Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming
+as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon
+their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I
+have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he
+glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it
+<i>should</i> be so little!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his
+papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts:</p>
+
+<p>"It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel
+scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to
+our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady
+and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to
+disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You
+yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by
+the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by
+those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now
+that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as
+well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany
+conspirators are pushing their schemes."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire
+to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon
+reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw
+regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany
+committee."</p>
+
+<p>Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture.
+Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who
+knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his
+manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold
+regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy.
+Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked
+overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side
+and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other
+subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to
+recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second,
+and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to
+his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were
+pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!"</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first
+haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences
+followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now
+erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the
+shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young
+Mr. Cross full in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Death of my life!" he stammered. "<i>You</i> are saying these things to <i>me</i>!
+It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and <i>her</i> son--the young man to
+whom I gave my soul's treasure!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling
+lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute
+the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What
+he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance
+came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then,
+seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously
+stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep
+his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned
+about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to
+be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling
+were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="23"></a>Chapter XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>"You are, then, not even a gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as
+husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could
+not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the
+mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the
+strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also
+affronted.</p>
+
+<p>Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her
+first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had
+discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered,
+acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the
+burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have
+been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her
+nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young
+Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her
+tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her
+the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the
+instinct of combat in his scowl.</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for
+folly."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You
+should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and
+done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the
+moment pierced even his thick skin.</p>
+
+<p>"He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for
+his interest. I intended no offence."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you follow him, and say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>I</i> will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!"</p>
+
+<p>The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the
+position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined
+and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom,
+was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough
+countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is
+not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer."</p>
+
+<p>The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence,
+you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives,
+and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you
+like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer
+whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your
+tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman
+in Albany!"</p>
+
+<p>The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words
+did not come readily with which to repel it.</p>
+
+<p>"I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I
+have been badly reared for such purposes."</p>
+
+<p>She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn
+with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being
+with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection
+came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's
+strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now,
+and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but
+the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And
+then the softness came to her voice too.</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>can</i> you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real
+self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old
+self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she
+was mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for
+me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing
+himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture
+upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but
+I am not Dutch, and I don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in
+the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly
+or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the
+house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to
+take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly
+interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very
+hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its
+improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing
+him again, yet was it not right that she should do so?</p>
+
+<p>The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to
+draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a
+motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of
+the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the
+foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward,
+head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily:</p>
+
+<p>"Get away! When I want you, I'll call!"</p>
+
+<p>The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat
+in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife
+approached him, and stood at the back of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be
+some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves
+all this misery?"</p>
+
+<p>"What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of
+having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on
+the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At
+least once in a while he points my way."</p>
+
+<p>"Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me
+aright, seeing my errors?"</p>
+
+<p>"There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or
+that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but
+ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money,
+position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house
+of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
+Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans,
+gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty
+face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins
+gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and
+distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of
+mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and
+chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit
+me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass.
+She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on
+the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be
+the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like
+a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I
+might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission
+in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure
+and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'"</p>
+
+<p>"You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if
+only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is
+not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as
+temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it."</p>
+
+<p>"What folly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly
+again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain
+fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years
+has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the
+same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body
+into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you
+really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you
+accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but
+please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you
+could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy
+of a wife!"</p>
+
+<p>Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at
+her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not
+like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are
+thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing
+to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in
+my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal
+and my wife is a rebel."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
+Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only
+wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more
+than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me
+I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers
+and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood;
+but as to my having ever spoken--"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words.
+"I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a
+Dutch foundling!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it
+had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That
+it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he
+the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished
+sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.</p>
+
+<p>While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the
+bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth
+papers from its recesses with angry haste.</p>
+
+<p>"Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared.</p>
+
+<p>The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons
+was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half
+trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the
+cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most
+trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his
+black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored
+hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance
+at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting
+papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be
+a long one; it may not."</p>
+
+<p>"It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals
+with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things
+I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have
+the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like,
+properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in
+the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
+When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters
+which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of
+the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when
+the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them
+saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead
+Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be
+ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then."</p>
+
+<p>The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Damnation! No!" growled Philip.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>If you do not, they shall be thrown after you</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to
+keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The
+words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers.
+There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near
+upon swooning to think at all.</p>
+
+<p>Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory
+was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and
+of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and
+fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the
+self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry,
+motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about
+her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already
+dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet
+hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else
+besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her,
+and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of
+packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two
+negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they
+had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door
+was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward
+the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this
+melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted
+and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging
+before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless,
+hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought
+and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage
+across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder
+ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these
+vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had
+passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the
+approaching rest.</p>
+
+<p>Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate.
+The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to
+awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before,
+but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising
+zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing.</p>
+
+<p>"They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured.</p>
+
+<p>A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a
+swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting
+from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on
+the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up
+at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness
+of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no longer any other home," she added.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and
+brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then
+fell inert.</p>
+
+<p>Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see
+Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form
+lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the
+world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="24"></a>Chapter XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>The Night Attack upon Quebec--And My Share in It.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Of these sad occurrences it was my fortune not to be informed for many
+months. In some senses this was a beneficent ignorance. Had I known that,
+under the dear old roof which so long sheltered me, Mr. Stewart was
+helplessly stricken with paralysis, and poor Daisy lay ill unto death with
+a brain malady, the knowledge must have gone far to unfit me for the work
+which was now given into my hands. And it was work of great magnitude and
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>Close upon the heels of the Bunker Hill intelligence came the news that a
+Continental army had been organized; that Colonel Washington of Virginia
+had been designated by Congress as its chief, and had started to assume
+command at Cambridge; and that our own Philip Schuyler was one of the four
+officers named at the same time as major-generals. There was great
+pleasure in Albany over the tidings; the patriot committee began to
+prepare for earnest action, and our Tory mayor, Abraham Cuyler,
+sagaciously betook himself off, ascending the Mohawk in a canoe, and
+making his way to Canada.</p>
+
+<p>Among the first wishes expressed by General Schuyler was one that I
+should assist and accompany him, and this, flattering enough in itself,
+was made delightful by the facts that my friend Peter Gansevoort was named
+as another aide, and that my kinsman Dr. Teunis was given a professional
+place in the general's camp family. We three went with him to the
+headquarters at Cambridge very shortly after, and thenceforward were too
+steadily engrossed with our novel duties to give much thought to
+home affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, a full seven months onward from the June of which I have
+written that my first information concerning the Cedars, and the dear folk
+within its walls, came to me in a letter from my mother. This letter found
+me, of all unlikely places in the world, lying in garrison on the frozen
+bank of the St. Lawrence--behind us the strange, unnatural silence of the
+northern waste of snow, before us the black, citadel-crowned,
+fire-spitting rock of Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>Again there presses upon me the temptation to put into this book the story
+of what I saw there while we were gathering our strength and resolution
+for the fatal assault. If I am not altogether proof against its wiles, at
+least no more shall be told of it than properly belongs here, insomuch as
+this is the relation of my life's romance.</p>
+
+<p>We had started in September with the expedition against Canada, while it
+was under the personal command of our general; and when his old sickness
+came unluckily upon him and forced his return, it was at his request that
+we still kept on, under his successor, General Richard Montgomery. It was
+the pleasanter course for us, both because we wanted to see fighting, and
+because Montgomery, as the son-in-law of Mr. Livingston, was known to us
+and was our friend. And so with him we saw the long siege of St. John's
+ended, and Chambly, and then Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, one by one
+submit, and the <i>habitants</i> acclaim us their deliverers as we swept the
+country clean to the gates of Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>To this place we came in the first week of December, and found bold Arnold
+and his seven hundred scarecrows awaiting us. These men had been here for
+a month, yet had scarcely regained their strength from the horrible
+sufferings they encountered throughout their wilderness march. We were by
+this time not enamoured of campaigning in any large degree, from our own
+experience of it. Yet when we saw the men whom Arnold and Morgan had led
+through the trackless Kennebec forest, and heard them modestly tell the
+story of that great achievement--of their dreadful sustained battle with
+cold, exhaustion, famine, with whirling rapids, rivers choked with ice,
+and dangerous mountain precipices--we felt ashamed at having supposed we
+knew what soldiering was.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks we lay waiting. Inside, clever Carleton was straining heaven
+and earth in his endeavor to strengthen his position; without, we could
+only wait. Those of us who were from the Albany and Mohawk country came to
+learn that some of our old Tory neighbors were within the walls, and the
+knowledge gave a new zest to our eager watchfulness.</p>
+
+<p>This, it should be said, was more eager than sanguine. It was evident from
+the outset that, in at least one respect, we had counted without our host.
+The French-Canadians were at heart on our side, perhaps, but they were not
+going to openly help us; and we had expected otherwise. Arnold himself,
+who as an old horse-dealer knew the country, had especially believed in
+their assistance and sympathy, and we had bills printed in the French
+language to distribute, calling upon them to rise and join us. That they
+did not do so was a grievous disappointment from the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we might have been warned of this. The common people were friendly to
+us--aided us privily when they could--but they were afraid of their
+seigneurs and cur&eacute;s. These gentry were our enemies for a good reason--in
+their eyes we were fighting New England's fight, and intolerant New
+England had only the year before bitterly protested to Parliament against
+the favor shown the Papist religion in Quebec. These seigneurs and priests
+stood together in a common interest. England had been shrewd enough to
+guarantee them their domains and revenues. Loyalty meant to them the
+security of their <i>rentes et d&icirc;mes</i>, and they were not likely to risk
+these in an adventure with the Papist-hating Yankees. Hence they stood by
+England, and, what is more, held their people practically aloof from us.</p>
+
+<p>But even then we could have raised Canadian troops, if we had had the
+wherewithal to feed or clothe or arm them. But of this Congress had taken
+no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our
+clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our
+food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the
+most desperate assault of known warfare.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks went by swiftly enough. Much of the time I was with the
+commander at our headquarters in Holland House, and I grew vastly attached
+to the handsome, gracious, devoted young soldier. Brigadier-General
+Montgomery had not, perhaps, the breadth of character that made Schuyler
+so notable; which one of all his contemporaries, save Washington, for that
+matter, had? But he was very single-minded and honorable, and had much
+charm of manner. Often, during those weeks, he told me of his beautiful
+young wife, waiting for his return at their new home on the Hudson, and of
+his hope soon to be able to abandon the strife and unrest of war, and
+settle there in peace. Alas! it was not to be so.</p>
+
+<p>And then, again, we would adventure forth at night, when there was no
+moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered
+force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the
+ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots
+filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than
+the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon,
+and once the General had his horse killed under him.</p>
+
+<p>I should say that he was hardly hopeful of the result of the attack
+already determined upon. But it was the only thing possible to be done,
+and with all his soul and mind he was resolved to as nearly do it as
+might be.</p>
+
+<p>The night came, the last night but one of that eventful, momentous year
+1775. Men had passed each day for a week between our quarters and Colonel
+Arnold's at St. Roch, concerting arrangements. There were Frenchmen inside
+the town from whom we were promised aid. What we did not know was that
+there were other Frenchmen, in our camp, who advised Carleton of all our
+plans. The day and evening were spent in silent preparations for the
+surprise and assault--if so be it the snow-storm came which was agreed
+upon as the signal. Last words of counsel and instruction were spoken.
+Suppressed excitement reigned everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>The skies were clear and moonlit in the evening; now, about midnight, a
+damp, heavy snowfall began and a fierce wind arose. So much the better for
+us and our enterprise, we thought.</p>
+
+<p>We left Holland House some hours after midnight, without lights and on
+foot, and placed ourselves at the head of the three hundred and fifty men
+whom Colonel Campbell (not the Cherry Valley man, but a vain and cowardly
+creature from down the Hudson, recently retired from the British army)
+held in waiting for us. Noiselessly we descended from the heights, passed
+Wolfe's Cove, and gained the narrow road on the ledge under the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>The General and his aide, McPherson, trudged through the deep snow ahead
+of all, with Gansevoort, and me keeping up to them as well as we could.
+What with the very difficult walking, the wildness of the gale, and the
+necessity for silence, I do not remember that anything was said. We panted
+heavily, I know, and more than once had to stop while the slender and less
+eager carpenters who formed the van came up.</p>
+
+<p>It was close upon the fence of wooden pickets which stretched across the
+causeway at Cape Diamond that the last of these halts was made. Through
+the darkness, rendered doubly dense by the whirling snowflakes with which
+the wind lashed our faces, we could only vaguely discern the barrier and
+the outlines of the little block-house beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is our work!" whispered the General to the half-dozen nearest him,
+and pointing ahead with his gauntleted hand. "Once over this and into the
+guard-house, and we can never be flanked, whatever else betide."</p>
+
+<p>We tore furiously at the posts, even while he spoke--we four with our
+hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay
+a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep
+in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur
+from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's
+troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more
+pickets. Somebody--it may have been I--said, "Cowards!" Some one else,
+doubtless the General, said, "Forward!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the ground shook violently under our feet, a great bursting roar
+deafened us, and before a scythe-like sweep of fire we at the front
+tumbled and fell!</p>
+
+<p>I got to my feet again, but had lost both sword and pistol in the snow. I
+had been hit somewhere--it seemed in the side--but of that I scarcely
+thought. I heard sharp firing and the sound of oaths and groans all around
+me, so it behooved me to fight, too. There were dimly visible dark forms
+issuing from the guard-house, and wrestling or exchanging blows with other
+forms, now upright, now in the snow. Here and there a flash of fire from
+some gun or pistol gave an instant's light to this Stygian hurly-burly.</p>
+
+<p>A heavy man, coming from the door of the block-house, fired a pistol
+straight at me; the bullet seemed not to have struck me, and I leaped upon
+him before he could throw the weapon. We struggled fiercely backward
+toward the pickets, I tearing at him with all my might, and striving with
+tremendous effort to keep my wits as well as my strength about me, in
+order to save my life. Curiously enough, I found that the simplest
+wrestling tricks I tried I had not the power for; even in this swift
+minute, loss of blood was telling on me. A ferocious last effort I made to
+swing and hurl him, and, instead, went staggering down into the drift with
+him on top.</p>
+
+<p>As I strove still to turn, and lifted my head, a voice sounded close in my
+ear, "It's you, is it? Damn you!" and then a great mashing blow on my face
+ended my fight.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless some reminiscence in that voice caused my mind to carry on the
+struggle in the second after sense had fled, for I thought we still were
+in the snow wrestling, only it was inside a mimic fort in the clearing
+around Mr. Stewart's old log-house, and I was a little boy in an apron,
+and my antagonist was a yellow-haired lad with hard fists, with which he
+beat me cruelly in the face--and so off into utter blackness and void
+of oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>One morning in the latter half of January, nearly three weeks after, I
+woke to consciousness again. Wholly innocent of the lapse of time, I
+seemed to be just awakening from the dream of the snow fort, and of my
+boyish fight with little Philip Cross. I smiled to myself as I thought of
+it, but even while I smiled the vague shadows of later happenings came
+over my mind. Little by little the outlines of that rough December night
+took shape in my puzzled wits.</p>
+
+<p>I had been wounded, evidently, and had been borne back to Holland House,
+for I recognized the room in which I lay. My right arm was in stiff
+splints; with the other hand I felt of my head and discovered that my hair
+had been cut close, and that my skull and face were fairly thatched with
+crossing strips of bandage. My chest, too, was girdled by similar
+medicated bands. My mental faculties moved very sedately, it seemed, and I
+had been pondering these phenomena for a long time when my cousin Dr.
+Teunis Van Hoorn came tip-toeing into the room.</p>
+
+<p>This worthy young man was sincerely delighted to find me come by my
+senses once more. In his joy he allowed me to talk and to listen more than
+was for my good, probably, for I had some bad days immediately following;
+but the relapse did not come before I had learned much that was gravely
+interesting.</p>
+
+<p>It is a story of sufficient sorrow and shame to American ears even
+now--this tale of how we failed to carry Quebec. Judge how grievously the
+recital fell upon my ears then, in the little barrack-chamber of Holland
+House, within hearing of the cannonade by which the farce of a siege was
+still maintained from day to day! Teunis told me how, by that first volley
+of grape at the guard-house, the brave and noble Montgomery had been
+instantly killed; how Arnold, forcing his way from the other direction at
+the head of his men, and being early shot in the leg, had fought and
+stormed like a wounded lion in the narrow Sault-au-Matelot; how he and the
+gallant Morgan had done more than their share in the temerarious
+adventure, and had held the town and citadel at their mercy if only the
+miserable Campbell had pushed forward after poor Montgomery fell, and gone
+on to meet those battling heroes in the Lower Town. But I have not the
+patience, even at this late day, to write about this melancholy and
+mortifying failure.</p>
+
+<p>Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman,
+and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right,
+and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the
+headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken
+prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still
+keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our
+operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance
+among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to
+prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that
+when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw
+in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up.</p>
+
+<p>All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as
+if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did
+it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared
+that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at
+the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my
+ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm.
+They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which
+was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into
+an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed
+fist or a pistol-butt.</p>
+
+<p>"Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some
+of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and
+McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he
+and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels.
+You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with
+the rest, next morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a
+colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are
+to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to
+travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if
+you please."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been dangerously ill, have I not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after
+the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody
+must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these,
+and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever.
+But I never feared for you."</p>
+
+<p>Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided
+to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that
+confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a
+week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a <i>son marquee</i>.
+But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that
+encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection.
+Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once
+it came to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who
+broke my head with his pistol-butt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for
+my confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that
+gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into
+fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your
+whole carcass!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="25"></a>Chapter XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>A Crestfallen Return to Albany.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was
+nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious
+slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it
+became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my
+progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have
+come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and
+every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of
+what use is all this now, alas!"</p>
+
+<p>These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came
+in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing
+the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with
+re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many
+letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The
+physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin
+relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them.</p>
+
+<p>One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of
+the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English
+trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease
+concerning what remained of its interests.</p>
+
+<p>The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat,
+painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in
+no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document,
+which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame
+Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not
+inherited by her son.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>January 9,</i> A. D. 1776.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most
+part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen
+you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you
+no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to
+be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a
+God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I
+surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do
+not reproach you.</p>
+
+<p>"The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars,
+was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was
+both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour
+with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the
+Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being
+dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in
+the way, and where others can help him to weep.</p>
+
+<p>"When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been
+deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with
+paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The
+burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it,
+but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her
+fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his
+wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful
+belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her
+from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal
+named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels,
+essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms
+that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant
+from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained
+nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at
+best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief,
+and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign
+matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were
+still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I
+knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying
+that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out
+of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the
+matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads
+are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I
+was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as
+sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go
+her own gait, and so she may for all of me.</p>
+
+<p>"She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work
+when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a
+worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck
+of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying
+that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame
+Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my
+company was not desired longer.</p>
+
+<p>"I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry
+other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the
+Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If
+the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be
+peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all
+say matters will be worse before they mend.</p>
+
+<p>"Affectionately, your mother,</p>
+
+<p>"Katharine Mauverensen."</p>
+
+<p>As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated
+and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of
+Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to
+laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of
+my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its
+humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no
+more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided
+always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for
+everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing
+in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done
+for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the
+moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their
+own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing
+was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how
+she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to
+me, unconsciously revealing her pique.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her,
+and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars
+since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a
+fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants;
+she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and
+foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a
+large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the
+fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and
+fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her
+bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring.</p>
+
+<p>From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day
+counts now. The sooner I get home the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to
+Sorel to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves
+are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion,
+like you, I should fear nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means
+of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my
+restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I
+gave him my mother's letter.</p>
+
+<p>My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient
+details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
+allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
+over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
+whistle softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"</p>
+
+<p>"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
+great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
+his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
+credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
+potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
+much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
+too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
+God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"</p>
+
+<p>I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
+upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.</p>
+
+<p>"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
+seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
+from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
+doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
+Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
+well as fast as you like, and we will be off."</p>
+
+<p>This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
+judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
+Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
+accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his
+arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From
+our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of
+many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter
+jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of
+turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense
+of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and
+that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was
+impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small
+disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and
+attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled
+districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt
+that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for
+their courtesies.</p>
+
+<p>Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had
+evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it
+was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy
+preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General
+Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full
+fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he
+had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and
+difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with
+books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during
+my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the
+General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy.</p>
+
+<p>But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole
+spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with
+anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied
+and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his
+case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring
+illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that
+it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home.
+It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was
+really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk
+duty at such a time.</p>
+
+<p>But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed
+that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one
+morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform
+with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he
+called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans:</p>
+
+<p>"John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his
+Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came
+down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the
+woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month
+much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead
+near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots
+day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue
+for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who
+followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington
+is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no
+reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to
+send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the
+thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs
+them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and
+all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the
+neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest.</p>
+
+<p>"You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for
+you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached
+to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go
+with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near
+place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You
+need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you.
+But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative
+in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the
+prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further."</p>
+
+<p>When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="26"></a>Chapter XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I rode beside Colonel Elias Dayton one forenoon some ten days later, up
+the Valley road, my pulses beating fast at the growing familiarity of the
+scene before us. We had crossed the Chuctenunda Creek, and were within
+sight of the gray walls of Guy Park. Beyond rose the hills behind which
+lay Fort Johnson. I was on the very threshold of my boyhood's
+playfield--within a short hour's walk of my boyhood's home.</p>
+
+<p>The air was full of sounds. Birds sang with merry discordance all through
+the thicket to our right, flitting among the pale green tangle of spring's
+foliage. The May sunshine had lured forth some pioneer locusts, whose
+shrill cries came from who could tell where--the tall swale-grass on the
+river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown
+broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the
+squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers
+along the willow-fringed water--the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad
+small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears
+took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of
+armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road before us, behind us,
+at our side.</p>
+
+<p>For my second return to the Valley was at the head of troops, bringing
+violence, perhaps bloodshed, in their train. I could not but contrast it
+in my mind with that other home-coming, four years before, when I sat
+turned to look eastward in the bow of Enoch's boat, and every soft dip of
+the oars timed the glad carol in my heart of home and friends--and the
+sweet maid I loved. I was so happy then!--and now, coming from the other
+direction, with suggestions of force and cruel purposes in every echo of
+our soldiers' tread, I was, to tell the plain truth, very
+miserable withal.</p>
+
+<p>My talk with Colonel Dayton had, in a way, contributed to this gloomy
+feeling. We had, from choice, ridden side by side for the better part of
+two days, and, for very need of confiding in some one, I had talked with
+him concerning my affairs more freely than was my wont. This was the
+easier, because he was a contemplative, serious, and sensible man, whose
+words and manner created confidence. Moreover, he was neither Dutchman nor
+Yankee, but a native Jerseyman, and so considered my story from an equable
+and fair point of view, without bias.</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, passing strange that this man, on his way to seize or
+crush the Johnson clique, as the case might be, should have been the one
+to first arouse in my mind the idea that, after all, the Tories had their
+good side, and were doing what to them seemed right, at tremendous cost
+and sacrifice to themselves. I had been telling him what a ruffian was
+Philip Cross, and what grounds I had for hating him, and despitefully
+describing the other chief Tories of the district. He said in reply,
+I remember:</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to miss the sad phase of all this, my friend. Your young blood
+feels only the partisan promptings of dislike. Some day--soon, perhaps--
+you will all at once find this youthful heat gone; you will begin to walk
+around men and things, so to speak, and study them from all sides. This
+stage comes to every sober mind; it will come to you. Then you will
+realize that this baronet up yonder is, from his own stand-point, a
+chivalrous, gallant loyal gentleman, who imperils estates, power, peace,
+almost life itself, rather than do what he holds to be weak or wrong. Why,
+take even this enemy of yours, this Cross. He was one of the notables of
+these parts--rich, popular, influential; he led a life of utmost luxury
+and pleasure. All this he has exchanged for the rough work of a soldier,
+with its privations, cold, fatigue, and the risk of death. Ask yourself
+why he did it."</p>
+
+<p>"I see what you would enforce," I said. "Your meaning is that these men,
+as well as our side, think the right is theirs."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely. They have inherited certain ideas. We disagree with them; we
+deem it our duty to silence them, fight them, drive them out of the
+country, and, with God's help, we will do it. But let us do this with our
+eyes open, and with the understanding that they are not necessarily
+scoundrels and heathen because they fail to see things as we see them."</p>
+
+<p>"But you would not defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages
+against their neighbors--against helpless women and children. That must be
+heathenish to any mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Defend it? No! I do not defend any acts of theirs. Rid your mind of the
+idea that because a man tries to understand a thing he therefore defends
+it. But I can see how they would defend it to their own consciences--just
+as these thrifty Whig farmers hereabout explain in their own minds as
+patriotic and public-spirited their itching to get hold of Johnson's
+Manor. Try and look at things in this light. Good and bad are relative
+terms; nothing is positively and unchangeably evil. Each group of men has
+its own little world of reasons and motives, its own atmosphere, its own
+standard of right and wrong. If you shut your eyes, and condemn or praise
+these wholly, without first striving to comprehend them, you may or may
+not do mischief to them; you assuredly injure yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Thus, and at great length, spoke the philosophical colonel. I could not
+help suspecting that he had too open a mind to be a very valuable fighter,
+and, indeed, this proved to be true. He subsequently built some good and
+serviceable forts along the Mohawk, one of which to this day bears his
+name, but he attained no distinction as a soldier in the field.</p>
+
+<p>But, none the less, his words impressed me greatly. What he said had never
+been put to me in clear form before, and at twenty-seven a man's mind is
+in that receptive frame, trembling upon the verge of the meditative
+stage, when the presentation of new ideas like these often marks a
+distinct turn in the progress and direction of his thoughts. It seems
+strange to confess it, but I still look back to that May day of 1776 as
+the date of my first notion that there could be anything admirable in
+my enemies.</p>
+
+<p>At the time, these new views and the tone of our talk helped to disquiet
+me. The swinging lines of shoulders, the tramp! tramp! in the mud, the
+sight of the guns and swords about me, were all depressing. They seemed to
+give a sinister significance to my return. It was my home, the dearest
+spot on earth--this smiling, peaceful, sunlit Mohawk Valley--and I was
+entering it with soldiers whose mission was to seize and despoil the son
+of my boyhood's friend, Sir William. More than one of my old play-mates,
+now grown to man's estate, would note with despair our approach, and curse
+me for being of it. The lady of Johnson Hall, to whom all this would be
+horrible nigh unto death, was a close, warm friend of Daisy's. So my
+thoughts ran gloomily, and I had no joy in any of the now familiar sights
+around me.</p>
+
+<p>The march up from Schenectady had been a most wearisome one for the men,
+owing to the miserable condition of the road, never over-smooth and now
+rendered doubly bad and difficult by the spring freshets and the oozing
+frost. When we reached the pleasant little hollow in which Fort Johnson
+nestles, a halt was accordingly ordered, and the tired soldiers prepared
+to refresh themselves with food by the banks of the creek. It was now
+afternoon; we were distant but a short mile from the Cedars, and I could
+not abide the thought of lingering here, to no purpose, so close to the
+goal of all my longings. I therefore exchanged some plans and suggestions
+with Colonel Dayton and his companion Judge Duer, who represented the
+civil law in the expedition, and so clapped spurs and dashed forward
+up the road.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems ten years, not four, since I was last here," I was saying to
+Daisy half an hour later, and unconsciously framing in words the thoughts
+which her face suggested.</p>
+
+<p>I know not how to describe the changes which this lapse of time had
+wrought upon her countenance and carriage. In the more obvious, outward
+sense, it had scarcely aged her. She was now twenty-three years of age,
+and I doubt a stranger would have deemed her older. Yet, looking upon her
+and listening to her, I seemed to feel that, instead of being four years
+her senior, I was in truth the younger of the two. The old buoyant,
+girlish air was all gone, for one thing. She spoke now with gentle,
+sweet-toned gravity; and her eyes, frankly meeting mine as of old, had in
+their glance a soft, reposeful dignity which was new to me.</p>
+
+<p>Almost another Daisy, too, she seemed in face. It was the woman in her
+features, I dare say, which disconcerted me. I had expected changes,
+perhaps, but not upon these lines. She had been the prettiest maiden of
+the Valley, beyond all others. She was not pretty now, I should say, but
+she <i>was</i> beautiful--somewhat pallid, yet not to give an air of unhealth;
+the delicate chiselling of features yielded now not merely the pleasure
+of regularity, but the subtler charm of sensitive, thoughtful character.
+The eyes and hair seemed a deeper hazel, a darker brown, than they had
+been. The lips had lost some, thing of their childish curve, and met each
+other in a straight line--fairer than ever, I thought, because more firm.</p>
+
+<p>I am striving now, you see, against great odds, to revive in words the
+impressions of difference which came to me in those first hours, as I
+scanned her face. They furnish forth no real portrait of the dear lady:
+how could I hope they should? But they help to define, even if dimly, the
+changes toward strength and self-control I found in her.</p>
+
+<p>I was, indeed, all unprepared for what awaited me here at the Cedars. My
+heart had been torn by all manner of anxieties and concern. I had hastened
+forward, convinced that my aid and protection were direly needed. I sat
+now, almost embarrassed, digesting the fact that the fortunes of the
+Cedars were in sufficient and capable hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart's condition was in truth sad enough. He had greeted me with
+such cordiality and clear-wittedness of utterance and manner that at first
+I fancied his misfortunes to have been exaggerated in my mother's letter.
+His conversation for a moment or two was also coherent and timely. But his
+mind was prone to wander mysteriously. He presently said: "Assuredly I
+taught you to shave with both hands. I knew I could not be mistaken." I
+stole a glance toward Daisy at this, and her answering nod showed me the
+whole case. It was after old Eli had come in and wheeled Mr. Stewart in
+his big chair out into the garden, that I spoke to Daisy of the
+differences time had wrought.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," she said, "it must be sadly apparent to you--the change in
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>How should I approach the subject--the one thing of which I knew we were
+both thinking? There seemed a wall between us. She had been unaffectedly
+glad to see me; had, for the instant, I fancied, thought to offer me her
+cheek to kiss--yet was, with it all, so self-possessed and reserved that I
+shrank from touching upon her trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not everything is sad," I made answer, falteringly. "Poor Mr.
+Stewart--that is indeed mournful; but, on the other hand--" I broke
+off abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"On the other hand," she took up my words calmly, "you are thinking that I
+am advantaged by Philip's departure."</p>
+
+<p>My face must have showed that I could not deny it.</p>
+
+<p>"In some respects," she went on, "yes; in others, no. I am glad to be able
+to speak freely to you, Douw, for you are nearest to me of all that are
+left. I do not altogether know my own mind; for that matter, does any one?
+The Philip to whom I gave my heart and whom I married is one person; the
+Philip who trampled on the heart and fled his home seems quite another and
+a different man. I hesitate between the two sometimes. I cannot always say
+to myself: 'The first was all fancy; the second is the reality.' Rather,
+they blend themselves in my mind, and I seem to see the fond lover
+remaining still the good husband, if only I had had the knowledge and
+tenderness to keep him so!"</p>
+
+<p>"In what are you to be reproached, Daisy?" I said this somewhat testily,
+for the self-accusation nettled me.</p>
+
+<p>"It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom
+from the beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with
+melancholy conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My
+heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for
+finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest. I
+dreamed to be called 'My lady,' too, in good time. I forgot that I came
+from the poor people, and that I belonged to them. So well and truly did I
+forget this that the fact struck me like a whip when--when it was brought
+to my notice."</p>
+
+<p>"He taunted you with it, then!" I burst forth, my mind working quickly for
+once.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer for the time, but rose from her chair and looked out
+upon the group in the garden. From the open door she saw the van of
+Dayton's soldiers trudging up the Valley road. I had previously told her
+of their mission and my business.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Lady Johnson," she said, resting her head against her hand on the
+door-frame, and looking upon the advancing troops with a weary expression
+of face. "Her trouble is coming--mine is past." Then, after a pause:
+"Will they be harsh with Sir John, think you? I trust not. They have both
+been kind to me since--since Philip went. Sir John is not bad at heart,
+Douw, believe me. You twain never liked each other, I know. He is a bitter
+man with those who are against him, but his heart is good if you touch
+it aright."</p>
+
+<p>I had not much to say to this. "I am glad he was good to you," I managed
+to utter, not over-graciously, I fear.</p>
+
+<p>The troops went by, with no sound of drums now, lest an alarm be raised
+prematurely. We watched them pass in silence, and soon after I took my
+leave for the day, saying that I would go up to see the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, and cross the river to my mother's home, and would return
+next morning. We shook hands at parting, almost with constraint.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="27"></a>Chapter XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Early the next day, which was May 20th, we heard to our surprise and
+consternation that on the preceding afternoon, almost as Colonel Dayton
+and his soldiers were entering Johnstown, Sir John and the bulk of his
+Highlanders and sympathizers, to the number of one hundred and thirty, had
+privately taken to the woods at the north of the Hall, and struck out
+for Canada.</p>
+
+<p>Over six weeks elapsed before we learned definitely that the baronet and
+his companions had traversed the whole wilderness in safety and reached
+Montreal, which now was once more in British hands--our ill-starred Quebec
+expedition having finally quitted Canada earlier in the month. We could
+understand the stories of Sir John's travail and privations, for the snow
+was not yet out of the Adirondack trails, and few of his company were
+skilled in woodmen's craft. But they did accomplish the journey, and that
+in nineteen days.</p>
+
+<p>I, for one, was not very much grieved at Johnson's escape, for his
+imprisonment would have been an embarrassment rather than a service to us.
+But Colonel Dayton was deeply chagrined at finding the bird flown, and I
+fear that in the first hours of his discomfiture he may have forgotten
+some of his philosophical toleration for Tories in general. He had,
+moreover, the delicate question on his hands of what to do with Lady
+Johnson. Neither Judge Duer nor I could advise him, and so everything was
+held in suspense for the better part of a week, until General Schuyler's
+decision could be had.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile my time was fairly occupied in the fulfilment of matters
+intrusted to me by the General. I had to visit Colonel Herkimer at his
+home below Little Falls, and talk with him about the disagreeable fact
+that his brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, had deserted the militia command
+given him by the Whigs and fled to Canada. The stout old German was free
+to denounce his brother, however, and I liked the looks and blunt speech
+of Peter Bellinger, who had been made colonel of the deserted battalion of
+German Flatts. There were also conversations to be had with Colonel Klock,
+and Ebenezer Cox, and the Fondas, at their several homes, and a day to
+spend with my friend John Frey, now sheriff in place of the Tory White. It
+thus happened that I saw very little of the people at the Cedars, and had
+no real talk again with Daisy, until a full week had passed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cool, overcast forenoon when I alighted next at the familiar
+gate, and gave my horse into Tulp's charge. The boy, though greatly
+rejoiced to see me back again, had developed a curious taciturnity in
+these latter years--since his accident, in fact--and no longer shouted out
+the news to me at sight. Hence I had to ask him, as I neared the door,
+what strange carriage was that in the yard beyond, and why it was there.
+As I spoke, a couple of men lounged in view from the rear of the house,
+and I recognized them as of Dayton's command. Tulp explained that Lady
+Johnson was being taken away, and that she had tarried here to rest on
+her journey.</p>
+
+<p>If I had known this at the gate, I doubt I should have stopped at all; but
+I had been seen from the window, and it was too late now to turn about. So
+I entered, much wishing that I had left off my uniform, or, still better,
+that I had stayed away altogether.</p>
+
+<p>There were present in the great room Daisy, Lady Johnson, a young lady who
+was her sister, two children--and a man in civilian's garb, with some few
+military touches, such as a belt and sword and a cockade, who sat by the
+window, his knees impudently spread apart and his hat on his head. I
+looked at this fellow in indignant inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy came eagerly to me, with an explanation on her lips:</p>
+
+<p>"It is the officer who is to take Lady Johnson to Albany. He insists upon
+forcing his presence upon us, and will not suffer us to be alone together
+in any room in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?--and off with your hat!" I said to the man, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>My uniform was of service, after all. He looked me over, and evidently
+remembered having seen me with his colonel, for he stood up and took off
+his hat. "I am a lieutenant of the Connecticut line," he said, in a
+Yankee snarl, "and I am doing my duty."</p>
+
+<p>"I am a major in the Continental line, and I should be doing <i>my</i> duty if
+I sent you back in irons to your colonel," I answered. "Get out of here,
+what time Lady Johnson is to remain, and leave these ladies to
+themselves!"</p>
+
+<p>He was clearly in two minds about obeying me, and I fancy it was my
+superior size rather than my rank that induced him to go, which he did in
+as disagreeable a fashion as possible. I made my bow to Lady Johnson, and
+said something about being glad that I had come, if I had been of use.</p>
+
+<p>She, poor young woman, was in a sad state of nervous excitement, what with
+her delicate condition and the distressing circumstances of the past week.
+She was, moreover, a very beautiful creature, naturally of soft and
+refined manners, and this made me the readier to overlook the way in which
+she met my kindly meant phrases.</p>
+
+<p>"I marvel that you are not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly,
+"to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that
+man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of
+calling such low fellows officers, or consorting with them!"</p>
+
+<p>I answered as gently as I could that, unfortunately, there were many such
+ill-conditioned men in every service, and pointed out that the man, by his
+speech, was a New Englander.</p>
+
+<p>"And who fetched them into this province, I should like to know!"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hold a political discussion
+with this poor troubled wife, who saw her husband's peril, her own plight,
+and the prospective birth of her first child in captivity constantly
+before her eyes! So I strove to bring the talk upon other grounds, but not
+with much success. She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a
+fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady
+Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather
+those of her husband. She seemed not to have very clear notions of what
+the trouble was all about, but ascribed it loosely, I gathered, to the
+jealousy of Philip Livingston, who was vexed that the Scotch did not
+settle upon his patent instead of on Sir John's land, and to the malice of
+General Schuyler, whose feud with the Johnsons was notorious.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think, too," she added, "that Mr. Schuyler's mother and my
+mother's mother were sisters! A very pleasant and valuable cousin he is,
+to be sure! Driving my husband off into the forest to perhaps die of
+hunger, and dragging me down to Albany, in my condition, and thrusting a
+low Connecticut cobbler into my carriage with me! If my sickness overtakes
+me on the road, and I die, my blood will be on the head of Philip
+Schuyler."</p>
+
+<p>I read in Daisy's eyes a way out of this painful conversation, and so
+said: "Lady Johnson, it will perhaps render your journey less harrowing if
+I have some talk with this officer who is your escort. Let me leave you
+women-folk together here in peace, the while"--and went out into the
+garden again.</p>
+
+<p>I found the lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping
+in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some
+private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed
+out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been,
+through no fault of her own, nurtured in aristocratic ideas and ways; that
+those of whatever party who knew her well most heartily esteemed her; and
+that, moreover, she was nearly related by blood to General Schuyler--he
+professed himself ready to behave toward her with more politeness.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble with him really lay in his abiding belief that people
+underestimated his importance, and hence he sought to magnify his position
+in their eyes by insolent demeanor. Therein I discerned the true Yankee.</p>
+
+<p>That the men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would
+be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome,
+intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during
+the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how
+their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened
+poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too,
+of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices
+against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So
+mischievous did this attitude become at last--when old General Wooster
+came to us with his Connecticut troops, and these set themselves up to be
+independent of all our plans or rules, refusing even to mess with the
+others or to touch Continental provisions and munitions--that Congress had
+to interfere and put them sharply back into their proper places.
+Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and men from the Carolinas will
+bear me out in saying these things about the New England soldiery. I speak
+not in blame or bitterness. The truth is that they were too much akin in
+blood and conceit to the English not to have in themselves many of the
+disagreeable qualities which had impelled us all to revolt against
+British rule.</p>
+
+<p>When the lieutenant had ordered the horses to be brought out for a start,
+I went back into the house. The women had been weeping, I could see. Lady
+Johnson had softened in her mood toward me, and spoke now some gentle
+words of thanks for the little I had done. When I told her, in turn, that
+her escort would henceforth be more considerate in his conduct toward her,
+she was for a moment pleased, but then tears filled her eyes at the
+thoughts of the journey before her.</p>
+
+<p>"When I am out of sight of this house," she said, sadly, "it will seem as
+if my last friend had been left behind. Why could they not have left me at
+the Hall? I gave them the keys; I yielded up everything! What harm could I
+have done them--remaining there? I had no wish to visit my relatives in
+Albany! It is a trick--a device! I doubt I shall ever lay eyes on my dear
+home again."</p>
+
+<p>And, poor lady, she never did.</p>
+
+<p>We strove to speak words of comfort to her, but they came but feebly, and
+could not have consoled her much. When the lieutenant opened the door, the
+women made a tearful adieu, with sobs and kisses upon which I could not
+bear to look. Lady Johnson shook hands with me, still with a pathetic
+quivering of the lips. But then in an instant she straightened herself to
+her full height, bit her lips tight, and walked proudly past the obnoxious
+escort down the path to the carriage, followed by her weeping sister and
+the two big-eyed wondering children.</p>
+
+<p>"Will she ever come back?" said Daisy, half in inquiry, half in despairing
+exclamation, as we saw the last of the carriage and its guard. "How will
+it all end, Douw?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can foresee?" I answered. "It is war now, at last, war open and
+desperate. I can see no peaceful way out of it. These aristocratic
+landlords, these Johnsons, Butlers, Phillipses, De Lanceys, and the rest,
+will not give up their estates without a hard fight for them. Of that you
+may be sure. <i>They</i> will come back, if their wives do not, and all that
+they can do, backed by England, to regain their positions, will be done.
+They may win, and if they do, it will be our necks that will be put into
+the yoke--or the halter. At all events, it has gone too far to be patched
+over now. We can only stand up and fight as stoutly as we may, and leave
+the rest to fate."</p>
+
+<p>"And it really was necessary to fight--I suppose it could not have been in
+reason avoided?"</p>
+
+<p>"They would have it so. They clung to the faith that they were by right
+the masters here, and we the slaves, and so infatuated were they that they
+brought in English troops and force to back them up. There was no
+alternative but to fight. Would you have had me on the other side--on the
+English side, Daisy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Douw," she answered, in a clear voice. "If war there must be,
+why, of course, the side of my people is my side."</p>
+
+<p>I was not surprised at this, but I said, "You speak of your people,
+Daisy--but surely mere birth does not count for more than one's whole
+training afterward, and you have been bred among another class altogether.
+Why, I should think nine out of every ten of your friends here in the
+Mohawk district must be Tories."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so great a proportion as that," she went on, with a faint smile upon
+her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. "You do not know the value of
+these 'friends,' as you call them, as closely as I do. Never have they
+forgotten on their side, even if I did on mine, that my parents were
+Palatine peasants. And you speak of my being bred among them! In what way
+more than you were? Was I not brought up side by side with you? Was there
+any difference in our rearing, in our daily life until--until you left us?
+Why should I not be a patriot, sir, as well as you?"</p>
+
+<p>She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it. We both
+were thinking, I felt, of the dear old days gone by, and of the melancholy
+fate which clouded over and darkened those days, and drove us apart.</p>
+
+<p>We still stood by the open door, whence we had watched the carriage
+disappear. After some seconds of silence I essayed to bring back the
+conversation to Lady Johnson, and talked of her narrow, ill-informed,
+purely one-sided way of regarding the troubles, and of how impossible it
+was that the class to which she belonged, no matter how amiable and good
+they might be, could ever adapt themselves to the enlarging social
+conditions of this new country.</p>
+
+<p>While I talked, there burst forth suddenly the racket of fifes and drums
+in the road. Some militia companies were marching past on their way to
+join Colonel Dayton's force. We stood and watched these go by, and in the
+noise that they made we failed to hear Mr. Stewart's tottering footsteps
+behind us.</p>
+
+<p>The din of the drums had called him out of his lethargy, and he came
+forward to watch the yeoman-soldiery.</p>
+
+<p>"They march badly--badly," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with
+his hand. "I do not know the uniform. But I have been away so long, and
+everything is changed since the King of Prussia began his wars. Yet I am
+happier here as I am--far happier with my fields, and my freedom, and my
+children."</p>
+
+<p>He had spoken in the tone, half-conversational, half-dreamy, which of late
+strangely marked most of his speech. He turned now and looked at us; a
+pleasant change came over his wan face, and he smiled upon us with a
+curious reflection of the old fond look.</p>
+
+<p>"You are good children," he said; "you shall be married in due time, and
+come after me when I am gone. There will be no handsomer, happier twain in
+the province."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy flushed crimson and looked pained at the old gentleman's childish
+babbling, and I made haste to get away.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="28"></a>Chapter XXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of
+unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business
+to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and
+encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice
+which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to
+time, assurance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler,
+and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these
+pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole
+Continental service no more unenviable post than mine.</p>
+
+<p>I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of
+fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the
+satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in
+which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the
+most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen
+Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing;
+but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning
+powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be
+posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly
+peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection.</p>
+
+<p>I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all
+the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley
+neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see
+now that they were not altogether without excuse.</p>
+
+<p>The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No
+sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental
+independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the
+declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden
+halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had
+been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the
+magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in
+New York, General Washington could not hold his own, and Congress lost the
+nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service,
+disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force
+became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and
+almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming
+numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally
+lamentable.</p>
+
+<p>There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift
+strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud
+which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening,
+before spring came.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and
+intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side
+this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money,
+without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in
+their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and
+resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence
+and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German
+auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispassionately these two opposing
+forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General
+Washington would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or
+not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me
+in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was,
+but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for
+rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of
+1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no
+visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending
+danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month.
+I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my
+bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an
+irritable mind.</p>
+
+<p>The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small
+outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up
+communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the
+time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of
+disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a
+somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress.
+Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding
+them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim
+their sails that they should ship no water whichever way the wind blew.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people
+had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Washington evacuated
+Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was
+wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively,
+then with less concealment, to drink the King's health.</p>
+
+<p>Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower
+district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all
+east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga.
+They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights
+to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British
+color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the
+county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig
+sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories,
+confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time passed, the dry-rot of
+doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that
+nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from
+home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and
+scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the
+other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King.</p>
+
+<p>It was my function to watch this shifting public opinion, to sway it where
+I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been
+conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I
+turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their
+sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with
+intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of
+promises to speedily glut the passions of war, circulated stealthily all
+about us. How it came, how it was passed from hearth to hearth, defied our
+penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and
+strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens.</p>
+
+<p>For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so
+long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the
+Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was
+more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of
+these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others
+flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that
+the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages
+to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly,
+over our heads.</p>
+
+<p>And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and
+selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and
+turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke.</p>
+
+<p>Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us
+if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to
+Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and
+patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of
+Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very
+gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that
+gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story
+was forged.</p>
+
+<p>Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Washington's call
+for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his
+poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York.
+The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in,
+and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told.
+Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New
+York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the
+Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an
+auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of
+our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once
+this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared
+not think!</p>
+
+<p>I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To
+comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter,
+but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife.
+Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this
+horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New
+England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a
+fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's
+pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the
+militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by
+suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and
+means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he,
+with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud
+just then.</p>
+
+<p>I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep,
+for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud
+pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and
+the messenger had thus found me out promptly.</p>
+
+<p>Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in
+response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on
+some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered
+from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could
+tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had
+been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see
+him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my
+sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight broke before we crossed the river, and the sunrise gun sounded as
+we rode up into the court-house square at Johnstown. Soldiers were already
+to be seen moving about outside the block-houses at the corners of the
+palisade which, since Sir John's flight, had been built around the jail.
+Our coming seemed to be expected, for one of the soldiers told us to wait
+while he went inside, and after a few minutes John Frey came out, rubbing
+his eyes. As I dismounted, he briefly explained matters to me.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that a Tory spy had made his way in from the woods, had
+delivered letters both at Cairncross and at the Cedars, and had then
+started to return, but by the vigilance of one of the Vrooman boys had
+been headed off and taken.</p>
+
+<p>"He is as close as the bark on a beech-tree," concluded the sheriff. "We
+could get nothing out of him. Even when I told him he would be hanged this
+morning after breakfast, he did not change color. He only said that if
+this was the case he would like first to see you; it seems he knows you,
+and has some information for you--probably about Philip Cross's wife.
+Perhaps he will tell <i>you</i> what was in the letter he brought to her."</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my
+being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy
+sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy.</p>
+
+<p>"All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail.</p>
+
+<p>When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our
+interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the
+shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to
+accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at
+our presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as
+freely as the manacles would admit.</p>
+
+<p>I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded
+neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the
+open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as
+leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on
+me. I stepped forward, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Enoch Wade?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried
+right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to
+make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a
+palaver with you, all by yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff.</p>
+
+<p>I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying
+"talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told
+Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon
+the sheriff and the soldier left us.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic
+smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't
+wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest
+Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young
+Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?"</p>
+
+<p>I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not
+prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more
+his conduct mystified me.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit
+down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep
+interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its
+essential points were these:</p>
+
+<p>After Sir William's death Enoch had remained on at the Hall, not feeling
+particularly bound to the new baronet, but having a cat's attachment to
+the Hall itself. When Sir John finally resolved to avoid arrest by flight,
+Enoch had been in two minds about accompanying him, but had finally
+yielded to the flattering reliance placed by all upon the value and
+thoroughness of his knowledge as a woodsman. It was largely due to his
+skill that the party got safely through the great wilderness, and reached
+Montreal so soon. Since his arrival in Canada, however, things had not
+been at all to his liking. There was but one thought among all his refugee
+companions, which was to return to the Mohawk Valley and put their old
+neighbors to fire and sword--and for this Enoch had no inclination
+whatever. He had accordingly resisted all offers to enrol him in the Tory
+regiment which Sir John was raising in Canada, and had looked for an
+opportunity to get away quietly and without reproach. This chance had only
+come to him a week or so ago, when Philip Cross offered to pay him well to
+take two letters down the Valley--one to his servant Rab, the other to
+Mrs. Cross. He had accepted this errand, and had delivered the letters as
+in duty bound. There his responsibility ended. He had no intention to
+return, and had allowed himself to be arrested by a slow and uninventive
+young man, solely because it seemed the best way of achieving his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your purpose, Enoch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from
+Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know
+who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory,
+with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel--Sillinger they called
+him--and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet
+the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians.
+Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come
+down the Valley!"</p>
+
+<p>You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch
+gave--details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west
+to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I
+returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query:</p>
+
+<p>"But why get yourself arrested?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given
+you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can
+contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the
+Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="29"></a>Chapter XXIX</h2>
+
+<h3>The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to
+the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come
+to us.</p>
+
+<p>For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as
+well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing
+Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we
+despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam
+and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels.</p>
+
+<p>Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of
+the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs--skilled marksmen
+recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class--and that
+Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war
+party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the
+Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's
+regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of
+men we had long known in the Valley--men whose brothers and kinsmen were
+still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons
+could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was
+mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green"
+uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their
+own blood.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he
+shouted fiercely at Enoch.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly.</p>
+
+<p>But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the
+hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother,
+Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another
+brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were
+with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped.</p>
+
+<p>More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the
+position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and
+despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to
+Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at
+Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel,
+and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt
+of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred
+men--the Third New York Continentals--and I took it upon myself to urge
+now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him.</p>
+
+<p>This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the
+military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action,
+there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no
+word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun,
+and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most
+important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any
+question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he
+were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested
+that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down
+the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he
+walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the
+pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown
+followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and
+picking berries by the way.</p>
+
+<p>The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my
+thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents--which it turned
+out he did not--but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating
+upon them.</p>
+
+<p>During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her
+recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of
+her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for
+a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and
+maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually
+wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak
+of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole
+subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed
+the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have
+added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for
+revenge should come.</p>
+
+<p>That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl,
+I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the
+dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with
+no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For
+the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the
+neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting
+that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes
+of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked
+Enoch.</p>
+
+<p>"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver
+it into her hands."</p>
+
+<p>"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood--his old accustomed
+temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most
+generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he
+is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition
+fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they
+started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts
+of themselves."</p>
+
+<p>I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I
+said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is
+still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt
+these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon--it is
+rest itself--when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your
+task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see
+these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard
+fighting to come. It made me uneasy."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift--it's more my way
+of thinking than the other--and you seem to need it powerfully, too.
+But"--here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to
+boot-tops--"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any
+regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,'
+but it would gag me from the first minute."</p>
+
+<p>We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort
+without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly
+Wemple appeared to let me in.</p>
+
+<p>"We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her
+apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little
+breathing-spell."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had
+fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in
+hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am <i>so</i> glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent
+Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never
+would come."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from--from----"</p>
+
+<p>"You know, then!"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger--he is
+an old friend of ours--told me that much, nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The
+pleased excitement at my arrival--apparently so much desired--was
+succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or--or how to
+tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea
+that nothing could be done without your advice and help--and yet, now you
+have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She
+paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to
+Cairncross."</p>
+
+<p>I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the
+truth, none the less."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Douw, only very, very wretched!"</p>
+
+<p>The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the
+glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front
+through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with
+the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about it all, Daisy--if you can."</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to
+me. She would have recalled it an instant later.</p>
+
+<p>"No--give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you
+should not see."</p>
+
+<p>But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again.</p>
+
+<p>"No--read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no
+difference--between <i>us</i>. You might as well know all!"</p>
+
+<p>The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded
+sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold
+character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature
+scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least:</p>
+
+<p>"Madam:--It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you
+are not to publish it.</p>
+
+<p>"If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I
+shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act
+accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my
+back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with
+ruffian foes to law and order generally.</p>
+
+<p>"All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including
+without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a
+major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me.
+After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to
+listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make
+no promise.</p>
+
+<p>"I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as
+your further instructions.</p>
+
+<p>"Philip."</p>
+
+<p>One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a
+letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading
+lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence,
+until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce
+to speak my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband
+of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!"</p>
+
+<p>There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying,
+that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has
+convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the
+inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed;
+so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this
+narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women
+folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do
+it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must
+be written.</p>
+
+<p>This is what Daisy actually said:</p>
+
+<p>"But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but
+indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has
+done, and that he still loves me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly see nothing of the kind!"</p>
+
+<p>She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his
+home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly
+with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared
+nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that
+by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he
+as much as says that he will forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes--perhaps--when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at
+the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after
+all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you."</p>
+
+<p>"He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is your husband--a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first
+makes your life wretched at home--you know you <i>were</i> wretched, Daisy!
+Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes,
+humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty
+of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years--having
+you watched meanwhile, it seems--yet never vouchsafing you so much as a
+word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help
+enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down
+and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this
+letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his
+coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if
+you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your
+chief friends. And all this you take kindly--sifting his brutal words in
+search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished
+at you! I credited you with more spirit."</p>
+
+<p>She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases
+than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little
+pause, said to me quite calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality."</p>
+
+<p>"You know him better than I--a thousand times better, more's the pity.
+Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of
+the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you forgotten that he saved my life?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but he forgot it--or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place
+of soft thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"And he loved me--ah! he truly did--for a little!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar;
+and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride."</p>
+
+<p>"How you hate him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?"</p>
+
+<p>"He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the
+gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a
+quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and
+as for Tulp--why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia
+over the cliff, and left me <i>you</i>--I--I----"</p>
+
+<p>The words were out!</p>
+
+<p>I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers.
+Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have
+uttered--what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was
+covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over
+this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and
+finally--after what had seemed an age of silence--I stammered on:</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever
+met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the
+ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany--in the Patroon's mansion,
+you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I
+went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery
+fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here,"
+I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was
+his doing."</p>
+
+<p>I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling
+that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the
+older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility
+overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder,
+and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed
+superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest
+nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem
+sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your
+feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given
+me. I know what you would have said----"</p>
+
+<p>"It was exactly what I most of all would <i>not</i> have said," I broke in
+with, in passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of
+course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it
+was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"--her voice softened
+and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in
+every detail of our youth--"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be,
+my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the
+two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter
+and sister."</p>
+
+<p>There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and
+self-sustained enough.</p>
+
+<p>She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross
+at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned
+out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to
+convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself
+accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown
+road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make
+assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that
+very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff
+at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="30"></a>Chapter XXX</h2>
+
+<h3>From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that
+mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion.</p>
+
+<p>The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us.
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the
+approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude,
+with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort,
+working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the
+dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for
+supplies, for more men, and for militia support.</p>
+
+<p>At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for
+Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of
+Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this
+little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that
+this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more
+was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now
+stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the
+spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had
+disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and
+doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their
+grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or
+suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors.
+And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help
+was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be
+welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our
+blood--the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our
+midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail.</p>
+
+<p>General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia,
+apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen
+and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall.
+Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared
+raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming
+forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we
+must meet them!</p>
+
+<p>It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of
+that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley
+bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came
+out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their
+order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the
+forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield
+that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered
+and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine
+danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month
+hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling
+drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the
+early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in
+bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear;
+and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find
+them again at work upon some other farm.</p>
+
+<p>There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together
+to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we
+had grown selfish and solitary--each man for himself. We had forgotten, in
+the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that
+fine old word "neighbor"--the husbandman, or <i>boer</i>, who is nigh, and to
+whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was
+in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared
+everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as
+to fight for one another--each for all, and all for each. Forty years have
+gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk
+Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The
+poor <i>bauers</i> and squatters from the bush came out then and did their
+share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings
+and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to
+this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the
+well-to-do than I know of anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly
+built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle
+for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the
+drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and
+filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was
+no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned,
+flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones
+threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the
+little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of
+their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix.</p>
+
+<p>By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to
+meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to
+be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might
+have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice
+of his day--grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under
+Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular
+troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said
+to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose
+to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory
+neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own
+fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets
+in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling,
+hissing stone.</p>
+
+<p>I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that
+in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great
+campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that
+strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last
+at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French
+overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical
+enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages
+or of the Don Cossacks--in none of these records, I aver, can you find so
+much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born
+Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter
+cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest
+painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian
+peasant was a nobleman.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon
+these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of
+duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than
+once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of
+them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my
+generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this
+philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an
+army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their
+relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be
+slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at
+their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars
+apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one
+pretend not to hate such monsters?</p>
+
+<p>At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had
+never known before to marshal our yeomanry together.</p>
+
+<p>Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night--to
+Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in
+the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East
+Creek--organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a
+little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district
+regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at
+Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched
+forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to
+Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather
+together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better
+than a fortnight ago had seemed possible.</p>
+
+<p>They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard
+of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and
+Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the
+bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and
+villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among
+them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and
+imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher
+estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call
+such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many
+of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform,
+such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied
+largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply
+their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their
+hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their
+sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might
+well have shrunk from.</p>
+
+<p>These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else,
+though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They
+had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine
+friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence,
+though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above
+at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were
+richer in hate.</p>
+
+<p>At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to
+start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late
+in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her
+roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the
+Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on
+our horses.</p>
+
+<p>I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty
+toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole
+distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I
+yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear,
+after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly
+prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and
+who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again?</p>
+
+<p>I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my
+mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out
+for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I
+ought instead to be going toward Cairncross.</p>
+
+<p>Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very
+woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had
+apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me--to say good-by?"
+asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of
+your starting to-morrow--for the battle."</p>
+
+<p>I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it
+in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in
+my words.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come--all day I have been thinking of
+little else--yet I feared that my visit might--might----"</p>
+
+<p>Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a
+superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow
+prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she
+showed now by leaving the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet
+with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to
+live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without
+a sign."</p>
+
+<p>We stood thus facing each other for a moment--mumbling forth some
+commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with
+a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "<i>Must you truly
+go</i>?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my
+shoulder and weeping violently.</p>
+
+<p>It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I
+would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence--as being too sacred a
+thing for aught of disclosure or speculation--were it not that some might,
+in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung
+by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of
+soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand,
+or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of impersonal things--of the coming invasion, of the chances of
+relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a
+good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young
+commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted
+together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back--as we had
+so often returned before during these latter hateful months--to the sweet
+companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr.
+Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at
+Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary
+of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in
+the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these
+long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of
+yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the
+strange quality of the Roman faith--that its forms and customs, learned in
+youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after
+many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab
+Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the
+tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may
+linger pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>Thus our conversation ran--decorous and harmless enough, in all
+conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a
+forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet
+influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole
+world of meaning evaded in our talk--were we to blame?</p>
+
+<p>I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you!
+This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we
+could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in
+common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly,
+the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman
+now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These
+had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time
+when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this
+we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor
+and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our
+thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and
+without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own
+choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of
+love's cherubim.</p>
+
+<p>We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her
+hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the
+white forehead she as gently inclined to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a
+soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come
+back."</p>
+
+<p>The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and
+Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night
+with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she
+shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough
+made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There
+were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me
+searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was
+as mystified as I then thought.</p>
+
+<p>At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch
+and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her
+during my absence--and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="31"></a>Chapter XXXI</h2>
+
+<h3>The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm
+yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about
+the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said,
+they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it
+would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had
+flooded the kitchen with tears.</p>
+
+<p>Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for
+the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the
+narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous
+personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one
+another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.</p>
+
+<p>During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each
+other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had
+got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her
+letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that
+she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my
+vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from
+it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be;
+for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household
+of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen
+management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her
+own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not
+one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting
+respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction
+as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to
+manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was
+within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and
+anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a
+veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never
+marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly
+unattainable ideal.</p>
+
+<p>I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I
+was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at
+all deceived.</p>
+
+<p>The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed
+bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender,
+high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my
+hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me
+in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives
+before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the
+horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back.
+After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form
+that I was going.</p>
+
+<p>And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come
+to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving
+homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could
+save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and
+scalping-knife.</p>
+
+<p>I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the
+reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I
+should not take this ride for nothing!</p>
+
+<p>"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the
+scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who
+through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that
+you are a Van Hoorn!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not forget."</p>
+
+<p>"And is that young Philip Cross--<i>her</i> husband--with Johnson's crew?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is."</p>
+
+<p>"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your
+grandfather Baltus was!"</p>
+
+<p>These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had
+joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to
+overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was
+nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.</p>
+
+<p>We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked
+road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by
+the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the
+highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and
+children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall
+corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine
+with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were
+gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the
+Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while
+there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in
+every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to
+Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.</p>
+
+<p>We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth,
+near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine
+from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry
+Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the
+Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that
+Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General
+Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her
+promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when
+I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major
+John Frey.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment,
+which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle.
+The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were
+sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting
+low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a
+refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for
+the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to
+find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves,
+Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of
+the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly
+proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but
+the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might
+have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly
+Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living
+there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and
+that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless
+if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that
+messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we
+look backward.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton
+was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia
+was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more
+were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There
+were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan
+volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations,
+and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in
+excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to
+perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting
+force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about
+seven hundred strong.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered
+together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called
+into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the
+Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors,
+the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country
+larger than any one of several European monarchies.</p>
+
+<p>As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue
+and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and
+linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and
+huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and
+equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen
+different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch
+Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and
+here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who
+with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and
+Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the
+bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.</p>
+
+<p>Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled
+together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone
+Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had
+children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in
+bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his
+strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives
+down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never
+forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good
+clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of
+the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a
+Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all
+looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been
+always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had
+small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer
+the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout
+Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock,
+and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of
+Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but
+others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel
+Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of
+the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a
+familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my
+business to check off.</p>
+
+<p>Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells,
+all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were
+five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it
+may well be five of more than one other family.</p>
+
+<p>The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the
+first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But
+soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts,
+and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer
+palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in
+the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new,
+deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force
+greater and more to be dreaded than was Bell&ecirc;tre's, but because we were
+encamped on historic ground.</p>
+
+<p>From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort
+Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine
+settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth;
+and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in
+a low voice as the daylight faded.</p>
+
+<p>The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of
+northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night,
+and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing
+tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay
+the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow
+ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the
+wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the
+widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the
+current, drowned!</p>
+
+<p>How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should
+have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary
+of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how
+marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the
+captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I
+should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was
+food enough for thought.</p>
+
+<p>But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest
+were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river
+against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in
+emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was
+called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the
+fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that
+Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the
+place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was
+there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith,
+who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was
+Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept
+in our interest.</p>
+
+<p>The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas
+could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of
+savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly
+neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the
+foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded,
+they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their
+Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the
+savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for
+him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to
+say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep
+sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives.
+Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had
+the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of
+forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and
+ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland,
+whom for half a century he had loved so well.</p>
+
+<p>There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with
+their war-party, by all means.</p>
+
+<p>After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of
+stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of
+the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these
+do not concern the story.</p>
+
+<p>It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been
+blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in
+his quaint German dialect:</p>
+
+<p>"Come, walk with me outside the fort."</p>
+
+<p>We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom
+we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound
+to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank.
+There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple
+militia gathering.</p>
+
+<p>We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where
+we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the
+sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest
+old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this
+brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?"
+feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew
+not of.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> am wrong," he said, simply.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand you, Brigadier."</p>
+
+<p>"Say rather that <i>they</i>, who ought to know me better, do not understand
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"They? Whom do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own
+regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me.
+Nothing could be worse than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Suspect <i>you</i>, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It
+has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a
+colonel with Johnson--up yonder."</p>
+
+<p>The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights
+of day were paling over the black line of trees.</p>
+
+<p>"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too,
+my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us,
+and his son <i>is</i> with the Tories--up yonder."</p>
+
+<p>"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and
+another married to Hendrick Frey, and <i>he</i> is a Tory, too. All this is
+thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I
+feel they are talking of this."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter
+Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe
+me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."
+
+"You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here.
+Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I
+different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are
+all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours
+as well."</p>
+
+<p>"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and
+lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you
+get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now.
+Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are
+going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do.
+Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you
+leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to
+save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them
+and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here
+in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank
+in the State line."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot credit that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up
+my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"</p>
+
+<p>Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long
+after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying
+my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.</p>
+
+<p>To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling
+existing against him, it to a degree did exist.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a
+few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered
+old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our
+Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who
+spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike.
+There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies,
+none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized
+their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the
+Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but
+still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some
+of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that
+matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it
+was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and
+suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once
+begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.</p>
+
+<p>All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy
+which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian
+fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into
+rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and
+wooden-headed Braddock.</p>
+
+<p>We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians
+bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of
+the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded
+the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed
+slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the
+Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which
+bears the name Oriskany.</p>
+
+<p>Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching,
+on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate
+to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with
+our attack.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="32"></a>Chapter XXXII</h2>
+
+<h3>"The Blood Be on Your Heads."</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the
+never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking
+rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the
+hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler
+darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in
+the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close
+neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals
+prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It
+might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for
+we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of
+these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final
+six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently.
+Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter.
+Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the
+threshold of so grave an adventure.</p>
+
+<p>I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the
+spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some
+dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night
+of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely
+brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store
+of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the
+Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some
+sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of
+food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with
+a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized
+cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on
+their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed
+so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise
+there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"</p>
+
+<p>No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.</p>
+
+<p>Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All
+preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers
+were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had
+been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last
+look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the
+General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses
+harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!</p>
+
+<p>The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the
+prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day,
+instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's
+inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's
+faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days'
+stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay.</p>
+
+<p>The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the
+headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice
+before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands.
+I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident
+impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were
+not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six
+miles distant.</p>
+
+<p>The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of
+sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre
+of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees,
+bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during
+the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now,
+after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in
+camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers.
+These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front
+sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or
+six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with
+one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious
+to hear what was going on.</p>
+
+<p>I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the
+Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling
+differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and
+majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had
+the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every
+day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the
+only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served
+further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me
+only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the
+square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry
+Valley way.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his <i>friseur</i>
+with him."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers.
+Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.</p>
+
+<p>"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing,
+half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence.
+When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and
+fight next spring!"</p>
+
+<p>All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to
+hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.</p>
+
+<p>The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer
+for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the
+sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions
+upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if
+with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired
+we must have heard them.</p>
+
+<p>I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough
+stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the
+dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that
+either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and
+that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he
+held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he
+kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The
+beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to
+one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in
+Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and
+munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus
+supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them,
+unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort.
+In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.</p>
+
+<p>"But I say the sortie <i>will</i> be made! They are waiting for us--only we are
+too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.</p>
+
+<p>"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the
+case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that
+fort two miles farther back."</p>
+
+<p>"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult
+travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's
+Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."</p>
+
+<p>"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or
+some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?"
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is
+to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."</p>
+
+<p>"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a
+great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"</p>
+
+<p>Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a
+swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be
+looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.</p>
+
+<p>His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.</p>
+
+<p>"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with
+his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is
+not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here,
+as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the
+parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers
+in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."</p>
+
+<p>"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel
+Cox, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered
+four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a
+loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came
+running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with
+difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one
+place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall,"
+said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his
+feet as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Will</i> you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone,
+pitched even higher.</p>
+
+<p>"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a
+general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back,
+misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.</p>
+
+<p>"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.</p>
+
+<p>Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.</p>
+
+<p>"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like
+this? Know you not your duty better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least <i>we</i>
+are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i>!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "<i>You</i> will be the first to
+run when you see the British!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited
+farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising
+momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had
+no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we
+could hear nothing clearly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier,
+Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous
+colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and
+"coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and
+dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I
+could scarce bear to look upon it.</p>
+
+<p>There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the
+crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously
+drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.</p>
+
+<p>Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If
+you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool
+at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred
+could hear:</p>
+
+<p>"VORW&Auml;RTS!"</p>
+
+<p>The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.</p>
+
+<p>There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To
+rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no
+dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back
+in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a
+hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps
+somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene
+before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the
+efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring
+their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his
+Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was
+ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of
+it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to
+bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles
+Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and
+Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.</p>
+
+<p>So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in
+the morning.</p>
+
+<p>The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of
+August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of
+the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the
+world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading
+to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut
+through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line,
+regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances
+bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when
+Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this
+time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough
+spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress
+was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.</p>
+
+<p>There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls
+of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled
+undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to
+be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us,
+and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van.
+Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had
+been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but
+without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely
+there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of
+an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.</p>
+
+<p>We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in
+the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in
+part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We
+in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were
+resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon
+in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards
+farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in
+the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.</p>
+
+<p>While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This
+is where we camped five years ago."</p>
+
+<p>Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall
+headlong upon the neck of his horse.</p>
+
+<p>There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell,
+a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="33"></a>Chapter XXXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still
+not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed.</p>
+
+<p>I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his
+horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I
+saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the
+gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the
+dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental
+numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at
+all to comprehend it.</p>
+
+<p>Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his
+mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead
+of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming
+footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement.</p>
+
+<p>The air was filled now with shouts--what they were I did not know. The
+solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together
+like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking
+to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends
+off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had
+jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the
+mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the
+stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at
+random into the underbrush.</p>
+
+<p>All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier.</p>
+
+<p>As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange
+barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther
+side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the
+whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the
+Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all
+directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the
+causeway. It was a horrible spectacle--of naked, yelling devils, daubed
+with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and
+flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and
+neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence
+they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants
+with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the
+sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept
+pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush.</p>
+
+<p>By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine,
+here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis.</p>
+
+<p>Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and
+calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His
+orders I forget now--or what part I played at first in carrying them
+out--but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our
+needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the
+attack, our forces--or what was left of them--had been drawn out of the
+cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This
+could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his
+self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest.</p>
+
+<p>Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing
+to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired
+their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the
+fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the
+Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the
+ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again
+from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of
+the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see
+the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment--these Petries, Weavers,
+Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts--fight their path backward
+through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been
+egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and
+returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie
+regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the
+rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber
+as well as they could, north and south of the road.</p>
+
+<p>While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had,
+strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to
+ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was
+struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from
+his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General
+Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The
+Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the
+rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a
+step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball
+which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood.</p>
+
+<p>It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man
+was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two
+rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and
+bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well
+sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and
+resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at
+a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of
+the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely
+brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the
+maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly
+lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him.</p>
+
+<p>"Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I
+will face the enemy till I die."</p>
+
+<p>All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the
+hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated.
+Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more
+than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little
+mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough,
+half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for
+the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob
+Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of
+his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across
+the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a
+captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat,
+and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the
+Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay.</p>
+
+<p>The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead
+and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist
+of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time,
+forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk
+was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and
+tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he
+missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming--and
+there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes.</p>
+
+<p>"Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when
+one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running
+forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better
+for us.</p>
+
+<p>There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An
+hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its
+clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting
+among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence
+upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet
+ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of
+dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as
+with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk
+stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by
+swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the
+shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible.
+Yes--horrible is the right word!</p>
+
+<p>A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy
+perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a
+compound is man!--we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its
+purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood
+in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!</p>
+
+<p>I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while
+others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now
+these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness
+and with a plenitude of minuti&aelig; which surprise me, the more that I
+remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight
+for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he
+isn't, and that is about all he thinks of.</p>
+
+<p>I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the
+struggle--the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on
+the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of
+the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our
+rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade,
+sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories,
+meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and
+drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been
+wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately
+St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started;
+this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed
+too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action
+cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where
+the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our
+centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way
+backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories
+came upon us.</p>
+
+<p>The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point,
+where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of
+the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the
+hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts,
+crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy,
+shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small
+firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs.</p>
+
+<p>Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which
+promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse,
+perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body
+of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent
+Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and
+cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac
+Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be
+handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence.</p>
+
+<p>Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute
+bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril!</p>
+
+<p>We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things
+were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague
+intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now
+drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells
+of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed
+to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of
+some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which
+side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our
+vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep
+ourselves alive.</p>
+
+<p>All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great
+storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had
+been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the
+darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared
+through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed
+in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the
+blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight
+hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements.</p>
+
+<p>We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched
+under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for
+the fight, it ceased utterly.</p>
+
+<p>While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report
+from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder;
+there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from
+the fort!</p>
+
+<p>I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping
+brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance
+that the Brigadier had not heard the reports.</p>
+
+<p>The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had
+left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches
+above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to
+have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or
+no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied
+their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had
+heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young
+men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off."</p>
+
+<p>The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree,
+avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof,
+told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred,
+nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward
+toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large
+part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to
+say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so
+broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest
+fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.</p>
+
+<p>What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who
+recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain.
+Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great
+catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.</p>
+
+<p>"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel
+Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll
+there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.</p>
+
+<p>Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only
+knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my
+brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry
+eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.</p>
+
+<p>I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of
+Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were
+saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were
+said to be dead already.</p>
+
+<p>The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew
+lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of
+white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at
+once the sun was shining.</p>
+
+<p>On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The
+fight began again.</p>
+
+<p>The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a
+few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what
+food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength.
+They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance
+they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their
+hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now.</p>
+
+<p>The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear
+the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties
+now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms,
+dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke
+arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe.
+Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable
+paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and
+with clinched fists.</p>
+
+<p>A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing
+through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us
+afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could
+reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this
+side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke
+bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses
+of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before
+us as we ran.</p>
+
+<p>Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and
+underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga
+men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the
+bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were
+looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old
+Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:</p>
+
+<p>"Help is here from the fort!"</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose
+musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the
+bushes, as they advanced in regular order.</p>
+
+<p>I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen
+shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear,
+the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the
+new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" he roared at them.</p>
+
+<p>"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.</p>
+
+<p>Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to
+the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we
+clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all
+confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them
+to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a
+mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and
+left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet,
+and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as
+a shield.</p>
+
+<p>While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing
+with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"</p>
+
+<p>"Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his
+vast might. "These art Tories. <i>Fire</i>! you fools! <i>Fire</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former
+friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their
+guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many
+more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.</p>
+
+<p>How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets
+seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a
+score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men
+had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade,
+dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These
+latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire
+to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with
+a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in
+wild pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled
+tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our
+faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore
+forward, loading and firing as we ran.</p>
+
+<p>The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were
+driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of
+renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all
+our ears.</p>
+
+<p>I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying
+piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of
+some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening
+of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the
+Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and
+left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion
+for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood
+in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.</p>
+
+<p>I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where
+the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall
+rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch
+farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently
+attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed
+thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we
+came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.</p>
+
+<p>While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground
+for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:</p>
+
+<p>"They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a
+tree."</p>
+
+<p>I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me,
+his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back
+of his head, his long rifle over his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet
+struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and
+leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps
+from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching
+almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.</p>
+
+<p>A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a
+momentary twinge of pain in my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted
+excitedly from the bush.</p>
+
+<p>There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong
+upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting
+forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars,
+resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his
+gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.</p>
+
+<p>I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained
+grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and
+looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="34"></a>Chapter XXXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>Alone at Last with My Enemy.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to
+speak, but no sound came from them.</p>
+
+<p>For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed
+upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this
+strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or
+over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I
+remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and
+scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look
+in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For
+all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing
+whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarrassed me. For relief I
+turned to Enoch, and said sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't told me yet what you were doing here."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned
+his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me.</p>
+
+<p>"You can see for yourself, can't ye?" he said. "What do people mostly do
+when there's shooting going on, and they've got a gun?"</p>
+
+<p>"But how came you here at all? I thought you were to stay at--at the place
+where I put you."</p>
+
+<p>"That was likely, wasn't it! Me loafing around the house like a tame cat
+among the niggers while good fighting was going on up here!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you wanted to come, why not have marched with us? I asked you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't march much myself. It suits me to get around on my own legs in my
+own way. I told you I wouldn't go into any ranks, or tote my gun on my
+shoulder when it was handier to carry it on my arm. But I didn't tell you
+I wouldn't come up and see this thing on my own hook."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been here all day?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you come to that, it's none of your business, young man. I got here
+about the right time of day to save <i>your</i> bacon, anyway. That's enough
+for <i>you</i>, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The rebuke was just, and I put no further questions.</p>
+
+<p>A great stillness had fallen upon the forest behind us. In the distance,
+from the scrub-oak thickets on the lowlands by the river, there sounded
+from time to time the echo of a stray shot, and faint Mohawk cries of
+"Oonah! Oonah!" The battle was over.</p>
+
+<p>"They were beginning to run away before I came down," said Enoch, in
+comment upon some of these dying-away yells of defeat which came to us.
+"They got handled too rough. If their white officers had showed themselves
+more, and took bigger risks, they'd have stood their ground. But these
+Tory fine gentlemen are a pack of cowards. They let the Injuns get killed,
+but they kept darned well hid themselves."</p>
+
+<p>The man on the ground broke silence here.</p>
+
+<p>"You lie!" he said, fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you can talk, can you?" said Enoch. "No, I don't lie, Mr. Cross. I'm
+talking gospel truth. Herkimer's officers came out like men, and fought
+like men, and got shot by dozens; but till we struck you, I never laid
+eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good,
+too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there,
+within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ain't
+pretty fair shooting."</p>
+
+<p>The cool brutality of this talk revolted me. I had it on my tongue to
+interpose, when the wounded man spoke again, with a new accent of gloom
+in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"What have I ever done to you?" he said, with his hand upon his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, nothing at all, Mr. Cross," answered Enoch, amiably. "There wasn't
+any feeling about it, at least on my part. I'd have potted you just as
+carefully if we'd been perfect strangers."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you leave us here together for a little while, Enoch?" I broke in.
+"Come back in a few minutes; find out what the news is in the gulf--how
+the fight has gone. I desire some words with this--this gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper nodded at this, and started off with his cat-like, springing
+walk, loading his rifle as he went. "I'll turn up in about a quarter of
+an hour," he said.</p>
+
+<p>I watched his lithe, leather-clad figure disappear among the trees, and
+then wheeled around to my prostrate foe.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what to say to you," I said, hesitatingly, looking down
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>He had taken his hand away from his breast, and was fumbling with it on
+the grass behind him. Suddenly he raised it, with a sharp cry of--</p>
+
+<p>"I know what to say to you!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pistol in the air confronting me, and I, taken all aback,
+looked full into the black circle of its barrel as he pulled the trigger.
+The flint struck out a spark of flame, but it fell upon priming dampened
+by the wet grass.</p>
+
+<p>The momentary gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died
+piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would
+have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his
+nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which
+cold sweat stood out, and groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what to say to you," I went on, the episode of the pistol
+seeming, strangely enough, to have cleared my thoughts. "For two
+years--yes, for five years--I have been picturing to myself some such
+scene as this, where you should lie overthrown before me, and I should
+crush the life out of your hateful body with my heel, as one does with
+snakes. But now that it has come about, I am at a strange loss for words."</p>
+
+<p>"That you were not formerly," said the wounded man. "Since I have known
+you, you have fought always exceedingly well with your mouth. It was only
+in deeds that you were slow."</p>
+
+<p>He made this retort with a contemptuous coolness of tone which was belied
+by his white face and drawn brows, and by the troubled, clinging gaze in
+his eyes. I found myself looking with a curious impersonal interest upon
+this heavy, large-featured countenance, always heretofore so deeply
+flushed with color, and now coarsely blotched with varying depths
+of pallor.</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless it would be best to leave you here. None of your party will
+straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and think of your
+misdeeds until-----"
+
+"Until the wolves come, you mean. Yes, go away. I prefer them to you."</p>
+
+<p>The sky to the west was one great lurid, brassy glare, overhung with banks
+of sinister clouds, a leaden purple above, fiery crimson below. The
+unnatural light fell strongly upon us both. A big shadow passed for an
+instant across the sunset, and we, looking instinctively up, saw the
+circling bulk of some huge bird of prey. I shuddered at the sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, leave me to <i>them</i>!" he said, bitterly. "Go back and seize my lands,
+my house. While the beasts and the birds tear me to bits here in the
+forest, do you fatten upon my substance at home. You and they are of
+a kidney."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I would touch nothing of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"No--not even my wife!"</p>
+
+<p>The thrust went home. There was a world of sardonic disdain in his voice
+as he spoke, but in truth I thought little of his tone. The words
+themselves seemed to open a gulf before my feet. Was it indeed true, in
+welcoming this man's death, that I was thinking of the woman it would set
+free--for me?</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a long, long time before I found tongue again. I walked up and
+down among the small cedars, fighting out in my own mind the issue of
+honor which had been with such brutal frankness raised. I could not make
+it seem wholly untrue--this charge he so contemptuously flung at me. There
+was no softening of my heart toward him: he was still the repellent, evil
+ruffian I had for years held him to be. I felt that I hated him the more
+because he had put me in the wrong. I went back to him, ashamed for the
+source of the increase of temper I trembled under, yet powerless to
+dissemble it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I not kill you where you lie?" I shouted at him.</p>
+
+<p>He made an effort at shrugging his shoulders, but vouchsafed no other
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"You"--I went on, in a whirl of rage at myself, at him, at the entire
+universe--"you have made my whole manhood bitter. I fought you the first
+time I saw you, when we were little boys. Even then you insulted, injured
+me. I have always hated you. You have always given me reason to hate you.
+It was you who poisoned Mr. Stewart's mind against me. It was you who
+stole my sweet sister away from me. Did this content you? No. You must
+drive the good old gentleman into paralysis and illness unto death--out of
+his mind--and you must overwhelm the poor, gentle girl with drunken
+brutality and cruelty, and to cap all, with desertion. And this is not
+enough--my God! think of it! <i>this</i> is not enough!--but you must come with
+the others to force Indian war upon our Valley, upon your old neighbors!
+There are hundreds lying dead here to-day in these woods--honest men whose
+wives, parents, little children, are waiting for them at home. They will
+never lay eyes on them again. Why? Because of you and your scoundrel
+friends. You have done too much mischief already. It is high time to put
+an end to you."</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man had listened to me wearily, with his free hand clutched
+tight over his wound, and the other tearing spasmodically at the grass
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am bleeding to death," he said, with a voice obviously weakened since
+his last preceding words. "So much the better for you. You would like it
+so. You are not bold enough to knock me on the head, or merciful enough to
+go about your business and leave me in peace. I ought to be above bandying
+words with you; nor would I if it did not take my mind from my hurt. You
+are right--you have always been my enemy. You were jealous of me as a
+little boy. You had an apron, and you envied me my coat. When, like a
+fool, I came again to this cursed wilderness, your sour face rose up in
+front of me like an ugly dream. It was my first disagreeable thing. Still
+you were jealous of me, for I was a gentleman; you were a skin-pedler. I
+married a maiden who had beauty and wit enough to grace my station, even
+though she had not been born to it. It was you who turned her mind against
+me, and incited her to unhappiness in the home I had given her. It was you
+who made a damned rebel out of her, and drove me into going to Canada. She
+has ever been more your friend than mine. You are of her sort. An English
+gentleman could rightly have had no part or lot with either of you. Go
+back to her now--tell her you left me here waiting for the wolves--and
+that my dying message was--"</p>
+
+<p>He followed with some painfully bitter and malignant words which I have
+not the heart to set down here in cold blood against him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see your wound," I said, when he had finished and sank back,
+exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>I knelt beside him and opened his green coat, and the fine, ruffled shirt
+beneath it. Both were soaked with blood on the whole right side, but the
+soft cambric had, in a measure, checked the flow. He made no resistance,
+and I spread over the ugly aperture some of the plaster with which my
+mother had fitted me out, and bound it fast, with some difficulty, by
+passing my sash under his body and winding it about his chest.</p>
+
+<p>He kept his eyes closed while I was doing this. I could not tell whether
+he was conscious or not. Nor could I explain to myself why I was
+concerning myself with his wound. Was it to save, if possible, his life?
+Was it to lengthen out his term of torture here in the great final
+solitude, helplessly facing the end, with snarling wolves and screaming
+kites for his death-watch? I scarcely knew which.</p>
+
+<p>I try now to retrace the courses by which my thoughts, in the confused
+searchings of those few moments, reached finally a good conclusion; but
+the effort is beyond my powers. I know only that all at once it became
+quite clear to my mind that I must not leave my enemy to die. How much of
+this was due to purely physical compassion for suffering, how much to the
+higher pleadings of humanity, how much to the feeling that his taunts of
+baseness must be proved untrue, I cannot say.</p>
+
+<p>I was still kneeling beside him, I know, when Enoch suddenly stood in
+front of me. His practised footsteps had made no sound. He glanced gravely
+at me and at the white, inanimate face of Cross. Emotions did not play
+lightly upon Enoch's leather-like visage; there was nothing in his look to
+tell whether he was surprised or not.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what news? How has the day gone?" I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were
+attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men."</p>
+
+<p>"What is Herkimer going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home
+again--down the Valley."</p>
+
+<p>"So, then, we have lost the fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded
+man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin
+with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the
+fort?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that
+both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want
+to rest for a spell."</p>
+
+<p>I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous
+carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on:</p>
+
+<p>"They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must
+be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along
+with 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't quite a fool, young man," said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of
+smile. "If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to
+explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that
+strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an
+opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers
+were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a
+fortnight ago."</p>
+
+<p>All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed.
+He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our
+conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I know you now--damn you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I
+gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in
+hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now.
+You make a good rebel."</p>
+
+<p>"Now look here, Mr. Cross," put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in
+his tone. "You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that
+way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and
+you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me
+to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and
+smoke it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Enoch," I here interrupted, "enough of that. The man is suffering.
+You must not vex him further by words."</p>
+
+<p>"Suffering or not," returned the trapper, "he might keep a civil tongue in
+his head.--Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for," he went on,
+scowling down at the prostrate soldier. "I delivered your message here to
+this man" (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--"all that, you
+know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a
+Missisague dog."</p>
+
+<p>Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: "There
+may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't
+look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong
+to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck."</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered
+at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which
+helped me the better to make up my mind.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch had turned to me once more:</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said, "we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so
+long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting
+from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them.
+As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long
+anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too
+many litters to carry already."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. "We will make
+our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the
+river--away from the others."</p>
+
+<p>"The hell you say!" said Enoch.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="35"></a>Chapter XXXV</h2>
+
+<h3>The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were
+wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the
+trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was
+never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and
+conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few,
+indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight
+later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my
+pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they
+all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at
+the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey.</p>
+
+<p>This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he
+protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my
+plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting,
+which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once
+embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal.</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went
+on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said,
+yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was
+not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings,
+covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side
+to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you
+touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand
+along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't
+know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help
+we want from you is for you to hold your jaw."</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man,
+raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring
+affrightedly straight ahead of him.</p>
+
+<p>There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the
+swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had
+returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away
+from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group.</p>
+
+<p>A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and,
+on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion
+mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The
+savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were
+fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in
+an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had
+laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering.
+If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent
+upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned
+in spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the
+sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help
+me God, I will not!"</p>
+
+<p>The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They
+looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not
+materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were
+all on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>"Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep
+cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give
+'em the word."</p>
+
+<p>Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into
+his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his
+arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be
+tortured--scalped--by these devils!"</p>
+
+<p>I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said,
+bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from
+the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your
+canting tongue to deny it."</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have
+their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending
+their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe
+them to take scalps."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me
+up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for
+you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you
+here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going
+to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to <i>hide</i> you at
+Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. <i>Now</i>
+will you keep still?"</p>
+
+<p>He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of
+mystification and utter weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my
+project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went,
+down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as
+a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him
+explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a
+magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical
+arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward
+should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey.</p>
+
+<p>"They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't
+help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one
+of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will
+be enough."</p>
+
+<p>The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired,
+together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the
+river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to
+the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my
+home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and
+lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done,
+and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the
+rude litter and started for the trail.</p>
+
+<p>I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last
+time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore
+still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of
+this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of
+fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of
+prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air
+stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no
+sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away.
+Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon
+this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly
+past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the
+leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in
+the sunset radiance, watching us gravely.</p>
+
+<p>We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field
+to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the
+forest primeval.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I
+recall no other equally wretched five days in my life.</p>
+
+<p>The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and
+fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be
+accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the
+sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing
+myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their
+sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced
+me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly
+along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face
+and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles,
+my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have
+wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on
+the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on
+the ground utterly worn out.</p>
+
+<p>We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on
+the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter
+we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had
+a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes,
+and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not
+build a fire.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in
+a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous
+activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the
+fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we
+lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe,
+floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less
+and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at
+least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more
+than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed
+sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our
+ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man
+ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal
+service and attention for granted.</p>
+
+<p>After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night
+out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able
+to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful
+woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark,
+while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe
+well enough.</p>
+
+<p>The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We
+were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new
+pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there
+was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the
+white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks,
+the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black
+against the pale sky.</p>
+
+<p>There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows
+hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my
+glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at
+one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly
+to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the
+voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses
+stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at
+best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more
+commodious boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made
+answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low,
+musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the
+wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at
+Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if
+we were going through a dead country."</p>
+
+<p>Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly
+blurted it out.</p>
+
+<p>"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I
+said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these
+brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really
+understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom!
+Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue."</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he
+had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression
+of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat.
+"I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day
+long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there
+just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my
+friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out
+of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are
+the wolves!"</p>
+
+<p>He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous
+quaver.</p>
+
+<p>"These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child
+awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get
+where you can have rest and care."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as
+powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and
+weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his
+face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it.</p>
+
+<p>He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled
+through a stretch of still water, in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally.</p>
+
+<p>I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches,
+in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind.
+"For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that
+either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I
+remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van
+Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have
+brought you back."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not
+gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the
+alternate moonlight and shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of
+thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only
+not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation
+of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed
+upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless,
+stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not
+so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and
+happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive.</p>
+
+<p>More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the
+reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even
+now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me,
+but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary
+spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent
+before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the
+bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as
+one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent
+impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon
+the man himself.</p>
+
+<p>His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his
+character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the
+existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man
+strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and
+sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable,
+generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty,
+and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been
+two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one
+because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other.</p>
+
+<p>Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story.
+To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have
+behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain
+wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was
+plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable
+husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class
+of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new
+land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon
+himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he
+had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as
+he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of
+his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to
+dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common
+herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led
+him down the fell incline.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I
+had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a
+knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other
+circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the
+same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of
+his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine.</p>
+
+<p>Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home
+as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of
+gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="36"></a>Chapter XXXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Just before daybreak of the fifth day we stole past the sleeping hamlet of
+Caughnawaga, and as the sun was rising over the Schoharie hills I drew up
+the canoe into the outlet of Dadanoscara Creek, a small brook which came
+down through the woods from the high land whereon Cairncross stood. Our
+journey by water was ended.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch was waiting for us, and helped me lift Cross from the canoe. His
+body hung inert in our arms; not even my clumsy slipping on the bank of
+the rivulet startled him from the deep sleep in which he had lain for
+hours in the boat.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been frightened. Can he be dying?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch knelt beside him, and put his hand over the patient's heart. He
+shook his head dubiously after a moment, and said: "It's tearing along
+like a racehorse. He's in a fever--the worst kind. This ain't
+sleep--it's stupor."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his
+life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can
+make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to
+his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be
+different. As it is, I don't see but you will have to risk it, and bring
+somebody here."</p>
+
+<p>For once in my life my brain worked in flashes. I actually thought of
+something which had not occurred to Enoch!</p>
+
+<p>"Why not carry him in this canoe?" I asked. "It is lighter than any litter
+we could make."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper slapped his lank, leather-clad thigh in high approval. "By
+hokey!" he said, "you've hit it!"</p>
+
+<p>We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate
+the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and
+we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it
+over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course
+two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in
+the Valley an absolute secret. His life would have been in deadly peril
+hereabouts, even before the battle. How bitterly the hatred of him and his
+traitor-fellows must have been augmented by the slaughter of that cruel
+ambuscade, I could readily imagine. With what words could I have protected
+him against the righteous rage of a Snell, for example, or a Seeber, or
+any one of a hundred others who had left kinsmen behind in that fatal
+gulch? No! There must be no risk run by meeting any one.</p>
+
+<p>With the scanty meal finished our rest was at an end. We ought to lose no
+time. Each minute's delay in getting the wounded man under a roof, in
+bed, within reach of aid and nursing, might be fatal.</p>
+
+<p>It was no light task to get the canoe upon our shoulders, after we had put
+in it our guns, covered these with ferns and twigs, and upon these laid
+Philip's bulky form, and a very few moments' progress showed that the work
+before us was to be no child's play. The conformation of the canoe made it
+a rather awkward thing to carry, to begin with. To bear it right side up,
+laden as it was, over eight miles of almost continuous ascent, through a
+perfectly unbroken wilderness, was as laborious an undertaking as it is
+easy to conceive.</p>
+
+<p>We toiled along so slowly, and the wretched little brook, whose bed we
+strove to follow, described such a wandering course, and was so often
+rendered fairly impassable by rocks, driftwood, and overhanging thicket,
+that when the sun hung due south above us we had covered barely half our
+journey, and confronted still the hardest portion of it. We were so
+exhausted when this noon hour came, too, that I could make no objection
+when Enoch declared his purpose of getting some trout from the brook, and
+cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and
+from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly
+I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper
+stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity,
+tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under the stones.</p>
+
+<p>Soon he had enough for a meal--and, my word! it was a feast for emperors
+or angels. We stuffed the pink dainties with mint, and baked them in balls
+of clay. It seemed as if I had not eaten before in years.</p>
+
+<p>We tried to rouse Cross sufficiently to enable him to eat, and in a small
+way succeeded; but the effect upon him was scarcely beneficial, it
+appeared to us. His fever increased, and when we started out once more
+under our burden, the motion inseparable from our progress affected his
+head, and he began to talk incoherently to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be imagined more weird and startling than was the sound of
+this voice above us, when we first heard it. Both Enoch and I
+instinctively stopped. For the moment we could not tell whence the sound
+came, and I know not what wild notions about it flashed through my mind.
+Even when we realized that it was the fever-loosed tongue of our companion
+which spoke, the effect was scarcely less uncanny. Though I could not see
+him, the noise of his ceaseless talking came from a point close to my
+head; he spoke for the most part in a bold, high voice--unnaturally raised
+above the pitch of his recent faint waking utterances. Whenever a fallen
+log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the
+prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe
+down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult
+connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of his
+disordered brain.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time--of course in a very disconnected way--he babbled about
+his mother, and of people, presumably English, of whom I knew nothing,
+save that one name, Digby, was that of his elder brother Then there began
+to be interwoven with this talk stray mention of Daisy's name, and soon
+the whole discourse was of her.</p>
+
+<p>The freaks of delirium have little significance, I believe, as clews to
+the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary
+speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching
+shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words
+addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to
+be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he was resting his
+head upon her bosom. Over and over again, with tiresome iteration, he kept
+entreating plaintively: "You <i>are</i> glad to see me? You do <i>truly</i> forgive
+me, and love me?"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been sadder than to hear him. I reasoned that this
+ceaseless dwelling upon the sweets of a tender welcome doubtless reflected
+the train of his thoughts during the journey down from the battle-field.
+He had forborne to once mention Daisy's name during the whole voyage, but
+he must have thought deeply, incessantly of her--in all likelihood with a
+great softening of heart and yearning for her compassionate nursing. It
+was not in me to be unmoved by this. I declare that as I went painfully
+forward, with this strangely pathetic song of passion repeating itself in
+my ears, I got fairly away from the habit of mind in which my own love for
+Daisy existed, and felt myself only an agent in the working out of some
+sombre and exalted romance.</p>
+
+<p>In Foxe's account of the English martyrs there are stories of men at the
+stake who, when a certain stage of the torture was reached, really forgot
+their anguish in the emotional ecstasy of the ideas born of that terrible
+moment. In a poor and imperfect fashion I approached that same strange
+state--not far removed, in sober fact, from the delirium of the man in
+the canoe.</p>
+
+<p>The shadows were lengthening in the woods, and the reddening blaze of the
+sun flared almost level in our eyes through the tree-trunks, when at last
+we had crossed the water-shed of the two creeks, and stood looking down
+into the gulf of which I have so often spoken heretofore.</p>
+
+<p>We rested the canoe upon a great rock in the mystic circle of ancient
+Indian fire worship, and leaned, tired and panting, against its side. My
+arm was giving me much pain, and what with insufficient food and feverish
+sleep, great immediate fatigue, and the vast nervous strain of these past
+six days, I was well-nigh swooning.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I can go no farther, Enoch," I groaned. "I can barely keep my feet
+as it is."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper himself was as close to utter exhaustion as one may be and
+have aught of spirit left, yet he tried to speak cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come!" he said, "we mustn't give out now, right here at the
+finish. Why, it's only down over that bridge, and up again--and there
+we are!"</p>
+
+<p>I smiled in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a
+final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest,
+and we'll at it again."</p>
+
+<p>While we stood half reclining against the bowlder, looking with
+trepidation at the stiff ascent before us on the farther side of the gulf,
+the scene of the old quarrel of our youth suddenly came to my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that spruce near the top, by the path--the one hanging over
+the edge? Five years ago I was going to fight this Philip Cross there, on
+that path. My little nigger Tulp ran between us, and he threw him head
+over heels to the bottom. The lad has never been himself since."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty tolerable fall," remarked Enoch, glancing down the precipitous,
+brush-clad wall of rock. "But a nigger lands on his head as a cat does on
+her feet, and it only scratches him where it would kill anybody else."</p>
+
+<p>We resumed our burden now, and made our way with it down the winding path
+to the bottom. Here I was fain to surrender once for all.</p>
+
+<p>"It is no use, Enoch," I said, resolutely. "I can't even try to climb up
+there with this load. You must wait here; I will go ahead to Cairncross,
+prepare them for his coming, and send down some slaves to fetch him the
+rest of the way."</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The great square mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front.
+The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no
+wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life
+visible, Cairncross might have been uninhabited a twelve-month.</p>
+
+<p>It was only when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within
+view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not
+been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday,
+church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass,
+intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep
+that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they
+became aware of my presence.</p>
+
+<p>They looked for a minute at me in a perplexed way--my mud-baked clothes,
+unshaven face, and general unkempt condition evidently rendering me a
+stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's
+ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like
+scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of the great house.</p>
+
+<p>So I was supposed to be dead! Curiously enough, it had not occurred to me
+before that this would be the natural explanation of my failure to return
+with the others. The idea now gave me a queer quaking sensation about the
+heart, and I stood stupidly staring at the back balcony of the house, with
+my mind in a whirl of confused thoughts. It seemed almost as if I <i>had</i>
+come back from the grave.</p>
+
+<p>While I still stood, faint and bewildered, trying to regain control of my
+ideas, the door opened, and a white-faced lady, robed all in black, came
+swiftly out upon the porch. It was Daisy, and she was gazing at me with
+distended eyes and parted lips, and clinging to the carved balustrade
+for support.</p>
+
+<p>As in a dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was
+gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in
+the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer
+exhaustion and rapture.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I could stand up, and felt myself coming back to something
+like self-possession, a score of eager questions and as many outbursts of
+deep thanksgiving were in my ears--all from her sweet voice. And I had
+tongue for none of them, but only looked into her dear face, and patted
+her hands between mine, and trembled like a leaf with excitement. So much
+was there to say, the sum of it beggared language.</p>
+
+<p>When finally we did talk, I was seated in a great chair one of the slaves
+had brought upon the sward, and wine had been fetched me, and my dear girl
+bent gently over me from behind, softly resting my head against her waist,
+her hands upon my arms.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not look me in the face again," she said--with ah! such
+compassionate, tender playfulness--"until I have been told. How did you
+escape? Were you a prisoner? Were you hurt?"--and oh! a host of
+other things.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the sky seemed to be covered with blackness, and the joy in my
+heart died out as by the stroke of death. I had remembered something. My
+parched and twitching lips did their best to refuse to form the words:</p>
+
+<p>"I have brought Philip home. He is sorely wounded. Send the slaves to
+bring him from the gulf."</p>
+
+<p>After a long silence, I heard Daisy's voice, clear and without a tremor,
+call out to the blacks that their master had been brought as far as the
+gulf beyond, and needed assistance. They started off helter-skelter at
+this, with many exclamations of great surprise, a bent and misshapen
+figure dragging itself with a grotesque limping gait at their tail.</p>
+
+<p>I rose from my chair, now in some measure restored to calmness and cold
+resolution. In mercy I had been given a brief time of blind happiness--of
+bliss without the alloy of a single thought. Now I must be a man, and walk
+erect, unflinching, to the sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go and meet them. It is best," I said. The poor girl raised her
+eyes to mine, and their startled, troubled gaze went to my heart. There
+must have been prodigious effort in the self-command of her tone to the
+slaves, for her voice broke down utterly now, as she faltered:</p>
+
+<p>"You have--brought--him home! For what purpose? How will this all end? It
+terrifies me!"</p>
+
+<p>We had by tacit consent begun to walk down the path toward the road. It
+was almost twilight. I remember still how the swallows wheeled swiftly in
+the air about the eaves, and how their twittering and darting seemed to
+confuse and tangle my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The situation was too sad for silence. I felt the necessity of talking, of
+uttering something which might, at least, make pretence of occupying these
+wretched minutes, until I should say:</p>
+
+<p>"This is your husband--and farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was clear enough to me," I said. "My duty was plain. I would have
+been a murderer had I left him there to die. It was very strange about my
+feelings. Up to a certain moment they were all bitter and merciless toward
+him. So many better men than he were dead about me, it seemed little
+enough that his life should go to help avenge them. Yet when the moment
+came--why, I could not suffer it. Not that my heart relented--no; I was
+still full of rage against him. But none the less it was my duty to save
+his life."</p>
+
+<p>"And to bring him home to <i>me</i>." She spoke musingly, completing my
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Daisy, would you have had it otherwise? Could I have left him there,
+to die alone, helpless in the swamp?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not said you were not right, Douw," she answered, with saddened
+slowness. "But I am trying to think. It is so hard to realize--coming like
+this. I was told you were both dead. His name was reported in their camp,
+yours among our people. And now you are both here--and it is all so
+strange, so startling--and what is right seems so mingled and bound up
+with what is cruel and painful! Oh, I cannot think! What will come of it?
+How will it all end?"</p>
+
+<p>"We must not ask how it will end!" I made answer, with lofty decision.
+"That is not our affair. We can but do our duty--what seems clearly
+right--and bear results as they come. There is no other way. You ought to
+see this."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I ought to see it," she said, slowly and in a low, distressed voice.</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my
+wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coarse-fibred male animal,
+returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my
+hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and
+gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my title to do this?--to rebuke
+her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I
+not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought
+pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought
+much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and
+fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of
+my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from
+trouble and grief?</p>
+
+<p>My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not
+have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so
+well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence,
+feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better
+than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as
+to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange
+question of our far-away youth.</p>
+
+<p>There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of
+the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell,
+like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the
+thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds
+of other voices, excited and vibrant.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some
+formless fear of she knew not what.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Tulp," she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. "Oh, I should have
+kept him back! Why did I not think of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What about Tulp?" I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the
+narrow path. "I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among
+the others, was he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has gone mad!"</p>
+
+<p>"What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange
+and slow of wit for years, but--"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you
+were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you
+came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father
+pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened?
+Who is this man?"</p>
+
+<p>In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of
+Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him
+huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was
+the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the
+common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean?</p>
+
+<p>When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do
+not understand. I will join you in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him.
+"Tell me quick."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a
+nigger. That's about what it comes to."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side
+nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs
+over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream
+like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it
+went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!"</p>
+
+<p>The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and
+clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh
+horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to
+where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed
+my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall
+grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="37"></a>Chapter XXXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Peaceful Ending of It All.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon
+the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted.
+Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would
+never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places
+which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play
+and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest
+farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the
+dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of
+death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more
+new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre
+in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to
+bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and
+tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.</p>
+
+<p>So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People
+listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the
+cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true
+that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?"</p>
+
+<p>In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast
+of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in
+the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information
+by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated.
+Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been
+hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately
+follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much
+later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to
+Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the
+men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done.</p>
+
+<p>To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this
+truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have
+chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus
+it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for
+Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered
+to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but
+think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of
+the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper
+Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own
+Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there
+at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That
+failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had
+been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the
+forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory
+gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done,
+he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies
+from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first
+the Yankees, then the others at his leisure.</p>
+
+<p>Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of
+Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of
+things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the
+heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was
+compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no
+doubt who would in the long-run triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great
+souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch
+at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live.</p>
+
+<p>But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much
+of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and
+wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around
+the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and
+general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange
+occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret
+returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as
+might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the
+stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with
+material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as
+possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the
+scene's sad suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the
+soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the
+other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent
+stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not
+visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the
+waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream.</p>
+
+<p>During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely
+engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to
+represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old
+Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful
+amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold
+and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood
+of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort,
+the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the
+hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant,
+and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from
+confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It
+was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the
+exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a
+hospital than for the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the
+Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year
+1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and
+neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the
+children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact
+date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the
+knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the
+sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not
+less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to
+gather over it.</p>
+
+<p>Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part
+thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came
+to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I
+was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of
+the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so.</p>
+
+<p>Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the
+hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into
+the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled
+and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This
+meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place
+were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly
+as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the
+grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John
+personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home
+of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought,
+alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to
+steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife,
+and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very
+melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days
+of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn
+of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though
+they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to
+the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with
+Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also
+have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old
+Douw Fonda!</p>
+
+<p>There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it
+touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter
+Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief
+Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the
+old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood
+upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the
+lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely
+wish him alive again.</p>
+
+<p>Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child
+whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He
+bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the
+Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably.</p>
+
+<p>In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which
+the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was
+born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as
+sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's
+breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him
+accordingly, as is the wont of parents.</p>
+
+<p>When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's
+bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny,
+fair babe nestled upon her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names,
+'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy
+into my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all
+so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much
+our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking,
+dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip."</p>
+
+<p>I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we
+had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of
+Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle
+sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet
+whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and
+fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any
+harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the
+room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in
+my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though
+the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal
+from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was
+easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which
+prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child
+because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and
+tragic romance.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious
+little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and
+slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in
+particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could
+bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty
+spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even
+now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely
+obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of
+his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart
+smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath
+his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our
+fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to
+resist him.</p>
+
+<p>The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month
+Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it
+seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old
+man. He literally staggered and died under the blow.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as
+peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of
+a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large
+advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having
+always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort,
+and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come
+to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We
+seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our
+childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof,
+where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very
+near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less
+peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of
+a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this
+interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for
+us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to
+both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and
+fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in
+happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts
+from scars.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In the Valley
+
+Author: Harold Frederic
+
+Posting Date: November 19, 2011 [EBook #9787]
+Release Date: January, 2006
+First Posted: October 16, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE VALLEY ***
+
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+
+In the Valley
+
+By
+
+Harold Frederic
+
+Copyright 1890
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dedication.
+
+
+
+_When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
+was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
+would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
+the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
+upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
+was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
+thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
+adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
+Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
+welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
+this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
+Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
+bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
+affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
+grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour._
+
+London, _September 11_, 1890
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Chapter I.      "The French Are in the Valley!"
+Chapter II.     Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+Chapter III.    Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly
+Chapter IV.     In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+Chapter V.      How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+Chapter VI.     Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+Chapter VII.    Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+Chapter VIII.   Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+Chapter IX.     I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+Chapter X.      The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+Chapter XI.     As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+Chapter XII.    Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.
+Chapter XIII.   To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+Chapter XIV.    How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+Chapter XV.     The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+Chapter XVI.    Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+Chapter XVII.   I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+Chapter XVIII.  The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+Chapter XIX.    I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+Chapter XX.     A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.
+Chapter XXI.    Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+Chapter XXII.   The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+Chapter XXIII.  How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+Chapter XXIV.   The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+Chapter XXV.    A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+Chapter XXVI.   I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+Chapter XXVII.  The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+Chapter XXVIII. An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.
+Chapter XXIX.   The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+Chapter XXX.    From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+Chapter XXXI.   The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+Chapter XXXII.  "The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+Chapter XXXIII. The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+Chapter XXXIV.  Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+Chapter XXXV.   The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+Chapter XXXVI.  A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully
+                Spared.
+Chapter XXXVII. The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+
+
+In The Valley
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+"The French Are in the Valley!"
+
+
+
+It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
+since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
+to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
+son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
+to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
+parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
+good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
+nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
+recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
+fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
+the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
+might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
+and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
+great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
+waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
+its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
+If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
+become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
+mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.
+
+Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
+keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
+I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
+confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
+their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
+so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
+the story:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.
+
+The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
+that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
+now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
+than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
+dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
+were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
+floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
+the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
+thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
+the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
+or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
+winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
+lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
+not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.
+
+I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
+whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
+did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
+their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
+and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
+women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
+for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
+mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
+behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
+after rains.
+
+Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
+longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
+kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
+time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
+duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
+bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
+the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
+me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
+and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
+too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
+sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
+flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
+hated them.
+
+The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
+these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
+knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
+ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
+commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
+vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
+inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
+snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
+the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
+timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
+our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
+nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
+lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
+I held my breath.
+
+It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
+dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
+set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
+noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
+hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
+great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
+heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):
+
+"The French are in the Valley!"
+
+I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
+and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.
+
+Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
+what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
+I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
+his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
+clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
+with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
+Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
+which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
+to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
+husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
+portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
+small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.
+
+How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
+considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
+Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
+mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
+my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
+fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
+aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
+momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
+suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.
+
+When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
+another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
+gravely from within the door:
+
+"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
+and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
+Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."
+
+Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
+Valley.
+
+These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
+to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
+great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
+the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
+all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.
+
+If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
+explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
+I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
+master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
+with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
+my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
+both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
+Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
+conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
+while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
+first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
+hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
+reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
+content to return to his sleep.
+
+I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
+dreamed at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+
+
+
+When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
+small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
+original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
+might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
+late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
+Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
+fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
+white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
+could sop my bread.
+
+During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
+housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
+upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
+which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
+well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
+command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
+cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
+employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
+heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
+Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
+any other large matter, I would have valued.
+
+Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
+apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
+air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
+the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
+on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
+with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
+cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
+almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.
+
+He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
+themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
+pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
+labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
+speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
+French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
+notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
+me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
+better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
+look up and down the Valley.
+
+It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
+forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
+edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
+the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
+through the cold night.
+
+To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
+or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
+not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
+its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
+its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
+logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
+upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
+grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
+in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
+been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
+French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
+our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
+Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
+being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
+still by contrast.
+
+Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
+adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
+were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
+and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
+houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.
+
+It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
+men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
+wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
+Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
+part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
+tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
+than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
+little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
+to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
+religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
+I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
+I trust there can be no doubt.
+
+While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
+these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
+of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
+dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
+there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
+the hill.
+
+As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
+his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
+to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
+attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
+mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
+westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.
+
+After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
+cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."
+
+All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
+stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
+the commotion.
+
+Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
+and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
+also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
+yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
+about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
+household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
+we saw on the highway.
+
+What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
+terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
+generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
+or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
+somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.
+
+Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
+phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
+out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
+before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
+French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
+above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
+Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
+auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
+had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
+in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
+answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
+the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
+others had become calm.
+
+As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
+cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:
+
+"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
+had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"
+
+To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
+in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.
+
+With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
+straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
+cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!
+
+He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
+put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
+in the face, and laughed again.
+
+All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
+all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
+himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
+puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
+staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
+with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
+some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
+wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
+comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.
+
+The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
+the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:
+
+"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
+embrace."
+
+The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
+two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
+face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
+the rending of an ice-gorge.
+
+"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
+came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
+my breath.
+
+It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
+foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
+the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
+and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
+despatched onward to the fort.
+
+While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
+and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
+eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
+eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
+(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
+long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
+their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
+reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
+the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.
+
+The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
+backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
+the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
+I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
+showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
+full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
+pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
+being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
+weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
+it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
+swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
+ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
+warrior should be.
+
+It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
+troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
+and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
+as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
+Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
+roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.
+
+For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I
+believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the
+frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was
+not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did
+not get into my favor after we came inside.
+
+Under this Master Philip's commands the negro squatted on his haunches and
+unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this
+bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps
+between three and four years of age.
+
+This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and
+looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her
+eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long,
+tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her
+feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure.
+She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face
+was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to
+me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the negro smiling upon
+us both.
+
+I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was
+already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly
+spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward
+the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone.
+
+"Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude
+behavior and at his words.
+
+"I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child.
+
+He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him,
+clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to
+one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little
+girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great
+wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have
+her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus
+you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood
+finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But
+I had the girl.
+
+"What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing,
+Douw, and what child is this?"
+
+"It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions,
+and red with color.
+
+The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that
+Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even
+feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for
+me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one
+might feel the heat, and said nothing.
+
+"Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as
+much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven."
+
+The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously:
+
+"She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village
+only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the
+other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When
+Belletre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first
+attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in
+the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange
+enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered?--the infant was in
+some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
+great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
+for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
+to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
+friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
+frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
+cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
+start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
+Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
+brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
+said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
+saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
+one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
+bundled her in."
+
+"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
+yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.
+
+"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
+friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
+young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
+people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
+Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
+that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
+not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?"
+
+"Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed.
+
+"Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly.
+
+"You are Tom Lynch, and your grandfather was a king----"
+
+"No more," interposed Mr. Stewart, frowning and lifting his finger. "That
+folly is dead and in its grave. Not even so fair a youth as you must give
+it resurrection."
+
+"Here, Bob," said the Major, with sudden alacrity. "Go outside with these
+children, and help them to some games."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly.
+
+
+
+My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty
+years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see
+him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there
+would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above
+forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame,
+yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist
+and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He
+was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much,
+let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain,
+ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a
+swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals,
+much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness
+when agreed with.
+
+All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many
+other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers.
+He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he
+loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great
+warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be
+said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and
+evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns
+in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most
+instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he,
+so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the
+profession of arms.
+
+A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward
+prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and
+I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here,
+although at the time I was in ignorance of it.
+
+In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had
+been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was
+the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who
+loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and
+sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court,
+of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the
+father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles
+the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch
+names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany.
+
+Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins,
+got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared
+meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew
+old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not
+forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast
+of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now,
+and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue
+and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a
+sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of
+Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse.
+
+With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had
+dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in
+a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally.
+After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the
+conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving
+himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to
+France, never to return.
+
+He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This
+boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court,
+now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting
+in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant
+existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon
+destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless
+alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous
+gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover,
+and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an
+injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts.
+
+Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a
+priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about
+Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the
+religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier,
+for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit
+to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the
+emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did
+Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning,
+honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the
+Jacobite gentleman.
+
+One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a
+young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony
+Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with
+ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke.
+He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that
+his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the
+daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had
+gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this
+exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from
+the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence.
+
+Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The
+two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the
+lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance
+and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced,
+and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he
+never forgot her till his death.
+
+Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for
+striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's
+lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his
+generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more
+selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among
+those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh
+and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of
+Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph,
+its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the
+Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was
+able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig
+influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to
+live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had
+fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to
+Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and
+peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of
+Stewart, and set sail to the New World.
+
+This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which
+perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish
+recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on
+which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the
+succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I
+still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to
+acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the
+question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out:
+
+"Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me
+a fort!"
+
+Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and
+I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in
+the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the
+little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks
+and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no
+work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was
+to his mind, he said:
+
+"Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the
+Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to
+drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he
+must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we
+must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come
+up.--Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!"
+
+Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing
+his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against
+my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt.
+
+"Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a
+Frenchman than you are yourself."
+
+"You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All
+foreigners are the same."
+
+"It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a
+foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?"
+
+He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of
+course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even
+speak English properly."
+
+This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr.
+Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to
+hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont
+to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English
+correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was
+true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by
+Philip's criticism.
+
+"Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a
+Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself
+when I _do_ come," or words to that purport.
+
+We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all
+better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were
+some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic
+fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is
+enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls
+which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my
+head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I
+forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling
+him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down,
+with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would
+be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead,
+mumbling with his mouth full of snow:
+
+"Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know."
+
+My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
+little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
+unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
+two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
+Philip said:
+
+"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
+My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
+besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
+weren't Dutch."
+
+When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
+eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
+a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
+and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.
+
+The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
+know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
+They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
+disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
+senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
+deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
+of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
+knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.
+
+"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
+some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
+trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
+estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a
+single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be
+damned to them!"
+
+"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and
+now!"
+
+"No, I'll _not_ think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I
+too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of
+'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit
+to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"
+
+"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no
+doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is,
+and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I
+dream--precisely what pleases me best."
+
+"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"
+
+"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk
+with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw,
+yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a
+second self."
+
+The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but
+without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon
+his plate:
+
+"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"
+
+"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.
+
+The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to
+be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help
+one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."
+
+Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."
+
+Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing
+furiously. He smiled and said:
+
+"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."
+
+My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.
+
+"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie
+over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow,
+struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school
+for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him.
+We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless
+grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut
+out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."
+
+The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.
+
+"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the
+lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life,
+dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for
+my bride."
+
+Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.
+
+The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with
+moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in
+this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and
+thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty
+despatches.
+
+While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over
+his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little
+waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore
+over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily
+and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.
+
+"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm,
+Bob, for the journey."
+
+The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's
+arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.
+
+"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.
+
+"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could
+Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his
+fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine
+country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again.
+What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"
+
+I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr.
+Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him
+pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence
+which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.
+
+"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.
+
+As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I
+walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with
+deep joy.
+
+"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a
+load off my mind.--Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."
+
+"And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked,
+vehemently.
+
+"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the
+question."
+
+The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat
+pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which
+Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips,
+and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me,
+red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at
+his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my
+apron, besides.
+
+With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face,
+knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst
+into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a
+wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and
+screaming that he _would_ have the child.
+
+I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle
+by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and
+then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob
+enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on
+the horse.
+
+Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a
+salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:
+
+"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when
+once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of
+him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade,
+a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."
+
+"God bless you--and yours, _mon frere_!"
+
+We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the
+river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly
+back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:
+
+"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their
+mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a
+father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the
+present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."
+
+To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the
+melting snow by his side.
+
+Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log
+structure critically over.
+
+"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this
+house--to me?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Stewart."
+
+"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan
+out still another room for our abode."
+
+Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically
+begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+
+
+
+The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage
+and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could
+scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the
+year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near
+the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that
+their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they
+did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in
+constant alarm. No household knew, on going to bed, that they would not be
+roused before morning by savage war-cries. No man ventured out of sight of
+his home without entertaining the idea that he might never get back alive.
+Hence, when the long-expected blow was really struck, and the town on the
+German Flatts devastated, everybody was in an agony of fear. To make
+matters worse, Sir William was at his home ill in bed, and there was some
+trouble between him and the English commanders, which stood in the way of
+troops being sent to our aid.
+
+Those few days following the dreadful news of the attack above us seem
+still like a nightmare. The settlers up the river began sending their
+household goods down to Albany; women and children, too, passed us in
+great parties, to take refuge in Fort Hunter or at Schenectady. The river
+suddenly became covered with boats once more, but this time representing
+the affrighted flight of whole communities instead of a peaceful commerce.
+
+During this season of terror I was, as may be conceived, indeed unhappy. I
+had no stomach even for play with the new addition to our household, yet
+scarcely dared to show my nose outside the stockade. Mr. Stewart spent his
+days abroad, either with Sir William, or up at Caughnawaga concerting
+means of defence with our friends the Fondas. He did, however, find time
+to cross the river and reassure my mother, who trembled with apprehension
+for her great brood of young, but was brave as a lion for herself. Weeks
+afterward, when I visited her once more, I saw baskets of lime in the
+attic which this devoted woman had stored there, to throw with water on
+the Indians when they came. This device she had learned from the family
+traditions of her ancestors' doings, when the Spaniards were in Holland.
+
+Gradually the alarm wore away. The French and Indians, after killing fifty
+Palatines and taking thrice that number prisoners, turned tail and marched
+back to the Lake again, with some of Honikol Herkimer's lead in their
+miserable bodies. The Valley was rarely to be cursed with their presence
+again. It was as if a long fever had come to its climax in a tremendous
+convulsion, and then gone off altogether. We regained confidence, and
+faced the long winter of '57 with content.
+
+Before the next snowfall succeeded to that first November flurry, and the
+season closed in in earnest, Mr. Stewart was able, by the aid of a number
+of neighbors, to build and roof over two additions to his house. The
+structure was still all of logs, but with its new wings became almost as
+large, if not as imposing, as any frame-house round about. One of these
+wings was set aside for Dame Kronk and the little girl. The other, much to
+my surprise, was given to me. At the same time my benefactor formally
+presented me with my little black playmate, Tulp. He had heretofore been
+my friend; henceforth he was my slave, yet, let me add, none the less
+my friend.
+
+All this was equivalent to my formal adoption as Mr. Stewart's son. It was
+the custom in those days, when a slave child came of a certain age, to
+present it to the child of the family who should be of the same age and
+sex. The presentation was made at New Year's, ordinarily, and the white
+child acknowledged it by giving the little black a piece of money and a
+pair of shoes. My mother rather illogically shed some tears at this token
+that I was to belong henceforth to Mr. Stewart; but she gave me a bright
+Spanish dollar out of her small hoard, for Tulp, and she had old William
+Dietz, the itinerant cobbler of Schoharie, construct for him a very
+notable pair of shoes, which did him no good since his father promptly
+sold them over at Fort Hunter for rum. The old rascal would have made
+away with the coin as well, no doubt, but that Mr. Stewart threatened him
+with a hiding, and so Tulp wore it on a leather string about his neck.
+
+I did not change my name, but continued to be Douw Mauverensen. This was
+at the wish of both Mr. Stewart and my mother, for the name I bore was an
+honorable one. My father had been for years a clergyman in the Valley,
+preaching now in Dutch, now in German, according to the nationality of the
+people, and leading a life of much hardship, travelling up and down among
+them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is
+certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many
+people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly
+remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very
+small boy.
+
+As he had had no fixed charge during life, but had ministered to half a
+dozen communities, so it was nobody's business in particular to care for
+his family after his death. The owner of the horse did send my mother a
+bushel of apples, and the congregation at Stone Arabia took up a little
+money for her. But they were all poor people in those days, wresting a
+scanty livelihood from the wilderness, and besides, I have never noticed
+that to be free with their money is in the nature of either the Dutch or
+the Palatines. The new dominie, too, who came up from Albany to take my
+father's place, was of the opinion that there was quite little enough
+coming in for the living pastor, without shearing it, as he said, to keep
+alive dead folk's memories. Thus sadly a prospect of great destitution
+opened before my mother.
+
+But she was, if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain
+Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the
+knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my
+grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years
+his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or
+by crook to collect his old credits outstanding, and maintained at least
+enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after
+his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with
+her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie
+Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she
+was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the
+youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means
+of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new
+dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time
+he visited our village. To add to the wretchedness of her plight, at this
+very time her sister Margaret came back in destitution and weakness to
+her, having been both widowed and sorely shaken in wits by the small-pox.
+
+It was then that Mr. Stewart, who had known my father, came to our relief.
+He first lent my mother a small sum of money--she would take no more, and
+was afterward very proud to repay him penny for penny. He further
+interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and
+others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort
+Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch.
+
+This language, which I have lived to see almost entirely fade from use,
+was even then thought to be most probably the tongue of the future in the
+colony, and there was the more need to teach it correctly, since, by the
+barbarous commingling of Rhenish peasant dialects, Irish and Scotch
+perversions of English, Indian phrases, the lingo of the slaves, and the
+curious expressions of the Yankees from the East, the most villanous
+jargon ever heard was commonly spoken in our Valley. My mother knew the
+noble language of her fathers in all its strength and sweetness, and her
+teaching was so highly prized that soon the school became a source of
+steady support to us all. Old "Uncle" Conrad--or Coonrod as we used to
+call him--the high-shouldered old pedagogue who was at once teacher,
+tithing-man, herb-doctor, and fiddler for our section, grumbled a little
+at the start; but either he had not the heart to take the bread from our
+mouths, or his own lips were soon silenced by the persuasion of
+our patrons.
+
+It was out of respect for one of these, good old Douw Fonda, who came from
+Schenectady to live at Caughnawaga when I was two years old, that I had
+been named. But even more we all owed to the quiet, lonely man who had
+built the log house opposite Aries Creek, and who used so often to come
+over on Sunday afternoons in the warm weather and pay us a
+friendly visit.
+
+My earliest recollections are of this Mr. Stewart, out of whom my boyish
+fancy created a beneficent sort of St. Nicholas, who could be good all the
+year round instead of only at New Year's. As I grew older his visits
+seemed more and more to be connected with me, for he paid little attention
+to my sisters, and rarely missed taking me on his knee, or, later on,
+leading me out for a walk. Finally I was asked to go over and stay with
+him for a week, and this practically was the last of my life with my
+mother. Soon afterward my aunt was engaged as his housekeeper, and I
+tacitly became a part of the household as well. Last of all, on my eighth
+birthday, in this same November of '57, I was formally installed as son of
+the house.
+
+It was a memorable day, as I have said, in that Tulp was given me for my
+own. But I think that at the time I was even more affected by the fact
+that I was presented with a coat, and allowed to forever lay aside my
+odious aprons. These garments, made by my mother's own hands, had long
+been the bane of my existence. To all my entreaties to be dressed as the
+other boys of my age were, like Matthew Wormuth or Walter Butler instead
+of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter
+Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he
+was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been
+my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my
+humiliation.
+
+Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same
+pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and
+plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel
+any more like the other boys than before.
+
+It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual
+contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the
+history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the
+neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other
+countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's
+possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the
+_Gentleman's Magazine,_ which I studied with delight. I had also from him
+_Roderick Random_, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now
+understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found
+favor with sensible people.
+
+My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little
+boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd
+sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the
+boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant
+as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the
+Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years
+after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's
+mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and
+fish and hunt instead. Young Butler was of a better sort mentally, but he
+too never cared to read much. Both he and the Groats, the Nellises, the
+Cosselmans, young Wormuth--in fact, all the boys of good families I knew
+in the Valley--derided education, and preferred instead to go into the
+woods with a negro, and hunt squirrels while he chopped, or to play with
+their traps.
+
+Perhaps they were not to be blamed much, for the attractions of the rough
+out-of-door life which they saw men leading all about them might very
+easily outweigh the quiet pleasures of a book. But it was a misfortune
+none the less in after-years to some of them, when they allowed uninformed
+prejudices to lead them into a terrible course of crime against their
+country and their neighbors, and paid their estates or their lives as the
+penalty for their ignorance and folly.
+
+Fortunately, things are better ordered for the youth of the land in these
+days.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+
+
+
+It was on the morrow after my birthday that we became finally convinced of
+the French retreat. Mr. Stewart had returned from his journeys, contented,
+and sat now, after his hot supper, smoking by the fire. I lay at his feet
+on a bear-skin, I remember, reading by the light of the flames, when my
+aunt brought the baby-girl in.
+
+During the week that she had been with us, I had been too much terrified
+by the menace of invasion to take much interest in her, and Mr. Stewart
+had scarcely seen her. He smiled now, and held out his hands to her. She
+went to him very freely, and looked him over with a wise, wondering
+expression when he took her on his knee. It could be seen that she was
+very pretty. Her little white rows of teeth were as regular and pearly as
+the upper kernels on an ear of fresh sweet corn. She had a ribbon in her
+long, glossy hair, and her face shone pleasantly with soap. My aunt had
+made her some shoes out of deer-hide, which Mr. Stewart chuckled over.
+
+"What a people the Dutch are!" he said, with a smile. "The child is
+polished like the barrel of a gun. What's your name, little one?"
+
+The girl made no answer, from timidity I suppose.
+
+"Has she no name? I should think she would have one," said I. It was the
+first time I had ever spoken to Mr. Stewart without having been addressed.
+But my new position in the house seemed to entitle me to this much
+liberty, for once.
+
+"No," he replied, "your aunt is not able to discover that she has a
+name--except that she calls herself Pulkey, or something like that."
+
+"That is not a good name to the ear," I said, in comment.
+
+"No; doubtless it is a nickname. I have thought," he added, musingly, "of
+calling her Desideria."
+
+I sat bolt upright at this. It did not become me to protest, but I could
+not keep the dismay from my face, evidently, for Mr. Stewart
+laughed aloud.
+
+"What is it, Douw? Is it not to your liking?"
+
+"Y-e-s, sir--but she is such a very little girl!"
+
+"And the name is so great, eh? She'll grow to it, lad, she'll grow to it.
+And what kind of a Dutchman are you, sir, who are unwilling to do honor to
+the greatest of all Dutchmen? The Dr. Erasmus upon whose letters you are
+to try your Latin this winter--his name was Desiderius. Can you tell what
+it means? It signifies 'desired,' as of a mother's heart, and he took a
+form of the Greek verb _erao_, meaning about the same thing, instead. It's
+a goodly famous name, you see. We mean to make our little girl the truest
+lady, and love her the best, of all the women in the Valley. And so we'll
+give her a name--a fair-sounding, gracious, classical name--which no
+other woman bears, and one that shall always suggest home love--eh, boy?"
+
+"But if it be so good a name, sir," I said, gingerly being conscious of
+presumption, "why did Dr. Erasmus not keep it himself instead of turning
+it into Greek?"
+
+My patron laughed heartily at this. "A Dutchman for obstinacy!" he said,
+and leaned over to rub the top of my head, which he did when I specially
+pleased him.
+
+Late that night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling
+of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I
+determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was
+brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the
+fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. Mr.
+Stewart was reading by the candles on the table. Save for the singing of
+the kettle on the crane--for the mixing of his night-drink later on--and
+the click of my aunt's knitting-needles, there was perfect silence. I
+mustered my bravery, and called my wee playmate "Daisy."
+
+I dared not look at the master, and could not tell if he had heard or not.
+Presently I spoke the name again, and this time ventured to steal an
+apprehensive glance at him, and fancied I saw the workings of a smile
+repressed in the deep lines about his mouth. "A Dutchman for obstinacy"
+truly, since two days afterward Mr. Stewart himself called the girl
+"Daisy"--and there was an end of it. Until confirmation time, when she
+played a queenly part at the head of the little class of farmers' and
+villagers' daughters whom Dominie Romeyn baptized into full communion,
+the ponderous Latin name was never heard of again. Then it indeed emerged
+for but a single day, to dignify a state occasion, and disappeared
+forever. Except alone on the confirmation register of the Stone Church at
+Caughnawaga, she was Daisy thenceforth for all time and to all men.
+
+The winter of 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of
+great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the
+roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good
+crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying
+settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to
+get food.
+
+I do not remember that our household stood in any such need, but
+occasionally some Indian who had been across the hills carrying venison
+would come in and rest, begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a
+strong smell like that of a tame bear as he toasted himself by the fire.
+Mr. Stewart was often amused by these fellows, and delighted to talk with
+them as far as their knowledge of language and inclination to use it went,
+but I never could abide them.
+
+It has become the fashion now to be sentimental about the red man, and
+young people who never knew what he really was like find it easy to extol
+his virtues, and to create for him a chivalrous character. No doubt there
+were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few
+just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion
+to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail
+me. But as a whole the race was a bad one--full of laziness and lies and
+cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and
+I know what I say.
+
+Probably there was no place on the whole continent where these Indians
+could be better studied than in the Mohawk Valley, near to Sir William's
+place. They came to him in great numbers, not only from the Six Nations,
+but often from far-distant tribes living beyond the Lakes and north of the
+St. Lawrence. They were on their best behavior with him, and no doubt had
+an affection for him in their way, but it was because he flattered their
+egregious vanity by acting and dressing in Indian fashion, and made it
+worth their while by constantly giving them presents and rum. Their liking
+seemed always to me to be that of the selfish, treacherous cat, rather
+than of the honest dog. Their teeth and claws were always ready for your
+flesh, if you did not give them enough, and if they dared to strike. And
+they were cowards, too, for all their boasting. Not even Sir William could
+get them to face any enemy in the open. Their notion of war was midnight
+skulking and shooting from behind safe cover. Even in battle they were
+murderers, not warriors.
+
+In peace they were next to useless. There was a little colony of them in
+our orchard one summer which I watched with much interest. The men never
+did one stroke of honest work all the season long, except to trot on
+errands when they felt like it, and occasionally salt and smoke fish
+which they caught in the river.
+
+But the wretched squaws--my word but _they_ worked enough for both! These
+women, wrinkled, dirty, sore-eyed from the smoke in their miserable huts,
+toiled on patiently, ceaselessly, making a great variety of wooden
+utensils and things of deer-hide like snow-shoes, moccasins, and shirts,
+which they bartered with the whites for milk and vegetables and rum. Even
+the little girls among them had to gather berries and mandrake, and, in
+the fall, the sumach blows which the Indians used for savoring their food.
+And if these poor creatures obtained in their bartering too much bread and
+milk and too little rum and tobacco, they were beaten by their men as no
+white man would beat the meanest animal.
+
+Doubtless much of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and
+hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all
+sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a
+score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp,
+that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs
+which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in
+the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, who herded
+together in a shanty at the edge of the clearing back of us, had their
+faults, no doubt; but they would work when they were bid, and they were
+grateful to those who fed and clothed and cared for them. These were
+reasons for their being despised by the Indians--and they seemed also
+reasons why I should like them, as I always did.
+
+There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a
+queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical
+sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably
+believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors
+or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge
+of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his
+ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over
+collecting tulip-bulbs.
+
+His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the
+possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened
+Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought
+him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the
+day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in
+his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing
+his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had
+some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could
+have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this
+warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living
+up to it.
+
+I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In
+truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season
+of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for
+me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head;
+that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close
+to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy,
+until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long
+months I never saw my mother and sisters, or went to church? It was very
+pleasant inside.
+
+I seem still to see the square, home-like central room of the old house,
+with Mr. Stewart's bed in one corner, covered with a great robe of pieced
+panther skins. The smoky rafters above were hung with strings of onions,
+red-peppers, and long ears of Indian corn, the gold of which shone through
+pale parted husks and glowed in the firelight. The rude home-made table,
+chairs, and stools stood in those days upon a rough floor of hewn planks,
+on projecting corners of which an unlucky toe was often stubbed. There
+were various skins spread on this floor, and others on the log walls, hung
+up to dry. Over the great stone mantel were suspended Mr. Stewart's guns,
+along with his sword and pistols. Back in the corners of the fireplace
+were hung traps, nets, and the like, while on the opposite side of the
+room was the master's bookcase, well filled with volumes in English,
+Latin, and other tongues. Three doors, low and unpanelled, opened from
+this room to the other chambers of the house--leading respectively to the
+kitchen, to my room, and to the room now set apart for my aunt and
+little Daisy.
+
+No doubt it was a poor abode, and scantily enough furnished, judged by
+present standards, but we were very comfortable in it, none the less. I
+worked pretty hard that winter on my Latin, conning Caesar for labor and
+Dr. Erasmus for play, and kept up my other studies as well, reading for
+the first time, I remember, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. For the
+rest, I busied myself learning to make snow-shoes, to twist cords out of
+flax, to mould bullets, and to write legibly, or else played with
+Daisy and Tulp.
+
+To confess how simply we amused ourselves, we three little ones, would be
+to speak in an unknown tongue, I fear, to modern children. Our stock of
+playthings was very limited. We had, as the basis of everything, the
+wooden works of the old clock, which served now for a gristmill like that
+of the Groats, now for a fort, again for a church. Then there were the
+spindles of a discarded spinning-wheel, and a small army of spools which
+my aunt used for winding linen thread. These we dressed in odd rags for
+dolls--soldiers, Indians, and fine ladies, and knights of old. To our
+contented fancy, there was endless interest in the lives and doings of
+these poor puppets. I made them illustrate the things I read, and the
+slave boy and tiny orphan girl assisted and followed on with equal
+enthusiasm, whether the play was of Alexander of Macedon, or Captain Kidd,
+or only a war-council of Delaware Indians, based upon Mr. Colden's book.
+
+Sometimes, when it was warm enough to leave the hearth, and Mr. Stewart
+desired not to be disturbed, we would transport ourselves and our games to
+my aunt's room. This would be a dingy enough place, I suppose, even to my
+eyes now, but it had a great charm then. Here from the rafters hung the
+dried, odoriferous herbs--sage, summer-savory, and mother-wort; bottles of
+cucumber ointment and of a liniment made from angle-worms--famous for cuts
+and bruises; strings of dried apples and pumpkins; black beans in their
+withered pods; sweet clover for the linen--and I know not what else
+besides. On the wall were two Dutch engravings of the killing of Jan and
+Cornelis de Wit by the citizens of The Hague, which, despite their hideous
+fidelity to details, had a great fascination for me.
+
+My childhood comes back vividly indeed to me as I recall the good old
+woman, in her white cap and short gown (which she had to lift to get at
+the pocket tied over her petticoat by a string to her waist), walking up
+and down with the yarn taut from the huge, buzzing wheel, crooning Dutch
+hymns to herself the while, and thinking about our dinner.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+
+
+
+If I relied upon my memory, I could not tell when the French war ended. It
+had practically terminated, so far as our Valley was concerned, with the
+episode already related. Sir William Johnson was away much of the time
+with the army, and several of the boys older than myself--John Johnson,
+John Frey, and Adam Fonda among them--went with him. We heard vague news
+of battles at distant places, at Niagara, at Quebec, and elsewhere. Once,
+indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did
+bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic
+in the lower settlements.
+
+Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in
+the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes.
+
+I remember one body of Highlanders in particular whose dress and mien
+impressed me greatly. Mr. Stewart, too, was much excited by the memories
+this noble uniform evoked, and had the officers into the house to eat and
+drink with him. I watched and listened to these tall, fierce, bare-kneed
+warriors in awe, from a distance. He brought out bottles from his rare
+stock of Madeira, and they drank it amid exclamations which, if I mistake
+not, were highly treasonable. This was almost the last occasion on which I
+heard references made to his descent, and he did his best to discourage
+them then. Most of these fine red-haired men, I learned afterward laid
+their bones on the bloody plateau overlooking Quebec.
+
+Far fresher in my recollection than these rumors of war is the fact that
+my Tulp caught the small-pox, in the spring of '60, the malady having been
+spread by a Yankee who came up the Valley selling sap-spouts that were
+turned with a lathe instead of being whittled. The poor little chap was
+carried off to a sheep-shed on the meadow clearing, a long walk from our
+house, and he had to remain there by himself for six weeks. At my urgent
+request, I was allowed to take his food to him daily, leaving it on a
+stone outside and then discreetly retiring. He would come out and get it,
+and then we would shout to each other across the creek. I took up some of
+our dolls to him, but he did not get much comfort out of them, being
+unable to remember any of the stories which I illustrated with them, or to
+invent any for himself. At his suggestion I brought him instead a piece of
+tanned calf-skin, with a sailor's needle and some twine, and the little
+fellow made out of this a lot of wallets for his friends, which had to be
+buried a long time before they could be safely used. I have one of these
+yet--mildewed with age, and most rudely stitched, but still a very
+precious possession.
+
+Tulp came out finally, scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward
+repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that
+Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than
+ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because
+women are more delicately made, and must perforce shudder at ugliness.
+
+How happily the years went by! The pictures in my memory, save those of
+the snug winter rooms already referred to, are all of a beautiful Valley,
+embowered in green, radiant with sunshine--each day live-long
+with delight.
+
+There was first of all in the spring, when the chorus of returning
+song-birds began, the gathering of maple-sap, still sacred to boyhood. The
+sheep were to be washed and sheared, too, and the awkward, weak-kneed
+calves to be fed. While the spring floods ran high, ducks and geese
+covered the water, and muskrats came out, driven from their holes. Then
+appeared great flocks of pigeons, well fattened from their winter's
+sojourn in the South, and everybody, young and old, gave himself up to
+their slaughter; while this lasted, the crack! crack! of guns was heard
+all the forenoon long, particularly if the day was cloudy and the birds
+were flying low--and ah! the buttered pigeon pies my aunt made, too.
+
+As the floods went down, and the snow-water disappeared, the fishing
+began, first with the big, silly suckers, then with wiser and more valued
+fish. The woods became dry, and then in long, joyous rambles we set traps
+and snares, hunted for nests among the low branches and in the
+marsh-grass, smoked woodchucks out of their holes, gathered wild flowers,
+winter-green, and dye-plants, or built great fires of the dead leaves and
+pithless, scattered branches, as boys to the end of time will delight
+to do.
+
+When autumn came, there were mushrooms, and beech-nuts, butter-nuts,
+hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of
+elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened
+the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the
+wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the
+combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by
+our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being
+boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk
+by my aunt.
+
+Ah, they were happy times indeed!
+
+Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early
+in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no
+reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are
+wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being
+invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew
+quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly
+upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular
+progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the
+pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high,
+uncompromising back made all my bones ache.
+
+Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was
+a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the
+best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own
+to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on
+me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me
+personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed
+to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist
+clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of
+the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even
+to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree
+were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and
+spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst
+in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads.
+
+When at last I could escape without discredit, and get across the river
+again, it was with the consoling thought that the next Sunday would be Mr.
+Stewart's Sunday.
+
+This meant a good long walk with my patron. Sometimes we would go down to
+Mount Johnson, if Sir William was at home, or to Mr. Butler's, or some
+other English-speaking house, where I would hear much profitable
+conversation, and then be encouraged to talk about it during our leisurely
+homeward stroll. But more often, if the day were fine, we would leave
+roads and civilization behind us, and climb the gradual elevation to the
+north of the house, through the woodland to an old Indian trail which led
+to our favorite haunt--a wonderful ravine.
+
+The place has still a local fame, and picnic parties go there to play at
+forestry, but it gives scarcely a suggestion now of its ancient wildness.
+As my boyish eyes saw it, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The
+creek, then a powerful stream, had cut a deep gorge in its exultant leap
+over the limestone barrier. On the cliffs above, giant hemlocks seemed to
+brush the very sky with their black, tufted boughs. Away below, on the
+shadowed bottomland, which could be reached only by feet trained to
+difficult descents, strange plants grew rank in the moisture of the
+waterfall, and misshapen rocks wrapped their nakedness in heavy folds of
+unknown mosses and nameless fern-growths. Above all was the ceaseless
+shout of the tumbling waters, which had in my ears ever a barbaric message
+from the Spirit of the Wilderness.
+
+The older Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot
+was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here,
+for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered
+about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had
+assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain,
+for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown.
+Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen
+or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this
+council place. Even the trail, winding its tortuous way from the Valley
+over the hills toward the Adirondack fastnesses, had been deserted for
+another long before--so long, in fact, that the young brave who chanced to
+follow the lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge,
+or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to
+learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the
+council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the
+chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part
+of his ancestral history.
+
+Mr. Stewart told me that when he first settled in the Valley, a
+disappointed and angry man, this gulf had much the satisfaction for him
+that men in great grief or wrath find in breasting a sharp storm. There
+was something congenial to his ugly unrest in this place, with its violent
+clamor, its swift dashing of waters, its dismal shadows, and damp
+chilliness of depths.
+
+But we were fallen now upon calmer, brighter days. He was no longer the
+discouraged, sullen misanthropist, but had come to be instead a pacific,
+contented, even happy, gentleman. And lo! the meaning of the wild gorge
+changed to reflect his mood. There was no stain of savagery upon the
+delight we had in coming to this spot. As he said, once listened rightly
+to, the music of the falling waters gave suggestions which, if they were
+sobering, were still not sad.
+
+This place was all our own, and hither we most frequently bent our steps
+on Sundays, after the snow-water had left the creek, and the danger of
+lurking colds had been coaxed from the earth by the May sun. Here he would
+sit for hours on one of the stones in the great Druid-like circle which
+some dead generation of savages had toiled to construct. Sometimes I
+would scour the steep sides of the ravine and the moist bottom for curious
+plants to fetch to him, and he would tell me of their structure and
+design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his
+pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and
+this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his
+past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable
+wealth of reminiscence, reflection, and helpful anecdote.
+
+On this spot, with the gaunt outlines of mammoth primeval trunks and
+twisted boughs above us, with the sacred memorials of extinct rites about
+us, and with the waters crashing down through the solitude beneath us on
+their way to turn Sir William's mill-wheel, one could get broad,
+comprehensive ideas of what things really meant. One could see wherein the
+age of Pitt differed from and advanced upon the age of Colbert, on this
+new continent, and could as in prophecy dream of the age of Jefferson yet
+to come. Did I as a lad feel these things? Truly it seems to me that
+I did.
+
+Half a century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle,
+its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan
+tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the
+blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound
+to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that not
+even the horrors of this death could shake his will, or wring a groan
+from his heaving breast. Here, too, above the unending din of the
+waterfall and the whisper of these hemlocks overhead, had often risen some
+such shrill-voiced, defiant deathsong, from the smoke and anguish of the
+stake, as that chant of the Algonquin son of Alknomuk which my
+grandchildren still sing at their school. This dead and horrible past of
+heathendom I saw as in a mirror, looking upon these council-stones.
+
+The children's children of these savages were still in the Valley. Their
+council fires were still lighted, no further distant than the Salt
+Springs. In their hearts burned all the old lust for torture and massacre,
+and the awful joys of rending enemies limb by limb. But the spell of
+Europe was upon them, and, in good part or otherwise, they bowed under it.
+So much had been gained, and two peaceful white people could come and talk
+in perfect safety on the ancient site of their sacrifices and cruelties.
+
+Yet this spell of Europe, accomplishing so much, left much to be desired.
+It was still possible to burn a slave to death by legal process, here in
+our Valley; and it was still within the power of careless, greedy noblemen
+in London, who did not know the Mohawk from the Mississippi, to sign away
+great patents of our land, robbing honest settlers of their all. There was
+to come the spell of America, which should remedy these things. I cannot
+get it out of my head that I learned to foresee this, to feel and to look
+for its coming, there in the gorge as a boy.
+
+But there are other reasons why I should remember the place--to be told
+later on.
+
+The part little Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is
+hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can
+recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade,
+and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds
+these old memories. We were happy together--that is all.
+
+I taught her to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from
+toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs.
+For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call
+her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I
+learned in turn to be merciful to helpless creatures, and to be honest and
+cleanly in my thoughts and talk. She would help me to seek for birds'
+nests with genuine enthusiasm, but it was her pity which prevented their
+being plundered afterward. Her pretty love for all living things, her
+delight in innocent, simple amusements, her innate repugnance to coarse
+and cruel actions--all served to make me different from the rough
+boys about me.
+
+Thus we grew up together, glad in each other's constant company, and
+holding our common benefactor, Mr. Stewart, in the greatest love and
+veneration.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+
+
+
+As we two children became slowly transformed into youths, the Valley with
+no less steadiness developed in activity, population, and wealth. Good
+roads were built; new settlements sprang up; the sense of being in the
+hollow of the hand of savagery wore off. Primitive conditions lapsed,
+disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven
+faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh
+outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began
+to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the
+common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the
+Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a
+pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore
+ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained
+hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that
+some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more
+attractions.
+
+There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was
+sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the
+gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London
+clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him.
+
+The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people
+all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the
+hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown
+how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be
+courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who
+fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses
+and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and
+close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed
+children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love
+for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others,
+the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his
+influence in London.
+
+They never liked him entirely; he in turn had so little regard for them
+and their pretensions that, when they came, he would suffer none of them
+to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom indeed they had often
+to meet as an associate and equal. Yet this bold, independent, really
+great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded
+water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to
+value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their
+painted spectacles--and thus to come to grief.
+
+Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr. Stewart all at once decided
+that he too would have a new house; and before snow flew the handsome,
+spacious "Cedars," as it was called, proudly fronted the Valley highway.
+Of course it was not, in size, a rival of the Hall at Johnstown, but it
+none the less was among the half-dozen best houses in the Mohawk Valley,
+and continued so to be until John Johnson burned it to the ground fifteen
+years later. It stood in front of our old log structure, now turned over
+to the slaves. It was of two stories, with lofty and spacious rooms, and
+from the road it presented a noble appearance, now that the old stockade
+had given place to a wall of low, regular masonry.
+
+With this new residence came a prodigious change in our way of life. Daisy
+was barely twelve years old, but we already thought of her as the lady of
+the house, for whom nothing was too good. The walls were plastered, and
+stiff paper from Antwerp with great sprawling arabesques, and figures of
+nymphs and fauns chasing one another up and down with ceaseless, fruitless
+persistency, was hung upon them, at least in the larger rooms. The floors
+were laid smoothly, each board lapping into the next by a then novel
+joiner's trick.
+
+On the floor in Daisy's room there was a carpet, too, a rare and
+remarkable thing in those days, and also from the Netherlands. In this
+same chamber, as well, were set up a bed of mahogany, cunningly carved and
+decorated, and a tall foreign cabinet of some rich dark wood, for linen,
+frocks, and the like. Here, likewise, were two gilt cages from Paris, in
+which a heart-breaking succession of native birds drooped and died, until
+four Dublin finches were at last imported for Daisy's special delight; and
+a case with glass doors and a lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her
+books; and, best of all, a piano--or was it a harpsichord?--standing on
+its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and
+bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling
+old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk,
+sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing
+to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that
+of the cherubim.
+
+Mr. Stewart and I lived in far less splendor. There was no foreign
+furniture to speak of in our portions of the house; we slept on beds the
+cords of which creaked through honest American maple posts; we walked on
+floors which offered gritty sand to the tread instead of carpet-stuffs.
+But there were two great stands laden with good books in our living-room;
+we had servants now within sound of a bell; we habitually wore garments
+befitting men of refinement and substance; we rode our own horses, and we
+could have given Daisy a chaise had the condition of our roads made it
+desirable.
+
+I say "we" because I had come to be a responsible factor in the control of
+the property. Mr. Stewart had never been poor; he was now close upon being
+wealthy. Upon me little by little had devolved the superintendence of
+affairs. I directed the burning over and clearing of land, which every
+year added scores of tillable acres to our credit; saw to the planting,
+care, and harvesting of crops; bought, bred, and sold the stock; watched
+prices, dickered with travelling traders, provisioned the house--in a
+word, grew to be the manager of all, and this when I was barely twenty.
+
+Mr. Stewart bore his years with great strength, physically, but he readily
+gave over to me, as fast as I could assume them, the details of out-door
+work. The taste for sitting indoors or in the garden, and reading, or
+talking with Daisy--the charm of simply living in a home made beautiful by
+a good and clever young girl--gained yearly upon him.
+
+Side by side with this sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second
+growth of old-world, mediaeval notions--a sort of aristocratic aftermath.
+It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by
+ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the
+wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under
+the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to dwell
+upon this change, or rather upon its results, at this stage of the story.
+
+Social position was now a matter for consideration. With improved means of
+intercourse and traffic, each year found some family thrifty enough to
+thrust its head above the rude level of settlers' equality, and take on
+the airs of superiority. Twenty years before, it had been Colonel Johnson
+first, and nobody else second. Now the Baronet-General was still
+preeminently first; but every little community in the Valley chain had its
+two or three families holding themselves only a trifle lower than
+the Johnsons.
+
+Five or six nationalities were represented. Of the Germans, there were the
+Herkimers up above the Falls, the Lawyers at Schoharie, the Freys (who
+were commonly thus classed, though they came originally from Switzerland),
+and many others. Of important Dutch families, there were the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, the Mabies and Groats at Rotterdam, below us, and the
+Quackenbosses to the west of us, across the river. The Johnsons and
+Butlers were Irish. Over at Cherry Valley the Campbells and Clydes were
+Scotch--the former being, indeed, close blood relatives of the great
+Argyll house. Colonel Isaac Paris, a prominent merchant near Stone Arabia,
+came from Strasbourg, and accounted himself a Frenchman, though he spoke
+German better than French, and attended the Dutch Calvinistic church.
+There were also English families of quality. I mention them all to show
+how curious was the admixture of races in our Valley. One cannot
+understand the terrible trouble which came upon us later without some
+knowledge of these race divisions.
+
+Mr. Stewart held a place in social estimation rather apart from any of
+these cliques. He was both Scotch and Irish by ancestry; he was French by
+education; he had lived and served in the Netherlands and sundry German
+states. Thus he could be all things to all men--yet he would not. He
+indeed became more solitary as he grew older, for the reasons I have
+already mentioned. He once had been friendly with all his intelligent
+neighbors, no matter what their nationality. Gradually he came to be
+intimate with only the Johnsons and Butlers on the theory that they were
+alone well born. Hours upon hours he talked with them of the Warrens and
+the Ormund-Butlers in Ireland, from whom they claimed descent, and of the
+assurance of Dutch and German cobblers and tinkers, in setting up for
+gentlemen.
+
+Sir William, in truth, had too much sense to often join or sympathize with
+these notions. But young Sir John and the Butlers, father and son, adopted
+them with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and
+German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these
+reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed
+lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for the friendship, of
+their critics.
+
+But let me defer these painful matters as long as possible. There are
+still the joys of youth to recall.
+
+I had grown now into a tall, strong young man, and I was in the way of
+meeting no one who did not treat me as an equal. It seems to me now that I
+was not particularly popular among my fellows, but I was conscious of no
+loneliness then. I had many things to occupy my mind, besides my regular
+tasks. Both natural history and botany interested me greatly, and I was
+privileged also to assist Sir William's investigations in the noble paths
+of astronomy. He had both large information and many fine thoughts on the
+subject, and used laughingly to say that if he were not too lazy he would
+write a book thereon. This was his way of saying that he had more labor to
+get through than any other man in the Colony. It was his idea that some
+time I should write the work instead; upon the Sacondaga hills, he said,
+we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our
+book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of
+planets. Alas! I also was too indolent--truly, not figuratively; the book
+was never written.
+
+In those days there was royal sport for rod and gun, but books also had a
+solid worth. We did not visit other houses much--Daisy and I--but held
+ourselves to a degree apart. The British people were, as a whole, nearer
+our station than the others, and had more ideas in common with us; but
+they were not of our blood, and we were not drawn toward many of them. As
+they looked down upon the Dutch, so the Dutch, in turn, were supercilious
+toward the Germans. I was Dutch, Daisy was German: but by a sort of tacit
+consent we identified ourselves with neither race, and this aided our
+isolation.
+
+There was also the question of religion. Mr. Stewart had been bred a
+Papist, and at the time of which I write, after the French war, Jesuit
+priests of that nation several times visited him to renew old European
+friendships. But he never went to mass, and never allowed them or anybody
+else to speak with him on the subject, no matter how deftly they
+approached it. This was prudent, from a worldly point of view, because the
+Valley, and for that matter the whole upper Colony, was bitterly opposed
+to Romish pretensions, and the first Scotch Highlanders who brought the
+mass into the Valley above Johnstown were openly denounced as idolaters.
+But it was certainly not caution which induced Mr. Stewart's backsliding.
+He was not the man to defer in that way to the prejudices of others. The
+truth was that he had no religious beliefs or faith whatever. But his
+scepticism was that of the French noble of the time, that of Voltaire and
+Mirabeau, rather than of the English plebeian and democrat, Thomas Paine.
+
+Naturally Daisy and I were not reared as theologians. We nominally
+belonged to the Calvinistic church, but not being obliged to attend its
+services, rarely did so. This tended to further separate us from our
+neighbors, who were mainly prodigious church-goers.
+
+But, more than all else, we lived by ourselves because, by constant
+contact with refined associations, we had grown to shrink from the
+coarseness which ruled outside. All about us marriages were made between
+mere children, each boy setting up for himself and taking a wife as soon
+as he had made a voyage to the Lakes and obtained a start in fur-trading.
+There was precious little sentiment or delicacy in these early courtships
+and matches, or in the state of society which they reflected--uncultured,
+sordid, rough, unsympathetic, with all its elementary instincts bluntly
+exposed and expressed. This was of course a subject not to be discussed by
+us. Up to the spring of 1772, when I was twenty-three years of age and
+Daisy was eighteen, no word of all the countless words which young men and
+women have from the dawn of language spoken on this great engrossing topic
+had ever been exchanged between us. In earlier years, when we were on the
+threshold of our teens, Mr. Stewart had more than once thought aloud in
+our hearing upon the time when we should inherit his home and fortune as a
+married couple. Nothing of that talk, though, had been heard for a
+long while.
+
+I had not entirely forgotten it; but I carried the idea along in the attic
+of my mind, as a thing not to be thrown away, yet of no present use or
+value or interest.
+
+Occasionally, indeed, I did recall it for the moment, and cast a diffident
+conjecture as to whether Daisy also remembered. Who shall say? I have been
+young and now am old, yet have I not learned the trick of reading a
+woman's mind. Very far indeed was I from it in those callow days.
+
+And now, after what I fear has been a tiresome enough prologue, my story
+awaits.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+
+
+It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were
+entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness
+of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve
+upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times,
+there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief
+inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and
+her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations.
+
+I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she
+stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson
+Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight.
+I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my
+companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise.
+
+We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first
+visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this
+morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion
+behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly
+along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this
+full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued
+hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever
+under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean
+face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown
+sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together,
+from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of
+himself and of the beautiful girl behind him.
+
+And she _was_ beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed
+with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance
+as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in
+its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's
+thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought
+that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so
+delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and
+thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the
+edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the
+hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun.
+
+She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought,
+as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was
+she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And
+I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my
+head a little, too.
+
+It would have been strange otherwise, for the day and the scene must have
+stirred the coldest pulse. We moved through a pale velvety panorama of
+green--woodland and roadside and river reflections and shadows, all of
+living yet young and softening green; the birds all about us filled the
+warm air with song; the tapping of the woodpeckers and the shrill chatter
+of squirrels came from every thicket; there was nothing which did not
+reflect our joyous, buoyant delight that spring had come again. And I rode
+by Daisy's side, and thought more of her, I'm bound, than I did of the
+flood-dismantled dike on the river-bend at home which I had left
+unrestored for the day.
+
+Over the heads of the negroes, who, spying us, came headlong to take our
+horses, we saw Sir William standing in the garden with an unknown lady.
+The baronet himself, walking a little heavily with his cane, approached us
+with hearty salutations, helped Daisy to unmount, and presented us to this
+stranger--Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+I am not so sure that people can fall in love at first sight. But never
+doubt their ability to dislike from the beginning! I know that I felt
+indignantly intolerant of this woman even before, hat in hand, I had
+finished my bow to her.
+
+Yet it might well have been that I was over-harsh in my judgment. She had
+been a pretty woman in her time, and still might be thought well-favored.
+At least _she_ must have thought so, for she wore more paint and ribbons,
+and fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since.
+Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in
+outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids
+and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet
+so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that
+it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous
+black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an
+unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin.
+
+I may say that I was a wholesome-enough looking young fellow, very tall
+and broad-shouldered, with a long, dark face, which was ugly in childhood,
+but had grown now into something like comeliness. I am not parading
+special innocence either, but no woman had ever looked into my eyes with
+so bold, I might say impudent, an expression as this fine lady put on to
+greet me. And she was old enough to be my mother, almost, into
+the bargain.
+
+But even more than her free glances, which, after all, meant no harm, but
+only reflected London manners, her dress grated upon me. We were not
+unaccustomed to good raiment in the Valley. Johnson Hall, which reared its
+broad bulk through the trees on the knoll above us, had many a time
+sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us.
+But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place--like her
+feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains
+and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet,
+whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and
+Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and
+knowing our position, were also genuine parts of the scene. The English
+lady was pinchbeck by contrast with all about her.
+
+"Will you give the ladies an arm, Douw?" said Sir William. "We were
+walking to see the lilacs I planted a year ago. We old fellows, with so
+much to say to each other, will lead the way."
+
+Nothing occurred to me to say to the new acquaintance, who further annoyed
+me by clinging to my arm with a zeal unpleasantly different from Daisy's
+soft touch on the other side. I walked silent, and more or less sulky,
+between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily.
+
+"And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks
+so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you
+content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet!
+And you never weary of it--never sigh when it is time to return to it from
+New York?"
+
+"I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer.
+
+Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment.
+
+"Never to New York! nor even to Albany! _Une vraie belle sauvage!_ How you
+amaze me, poor child!"
+
+"Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily. "My father
+and brother are so good to me--just like a true father and brother--that
+if I but hinted a wish to visit the moon, they would at once set about to
+arrange the voyage. I do not always stay at home. Twice I have been on a
+visit to Mr. Campbell, at Cherry Valley, over the hills yonder. And then
+once we made a grand excursion up the river, way to Fort Herkimer, and
+beyond to the place where my poor parents lost their lives."
+
+As we stood regarding the lilac bushes, planted in a circle on the slope,
+and I was congratulating myself that my elbows were free again, two
+gentlemen approached us from the direction of the Hall.
+
+Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady
+Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There,
+that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler."
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we
+came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his
+rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke
+pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake
+country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until his return, at
+Johnson Hall.
+
+His companion was Walter Butler, and of him I ought to speak more closely,
+since long generations after this tale is forgotten his name will remain
+written, blood-red, in the Valley's chronicles. I walked away from the
+lilacs with him, I recall, discussing some unremembered subject. I always
+liked Walter: even now, despite everything, there continues a soft spot in
+my memory for him.
+
+He was about my own age, and, oh! such a handsome youth, with features cut
+as in a cameo, and pale-brown smooth skin, and large deep eyes, that look
+upon me still sometimes in dreams with ineffable melancholy. He was
+somewhat beneath my stature, but formed with perfect delicacy.
+
+In those old days of breeches and long hose, a man's leg went for a good
+deal. I have often thought that there must be a much closer connection
+between trousers and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man
+like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a
+Whig in the Revolutionary time--as if by natural prejudice against the
+would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and
+dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own
+country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still
+largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World
+ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the
+symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and
+silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction
+of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of
+republican trousers--a popular decree that henceforth all men should be
+equal as to legs?
+
+To return. Walter Butler was most perfectly built--a living picture of
+grace. He dressed, too, with remarkable taste, contriving always to appear
+the gentleman, yet not out of place in the wilderness. He wore his own
+black hair, carelessly tied or flowing, and with no thought of powder.
+
+We had always liked each other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn
+and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he
+was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he
+held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also
+be able to revere them for upholding a false-tongued king against the
+rights of his people. For my own part, I did not pin much faith upon his
+descent, being able to remember his grandfather, the old lieutenant, who
+seemed a peasant to the marrow of his bones.
+
+Nor could I see any special value in the fact of descent, even were it
+unquestioned. Walter, it seemed to me, would do much better to work at the
+law, to which he was bred, and make a name for himself by his own
+exertions. Alas, he did make a name!
+
+But though our paths would presently diverge we still were good friends,
+and as we walked he told me what he had heard that day of Lady Berenicia
+Cross. It was not much. She had been the daughter of a penniless,
+disreputable Irish earl, and had wedded early in life to escape the
+wretchedness of her paternal home. She had played quite a splendid part
+for a time in the vanities of London court-life, after her husband gained
+his wealth, but had latterly found her hold upon fashion's favor loosened.
+Why she had accompanied her serious spouse on this rough and wearisome
+journey was not clear. It might be that she came because he did not care
+for her company. It might be that he thought it wisest not to leave her in
+London to her own devices. In any case, here she indubitably was, and
+Walter was disposed to think her rather a fine woman for her years,
+which he took to be about twoscore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We strolled back again to the lilacs, where the two women were seated on a
+bench, with Mr. Cross and Colonel Claus--the brighter and better of Sir
+William's two sons-in-law--standing over them. Lady Berenicia beckoned to
+my companion with her fan.
+
+"Pray come and amuse us, Mr. Butler," she said, in her high, mincing
+tones. "Were it not for the fear of ministering to your vanity, I might
+confess we two have been languishing for an hour for your company.
+Mistress Daisy and I venerate these cavaliers of ours vastly--we hold
+their grave wisdom in high regard--but our frivolous palates need lighter
+things than East India Companies and political quarrels in Boston. I
+command you to discourse nonsense, Mr. Butler--pure, giddy nonsense."
+
+Walter bowed, and with a tinge of irony acknowledged the compliment, but
+all pleasantly enough. I glanced at our Daisy, expecting to discover my
+own distaste for this silly speech mirrored on her face. It vexed me a
+little to see that she seemed instead to be pleased with the London lady.
+
+"What shall it be, my lady?" smiled Walter; "what shall be the
+shuttlecock--the May races, the ball, the Klock scandal, the--"
+
+If it was rude, it is too late to be helped now. I interrupted the foolish
+talk by asking Colonel Claus what the news from Boston was, for the
+post-boy had brought papers to the Hall that morning.
+
+"The anniversary speech is reported. Some apothecary, named Warren, held
+forth this year, and his seems the boldest tongue yet. If his talk stinks
+not of treason in every line, why then I have no smelling sense. They are
+talking of it in the library now; but I am no statesman, and it suits me
+better out here in the sun."
+
+"But," I replied, "I have heard of this Dr. Warren, and he is not reputed
+to be a rash or thoughtless speaker."
+
+Young Butler burst into the conversation with eager bitterness:
+
+"Thoughtless! Rash! No--the dogs know better! There'll be no word that can
+be laid hold upon--all circumspect outside, with hell itself underneath.
+Do we not know the canters? Oh, but I'd smash through letter and seal of
+the law alike to get at them, were I in power! There'll be no peace till
+some strong hand does do it."
+
+Walter's deep eyes flashed and glowed as he spoke, and his face was
+shadowed with grave intensity of feeling.
+
+There was a moment's silence--broken by the thin voice of the London lady:
+"_Bravo_! admirable! Always be in a rage, Mr. Butler, it suits you so
+much.--Isn't he handsome, Daisy, with his feathers all on end?"
+
+While our girl, unused to such bold talk, looked blushingly at the young
+grass, Mr. Cross spoke:
+
+"Doubtless you gentry of New York have your own good reasons for disliking
+Boston men, as I find you do. But why rasp your nerves and spoil your
+digestion by so fuming over their politics? I am an Englishman: if I can
+keep calm on the subject, you who are only collaterally aggrieved, as it
+were, should surely be able to do so. My word for it, young men, life
+brings vexations enough to one's very door, without setting out in
+quest of them."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Cross," languidly sneered my lady, "what is there in the
+heavens or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, which could
+stir your blood by one added beat an hour, save indigo and spices?"
+
+There was so distinct a menace of domestic discord in this iced query that
+Butler hastened to take up the talk:
+
+"Ah, yes, _you_ can keep cool! There are thousands of miles of water
+between you English and the nest where this treason is hatched. It's close
+to us. Do you think you can fence in a sentiment as you can cattle? No: it
+will spread. Soon what is shouted in Boston will be spoken in Albany,
+whispered in Philadelphia, winked and nodded in Williamsburg, thought in
+Charleston. And how will it be here, with us? Let me tell you, Mr. Cross,
+we are really in an alien country here. The high Germans above us, like
+that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for
+the King? And these damned sour-faced Dutch traders below, have they
+forgotten that this province was their grandfathers'? The moment it
+becomes clear to their niggard souls that there's no money to be lost by
+treason, will they not delight to help on any trouble the Yankees contrive
+to make for England? I tell you, sir, if you knew these Dutch as I know
+them--their silent treachery, their jealousy of us, their greed--"
+
+This seemed to have gone far enough. "Come, you forget that I am a
+Dutchman," I said, putting my hand on Butler's shoulder.
+
+Quivering with the excitement into which he had worked himself, he shook
+off my touch, and took a backward step, eying me angrily. I returned his
+gaze, and I dare say it was about as wrathful as his own.
+
+Lady Berenicia made a diversion. "It grows cool," she said. "Come inside
+with me, Mistress Daisy, and I will show you all my chests and boxes. Mr.
+Cross made a great to-do about bringing them, but--"
+
+As the ladies rose, Walter came to me with outstretched hand. "I was at
+fault, Douw," said he, frankly. "Don't think more about it."
+
+I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his
+words.
+
+Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with
+disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks.
+
+"My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+
+
+
+In the library room of the Hall, across from the dining-chamber, and at
+the foot of the great staircase, on the bannister of which you may still
+see the marks of Joseph Brant's hatchet, we men had a long talk in the
+afternoon. I recall but indifferently the lesser topics of conversation.
+There was, of course, some political debate, in which Sir William and I
+were alone on the side of the Colonist feeling, and Mr. Stewart, the two
+Butlers, and Sir John Johnson were all for choking discontent with the
+rope. Nothing very much to the point was said, on our part at least; for
+the growing discord pained Sir William too deeply to allow him pleasure in
+its discussion, and I shrank from appearing to oppose Mr. Stewart, hateful
+as his notions seemed.
+
+Young Sir John stood by the window, I remember, sulkily drumming on the
+diapered panes, and purposely making his interjections as disagreeable to
+me as he could; at least, I thought so. So, apparently, did his father
+think, for several times I caught the wise old baronet glancing at his son
+in reproof, with a look in his grave gray eyes as of dawning doubt about
+the future of his heir.
+
+Young Johnson was now a man of thirty, blond, aquiline-faced, with cold
+blue eyes and thin, tight lips, which pouted more readily than they
+smiled. His hair was the pale color of bleached hay, a legacy from his low
+born German mother, and his complexion was growing evenly florid from too
+much Madeira wine. We were not friends, and we both knew it.
+
+There was other talk--about the recent creation of our part into a county
+by itself to be named after the Governor; about the behavior of the French
+traders at Oswego and Detroit, and a report from Europe in the latest
+gazettes that the "Young" Pretender, now a broken old rake, was at last to
+be married. This last was a subject upon which Mr. Stewart spoke most
+entertainingly, but with more willingness to let it be known that he had a
+kinsman's interest in the matter than he would formerly have shown. He was
+getting old, in fact, and an almost childish pride in his equivocal
+ancestry was growing upon him. Still his talk and reminiscences were
+extremely interesting.
+
+They fade in my recollection, however, before the fact that it was at this
+little gathering, this afternoon, that my career was settled for me. There
+had been some talk about me while I remained alone outside to confer with
+Sir William's head farmer, and Mr. Cross had agreed with Mr. Stewart and
+Sir William that I was to accompany him on his trip to the far Western
+region the following week. My patron had explained that I needed some
+added knowledge of the world and its affairs, yet was of too serious a
+turn to gather this in the guise of amusement, as Mr. John Butler advised
+I should, by being sent on a holiday to New York. Mr. Cross had been good
+enough to say that he liked what he had seen of me, and should be glad of
+my company.
+
+Of all this I knew nothing when I entered the library. The air was heavy
+with tobacco-smoke, and the table bore more bottles and glasses
+than books.
+
+"Find a chair, Douw," said Sir William. "I have sent for my man, Enoch
+Wade, who is to go westward with Mr, Cross next week. If he's drunk enough
+there'll be some sport."
+
+There entered the room a middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame,
+with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He
+bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian in his clothes
+of deer-hide.
+
+"This is Enoch Wade, gentlemen," said the baronet, indicating the
+new-comer with a wave of his glass, and stretching out his legs to enjoy
+the scene the more. "He is my land-sailor. Between his last sale at
+Albany, and his first foot westward from here, he professes all the vices
+and draws never a sober breath. Yet when he is in the woods he is
+abstemious, amiable, wise, resourceful, virtuous as a statue--a paragon of
+trappers. You can see him for yourselves. Yet, I warn you, appearances are
+deceitful; he is always drunker than he looks. He was, I know, most
+sinfully tipsy last night."
+
+"It was in excellent good company, General," said the hunter, drawling his
+words and no whit abashed.
+
+"He has no manners to speak of," continued the baronet, evidently with
+much satisfaction to himself; "he can outlie a Frontenac half-breed, he is
+more greedy of gain than a Kinderhook Dutchman, he can drink all the
+Mohawks of both castles under the bench, and my niggers are veritable
+Josephs in comparison with him--wait a moment, Enoch!--this is while he is
+in contact with civilization. Yet once on the trail, so to speak, he is
+probity personified. I know this, since he has twice accompanied me
+to Detroit."
+
+"Oh, in the woods, you know, some one of the party must remain sober,"
+said Enoch, readily, still stiffly erect, but with a faint grin twitching
+on the saturnine corners of his mouth.
+
+This time Sir William laughed aloud, and pointed to a decanter and glass,
+from which the trapper helped himself with dignity.
+
+"Look you, rogue," said the host, "there is a young gentleman to be added
+to your party next week, and doubtless he will of needs have a nigger with
+him. See to it that the boat and provision arrangements are altered to
+meet this, and to-morrow be sober enough to advise him as to his outfit.
+For to-night, soak as deep as you like."
+
+Enoch poured out for himself a second tumbler of rum, but not showing the
+first signs of unsteadiness in gait or gesture.
+
+"This young gentleman"--he said, gravely smacking his lips--"about him; is
+he a temperate person, one of the sort who can turn a steadfast back upon
+the bottle?"
+
+A burst of Homeric laughter was Sir William's reply--laughter in which
+all were fain to join.
+
+"It's all right, General," said Enoch, as he turned to go; "don't mind my
+asking. One never can tell, you know, what kind of company he is like to
+pick up with here at the Hall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My surprise and delight when I learned that I was the young gentleman in
+question, and that I was really to go to the Lakes and beyond, may be
+imagined. I seemed to walk on air, so great was my elation. You will not
+marvel now that I fail to recall very distinctly the general talk
+which followed.
+
+Conversation finally lagged, as the promptings of hunger, not less than
+the Ethiopian shouting and scolding from the kitchen below, warned us of
+approaching dinner.
+
+The drinking moderated somewhat, and the pipes were one by one laid aside,
+in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were
+persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against
+tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of
+hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence
+of interest in the fitful talk.
+
+There came a sharp double knock on the door, which a second later was
+pushed partly open. Some of us rose, pulling our ruffles into place, and
+ready to start at once, for there were famous appetites in the wild Valley
+of those days. But the voice from behind the door was not a servant's, nor
+did it convey the intelligence we all awaited. It was, instead, the
+sharp, surface voice of Lady Berenicia, and it said:
+
+"We are weary of waiting for you in civilized quarters of the Hall. May we
+come in here, or are you too much ashamed of your vices to court
+inspection?"
+
+Walter Butler hastened to open the door, bowing low as he did so, and
+delivering himself of some gallant nonsense or other.
+
+The London lady entered the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of
+carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer.
+
+If her morning attire had seemed over-splendid, what shall I say of her
+appearance now? I looked in amazement upon her imposing tower of whitened
+hair, upon the great fluffs of lace, the brocaded stomacher and train, the
+shining satin petticoat front, the dazzling, creamy surfaces of throat and
+shoulders and forearms, all rather freely set forth.
+
+If the effect was bewildering, it was not unpleasant. The smoke-laden air
+of the dim old room seemed suddenly clarified, made radiant. A movement of
+chairs and of their occupants ran through the chamber, like a murmur of
+applause, as we rose to greet the resplendent apparition. But there came a
+veritable outburst of admiration when my lady's companion appeared
+in view.
+
+It was our Daisy, robed like a princess, who dawned upon our vision. She
+was blushing as much from embarrassment as from novel pride, yet managed
+to keep her pretty head up, smiling at us all, and to bear herself
+with grace.
+
+Lady Berenicia, from the wealth of finery in those bulky chests which
+honest Mr. Cross in vain had protested against bringing over the ocean and
+up to this savage outpost, had tricked out the girl in wondrous fashion.
+Her gown was not satin, like the other, but of a soft, lustreless stuff,
+whose delicate lavender folds fell into the sweetest of violet shadows. I
+was glad to see that her neck and arms were properly covered. The laces on
+the sleeves were tawny with age; the ribbon by which the little white
+shawl was decorously gathered at the bosom carried the faint suggestion of
+yellow to a distinct tone, repeated and deepened above by the color of the
+maiden's hair. This hair, too, was a marvel of the dresser's art--reared
+straight and tight from the forehead over a high-arched roll, and losing
+strictness of form behind in ingenious wavy curls, which seemed the very
+triumph of artlessness; it was less wholly powdered than Lady Berenicia's,
+so that the warm gold shone through the white dust in soft gradations of
+half tints; at the side, well up, was a single salmon tea-rose, that
+served to make everything else more beautiful.
+
+Picture to yourself this delicious figure--this face which had seemed
+lovely before, and now, with deft cosmetics, and a solitary tiny patch,
+and the glow of exquisite enjoyment in the sweet hazel eyes, was nothing
+less than a Greuze's dream--picture our Daisy to yourself, I say, and you
+may guess in part how flattering was her reception, how high and fast rose
+the gallant congratulations that the Valley boasted such a beauteous
+daughter. Sir William himself gave her his arm, jovially protesting that
+this was not the Mohawk country, but France--not Johnson Hall, but
+Versailles.
+
+I came on at the tail of the dinner procession, not quite easy in my mind
+about all this.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+
+
+
+There were, in all, ten of us at the table. Sir William beamed upon us
+from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the
+London dame on the other--in the place of distinction to which she was, I
+suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and
+Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come
+back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner.
+
+I could not see Daisy from where I sat, but all through the meal I watched
+the effect she was producing upon those opposite us. To do her justice,
+Lady Berenicia seemed to have no alloy of jealousy in the delight with
+which she regarded the result of her handiwork. Mr. Stewart could not keep
+his fond eyes off the girl; they fairly glowed with satisfied pride and
+affection. Both Sir John and Walter gave more attention to our beautiful
+maiden than they did to their plates, and both faces told an open tale of
+admiration, each after its kind.
+
+There was plenty of gay talk at the head of the table--merry chatter of
+which I recall nothing, save vaguely that it was about the triumph of art
+over unadorned nature at which we were assisting.
+
+Mr. Cross and I bore our small part in the celebration in silence for a
+time. Then we fell to talking quietly of the journey upon which we were so
+soon to embark; but our minds were not on the subject, and after a little
+its discussion lapsed. All at once he said, as if speaking the thoughts
+which tied my tongue:
+
+"To my mind the young woman is not improved by these furbelows and
+fal-lals my wife has put upon her. What wit or reason is there in a
+homely, sensible little maiden like this--a pretty flower growing, as God
+designed it to, in modest sweetness on its own soil--being garnished out
+in the stale foppery of the last London season?"
+
+"But it is only a masquerade, sir," I pleaded--as much to my own judgment
+as to his--"and it does make her very beautiful, does it not?"
+
+"She _was_ beautiful before," he replied, in the same low tones. "Can a
+few trumpery laces and ribbons, a foolish patch, a little powder, affect
+what is real about a woman, think you? And do any but empty heads value
+unreal things?"
+
+"True enough, sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry.
+Women are that way. See how pleased she is--how full of smiles and
+happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor
+Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to begrudge her
+this innocent pleasure."
+
+"Innocent--yes, no doubt; but, do you know, she will never be the same
+girl again. She will never feel quite the same pretty little Mistress
+Daisy, in her woollen gown and her puttical kerchief. She will never get
+the taste of this triumph out of her mouth. You do not know women, young
+man, as I do. I have studied the sex in a very celebrated and costly
+school. Mark my words, ideas have been put into her head that will never
+come out."
+
+I tried to believe that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other
+women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself--so prudent
+and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem
+all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books--never
+anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr.
+Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn her
+dear head."
+
+He smiled, somewhat compassionately I thought, and made no answer.
+
+Was I so firm in my faith, after all? The doubt rose in my thoughts, and
+would not down, as the gallant talk flowed and bubbled around me. _Would_
+this Daisy be quite the same next day, or next week, singing to us at the
+old harpsichord in the twilight, with the glare of the blaze on the hearth
+making red gold of that hair, plaited once more in simple braids? I tried
+with all my might to call up this sweet familiar figure before my mental
+vision: it would not freely come.
+
+She was laughing now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing
+quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom
+employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting
+things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other than
+Daisy laughing.
+
+I was still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the
+ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to
+ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand,
+to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see
+the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with
+Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent
+of powder left on the air annoyed me, as something stifling those thoughts
+of the good little adopted sister, whom I had brought to the Hall and lost
+there, which I would fain dwell upon.
+
+We sat over our Madeira and pipes longer than usual. Candles were brought
+in by Sir William's young body-servant Pontiac, for there was a full moon,
+and we might thus prolong our stay after nightfall. The talk was chiefly
+about our coming trip--a very serious undertaking. Sir William and Mr.
+Butler had adventures of their own early trading days to recall, and they
+gave us great stores of advice drawn from experience, and ranging from
+choice of shirts and spirits to needful diplomacy with the Algonquins
+and Sakis.
+
+Then the company drank the health of Mr. Cross, and were good enough to
+couple mine with it. A comical little yellow boy danced for us before the
+hearth--an admiring wall of black faces and rolling white eyeballs filling
+up the open door meanwhile. Walter Butler sang a pretty song--everybody,
+negroes and all, swelling the chorus. Rum was brought in, and mixed in hot
+glasses, with spice, molasses, and scalding water from the kettle on the
+crane. So evening deepened to night; but I never for a moment, not even
+when they drank my health, shook off the sense of unrest born of Daisy's
+masquerade.
+
+It was Molly Brant herself, nobly erect and handsome in her dark, sinister
+way, who came to us with word that the moon was up over the pine-ridged
+hills, and that Mistress Daisy was attired for the homeward ride,
+and waiting.
+
+Of all the pictures in Memory's portfolio, none is more distinct than this
+of the departure that evening from the Hall. A dozen negroes were about
+the steps, two or three mounted ready to escort us home, others bearing
+horn lanterns which the moonlight darkened into inutility, still others
+pulling the restive horses about on the gravel. Mr. Stewart swung himself
+into the saddle, and Daisy stepped out to mount behind him. She wore her
+own garments once more, but there was just a trace of powder on the hair
+under the hood, and the patch was still on her chin. I moved forward to
+lift her to the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she
+did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John
+and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight,
+flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held
+Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of
+even this.
+
+So we rode away, pursued down the path to the lilacs by shouts of
+"Good-night! Safe home!" Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I
+saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his
+hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing
+above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on
+either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark
+front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky.
+
+As I recall the scene, it seems to me that then and there I said farewell,
+not alone to pleasant friends, but to the Daisy of my childhood and youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Hall slaves rode well ahead in the narrow road; we could just hear
+faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears
+the murmur of an AEolian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous:
+the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping
+helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly
+safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness,
+not danger.
+
+I did indeed rest my free hand on the pistol in my holster as I jogged
+along close behind the old gray horse and his double burden; but the act
+was more an unconscious reflection of my saturnine mood, I fear, than a
+recognition of need. There was every reason why I should dwell with
+delight upon the prospect opening before me--upon the idea of the great
+journey so close at hand; but I scarcely thought of it at all, and I was
+not happy. The moon threw a jaundiced light over my mind, and in its
+discolored glare I saw things wrongly, and with gratuitous pain to myself.
+
+In fact, my brooding was the creature of the last few hours, born of a
+childish pique. But as I rode gloomily silent behind my companions, it
+seemed as if I had long suffered a growing separation from them. "Three is
+a clumsy number," I said to myself, "in family affection not less than in
+love; there was never any triad of friends since the world began, no
+matter how fond their ties, in which two did not build a little interior
+court of thoughts and sympathies from which the third was shut out. These
+two people whom I hold dearer than everything else on earth--this good
+gentleman to whom I owe all, this sweet girl who has grown up from
+babyhood in my heart--would scout the idea that there was any line of
+division running through our household. They do not see it--cannot see it.
+Yet they have a whole world of ideas and sentiments in common, a whole
+world of communion, which I may never enter."
+
+This was what, in sulky, inchoate fashion, I said to myself, under the
+spur of the jealous spirits which sometimes get rein over the thoughts of
+the best of us. And it was all because the London woman had tricked out
+our Daisy, for but a little hour or two, in the presentment of a
+court lady!
+
+Conversation went briskly forward, meanwhile, from the stout back of the
+gray horse.
+
+"Did you note, papa, how white and soft her hands were?" said Daisy.
+"Mine were so red beside them! It is working in the garden, I believe,
+although Mary Johnson always wore gloves when she was out among the
+flowers and vegetables, and her hands were red, too. And Lady Berenicia
+was so surprised to learn that I had never read any of the romances which
+they write now in England! She says ladies in London, and in the provinces
+too, do not deem themselves fit to converse unless they keep abreast of
+all these. She has some of them in her chests, and there are others in the
+Hall, she has found, and I am to read them, and welcome."
+
+"You are old enough now, my girl," replied Mr. Stewart. "They seem to me
+to be trivial enough things, but no doubt they have their use. I would not
+have you seem as inferior to other ladies in knowledge of the matters they
+talk of, as they are inferior to you in honest information."
+
+"How interested she was when I told her of the serious books I read, and
+of my daily occupations--moulding the candles, brewing the beer, carding
+wool, making butter, and then caring for the garden! She had never seen
+celery in trenches, she said, and would not know beans from gourds if she
+saw them growing. It seems that in England ladies have nothing to do with
+their gardens--when, indeed, they have any at all--save to pluck a rose
+now and then, or give tea to their gentlemen under the shrubbery when it
+is fine. And I told her of our quilting and spinning bees, and the
+coasting on clear winter evenings, and of watching the blacks on Pinkster
+night, and the picnics in the woods, and she vowed London had no
+pleasures like them. She was jesting though, I think. Oh, shall we ever go
+to London, papa?"
+
+"By all means, let us go," chuckled Mr. Stewart. "You would see something
+there she never saw--my grizzled old head upon Temple Bar. Shall we be off
+to-morrow? My neck tingles with anticipation."
+
+"Old tease!" laughed Daisy, patting his shoulder. "You know there have
+been no heads put there since long before I was born. Never flatter
+yourself that they would begin again now with yours. They've forgotten
+there was ever such a body as you."
+
+"Faith! the world doesn't go round so fast as you young people think. Only
+to-day I read in the London mail that two months ago one of the polls that
+had been there since '46 fell down; but if it was Fletcher's or Townley's
+no one can tell--like enough not even they themselves by this time. So
+there's a vacant spike now for mine. No, child--I doubt these old bones
+will ever get across the sea again. But who knows?--it may be your fortune
+to go some time."
+
+"Lady Berenicia says I must come to the Hall often, papa, while she is
+there," said the girl, returning to the subject which bewitched her; "and
+you must fetch me, of course. She admires you greatly; she says gentlemen
+in London have quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your
+bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep
+each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and
+Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them--the two
+solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness."
+
+The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection
+of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less
+malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on
+my ears.
+
+"It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be
+disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy.
+
+"What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and
+glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all
+the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to
+your liking?"
+
+"Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go."
+
+It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody
+would specially miss me, but I held it back.
+
+"He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured
+sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has
+when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at
+dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he
+would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I
+looked well in the--the citified costume."
+
+"Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for."
+
+She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and
+went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes:
+
+"And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable
+Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the
+lilacs, this very morning--and in the presence of ladies, too."
+
+"No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied.
+
+"Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was
+before a lady too--or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own
+eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and
+run at him with both fists out--and all on your account, too, my lady;
+and then--"
+
+"Oh, I am reminded!"
+
+It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped
+her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said:
+
+"Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come
+out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up
+at the Hall--Lady Berenicia's husband--is a cousin to the old Major who
+brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?"
+
+"Is _that_ your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago."
+
+"How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then
+a General, and died last winter, poor man."
+
+"Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all
+walk that way."
+
+Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year,
+papa. And now tell me, did not this Major--_my_ Major, though I do not
+remember him--take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir
+William, while he was on this side of the water?"
+
+"Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the
+horse.
+
+We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he
+knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a
+tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched
+beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked
+by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the
+property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water
+running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock
+wall, farther down, of which I have already written.
+
+"Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you
+ask, girl?"
+
+"_Now_ for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits
+the English house and lands. The other son, Philip--the boy you fought
+with, Douw--is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it.
+He sailed with the others--he is in New York--he is coming here to live!"
+
+"We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily.
+
+"I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest
+comment I could screw my tongue to.
+
+Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we
+quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+
+
+
+When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the
+searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and
+slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was
+high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my
+aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum
+between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be
+vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its
+inmates, now that the hour had arrived.
+
+I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day,
+dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but
+without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the
+adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins
+while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home--my true home--my heart
+quivered and sank at thought of departure.
+
+"I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than
+Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all
+things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is
+different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed
+after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod.
+You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be
+at a good school with him."
+
+He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred
+indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental
+order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my
+feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have
+preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet
+coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet
+felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I
+listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts
+vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside.
+
+Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with
+advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key.
+Their shouts and wailing--they could not have made more ado if he had just
+been sold to Jamaica--came through the open door. It was not of this din I
+thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were
+piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond.
+
+I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to
+gather a nosegay for me.
+
+Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending
+in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden
+filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing
+more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit,
+the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts
+of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad
+thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much--this dear
+girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the
+tears _were_ coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned
+my head away.
+
+There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices.
+Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman
+had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to
+the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption.
+
+Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the
+wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden,
+presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with
+her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of her neck she
+was blushing.
+
+There was enough for her to blush at. The stranger was bowing very low,
+putting one hand up to his breast. With the other he had taken her fingers
+and raised them formally to his lips. This was not a custom in our parts.
+Sir William did it now and then on state occasions, but young men,
+particularly strangers, did not.
+
+As we advanced, this gallant morning-caller drew himself up and turned
+toward us. You may be sure I looked him over attentively.
+
+I have seen few handsomer young men. In a way, so far as light hair, blue
+eyes, ruddy and regular face went, he was not unlike Sir John. But he was
+much taller, and his neck and shoulders were squared proudly--a trick
+Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a
+fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the
+shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl
+buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run
+into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in
+one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in
+its ruffles, he stretched out now toward Mr. Stewart with a free,
+pleasant gesture.
+
+"With my father's oldest friend," he said, "I must not wait for ceremony.
+I am Philip Cross, from England, and I hope you will be my friend, sir,
+now that my father is gone."
+
+That this speech found instant favor need not be doubted. Mr. Stewart
+shook him again and again by the hand, and warmly bade him welcome to the
+Valley and the Cedars a dozen times in as many breaths. Young Cross
+managed to explain between these cordial ejaculations, that he had
+journeyed up from New York with the youthful Stephen Watts--to whose
+sister Sir John was already betrothed; that they had reached Guy Park the
+previous evening; that Watts was too wearied this morning to think of
+stirring out, but that hardly illness itself could have prevented him,
+Cross, from promptly paying his respects to his father's ancient comrade.
+
+The young man spoke easily and fluently, looking Mr. Stewart frankly in
+the eye, with smiling sincerity in glance and tone. He went on:
+
+"How changed everything is roundabout!--all save you, who look scarcely
+older or less strong. When I was here as a boy it was winter, cold and
+bleak. There was a stockade surrounded by wilderness then, I remember, and
+a log-house hardly bigger than the fireplace inside it. Where we stand now
+the ground was covered with brush and chips, half hidden by snow.
+Now--_presto!_ there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden
+neatly made, and"--turning with a bow to Daisy--"a fair mistress for them
+all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as
+a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would have
+held her entire."
+
+"I saw the cart laden outside," put in Sir John, "and fancied perhaps we
+should miss you."
+
+"Why, no," said Mr. Stewart; "I had forgotten for the moment that this was
+a house of mourning. Douw is starting to the Lake country this very day.
+Mr. Cross, you must remember my boy, my Douw?"
+
+The young Englishman turned toward me, as I was indicated by Mr. Stewart's
+gesture. He looked me over briefly, with a half-smile about his eyes,
+nodded to me, and said:
+
+"You were the Dutch boy with the apron, weren't you?"
+
+I assented by a sign of the head, as slight as I could politely make it.
+
+"Oh, yes, I recall you quite distinctly. I used to make my brother Digby
+laugh by telling about your aprons. He made quite a good picture of you in
+one of them, drawn from my descriptions. We had a fort of snow, too, did
+we not? and I beat you, or you me, I forget which. I got snow down the
+back of my neck, I know, and shivered all the way to the fort."
+
+He turned lightly at this to Mr. Stewart, and began conversation again. I
+went over to where Daisy stood, by the edge of the flower-bed.
+
+"I must go now, dear sister," I said. The words were choking me.
+
+We walked slowly to the house, she and I. When I had said good-by to my
+aunt, and gathered together my hat, coats, and the like, I stood
+speechless, looking at Daisy. The moment was here, and I had no word for
+it which did not seem a mockery.
+
+She raised herself on tiptoe to be kissed. "Good-by, big brother," she
+said, softly. "Come back to us well and strong, and altogether homesick,
+won't you? It will not be like home, without you, to either of us."
+
+And so the farewells were all made, and I stood in the road prepared to
+mount. Tulp was already on the cart, along with another negro who was to
+bring back my horse and the vehicle after we had embarked in the boats.
+There was nothing more to say--time pressed--yet I lingered dumb and
+irresolute. At the moment I seemed to be exchanging everything for
+nothing--committing domestic suicide. I looked at them both, the girl and
+the old man, with the gloomy thought that I might never lay eyes on them
+again. I dare say I wore my grief upon my face, for Mr. Stewart tried
+cheerily to hearten me with, "Courage, lad! We shall all be waiting for
+you, rejoiced to welcome you back safe and sound."
+
+Daisy came to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned
+upon my lapel some of the pale blue blossoms she had gathered.
+
+"There's 'rosemary for remembrance,'" she murmured. "Poor Ophelia could
+scarce have been sadder than we feel, Douw, at your going."
+
+"And may I be decorated too--for remembrance' sake?" asked handsome young
+Philip Cross, gayly.
+
+"Surely, sir," the maiden answered, with a smile of sweet sorrowfulness.
+"You have a rightful part in the old memories--in a sense, perhaps, the
+greatest part of all."
+
+"Ay, you two were friends before ever you came to us, dear," said Mr.
+Stewart.
+
+So as I rode away, with smarting eyes and a heart weighing like lead, my
+last picture of the good old home was of Daisy fastening flowers on the
+young Englishman's breast, just as she had put these of mine in
+their place.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Old-Time Politics Pondered Under the Forest Starlight.
+
+
+
+Among the numerous books which at one time of another I had resolved to
+write, and which the evening twilight of my life finds still unwritten,
+was one on Fur-trading. This volume, indeed, came somewhat nearer to a
+state of actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have
+yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in
+earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical
+Delusions--which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary--and
+the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point
+of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation
+now in deciding not to put into this narrative a great deal about my
+experiences in, and information concerning, the almost trackless West of
+my youth. My diary of this first and momentous journey with Mr. Jonathan
+Cross, yellow with age and stained by damp and mildew, lies here before
+me; along with it are many odd and curious incidents and reflections
+jotted down, mirroring that strange, rude, perilous past which seems so
+far away to the generation now directing a safe and almost eventless
+commerce to the Pacific and the Gulf. But I will draw from my stock only
+the barest outlines, sufficient to keep in continuity the movement of
+my story.
+
+When we reached Caughnawaga Mr. Cross and his party were waiting for us at
+the trading store of my godfather, good old Douw Fonda. I was relieved to
+learn that I had not delayed them; for it was still undecided, I found,
+whether we should all take to the river here, or send the boats forward
+with the men, and ourselves proceed to the Great Carrying Place at Fort
+Stanwix by the road. Although it was so early in the season, the Mohawk
+ran very low between its banks. Major Jelles Fonda, the eldest son of my
+godfather, and by this time the true head of the business, had only
+returned from the Lakes, and it was by his advice that we settled upon
+riding and carting as far as we could, and leaving the lightened boats to
+follow. So we set out in the saddle, my friend and I, stopping one night
+with crazy old John Abeel--he who is still remembered as the father of the
+Seneca half-breed chieftain Corn-Planter--and the next night with
+Honnikol Herkimer.
+
+This man, I recall, greatly impressed Mr. Cross. We were now in an
+exclusively German section of the Valley, where no Dutch and very little
+English was to be heard. Herkimer himself conversed with us in a dialect
+that must often have puzzled my English friend, though he gravely forbore
+showing it. I had known Colonel Herkimer all my life; doubtless it was
+this familiarity with his person and speech which had prevented my
+recognizing his real merit, for I was not a little surprised when Mr.
+Cross said to me that night: "Our host is one of the strongest and most
+sagacious men I have ever encountered in the Colonies; he is worth a
+thousand of your Butlers or Sir Johns."
+
+It became clear in later years that my friend was right. I remember that I
+regarded the hospitable Colonel, at breakfast next morning, with a closer
+and more respectful attention than ever before, but it was not easy to
+discern any new elements of greatness in his talk.
+
+Herkimer was then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and
+sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no
+time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the
+Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side.
+One thing which he said, in his effort to make my friend understand the
+difference between his position and the more abstract and educated
+discontent of New England and Virginia, sticks in my memory.
+
+"We Germans," he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers
+remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and
+wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some
+scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector
+might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of
+their daughters, worked to death, frozen by the cold in their nakedness,
+dragged off into the armies to be sold to any prince who could pay for
+their blood and broken bones. The French who overran the Palatinate were
+bad enough; the native rulers were even more to be hated. The exiles of
+our race have not forgotten this; they have told it all to us, their
+children and grandchildren born here in this Valley. We have made a new
+home for ourselves over here, and we owe no one but God anything for it.
+If they try to make here another aristocracy over us, then we will die
+first before we will submit."
+
+The case for the Mohawk Valley's part in the great revolt has never been
+more truly stated, I think, than it was thus, by the rough, uneducated,
+little frontier trader, in his broken English, on that May morning years
+before the storm broke.
+
+We rode away westward in the full sunshine that morning, in high spirits.
+The sky was pure blue overhead; the birds carolled from every clump of
+foliage about us; the scenery, to which Mr. Cross paid much delighted
+attention, first grew nobly wild and impressive when we skirted the Little
+Falls--as grand and gloomy in its effect of towering jagged cliffs and
+foaming cataracts as one of Jacob Ruysdael's pictures--and then softened
+into a dream of beauty as it spread out before us the smiling, embowered
+expanses of the German Flatts. Time and time again my companion and I
+reined up our horses to contemplate the charms of this lovely scene.
+
+We had forded the river near Fort Herkimer, where old Hon Yost Herkimer,
+the father of the Colonel, lived, and were now once more on the north
+side. From an open knoll I pointed out to my friend, by the apple and pear
+blossoms whitening the deserted orchards, the site of the Palatines'
+village where Daisy's father had been killed, fifteen years ago, in the
+midnight rout and massacre.
+
+"It was over those hills that the French stole in darkness. Back yonder,
+at the very ford we crossed, her poor mother was trampled under foot and
+drowned in the frightened throng. It was at the fort there, where we had
+the buttermilk and _Kuchen,_ that your cousin, Major Cross, found the
+little girl. I wonder if he ever knew how deeply grateful to him we
+were--and are."
+
+This brought once more to my mind--where indeed it had often enough before
+intruded itself--the recollection of young Philip's arrival at the Cedars.
+For some reason I had disliked to speak of it before, but now I told Mr.
+Cross of it as we walked our horses along over the rough, muddy road,
+under the arching roof of thicket.
+
+"I'll be bound Mr. Stewart welcomed him with open arms," said my
+companion.
+
+"Ay, indeed! No son could have asked a fonder greeting."
+
+"Yes, the lad is very like his mother; that of itself would suffice to
+warm the old gentleman's heart. You knew he was a suitor for her hand long
+before Tony Cross ever saw her?"
+
+I didn't know this, but I nodded silently.
+
+"Curious creature she was," mused he, as if to himself. "Selfish,
+suspicious, swift to offence, jealous of everything and everybody about
+her--yet with moods when she seemed to all she met the most amiable and
+delightful of women. She had her fine side, too. She would have given her
+life gladly for the success of the Jacobites, of that I'm sure. And
+proud!--no duchess could have carried her head higher."
+
+"You say her son is very like her?"
+
+"As like as two leaves on a twig. Perhaps he has something of his father's
+Irish openness of manner as well. His father belonged to the younger, what
+we call the Irish, branch of our family, you know, though it is as English
+in the matter of blood as I am. We were only second cousins, in point of
+fact, and his grandfather was set up in Ireland by the bounty of mine. Yet
+Master Philip condescends to me, patronizes me, as if the case had been
+reversed."
+
+Mr. Cross did not speak as if he at all resented this, but in a calm,
+analytical manner, and with a wholly impersonal interest. I have never
+known another man who was so totally without individual bias, and regarded
+all persons and things with so little reference to his own feelings. If he
+had either prejudices or crotchets on any point, I never discovered them.
+He was, I feel assured, a scrupulously honest and virtuous gentleman, yet
+he never seemed to hate people who were not so. He was careful not to let
+them get an advantage over him, but for the rest he studied them and
+observed their weaknesses and craft, with the same quiet interest he
+displayed toward worthier objects. A thoroughly equable nature was
+his--with little capacity for righteous indignation on the one side, and
+no small tendencies toward envy or peevishness on the other. There was not
+a wrinkle on his calm countenance, nor any power of angry flashing in his
+steadfast, wide-apart, gray eyes. But his tongue could cut deep
+on occasion.
+
+We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the
+Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that
+crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and
+the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along,
+partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had
+been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under
+a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the
+brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground.
+We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer
+wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and
+crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up
+the fires.
+
+We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well
+wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep
+the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard
+the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the
+moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises
+and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London
+companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very
+acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no
+degree nervous.
+
+We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer
+had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we
+talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying
+on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting,
+wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle,
+under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank
+affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon
+this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with
+fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves
+we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly
+halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my
+friends and comrades.
+
+We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully,
+contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the
+air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank,
+uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer
+heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form,
+with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side?
+
+"I spoke about Philip's having some of his father's adopted Irish traits,"
+said Mr. Cross, after a longer interval of silence than usual. "One of
+them is the desire to have subordinates, dependents, about him. There is
+no Irishman so poor or lowly that he will not, if possible, encourage some
+still poorer, lowlier Irishman to hang to his skirts. It is a reflection
+of their old Gaelic tribal system, I suppose, which, between its chiefs
+above and its clansmen below, left no place for a free yeomanry. I note
+this same thing in the Valley, with the Johnsons and the Butlers. So far
+as Sir William is concerned, the quality I speak of has been of service to
+the Colony, for he has used his fondness and faculty for attracting
+retainers and domineering over subordinates to public advantage. But then
+he is an exceptional and note-worthy man--one among ten thousand. But his
+son Sir John, and his son-in-law Guy Johnson, and the Butlers, father and
+son, and now to them added our masterful young Master Philip--these own no
+such steadying balance-wheel of common-sense. They have no restraining
+notion of public interest. Their sole idea is to play the aristocrat, to
+surround themselves with menials, to make their neighbors concede to them
+submission and reverence. It was of them that Herkimer spoke, plainly
+enough, though he gave no names. Mark my words, they will come to grief
+with that man, if the question be ever put to the test."
+
+I had not seen enough of Englishmen to understand very clearly the
+differences between them and the Irish, and I said so. The conversation
+drifted upon race questions and distinctions, as they were presented by
+the curiously mixed population of New York province.
+
+My companion was of the impression that the distinctly British
+settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more
+powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his
+point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I
+cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this
+Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their wonderful
+patriotism and intelligence, and of the tremendous part they played in the
+Revolution, without smashing my pipe in wrath. Yet I am old enough now to
+see that all this is largely the fault of the New Yorkers themselves. We
+have given our time and attention to the making of money, and have left it
+to others to make the histories. If they write themselves down large, and
+us small, it is only what might have been expected. But at the time of
+which I am telling I was very young, and full of confidence in not only
+the existing superiority but the future supremacy of my race. I could not
+foresee how we were to be snowed under by the Yankees in our own State,
+and, what is worse, accept our subjugation without a protest--so that
+to-day the New York schoolboy supposes Fisher Ames, or any other of a
+dozen Boston talkers, to have been a greater man than Philip Schuyler.
+
+I remember that I greatly vaunted the good qualities of the Dutch that
+night. I pointed out how they alone had learned the idea of religious
+toleration toward others in the cruel school of European persecution; how
+their faith in liberty and in popular institutions, nobly exemplified at
+home in the marvellous struggle with Spain, had planted roots of civil and
+religious freedom in the New World which he could find neither to the east
+nor to the south of us; and how even the early Plymouth Puritans had
+imbibed all they knew of clemency and liberty during their stay
+in Holland.
+
+I fear that Mr. Cross inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and
+extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded
+the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable
+resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed
+always in Europe. But then he went on to declare that the Dutch could not
+hope to hold their own in strange lands against the extraordinary
+conquering and colonizing power of the more numerous English, who, by
+sheer force of will and energy, were destined in the end to dominate
+everything they touched. Note how Clive and the English had gradually
+undermined or overthrown French, Portuguese, and Dutch alike in the
+Indies, he said; the same thing has happened here, either by bloodshed or
+barter. No nation could resist the English in war; no people could
+maintain themselves in trade or the peaceful arts against the English.
+
+"But you yourself predicted, not an hour ago, that the young gentry down
+the Valley would come to grief in their effort to lord it over the Dutch
+and Palatines."
+
+"Oh, that indeed," my friend replied. "They are silly sprouts, grown up
+weak and spindling under the shadow of Sir William; when he is cut down
+the sun will shrivel them, no doubt. But the hardier, healthier plants
+which finally take their place will be of English stock--not Dutch
+or German."
+
+I hope devoutly that this lengthened digression into politics has not
+proved wearisome. I have touched upon but one of a hundred like
+conversations which we two had together on our slow journey, and this
+because I wanted to set forth the manner of things we discussed, and the
+views we severally had. Events proved that we both were partially right.
+The United States of the Netherlands was the real parent of the United
+States of America, and the constitution which the Dutch made for the
+infant State of New York served as the model in breadth and in freedom for
+our present noble Federal Constitution. In that much my faith was
+justified. But it is also true that my State is no longer Dutch, but
+English, and that the language of my mother has died out from among us.
+
+Before noon next day we reached Fort Stanwix, the forest-girdled
+block-house commanding the Great Carrying Place. Here we waited one day
+for the boats to come up, and half of another to get them through the
+sluices into Wood Creek. Then, as the horses and carts returned, we
+embarked and set our faces toward the Lakes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+
+
+
+We had left what it pleases us to call civilization behind. Until our
+return we were scarcely again to see the blackened fields of stumps
+surrounding clearings, or potash kettles, or girdled trees, or chimneys.
+
+Not that our course lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we
+for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed
+westward farther and farther to be alone--to get away from their fellows.
+The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and
+honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. They traded a little,
+in a careless, desultory fashion, with the proceeds of their traps and
+rifles. But their desires were few--a pan and kettle, a case of needles
+and cord, some rum or brandy from cider or wild grapes, tobacco, lead, and
+powder--chiefly the last three. They fed themselves, adding to their own
+fish and game only a little pounded maize which they got mostly from the
+Indians, and cooked in mush or on a baking stone. In the infrequent cases
+where there were women with them, we sometimes saw candles, either dips or
+of the wax of myrtle-berries, but more often the pine-knot was used.
+Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story
+above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their
+habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires.
+They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally
+disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of
+view, but I judge both industrious and contented from their own.
+
+We should have had little favor or countenance from these fellows, I doubt
+not, but for Enoch Wade. He seemed to know all the saturnine, shaggy,
+lounging outcasts whom we met in unexpected places; if he did not, they
+knew him at a glance for one of their own kidney, which came to the same
+thing. It was on his account that we were tolerated, nay, even advised and
+helped and entertained.
+
+Enoch had been a prodigious traveller--or else was a still more prodigious
+liar--I never quite decided which. He told them, when we chanced to sit
+around their fires of an evening, most remarkable stories of field and
+forest--of caribou and seals killed in the North; of vast herds of bison
+on far Western prairies; of ice-bound winters spent in the Hudson Bay
+Company's preserves beyond the Lakes; of houses built of oyster-shells and
+cement on the Carolina coast. They listened gravely, smoking their
+cob-and-reed pipes, and eying him attentively. They liked him, and they
+did not seem to dislike Coppernol and our other white servants. But they
+showed no friendliness toward my poor Tulp, and exhibited only scant,
+frigid courtesy to Mr. Cross and me.
+
+The fact that my companion was a power in the East India Company, and a
+director in the new Northwestern Fur Company, did not interest them, at
+least favorably. It was indeed not until after we had got beyond the
+Sandusky that Enoch often volunteered this information, for the trappers
+of the East had little love for companies, or organized commerce and
+property of any sort.
+
+I like better to recall the purely physical side of our journey. Now our
+little flotilla would move for hours on broad, placid, still waters,
+flanked on each side by expanses of sedge and flags--in which great broods
+of water-fowl lived--and beyond by majestic avenues formed of pines,
+towering mast-like sheer sixty feet before they burst into intertwining
+branches. Again, we would pass through darkened, narrow channels, where
+adverse waters sped swiftly, and where we battled not only with deep
+currents, but had often to chop our way through barriers of green
+tree-trunks, hickory, ash, and birch, which the soft soil on the banks had
+been unable to longer hold erect. Now we flew merrily along under sail or
+energetic oars; now we toiled laboriously against strong tides, by poles
+or by difficult towing.
+
+But it was all healthful, heartening work, and we enjoyed it to the full.
+Toward sundown we would begin to look for a brook upon which to pitch our
+camp. When one was found which did not run black, showing its origin in a
+tamarack swamp, a landing was made with all the five boats. These
+secured, axes were out with, and a shelter soon constructed, while others
+heaped the fire, prepared the food and utensils, and cooked the welcome
+meal. How good everything tasted! how big and bright the stars looked! how
+sweet was the odor of the balsam in the air, later, as we lay on our
+blankets, looking skyward, and talked! Or, if the night was wild and wet,
+how cheerily the great fires roared in the draught, and how snugly we lay
+in our shelter, blinking at the fierce blaze!
+
+When in early July we drew near the country of the Outagamis, having left
+the Detroit settlement behind us, not to speak of Oswego and Niagara,
+which seemed as far off now as the moon, an element of personal danger was
+added to our experiences. Both white hunters and Indians were warmly
+affected toward the French interest, and often enough we found reason to
+fear that we would be made to feel this, though luckily it never came to
+anything serious. It was a novel experience to me to be disliked on
+account of the English, whom I had myself never regarded with friendship.
+I was able, fortunately, being thus between the two rival races, as it
+were, to measure them each against the other.
+
+I had no prejudice in favor of either, God knows. My earliest
+recollections were of the savage cruelty with which the French had
+devastated, butchered, and burned among the hapless settlements at the
+head of the Mohawk Valley. My maturer feelings were all colored with the
+strong repulsion we Dutch felt for the English rule, which so scornfully
+misgoverned and plundered our province, granting away our lands to court
+favorites and pimps, shipping to us the worst and most degraded of
+Old-World criminals, quartering upon us soldiers whose rude vices made
+them even more obnoxious than the convicts, and destroying our commerce by
+selfish and senseless laws.
+
+From the Straits west I saw the Frenchman for the first time, and read the
+reasons for his failure to stand against the English. Even while we
+suspected grounds for fearing his hostility, we found him a more courteous
+and affable man than the Englishman or Yankee. To be pleasant with us
+seemed a genuine concern, though it may really have been otherwise. The
+Indians about him, too, were a far more satisfactory lot than I had known
+in the Valley. Although many of our Mohawks could read, and some few
+write, and although the pains and devotion of my friend Samuel Kirkland
+had done much for the Oneidas, still these French-spoken, Jesuit-taught
+Indians seemed a much better and soberer class than my neighbors of the
+Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively
+plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived
+most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and
+this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going
+on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the
+English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So much for
+the good side.
+
+The medal had a reverse. The Frenchman contrived to get on with the
+Indian by deferring to him, cultivating his better and more generous side,
+and treating him as an equal. This had the effect of improving and
+softening the savage, but it inevitably tended to weaken and lower the
+Frenchman--at least, judged by the standard of fitness to maintain himself
+in a war of races. No doubt the French and Indians lived together much
+more quietly and civilly than did the English and Indians. But when these
+two systems came to be tested by results, it was shown that the
+Frenchman's policy and kindliness had only enervated and emasculated him,
+while the Englishman's rough domineering and rule of force had hardened
+his muscles and fired his resolution. To be sure, measured by the received
+laws of humanity, the Frenchman was right and the other wrong. But is it
+so certain, after all, that the right invariably wins?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well along in September when, standing on the eminence to the east
+of Fort Stanwix, I first looked again on my beloved Mohawk.
+
+The trip had been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four
+bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries,
+including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the
+remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of
+his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and
+silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied its value
+twenty-fold.
+
+Of course, this was of secondary importance. The true object of the
+journey had been to enable Mr. Jonathan Cross to see for himself the
+prospects of the new Northwestern Company--to look over the territory
+embraced in its grants, estimate its probable trade, mark points for the
+establishment of its forts and posts, and secure the information necessary
+to guard the company from the frauds or failings of agents. He professed
+himself vastly gratified at the results, physical as well as financial, of
+his experience, and that was the great thing.
+
+Or no!--perhaps for the purposes of this story there was something more
+important still. It is even now very pleasant to me to recall that he
+liked me well enough, after this long, enforced intimacy, to proffer me
+the responsible and exacting post of the company's agent at Albany.
+
+To say that the offer made me proud and glad would be to feebly understate
+my emotions. I could not be expected to decide all at once. Independent of
+the necessity of submitting the proposition to Mr. Stewart, there was a
+very deep distaste within me for fur-trading at Albany--of the meanness
+and fraudulency of which I had heard from boyhood. A good many hard
+stories are told of the Albanians, which, aside from all possible bias of
+race, I take the liberty of doubting. I do not, for instance, believe all
+the Yankee tales that the Albany Dutchmen bought from the Indians the
+silver plate which the latter seized in New England on the occasions of
+the French and Indian incursions--if for no other reason than the absence
+of proof that they ever had any plate in New England. But that the
+Indians used to be most shamefully drugged and cheated out of their
+eye-teeth in Albany, I fear there can be no reasonable doubt. An evil
+repute attached to the trade there, and I shrank from embarking in it,
+even under such splendid auspices. All the same, the offer gratified
+me greatly.
+
+To be in the woods with a man, day in and day out, is to know him through
+and through. If I had borne this closest of all conceivable forms of
+scrutiny, in the factor's estimation, there must be something good in me.
+
+So there was pride as well as joy in this first glance I cast upon the
+soft-flowing, shadowed water, upon the spreading, stately willows, upon
+the far-off furrow in the hazy lines of foliage--which spoke to me of
+home. Here at last was my dear Valley, always to me the loveliest on
+earth, but now transfigured in my eyes, and radiant beyond all dreams of
+beauty--because in it was my home, and in that home was the sweet maid
+I loved.
+
+Yes--I was returned a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the
+heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the
+swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of
+their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder.
+Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper
+breath for their absence. I had almost wept with excess of boyish feeling
+when I left the Valley--my fond old mother and protector. I gazed upon it
+now with an altogether variant emotion--as of one coming to take
+possession. Ah, the calm elation of that one moment, there alone on the
+knoll, with the sinking September sun behind me, and in front but the
+trifle of sixty miles of river route--when I realized that I was a man!
+
+Perhaps it was at this moment that I first knew I loved Daisy; perhaps it
+had been the truly dominant thought in my mind for months, gathering vigor
+and form from every tender, longing memory of the Cedars. I cannot decide,
+nor is it needful that I should. At least now my head was full of the
+triumphant thoughts that I returned successful and in high favor with my
+companion, that I had a flattering career opened for me, that the people
+at home would be pleased with me--and that I should marry Daisy.
+
+These remaining twenty leagues grew really very tedious before they were
+done with. We went down with the boats this time. I fear that Mr. Cross
+found me but poor company these last three days, for I sat mute in the bow
+most of the time, twisted around to look forward down the winding course,
+as if this would bring the Cedars nearer. I had not the heart to talk.
+"Now she is winding the yarn for my aunt," I would think; "now she is
+scattering oats for the pigeons, or filling Mr. Stewart's pipe, or running
+the candles into the moulds. Dear girl, does she wonder when I am coming?
+If she could know that I was here--here on the river speeding to
+her--what, would she think?"
+
+And I pictured to myself the pretty glance of surprise, mantling into a
+flush of joyous welcome, which would greet me on her face, as she ran
+gladly to my arms. Good old Mr. Stewart, my more than father, would stare
+at me, then smile with pleasure, and take both my hands in his, with warm,
+honest words straight from his great heart. What an evening it would be
+when, seated snugly around the huge blaze--Mr. Stewart in his arm-chair to
+the right, Daisy nestling on the stool at his knee and looking up into my
+face, and Dame Kronk knitting in the chimney-shadow to the left--I should
+tell of my adventures! How goodly a recital I could make of them, though
+they had been even tamer than they were, with such an audience! And how
+happy, how gratified they would be when I came to the climax, artfully
+postponed, of Mr. Cross's offer to me of the Albany agency!
+
+And then how natural, how easy, while these dear people were still smiling
+with pride and satisfaction at my good fortune, to say calmly--yes, calmly
+in tone, though my heart should be beating its way through my breast:
+
+"Even more, sir, I prize the hope that Daisy will share it with me--as my
+wife!"
+
+What with the delay at Caughnawaga, where Mr. Cross debarked, and Major
+Fonda would have us eat and drink while he told us the news, and Tulp's
+crazy rowing later, through excitement at nearing home, it was twilight
+before the boat was run up into our little cove, and I set my foot on
+land. The Cedars stood before us as yet lightless against the northern
+sky. The gate was open. The sweet voice of a negro singing arose from the
+cabins on the dusky hill-side. Tears came to my eyes as I turned to Tulp,
+who was gathering up the things in the boat, and said:
+
+"Do you see, boy? We're home--home at last!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+
+
+
+I could hear the noisy clamor among the negroes over the advent of Tulp,
+whom I had sent off, desiring to be alone, while I still stood irresolute
+on the porch. My hand was on the familiar, well-worn latch, yet I almost
+hesitated to enter, so excited was I with eager anticipations of welcome.
+
+The spacious hall--our sitting-room--was deserted. A fire was blazing on
+the hearth, and plates were laid on the oak table as in preparation for a
+meal, but there was no one to speak to me. I lighted a candle, and opened
+the door to the kitchen; here too there was a fire, but my aunt was not
+visible. Mr. Stewart's room to the right of the hall, and mine to the
+left, were alike unoccupied. I threw aside my hat and watch-coat here, and
+then with the light went up-stairs, whistling as was my wont to warn Daisy
+of my coming. There was no sound or sign of movement. The door of her
+outer room stood open, and I entered and looked about.
+
+The furniture and appointments had been changed in position somewhat, so
+that the chamber seemed strange to me. There were numerous novel objects
+scattered through the rooms as well. A Spanish guitar which I had never
+seen before stood beside the old piano. There were several elegantly bound
+books, new to me, on the table; on the mantel-shelf were three miniatures,
+delicately painted, depicting a florid officer in scarlet, a handsome,
+proud-looking lady with towering powdered coiffure, and a fair-haired,
+proud-looking youth. This last I knew in an instant to be the likeness of
+Master Philip Cross, though it seemingly portrayed him at an age half-way
+between the two times I had seen him as boy and man. His resemblance to
+the lady, and then my own recurring recollection of the officer's
+features, helped me to place them as his parents.
+
+I called out "Daisy!" My voice had a faltering, mournful sound, and there
+was no answer.
+
+I came down the stairs again, burdened with a sudden sense of mental
+discomfort. Already the visions I had had of an enthusiastic welcome were
+but vague outlines of dreams. There had sprung up in my mind instead a
+sudden, novel doubt of my position in this house--a cruel idea that
+perhaps the affection which had so swelled and buoyed my heart was not
+reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the
+same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and
+the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic
+aspect, instead of the bright, honest glow of greeting.
+
+While I stood before the fire-place, still holding the candle in my hand,
+my aunt entered the room from the kitchen door. At sight of me the good
+soul gave a guttural exclamation, dropped flat an apronful of chips she
+was bringing in, and stared at me open-mouthed. When she was at last
+persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to
+be kissed by me--it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add--but
+it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were
+a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she
+brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that
+she had been out in the smoke-house.
+
+"Philip sent down two haunches yesterday by Marinus Folts," she said,
+apologetically, "and this muggy weather I was afraid they wouldn't keep."
+
+"This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not
+help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's
+infirmities. Aloud I said:
+
+"How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have
+the farms been doing?"
+
+"Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is
+the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course
+it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings
+alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor."
+
+"But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?"
+
+"But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did
+before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some,
+bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more
+elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just
+breaking the branches. And the--"
+
+"Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?"
+
+"Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they
+left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to
+the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything
+but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer
+but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I
+was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One
+of them is for you."
+
+Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working
+for me. My heart felt lighter.
+
+"But where _are_ they?" I repeated.
+
+"Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just
+built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the
+Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's
+made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and
+he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it.
+Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd
+had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."
+
+I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the
+home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when
+they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and
+began to find comfort of mind again.
+
+My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she
+came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm
+going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then,
+or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I
+would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I
+was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing
+it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with:
+
+"Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the
+trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs
+and toads?"
+
+This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had
+answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to
+the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended.
+
+I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled
+myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight
+at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him
+off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his
+jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his.
+This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck,
+and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could
+hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking
+strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of
+child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine----
+
+Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear
+ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate
+my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old
+slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with
+small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach
+upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether
+it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the
+matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the
+nights of my life!
+
+At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of
+voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and
+on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the
+slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly,
+enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark;
+but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and,
+judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party,
+I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night
+of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of
+the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these
+roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a
+time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of
+the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for
+the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them
+in any disguise.
+
+I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival--for
+which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads
+together--but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact,
+they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I
+learned afterward.
+
+All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as
+sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself
+almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and
+wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing
+me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my
+breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be
+kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation.
+
+And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour
+later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks
+flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on
+both sides.
+
+Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem
+very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another
+with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not
+possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for
+people nowadays.
+
+But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and
+quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable
+Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained.
+Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in
+fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed
+had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father.
+Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's.
+It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New
+York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very
+melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the
+house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir
+William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall--an ambitious enough name,
+surely, for a forest fishing-cottage.
+
+Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which
+they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were
+the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms,
+while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had
+ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its
+being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing
+there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been
+a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at
+pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain
+she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly
+laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen
+had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other
+habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough
+that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down.
+
+I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of
+uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under
+his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the
+house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the
+food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear.
+They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but
+to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I
+looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age
+and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep,
+nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies'
+boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had
+parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but
+still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there.
+
+It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady
+Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought
+forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but
+for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly
+cover of his simple middle life.
+
+If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them
+this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair
+cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile
+which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and
+more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of
+me, for I did not notice it.
+
+I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great
+swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion,
+fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which
+crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the
+bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all
+accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail,
+this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for
+Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr.
+Stewart was evidently much captivated by the young man's spirit and social
+qualities and demeanor generally.
+
+"He is his father's own boy, ay, and his mother's too," said the old man,
+with sparkling eyes. "Not much for books, perhaps, though no dullard. But
+he can break a wild colt, or turn a bottle inside out, or bore a
+pencilled hole with a pistol-bullet at thirty paces, or tell a story, or
+sing a song, or ride, dance, box, cross swords, with any gentleman in the
+Colony. You should have seen him stand Walrath the blacksmith on his head
+at the races a fortnight ago! I never saw it better done in the
+Tweed country."
+
+"A highly accomplished gentleman, truly," I said, with as little obvious
+satire as possible.
+
+"Ah, but he has mind as well as muscle," put in Mr. Stewart. "He is a very
+Bolingbroke with the ladies. It carries me back to my days at the play, I
+swear, to hear him and Lady Berenicia clashing rapiers in badinage. You
+shall hear them, my boy, and judge. And there's a sweet side to his
+tongue, too, or many a pretty, blushing cheek belies the little ear
+behind it."
+
+The old gentleman chuckled amiably to himself as he spoke, and poured more
+Madeira into my glass and his. Daisy somewhat hurriedly rose, bade us
+"good-night," and left us to ourselves.
+
+Oh, if I had only spoken the word that night!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+
+
+
+I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season
+of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all
+unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and
+occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign
+barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness.
+
+Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too,
+there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had
+treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with
+affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever
+disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade
+himself that it was all for the best.
+
+But these five months had created a certain change in the social
+conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening,
+here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my
+absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now
+manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no
+doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social,
+part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible
+glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than
+elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through
+houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family
+fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers,
+husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the
+existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the
+man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it
+and I on the other.
+
+This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his
+manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had
+made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof
+of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance
+of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I
+ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to
+me, for the first time.
+
+"Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said.
+"If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing
+aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go
+to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's
+content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!"
+
+This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance
+with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded,
+looking at him. He went on:
+
+"What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these
+people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood.
+Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been,
+given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed,
+by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and
+people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would
+have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must,
+forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of
+their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence
+worth of goods!"
+
+What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a
+heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard
+to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from
+Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for
+irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have
+visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had
+engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear.
+
+Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me.
+Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even
+toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my
+poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time
+up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and
+elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of
+her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old.
+
+If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence,
+it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new
+Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft
+with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear
+girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or
+twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to
+confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she
+suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices,
+or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to
+her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me.
+
+I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long
+afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress
+at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her
+judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating
+between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with
+their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive,
+idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate,
+womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license,
+beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly
+watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind
+those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure
+might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different!
+
+But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was
+by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky.
+
+For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose,
+tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the
+old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch
+herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the
+joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us
+of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young
+Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a
+bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast,
+and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and
+gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning,
+when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see
+her cheerful once more.
+
+And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love.
+
+One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion
+she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a
+luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering
+mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise,
+and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy
+seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled
+insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter.
+
+To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to
+understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing
+but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his
+old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to
+me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no
+longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or
+say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the
+fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised
+to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or
+not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called.
+
+Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for
+the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready.
+She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my
+part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been
+invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed
+so much annoyed that I hastened to join them.
+
+It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the
+air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale
+changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way
+approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely
+red through the smoky haze.
+
+Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and
+I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the
+gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in
+fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the
+mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new
+bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep
+zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark
+rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to
+be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he
+would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side
+of the gulf was Philip's property.
+
+"It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth
+clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building
+a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the
+waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You
+know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek."
+
+Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking
+measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of
+erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the
+skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing
+edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have
+quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering,
+hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and
+about the structure.
+
+At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level,
+high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were
+assembled, and thither we bent our steps.
+
+Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my
+companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded,
+and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed
+sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly
+was handsome.
+
+He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the
+hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real
+delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers
+with his lips.
+
+"You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he
+murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with
+pleasure at him.
+
+To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is
+true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that
+he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention
+whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle
+outside the tent.
+
+Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others.
+By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was
+distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who
+took the trouble only to nod at me.
+
+Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was
+confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being
+nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was
+monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more
+discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall
+occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr.
+Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was
+chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she
+was telling.
+
+"Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to
+Tulp to follow me, I started.
+
+It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which
+forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage
+comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a
+profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon
+him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen
+and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very
+rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred
+dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no
+other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I
+made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an
+unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth
+I was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the
+very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of
+the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others,
+of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not
+been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well
+tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel
+above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I
+stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing.
+
+He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come,
+and what company I had quitted to visit him.
+
+"So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more
+vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple
+has fallen with less shaking than I thought for."
+
+I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have
+been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long,
+heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and
+saw nothing.
+
+At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day:
+
+"You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross
+asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From
+what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know
+it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'"
+
+This time I know I kept silence for a long time.
+
+I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying,
+in a voice which sounded like a stranger's:
+
+"I will go to Albany whenever you like."
+
+I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my
+path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+
+
+
+Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road
+which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter
+weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track
+straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As
+it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a
+wayside stump, dead beat.
+
+"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick,"
+he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best
+I can."
+
+The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had
+put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention.
+"Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water
+which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at
+their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I
+stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I
+cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had
+not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the
+Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection
+as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop,
+and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale
+Adirondack outlines.
+
+As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze
+had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east
+and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them
+upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its
+cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his
+infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.
+
+"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody
+is waiting for me--nobody wants me."
+
+The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long
+afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion
+that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.
+
+"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of
+my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."
+
+Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He
+humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going
+by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road,
+and the rain was coming on.
+
+Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the
+distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.
+
+Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the
+settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a
+controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the
+hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not
+much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the
+vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my
+brain, almost frightened me.
+
+I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had
+spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah,
+fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in
+contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still
+nourished in my heart a hope--and these _were_ happiness! I laughed aloud
+at my folly in having deemed them less.
+
+She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes
+open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent
+cub!--so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I
+pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her
+grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile,
+the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed
+against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him--brawling
+dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and
+proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken
+wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration! Where were their eyes, that
+they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when
+he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?
+
+Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of
+his class, or of his pretence to class?
+
+Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could
+not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing,
+everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other
+friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John
+Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from
+boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class,"
+these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had
+never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me,
+grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink
+and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the
+gentry--save the mark!--of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never
+so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid,
+fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her;
+it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their
+congratulations.
+
+And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other
+affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge
+their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered
+stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action,
+my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before
+their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their
+hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time
+out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on
+my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as
+worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet
+with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a
+moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!
+
+Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.
+
+Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the
+self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute,
+tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal
+notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn
+to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little
+country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed
+rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed
+also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this
+Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive
+expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an
+intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all
+my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to
+employment!
+
+It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was
+more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three
+bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman
+was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the
+blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia
+was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel
+gilt, the gaudier the better!
+
+But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing
+pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason
+runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours'
+wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh
+murderous in its fierceness.
+
+The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of
+thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat.
+The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood.
+
+On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from
+the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn,
+rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A
+half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars,
+and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it
+was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart
+and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and
+that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to
+accompany them.
+
+"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's
+human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty
+beckon the other way."
+
+I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We
+resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily
+pelting upon our backs.
+
+When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the
+waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail
+was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you
+could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct
+mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly
+and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears,
+and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.
+
+At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.
+
+He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a
+walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion;
+yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a
+song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that
+neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on
+this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!
+
+He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not
+interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility
+toward me.
+
+"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I
+see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this
+"--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.
+
+I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I
+could only hope he failed to note:
+
+"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you
+like--here! now!"
+
+He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are
+drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"
+
+"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him
+square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was
+ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner
+that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."
+
+The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his
+surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his
+great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of
+mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.
+
+If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration.
+There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his
+knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my
+superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing,
+there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over,
+he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his
+coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully.
+I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and
+was vexed with myself for it.
+
+We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a
+final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not
+only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood
+upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift
+movement past me from behind.
+
+I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that
+followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful
+slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus
+place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.
+
+To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.
+
+There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close
+before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow
+in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side
+of the cliff!
+
+Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips
+over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very
+moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end,
+one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the
+Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which
+recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had
+chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till
+the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed
+me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he
+said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than
+poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless
+morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my
+readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled
+the Englishman.
+
+The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight
+out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.
+
+With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as
+possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty
+masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the
+far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably
+sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught
+sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine,
+limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but
+it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my
+antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked
+at him.
+
+The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently,
+for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had
+been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him.
+
+I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin
+defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and
+stood for a moment frowning down at me.
+
+"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a
+new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see
+you again."
+
+"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break
+every bone in your body."
+
+With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I
+continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp
+was waiting for me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+
+
+
+The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding
+his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic.
+
+He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had
+from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been
+more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines.
+He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and
+some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though
+all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my
+neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as
+by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over
+the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall
+came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet
+and miserable affair.
+
+When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise
+to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what
+to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had
+overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far
+from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my
+part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word
+or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far
+as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest.
+Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage
+feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon
+the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive
+way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my
+fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my
+mortification and rage.
+
+When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself
+by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart;
+both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in
+the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as
+this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat
+at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then
+sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather,
+lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room.
+
+"Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened?
+There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?"
+
+I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her:
+
+"The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie
+it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by
+the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!"
+
+Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room,
+closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting
+over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them
+for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining
+at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for
+making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon
+as possible leave the Cedars.
+
+When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper.
+Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude,
+with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a
+complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the
+simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone
+to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt
+the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his
+curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the
+dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not
+ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was
+impendent.
+
+Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily:
+
+"Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your
+wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness
+in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been
+only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of
+truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet.
+But his scornful sternness hardened me.
+
+"Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper."
+
+More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred
+fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the
+chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I
+knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again:
+
+"Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association
+has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by
+want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back."
+
+I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly
+ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved
+toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the
+apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over
+now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He
+seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile,
+and he was some time in finding them.
+
+"In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my
+equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small
+matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment
+which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find
+myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person
+who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the
+appearance of respect for my gray hairs."
+
+He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender,
+ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on:
+
+"In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being
+wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has
+come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily
+observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I
+will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful,
+respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you
+developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of
+your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way,
+virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your
+credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much
+consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I
+had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken
+altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of
+my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours."
+
+"Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he
+paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you."
+
+He went on as if I had not spoken:
+
+"Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your
+voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position
+and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to
+dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not
+forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my
+disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your
+education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of
+what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting
+and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to
+me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her
+chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would
+fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my
+duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed."
+
+The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered
+under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul
+and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell.
+
+Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and
+foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct
+or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long,
+stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my
+actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly
+stood my ground.
+
+"If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly
+be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and
+to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can
+the simple truth affront?"
+
+"What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being
+thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose
+to describe him thus."
+
+"I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor
+devil escaped with his life."
+
+"How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days
+slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason."
+
+"Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not
+understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with
+rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as
+we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need
+for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off."
+
+"Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?"
+
+"I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have
+killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not
+put other things in our heads."
+
+"My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time,
+then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in
+apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than
+before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in
+this than I thought. Explain it to me."
+
+I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference,
+than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel.
+
+"What am I to explain?" I asked.
+
+"Why were you quarrelling with Philip?"
+
+"Because I felt like it--because I hate him!"
+
+"Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two?
+I demand to know!"
+
+"If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth
+in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he
+has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be
+worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his
+fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you
+and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to
+deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My
+throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might
+not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes.
+
+My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in
+the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed
+them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since
+familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing
+sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my
+voice came back to me.
+
+"If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first
+looked on the Valley--_our_ Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could
+only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from
+this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you
+could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that
+evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah,
+then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning
+with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and
+her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and
+sullen, _that_ is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and
+upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the
+displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if
+I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess
+of tenderness trampled underfoot."
+
+At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all
+events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old.
+He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly.
+
+"My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time
+gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not
+have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset,
+the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right
+in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go
+aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies
+and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a
+melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these
+sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to
+Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would
+be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the
+beginning."
+
+I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth.
+
+"Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them.
+
+He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly
+with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have,
+waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my
+heart--to have Daisy for my wife."
+
+As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether
+strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she
+and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we
+were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not
+infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and
+all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness
+of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a
+lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious,
+civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image
+of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the
+delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home
+that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now
+with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should
+crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover,
+that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as
+innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child
+approaching to kiss its mother.
+
+"Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom
+it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you
+will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling."
+
+His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly
+enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no
+fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the
+very wisest to bestow.
+
+He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments
+exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world.
+In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of
+every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other
+distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just
+the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he
+essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent.
+He added, I remember, a personal parallel:
+
+"I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my
+grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young
+Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other
+thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of
+her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and
+hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I
+verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket
+this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony
+Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are
+kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns
+sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if
+you would deny her the gallant of her choice?"
+
+"If I believed," I blurted out, "that it _was_ her own free choice!"
+
+"Whose else, then, pray?"
+
+"If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not
+been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--"
+
+"Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning
+testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all
+these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the
+youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had
+spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it
+might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We
+who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred
+bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be
+no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own
+judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I
+mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony.
+Perhaps--who knows?--he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of
+these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon
+enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow
+freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way."
+
+My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never
+abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went
+to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came.
+
+The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent
+down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal
+for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we
+hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task.
+
+It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the
+wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told
+Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and
+take up the proffered agency.
+
+He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong
+opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the
+best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or
+made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with
+my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by
+my perseverance in the project.
+
+Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences
+with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he
+was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with
+voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and
+much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among
+others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon,
+who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I
+never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of
+more utility.
+
+In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a
+departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few
+times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of
+that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the
+incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to
+Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I
+fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.
+At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with
+my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not
+sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.
+
+It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began
+life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried
+with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of
+compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of
+the Cedars.
+
+As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+
+
+
+The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new
+world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with
+but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this
+distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost
+at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had
+left behind.
+
+For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.
+I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter
+was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was
+pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager
+national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places,
+to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly
+the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to
+prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as
+possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to
+encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome
+settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was
+easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from
+scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then,
+however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.
+
+Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in
+it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most
+delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were
+to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were
+equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed
+brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting
+water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I
+had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the
+Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses,
+here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New
+England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a
+pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the
+conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.
+
+And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There
+were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen
+had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had
+weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told
+of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the
+hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie
+Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great
+town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its
+population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four
+hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and
+were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect
+was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the
+grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The
+wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is
+thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps
+of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.
+Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from
+the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.
+
+Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when
+men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The
+only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to
+barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and
+occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his
+representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.
+For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and
+comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even
+to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea
+fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other
+town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our
+own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted
+slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.
+
+There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the
+firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the
+Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old
+age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass
+unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know
+how neither to rest nor to play.
+
+But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in
+the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already
+sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of
+books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself
+almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances
+were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was
+repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for
+them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies
+were mine.
+
+But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and
+rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the
+outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the
+uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost
+citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others
+not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen
+before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon
+terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger
+men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age,
+and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.
+
+These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not
+inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or
+to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had
+seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were
+masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had
+suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my
+surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with
+loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another
+name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen
+disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the
+ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence
+the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its
+citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political
+life, were of my way of thinking.
+
+More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against
+England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in
+our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth,
+and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and
+social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act
+crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly
+discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in
+our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious
+of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked
+the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret
+these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found
+myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils
+of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it,
+as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.
+Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became
+the most ardent of Whigs?
+
+Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established,
+there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole
+current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There
+were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern,
+to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a
+considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of
+provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at
+Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and
+there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped
+hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no
+obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare
+expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had
+entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind
+and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting
+alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking
+of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the
+Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching
+completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.
+Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for
+me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the
+collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against
+Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.
+The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my
+disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of
+myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon
+other things.
+
+Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her
+ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had
+established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.
+I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed
+me, which was not at all.
+
+The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the
+company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business,
+push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English
+charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run
+over here."
+
+So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.
+
+It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held
+me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true
+that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city,
+for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always
+seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the
+town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This
+made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I
+am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who
+came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in
+estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.
+
+I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each
+quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the
+company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went
+to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my
+progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased
+at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But
+that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than
+the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year
+than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have
+learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my
+companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of
+mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden,
+and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.
+
+So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently
+rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped
+meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling
+tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs,
+twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent
+position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to
+mortal man.
+
+Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this
+correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of
+the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+
+
+
+We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night
+not to be forgotten while memory remains to me.
+
+There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons,
+and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian
+lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon
+was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business
+which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer
+mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country
+roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been
+despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite
+the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson
+had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir
+John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this
+opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he
+had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in
+company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with
+more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and
+flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was
+I at last to meet Daisy?
+
+Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and
+decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the
+most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more
+beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening
+return to me.
+
+You may still see for yourselves how noble, one might say palatial, was
+the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on
+the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no
+power of fancy can restore for _you_--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic
+people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad,
+fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome;
+the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights,
+hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the
+stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their
+passengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich
+velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright
+eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair breasts--all radiant in the
+hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of
+gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the
+horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of
+color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the
+spacious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her
+son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests.
+No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You
+shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy.
+
+The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all,
+pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the
+best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery
+beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead.
+
+This round, lustrous orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to
+every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that
+this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm
+was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost
+stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman,
+when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the
+formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see
+sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one
+another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust
+over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it.
+
+It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess.
+She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The
+Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before
+her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my
+roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is
+trouble brewing."
+
+I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left,
+but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words
+with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of
+whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then
+rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all
+liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it
+would not do to pass him by unheeded.
+
+While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of
+the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the
+hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space
+clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I
+perforce followed.
+
+I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book
+had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been
+equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects.
+Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was
+now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of
+English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his
+office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered
+me his hand.
+
+It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his
+great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had
+Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his
+long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few
+words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I passed to make room for
+others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood.
+
+"The old fox!" he said, smilingly nodding toward Colden. "One may not but
+like him, for all his tricks. If England had had the wit to keep that rude
+boor of a Tryon at home, and make Colden governor, and listen to him,
+matters would have gone better. Who is that behind him? Oh, yes,
+De Lancey."
+
+Oliver de Lancey was chiefly notable on account of his late brother James,
+who had been chief justice and lieutenant-governor, and the most
+brilliant, unscrupulous, masterful politician of his time. Oliver was
+himself a man of much energy and ambition. I observed him curiously, for
+his mother had been a Van Cortlandt, and I had some of that blood in my
+veins as well. So far as it had contributed to shape his face, I was not
+proud of it, for he had a selfish and arrogant mien.
+
+It was more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of
+the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their
+characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip
+Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite
+forty years of age, almost of my stature--that is to say, a tall man. He
+held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air,
+which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under
+the powder, helped to confirm. But no one could speak in amity with him
+without finding him to be the most affable and sweet-natured of men. If he
+had had more of the personal vanity and self-love which his bearing seemed
+to indicate, it would have served him well, perhaps, when New England
+jealousy assailed and overbore him. But he was too proud to fight for
+himself, and too patriotic not to fight for his country, whether the just
+reward came or was withheld.
+
+Colonel Schuyler had been chosen as one of the five delegates of the
+Colony to attend the first Continental Congress, now sitting at
+Philadelphia, but ill-health had compelled him to decline the journey. He
+had since been to New York, however, where he had learned much of the
+situation, and now was in receipt of tidings from the Congress itself. By
+a compromise in the New York Assembly, both parties had been represented
+in our delegation, the Whigs sending Philip Livingston and Isaac Low, the
+Tories James Duane and John Jay, and the fifth man, one Alsopp, being a
+neutral-tinted individual to whom neither side could object. The
+information which Schuyler had received was to the effect that all five,
+under the tremendous and enthusiastic pressure they had encountered in
+Philadelphia, had now resolved to act together in all things for the
+Colonies and against the Crown.
+
+"That means," said he, "that we shall all adopt Massachusetts's cause as
+our own. After Virginia led the way with Patrick Henry's speech, there was
+no other course possible for even Jay and Duane. I should like to hear
+that man Henry. He must be wonderful."
+
+The space about Mr. Colden had shifted across the room, so that we were
+now upon its edge, and Schuyler went to him with outstretched hand. The
+two men exchanged a glance, and each knew what the other was thinking of.
+
+"Your excellency has heard from Philadelphia," said the Colonel, more as a
+statement of fact than as an inquiry.
+
+"Sad, sad!" exclaimed the aged politician, in a low tone. "It is a grief
+instead of a joy to have lived so long, if my life must end amid
+contention and strife."
+
+"He is really sincere in deploring the trouble," said Schuyler, when he
+had rejoined me. "He knows in his heart that the Ministry are pig-headedly
+wrong, and that we are in the right. He would do justice if he could, but
+he is as powerless as I am so far as influencing London goes, and here he
+is in the hands of the De Lanceys. To give the devil his due, I believe
+Sir William Johnson was on our side, too, at heart."
+
+We had talked of this before, and out of deference to my sentiments of
+liking and gratitude to Sir William, he always tried to say amiable things
+about the late baronet to me. But they did not come easily, for there was
+an old-time feud between the two families. The dislike dated back to the
+beginning of young Johnson's career, when, by taking sides shrewdly in a
+political struggle between Clinton and De Lancey, he had ousted John
+Schuyler, Philip's grandfather, from the Indian commissionership and
+secured it for himself. In later years, since the Colonel had come to
+manhood, he had been forced into rivalry, almost amounting to antagonism
+at times, with the baronet, in Colonial and Indian affairs; and even now,
+after the baronet's death, it was hard for him to acknowledge the
+existence of all the virtues which my boyish liking had found in Sir
+William. But still he did try, if only to please me.
+
+As we spoke, Sir John Johnson passed us, in company with several younger
+men, pushing toward the room to the right, where the punch-bowl
+was placed.
+
+"At least, _he_ is no friend of yours?" said Schuyler, indicating the
+red-faced young baronet.
+
+"No man less so," I replied, promptly. Two years ago I doubt I should have
+been so certain of my entire enmity toward Sir John. But in the interim
+all my accumulating political fervor had unconsciously stretched back to
+include the Johnstown Tories; I found myself now honestly hating them all
+alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude
+toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish
+dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to
+make him the chief object of my aversion.
+
+We talked of him now, and of his wife, a beautiful, sweet-faced girl of
+twenty, who had been Polly Watts of New York. My companion pointed her out
+to me, as one of a circle beyond the fire-place. He had only soft words
+and pity for her--as if foreseeing the anguish and travail soon to be
+brought upon her by her husband's misdeeds--but he spoke very slightingly
+and angrily of Sir John. To Schuyler's mind there was no good in him.
+
+"I have known him more or less since he was a boy and followed his father
+in the Lake George campaign. The officers then could not abide him, though
+some were submissive to him because of his father's position. So now,
+fifteen years afterward, although he has many toadies and flatterers, I
+doubt his having any real friends. Through all these score of years, I
+have yet to learn of any gracious or manly thing he has done."
+
+"At least he did gallop from the Fort to the Hall at news of his father's
+death, and kill his horse by the pace," I said.
+
+"Heirs can afford to ride swiftly," replied the Colonel, in a dry tone.
+"No: he has neither the honesty to respect the rights of others, nor the
+wit to enforce those which he arrogates to himself. Look at his management
+in the Mohawk Valley. Scarce two months after the old baronet's
+death--before he was barely warm in his father's bed--all the Dutch and
+Palatines and Cherry Valley Scotch were up in arms against him and his
+friends. I call that the work of a fool. Why, Tryon County ought, by all
+the rules, to be the Tories' strongest citadel. There, of all other
+places, they should be able to hold their own. Old Sir William would have
+contrived matters better, believe me. But this sulky, slave-driving cub
+must needs force the quarrel from the start. Already they have their
+committee in the Palatine district, with men like Frey and Yates and Paris
+on it, and their resolutions are as strong as any we have heard."
+
+Others came up at this, and I moved away, thinking to pay my respects to
+friends in the rooms on the left. The fine hall was almost overcrowded.
+One's knee struck a sword, or one's foot touched a satin train, at every
+step. There were many whom I knew, chiefly Albanians, and my progress was
+thus rendered slow. At the door I met my kinsman, Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn.
+
+"Ha! well met, Cousin Sobriety!" he cried. "Let us cross the hall, and get
+near the punch-bowl."
+
+"It is my idea that you have had enough," I answered.
+
+"'Too much is enough,' as the Indian said. He was nearer the truth than
+you are," replied Teunis, taking my arm.
+
+"No, not now! First let me see who is here."
+
+"Who is here? Everybody--from Hendrik Hudson and Killian the First down.
+Old Centenarian Colden is telling them about William the Silent, whom he
+remembers very well."
+
+"I have never heard any one speak of Teunis the Silent."
+
+"Nor ever will! It is not my _metier_, as the French students used to say.
+Well, then, I will turn back with you; but the punch will all be gone,
+mark my words. I saw Johnson and Watts and their party headed for the bowl
+five-and-twenty minutes ago. We shall get not so much as a lemon-seed. But
+I sacrifice myself."
+
+We entered the room, and my eyes were drawn, as by the force of a million
+magnets, to the place where Daisy sat.
+
+For the moment she was unattended. She was very beautifully attired, and
+jewels glistened from her hair and throat. Her eyes were downcast--looking
+upon the waxed floor as if in meditation. Even to this sudden, momentary
+glance, her fair face looked thinner and paler than I remembered it--and
+ah, how well did I remember it! With some muttered word of explanation I
+broke away from my companion, and went straight to her.
+
+She had not noted my presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood
+before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had
+expected. She smiled in a wan way, and gave me her hand.
+
+"I knew you were here," she said, in a soft voice which I scarcely
+recognized, so changed, I might say saddened, was it by the introduction
+of some plaintive, minor element. "Philip told me. I thought that sooner
+or later I should see you."
+
+"And I have thought of little else but the chance of seeing you," I
+replied, speaking what was in my heart, with no reflection save that this
+was our Daisy, come into my life again.
+
+She was silent for a moment, her eyes seeking the floor and a faint glow
+coming upon her cheeks. Then she raised them to my face, with something of
+the old sparkle in their glance.
+
+"Well, then," she said, drawing aside her skirts, "sit here, and see me."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust Upon Me.
+
+
+
+I sat beside Daisy, and we talked. It was at the beginning a highly
+superficial conversation, as I remember it, during which neither looked at
+the other, and each made haste to fill up any threatened lapse into
+silence by words of some sort, it mattered not much what.
+
+She told me a great deal about Mr. Stewart's health, which I learned was
+far less satisfactory than his letters had given reason to suspect. In
+reply to questions, I told her of my business and my daily life here in
+Albany. I did not ask her in return about herself. She seemed eager to
+forestall any possible inquiry on this point, and hastened to inform me as
+to my old acquaintances in the Valley.
+
+From her words I first realized how grave the situation there had suddenly
+become. It was not only that opposition to the Johnsons had been openly
+formulated, but feuds of characteristic bitterness had sprung up within
+families, and between old-time friends, in consequence. Colonel Henry
+Frey, who owned the upper Canajoharie mills, took sides with the Tories,
+and had fiercely quarrelled with his brother John, who was one of the Whig
+Committee. There was an equally marked division in the Herkimer family,
+where one brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, and his nephew, outraged the others
+by espousing the Tory cause. So instances might be multiplied. Already on
+one side there were projects of forcible resistance, and on the other ugly
+threats of using the terrible Indian power, which hung portentous on the
+western skirt of the Valley, to coerce the Whigs.
+
+I gained from this recital, more from her manner than her words, that her
+sympathies were with the people and not with the aristocrats. She went on
+to say things which seemed to offer an explanation of this.
+
+The tone of Valley society, at least so far as it was a reflection of
+Johnson Hall, had, she said, deteriorated wofully since the old baronet's
+death. A reign of extravagance and recklessness both as to money and
+temper--of gambling, racing, hard drinking, low sports, and coarse
+manners--had set in. The friends of Sir John were now a class by
+themselves, having no relations to speak of with the body of Whig farmers,
+merchants, inn-keepers, and the like. Rather it seemed to please the Tory
+clique to defy the good opinion of their neighbors, and show by very
+excess and license contempt for their judgment. Some of the young men whom
+I had known were of late sadly altered. She spoke particularly of Walter
+Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the
+evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a
+sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to distinguish sometimes
+from madness.
+
+In all this I found but one reflection--rising again and again as she
+spoke--and this was that she was telling me, by inference, the story of
+her own unhappiness.
+
+Daisy would never have done this consciously--of that I am positive. But
+it was betrayed in every line of her face, and my anxious ear caught it in
+every word she uttered as to the doings of the Johnson party. Doubtless
+she did not realize how naturally and closely I would associate her
+husband with that party.
+
+Underneath all our talk there had been, on both sides, I dare say, a sense
+of awkward constraint. There were so many things which we must not speak
+of--things which threatened incessantly to force their way to the surface.
+
+I thought of them all, and wondered how much she knew of the events that
+preceded my departure--how much she guessed of the heart-breaking grief
+with which I had seen her go to another. It came back to me now, very
+vividly, as I touched the satin fold of her gown with my shoe, and said to
+myself, "This is really she."
+
+The two years had not passed so uncomfortably, it is true; work and
+pre-occupation and the change of surroundings had brought me back my peace
+of mind and taken the keen edge from my despair--which was to have been
+life-long, and had faded in a month. Yet now her simple presence--with the
+vague added feeling that she was unhappy--sufficed to wipe out the whole
+episode of Albany, and transport me bodily back to the old Valley days. I
+felt again all the anguish at losing her, all the bitter wrath at the
+triumph of my rival--emphasized and intensified now by the implied
+confession that he had proved unworthy.
+
+To this gloom there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition,
+the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air
+about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence.
+The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping
+us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as
+I did?
+
+I looked up into her face. She had been silent for I know not how long,
+following her thoughts as I had followed mine. It was almost a shock to me
+to find that the talk had died away, and I fancied that I read a kindred
+embarrassment in her eyes. I seized upon the first subject which
+entered my head.
+
+"Tulp would be glad to see you," I said, foolishly enough.
+
+She colored slightly, and opened and shut her fan in a nervous way. "Poor
+Tulp!" she said, "I don't think he ever liked me as he did you. Is
+he well?"
+
+"He has never been quite the same since--since he came to Albany. He is a
+faithful body-servant now--nothing more."
+
+"Yes," she said, softly, with a sigh; then, after a pause, "Philip spoke
+of offering to make good to you your money loss in Tulp, but I told him he
+would better not."
+
+"It _was_ better not," I answered.
+
+Silence menaced us again. I did not find myself indignant at this
+insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly
+close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near
+Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts of him whatsoever.
+
+"You do Tulp a wrong," I said. "Poor little fellow! Do you remember--" and
+so we drifted into the happy, sunlit past, with its childish memories for
+both of games and forest rambles, and innocent pleasures making every day
+a little blissful lifetime by itself, and all the years behind our parting
+one sweet prolonged delight.
+
+Words came freely now; we looked into each other's faces without
+constraint, and laughed at the pastimes we recalled. It was so pleasant to
+be together again, and there was so much of charm for us both in the time
+which we remembered together.
+
+Sir John Johnson and his party had left the punch--or what remained of
+it--and came suddenly up to us. Behind the baronet I saw young Watts,
+young De Lancey, one or two others whom I did not know, and, yes!--it was
+he--Philip Cross.
+
+He had altered in appearance greatly. The two years had added much flesh
+to his figure, which was now burly, and seemed to have diminished his
+stature in consequence. His face, which even I had once regarded as
+handsome, was hardened now in expression, and bore an unhealthy, reddish
+hue. For that matter, all these young men were flushed with drink, and had
+entered rather boisterously, attracting attention as they progressed. This
+attention was not altogether friendly. Some of the ladies had drawn in
+their skirts impatiently, as they passed, and beyond them I saw a group of
+Dutch friends of mine, among them Teunis, who were scowling dark looks at
+the new-comers.
+
+Sir John recognized me as he approached, and deigned to say, "Ha!
+Mauverensen--you here?" after a cool fashion, and not offering his hand.
+
+I had risen, not knowing what his greeting would be like. It was only
+decent now to say: "I was much grieved to hear of your honored father's
+death last summer."
+
+"Well you might be!" said polite Sir John. "He served you many a good
+purpose. I saw you talking out yonder with Schuyler, that coward who dared
+not go to Philadelphia and risk his neck for his treason. I dare say he,
+too, was convulsed with grief over my father's death!"
+
+"Perhaps you would like to tell Philip Schuyler to his face that he is a
+coward," I retorted, in rising heat at the unprovoked insolence in his
+tone. "There is no braver man in the Colony."
+
+"But he didn't go to Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty
+scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list."
+
+"He did not go for a reason which is perfectly well known--his illness
+forbade the journey."
+
+"Yes," sneered the baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance;
+"too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told,
+he has been most of the time since your--what d'ye call it?--Congress
+assembled."
+
+I grew angry. "He went there to bury General Bradstreet. That, also, is
+well known. Information seems to reach the Valley but indifferently, Sir
+John. Everywhere else people understand and appreciate the imperative
+nature of the summons which called Colonel Schuyler to New York. The
+friendship of the two men has been a familiar matter of knowledge this
+fifteen years. I know not your notions of friendship's duties; but for a
+gentleman like Schuyler, scarcely a mortal illness itself could serve to
+keep him from paying the last respect to a friend whose death was such an
+affliction to him."
+
+Johnson had begun some response, truculent in tone, when an interruption
+came from a most unexpected source. Philip Cross, who had looked at me
+closely without betraying any sign of recognition, put his hand now on Sir
+John's shoulder.
+
+"Bradstreet?" he said. "Did I not know him? Surely he is the man who found
+his friend's wife so charming that he sent that friend to distant
+posts--to England, to Quebec, to Oswego, and Detroit--and amused himself
+here at home during the husband's absence. I am told he even built a
+mansion for her while the spouse was in London _on business._ So he is
+dead, eh?"
+
+I had felt the bitter purport of his words, almost before they were out.
+It was a familiar scandal in the mouths of the Johnson coterie--this foul
+assertion that Mrs. Schuyler, one of the best and most faithful of
+helpmates, as witty as she was beautiful, as good as she was diligent, in
+truth, an ideal wife, had pursued through many years a course of deceit
+and dishonor, and that her husband, the noblest son of our Colony, had
+been base enough to profit by it. Of all the cruel and malignant things to
+which the Tories laid their mean tongues, this was the lowest and most
+false. I could not refrain from putting my hand on my sword-hilt as
+I answered:
+
+"Such infamous words as these are an insult to every gentleman, the world
+over, who has ever presented a friend to his family!"
+
+Doubtless there was apparent in my face, as in the exaggerated formality
+of my bow to Cross, a plain invitation to fight. If there had not been,
+then my manner would have wofully belied my intent. It was, in fact, so
+plain that Daisy, who sat close by my side, and, like some others near at
+hand, had heard every word that had passed, half-started to her feet and
+clutched my sleeve, as with an appeal against my passionate purpose.
+
+Her husband had not stirred from his erect and arrogant posture until he
+saw his wife's frightened action. I could see that he noted this, and that
+it further angered him. He also laid his hand on his sword now, and
+frigidly inclined his wigged head toward me.
+
+"I had not the honor of addressing you, sir," he said, in a low voice,
+very much at variance with the expression in his eyes. "I had no wish to
+exchange words with you, or with any of your sour-faced tribe. But if you
+desire a conversation--a lengthy and more private conversation--I am at
+your disposition. Let me say here, however,"--and he glanced with fierce
+meaning at Daisy as he spoke--"I am not a Schuyler; I do not encourage
+'friends.'"
+
+Even Sir John saw that this was too much.
+
+"Come, come, Cross!" he said, going to his friend. "Your tongue runs away
+with you." Then, in a murmur, he added: "Damn it, man! Don't drag your
+wife into the thing. Skewer the Dutchman outside, if you like, and if you
+are steady enough, but remember what you are about."
+
+I could hear this muttered exhortation as distinctly as I had heard
+Cross's outrageous insult. Sir John's words appealed to me even more than
+they did to his companion. I was already ashamed to have been led into a
+display of temper and a threat of quarrelling, here in the company of
+ladies, and on such an occasion. We were attracting attention, moreover,
+and Teunis and some of his Dutch friends had drawn nearer, evidently
+understanding that a dispute was at hand. The baronet's hint about Daisy
+completed my mortification. _I_ should have been the one to think of her,
+to be restrained by her presence, and to prevent, at any cost, her name
+being associated with the quarrel by so much as the remotest inference.
+
+So I stood irresolute, with my hand still on my sword, and black rage
+still tearing at my heart, but with a mist of self-reproach and indecision
+before my eyes, in which lights, costumes, powdered wigs, gay figures
+about me, all swam dizzily.
+
+Stephen Watts, a man in manner, though a mere stripling in years, had
+approached me from the other group, a yard off, in a quiet way to avoid
+observation. He whispered:
+
+"There must be no quarrel _here_, Mr. Mauverensen. And there must be no
+notice taken of his last words--spoken in heat, and properly due, I dare
+say, to the punch rather than to the man."
+
+"I feel that as deeply as you can," I replied.
+
+"I am glad," said Watts, still in a sidelong whisper. "If you must fight,
+let there be some tolerable pretext."
+
+"We have one ready standing," I whispered back. "When we last met I warned
+him that at our next encounter I should break every bone in his skin. Is
+not that enough?"
+
+"Capital! Who is your friend?"
+
+By some remarkable intuition my kinsman Teunis was prompted to advance at
+this. I introduced the two young men to each other, and they sauntered
+off, past where Sir John was still arguing with Cross, and into the outer
+hall. I stood watching them till they disappeared, then looking aimlessly
+at the people in front of me, who seemed to belong to some strange
+phantasmagoria.
+
+It was Daisy's voice which awakened me from this species of trance. She
+spoke from behind her fan, purposely avoiding looking up at me.
+
+"You are going to fight--you two!" she murmured.
+
+I could not answer her directly, and felt myself flushing with
+embarrassment. "He spoke in heat," I said, stumblingly. "Doubtless he will
+apologize--to you, at least."
+
+"You do not know him. He would have his tongue torn out before he would
+admit his wrong, or any sorrow for it."
+
+To this I could find no reply. It was on my tongue's end to say that men
+who had a pride in combining obstinacy with insolence must reap what they
+sow, but I wisely kept silence.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Promise me, Douw, that you will not fight. It chills my heart, even the
+thought of it. Let it pass. Go away now--anything but a quarrel! I
+beseech you!"
+
+"'Tis more easily said than done," I muttered back to her. "Men cannot
+slip out of du--out of quarrels as they may out of coats."
+
+"For my sake!" came the whisper, with a pleading quaver in it, from behind
+the feathers.
+
+"It is all on one side, Daisy," I protested. "I must be ridden over,
+insulted, scorned, flouted to my face--and pocket it all! That is a
+nigger's portion, not a gentleman's. You do not know what I have
+borne already."
+
+"Do I not? Ah, too well! For my sake, Douw, for the sake of our memories
+of the dear old home, I implore you to avoid an encounter. Will you
+not--for me?"
+
+"It makes a coward out of me! Every Tory in the two counties will cackle
+over the story that a Dutchman, a Whig, was affronted here under the
+Patroon's very roof, and dared not resent it."
+
+"How much do you value their words? Must a thing be true for them to say
+it? The real manhood is shown in the strength of restraint, not the
+weakness of yielding to the impulse of the moment. And you can be strong
+if you choose, Douw!"
+
+While I still pondered these words Teunis Van Hoorn returned to me, having
+finished his consultation with Watts, whom I now saw whispering to Sir
+John and the others who clustered about Cross.
+
+The doctor was in good spirits. He sidled up to me, uttering aloud some
+merry commonplace, and then adding, in a low tone:
+
+"I was a match for him. He insisted that they were the aggrieved party,
+and chose swords. I stuck to it that we occupied that position, and had
+the right to choose pistols. You are no Frenchman, to spit flesh with a
+wire; but you _can_ shoot, can't you? If we stand to our point, they
+must yield."
+
+I cast a swift glance toward the sweet, pleading face at my side, and made
+answer:
+
+"I will not fight!"
+
+My kinsman looked at me with surprise and vexation.
+
+"No," I went on, "it is not our way here. You have lived so long abroad
+that duelling seems a natural and proper thing. But we stay-at-homes no
+more recognize the right of these English fops to force their fighting
+customs upon us than we rush to tie our hair in queues because it is
+their fashion."
+
+I will not pretend that I was much in love with the line of action thus
+lamely defended. To the contrary, it seemed to me then a cowardly and
+unworthy course; but I had chosen it, and I could not retreat.
+
+There was upon the moment offered temptation enough to test my resolution
+sorely.
+
+Many of the ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let
+it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust
+upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson
+stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost our sole
+observers.
+
+Philip Cross shook himself loose from the restraining circle of friends,
+and strode toward me, his face glowing darkly with passion, and his
+hands clinched.
+
+"You run away, do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where
+you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?--here, where you stand!"
+
+"I hear you," I made answer, striving hard to keep my voice down and my
+resolution up. "Others hear you, too. There are ladies in the room. If you
+have any right to be among gentlemen, it is high time for you to show it.
+You are acting like a blackguard."
+
+"Hear the preaching Dutchman!" he called out, with a harsh, scornful
+laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his
+hiding-place behind the petticoats.--Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and
+I'll break that sword of yours over your back!"
+
+Where this all would have ended I cannot tell. My friends gathered around
+beside me, and at my back. Cross advanced a step or two nearer to me, his
+companions with him. I felt, rather than saw, the gestures preceding the
+drawing of swords. I cast a single glance toward the group of women across
+the room--who, huddled together, were gazing at us with pale faces and
+fixed eyes--and I dare say the purport of my glance was that I had borne
+all I could, and that the results were beyond my control--when suddenly
+there came an unlooked-for interruption.
+
+The dignified, sober figure of Abraham Ten Broeck appeared in our wrathful
+circle. Some one had doubtless told him, in the outer hall, of the
+quarrel, and he had come to interfere. A hush fell over us all at
+his advent.
+
+"What have we here, gentlemen?" asked the merchant, looking from one to
+another of our heated faces with a grave air of authority. "Are you well
+advised to hold discussions here, in what ought to be a pleasant and
+social company?"
+
+No ready answer was forthcoming. The quarrel was none of my manufacture,
+and it was not my business to explain it to him. The Tories were secretly
+disgusted, I fancy, with the personal aspects of the dispute, and had
+nothing to say. Only Cross, who unfortunately did not know the new-comer,
+and perhaps would not have altered his manner if he had known him, said
+uncivilly:
+
+"The matter concerns us alone, sir. It is no affair of outsiders."
+
+I saw the blood mount to Mr. Ten Broeck's dark cheeks, and the fire flash
+in his eyes. But the Dutch gentleman kept tight bit on his tongue
+and temper.
+
+"Perhaps I am not altogether an outsider, young sir," he replied, calmly.
+"It might be thought that I would have a right to civil answers here."
+
+"Who is he?" asked Cross, contemptuously turning his head toward Sir John.
+
+Mr. Ten Broeck took the reply upon himself. "I am the uncle and guardian
+of your boy-host," he said, quietly. "In a certain sense I am myself your
+host--though it may be an honor which I shall not enjoy again."
+
+There was a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to
+impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant,
+and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on
+the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the
+principals changed his posture with a sense of relief.
+
+Philip Cross presently went over to where the ladies stood, exchanged a
+few words with them, and then with his male friends left the room,
+affecting great composure and indifference. It was departing time; the
+outer hall was beginning to display cloaks, hoods, and tippets, and from
+without could be heard the voices of the negroes, bawling out demands for
+carriages.
+
+I had only a momentary chance of saying farewell to Daisy. Doubtless I
+ought to have held aloof from her altogether, but I felt that to be
+impossible. She gave me her hand, looking still very pale and distrait,
+and murmured only, "It was brave of you, Douw."
+
+I did not entirely agree with her, so I said in reply: "I hope you will
+be happy, dear girl; that I truly hope. Give my love and duty to Mr.
+Stewart, and--and if I may be of service to you, no matter in how exacting
+or how slight a matter, I pray you command me."
+
+We exchanged good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left
+me to join Lady Johnson and to depart with their company.
+
+Later, when I walked homeward with Teunis, sauntering in the moonlight, he
+imparted something to me which he had heard, in confidence of course, from
+one of the ladies who had formed the anxious little group that watched
+our quarrel.
+
+"After Ten Broeck came in, Cross went over to his wife, and brusquely said
+to her, in the hearing of her friends, that your acquaintance with her was
+an insult to him, and that he forbade her ever again holding converse
+with you!"
+
+We walked a considerable time in silence after this, and I will not essay
+to describe for you my thoughts. We had come into the shadow of the old
+Dutch church in the square, I know, before Teunis spoke again.
+
+"Be patient yet a little longer, Douw," he said. "The break must come soon
+now, and then we will drive all these insolent scoundrels before us
+into the sea!"
+
+I shook hands with him solemnly on this, as we parted.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+
+
+
+To pass from October, 1774, to mid-June of 1775--from the moonlit streets
+of sleeping Albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the Mohawk
+Valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. To
+us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully
+long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement.
+
+War was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister
+conditions. Dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting
+themselves in Parliament, at London, by declaring that the Americans were
+cowards and would not fight. We boasted little, but we knew ourselves
+better. There was as yet small talk of independence, of separation.
+Another year was to elapse before Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_ should
+flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us
+both our real goal and the way to attain it. But about fighting, we had
+resolved our purpose.
+
+We should have been slaves otherwise.
+
+Turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable
+at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now
+it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North--all tediously
+alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of
+determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. To get justice, or
+even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. They
+listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of
+officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too
+worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England--who lied us
+impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the
+musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we
+were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition;
+the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town
+to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched
+under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and
+stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the Crown
+authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest
+men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up
+our substance in wanton taxation.
+
+There had been a chance that the new Parliament, meeting for the first
+time in the January of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to
+honestly set matters right. We had appealed from Crown and Commons to the
+English people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. But
+the hope speedily fell to the ground. The English, with that strange
+rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds
+their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal
+courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the
+cart-tail.
+
+To this we said no!
+
+In Albany, on this day in the latter part of June, when the thread of the
+story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague,
+tidings. Following upon the blow struck at Concord in April, a host of
+armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were
+investing Boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the
+beleaguered British General Gage. A great battle had been fought near the
+town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. But it meant
+War, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of
+excited comment.
+
+The windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming
+sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. Men had
+gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the
+Berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the
+mountains of how the fight had gone. No one talked of anything else.
+Assuredly I too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and
+discuss the news from Boston, but that my old friend Major Jelles Fonda
+had come down from Caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence
+from the Mohawk Valley.
+
+How well I remember him still, the good, square-set, solid
+merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm,
+resourceful, masterful air! He sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the
+day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and
+deliberate whiffs of his pipe. I listened with growing interest, until at
+last I forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which
+before had so absorbed me. He had much to tell.
+
+More than a month before, the two contending factions had come to
+fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the Whigs in and in front of John
+Veeder's house, at Caughnawaga. They were to raise a liberty pole there,
+and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. While they were
+deliberating, up rides Guy Johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in
+the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage.
+Back of him rode a whole company of the Hall cabal--Sir John Johnson,
+Philip Cross, the Butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the
+meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed.
+Many of these were drunk. Colonel Guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and
+began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had
+summoned them thither. Young Jake Sammons, with the characteristic
+boldness of his family, stood up to the Indian superintendent and answered
+him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the Johnson men fell upon
+Jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. Some insisted that it
+was peppery Guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded
+riding-whip, but on this point Major Jelles was not clear.
+
+"But what were our people about, to let this happen?" I asked, with some
+heat.
+
+"To tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away.
+Only a few of us held our place. Our men were unarmed, for one thing.
+Moreover, they are in awe of the power of the Hall. The magistrates, the
+sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office
+in Tryon County--take orders from the Hall. You can't get people to forget
+that. Besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down."
+
+Major Jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed
+force on the side of the Johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper
+of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. Sir
+John had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the Hall, and his Roman
+Catholic Highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as
+a military body. All sorts of stories came down from Johnstown and up from
+Guy Park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their
+retainers. Peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were
+Philip Cross and Walter Butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with
+the most violent party of the Tories. To them, indeed, was directly
+traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the Valley tribes proved to have
+been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder Indians were to be
+called down from the headwaters of the Three Rivers, and from the Lake
+plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if
+rebellion was persisted in.
+
+"But they would never dare do that!" I cried rising to my feet.
+
+"Why not?" asked Jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "After all,
+that is their chief strength. Make no mistake! They are at work with the
+red-skins, poisoning them against us. Guy Johnson is savage at the
+mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at Guy Park,
+and he has already procured orders from London to remove Dominie Kirkland,
+the missionary who has kept the Oneidas heretofore friendly to us. That
+means--You can see as well as the rest of us what it means."
+
+"It means war in the Valley--fighting for your lives."
+
+"Well, let it! My customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. I will
+give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from
+the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this Johnson nonsense any
+longer. And my old father and my brothers say it with me. My brother Adam,
+he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work,
+his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple
+for gun-stocks, and making bullets. That reminds me--Guy Johnson took all
+the lead weights out of the windows at Guy Park, and hid them, to keep
+them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away."
+
+"Before he ran away? Who ran away?"
+
+"Why, Guy, of course," was the calm reply.
+
+I stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "You never mentioned
+this!" I managed to say at last.
+
+"I hadn't got to it yet," the Dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly.
+"You young people hurry one so."
+
+By degrees I obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had
+purposely come down, I believe, to tell me. As he progressed, my fancy ran
+before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great
+Hall on the hill which I knew so well.
+
+I needed not his assurances to believe that Molly Brant, who had come down
+from the upper Mohawk Castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred
+on all the rest into malevolent resolves.
+
+I could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the
+table where in Sir William's time she had been mistress, and now was but a
+visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. I could see her watching with
+silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, Sir John,
+Colonel Guy, the Butlers, Cross, and Claus, and then her own brother
+Joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her,
+engrafting upon his full wolf-totem Mohawk blood the restraints of tongue
+and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. No one of the males,
+Caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. Each
+in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to
+them meant London--would think of their acts. No one, not even Joseph
+Brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to
+wit: that the recalcitrant Valley should be swept as with a besom of fire
+and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. This, when
+it came her time, the Indian woman said for them frankly, and with
+scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. I could fancy
+her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away
+from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest
+the powers with which the king had intrusted them.
+
+It was not hard, either, to imagine young Walter Butler and Philip Cross
+rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot
+and fast upon the echo of Mistress Molly's contemptuous rebuke, should
+have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed
+all to the use of the Indians.
+
+So that day, just a week since, it had been settled that Colonel Guy and
+the two Butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a
+council near Fort Schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against
+their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they
+had departed. Guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great
+Sir William, she would be of use in the work; but Mrs. John Butler had
+gone to the Hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower
+Indian Castle.
+
+The two houses thus deserted--Guy Park and the Butlers' home on Switzer's
+Hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their
+contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in
+their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity,
+or hidden.
+
+"My brother Adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest Jelles
+Fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. So their thoughts were on bullets
+as well as his. He has his eye now on the church roof at home."
+
+Here was news indeed! There could be no pretence that the clandestine
+flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. To the
+contrary, Colonel Guy, as Indian superintendent, had fully five hundred
+fighting men, Indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. They
+had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to
+assist Sir John, Sheriff White, and their Tory minions to hold Tryon
+County in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood.
+
+We sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a
+situation. At last I said:
+
+"Can I do anything? You all must know up there that I am with you, heart
+and soul."
+
+Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.
+
+"Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve
+us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and
+to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use
+here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things
+would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson
+is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying
+to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts
+and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to
+advise you. What do you think?"
+
+While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major
+Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul
+never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with
+tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he
+could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of
+his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that
+story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of
+vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!
+
+An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.
+
+He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County
+part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.
+
+It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found
+how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital,
+tidings for the last.
+
+"Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention
+it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the
+Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he
+deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+
+
+
+There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry
+scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by
+this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome
+_ego_, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it
+essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be
+familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent
+enough as the tale unfolds.
+
+Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall
+at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be
+placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of
+the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and
+gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from
+the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom
+which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and
+warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as
+if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond
+its strength.
+
+Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled
+hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it
+was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these
+last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the
+erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone,
+the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair
+is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the
+neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face.
+The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the
+mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now
+to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still
+calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the
+querulous in tone.
+
+"I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is
+Philip."
+
+"Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays."
+
+Here the change _is_ in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy
+who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the
+other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the
+smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty
+efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take
+up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to
+emphasize her loneliness.
+
+"The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in
+comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders.
+"If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem
+home-like."
+
+The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no
+more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must
+be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a
+mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to
+them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday
+was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be.
+
+The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two.
+The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to
+accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this
+calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results
+without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two
+up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart
+beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the
+Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong
+ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see
+differently. And this was the saddest thing of all.
+
+Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his
+boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the
+two before the fire.
+
+"I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so
+uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?"
+
+"I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at
+the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers.
+He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He
+walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and
+neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair
+showed almost white--which both knew too well.
+
+"Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart.
+
+"There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all
+in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God!
+they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not
+whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!"
+
+Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held
+up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.
+
+"Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt,
+and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down
+from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would
+have none of her."
+
+"Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too,
+to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things
+will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful
+and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to
+God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!"
+
+Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift
+glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young
+wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
+Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:
+
+"Things are moving, you say. What is new?"
+
+"Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment,
+and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of
+milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will
+master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of
+rebellion!"
+
+"Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough,
+since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years
+younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of
+misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest
+enough, but they have small cunning."
+
+"That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We
+will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!"
+
+An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke,
+and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the
+stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over
+his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at
+bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries
+of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights
+lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it
+mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the
+prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his
+surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander,
+true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of
+thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly
+from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch
+were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing
+with types.
+
+"Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the
+tomahawk!"
+
+The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.
+
+"You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes,
+and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to
+interrogate her husband.
+
+He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed
+with his papers.
+
+After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet,
+walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.
+
+"I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting
+for me, and the evenings grow cold."
+
+"Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a
+perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever
+welcome here."
+
+"Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
+"But old bones are best couched at home."
+
+There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand
+affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.
+
+"I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I
+pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you,
+God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at
+which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day
+for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the
+counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words
+of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no
+good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first
+came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have
+known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push
+steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand
+its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
+Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err
+cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of
+the savages."
+
+"All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to
+these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man.
+
+"You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,"
+continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were
+too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley,
+of Belletre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you.
+Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk
+yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in
+terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world
+men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a
+willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is
+that you would do!"
+
+"It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot
+on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to
+fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I
+have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they
+deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you."
+
+"Go with them? Where are they going?"
+
+"Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego;
+perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and
+hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it
+really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that,
+you know."
+
+"And this flight is actually resolved upon?"
+
+"If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the
+Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They
+have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely
+pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at
+his command to shake my will."
+
+"Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr.
+Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive
+concert of thought.
+
+She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she
+had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her,
+she signified it not by glance or gesture.
+
+"No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged
+me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on
+Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming
+as possible."
+
+"Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon
+their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I
+have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he
+glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it
+_should_ be so little!"
+
+The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his
+papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts:
+
+"It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel
+scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to
+our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady
+and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to
+disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You
+yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by
+the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by
+those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now
+that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as
+well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany
+conspirators are pushing their schemes."
+
+"I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire
+to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon
+reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw
+regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany
+committee."
+
+Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture.
+Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who
+knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his
+manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke.
+
+"Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold
+regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy.
+Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked
+overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side
+and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other
+subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to
+recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second,
+and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to
+his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were
+pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!"
+
+The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first
+haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences
+followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now
+erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the
+shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young
+Mr. Cross full in the face.
+
+"Death of my life!" he stammered. "_You_ are saying these things to _me_!
+It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and _her_ son--the young man to
+whom I gave my soul's treasure!"
+
+Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling
+lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute
+the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What
+he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance
+came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then,
+seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously
+stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep
+his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room.
+
+When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned
+about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to
+be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling
+were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+
+
+
+"You are, then, not even a gentleman!"
+
+The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as
+husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could
+not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the
+mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the
+strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also
+affronted.
+
+Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her
+first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had
+discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered,
+acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the
+burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have
+been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her
+nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young
+Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her
+tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her
+the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance.
+
+He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the
+instinct of combat in his scowl.
+
+"Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for
+folly."
+
+"Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You
+should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and
+done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the
+moment pierced even his thick skin.
+
+"He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for
+his interest. I intended no offence."
+
+"Will you follow him, and say so?"
+
+"Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of
+mine."
+
+"Then _I_ will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!"
+
+The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the
+position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined
+and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom,
+was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough
+countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay.
+
+"Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is
+not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer."
+
+The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence,
+you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives,
+and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you
+like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer
+whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your
+tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman
+in Albany!"
+
+The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words
+did not come readily with which to repel it.
+
+"I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I
+have been badly reared for such purposes."
+
+She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn
+with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being
+with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection
+came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's
+strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now,
+and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but
+the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And
+then the softness came to her voice too.
+
+"How _can_ you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real
+self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old
+self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she
+was mistaken.
+
+"Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?"
+
+"Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for
+me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal.
+
+"I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing
+himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture
+upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but
+I am not Dutch, and I don't like it."
+
+She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in
+the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly
+or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the
+house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to
+take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly
+interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very
+hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its
+improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing
+him again, yet was it not right that she should do so?
+
+The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to
+draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a
+motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of
+the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the
+foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward,
+head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily:
+
+"Get away! When I want you, I'll call!"
+
+The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat
+in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife
+approached him, and stood at the back of his chair.
+
+"You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be
+some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves
+all this misery?"
+
+"What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of
+having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on
+the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At
+least once in a while he points my way."
+
+"Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me
+aright, seeing my errors?"
+
+"There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or
+that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but
+ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money,
+position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house
+of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
+Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans,
+gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty
+face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins
+gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and
+distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of
+mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and
+chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit
+me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass.
+She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on
+the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be
+the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like
+a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I
+might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission
+in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure
+and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'"
+
+"You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if
+only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is
+not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame."
+
+"Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as
+temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it."
+
+"What folly!"
+
+"Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--"
+
+"Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly
+again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain
+fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years
+has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the
+same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body
+into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you
+really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you
+accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but
+please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you
+could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy
+of a wife!"
+
+Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at
+her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.
+
+"There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not
+like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are
+thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing
+to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in
+my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal
+and my wife is a rebel."
+
+"Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
+Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only
+wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more
+than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me
+I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers
+and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood;
+but as to my having ever spoken--"
+
+"Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words.
+"I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a
+Dutch foundling!"
+
+She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it
+had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That
+it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he
+the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished
+sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.
+
+While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the
+bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth
+papers from its recesses with angry haste.
+
+"Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared.
+
+The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons
+was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half
+trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the
+cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most
+trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his
+black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored
+hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance
+at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting
+papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be
+a long one; it may not."
+
+"It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar.
+
+"Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals
+with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things
+I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have
+the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like,
+properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in
+the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
+When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters
+which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of
+the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when
+the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them
+saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead
+Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be
+ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then."
+
+The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.
+
+"Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked.
+
+"Damnation! No!" growled Philip.
+
+"_If you do not, they shall be thrown after you_!"
+
+It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to
+keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The
+words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers.
+There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near
+upon swooning to think at all.
+
+Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory
+was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and
+of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and
+fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the
+self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry,
+motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about
+her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already
+dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet
+hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else
+besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought.
+
+Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her,
+and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of
+packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two
+negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they
+had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door
+was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward
+the gulf.
+
+It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this
+melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted
+and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging
+before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless,
+hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought
+and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage
+across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder
+ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these
+vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had
+passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the
+approaching rest.
+
+Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate.
+The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to
+awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before,
+but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising
+zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing.
+
+"They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured.
+
+A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a
+swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting
+from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her.
+
+The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on
+the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up
+at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness
+of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips.
+
+"I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily.
+
+He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning.
+
+"I have no longer any other home," she added.
+
+She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and
+brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then
+fell inert.
+
+Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see
+Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form
+lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the
+world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+The Night Attack upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+
+
+
+Of these sad occurrences it was my fortune not to be informed for many
+months. In some senses this was a beneficent ignorance. Had I known that,
+under the dear old roof which so long sheltered me, Mr. Stewart was
+helplessly stricken with paralysis, and poor Daisy lay ill unto death with
+a brain malady, the knowledge must have gone far to unfit me for the work
+which was now given into my hands. And it was work of great magnitude and
+importance.
+
+Close upon the heels of the Bunker Hill intelligence came the news that a
+Continental army had been organized; that Colonel Washington of Virginia
+had been designated by Congress as its chief, and had started to assume
+command at Cambridge; and that our own Philip Schuyler was one of the four
+officers named at the same time as major-generals. There was great
+pleasure in Albany over the tidings; the patriot committee began to
+prepare for earnest action, and our Tory mayor, Abraham Cuyler,
+sagaciously betook himself off, ascending the Mohawk in a canoe, and
+making his way to Canada.
+
+Among the first wishes expressed by General Schuyler was one that I
+should assist and accompany him, and this, flattering enough in itself,
+was made delightful by the facts that my friend Peter Gansevoort was named
+as another aide, and that my kinsman Dr. Teunis was given a professional
+place in the general's camp family. We three went with him to the
+headquarters at Cambridge very shortly after, and thenceforward were too
+steadily engrossed with our novel duties to give much thought to
+home affairs.
+
+It was, indeed, a full seven months onward from the June of which I have
+written that my first information concerning the Cedars, and the dear folk
+within its walls, came to me in a letter from my mother. This letter found
+me, of all unlikely places in the world, lying in garrison on the frozen
+bank of the St. Lawrence--behind us the strange, unnatural silence of the
+northern waste of snow, before us the black, citadel-crowned,
+fire-spitting rock of Quebec.
+
+Again there presses upon me the temptation to put into this book the story
+of what I saw there while we were gathering our strength and resolution
+for the fatal assault. If I am not altogether proof against its wiles, at
+least no more shall be told of it than properly belongs here, insomuch as
+this is the relation of my life's romance.
+
+We had started in September with the expedition against Canada, while it
+was under the personal command of our general; and when his old sickness
+came unluckily upon him and forced his return, it was at his request that
+we still kept on, under his successor, General Richard Montgomery. It was
+the pleasanter course for us, both because we wanted to see fighting, and
+because Montgomery, as the son-in-law of Mr. Livingston, was known to us
+and was our friend. And so with him we saw the long siege of St. John's
+ended, and Chambly, and then Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, one by one
+submit, and the _habitants_ acclaim us their deliverers as we swept the
+country clean to the gates of Quebec.
+
+To this place we came in the first week of December, and found bold Arnold
+and his seven hundred scarecrows awaiting us. These men had been here for
+a month, yet had scarcely regained their strength from the horrible
+sufferings they encountered throughout their wilderness march. We were by
+this time not enamoured of campaigning in any large degree, from our own
+experience of it. Yet when we saw the men whom Arnold and Morgan had led
+through the trackless Kennebec forest, and heard them modestly tell the
+story of that great achievement--of their dreadful sustained battle with
+cold, exhaustion, famine, with whirling rapids, rivers choked with ice,
+and dangerous mountain precipices--we felt ashamed at having supposed we
+knew what soldiering was.
+
+Three weeks we lay waiting. Inside, clever Carleton was straining heaven
+and earth in his endeavor to strengthen his position; without, we could
+only wait. Those of us who were from the Albany and Mohawk country came to
+learn that some of our old Tory neighbors were within the walls, and the
+knowledge gave a new zest to our eager watchfulness.
+
+This, it should be said, was more eager than sanguine. It was evident from
+the outset that, in at least one respect, we had counted without our host.
+The French-Canadians were at heart on our side, perhaps, but they were not
+going to openly help us; and we had expected otherwise. Arnold himself,
+who as an old horse-dealer knew the country, had especially believed in
+their assistance and sympathy, and we had bills printed in the French
+language to distribute, calling upon them to rise and join us. That they
+did not do so was a grievous disappointment from the beginning.
+
+Yet we might have been warned of this. The common people were friendly to
+us--aided us privily when they could--but they were afraid of their
+seigneurs and cures. These gentry were our enemies for a good reason--in
+their eyes we were fighting New England's fight, and intolerant New
+England had only the year before bitterly protested to Parliament against
+the favor shown the Papist religion in Quebec. These seigneurs and priests
+stood together in a common interest. England had been shrewd enough to
+guarantee them their domains and revenues. Loyalty meant to them the
+security of their _rentes et dimes_, and they were not likely to risk
+these in an adventure with the Papist-hating Yankees. Hence they stood by
+England, and, what is more, held their people practically aloof from us.
+
+But even then we could have raised Canadian troops, if we had had the
+wherewithal to feed or clothe or arm them. But of this Congress had taken
+no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our
+clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our
+food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the
+most desperate assault of known warfare.
+
+The weeks went by swiftly enough. Much of the time I was with the
+commander at our headquarters in Holland House, and I grew vastly attached
+to the handsome, gracious, devoted young soldier. Brigadier-General
+Montgomery had not, perhaps, the breadth of character that made Schuyler
+so notable; which one of all his contemporaries, save Washington, for that
+matter, had? But he was very single-minded and honorable, and had much
+charm of manner. Often, during those weeks, he told me of his beautiful
+young wife, waiting for his return at their new home on the Hudson, and of
+his hope soon to be able to abandon the strife and unrest of war, and
+settle there in peace. Alas! it was not to be so.
+
+And then, again, we would adventure forth at night, when there was no
+moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered
+force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the
+ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots
+filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than
+the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon,
+and once the General had his horse killed under him.
+
+I should say that he was hardly hopeful of the result of the attack
+already determined upon. But it was the only thing possible to be done,
+and with all his soul and mind he was resolved to as nearly do it as
+might be.
+
+The night came, the last night but one of that eventful, momentous year
+1775. Men had passed each day for a week between our quarters and Colonel
+Arnold's at St. Roch, concerting arrangements. There were Frenchmen inside
+the town from whom we were promised aid. What we did not know was that
+there were other Frenchmen, in our camp, who advised Carleton of all our
+plans. The day and evening were spent in silent preparations for the
+surprise and assault--if so be it the snow-storm came which was agreed
+upon as the signal. Last words of counsel and instruction were spoken.
+Suppressed excitement reigned everywhere.
+
+The skies were clear and moonlit in the evening; now, about midnight, a
+damp, heavy snowfall began and a fierce wind arose. So much the better for
+us and our enterprise, we thought.
+
+We left Holland House some hours after midnight, without lights and on
+foot, and placed ourselves at the head of the three hundred and fifty men
+whom Colonel Campbell (not the Cherry Valley man, but a vain and cowardly
+creature from down the Hudson, recently retired from the British army)
+held in waiting for us. Noiselessly we descended from the heights, passed
+Wolfe's Cove, and gained the narrow road on the ledge under the mountain.
+
+The General and his aide, McPherson, trudged through the deep snow ahead
+of all, with Gansevoort, and me keeping up to them as well as we could.
+What with the very difficult walking, the wildness of the gale, and the
+necessity for silence, I do not remember that anything was said. We panted
+heavily, I know, and more than once had to stop while the slender and less
+eager carpenters who formed the van came up.
+
+It was close upon the fence of wooden pickets which stretched across the
+causeway at Cape Diamond that the last of these halts was made. Through
+the darkness, rendered doubly dense by the whirling snowflakes with which
+the wind lashed our faces, we could only vaguely discern the barrier and
+the outlines of the little block-house beyond it.
+
+"Here is our work!" whispered the General to the half-dozen nearest him,
+and pointing ahead with his gauntleted hand. "Once over this and into the
+guard-house, and we can never be flanked, whatever else betide."
+
+We tore furiously at the posts, even while he spoke--we four with our
+hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay
+a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep
+in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur
+from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's
+troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more
+pickets. Somebody--it may have been I--said, "Cowards!" Some one else,
+doubtless the General, said, "Forward!"
+
+Then the ground shook violently under our feet, a great bursting roar
+deafened us, and before a scythe-like sweep of fire we at the front
+tumbled and fell!
+
+I got to my feet again, but had lost both sword and pistol in the snow. I
+had been hit somewhere--it seemed in the side--but of that I scarcely
+thought. I heard sharp firing and the sound of oaths and groans all around
+me, so it behooved me to fight, too. There were dimly visible dark forms
+issuing from the guard-house, and wrestling or exchanging blows with other
+forms, now upright, now in the snow. Here and there a flash of fire from
+some gun or pistol gave an instant's light to this Stygian hurly-burly.
+
+A heavy man, coming from the door of the block-house, fired a pistol
+straight at me; the bullet seemed not to have struck me, and I leaped upon
+him before he could throw the weapon. We struggled fiercely backward
+toward the pickets, I tearing at him with all my might, and striving with
+tremendous effort to keep my wits as well as my strength about me, in
+order to save my life. Curiously enough, I found that the simplest
+wrestling tricks I tried I had not the power for; even in this swift
+minute, loss of blood was telling on me. A ferocious last effort I made to
+swing and hurl him, and, instead, went staggering down into the drift with
+him on top.
+
+As I strove still to turn, and lifted my head, a voice sounded close in my
+ear, "It's you, is it? Damn you!" and then a great mashing blow on my face
+ended my fight.
+
+Doubtless some reminiscence in that voice caused my mind to carry on the
+struggle in the second after sense had fled, for I thought we still were
+in the snow wrestling, only it was inside a mimic fort in the clearing
+around Mr. Stewart's old log-house, and I was a little boy in an apron,
+and my antagonist was a yellow-haired lad with hard fists, with which he
+beat me cruelly in the face--and so off into utter blackness and void
+of oblivion.
+
+One morning in the latter half of January, nearly three weeks after, I
+woke to consciousness again. Wholly innocent of the lapse of time, I
+seemed to be just awakening from the dream of the snow fort, and of my
+boyish fight with little Philip Cross. I smiled to myself as I thought of
+it, but even while I smiled the vague shadows of later happenings came
+over my mind. Little by little the outlines of that rough December night
+took shape in my puzzled wits.
+
+I had been wounded, evidently, and had been borne back to Holland House,
+for I recognized the room in which I lay. My right arm was in stiff
+splints; with the other hand I felt of my head and discovered that my hair
+had been cut close, and that my skull and face were fairly thatched with
+crossing strips of bandage. My chest, too, was girdled by similar
+medicated bands. My mental faculties moved very sedately, it seemed, and I
+had been pondering these phenomena for a long time when my cousin Dr.
+Teunis Van Hoorn came tip-toeing into the room.
+
+This worthy young man was sincerely delighted to find me come by my
+senses once more. In his joy he allowed me to talk and to listen more than
+was for my good, probably, for I had some bad days immediately following;
+but the relapse did not come before I had learned much that was gravely
+interesting.
+
+It is a story of sufficient sorrow and shame to American ears even
+now--this tale of how we failed to carry Quebec. Judge how grievously the
+recital fell upon my ears then, in the little barrack-chamber of Holland
+House, within hearing of the cannonade by which the farce of a siege was
+still maintained from day to day! Teunis told me how, by that first volley
+of grape at the guard-house, the brave and noble Montgomery had been
+instantly killed; how Arnold, forcing his way from the other direction at
+the head of his men, and being early shot in the leg, had fought and
+stormed like a wounded lion in the narrow Sault-au-Matelot; how he and the
+gallant Morgan had done more than their share in the temerarious
+adventure, and had held the town and citadel at their mercy if only the
+miserable Campbell had pushed forward after poor Montgomery fell, and gone
+on to meet those battling heroes in the Lower Town. But I have not the
+patience, even at this late day, to write about this melancholy and
+mortifying failure.
+
+Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman,
+and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right,
+and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the
+headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken
+prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still
+keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our
+operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance
+among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to
+prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that
+when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw
+in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up.
+
+All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as
+if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did
+it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us.
+
+It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared
+that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at
+the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my
+ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm.
+They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which
+was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into
+an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed
+fist or a pistol-butt.
+
+"Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some
+of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and
+McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he
+and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels.
+You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with
+the rest, next morning."
+
+"Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?"
+
+"Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a
+colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are
+to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to
+travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if
+you please."
+
+"I have been dangerously ill, have I not?"
+
+"Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after
+the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody
+must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these,
+and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever.
+But I never feared for you."
+
+Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided
+to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that
+confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a
+week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a _son marquee_.
+But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that
+encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection.
+Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once
+it came to me.
+
+"Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who
+broke my head with his pistol-butt?"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for
+my confidence.
+
+"Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that
+gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into
+fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your
+whole carcass!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+
+
+
+For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was
+nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious
+slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it
+became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my
+progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have
+come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and
+every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of
+what use is all this now, alas!"
+
+These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came
+in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing
+the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with
+re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many
+letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The
+physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin
+relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them.
+
+One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of
+the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English
+trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease
+concerning what remained of its interests.
+
+The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat,
+painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in
+no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document,
+which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame
+Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not
+inherited by her son.
+
+"_January 9,_ A. D. 1776.
+
+"Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most
+part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen
+you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you
+no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to
+be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a
+God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I
+surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do
+not reproach you.
+
+"The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars,
+was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was
+both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour
+with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the
+Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being
+dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in
+the way, and where others can help him to weep.
+
+"When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been
+deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with
+paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The
+burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it,
+but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her
+fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his
+wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful
+belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her
+from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal
+named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels,
+essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms
+that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant
+from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained
+nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at
+best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence.
+
+"Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief,
+and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign
+matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were
+still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I
+knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying
+that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out
+of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the
+matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads
+are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I
+was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as
+sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go
+her own gait, and so she may for all of me.
+
+"She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work
+when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a
+worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck
+of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying
+that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame
+Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my
+company was not desired longer.
+
+"I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry
+other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the
+Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If
+the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be
+peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all
+say matters will be worse before they mend.
+
+"Affectionately, your mother,
+
+"Katharine Mauverensen."
+
+As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated
+and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of
+Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to
+laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of
+my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its
+humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no
+more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided
+always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for
+everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing
+in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done
+for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the
+moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their
+own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing
+was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how
+she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to
+me, unconsciously revealing her pique.
+
+Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her,
+and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars
+since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a
+fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants;
+she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and
+foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a
+large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the
+fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and
+fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her
+bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring.
+
+From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day
+counts now. The sooner I get home the better."
+
+"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to
+Sorel to-morrow morning."
+
+"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"
+
+"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves
+are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion,
+like you, I should fear nothing."
+
+"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means
+of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my
+restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I
+gave him my mother's letter.
+
+My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient
+details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
+allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
+over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
+whistle softly.
+
+"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"
+
+"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
+great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
+his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
+credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
+potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
+much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
+too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
+God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"
+
+I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
+upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.
+
+"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
+seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
+from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
+doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
+Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
+well as fast as you like, and we will be off."
+
+This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
+judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
+Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
+accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his
+arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From
+our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of
+many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter
+jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of
+turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense
+of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and
+that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was
+impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small
+disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and
+attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled
+districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt
+that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for
+their courtesies.
+
+Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had
+evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it
+was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy
+preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General
+Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full
+fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he
+had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and
+difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with
+books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during
+my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the
+General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy.
+
+But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole
+spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with
+anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied
+and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his
+case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring
+illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that
+it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home.
+It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was
+really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk
+duty at such a time.
+
+But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed
+that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one
+morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform
+with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he
+called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans:
+
+"John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his
+Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came
+down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the
+woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month
+much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead
+near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots
+day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue
+for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who
+followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington
+is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no
+reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to
+send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the
+thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs
+them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and
+all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the
+neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest.
+
+"You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for
+you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached
+to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go
+with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near
+place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You
+need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you.
+But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative
+in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the
+prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further."
+
+When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+
+
+
+I rode beside Colonel Elias Dayton one forenoon some ten days later, up
+the Valley road, my pulses beating fast at the growing familiarity of the
+scene before us. We had crossed the Chuctenunda Creek, and were within
+sight of the gray walls of Guy Park. Beyond rose the hills behind which
+lay Fort Johnson. I was on the very threshold of my boyhood's
+playfield--within a short hour's walk of my boyhood's home.
+
+The air was full of sounds. Birds sang with merry discordance all through
+the thicket to our right, flitting among the pale green tangle of spring's
+foliage. The May sunshine had lured forth some pioneer locusts, whose
+shrill cries came from who could tell where--the tall swale-grass on the
+river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown
+broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the
+squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers
+along the willow-fringed water--the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad
+small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears
+took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of
+armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road before us, behind us,
+at our side.
+
+For my second return to the Valley was at the head of troops, bringing
+violence, perhaps bloodshed, in their train. I could not but contrast it
+in my mind with that other home-coming, four years before, when I sat
+turned to look eastward in the bow of Enoch's boat, and every soft dip of
+the oars timed the glad carol in my heart of home and friends--and the
+sweet maid I loved. I was so happy then!--and now, coming from the other
+direction, with suggestions of force and cruel purposes in every echo of
+our soldiers' tread, I was, to tell the plain truth, very
+miserable withal.
+
+My talk with Colonel Dayton had, in a way, contributed to this gloomy
+feeling. We had, from choice, ridden side by side for the better part of
+two days, and, for very need of confiding in some one, I had talked with
+him concerning my affairs more freely than was my wont. This was the
+easier, because he was a contemplative, serious, and sensible man, whose
+words and manner created confidence. Moreover, he was neither Dutchman nor
+Yankee, but a native Jerseyman, and so considered my story from an equable
+and fair point of view, without bias.
+
+It was, indeed, passing strange that this man, on his way to seize or
+crush the Johnson clique, as the case might be, should have been the one
+to first arouse in my mind the idea that, after all, the Tories had their
+good side, and were doing what to them seemed right, at tremendous cost
+and sacrifice to themselves. I had been telling him what a ruffian was
+Philip Cross, and what grounds I had for hating him, and despitefully
+describing the other chief Tories of the district. He said in reply,
+I remember:
+
+"You seem to miss the sad phase of all this, my friend. Your young blood
+feels only the partisan promptings of dislike. Some day--soon, perhaps--
+you will all at once find this youthful heat gone; you will begin to walk
+around men and things, so to speak, and study them from all sides. This
+stage comes to every sober mind; it will come to you. Then you will
+realize that this baronet up yonder is, from his own stand-point, a
+chivalrous, gallant loyal gentleman, who imperils estates, power, peace,
+almost life itself, rather than do what he holds to be weak or wrong. Why,
+take even this enemy of yours, this Cross. He was one of the notables of
+these parts--rich, popular, influential; he led a life of utmost luxury
+and pleasure. All this he has exchanged for the rough work of a soldier,
+with its privations, cold, fatigue, and the risk of death. Ask yourself
+why he did it."
+
+"I see what you would enforce," I said. "Your meaning is that these men,
+as well as our side, think the right is theirs."
+
+"Precisely. They have inherited certain ideas. We disagree with them; we
+deem it our duty to silence them, fight them, drive them out of the
+country, and, with God's help, we will do it. But let us do this with our
+eyes open, and with the understanding that they are not necessarily
+scoundrels and heathen because they fail to see things as we see them."
+
+"But you would not defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages
+against their neighbors--against helpless women and children. That must be
+heathenish to any mind."
+
+"Defend it? No! I do not defend any acts of theirs. Rid your mind of the
+idea that because a man tries to understand a thing he therefore defends
+it. But I can see how they would defend it to their own consciences--just
+as these thrifty Whig farmers hereabout explain in their own minds as
+patriotic and public-spirited their itching to get hold of Johnson's
+Manor. Try and look at things in this light. Good and bad are relative
+terms; nothing is positively and unchangeably evil. Each group of men has
+its own little world of reasons and motives, its own atmosphere, its own
+standard of right and wrong. If you shut your eyes, and condemn or praise
+these wholly, without first striving to comprehend them, you may or may
+not do mischief to them; you assuredly injure yourself."
+
+Thus, and at great length, spoke the philosophical colonel. I could not
+help suspecting that he had too open a mind to be a very valuable fighter,
+and, indeed, this proved to be true. He subsequently built some good and
+serviceable forts along the Mohawk, one of which to this day bears his
+name, but he attained no distinction as a soldier in the field.
+
+But, none the less, his words impressed me greatly. What he said had never
+been put to me in clear form before, and at twenty-seven a man's mind is
+in that receptive frame, trembling upon the verge of the meditative
+stage, when the presentation of new ideas like these often marks a
+distinct turn in the progress and direction of his thoughts. It seems
+strange to confess it, but I still look back to that May day of 1776 as
+the date of my first notion that there could be anything admirable in
+my enemies.
+
+At the time, these new views and the tone of our talk helped to disquiet
+me. The swinging lines of shoulders, the tramp! tramp! in the mud, the
+sight of the guns and swords about me, were all depressing. They seemed to
+give a sinister significance to my return. It was my home, the dearest
+spot on earth--this smiling, peaceful, sunlit Mohawk Valley--and I was
+entering it with soldiers whose mission was to seize and despoil the son
+of my boyhood's friend, Sir William. More than one of my old play-mates,
+now grown to man's estate, would note with despair our approach, and curse
+me for being of it. The lady of Johnson Hall, to whom all this would be
+horrible nigh unto death, was a close, warm friend of Daisy's. So my
+thoughts ran gloomily, and I had no joy in any of the now familiar sights
+around me.
+
+The march up from Schenectady had been a most wearisome one for the men,
+owing to the miserable condition of the road, never over-smooth and now
+rendered doubly bad and difficult by the spring freshets and the oozing
+frost. When we reached the pleasant little hollow in which Fort Johnson
+nestles, a halt was accordingly ordered, and the tired soldiers prepared
+to refresh themselves with food by the banks of the creek. It was now
+afternoon; we were distant but a short mile from the Cedars, and I could
+not abide the thought of lingering here, to no purpose, so close to the
+goal of all my longings. I therefore exchanged some plans and suggestions
+with Colonel Dayton and his companion Judge Duer, who represented the
+civil law in the expedition, and so clapped spurs and dashed forward
+up the road.
+
+"It seems ten years, not four, since I was last here," I was saying to
+Daisy half an hour later, and unconsciously framing in words the thoughts
+which her face suggested.
+
+I know not how to describe the changes which this lapse of time had
+wrought upon her countenance and carriage. In the more obvious, outward
+sense, it had scarcely aged her. She was now twenty-three years of age,
+and I doubt a stranger would have deemed her older. Yet, looking upon her
+and listening to her, I seemed to feel that, instead of being four years
+her senior, I was in truth the younger of the two. The old buoyant,
+girlish air was all gone, for one thing. She spoke now with gentle,
+sweet-toned gravity; and her eyes, frankly meeting mine as of old, had in
+their glance a soft, reposeful dignity which was new to me.
+
+Almost another Daisy, too, she seemed in face. It was the woman in her
+features, I dare say, which disconcerted me. I had expected changes,
+perhaps, but not upon these lines. She had been the prettiest maiden of
+the Valley, beyond all others. She was not pretty now, I should say, but
+she _was_ beautiful--somewhat pallid, yet not to give an air of unhealth;
+the delicate chiselling of features yielded now not merely the pleasure
+of regularity, but the subtler charm of sensitive, thoughtful character.
+The eyes and hair seemed a deeper hazel, a darker brown, than they had
+been. The lips had lost some, thing of their childish curve, and met each
+other in a straight line--fairer than ever, I thought, because more firm.
+
+I am striving now, you see, against great odds, to revive in words the
+impressions of difference which came to me in those first hours, as I
+scanned her face. They furnish forth no real portrait of the dear lady:
+how could I hope they should? But they help to define, even if dimly, the
+changes toward strength and self-control I found in her.
+
+I was, indeed, all unprepared for what awaited me here at the Cedars. My
+heart had been torn by all manner of anxieties and concern. I had hastened
+forward, convinced that my aid and protection were direly needed. I sat
+now, almost embarrassed, digesting the fact that the fortunes of the
+Cedars were in sufficient and capable hands.
+
+Mr. Stewart's condition was in truth sad enough. He had greeted me with
+such cordiality and clear-wittedness of utterance and manner that at first
+I fancied his misfortunes to have been exaggerated in my mother's letter.
+His conversation for a moment or two was also coherent and timely. But his
+mind was prone to wander mysteriously. He presently said: "Assuredly I
+taught you to shave with both hands. I knew I could not be mistaken." I
+stole a glance toward Daisy at this, and her answering nod showed me the
+whole case. It was after old Eli had come in and wheeled Mr. Stewart in
+his big chair out into the garden, that I spoke to Daisy of the
+differences time had wrought.
+
+"Ay," she said, "it must be sadly apparent to you--the change in
+everything."
+
+How should I approach the subject--the one thing of which I knew we were
+both thinking? There seemed a wall between us. She had been unaffectedly
+glad to see me; had, for the instant, I fancied, thought to offer me her
+cheek to kiss--yet was, with it all, so self-possessed and reserved that I
+shrank from touching upon her trouble.
+
+"Perhaps not everything is sad," I made answer, falteringly. "Poor Mr.
+Stewart--that is indeed mournful; but, on the other hand--" I broke
+off abruptly.
+
+"On the other hand," she took up my words calmly, "you are thinking that I
+am advantaged by Philip's departure."
+
+My face must have showed that I could not deny it.
+
+"In some respects," she went on, "yes; in others, no. I am glad to be able
+to speak freely to you, Douw, for you are nearest to me of all that are
+left. I do not altogether know my own mind; for that matter, does any one?
+The Philip to whom I gave my heart and whom I married is one person; the
+Philip who trampled on the heart and fled his home seems quite another and
+a different man. I hesitate between the two sometimes. I cannot always say
+to myself: 'The first was all fancy; the second is the reality.' Rather,
+they blend themselves in my mind, and I seem to see the fond lover
+remaining still the good husband, if only I had had the knowledge and
+tenderness to keep him so!"
+
+"In what are you to be reproached, Daisy?" I said this somewhat testily,
+for the self-accusation nettled me.
+
+"It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom
+from the beginning."
+
+"It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with
+melancholy conviction.
+
+"Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My
+heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for
+finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest. I
+dreamed to be called 'My lady,' too, in good time. I forgot that I came
+from the poor people, and that I belonged to them. So well and truly did I
+forget this that the fact struck me like a whip when--when it was brought
+to my notice."
+
+"He taunted you with it, then!" I burst forth, my mind working quickly for
+once.
+
+She made no answer for the time, but rose from her chair and looked out
+upon the group in the garden. From the open door she saw the van of
+Dayton's soldiers trudging up the Valley road. I had previously told her
+of their mission and my business.
+
+"Poor Lady Johnson," she said, resting her head against her hand on the
+door-frame, and looking upon the advancing troops with a weary expression
+of face. "Her trouble is coming--mine is past." Then, after a pause:
+"Will they be harsh with Sir John, think you? I trust not. They have both
+been kind to me since--since Philip went. Sir John is not bad at heart,
+Douw, believe me. You twain never liked each other, I know. He is a bitter
+man with those who are against him, but his heart is good if you touch
+it aright."
+
+I had not much to say to this. "I am glad he was good to you," I managed
+to utter, not over-graciously, I fear.
+
+The troops went by, with no sound of drums now, lest an alarm be raised
+prematurely. We watched them pass in silence, and soon after I took my
+leave for the day, saying that I would go up to see the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, and cross the river to my mother's home, and would return
+next morning. We shook hands at parting, almost with constraint.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+
+
+
+Early the next day, which was May 20th, we heard to our surprise and
+consternation that on the preceding afternoon, almost as Colonel Dayton
+and his soldiers were entering Johnstown, Sir John and the bulk of his
+Highlanders and sympathizers, to the number of one hundred and thirty, had
+privately taken to the woods at the north of the Hall, and struck out
+for Canada.
+
+Over six weeks elapsed before we learned definitely that the baronet and
+his companions had traversed the whole wilderness in safety and reached
+Montreal, which now was once more in British hands--our ill-starred Quebec
+expedition having finally quitted Canada earlier in the month. We could
+understand the stories of Sir John's travail and privations, for the snow
+was not yet out of the Adirondack trails, and few of his company were
+skilled in woodmen's craft. But they did accomplish the journey, and that
+in nineteen days.
+
+I, for one, was not very much grieved at Johnson's escape, for his
+imprisonment would have been an embarrassment rather than a service to us.
+But Colonel Dayton was deeply chagrined at finding the bird flown, and I
+fear that in the first hours of his discomfiture he may have forgotten
+some of his philosophical toleration for Tories in general. He had,
+moreover, the delicate question on his hands of what to do with Lady
+Johnson. Neither Judge Duer nor I could advise him, and so everything was
+held in suspense for the better part of a week, until General Schuyler's
+decision could be had.
+
+Meanwhile my time was fairly occupied in the fulfilment of matters
+intrusted to me by the General. I had to visit Colonel Herkimer at his
+home below Little Falls, and talk with him about the disagreeable fact
+that his brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, had deserted the militia command
+given him by the Whigs and fled to Canada. The stout old German was free
+to denounce his brother, however, and I liked the looks and blunt speech
+of Peter Bellinger, who had been made colonel of the deserted battalion of
+German Flatts. There were also conversations to be had with Colonel Klock,
+and Ebenezer Cox, and the Fondas, at their several homes, and a day to
+spend with my friend John Frey, now sheriff in place of the Tory White. It
+thus happened that I saw very little of the people at the Cedars, and had
+no real talk again with Daisy, until a full week had passed.
+
+It was a cool, overcast forenoon when I alighted next at the familiar
+gate, and gave my horse into Tulp's charge. The boy, though greatly
+rejoiced to see me back again, had developed a curious taciturnity in
+these latter years--since his accident, in fact--and no longer shouted out
+the news to me at sight. Hence I had to ask him, as I neared the door,
+what strange carriage was that in the yard beyond, and why it was there.
+As I spoke, a couple of men lounged in view from the rear of the house,
+and I recognized them as of Dayton's command. Tulp explained that Lady
+Johnson was being taken away, and that she had tarried here to rest on
+her journey.
+
+If I had known this at the gate, I doubt I should have stopped at all; but
+I had been seen from the window, and it was too late now to turn about. So
+I entered, much wishing that I had left off my uniform, or, still better,
+that I had stayed away altogether.
+
+There were present in the great room Daisy, Lady Johnson, a young lady who
+was her sister, two children--and a man in civilian's garb, with some few
+military touches, such as a belt and sword and a cockade, who sat by the
+window, his knees impudently spread apart and his hat on his head. I
+looked at this fellow in indignant inquiry.
+
+Daisy came eagerly to me, with an explanation on her lips:
+
+"It is the officer who is to take Lady Johnson to Albany. He insists upon
+forcing his presence upon us, and will not suffer us to be alone together
+in any room in the house."
+
+"Who are you?--and off with your hat!" I said to the man, sharply.
+
+My uniform was of service, after all. He looked me over, and evidently
+remembered having seen me with his colonel, for he stood up and took off
+his hat. "I am a lieutenant of the Connecticut line," he said, in a
+Yankee snarl, "and I am doing my duty."
+
+"I am a major in the Continental line, and I should be doing _my_ duty if
+I sent you back in irons to your colonel," I answered. "Get out of here,
+what time Lady Johnson is to remain, and leave these ladies to
+themselves!"
+
+He was clearly in two minds about obeying me, and I fancy it was my
+superior size rather than my rank that induced him to go, which he did in
+as disagreeable a fashion as possible. I made my bow to Lady Johnson, and
+said something about being glad that I had come, if I had been of use.
+
+She, poor young woman, was in a sad state of nervous excitement, what with
+her delicate condition and the distressing circumstances of the past week.
+She was, moreover, a very beautiful creature, naturally of soft and
+refined manners, and this made me the readier to overlook the way in which
+she met my kindly meant phrases.
+
+"I marvel that you are not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly,
+"to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that
+man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of
+calling such low fellows officers, or consorting with them!"
+
+I answered as gently as I could that, unfortunately, there were many such
+ill-conditioned men in every service, and pointed out that the man, by his
+speech, was a New Englander.
+
+"And who fetched them into this province, I should like to know!"
+
+Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hold a political discussion
+with this poor troubled wife, who saw her husband's peril, her own plight,
+and the prospective birth of her first child in captivity constantly
+before her eyes! So I strove to bring the talk upon other grounds, but not
+with much success. She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a
+fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady
+Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather
+those of her husband. She seemed not to have very clear notions of what
+the trouble was all about, but ascribed it loosely, I gathered, to the
+jealousy of Philip Livingston, who was vexed that the Scotch did not
+settle upon his patent instead of on Sir John's land, and to the malice of
+General Schuyler, whose feud with the Johnsons was notorious.
+
+"And to think, too," she added, "that Mr. Schuyler's mother and my
+mother's mother were sisters! A very pleasant and valuable cousin he is,
+to be sure! Driving my husband off into the forest to perhaps die of
+hunger, and dragging me down to Albany, in my condition, and thrusting a
+low Connecticut cobbler into my carriage with me! If my sickness overtakes
+me on the road, and I die, my blood will be on the head of Philip
+Schuyler."
+
+I read in Daisy's eyes a way out of this painful conversation, and so
+said: "Lady Johnson, it will perhaps render your journey less harrowing if
+I have some talk with this officer who is your escort. Let me leave you
+women-folk together here in peace, the while"--and went out into the
+garden again.
+
+I found the lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping
+in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some
+private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed
+out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been,
+through no fault of her own, nurtured in aristocratic ideas and ways; that
+those of whatever party who knew her well most heartily esteemed her; and
+that, moreover, she was nearly related by blood to General Schuyler--he
+professed himself ready to behave toward her with more politeness.
+
+The trouble with him really lay in his abiding belief that people
+underestimated his importance, and hence he sought to magnify his position
+in their eyes by insolent demeanor. Therein I discerned the true Yankee.
+
+That the men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would
+be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome,
+intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during
+the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how
+their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened
+poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too,
+of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices
+against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So
+mischievous did this attitude become at last--when old General Wooster
+came to us with his Connecticut troops, and these set themselves up to be
+independent of all our plans or rules, refusing even to mess with the
+others or to touch Continental provisions and munitions--that Congress had
+to interfere and put them sharply back into their proper places.
+Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and men from the Carolinas will
+bear me out in saying these things about the New England soldiery. I speak
+not in blame or bitterness. The truth is that they were too much akin in
+blood and conceit to the English not to have in themselves many of the
+disagreeable qualities which had impelled us all to revolt against
+British rule.
+
+When the lieutenant had ordered the horses to be brought out for a start,
+I went back into the house. The women had been weeping, I could see. Lady
+Johnson had softened in her mood toward me, and spoke now some gentle
+words of thanks for the little I had done. When I told her, in turn, that
+her escort would henceforth be more considerate in his conduct toward her,
+she was for a moment pleased, but then tears filled her eyes at the
+thoughts of the journey before her.
+
+"When I am out of sight of this house," she said, sadly, "it will seem as
+if my last friend had been left behind. Why could they not have left me at
+the Hall? I gave them the keys; I yielded up everything! What harm could I
+have done them--remaining there? I had no wish to visit my relatives in
+Albany! It is a trick--a device! I doubt I shall ever lay eyes on my dear
+home again."
+
+And, poor lady, she never did.
+
+We strove to speak words of comfort to her, but they came but feebly, and
+could not have consoled her much. When the lieutenant opened the door, the
+women made a tearful adieu, with sobs and kisses upon which I could not
+bear to look. Lady Johnson shook hands with me, still with a pathetic
+quivering of the lips. But then in an instant she straightened herself to
+her full height, bit her lips tight, and walked proudly past the obnoxious
+escort down the path to the carriage, followed by her weeping sister and
+the two big-eyed wondering children.
+
+"Will she ever come back?" said Daisy, half in inquiry, half in despairing
+exclamation, as we saw the last of the carriage and its guard. "How will
+it all end, Douw?"
+
+"Who can foresee?" I answered. "It is war now, at last, war open and
+desperate. I can see no peaceful way out of it. These aristocratic
+landlords, these Johnsons, Butlers, Phillipses, De Lanceys, and the rest,
+will not give up their estates without a hard fight for them. Of that you
+may be sure. _They_ will come back, if their wives do not, and all that
+they can do, backed by England, to regain their positions, will be done.
+They may win, and if they do, it will be our necks that will be put into
+the yoke--or the halter. At all events, it has gone too far to be patched
+over now. We can only stand up and fight as stoutly as we may, and leave
+the rest to fate."
+
+"And it really was necessary to fight--I suppose it could not have been in
+reason avoided?"
+
+"They would have it so. They clung to the faith that they were by right
+the masters here, and we the slaves, and so infatuated were they that they
+brought in English troops and force to back them up. There was no
+alternative but to fight. Would you have had me on the other side--on the
+English side, Daisy?"
+
+"Oh, no, Douw," she answered, in a clear voice. "If war there must be,
+why, of course, the side of my people is my side."
+
+I was not surprised at this, but I said, "You speak of your people,
+Daisy--but surely mere birth does not count for more than one's whole
+training afterward, and you have been bred among another class altogether.
+Why, I should think nine out of every ten of your friends here in the
+Mohawk district must be Tories."
+
+"Not so great a proportion as that," she went on, with a faint smile upon
+her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. "You do not know the value of
+these 'friends,' as you call them, as closely as I do. Never have they
+forgotten on their side, even if I did on mine, that my parents were
+Palatine peasants. And you speak of my being bred among them! In what way
+more than you were? Was I not brought up side by side with you? Was there
+any difference in our rearing, in our daily life until--until you left us?
+Why should I not be a patriot, sir, as well as you?"
+
+She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it. We both
+were thinking, I felt, of the dear old days gone by, and of the melancholy
+fate which clouded over and darkened those days, and drove us apart.
+
+We still stood by the open door, whence we had watched the carriage
+disappear. After some seconds of silence I essayed to bring back the
+conversation to Lady Johnson, and talked of her narrow, ill-informed,
+purely one-sided way of regarding the troubles, and of how impossible it
+was that the class to which she belonged, no matter how amiable and good
+they might be, could ever adapt themselves to the enlarging social
+conditions of this new country.
+
+While I talked, there burst forth suddenly the racket of fifes and drums
+in the road. Some militia companies were marching past on their way to
+join Colonel Dayton's force. We stood and watched these go by, and in the
+noise that they made we failed to hear Mr. Stewart's tottering footsteps
+behind us.
+
+The din of the drums had called him out of his lethargy, and he came
+forward to watch the yeoman-soldiery.
+
+"They march badly--badly," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with
+his hand. "I do not know the uniform. But I have been away so long, and
+everything is changed since the King of Prussia began his wars. Yet I am
+happier here as I am--far happier with my fields, and my freedom, and my
+children."
+
+He had spoken in the tone, half-conversational, half-dreamy, which of late
+strangely marked most of his speech. He turned now and looked at us; a
+pleasant change came over his wan face, and he smiled upon us with a
+curious reflection of the old fond look.
+
+"You are good children," he said; "you shall be married in due time, and
+come after me when I am gone. There will be no handsomer, happier twain in
+the province."
+
+Daisy flushed crimson and looked pained at the old gentleman's childish
+babbling, and I made haste to get away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles.
+
+
+
+A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of
+unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business
+to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and
+encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice
+which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to
+time, assurance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler,
+and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these
+pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole
+Continental service no more unenviable post than mine.
+
+I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of
+fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the
+satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in
+which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the
+most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen
+Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing;
+but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning
+powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be
+posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly
+peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection.
+
+I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all
+the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley
+neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see
+now that they were not altogether without excuse.
+
+The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No
+sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental
+independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the
+declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden
+halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had
+been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the
+magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in
+New York, General Washington could not hold his own, and Congress lost the
+nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service,
+disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force
+became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and
+almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming
+numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally
+lamentable.
+
+There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift
+strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud
+which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening,
+before spring came.
+
+The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and
+intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side
+this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money,
+without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in
+their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and
+resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence
+and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German
+auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispassionately these two opposing
+forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General
+Washington would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London.
+
+I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or
+not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me
+in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was,
+but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for
+rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of
+1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no
+visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending
+danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month.
+I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my
+bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an
+irritable mind.
+
+The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small
+outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up
+communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the
+time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of
+disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a
+somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress.
+Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding
+them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim
+their sails that they should ship no water whichever way the wind blew.
+
+Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people
+had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Washington evacuated
+Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was
+wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively,
+then with less concealment, to drink the King's health.
+
+Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower
+district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all
+east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga.
+They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights
+to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British
+color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the
+county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig
+sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories,
+confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time passed, the dry-rot of
+doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that
+nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from
+home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and
+scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the
+other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King.
+
+It was my function to watch this shifting public opinion, to sway it where
+I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been
+conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I
+turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their
+sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with
+intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of
+promises to speedily glut the passions of war, circulated stealthily all
+about us. How it came, how it was passed from hearth to hearth, defied our
+penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and
+strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens.
+
+For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so
+long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the
+Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was
+more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of
+these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others
+flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that
+the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages
+to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly,
+over our heads.
+
+And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and
+selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and
+turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke.
+
+Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us
+if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to
+Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and
+patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of
+Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very
+gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted.
+
+It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that
+gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story
+was forged.
+
+Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Washington's call
+for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his
+poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York.
+The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in,
+and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told.
+Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New
+York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the
+Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an
+auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of
+our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once
+this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared
+not think!
+
+I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To
+comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter,
+but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife.
+Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this
+horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New
+England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a
+fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's
+pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the
+militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by
+suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and
+means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he,
+with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud
+just then.
+
+I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep,
+for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud
+pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and
+the messenger had thus found me out promptly.
+
+Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in
+response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on
+some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered
+from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could
+tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had
+been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see
+him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my
+sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous.
+
+Daylight broke before we crossed the river, and the sunrise gun sounded as
+we rode up into the court-house square at Johnstown. Soldiers were already
+to be seen moving about outside the block-houses at the corners of the
+palisade which, since Sir John's flight, had been built around the jail.
+Our coming seemed to be expected, for one of the soldiers told us to wait
+while he went inside, and after a few minutes John Frey came out, rubbing
+his eyes. As I dismounted, he briefly explained matters to me.
+
+It seemed that a Tory spy had made his way in from the woods, had
+delivered letters both at Cairncross and at the Cedars, and had then
+started to return, but by the vigilance of one of the Vrooman boys had
+been headed off and taken.
+
+"He is as close as the bark on a beech-tree," concluded the sheriff. "We
+could get nothing out of him. Even when I told him he would be hanged this
+morning after breakfast, he did not change color. He only said that if
+this was the case he would like first to see you; it seems he knows you,
+and has some information for you--probably about Philip Cross's wife.
+Perhaps he will tell _you_ what was in the letter he brought to her."
+
+It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my
+being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy
+sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy.
+
+"All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail.
+
+When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our
+interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the
+shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to
+accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at
+our presence.
+
+"Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as
+freely as the manacles would admit.
+
+I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded
+neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the
+open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as
+leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on
+me. I stepped forward, and said:
+
+"Is that you, Enoch Wade?"
+
+He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion.
+
+"It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried
+right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to
+make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a
+palaver with you, all by yourself?"
+
+"What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff.
+
+I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying
+"talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told
+Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon
+the sheriff and the soldier left us.
+
+"It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic
+smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that."
+
+"Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could.
+
+"Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't
+wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest
+Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young
+Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?"
+
+I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not
+prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more
+his conduct mystified me.
+
+"Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit
+down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all
+about it."
+
+The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep
+interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its
+essential points were these:
+
+After Sir William's death Enoch had remained on at the Hall, not feeling
+particularly bound to the new baronet, but having a cat's attachment to
+the Hall itself. When Sir John finally resolved to avoid arrest by flight,
+Enoch had been in two minds about accompanying him, but had finally
+yielded to the flattering reliance placed by all upon the value and
+thoroughness of his knowledge as a woodsman. It was largely due to his
+skill that the party got safely through the great wilderness, and reached
+Montreal so soon. Since his arrival in Canada, however, things had not
+been at all to his liking. There was but one thought among all his refugee
+companions, which was to return to the Mohawk Valley and put their old
+neighbors to fire and sword--and for this Enoch had no inclination
+whatever. He had accordingly resisted all offers to enrol him in the Tory
+regiment which Sir John was raising in Canada, and had looked for an
+opportunity to get away quietly and without reproach. This chance had only
+come to him a week or so ago, when Philip Cross offered to pay him well to
+take two letters down the Valley--one to his servant Rab, the other to
+Mrs. Cross. He had accepted this errand, and had delivered the letters as
+in duty bound. There his responsibility ended. He had no intention to
+return, and had allowed himself to be arrested by a slow and uninventive
+young man, solely because it seemed the best way of achieving his purpose.
+
+"What is your purpose, Enoch?"
+
+"Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from
+Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know
+who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory,
+with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel--Sillinger they called
+him--and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet
+the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians.
+Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come
+down the Valley!"
+
+You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch
+gave--details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west
+to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I
+returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query:
+
+"But why get yourself arrested?"
+
+"Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given
+you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can
+contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the
+Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+
+
+
+The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to
+the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come
+to us.
+
+For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as
+well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing
+Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we
+despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam
+and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels.
+
+Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of
+the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs--skilled marksmen
+recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class--and that
+Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war
+party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the
+Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's
+regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of
+men we had long known in the Valley--men whose brothers and kinsmen were
+still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons
+could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was
+mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green"
+uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their
+own blood.
+
+"You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he
+shouted fiercely at Enoch.
+
+"Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly.
+
+But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the
+hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother,
+Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another
+brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were
+with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped.
+
+More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the
+position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and
+despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to
+Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at
+Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel,
+and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt
+of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred
+men--the Third New York Continentals--and I took it upon myself to urge
+now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him.
+
+This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the
+military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action,
+there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no
+word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun,
+and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most
+important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any
+question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he
+were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested
+that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination.
+
+Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down
+the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he
+walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the
+pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown
+followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and
+picking berries by the way.
+
+The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my
+thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents--which it turned
+out he did not--but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating
+upon them.
+
+During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her
+recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of
+her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for
+a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and
+maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually
+wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak
+of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole
+subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed
+the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have
+added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for
+revenge should come.
+
+That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl,
+I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the
+dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with
+no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For
+the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the
+neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting
+that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes
+of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.
+
+"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked
+Enoch.
+
+"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver
+it into her hands."
+
+"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"
+
+"Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood--his old accustomed
+temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most
+generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he
+is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition
+fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they
+started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts
+of themselves."
+
+I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I
+said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside
+of you."
+
+"No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is
+still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt
+these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon--it is
+rest itself--when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your
+task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see
+these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard
+fighting to come. It made me uneasy."
+
+"And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know."
+
+"Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift--it's more my way
+of thinking than the other--and you seem to need it powerfully, too.
+But"--here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to
+boot-tops--"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any
+regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,'
+but it would gag me from the first minute."
+
+We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort
+without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly
+Wemple appeared to let me in.
+
+"We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her
+apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little
+breathing-spell."
+
+The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had
+fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon.
+
+Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in
+hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness.
+
+"Oh, I am _so_ glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent
+Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never
+would come."
+
+"Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from--from----"
+
+"You know, then!"
+
+"Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger--he is
+an old friend of ours--told me that much, nothing more."
+
+Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The
+pleased excitement at my arrival--apparently so much desired--was
+succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment.
+
+"Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or--or how to
+tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea
+that nothing could be done without your advice and help--and yet, now you
+have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She
+paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to
+Cairncross."
+
+I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!"
+
+She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the
+truth, none the less."
+
+"You must be crazy!"
+
+"No, Douw, only very, very wretched!"
+
+The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the
+glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front
+through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with
+the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her.
+
+"Tell me about it all, Daisy--if you can."
+
+Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to
+me. She would have recalled it an instant later.
+
+"No--give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you
+should not see."
+
+But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again.
+
+"No--read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no
+difference--between _us_. You might as well know all!"
+
+The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded
+sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold
+character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature
+scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least:
+
+"Madam:--It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you
+are not to publish it.
+
+"If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I
+shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act
+accordingly.
+
+"I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my
+back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with
+ruffian foes to law and order generally.
+
+"All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including
+without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a
+major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me.
+After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to
+listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make
+no promise.
+
+"I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as
+your further instructions.
+
+"Philip."
+
+One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a
+letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading
+lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence,
+until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce
+to speak my mind.
+
+"I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband
+of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!"
+
+There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying,
+that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has
+convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the
+inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed;
+so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this
+narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women
+folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do
+it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must
+be written.
+
+This is what Daisy actually said:
+
+"But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but
+indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has
+done, and that he still loves me?"
+
+"I certainly see nothing of the kind!"
+
+She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his
+home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly
+with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared
+nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that
+by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he
+as much as says that he will forgive me."
+
+"Yes--perhaps--when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at
+the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after
+all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you."
+
+"He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything.
+
+"Yes, he is your husband--a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first
+makes your life wretched at home--you know you _were_ wretched, Daisy!
+Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes,
+humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty
+of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years--having
+you watched meanwhile, it seems--yet never vouchsafing you so much as a
+word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help
+enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down
+and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this
+letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his
+coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if
+you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your
+chief friends. And all this you take kindly--sifting his brutal words in
+search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished
+at you! I credited you with more spirit."
+
+She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases
+than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little
+pause, said to me quite calmly:
+
+"I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality."
+
+"You know him better than I--a thousand times better, more's the pity.
+Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of
+the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!"
+
+"Have you forgotten that he saved my life?"
+
+"No; but he forgot it--or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place
+of soft thoughts."
+
+"And he loved me--ah! he truly did--for a little!"
+
+"Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar;
+and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride."
+
+"How you hate him!"
+
+"Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?"
+
+"He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the
+gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a
+quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and
+as for Tulp--why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?"
+
+"Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia
+over the cliff, and left me _you_--I--I----"
+
+The words were out!
+
+I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers.
+Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have
+uttered--what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was
+covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over
+this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and
+finally--after what had seemed an age of silence--I stammered on:
+
+"What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever
+met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the
+ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany--in the Patroon's mansion,
+you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I
+went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery
+fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here,"
+I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was
+his doing."
+
+I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling
+that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the
+older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility
+overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder,
+and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind.
+
+"My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed
+superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest
+nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem
+sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your
+feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given
+me. I know what you would have said----"
+
+"It was exactly what I most of all would _not_ have said," I broke in
+with, in passing.
+
+"Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of
+course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it
+was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"--her voice softened
+and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in
+every detail of our youth--"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be,
+my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the
+two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter
+and sister."
+
+There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and
+self-sustained enough.
+
+She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross
+at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned
+out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to
+convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself
+accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown
+road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make
+assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that
+very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff
+at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX.
+
+From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+
+
+
+And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that
+mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion.
+
+The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us.
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the
+approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude,
+with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort,
+working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the
+dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for
+supplies, for more men, and for militia support.
+
+At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for
+Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of
+Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this
+little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that
+this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more
+was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves.
+
+It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now
+stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the
+spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had
+disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and
+doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their
+grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or
+suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors.
+And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help
+was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be
+welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our
+blood--the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our
+midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail.
+
+General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia,
+apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen
+and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall.
+Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared
+raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming
+forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we
+must meet them!
+
+It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of
+that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley
+bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came
+out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their
+order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the
+forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield
+that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered
+and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine
+danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month
+hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling
+drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the
+early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in
+bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear;
+and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find
+them again at work upon some other farm.
+
+There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together
+to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we
+had grown selfish and solitary--each man for himself. We had forgotten, in
+the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that
+fine old word "neighbor"--the husbandman, or _boer_, who is nigh, and to
+whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was
+in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared
+everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as
+to fight for one another--each for all, and all for each. Forty years have
+gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk
+Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The
+poor _bauers_ and squatters from the bush came out then and did their
+share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings
+and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to
+this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the
+well-to-do than I know of anywhere else.
+
+When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly
+built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle
+for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the
+drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and
+filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was
+no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned,
+flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones
+threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the
+little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of
+their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix.
+
+By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to
+meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to
+be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might
+have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice
+of his day--grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under
+Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular
+troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said
+to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose
+to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory
+neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own
+fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets
+in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling,
+hissing stone.
+
+I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that
+in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great
+campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that
+strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last
+at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French
+overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical
+enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages
+or of the Don Cossacks--in none of these records, I aver, can you find so
+much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born
+Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter
+cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest
+painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian
+peasant was a nobleman.
+
+Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon
+these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of
+duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than
+once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of
+them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my
+generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this
+philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an
+army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their
+relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be
+slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at
+their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars
+apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one
+pretend not to hate such monsters?
+
+At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had
+never known before to marshal our yeomanry together.
+
+Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night--to
+Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in
+the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East
+Creek--organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a
+little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district
+regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at
+Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched
+forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to
+Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather
+together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better
+than a fortnight ago had seemed possible.
+
+They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard
+of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and
+Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the
+bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and
+villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among
+them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and
+imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher
+estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call
+such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many
+of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform,
+such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied
+largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply
+their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their
+hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their
+sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might
+well have shrunk from.
+
+These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else,
+though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They
+had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine
+friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence,
+though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above
+at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were
+richer in hate.
+
+At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to
+start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late
+in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her
+roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the
+Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on
+our horses.
+
+I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty
+toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole
+distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I
+yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear,
+after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly
+prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and
+who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again?
+
+I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my
+mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out
+for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I
+ought instead to be going toward Cairncross.
+
+Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very
+woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had
+apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me.
+
+"Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me--to say good-by?"
+asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of
+your starting to-morrow--for the battle."
+
+I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it
+in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in
+my words.
+
+"Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come--all day I have been thinking of
+little else--yet I feared that my visit might--might----"
+
+Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a
+superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow
+prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she
+showed now by leaving the room.
+
+"I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet
+with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to
+live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without
+a sign."
+
+We stood thus facing each other for a moment--mumbling forth some
+commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with
+a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "_Must you truly
+go_?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my
+shoulder and weeping violently.
+
+It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I
+would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence--as being too sacred a
+thing for aught of disclosure or speculation--were it not that some might,
+in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung
+by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of
+soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable.
+
+We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand,
+or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot.
+
+We talked of impersonal things--of the coming invasion, of the chances of
+relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a
+good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young
+commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted
+together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back--as we had
+so often returned before during these latter hateful months--to the sweet
+companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr.
+Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at
+Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary
+of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in
+the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these
+long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of
+yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the
+strange quality of the Roman faith--that its forms and customs, learned in
+youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after
+many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab
+Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the
+tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may
+linger pleasantly.
+
+Thus our conversation ran--decorous and harmless enough, in all
+conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a
+forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet
+influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole
+world of meaning evaded in our talk--were we to blame?
+
+I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you!
+This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we
+could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in
+common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly,
+the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman
+now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These
+had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time
+when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this
+we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor
+and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our
+thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and
+without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own
+choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of
+love's cherubim.
+
+We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her
+hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the
+white forehead she as gently inclined to me.
+
+"Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a
+soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!"
+
+"I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come
+back."
+
+The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and
+Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night
+with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she
+shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning.
+
+The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough
+made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There
+were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me
+searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was
+as mystified as I then thought.
+
+At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch
+and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her
+during my absence--and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI.
+
+The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+
+
+
+I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm
+yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about
+the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said,
+they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it
+would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had
+flooded the kitchen with tears.
+
+Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for
+the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the
+narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous
+personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one
+another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.
+
+During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each
+other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had
+got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her
+letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that
+she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my
+vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from
+it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be;
+for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household
+of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen
+management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her
+own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not
+one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting
+respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction
+as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to
+manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was
+within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and
+anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a
+veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never
+marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly
+unattainable ideal.
+
+I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I
+was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at
+all deceived.
+
+The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed
+bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender,
+high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my
+hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me
+in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives
+before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the
+horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back.
+After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form
+that I was going.
+
+And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come
+to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving
+homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could
+save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and
+scalping-knife.
+
+I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the
+reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I
+should not take this ride for nothing!
+
+"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the
+scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."
+
+"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who
+through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that
+you are a Van Hoorn!"
+
+"I shall not forget."
+
+"And is that young Philip Cross--_her_ husband--with Johnson's crew?"
+
+"Yes, he is."
+
+"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your
+grandfather Baltus was!"
+
+These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had
+joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to
+overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was
+nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.
+
+We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked
+road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by
+the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the
+highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and
+children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall
+corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine
+with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were
+gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the
+Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while
+there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in
+every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to
+Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.
+
+We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth,
+near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine
+from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry
+Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the
+Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that
+Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General
+Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her
+promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when
+I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major
+John Frey.
+
+It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment,
+which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle.
+The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were
+sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting
+low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a
+refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for
+the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to
+find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves,
+Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.
+
+Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of
+the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly
+proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but
+the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might
+have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly
+Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living
+there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and
+that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless
+if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that
+messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we
+look backward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton
+was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia
+was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more
+were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There
+were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan
+volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations,
+and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in
+excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to
+perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting
+force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about
+seven hundred strong.
+
+It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered
+together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called
+into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the
+Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors,
+the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country
+larger than any one of several European monarchies.
+
+As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue
+and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and
+linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and
+huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and
+equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen
+different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch
+Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and
+here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who
+with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and
+Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the
+bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.
+
+Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled
+together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone
+Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had
+children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in
+bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his
+strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives
+down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never
+forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good
+clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of
+the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a
+Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all
+looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been
+always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.
+
+Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had
+small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer
+the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout
+Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock,
+and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of
+Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but
+others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel
+Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of
+the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a
+familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my
+business to check off.
+
+Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells,
+all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were
+five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it
+may well be five of more than one other family.
+
+The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the
+first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But
+soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts,
+and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer
+palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in
+the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new,
+deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force
+greater and more to be dreaded than was Belletre's, but because we were
+encamped on historic ground.
+
+From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort
+Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine
+settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth;
+and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in
+a low voice as the daylight faded.
+
+The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of
+northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night,
+and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing
+tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay
+the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow
+ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the
+wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the
+widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the
+current, drowned!
+
+How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should
+have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary
+of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how
+marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the
+captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I
+should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was
+food enough for thought.
+
+But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest
+were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river
+against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in
+emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was
+called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the
+fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that
+Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the
+place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was
+there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith,
+who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was
+Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept
+in our interest.
+
+The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas
+could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of
+savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly
+neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the
+foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded,
+they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their
+Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the
+savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for
+him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to
+say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep
+sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives.
+Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had
+the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of
+forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and
+ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland,
+whom for half a century he had loved so well.
+
+There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with
+their war-party, by all means.
+
+After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of
+stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of
+the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these
+do not concern the story.
+
+It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been
+blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in
+his quaint German dialect:
+
+"Come, walk with me outside the fort."
+
+We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom
+we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound
+to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank.
+There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple
+militia gathering.
+
+We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where
+we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the
+sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest
+old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.
+
+"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.
+
+I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this
+brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?"
+feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew
+not of.
+
+"_I_ am wrong," he said, simply.
+
+"I do not understand you, Brigadier."
+
+"Say rather that _they_, who ought to know me better, do not understand
+me."
+
+"They? Whom do you mean?"
+
+"All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own
+regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me.
+Nothing could be worse than that."
+
+"Suspect _you_, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"
+
+"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It
+has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a
+colonel with Johnson--up yonder."
+
+The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights
+of day were paling over the black line of trees.
+
+"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too,
+my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us,
+and his son _is_ with the Tories--up yonder."
+
+"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march
+to-morrow."
+
+"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and
+another married to Hendrick Frey, and _he_ is a Tory, too. All this is
+thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I
+feel they are talking of this."
+
+"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter
+Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe
+me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."
+
+"You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here.
+Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."
+
+"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I
+different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are
+all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours
+as well."
+
+"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and
+lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you
+get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now.
+Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are
+going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do.
+Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you
+leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to
+save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them
+and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here
+in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank
+in the State line."
+
+"I cannot credit that."
+
+"Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up
+my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"
+
+Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long
+after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying
+my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.
+
+To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling
+existing against him, it to a degree did exist.
+
+The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a
+few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered
+old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our
+Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who
+spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike.
+There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies,
+none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized
+their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the
+Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but
+still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some
+of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that
+matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it
+was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and
+suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once
+begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.
+
+All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy
+which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian
+fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into
+rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and
+wooden-headed Braddock.
+
+We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians
+bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of
+the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded
+the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed
+slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the
+Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which
+bears the name Oriskany.
+
+Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching,
+on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate
+to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with
+our attack.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII.
+
+"The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+
+
+
+A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the
+never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking
+rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the
+hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler
+darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.
+
+Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in
+the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close
+neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals
+prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It
+might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for
+we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of
+these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final
+six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently.
+Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter.
+Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the
+threshold of so grave an adventure.
+
+I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the
+spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some
+dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night
+of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely
+brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store
+of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the
+Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some
+sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of
+food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with
+a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized
+cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on
+their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed
+so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise
+there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"
+
+No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.
+
+Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All
+preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers
+were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had
+been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last
+look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the
+General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses
+harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!
+
+The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the
+prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day,
+instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's
+inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's
+faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days'
+stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay.
+
+The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the
+headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice
+before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands.
+I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident
+impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were
+not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six
+miles distant.
+
+The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of
+sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre
+of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees,
+bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during
+the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now,
+after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in
+camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers.
+These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front
+sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or
+six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with
+one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious
+to hear what was going on.
+
+I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the
+Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling
+differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and
+majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had
+the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every
+day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the
+only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served
+further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me
+only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the
+square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry
+Valley way.
+
+"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his _friseur_
+with him."
+
+"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers.
+Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.
+
+"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing,
+half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence.
+When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and
+fight next spring!"
+
+All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to
+hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.
+
+The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer
+for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the
+sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions
+upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if
+with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired
+we must have heard them.
+
+I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough
+stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the
+dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that
+either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and
+that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he
+held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he
+kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The
+beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to
+one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in
+Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and
+munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus
+supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them,
+unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort.
+In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.
+
+"But I say the sortie _will_ be made! They are waiting for us--only we are
+too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.
+
+"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the
+case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that
+fort two miles farther back."
+
+"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult
+travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's
+Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."
+
+"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or
+some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?"
+I asked.
+
+"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is
+to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."
+
+"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a
+great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"
+
+Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a
+swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be
+looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.
+
+His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.
+
+"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with
+his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.
+
+"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is
+not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here,
+as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the
+parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers
+in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."
+
+"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel
+Cox, angrily.
+
+He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered
+four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a
+loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came
+running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with
+difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one
+place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.
+
+"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall,"
+said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his
+feet as he spoke.
+
+"_Will_ you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone,
+pitched even higher.
+
+"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a
+general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back,
+misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.
+
+"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.
+
+Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.
+
+"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like
+this? Know you not your duty better?"
+
+"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least _we_
+are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.
+
+"_You_!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "_You_ will be the first to
+run when you see the British!"
+
+There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited
+farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising
+momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had
+no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we
+could hear nothing clearly.
+
+There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier,
+Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous
+colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and
+"coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and
+dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I
+could scarce bear to look upon it.
+
+There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the
+crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously
+drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.
+
+Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If
+you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool
+at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred
+could hear:
+
+"VORWAeRTS!"
+
+The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.
+
+There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To
+rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no
+dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back
+in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a
+hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps
+somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene
+before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the
+efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring
+their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his
+Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was
+ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of
+it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to
+bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles
+Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and
+Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.
+
+So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in
+the morning.
+
+The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of
+August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of
+the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the
+world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading
+to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut
+through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line,
+regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances
+bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when
+Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this
+time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough
+spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress
+was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.
+
+There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls
+of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled
+undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to
+be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us,
+and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.
+
+Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van.
+Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had
+been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but
+without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely
+there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of
+an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.
+
+We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in
+the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in
+part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We
+in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were
+resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon
+in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards
+farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in
+the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.
+
+While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This
+is where we camped five years ago."
+
+Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall
+headlong upon the neck of his horse.
+
+There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell,
+a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII.
+
+The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+
+
+
+Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still
+not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed.
+
+I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his
+horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I
+saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the
+gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the
+dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental
+numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at
+all to comprehend it.
+
+Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his
+mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead
+of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming
+footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement.
+
+The air was filled now with shouts--what they were I did not know. The
+solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together
+like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking
+to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends
+off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had
+jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the
+mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the
+stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at
+random into the underbrush.
+
+All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier.
+
+As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange
+barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther
+side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the
+whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the
+Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all
+directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the
+causeway. It was a horrible spectacle--of naked, yelling devils, daubed
+with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and
+flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and
+neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence
+they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants
+with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the
+sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept
+pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush.
+
+By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine,
+here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis.
+
+Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and
+calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His
+orders I forget now--or what part I played at first in carrying them
+out--but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our
+needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the
+attack, our forces--or what was left of them--had been drawn out of the
+cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This
+could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his
+self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest.
+
+Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing
+to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired
+their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the
+fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the
+Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the
+ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again
+from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of
+the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see
+the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment--these Petries, Weavers,
+Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts--fight their path backward
+through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been
+egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and
+returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie
+regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the
+rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber
+as well as they could, north and south of the road.
+
+While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had,
+strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to
+ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was
+struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from
+his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General
+Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The
+Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the
+rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a
+step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball
+which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood.
+
+It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man
+was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two
+rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and
+bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well
+sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and
+resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at
+a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of
+the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely
+brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the
+maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly
+lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him.
+
+"Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked.
+
+"No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I
+will face the enemy till I die."
+
+All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the
+hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated.
+Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more
+than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little
+mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough,
+half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for
+the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob
+Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of
+his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across
+the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a
+captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat,
+and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the
+Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay.
+
+The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead
+and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist
+of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time,
+forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk
+was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and
+tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he
+missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming--and
+there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes.
+
+"Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when
+one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running
+forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better
+for us.
+
+There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An
+hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its
+clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting
+among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence
+upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet
+ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of
+dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as
+with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk
+stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by
+swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the
+shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible.
+Yes--horrible is the right word!
+
+A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy
+perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a
+compound is man!--we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its
+purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood
+in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!
+
+I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while
+others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now
+these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness
+and with a plenitude of minutiae which surprise me, the more that I
+remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight
+for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he
+isn't, and that is about all he thinks of.
+
+I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the
+struggle--the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on
+the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of
+the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our
+rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade,
+sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories,
+meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and
+drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been
+wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately
+St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started;
+this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed
+too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action
+cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where
+the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our
+centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way
+backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories
+came upon us.
+
+The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point,
+where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of
+the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the
+hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts,
+crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy,
+shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small
+firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs.
+
+Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which
+promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse,
+perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body
+of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent
+Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and
+cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac
+Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be
+handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence.
+
+Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute
+bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril!
+
+We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things
+were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague
+intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now
+drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells
+of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed
+to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of
+some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which
+side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our
+vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep
+ourselves alive.
+
+All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great
+storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had
+been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the
+darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared
+through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed
+in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the
+blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight
+hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements.
+
+We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched
+under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for
+the fight, it ceased utterly.
+
+While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report
+from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder;
+there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from
+the fort!
+
+I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping
+brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance
+that the Brigadier had not heard the reports.
+
+The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had
+left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches
+above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to
+have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or
+no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied
+their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had
+heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it.
+
+"I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young
+men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off."
+
+The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree,
+avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof,
+told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred,
+nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward
+toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large
+part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to
+say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so
+broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest
+fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.
+
+What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who
+recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain.
+Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great
+catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.
+
+"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel
+Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll
+there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.
+
+Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only
+knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my
+brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry
+eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.
+
+I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of
+Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were
+saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were
+said to be dead already.
+
+The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew
+lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of
+white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at
+once the sun was shining.
+
+On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The
+fight began again.
+
+The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a
+few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what
+food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength.
+They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance
+they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their
+hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now.
+
+The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear
+the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties
+now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms,
+dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke
+arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe.
+Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable
+paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and
+with clinched fists.
+
+A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing
+through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us
+afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could
+reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this
+side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke
+bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses
+of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before
+us as we ran.
+
+Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and
+underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga
+men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the
+bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were
+looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old
+Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:
+
+"Help is here from the fort!"
+
+Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose
+musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the
+bushes, as they advanced in regular order.
+
+I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen
+shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear,
+the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the
+new-comers.
+
+"Who's there?" he roared at them.
+
+"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.
+
+Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to
+the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we
+clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all
+confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them
+to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.
+
+Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.
+
+Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a
+mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and
+left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet,
+and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as
+a shield.
+
+While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing
+with excitement.
+
+"In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"
+
+"Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his
+vast might. "These art Tories. _Fire_! you fools! _Fire_!"
+
+It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former
+friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their
+guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many
+more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.
+
+How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets
+seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a
+score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men
+had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade,
+dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These
+latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire
+to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with
+a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in
+wild pursuit.
+
+Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled
+tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our
+faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore
+forward, loading and firing as we ran.
+
+The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were
+driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of
+renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all
+our ears.
+
+I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying
+piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of
+some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening
+of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the
+Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and
+left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion
+for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood
+in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.
+
+I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where
+the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall
+rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch
+farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently
+attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed
+thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we
+came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.
+
+While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground
+for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:
+
+"They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a
+tree."
+
+I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me,
+his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back
+of his head, his long rifle over his arm.
+
+"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"
+
+"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he
+spoke.
+
+We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet
+struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.
+
+"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and
+leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps
+from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching
+almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.
+
+A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a
+momentary twinge of pain in my arm.
+
+"Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted
+excitedly from the bush.
+
+There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong
+upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting
+forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.
+
+"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars,
+resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his
+gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.
+
+I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained
+grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and
+looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV.
+
+Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+
+
+
+My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to
+speak, but no sound came from them.
+
+For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed
+upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this
+strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or
+over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I
+remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and
+scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay.
+
+There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look
+in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For
+all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing
+whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarrassed me. For relief I
+turned to Enoch, and said sharply:
+
+"You haven't told me yet what you were doing here."
+
+The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned
+his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me.
+
+"You can see for yourself, can't ye?" he said. "What do people mostly do
+when there's shooting going on, and they've got a gun?"
+
+"But how came you here at all? I thought you were to stay at--at the place
+where I put you."
+
+"That was likely, wasn't it! Me loafing around the house like a tame cat
+among the niggers while good fighting was going on up here!"
+
+"If you wanted to come, why not have marched with us? I asked you."
+
+"I don't march much myself. It suits me to get around on my own legs in my
+own way. I told you I wouldn't go into any ranks, or tote my gun on my
+shoulder when it was handier to carry it on my arm. But I didn't tell you
+I wouldn't come up and see this thing on my own hook."
+
+"Have you been here all day?"
+
+"If you come to that, it's none of your business, young man. I got here
+about the right time of day to save _your_ bacon, anyway. That's enough
+for _you_, ain't it?"
+
+The rebuke was just, and I put no further questions.
+
+A great stillness had fallen upon the forest behind us. In the distance,
+from the scrub-oak thickets on the lowlands by the river, there sounded
+from time to time the echo of a stray shot, and faint Mohawk cries of
+"Oonah! Oonah!" The battle was over.
+
+"They were beginning to run away before I came down," said Enoch, in
+comment upon some of these dying-away yells of defeat which came to us.
+"They got handled too rough. If their white officers had showed themselves
+more, and took bigger risks, they'd have stood their ground. But these
+Tory fine gentlemen are a pack of cowards. They let the Injuns get killed,
+but they kept darned well hid themselves."
+
+The man on the ground broke silence here.
+
+"You lie!" he said, fiercely.
+
+"Oh! you can talk, can you?" said Enoch. "No, I don't lie, Mr. Cross. I'm
+talking gospel truth. Herkimer's officers came out like men, and fought
+like men, and got shot by dozens; but till we struck you, I never laid
+eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good,
+too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there,
+within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ain't
+pretty fair shooting."
+
+The cool brutality of this talk revolted me. I had it on my tongue to
+interpose, when the wounded man spoke again, with a new accent of gloom
+in his tone.
+
+"What have I ever done to you?" he said, with his hand upon his breast.
+
+"Why, nothing at all, Mr. Cross," answered Enoch, amiably. "There wasn't
+any feeling about it, at least on my part. I'd have potted you just as
+carefully if we'd been perfect strangers."
+
+"Will you leave us here together for a little while, Enoch?" I broke in.
+"Come back in a few minutes; find out what the news is in the gulf--how
+the fight has gone. I desire some words with this--this gentleman."
+
+The trapper nodded at this, and started off with his cat-like, springing
+walk, loading his rifle as he went. "I'll turn up in about a quarter of
+an hour," he said.
+
+I watched his lithe, leather-clad figure disappear among the trees, and
+then wheeled around to my prostrate foe.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I said, hesitatingly, looking down
+upon him.
+
+He had taken his hand away from his breast, and was fumbling with it on
+the grass behind him. Suddenly he raised it, with a sharp cry of--
+
+"I know what to say to you!"
+
+There was a pistol in the air confronting me, and I, taken all aback,
+looked full into the black circle of its barrel as he pulled the trigger.
+The flint struck out a spark of flame, but it fell upon priming dampened
+by the wet grass.
+
+The momentary gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died
+piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would
+have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his
+nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which
+cold sweat stood out, and groaned aloud.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I went on, the episode of the pistol
+seeming, strangely enough, to have cleared my thoughts. "For two
+years--yes, for five years--I have been picturing to myself some such
+scene as this, where you should lie overthrown before me, and I should
+crush the life out of your hateful body with my heel, as one does with
+snakes. But now that it has come about, I am at a strange loss for words."
+
+"That you were not formerly," said the wounded man. "Since I have known
+you, you have fought always exceedingly well with your mouth. It was only
+in deeds that you were slow."
+
+He made this retort with a contemptuous coolness of tone which was belied
+by his white face and drawn brows, and by the troubled, clinging gaze in
+his eyes. I found myself looking with a curious impersonal interest upon
+this heavy, large-featured countenance, always heretofore so deeply
+flushed with color, and now coarsely blotched with varying depths
+of pallor.
+
+"Doubtless it would be best to leave you here. None of your party will
+straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and think of your
+misdeeds until-----"
+
+"Until the wolves come, you mean. Yes, go away. I prefer them to you."
+
+The sky to the west was one great lurid, brassy glare, overhung with banks
+of sinister clouds, a leaden purple above, fiery crimson below. The
+unnatural light fell strongly upon us both. A big shadow passed for an
+instant across the sunset, and we, looking instinctively up, saw the
+circling bulk of some huge bird of prey. I shuddered at the sight.
+
+"Yes, leave me to _them_!" he said, bitterly. "Go back and seize my lands,
+my house. While the beasts and the birds tear me to bits here in the
+forest, do you fatten upon my substance at home. You and they are of
+a kidney."
+
+"You know I would touch nothing of yours."
+
+"No--not even my wife!"
+
+The thrust went home. There was a world of sardonic disdain in his voice
+as he spoke, but in truth I thought little of his tone. The words
+themselves seemed to open a gulf before my feet. Was it indeed true, in
+welcoming this man's death, that I was thinking of the woman it would set
+free--for me?
+
+It seemed a long, long time before I found tongue again. I walked up and
+down among the small cedars, fighting out in my own mind the issue of
+honor which had been with such brutal frankness raised. I could not make
+it seem wholly untrue--this charge he so contemptuously flung at me. There
+was no softening of my heart toward him: he was still the repellent, evil
+ruffian I had for years held him to be. I felt that I hated him the more
+because he had put me in the wrong. I went back to him, ashamed for the
+source of the increase of temper I trembled under, yet powerless to
+dissemble it.
+
+"Why should I not kill you where you lie?" I shouted at him.
+
+He made an effort at shrugging his shoulders, but vouchsafed no other
+reply.
+
+"You"--I went on, in a whirl of rage at myself, at him, at the entire
+universe--"you have made my whole manhood bitter. I fought you the first
+time I saw you, when we were little boys. Even then you insulted, injured
+me. I have always hated you. You have always given me reason to hate you.
+It was you who poisoned Mr. Stewart's mind against me. It was you who
+stole my sweet sister away from me. Did this content you? No. You must
+drive the good old gentleman into paralysis and illness unto death--out of
+his mind--and you must overwhelm the poor, gentle girl with drunken
+brutality and cruelty, and to cap all, with desertion. And this is not
+enough--my God! think of it! _this_ is not enough!--but you must come with
+the others to force Indian war upon our Valley, upon your old neighbors!
+There are hundreds lying dead here to-day in these woods--honest men whose
+wives, parents, little children, are waiting for them at home. They will
+never lay eyes on them again. Why? Because of you and your scoundrel
+friends. You have done too much mischief already. It is high time to put
+an end to you."
+
+The wounded man had listened to me wearily, with his free hand clutched
+tight over his wound, and the other tearing spasmodically at the grass
+beside him.
+
+"I am bleeding to death," he said, with a voice obviously weakened since
+his last preceding words. "So much the better for you. You would like it
+so. You are not bold enough to knock me on the head, or merciful enough to
+go about your business and leave me in peace. I ought to be above bandying
+words with you; nor would I if it did not take my mind from my hurt. You
+are right--you have always been my enemy. You were jealous of me as a
+little boy. You had an apron, and you envied me my coat. When, like a
+fool, I came again to this cursed wilderness, your sour face rose up in
+front of me like an ugly dream. It was my first disagreeable thing. Still
+you were jealous of me, for I was a gentleman; you were a skin-pedler. I
+married a maiden who had beauty and wit enough to grace my station, even
+though she had not been born to it. It was you who turned her mind against
+me, and incited her to unhappiness in the home I had given her. It was you
+who made a damned rebel out of her, and drove me into going to Canada. She
+has ever been more your friend than mine. You are of her sort. An English
+gentleman could rightly have had no part or lot with either of you. Go
+back to her now--tell her you left me here waiting for the wolves--and
+that my dying message was--"
+
+He followed with some painfully bitter and malignant words which I have
+not the heart to set down here in cold blood against him.
+
+"Let me see your wound," I said, when he had finished and sank back,
+exhausted.
+
+I knelt beside him and opened his green coat, and the fine, ruffled shirt
+beneath it. Both were soaked with blood on the whole right side, but the
+soft cambric had, in a measure, checked the flow. He made no resistance,
+and I spread over the ugly aperture some of the plaster with which my
+mother had fitted me out, and bound it fast, with some difficulty, by
+passing my sash under his body and winding it about his chest.
+
+He kept his eyes closed while I was doing this. I could not tell whether
+he was conscious or not. Nor could I explain to myself why I was
+concerning myself with his wound. Was it to save, if possible, his life?
+Was it to lengthen out his term of torture here in the great final
+solitude, helplessly facing the end, with snarling wolves and screaming
+kites for his death-watch? I scarcely knew which.
+
+I try now to retrace the courses by which my thoughts, in the confused
+searchings of those few moments, reached finally a good conclusion; but
+the effort is beyond my powers. I know only that all at once it became
+quite clear to my mind that I must not leave my enemy to die. How much of
+this was due to purely physical compassion for suffering, how much to the
+higher pleadings of humanity, how much to the feeling that his taunts of
+baseness must be proved untrue, I cannot say.
+
+I was still kneeling beside him, I know, when Enoch suddenly stood in
+front of me. His practised footsteps had made no sound. He glanced gravely
+at me and at the white, inanimate face of Cross. Emotions did not play
+lightly upon Enoch's leather-like visage; there was nothing in his look to
+tell whether he was surprised or not.
+
+"Well, what news? How has the day gone?" I asked him.
+
+"Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were
+attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men."
+
+"What is Herkimer going to do?"
+
+"They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home
+again--down the Valley."
+
+"So, then, we have lost the fight."
+
+"Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded
+man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin
+with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?"
+
+"But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the
+fort?"
+
+"Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that
+both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want
+to rest for a spell."
+
+I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous
+carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on:
+
+"They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must
+be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along
+with 'em."
+
+"Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?"
+
+"I ain't quite a fool, young man," said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of
+smile. "If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to
+explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that
+strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an
+opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers
+were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a
+fortnight ago."
+
+All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed.
+He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our
+conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice:
+
+"I know you now--damn you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I
+gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in
+hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now.
+You make a good rebel."
+
+"Now look here, Mr. Cross," put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in
+his tone. "You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that
+way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and
+you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me
+to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and
+smoke it!"
+
+"Come, Enoch," I here interrupted, "enough of that. The man is suffering.
+You must not vex him further by words."
+
+"Suffering or not," returned the trapper, "he might keep a civil tongue in
+his head.--Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for," he went on,
+scowling down at the prostrate soldier. "I delivered your message here to
+this man" (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--"all that, you
+know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a
+Missisague dog."
+
+Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: "There
+may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't
+look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong
+to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck."
+
+The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered
+at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which
+helped me the better to make up my mind.
+
+Enoch had turned to me once more:
+
+"Come," he said, "we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so
+long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting
+from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them.
+As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long
+anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too
+many litters to carry already."
+
+"No," I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. "We will make
+our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the
+river--away from the others."
+
+"The hell you say!" said Enoch.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV.
+
+The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+
+
+
+In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were
+wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the
+trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was
+never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and
+conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few,
+indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight
+later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my
+pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they
+all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at
+the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey.
+
+This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he
+protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my
+plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting,
+which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once
+embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal.
+
+The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went
+on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said,
+yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was
+not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings,
+covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side
+to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke:
+
+"Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you
+touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough
+for you."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand
+along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't
+know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help
+we want from you is for you to hold your jaw."
+
+"You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man,
+raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring
+affrightedly straight ahead of him.
+
+There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the
+swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had
+returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away
+from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group.
+
+A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and,
+on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion
+mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The
+savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were
+fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in
+an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had
+laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering.
+If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent
+upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned
+in spirit.
+
+"Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the
+sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help
+me God, I will not!"
+
+The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They
+looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not
+materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were
+all on the other side.
+
+"Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep
+cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give
+'em the word."
+
+Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into
+his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his
+arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast.
+
+"It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be
+tortured--scalped--by these devils!"
+
+I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said,
+bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from
+the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps."
+
+"Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your
+canting tongue to deny it."
+
+It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have
+their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending
+their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe
+them to take scalps."
+
+"Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me
+up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain."
+
+"Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for
+you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you
+here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going
+to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to _hide_ you at
+Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. _Now_
+will you keep still?"
+
+He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of
+mystification and utter weakness.
+
+Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my
+project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went,
+down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as
+a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him
+explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a
+magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress.
+
+Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical
+arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward
+should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey.
+
+"They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't
+help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one
+of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will
+be enough."
+
+The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired,
+together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the
+river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to
+the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my
+home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and
+lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done,
+and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the
+rude litter and started for the trail.
+
+I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last
+time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore
+still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of
+this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of
+fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of
+prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air
+stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no
+sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away.
+Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon
+this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly
+past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the
+leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in
+the sunset radiance, watching us gravely.
+
+We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field
+to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the
+forest primeval.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I
+recall no other equally wretched five days in my life.
+
+The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and
+fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be
+accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the
+sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing
+myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their
+sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced
+me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly
+along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face
+and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles,
+my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have
+wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on
+the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on
+the ground utterly worn out.
+
+We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on
+the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter
+we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had
+a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes,
+and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not
+build a fire.
+
+Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in
+a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous
+activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the
+fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we
+lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe,
+floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less
+and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at
+least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more
+than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed
+sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our
+ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man
+ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal
+service and attention for granted.
+
+After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night
+out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able
+to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful
+woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark,
+while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe
+well enough.
+
+The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We
+were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new
+pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there
+was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the
+white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks,
+the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black
+against the pale sky.
+
+There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows
+hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my
+glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at
+one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly
+to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the
+voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses
+stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue.
+
+"Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at
+best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more
+commodious boat."
+
+"Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made
+answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low,
+musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the
+wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at
+Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if
+we were going through a dead country."
+
+Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly
+blurted it out.
+
+"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I
+said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these
+brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really
+understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom!
+Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue."
+
+He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he
+had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression
+of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental.
+
+"Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat.
+"I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day
+long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there
+just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my
+friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out
+of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are
+the wolves!"
+
+He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous
+quaver.
+
+"These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child
+awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get
+where you can have rest and care."
+
+It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as
+powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and
+weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his
+face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it.
+
+He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled
+through a stretch of still water, in silence.
+
+"You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally.
+
+I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered:
+
+"Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches,
+in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?"
+
+"What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman."
+
+I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind.
+"For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that
+either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I
+remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van
+Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have
+brought you back."
+
+"Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily.
+
+After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not
+gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the
+alternate moonlight and shadow.
+
+The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of
+thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only
+not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation
+of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed
+upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless,
+stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not
+so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and
+happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive.
+
+More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the
+reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even
+now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me,
+but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary
+spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent
+before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the
+bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as
+one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent
+impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon
+the man himself.
+
+His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his
+character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the
+existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man
+strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and
+sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable,
+generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty,
+and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been
+two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one
+because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other.
+
+Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story.
+To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have
+behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain
+wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was
+plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable
+husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class
+of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new
+land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon
+himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he
+had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as
+he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of
+his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to
+dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common
+herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led
+him down the fell incline.
+
+I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I
+had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a
+knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other
+circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the
+same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of
+his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine.
+
+Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home
+as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of
+gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI.
+
+A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.
+
+
+
+Just before daybreak of the fifth day we stole past the sleeping hamlet of
+Caughnawaga, and as the sun was rising over the Schoharie hills I drew up
+the canoe into the outlet of Dadanoscara Creek, a small brook which came
+down through the woods from the high land whereon Cairncross stood. Our
+journey by water was ended.
+
+Enoch was waiting for us, and helped me lift Cross from the canoe. His
+body hung inert in our arms; not even my clumsy slipping on the bank of
+the rivulet startled him from the deep sleep in which he had lain for
+hours in the boat.
+
+"I have been frightened. Can he be dying?" I asked.
+
+Enoch knelt beside him, and put his hand over the patient's heart. He
+shook his head dubiously after a moment, and said: "It's tearing along
+like a racehorse. He's in a fever--the worst kind. This ain't
+sleep--it's stupor."
+
+He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his
+life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can
+make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to
+his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be
+different. As it is, I don't see but you will have to risk it, and bring
+somebody here."
+
+For once in my life my brain worked in flashes. I actually thought of
+something which had not occurred to Enoch!
+
+"Why not carry him in this canoe?" I asked. "It is lighter than any litter
+we could make."
+
+The trapper slapped his lank, leather-clad thigh in high approval. "By
+hokey!" he said, "you've hit it!"
+
+We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate
+the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and
+we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it
+over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course
+two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in
+the Valley an absolute secret. His life would have been in deadly peril
+hereabouts, even before the battle. How bitterly the hatred of him and his
+traitor-fellows must have been augmented by the slaughter of that cruel
+ambuscade, I could readily imagine. With what words could I have protected
+him against the righteous rage of a Snell, for example, or a Seeber, or
+any one of a hundred others who had left kinsmen behind in that fatal
+gulch? No! There must be no risk run by meeting any one.
+
+With the scanty meal finished our rest was at an end. We ought to lose no
+time. Each minute's delay in getting the wounded man under a roof, in
+bed, within reach of aid and nursing, might be fatal.
+
+It was no light task to get the canoe upon our shoulders, after we had put
+in it our guns, covered these with ferns and twigs, and upon these laid
+Philip's bulky form, and a very few moments' progress showed that the work
+before us was to be no child's play. The conformation of the canoe made it
+a rather awkward thing to carry, to begin with. To bear it right side up,
+laden as it was, over eight miles of almost continuous ascent, through a
+perfectly unbroken wilderness, was as laborious an undertaking as it is
+easy to conceive.
+
+We toiled along so slowly, and the wretched little brook, whose bed we
+strove to follow, described such a wandering course, and was so often
+rendered fairly impassable by rocks, driftwood, and overhanging thicket,
+that when the sun hung due south above us we had covered barely half our
+journey, and confronted still the hardest portion of it. We were so
+exhausted when this noon hour came, too, that I could make no objection
+when Enoch declared his purpose of getting some trout from the brook, and
+cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and
+from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly
+I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper
+stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity,
+tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under the stones.
+
+Soon he had enough for a meal--and, my word! it was a feast for emperors
+or angels. We stuffed the pink dainties with mint, and baked them in balls
+of clay. It seemed as if I had not eaten before in years.
+
+We tried to rouse Cross sufficiently to enable him to eat, and in a small
+way succeeded; but the effect upon him was scarcely beneficial, it
+appeared to us. His fever increased, and when we started out once more
+under our burden, the motion inseparable from our progress affected his
+head, and he began to talk incoherently to himself.
+
+Nothing can be imagined more weird and startling than was the sound of
+this voice above us, when we first heard it. Both Enoch and I
+instinctively stopped. For the moment we could not tell whence the sound
+came, and I know not what wild notions about it flashed through my mind.
+Even when we realized that it was the fever-loosed tongue of our companion
+which spoke, the effect was scarcely less uncanny. Though I could not see
+him, the noise of his ceaseless talking came from a point close to my
+head; he spoke for the most part in a bold, high voice--unnaturally raised
+above the pitch of his recent faint waking utterances. Whenever a fallen
+log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the
+prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe
+down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult
+connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of his
+disordered brain.
+
+For a long time--of course in a very disconnected way--he babbled about
+his mother, and of people, presumably English, of whom I knew nothing,
+save that one name, Digby, was that of his elder brother Then there began
+to be interwoven with this talk stray mention of Daisy's name, and soon
+the whole discourse was of her.
+
+The freaks of delirium have little significance, I believe, as clews to
+the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary
+speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching
+shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words
+addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to
+be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he was resting his
+head upon her bosom. Over and over again, with tiresome iteration, he kept
+entreating plaintively: "You _are_ glad to see me? You do _truly_ forgive
+me, and love me?"
+
+Nothing could have been sadder than to hear him. I reasoned that this
+ceaseless dwelling upon the sweets of a tender welcome doubtless reflected
+the train of his thoughts during the journey down from the battle-field.
+He had forborne to once mention Daisy's name during the whole voyage, but
+he must have thought deeply, incessantly of her--in all likelihood with a
+great softening of heart and yearning for her compassionate nursing. It
+was not in me to be unmoved by this. I declare that as I went painfully
+forward, with this strangely pathetic song of passion repeating itself in
+my ears, I got fairly away from the habit of mind in which my own love for
+Daisy existed, and felt myself only an agent in the working out of some
+sombre and exalted romance.
+
+In Foxe's account of the English martyrs there are stories of men at the
+stake who, when a certain stage of the torture was reached, really forgot
+their anguish in the emotional ecstasy of the ideas born of that terrible
+moment. In a poor and imperfect fashion I approached that same strange
+state--not far removed, in sober fact, from the delirium of the man in
+the canoe.
+
+The shadows were lengthening in the woods, and the reddening blaze of the
+sun flared almost level in our eyes through the tree-trunks, when at last
+we had crossed the water-shed of the two creeks, and stood looking down
+into the gulf of which I have so often spoken heretofore.
+
+We rested the canoe upon a great rock in the mystic circle of ancient
+Indian fire worship, and leaned, tired and panting, against its side. My
+arm was giving me much pain, and what with insufficient food and feverish
+sleep, great immediate fatigue, and the vast nervous strain of these past
+six days, I was well-nigh swooning.
+
+"I fear I can go no farther, Enoch," I groaned. "I can barely keep my feet
+as it is."
+
+The trapper himself was as close to utter exhaustion as one may be and
+have aught of spirit left, yet he tried to speak cheerily.
+
+"Come, come!" he said, "we mustn't give out now, right here at the
+finish. Why, it's only down over that bridge, and up again--and there
+we are!"
+
+I smiled in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a
+final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest,
+and we'll at it again."
+
+While we stood half reclining against the bowlder, looking with
+trepidation at the stiff ascent before us on the farther side of the gulf,
+the scene of the old quarrel of our youth suddenly came to my mind.
+
+"Do you see that spruce near the top, by the path--the one hanging over
+the edge? Five years ago I was going to fight this Philip Cross there, on
+that path. My little nigger Tulp ran between us, and he threw him head
+over heels to the bottom. The lad has never been himself since."
+
+"Pretty tolerable fall," remarked Enoch, glancing down the precipitous,
+brush-clad wall of rock. "But a nigger lands on his head as a cat does on
+her feet, and it only scratches him where it would kill anybody else."
+
+We resumed our burden now, and made our way with it down the winding path
+to the bottom. Here I was fain to surrender once for all.
+
+"It is no use, Enoch," I said, resolutely. "I can't even try to climb up
+there with this load. You must wait here; I will go ahead to Cairncross,
+prepare them for his coming, and send down some slaves to fetch him the
+rest of the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great square mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front.
+The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no
+wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life
+visible, Cairncross might have been uninhabited a twelve-month.
+
+It was only when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within
+view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not
+been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday,
+church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass,
+intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep
+that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they
+became aware of my presence.
+
+They looked for a minute at me in a perplexed way--my mud-baked clothes,
+unshaven face, and general unkempt condition evidently rendering me a
+stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's
+ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like
+scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of the great house.
+
+So I was supposed to be dead! Curiously enough, it had not occurred to me
+before that this would be the natural explanation of my failure to return
+with the others. The idea now gave me a queer quaking sensation about the
+heart, and I stood stupidly staring at the back balcony of the house, with
+my mind in a whirl of confused thoughts. It seemed almost as if I _had_
+come back from the grave.
+
+While I still stood, faint and bewildered, trying to regain control of my
+ideas, the door opened, and a white-faced lady, robed all in black, came
+swiftly out upon the porch. It was Daisy, and she was gazing at me with
+distended eyes and parted lips, and clinging to the carved balustrade
+for support.
+
+As in a dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was
+gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in
+the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer
+exhaustion and rapture.
+
+When at last I could stand up, and felt myself coming back to something
+like self-possession, a score of eager questions and as many outbursts of
+deep thanksgiving were in my ears--all from her sweet voice. And I had
+tongue for none of them, but only looked into her dear face, and patted
+her hands between mine, and trembled like a leaf with excitement. So much
+was there to say, the sum of it beggared language.
+
+When finally we did talk, I was seated in a great chair one of the slaves
+had brought upon the sward, and wine had been fetched me, and my dear girl
+bent gently over me from behind, softly resting my head against her waist,
+her hands upon my arms.
+
+"You shall not look me in the face again," she said--with ah! such
+compassionate, tender playfulness--"until I have been told. How did you
+escape? Were you a prisoner? Were you hurt?"--and oh! a host of
+other things.
+
+Suddenly the sky seemed to be covered with blackness, and the joy in my
+heart died out as by the stroke of death. I had remembered something. My
+parched and twitching lips did their best to refuse to form the words:
+
+"I have brought Philip home. He is sorely wounded. Send the slaves to
+bring him from the gulf."
+
+After a long silence, I heard Daisy's voice, clear and without a tremor,
+call out to the blacks that their master had been brought as far as the
+gulf beyond, and needed assistance. They started off helter-skelter at
+this, with many exclamations of great surprise, a bent and misshapen
+figure dragging itself with a grotesque limping gait at their tail.
+
+I rose from my chair, now in some measure restored to calmness and cold
+resolution. In mercy I had been given a brief time of blind happiness--of
+bliss without the alloy of a single thought. Now I must be a man, and walk
+erect, unflinching, to the sacrifice.
+
+"Let us go and meet them. It is best," I said. The poor girl raised her
+eyes to mine, and their startled, troubled gaze went to my heart. There
+must have been prodigious effort in the self-command of her tone to the
+slaves, for her voice broke down utterly now, as she faltered:
+
+"You have--brought--him home! For what purpose? How will this all end? It
+terrifies me!"
+
+We had by tacit consent begun to walk down the path toward the road. It
+was almost twilight. I remember still how the swallows wheeled swiftly in
+the air about the eaves, and how their twittering and darting seemed to
+confuse and tangle my thoughts.
+
+The situation was too sad for silence. I felt the necessity of talking, of
+uttering something which might, at least, make pretence of occupying these
+wretched minutes, until I should say:
+
+"This is your husband--and farewell!"
+
+"It was clear enough to me," I said. "My duty was plain. I would have
+been a murderer had I left him there to die. It was very strange about my
+feelings. Up to a certain moment they were all bitter and merciless toward
+him. So many better men than he were dead about me, it seemed little
+enough that his life should go to help avenge them. Yet when the moment
+came--why, I could not suffer it. Not that my heart relented--no; I was
+still full of rage against him. But none the less it was my duty to save
+his life."
+
+"And to bring him home to _me_." She spoke musingly, completing my
+sentence.
+
+"Why, Daisy, would you have had it otherwise? Could I have left him there,
+to die alone, helpless in the swamp?"
+
+"I have not said you were not right, Douw," she answered, with saddened
+slowness. "But I am trying to think. It is so hard to realize--coming like
+this. I was told you were both dead. His name was reported in their camp,
+yours among our people. And now you are both here--and it is all so
+strange, so startling--and what is right seems so mingled and bound up
+with what is cruel and painful! Oh, I cannot think! What will come of it?
+How will it all end?"
+
+"We must not ask how it will end!" I made answer, with lofty decision.
+"That is not our affair. We can but do our duty--what seems clearly
+right--and bear results as they come. There is no other way. You ought to
+see this."
+
+"Yes, I ought to see it," she said, slowly and in a low, distressed voice.
+
+As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my
+wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coarse-fibred male animal,
+returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my
+hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and
+gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my title to do this?--to rebuke
+her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I
+not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought
+pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought
+much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and
+fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of
+my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from
+trouble and grief?
+
+My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not
+have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so
+well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence,
+feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better
+than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong.
+
+Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as
+to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange
+question of our far-away youth.
+
+There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of
+the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell,
+like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the
+thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds
+of other voices, excited and vibrant.
+
+Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some
+formless fear of she knew not what.
+
+"It is Tulp," she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. "Oh, I should have
+kept him back! Why did I not think of it?"
+
+"What about Tulp?" I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the
+narrow path. "I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among
+the others, was he?"
+
+"He has gone mad!"
+
+"What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange
+and slow of wit for years, but--"
+
+"Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you
+were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you
+came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father
+pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened?
+Who is this man?"
+
+In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of
+Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him
+huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was
+the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the
+common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean?
+
+When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.
+
+"Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness.
+
+"Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do
+not understand. I will join you in a moment.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him.
+"Tell me quick."
+
+"Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a
+nigger. That's about what it comes to."
+
+"Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?"
+
+"It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side
+nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs
+over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream
+like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it
+went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!"
+
+The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and
+clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh
+horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to
+where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed
+my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.
+
+Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall
+grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII.
+
+The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon
+the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted.
+Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would
+never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places
+which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play
+and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest
+farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the
+dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of
+death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more
+new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre
+in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to
+bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and
+tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.
+
+So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People
+listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the
+cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true
+that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?"
+
+In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast
+of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in
+the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information
+by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated.
+Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been
+hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately
+follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much
+later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to
+Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the
+men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done.
+
+To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this
+truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have
+chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus
+it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for
+Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered
+to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but
+think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of
+the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper
+Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own
+Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there
+at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That
+failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had
+been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the
+forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory
+gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done,
+he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies
+from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first
+the Yankees, then the others at his leisure.
+
+Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of
+Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of
+things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the
+heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was
+compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no
+doubt who would in the long-run triumph.
+
+Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great
+souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch
+at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live.
+
+But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much
+of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and
+wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around
+the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and
+general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange
+occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf.
+
+I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret
+returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as
+might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the
+stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with
+material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as
+possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the
+scene's sad suggestions.
+
+From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the
+soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the
+other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent
+stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not
+visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the
+waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream.
+
+During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely
+engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to
+represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old
+Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful
+amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold
+and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood
+of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort,
+the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the
+hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant,
+and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from
+confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It
+was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the
+exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a
+hospital than for the saddle.
+
+I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the
+Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year
+1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and
+neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the
+children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact
+date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the
+knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the
+sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not
+less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to
+gather over it.
+
+Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part
+thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came
+to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I
+was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of
+the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so.
+
+Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the
+hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into
+the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled
+and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This
+meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place
+were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly
+as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the
+grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation.
+
+But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John
+personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home
+of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought,
+alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to
+steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife,
+and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very
+melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days
+of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn
+of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though
+they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to
+the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with
+Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also
+have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old
+Douw Fonda!
+
+There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it
+touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter
+Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief
+Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the
+old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood
+upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the
+lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely
+wish him alive again.
+
+Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child
+whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He
+bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the
+Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably.
+
+In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which
+the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was
+born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as
+sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's
+breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him
+accordingly, as is the wont of parents.
+
+When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's
+bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny,
+fair babe nestled upon her arm.
+
+"Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names,
+'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked.
+
+Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy
+into my eyes.
+
+"I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all
+so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much
+our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking,
+dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip."
+
+I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we
+had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of
+Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle
+sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet
+whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and
+fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any
+harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the
+room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in
+my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though
+the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal
+from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was
+easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which
+prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child
+because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and
+tragic romance.
+
+In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious
+little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and
+slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in
+particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could
+bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty
+spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even
+now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely
+obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of
+his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart
+smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath
+his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our
+fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to
+resist him.
+
+The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month
+Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it
+seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old
+man. He literally staggered and died under the blow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as
+peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of
+a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large
+advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having
+always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort,
+and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come
+to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We
+seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our
+childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof,
+where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very
+near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less
+peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of
+a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this
+interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for
+us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to
+both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and
+fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in
+happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts
+from scars.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
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+Title: In the Valley
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+Author: Harold Frederic
+
+Release Date: January, 2006  [EBook #9787]
+[This file was first posted on October 16, 2003]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, IN THE VALLEY ***
+
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+
+E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In the Valley
+
+By
+
+Harold Frederic
+
+Copyright 1890
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dedication.
+
+
+
+_When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
+was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
+would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
+the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
+upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
+was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
+thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
+adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
+Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
+welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
+this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
+Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
+bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
+affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
+grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour._
+
+London, _September 11_, 1890
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Chapter I.      "The French Are in the Valley!"
+Chapter II.     Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+Chapter III.    Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly
+Chapter IV.     In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+Chapter V.      How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+Chapter VI.     Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+Chapter VII.    Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+Chapter VIII.   Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+Chapter IX.     I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+Chapter X.      The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+Chapter XI.     As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+Chapter XII.    Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.
+Chapter XIII.   To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+Chapter XIV.    How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+Chapter XV.     The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+Chapter XVI.    Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+Chapter XVII.   I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+Chapter XVIII.  The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+Chapter XIX.    I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+Chapter XX.     A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.
+Chapter XXI.    Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+Chapter XXII.   The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+Chapter XXIII.  How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+Chapter XXIV.   The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+Chapter XXV.    A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+Chapter XXVI.   I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+Chapter XXVII.  The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+Chapter XXVIII. An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.
+Chapter XXIX.   The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+Chapter XXX.    From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+Chapter XXXI.   The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+Chapter XXXII.  "The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+Chapter XXXIII. The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+Chapter XXXIV.  Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+Chapter XXXV.   The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+Chapter XXXVI.  A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully
+                Spared.
+Chapter XXXVII. The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+
+
+In The Valley
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+"The French Are in the Valley!"
+
+
+
+It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
+since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
+to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
+son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
+to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
+parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
+good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
+nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
+recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
+fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
+the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
+might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
+and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
+great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
+waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
+its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
+If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
+become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
+mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.
+
+Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
+keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
+I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
+confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
+their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
+so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
+the story:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.
+
+The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
+that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
+now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
+than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
+dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
+were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
+floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
+the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
+thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
+the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
+or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
+winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
+lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
+not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.
+
+I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
+whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
+did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
+their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
+and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
+women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
+for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
+mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
+behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
+after rains.
+
+Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
+longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
+kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
+time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
+duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
+bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
+the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
+me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
+and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
+too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
+sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
+flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
+hated them.
+
+The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
+these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
+knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
+ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
+commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
+vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
+inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
+snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
+the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
+timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
+our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
+nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
+lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
+I held my breath.
+
+It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
+dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
+set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
+noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
+hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
+great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
+heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):
+
+"The French are in the Valley!"
+
+I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
+and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.
+
+Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
+what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
+I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
+his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
+clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
+with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
+Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
+which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
+to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
+husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
+portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
+small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.
+
+How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
+considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
+Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
+mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
+my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
+fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
+aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
+momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
+suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.
+
+When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
+another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
+gravely from within the door:
+
+"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
+and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
+Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."
+
+Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
+Valley.
+
+These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
+to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
+great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
+the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
+all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.
+
+If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
+explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
+I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
+master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
+with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
+my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
+both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
+Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
+conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
+while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
+first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
+hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
+reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
+content to return to his sleep.
+
+I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
+dreamed at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+
+
+
+When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
+small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
+original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
+might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
+late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
+Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
+fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
+white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
+could sop my bread.
+
+During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
+housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
+upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
+which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
+well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
+command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
+cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
+employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
+heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
+Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
+any other large matter, I would have valued.
+
+Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
+apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
+air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
+the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
+on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
+with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
+cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
+almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.
+
+He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
+themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
+pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
+labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
+speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
+French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
+notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
+me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
+better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
+look up and down the Valley.
+
+It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
+forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
+edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
+the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
+through the cold night.
+
+To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
+or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
+not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
+its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
+its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
+logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
+upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
+grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
+in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
+been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
+French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
+our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
+Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
+being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
+still by contrast.
+
+Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
+adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
+were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
+and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
+houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.
+
+It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
+men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
+wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
+Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
+part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
+tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
+than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
+little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
+to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
+religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
+I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
+I trust there can be no doubt.
+
+While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
+these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
+of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
+dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
+there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
+the hill.
+
+As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
+his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
+to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
+attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
+mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
+westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.
+
+After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
+cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."
+
+All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
+stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
+the commotion.
+
+Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
+and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
+also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
+yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
+about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
+household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
+we saw on the highway.
+
+What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
+terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
+generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
+or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
+somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.
+
+Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
+phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
+out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
+before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
+French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
+above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
+Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
+auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
+had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
+in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
+answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
+the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
+others had become calm.
+
+As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
+cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:
+
+"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
+had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"
+
+To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
+in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.
+
+With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
+straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
+cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!
+
+He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
+put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
+in the face, and laughed again.
+
+All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
+all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
+himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
+puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
+staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
+with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
+some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
+wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
+comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.
+
+The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
+the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:
+
+"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
+embrace."
+
+The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
+two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
+face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
+the rending of an ice-gorge.
+
+"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
+came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
+my breath.
+
+It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
+foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
+the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
+and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
+despatched onward to the fort.
+
+While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
+and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
+eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
+eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
+(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
+long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
+their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
+reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
+the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.
+
+The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
+backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
+the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
+I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
+showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
+full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
+pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
+being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
+weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
+it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
+swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
+ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
+warrior should be.
+
+It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
+troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
+and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
+as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
+Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
+roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.
+
+For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I
+believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the
+frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was
+not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did
+not get into my favor after we came inside.
+
+Under this Master Philip's commands the negro squatted on his haunches and
+unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this
+bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps
+between three and four years of age.
+
+This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and
+looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her
+eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long,
+tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her
+feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure.
+She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face
+was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to
+me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the negro smiling upon
+us both.
+
+I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was
+already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly
+spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward
+the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone.
+
+"Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude
+behavior and at his words.
+
+"I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child.
+
+He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him,
+clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to
+one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little
+girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great
+wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have
+her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus
+you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood
+finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But
+I had the girl.
+
+"What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing,
+Douw, and what child is this?"
+
+"It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions,
+and red with color.
+
+The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that
+Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even
+feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for
+me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one
+might feel the heat, and said nothing.
+
+"Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as
+much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven."
+
+The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously:
+
+"She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village
+only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the
+other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When
+Belletre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first
+attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in
+the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange
+enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered?--the infant was in
+some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
+great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
+for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
+to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
+friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
+frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
+cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
+start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
+Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
+brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
+said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
+saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
+one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
+bundled her in."
+
+"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
+yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.
+
+"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
+friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
+young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
+people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
+Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
+that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
+not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?"
+
+"Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed.
+
+"Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly.
+
+"You are Tom Lynch, and your grandfather was a king----"
+
+"No more," interposed Mr. Stewart, frowning and lifting his finger. "That
+folly is dead and in its grave. Not even so fair a youth as you must give
+it resurrection."
+
+"Here, Bob," said the Major, with sudden alacrity. "Go outside with these
+children, and help them to some games."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly.
+
+
+
+My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty
+years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see
+him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there
+would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above
+forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame,
+yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist
+and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He
+was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much,
+let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain,
+ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a
+swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals,
+much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness
+when agreed with.
+
+All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many
+other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers.
+He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he
+loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great
+warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be
+said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and
+evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns
+in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most
+instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he,
+so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the
+profession of arms.
+
+A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward
+prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and
+I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here,
+although at the time I was in ignorance of it.
+
+In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had
+been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was
+the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who
+loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and
+sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court,
+of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the
+father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles
+the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch
+names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany.
+
+Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins,
+got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared
+meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew
+old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not
+forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast
+of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now,
+and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue
+and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a
+sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of
+Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse.
+
+With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had
+dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in
+a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally.
+After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the
+conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving
+himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to
+France, never to return.
+
+He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This
+boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court,
+now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting
+in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant
+existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon
+destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless
+alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous
+gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover,
+and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an
+injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts.
+
+Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a
+priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about
+Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the
+religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier,
+for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit
+to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the
+emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did
+Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning,
+honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the
+Jacobite gentleman.
+
+One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a
+young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony
+Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with
+ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke.
+He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that
+his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the
+daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had
+gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this
+exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from
+the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence.
+
+Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The
+two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the
+lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance
+and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced,
+and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he
+never forgot her till his death.
+
+Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for
+striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's
+lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his
+generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more
+selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among
+those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh
+and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of
+Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph,
+its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the
+Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was
+able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig
+influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to
+live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had
+fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to
+Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and
+peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of
+Stewart, and set sail to the New World.
+
+This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which
+perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish
+recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on
+which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the
+succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I
+still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to
+acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the
+question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out:
+
+"Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me
+a fort!"
+
+Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and
+I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in
+the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the
+little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks
+and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no
+work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was
+to his mind, he said:
+
+"Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the
+Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to
+drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he
+must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we
+must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come
+up.--Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!"
+
+Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing
+his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against
+my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt.
+
+"Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a
+Frenchman than you are yourself."
+
+"You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All
+foreigners are the same."
+
+"It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a
+foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?"
+
+He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of
+course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even
+speak English properly."
+
+This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr.
+Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to
+hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont
+to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English
+correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was
+true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by
+Philip's criticism.
+
+"Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a
+Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself
+when I _do_ come," or words to that purport.
+
+We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all
+better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were
+some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic
+fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is
+enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls
+which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my
+head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I
+forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling
+him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down,
+with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would
+be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead,
+mumbling with his mouth full of snow:
+
+"Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know."
+
+My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
+little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
+unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
+two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
+Philip said:
+
+"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
+My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
+besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
+weren't Dutch."
+
+When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
+eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
+a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
+and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.
+
+The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
+know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
+They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
+disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
+senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
+deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
+of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
+knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.
+
+"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
+some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
+trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
+estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a
+single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be
+damned to them!"
+
+"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and
+now!"
+
+"No, I'll _not_ think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I
+too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of
+'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit
+to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"
+
+"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no
+doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is,
+and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I
+dream--precisely what pleases me best."
+
+"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"
+
+"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk
+with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw,
+yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a
+second self."
+
+The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but
+without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon
+his plate:
+
+"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"
+
+"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.
+
+The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to
+be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help
+one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."
+
+Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."
+
+Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing
+furiously. He smiled and said:
+
+"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."
+
+My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.
+
+"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie
+over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow,
+struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school
+for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him.
+We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless
+grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut
+out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."
+
+The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.
+
+"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the
+lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life,
+dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for
+my bride."
+
+Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.
+
+The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with
+moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in
+this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and
+thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty
+despatches.
+
+While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over
+his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little
+waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore
+over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily
+and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.
+
+"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm,
+Bob, for the journey."
+
+The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's
+arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.
+
+"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.
+
+"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could
+Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his
+fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine
+country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again.
+What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"
+
+I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr.
+Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him
+pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence
+which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.
+
+"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.
+
+As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I
+walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with
+deep joy.
+
+"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a
+load off my mind.--Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."
+
+"And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked,
+vehemently.
+
+"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the
+question."
+
+The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat
+pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which
+Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips,
+and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me,
+red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at
+his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my
+apron, besides.
+
+With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face,
+knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst
+into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a
+wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and
+screaming that he _would_ have the child.
+
+I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle
+by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and
+then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob
+enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on
+the horse.
+
+Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a
+salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:
+
+"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when
+once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of
+him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade,
+a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."
+
+"God bless you--and yours, _mon frere_!"
+
+We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the
+river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly
+back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:
+
+"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their
+mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a
+father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the
+present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."
+
+To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the
+melting snow by his side.
+
+Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log
+structure critically over.
+
+"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this
+house--to me?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Stewart."
+
+"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan
+out still another room for our abode."
+
+Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically
+begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+
+
+
+The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage
+and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could
+scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the
+year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near
+the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that
+their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they
+did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in
+constant alarm. No household knew, on going to bed, that they would not be
+roused before morning by savage war-cries. No man ventured out of sight of
+his home without entertaining the idea that he might never get back alive.
+Hence, when the long-expected blow was really struck, and the town on the
+German Flatts devastated, everybody was in an agony of fear. To make
+matters worse, Sir William was at his home ill in bed, and there was some
+trouble between him and the English commanders, which stood in the way of
+troops being sent to our aid.
+
+Those few days following the dreadful news of the attack above us seem
+still like a nightmare. The settlers up the river began sending their
+household goods down to Albany; women and children, too, passed us in
+great parties, to take refuge in Fort Hunter or at Schenectady. The river
+suddenly became covered with boats once more, but this time representing
+the affrighted flight of whole communities instead of a peaceful commerce.
+
+During this season of terror I was, as may be conceived, indeed unhappy. I
+had no stomach even for play with the new addition to our household, yet
+scarcely dared to show my nose outside the stockade. Mr. Stewart spent his
+days abroad, either with Sir William, or up at Caughnawaga concerting
+means of defence with our friends the Fondas. He did, however, find time
+to cross the river and reassure my mother, who trembled with apprehension
+for her great brood of young, but was brave as a lion for herself. Weeks
+afterward, when I visited her once more, I saw baskets of lime in the
+attic which this devoted woman had stored there, to throw with water on
+the Indians when they came. This device she had learned from the family
+traditions of her ancestors' doings, when the Spaniards were in Holland.
+
+Gradually the alarm wore away. The French and Indians, after killing fifty
+Palatines and taking thrice that number prisoners, turned tail and marched
+back to the Lake again, with some of Honikol Herkimer's lead in their
+miserable bodies. The Valley was rarely to be cursed with their presence
+again. It was as if a long fever had come to its climax in a tremendous
+convulsion, and then gone off altogether. We regained confidence, and
+faced the long winter of '57 with content.
+
+Before the next snowfall succeeded to that first November flurry, and the
+season closed in in earnest, Mr. Stewart was able, by the aid of a number
+of neighbors, to build and roof over two additions to his house. The
+structure was still all of logs, but with its new wings became almost as
+large, if not as imposing, as any frame-house round about. One of these
+wings was set aside for Dame Kronk and the little girl. The other, much to
+my surprise, was given to me. At the same time my benefactor formally
+presented me with my little black playmate, Tulp. He had heretofore been
+my friend; henceforth he was my slave, yet, let me add, none the less
+my friend.
+
+All this was equivalent to my formal adoption as Mr. Stewart's son. It was
+the custom in those days, when a slave child came of a certain age, to
+present it to the child of the family who should be of the same age and
+sex. The presentation was made at New Year's, ordinarily, and the white
+child acknowledged it by giving the little black a piece of money and a
+pair of shoes. My mother rather illogically shed some tears at this token
+that I was to belong henceforth to Mr. Stewart; but she gave me a bright
+Spanish dollar out of her small hoard, for Tulp, and she had old William
+Dietz, the itinerant cobbler of Schoharie, construct for him a very
+notable pair of shoes, which did him no good since his father promptly
+sold them over at Fort Hunter for rum. The old rascal would have made
+away with the coin as well, no doubt, but that Mr. Stewart threatened him
+with a hiding, and so Tulp wore it on a leather string about his neck.
+
+I did not change my name, but continued to be Douw Mauverensen. This was
+at the wish of both Mr. Stewart and my mother, for the name I bore was an
+honorable one. My father had been for years a clergyman in the Valley,
+preaching now in Dutch, now in German, according to the nationality of the
+people, and leading a life of much hardship, travelling up and down among
+them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is
+certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many
+people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly
+remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very
+small boy.
+
+As he had had no fixed charge during life, but had ministered to half a
+dozen communities, so it was nobody's business in particular to care for
+his family after his death. The owner of the horse did send my mother a
+bushel of apples, and the congregation at Stone Arabia took up a little
+money for her. But they were all poor people in those days, wresting a
+scanty livelihood from the wilderness, and besides, I have never noticed
+that to be free with their money is in the nature of either the Dutch or
+the Palatines. The new dominie, too, who came up from Albany to take my
+father's place, was of the opinion that there was quite little enough
+coming in for the living pastor, without shearing it, as he said, to keep
+alive dead folk's memories. Thus sadly a prospect of great destitution
+opened before my mother.
+
+But she was, if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain
+Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the
+knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my
+grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years
+his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or
+by crook to collect his old credits outstanding, and maintained at least
+enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after
+his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with
+her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie
+Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she
+was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the
+youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means
+of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new
+dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time
+he visited our village. To add to the wretchedness of her plight, at this
+very time her sister Margaret came back in destitution and weakness to
+her, having been both widowed and sorely shaken in wits by the small-pox.
+
+It was then that Mr. Stewart, who had known my father, came to our relief.
+He first lent my mother a small sum of money--she would take no more, and
+was afterward very proud to repay him penny for penny. He further
+interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and
+others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort
+Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch.
+
+This language, which I have lived to see almost entirely fade from use,
+was even then thought to be most probably the tongue of the future in the
+colony, and there was the more need to teach it correctly, since, by the
+barbarous commingling of Rhenish peasant dialects, Irish and Scotch
+perversions of English, Indian phrases, the lingo of the slaves, and the
+curious expressions of the Yankees from the East, the most villanous
+jargon ever heard was commonly spoken in our Valley. My mother knew the
+noble language of her fathers in all its strength and sweetness, and her
+teaching was so highly prized that soon the school became a source of
+steady support to us all. Old "Uncle" Conrad--or Coonrod as we used to
+call him--the high-shouldered old pedagogue who was at once teacher,
+tithing-man, herb-doctor, and fiddler for our section, grumbled a little
+at the start; but either he had not the heart to take the bread from our
+mouths, or his own lips were soon silenced by the persuasion of
+our patrons.
+
+It was out of respect for one of these, good old Douw Fonda, who came from
+Schenectady to live at Caughnawaga when I was two years old, that I had
+been named. But even more we all owed to the quiet, lonely man who had
+built the log house opposite Aries Creek, and who used so often to come
+over on Sunday afternoons in the warm weather and pay us a
+friendly visit.
+
+My earliest recollections are of this Mr. Stewart, out of whom my boyish
+fancy created a beneficent sort of St. Nicholas, who could be good all the
+year round instead of only at New Year's. As I grew older his visits
+seemed more and more to be connected with me, for he paid little attention
+to my sisters, and rarely missed taking me on his knee, or, later on,
+leading me out for a walk. Finally I was asked to go over and stay with
+him for a week, and this practically was the last of my life with my
+mother. Soon afterward my aunt was engaged as his housekeeper, and I
+tacitly became a part of the household as well. Last of all, on my eighth
+birthday, in this same November of '57, I was formally installed as son of
+the house.
+
+It was a memorable day, as I have said, in that Tulp was given me for my
+own. But I think that at the time I was even more affected by the fact
+that I was presented with a coat, and allowed to forever lay aside my
+odious aprons. These garments, made by my mother's own hands, had long
+been the bane of my existence. To all my entreaties to be dressed as the
+other boys of my age were, like Matthew Wormuth or Walter Butler instead
+of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter
+Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he
+was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been
+my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my
+humiliation.
+
+Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same
+pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and
+plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel
+any more like the other boys than before.
+
+It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual
+contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the
+history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the
+neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other
+countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's
+possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the
+_Gentleman's Magazine,_ which I studied with delight. I had also from him
+_Roderick Random_, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now
+understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found
+favor with sensible people.
+
+My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little
+boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd
+sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the
+boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant
+as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the
+Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years
+after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's
+mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and
+fish and hunt instead. Young Butler was of a better sort mentally, but he
+too never cared to read much. Both he and the Groats, the Nellises, the
+Cosselmans, young Wormuth--in fact, all the boys of good families I knew
+in the Valley--derided education, and preferred instead to go into the
+woods with a negro, and hunt squirrels while he chopped, or to play with
+their traps.
+
+Perhaps they were not to be blamed much, for the attractions of the rough
+out-of-door life which they saw men leading all about them might very
+easily outweigh the quiet pleasures of a book. But it was a misfortune
+none the less in after-years to some of them, when they allowed uninformed
+prejudices to lead them into a terrible course of crime against their
+country and their neighbors, and paid their estates or their lives as the
+penalty for their ignorance and folly.
+
+Fortunately, things are better ordered for the youth of the land in these
+days.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+
+
+
+It was on the morrow after my birthday that we became finally convinced of
+the French retreat. Mr. Stewart had returned from his journeys, contented,
+and sat now, after his hot supper, smoking by the fire. I lay at his feet
+on a bear-skin, I remember, reading by the light of the flames, when my
+aunt brought the baby-girl in.
+
+During the week that she had been with us, I had been too much terrified
+by the menace of invasion to take much interest in her, and Mr. Stewart
+had scarcely seen her. He smiled now, and held out his hands to her. She
+went to him very freely, and looked him over with a wise, wondering
+expression when he took her on his knee. It could be seen that she was
+very pretty. Her little white rows of teeth were as regular and pearly as
+the upper kernels on an ear of fresh sweet corn. She had a ribbon in her
+long, glossy hair, and her face shone pleasantly with soap. My aunt had
+made her some shoes out of deer-hide, which Mr. Stewart chuckled over.
+
+"What a people the Dutch are!" he said, with a smile. "The child is
+polished like the barrel of a gun. What's your name, little one?"
+
+The girl made no answer, from timidity I suppose.
+
+"Has she no name? I should think she would have one," said I. It was the
+first time I had ever spoken to Mr. Stewart without having been addressed.
+But my new position in the house seemed to entitle me to this much
+liberty, for once.
+
+"No," he replied, "your aunt is not able to discover that she has a
+name--except that she calls herself Pulkey, or something like that."
+
+"That is not a good name to the ear," I said, in comment.
+
+"No; doubtless it is a nickname. I have thought," he added, musingly, "of
+calling her Desideria."
+
+I sat bolt upright at this. It did not become me to protest, but I could
+not keep the dismay from my face, evidently, for Mr. Stewart
+laughed aloud.
+
+"What is it, Douw? Is it not to your liking?"
+
+"Y-e-s, sir--but she is such a very little girl!"
+
+"And the name is so great, eh? She'll grow to it, lad, she'll grow to it.
+And what kind of a Dutchman are you, sir, who are unwilling to do honor to
+the greatest of all Dutchmen? The Dr. Erasmus upon whose letters you are
+to try your Latin this winter--his name was Desiderius. Can you tell what
+it means? It signifies 'desired,' as of a mother's heart, and he took a
+form of the Greek verb _erao_, meaning about the same thing, instead. It's
+a goodly famous name, you see. We mean to make our little girl the truest
+lady, and love her the best, of all the women in the Valley. And so we'll
+give her a name--a fair-sounding, gracious, classical name--which no
+other woman bears, and one that shall always suggest home love--eh, boy?"
+
+"But if it be so good a name, sir," I said, gingerly being conscious of
+presumption, "why did Dr. Erasmus not keep it himself instead of turning
+it into Greek?"
+
+My patron laughed heartily at this. "A Dutchman for obstinacy!" he said,
+and leaned over to rub the top of my head, which he did when I specially
+pleased him.
+
+Late that night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling
+of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I
+determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was
+brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the
+fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. Mr.
+Stewart was reading by the candles on the table. Save for the singing of
+the kettle on the crane--for the mixing of his night-drink later on--and
+the click of my aunt's knitting-needles, there was perfect silence. I
+mustered my bravery, and called my wee playmate "Daisy."
+
+I dared not look at the master, and could not tell if he had heard or not.
+Presently I spoke the name again, and this time ventured to steal an
+apprehensive glance at him, and fancied I saw the workings of a smile
+repressed in the deep lines about his mouth. "A Dutchman for obstinacy"
+truly, since two days afterward Mr. Stewart himself called the girl
+"Daisy"--and there was an end of it. Until confirmation time, when she
+played a queenly part at the head of the little class of farmers' and
+villagers' daughters whom Dominie Romeyn baptized into full communion,
+the ponderous Latin name was never heard of again. Then it indeed emerged
+for but a single day, to dignify a state occasion, and disappeared
+forever. Except alone on the confirmation register of the Stone Church at
+Caughnawaga, she was Daisy thenceforth for all time and to all men.
+
+The winter of 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of
+great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the
+roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good
+crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying
+settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to
+get food.
+
+I do not remember that our household stood in any such need, but
+occasionally some Indian who had been across the hills carrying venison
+would come in and rest, begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a
+strong smell like that of a tame bear as he toasted himself by the fire.
+Mr. Stewart was often amused by these fellows, and delighted to talk with
+them as far as their knowledge of language and inclination to use it went,
+but I never could abide them.
+
+It has become the fashion now to be sentimental about the red man, and
+young people who never knew what he really was like find it easy to extol
+his virtues, and to create for him a chivalrous character. No doubt there
+were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few
+just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion
+to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail
+me. But as a whole the race was a bad one--full of laziness and lies and
+cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and
+I know what I say.
+
+Probably there was no place on the whole continent where these Indians
+could be better studied than in the Mohawk Valley, near to Sir William's
+place. They came to him in great numbers, not only from the Six Nations,
+but often from far-distant tribes living beyond the Lakes and north of the
+St. Lawrence. They were on their best behavior with him, and no doubt had
+an affection for him in their way, but it was because he flattered their
+egregious vanity by acting and dressing in Indian fashion, and made it
+worth their while by constantly giving them presents and rum. Their liking
+seemed always to me to be that of the selfish, treacherous cat, rather
+than of the honest dog. Their teeth and claws were always ready for your
+flesh, if you did not give them enough, and if they dared to strike. And
+they were cowards, too, for all their boasting. Not even Sir William could
+get them to face any enemy in the open. Their notion of war was midnight
+skulking and shooting from behind safe cover. Even in battle they were
+murderers, not warriors.
+
+In peace they were next to useless. There was a little colony of them in
+our orchard one summer which I watched with much interest. The men never
+did one stroke of honest work all the season long, except to trot on
+errands when they felt like it, and occasionally salt and smoke fish
+which they caught in the river.
+
+But the wretched squaws--my word but _they_ worked enough for both! These
+women, wrinkled, dirty, sore-eyed from the smoke in their miserable huts,
+toiled on patiently, ceaselessly, making a great variety of wooden
+utensils and things of deer-hide like snow-shoes, moccasins, and shirts,
+which they bartered with the whites for milk and vegetables and rum. Even
+the little girls among them had to gather berries and mandrake, and, in
+the fall, the sumach blows which the Indians used for savoring their food.
+And if these poor creatures obtained in their bartering too much bread and
+milk and too little rum and tobacco, they were beaten by their men as no
+white man would beat the meanest animal.
+
+Doubtless much of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and
+hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all
+sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a
+score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp,
+that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs
+which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in
+the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, who herded
+together in a shanty at the edge of the clearing back of us, had their
+faults, no doubt; but they would work when they were bid, and they were
+grateful to those who fed and clothed and cared for them. These were
+reasons for their being despised by the Indians--and they seemed also
+reasons why I should like them, as I always did.
+
+There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a
+queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical
+sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably
+believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors
+or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge
+of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his
+ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over
+collecting tulip-bulbs.
+
+His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the
+possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened
+Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought
+him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the
+day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in
+his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing
+his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had
+some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could
+have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this
+warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living
+up to it.
+
+I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In
+truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season
+of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for
+me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head;
+that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close
+to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy,
+until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long
+months I never saw my mother and sisters, or went to church? It was very
+pleasant inside.
+
+I seem still to see the square, home-like central room of the old house,
+with Mr. Stewart's bed in one corner, covered with a great robe of pieced
+panther skins. The smoky rafters above were hung with strings of onions,
+red-peppers, and long ears of Indian corn, the gold of which shone through
+pale parted husks and glowed in the firelight. The rude home-made table,
+chairs, and stools stood in those days upon a rough floor of hewn planks,
+on projecting corners of which an unlucky toe was often stubbed. There
+were various skins spread on this floor, and others on the log walls, hung
+up to dry. Over the great stone mantel were suspended Mr. Stewart's guns,
+along with his sword and pistols. Back in the corners of the fireplace
+were hung traps, nets, and the like, while on the opposite side of the
+room was the master's bookcase, well filled with volumes in English,
+Latin, and other tongues. Three doors, low and unpanelled, opened from
+this room to the other chambers of the house--leading respectively to the
+kitchen, to my room, and to the room now set apart for my aunt and
+little Daisy.
+
+No doubt it was a poor abode, and scantily enough furnished, judged by
+present standards, but we were very comfortable in it, none the less. I
+worked pretty hard that winter on my Latin, conning Caesar for labor and
+Dr. Erasmus for play, and kept up my other studies as well, reading for
+the first time, I remember, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. For the
+rest, I busied myself learning to make snow-shoes, to twist cords out of
+flax, to mould bullets, and to write legibly, or else played with
+Daisy and Tulp.
+
+To confess how simply we amused ourselves, we three little ones, would be
+to speak in an unknown tongue, I fear, to modern children. Our stock of
+playthings was very limited. We had, as the basis of everything, the
+wooden works of the old clock, which served now for a gristmill like that
+of the Groats, now for a fort, again for a church. Then there were the
+spindles of a discarded spinning-wheel, and a small army of spools which
+my aunt used for winding linen thread. These we dressed in odd rags for
+dolls--soldiers, Indians, and fine ladies, and knights of old. To our
+contented fancy, there was endless interest in the lives and doings of
+these poor puppets. I made them illustrate the things I read, and the
+slave boy and tiny orphan girl assisted and followed on with equal
+enthusiasm, whether the play was of Alexander of Macedon, or Captain Kidd,
+or only a war-council of Delaware Indians, based upon Mr. Colden's book.
+
+Sometimes, when it was warm enough to leave the hearth, and Mr. Stewart
+desired not to be disturbed, we would transport ourselves and our games to
+my aunt's room. This would be a dingy enough place, I suppose, even to my
+eyes now, but it had a great charm then. Here from the rafters hung the
+dried, odoriferous herbs--sage, summer-savory, and mother-wort; bottles of
+cucumber ointment and of a liniment made from angle-worms--famous for cuts
+and bruises; strings of dried apples and pumpkins; black beans in their
+withered pods; sweet clover for the linen--and I know not what else
+besides. On the wall were two Dutch engravings of the killing of Jan and
+Cornelis de Wit by the citizens of The Hague, which, despite their hideous
+fidelity to details, had a great fascination for me.
+
+My childhood comes back vividly indeed to me as I recall the good old
+woman, in her white cap and short gown (which she had to lift to get at
+the pocket tied over her petticoat by a string to her waist), walking up
+and down with the yarn taut from the huge, buzzing wheel, crooning Dutch
+hymns to herself the while, and thinking about our dinner.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+
+
+
+If I relied upon my memory, I could not tell when the French war ended. It
+had practically terminated, so far as our Valley was concerned, with the
+episode already related. Sir William Johnson was away much of the time
+with the army, and several of the boys older than myself--John Johnson,
+John Frey, and Adam Fonda among them--went with him. We heard vague news
+of battles at distant places, at Niagara, at Quebec, and elsewhere. Once,
+indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did
+bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic
+in the lower settlements.
+
+Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in
+the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes.
+
+I remember one body of Highlanders in particular whose dress and mien
+impressed me greatly. Mr. Stewart, too, was much excited by the memories
+this noble uniform evoked, and had the officers into the house to eat and
+drink with him. I watched and listened to these tall, fierce, bare-kneed
+warriors in awe, from a distance. He brought out bottles from his rare
+stock of Madeira, and they drank it amid exclamations which, if I mistake
+not, were highly treasonable. This was almost the last occasion on which I
+heard references made to his descent, and he did his best to discourage
+them then. Most of these fine red-haired men, I learned afterward laid
+their bones on the bloody plateau overlooking Quebec.
+
+Far fresher in my recollection than these rumors of war is the fact that
+my Tulp caught the small-pox, in the spring of '60, the malady having been
+spread by a Yankee who came up the Valley selling sap-spouts that were
+turned with a lathe instead of being whittled. The poor little chap was
+carried off to a sheep-shed on the meadow clearing, a long walk from our
+house, and he had to remain there by himself for six weeks. At my urgent
+request, I was allowed to take his food to him daily, leaving it on a
+stone outside and then discreetly retiring. He would come out and get it,
+and then we would shout to each other across the creek. I took up some of
+our dolls to him, but he did not get much comfort out of them, being
+unable to remember any of the stories which I illustrated with them, or to
+invent any for himself. At his suggestion I brought him instead a piece of
+tanned calf-skin, with a sailor's needle and some twine, and the little
+fellow made out of this a lot of wallets for his friends, which had to be
+buried a long time before they could be safely used. I have one of these
+yet--mildewed with age, and most rudely stitched, but still a very
+precious possession.
+
+Tulp came out finally, scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward
+repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that
+Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than
+ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because
+women are more delicately made, and must perforce shudder at ugliness.
+
+How happily the years went by! The pictures in my memory, save those of
+the snug winter rooms already referred to, are all of a beautiful Valley,
+embowered in green, radiant with sunshine--each day live-long
+with delight.
+
+There was first of all in the spring, when the chorus of returning
+song-birds began, the gathering of maple-sap, still sacred to boyhood. The
+sheep were to be washed and sheared, too, and the awkward, weak-kneed
+calves to be fed. While the spring floods ran high, ducks and geese
+covered the water, and muskrats came out, driven from their holes. Then
+appeared great flocks of pigeons, well fattened from their winter's
+sojourn in the South, and everybody, young and old, gave himself up to
+their slaughter; while this lasted, the crack! crack! of guns was heard
+all the forenoon long, particularly if the day was cloudy and the birds
+were flying low--and ah! the buttered pigeon pies my aunt made, too.
+
+As the floods went down, and the snow-water disappeared, the fishing
+began, first with the big, silly suckers, then with wiser and more valued
+fish. The woods became dry, and then in long, joyous rambles we set traps
+and snares, hunted for nests among the low branches and in the
+marsh-grass, smoked woodchucks out of their holes, gathered wild flowers,
+winter-green, and dye-plants, or built great fires of the dead leaves and
+pithless, scattered branches, as boys to the end of time will delight
+to do.
+
+When autumn came, there were mushrooms, and beech-nuts, butter-nuts,
+hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of
+elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened
+the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the
+wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the
+combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by
+our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being
+boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk
+by my aunt.
+
+Ah, they were happy times indeed!
+
+Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early
+in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no
+reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are
+wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being
+invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew
+quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly
+upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular
+progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the
+pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high,
+uncompromising back made all my bones ache.
+
+Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was
+a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the
+best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own
+to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on
+me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me
+personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed
+to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist
+clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of
+the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even
+to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree
+were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and
+spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst
+in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads.
+
+When at last I could escape without discredit, and get across the river
+again, it was with the consoling thought that the next Sunday would be Mr.
+Stewart's Sunday.
+
+This meant a good long walk with my patron. Sometimes we would go down to
+Mount Johnson, if Sir William was at home, or to Mr. Butler's, or some
+other English-speaking house, where I would hear much profitable
+conversation, and then be encouraged to talk about it during our leisurely
+homeward stroll. But more often, if the day were fine, we would leave
+roads and civilization behind us, and climb the gradual elevation to the
+north of the house, through the woodland to an old Indian trail which led
+to our favorite haunt--a wonderful ravine.
+
+The place has still a local fame, and picnic parties go there to play at
+forestry, but it gives scarcely a suggestion now of its ancient wildness.
+As my boyish eyes saw it, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The
+creek, then a powerful stream, had cut a deep gorge in its exultant leap
+over the limestone barrier. On the cliffs above, giant hemlocks seemed to
+brush the very sky with their black, tufted boughs. Away below, on the
+shadowed bottomland, which could be reached only by feet trained to
+difficult descents, strange plants grew rank in the moisture of the
+waterfall, and misshapen rocks wrapped their nakedness in heavy folds of
+unknown mosses and nameless fern-growths. Above all was the ceaseless
+shout of the tumbling waters, which had in my ears ever a barbaric message
+from the Spirit of the Wilderness.
+
+The older Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot
+was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here,
+for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered
+about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had
+assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain,
+for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown.
+Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen
+or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this
+council place. Even the trail, winding its tortuous way from the Valley
+over the hills toward the Adirondack fastnesses, had been deserted for
+another long before--so long, in fact, that the young brave who chanced to
+follow the lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge,
+or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to
+learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the
+council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the
+chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part
+of his ancestral history.
+
+Mr. Stewart told me that when he first settled in the Valley, a
+disappointed and angry man, this gulf had much the satisfaction for him
+that men in great grief or wrath find in breasting a sharp storm. There
+was something congenial to his ugly unrest in this place, with its violent
+clamor, its swift dashing of waters, its dismal shadows, and damp
+chilliness of depths.
+
+But we were fallen now upon calmer, brighter days. He was no longer the
+discouraged, sullen misanthropist, but had come to be instead a pacific,
+contented, even happy, gentleman. And lo! the meaning of the wild gorge
+changed to reflect his mood. There was no stain of savagery upon the
+delight we had in coming to this spot. As he said, once listened rightly
+to, the music of the falling waters gave suggestions which, if they were
+sobering, were still not sad.
+
+This place was all our own, and hither we most frequently bent our steps
+on Sundays, after the snow-water had left the creek, and the danger of
+lurking colds had been coaxed from the earth by the May sun. Here he would
+sit for hours on one of the stones in the great Druid-like circle which
+some dead generation of savages had toiled to construct. Sometimes I
+would scour the steep sides of the ravine and the moist bottom for curious
+plants to fetch to him, and he would tell me of their structure and
+design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his
+pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and
+this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his
+past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable
+wealth of reminiscence, reflection, and helpful anecdote.
+
+On this spot, with the gaunt outlines of mammoth primeval trunks and
+twisted boughs above us, with the sacred memorials of extinct rites about
+us, and with the waters crashing down through the solitude beneath us on
+their way to turn Sir William's mill-wheel, one could get broad,
+comprehensive ideas of what things really meant. One could see wherein the
+age of Pitt differed from and advanced upon the age of Colbert, on this
+new continent, and could as in prophecy dream of the age of Jefferson yet
+to come. Did I as a lad feel these things? Truly it seems to me that
+I did.
+
+Half a century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle,
+its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan
+tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the
+blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound
+to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that not
+even the horrors of this death could shake his will, or wring a groan
+from his heaving breast. Here, too, above the unending din of the
+waterfall and the whisper of these hemlocks overhead, had often risen some
+such shrill-voiced, defiant deathsong, from the smoke and anguish of the
+stake, as that chant of the Algonquin son of Alknomuk which my
+grandchildren still sing at their school. This dead and horrible past of
+heathendom I saw as in a mirror, looking upon these council-stones.
+
+The children's children of these savages were still in the Valley. Their
+council fires were still lighted, no further distant than the Salt
+Springs. In their hearts burned all the old lust for torture and massacre,
+and the awful joys of rending enemies limb by limb. But the spell of
+Europe was upon them, and, in good part or otherwise, they bowed under it.
+So much had been gained, and two peaceful white people could come and talk
+in perfect safety on the ancient site of their sacrifices and cruelties.
+
+Yet this spell of Europe, accomplishing so much, left much to be desired.
+It was still possible to burn a slave to death by legal process, here in
+our Valley; and it was still within the power of careless, greedy noblemen
+in London, who did not know the Mohawk from the Mississippi, to sign away
+great patents of our land, robbing honest settlers of their all. There was
+to come the spell of America, which should remedy these things. I cannot
+get it out of my head that I learned to foresee this, to feel and to look
+for its coming, there in the gorge as a boy.
+
+But there are other reasons why I should remember the place--to be told
+later on.
+
+The part little Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is
+hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can
+recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade,
+and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds
+these old memories. We were happy together--that is all.
+
+I taught her to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from
+toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs.
+For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call
+her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I
+learned in turn to be merciful to helpless creatures, and to be honest and
+cleanly in my thoughts and talk. She would help me to seek for birds'
+nests with genuine enthusiasm, but it was her pity which prevented their
+being plundered afterward. Her pretty love for all living things, her
+delight in innocent, simple amusements, her innate repugnance to coarse
+and cruel actions--all served to make me different from the rough
+boys about me.
+
+Thus we grew up together, glad in each other's constant company, and
+holding our common benefactor, Mr. Stewart, in the greatest love and
+veneration.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+
+
+
+As we two children became slowly transformed into youths, the Valley with
+no less steadiness developed in activity, population, and wealth. Good
+roads were built; new settlements sprang up; the sense of being in the
+hollow of the hand of savagery wore off. Primitive conditions lapsed,
+disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven
+faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh
+outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began
+to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the
+common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the
+Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a
+pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore
+ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained
+hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that
+some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more
+attractions.
+
+There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was
+sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the
+gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London
+clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him.
+
+The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people
+all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the
+hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown
+how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be
+courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who
+fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses
+and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and
+close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed
+children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love
+for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others,
+the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his
+influence in London.
+
+They never liked him entirely; he in turn had so little regard for them
+and their pretensions that, when they came, he would suffer none of them
+to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom indeed they had often
+to meet as an associate and equal. Yet this bold, independent, really
+great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded
+water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to
+value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their
+painted spectacles--and thus to come to grief.
+
+Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr. Stewart all at once decided
+that he too would have a new house; and before snow flew the handsome,
+spacious "Cedars," as it was called, proudly fronted the Valley highway.
+Of course it was not, in size, a rival of the Hall at Johnstown, but it
+none the less was among the half-dozen best houses in the Mohawk Valley,
+and continued so to be until John Johnson burned it to the ground fifteen
+years later. It stood in front of our old log structure, now turned over
+to the slaves. It was of two stories, with lofty and spacious rooms, and
+from the road it presented a noble appearance, now that the old stockade
+had given place to a wall of low, regular masonry.
+
+With this new residence came a prodigious change in our way of life. Daisy
+was barely twelve years old, but we already thought of her as the lady of
+the house, for whom nothing was too good. The walls were plastered, and
+stiff paper from Antwerp with great sprawling arabesques, and figures of
+nymphs and fauns chasing one another up and down with ceaseless, fruitless
+persistency, was hung upon them, at least in the larger rooms. The floors
+were laid smoothly, each board lapping into the next by a then novel
+joiner's trick.
+
+On the floor in Daisy's room there was a carpet, too, a rare and
+remarkable thing in those days, and also from the Netherlands. In this
+same chamber, as well, were set up a bed of mahogany, cunningly carved and
+decorated, and a tall foreign cabinet of some rich dark wood, for linen,
+frocks, and the like. Here, likewise, were two gilt cages from Paris, in
+which a heart-breaking succession of native birds drooped and died, until
+four Dublin finches were at last imported for Daisy's special delight; and
+a case with glass doors and a lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her
+books; and, best of all, a piano--or was it a harpsichord?--standing on
+its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and
+bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling
+old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk,
+sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing
+to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that
+of the cherubim.
+
+Mr. Stewart and I lived in far less splendor. There was no foreign
+furniture to speak of in our portions of the house; we slept on beds the
+cords of which creaked through honest American maple posts; we walked on
+floors which offered gritty sand to the tread instead of carpet-stuffs.
+But there were two great stands laden with good books in our living-room;
+we had servants now within sound of a bell; we habitually wore garments
+befitting men of refinement and substance; we rode our own horses, and we
+could have given Daisy a chaise had the condition of our roads made it
+desirable.
+
+I say "we" because I had come to be a responsible factor in the control of
+the property. Mr. Stewart had never been poor; he was now close upon being
+wealthy. Upon me little by little had devolved the superintendence of
+affairs. I directed the burning over and clearing of land, which every
+year added scores of tillable acres to our credit; saw to the planting,
+care, and harvesting of crops; bought, bred, and sold the stock; watched
+prices, dickered with travelling traders, provisioned the house--in a
+word, grew to be the manager of all, and this when I was barely twenty.
+
+Mr. Stewart bore his years with great strength, physically, but he readily
+gave over to me, as fast as I could assume them, the details of out-door
+work. The taste for sitting indoors or in the garden, and reading, or
+talking with Daisy--the charm of simply living in a home made beautiful by
+a good and clever young girl--gained yearly upon him.
+
+Side by side with this sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second
+growth of old-world, mediaeval notions--a sort of aristocratic aftermath.
+It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by
+ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the
+wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under
+the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to dwell
+upon this change, or rather upon its results, at this stage of the story.
+
+Social position was now a matter for consideration. With improved means of
+intercourse and traffic, each year found some family thrifty enough to
+thrust its head above the rude level of settlers' equality, and take on
+the airs of superiority. Twenty years before, it had been Colonel Johnson
+first, and nobody else second. Now the Baronet-General was still
+preeminently first; but every little community in the Valley chain had its
+two or three families holding themselves only a trifle lower than
+the Johnsons.
+
+Five or six nationalities were represented. Of the Germans, there were the
+Herkimers up above the Falls, the Lawyers at Schoharie, the Freys (who
+were commonly thus classed, though they came originally from Switzerland),
+and many others. Of important Dutch families, there were the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, the Mabies and Groats at Rotterdam, below us, and the
+Quackenbosses to the west of us, across the river. The Johnsons and
+Butlers were Irish. Over at Cherry Valley the Campbells and Clydes were
+Scotch--the former being, indeed, close blood relatives of the great
+Argyll house. Colonel Isaac Paris, a prominent merchant near Stone Arabia,
+came from Strasbourg, and accounted himself a Frenchman, though he spoke
+German better than French, and attended the Dutch Calvinistic church.
+There were also English families of quality. I mention them all to show
+how curious was the admixture of races in our Valley. One cannot
+understand the terrible trouble which came upon us later without some
+knowledge of these race divisions.
+
+Mr. Stewart held a place in social estimation rather apart from any of
+these cliques. He was both Scotch and Irish by ancestry; he was French by
+education; he had lived and served in the Netherlands and sundry German
+states. Thus he could be all things to all men--yet he would not. He
+indeed became more solitary as he grew older, for the reasons I have
+already mentioned. He once had been friendly with all his intelligent
+neighbors, no matter what their nationality. Gradually he came to be
+intimate with only the Johnsons and Butlers on the theory that they were
+alone well born. Hours upon hours he talked with them of the Warrens and
+the Ormund-Butlers in Ireland, from whom they claimed descent, and of the
+assurance of Dutch and German cobblers and tinkers, in setting up for
+gentlemen.
+
+Sir William, in truth, had too much sense to often join or sympathize with
+these notions. But young Sir John and the Butlers, father and son, adopted
+them with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and
+German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these
+reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed
+lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for the friendship, of
+their critics.
+
+But let me defer these painful matters as long as possible. There are
+still the joys of youth to recall.
+
+I had grown now into a tall, strong young man, and I was in the way of
+meeting no one who did not treat me as an equal. It seems to me now that I
+was not particularly popular among my fellows, but I was conscious of no
+loneliness then. I had many things to occupy my mind, besides my regular
+tasks. Both natural history and botany interested me greatly, and I was
+privileged also to assist Sir William's investigations in the noble paths
+of astronomy. He had both large information and many fine thoughts on the
+subject, and used laughingly to say that if he were not too lazy he would
+write a book thereon. This was his way of saying that he had more labor to
+get through than any other man in the Colony. It was his idea that some
+time I should write the work instead; upon the Sacondaga hills, he said,
+we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our
+book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of
+planets. Alas! I also was too indolent--truly, not figuratively; the book
+was never written.
+
+In those days there was royal sport for rod and gun, but books also had a
+solid worth. We did not visit other houses much--Daisy and I--but held
+ourselves to a degree apart. The British people were, as a whole, nearer
+our station than the others, and had more ideas in common with us; but
+they were not of our blood, and we were not drawn toward many of them. As
+they looked down upon the Dutch, so the Dutch, in turn, were supercilious
+toward the Germans. I was Dutch, Daisy was German: but by a sort of tacit
+consent we identified ourselves with neither race, and this aided our
+isolation.
+
+There was also the question of religion. Mr. Stewart had been bred a
+Papist, and at the time of which I write, after the French war, Jesuit
+priests of that nation several times visited him to renew old European
+friendships. But he never went to mass, and never allowed them or anybody
+else to speak with him on the subject, no matter how deftly they
+approached it. This was prudent, from a worldly point of view, because the
+Valley, and for that matter the whole upper Colony, was bitterly opposed
+to Romish pretensions, and the first Scotch Highlanders who brought the
+mass into the Valley above Johnstown were openly denounced as idolaters.
+But it was certainly not caution which induced Mr. Stewart's backsliding.
+He was not the man to defer in that way to the prejudices of others. The
+truth was that he had no religious beliefs or faith whatever. But his
+scepticism was that of the French noble of the time, that of Voltaire and
+Mirabeau, rather than of the English plebeian and democrat, Thomas Paine.
+
+Naturally Daisy and I were not reared as theologians. We nominally
+belonged to the Calvinistic church, but not being obliged to attend its
+services, rarely did so. This tended to further separate us from our
+neighbors, who were mainly prodigious church-goers.
+
+But, more than all else, we lived by ourselves because, by constant
+contact with refined associations, we had grown to shrink from the
+coarseness which ruled outside. All about us marriages were made between
+mere children, each boy setting up for himself and taking a wife as soon
+as he had made a voyage to the Lakes and obtained a start in fur-trading.
+There was precious little sentiment or delicacy in these early courtships
+and matches, or in the state of society which they reflected--uncultured,
+sordid, rough, unsympathetic, with all its elementary instincts bluntly
+exposed and expressed. This was of course a subject not to be discussed by
+us. Up to the spring of 1772, when I was twenty-three years of age and
+Daisy was eighteen, no word of all the countless words which young men and
+women have from the dawn of language spoken on this great engrossing topic
+had ever been exchanged between us. In earlier years, when we were on the
+threshold of our teens, Mr. Stewart had more than once thought aloud in
+our hearing upon the time when we should inherit his home and fortune as a
+married couple. Nothing of that talk, though, had been heard for a
+long while.
+
+I had not entirely forgotten it; but I carried the idea along in the attic
+of my mind, as a thing not to be thrown away, yet of no present use or
+value or interest.
+
+Occasionally, indeed, I did recall it for the moment, and cast a diffident
+conjecture as to whether Daisy also remembered. Who shall say? I have been
+young and now am old, yet have I not learned the trick of reading a
+woman's mind. Very far indeed was I from it in those callow days.
+
+And now, after what I fear has been a tiresome enough prologue, my story
+awaits.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+
+
+It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were
+entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness
+of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve
+upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times,
+there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief
+inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and
+her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations.
+
+I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she
+stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson
+Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight.
+I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my
+companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise.
+
+We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first
+visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this
+morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion
+behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly
+along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this
+full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued
+hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever
+under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean
+face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown
+sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together,
+from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of
+himself and of the beautiful girl behind him.
+
+And she _was_ beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed
+with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance
+as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in
+its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's
+thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought
+that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so
+delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and
+thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the
+edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the
+hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun.
+
+She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought,
+as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was
+she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And
+I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my
+head a little, too.
+
+It would have been strange otherwise, for the day and the scene must have
+stirred the coldest pulse. We moved through a pale velvety panorama of
+green--woodland and roadside and river reflections and shadows, all of
+living yet young and softening green; the birds all about us filled the
+warm air with song; the tapping of the woodpeckers and the shrill chatter
+of squirrels came from every thicket; there was nothing which did not
+reflect our joyous, buoyant delight that spring had come again. And I rode
+by Daisy's side, and thought more of her, I'm bound, than I did of the
+flood-dismantled dike on the river-bend at home which I had left
+unrestored for the day.
+
+Over the heads of the negroes, who, spying us, came headlong to take our
+horses, we saw Sir William standing in the garden with an unknown lady.
+The baronet himself, walking a little heavily with his cane, approached us
+with hearty salutations, helped Daisy to unmount, and presented us to this
+stranger--Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+I am not so sure that people can fall in love at first sight. But never
+doubt their ability to dislike from the beginning! I know that I felt
+indignantly intolerant of this woman even before, hat in hand, I had
+finished my bow to her.
+
+Yet it might well have been that I was over-harsh in my judgment. She had
+been a pretty woman in her time, and still might be thought well-favored.
+At least _she_ must have thought so, for she wore more paint and ribbons,
+and fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since.
+Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in
+outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids
+and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet
+so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that
+it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous
+black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an
+unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin.
+
+I may say that I was a wholesome-enough looking young fellow, very tall
+and broad-shouldered, with a long, dark face, which was ugly in childhood,
+but had grown now into something like comeliness. I am not parading
+special innocence either, but no woman had ever looked into my eyes with
+so bold, I might say impudent, an expression as this fine lady put on to
+greet me. And she was old enough to be my mother, almost, into
+the bargain.
+
+But even more than her free glances, which, after all, meant no harm, but
+only reflected London manners, her dress grated upon me. We were not
+unaccustomed to good raiment in the Valley. Johnson Hall, which reared its
+broad bulk through the trees on the knoll above us, had many a time
+sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us.
+But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place--like her
+feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains
+and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet,
+whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and
+Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and
+knowing our position, were also genuine parts of the scene. The English
+lady was pinchbeck by contrast with all about her.
+
+"Will you give the ladies an arm, Douw?" said Sir William. "We were
+walking to see the lilacs I planted a year ago. We old fellows, with so
+much to say to each other, will lead the way."
+
+Nothing occurred to me to say to the new acquaintance, who further annoyed
+me by clinging to my arm with a zeal unpleasantly different from Daisy's
+soft touch on the other side. I walked silent, and more or less sulky,
+between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily.
+
+"And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks
+so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you
+content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet!
+And you never weary of it--never sigh when it is time to return to it from
+New York?"
+
+"I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer.
+
+Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment.
+
+"Never to New York! nor even to Albany! _Une vraie belle sauvage!_ How you
+amaze me, poor child!"
+
+"Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily. "My father
+and brother are so good to me--just like a true father and brother--that
+if I but hinted a wish to visit the moon, they would at once set about to
+arrange the voyage. I do not always stay at home. Twice I have been on a
+visit to Mr. Campbell, at Cherry Valley, over the hills yonder. And then
+once we made a grand excursion up the river, way to Fort Herkimer, and
+beyond to the place where my poor parents lost their lives."
+
+As we stood regarding the lilac bushes, planted in a circle on the slope,
+and I was congratulating myself that my elbows were free again, two
+gentlemen approached us from the direction of the Hall.
+
+Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady
+Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There,
+that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler."
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we
+came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his
+rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke
+pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake
+country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until his return, at
+Johnson Hall.
+
+His companion was Walter Butler, and of him I ought to speak more closely,
+since long generations after this tale is forgotten his name will remain
+written, blood-red, in the Valley's chronicles. I walked away from the
+lilacs with him, I recall, discussing some unremembered subject. I always
+liked Walter: even now, despite everything, there continues a soft spot in
+my memory for him.
+
+He was about my own age, and, oh! such a handsome youth, with features cut
+as in a cameo, and pale-brown smooth skin, and large deep eyes, that look
+upon me still sometimes in dreams with ineffable melancholy. He was
+somewhat beneath my stature, but formed with perfect delicacy.
+
+In those old days of breeches and long hose, a man's leg went for a good
+deal. I have often thought that there must be a much closer connection
+between trousers and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man
+like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a
+Whig in the Revolutionary time--as if by natural prejudice against the
+would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and
+dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own
+country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still
+largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World
+ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the
+symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and
+silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction
+of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of
+republican trousers--a popular decree that henceforth all men should be
+equal as to legs?
+
+To return. Walter Butler was most perfectly built--a living picture of
+grace. He dressed, too, with remarkable taste, contriving always to appear
+the gentleman, yet not out of place in the wilderness. He wore his own
+black hair, carelessly tied or flowing, and with no thought of powder.
+
+We had always liked each other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn
+and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he
+was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he
+held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also
+be able to revere them for upholding a false-tongued king against the
+rights of his people. For my own part, I did not pin much faith upon his
+descent, being able to remember his grandfather, the old lieutenant, who
+seemed a peasant to the marrow of his bones.
+
+Nor could I see any special value in the fact of descent, even were it
+unquestioned. Walter, it seemed to me, would do much better to work at the
+law, to which he was bred, and make a name for himself by his own
+exertions. Alas, he did make a name!
+
+But though our paths would presently diverge we still were good friends,
+and as we walked he told me what he had heard that day of Lady Berenicia
+Cross. It was not much. She had been the daughter of a penniless,
+disreputable Irish earl, and had wedded early in life to escape the
+wretchedness of her paternal home. She had played quite a splendid part
+for a time in the vanities of London court-life, after her husband gained
+his wealth, but had latterly found her hold upon fashion's favor loosened.
+Why she had accompanied her serious spouse on this rough and wearisome
+journey was not clear. It might be that she came because he did not care
+for her company. It might be that he thought it wisest not to leave her in
+London to her own devices. In any case, here she indubitably was, and
+Walter was disposed to think her rather a fine woman for her years,
+which he took to be about twoscore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We strolled back again to the lilacs, where the two women were seated on a
+bench, with Mr. Cross and Colonel Claus--the brighter and better of Sir
+William's two sons-in-law--standing over them. Lady Berenicia beckoned to
+my companion with her fan.
+
+"Pray come and amuse us, Mr. Butler," she said, in her high, mincing
+tones. "Were it not for the fear of ministering to your vanity, I might
+confess we two have been languishing for an hour for your company.
+Mistress Daisy and I venerate these cavaliers of ours vastly--we hold
+their grave wisdom in high regard--but our frivolous palates need lighter
+things than East India Companies and political quarrels in Boston. I
+command you to discourse nonsense, Mr. Butler--pure, giddy nonsense."
+
+Walter bowed, and with a tinge of irony acknowledged the compliment, but
+all pleasantly enough. I glanced at our Daisy, expecting to discover my
+own distaste for this silly speech mirrored on her face. It vexed me a
+little to see that she seemed instead to be pleased with the London lady.
+
+"What shall it be, my lady?" smiled Walter; "what shall be the
+shuttlecock--the May races, the ball, the Klock scandal, the--"
+
+If it was rude, it is too late to be helped now. I interrupted the foolish
+talk by asking Colonel Claus what the news from Boston was, for the
+post-boy had brought papers to the Hall that morning.
+
+"The anniversary speech is reported. Some apothecary, named Warren, held
+forth this year, and his seems the boldest tongue yet. If his talk stinks
+not of treason in every line, why then I have no smelling sense. They are
+talking of it in the library now; but I am no statesman, and it suits me
+better out here in the sun."
+
+"But," I replied, "I have heard of this Dr. Warren, and he is not reputed
+to be a rash or thoughtless speaker."
+
+Young Butler burst into the conversation with eager bitterness:
+
+"Thoughtless! Rash! No--the dogs know better! There'll be no word that can
+be laid hold upon--all circumspect outside, with hell itself underneath.
+Do we not know the canters? Oh, but I'd smash through letter and seal of
+the law alike to get at them, were I in power! There'll be no peace till
+some strong hand does do it."
+
+Walter's deep eyes flashed and glowed as he spoke, and his face was
+shadowed with grave intensity of feeling.
+
+There was a moment's silence--broken by the thin voice of the London lady:
+"_Bravo_! admirable! Always be in a rage, Mr. Butler, it suits you so
+much.--Isn't he handsome, Daisy, with his feathers all on end?"
+
+While our girl, unused to such bold talk, looked blushingly at the young
+grass, Mr. Cross spoke:
+
+"Doubtless you gentry of New York have your own good reasons for disliking
+Boston men, as I find you do. But why rasp your nerves and spoil your
+digestion by so fuming over their politics? I am an Englishman: if I can
+keep calm on the subject, you who are only collaterally aggrieved, as it
+were, should surely be able to do so. My word for it, young men, life
+brings vexations enough to one's very door, without setting out in
+quest of them."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Cross," languidly sneered my lady, "what is there in the
+heavens or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, which could
+stir your blood by one added beat an hour, save indigo and spices?"
+
+There was so distinct a menace of domestic discord in this iced query that
+Butler hastened to take up the talk:
+
+"Ah, yes, _you_ can keep cool! There are thousands of miles of water
+between you English and the nest where this treason is hatched. It's close
+to us. Do you think you can fence in a sentiment as you can cattle? No: it
+will spread. Soon what is shouted in Boston will be spoken in Albany,
+whispered in Philadelphia, winked and nodded in Williamsburg, thought in
+Charleston. And how will it be here, with us? Let me tell you, Mr. Cross,
+we are really in an alien country here. The high Germans above us, like
+that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for
+the King? And these damned sour-faced Dutch traders below, have they
+forgotten that this province was their grandfathers'? The moment it
+becomes clear to their niggard souls that there's no money to be lost by
+treason, will they not delight to help on any trouble the Yankees contrive
+to make for England? I tell you, sir, if you knew these Dutch as I know
+them--their silent treachery, their jealousy of us, their greed--"
+
+This seemed to have gone far enough. "Come, you forget that I am a
+Dutchman," I said, putting my hand on Butler's shoulder.
+
+Quivering with the excitement into which he had worked himself, he shook
+off my touch, and took a backward step, eying me angrily. I returned his
+gaze, and I dare say it was about as wrathful as his own.
+
+Lady Berenicia made a diversion. "It grows cool," she said. "Come inside
+with me, Mistress Daisy, and I will show you all my chests and boxes. Mr.
+Cross made a great to-do about bringing them, but--"
+
+As the ladies rose, Walter came to me with outstretched hand. "I was at
+fault, Douw," said he, frankly. "Don't think more about it."
+
+I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his
+words.
+
+Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with
+disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks.
+
+"My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+
+
+
+In the library room of the Hall, across from the dining-chamber, and at
+the foot of the great staircase, on the bannister of which you may still
+see the marks of Joseph Brant's hatchet, we men had a long talk in the
+afternoon. I recall but indifferently the lesser topics of conversation.
+There was, of course, some political debate, in which Sir William and I
+were alone on the side of the Colonist feeling, and Mr. Stewart, the two
+Butlers, and Sir John Johnson were all for choking discontent with the
+rope. Nothing very much to the point was said, on our part at least; for
+the growing discord pained Sir William too deeply to allow him pleasure in
+its discussion, and I shrank from appearing to oppose Mr. Stewart, hateful
+as his notions seemed.
+
+Young Sir John stood by the window, I remember, sulkily drumming on the
+diapered panes, and purposely making his interjections as disagreeable to
+me as he could; at least, I thought so. So, apparently, did his father
+think, for several times I caught the wise old baronet glancing at his son
+in reproof, with a look in his grave gray eyes as of dawning doubt about
+the future of his heir.
+
+Young Johnson was now a man of thirty, blond, aquiline-faced, with cold
+blue eyes and thin, tight lips, which pouted more readily than they
+smiled. His hair was the pale color of bleached hay, a legacy from his low
+born German mother, and his complexion was growing evenly florid from too
+much Madeira wine. We were not friends, and we both knew it.
+
+There was other talk--about the recent creation of our part into a county
+by itself to be named after the Governor; about the behavior of the French
+traders at Oswego and Detroit, and a report from Europe in the latest
+gazettes that the "Young" Pretender, now a broken old rake, was at last to
+be married. This last was a subject upon which Mr. Stewart spoke most
+entertainingly, but with more willingness to let it be known that he had a
+kinsman's interest in the matter than he would formerly have shown. He was
+getting old, in fact, and an almost childish pride in his equivocal
+ancestry was growing upon him. Still his talk and reminiscences were
+extremely interesting.
+
+They fade in my recollection, however, before the fact that it was at this
+little gathering, this afternoon, that my career was settled for me. There
+had been some talk about me while I remained alone outside to confer with
+Sir William's head farmer, and Mr. Cross had agreed with Mr. Stewart and
+Sir William that I was to accompany him on his trip to the far Western
+region the following week. My patron had explained that I needed some
+added knowledge of the world and its affairs, yet was of too serious a
+turn to gather this in the guise of amusement, as Mr. John Butler advised
+I should, by being sent on a holiday to New York. Mr. Cross had been good
+enough to say that he liked what he had seen of me, and should be glad of
+my company.
+
+Of all this I knew nothing when I entered the library. The air was heavy
+with tobacco-smoke, and the table bore more bottles and glasses
+than books.
+
+"Find a chair, Douw," said Sir William. "I have sent for my man, Enoch
+Wade, who is to go westward with Mr, Cross next week. If he's drunk enough
+there'll be some sport."
+
+There entered the room a middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame,
+with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He
+bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian in his clothes
+of deer-hide.
+
+"This is Enoch Wade, gentlemen," said the baronet, indicating the
+new-comer with a wave of his glass, and stretching out his legs to enjoy
+the scene the more. "He is my land-sailor. Between his last sale at
+Albany, and his first foot westward from here, he professes all the vices
+and draws never a sober breath. Yet when he is in the woods he is
+abstemious, amiable, wise, resourceful, virtuous as a statue--a paragon of
+trappers. You can see him for yourselves. Yet, I warn you, appearances are
+deceitful; he is always drunker than he looks. He was, I know, most
+sinfully tipsy last night."
+
+"It was in excellent good company, General," said the hunter, drawling his
+words and no whit abashed.
+
+"He has no manners to speak of," continued the baronet, evidently with
+much satisfaction to himself; "he can outlie a Frontenac half-breed, he is
+more greedy of gain than a Kinderhook Dutchman, he can drink all the
+Mohawks of both castles under the bench, and my niggers are veritable
+Josephs in comparison with him--wait a moment, Enoch!--this is while he is
+in contact with civilization. Yet once on the trail, so to speak, he is
+probity personified. I know this, since he has twice accompanied me
+to Detroit."
+
+"Oh, in the woods, you know, some one of the party must remain sober,"
+said Enoch, readily, still stiffly erect, but with a faint grin twitching
+on the saturnine corners of his mouth.
+
+This time Sir William laughed aloud, and pointed to a decanter and glass,
+from which the trapper helped himself with dignity.
+
+"Look you, rogue," said the host, "there is a young gentleman to be added
+to your party next week, and doubtless he will of needs have a nigger with
+him. See to it that the boat and provision arrangements are altered to
+meet this, and to-morrow be sober enough to advise him as to his outfit.
+For to-night, soak as deep as you like."
+
+Enoch poured out for himself a second tumbler of rum, but not showing the
+first signs of unsteadiness in gait or gesture.
+
+"This young gentleman"--he said, gravely smacking his lips--"about him; is
+he a temperate person, one of the sort who can turn a steadfast back upon
+the bottle?"
+
+A burst of Homeric laughter was Sir William's reply--laughter in which
+all were fain to join.
+
+"It's all right, General," said Enoch, as he turned to go; "don't mind my
+asking. One never can tell, you know, what kind of company he is like to
+pick up with here at the Hall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My surprise and delight when I learned that I was the young gentleman in
+question, and that I was really to go to the Lakes and beyond, may be
+imagined. I seemed to walk on air, so great was my elation. You will not
+marvel now that I fail to recall very distinctly the general talk
+which followed.
+
+Conversation finally lagged, as the promptings of hunger, not less than
+the Ethiopian shouting and scolding from the kitchen below, warned us of
+approaching dinner.
+
+The drinking moderated somewhat, and the pipes were one by one laid aside,
+in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were
+persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against
+tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of
+hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence
+of interest in the fitful talk.
+
+There came a sharp double knock on the door, which a second later was
+pushed partly open. Some of us rose, pulling our ruffles into place, and
+ready to start at once, for there were famous appetites in the wild Valley
+of those days. But the voice from behind the door was not a servant's, nor
+did it convey the intelligence we all awaited. It was, instead, the
+sharp, surface voice of Lady Berenicia, and it said:
+
+"We are weary of waiting for you in civilized quarters of the Hall. May we
+come in here, or are you too much ashamed of your vices to court
+inspection?"
+
+Walter Butler hastened to open the door, bowing low as he did so, and
+delivering himself of some gallant nonsense or other.
+
+The London lady entered the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of
+carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer.
+
+If her morning attire had seemed over-splendid, what shall I say of her
+appearance now? I looked in amazement upon her imposing tower of whitened
+hair, upon the great fluffs of lace, the brocaded stomacher and train, the
+shining satin petticoat front, the dazzling, creamy surfaces of throat and
+shoulders and forearms, all rather freely set forth.
+
+If the effect was bewildering, it was not unpleasant. The smoke-laden air
+of the dim old room seemed suddenly clarified, made radiant. A movement of
+chairs and of their occupants ran through the chamber, like a murmur of
+applause, as we rose to greet the resplendent apparition. But there came a
+veritable outburst of admiration when my lady's companion appeared
+in view.
+
+It was our Daisy, robed like a princess, who dawned upon our vision. She
+was blushing as much from embarrassment as from novel pride, yet managed
+to keep her pretty head up, smiling at us all, and to bear herself
+with grace.
+
+Lady Berenicia, from the wealth of finery in those bulky chests which
+honest Mr. Cross in vain had protested against bringing over the ocean and
+up to this savage outpost, had tricked out the girl in wondrous fashion.
+Her gown was not satin, like the other, but of a soft, lustreless stuff,
+whose delicate lavender folds fell into the sweetest of violet shadows. I
+was glad to see that her neck and arms were properly covered. The laces on
+the sleeves were tawny with age; the ribbon by which the little white
+shawl was decorously gathered at the bosom carried the faint suggestion of
+yellow to a distinct tone, repeated and deepened above by the color of the
+maiden's hair. This hair, too, was a marvel of the dresser's art--reared
+straight and tight from the forehead over a high-arched roll, and losing
+strictness of form behind in ingenious wavy curls, which seemed the very
+triumph of artlessness; it was less wholly powdered than Lady Berenicia's,
+so that the warm gold shone through the white dust in soft gradations of
+half tints; at the side, well up, was a single salmon tea-rose, that
+served to make everything else more beautiful.
+
+Picture to yourself this delicious figure--this face which had seemed
+lovely before, and now, with deft cosmetics, and a solitary tiny patch,
+and the glow of exquisite enjoyment in the sweet hazel eyes, was nothing
+less than a Greuze's dream--picture our Daisy to yourself, I say, and you
+may guess in part how flattering was her reception, how high and fast rose
+the gallant congratulations that the Valley boasted such a beauteous
+daughter. Sir William himself gave her his arm, jovially protesting that
+this was not the Mohawk country, but France--not Johnson Hall, but
+Versailles.
+
+I came on at the tail of the dinner procession, not quite easy in my mind
+about all this.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+
+
+
+There were, in all, ten of us at the table. Sir William beamed upon us
+from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the
+London dame on the other--in the place of distinction to which she was, I
+suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and
+Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come
+back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner.
+
+I could not see Daisy from where I sat, but all through the meal I watched
+the effect she was producing upon those opposite us. To do her justice,
+Lady Berenicia seemed to have no alloy of jealousy in the delight with
+which she regarded the result of her handiwork. Mr. Stewart could not keep
+his fond eyes off the girl; they fairly glowed with satisfied pride and
+affection. Both Sir John and Walter gave more attention to our beautiful
+maiden than they did to their plates, and both faces told an open tale of
+admiration, each after its kind.
+
+There was plenty of gay talk at the head of the table--merry chatter of
+which I recall nothing, save vaguely that it was about the triumph of art
+over unadorned nature at which we were assisting.
+
+Mr. Cross and I bore our small part in the celebration in silence for a
+time. Then we fell to talking quietly of the journey upon which we were so
+soon to embark; but our minds were not on the subject, and after a little
+its discussion lapsed. All at once he said, as if speaking the thoughts
+which tied my tongue:
+
+"To my mind the young woman is not improved by these furbelows and
+fal-lals my wife has put upon her. What wit or reason is there in a
+homely, sensible little maiden like this--a pretty flower growing, as God
+designed it to, in modest sweetness on its own soil--being garnished out
+in the stale foppery of the last London season?"
+
+"But it is only a masquerade, sir," I pleaded--as much to my own judgment
+as to his--"and it does make her very beautiful, does it not?"
+
+"She _was_ beautiful before," he replied, in the same low tones. "Can a
+few trumpery laces and ribbons, a foolish patch, a little powder, affect
+what is real about a woman, think you? And do any but empty heads value
+unreal things?"
+
+"True enough, sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry.
+Women are that way. See how pleased she is--how full of smiles and
+happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor
+Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to begrudge her
+this innocent pleasure."
+
+"Innocent--yes, no doubt; but, do you know, she will never be the same
+girl again. She will never feel quite the same pretty little Mistress
+Daisy, in her woollen gown and her puttical kerchief. She will never get
+the taste of this triumph out of her mouth. You do not know women, young
+man, as I do. I have studied the sex in a very celebrated and costly
+school. Mark my words, ideas have been put into her head that will never
+come out."
+
+I tried to believe that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other
+women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself--so prudent
+and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem
+all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books--never
+anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr.
+Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn her
+dear head."
+
+He smiled, somewhat compassionately I thought, and made no answer.
+
+Was I so firm in my faith, after all? The doubt rose in my thoughts, and
+would not down, as the gallant talk flowed and bubbled around me. _Would_
+this Daisy be quite the same next day, or next week, singing to us at the
+old harpsichord in the twilight, with the glare of the blaze on the hearth
+making red gold of that hair, plaited once more in simple braids? I tried
+with all my might to call up this sweet familiar figure before my mental
+vision: it would not freely come.
+
+She was laughing now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing
+quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom
+employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting
+things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other than
+Daisy laughing.
+
+I was still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the
+ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to
+ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand,
+to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see
+the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with
+Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent
+of powder left on the air annoyed me, as something stifling those thoughts
+of the good little adopted sister, whom I had brought to the Hall and lost
+there, which I would fain dwell upon.
+
+We sat over our Madeira and pipes longer than usual. Candles were brought
+in by Sir William's young body-servant Pontiac, for there was a full moon,
+and we might thus prolong our stay after nightfall. The talk was chiefly
+about our coming trip--a very serious undertaking. Sir William and Mr.
+Butler had adventures of their own early trading days to recall, and they
+gave us great stores of advice drawn from experience, and ranging from
+choice of shirts and spirits to needful diplomacy with the Algonquins
+and Sakis.
+
+Then the company drank the health of Mr. Cross, and were good enough to
+couple mine with it. A comical little yellow boy danced for us before the
+hearth--an admiring wall of black faces and rolling white eyeballs filling
+up the open door meanwhile. Walter Butler sang a pretty song--everybody,
+negroes and all, swelling the chorus. Rum was brought in, and mixed in hot
+glasses, with spice, molasses, and scalding water from the kettle on the
+crane. So evening deepened to night; but I never for a moment, not even
+when they drank my health, shook off the sense of unrest born of Daisy's
+masquerade.
+
+It was Molly Brant herself, nobly erect and handsome in her dark, sinister
+way, who came to us with word that the moon was up over the pine-ridged
+hills, and that Mistress Daisy was attired for the homeward ride,
+and waiting.
+
+Of all the pictures in Memory's portfolio, none is more distinct than this
+of the departure that evening from the Hall. A dozen negroes were about
+the steps, two or three mounted ready to escort us home, others bearing
+horn lanterns which the moonlight darkened into inutility, still others
+pulling the restive horses about on the gravel. Mr. Stewart swung himself
+into the saddle, and Daisy stepped out to mount behind him. She wore her
+own garments once more, but there was just a trace of powder on the hair
+under the hood, and the patch was still on her chin. I moved forward to
+lift her to the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she
+did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John
+and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight,
+flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held
+Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of
+even this.
+
+So we rode away, pursued down the path to the lilacs by shouts of
+"Good-night! Safe home!" Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I
+saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his
+hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing
+above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on
+either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark
+front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky.
+
+As I recall the scene, it seems to me that then and there I said farewell,
+not alone to pleasant friends, but to the Daisy of my childhood and youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Hall slaves rode well ahead in the narrow road; we could just hear
+faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears
+the murmur of an AEolian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous:
+the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping
+helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly
+safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness,
+not danger.
+
+I did indeed rest my free hand on the pistol in my holster as I jogged
+along close behind the old gray horse and his double burden; but the act
+was more an unconscious reflection of my saturnine mood, I fear, than a
+recognition of need. There was every reason why I should dwell with
+delight upon the prospect opening before me--upon the idea of the great
+journey so close at hand; but I scarcely thought of it at all, and I was
+not happy. The moon threw a jaundiced light over my mind, and in its
+discolored glare I saw things wrongly, and with gratuitous pain to myself.
+
+In fact, my brooding was the creature of the last few hours, born of a
+childish pique. But as I rode gloomily silent behind my companions, it
+seemed as if I had long suffered a growing separation from them. "Three is
+a clumsy number," I said to myself, "in family affection not less than in
+love; there was never any triad of friends since the world began, no
+matter how fond their ties, in which two did not build a little interior
+court of thoughts and sympathies from which the third was shut out. These
+two people whom I hold dearer than everything else on earth--this good
+gentleman to whom I owe all, this sweet girl who has grown up from
+babyhood in my heart--would scout the idea that there was any line of
+division running through our household. They do not see it--cannot see it.
+Yet they have a whole world of ideas and sentiments in common, a whole
+world of communion, which I may never enter."
+
+This was what, in sulky, inchoate fashion, I said to myself, under the
+spur of the jealous spirits which sometimes get rein over the thoughts of
+the best of us. And it was all because the London woman had tricked out
+our Daisy, for but a little hour or two, in the presentment of a
+court lady!
+
+Conversation went briskly forward, meanwhile, from the stout back of the
+gray horse.
+
+"Did you note, papa, how white and soft her hands were?" said Daisy.
+"Mine were so red beside them! It is working in the garden, I believe,
+although Mary Johnson always wore gloves when she was out among the
+flowers and vegetables, and her hands were red, too. And Lady Berenicia
+was so surprised to learn that I had never read any of the romances which
+they write now in England! She says ladies in London, and in the provinces
+too, do not deem themselves fit to converse unless they keep abreast of
+all these. She has some of them in her chests, and there are others in the
+Hall, she has found, and I am to read them, and welcome."
+
+"You are old enough now, my girl," replied Mr. Stewart. "They seem to me
+to be trivial enough things, but no doubt they have their use. I would not
+have you seem as inferior to other ladies in knowledge of the matters they
+talk of, as they are inferior to you in honest information."
+
+"How interested she was when I told her of the serious books I read, and
+of my daily occupations--moulding the candles, brewing the beer, carding
+wool, making butter, and then caring for the garden! She had never seen
+celery in trenches, she said, and would not know beans from gourds if she
+saw them growing. It seems that in England ladies have nothing to do with
+their gardens--when, indeed, they have any at all--save to pluck a rose
+now and then, or give tea to their gentlemen under the shrubbery when it
+is fine. And I told her of our quilting and spinning bees, and the
+coasting on clear winter evenings, and of watching the blacks on Pinkster
+night, and the picnics in the woods, and she vowed London had no
+pleasures like them. She was jesting though, I think. Oh, shall we ever go
+to London, papa?"
+
+"By all means, let us go," chuckled Mr. Stewart. "You would see something
+there she never saw--my grizzled old head upon Temple Bar. Shall we be off
+to-morrow? My neck tingles with anticipation."
+
+"Old tease!" laughed Daisy, patting his shoulder. "You know there have
+been no heads put there since long before I was born. Never flatter
+yourself that they would begin again now with yours. They've forgotten
+there was ever such a body as you."
+
+"Faith! the world doesn't go round so fast as you young people think. Only
+to-day I read in the London mail that two months ago one of the polls that
+had been there since '46 fell down; but if it was Fletcher's or Townley's
+no one can tell--like enough not even they themselves by this time. So
+there's a vacant spike now for mine. No, child--I doubt these old bones
+will ever get across the sea again. But who knows?--it may be your fortune
+to go some time."
+
+"Lady Berenicia says I must come to the Hall often, papa, while she is
+there," said the girl, returning to the subject which bewitched her; "and
+you must fetch me, of course. She admires you greatly; she says gentlemen
+in London have quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your
+bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep
+each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and
+Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them--the two
+solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness."
+
+The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection
+of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less
+malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on
+my ears.
+
+"It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be
+disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy.
+
+"What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and
+glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all
+the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to
+your liking?"
+
+"Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go."
+
+It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody
+would specially miss me, but I held it back.
+
+"He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured
+sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has
+when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at
+dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he
+would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I
+looked well in the--the citified costume."
+
+"Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for."
+
+She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and
+went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes:
+
+"And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable
+Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the
+lilacs, this very morning--and in the presence of ladies, too."
+
+"No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied.
+
+"Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was
+before a lady too--or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own
+eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and
+run at him with both fists out--and all on your account, too, my lady;
+and then--"
+
+"Oh, I am reminded!"
+
+It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped
+her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said:
+
+"Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come
+out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up
+at the Hall--Lady Berenicia's husband--is a cousin to the old Major who
+brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?"
+
+"Is _that_ your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago."
+
+"How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then
+a General, and died last winter, poor man."
+
+"Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all
+walk that way."
+
+Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year,
+papa. And now tell me, did not this Major--_my_ Major, though I do not
+remember him--take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir
+William, while he was on this side of the water?"
+
+"Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the
+horse.
+
+We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he
+knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a
+tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched
+beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked
+by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the
+property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water
+running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock
+wall, farther down, of which I have already written.
+
+"Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you
+ask, girl?"
+
+"_Now_ for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits
+the English house and lands. The other son, Philip--the boy you fought
+with, Douw--is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it.
+He sailed with the others--he is in New York--he is coming here to live!"
+
+"We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily.
+
+"I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest
+comment I could screw my tongue to.
+
+Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we
+quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+
+
+
+When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the
+searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and
+slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was
+high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my
+aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum
+between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be
+vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its
+inmates, now that the hour had arrived.
+
+I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day,
+dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but
+without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the
+adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins
+while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home--my true home--my heart
+quivered and sank at thought of departure.
+
+"I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than
+Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all
+things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is
+different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed
+after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod.
+You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be
+at a good school with him."
+
+He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred
+indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental
+order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my
+feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have
+preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet
+coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet
+felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I
+listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts
+vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside.
+
+Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with
+advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key.
+Their shouts and wailing--they could not have made more ado if he had just
+been sold to Jamaica--came through the open door. It was not of this din I
+thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were
+piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond.
+
+I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to
+gather a nosegay for me.
+
+Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending
+in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden
+filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing
+more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit,
+the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts
+of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad
+thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much--this dear
+girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the
+tears _were_ coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned
+my head away.
+
+There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices.
+Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman
+had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to
+the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption.
+
+Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the
+wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden,
+presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with
+her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of her neck she
+was blushing.
+
+There was enough for her to blush at. The stranger was bowing very low,
+putting one hand up to his breast. With the other he had taken her fingers
+and raised them formally to his lips. This was not a custom in our parts.
+Sir William did it now and then on state occasions, but young men,
+particularly strangers, did not.
+
+As we advanced, this gallant morning-caller drew himself up and turned
+toward us. You may be sure I looked him over attentively.
+
+I have seen few handsomer young men. In a way, so far as light hair, blue
+eyes, ruddy and regular face went, he was not unlike Sir John. But he was
+much taller, and his neck and shoulders were squared proudly--a trick
+Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a
+fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the
+shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl
+buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run
+into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in
+one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in
+its ruffles, he stretched out now toward Mr. Stewart with a free,
+pleasant gesture.
+
+"With my father's oldest friend," he said, "I must not wait for ceremony.
+I am Philip Cross, from England, and I hope you will be my friend, sir,
+now that my father is gone."
+
+That this speech found instant favor need not be doubted. Mr. Stewart
+shook him again and again by the hand, and warmly bade him welcome to the
+Valley and the Cedars a dozen times in as many breaths. Young Cross
+managed to explain between these cordial ejaculations, that he had
+journeyed up from New York with the youthful Stephen Watts--to whose
+sister Sir John was already betrothed; that they had reached Guy Park the
+previous evening; that Watts was too wearied this morning to think of
+stirring out, but that hardly illness itself could have prevented him,
+Cross, from promptly paying his respects to his father's ancient comrade.
+
+The young man spoke easily and fluently, looking Mr. Stewart frankly in
+the eye, with smiling sincerity in glance and tone. He went on:
+
+"How changed everything is roundabout!--all save you, who look scarcely
+older or less strong. When I was here as a boy it was winter, cold and
+bleak. There was a stockade surrounded by wilderness then, I remember, and
+a log-house hardly bigger than the fireplace inside it. Where we stand now
+the ground was covered with brush and chips, half hidden by snow.
+Now--_presto!_ there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden
+neatly made, and"--turning with a bow to Daisy--"a fair mistress for them
+all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as
+a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would have
+held her entire."
+
+"I saw the cart laden outside," put in Sir John, "and fancied perhaps we
+should miss you."
+
+"Why, no," said Mr. Stewart; "I had forgotten for the moment that this was
+a house of mourning. Douw is starting to the Lake country this very day.
+Mr. Cross, you must remember my boy, my Douw?"
+
+The young Englishman turned toward me, as I was indicated by Mr. Stewart's
+gesture. He looked me over briefly, with a half-smile about his eyes,
+nodded to me, and said:
+
+"You were the Dutch boy with the apron, weren't you?"
+
+I assented by a sign of the head, as slight as I could politely make it.
+
+"Oh, yes, I recall you quite distinctly. I used to make my brother Digby
+laugh by telling about your aprons. He made quite a good picture of you in
+one of them, drawn from my descriptions. We had a fort of snow, too, did
+we not? and I beat you, or you me, I forget which. I got snow down the
+back of my neck, I know, and shivered all the way to the fort."
+
+He turned lightly at this to Mr. Stewart, and began conversation again. I
+went over to where Daisy stood, by the edge of the flower-bed.
+
+"I must go now, dear sister," I said. The words were choking me.
+
+We walked slowly to the house, she and I. When I had said good-by to my
+aunt, and gathered together my hat, coats, and the like, I stood
+speechless, looking at Daisy. The moment was here, and I had no word for
+it which did not seem a mockery.
+
+She raised herself on tiptoe to be kissed. "Good-by, big brother," she
+said, softly. "Come back to us well and strong, and altogether homesick,
+won't you? It will not be like home, without you, to either of us."
+
+And so the farewells were all made, and I stood in the road prepared to
+mount. Tulp was already on the cart, along with another negro who was to
+bring back my horse and the vehicle after we had embarked in the boats.
+There was nothing more to say--time pressed--yet I lingered dumb and
+irresolute. At the moment I seemed to be exchanging everything for
+nothing--committing domestic suicide. I looked at them both, the girl and
+the old man, with the gloomy thought that I might never lay eyes on them
+again. I dare say I wore my grief upon my face, for Mr. Stewart tried
+cheerily to hearten me with, "Courage, lad! We shall all be waiting for
+you, rejoiced to welcome you back safe and sound."
+
+Daisy came to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned
+upon my lapel some of the pale blue blossoms she had gathered.
+
+"There's 'rosemary for remembrance,'" she murmured. "Poor Ophelia could
+scarce have been sadder than we feel, Douw, at your going."
+
+"And may I be decorated too--for remembrance' sake?" asked handsome young
+Philip Cross, gayly.
+
+"Surely, sir," the maiden answered, with a smile of sweet sorrowfulness.
+"You have a rightful part in the old memories--in a sense, perhaps, the
+greatest part of all."
+
+"Ay, you two were friends before ever you came to us, dear," said Mr.
+Stewart.
+
+So as I rode away, with smarting eyes and a heart weighing like lead, my
+last picture of the good old home was of Daisy fastening flowers on the
+young Englishman's breast, just as she had put these of mine in
+their place.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Old-Time Politics Pondered Under the Forest Starlight.
+
+
+
+Among the numerous books which at one time of another I had resolved to
+write, and which the evening twilight of my life finds still unwritten,
+was one on Fur-trading. This volume, indeed, came somewhat nearer to a
+state of actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have
+yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in
+earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical
+Delusions--which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary--and
+the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point
+of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation
+now in deciding not to put into this narrative a great deal about my
+experiences in, and information concerning, the almost trackless West of
+my youth. My diary of this first and momentous journey with Mr. Jonathan
+Cross, yellow with age and stained by damp and mildew, lies here before
+me; along with it are many odd and curious incidents and reflections
+jotted down, mirroring that strange, rude, perilous past which seems so
+far away to the generation now directing a safe and almost eventless
+commerce to the Pacific and the Gulf. But I will draw from my stock only
+the barest outlines, sufficient to keep in continuity the movement of
+my story.
+
+When we reached Caughnawaga Mr. Cross and his party were waiting for us at
+the trading store of my godfather, good old Douw Fonda. I was relieved to
+learn that I had not delayed them; for it was still undecided, I found,
+whether we should all take to the river here, or send the boats forward
+with the men, and ourselves proceed to the Great Carrying Place at Fort
+Stanwix by the road. Although it was so early in the season, the Mohawk
+ran very low between its banks. Major Jelles Fonda, the eldest son of my
+godfather, and by this time the true head of the business, had only
+returned from the Lakes, and it was by his advice that we settled upon
+riding and carting as far as we could, and leaving the lightened boats to
+follow. So we set out in the saddle, my friend and I, stopping one night
+with crazy old John Abeel--he who is still remembered as the father of the
+Seneca half-breed chieftain Corn-Planter--and the next night with
+Honnikol Herkimer.
+
+This man, I recall, greatly impressed Mr. Cross. We were now in an
+exclusively German section of the Valley, where no Dutch and very little
+English was to be heard. Herkimer himself conversed with us in a dialect
+that must often have puzzled my English friend, though he gravely forbore
+showing it. I had known Colonel Herkimer all my life; doubtless it was
+this familiarity with his person and speech which had prevented my
+recognizing his real merit, for I was not a little surprised when Mr.
+Cross said to me that night: "Our host is one of the strongest and most
+sagacious men I have ever encountered in the Colonies; he is worth a
+thousand of your Butlers or Sir Johns."
+
+It became clear in later years that my friend was right. I remember that I
+regarded the hospitable Colonel, at breakfast next morning, with a closer
+and more respectful attention than ever before, but it was not easy to
+discern any new elements of greatness in his talk.
+
+Herkimer was then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and
+sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no
+time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the
+Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side.
+One thing which he said, in his effort to make my friend understand the
+difference between his position and the more abstract and educated
+discontent of New England and Virginia, sticks in my memory.
+
+"We Germans," he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers
+remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and
+wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some
+scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector
+might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of
+their daughters, worked to death, frozen by the cold in their nakedness,
+dragged off into the armies to be sold to any prince who could pay for
+their blood and broken bones. The French who overran the Palatinate were
+bad enough; the native rulers were even more to be hated. The exiles of
+our race have not forgotten this; they have told it all to us, their
+children and grandchildren born here in this Valley. We have made a new
+home for ourselves over here, and we owe no one but God anything for it.
+If they try to make here another aristocracy over us, then we will die
+first before we will submit."
+
+The case for the Mohawk Valley's part in the great revolt has never been
+more truly stated, I think, than it was thus, by the rough, uneducated,
+little frontier trader, in his broken English, on that May morning years
+before the storm broke.
+
+We rode away westward in the full sunshine that morning, in high spirits.
+The sky was pure blue overhead; the birds carolled from every clump of
+foliage about us; the scenery, to which Mr. Cross paid much delighted
+attention, first grew nobly wild and impressive when we skirted the Little
+Falls--as grand and gloomy in its effect of towering jagged cliffs and
+foaming cataracts as one of Jacob Ruysdael's pictures--and then softened
+into a dream of beauty as it spread out before us the smiling, embowered
+expanses of the German Flatts. Time and time again my companion and I
+reined up our horses to contemplate the charms of this lovely scene.
+
+We had forded the river near Fort Herkimer, where old Hon Yost Herkimer,
+the father of the Colonel, lived, and were now once more on the north
+side. From an open knoll I pointed out to my friend, by the apple and pear
+blossoms whitening the deserted orchards, the site of the Palatines'
+village where Daisy's father had been killed, fifteen years ago, in the
+midnight rout and massacre.
+
+"It was over those hills that the French stole in darkness. Back yonder,
+at the very ford we crossed, her poor mother was trampled under foot and
+drowned in the frightened throng. It was at the fort there, where we had
+the buttermilk and _Kuchen,_ that your cousin, Major Cross, found the
+little girl. I wonder if he ever knew how deeply grateful to him we
+were--and are."
+
+This brought once more to my mind--where indeed it had often enough before
+intruded itself--the recollection of young Philip's arrival at the Cedars.
+For some reason I had disliked to speak of it before, but now I told Mr.
+Cross of it as we walked our horses along over the rough, muddy road,
+under the arching roof of thicket.
+
+"I'll be bound Mr. Stewart welcomed him with open arms," said my
+companion.
+
+"Ay, indeed! No son could have asked a fonder greeting."
+
+"Yes, the lad is very like his mother; that of itself would suffice to
+warm the old gentleman's heart. You knew he was a suitor for her hand long
+before Tony Cross ever saw her?"
+
+I didn't know this, but I nodded silently.
+
+"Curious creature she was," mused he, as if to himself. "Selfish,
+suspicious, swift to offence, jealous of everything and everybody about
+her--yet with moods when she seemed to all she met the most amiable and
+delightful of women. She had her fine side, too. She would have given her
+life gladly for the success of the Jacobites, of that I'm sure. And
+proud!--no duchess could have carried her head higher."
+
+"You say her son is very like her?"
+
+"As like as two leaves on a twig. Perhaps he has something of his father's
+Irish openness of manner as well. His father belonged to the younger, what
+we call the Irish, branch of our family, you know, though it is as English
+in the matter of blood as I am. We were only second cousins, in point of
+fact, and his grandfather was set up in Ireland by the bounty of mine. Yet
+Master Philip condescends to me, patronizes me, as if the case had been
+reversed."
+
+Mr. Cross did not speak as if he at all resented this, but in a calm,
+analytical manner, and with a wholly impersonal interest. I have never
+known another man who was so totally without individual bias, and regarded
+all persons and things with so little reference to his own feelings. If he
+had either prejudices or crotchets on any point, I never discovered them.
+He was, I feel assured, a scrupulously honest and virtuous gentleman, yet
+he never seemed to hate people who were not so. He was careful not to let
+them get an advantage over him, but for the rest he studied them and
+observed their weaknesses and craft, with the same quiet interest he
+displayed toward worthier objects. A thoroughly equable nature was
+his--with little capacity for righteous indignation on the one side, and
+no small tendencies toward envy or peevishness on the other. There was not
+a wrinkle on his calm countenance, nor any power of angry flashing in his
+steadfast, wide-apart, gray eyes. But his tongue could cut deep
+on occasion.
+
+We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the
+Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that
+crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and
+the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along,
+partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had
+been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under
+a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the
+brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground.
+We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer
+wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and
+crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up
+the fires.
+
+We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well
+wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep
+the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard
+the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the
+moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises
+and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London
+companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very
+acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no
+degree nervous.
+
+We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer
+had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we
+talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying
+on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting,
+wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle,
+under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank
+affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon
+this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with
+fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves
+we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly
+halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my
+friends and comrades.
+
+We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully,
+contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the
+air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank,
+uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer
+heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form,
+with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side?
+
+"I spoke about Philip's having some of his father's adopted Irish traits,"
+said Mr. Cross, after a longer interval of silence than usual. "One of
+them is the desire to have subordinates, dependents, about him. There is
+no Irishman so poor or lowly that he will not, if possible, encourage some
+still poorer, lowlier Irishman to hang to his skirts. It is a reflection
+of their old Gaelic tribal system, I suppose, which, between its chiefs
+above and its clansmen below, left no place for a free yeomanry. I note
+this same thing in the Valley, with the Johnsons and the Butlers. So far
+as Sir William is concerned, the quality I speak of has been of service to
+the Colony, for he has used his fondness and faculty for attracting
+retainers and domineering over subordinates to public advantage. But then
+he is an exceptional and note-worthy man--one among ten thousand. But his
+son Sir John, and his son-in-law Guy Johnson, and the Butlers, father and
+son, and now to them added our masterful young Master Philip--these own no
+such steadying balance-wheel of common-sense. They have no restraining
+notion of public interest. Their sole idea is to play the aristocrat, to
+surround themselves with menials, to make their neighbors concede to them
+submission and reverence. It was of them that Herkimer spoke, plainly
+enough, though he gave no names. Mark my words, they will come to grief
+with that man, if the question be ever put to the test."
+
+I had not seen enough of Englishmen to understand very clearly the
+differences between them and the Irish, and I said so. The conversation
+drifted upon race questions and distinctions, as they were presented by
+the curiously mixed population of New York province.
+
+My companion was of the impression that the distinctly British
+settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more
+powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his
+point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I
+cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this
+Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their wonderful
+patriotism and intelligence, and of the tremendous part they played in the
+Revolution, without smashing my pipe in wrath. Yet I am old enough now to
+see that all this is largely the fault of the New Yorkers themselves. We
+have given our time and attention to the making of money, and have left it
+to others to make the histories. If they write themselves down large, and
+us small, it is only what might have been expected. But at the time of
+which I am telling I was very young, and full of confidence in not only
+the existing superiority but the future supremacy of my race. I could not
+foresee how we were to be snowed under by the Yankees in our own State,
+and, what is worse, accept our subjugation without a protest--so that
+to-day the New York schoolboy supposes Fisher Ames, or any other of a
+dozen Boston talkers, to have been a greater man than Philip Schuyler.
+
+I remember that I greatly vaunted the good qualities of the Dutch that
+night. I pointed out how they alone had learned the idea of religious
+toleration toward others in the cruel school of European persecution; how
+their faith in liberty and in popular institutions, nobly exemplified at
+home in the marvellous struggle with Spain, had planted roots of civil and
+religious freedom in the New World which he could find neither to the east
+nor to the south of us; and how even the early Plymouth Puritans had
+imbibed all they knew of clemency and liberty during their stay
+in Holland.
+
+I fear that Mr. Cross inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and
+extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded
+the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable
+resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed
+always in Europe. But then he went on to declare that the Dutch could not
+hope to hold their own in strange lands against the extraordinary
+conquering and colonizing power of the more numerous English, who, by
+sheer force of will and energy, were destined in the end to dominate
+everything they touched. Note how Clive and the English had gradually
+undermined or overthrown French, Portuguese, and Dutch alike in the
+Indies, he said; the same thing has happened here, either by bloodshed or
+barter. No nation could resist the English in war; no people could
+maintain themselves in trade or the peaceful arts against the English.
+
+"But you yourself predicted, not an hour ago, that the young gentry down
+the Valley would come to grief in their effort to lord it over the Dutch
+and Palatines."
+
+"Oh, that indeed," my friend replied. "They are silly sprouts, grown up
+weak and spindling under the shadow of Sir William; when he is cut down
+the sun will shrivel them, no doubt. But the hardier, healthier plants
+which finally take their place will be of English stock--not Dutch
+or German."
+
+I hope devoutly that this lengthened digression into politics has not
+proved wearisome. I have touched upon but one of a hundred like
+conversations which we two had together on our slow journey, and this
+because I wanted to set forth the manner of things we discussed, and the
+views we severally had. Events proved that we both were partially right.
+The United States of the Netherlands was the real parent of the United
+States of America, and the constitution which the Dutch made for the
+infant State of New York served as the model in breadth and in freedom for
+our present noble Federal Constitution. In that much my faith was
+justified. But it is also true that my State is no longer Dutch, but
+English, and that the language of my mother has died out from among us.
+
+Before noon next day we reached Fort Stanwix, the forest-girdled
+block-house commanding the Great Carrying Place. Here we waited one day
+for the boats to come up, and half of another to get them through the
+sluices into Wood Creek. Then, as the horses and carts returned, we
+embarked and set our faces toward the Lakes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+
+
+
+We had left what it pleases us to call civilization behind. Until our
+return we were scarcely again to see the blackened fields of stumps
+surrounding clearings, or potash kettles, or girdled trees, or chimneys.
+
+Not that our course lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we
+for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed
+westward farther and farther to be alone--to get away from their fellows.
+The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and
+honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. They traded a little,
+in a careless, desultory fashion, with the proceeds of their traps and
+rifles. But their desires were few--a pan and kettle, a case of needles
+and cord, some rum or brandy from cider or wild grapes, tobacco, lead, and
+powder--chiefly the last three. They fed themselves, adding to their own
+fish and game only a little pounded maize which they got mostly from the
+Indians, and cooked in mush or on a baking stone. In the infrequent cases
+where there were women with them, we sometimes saw candles, either dips or
+of the wax of myrtle-berries, but more often the pine-knot was used.
+Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story
+above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their
+habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires.
+They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally
+disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of
+view, but I judge both industrious and contented from their own.
+
+We should have had little favor or countenance from these fellows, I doubt
+not, but for Enoch Wade. He seemed to know all the saturnine, shaggy,
+lounging outcasts whom we met in unexpected places; if he did not, they
+knew him at a glance for one of their own kidney, which came to the same
+thing. It was on his account that we were tolerated, nay, even advised and
+helped and entertained.
+
+Enoch had been a prodigious traveller--or else was a still more prodigious
+liar--I never quite decided which. He told them, when we chanced to sit
+around their fires of an evening, most remarkable stories of field and
+forest--of caribou and seals killed in the North; of vast herds of bison
+on far Western prairies; of ice-bound winters spent in the Hudson Bay
+Company's preserves beyond the Lakes; of houses built of oyster-shells and
+cement on the Carolina coast. They listened gravely, smoking their
+cob-and-reed pipes, and eying him attentively. They liked him, and they
+did not seem to dislike Coppernol and our other white servants. But they
+showed no friendliness toward my poor Tulp, and exhibited only scant,
+frigid courtesy to Mr. Cross and me.
+
+The fact that my companion was a power in the East India Company, and a
+director in the new Northwestern Fur Company, did not interest them, at
+least favorably. It was indeed not until after we had got beyond the
+Sandusky that Enoch often volunteered this information, for the trappers
+of the East had little love for companies, or organized commerce and
+property of any sort.
+
+I like better to recall the purely physical side of our journey. Now our
+little flotilla would move for hours on broad, placid, still waters,
+flanked on each side by expanses of sedge and flags--in which great broods
+of water-fowl lived--and beyond by majestic avenues formed of pines,
+towering mast-like sheer sixty feet before they burst into intertwining
+branches. Again, we would pass through darkened, narrow channels, where
+adverse waters sped swiftly, and where we battled not only with deep
+currents, but had often to chop our way through barriers of green
+tree-trunks, hickory, ash, and birch, which the soft soil on the banks had
+been unable to longer hold erect. Now we flew merrily along under sail or
+energetic oars; now we toiled laboriously against strong tides, by poles
+or by difficult towing.
+
+But it was all healthful, heartening work, and we enjoyed it to the full.
+Toward sundown we would begin to look for a brook upon which to pitch our
+camp. When one was found which did not run black, showing its origin in a
+tamarack swamp, a landing was made with all the five boats. These
+secured, axes were out with, and a shelter soon constructed, while others
+heaped the fire, prepared the food and utensils, and cooked the welcome
+meal. How good everything tasted! how big and bright the stars looked! how
+sweet was the odor of the balsam in the air, later, as we lay on our
+blankets, looking skyward, and talked! Or, if the night was wild and wet,
+how cheerily the great fires roared in the draught, and how snugly we lay
+in our shelter, blinking at the fierce blaze!
+
+When in early July we drew near the country of the Outagamis, having left
+the Detroit settlement behind us, not to speak of Oswego and Niagara,
+which seemed as far off now as the moon, an element of personal danger was
+added to our experiences. Both white hunters and Indians were warmly
+affected toward the French interest, and often enough we found reason to
+fear that we would be made to feel this, though luckily it never came to
+anything serious. It was a novel experience to me to be disliked on
+account of the English, whom I had myself never regarded with friendship.
+I was able, fortunately, being thus between the two rival races, as it
+were, to measure them each against the other.
+
+I had no prejudice in favor of either, God knows. My earliest
+recollections were of the savage cruelty with which the French had
+devastated, butchered, and burned among the hapless settlements at the
+head of the Mohawk Valley. My maturer feelings were all colored with the
+strong repulsion we Dutch felt for the English rule, which so scornfully
+misgoverned and plundered our province, granting away our lands to court
+favorites and pimps, shipping to us the worst and most degraded of
+Old-World criminals, quartering upon us soldiers whose rude vices made
+them even more obnoxious than the convicts, and destroying our commerce by
+selfish and senseless laws.
+
+From the Straits west I saw the Frenchman for the first time, and read the
+reasons for his failure to stand against the English. Even while we
+suspected grounds for fearing his hostility, we found him a more courteous
+and affable man than the Englishman or Yankee. To be pleasant with us
+seemed a genuine concern, though it may really have been otherwise. The
+Indians about him, too, were a far more satisfactory lot than I had known
+in the Valley. Although many of our Mohawks could read, and some few
+write, and although the pains and devotion of my friend Samuel Kirkland
+had done much for the Oneidas, still these French-spoken, Jesuit-taught
+Indians seemed a much better and soberer class than my neighbors of the
+Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively
+plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived
+most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and
+this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going
+on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the
+English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So much for
+the good side.
+
+The medal had a reverse. The Frenchman contrived to get on with the
+Indian by deferring to him, cultivating his better and more generous side,
+and treating him as an equal. This had the effect of improving and
+softening the savage, but it inevitably tended to weaken and lower the
+Frenchman--at least, judged by the standard of fitness to maintain himself
+in a war of races. No doubt the French and Indians lived together much
+more quietly and civilly than did the English and Indians. But when these
+two systems came to be tested by results, it was shown that the
+Frenchman's policy and kindliness had only enervated and emasculated him,
+while the Englishman's rough domineering and rule of force had hardened
+his muscles and fired his resolution. To be sure, measured by the received
+laws of humanity, the Frenchman was right and the other wrong. But is it
+so certain, after all, that the right invariably wins?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well along in September when, standing on the eminence to the east
+of Fort Stanwix, I first looked again on my beloved Mohawk.
+
+The trip had been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four
+bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries,
+including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the
+remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of
+his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and
+silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied its value
+twenty-fold.
+
+Of course, this was of secondary importance. The true object of the
+journey had been to enable Mr. Jonathan Cross to see for himself the
+prospects of the new Northwestern Company--to look over the territory
+embraced in its grants, estimate its probable trade, mark points for the
+establishment of its forts and posts, and secure the information necessary
+to guard the company from the frauds or failings of agents. He professed
+himself vastly gratified at the results, physical as well as financial, of
+his experience, and that was the great thing.
+
+Or no!--perhaps for the purposes of this story there was something more
+important still. It is even now very pleasant to me to recall that he
+liked me well enough, after this long, enforced intimacy, to proffer me
+the responsible and exacting post of the company's agent at Albany.
+
+To say that the offer made me proud and glad would be to feebly understate
+my emotions. I could not be expected to decide all at once. Independent of
+the necessity of submitting the proposition to Mr. Stewart, there was a
+very deep distaste within me for fur-trading at Albany--of the meanness
+and fraudulency of which I had heard from boyhood. A good many hard
+stories are told of the Albanians, which, aside from all possible bias of
+race, I take the liberty of doubting. I do not, for instance, believe all
+the Yankee tales that the Albany Dutchmen bought from the Indians the
+silver plate which the latter seized in New England on the occasions of
+the French and Indian incursions--if for no other reason than the absence
+of proof that they ever had any plate in New England. But that the
+Indians used to be most shamefully drugged and cheated out of their
+eye-teeth in Albany, I fear there can be no reasonable doubt. An evil
+repute attached to the trade there, and I shrank from embarking in it,
+even under such splendid auspices. All the same, the offer gratified
+me greatly.
+
+To be in the woods with a man, day in and day out, is to know him through
+and through. If I had borne this closest of all conceivable forms of
+scrutiny, in the factor's estimation, there must be something good in me.
+
+So there was pride as well as joy in this first glance I cast upon the
+soft-flowing, shadowed water, upon the spreading, stately willows, upon
+the far-off furrow in the hazy lines of foliage--which spoke to me of
+home. Here at last was my dear Valley, always to me the loveliest on
+earth, but now transfigured in my eyes, and radiant beyond all dreams of
+beauty--because in it was my home, and in that home was the sweet maid
+I loved.
+
+Yes--I was returned a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the
+heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the
+swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of
+their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder.
+Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper
+breath for their absence. I had almost wept with excess of boyish feeling
+when I left the Valley--my fond old mother and protector. I gazed upon it
+now with an altogether variant emotion--as of one coming to take
+possession. Ah, the calm elation of that one moment, there alone on the
+knoll, with the sinking September sun behind me, and in front but the
+trifle of sixty miles of river route--when I realized that I was a man!
+
+Perhaps it was at this moment that I first knew I loved Daisy; perhaps it
+had been the truly dominant thought in my mind for months, gathering vigor
+and form from every tender, longing memory of the Cedars. I cannot decide,
+nor is it needful that I should. At least now my head was full of the
+triumphant thoughts that I returned successful and in high favor with my
+companion, that I had a flattering career opened for me, that the people
+at home would be pleased with me--and that I should marry Daisy.
+
+These remaining twenty leagues grew really very tedious before they were
+done with. We went down with the boats this time. I fear that Mr. Cross
+found me but poor company these last three days, for I sat mute in the bow
+most of the time, twisted around to look forward down the winding course,
+as if this would bring the Cedars nearer. I had not the heart to talk.
+"Now she is winding the yarn for my aunt," I would think; "now she is
+scattering oats for the pigeons, or filling Mr. Stewart's pipe, or running
+the candles into the moulds. Dear girl, does she wonder when I am coming?
+If she could know that I was here--here on the river speeding to
+her--what, would she think?"
+
+And I pictured to myself the pretty glance of surprise, mantling into a
+flush of joyous welcome, which would greet me on her face, as she ran
+gladly to my arms. Good old Mr. Stewart, my more than father, would stare
+at me, then smile with pleasure, and take both my hands in his, with warm,
+honest words straight from his great heart. What an evening it would be
+when, seated snugly around the huge blaze--Mr. Stewart in his arm-chair to
+the right, Daisy nestling on the stool at his knee and looking up into my
+face, and Dame Kronk knitting in the chimney-shadow to the left--I should
+tell of my adventures! How goodly a recital I could make of them, though
+they had been even tamer than they were, with such an audience! And how
+happy, how gratified they would be when I came to the climax, artfully
+postponed, of Mr. Cross's offer to me of the Albany agency!
+
+And then how natural, how easy, while these dear people were still smiling
+with pride and satisfaction at my good fortune, to say calmly--yes, calmly
+in tone, though my heart should be beating its way through my breast:
+
+"Even more, sir, I prize the hope that Daisy will share it with me--as my
+wife!"
+
+What with the delay at Caughnawaga, where Mr. Cross debarked, and Major
+Fonda would have us eat and drink while he told us the news, and Tulp's
+crazy rowing later, through excitement at nearing home, it was twilight
+before the boat was run up into our little cove, and I set my foot on
+land. The Cedars stood before us as yet lightless against the northern
+sky. The gate was open. The sweet voice of a negro singing arose from the
+cabins on the dusky hill-side. Tears came to my eyes as I turned to Tulp,
+who was gathering up the things in the boat, and said:
+
+"Do you see, boy? We're home--home at last!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+
+
+
+I could hear the noisy clamor among the negroes over the advent of Tulp,
+whom I had sent off, desiring to be alone, while I still stood irresolute
+on the porch. My hand was on the familiar, well-worn latch, yet I almost
+hesitated to enter, so excited was I with eager anticipations of welcome.
+
+The spacious hall--our sitting-room--was deserted. A fire was blazing on
+the hearth, and plates were laid on the oak table as in preparation for a
+meal, but there was no one to speak to me. I lighted a candle, and opened
+the door to the kitchen; here too there was a fire, but my aunt was not
+visible. Mr. Stewart's room to the right of the hall, and mine to the
+left, were alike unoccupied. I threw aside my hat and watch-coat here, and
+then with the light went up-stairs, whistling as was my wont to warn Daisy
+of my coming. There was no sound or sign of movement. The door of her
+outer room stood open, and I entered and looked about.
+
+The furniture and appointments had been changed in position somewhat, so
+that the chamber seemed strange to me. There were numerous novel objects
+scattered through the rooms as well. A Spanish guitar which I had never
+seen before stood beside the old piano. There were several elegantly bound
+books, new to me, on the table; on the mantel-shelf were three miniatures,
+delicately painted, depicting a florid officer in scarlet, a handsome,
+proud-looking lady with towering powdered coiffure, and a fair-haired,
+proud-looking youth. This last I knew in an instant to be the likeness of
+Master Philip Cross, though it seemingly portrayed him at an age half-way
+between the two times I had seen him as boy and man. His resemblance to
+the lady, and then my own recurring recollection of the officer's
+features, helped me to place them as his parents.
+
+I called out "Daisy!" My voice had a faltering, mournful sound, and there
+was no answer.
+
+I came down the stairs again, burdened with a sudden sense of mental
+discomfort. Already the visions I had had of an enthusiastic welcome were
+but vague outlines of dreams. There had sprung up in my mind instead a
+sudden, novel doubt of my position in this house--a cruel idea that
+perhaps the affection which had so swelled and buoyed my heart was not
+reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the
+same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and
+the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic
+aspect, instead of the bright, honest glow of greeting.
+
+While I stood before the fire-place, still holding the candle in my hand,
+my aunt entered the room from the kitchen door. At sight of me the good
+soul gave a guttural exclamation, dropped flat an apronful of chips she
+was bringing in, and stared at me open-mouthed. When she was at last
+persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to
+be kissed by me--it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add--but
+it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were
+a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she
+brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that
+she had been out in the smoke-house.
+
+"Philip sent down two haunches yesterday by Marinus Folts," she said,
+apologetically, "and this muggy weather I was afraid they wouldn't keep."
+
+"This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not
+help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's
+infirmities. Aloud I said:
+
+"How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have
+the farms been doing?"
+
+"Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is
+the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course
+it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings
+alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor."
+
+"But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?"
+
+"But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did
+before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some,
+bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more
+elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just
+breaking the branches. And the--"
+
+"Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?"
+
+"Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they
+left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to
+the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything
+but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer
+but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I
+was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One
+of them is for you."
+
+Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working
+for me. My heart felt lighter.
+
+"But where _are_ they?" I repeated.
+
+"Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just
+built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the
+Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's
+made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and
+he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it.
+Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd
+had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."
+
+I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the
+home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when
+they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and
+began to find comfort of mind again.
+
+My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she
+came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm
+going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then,
+or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I
+would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I
+was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing
+it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with:
+
+"Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the
+trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs
+and toads?"
+
+This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had
+answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to
+the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended.
+
+I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled
+myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight
+at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him
+off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his
+jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his.
+This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck,
+and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could
+hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking
+strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of
+child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine----
+
+Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear
+ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate
+my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old
+slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with
+small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach
+upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether
+it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the
+matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the
+nights of my life!
+
+At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of
+voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and
+on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the
+slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly,
+enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark;
+but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and,
+judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party,
+I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night
+of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of
+the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these
+roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a
+time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of
+the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for
+the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them
+in any disguise.
+
+I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival--for
+which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads
+together--but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact,
+they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I
+learned afterward.
+
+All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as
+sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself
+almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and
+wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing
+me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my
+breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be
+kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation.
+
+And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour
+later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks
+flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on
+both sides.
+
+Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem
+very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another
+with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not
+possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for
+people nowadays.
+
+But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and
+quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable
+Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained.
+Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in
+fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed
+had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father.
+Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's.
+It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New
+York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very
+melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the
+house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir
+William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall--an ambitious enough name,
+surely, for a forest fishing-cottage.
+
+Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which
+they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were
+the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms,
+while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had
+ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its
+being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing
+there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been
+a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at
+pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain
+she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly
+laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen
+had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other
+habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough
+that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down.
+
+I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of
+uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under
+his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the
+house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the
+food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear.
+They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but
+to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I
+looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age
+and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep,
+nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies'
+boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had
+parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but
+still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there.
+
+It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady
+Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought
+forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but
+for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly
+cover of his simple middle life.
+
+If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them
+this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair
+cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile
+which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and
+more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of
+me, for I did not notice it.
+
+I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great
+swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion,
+fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which
+crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the
+bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all
+accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail,
+this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for
+Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr.
+Stewart was evidently much captivated by the young man's spirit and social
+qualities and demeanor generally.
+
+"He is his father's own boy, ay, and his mother's too," said the old man,
+with sparkling eyes. "Not much for books, perhaps, though no dullard. But
+he can break a wild colt, or turn a bottle inside out, or bore a
+pencilled hole with a pistol-bullet at thirty paces, or tell a story, or
+sing a song, or ride, dance, box, cross swords, with any gentleman in the
+Colony. You should have seen him stand Walrath the blacksmith on his head
+at the races a fortnight ago! I never saw it better done in the
+Tweed country."
+
+"A highly accomplished gentleman, truly," I said, with as little obvious
+satire as possible.
+
+"Ah, but he has mind as well as muscle," put in Mr. Stewart. "He is a very
+Bolingbroke with the ladies. It carries me back to my days at the play, I
+swear, to hear him and Lady Berenicia clashing rapiers in badinage. You
+shall hear them, my boy, and judge. And there's a sweet side to his
+tongue, too, or many a pretty, blushing cheek belies the little ear
+behind it."
+
+The old gentleman chuckled amiably to himself as he spoke, and poured more
+Madeira into my glass and his. Daisy somewhat hurriedly rose, bade us
+"good-night," and left us to ourselves.
+
+Oh, if I had only spoken the word that night!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+
+
+
+I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season
+of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all
+unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and
+occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign
+barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness.
+
+Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too,
+there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had
+treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with
+affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever
+disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade
+himself that it was all for the best.
+
+But these five months had created a certain change in the social
+conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening,
+here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my
+absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now
+manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no
+doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social,
+part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible
+glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than
+elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through
+houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family
+fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers,
+husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the
+existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the
+man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it
+and I on the other.
+
+This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his
+manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had
+made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof
+of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance
+of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I
+ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to
+me, for the first time.
+
+"Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said.
+"If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing
+aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go
+to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's
+content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!"
+
+This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance
+with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded,
+looking at him. He went on:
+
+"What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these
+people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood.
+Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been,
+given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed,
+by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and
+people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would
+have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must,
+forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of
+their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence
+worth of goods!"
+
+What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a
+heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard
+to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from
+Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for
+irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have
+visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had
+engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear.
+
+Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me.
+Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even
+toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my
+poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time
+up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and
+elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of
+her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old.
+
+If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence,
+it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new
+Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft
+with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear
+girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or
+twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to
+confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she
+suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices,
+or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to
+her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me.
+
+I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long
+afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress
+at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her
+judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating
+between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with
+their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive,
+idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate,
+womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license,
+beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly
+watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind
+those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure
+might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different!
+
+But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was
+by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky.
+
+For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose,
+tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the
+old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch
+herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the
+joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us
+of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young
+Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a
+bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast,
+and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and
+gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning,
+when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see
+her cheerful once more.
+
+And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love.
+
+One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion
+she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a
+luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering
+mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise,
+and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy
+seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled
+insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter.
+
+To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to
+understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing
+but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his
+old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to
+me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no
+longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or
+say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the
+fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised
+to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or
+not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called.
+
+Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for
+the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready.
+She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my
+part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been
+invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed
+so much annoyed that I hastened to join them.
+
+It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the
+air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale
+changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way
+approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely
+red through the smoky haze.
+
+Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and
+I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the
+gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in
+fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the
+mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new
+bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep
+zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark
+rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to
+be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he
+would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side
+of the gulf was Philip's property.
+
+"It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth
+clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building
+a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the
+waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You
+know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek."
+
+Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking
+measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of
+erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the
+skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing
+edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have
+quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering,
+hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and
+about the structure.
+
+At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level,
+high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were
+assembled, and thither we bent our steps.
+
+Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my
+companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded,
+and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed
+sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly
+was handsome.
+
+He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the
+hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real
+delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers
+with his lips.
+
+"You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he
+murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with
+pleasure at him.
+
+To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is
+true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that
+he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention
+whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle
+outside the tent.
+
+Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others.
+By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was
+distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who
+took the trouble only to nod at me.
+
+Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was
+confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being
+nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was
+monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more
+discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall
+occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr.
+Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was
+chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she
+was telling.
+
+"Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to
+Tulp to follow me, I started.
+
+It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which
+forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage
+comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a
+profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon
+him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen
+and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very
+rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred
+dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no
+other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I
+made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an
+unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth
+I was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the
+very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of
+the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others,
+of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not
+been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well
+tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel
+above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I
+stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing.
+
+He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come,
+and what company I had quitted to visit him.
+
+"So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more
+vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple
+has fallen with less shaking than I thought for."
+
+I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have
+been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long,
+heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and
+saw nothing.
+
+At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day:
+
+"You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross
+asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From
+what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know
+it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'"
+
+This time I know I kept silence for a long time.
+
+I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying,
+in a voice which sounded like a stranger's:
+
+"I will go to Albany whenever you like."
+
+I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my
+path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+
+
+
+Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road
+which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter
+weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track
+straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As
+it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a
+wayside stump, dead beat.
+
+"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick,"
+he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best
+I can."
+
+The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had
+put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention.
+"Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water
+which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at
+their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I
+stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I
+cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had
+not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the
+Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection
+as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop,
+and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale
+Adirondack outlines.
+
+As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze
+had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east
+and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them
+upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its
+cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his
+infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.
+
+"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody
+is waiting for me--nobody wants me."
+
+The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long
+afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion
+that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.
+
+"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of
+my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."
+
+Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He
+humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going
+by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road,
+and the rain was coming on.
+
+Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the
+distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.
+
+Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the
+settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a
+controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the
+hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not
+much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the
+vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my
+brain, almost frightened me.
+
+I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had
+spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah,
+fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in
+contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still
+nourished in my heart a hope--and these _were_ happiness! I laughed aloud
+at my folly in having deemed them less.
+
+She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes
+open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent
+cub!--so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I
+pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her
+grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile,
+the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed
+against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him--brawling
+dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and
+proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken
+wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration! Where were their eyes, that
+they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when
+he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?
+
+Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of
+his class, or of his pretence to class?
+
+Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could
+not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing,
+everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other
+friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John
+Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from
+boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class,"
+these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had
+never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me,
+grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink
+and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the
+gentry--save the mark!--of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never
+so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid,
+fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her;
+it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their
+congratulations.
+
+And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other
+affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge
+their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered
+stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action,
+my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before
+their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their
+hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time
+out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on
+my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as
+worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet
+with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a
+moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!
+
+Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.
+
+Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the
+self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute,
+tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal
+notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn
+to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little
+country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed
+rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed
+also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this
+Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive
+expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an
+intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all
+my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to
+employment!
+
+It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was
+more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three
+bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman
+was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the
+blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia
+was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel
+gilt, the gaudier the better!
+
+But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing
+pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason
+runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours'
+wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh
+murderous in its fierceness.
+
+The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of
+thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat.
+The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood.
+
+On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from
+the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn,
+rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A
+half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars,
+and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it
+was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart
+and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and
+that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to
+accompany them.
+
+"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's
+human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty
+beckon the other way."
+
+I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We
+resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily
+pelting upon our backs.
+
+When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the
+waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail
+was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you
+could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct
+mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly
+and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears,
+and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.
+
+At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.
+
+He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a
+walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion;
+yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a
+song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that
+neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on
+this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!
+
+He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not
+interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility
+toward me.
+
+"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I
+see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this
+"--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.
+
+I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I
+could only hope he failed to note:
+
+"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you
+like--here! now!"
+
+He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are
+drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"
+
+"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him
+square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was
+ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner
+that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."
+
+The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his
+surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his
+great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of
+mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.
+
+If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration.
+There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his
+knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my
+superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing,
+there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over,
+he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his
+coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully.
+I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and
+was vexed with myself for it.
+
+We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a
+final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not
+only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood
+upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift
+movement past me from behind.
+
+I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that
+followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful
+slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus
+place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.
+
+To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.
+
+There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close
+before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow
+in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side
+of the cliff!
+
+Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips
+over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very
+moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end,
+one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the
+Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which
+recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had
+chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till
+the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed
+me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he
+said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than
+poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless
+morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my
+readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled
+the Englishman.
+
+The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight
+out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.
+
+With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as
+possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty
+masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the
+far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably
+sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught
+sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine,
+limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but
+it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my
+antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked
+at him.
+
+The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently,
+for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had
+been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him.
+
+I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin
+defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and
+stood for a moment frowning down at me.
+
+"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a
+new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see
+you again."
+
+"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break
+every bone in your body."
+
+With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I
+continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp
+was waiting for me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+
+
+
+The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding
+his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic.
+
+He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had
+from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been
+more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines.
+He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and
+some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though
+all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my
+neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as
+by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over
+the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall
+came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet
+and miserable affair.
+
+When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise
+to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what
+to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had
+overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far
+from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my
+part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word
+or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far
+as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest.
+Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage
+feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon
+the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive
+way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my
+fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my
+mortification and rage.
+
+When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself
+by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart;
+both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in
+the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as
+this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat
+at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then
+sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather,
+lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room.
+
+"Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened?
+There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?"
+
+I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her:
+
+"The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie
+it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by
+the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!"
+
+Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room,
+closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting
+over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them
+for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining
+at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for
+making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon
+as possible leave the Cedars.
+
+When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper.
+Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude,
+with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a
+complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the
+simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone
+to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt
+the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his
+curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the
+dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not
+ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was
+impendent.
+
+Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily:
+
+"Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your
+wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness
+in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been
+only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of
+truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet.
+But his scornful sternness hardened me.
+
+"Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper."
+
+More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred
+fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the
+chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I
+knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again:
+
+"Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association
+has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by
+want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back."
+
+I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly
+ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved
+toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the
+apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over
+now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He
+seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile,
+and he was some time in finding them.
+
+"In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my
+equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small
+matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment
+which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find
+myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person
+who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the
+appearance of respect for my gray hairs."
+
+He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender,
+ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on:
+
+"In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being
+wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has
+come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily
+observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I
+will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful,
+respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you
+developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of
+your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way,
+virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your
+credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much
+consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I
+had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken
+altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of
+my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours."
+
+"Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he
+paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you."
+
+He went on as if I had not spoken:
+
+"Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your
+voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position
+and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to
+dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not
+forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my
+disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your
+education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of
+what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting
+and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to
+me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her
+chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would
+fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my
+duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed."
+
+The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered
+under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul
+and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell.
+
+Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and
+foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct
+or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long,
+stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my
+actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly
+stood my ground.
+
+"If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly
+be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and
+to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can
+the simple truth affront?"
+
+"What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being
+thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose
+to describe him thus."
+
+"I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor
+devil escaped with his life."
+
+"How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days
+slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason."
+
+"Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not
+understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with
+rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as
+we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need
+for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off."
+
+"Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?"
+
+"I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have
+killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not
+put other things in our heads."
+
+"My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time,
+then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in
+apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than
+before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in
+this than I thought. Explain it to me."
+
+I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference,
+than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel.
+
+"What am I to explain?" I asked.
+
+"Why were you quarrelling with Philip?"
+
+"Because I felt like it--because I hate him!"
+
+"Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two?
+I demand to know!"
+
+"If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth
+in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he
+has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be
+worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his
+fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you
+and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to
+deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My
+throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might
+not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes.
+
+My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in
+the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed
+them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since
+familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing
+sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my
+voice came back to me.
+
+"If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first
+looked on the Valley--_our_ Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could
+only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from
+this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you
+could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that
+evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah,
+then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning
+with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and
+her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and
+sullen, _that_ is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and
+upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the
+displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if
+I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess
+of tenderness trampled underfoot."
+
+At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all
+events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old.
+He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly.
+
+"My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time
+gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not
+have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset,
+the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right
+in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go
+aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies
+and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a
+melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these
+sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to
+Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would
+be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the
+beginning."
+
+I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth.
+
+"Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them.
+
+He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly
+with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have,
+waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my
+heart--to have Daisy for my wife."
+
+As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether
+strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she
+and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we
+were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not
+infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and
+all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness
+of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a
+lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious,
+civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image
+of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the
+delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home
+that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now
+with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should
+crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover,
+that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as
+innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child
+approaching to kiss its mother.
+
+"Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom
+it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you
+will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling."
+
+His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly
+enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no
+fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the
+very wisest to bestow.
+
+He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments
+exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world.
+In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of
+every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other
+distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just
+the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he
+essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent.
+He added, I remember, a personal parallel:
+
+"I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my
+grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young
+Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other
+thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of
+her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and
+hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I
+verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket
+this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony
+Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are
+kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns
+sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if
+you would deny her the gallant of her choice?"
+
+"If I believed," I blurted out, "that it _was_ her own free choice!"
+
+"Whose else, then, pray?"
+
+"If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not
+been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--"
+
+"Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning
+testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all
+these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the
+youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had
+spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it
+might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We
+who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred
+bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be
+no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own
+judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I
+mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony.
+Perhaps--who knows?--he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of
+these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon
+enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow
+freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way."
+
+My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never
+abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went
+to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came.
+
+The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent
+down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal
+for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we
+hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task.
+
+It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the
+wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told
+Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and
+take up the proffered agency.
+
+He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong
+opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the
+best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or
+made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with
+my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by
+my perseverance in the project.
+
+Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences
+with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he
+was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with
+voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and
+much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among
+others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon,
+who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I
+never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of
+more utility.
+
+In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a
+departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few
+times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of
+that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the
+incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to
+Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I
+fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.
+At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with
+my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not
+sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.
+
+It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began
+life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried
+with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of
+compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of
+the Cedars.
+
+As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+
+
+
+The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new
+world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with
+but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this
+distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost
+at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had
+left behind.
+
+For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.
+I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter
+was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was
+pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager
+national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places,
+to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly
+the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to
+prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as
+possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to
+encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome
+settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was
+easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from
+scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then,
+however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.
+
+Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in
+it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most
+delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were
+to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were
+equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed
+brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting
+water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I
+had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the
+Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses,
+here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New
+England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a
+pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the
+conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.
+
+And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There
+were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen
+had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had
+weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told
+of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the
+hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie
+Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great
+town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its
+population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four
+hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and
+were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect
+was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the
+grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The
+wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is
+thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps
+of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.
+Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from
+the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.
+
+Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when
+men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The
+only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to
+barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and
+occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his
+representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.
+For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and
+comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even
+to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea
+fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other
+town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our
+own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted
+slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.
+
+There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the
+firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the
+Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old
+age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass
+unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know
+how neither to rest nor to play.
+
+But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in
+the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already
+sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of
+books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself
+almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances
+were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was
+repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for
+them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies
+were mine.
+
+But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and
+rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the
+outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the
+uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost
+citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others
+not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen
+before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon
+terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger
+men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age,
+and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.
+
+These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not
+inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or
+to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had
+seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were
+masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had
+suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my
+surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with
+loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another
+name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen
+disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the
+ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence
+the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its
+citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political
+life, were of my way of thinking.
+
+More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against
+England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in
+our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth,
+and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and
+social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act
+crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly
+discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in
+our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious
+of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked
+the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret
+these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found
+myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils
+of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it,
+as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.
+Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became
+the most ardent of Whigs?
+
+Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established,
+there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole
+current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There
+were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern,
+to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a
+considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of
+provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at
+Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and
+there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped
+hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no
+obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare
+expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had
+entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind
+and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting
+alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking
+of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the
+Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching
+completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.
+Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for
+me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the
+collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against
+Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.
+The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my
+disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of
+myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon
+other things.
+
+Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her
+ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had
+established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.
+I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed
+me, which was not at all.
+
+The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the
+company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business,
+push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English
+charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run
+over here."
+
+So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.
+
+It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held
+me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true
+that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city,
+for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always
+seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the
+town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This
+made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I
+am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who
+came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in
+estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.
+
+I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each
+quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the
+company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went
+to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my
+progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased
+at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But
+that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than
+the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year
+than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have
+learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my
+companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of
+mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden,
+and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.
+
+So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently
+rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped
+meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling
+tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs,
+twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent
+position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to
+mortal man.
+
+Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this
+correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of
+the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+
+
+
+We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night
+not to be forgotten while memory remains to me.
+
+There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons,
+and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian
+lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon
+was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business
+which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer
+mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country
+roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been
+despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite
+the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson
+had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir
+John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this
+opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he
+had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in
+company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with
+more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and
+flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was
+I at last to meet Daisy?
+
+Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and
+decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the
+most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more
+beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening
+return to me.
+
+You may still see for yourselves how noble, one might say palatial, was
+the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on
+the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no
+power of fancy can restore for _you_--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic
+people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad,
+fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome;
+the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights,
+hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the
+stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their
+passengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich
+velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright
+eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair breasts--all radiant in the
+hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of
+gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the
+horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of
+color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the
+spacious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her
+son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests.
+No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You
+shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy.
+
+The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all,
+pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the
+best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery
+beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead.
+
+This round, lustrous orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to
+every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that
+this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm
+was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost
+stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman,
+when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the
+formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see
+sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one
+another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust
+over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it.
+
+It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess.
+She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The
+Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before
+her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my
+roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is
+trouble brewing."
+
+I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left,
+but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words
+with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of
+whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then
+rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all
+liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it
+would not do to pass him by unheeded.
+
+While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of
+the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the
+hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space
+clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I
+perforce followed.
+
+I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book
+had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been
+equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects.
+Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was
+now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of
+English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his
+office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered
+me his hand.
+
+It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his
+great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had
+Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his
+long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few
+words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I passed to make room for
+others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood.
+
+"The old fox!" he said, smilingly nodding toward Colden. "One may not but
+like him, for all his tricks. If England had had the wit to keep that rude
+boor of a Tryon at home, and make Colden governor, and listen to him,
+matters would have gone better. Who is that behind him? Oh, yes,
+De Lancey."
+
+Oliver de Lancey was chiefly notable on account of his late brother James,
+who had been chief justice and lieutenant-governor, and the most
+brilliant, unscrupulous, masterful politician of his time. Oliver was
+himself a man of much energy and ambition. I observed him curiously, for
+his mother had been a Van Cortlandt, and I had some of that blood in my
+veins as well. So far as it had contributed to shape his face, I was not
+proud of it, for he had a selfish and arrogant mien.
+
+It was more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of
+the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their
+characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip
+Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite
+forty years of age, almost of my stature--that is to say, a tall man. He
+held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air,
+which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under
+the powder, helped to confirm. But no one could speak in amity with him
+without finding him to be the most affable and sweet-natured of men. If he
+had had more of the personal vanity and self-love which his bearing seemed
+to indicate, it would have served him well, perhaps, when New England
+jealousy assailed and overbore him. But he was too proud to fight for
+himself, and too patriotic not to fight for his country, whether the just
+reward came or was withheld.
+
+Colonel Schuyler had been chosen as one of the five delegates of the
+Colony to attend the first Continental Congress, now sitting at
+Philadelphia, but ill-health had compelled him to decline the journey. He
+had since been to New York, however, where he had learned much of the
+situation, and now was in receipt of tidings from the Congress itself. By
+a compromise in the New York Assembly, both parties had been represented
+in our delegation, the Whigs sending Philip Livingston and Isaac Low, the
+Tories James Duane and John Jay, and the fifth man, one Alsopp, being a
+neutral-tinted individual to whom neither side could object. The
+information which Schuyler had received was to the effect that all five,
+under the tremendous and enthusiastic pressure they had encountered in
+Philadelphia, had now resolved to act together in all things for the
+Colonies and against the Crown.
+
+"That means," said he, "that we shall all adopt Massachusetts's cause as
+our own. After Virginia led the way with Patrick Henry's speech, there was
+no other course possible for even Jay and Duane. I should like to hear
+that man Henry. He must be wonderful."
+
+The space about Mr. Colden had shifted across the room, so that we were
+now upon its edge, and Schuyler went to him with outstretched hand. The
+two men exchanged a glance, and each knew what the other was thinking of.
+
+"Your excellency has heard from Philadelphia," said the Colonel, more as a
+statement of fact than as an inquiry.
+
+"Sad, sad!" exclaimed the aged politician, in a low tone. "It is a grief
+instead of a joy to have lived so long, if my life must end amid
+contention and strife."
+
+"He is really sincere in deploring the trouble," said Schuyler, when he
+had rejoined me. "He knows in his heart that the Ministry are pig-headedly
+wrong, and that we are in the right. He would do justice if he could, but
+he is as powerless as I am so far as influencing London goes, and here he
+is in the hands of the De Lanceys. To give the devil his due, I believe
+Sir William Johnson was on our side, too, at heart."
+
+We had talked of this before, and out of deference to my sentiments of
+liking and gratitude to Sir William, he always tried to say amiable things
+about the late baronet to me. But they did not come easily, for there was
+an old-time feud between the two families. The dislike dated back to the
+beginning of young Johnson's career, when, by taking sides shrewdly in a
+political struggle between Clinton and De Lancey, he had ousted John
+Schuyler, Philip's grandfather, from the Indian commissionership and
+secured it for himself. In later years, since the Colonel had come to
+manhood, he had been forced into rivalry, almost amounting to antagonism
+at times, with the baronet, in Colonial and Indian affairs; and even now,
+after the baronet's death, it was hard for him to acknowledge the
+existence of all the virtues which my boyish liking had found in Sir
+William. But still he did try, if only to please me.
+
+As we spoke, Sir John Johnson passed us, in company with several younger
+men, pushing toward the room to the right, where the punch-bowl
+was placed.
+
+"At least, _he_ is no friend of yours?" said Schuyler, indicating the
+red-faced young baronet.
+
+"No man less so," I replied, promptly. Two years ago I doubt I should have
+been so certain of my entire enmity toward Sir John. But in the interim
+all my accumulating political fervor had unconsciously stretched back to
+include the Johnstown Tories; I found myself now honestly hating them all
+alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude
+toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish
+dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to
+make him the chief object of my aversion.
+
+We talked of him now, and of his wife, a beautiful, sweet-faced girl of
+twenty, who had been Polly Watts of New York. My companion pointed her out
+to me, as one of a circle beyond the fire-place. He had only soft words
+and pity for her--as if foreseeing the anguish and travail soon to be
+brought upon her by her husband's misdeeds--but he spoke very slightingly
+and angrily of Sir John. To Schuyler's mind there was no good in him.
+
+"I have known him more or less since he was a boy and followed his father
+in the Lake George campaign. The officers then could not abide him, though
+some were submissive to him because of his father's position. So now,
+fifteen years afterward, although he has many toadies and flatterers, I
+doubt his having any real friends. Through all these score of years, I
+have yet to learn of any gracious or manly thing he has done."
+
+"At least he did gallop from the Fort to the Hall at news of his father's
+death, and kill his horse by the pace," I said.
+
+"Heirs can afford to ride swiftly," replied the Colonel, in a dry tone.
+"No: he has neither the honesty to respect the rights of others, nor the
+wit to enforce those which he arrogates to himself. Look at his management
+in the Mohawk Valley. Scarce two months after the old baronet's
+death--before he was barely warm in his father's bed--all the Dutch and
+Palatines and Cherry Valley Scotch were up in arms against him and his
+friends. I call that the work of a fool. Why, Tryon County ought, by all
+the rules, to be the Tories' strongest citadel. There, of all other
+places, they should be able to hold their own. Old Sir William would have
+contrived matters better, believe me. But this sulky, slave-driving cub
+must needs force the quarrel from the start. Already they have their
+committee in the Palatine district, with men like Frey and Yates and Paris
+on it, and their resolutions are as strong as any we have heard."
+
+Others came up at this, and I moved away, thinking to pay my respects to
+friends in the rooms on the left. The fine hall was almost overcrowded.
+One's knee struck a sword, or one's foot touched a satin train, at every
+step. There were many whom I knew, chiefly Albanians, and my progress was
+thus rendered slow. At the door I met my kinsman, Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn.
+
+"Ha! well met, Cousin Sobriety!" he cried. "Let us cross the hall, and get
+near the punch-bowl."
+
+"It is my idea that you have had enough," I answered.
+
+"'Too much is enough,' as the Indian said. He was nearer the truth than
+you are," replied Teunis, taking my arm.
+
+"No, not now! First let me see who is here."
+
+"Who is here? Everybody--from Hendrik Hudson and Killian the First down.
+Old Centenarian Colden is telling them about William the Silent, whom he
+remembers very well."
+
+"I have never heard any one speak of Teunis the Silent."
+
+"Nor ever will! It is not my _metier_, as the French students used to say.
+Well, then, I will turn back with you; but the punch will all be gone,
+mark my words. I saw Johnson and Watts and their party headed for the bowl
+five-and-twenty minutes ago. We shall get not so much as a lemon-seed. But
+I sacrifice myself."
+
+We entered the room, and my eyes were drawn, as by the force of a million
+magnets, to the place where Daisy sat.
+
+For the moment she was unattended. She was very beautifully attired, and
+jewels glistened from her hair and throat. Her eyes were downcast--looking
+upon the waxed floor as if in meditation. Even to this sudden, momentary
+glance, her fair face looked thinner and paler than I remembered it--and
+ah, how well did I remember it! With some muttered word of explanation I
+broke away from my companion, and went straight to her.
+
+She had not noted my presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood
+before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had
+expected. She smiled in a wan way, and gave me her hand.
+
+"I knew you were here," she said, in a soft voice which I scarcely
+recognized, so changed, I might say saddened, was it by the introduction
+of some plaintive, minor element. "Philip told me. I thought that sooner
+or later I should see you."
+
+"And I have thought of little else but the chance of seeing you," I
+replied, speaking what was in my heart, with no reflection save that this
+was our Daisy, come into my life again.
+
+She was silent for a moment, her eyes seeking the floor and a faint glow
+coming upon her cheeks. Then she raised them to my face, with something of
+the old sparkle in their glance.
+
+"Well, then," she said, drawing aside her skirts, "sit here, and see me."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust Upon Me.
+
+
+
+I sat beside Daisy, and we talked. It was at the beginning a highly
+superficial conversation, as I remember it, during which neither looked at
+the other, and each made haste to fill up any threatened lapse into
+silence by words of some sort, it mattered not much what.
+
+She told me a great deal about Mr. Stewart's health, which I learned was
+far less satisfactory than his letters had given reason to suspect. In
+reply to questions, I told her of my business and my daily life here in
+Albany. I did not ask her in return about herself. She seemed eager to
+forestall any possible inquiry on this point, and hastened to inform me as
+to my old acquaintances in the Valley.
+
+From her words I first realized how grave the situation there had suddenly
+become. It was not only that opposition to the Johnsons had been openly
+formulated, but feuds of characteristic bitterness had sprung up within
+families, and between old-time friends, in consequence. Colonel Henry
+Frey, who owned the upper Canajoharie mills, took sides with the Tories,
+and had fiercely quarrelled with his brother John, who was one of the Whig
+Committee. There was an equally marked division in the Herkimer family,
+where one brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, and his nephew, outraged the others
+by espousing the Tory cause. So instances might be multiplied. Already on
+one side there were projects of forcible resistance, and on the other ugly
+threats of using the terrible Indian power, which hung portentous on the
+western skirt of the Valley, to coerce the Whigs.
+
+I gained from this recital, more from her manner than her words, that her
+sympathies were with the people and not with the aristocrats. She went on
+to say things which seemed to offer an explanation of this.
+
+The tone of Valley society, at least so far as it was a reflection of
+Johnson Hall, had, she said, deteriorated wofully since the old baronet's
+death. A reign of extravagance and recklessness both as to money and
+temper--of gambling, racing, hard drinking, low sports, and coarse
+manners--had set in. The friends of Sir John were now a class by
+themselves, having no relations to speak of with the body of Whig farmers,
+merchants, inn-keepers, and the like. Rather it seemed to please the Tory
+clique to defy the good opinion of their neighbors, and show by very
+excess and license contempt for their judgment. Some of the young men whom
+I had known were of late sadly altered. She spoke particularly of Walter
+Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the
+evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a
+sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to distinguish sometimes
+from madness.
+
+In all this I found but one reflection--rising again and again as she
+spoke--and this was that she was telling me, by inference, the story of
+her own unhappiness.
+
+Daisy would never have done this consciously--of that I am positive. But
+it was betrayed in every line of her face, and my anxious ear caught it in
+every word she uttered as to the doings of the Johnson party. Doubtless
+she did not realize how naturally and closely I would associate her
+husband with that party.
+
+Underneath all our talk there had been, on both sides, I dare say, a sense
+of awkward constraint. There were so many things which we must not speak
+of--things which threatened incessantly to force their way to the surface.
+
+I thought of them all, and wondered how much she knew of the events that
+preceded my departure--how much she guessed of the heart-breaking grief
+with which I had seen her go to another. It came back to me now, very
+vividly, as I touched the satin fold of her gown with my shoe, and said to
+myself, "This is really she."
+
+The two years had not passed so uncomfortably, it is true; work and
+pre-occupation and the change of surroundings had brought me back my peace
+of mind and taken the keen edge from my despair--which was to have been
+life-long, and had faded in a month. Yet now her simple presence--with the
+vague added feeling that she was unhappy--sufficed to wipe out the whole
+episode of Albany, and transport me bodily back to the old Valley days. I
+felt again all the anguish at losing her, all the bitter wrath at the
+triumph of my rival--emphasized and intensified now by the implied
+confession that he had proved unworthy.
+
+To this gloom there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition,
+the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air
+about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence.
+The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping
+us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as
+I did?
+
+I looked up into her face. She had been silent for I know not how long,
+following her thoughts as I had followed mine. It was almost a shock to me
+to find that the talk had died away, and I fancied that I read a kindred
+embarrassment in her eyes. I seized upon the first subject which
+entered my head.
+
+"Tulp would be glad to see you," I said, foolishly enough.
+
+She colored slightly, and opened and shut her fan in a nervous way. "Poor
+Tulp!" she said, "I don't think he ever liked me as he did you. Is
+he well?"
+
+"He has never been quite the same since--since he came to Albany. He is a
+faithful body-servant now--nothing more."
+
+"Yes," she said, softly, with a sigh; then, after a pause, "Philip spoke
+of offering to make good to you your money loss in Tulp, but I told him he
+would better not."
+
+"It _was_ better not," I answered.
+
+Silence menaced us again. I did not find myself indignant at this
+insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly
+close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near
+Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts of him whatsoever.
+
+"You do Tulp a wrong," I said. "Poor little fellow! Do you remember--" and
+so we drifted into the happy, sunlit past, with its childish memories for
+both of games and forest rambles, and innocent pleasures making every day
+a little blissful lifetime by itself, and all the years behind our parting
+one sweet prolonged delight.
+
+Words came freely now; we looked into each other's faces without
+constraint, and laughed at the pastimes we recalled. It was so pleasant to
+be together again, and there was so much of charm for us both in the time
+which we remembered together.
+
+Sir John Johnson and his party had left the punch--or what remained of
+it--and came suddenly up to us. Behind the baronet I saw young Watts,
+young De Lancey, one or two others whom I did not know, and, yes!--it was
+he--Philip Cross.
+
+He had altered in appearance greatly. The two years had added much flesh
+to his figure, which was now burly, and seemed to have diminished his
+stature in consequence. His face, which even I had once regarded as
+handsome, was hardened now in expression, and bore an unhealthy, reddish
+hue. For that matter, all these young men were flushed with drink, and had
+entered rather boisterously, attracting attention as they progressed. This
+attention was not altogether friendly. Some of the ladies had drawn in
+their skirts impatiently, as they passed, and beyond them I saw a group of
+Dutch friends of mine, among them Teunis, who were scowling dark looks at
+the new-comers.
+
+Sir John recognized me as he approached, and deigned to say, "Ha!
+Mauverensen--you here?" after a cool fashion, and not offering his hand.
+
+I had risen, not knowing what his greeting would be like. It was only
+decent now to say: "I was much grieved to hear of your honored father's
+death last summer."
+
+"Well you might be!" said polite Sir John. "He served you many a good
+purpose. I saw you talking out yonder with Schuyler, that coward who dared
+not go to Philadelphia and risk his neck for his treason. I dare say he,
+too, was convulsed with grief over my father's death!"
+
+"Perhaps you would like to tell Philip Schuyler to his face that he is a
+coward," I retorted, in rising heat at the unprovoked insolence in his
+tone. "There is no braver man in the Colony."
+
+"But he didn't go to Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty
+scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list."
+
+"He did not go for a reason which is perfectly well known--his illness
+forbade the journey."
+
+"Yes," sneered the baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance;
+"too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told,
+he has been most of the time since your--what d'ye call it?--Congress
+assembled."
+
+I grew angry. "He went there to bury General Bradstreet. That, also, is
+well known. Information seems to reach the Valley but indifferently, Sir
+John. Everywhere else people understand and appreciate the imperative
+nature of the summons which called Colonel Schuyler to New York. The
+friendship of the two men has been a familiar matter of knowledge this
+fifteen years. I know not your notions of friendship's duties; but for a
+gentleman like Schuyler, scarcely a mortal illness itself could serve to
+keep him from paying the last respect to a friend whose death was such an
+affliction to him."
+
+Johnson had begun some response, truculent in tone, when an interruption
+came from a most unexpected source. Philip Cross, who had looked at me
+closely without betraying any sign of recognition, put his hand now on Sir
+John's shoulder.
+
+"Bradstreet?" he said. "Did I not know him? Surely he is the man who found
+his friend's wife so charming that he sent that friend to distant
+posts--to England, to Quebec, to Oswego, and Detroit--and amused himself
+here at home during the husband's absence. I am told he even built a
+mansion for her while the spouse was in London _on business._ So he is
+dead, eh?"
+
+I had felt the bitter purport of his words, almost before they were out.
+It was a familiar scandal in the mouths of the Johnson coterie--this foul
+assertion that Mrs. Schuyler, one of the best and most faithful of
+helpmates, as witty as she was beautiful, as good as she was diligent, in
+truth, an ideal wife, had pursued through many years a course of deceit
+and dishonor, and that her husband, the noblest son of our Colony, had
+been base enough to profit by it. Of all the cruel and malignant things to
+which the Tories laid their mean tongues, this was the lowest and most
+false. I could not refrain from putting my hand on my sword-hilt as
+I answered:
+
+"Such infamous words as these are an insult to every gentleman, the world
+over, who has ever presented a friend to his family!"
+
+Doubtless there was apparent in my face, as in the exaggerated formality
+of my bow to Cross, a plain invitation to fight. If there had not been,
+then my manner would have wofully belied my intent. It was, in fact, so
+plain that Daisy, who sat close by my side, and, like some others near at
+hand, had heard every word that had passed, half-started to her feet and
+clutched my sleeve, as with an appeal against my passionate purpose.
+
+Her husband had not stirred from his erect and arrogant posture until he
+saw his wife's frightened action. I could see that he noted this, and that
+it further angered him. He also laid his hand on his sword now, and
+frigidly inclined his wigged head toward me.
+
+"I had not the honor of addressing you, sir," he said, in a low voice,
+very much at variance with the expression in his eyes. "I had no wish to
+exchange words with you, or with any of your sour-faced tribe. But if you
+desire a conversation--a lengthy and more private conversation--I am at
+your disposition. Let me say here, however,"--and he glanced with fierce
+meaning at Daisy as he spoke--"I am not a Schuyler; I do not encourage
+'friends.'"
+
+Even Sir John saw that this was too much.
+
+"Come, come, Cross!" he said, going to his friend. "Your tongue runs away
+with you." Then, in a murmur, he added: "Damn it, man! Don't drag your
+wife into the thing. Skewer the Dutchman outside, if you like, and if you
+are steady enough, but remember what you are about."
+
+I could hear this muttered exhortation as distinctly as I had heard
+Cross's outrageous insult. Sir John's words appealed to me even more than
+they did to his companion. I was already ashamed to have been led into a
+display of temper and a threat of quarrelling, here in the company of
+ladies, and on such an occasion. We were attracting attention, moreover,
+and Teunis and some of his Dutch friends had drawn nearer, evidently
+understanding that a dispute was at hand. The baronet's hint about Daisy
+completed my mortification. _I_ should have been the one to think of her,
+to be restrained by her presence, and to prevent, at any cost, her name
+being associated with the quarrel by so much as the remotest inference.
+
+So I stood irresolute, with my hand still on my sword, and black rage
+still tearing at my heart, but with a mist of self-reproach and indecision
+before my eyes, in which lights, costumes, powdered wigs, gay figures
+about me, all swam dizzily.
+
+Stephen Watts, a man in manner, though a mere stripling in years, had
+approached me from the other group, a yard off, in a quiet way to avoid
+observation. He whispered:
+
+"There must be no quarrel _here_, Mr. Mauverensen. And there must be no
+notice taken of his last words--spoken in heat, and properly due, I dare
+say, to the punch rather than to the man."
+
+"I feel that as deeply as you can," I replied.
+
+"I am glad," said Watts, still in a sidelong whisper. "If you must fight,
+let there be some tolerable pretext."
+
+"We have one ready standing," I whispered back. "When we last met I warned
+him that at our next encounter I should break every bone in his skin. Is
+not that enough?"
+
+"Capital! Who is your friend?"
+
+By some remarkable intuition my kinsman Teunis was prompted to advance at
+this. I introduced the two young men to each other, and they sauntered
+off, past where Sir John was still arguing with Cross, and into the outer
+hall. I stood watching them till they disappeared, then looking aimlessly
+at the people in front of me, who seemed to belong to some strange
+phantasmagoria.
+
+It was Daisy's voice which awakened me from this species of trance. She
+spoke from behind her fan, purposely avoiding looking up at me.
+
+"You are going to fight--you two!" she murmured.
+
+I could not answer her directly, and felt myself flushing with
+embarrassment. "He spoke in heat," I said, stumblingly. "Doubtless he will
+apologize--to you, at least."
+
+"You do not know him. He would have his tongue torn out before he would
+admit his wrong, or any sorrow for it."
+
+To this I could find no reply. It was on my tongue's end to say that men
+who had a pride in combining obstinacy with insolence must reap what they
+sow, but I wisely kept silence.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Promise me, Douw, that you will not fight. It chills my heart, even the
+thought of it. Let it pass. Go away now--anything but a quarrel! I
+beseech you!"
+
+"'Tis more easily said than done," I muttered back to her. "Men cannot
+slip out of du--out of quarrels as they may out of coats."
+
+"For my sake!" came the whisper, with a pleading quaver in it, from behind
+the feathers.
+
+"It is all on one side, Daisy," I protested. "I must be ridden over,
+insulted, scorned, flouted to my face--and pocket it all! That is a
+nigger's portion, not a gentleman's. You do not know what I have
+borne already."
+
+"Do I not? Ah, too well! For my sake, Douw, for the sake of our memories
+of the dear old home, I implore you to avoid an encounter. Will you
+not--for me?"
+
+"It makes a coward out of me! Every Tory in the two counties will cackle
+over the story that a Dutchman, a Whig, was affronted here under the
+Patroon's very roof, and dared not resent it."
+
+"How much do you value their words? Must a thing be true for them to say
+it? The real manhood is shown in the strength of restraint, not the
+weakness of yielding to the impulse of the moment. And you can be strong
+if you choose, Douw!"
+
+While I still pondered these words Teunis Van Hoorn returned to me, having
+finished his consultation with Watts, whom I now saw whispering to Sir
+John and the others who clustered about Cross.
+
+The doctor was in good spirits. He sidled up to me, uttering aloud some
+merry commonplace, and then adding, in a low tone:
+
+"I was a match for him. He insisted that they were the aggrieved party,
+and chose swords. I stuck to it that we occupied that position, and had
+the right to choose pistols. You are no Frenchman, to spit flesh with a
+wire; but you _can_ shoot, can't you? If we stand to our point, they
+must yield."
+
+I cast a swift glance toward the sweet, pleading face at my side, and made
+answer:
+
+"I will not fight!"
+
+My kinsman looked at me with surprise and vexation.
+
+"No," I went on, "it is not our way here. You have lived so long abroad
+that duelling seems a natural and proper thing. But we stay-at-homes no
+more recognize the right of these English fops to force their fighting
+customs upon us than we rush to tie our hair in queues because it is
+their fashion."
+
+I will not pretend that I was much in love with the line of action thus
+lamely defended. To the contrary, it seemed to me then a cowardly and
+unworthy course; but I had chosen it, and I could not retreat.
+
+There was upon the moment offered temptation enough to test my resolution
+sorely.
+
+Many of the ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let
+it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust
+upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson
+stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost our sole
+observers.
+
+Philip Cross shook himself loose from the restraining circle of friends,
+and strode toward me, his face glowing darkly with passion, and his
+hands clinched.
+
+"You run away, do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where
+you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?--here, where you stand!"
+
+"I hear you," I made answer, striving hard to keep my voice down and my
+resolution up. "Others hear you, too. There are ladies in the room. If you
+have any right to be among gentlemen, it is high time for you to show it.
+You are acting like a blackguard."
+
+"Hear the preaching Dutchman!" he called out, with a harsh, scornful
+laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his
+hiding-place behind the petticoats.--Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and
+I'll break that sword of yours over your back!"
+
+Where this all would have ended I cannot tell. My friends gathered around
+beside me, and at my back. Cross advanced a step or two nearer to me, his
+companions with him. I felt, rather than saw, the gestures preceding the
+drawing of swords. I cast a single glance toward the group of women across
+the room--who, huddled together, were gazing at us with pale faces and
+fixed eyes--and I dare say the purport of my glance was that I had borne
+all I could, and that the results were beyond my control--when suddenly
+there came an unlooked-for interruption.
+
+The dignified, sober figure of Abraham Ten Broeck appeared in our wrathful
+circle. Some one had doubtless told him, in the outer hall, of the
+quarrel, and he had come to interfere. A hush fell over us all at
+his advent.
+
+"What have we here, gentlemen?" asked the merchant, looking from one to
+another of our heated faces with a grave air of authority. "Are you well
+advised to hold discussions here, in what ought to be a pleasant and
+social company?"
+
+No ready answer was forthcoming. The quarrel was none of my manufacture,
+and it was not my business to explain it to him. The Tories were secretly
+disgusted, I fancy, with the personal aspects of the dispute, and had
+nothing to say. Only Cross, who unfortunately did not know the new-comer,
+and perhaps would not have altered his manner if he had known him, said
+uncivilly:
+
+"The matter concerns us alone, sir. It is no affair of outsiders."
+
+I saw the blood mount to Mr. Ten Broeck's dark cheeks, and the fire flash
+in his eyes. But the Dutch gentleman kept tight bit on his tongue
+and temper.
+
+"Perhaps I am not altogether an outsider, young sir," he replied, calmly.
+"It might be thought that I would have a right to civil answers here."
+
+"Who is he?" asked Cross, contemptuously turning his head toward Sir John.
+
+Mr. Ten Broeck took the reply upon himself. "I am the uncle and guardian
+of your boy-host," he said, quietly. "In a certain sense I am myself your
+host--though it may be an honor which I shall not enjoy again."
+
+There was a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to
+impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant,
+and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on
+the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the
+principals changed his posture with a sense of relief.
+
+Philip Cross presently went over to where the ladies stood, exchanged a
+few words with them, and then with his male friends left the room,
+affecting great composure and indifference. It was departing time; the
+outer hall was beginning to display cloaks, hoods, and tippets, and from
+without could be heard the voices of the negroes, bawling out demands for
+carriages.
+
+I had only a momentary chance of saying farewell to Daisy. Doubtless I
+ought to have held aloof from her altogether, but I felt that to be
+impossible. She gave me her hand, looking still very pale and distrait,
+and murmured only, "It was brave of you, Douw."
+
+I did not entirely agree with her, so I said in reply: "I hope you will
+be happy, dear girl; that I truly hope. Give my love and duty to Mr.
+Stewart, and--and if I may be of service to you, no matter in how exacting
+or how slight a matter, I pray you command me."
+
+We exchanged good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left
+me to join Lady Johnson and to depart with their company.
+
+Later, when I walked homeward with Teunis, sauntering in the moonlight, he
+imparted something to me which he had heard, in confidence of course, from
+one of the ladies who had formed the anxious little group that watched
+our quarrel.
+
+"After Ten Broeck came in, Cross went over to his wife, and brusquely said
+to her, in the hearing of her friends, that your acquaintance with her was
+an insult to him, and that he forbade her ever again holding converse
+with you!"
+
+We walked a considerable time in silence after this, and I will not essay
+to describe for you my thoughts. We had come into the shadow of the old
+Dutch church in the square, I know, before Teunis spoke again.
+
+"Be patient yet a little longer, Douw," he said. "The break must come soon
+now, and then we will drive all these insolent scoundrels before us
+into the sea!"
+
+I shook hands with him solemnly on this, as we parted.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+
+
+
+To pass from October, 1774, to mid-June of 1775--from the moonlit streets
+of sleeping Albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the Mohawk
+Valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. To
+us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully
+long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement.
+
+War was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister
+conditions. Dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting
+themselves in Parliament, at London, by declaring that the Americans were
+cowards and would not fight. We boasted little, but we knew ourselves
+better. There was as yet small talk of independence, of separation.
+Another year was to elapse before Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_ should
+flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us
+both our real goal and the way to attain it. But about fighting, we had
+resolved our purpose.
+
+We should have been slaves otherwise.
+
+Turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable
+at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now
+it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North--all tediously
+alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of
+determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. To get justice, or
+even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. They
+listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of
+officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too
+worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England--who lied us
+impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the
+musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we
+were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition;
+the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town
+to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched
+under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and
+stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the Crown
+authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest
+men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up
+our substance in wanton taxation.
+
+There had been a chance that the new Parliament, meeting for the first
+time in the January of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to
+honestly set matters right. We had appealed from Crown and Commons to the
+English people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. But
+the hope speedily fell to the ground. The English, with that strange
+rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds
+their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal
+courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the
+cart-tail.
+
+To this we said no!
+
+In Albany, on this day in the latter part of June, when the thread of the
+story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague,
+tidings. Following upon the blow struck at Concord in April, a host of
+armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were
+investing Boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the
+beleaguered British General Gage. A great battle had been fought near the
+town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. But it meant
+War, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of
+excited comment.
+
+The windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming
+sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. Men had
+gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the
+Berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the
+mountains of how the fight had gone. No one talked of anything else.
+Assuredly I too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and
+discuss the news from Boston, but that my old friend Major Jelles Fonda
+had come down from Caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence
+from the Mohawk Valley.
+
+How well I remember him still, the good, square-set, solid
+merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm,
+resourceful, masterful air! He sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the
+day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and
+deliberate whiffs of his pipe. I listened with growing interest, until at
+last I forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which
+before had so absorbed me. He had much to tell.
+
+More than a month before, the two contending factions had come to
+fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the Whigs in and in front of John
+Veeder's house, at Caughnawaga. They were to raise a liberty pole there,
+and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. While they were
+deliberating, up rides Guy Johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in
+the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage.
+Back of him rode a whole company of the Hall cabal--Sir John Johnson,
+Philip Cross, the Butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the
+meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed.
+Many of these were drunk. Colonel Guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and
+began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had
+summoned them thither. Young Jake Sammons, with the characteristic
+boldness of his family, stood up to the Indian superintendent and answered
+him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the Johnson men fell upon
+Jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. Some insisted that it
+was peppery Guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded
+riding-whip, but on this point Major Jelles was not clear.
+
+"But what were our people about, to let this happen?" I asked, with some
+heat.
+
+"To tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away.
+Only a few of us held our place. Our men were unarmed, for one thing.
+Moreover, they are in awe of the power of the Hall. The magistrates, the
+sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office
+in Tryon County--take orders from the Hall. You can't get people to forget
+that. Besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down."
+
+Major Jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed
+force on the side of the Johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper
+of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. Sir
+John had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the Hall, and his Roman
+Catholic Highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as
+a military body. All sorts of stories came down from Johnstown and up from
+Guy Park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their
+retainers. Peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were
+Philip Cross and Walter Butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with
+the most violent party of the Tories. To them, indeed, was directly
+traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the Valley tribes proved to have
+been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder Indians were to be
+called down from the headwaters of the Three Rivers, and from the Lake
+plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if
+rebellion was persisted in.
+
+"But they would never dare do that!" I cried rising to my feet.
+
+"Why not?" asked Jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "After all,
+that is their chief strength. Make no mistake! They are at work with the
+red-skins, poisoning them against us. Guy Johnson is savage at the
+mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at Guy Park,
+and he has already procured orders from London to remove Dominie Kirkland,
+the missionary who has kept the Oneidas heretofore friendly to us. That
+means--You can see as well as the rest of us what it means."
+
+"It means war in the Valley--fighting for your lives."
+
+"Well, let it! My customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. I will
+give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from
+the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this Johnson nonsense any
+longer. And my old father and my brothers say it with me. My brother Adam,
+he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work,
+his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple
+for gun-stocks, and making bullets. That reminds me--Guy Johnson took all
+the lead weights out of the windows at Guy Park, and hid them, to keep
+them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away."
+
+"Before he ran away? Who ran away?"
+
+"Why, Guy, of course," was the calm reply.
+
+I stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "You never mentioned
+this!" I managed to say at last.
+
+"I hadn't got to it yet," the Dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly.
+"You young people hurry one so."
+
+By degrees I obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had
+purposely come down, I believe, to tell me. As he progressed, my fancy ran
+before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great
+Hall on the hill which I knew so well.
+
+I needed not his assurances to believe that Molly Brant, who had come down
+from the upper Mohawk Castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred
+on all the rest into malevolent resolves.
+
+I could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the
+table where in Sir William's time she had been mistress, and now was but a
+visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. I could see her watching with
+silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, Sir John,
+Colonel Guy, the Butlers, Cross, and Claus, and then her own brother
+Joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her,
+engrafting upon his full wolf-totem Mohawk blood the restraints of tongue
+and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. No one of the males,
+Caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. Each
+in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to
+them meant London--would think of their acts. No one, not even Joseph
+Brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to
+wit: that the recalcitrant Valley should be swept as with a besom of fire
+and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. This, when
+it came her time, the Indian woman said for them frankly, and with
+scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. I could fancy
+her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away
+from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest
+the powers with which the king had intrusted them.
+
+It was not hard, either, to imagine young Walter Butler and Philip Cross
+rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot
+and fast upon the echo of Mistress Molly's contemptuous rebuke, should
+have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed
+all to the use of the Indians.
+
+So that day, just a week since, it had been settled that Colonel Guy and
+the two Butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a
+council near Fort Schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against
+their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they
+had departed. Guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great
+Sir William, she would be of use in the work; but Mrs. John Butler had
+gone to the Hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower
+Indian Castle.
+
+The two houses thus deserted--Guy Park and the Butlers' home on Switzer's
+Hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their
+contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in
+their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity,
+or hidden.
+
+"My brother Adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest Jelles
+Fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. So their thoughts were on bullets
+as well as his. He has his eye now on the church roof at home."
+
+Here was news indeed! There could be no pretence that the clandestine
+flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. To the
+contrary, Colonel Guy, as Indian superintendent, had fully five hundred
+fighting men, Indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. They
+had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to
+assist Sir John, Sheriff White, and their Tory minions to hold Tryon
+County in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood.
+
+We sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a
+situation. At last I said:
+
+"Can I do anything? You all must know up there that I am with you, heart
+and soul."
+
+Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.
+
+"Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve
+us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and
+to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use
+here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things
+would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson
+is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying
+to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts
+and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to
+advise you. What do you think?"
+
+While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major
+Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul
+never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with
+tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he
+could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of
+his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that
+story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of
+vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!
+
+An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.
+
+He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County
+part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.
+
+It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found
+how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital,
+tidings for the last.
+
+"Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention
+it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the
+Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he
+deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+
+
+
+There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry
+scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by
+this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome
+_ego_, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it
+essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be
+familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent
+enough as the tale unfolds.
+
+Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall
+at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be
+placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of
+the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and
+gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from
+the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom
+which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and
+warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as
+if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond
+its strength.
+
+Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled
+hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it
+was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these
+last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the
+erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone,
+the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair
+is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the
+neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face.
+The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the
+mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now
+to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still
+calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the
+querulous in tone.
+
+"I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is
+Philip."
+
+"Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays."
+
+Here the change _is_ in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy
+who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the
+other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the
+smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty
+efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take
+up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to
+emphasize her loneliness.
+
+"The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in
+comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders.
+"If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem
+home-like."
+
+The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no
+more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must
+be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a
+mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to
+them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday
+was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be.
+
+The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two.
+The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to
+accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this
+calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results
+without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two
+up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart
+beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the
+Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong
+ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see
+differently. And this was the saddest thing of all.
+
+Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his
+boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the
+two before the fire.
+
+"I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so
+uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?"
+
+"I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at
+the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers.
+He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He
+walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and
+neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair
+showed almost white--which both knew too well.
+
+"Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart.
+
+"There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all
+in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God!
+they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not
+whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!"
+
+Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held
+up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.
+
+"Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt,
+and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down
+from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would
+have none of her."
+
+"Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too,
+to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things
+will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful
+and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to
+God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!"
+
+Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift
+glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young
+wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
+Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:
+
+"Things are moving, you say. What is new?"
+
+"Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment,
+and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of
+milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will
+master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of
+rebellion!"
+
+"Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough,
+since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years
+younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of
+misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest
+enough, but they have small cunning."
+
+"That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We
+will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!"
+
+An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke,
+and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the
+stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over
+his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at
+bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries
+of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights
+lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it
+mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the
+prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his
+surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander,
+true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of
+thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly
+from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch
+were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing
+with types.
+
+"Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the
+tomahawk!"
+
+The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.
+
+"You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes,
+and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to
+interrogate her husband.
+
+He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed
+with his papers.
+
+After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet,
+walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.
+
+"I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting
+for me, and the evenings grow cold."
+
+"Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a
+perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever
+welcome here."
+
+"Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
+"But old bones are best couched at home."
+
+There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand
+affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.
+
+"I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I
+pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you,
+God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at
+which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day
+for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the
+counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words
+of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no
+good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first
+came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have
+known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push
+steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand
+its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
+Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err
+cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of
+the savages."
+
+"All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to
+these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man.
+
+"You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,"
+continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were
+too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley,
+of Belletre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you.
+Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk
+yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in
+terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world
+men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a
+willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is
+that you would do!"
+
+"It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot
+on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to
+fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I
+have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they
+deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you."
+
+"Go with them? Where are they going?"
+
+"Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego;
+perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and
+hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it
+really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that,
+you know."
+
+"And this flight is actually resolved upon?"
+
+"If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the
+Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They
+have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely
+pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at
+his command to shake my will."
+
+"Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr.
+Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive
+concert of thought.
+
+She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she
+had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her,
+she signified it not by glance or gesture.
+
+"No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged
+me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on
+Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming
+as possible."
+
+"Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon
+their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I
+have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he
+glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it
+_should_ be so little!"
+
+The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his
+papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts:
+
+"It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel
+scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to
+our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady
+and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to
+disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You
+yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by
+the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by
+those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now
+that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as
+well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany
+conspirators are pushing their schemes."
+
+"I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire
+to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon
+reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw
+regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany
+committee."
+
+Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture.
+Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who
+knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his
+manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke.
+
+"Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold
+regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy.
+Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked
+overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side
+and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other
+subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to
+recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second,
+and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to
+his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were
+pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!"
+
+The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first
+haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences
+followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now
+erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the
+shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young
+Mr. Cross full in the face.
+
+"Death of my life!" he stammered. "_You_ are saying these things to _me_!
+It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and _her_ son--the young man to
+whom I gave my soul's treasure!"
+
+Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling
+lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute
+the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What
+he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance
+came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then,
+seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously
+stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep
+his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room.
+
+When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned
+about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to
+be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling
+were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+
+
+
+"You are, then, not even a gentleman!"
+
+The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as
+husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could
+not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the
+mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the
+strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also
+affronted.
+
+Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her
+first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had
+discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered,
+acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the
+burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have
+been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her
+nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young
+Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her
+tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her
+the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance.
+
+He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the
+instinct of combat in his scowl.
+
+"Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for
+folly."
+
+"Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You
+should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and
+done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the
+moment pierced even his thick skin.
+
+"He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for
+his interest. I intended no offence."
+
+"Will you follow him, and say so?"
+
+"Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of
+mine."
+
+"Then _I_ will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!"
+
+The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the
+position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined
+and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom,
+was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough
+countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay.
+
+"Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is
+not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer."
+
+The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence,
+you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives,
+and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you
+like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer
+whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your
+tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman
+in Albany!"
+
+The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words
+did not come readily with which to repel it.
+
+"I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I
+have been badly reared for such purposes."
+
+She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn
+with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being
+with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection
+came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's
+strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now,
+and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but
+the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And
+then the softness came to her voice too.
+
+"How _can_ you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real
+self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old
+self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she
+was mistaken.
+
+"Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?"
+
+"Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for
+me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal.
+
+"I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing
+himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture
+upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but
+I am not Dutch, and I don't like it."
+
+She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in
+the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly
+or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the
+house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to
+take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly
+interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very
+hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its
+improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing
+him again, yet was it not right that she should do so?
+
+The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to
+draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a
+motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of
+the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the
+foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward,
+head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily:
+
+"Get away! When I want you, I'll call!"
+
+The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat
+in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife
+approached him, and stood at the back of his chair.
+
+"You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be
+some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves
+all this misery?"
+
+"What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of
+having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on
+the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At
+least once in a while he points my way."
+
+"Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me
+aright, seeing my errors?"
+
+"There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or
+that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but
+ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money,
+position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house
+of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
+Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans,
+gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty
+face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins
+gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and
+distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of
+mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and
+chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit
+me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass.
+She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on
+the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be
+the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like
+a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I
+might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission
+in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure
+and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'"
+
+"You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if
+only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is
+not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame."
+
+"Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as
+temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it."
+
+"What folly!"
+
+"Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--"
+
+"Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly
+again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain
+fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years
+has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the
+same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body
+into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you
+really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you
+accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but
+please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you
+could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy
+of a wife!"
+
+Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at
+her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.
+
+"There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not
+like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are
+thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing
+to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in
+my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal
+and my wife is a rebel."
+
+"Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
+Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only
+wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more
+than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me
+I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers
+and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood;
+but as to my having ever spoken--"
+
+"Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words.
+"I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a
+Dutch foundling!"
+
+She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it
+had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That
+it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he
+the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished
+sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.
+
+While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the
+bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth
+papers from its recesses with angry haste.
+
+"Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared.
+
+The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons
+was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half
+trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the
+cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most
+trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his
+black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored
+hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance
+at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting
+papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be
+a long one; it may not."
+
+"It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar.
+
+"Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals
+with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things
+I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have
+the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like,
+properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in
+the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
+When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters
+which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of
+the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when
+the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them
+saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead
+Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be
+ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then."
+
+The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.
+
+"Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked.
+
+"Damnation! No!" growled Philip.
+
+"_If you do not, they shall be thrown after you_!"
+
+It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to
+keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The
+words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers.
+There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near
+upon swooning to think at all.
+
+Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory
+was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and
+of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and
+fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the
+self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry,
+motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about
+her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already
+dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet
+hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else
+besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought.
+
+Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her,
+and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of
+packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two
+negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they
+had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door
+was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward
+the gulf.
+
+It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this
+melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted
+and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging
+before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless,
+hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought
+and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage
+across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder
+ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these
+vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had
+passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the
+approaching rest.
+
+Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate.
+The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to
+awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before,
+but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising
+zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing.
+
+"They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured.
+
+A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a
+swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting
+from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her.
+
+The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on
+the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up
+at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness
+of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips.
+
+"I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily.
+
+He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning.
+
+"I have no longer any other home," she added.
+
+She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and
+brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then
+fell inert.
+
+Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see
+Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form
+lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the
+world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+The Night Attack upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+
+
+
+Of these sad occurrences it was my fortune not to be informed for many
+months. In some senses this was a beneficent ignorance. Had I known that,
+under the dear old roof which so long sheltered me, Mr. Stewart was
+helplessly stricken with paralysis, and poor Daisy lay ill unto death with
+a brain malady, the knowledge must have gone far to unfit me for the work
+which was now given into my hands. And it was work of great magnitude and
+importance.
+
+Close upon the heels of the Bunker Hill intelligence came the news that a
+Continental army had been organized; that Colonel Washington of Virginia
+had been designated by Congress as its chief, and had started to assume
+command at Cambridge; and that our own Philip Schuyler was one of the four
+officers named at the same time as major-generals. There was great
+pleasure in Albany over the tidings; the patriot committee began to
+prepare for earnest action, and our Tory mayor, Abraham Cuyler,
+sagaciously betook himself off, ascending the Mohawk in a canoe, and
+making his way to Canada.
+
+Among the first wishes expressed by General Schuyler was one that I
+should assist and accompany him, and this, flattering enough in itself,
+was made delightful by the facts that my friend Peter Gansevoort was named
+as another aide, and that my kinsman Dr. Teunis was given a professional
+place in the general's camp family. We three went with him to the
+headquarters at Cambridge very shortly after, and thenceforward were too
+steadily engrossed with our novel duties to give much thought to
+home affairs.
+
+It was, indeed, a full seven months onward from the June of which I have
+written that my first information concerning the Cedars, and the dear folk
+within its walls, came to me in a letter from my mother. This letter found
+me, of all unlikely places in the world, lying in garrison on the frozen
+bank of the St. Lawrence--behind us the strange, unnatural silence of the
+northern waste of snow, before us the black, citadel-crowned,
+fire-spitting rock of Quebec.
+
+Again there presses upon me the temptation to put into this book the story
+of what I saw there while we were gathering our strength and resolution
+for the fatal assault. If I am not altogether proof against its wiles, at
+least no more shall be told of it than properly belongs here, insomuch as
+this is the relation of my life's romance.
+
+We had started in September with the expedition against Canada, while it
+was under the personal command of our general; and when his old sickness
+came unluckily upon him and forced his return, it was at his request that
+we still kept on, under his successor, General Richard Montgomery. It was
+the pleasanter course for us, both because we wanted to see fighting, and
+because Montgomery, as the son-in-law of Mr. Livingston, was known to us
+and was our friend. And so with him we saw the long siege of St. John's
+ended, and Chambly, and then Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, one by one
+submit, and the _habitants_ acclaim us their deliverers as we swept the
+country clean to the gates of Quebec.
+
+To this place we came in the first week of December, and found bold Arnold
+and his seven hundred scarecrows awaiting us. These men had been here for
+a month, yet had scarcely regained their strength from the horrible
+sufferings they encountered throughout their wilderness march. We were by
+this time not enamoured of campaigning in any large degree, from our own
+experience of it. Yet when we saw the men whom Arnold and Morgan had led
+through the trackless Kennebec forest, and heard them modestly tell the
+story of that great achievement--of their dreadful sustained battle with
+cold, exhaustion, famine, with whirling rapids, rivers choked with ice,
+and dangerous mountain precipices--we felt ashamed at having supposed we
+knew what soldiering was.
+
+Three weeks we lay waiting. Inside, clever Carleton was straining heaven
+and earth in his endeavor to strengthen his position; without, we could
+only wait. Those of us who were from the Albany and Mohawk country came to
+learn that some of our old Tory neighbors were within the walls, and the
+knowledge gave a new zest to our eager watchfulness.
+
+This, it should be said, was more eager than sanguine. It was evident from
+the outset that, in at least one respect, we had counted without our host.
+The French-Canadians were at heart on our side, perhaps, but they were not
+going to openly help us; and we had expected otherwise. Arnold himself,
+who as an old horse-dealer knew the country, had especially believed in
+their assistance and sympathy, and we had bills printed in the French
+language to distribute, calling upon them to rise and join us. That they
+did not do so was a grievous disappointment from the beginning.
+
+Yet we might have been warned of this. The common people were friendly to
+us--aided us privily when they could--but they were afraid of their
+seigneurs and cures. These gentry were our enemies for a good reason--in
+their eyes we were fighting New England's fight, and intolerant New
+England had only the year before bitterly protested to Parliament against
+the favor shown the Papist religion in Quebec. These seigneurs and priests
+stood together in a common interest. England had been shrewd enough to
+guarantee them their domains and revenues. Loyalty meant to them the
+security of their _rentes et dimes_, and they were not likely to risk
+these in an adventure with the Papist-hating Yankees. Hence they stood by
+England, and, what is more, held their people practically aloof from us.
+
+But even then we could have raised Canadian troops, if we had had the
+wherewithal to feed or clothe or arm them. But of this Congress had taken
+no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our
+clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our
+food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the
+most desperate assault of known warfare.
+
+The weeks went by swiftly enough. Much of the time I was with the
+commander at our headquarters in Holland House, and I grew vastly attached
+to the handsome, gracious, devoted young soldier. Brigadier-General
+Montgomery had not, perhaps, the breadth of character that made Schuyler
+so notable; which one of all his contemporaries, save Washington, for that
+matter, had? But he was very single-minded and honorable, and had much
+charm of manner. Often, during those weeks, he told me of his beautiful
+young wife, waiting for his return at their new home on the Hudson, and of
+his hope soon to be able to abandon the strife and unrest of war, and
+settle there in peace. Alas! it was not to be so.
+
+And then, again, we would adventure forth at night, when there was no
+moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered
+force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the
+ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots
+filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than
+the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon,
+and once the General had his horse killed under him.
+
+I should say that he was hardly hopeful of the result of the attack
+already determined upon. But it was the only thing possible to be done,
+and with all his soul and mind he was resolved to as nearly do it as
+might be.
+
+The night came, the last night but one of that eventful, momentous year
+1775. Men had passed each day for a week between our quarters and Colonel
+Arnold's at St. Roch, concerting arrangements. There were Frenchmen inside
+the town from whom we were promised aid. What we did not know was that
+there were other Frenchmen, in our camp, who advised Carleton of all our
+plans. The day and evening were spent in silent preparations for the
+surprise and assault--if so be it the snow-storm came which was agreed
+upon as the signal. Last words of counsel and instruction were spoken.
+Suppressed excitement reigned everywhere.
+
+The skies were clear and moonlit in the evening; now, about midnight, a
+damp, heavy snowfall began and a fierce wind arose. So much the better for
+us and our enterprise, we thought.
+
+We left Holland House some hours after midnight, without lights and on
+foot, and placed ourselves at the head of the three hundred and fifty men
+whom Colonel Campbell (not the Cherry Valley man, but a vain and cowardly
+creature from down the Hudson, recently retired from the British army)
+held in waiting for us. Noiselessly we descended from the heights, passed
+Wolfe's Cove, and gained the narrow road on the ledge under the mountain.
+
+The General and his aide, McPherson, trudged through the deep snow ahead
+of all, with Gansevoort, and me keeping up to them as well as we could.
+What with the very difficult walking, the wildness of the gale, and the
+necessity for silence, I do not remember that anything was said. We panted
+heavily, I know, and more than once had to stop while the slender and less
+eager carpenters who formed the van came up.
+
+It was close upon the fence of wooden pickets which stretched across the
+causeway at Cape Diamond that the last of these halts was made. Through
+the darkness, rendered doubly dense by the whirling snowflakes with which
+the wind lashed our faces, we could only vaguely discern the barrier and
+the outlines of the little block-house beyond it.
+
+"Here is our work!" whispered the General to the half-dozen nearest him,
+and pointing ahead with his gauntleted hand. "Once over this and into the
+guard-house, and we can never be flanked, whatever else betide."
+
+We tore furiously at the posts, even while he spoke--we four with our
+hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay
+a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep
+in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur
+from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's
+troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more
+pickets. Somebody--it may have been I--said, "Cowards!" Some one else,
+doubtless the General, said, "Forward!"
+
+Then the ground shook violently under our feet, a great bursting roar
+deafened us, and before a scythe-like sweep of fire we at the front
+tumbled and fell!
+
+I got to my feet again, but had lost both sword and pistol in the snow. I
+had been hit somewhere--it seemed in the side--but of that I scarcely
+thought. I heard sharp firing and the sound of oaths and groans all around
+me, so it behooved me to fight, too. There were dimly visible dark forms
+issuing from the guard-house, and wrestling or exchanging blows with other
+forms, now upright, now in the snow. Here and there a flash of fire from
+some gun or pistol gave an instant's light to this Stygian hurly-burly.
+
+A heavy man, coming from the door of the block-house, fired a pistol
+straight at me; the bullet seemed not to have struck me, and I leaped upon
+him before he could throw the weapon. We struggled fiercely backward
+toward the pickets, I tearing at him with all my might, and striving with
+tremendous effort to keep my wits as well as my strength about me, in
+order to save my life. Curiously enough, I found that the simplest
+wrestling tricks I tried I had not the power for; even in this swift
+minute, loss of blood was telling on me. A ferocious last effort I made to
+swing and hurl him, and, instead, went staggering down into the drift with
+him on top.
+
+As I strove still to turn, and lifted my head, a voice sounded close in my
+ear, "It's you, is it? Damn you!" and then a great mashing blow on my face
+ended my fight.
+
+Doubtless some reminiscence in that voice caused my mind to carry on the
+struggle in the second after sense had fled, for I thought we still were
+in the snow wrestling, only it was inside a mimic fort in the clearing
+around Mr. Stewart's old log-house, and I was a little boy in an apron,
+and my antagonist was a yellow-haired lad with hard fists, with which he
+beat me cruelly in the face--and so off into utter blackness and void
+of oblivion.
+
+One morning in the latter half of January, nearly three weeks after, I
+woke to consciousness again. Wholly innocent of the lapse of time, I
+seemed to be just awakening from the dream of the snow fort, and of my
+boyish fight with little Philip Cross. I smiled to myself as I thought of
+it, but even while I smiled the vague shadows of later happenings came
+over my mind. Little by little the outlines of that rough December night
+took shape in my puzzled wits.
+
+I had been wounded, evidently, and had been borne back to Holland House,
+for I recognized the room in which I lay. My right arm was in stiff
+splints; with the other hand I felt of my head and discovered that my hair
+had been cut close, and that my skull and face were fairly thatched with
+crossing strips of bandage. My chest, too, was girdled by similar
+medicated bands. My mental faculties moved very sedately, it seemed, and I
+had been pondering these phenomena for a long time when my cousin Dr.
+Teunis Van Hoorn came tip-toeing into the room.
+
+This worthy young man was sincerely delighted to find me come by my
+senses once more. In his joy he allowed me to talk and to listen more than
+was for my good, probably, for I had some bad days immediately following;
+but the relapse did not come before I had learned much that was gravely
+interesting.
+
+It is a story of sufficient sorrow and shame to American ears even
+now--this tale of how we failed to carry Quebec. Judge how grievously the
+recital fell upon my ears then, in the little barrack-chamber of Holland
+House, within hearing of the cannonade by which the farce of a siege was
+still maintained from day to day! Teunis told me how, by that first volley
+of grape at the guard-house, the brave and noble Montgomery had been
+instantly killed; how Arnold, forcing his way from the other direction at
+the head of his men, and being early shot in the leg, had fought and
+stormed like a wounded lion in the narrow Sault-au-Matelot; how he and the
+gallant Morgan had done more than their share in the temerarious
+adventure, and had held the town and citadel at their mercy if only the
+miserable Campbell had pushed forward after poor Montgomery fell, and gone
+on to meet those battling heroes in the Lower Town. But I have not the
+patience, even at this late day, to write about this melancholy and
+mortifying failure.
+
+Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman,
+and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right,
+and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the
+headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken
+prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still
+keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our
+operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance
+among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to
+prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that
+when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw
+in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up.
+
+All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as
+if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did
+it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us.
+
+It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared
+that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at
+the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my
+ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm.
+They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which
+was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into
+an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed
+fist or a pistol-butt.
+
+"Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some
+of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and
+McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he
+and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels.
+You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with
+the rest, next morning."
+
+"Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?"
+
+"Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a
+colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are
+to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to
+travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if
+you please."
+
+"I have been dangerously ill, have I not?"
+
+"Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after
+the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody
+must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these,
+and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever.
+But I never feared for you."
+
+Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided
+to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that
+confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a
+week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a _son marquee_.
+But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that
+encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection.
+Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once
+it came to me.
+
+"Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who
+broke my head with his pistol-butt?"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for
+my confidence.
+
+"Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that
+gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into
+fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your
+whole carcass!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+
+
+
+For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was
+nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious
+slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it
+became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my
+progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have
+come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and
+every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of
+what use is all this now, alas!"
+
+These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came
+in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing
+the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with
+re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many
+letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The
+physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin
+relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them.
+
+One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of
+the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English
+trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease
+concerning what remained of its interests.
+
+The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat,
+painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in
+no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document,
+which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame
+Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not
+inherited by her son.
+
+"_January 9,_ A. D. 1776.
+
+"Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most
+part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen
+you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you
+no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to
+be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a
+God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I
+surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do
+not reproach you.
+
+"The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars,
+was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was
+both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour
+with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the
+Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being
+dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in
+the way, and where others can help him to weep.
+
+"When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been
+deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with
+paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The
+burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it,
+but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her
+fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his
+wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful
+belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her
+from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal
+named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels,
+essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms
+that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant
+from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained
+nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at
+best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence.
+
+"Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief,
+and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign
+matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were
+still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I
+knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying
+that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out
+of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the
+matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads
+are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I
+was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as
+sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go
+her own gait, and so she may for all of me.
+
+"She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work
+when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a
+worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck
+of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying
+that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame
+Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my
+company was not desired longer.
+
+"I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry
+other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the
+Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If
+the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be
+peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all
+say matters will be worse before they mend.
+
+"Affectionately, your mother,
+
+"Katharine Mauverensen."
+
+As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated
+and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of
+Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to
+laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of
+my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its
+humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no
+more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided
+always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for
+everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing
+in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done
+for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the
+moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their
+own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing
+was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how
+she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to
+me, unconsciously revealing her pique.
+
+Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her,
+and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars
+since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a
+fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants;
+she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and
+foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a
+large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the
+fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and
+fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her
+bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring.
+
+From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day
+counts now. The sooner I get home the better."
+
+"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to
+Sorel to-morrow morning."
+
+"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"
+
+"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves
+are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion,
+like you, I should fear nothing."
+
+"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means
+of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my
+restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I
+gave him my mother's letter.
+
+My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient
+details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
+allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
+over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
+whistle softly.
+
+"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"
+
+"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
+great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
+his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
+credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
+potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
+much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
+too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
+God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"
+
+I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
+upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.
+
+"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
+seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
+from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
+doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
+Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
+well as fast as you like, and we will be off."
+
+This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
+judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
+Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
+accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his
+arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From
+our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of
+many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter
+jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of
+turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense
+of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and
+that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was
+impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small
+disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and
+attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled
+districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt
+that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for
+their courtesies.
+
+Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had
+evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it
+was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy
+preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General
+Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full
+fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he
+had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and
+difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with
+books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during
+my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the
+General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy.
+
+But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole
+spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with
+anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied
+and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his
+case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring
+illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that
+it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home.
+It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was
+really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk
+duty at such a time.
+
+But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed
+that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one
+morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform
+with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he
+called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans:
+
+"John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his
+Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came
+down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the
+woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month
+much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead
+near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots
+day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue
+for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who
+followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington
+is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no
+reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to
+send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the
+thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs
+them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and
+all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the
+neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest.
+
+"You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for
+you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached
+to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go
+with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near
+place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You
+need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you.
+But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative
+in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the
+prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further."
+
+When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+
+
+
+I rode beside Colonel Elias Dayton one forenoon some ten days later, up
+the Valley road, my pulses beating fast at the growing familiarity of the
+scene before us. We had crossed the Chuctenunda Creek, and were within
+sight of the gray walls of Guy Park. Beyond rose the hills behind which
+lay Fort Johnson. I was on the very threshold of my boyhood's
+playfield--within a short hour's walk of my boyhood's home.
+
+The air was full of sounds. Birds sang with merry discordance all through
+the thicket to our right, flitting among the pale green tangle of spring's
+foliage. The May sunshine had lured forth some pioneer locusts, whose
+shrill cries came from who could tell where--the tall swale-grass on the
+river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown
+broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the
+squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers
+along the willow-fringed water--the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad
+small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears
+took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of
+armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road before us, behind us,
+at our side.
+
+For my second return to the Valley was at the head of troops, bringing
+violence, perhaps bloodshed, in their train. I could not but contrast it
+in my mind with that other home-coming, four years before, when I sat
+turned to look eastward in the bow of Enoch's boat, and every soft dip of
+the oars timed the glad carol in my heart of home and friends--and the
+sweet maid I loved. I was so happy then!--and now, coming from the other
+direction, with suggestions of force and cruel purposes in every echo of
+our soldiers' tread, I was, to tell the plain truth, very
+miserable withal.
+
+My talk with Colonel Dayton had, in a way, contributed to this gloomy
+feeling. We had, from choice, ridden side by side for the better part of
+two days, and, for very need of confiding in some one, I had talked with
+him concerning my affairs more freely than was my wont. This was the
+easier, because he was a contemplative, serious, and sensible man, whose
+words and manner created confidence. Moreover, he was neither Dutchman nor
+Yankee, but a native Jerseyman, and so considered my story from an equable
+and fair point of view, without bias.
+
+It was, indeed, passing strange that this man, on his way to seize or
+crush the Johnson clique, as the case might be, should have been the one
+to first arouse in my mind the idea that, after all, the Tories had their
+good side, and were doing what to them seemed right, at tremendous cost
+and sacrifice to themselves. I had been telling him what a ruffian was
+Philip Cross, and what grounds I had for hating him, and despitefully
+describing the other chief Tories of the district. He said in reply,
+I remember:
+
+"You seem to miss the sad phase of all this, my friend. Your young blood
+feels only the partisan promptings of dislike. Some day--soon, perhaps--
+you will all at once find this youthful heat gone; you will begin to walk
+around men and things, so to speak, and study them from all sides. This
+stage comes to every sober mind; it will come to you. Then you will
+realize that this baronet up yonder is, from his own stand-point, a
+chivalrous, gallant loyal gentleman, who imperils estates, power, peace,
+almost life itself, rather than do what he holds to be weak or wrong. Why,
+take even this enemy of yours, this Cross. He was one of the notables of
+these parts--rich, popular, influential; he led a life of utmost luxury
+and pleasure. All this he has exchanged for the rough work of a soldier,
+with its privations, cold, fatigue, and the risk of death. Ask yourself
+why he did it."
+
+"I see what you would enforce," I said. "Your meaning is that these men,
+as well as our side, think the right is theirs."
+
+"Precisely. They have inherited certain ideas. We disagree with them; we
+deem it our duty to silence them, fight them, drive them out of the
+country, and, with God's help, we will do it. But let us do this with our
+eyes open, and with the understanding that they are not necessarily
+scoundrels and heathen because they fail to see things as we see them."
+
+"But you would not defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages
+against their neighbors--against helpless women and children. That must be
+heathenish to any mind."
+
+"Defend it? No! I do not defend any acts of theirs. Rid your mind of the
+idea that because a man tries to understand a thing he therefore defends
+it. But I can see how they would defend it to their own consciences--just
+as these thrifty Whig farmers hereabout explain in their own minds as
+patriotic and public-spirited their itching to get hold of Johnson's
+Manor. Try and look at things in this light. Good and bad are relative
+terms; nothing is positively and unchangeably evil. Each group of men has
+its own little world of reasons and motives, its own atmosphere, its own
+standard of right and wrong. If you shut your eyes, and condemn or praise
+these wholly, without first striving to comprehend them, you may or may
+not do mischief to them; you assuredly injure yourself."
+
+Thus, and at great length, spoke the philosophical colonel. I could not
+help suspecting that he had too open a mind to be a very valuable fighter,
+and, indeed, this proved to be true. He subsequently built some good and
+serviceable forts along the Mohawk, one of which to this day bears his
+name, but he attained no distinction as a soldier in the field.
+
+But, none the less, his words impressed me greatly. What he said had never
+been put to me in clear form before, and at twenty-seven a man's mind is
+in that receptive frame, trembling upon the verge of the meditative
+stage, when the presentation of new ideas like these often marks a
+distinct turn in the progress and direction of his thoughts. It seems
+strange to confess it, but I still look back to that May day of 1776 as
+the date of my first notion that there could be anything admirable in
+my enemies.
+
+At the time, these new views and the tone of our talk helped to disquiet
+me. The swinging lines of shoulders, the tramp! tramp! in the mud, the
+sight of the guns and swords about me, were all depressing. They seemed to
+give a sinister significance to my return. It was my home, the dearest
+spot on earth--this smiling, peaceful, sunlit Mohawk Valley--and I was
+entering it with soldiers whose mission was to seize and despoil the son
+of my boyhood's friend, Sir William. More than one of my old play-mates,
+now grown to man's estate, would note with despair our approach, and curse
+me for being of it. The lady of Johnson Hall, to whom all this would be
+horrible nigh unto death, was a close, warm friend of Daisy's. So my
+thoughts ran gloomily, and I had no joy in any of the now familiar sights
+around me.
+
+The march up from Schenectady had been a most wearisome one for the men,
+owing to the miserable condition of the road, never over-smooth and now
+rendered doubly bad and difficult by the spring freshets and the oozing
+frost. When we reached the pleasant little hollow in which Fort Johnson
+nestles, a halt was accordingly ordered, and the tired soldiers prepared
+to refresh themselves with food by the banks of the creek. It was now
+afternoon; we were distant but a short mile from the Cedars, and I could
+not abide the thought of lingering here, to no purpose, so close to the
+goal of all my longings. I therefore exchanged some plans and suggestions
+with Colonel Dayton and his companion Judge Duer, who represented the
+civil law in the expedition, and so clapped spurs and dashed forward
+up the road.
+
+"It seems ten years, not four, since I was last here," I was saying to
+Daisy half an hour later, and unconsciously framing in words the thoughts
+which her face suggested.
+
+I know not how to describe the changes which this lapse of time had
+wrought upon her countenance and carriage. In the more obvious, outward
+sense, it had scarcely aged her. She was now twenty-three years of age,
+and I doubt a stranger would have deemed her older. Yet, looking upon her
+and listening to her, I seemed to feel that, instead of being four years
+her senior, I was in truth the younger of the two. The old buoyant,
+girlish air was all gone, for one thing. She spoke now with gentle,
+sweet-toned gravity; and her eyes, frankly meeting mine as of old, had in
+their glance a soft, reposeful dignity which was new to me.
+
+Almost another Daisy, too, she seemed in face. It was the woman in her
+features, I dare say, which disconcerted me. I had expected changes,
+perhaps, but not upon these lines. She had been the prettiest maiden of
+the Valley, beyond all others. She was not pretty now, I should say, but
+she _was_ beautiful--somewhat pallid, yet not to give an air of unhealth;
+the delicate chiselling of features yielded now not merely the pleasure
+of regularity, but the subtler charm of sensitive, thoughtful character.
+The eyes and hair seemed a deeper hazel, a darker brown, than they had
+been. The lips had lost some, thing of their childish curve, and met each
+other in a straight line--fairer than ever, I thought, because more firm.
+
+I am striving now, you see, against great odds, to revive in words the
+impressions of difference which came to me in those first hours, as I
+scanned her face. They furnish forth no real portrait of the dear lady:
+how could I hope they should? But they help to define, even if dimly, the
+changes toward strength and self-control I found in her.
+
+I was, indeed, all unprepared for what awaited me here at the Cedars. My
+heart had been torn by all manner of anxieties and concern. I had hastened
+forward, convinced that my aid and protection were direly needed. I sat
+now, almost embarrassed, digesting the fact that the fortunes of the
+Cedars were in sufficient and capable hands.
+
+Mr. Stewart's condition was in truth sad enough. He had greeted me with
+such cordiality and clear-wittedness of utterance and manner that at first
+I fancied his misfortunes to have been exaggerated in my mother's letter.
+His conversation for a moment or two was also coherent and timely. But his
+mind was prone to wander mysteriously. He presently said: "Assuredly I
+taught you to shave with both hands. I knew I could not be mistaken." I
+stole a glance toward Daisy at this, and her answering nod showed me the
+whole case. It was after old Eli had come in and wheeled Mr. Stewart in
+his big chair out into the garden, that I spoke to Daisy of the
+differences time had wrought.
+
+"Ay," she said, "it must be sadly apparent to you--the change in
+everything."
+
+How should I approach the subject--the one thing of which I knew we were
+both thinking? There seemed a wall between us. She had been unaffectedly
+glad to see me; had, for the instant, I fancied, thought to offer me her
+cheek to kiss--yet was, with it all, so self-possessed and reserved that I
+shrank from touching upon her trouble.
+
+"Perhaps not everything is sad," I made answer, falteringly. "Poor Mr.
+Stewart--that is indeed mournful; but, on the other hand--" I broke
+off abruptly.
+
+"On the other hand," she took up my words calmly, "you are thinking that I
+am advantaged by Philip's departure."
+
+My face must have showed that I could not deny it.
+
+"In some respects," she went on, "yes; in others, no. I am glad to be able
+to speak freely to you, Douw, for you are nearest to me of all that are
+left. I do not altogether know my own mind; for that matter, does any one?
+The Philip to whom I gave my heart and whom I married is one person; the
+Philip who trampled on the heart and fled his home seems quite another and
+a different man. I hesitate between the two sometimes. I cannot always say
+to myself: 'The first was all fancy; the second is the reality.' Rather,
+they blend themselves in my mind, and I seem to see the fond lover
+remaining still the good husband, if only I had had the knowledge and
+tenderness to keep him so!"
+
+"In what are you to be reproached, Daisy?" I said this somewhat testily,
+for the self-accusation nettled me.
+
+"It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom
+from the beginning."
+
+"It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with
+melancholy conviction.
+
+"Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My
+heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for
+finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest. I
+dreamed to be called 'My lady,' too, in good time. I forgot that I came
+from the poor people, and that I belonged to them. So well and truly did I
+forget this that the fact struck me like a whip when--when it was brought
+to my notice."
+
+"He taunted you with it, then!" I burst forth, my mind working quickly for
+once.
+
+She made no answer for the time, but rose from her chair and looked out
+upon the group in the garden. From the open door she saw the van of
+Dayton's soldiers trudging up the Valley road. I had previously told her
+of their mission and my business.
+
+"Poor Lady Johnson," she said, resting her head against her hand on the
+door-frame, and looking upon the advancing troops with a weary expression
+of face. "Her trouble is coming--mine is past." Then, after a pause:
+"Will they be harsh with Sir John, think you? I trust not. They have both
+been kind to me since--since Philip went. Sir John is not bad at heart,
+Douw, believe me. You twain never liked each other, I know. He is a bitter
+man with those who are against him, but his heart is good if you touch
+it aright."
+
+I had not much to say to this. "I am glad he was good to you," I managed
+to utter, not over-graciously, I fear.
+
+The troops went by, with no sound of drums now, lest an alarm be raised
+prematurely. We watched them pass in silence, and soon after I took my
+leave for the day, saying that I would go up to see the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, and cross the river to my mother's home, and would return
+next morning. We shook hands at parting, almost with constraint.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+
+
+
+Early the next day, which was May 20th, we heard to our surprise and
+consternation that on the preceding afternoon, almost as Colonel Dayton
+and his soldiers were entering Johnstown, Sir John and the bulk of his
+Highlanders and sympathizers, to the number of one hundred and thirty, had
+privately taken to the woods at the north of the Hall, and struck out
+for Canada.
+
+Over six weeks elapsed before we learned definitely that the baronet and
+his companions had traversed the whole wilderness in safety and reached
+Montreal, which now was once more in British hands--our ill-starred Quebec
+expedition having finally quitted Canada earlier in the month. We could
+understand the stories of Sir John's travail and privations, for the snow
+was not yet out of the Adirondack trails, and few of his company were
+skilled in woodmen's craft. But they did accomplish the journey, and that
+in nineteen days.
+
+I, for one, was not very much grieved at Johnson's escape, for his
+imprisonment would have been an embarrassment rather than a service to us.
+But Colonel Dayton was deeply chagrined at finding the bird flown, and I
+fear that in the first hours of his discomfiture he may have forgotten
+some of his philosophical toleration for Tories in general. He had,
+moreover, the delicate question on his hands of what to do with Lady
+Johnson. Neither Judge Duer nor I could advise him, and so everything was
+held in suspense for the better part of a week, until General Schuyler's
+decision could be had.
+
+Meanwhile my time was fairly occupied in the fulfilment of matters
+intrusted to me by the General. I had to visit Colonel Herkimer at his
+home below Little Falls, and talk with him about the disagreeable fact
+that his brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, had deserted the militia command
+given him by the Whigs and fled to Canada. The stout old German was free
+to denounce his brother, however, and I liked the looks and blunt speech
+of Peter Bellinger, who had been made colonel of the deserted battalion of
+German Flatts. There were also conversations to be had with Colonel Klock,
+and Ebenezer Cox, and the Fondas, at their several homes, and a day to
+spend with my friend John Frey, now sheriff in place of the Tory White. It
+thus happened that I saw very little of the people at the Cedars, and had
+no real talk again with Daisy, until a full week had passed.
+
+It was a cool, overcast forenoon when I alighted next at the familiar
+gate, and gave my horse into Tulp's charge. The boy, though greatly
+rejoiced to see me back again, had developed a curious taciturnity in
+these latter years--since his accident, in fact--and no longer shouted out
+the news to me at sight. Hence I had to ask him, as I neared the door,
+what strange carriage was that in the yard beyond, and why it was there.
+As I spoke, a couple of men lounged in view from the rear of the house,
+and I recognized them as of Dayton's command. Tulp explained that Lady
+Johnson was being taken away, and that she had tarried here to rest on
+her journey.
+
+If I had known this at the gate, I doubt I should have stopped at all; but
+I had been seen from the window, and it was too late now to turn about. So
+I entered, much wishing that I had left off my uniform, or, still better,
+that I had stayed away altogether.
+
+There were present in the great room Daisy, Lady Johnson, a young lady who
+was her sister, two children--and a man in civilian's garb, with some few
+military touches, such as a belt and sword and a cockade, who sat by the
+window, his knees impudently spread apart and his hat on his head. I
+looked at this fellow in indignant inquiry.
+
+Daisy came eagerly to me, with an explanation on her lips:
+
+"It is the officer who is to take Lady Johnson to Albany. He insists upon
+forcing his presence upon us, and will not suffer us to be alone together
+in any room in the house."
+
+"Who are you?--and off with your hat!" I said to the man, sharply.
+
+My uniform was of service, after all. He looked me over, and evidently
+remembered having seen me with his colonel, for he stood up and took off
+his hat. "I am a lieutenant of the Connecticut line," he said, in a
+Yankee snarl, "and I am doing my duty."
+
+"I am a major in the Continental line, and I should be doing _my_ duty if
+I sent you back in irons to your colonel," I answered. "Get out of here,
+what time Lady Johnson is to remain, and leave these ladies to
+themselves!"
+
+He was clearly in two minds about obeying me, and I fancy it was my
+superior size rather than my rank that induced him to go, which he did in
+as disagreeable a fashion as possible. I made my bow to Lady Johnson, and
+said something about being glad that I had come, if I had been of use.
+
+She, poor young woman, was in a sad state of nervous excitement, what with
+her delicate condition and the distressing circumstances of the past week.
+She was, moreover, a very beautiful creature, naturally of soft and
+refined manners, and this made me the readier to overlook the way in which
+she met my kindly meant phrases.
+
+"I marvel that you are not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly,
+"to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that
+man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of
+calling such low fellows officers, or consorting with them!"
+
+I answered as gently as I could that, unfortunately, there were many such
+ill-conditioned men in every service, and pointed out that the man, by his
+speech, was a New Englander.
+
+"And who fetched them into this province, I should like to know!"
+
+Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hold a political discussion
+with this poor troubled wife, who saw her husband's peril, her own plight,
+and the prospective birth of her first child in captivity constantly
+before her eyes! So I strove to bring the talk upon other grounds, but not
+with much success. She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a
+fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady
+Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather
+those of her husband. She seemed not to have very clear notions of what
+the trouble was all about, but ascribed it loosely, I gathered, to the
+jealousy of Philip Livingston, who was vexed that the Scotch did not
+settle upon his patent instead of on Sir John's land, and to the malice of
+General Schuyler, whose feud with the Johnsons was notorious.
+
+"And to think, too," she added, "that Mr. Schuyler's mother and my
+mother's mother were sisters! A very pleasant and valuable cousin he is,
+to be sure! Driving my husband off into the forest to perhaps die of
+hunger, and dragging me down to Albany, in my condition, and thrusting a
+low Connecticut cobbler into my carriage with me! If my sickness overtakes
+me on the road, and I die, my blood will be on the head of Philip
+Schuyler."
+
+I read in Daisy's eyes a way out of this painful conversation, and so
+said: "Lady Johnson, it will perhaps render your journey less harrowing if
+I have some talk with this officer who is your escort. Let me leave you
+women-folk together here in peace, the while"--and went out into the
+garden again.
+
+I found the lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping
+in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some
+private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed
+out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been,
+through no fault of her own, nurtured in aristocratic ideas and ways; that
+those of whatever party who knew her well most heartily esteemed her; and
+that, moreover, she was nearly related by blood to General Schuyler--he
+professed himself ready to behave toward her with more politeness.
+
+The trouble with him really lay in his abiding belief that people
+underestimated his importance, and hence he sought to magnify his position
+in their eyes by insolent demeanor. Therein I discerned the true Yankee.
+
+That the men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would
+be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome,
+intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during
+the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how
+their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened
+poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too,
+of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices
+against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So
+mischievous did this attitude become at last--when old General Wooster
+came to us with his Connecticut troops, and these set themselves up to be
+independent of all our plans or rules, refusing even to mess with the
+others or to touch Continental provisions and munitions--that Congress had
+to interfere and put them sharply back into their proper places.
+Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and men from the Carolinas will
+bear me out in saying these things about the New England soldiery. I speak
+not in blame or bitterness. The truth is that they were too much akin in
+blood and conceit to the English not to have in themselves many of the
+disagreeable qualities which had impelled us all to revolt against
+British rule.
+
+When the lieutenant had ordered the horses to be brought out for a start,
+I went back into the house. The women had been weeping, I could see. Lady
+Johnson had softened in her mood toward me, and spoke now some gentle
+words of thanks for the little I had done. When I told her, in turn, that
+her escort would henceforth be more considerate in his conduct toward her,
+she was for a moment pleased, but then tears filled her eyes at the
+thoughts of the journey before her.
+
+"When I am out of sight of this house," she said, sadly, "it will seem as
+if my last friend had been left behind. Why could they not have left me at
+the Hall? I gave them the keys; I yielded up everything! What harm could I
+have done them--remaining there? I had no wish to visit my relatives in
+Albany! It is a trick--a device! I doubt I shall ever lay eyes on my dear
+home again."
+
+And, poor lady, she never did.
+
+We strove to speak words of comfort to her, but they came but feebly, and
+could not have consoled her much. When the lieutenant opened the door, the
+women made a tearful adieu, with sobs and kisses upon which I could not
+bear to look. Lady Johnson shook hands with me, still with a pathetic
+quivering of the lips. But then in an instant she straightened herself to
+her full height, bit her lips tight, and walked proudly past the obnoxious
+escort down the path to the carriage, followed by her weeping sister and
+the two big-eyed wondering children.
+
+"Will she ever come back?" said Daisy, half in inquiry, half in despairing
+exclamation, as we saw the last of the carriage and its guard. "How will
+it all end, Douw?"
+
+"Who can foresee?" I answered. "It is war now, at last, war open and
+desperate. I can see no peaceful way out of it. These aristocratic
+landlords, these Johnsons, Butlers, Phillipses, De Lanceys, and the rest,
+will not give up their estates without a hard fight for them. Of that you
+may be sure. _They_ will come back, if their wives do not, and all that
+they can do, backed by England, to regain their positions, will be done.
+They may win, and if they do, it will be our necks that will be put into
+the yoke--or the halter. At all events, it has gone too far to be patched
+over now. We can only stand up and fight as stoutly as we may, and leave
+the rest to fate."
+
+"And it really was necessary to fight--I suppose it could not have been in
+reason avoided?"
+
+"They would have it so. They clung to the faith that they were by right
+the masters here, and we the slaves, and so infatuated were they that they
+brought in English troops and force to back them up. There was no
+alternative but to fight. Would you have had me on the other side--on the
+English side, Daisy?"
+
+"Oh, no, Douw," she answered, in a clear voice. "If war there must be,
+why, of course, the side of my people is my side."
+
+I was not surprised at this, but I said, "You speak of your people,
+Daisy--but surely mere birth does not count for more than one's whole
+training afterward, and you have been bred among another class altogether.
+Why, I should think nine out of every ten of your friends here in the
+Mohawk district must be Tories."
+
+"Not so great a proportion as that," she went on, with a faint smile upon
+her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. "You do not know the value of
+these 'friends,' as you call them, as closely as I do. Never have they
+forgotten on their side, even if I did on mine, that my parents were
+Palatine peasants. And you speak of my being bred among them! In what way
+more than you were? Was I not brought up side by side with you? Was there
+any difference in our rearing, in our daily life until--until you left us?
+Why should I not be a patriot, sir, as well as you?"
+
+She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it. We both
+were thinking, I felt, of the dear old days gone by, and of the melancholy
+fate which clouded over and darkened those days, and drove us apart.
+
+We still stood by the open door, whence we had watched the carriage
+disappear. After some seconds of silence I essayed to bring back the
+conversation to Lady Johnson, and talked of her narrow, ill-informed,
+purely one-sided way of regarding the troubles, and of how impossible it
+was that the class to which she belonged, no matter how amiable and good
+they might be, could ever adapt themselves to the enlarging social
+conditions of this new country.
+
+While I talked, there burst forth suddenly the racket of fifes and drums
+in the road. Some militia companies were marching past on their way to
+join Colonel Dayton's force. We stood and watched these go by, and in the
+noise that they made we failed to hear Mr. Stewart's tottering footsteps
+behind us.
+
+The din of the drums had called him out of his lethargy, and he came
+forward to watch the yeoman-soldiery.
+
+"They march badly--badly," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with
+his hand. "I do not know the uniform. But I have been away so long, and
+everything is changed since the King of Prussia began his wars. Yet I am
+happier here as I am--far happier with my fields, and my freedom, and my
+children."
+
+He had spoken in the tone, half-conversational, half-dreamy, which of late
+strangely marked most of his speech. He turned now and looked at us; a
+pleasant change came over his wan face, and he smiled upon us with a
+curious reflection of the old fond look.
+
+"You are good children," he said; "you shall be married in due time, and
+come after me when I am gone. There will be no handsomer, happier twain in
+the province."
+
+Daisy flushed crimson and looked pained at the old gentleman's childish
+babbling, and I made haste to get away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles.
+
+
+
+A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of
+unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business
+to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and
+encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice
+which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to
+time, assurance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler,
+and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these
+pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole
+Continental service no more unenviable post than mine.
+
+I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of
+fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the
+satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in
+which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the
+most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen
+Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing;
+but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning
+powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be
+posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly
+peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection.
+
+I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all
+the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley
+neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see
+now that they were not altogether without excuse.
+
+The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No
+sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental
+independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the
+declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden
+halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had
+been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the
+magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in
+New York, General Washington could not hold his own, and Congress lost the
+nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service,
+disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force
+became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and
+almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming
+numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally
+lamentable.
+
+There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift
+strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud
+which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening,
+before spring came.
+
+The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and
+intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side
+this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money,
+without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in
+their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and
+resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence
+and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German
+auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispassionately these two opposing
+forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General
+Washington would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London.
+
+I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or
+not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me
+in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was,
+but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for
+rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of
+1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no
+visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending
+danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month.
+I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my
+bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an
+irritable mind.
+
+The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small
+outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up
+communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the
+time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of
+disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a
+somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress.
+Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding
+them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim
+their sails that they should ship no water whichever way the wind blew.
+
+Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people
+had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Washington evacuated
+Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was
+wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively,
+then with less concealment, to drink the King's health.
+
+Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower
+district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all
+east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga.
+They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights
+to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British
+color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the
+county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig
+sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories,
+confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time passed, the dry-rot of
+doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that
+nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from
+home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and
+scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the
+other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King.
+
+It was my function to watch this shifting public opinion, to sway it where
+I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been
+conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I
+turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their
+sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with
+intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of
+promises to speedily glut the passions of war, circulated stealthily all
+about us. How it came, how it was passed from hearth to hearth, defied our
+penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and
+strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens.
+
+For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so
+long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the
+Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was
+more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of
+these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others
+flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that
+the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages
+to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly,
+over our heads.
+
+And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and
+selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and
+turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke.
+
+Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us
+if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to
+Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and
+patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of
+Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very
+gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted.
+
+It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that
+gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story
+was forged.
+
+Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Washington's call
+for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his
+poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York.
+The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in,
+and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told.
+Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New
+York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the
+Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an
+auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of
+our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once
+this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared
+not think!
+
+I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To
+comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter,
+but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife.
+Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this
+horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New
+England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a
+fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's
+pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the
+militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by
+suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and
+means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he,
+with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud
+just then.
+
+I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep,
+for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud
+pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and
+the messenger had thus found me out promptly.
+
+Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in
+response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on
+some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered
+from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could
+tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had
+been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see
+him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my
+sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous.
+
+Daylight broke before we crossed the river, and the sunrise gun sounded as
+we rode up into the court-house square at Johnstown. Soldiers were already
+to be seen moving about outside the block-houses at the corners of the
+palisade which, since Sir John's flight, had been built around the jail.
+Our coming seemed to be expected, for one of the soldiers told us to wait
+while he went inside, and after a few minutes John Frey came out, rubbing
+his eyes. As I dismounted, he briefly explained matters to me.
+
+It seemed that a Tory spy had made his way in from the woods, had
+delivered letters both at Cairncross and at the Cedars, and had then
+started to return, but by the vigilance of one of the Vrooman boys had
+been headed off and taken.
+
+"He is as close as the bark on a beech-tree," concluded the sheriff. "We
+could get nothing out of him. Even when I told him he would be hanged this
+morning after breakfast, he did not change color. He only said that if
+this was the case he would like first to see you; it seems he knows you,
+and has some information for you--probably about Philip Cross's wife.
+Perhaps he will tell _you_ what was in the letter he brought to her."
+
+It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my
+being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy
+sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy.
+
+"All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail.
+
+When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our
+interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the
+shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to
+accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at
+our presence.
+
+"Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as
+freely as the manacles would admit.
+
+I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded
+neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the
+open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as
+leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on
+me. I stepped forward, and said:
+
+"Is that you, Enoch Wade?"
+
+He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion.
+
+"It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried
+right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to
+make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a
+palaver with you, all by yourself?"
+
+"What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff.
+
+I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying
+"talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told
+Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon
+the sheriff and the soldier left us.
+
+"It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic
+smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that."
+
+"Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could.
+
+"Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't
+wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest
+Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young
+Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?"
+
+I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not
+prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more
+his conduct mystified me.
+
+"Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit
+down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all
+about it."
+
+The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep
+interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its
+essential points were these:
+
+After Sir William's death Enoch had remained on at the Hall, not feeling
+particularly bound to the new baronet, but having a cat's attachment to
+the Hall itself. When Sir John finally resolved to avoid arrest by flight,
+Enoch had been in two minds about accompanying him, but had finally
+yielded to the flattering reliance placed by all upon the value and
+thoroughness of his knowledge as a woodsman. It was largely due to his
+skill that the party got safely through the great wilderness, and reached
+Montreal so soon. Since his arrival in Canada, however, things had not
+been at all to his liking. There was but one thought among all his refugee
+companions, which was to return to the Mohawk Valley and put their old
+neighbors to fire and sword--and for this Enoch had no inclination
+whatever. He had accordingly resisted all offers to enrol him in the Tory
+regiment which Sir John was raising in Canada, and had looked for an
+opportunity to get away quietly and without reproach. This chance had only
+come to him a week or so ago, when Philip Cross offered to pay him well to
+take two letters down the Valley--one to his servant Rab, the other to
+Mrs. Cross. He had accepted this errand, and had delivered the letters as
+in duty bound. There his responsibility ended. He had no intention to
+return, and had allowed himself to be arrested by a slow and uninventive
+young man, solely because it seemed the best way of achieving his purpose.
+
+"What is your purpose, Enoch?"
+
+"Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from
+Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know
+who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory,
+with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel--Sillinger they called
+him--and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet
+the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians.
+Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come
+down the Valley!"
+
+You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch
+gave--details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west
+to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I
+returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query:
+
+"But why get yourself arrested?"
+
+"Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given
+you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can
+contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the
+Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+
+
+
+The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to
+the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come
+to us.
+
+For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as
+well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing
+Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we
+despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam
+and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels.
+
+Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of
+the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs--skilled marksmen
+recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class--and that
+Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war
+party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the
+Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's
+regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of
+men we had long known in the Valley--men whose brothers and kinsmen were
+still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons
+could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was
+mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green"
+uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their
+own blood.
+
+"You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he
+shouted fiercely at Enoch.
+
+"Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly.
+
+But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the
+hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother,
+Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another
+brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were
+with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped.
+
+More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the
+position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and
+despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to
+Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at
+Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel,
+and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt
+of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred
+men--the Third New York Continentals--and I took it upon myself to urge
+now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him.
+
+This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the
+military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action,
+there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no
+word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun,
+and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most
+important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any
+question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he
+were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested
+that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination.
+
+Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down
+the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he
+walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the
+pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown
+followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and
+picking berries by the way.
+
+The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my
+thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents--which it turned
+out he did not--but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating
+upon them.
+
+During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her
+recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of
+her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for
+a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and
+maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually
+wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak
+of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole
+subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed
+the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have
+added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for
+revenge should come.
+
+That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl,
+I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the
+dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with
+no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For
+the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the
+neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting
+that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes
+of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.
+
+"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked
+Enoch.
+
+"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver
+it into her hands."
+
+"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"
+
+"Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood--his old accustomed
+temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most
+generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he
+is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition
+fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they
+started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts
+of themselves."
+
+I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I
+said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside
+of you."
+
+"No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is
+still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt
+these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon--it is
+rest itself--when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your
+task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see
+these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard
+fighting to come. It made me uneasy."
+
+"And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know."
+
+"Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift--it's more my way
+of thinking than the other--and you seem to need it powerfully, too.
+But"--here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to
+boot-tops--"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any
+regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,'
+but it would gag me from the first minute."
+
+We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort
+without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly
+Wemple appeared to let me in.
+
+"We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her
+apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little
+breathing-spell."
+
+The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had
+fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon.
+
+Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in
+hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness.
+
+"Oh, I am _so_ glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent
+Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never
+would come."
+
+"Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from--from----"
+
+"You know, then!"
+
+"Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger--he is
+an old friend of ours--told me that much, nothing more."
+
+Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The
+pleased excitement at my arrival--apparently so much desired--was
+succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment.
+
+"Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or--or how to
+tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea
+that nothing could be done without your advice and help--and yet, now you
+have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She
+paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to
+Cairncross."
+
+I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!"
+
+She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the
+truth, none the less."
+
+"You must be crazy!"
+
+"No, Douw, only very, very wretched!"
+
+The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the
+glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front
+through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with
+the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her.
+
+"Tell me about it all, Daisy--if you can."
+
+Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to
+me. She would have recalled it an instant later.
+
+"No--give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you
+should not see."
+
+But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again.
+
+"No--read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no
+difference--between _us_. You might as well know all!"
+
+The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded
+sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold
+character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature
+scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least:
+
+"Madam:--It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you
+are not to publish it.
+
+"If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I
+shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act
+accordingly.
+
+"I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my
+back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with
+ruffian foes to law and order generally.
+
+"All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including
+without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a
+major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me.
+After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to
+listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make
+no promise.
+
+"I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as
+your further instructions.
+
+"Philip."
+
+One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a
+letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading
+lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence,
+until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce
+to speak my mind.
+
+"I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband
+of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!"
+
+There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying,
+that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has
+convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the
+inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed;
+so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this
+narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women
+folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do
+it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must
+be written.
+
+This is what Daisy actually said:
+
+"But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but
+indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has
+done, and that he still loves me?"
+
+"I certainly see nothing of the kind!"
+
+She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his
+home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly
+with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared
+nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that
+by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he
+as much as says that he will forgive me."
+
+"Yes--perhaps--when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at
+the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after
+all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you."
+
+"He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything.
+
+"Yes, he is your husband--a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first
+makes your life wretched at home--you know you _were_ wretched, Daisy!
+Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes,
+humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty
+of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years--having
+you watched meanwhile, it seems--yet never vouchsafing you so much as a
+word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help
+enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down
+and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this
+letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his
+coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if
+you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your
+chief friends. And all this you take kindly--sifting his brutal words in
+search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished
+at you! I credited you with more spirit."
+
+She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases
+than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little
+pause, said to me quite calmly:
+
+"I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality."
+
+"You know him better than I--a thousand times better, more's the pity.
+Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of
+the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!"
+
+"Have you forgotten that he saved my life?"
+
+"No; but he forgot it--or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place
+of soft thoughts."
+
+"And he loved me--ah! he truly did--for a little!"
+
+"Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar;
+and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride."
+
+"How you hate him!"
+
+"Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?"
+
+"He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the
+gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a
+quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and
+as for Tulp--why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?"
+
+"Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia
+over the cliff, and left me _you_--I--I----"
+
+The words were out!
+
+I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers.
+Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have
+uttered--what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was
+covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over
+this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and
+finally--after what had seemed an age of silence--I stammered on:
+
+"What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever
+met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the
+ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany--in the Patroon's mansion,
+you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I
+went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery
+fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here,"
+I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was
+his doing."
+
+I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling
+that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the
+older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility
+overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder,
+and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind.
+
+"My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed
+superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest
+nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem
+sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your
+feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given
+me. I know what you would have said----"
+
+"It was exactly what I most of all would _not_ have said," I broke in
+with, in passing.
+
+"Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of
+course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it
+was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"--her voice softened
+and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in
+every detail of our youth--"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be,
+my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the
+two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter
+and sister."
+
+There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and
+self-sustained enough.
+
+She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross
+at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned
+out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to
+convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself
+accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown
+road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make
+assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that
+very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff
+at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX.
+
+From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+
+
+
+And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that
+mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion.
+
+The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us.
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the
+approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude,
+with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort,
+working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the
+dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for
+supplies, for more men, and for militia support.
+
+At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for
+Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of
+Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this
+little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that
+this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more
+was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves.
+
+It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now
+stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the
+spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had
+disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and
+doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their
+grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or
+suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors.
+And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help
+was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be
+welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our
+blood--the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our
+midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail.
+
+General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia,
+apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen
+and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall.
+Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared
+raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming
+forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we
+must meet them!
+
+It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of
+that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley
+bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came
+out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their
+order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the
+forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield
+that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered
+and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine
+danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month
+hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling
+drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the
+early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in
+bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear;
+and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find
+them again at work upon some other farm.
+
+There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together
+to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we
+had grown selfish and solitary--each man for himself. We had forgotten, in
+the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that
+fine old word "neighbor"--the husbandman, or _boer_, who is nigh, and to
+whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was
+in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared
+everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as
+to fight for one another--each for all, and all for each. Forty years have
+gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk
+Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The
+poor _bauers_ and squatters from the bush came out then and did their
+share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings
+and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to
+this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the
+well-to-do than I know of anywhere else.
+
+When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly
+built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle
+for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the
+drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and
+filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was
+no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned,
+flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones
+threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the
+little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of
+their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix.
+
+By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to
+meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to
+be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might
+have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice
+of his day--grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under
+Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular
+troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said
+to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose
+to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory
+neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own
+fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets
+in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling,
+hissing stone.
+
+I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that
+in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great
+campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that
+strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last
+at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French
+overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical
+enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages
+or of the Don Cossacks--in none of these records, I aver, can you find so
+much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born
+Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter
+cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest
+painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian
+peasant was a nobleman.
+
+Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon
+these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of
+duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than
+once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of
+them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my
+generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this
+philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an
+army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their
+relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be
+slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at
+their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars
+apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one
+pretend not to hate such monsters?
+
+At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had
+never known before to marshal our yeomanry together.
+
+Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night--to
+Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in
+the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East
+Creek--organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a
+little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district
+regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at
+Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched
+forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to
+Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather
+together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better
+than a fortnight ago had seemed possible.
+
+They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard
+of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and
+Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the
+bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and
+villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among
+them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and
+imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher
+estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call
+such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many
+of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform,
+such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied
+largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply
+their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their
+hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their
+sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might
+well have shrunk from.
+
+These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else,
+though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They
+had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine
+friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence,
+though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above
+at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were
+richer in hate.
+
+At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to
+start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late
+in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her
+roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the
+Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on
+our horses.
+
+I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty
+toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole
+distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I
+yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear,
+after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly
+prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and
+who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again?
+
+I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my
+mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out
+for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I
+ought instead to be going toward Cairncross.
+
+Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very
+woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had
+apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me.
+
+"Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me--to say good-by?"
+asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of
+your starting to-morrow--for the battle."
+
+I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it
+in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in
+my words.
+
+"Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come--all day I have been thinking of
+little else--yet I feared that my visit might--might----"
+
+Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a
+superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow
+prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she
+showed now by leaving the room.
+
+"I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet
+with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to
+live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without
+a sign."
+
+We stood thus facing each other for a moment--mumbling forth some
+commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with
+a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "_Must you truly
+go_?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my
+shoulder and weeping violently.
+
+It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I
+would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence--as being too sacred a
+thing for aught of disclosure or speculation--were it not that some might,
+in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung
+by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of
+soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable.
+
+We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand,
+or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot.
+
+We talked of impersonal things--of the coming invasion, of the chances of
+relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a
+good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young
+commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted
+together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back--as we had
+so often returned before during these latter hateful months--to the sweet
+companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr.
+Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at
+Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary
+of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in
+the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these
+long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of
+yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the
+strange quality of the Roman faith--that its forms and customs, learned in
+youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after
+many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab
+Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the
+tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may
+linger pleasantly.
+
+Thus our conversation ran--decorous and harmless enough, in all
+conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a
+forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet
+influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole
+world of meaning evaded in our talk--were we to blame?
+
+I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you!
+This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we
+could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in
+common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly,
+the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman
+now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These
+had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time
+when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this
+we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor
+and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our
+thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and
+without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own
+choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of
+love's cherubim.
+
+We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her
+hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the
+white forehead she as gently inclined to me.
+
+"Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a
+soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!"
+
+"I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come
+back."
+
+The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and
+Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night
+with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she
+shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning.
+
+The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough
+made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There
+were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me
+searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was
+as mystified as I then thought.
+
+At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch
+and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her
+during my absence--and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI.
+
+The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+
+
+
+I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm
+yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about
+the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said,
+they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it
+would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had
+flooded the kitchen with tears.
+
+Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for
+the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the
+narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous
+personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one
+another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.
+
+During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each
+other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had
+got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her
+letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that
+she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my
+vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from
+it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be;
+for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household
+of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen
+management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her
+own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not
+one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting
+respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction
+as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to
+manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was
+within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and
+anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a
+veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never
+marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly
+unattainable ideal.
+
+I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I
+was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at
+all deceived.
+
+The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed
+bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender,
+high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my
+hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me
+in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives
+before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the
+horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back.
+After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form
+that I was going.
+
+And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come
+to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving
+homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could
+save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and
+scalping-knife.
+
+I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the
+reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I
+should not take this ride for nothing!
+
+"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the
+scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."
+
+"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who
+through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that
+you are a Van Hoorn!"
+
+"I shall not forget."
+
+"And is that young Philip Cross--_her_ husband--with Johnson's crew?"
+
+"Yes, he is."
+
+"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your
+grandfather Baltus was!"
+
+These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had
+joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to
+overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was
+nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.
+
+We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked
+road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by
+the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the
+highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and
+children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall
+corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine
+with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were
+gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the
+Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while
+there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in
+every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to
+Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.
+
+We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth,
+near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine
+from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry
+Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the
+Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that
+Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General
+Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her
+promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when
+I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major
+John Frey.
+
+It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment,
+which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle.
+The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were
+sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting
+low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a
+refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for
+the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to
+find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves,
+Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.
+
+Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of
+the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly
+proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but
+the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might
+have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly
+Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living
+there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and
+that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless
+if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that
+messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we
+look backward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton
+was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia
+was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more
+were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There
+were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan
+volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations,
+and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in
+excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to
+perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting
+force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about
+seven hundred strong.
+
+It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered
+together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called
+into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the
+Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors,
+the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country
+larger than any one of several European monarchies.
+
+As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue
+and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and
+linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and
+huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and
+equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen
+different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch
+Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and
+here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who
+with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and
+Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the
+bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.
+
+Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled
+together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone
+Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had
+children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in
+bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his
+strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives
+down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never
+forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good
+clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of
+the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a
+Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all
+looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been
+always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.
+
+Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had
+small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer
+the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout
+Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock,
+and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of
+Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but
+others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel
+Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of
+the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a
+familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my
+business to check off.
+
+Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells,
+all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were
+five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it
+may well be five of more than one other family.
+
+The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the
+first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But
+soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts,
+and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer
+palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in
+the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new,
+deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force
+greater and more to be dreaded than was Belletre's, but because we were
+encamped on historic ground.
+
+From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort
+Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine
+settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth;
+and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in
+a low voice as the daylight faded.
+
+The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of
+northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night,
+and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing
+tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay
+the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow
+ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the
+wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the
+widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the
+current, drowned!
+
+How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should
+have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary
+of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how
+marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the
+captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I
+should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was
+food enough for thought.
+
+But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest
+were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river
+against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in
+emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was
+called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the
+fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that
+Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the
+place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was
+there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith,
+who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was
+Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept
+in our interest.
+
+The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas
+could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of
+savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly
+neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the
+foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded,
+they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their
+Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the
+savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for
+him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to
+say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep
+sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives.
+Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had
+the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of
+forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and
+ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland,
+whom for half a century he had loved so well.
+
+There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with
+their war-party, by all means.
+
+After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of
+stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of
+the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these
+do not concern the story.
+
+It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been
+blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in
+his quaint German dialect:
+
+"Come, walk with me outside the fort."
+
+We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom
+we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound
+to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank.
+There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple
+militia gathering.
+
+We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where
+we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the
+sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest
+old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.
+
+"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.
+
+I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this
+brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?"
+feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew
+not of.
+
+"_I_ am wrong," he said, simply.
+
+"I do not understand you, Brigadier."
+
+"Say rather that _they_, who ought to know me better, do not understand
+me."
+
+"They? Whom do you mean?"
+
+"All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own
+regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me.
+Nothing could be worse than that."
+
+"Suspect _you_, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"
+
+"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It
+has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a
+colonel with Johnson--up yonder."
+
+The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights
+of day were paling over the black line of trees.
+
+"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too,
+my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us,
+and his son _is_ with the Tories--up yonder."
+
+"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march
+to-morrow."
+
+"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and
+another married to Hendrick Frey, and _he_ is a Tory, too. All this is
+thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I
+feel they are talking of this."
+
+"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter
+Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe
+me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."
+
+"You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here.
+Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."
+
+"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I
+different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are
+all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours
+as well."
+
+"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and
+lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you
+get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now.
+Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are
+going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do.
+Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you
+leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to
+save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them
+and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here
+in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank
+in the State line."
+
+"I cannot credit that."
+
+"Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up
+my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"
+
+Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long
+after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying
+my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.
+
+To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling
+existing against him, it to a degree did exist.
+
+The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a
+few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered
+old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our
+Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who
+spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike.
+There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies,
+none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized
+their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the
+Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but
+still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some
+of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that
+matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it
+was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and
+suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once
+begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.
+
+All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy
+which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian
+fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into
+rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and
+wooden-headed Braddock.
+
+We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians
+bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of
+the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded
+the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed
+slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the
+Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which
+bears the name Oriskany.
+
+Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching,
+on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate
+to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with
+our attack.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII.
+
+"The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+
+
+
+A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the
+never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking
+rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the
+hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler
+darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.
+
+Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in
+the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close
+neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals
+prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It
+might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for
+we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of
+these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final
+six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently.
+Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter.
+Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the
+threshold of so grave an adventure.
+
+I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the
+spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some
+dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night
+of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely
+brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store
+of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the
+Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some
+sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of
+food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with
+a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized
+cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on
+their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed
+so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise
+there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"
+
+No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.
+
+Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All
+preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers
+were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had
+been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last
+look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the
+General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses
+harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!
+
+The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the
+prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day,
+instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's
+inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's
+faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days'
+stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay.
+
+The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the
+headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice
+before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands.
+I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident
+impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were
+not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six
+miles distant.
+
+The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of
+sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre
+of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees,
+bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during
+the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now,
+after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in
+camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers.
+These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front
+sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or
+six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with
+one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious
+to hear what was going on.
+
+I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the
+Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling
+differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and
+majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had
+the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every
+day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the
+only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served
+further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me
+only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the
+square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry
+Valley way.
+
+"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his _friseur_
+with him."
+
+"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers.
+Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.
+
+"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing,
+half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence.
+When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and
+fight next spring!"
+
+All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to
+hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.
+
+The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer
+for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the
+sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions
+upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if
+with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired
+we must have heard them.
+
+I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough
+stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the
+dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that
+either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and
+that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he
+held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he
+kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The
+beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to
+one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in
+Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and
+munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus
+supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them,
+unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort.
+In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.
+
+"But I say the sortie _will_ be made! They are waiting for us--only we are
+too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.
+
+"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the
+case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that
+fort two miles farther back."
+
+"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult
+travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's
+Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."
+
+"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or
+some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?"
+I asked.
+
+"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is
+to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."
+
+"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a
+great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"
+
+Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a
+swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be
+looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.
+
+His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.
+
+"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with
+his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.
+
+"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is
+not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here,
+as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the
+parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers
+in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."
+
+"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel
+Cox, angrily.
+
+He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered
+four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a
+loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came
+running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with
+difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one
+place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.
+
+"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall,"
+said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his
+feet as he spoke.
+
+"_Will_ you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone,
+pitched even higher.
+
+"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a
+general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back,
+misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.
+
+"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.
+
+Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.
+
+"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like
+this? Know you not your duty better?"
+
+"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least _we_
+are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.
+
+"_You_!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "_You_ will be the first to
+run when you see the British!"
+
+There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited
+farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising
+momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had
+no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we
+could hear nothing clearly.
+
+There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier,
+Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous
+colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and
+"coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and
+dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I
+could scarce bear to look upon it.
+
+There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the
+crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously
+drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.
+
+Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If
+you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool
+at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred
+could hear:
+
+"VORWAERTS!"
+
+The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.
+
+There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To
+rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no
+dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back
+in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a
+hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps
+somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene
+before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the
+efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring
+their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his
+Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was
+ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of
+it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to
+bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles
+Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and
+Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.
+
+So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in
+the morning.
+
+The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of
+August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of
+the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the
+world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading
+to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut
+through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line,
+regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances
+bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when
+Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this
+time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough
+spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress
+was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.
+
+There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls
+of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled
+undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to
+be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us,
+and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.
+
+Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van.
+Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had
+been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but
+without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely
+there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of
+an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.
+
+We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in
+the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in
+part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We
+in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were
+resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon
+in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards
+farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in
+the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.
+
+While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This
+is where we camped five years ago."
+
+Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall
+headlong upon the neck of his horse.
+
+There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell,
+a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII.
+
+The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+
+
+
+Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still
+not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed.
+
+I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his
+horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I
+saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the
+gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the
+dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental
+numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at
+all to comprehend it.
+
+Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his
+mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead
+of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming
+footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement.
+
+The air was filled now with shouts--what they were I did not know. The
+solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together
+like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking
+to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends
+off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had
+jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the
+mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the
+stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at
+random into the underbrush.
+
+All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier.
+
+As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange
+barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther
+side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the
+whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the
+Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all
+directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the
+causeway. It was a horrible spectacle--of naked, yelling devils, daubed
+with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and
+flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and
+neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence
+they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants
+with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the
+sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept
+pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush.
+
+By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine,
+here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis.
+
+Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and
+calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His
+orders I forget now--or what part I played at first in carrying them
+out--but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our
+needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the
+attack, our forces--or what was left of them--had been drawn out of the
+cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This
+could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his
+self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest.
+
+Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing
+to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired
+their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the
+fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the
+Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the
+ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again
+from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of
+the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see
+the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment--these Petries, Weavers,
+Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts--fight their path backward
+through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been
+egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and
+returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie
+regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the
+rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber
+as well as they could, north and south of the road.
+
+While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had,
+strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to
+ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was
+struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from
+his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General
+Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The
+Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the
+rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a
+step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball
+which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood.
+
+It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man
+was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two
+rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and
+bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well
+sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and
+resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at
+a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of
+the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely
+brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the
+maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly
+lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him.
+
+"Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked.
+
+"No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I
+will face the enemy till I die."
+
+All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the
+hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated.
+Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more
+than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little
+mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough,
+half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for
+the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob
+Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of
+his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across
+the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a
+captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat,
+and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the
+Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay.
+
+The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead
+and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist
+of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time,
+forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk
+was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and
+tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he
+missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming--and
+there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes.
+
+"Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when
+one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running
+forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better
+for us.
+
+There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An
+hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its
+clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting
+among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence
+upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet
+ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of
+dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as
+with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk
+stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by
+swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the
+shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible.
+Yes--horrible is the right word!
+
+A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy
+perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a
+compound is man!--we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its
+purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood
+in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!
+
+I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while
+others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now
+these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness
+and with a plenitude of minutiae which surprise me, the more that I
+remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight
+for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he
+isn't, and that is about all he thinks of.
+
+I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the
+struggle--the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on
+the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of
+the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our
+rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade,
+sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories,
+meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and
+drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been
+wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately
+St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started;
+this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed
+too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action
+cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where
+the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our
+centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way
+backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories
+came upon us.
+
+The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point,
+where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of
+the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the
+hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts,
+crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy,
+shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small
+firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs.
+
+Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which
+promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse,
+perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body
+of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent
+Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and
+cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac
+Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be
+handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence.
+
+Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute
+bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril!
+
+We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things
+were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague
+intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now
+drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells
+of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed
+to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of
+some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which
+side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our
+vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep
+ourselves alive.
+
+All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great
+storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had
+been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the
+darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared
+through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed
+in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the
+blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight
+hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements.
+
+We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched
+under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for
+the fight, it ceased utterly.
+
+While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report
+from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder;
+there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from
+the fort!
+
+I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping
+brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance
+that the Brigadier had not heard the reports.
+
+The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had
+left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches
+above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to
+have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or
+no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied
+their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had
+heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it.
+
+"I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young
+men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off."
+
+The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree,
+avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof,
+told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred,
+nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward
+toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large
+part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to
+say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so
+broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest
+fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.
+
+What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who
+recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain.
+Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great
+catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.
+
+"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel
+Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll
+there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.
+
+Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only
+knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my
+brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry
+eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.
+
+I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of
+Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were
+saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were
+said to be dead already.
+
+The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew
+lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of
+white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at
+once the sun was shining.
+
+On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The
+fight began again.
+
+The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a
+few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what
+food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength.
+They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance
+they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their
+hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now.
+
+The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear
+the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties
+now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms,
+dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke
+arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe.
+Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable
+paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and
+with clinched fists.
+
+A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing
+through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us
+afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could
+reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this
+side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke
+bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses
+of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before
+us as we ran.
+
+Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and
+underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga
+men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the
+bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were
+looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old
+Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:
+
+"Help is here from the fort!"
+
+Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose
+musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the
+bushes, as they advanced in regular order.
+
+I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen
+shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear,
+the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the
+new-comers.
+
+"Who's there?" he roared at them.
+
+"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.
+
+Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to
+the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we
+clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all
+confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them
+to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.
+
+Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.
+
+Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a
+mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and
+left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet,
+and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as
+a shield.
+
+While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing
+with excitement.
+
+"In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"
+
+"Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his
+vast might. "These art Tories. _Fire_! you fools! _Fire_!"
+
+It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former
+friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their
+guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many
+more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.
+
+How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets
+seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a
+score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men
+had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade,
+dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These
+latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire
+to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with
+a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in
+wild pursuit.
+
+Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled
+tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our
+faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore
+forward, loading and firing as we ran.
+
+The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were
+driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of
+renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all
+our ears.
+
+I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying
+piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of
+some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening
+of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the
+Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and
+left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion
+for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood
+in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.
+
+I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where
+the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall
+rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch
+farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently
+attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed
+thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we
+came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.
+
+While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground
+for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:
+
+"They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a
+tree."
+
+I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me,
+his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back
+of his head, his long rifle over his arm.
+
+"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"
+
+"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he
+spoke.
+
+We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet
+struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.
+
+"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and
+leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps
+from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching
+almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.
+
+A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a
+momentary twinge of pain in my arm.
+
+"Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted
+excitedly from the bush.
+
+There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong
+upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting
+forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.
+
+"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars,
+resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his
+gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.
+
+I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained
+grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and
+looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV.
+
+Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+
+
+
+My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to
+speak, but no sound came from them.
+
+For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed
+upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this
+strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or
+over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I
+remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and
+scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay.
+
+There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look
+in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For
+all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing
+whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarrassed me. For relief I
+turned to Enoch, and said sharply:
+
+"You haven't told me yet what you were doing here."
+
+The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned
+his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me.
+
+"You can see for yourself, can't ye?" he said. "What do people mostly do
+when there's shooting going on, and they've got a gun?"
+
+"But how came you here at all? I thought you were to stay at--at the place
+where I put you."
+
+"That was likely, wasn't it! Me loafing around the house like a tame cat
+among the niggers while good fighting was going on up here!"
+
+"If you wanted to come, why not have marched with us? I asked you."
+
+"I don't march much myself. It suits me to get around on my own legs in my
+own way. I told you I wouldn't go into any ranks, or tote my gun on my
+shoulder when it was handier to carry it on my arm. But I didn't tell you
+I wouldn't come up and see this thing on my own hook."
+
+"Have you been here all day?"
+
+"If you come to that, it's none of your business, young man. I got here
+about the right time of day to save _your_ bacon, anyway. That's enough
+for _you_, ain't it?"
+
+The rebuke was just, and I put no further questions.
+
+A great stillness had fallen upon the forest behind us. In the distance,
+from the scrub-oak thickets on the lowlands by the river, there sounded
+from time to time the echo of a stray shot, and faint Mohawk cries of
+"Oonah! Oonah!" The battle was over.
+
+"They were beginning to run away before I came down," said Enoch, in
+comment upon some of these dying-away yells of defeat which came to us.
+"They got handled too rough. If their white officers had showed themselves
+more, and took bigger risks, they'd have stood their ground. But these
+Tory fine gentlemen are a pack of cowards. They let the Injuns get killed,
+but they kept darned well hid themselves."
+
+The man on the ground broke silence here.
+
+"You lie!" he said, fiercely.
+
+"Oh! you can talk, can you?" said Enoch. "No, I don't lie, Mr. Cross. I'm
+talking gospel truth. Herkimer's officers came out like men, and fought
+like men, and got shot by dozens; but till we struck you, I never laid
+eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good,
+too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there,
+within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ain't
+pretty fair shooting."
+
+The cool brutality of this talk revolted me. I had it on my tongue to
+interpose, when the wounded man spoke again, with a new accent of gloom
+in his tone.
+
+"What have I ever done to you?" he said, with his hand upon his breast.
+
+"Why, nothing at all, Mr. Cross," answered Enoch, amiably. "There wasn't
+any feeling about it, at least on my part. I'd have potted you just as
+carefully if we'd been perfect strangers."
+
+"Will you leave us here together for a little while, Enoch?" I broke in.
+"Come back in a few minutes; find out what the news is in the gulf--how
+the fight has gone. I desire some words with this--this gentleman."
+
+The trapper nodded at this, and started off with his cat-like, springing
+walk, loading his rifle as he went. "I'll turn up in about a quarter of
+an hour," he said.
+
+I watched his lithe, leather-clad figure disappear among the trees, and
+then wheeled around to my prostrate foe.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I said, hesitatingly, looking down
+upon him.
+
+He had taken his hand away from his breast, and was fumbling with it on
+the grass behind him. Suddenly he raised it, with a sharp cry of--
+
+"I know what to say to you!"
+
+There was a pistol in the air confronting me, and I, taken all aback,
+looked full into the black circle of its barrel as he pulled the trigger.
+The flint struck out a spark of flame, but it fell upon priming dampened
+by the wet grass.
+
+The momentary gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died
+piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would
+have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his
+nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which
+cold sweat stood out, and groaned aloud.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I went on, the episode of the pistol
+seeming, strangely enough, to have cleared my thoughts. "For two
+years--yes, for five years--I have been picturing to myself some such
+scene as this, where you should lie overthrown before me, and I should
+crush the life out of your hateful body with my heel, as one does with
+snakes. But now that it has come about, I am at a strange loss for words."
+
+"That you were not formerly," said the wounded man. "Since I have known
+you, you have fought always exceedingly well with your mouth. It was only
+in deeds that you were slow."
+
+He made this retort with a contemptuous coolness of tone which was belied
+by his white face and drawn brows, and by the troubled, clinging gaze in
+his eyes. I found myself looking with a curious impersonal interest upon
+this heavy, large-featured countenance, always heretofore so deeply
+flushed with color, and now coarsely blotched with varying depths
+of pallor.
+
+"Doubtless it would be best to leave you here. None of your party will
+straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and think of your
+misdeeds until-----"
+
+"Until the wolves come, you mean. Yes, go away. I prefer them to you."
+
+The sky to the west was one great lurid, brassy glare, overhung with banks
+of sinister clouds, a leaden purple above, fiery crimson below. The
+unnatural light fell strongly upon us both. A big shadow passed for an
+instant across the sunset, and we, looking instinctively up, saw the
+circling bulk of some huge bird of prey. I shuddered at the sight.
+
+"Yes, leave me to _them_!" he said, bitterly. "Go back and seize my lands,
+my house. While the beasts and the birds tear me to bits here in the
+forest, do you fatten upon my substance at home. You and they are of
+a kidney."
+
+"You know I would touch nothing of yours."
+
+"No--not even my wife!"
+
+The thrust went home. There was a world of sardonic disdain in his voice
+as he spoke, but in truth I thought little of his tone. The words
+themselves seemed to open a gulf before my feet. Was it indeed true, in
+welcoming this man's death, that I was thinking of the woman it would set
+free--for me?
+
+It seemed a long, long time before I found tongue again. I walked up and
+down among the small cedars, fighting out in my own mind the issue of
+honor which had been with such brutal frankness raised. I could not make
+it seem wholly untrue--this charge he so contemptuously flung at me. There
+was no softening of my heart toward him: he was still the repellent, evil
+ruffian I had for years held him to be. I felt that I hated him the more
+because he had put me in the wrong. I went back to him, ashamed for the
+source of the increase of temper I trembled under, yet powerless to
+dissemble it.
+
+"Why should I not kill you where you lie?" I shouted at him.
+
+He made an effort at shrugging his shoulders, but vouchsafed no other
+reply.
+
+"You"--I went on, in a whirl of rage at myself, at him, at the entire
+universe--"you have made my whole manhood bitter. I fought you the first
+time I saw you, when we were little boys. Even then you insulted, injured
+me. I have always hated you. You have always given me reason to hate you.
+It was you who poisoned Mr. Stewart's mind against me. It was you who
+stole my sweet sister away from me. Did this content you? No. You must
+drive the good old gentleman into paralysis and illness unto death--out of
+his mind--and you must overwhelm the poor, gentle girl with drunken
+brutality and cruelty, and to cap all, with desertion. And this is not
+enough--my God! think of it! _this_ is not enough!--but you must come with
+the others to force Indian war upon our Valley, upon your old neighbors!
+There are hundreds lying dead here to-day in these woods--honest men whose
+wives, parents, little children, are waiting for them at home. They will
+never lay eyes on them again. Why? Because of you and your scoundrel
+friends. You have done too much mischief already. It is high time to put
+an end to you."
+
+The wounded man had listened to me wearily, with his free hand clutched
+tight over his wound, and the other tearing spasmodically at the grass
+beside him.
+
+"I am bleeding to death," he said, with a voice obviously weakened since
+his last preceding words. "So much the better for you. You would like it
+so. You are not bold enough to knock me on the head, or merciful enough to
+go about your business and leave me in peace. I ought to be above bandying
+words with you; nor would I if it did not take my mind from my hurt. You
+are right--you have always been my enemy. You were jealous of me as a
+little boy. You had an apron, and you envied me my coat. When, like a
+fool, I came again to this cursed wilderness, your sour face rose up in
+front of me like an ugly dream. It was my first disagreeable thing. Still
+you were jealous of me, for I was a gentleman; you were a skin-pedler. I
+married a maiden who had beauty and wit enough to grace my station, even
+though she had not been born to it. It was you who turned her mind against
+me, and incited her to unhappiness in the home I had given her. It was you
+who made a damned rebel out of her, and drove me into going to Canada. She
+has ever been more your friend than mine. You are of her sort. An English
+gentleman could rightly have had no part or lot with either of you. Go
+back to her now--tell her you left me here waiting for the wolves--and
+that my dying message was--"
+
+He followed with some painfully bitter and malignant words which I have
+not the heart to set down here in cold blood against him.
+
+"Let me see your wound," I said, when he had finished and sank back,
+exhausted.
+
+I knelt beside him and opened his green coat, and the fine, ruffled shirt
+beneath it. Both were soaked with blood on the whole right side, but the
+soft cambric had, in a measure, checked the flow. He made no resistance,
+and I spread over the ugly aperture some of the plaster with which my
+mother had fitted me out, and bound it fast, with some difficulty, by
+passing my sash under his body and winding it about his chest.
+
+He kept his eyes closed while I was doing this. I could not tell whether
+he was conscious or not. Nor could I explain to myself why I was
+concerning myself with his wound. Was it to save, if possible, his life?
+Was it to lengthen out his term of torture here in the great final
+solitude, helplessly facing the end, with snarling wolves and screaming
+kites for his death-watch? I scarcely knew which.
+
+I try now to retrace the courses by which my thoughts, in the confused
+searchings of those few moments, reached finally a good conclusion; but
+the effort is beyond my powers. I know only that all at once it became
+quite clear to my mind that I must not leave my enemy to die. How much of
+this was due to purely physical compassion for suffering, how much to the
+higher pleadings of humanity, how much to the feeling that his taunts of
+baseness must be proved untrue, I cannot say.
+
+I was still kneeling beside him, I know, when Enoch suddenly stood in
+front of me. His practised footsteps had made no sound. He glanced gravely
+at me and at the white, inanimate face of Cross. Emotions did not play
+lightly upon Enoch's leather-like visage; there was nothing in his look to
+tell whether he was surprised or not.
+
+"Well, what news? How has the day gone?" I asked him.
+
+"Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were
+attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men."
+
+"What is Herkimer going to do?"
+
+"They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home
+again--down the Valley."
+
+"So, then, we have lost the fight."
+
+"Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded
+man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin
+with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?"
+
+"But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the
+fort?"
+
+"Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that
+both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want
+to rest for a spell."
+
+I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous
+carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on:
+
+"They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must
+be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along
+with 'em."
+
+"Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?"
+
+"I ain't quite a fool, young man," said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of
+smile. "If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to
+explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that
+strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an
+opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers
+were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a
+fortnight ago."
+
+All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed.
+He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our
+conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice:
+
+"I know you now--damn you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I
+gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in
+hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now.
+You make a good rebel."
+
+"Now look here, Mr. Cross," put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in
+his tone. "You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that
+way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and
+you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me
+to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and
+smoke it!"
+
+"Come, Enoch," I here interrupted, "enough of that. The man is suffering.
+You must not vex him further by words."
+
+"Suffering or not," returned the trapper, "he might keep a civil tongue in
+his head.--Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for," he went on,
+scowling down at the prostrate soldier. "I delivered your message here to
+this man" (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--"all that, you
+know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a
+Missisague dog."
+
+Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: "There
+may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't
+look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong
+to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck."
+
+The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered
+at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which
+helped me the better to make up my mind.
+
+Enoch had turned to me once more:
+
+"Come," he said, "we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so
+long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting
+from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them.
+As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long
+anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too
+many litters to carry already."
+
+"No," I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. "We will make
+our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the
+river--away from the others."
+
+"The hell you say!" said Enoch.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV.
+
+The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+
+
+
+In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were
+wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the
+trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was
+never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and
+conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few,
+indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight
+later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my
+pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they
+all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at
+the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey.
+
+This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he
+protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my
+plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting,
+which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once
+embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal.
+
+The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went
+on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said,
+yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was
+not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings,
+covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side
+to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke:
+
+"Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you
+touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough
+for you."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand
+along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't
+know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help
+we want from you is for you to hold your jaw."
+
+"You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man,
+raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring
+affrightedly straight ahead of him.
+
+There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the
+swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had
+returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away
+from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group.
+
+A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and,
+on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion
+mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The
+savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were
+fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in
+an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had
+laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering.
+If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent
+upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned
+in spirit.
+
+"Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the
+sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help
+me God, I will not!"
+
+The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They
+looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not
+materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were
+all on the other side.
+
+"Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep
+cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give
+'em the word."
+
+Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into
+his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his
+arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast.
+
+"It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be
+tortured--scalped--by these devils!"
+
+I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said,
+bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from
+the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps."
+
+"Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your
+canting tongue to deny it."
+
+It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have
+their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending
+their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe
+them to take scalps."
+
+"Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me
+up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain."
+
+"Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for
+you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you
+here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going
+to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to _hide_ you at
+Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. _Now_
+will you keep still?"
+
+He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of
+mystification and utter weakness.
+
+Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my
+project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went,
+down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as
+a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him
+explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a
+magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress.
+
+Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical
+arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward
+should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey.
+
+"They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't
+help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one
+of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will
+be enough."
+
+The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired,
+together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the
+river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to
+the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my
+home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and
+lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done,
+and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the
+rude litter and started for the trail.
+
+I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last
+time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore
+still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of
+this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of
+fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of
+prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air
+stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no
+sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away.
+Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon
+this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly
+past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the
+leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in
+the sunset radiance, watching us gravely.
+
+We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field
+to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the
+forest primeval.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I
+recall no other equally wretched five days in my life.
+
+The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and
+fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be
+accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the
+sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing
+myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their
+sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced
+me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly
+along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face
+and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles,
+my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have
+wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on
+the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on
+the ground utterly worn out.
+
+We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on
+the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter
+we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had
+a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes,
+and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not
+build a fire.
+
+Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in
+a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous
+activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the
+fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we
+lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe,
+floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less
+and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at
+least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more
+than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed
+sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our
+ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man
+ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal
+service and attention for granted.
+
+After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night
+out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able
+to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful
+woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark,
+while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe
+well enough.
+
+The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We
+were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new
+pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there
+was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the
+white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks,
+the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black
+against the pale sky.
+
+There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows
+hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my
+glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at
+one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly
+to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the
+voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses
+stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue.
+
+"Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at
+best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more
+commodious boat."
+
+"Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made
+answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low,
+musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the
+wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at
+Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if
+we were going through a dead country."
+
+Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly
+blurted it out.
+
+"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I
+said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these
+brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really
+understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom!
+Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue."
+
+He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he
+had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression
+of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental.
+
+"Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat.
+"I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day
+long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there
+just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my
+friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out
+of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are
+the wolves!"
+
+He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous
+quaver.
+
+"These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child
+awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get
+where you can have rest and care."
+
+It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as
+powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and
+weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his
+face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it.
+
+He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled
+through a stretch of still water, in silence.
+
+"You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally.
+
+I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered:
+
+"Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches,
+in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?"
+
+"What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman."
+
+I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind.
+"For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that
+either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I
+remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van
+Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have
+brought you back."
+
+"Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily.
+
+After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not
+gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the
+alternate moonlight and shadow.
+
+The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of
+thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only
+not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation
+of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed
+upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless,
+stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not
+so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and
+happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive.
+
+More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the
+reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even
+now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me,
+but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary
+spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent
+before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the
+bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as
+one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent
+impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon
+the man himself.
+
+His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his
+character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the
+existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man
+strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and
+sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable,
+generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty,
+and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been
+two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one
+because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other.
+
+Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story.
+To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have
+behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain
+wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was
+plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable
+husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class
+of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new
+land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon
+himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he
+had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as
+he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of
+his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to
+dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common
+herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led
+him down the fell incline.
+
+I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I
+had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a
+knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other
+circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the
+same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of
+his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine.
+
+Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home
+as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of
+gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI.
+
+A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.
+
+
+
+Just before daybreak of the fifth day we stole past the sleeping hamlet of
+Caughnawaga, and as the sun was rising over the Schoharie hills I drew up
+the canoe into the outlet of Dadanoscara Creek, a small brook which came
+down through the woods from the high land whereon Cairncross stood. Our
+journey by water was ended.
+
+Enoch was waiting for us, and helped me lift Cross from the canoe. His
+body hung inert in our arms; not even my clumsy slipping on the bank of
+the rivulet startled him from the deep sleep in which he had lain for
+hours in the boat.
+
+"I have been frightened. Can he be dying?" I asked.
+
+Enoch knelt beside him, and put his hand over the patient's heart. He
+shook his head dubiously after a moment, and said: "It's tearing along
+like a racehorse. He's in a fever--the worst kind. This ain't
+sleep--it's stupor."
+
+He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his
+life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can
+make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to
+his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be
+different. As it is, I don't see but you will have to risk it, and bring
+somebody here."
+
+For once in my life my brain worked in flashes. I actually thought of
+something which had not occurred to Enoch!
+
+"Why not carry him in this canoe?" I asked. "It is lighter than any litter
+we could make."
+
+The trapper slapped his lank, leather-clad thigh in high approval. "By
+hokey!" he said, "you've hit it!"
+
+We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate
+the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and
+we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it
+over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course
+two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in
+the Valley an absolute secret. His life would have been in deadly peril
+hereabouts, even before the battle. How bitterly the hatred of him and his
+traitor-fellows must have been augmented by the slaughter of that cruel
+ambuscade, I could readily imagine. With what words could I have protected
+him against the righteous rage of a Snell, for example, or a Seeber, or
+any one of a hundred others who had left kinsmen behind in that fatal
+gulch? No! There must be no risk run by meeting any one.
+
+With the scanty meal finished our rest was at an end. We ought to lose no
+time. Each minute's delay in getting the wounded man under a roof, in
+bed, within reach of aid and nursing, might be fatal.
+
+It was no light task to get the canoe upon our shoulders, after we had put
+in it our guns, covered these with ferns and twigs, and upon these laid
+Philip's bulky form, and a very few moments' progress showed that the work
+before us was to be no child's play. The conformation of the canoe made it
+a rather awkward thing to carry, to begin with. To bear it right side up,
+laden as it was, over eight miles of almost continuous ascent, through a
+perfectly unbroken wilderness, was as laborious an undertaking as it is
+easy to conceive.
+
+We toiled along so slowly, and the wretched little brook, whose bed we
+strove to follow, described such a wandering course, and was so often
+rendered fairly impassable by rocks, driftwood, and overhanging thicket,
+that when the sun hung due south above us we had covered barely half our
+journey, and confronted still the hardest portion of it. We were so
+exhausted when this noon hour came, too, that I could make no objection
+when Enoch declared his purpose of getting some trout from the brook, and
+cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and
+from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly
+I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper
+stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity,
+tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under the stones.
+
+Soon he had enough for a meal--and, my word! it was a feast for emperors
+or angels. We stuffed the pink dainties with mint, and baked them in balls
+of clay. It seemed as if I had not eaten before in years.
+
+We tried to rouse Cross sufficiently to enable him to eat, and in a small
+way succeeded; but the effect upon him was scarcely beneficial, it
+appeared to us. His fever increased, and when we started out once more
+under our burden, the motion inseparable from our progress affected his
+head, and he began to talk incoherently to himself.
+
+Nothing can be imagined more weird and startling than was the sound of
+this voice above us, when we first heard it. Both Enoch and I
+instinctively stopped. For the moment we could not tell whence the sound
+came, and I know not what wild notions about it flashed through my mind.
+Even when we realized that it was the fever-loosed tongue of our companion
+which spoke, the effect was scarcely less uncanny. Though I could not see
+him, the noise of his ceaseless talking came from a point close to my
+head; he spoke for the most part in a bold, high voice--unnaturally raised
+above the pitch of his recent faint waking utterances. Whenever a fallen
+log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the
+prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe
+down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult
+connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of his
+disordered brain.
+
+For a long time--of course in a very disconnected way--he babbled about
+his mother, and of people, presumably English, of whom I knew nothing,
+save that one name, Digby, was that of his elder brother Then there began
+to be interwoven with this talk stray mention of Daisy's name, and soon
+the whole discourse was of her.
+
+The freaks of delirium have little significance, I believe, as clews to
+the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary
+speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching
+shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words
+addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to
+be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he was resting his
+head upon her bosom. Over and over again, with tiresome iteration, he kept
+entreating plaintively: "You _are_ glad to see me? You do _truly_ forgive
+me, and love me?"
+
+Nothing could have been sadder than to hear him. I reasoned that this
+ceaseless dwelling upon the sweets of a tender welcome doubtless reflected
+the train of his thoughts during the journey down from the battle-field.
+He had forborne to once mention Daisy's name during the whole voyage, but
+he must have thought deeply, incessantly of her--in all likelihood with a
+great softening of heart and yearning for her compassionate nursing. It
+was not in me to be unmoved by this. I declare that as I went painfully
+forward, with this strangely pathetic song of passion repeating itself in
+my ears, I got fairly away from the habit of mind in which my own love for
+Daisy existed, and felt myself only an agent in the working out of some
+sombre and exalted romance.
+
+In Foxe's account of the English martyrs there are stories of men at the
+stake who, when a certain stage of the torture was reached, really forgot
+their anguish in the emotional ecstasy of the ideas born of that terrible
+moment. In a poor and imperfect fashion I approached that same strange
+state--not far removed, in sober fact, from the delirium of the man in
+the canoe.
+
+The shadows were lengthening in the woods, and the reddening blaze of the
+sun flared almost level in our eyes through the tree-trunks, when at last
+we had crossed the water-shed of the two creeks, and stood looking down
+into the gulf of which I have so often spoken heretofore.
+
+We rested the canoe upon a great rock in the mystic circle of ancient
+Indian fire worship, and leaned, tired and panting, against its side. My
+arm was giving me much pain, and what with insufficient food and feverish
+sleep, great immediate fatigue, and the vast nervous strain of these past
+six days, I was well-nigh swooning.
+
+"I fear I can go no farther, Enoch," I groaned. "I can barely keep my feet
+as it is."
+
+The trapper himself was as close to utter exhaustion as one may be and
+have aught of spirit left, yet he tried to speak cheerily.
+
+"Come, come!" he said, "we mustn't give out now, right here at the
+finish. Why, it's only down over that bridge, and up again--and there
+we are!"
+
+I smiled in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a
+final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest,
+and we'll at it again."
+
+While we stood half reclining against the bowlder, looking with
+trepidation at the stiff ascent before us on the farther side of the gulf,
+the scene of the old quarrel of our youth suddenly came to my mind.
+
+"Do you see that spruce near the top, by the path--the one hanging over
+the edge? Five years ago I was going to fight this Philip Cross there, on
+that path. My little nigger Tulp ran between us, and he threw him head
+over heels to the bottom. The lad has never been himself since."
+
+"Pretty tolerable fall," remarked Enoch, glancing down the precipitous,
+brush-clad wall of rock. "But a nigger lands on his head as a cat does on
+her feet, and it only scratches him where it would kill anybody else."
+
+We resumed our burden now, and made our way with it down the winding path
+to the bottom. Here I was fain to surrender once for all.
+
+"It is no use, Enoch," I said, resolutely. "I can't even try to climb up
+there with this load. You must wait here; I will go ahead to Cairncross,
+prepare them for his coming, and send down some slaves to fetch him the
+rest of the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great square mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front.
+The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no
+wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life
+visible, Cairncross might have been uninhabited a twelve-month.
+
+It was only when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within
+view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not
+been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday,
+church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass,
+intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep
+that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they
+became aware of my presence.
+
+They looked for a minute at me in a perplexed way--my mud-baked clothes,
+unshaven face, and general unkempt condition evidently rendering me a
+stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's
+ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like
+scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of the great house.
+
+So I was supposed to be dead! Curiously enough, it had not occurred to me
+before that this would be the natural explanation of my failure to return
+with the others. The idea now gave me a queer quaking sensation about the
+heart, and I stood stupidly staring at the back balcony of the house, with
+my mind in a whirl of confused thoughts. It seemed almost as if I _had_
+come back from the grave.
+
+While I still stood, faint and bewildered, trying to regain control of my
+ideas, the door opened, and a white-faced lady, robed all in black, came
+swiftly out upon the porch. It was Daisy, and she was gazing at me with
+distended eyes and parted lips, and clinging to the carved balustrade
+for support.
+
+As in a dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was
+gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in
+the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer
+exhaustion and rapture.
+
+When at last I could stand up, and felt myself coming back to something
+like self-possession, a score of eager questions and as many outbursts of
+deep thanksgiving were in my ears--all from her sweet voice. And I had
+tongue for none of them, but only looked into her dear face, and patted
+her hands between mine, and trembled like a leaf with excitement. So much
+was there to say, the sum of it beggared language.
+
+When finally we did talk, I was seated in a great chair one of the slaves
+had brought upon the sward, and wine had been fetched me, and my dear girl
+bent gently over me from behind, softly resting my head against her waist,
+her hands upon my arms.
+
+"You shall not look me in the face again," she said--with ah! such
+compassionate, tender playfulness--"until I have been told. How did you
+escape? Were you a prisoner? Were you hurt?"--and oh! a host of
+other things.
+
+Suddenly the sky seemed to be covered with blackness, and the joy in my
+heart died out as by the stroke of death. I had remembered something. My
+parched and twitching lips did their best to refuse to form the words:
+
+"I have brought Philip home. He is sorely wounded. Send the slaves to
+bring him from the gulf."
+
+After a long silence, I heard Daisy's voice, clear and without a tremor,
+call out to the blacks that their master had been brought as far as the
+gulf beyond, and needed assistance. They started off helter-skelter at
+this, with many exclamations of great surprise, a bent and misshapen
+figure dragging itself with a grotesque limping gait at their tail.
+
+I rose from my chair, now in some measure restored to calmness and cold
+resolution. In mercy I had been given a brief time of blind happiness--of
+bliss without the alloy of a single thought. Now I must be a man, and walk
+erect, unflinching, to the sacrifice.
+
+"Let us go and meet them. It is best," I said. The poor girl raised her
+eyes to mine, and their startled, troubled gaze went to my heart. There
+must have been prodigious effort in the self-command of her tone to the
+slaves, for her voice broke down utterly now, as she faltered:
+
+"You have--brought--him home! For what purpose? How will this all end? It
+terrifies me!"
+
+We had by tacit consent begun to walk down the path toward the road. It
+was almost twilight. I remember still how the swallows wheeled swiftly in
+the air about the eaves, and how their twittering and darting seemed to
+confuse and tangle my thoughts.
+
+The situation was too sad for silence. I felt the necessity of talking, of
+uttering something which might, at least, make pretence of occupying these
+wretched minutes, until I should say:
+
+"This is your husband--and farewell!"
+
+"It was clear enough to me," I said. "My duty was plain. I would have
+been a murderer had I left him there to die. It was very strange about my
+feelings. Up to a certain moment they were all bitter and merciless toward
+him. So many better men than he were dead about me, it seemed little
+enough that his life should go to help avenge them. Yet when the moment
+came--why, I could not suffer it. Not that my heart relented--no; I was
+still full of rage against him. But none the less it was my duty to save
+his life."
+
+"And to bring him home to _me_." She spoke musingly, completing my
+sentence.
+
+"Why, Daisy, would you have had it otherwise? Could I have left him there,
+to die alone, helpless in the swamp?"
+
+"I have not said you were not right, Douw," she answered, with saddened
+slowness. "But I am trying to think. It is so hard to realize--coming like
+this. I was told you were both dead. His name was reported in their camp,
+yours among our people. And now you are both here--and it is all so
+strange, so startling--and what is right seems so mingled and bound up
+with what is cruel and painful! Oh, I cannot think! What will come of it?
+How will it all end?"
+
+"We must not ask how it will end!" I made answer, with lofty decision.
+"That is not our affair. We can but do our duty--what seems clearly
+right--and bear results as they come. There is no other way. You ought to
+see this."
+
+"Yes, I ought to see it," she said, slowly and in a low, distressed voice.
+
+As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my
+wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coarse-fibred male animal,
+returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my
+hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and
+gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my title to do this?--to rebuke
+her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I
+not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought
+pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought
+much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and
+fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of
+my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from
+trouble and grief?
+
+My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not
+have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so
+well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence,
+feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better
+than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong.
+
+Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as
+to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange
+question of our far-away youth.
+
+There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of
+the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell,
+like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the
+thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds
+of other voices, excited and vibrant.
+
+Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some
+formless fear of she knew not what.
+
+"It is Tulp," she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. "Oh, I should have
+kept him back! Why did I not think of it?"
+
+"What about Tulp?" I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the
+narrow path. "I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among
+the others, was he?"
+
+"He has gone mad!"
+
+"What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange
+and slow of wit for years, but--"
+
+"Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you
+were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you
+came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father
+pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened?
+Who is this man?"
+
+In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of
+Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him
+huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was
+the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the
+common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean?
+
+When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.
+
+"Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness.
+
+"Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do
+not understand. I will join you in a moment.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him.
+"Tell me quick."
+
+"Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a
+nigger. That's about what it comes to."
+
+"Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?"
+
+"It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side
+nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs
+over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream
+like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it
+went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!"
+
+The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and
+clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh
+horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to
+where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed
+my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.
+
+Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall
+grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII.
+
+The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon
+the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted.
+Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would
+never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places
+which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play
+and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest
+farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the
+dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of
+death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more
+new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre
+in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to
+bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and
+tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.
+
+So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People
+listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the
+cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true
+that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?"
+
+In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast
+of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in
+the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information
+by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated.
+Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been
+hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately
+follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much
+later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to
+Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the
+men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done.
+
+To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this
+truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have
+chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus
+it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for
+Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered
+to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but
+think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of
+the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper
+Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own
+Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there
+at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That
+failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had
+been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the
+forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory
+gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done,
+he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies
+from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first
+the Yankees, then the others at his leisure.
+
+Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of
+Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of
+things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the
+heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was
+compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no
+doubt who would in the long-run triumph.
+
+Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great
+souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch
+at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live.
+
+But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much
+of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and
+wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around
+the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and
+general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange
+occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf.
+
+I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret
+returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as
+might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the
+stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with
+material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as
+possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the
+scene's sad suggestions.
+
+From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the
+soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the
+other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent
+stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not
+visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the
+waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream.
+
+During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely
+engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to
+represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old
+Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful
+amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold
+and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood
+of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort,
+the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the
+hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant,
+and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from
+confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It
+was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the
+exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a
+hospital than for the saddle.
+
+I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the
+Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year
+1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and
+neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the
+children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact
+date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the
+knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the
+sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not
+less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to
+gather over it.
+
+Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part
+thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came
+to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I
+was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of
+the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so.
+
+Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the
+hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into
+the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled
+and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This
+meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place
+were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly
+as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the
+grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation.
+
+But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John
+personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home
+of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought,
+alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to
+steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife,
+and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very
+melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days
+of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn
+of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though
+they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to
+the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with
+Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also
+have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old
+Douw Fonda!
+
+There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it
+touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter
+Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief
+Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the
+old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood
+upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the
+lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely
+wish him alive again.
+
+Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child
+whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He
+bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the
+Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably.
+
+In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which
+the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was
+born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as
+sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's
+breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him
+accordingly, as is the wont of parents.
+
+When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's
+bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny,
+fair babe nestled upon her arm.
+
+"Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names,
+'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked.
+
+Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy
+into my eyes.
+
+"I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all
+so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much
+our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking,
+dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip."
+
+I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we
+had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of
+Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle
+sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet
+whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and
+fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any
+harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the
+room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in
+my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though
+the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal
+from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was
+easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which
+prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child
+because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and
+tragic romance.
+
+In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious
+little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and
+slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in
+particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could
+bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty
+spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even
+now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely
+obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of
+his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart
+smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath
+his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our
+fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to
+resist him.
+
+The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month
+Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it
+seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old
+man. He literally staggered and died under the blow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as
+peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of
+a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large
+advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having
+always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort,
+and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come
+to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We
+seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our
+childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof,
+where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very
+near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less
+peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of
+a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this
+interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for
+us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to
+both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and
+fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in
+happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts
+from scars.
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Valley, by Harold Frederic
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+Title: In the Valley
+
+Author: Harold Frederic
+
+Release Date: January, 2006  [EBook #9787]
+[This file was first posted on October 16, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, IN THE VALLEY ***
+
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+
+E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In the Valley
+
+By
+
+Harold Frederic
+
+Copyright 1890
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dedication.
+
+
+
+_When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
+was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
+would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
+the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
+upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
+was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
+thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
+adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
+Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
+welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
+this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
+Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
+bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
+affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
+grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour._
+
+London, _September 11_, 1890
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Chapter I.      "The French Are in the Valley!"
+Chapter II.     Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+Chapter III.    Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly
+Chapter IV.     In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+Chapter V.      How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+Chapter VI.     Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+Chapter VII.    Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+Chapter VIII.   Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+Chapter IX.     I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+Chapter X.      The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+Chapter XI.     As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+Chapter XII.    Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.
+Chapter XIII.   To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+Chapter XIV.    How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+Chapter XV.     The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+Chapter XVI.    Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+Chapter XVII.   I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+Chapter XVIII.  The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+Chapter XIX.    I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+Chapter XX.     A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.
+Chapter XXI.    Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+Chapter XXII.   The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+Chapter XXIII.  How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+Chapter XXIV.   The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+Chapter XXV.    A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+Chapter XXVI.   I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+Chapter XXVII.  The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+Chapter XXVIII. An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.
+Chapter XXIX.   The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+Chapter XXX.    From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+Chapter XXXI.   The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+Chapter XXXII.  "The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+Chapter XXXIII. The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+Chapter XXXIV.  Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+Chapter XXXV.   The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+Chapter XXXVI.  A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully
+                Spared.
+Chapter XXXVII. The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+
+
+In The Valley
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+"The French Are in the Valley!"
+
+
+
+It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
+since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
+to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
+son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
+to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
+parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
+good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
+nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
+recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
+fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
+the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
+might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
+and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
+great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
+waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
+its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
+If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
+become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
+mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.
+
+Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
+keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
+I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
+confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
+their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
+so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
+the story:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.
+
+The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
+that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
+now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
+than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
+dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
+were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
+floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
+the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
+thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
+the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
+or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
+winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
+lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
+not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.
+
+I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
+whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
+did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
+their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
+and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
+women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
+for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
+mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
+behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
+after rains.
+
+Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
+longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
+kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
+time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
+duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
+bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
+the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
+me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
+and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
+too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
+sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
+flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
+hated them.
+
+The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
+these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
+knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
+ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
+commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
+vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
+inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
+snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
+the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
+timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
+our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
+nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
+lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
+I held my breath.
+
+It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
+dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
+set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
+noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
+hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
+great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
+heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):
+
+"The French are in the Valley!"
+
+I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
+and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.
+
+Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
+what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
+I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
+his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
+clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
+with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
+Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
+which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
+to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
+husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
+portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
+small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.
+
+How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
+considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
+Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
+mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
+my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
+fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
+aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
+momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
+suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.
+
+When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
+another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
+gravely from within the door:
+
+"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
+and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
+Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."
+
+Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
+Valley.
+
+These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
+to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
+great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
+the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
+all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.
+
+If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
+explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
+I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
+master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
+with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
+my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
+both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
+Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
+conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
+while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
+first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
+hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
+reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
+content to return to his sleep.
+
+I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
+dreamed at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
+
+
+
+When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
+small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
+original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
+might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
+late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
+Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
+fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
+white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
+could sop my bread.
+
+During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
+housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
+upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
+which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
+well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
+command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
+cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
+employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
+heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
+Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
+any other large matter, I would have valued.
+
+Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
+apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
+air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
+the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
+on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
+with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
+cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
+almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.
+
+He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
+themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
+pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
+labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
+speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
+French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
+notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
+me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
+better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
+look up and down the Valley.
+
+It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
+forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
+edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
+the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
+through the cold night.
+
+To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
+or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
+not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
+its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
+its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
+logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
+upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
+grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
+in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
+been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
+French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
+our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
+Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
+being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
+still by contrast.
+
+Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
+adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
+were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
+and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
+houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.
+
+It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
+men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
+wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
+Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
+part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
+tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
+than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
+little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
+to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
+religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
+I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
+I trust there can be no doubt.
+
+While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
+these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
+of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
+dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
+there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
+the hill.
+
+As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
+his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
+to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
+attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
+mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
+westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.
+
+After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
+cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."
+
+All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
+stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
+the commotion.
+
+Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
+and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
+also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
+yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
+about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
+household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
+we saw on the highway.
+
+What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
+terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
+generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
+or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
+somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.
+
+Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
+phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
+out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
+before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
+French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
+above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
+Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
+auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
+had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
+in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
+answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
+the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
+others had become calm.
+
+As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
+cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:
+
+"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
+had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"
+
+To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
+in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.
+
+With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
+straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
+cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!
+
+He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
+put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
+in the face, and laughed again.
+
+All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
+all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
+himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
+puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
+staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
+with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
+some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
+wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
+comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.
+
+The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
+the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:
+
+"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
+embrace."
+
+The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
+two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
+face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
+the rending of an ice-gorge.
+
+"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
+came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
+my breath.
+
+It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
+foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
+the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
+and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
+despatched onward to the fort.
+
+While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
+and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
+eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
+eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
+(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
+long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
+their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
+reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
+the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.
+
+The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
+backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
+the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
+I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
+showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
+full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
+pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
+being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
+weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
+it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
+swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
+ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
+warrior should be.
+
+It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
+troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
+and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
+as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
+Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
+roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.
+
+For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I
+believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the
+frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was
+not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did
+not get into my favor after we came inside.
+
+Under this Master Philip's commands the negro squatted on his haunches and
+unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this
+bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps
+between three and four years of age.
+
+This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and
+looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her
+eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long,
+tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her
+feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure.
+She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face
+was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to
+me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the negro smiling upon
+us both.
+
+I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was
+already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly
+spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward
+the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone.
+
+"Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude
+behavior and at his words.
+
+"I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child.
+
+He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him,
+clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to
+one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little
+girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great
+wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have
+her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus
+you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood
+finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But
+I had the girl.
+
+"What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing,
+Douw, and what child is this?"
+
+"It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions,
+and red with color.
+
+The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that
+Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even
+feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for
+me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one
+might feel the heat, and said nothing.
+
+"Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as
+much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven."
+
+The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously:
+
+"She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village
+only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the
+other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When
+Bellêtre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first
+attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in
+the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange
+enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered?--the infant was in
+some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
+great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
+for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
+to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
+friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
+frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
+cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
+start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
+Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
+brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
+said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
+saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
+one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
+bundled her in."
+
+"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
+yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.
+
+"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
+friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
+young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
+people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
+Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
+that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
+not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?"
+
+"Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed.
+
+"Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly.
+
+"You are Tom Lynch, and your grandfather was a king----"
+
+"No more," interposed Mr. Stewart, frowning and lifting his finger. "That
+folly is dead and in its grave. Not even so fair a youth as you must give
+it resurrection."
+
+"Here, Bob," said the Major, with sudden alacrity. "Go outside with these
+children, and help them to some games."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly.
+
+
+
+My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty
+years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see
+him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there
+would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above
+forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame,
+yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist
+and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He
+was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much,
+let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain,
+ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a
+swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals,
+much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness
+when agreed with.
+
+All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many
+other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers.
+He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he
+loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great
+warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be
+said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and
+evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns
+in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most
+instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he,
+so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the
+profession of arms.
+
+A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward
+prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and
+I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here,
+although at the time I was in ignorance of it.
+
+In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had
+been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was
+the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who
+loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and
+sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court,
+of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the
+father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles
+the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch
+names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany.
+
+Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins,
+got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared
+meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew
+old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not
+forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast
+of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now,
+and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue
+and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a
+sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of
+Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse.
+
+With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had
+dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in
+a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally.
+After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the
+conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving
+himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to
+France, never to return.
+
+He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This
+boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court,
+now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting
+in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant
+existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon
+destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless
+alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous
+gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover,
+and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an
+injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts.
+
+Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a
+priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about
+Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the
+religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier,
+for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit
+to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the
+emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did
+Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning,
+honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the
+Jacobite gentleman.
+
+One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a
+young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony
+Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with
+ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke.
+He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that
+his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the
+daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had
+gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this
+exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from
+the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence.
+
+Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The
+two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the
+lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance
+and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced,
+and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he
+never forgot her till his death.
+
+Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for
+striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's
+lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his
+generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more
+selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among
+those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh
+and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of
+Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph,
+its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the
+Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was
+able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig
+influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to
+live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had
+fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to
+Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and
+peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of
+Stewart, and set sail to the New World.
+
+This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which
+perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish
+recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on
+which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the
+succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I
+still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to
+acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the
+question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out:
+
+"Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me
+a fort!"
+
+Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and
+I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in
+the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the
+little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks
+and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no
+work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was
+to his mind, he said:
+
+"Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the
+Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to
+drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he
+must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we
+must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come
+up.--Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!"
+
+Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing
+his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against
+my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt.
+
+"Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a
+Frenchman than you are yourself."
+
+"You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All
+foreigners are the same."
+
+"It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a
+foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?"
+
+He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of
+course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even
+speak English properly."
+
+This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr.
+Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to
+hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont
+to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English
+correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was
+true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by
+Philip's criticism.
+
+"Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a
+Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself
+when I _do_ come," or words to that purport.
+
+We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all
+better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were
+some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic
+fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is
+enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls
+which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my
+head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I
+forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling
+him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down,
+with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would
+be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead,
+mumbling with his mouth full of snow:
+
+"Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know."
+
+My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
+little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
+unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
+two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
+Philip said:
+
+"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
+My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
+besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
+weren't Dutch."
+
+When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
+eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
+a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
+and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.
+
+The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
+know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
+They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
+disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
+senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
+deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
+of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
+knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.
+
+"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
+some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
+trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
+estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a
+single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be
+damned to them!"
+
+"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and
+now!"
+
+"No, I'll _not_ think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I
+too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of
+'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit
+to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"
+
+"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no
+doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is,
+and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I
+dream--precisely what pleases me best."
+
+"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"
+
+"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk
+with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw,
+yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a
+second self."
+
+The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but
+without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon
+his plate:
+
+"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"
+
+"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.
+
+The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to
+be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help
+one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."
+
+Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."
+
+Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing
+furiously. He smiled and said:
+
+"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."
+
+My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.
+
+"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie
+over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow,
+struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school
+for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him.
+We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless
+grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut
+out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."
+
+The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.
+
+"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the
+lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life,
+dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for
+my bride."
+
+Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.
+
+The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with
+moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in
+this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and
+thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty
+despatches.
+
+While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over
+his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little
+waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore
+over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily
+and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.
+
+"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm,
+Bob, for the journey."
+
+The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's
+arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.
+
+"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.
+
+"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could
+Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his
+fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine
+country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again.
+What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"
+
+I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr.
+Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him
+pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence
+which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.
+
+"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.
+
+As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I
+walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with
+deep joy.
+
+"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a
+load off my mind.--Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."
+
+"And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked,
+vehemently.
+
+"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the
+question."
+
+The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat
+pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which
+Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips,
+and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me,
+red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at
+his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my
+apron, besides.
+
+With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face,
+knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst
+into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a
+wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and
+screaming that he _would_ have the child.
+
+I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle
+by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and
+then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob
+enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on
+the horse.
+
+Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a
+salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:
+
+"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when
+once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of
+him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade,
+a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."
+
+"God bless you--and yours, _mon frère_!"
+
+We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the
+river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly
+back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:
+
+"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their
+mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a
+father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the
+present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."
+
+To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the
+melting snow by his side.
+
+Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log
+structure critically over.
+
+"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this
+house--to me?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Stewart."
+
+"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan
+out still another room for our abode."
+
+Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically
+begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+In Which I Become the Son of the House.
+
+
+
+The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage
+and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could
+scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the
+year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near
+the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that
+their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they
+did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in
+constant alarm. No household knew, on going to bed, that they would not be
+roused before morning by savage war-cries. No man ventured out of sight of
+his home without entertaining the idea that he might never get back alive.
+Hence, when the long-expected blow was really struck, and the town on the
+German Flatts devastated, everybody was in an agony of fear. To make
+matters worse, Sir William was at his home ill in bed, and there was some
+trouble between him and the English commanders, which stood in the way of
+troops being sent to our aid.
+
+Those few days following the dreadful news of the attack above us seem
+still like a nightmare. The settlers up the river began sending their
+household goods down to Albany; women and children, too, passed us in
+great parties, to take refuge in Fort Hunter or at Schenectady. The river
+suddenly became covered with boats once more, but this time representing
+the affrighted flight of whole communities instead of a peaceful commerce.
+
+During this season of terror I was, as may be conceived, indeed unhappy. I
+had no stomach even for play with the new addition to our household, yet
+scarcely dared to show my nose outside the stockade. Mr. Stewart spent his
+days abroad, either with Sir William, or up at Caughnawaga concerting
+means of defence with our friends the Fondas. He did, however, find time
+to cross the river and reassure my mother, who trembled with apprehension
+for her great brood of young, but was brave as a lion for herself. Weeks
+afterward, when I visited her once more, I saw baskets of lime in the
+attic which this devoted woman had stored there, to throw with water on
+the Indians when they came. This device she had learned from the family
+traditions of her ancestors' doings, when the Spaniards were in Holland.
+
+Gradually the alarm wore away. The French and Indians, after killing fifty
+Palatines and taking thrice that number prisoners, turned tail and marched
+back to the Lake again, with some of Honikol Herkimer's lead in their
+miserable bodies. The Valley was rarely to be cursed with their presence
+again. It was as if a long fever had come to its climax in a tremendous
+convulsion, and then gone off altogether. We regained confidence, and
+faced the long winter of '57 with content.
+
+Before the next snowfall succeeded to that first November flurry, and the
+season closed in in earnest, Mr. Stewart was able, by the aid of a number
+of neighbors, to build and roof over two additions to his house. The
+structure was still all of logs, but with its new wings became almost as
+large, if not as imposing, as any frame-house round about. One of these
+wings was set aside for Dame Kronk and the little girl. The other, much to
+my surprise, was given to me. At the same time my benefactor formally
+presented me with my little black playmate, Tulp. He had heretofore been
+my friend; henceforth he was my slave, yet, let me add, none the less
+my friend.
+
+All this was equivalent to my formal adoption as Mr. Stewart's son. It was
+the custom in those days, when a slave child came of a certain age, to
+present it to the child of the family who should be of the same age and
+sex. The presentation was made at New Year's, ordinarily, and the white
+child acknowledged it by giving the little black a piece of money and a
+pair of shoes. My mother rather illogically shed some tears at this token
+that I was to belong henceforth to Mr. Stewart; but she gave me a bright
+Spanish dollar out of her small hoard, for Tulp, and she had old William
+Dietz, the itinerant cobbler of Schoharie, construct for him a very
+notable pair of shoes, which did him no good since his father promptly
+sold them over at Fort Hunter for rum. The old rascal would have made
+away with the coin as well, no doubt, but that Mr. Stewart threatened him
+with a hiding, and so Tulp wore it on a leather string about his neck.
+
+I did not change my name, but continued to be Douw Mauverensen. This was
+at the wish of both Mr. Stewart and my mother, for the name I bore was an
+honorable one. My father had been for years a clergyman in the Valley,
+preaching now in Dutch, now in German, according to the nationality of the
+people, and leading a life of much hardship, travelling up and down among
+them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is
+certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many
+people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly
+remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very
+small boy.
+
+As he had had no fixed charge during life, but had ministered to half a
+dozen communities, so it was nobody's business in particular to care for
+his family after his death. The owner of the horse did send my mother a
+bushel of apples, and the congregation at Stone Arabia took up a little
+money for her. But they were all poor people in those days, wresting a
+scanty livelihood from the wilderness, and besides, I have never noticed
+that to be free with their money is in the nature of either the Dutch or
+the Palatines. The new dominie, too, who came up from Albany to take my
+father's place, was of the opinion that there was quite little enough
+coming in for the living pastor, without shearing it, as he said, to keep
+alive dead folk's memories. Thus sadly a prospect of great destitution
+opened before my mother.
+
+But she was, if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain
+Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the
+knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my
+grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years
+his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or
+by crook to collect his old credits outstanding, and maintained at least
+enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after
+his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with
+her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie
+Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she
+was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the
+youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means
+of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new
+dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time
+he visited our village. To add to the wretchedness of her plight, at this
+very time her sister Margaret came back in destitution and weakness to
+her, having been both widowed and sorely shaken in wits by the small-pox.
+
+It was then that Mr. Stewart, who had known my father, came to our relief.
+He first lent my mother a small sum of money--she would take no more, and
+was afterward very proud to repay him penny for penny. He further
+interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and
+others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort
+Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch.
+
+This language, which I have lived to see almost entirely fade from use,
+was even then thought to be most probably the tongue of the future in the
+colony, and there was the more need to teach it correctly, since, by the
+barbarous commingling of Rhenish peasant dialects, Irish and Scotch
+perversions of English, Indian phrases, the lingo of the slaves, and the
+curious expressions of the Yankees from the East, the most villanous
+jargon ever heard was commonly spoken in our Valley. My mother knew the
+noble language of her fathers in all its strength and sweetness, and her
+teaching was so highly prized that soon the school became a source of
+steady support to us all. Old "Uncle" Conrad--or Coonrod as we used to
+call him--the high-shouldered old pedagogue who was at once teacher,
+tithing-man, herb-doctor, and fiddler for our section, grumbled a little
+at the start; but either he had not the heart to take the bread from our
+mouths, or his own lips were soon silenced by the persuasion of
+our patrons.
+
+It was out of respect for one of these, good old Douw Fonda, who came from
+Schenectady to live at Caughnawaga when I was two years old, that I had
+been named. But even more we all owed to the quiet, lonely man who had
+built the log house opposite Aries Creek, and who used so often to come
+over on Sunday afternoons in the warm weather and pay us a
+friendly visit.
+
+My earliest recollections are of this Mr. Stewart, out of whom my boyish
+fancy created a beneficent sort of St. Nicholas, who could be good all the
+year round instead of only at New Year's. As I grew older his visits
+seemed more and more to be connected with me, for he paid little attention
+to my sisters, and rarely missed taking me on his knee, or, later on,
+leading me out for a walk. Finally I was asked to go over and stay with
+him for a week, and this practically was the last of my life with my
+mother. Soon afterward my aunt was engaged as his housekeeper, and I
+tacitly became a part of the household as well. Last of all, on my eighth
+birthday, in this same November of '57, I was formally installed as son of
+the house.
+
+It was a memorable day, as I have said, in that Tulp was given me for my
+own. But I think that at the time I was even more affected by the fact
+that I was presented with a coat, and allowed to forever lay aside my
+odious aprons. These garments, made by my mother's own hands, had long
+been the bane of my existence. To all my entreaties to be dressed as the
+other boys of my age were, like Matthew Wormuth or Walter Butler instead
+of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter
+Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he
+was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been
+my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my
+humiliation.
+
+Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same
+pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and
+plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel
+any more like the other boys than before.
+
+It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual
+contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the
+history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the
+neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other
+countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's
+possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the
+_Gentleman's Magazine,_ which I studied with delight. I had also from him
+_Roderick Random_, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now
+understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found
+favor with sensible people.
+
+My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little
+boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd
+sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the
+boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant
+as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the
+Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years
+after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's
+mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and
+fish and hunt instead. Young Butler was of a better sort mentally, but he
+too never cared to read much. Both he and the Groats, the Nellises, the
+Cosselmans, young Wormuth--in fact, all the boys of good families I knew
+in the Valley--derided education, and preferred instead to go into the
+woods with a negro, and hunt squirrels while he chopped, or to play with
+their traps.
+
+Perhaps they were not to be blamed much, for the attractions of the rough
+out-of-door life which they saw men leading all about them might very
+easily outweigh the quiet pleasures of a book. But it was a misfortune
+none the less in after-years to some of them, when they allowed uninformed
+prejudices to lead them into a terrible course of crime against their
+country and their neighbors, and paid their estates or their lives as the
+penalty for their ignorance and folly.
+
+Fortunately, things are better ordered for the youth of the land in these
+days.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
+
+
+
+It was on the morrow after my birthday that we became finally convinced of
+the French retreat. Mr. Stewart had returned from his journeys, contented,
+and sat now, after his hot supper, smoking by the fire. I lay at his feet
+on a bear-skin, I remember, reading by the light of the flames, when my
+aunt brought the baby-girl in.
+
+During the week that she had been with us, I had been too much terrified
+by the menace of invasion to take much interest in her, and Mr. Stewart
+had scarcely seen her. He smiled now, and held out his hands to her. She
+went to him very freely, and looked him over with a wise, wondering
+expression when he took her on his knee. It could be seen that she was
+very pretty. Her little white rows of teeth were as regular and pearly as
+the upper kernels on an ear of fresh sweet corn. She had a ribbon in her
+long, glossy hair, and her face shone pleasantly with soap. My aunt had
+made her some shoes out of deer-hide, which Mr. Stewart chuckled over.
+
+"What a people the Dutch are!" he said, with a smile. "The child is
+polished like the barrel of a gun. What's your name, little one?"
+
+The girl made no answer, from timidity I suppose.
+
+"Has she no name? I should think she would have one," said I. It was the
+first time I had ever spoken to Mr. Stewart without having been addressed.
+But my new position in the house seemed to entitle me to this much
+liberty, for once.
+
+"No," he replied, "your aunt is not able to discover that she has a
+name--except that she calls herself Pulkey, or something like that."
+
+"That is not a good name to the ear," I said, in comment.
+
+"No; doubtless it is a nickname. I have thought," he added, musingly, "of
+calling her Desideria."
+
+I sat bolt upright at this. It did not become me to protest, but I could
+not keep the dismay from my face, evidently, for Mr. Stewart
+laughed aloud.
+
+"What is it, Douw? Is it not to your liking?"
+
+"Y-e-s, sir--but she is such a very little girl!"
+
+"And the name is so great, eh? She'll grow to it, lad, she'll grow to it.
+And what kind of a Dutchman are you, sir, who are unwilling to do honor to
+the greatest of all Dutchmen? The Dr. Erasmus upon whose letters you are
+to try your Latin this winter--his name was Desiderius. Can you tell what
+it means? It signifies 'desired,' as of a mother's heart, and he took a
+form of the Greek verb _erao_, meaning about the same thing, instead. It's
+a goodly famous name, you see. We mean to make our little girl the truest
+lady, and love her the best, of all the women in the Valley. And so we'll
+give her a name--a fair-sounding, gracious, classical name--which no
+other woman bears, and one that shall always suggest home love--eh, boy?"
+
+"But if it be so good a name, sir," I said, gingerly being conscious of
+presumption, "why did Dr. Erasmus not keep it himself instead of turning
+it into Greek?"
+
+My patron laughed heartily at this. "A Dutchman for obstinacy!" he said,
+and leaned over to rub the top of my head, which he did when I specially
+pleased him.
+
+Late that night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling
+of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I
+determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was
+brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the
+fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. Mr.
+Stewart was reading by the candles on the table. Save for the singing of
+the kettle on the crane--for the mixing of his night-drink later on--and
+the click of my aunt's knitting-needles, there was perfect silence. I
+mustered my bravery, and called my wee playmate "Daisy."
+
+I dared not look at the master, and could not tell if he had heard or not.
+Presently I spoke the name again, and this time ventured to steal an
+apprehensive glance at him, and fancied I saw the workings of a smile
+repressed in the deep lines about his mouth. "A Dutchman for obstinacy"
+truly, since two days afterward Mr. Stewart himself called the girl
+"Daisy"--and there was an end of it. Until confirmation time, when she
+played a queenly part at the head of the little class of farmers' and
+villagers' daughters whom Dominie Romeyn baptized into full communion,
+the ponderous Latin name was never heard of again. Then it indeed emerged
+for but a single day, to dignify a state occasion, and disappeared
+forever. Except alone on the confirmation register of the Stone Church at
+Caughnawaga, she was Daisy thenceforth for all time and to all men.
+
+The winter of 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of
+great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the
+roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good
+crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying
+settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to
+get food.
+
+I do not remember that our household stood in any such need, but
+occasionally some Indian who had been across the hills carrying venison
+would come in and rest, begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a
+strong smell like that of a tame bear as he toasted himself by the fire.
+Mr. Stewart was often amused by these fellows, and delighted to talk with
+them as far as their knowledge of language and inclination to use it went,
+but I never could abide them.
+
+It has become the fashion now to be sentimental about the red man, and
+young people who never knew what he really was like find it easy to extol
+his virtues, and to create for him a chivalrous character. No doubt there
+were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few
+just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion
+to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail
+me. But as a whole the race was a bad one--full of laziness and lies and
+cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and
+I know what I say.
+
+Probably there was no place on the whole continent where these Indians
+could be better studied than in the Mohawk Valley, near to Sir William's
+place. They came to him in great numbers, not only from the Six Nations,
+but often from far-distant tribes living beyond the Lakes and north of the
+St. Lawrence. They were on their best behavior with him, and no doubt had
+an affection for him in their way, but it was because he flattered their
+egregious vanity by acting and dressing in Indian fashion, and made it
+worth their while by constantly giving them presents and rum. Their liking
+seemed always to me to be that of the selfish, treacherous cat, rather
+than of the honest dog. Their teeth and claws were always ready for your
+flesh, if you did not give them enough, and if they dared to strike. And
+they were cowards, too, for all their boasting. Not even Sir William could
+get them to face any enemy in the open. Their notion of war was midnight
+skulking and shooting from behind safe cover. Even in battle they were
+murderers, not warriors.
+
+In peace they were next to useless. There was a little colony of them in
+our orchard one summer which I watched with much interest. The men never
+did one stroke of honest work all the season long, except to trot on
+errands when they felt like it, and occasionally salt and smoke fish
+which they caught in the river.
+
+But the wretched squaws--my word but _they_ worked enough for both! These
+women, wrinkled, dirty, sore-eyed from the smoke in their miserable huts,
+toiled on patiently, ceaselessly, making a great variety of wooden
+utensils and things of deer-hide like snow-shoes, moccasins, and shirts,
+which they bartered with the whites for milk and vegetables and rum. Even
+the little girls among them had to gather berries and mandrake, and, in
+the fall, the sumach blows which the Indians used for savoring their food.
+And if these poor creatures obtained in their bartering too much bread and
+milk and too little rum and tobacco, they were beaten by their men as no
+white man would beat the meanest animal.
+
+Doubtless much of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and
+hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all
+sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a
+score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp,
+that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs
+which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in
+the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, who herded
+together in a shanty at the edge of the clearing back of us, had their
+faults, no doubt; but they would work when they were bid, and they were
+grateful to those who fed and clothed and cared for them. These were
+reasons for their being despised by the Indians--and they seemed also
+reasons why I should like them, as I always did.
+
+There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a
+queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical
+sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably
+believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors
+or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge
+of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his
+ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over
+collecting tulip-bulbs.
+
+His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the
+possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened
+Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought
+him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the
+day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in
+his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing
+his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had
+some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could
+have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this
+warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living
+up to it.
+
+I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In
+truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season
+of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for
+me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head;
+that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close
+to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy,
+until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long
+months I never saw my mother and sisters, or went to church? It was very
+pleasant inside.
+
+I seem still to see the square, home-like central room of the old house,
+with Mr. Stewart's bed in one corner, covered with a great robe of pieced
+panther skins. The smoky rafters above were hung with strings of onions,
+red-peppers, and long ears of Indian corn, the gold of which shone through
+pale parted husks and glowed in the firelight. The rude home-made table,
+chairs, and stools stood in those days upon a rough floor of hewn planks,
+on projecting corners of which an unlucky toe was often stubbed. There
+were various skins spread on this floor, and others on the log walls, hung
+up to dry. Over the great stone mantel were suspended Mr. Stewart's guns,
+along with his sword and pistols. Back in the corners of the fireplace
+were hung traps, nets, and the like, while on the opposite side of the
+room was the master's bookcase, well filled with volumes in English,
+Latin, and other tongues. Three doors, low and unpanelled, opened from
+this room to the other chambers of the house--leading respectively to the
+kitchen, to my room, and to the room now set apart for my aunt and
+little Daisy.
+
+No doubt it was a poor abode, and scantily enough furnished, judged by
+present standards, but we were very comfortable in it, none the less. I
+worked pretty hard that winter on my Latin, conning Cæsar for labor and
+Dr. Erasmus for play, and kept up my other studies as well, reading for
+the first time, I remember, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. For the
+rest, I busied myself learning to make snow-shoes, to twist cords out of
+flax, to mould bullets, and to write legibly, or else played with
+Daisy and Tulp.
+
+To confess how simply we amused ourselves, we three little ones, would be
+to speak in an unknown tongue, I fear, to modern children. Our stock of
+playthings was very limited. We had, as the basis of everything, the
+wooden works of the old clock, which served now for a gristmill like that
+of the Groats, now for a fort, again for a church. Then there were the
+spindles of a discarded spinning-wheel, and a small army of spools which
+my aunt used for winding linen thread. These we dressed in odd rags for
+dolls--soldiers, Indians, and fine ladies, and knights of old. To our
+contented fancy, there was endless interest in the lives and doings of
+these poor puppets. I made them illustrate the things I read, and the
+slave boy and tiny orphan girl assisted and followed on with equal
+enthusiasm, whether the play was of Alexander of Macedon, or Captain Kidd,
+or only a war-council of Delaware Indians, based upon Mr. Colden's book.
+
+Sometimes, when it was warm enough to leave the hearth, and Mr. Stewart
+desired not to be disturbed, we would transport ourselves and our games to
+my aunt's room. This would be a dingy enough place, I suppose, even to my
+eyes now, but it had a great charm then. Here from the rafters hung the
+dried, odoriferous herbs--sage, summer-savory, and mother-wort; bottles of
+cucumber ointment and of a liniment made from angle-worms--famous for cuts
+and bruises; strings of dried apples and pumpkins; black beans in their
+withered pods; sweet clover for the linen--and I know not what else
+besides. On the wall were two Dutch engravings of the killing of Jan and
+Cornelis de Wit by the citizens of The Hague, which, despite their hideous
+fidelity to details, had a great fascination for me.
+
+My childhood comes back vividly indeed to me as I recall the good old
+woman, in her white cap and short gown (which she had to lift to get at
+the pocket tied over her petticoat by a string to her waist), walking up
+and down with the yarn taut from the huge, buzzing wheel, crooning Dutch
+hymns to herself the while, and thinking about our dinner.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
+
+
+
+If I relied upon my memory, I could not tell when the French war ended. It
+had practically terminated, so far as our Valley was concerned, with the
+episode already related. Sir William Johnson was away much of the time
+with the army, and several of the boys older than myself--John Johnson,
+John Frey, and Adam Fonda among them--went with him. We heard vague news
+of battles at distant places, at Niagara, at Quebec, and elsewhere. Once,
+indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did
+bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic
+in the lower settlements.
+
+Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in
+the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes.
+
+I remember one body of Highlanders in particular whose dress and mien
+impressed me greatly. Mr. Stewart, too, was much excited by the memories
+this noble uniform evoked, and had the officers into the house to eat and
+drink with him. I watched and listened to these tall, fierce, bare-kneed
+warriors in awe, from a distance. He brought out bottles from his rare
+stock of Madeira, and they drank it amid exclamations which, if I mistake
+not, were highly treasonable. This was almost the last occasion on which I
+heard references made to his descent, and he did his best to discourage
+them then. Most of these fine red-haired men, I learned afterward laid
+their bones on the bloody plateau overlooking Quebec.
+
+Far fresher in my recollection than these rumors of war is the fact that
+my Tulp caught the small-pox, in the spring of '60, the malady having been
+spread by a Yankee who came up the Valley selling sap-spouts that were
+turned with a lathe instead of being whittled. The poor little chap was
+carried off to a sheep-shed on the meadow clearing, a long walk from our
+house, and he had to remain there by himself for six weeks. At my urgent
+request, I was allowed to take his food to him daily, leaving it on a
+stone outside and then discreetly retiring. He would come out and get it,
+and then we would shout to each other across the creek. I took up some of
+our dolls to him, but he did not get much comfort out of them, being
+unable to remember any of the stories which I illustrated with them, or to
+invent any for himself. At his suggestion I brought him instead a piece of
+tanned calf-skin, with a sailor's needle and some twine, and the little
+fellow made out of this a lot of wallets for his friends, which had to be
+buried a long time before they could be safely used. I have one of these
+yet--mildewed with age, and most rudely stitched, but still a very
+precious possession.
+
+Tulp came out finally, scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward
+repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that
+Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than
+ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because
+women are more delicately made, and must perforce shudder at ugliness.
+
+How happily the years went by! The pictures in my memory, save those of
+the snug winter rooms already referred to, are all of a beautiful Valley,
+embowered in green, radiant with sunshine--each day live-long
+with delight.
+
+There was first of all in the spring, when the chorus of returning
+song-birds began, the gathering of maple-sap, still sacred to boyhood. The
+sheep were to be washed and sheared, too, and the awkward, weak-kneed
+calves to be fed. While the spring floods ran high, ducks and geese
+covered the water, and muskrats came out, driven from their holes. Then
+appeared great flocks of pigeons, well fattened from their winter's
+sojourn in the South, and everybody, young and old, gave himself up to
+their slaughter; while this lasted, the crack! crack! of guns was heard
+all the forenoon long, particularly if the day was cloudy and the birds
+were flying low--and ah! the buttered pigeon pies my aunt made, too.
+
+As the floods went down, and the snow-water disappeared, the fishing
+began, first with the big, silly suckers, then with wiser and more valued
+fish. The woods became dry, and then in long, joyous rambles we set traps
+and snares, hunted for nests among the low branches and in the
+marsh-grass, smoked woodchucks out of their holes, gathered wild flowers,
+winter-green, and dye-plants, or built great fires of the dead leaves and
+pithless, scattered branches, as boys to the end of time will delight
+to do.
+
+When autumn came, there were mushrooms, and beech-nuts, butter-nuts,
+hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of
+elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened
+the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the
+wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the
+combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by
+our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being
+boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk
+by my aunt.
+
+Ah, they were happy times indeed!
+
+Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early
+in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no
+reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are
+wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being
+invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew
+quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly
+upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular
+progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the
+pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high,
+uncompromising back made all my bones ache.
+
+Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was
+a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the
+best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own
+to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on
+me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me
+personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed
+to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist
+clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of
+the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even
+to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree
+were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and
+spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst
+in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads.
+
+When at last I could escape without discredit, and get across the river
+again, it was with the consoling thought that the next Sunday would be Mr.
+Stewart's Sunday.
+
+This meant a good long walk with my patron. Sometimes we would go down to
+Mount Johnson, if Sir William was at home, or to Mr. Butler's, or some
+other English-speaking house, where I would hear much profitable
+conversation, and then be encouraged to talk about it during our leisurely
+homeward stroll. But more often, if the day were fine, we would leave
+roads and civilization behind us, and climb the gradual elevation to the
+north of the house, through the woodland to an old Indian trail which led
+to our favorite haunt--a wonderful ravine.
+
+The place has still a local fame, and picnic parties go there to play at
+forestry, but it gives scarcely a suggestion now of its ancient wildness.
+As my boyish eyes saw it, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The
+creek, then a powerful stream, had cut a deep gorge in its exultant leap
+over the limestone barrier. On the cliffs above, giant hemlocks seemed to
+brush the very sky with their black, tufted boughs. Away below, on the
+shadowed bottomland, which could be reached only by feet trained to
+difficult descents, strange plants grew rank in the moisture of the
+waterfall, and misshapen rocks wrapped their nakedness in heavy folds of
+unknown mosses and nameless fern-growths. Above all was the ceaseless
+shout of the tumbling waters, which had in my ears ever a barbaric message
+from the Spirit of the Wilderness.
+
+The older Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot
+was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here,
+for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered
+about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had
+assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain,
+for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown.
+Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen
+or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this
+council place. Even the trail, winding its tortuous way from the Valley
+over the hills toward the Adirondack fastnesses, had been deserted for
+another long before--so long, in fact, that the young brave who chanced to
+follow the lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge,
+or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to
+learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the
+council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the
+chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part
+of his ancestral history.
+
+Mr. Stewart told me that when he first settled in the Valley, a
+disappointed and angry man, this gulf had much the satisfaction for him
+that men in great grief or wrath find in breasting a sharp storm. There
+was something congenial to his ugly unrest in this place, with its violent
+clamor, its swift dashing of waters, its dismal shadows, and damp
+chilliness of depths.
+
+But we were fallen now upon calmer, brighter days. He was no longer the
+discouraged, sullen misanthropist, but had come to be instead a pacific,
+contented, even happy, gentleman. And lo! the meaning of the wild gorge
+changed to reflect his mood. There was no stain of savagery upon the
+delight we had in coming to this spot. As he said, once listened rightly
+to, the music of the falling waters gave suggestions which, if they were
+sobering, were still not sad.
+
+This place was all our own, and hither we most frequently bent our steps
+on Sundays, after the snow-water had left the creek, and the danger of
+lurking colds had been coaxed from the earth by the May sun. Here he would
+sit for hours on one of the stones in the great Druid-like circle which
+some dead generation of savages had toiled to construct. Sometimes I
+would scour the steep sides of the ravine and the moist bottom for curious
+plants to fetch to him, and he would tell me of their structure and
+design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his
+pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and
+this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his
+past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable
+wealth of reminiscence, reflection, and helpful anecdote.
+
+On this spot, with the gaunt outlines of mammoth primeval trunks and
+twisted boughs above us, with the sacred memorials of extinct rites about
+us, and with the waters crashing down through the solitude beneath us on
+their way to turn Sir William's mill-wheel, one could get broad,
+comprehensive ideas of what things really meant. One could see wherein the
+age of Pitt differed from and advanced upon the age of Colbert, on this
+new continent, and could as in prophecy dream of the age of Jefferson yet
+to come. Did I as a lad feel these things? Truly it seems to me that
+I did.
+
+Half a century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle,
+its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan
+tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the
+blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound
+to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that not
+even the horrors of this death could shake his will, or wring a groan
+from his heaving breast. Here, too, above the unending din of the
+waterfall and the whisper of these hemlocks overhead, had often risen some
+such shrill-voiced, defiant deathsong, from the smoke and anguish of the
+stake, as that chant of the Algonquin son of Alknomuk which my
+grandchildren still sing at their school. This dead and horrible past of
+heathendom I saw as in a mirror, looking upon these council-stones.
+
+The children's children of these savages were still in the Valley. Their
+council fires were still lighted, no further distant than the Salt
+Springs. In their hearts burned all the old lust for torture and massacre,
+and the awful joys of rending enemies limb by limb. But the spell of
+Europe was upon them, and, in good part or otherwise, they bowed under it.
+So much had been gained, and two peaceful white people could come and talk
+in perfect safety on the ancient site of their sacrifices and cruelties.
+
+Yet this spell of Europe, accomplishing so much, left much to be desired.
+It was still possible to burn a slave to death by legal process, here in
+our Valley; and it was still within the power of careless, greedy noblemen
+in London, who did not know the Mohawk from the Mississippi, to sign away
+great patents of our land, robbing honest settlers of their all. There was
+to come the spell of America, which should remedy these things. I cannot
+get it out of my head that I learned to foresee this, to feel and to look
+for its coming, there in the gorge as a boy.
+
+But there are other reasons why I should remember the place--to be told
+later on.
+
+The part little Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is
+hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can
+recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade,
+and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds
+these old memories. We were happy together--that is all.
+
+I taught her to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from
+toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs.
+For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call
+her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I
+learned in turn to be merciful to helpless creatures, and to be honest and
+cleanly in my thoughts and talk. She would help me to seek for birds'
+nests with genuine enthusiasm, but it was her pity which prevented their
+being plundered afterward. Her pretty love for all living things, her
+delight in innocent, simple amusements, her innate repugnance to coarse
+and cruel actions--all served to make me different from the rough
+boys about me.
+
+Thus we grew up together, glad in each other's constant company, and
+holding our common benefactor, Mr. Stewart, in the greatest love and
+veneration.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
+
+
+
+As we two children became slowly transformed into youths, the Valley with
+no less steadiness developed in activity, population, and wealth. Good
+roads were built; new settlements sprang up; the sense of being in the
+hollow of the hand of savagery wore off. Primitive conditions lapsed,
+disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven
+faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh
+outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began
+to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the
+common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the
+Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a
+pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore
+ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained
+hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that
+some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more
+attractions.
+
+There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was
+sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the
+gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London
+clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him.
+
+The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people
+all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the
+hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown
+how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be
+courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who
+fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses
+and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and
+close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed
+children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love
+for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others,
+the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his
+influence in London.
+
+They never liked him entirely; he in turn had so little regard for them
+and their pretensions that, when they came, he would suffer none of them
+to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom indeed they had often
+to meet as an associate and equal. Yet this bold, independent, really
+great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded
+water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to
+value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their
+painted spectacles--and thus to come to grief.
+
+Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr. Stewart all at once decided
+that he too would have a new house; and before snow flew the handsome,
+spacious "Cedars," as it was called, proudly fronted the Valley highway.
+Of course it was not, in size, a rival of the Hall at Johnstown, but it
+none the less was among the half-dozen best houses in the Mohawk Valley,
+and continued so to be until John Johnson burned it to the ground fifteen
+years later. It stood in front of our old log structure, now turned over
+to the slaves. It was of two stories, with lofty and spacious rooms, and
+from the road it presented a noble appearance, now that the old stockade
+had given place to a wall of low, regular masonry.
+
+With this new residence came a prodigious change in our way of life. Daisy
+was barely twelve years old, but we already thought of her as the lady of
+the house, for whom nothing was too good. The walls were plastered, and
+stiff paper from Antwerp with great sprawling arabesques, and figures of
+nymphs and fauns chasing one another up and down with ceaseless, fruitless
+persistency, was hung upon them, at least in the larger rooms. The floors
+were laid smoothly, each board lapping into the next by a then novel
+joiner's trick.
+
+On the floor in Daisy's room there was a carpet, too, a rare and
+remarkable thing in those days, and also from the Netherlands. In this
+same chamber, as well, were set up a bed of mahogany, cunningly carved and
+decorated, and a tall foreign cabinet of some rich dark wood, for linen,
+frocks, and the like. Here, likewise, were two gilt cages from Paris, in
+which a heart-breaking succession of native birds drooped and died, until
+four Dublin finches were at last imported for Daisy's special delight; and
+a case with glass doors and a lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her
+books; and, best of all, a piano--or was it a harpsichord?--standing on
+its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and
+bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling
+old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk,
+sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing
+to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that
+of the cherubim.
+
+Mr. Stewart and I lived in far less splendor. There was no foreign
+furniture to speak of in our portions of the house; we slept on beds the
+cords of which creaked through honest American maple posts; we walked on
+floors which offered gritty sand to the tread instead of carpet-stuffs.
+But there were two great stands laden with good books in our living-room;
+we had servants now within sound of a bell; we habitually wore garments
+befitting men of refinement and substance; we rode our own horses, and we
+could have given Daisy a chaise had the condition of our roads made it
+desirable.
+
+I say "we" because I had come to be a responsible factor in the control of
+the property. Mr. Stewart had never been poor; he was now close upon being
+wealthy. Upon me little by little had devolved the superintendence of
+affairs. I directed the burning over and clearing of land, which every
+year added scores of tillable acres to our credit; saw to the planting,
+care, and harvesting of crops; bought, bred, and sold the stock; watched
+prices, dickered with travelling traders, provisioned the house--in a
+word, grew to be the manager of all, and this when I was barely twenty.
+
+Mr. Stewart bore his years with great strength, physically, but he readily
+gave over to me, as fast as I could assume them, the details of out-door
+work. The taste for sitting indoors or in the garden, and reading, or
+talking with Daisy--the charm of simply living in a home made beautiful by
+a good and clever young girl--gained yearly upon him.
+
+Side by side with this sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second
+growth of old-world, mediæval notions--a sort of aristocratic aftermath.
+It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by
+ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the
+wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under
+the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to dwell
+upon this change, or rather upon its results, at this stage of the story.
+
+Social position was now a matter for consideration. With improved means of
+intercourse and traffic, each year found some family thrifty enough to
+thrust its head above the rude level of settlers' equality, and take on
+the airs of superiority. Twenty years before, it had been Colonel Johnson
+first, and nobody else second. Now the Baronet-General was still
+preeminently first; but every little community in the Valley chain had its
+two or three families holding themselves only a trifle lower than
+the Johnsons.
+
+Five or six nationalities were represented. Of the Germans, there were the
+Herkimers up above the Falls, the Lawyers at Schoharie, the Freys (who
+were commonly thus classed, though they came originally from Switzerland),
+and many others. Of important Dutch families, there were the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, the Mabies and Groats at Rotterdam, below us, and the
+Quackenbosses to the west of us, across the river. The Johnsons and
+Butlers were Irish. Over at Cherry Valley the Campbells and Clydes were
+Scotch--the former being, indeed, close blood relatives of the great
+Argyll house. Colonel Isaac Paris, a prominent merchant near Stone Arabia,
+came from Strasbourg, and accounted himself a Frenchman, though he spoke
+German better than French, and attended the Dutch Calvinistic church.
+There were also English families of quality. I mention them all to show
+how curious was the admixture of races in our Valley. One cannot
+understand the terrible trouble which came upon us later without some
+knowledge of these race divisions.
+
+Mr. Stewart held a place in social estimation rather apart from any of
+these cliques. He was both Scotch and Irish by ancestry; he was French by
+education; he had lived and served in the Netherlands and sundry German
+states. Thus he could be all things to all men--yet he would not. He
+indeed became more solitary as he grew older, for the reasons I have
+already mentioned. He once had been friendly with all his intelligent
+neighbors, no matter what their nationality. Gradually he came to be
+intimate with only the Johnsons and Butlers on the theory that they were
+alone well born. Hours upon hours he talked with them of the Warrens and
+the Ormund-Butlers in Ireland, from whom they claimed descent, and of the
+assurance of Dutch and German cobblers and tinkers, in setting up for
+gentlemen.
+
+Sir William, in truth, had too much sense to often join or sympathize with
+these notions. But young Sir John and the Butlers, father and son, adopted
+them with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and
+German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these
+reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed
+lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for the friendship, of
+their critics.
+
+But let me defer these painful matters as long as possible. There are
+still the joys of youth to recall.
+
+I had grown now into a tall, strong young man, and I was in the way of
+meeting no one who did not treat me as an equal. It seems to me now that I
+was not particularly popular among my fellows, but I was conscious of no
+loneliness then. I had many things to occupy my mind, besides my regular
+tasks. Both natural history and botany interested me greatly, and I was
+privileged also to assist Sir William's investigations in the noble paths
+of astronomy. He had both large information and many fine thoughts on the
+subject, and used laughingly to say that if he were not too lazy he would
+write a book thereon. This was his way of saying that he had more labor to
+get through than any other man in the Colony. It was his idea that some
+time I should write the work instead; upon the Sacondaga hills, he said,
+we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our
+book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of
+planets. Alas! I also was too indolent--truly, not figuratively; the book
+was never written.
+
+In those days there was royal sport for rod and gun, but books also had a
+solid worth. We did not visit other houses much--Daisy and I--but held
+ourselves to a degree apart. The British people were, as a whole, nearer
+our station than the others, and had more ideas in common with us; but
+they were not of our blood, and we were not drawn toward many of them. As
+they looked down upon the Dutch, so the Dutch, in turn, were supercilious
+toward the Germans. I was Dutch, Daisy was German: but by a sort of tacit
+consent we identified ourselves with neither race, and this aided our
+isolation.
+
+There was also the question of religion. Mr. Stewart had been bred a
+Papist, and at the time of which I write, after the French war, Jesuit
+priests of that nation several times visited him to renew old European
+friendships. But he never went to mass, and never allowed them or anybody
+else to speak with him on the subject, no matter how deftly they
+approached it. This was prudent, from a worldly point of view, because the
+Valley, and for that matter the whole upper Colony, was bitterly opposed
+to Romish pretensions, and the first Scotch Highlanders who brought the
+mass into the Valley above Johnstown were openly denounced as idolaters.
+But it was certainly not caution which induced Mr. Stewart's backsliding.
+He was not the man to defer in that way to the prejudices of others. The
+truth was that he had no religious beliefs or faith whatever. But his
+scepticism was that of the French noble of the time, that of Voltaire and
+Mirabeau, rather than of the English plebeian and democrat, Thomas Paine.
+
+Naturally Daisy and I were not reared as theologians. We nominally
+belonged to the Calvinistic church, but not being obliged to attend its
+services, rarely did so. This tended to further separate us from our
+neighbors, who were mainly prodigious church-goers.
+
+But, more than all else, we lived by ourselves because, by constant
+contact with refined associations, we had grown to shrink from the
+coarseness which ruled outside. All about us marriages were made between
+mere children, each boy setting up for himself and taking a wife as soon
+as he had made a voyage to the Lakes and obtained a start in fur-trading.
+There was precious little sentiment or delicacy in these early courtships
+and matches, or in the state of society which they reflected--uncultured,
+sordid, rough, unsympathetic, with all its elementary instincts bluntly
+exposed and expressed. This was of course a subject not to be discussed by
+us. Up to the spring of 1772, when I was twenty-three years of age and
+Daisy was eighteen, no word of all the countless words which young men and
+women have from the dawn of language spoken on this great engrossing topic
+had ever been exchanged between us. In earlier years, when we were on the
+threshold of our teens, Mr. Stewart had more than once thought aloud in
+our hearing upon the time when we should inherit his home and fortune as a
+married couple. Nothing of that talk, though, had been heard for a
+long while.
+
+I had not entirely forgotten it; but I carried the idea along in the attic
+of my mind, as a thing not to be thrown away, yet of no present use or
+value or interest.
+
+Occasionally, indeed, I did recall it for the moment, and cast a diffident
+conjecture as to whether Daisy also remembered. Who shall say? I have been
+young and now am old, yet have I not learned the trick of reading a
+woman's mind. Very far indeed was I from it in those callow days.
+
+And now, after what I fear has been a tiresome enough prologue, my story
+awaits.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+
+
+It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were
+entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness
+of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve
+upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times,
+there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief
+inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and
+her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations.
+
+I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she
+stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson
+Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight.
+I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my
+companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise.
+
+We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first
+visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this
+morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion
+behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly
+along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this
+full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued
+hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever
+under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean
+face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown
+sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together,
+from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of
+himself and of the beautiful girl behind him.
+
+And she _was_ beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed
+with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance
+as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in
+its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's
+thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought
+that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so
+delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and
+thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the
+edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the
+hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun.
+
+She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought,
+as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was
+she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And
+I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my
+head a little, too.
+
+It would have been strange otherwise, for the day and the scene must have
+stirred the coldest pulse. We moved through a pale velvety panorama of
+green--woodland and roadside and river reflections and shadows, all of
+living yet young and softening green; the birds all about us filled the
+warm air with song; the tapping of the woodpeckers and the shrill chatter
+of squirrels came from every thicket; there was nothing which did not
+reflect our joyous, buoyant delight that spring had come again. And I rode
+by Daisy's side, and thought more of her, I'm bound, than I did of the
+flood-dismantled dike on the river-bend at home which I had left
+unrestored for the day.
+
+Over the heads of the negroes, who, spying us, came headlong to take our
+horses, we saw Sir William standing in the garden with an unknown lady.
+The baronet himself, walking a little heavily with his cane, approached us
+with hearty salutations, helped Daisy to unmount, and presented us to this
+stranger--Lady Berenicia Cross.
+
+I am not so sure that people can fall in love at first sight. But never
+doubt their ability to dislike from the beginning! I know that I felt
+indignantly intolerant of this woman even before, hat in hand, I had
+finished my bow to her.
+
+Yet it might well have been that I was over-harsh in my judgment. She had
+been a pretty woman in her time, and still might be thought well-favored.
+At least _she_ must have thought so, for she wore more paint and ribbons,
+and fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since.
+Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in
+outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids
+and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet
+so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that
+it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous
+black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an
+unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin.
+
+I may say that I was a wholesome-enough looking young fellow, very tall
+and broad-shouldered, with a long, dark face, which was ugly in childhood,
+but had grown now into something like comeliness. I am not parading
+special innocence either, but no woman had ever looked into my eyes with
+so bold, I might say impudent, an expression as this fine lady put on to
+greet me. And she was old enough to be my mother, almost, into
+the bargain.
+
+But even more than her free glances, which, after all, meant no harm, but
+only reflected London manners, her dress grated upon me. We were not
+unaccustomed to good raiment in the Valley. Johnson Hall, which reared its
+broad bulk through the trees on the knoll above us, had many a time
+sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us.
+But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place--like her
+feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains
+and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet,
+whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and
+Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and
+knowing our position, were also genuine parts of the scene. The English
+lady was pinchbeck by contrast with all about her.
+
+"Will you give the ladies an arm, Douw?" said Sir William. "We were
+walking to see the lilacs I planted a year ago. We old fellows, with so
+much to say to each other, will lead the way."
+
+Nothing occurred to me to say to the new acquaintance, who further annoyed
+me by clinging to my arm with a zeal unpleasantly different from Daisy's
+soft touch on the other side. I walked silent, and more or less sulky,
+between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily.
+
+"And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks
+so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you
+content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet!
+And you never weary of it--never sigh when it is time to return to it from
+New York?"
+
+"I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer.
+
+Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment.
+
+"Never to New York! nor even to Albany! _Une vraie belle sauvage!_ How you
+amaze me, poor child!"
+
+"Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily. "My father
+and brother are so good to me--just like a true father and brother--that
+if I but hinted a wish to visit the moon, they would at once set about to
+arrange the voyage. I do not always stay at home. Twice I have been on a
+visit to Mr. Campbell, at Cherry Valley, over the hills yonder. And then
+once we made a grand excursion up the river, way to Fort Herkimer, and
+beyond to the place where my poor parents lost their lives."
+
+As we stood regarding the lilac bushes, planted in a circle on the slope,
+and I was congratulating myself that my elbows were free again, two
+gentlemen approached us from the direction of the Hall.
+
+Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady
+Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There,
+that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler."
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we
+came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his
+rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke
+pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake
+country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until his return, at
+Johnson Hall.
+
+His companion was Walter Butler, and of him I ought to speak more closely,
+since long generations after this tale is forgotten his name will remain
+written, blood-red, in the Valley's chronicles. I walked away from the
+lilacs with him, I recall, discussing some unremembered subject. I always
+liked Walter: even now, despite everything, there continues a soft spot in
+my memory for him.
+
+He was about my own age, and, oh! such a handsome youth, with features cut
+as in a cameo, and pale-brown smooth skin, and large deep eyes, that look
+upon me still sometimes in dreams with ineffable melancholy. He was
+somewhat beneath my stature, but formed with perfect delicacy.
+
+In those old days of breeches and long hose, a man's leg went for a good
+deal. I have often thought that there must be a much closer connection
+between trousers and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man
+like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a
+Whig in the Revolutionary time--as if by natural prejudice against the
+would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and
+dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own
+country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still
+largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World
+ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the
+symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and
+silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction
+of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of
+republican trousers--a popular decree that henceforth all men should be
+equal as to legs?
+
+To return. Walter Butler was most perfectly built--a living picture of
+grace. He dressed, too, with remarkable taste, contriving always to appear
+the gentleman, yet not out of place in the wilderness. He wore his own
+black hair, carelessly tied or flowing, and with no thought of powder.
+
+We had always liked each other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn
+and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he
+was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he
+held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also
+be able to revere them for upholding a false-tongued king against the
+rights of his people. For my own part, I did not pin much faith upon his
+descent, being able to remember his grandfather, the old lieutenant, who
+seemed a peasant to the marrow of his bones.
+
+Nor could I see any special value in the fact of descent, even were it
+unquestioned. Walter, it seemed to me, would do much better to work at the
+law, to which he was bred, and make a name for himself by his own
+exertions. Alas, he did make a name!
+
+But though our paths would presently diverge we still were good friends,
+and as we walked he told me what he had heard that day of Lady Berenicia
+Cross. It was not much. She had been the daughter of a penniless,
+disreputable Irish earl, and had wedded early in life to escape the
+wretchedness of her paternal home. She had played quite a splendid part
+for a time in the vanities of London court-life, after her husband gained
+his wealth, but had latterly found her hold upon fashion's favor loosened.
+Why she had accompanied her serious spouse on this rough and wearisome
+journey was not clear. It might be that she came because he did not care
+for her company. It might be that he thought it wisest not to leave her in
+London to her own devices. In any case, here she indubitably was, and
+Walter was disposed to think her rather a fine woman for her years,
+which he took to be about twoscore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We strolled back again to the lilacs, where the two women were seated on a
+bench, with Mr. Cross and Colonel Claus--the brighter and better of Sir
+William's two sons-in-law--standing over them. Lady Berenicia beckoned to
+my companion with her fan.
+
+"Pray come and amuse us, Mr. Butler," she said, in her high, mincing
+tones. "Were it not for the fear of ministering to your vanity, I might
+confess we two have been languishing for an hour for your company.
+Mistress Daisy and I venerate these cavaliers of ours vastly--we hold
+their grave wisdom in high regard--but our frivolous palates need lighter
+things than East India Companies and political quarrels in Boston. I
+command you to discourse nonsense, Mr. Butler--pure, giddy nonsense."
+
+Walter bowed, and with a tinge of irony acknowledged the compliment, but
+all pleasantly enough. I glanced at our Daisy, expecting to discover my
+own distaste for this silly speech mirrored on her face. It vexed me a
+little to see that she seemed instead to be pleased with the London lady.
+
+"What shall it be, my lady?" smiled Walter; "what shall be the
+shuttlecock--the May races, the ball, the Klock scandal, the--"
+
+If it was rude, it is too late to be helped now. I interrupted the foolish
+talk by asking Colonel Claus what the news from Boston was, for the
+post-boy had brought papers to the Hall that morning.
+
+"The anniversary speech is reported. Some apothecary, named Warren, held
+forth this year, and his seems the boldest tongue yet. If his talk stinks
+not of treason in every line, why then I have no smelling sense. They are
+talking of it in the library now; but I am no statesman, and it suits me
+better out here in the sun."
+
+"But," I replied, "I have heard of this Dr. Warren, and he is not reputed
+to be a rash or thoughtless speaker."
+
+Young Butler burst into the conversation with eager bitterness:
+
+"Thoughtless! Rash! No--the dogs know better! There'll be no word that can
+be laid hold upon--all circumspect outside, with hell itself underneath.
+Do we not know the canters? Oh, but I'd smash through letter and seal of
+the law alike to get at them, were I in power! There'll be no peace till
+some strong hand does do it."
+
+Walter's deep eyes flashed and glowed as he spoke, and his face was
+shadowed with grave intensity of feeling.
+
+There was a moment's silence--broken by the thin voice of the London lady:
+"_Bravo_! admirable! Always be in a rage, Mr. Butler, it suits you so
+much.--Isn't he handsome, Daisy, with his feathers all on end?"
+
+While our girl, unused to such bold talk, looked blushingly at the young
+grass, Mr. Cross spoke:
+
+"Doubtless you gentry of New York have your own good reasons for disliking
+Boston men, as I find you do. But why rasp your nerves and spoil your
+digestion by so fuming over their politics? I am an Englishman: if I can
+keep calm on the subject, you who are only collaterally aggrieved, as it
+were, should surely be able to do so. My word for it, young men, life
+brings vexations enough to one's very door, without setting out in
+quest of them."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Cross," languidly sneered my lady, "what is there in the
+heavens or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, which could
+stir your blood by one added beat an hour, save indigo and spices?"
+
+There was so distinct a menace of domestic discord in this iced query that
+Butler hastened to take up the talk:
+
+"Ah, yes, _you_ can keep cool! There are thousands of miles of water
+between you English and the nest where this treason is hatched. It's close
+to us. Do you think you can fence in a sentiment as you can cattle? No: it
+will spread. Soon what is shouted in Boston will be spoken in Albany,
+whispered in Philadelphia, winked and nodded in Williamsburg, thought in
+Charleston. And how will it be here, with us? Let me tell you, Mr. Cross,
+we are really in an alien country here. The high Germans above us, like
+that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for
+the King? And these damned sour-faced Dutch traders below, have they
+forgotten that this province was their grandfathers'? The moment it
+becomes clear to their niggard souls that there's no money to be lost by
+treason, will they not delight to help on any trouble the Yankees contrive
+to make for England? I tell you, sir, if you knew these Dutch as I know
+them--their silent treachery, their jealousy of us, their greed--"
+
+This seemed to have gone far enough. "Come, you forget that I am a
+Dutchman," I said, putting my hand on Butler's shoulder.
+
+Quivering with the excitement into which he had worked himself, he shook
+off my touch, and took a backward step, eying me angrily. I returned his
+gaze, and I dare say it was about as wrathful as his own.
+
+Lady Berenicia made a diversion. "It grows cool," she said. "Come inside
+with me, Mistress Daisy, and I will show you all my chests and boxes. Mr.
+Cross made a great to-do about bringing them, but--"
+
+As the ladies rose, Walter came to me with outstretched hand. "I was at
+fault, Douw," said he, frankly. "Don't think more about it."
+
+I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his
+words.
+
+Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with
+disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks.
+
+"My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
+
+
+
+In the library room of the Hall, across from the dining-chamber, and at
+the foot of the great staircase, on the bannister of which you may still
+see the marks of Joseph Brant's hatchet, we men had a long talk in the
+afternoon. I recall but indifferently the lesser topics of conversation.
+There was, of course, some political debate, in which Sir William and I
+were alone on the side of the Colonist feeling, and Mr. Stewart, the two
+Butlers, and Sir John Johnson were all for choking discontent with the
+rope. Nothing very much to the point was said, on our part at least; for
+the growing discord pained Sir William too deeply to allow him pleasure in
+its discussion, and I shrank from appearing to oppose Mr. Stewart, hateful
+as his notions seemed.
+
+Young Sir John stood by the window, I remember, sulkily drumming on the
+diapered panes, and purposely making his interjections as disagreeable to
+me as he could; at least, I thought so. So, apparently, did his father
+think, for several times I caught the wise old baronet glancing at his son
+in reproof, with a look in his grave gray eyes as of dawning doubt about
+the future of his heir.
+
+Young Johnson was now a man of thirty, blond, aquiline-faced, with cold
+blue eyes and thin, tight lips, which pouted more readily than they
+smiled. His hair was the pale color of bleached hay, a legacy from his low
+born German mother, and his complexion was growing evenly florid from too
+much Madeira wine. We were not friends, and we both knew it.
+
+There was other talk--about the recent creation of our part into a county
+by itself to be named after the Governor; about the behavior of the French
+traders at Oswego and Detroit, and a report from Europe in the latest
+gazettes that the "Young" Pretender, now a broken old rake, was at last to
+be married. This last was a subject upon which Mr. Stewart spoke most
+entertainingly, but with more willingness to let it be known that he had a
+kinsman's interest in the matter than he would formerly have shown. He was
+getting old, in fact, and an almost childish pride in his equivocal
+ancestry was growing upon him. Still his talk and reminiscences were
+extremely interesting.
+
+They fade in my recollection, however, before the fact that it was at this
+little gathering, this afternoon, that my career was settled for me. There
+had been some talk about me while I remained alone outside to confer with
+Sir William's head farmer, and Mr. Cross had agreed with Mr. Stewart and
+Sir William that I was to accompany him on his trip to the far Western
+region the following week. My patron had explained that I needed some
+added knowledge of the world and its affairs, yet was of too serious a
+turn to gather this in the guise of amusement, as Mr. John Butler advised
+I should, by being sent on a holiday to New York. Mr. Cross had been good
+enough to say that he liked what he had seen of me, and should be glad of
+my company.
+
+Of all this I knew nothing when I entered the library. The air was heavy
+with tobacco-smoke, and the table bore more bottles and glasses
+than books.
+
+"Find a chair, Douw," said Sir William. "I have sent for my man, Enoch
+Wade, who is to go westward with Mr, Cross next week. If he's drunk enough
+there'll be some sport."
+
+There entered the room a middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame,
+with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He
+bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian in his clothes
+of deer-hide.
+
+"This is Enoch Wade, gentlemen," said the baronet, indicating the
+new-comer with a wave of his glass, and stretching out his legs to enjoy
+the scene the more. "He is my land-sailor. Between his last sale at
+Albany, and his first foot westward from here, he professes all the vices
+and draws never a sober breath. Yet when he is in the woods he is
+abstemious, amiable, wise, resourceful, virtuous as a statue--a paragon of
+trappers. You can see him for yourselves. Yet, I warn you, appearances are
+deceitful; he is always drunker than he looks. He was, I know, most
+sinfully tipsy last night."
+
+"It was in excellent good company, General," said the hunter, drawling his
+words and no whit abashed.
+
+"He has no manners to speak of," continued the baronet, evidently with
+much satisfaction to himself; "he can outlie a Frontenac half-breed, he is
+more greedy of gain than a Kinderhook Dutchman, he can drink all the
+Mohawks of both castles under the bench, and my niggers are veritable
+Josephs in comparison with him--wait a moment, Enoch!--this is while he is
+in contact with civilization. Yet once on the trail, so to speak, he is
+probity personified. I know this, since he has twice accompanied me
+to Detroit."
+
+"Oh, in the woods, you know, some one of the party must remain sober,"
+said Enoch, readily, still stiffly erect, but with a faint grin twitching
+on the saturnine corners of his mouth.
+
+This time Sir William laughed aloud, and pointed to a decanter and glass,
+from which the trapper helped himself with dignity.
+
+"Look you, rogue," said the host, "there is a young gentleman to be added
+to your party next week, and doubtless he will of needs have a nigger with
+him. See to it that the boat and provision arrangements are altered to
+meet this, and to-morrow be sober enough to advise him as to his outfit.
+For to-night, soak as deep as you like."
+
+Enoch poured out for himself a second tumbler of rum, but not showing the
+first signs of unsteadiness in gait or gesture.
+
+"This young gentleman"--he said, gravely smacking his lips--"about him; is
+he a temperate person, one of the sort who can turn a steadfast back upon
+the bottle?"
+
+A burst of Homeric laughter was Sir William's reply--laughter in which
+all were fain to join.
+
+"It's all right, General," said Enoch, as he turned to go; "don't mind my
+asking. One never can tell, you know, what kind of company he is like to
+pick up with here at the Hall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My surprise and delight when I learned that I was the young gentleman in
+question, and that I was really to go to the Lakes and beyond, may be
+imagined. I seemed to walk on air, so great was my elation. You will not
+marvel now that I fail to recall very distinctly the general talk
+which followed.
+
+Conversation finally lagged, as the promptings of hunger, not less than
+the Ethiopian shouting and scolding from the kitchen below, warned us of
+approaching dinner.
+
+The drinking moderated somewhat, and the pipes were one by one laid aside,
+in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were
+persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against
+tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of
+hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence
+of interest in the fitful talk.
+
+There came a sharp double knock on the door, which a second later was
+pushed partly open. Some of us rose, pulling our ruffles into place, and
+ready to start at once, for there were famous appetites in the wild Valley
+of those days. But the voice from behind the door was not a servant's, nor
+did it convey the intelligence we all awaited. It was, instead, the
+sharp, surface voice of Lady Berenicia, and it said:
+
+"We are weary of waiting for you in civilized quarters of the Hall. May we
+come in here, or are you too much ashamed of your vices to court
+inspection?"
+
+Walter Butler hastened to open the door, bowing low as he did so, and
+delivering himself of some gallant nonsense or other.
+
+The London lady entered the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of
+carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer.
+
+If her morning attire had seemed over-splendid, what shall I say of her
+appearance now? I looked in amazement upon her imposing tower of whitened
+hair, upon the great fluffs of lace, the brocaded stomacher and train, the
+shining satin petticoat front, the dazzling, creamy surfaces of throat and
+shoulders and forearms, all rather freely set forth.
+
+If the effect was bewildering, it was not unpleasant. The smoke-laden air
+of the dim old room seemed suddenly clarified, made radiant. A movement of
+chairs and of their occupants ran through the chamber, like a murmur of
+applause, as we rose to greet the resplendent apparition. But there came a
+veritable outburst of admiration when my lady's companion appeared
+in view.
+
+It was our Daisy, robed like a princess, who dawned upon our vision. She
+was blushing as much from embarrassment as from novel pride, yet managed
+to keep her pretty head up, smiling at us all, and to bear herself
+with grace.
+
+Lady Berenicia, from the wealth of finery in those bulky chests which
+honest Mr. Cross in vain had protested against bringing over the ocean and
+up to this savage outpost, had tricked out the girl in wondrous fashion.
+Her gown was not satin, like the other, but of a soft, lustreless stuff,
+whose delicate lavender folds fell into the sweetest of violet shadows. I
+was glad to see that her neck and arms were properly covered. The laces on
+the sleeves were tawny with age; the ribbon by which the little white
+shawl was decorously gathered at the bosom carried the faint suggestion of
+yellow to a distinct tone, repeated and deepened above by the color of the
+maiden's hair. This hair, too, was a marvel of the dresser's art--reared
+straight and tight from the forehead over a high-arched roll, and losing
+strictness of form behind in ingenious wavy curls, which seemed the very
+triumph of artlessness; it was less wholly powdered than Lady Berenicia's,
+so that the warm gold shone through the white dust in soft gradations of
+half tints; at the side, well up, was a single salmon tea-rose, that
+served to make everything else more beautiful.
+
+Picture to yourself this delicious figure--this face which had seemed
+lovely before, and now, with deft cosmetics, and a solitary tiny patch,
+and the glow of exquisite enjoyment in the sweet hazel eyes, was nothing
+less than a Greuze's dream--picture our Daisy to yourself, I say, and you
+may guess in part how flattering was her reception, how high and fast rose
+the gallant congratulations that the Valley boasted such a beauteous
+daughter. Sir William himself gave her his arm, jovially protesting that
+this was not the Mohawk country, but France--not Johnson Hall, but
+Versailles.
+
+I came on at the tail of the dinner procession, not quite easy in my mind
+about all this.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
+
+
+
+There were, in all, ten of us at the table. Sir William beamed upon us
+from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the
+London dame on the other--in the place of distinction to which she was, I
+suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and
+Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come
+back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner.
+
+I could not see Daisy from where I sat, but all through the meal I watched
+the effect she was producing upon those opposite us. To do her justice,
+Lady Berenicia seemed to have no alloy of jealousy in the delight with
+which she regarded the result of her handiwork. Mr. Stewart could not keep
+his fond eyes off the girl; they fairly glowed with satisfied pride and
+affection. Both Sir John and Walter gave more attention to our beautiful
+maiden than they did to their plates, and both faces told an open tale of
+admiration, each after its kind.
+
+There was plenty of gay talk at the head of the table--merry chatter of
+which I recall nothing, save vaguely that it was about the triumph of art
+over unadorned nature at which we were assisting.
+
+Mr. Cross and I bore our small part in the celebration in silence for a
+time. Then we fell to talking quietly of the journey upon which we were so
+soon to embark; but our minds were not on the subject, and after a little
+its discussion lapsed. All at once he said, as if speaking the thoughts
+which tied my tongue:
+
+"To my mind the young woman is not improved by these furbelows and
+fal-lals my wife has put upon her. What wit or reason is there in a
+homely, sensible little maiden like this--a pretty flower growing, as God
+designed it to, in modest sweetness on its own soil--being garnished out
+in the stale foppery of the last London season?"
+
+"But it is only a masquerade, sir," I pleaded--as much to my own judgment
+as to his--"and it does make her very beautiful, does it not?"
+
+"She _was_ beautiful before," he replied, in the same low tones. "Can a
+few trumpery laces and ribbons, a foolish patch, a little powder, affect
+what is real about a woman, think you? And do any but empty heads value
+unreal things?"
+
+"True enough, sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry.
+Women are that way. See how pleased she is--how full of smiles and
+happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor
+Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to begrudge her
+this innocent pleasure."
+
+"Innocent--yes, no doubt; but, do you know, she will never be the same
+girl again. She will never feel quite the same pretty little Mistress
+Daisy, in her woollen gown and her puttical kerchief. She will never get
+the taste of this triumph out of her mouth. You do not know women, young
+man, as I do. I have studied the sex in a very celebrated and costly
+school. Mark my words, ideas have been put into her head that will never
+come out."
+
+I tried to believe that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other
+women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself--so prudent
+and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem
+all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books--never
+anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr.
+Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn her
+dear head."
+
+He smiled, somewhat compassionately I thought, and made no answer.
+
+Was I so firm in my faith, after all? The doubt rose in my thoughts, and
+would not down, as the gallant talk flowed and bubbled around me. _Would_
+this Daisy be quite the same next day, or next week, singing to us at the
+old harpsichord in the twilight, with the glare of the blaze on the hearth
+making red gold of that hair, plaited once more in simple braids? I tried
+with all my might to call up this sweet familiar figure before my mental
+vision: it would not freely come.
+
+She was laughing now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing
+quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom
+employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting
+things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other than
+Daisy laughing.
+
+I was still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the
+ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to
+ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand,
+to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see
+the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with
+Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent
+of powder left on the air annoyed me, as something stifling those thoughts
+of the good little adopted sister, whom I had brought to the Hall and lost
+there, which I would fain dwell upon.
+
+We sat over our Madeira and pipes longer than usual. Candles were brought
+in by Sir William's young body-servant Pontiac, for there was a full moon,
+and we might thus prolong our stay after nightfall. The talk was chiefly
+about our coming trip--a very serious undertaking. Sir William and Mr.
+Butler had adventures of their own early trading days to recall, and they
+gave us great stores of advice drawn from experience, and ranging from
+choice of shirts and spirits to needful diplomacy with the Algonquins
+and Sakis.
+
+Then the company drank the health of Mr. Cross, and were good enough to
+couple mine with it. A comical little yellow boy danced for us before the
+hearth--an admiring wall of black faces and rolling white eyeballs filling
+up the open door meanwhile. Walter Butler sang a pretty song--everybody,
+negroes and all, swelling the chorus. Rum was brought in, and mixed in hot
+glasses, with spice, molasses, and scalding water from the kettle on the
+crane. So evening deepened to night; but I never for a moment, not even
+when they drank my health, shook off the sense of unrest born of Daisy's
+masquerade.
+
+It was Molly Brant herself, nobly erect and handsome in her dark, sinister
+way, who came to us with word that the moon was up over the pine-ridged
+hills, and that Mistress Daisy was attired for the homeward ride,
+and waiting.
+
+Of all the pictures in Memory's portfolio, none is more distinct than this
+of the departure that evening from the Hall. A dozen negroes were about
+the steps, two or three mounted ready to escort us home, others bearing
+horn lanterns which the moonlight darkened into inutility, still others
+pulling the restive horses about on the gravel. Mr. Stewart swung himself
+into the saddle, and Daisy stepped out to mount behind him. She wore her
+own garments once more, but there was just a trace of powder on the hair
+under the hood, and the patch was still on her chin. I moved forward to
+lift her to the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she
+did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John
+and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight,
+flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held
+Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of
+even this.
+
+So we rode away, pursued down the path to the lilacs by shouts of
+"Good-night! Safe home!" Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I
+saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his
+hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing
+above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on
+either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark
+front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky.
+
+As I recall the scene, it seems to me that then and there I said farewell,
+not alone to pleasant friends, but to the Daisy of my childhood and youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Hall slaves rode well ahead in the narrow road; we could just hear
+faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears
+the murmur of an Æolian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous:
+the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping
+helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly
+safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness,
+not danger.
+
+I did indeed rest my free hand on the pistol in my holster as I jogged
+along close behind the old gray horse and his double burden; but the act
+was more an unconscious reflection of my saturnine mood, I fear, than a
+recognition of need. There was every reason why I should dwell with
+delight upon the prospect opening before me--upon the idea of the great
+journey so close at hand; but I scarcely thought of it at all, and I was
+not happy. The moon threw a jaundiced light over my mind, and in its
+discolored glare I saw things wrongly, and with gratuitous pain to myself.
+
+In fact, my brooding was the creature of the last few hours, born of a
+childish pique. But as I rode gloomily silent behind my companions, it
+seemed as if I had long suffered a growing separation from them. "Three is
+a clumsy number," I said to myself, "in family affection not less than in
+love; there was never any triad of friends since the world began, no
+matter how fond their ties, in which two did not build a little interior
+court of thoughts and sympathies from which the third was shut out. These
+two people whom I hold dearer than everything else on earth--this good
+gentleman to whom I owe all, this sweet girl who has grown up from
+babyhood in my heart--would scout the idea that there was any line of
+division running through our household. They do not see it--cannot see it.
+Yet they have a whole world of ideas and sentiments in common, a whole
+world of communion, which I may never enter."
+
+This was what, in sulky, inchoate fashion, I said to myself, under the
+spur of the jealous spirits which sometimes get rein over the thoughts of
+the best of us. And it was all because the London woman had tricked out
+our Daisy, for but a little hour or two, in the presentment of a
+court lady!
+
+Conversation went briskly forward, meanwhile, from the stout back of the
+gray horse.
+
+"Did you note, papa, how white and soft her hands were?" said Daisy.
+"Mine were so red beside them! It is working in the garden, I believe,
+although Mary Johnson always wore gloves when she was out among the
+flowers and vegetables, and her hands were red, too. And Lady Berenicia
+was so surprised to learn that I had never read any of the romances which
+they write now in England! She says ladies in London, and in the provinces
+too, do not deem themselves fit to converse unless they keep abreast of
+all these. She has some of them in her chests, and there are others in the
+Hall, she has found, and I am to read them, and welcome."
+
+"You are old enough now, my girl," replied Mr. Stewart. "They seem to me
+to be trivial enough things, but no doubt they have their use. I would not
+have you seem as inferior to other ladies in knowledge of the matters they
+talk of, as they are inferior to you in honest information."
+
+"How interested she was when I told her of the serious books I read, and
+of my daily occupations--moulding the candles, brewing the beer, carding
+wool, making butter, and then caring for the garden! She had never seen
+celery in trenches, she said, and would not know beans from gourds if she
+saw them growing. It seems that in England ladies have nothing to do with
+their gardens--when, indeed, they have any at all--save to pluck a rose
+now and then, or give tea to their gentlemen under the shrubbery when it
+is fine. And I told her of our quilting and spinning bees, and the
+coasting on clear winter evenings, and of watching the blacks on Pinkster
+night, and the picnics in the woods, and she vowed London had no
+pleasures like them. She was jesting though, I think. Oh, shall we ever go
+to London, papa?"
+
+"By all means, let us go," chuckled Mr. Stewart. "You would see something
+there she never saw--my grizzled old head upon Temple Bar. Shall we be off
+to-morrow? My neck tingles with anticipation."
+
+"Old tease!" laughed Daisy, patting his shoulder. "You know there have
+been no heads put there since long before I was born. Never flatter
+yourself that they would begin again now with yours. They've forgotten
+there was ever such a body as you."
+
+"Faith! the world doesn't go round so fast as you young people think. Only
+to-day I read in the London mail that two months ago one of the polls that
+had been there since '46 fell down; but if it was Fletcher's or Townley's
+no one can tell--like enough not even they themselves by this time. So
+there's a vacant spike now for mine. No, child--I doubt these old bones
+will ever get across the sea again. But who knows?--it may be your fortune
+to go some time."
+
+"Lady Berenicia says I must come to the Hall often, papa, while she is
+there," said the girl, returning to the subject which bewitched her; "and
+you must fetch me, of course. She admires you greatly; she says gentlemen
+in London have quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your
+bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep
+each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and
+Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them--the two
+solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness."
+
+The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection
+of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less
+malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on
+my ears.
+
+"It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be
+disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy.
+
+"What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and
+glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all
+the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to
+your liking?"
+
+"Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go."
+
+It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody
+would specially miss me, but I held it back.
+
+"He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured
+sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has
+when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at
+dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he
+would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I
+looked well in the--the citified costume."
+
+"Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for."
+
+She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and
+went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes:
+
+"And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable
+Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the
+lilacs, this very morning--and in the presence of ladies, too."
+
+"No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied.
+
+"Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was
+before a lady too--or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own
+eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and
+run at him with both fists out--and all on your account, too, my lady;
+and then--"
+
+"Oh, I am reminded!"
+
+It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped
+her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said:
+
+"Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come
+out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up
+at the Hall--Lady Berenicia's husband--is a cousin to the old Major who
+brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?"
+
+"Is _that_ your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago."
+
+"How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then
+a General, and died last winter, poor man."
+
+"Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all
+walk that way."
+
+Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year,
+papa. And now tell me, did not this Major--_my_ Major, though I do not
+remember him--take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir
+William, while he was on this side of the water?"
+
+"Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the
+horse.
+
+We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he
+knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a
+tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched
+beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked
+by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the
+property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water
+running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock
+wall, farther down, of which I have already written.
+
+"Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you
+ask, girl?"
+
+"_Now_ for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits
+the English house and lands. The other son, Philip--the boy you fought
+with, Douw--is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it.
+He sailed with the others--he is in New York--he is coming here to live!"
+
+"We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily.
+
+"I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest
+comment I could screw my tongue to.
+
+Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we
+quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
+
+
+
+When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the
+searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and
+slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was
+high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my
+aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum
+between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be
+vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its
+inmates, now that the hour had arrived.
+
+I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day,
+dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but
+without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the
+adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins
+while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home--my true home--my heart
+quivered and sank at thought of departure.
+
+"I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than
+Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all
+things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is
+different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed
+after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod.
+You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be
+at a good school with him."
+
+He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred
+indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental
+order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my
+feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have
+preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet
+coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet
+felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I
+listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts
+vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside.
+
+Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with
+advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key.
+Their shouts and wailing--they could not have made more ado if he had just
+been sold to Jamaica--came through the open door. It was not of this din I
+thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were
+piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond.
+
+I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to
+gather a nosegay for me.
+
+Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending
+in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden
+filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing
+more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit,
+the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts
+of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad
+thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much--this dear
+girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the
+tears _were_ coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned
+my head away.
+
+There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices.
+Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman
+had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to
+the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption.
+
+Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the
+wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden,
+presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with
+her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of her neck she
+was blushing.
+
+There was enough for her to blush at. The stranger was bowing very low,
+putting one hand up to his breast. With the other he had taken her fingers
+and raised them formally to his lips. This was not a custom in our parts.
+Sir William did it now and then on state occasions, but young men,
+particularly strangers, did not.
+
+As we advanced, this gallant morning-caller drew himself up and turned
+toward us. You may be sure I looked him over attentively.
+
+I have seen few handsomer young men. In a way, so far as light hair, blue
+eyes, ruddy and regular face went, he was not unlike Sir John. But he was
+much taller, and his neck and shoulders were squared proudly--a trick
+Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a
+fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the
+shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl
+buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run
+into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in
+one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in
+its ruffles, he stretched out now toward Mr. Stewart with a free,
+pleasant gesture.
+
+"With my father's oldest friend," he said, "I must not wait for ceremony.
+I am Philip Cross, from England, and I hope you will be my friend, sir,
+now that my father is gone."
+
+That this speech found instant favor need not be doubted. Mr. Stewart
+shook him again and again by the hand, and warmly bade him welcome to the
+Valley and the Cedars a dozen times in as many breaths. Young Cross
+managed to explain between these cordial ejaculations, that he had
+journeyed up from New York with the youthful Stephen Watts--to whose
+sister Sir John was already betrothed; that they had reached Guy Park the
+previous evening; that Watts was too wearied this morning to think of
+stirring out, but that hardly illness itself could have prevented him,
+Cross, from promptly paying his respects to his father's ancient comrade.
+
+The young man spoke easily and fluently, looking Mr. Stewart frankly in
+the eye, with smiling sincerity in glance and tone. He went on:
+
+"How changed everything is roundabout!--all save you, who look scarcely
+older or less strong. When I was here as a boy it was winter, cold and
+bleak. There was a stockade surrounded by wilderness then, I remember, and
+a log-house hardly bigger than the fireplace inside it. Where we stand now
+the ground was covered with brush and chips, half hidden by snow.
+Now--_presto!_ there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden
+neatly made, and"--turning with a bow to Daisy--"a fair mistress for them
+all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as
+a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would have
+held her entire."
+
+"I saw the cart laden outside," put in Sir John, "and fancied perhaps we
+should miss you."
+
+"Why, no," said Mr. Stewart; "I had forgotten for the moment that this was
+a house of mourning. Douw is starting to the Lake country this very day.
+Mr. Cross, you must remember my boy, my Douw?"
+
+The young Englishman turned toward me, as I was indicated by Mr. Stewart's
+gesture. He looked me over briefly, with a half-smile about his eyes,
+nodded to me, and said:
+
+"You were the Dutch boy with the apron, weren't you?"
+
+I assented by a sign of the head, as slight as I could politely make it.
+
+"Oh, yes, I recall you quite distinctly. I used to make my brother Digby
+laugh by telling about your aprons. He made quite a good picture of you in
+one of them, drawn from my descriptions. We had a fort of snow, too, did
+we not? and I beat you, or you me, I forget which. I got snow down the
+back of my neck, I know, and shivered all the way to the fort."
+
+He turned lightly at this to Mr. Stewart, and began conversation again. I
+went over to where Daisy stood, by the edge of the flower-bed.
+
+"I must go now, dear sister," I said. The words were choking me.
+
+We walked slowly to the house, she and I. When I had said good-by to my
+aunt, and gathered together my hat, coats, and the like, I stood
+speechless, looking at Daisy. The moment was here, and I had no word for
+it which did not seem a mockery.
+
+She raised herself on tiptoe to be kissed. "Good-by, big brother," she
+said, softly. "Come back to us well and strong, and altogether homesick,
+won't you? It will not be like home, without you, to either of us."
+
+And so the farewells were all made, and I stood in the road prepared to
+mount. Tulp was already on the cart, along with another negro who was to
+bring back my horse and the vehicle after we had embarked in the boats.
+There was nothing more to say--time pressed--yet I lingered dumb and
+irresolute. At the moment I seemed to be exchanging everything for
+nothing--committing domestic suicide. I looked at them both, the girl and
+the old man, with the gloomy thought that I might never lay eyes on them
+again. I dare say I wore my grief upon my face, for Mr. Stewart tried
+cheerily to hearten me with, "Courage, lad! We shall all be waiting for
+you, rejoiced to welcome you back safe and sound."
+
+Daisy came to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned
+upon my lapel some of the pale blue blossoms she had gathered.
+
+"There's 'rosemary for remembrance,'" she murmured. "Poor Ophelia could
+scarce have been sadder than we feel, Douw, at your going."
+
+"And may I be decorated too--for remembrance' sake?" asked handsome young
+Philip Cross, gayly.
+
+"Surely, sir," the maiden answered, with a smile of sweet sorrowfulness.
+"You have a rightful part in the old memories--in a sense, perhaps, the
+greatest part of all."
+
+"Ay, you two were friends before ever you came to us, dear," said Mr.
+Stewart.
+
+So as I rode away, with smarting eyes and a heart weighing like lead, my
+last picture of the good old home was of Daisy fastening flowers on the
+young Englishman's breast, just as she had put these of mine in
+their place.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Old-Time Politics Pondered Under the Forest Starlight.
+
+
+
+Among the numerous books which at one time of another I had resolved to
+write, and which the evening twilight of my life finds still unwritten,
+was one on Fur-trading. This volume, indeed, came somewhat nearer to a
+state of actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have
+yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in
+earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical
+Delusions--which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary--and
+the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point
+of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation
+now in deciding not to put into this narrative a great deal about my
+experiences in, and information concerning, the almost trackless West of
+my youth. My diary of this first and momentous journey with Mr. Jonathan
+Cross, yellow with age and stained by damp and mildew, lies here before
+me; along with it are many odd and curious incidents and reflections
+jotted down, mirroring that strange, rude, perilous past which seems so
+far away to the generation now directing a safe and almost eventless
+commerce to the Pacific and the Gulf. But I will draw from my stock only
+the barest outlines, sufficient to keep in continuity the movement of
+my story.
+
+When we reached Caughnawaga Mr. Cross and his party were waiting for us at
+the trading store of my godfather, good old Douw Fonda. I was relieved to
+learn that I had not delayed them; for it was still undecided, I found,
+whether we should all take to the river here, or send the boats forward
+with the men, and ourselves proceed to the Great Carrying Place at Fort
+Stanwix by the road. Although it was so early in the season, the Mohawk
+ran very low between its banks. Major Jelles Fonda, the eldest son of my
+godfather, and by this time the true head of the business, had only
+returned from the Lakes, and it was by his advice that we settled upon
+riding and carting as far as we could, and leaving the lightened boats to
+follow. So we set out in the saddle, my friend and I, stopping one night
+with crazy old John Abeel--he who is still remembered as the father of the
+Seneca half-breed chieftain Corn-Planter--and the next night with
+Honnikol Herkimer.
+
+This man, I recall, greatly impressed Mr. Cross. We were now in an
+exclusively German section of the Valley, where no Dutch and very little
+English was to be heard. Herkimer himself conversed with us in a dialect
+that must often have puzzled my English friend, though he gravely forbore
+showing it. I had known Colonel Herkimer all my life; doubtless it was
+this familiarity with his person and speech which had prevented my
+recognizing his real merit, for I was not a little surprised when Mr.
+Cross said to me that night: "Our host is one of the strongest and most
+sagacious men I have ever encountered in the Colonies; he is worth a
+thousand of your Butlers or Sir Johns."
+
+It became clear in later years that my friend was right. I remember that I
+regarded the hospitable Colonel, at breakfast next morning, with a closer
+and more respectful attention than ever before, but it was not easy to
+discern any new elements of greatness in his talk.
+
+Herkimer was then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and
+sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no
+time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the
+Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side.
+One thing which he said, in his effort to make my friend understand the
+difference between his position and the more abstract and educated
+discontent of New England and Virginia, sticks in my memory.
+
+"We Germans," he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers
+remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and
+wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some
+scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector
+might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of
+their daughters, worked to death, frozen by the cold in their nakedness,
+dragged off into the armies to be sold to any prince who could pay for
+their blood and broken bones. The French who overran the Palatinate were
+bad enough; the native rulers were even more to be hated. The exiles of
+our race have not forgotten this; they have told it all to us, their
+children and grandchildren born here in this Valley. We have made a new
+home for ourselves over here, and we owe no one but God anything for it.
+If they try to make here another aristocracy over us, then we will die
+first before we will submit."
+
+The case for the Mohawk Valley's part in the great revolt has never been
+more truly stated, I think, than it was thus, by the rough, uneducated,
+little frontier trader, in his broken English, on that May morning years
+before the storm broke.
+
+We rode away westward in the full sunshine that morning, in high spirits.
+The sky was pure blue overhead; the birds carolled from every clump of
+foliage about us; the scenery, to which Mr. Cross paid much delighted
+attention, first grew nobly wild and impressive when we skirted the Little
+Falls--as grand and gloomy in its effect of towering jagged cliffs and
+foaming cataracts as one of Jacob Ruysdael's pictures--and then softened
+into a dream of beauty as it spread out before us the smiling, embowered
+expanses of the German Flatts. Time and time again my companion and I
+reined up our horses to contemplate the charms of this lovely scene.
+
+We had forded the river near Fort Herkimer, where old Hon Yost Herkimer,
+the father of the Colonel, lived, and were now once more on the north
+side. From an open knoll I pointed out to my friend, by the apple and pear
+blossoms whitening the deserted orchards, the site of the Palatines'
+village where Daisy's father had been killed, fifteen years ago, in the
+midnight rout and massacre.
+
+"It was over those hills that the French stole in darkness. Back yonder,
+at the very ford we crossed, her poor mother was trampled under foot and
+drowned in the frightened throng. It was at the fort there, where we had
+the buttermilk and _Kuchen,_ that your cousin, Major Cross, found the
+little girl. I wonder if he ever knew how deeply grateful to him we
+were--and are."
+
+This brought once more to my mind--where indeed it had often enough before
+intruded itself--the recollection of young Philip's arrival at the Cedars.
+For some reason I had disliked to speak of it before, but now I told Mr.
+Cross of it as we walked our horses along over the rough, muddy road,
+under the arching roof of thicket.
+
+"I'll be bound Mr. Stewart welcomed him with open arms," said my
+companion.
+
+"Ay, indeed! No son could have asked a fonder greeting."
+
+"Yes, the lad is very like his mother; that of itself would suffice to
+warm the old gentleman's heart. You knew he was a suitor for her hand long
+before Tony Cross ever saw her?"
+
+I didn't know this, but I nodded silently.
+
+"Curious creature she was," mused he, as if to himself. "Selfish,
+suspicious, swift to offence, jealous of everything and everybody about
+her--yet with moods when she seemed to all she met the most amiable and
+delightful of women. She had her fine side, too. She would have given her
+life gladly for the success of the Jacobites, of that I'm sure. And
+proud!--no duchess could have carried her head higher."
+
+"You say her son is very like her?"
+
+"As like as two leaves on a twig. Perhaps he has something of his father's
+Irish openness of manner as well. His father belonged to the younger, what
+we call the Irish, branch of our family, you know, though it is as English
+in the matter of blood as I am. We were only second cousins, in point of
+fact, and his grandfather was set up in Ireland by the bounty of mine. Yet
+Master Philip condescends to me, patronizes me, as if the case had been
+reversed."
+
+Mr. Cross did not speak as if he at all resented this, but in a calm,
+analytical manner, and with a wholly impersonal interest. I have never
+known another man who was so totally without individual bias, and regarded
+all persons and things with so little reference to his own feelings. If he
+had either prejudices or crotchets on any point, I never discovered them.
+He was, I feel assured, a scrupulously honest and virtuous gentleman, yet
+he never seemed to hate people who were not so. He was careful not to let
+them get an advantage over him, but for the rest he studied them and
+observed their weaknesses and craft, with the same quiet interest he
+displayed toward worthier objects. A thoroughly equable nature was
+his--with little capacity for righteous indignation on the one side, and
+no small tendencies toward envy or peevishness on the other. There was not
+a wrinkle on his calm countenance, nor any power of angry flashing in his
+steadfast, wide-apart, gray eyes. But his tongue could cut deep
+on occasion.
+
+We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the
+Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that
+crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and
+the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along,
+partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had
+been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under
+a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the
+brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground.
+We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer
+wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and
+crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up
+the fires.
+
+We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well
+wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep
+the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard
+the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the
+moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises
+and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London
+companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very
+acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no
+degree nervous.
+
+We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer
+had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we
+talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying
+on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting,
+wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle,
+under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank
+affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon
+this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with
+fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves
+we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly
+halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my
+friends and comrades.
+
+We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully,
+contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the
+air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank,
+uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer
+heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form,
+with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side?
+
+"I spoke about Philip's having some of his father's adopted Irish traits,"
+said Mr. Cross, after a longer interval of silence than usual. "One of
+them is the desire to have subordinates, dependents, about him. There is
+no Irishman so poor or lowly that he will not, if possible, encourage some
+still poorer, lowlier Irishman to hang to his skirts. It is a reflection
+of their old Gaelic tribal system, I suppose, which, between its chiefs
+above and its clansmen below, left no place for a free yeomanry. I note
+this same thing in the Valley, with the Johnsons and the Butlers. So far
+as Sir William is concerned, the quality I speak of has been of service to
+the Colony, for he has used his fondness and faculty for attracting
+retainers and domineering over subordinates to public advantage. But then
+he is an exceptional and note-worthy man--one among ten thousand. But his
+son Sir John, and his son-in-law Guy Johnson, and the Butlers, father and
+son, and now to them added our masterful young Master Philip--these own no
+such steadying balance-wheel of common-sense. They have no restraining
+notion of public interest. Their sole idea is to play the aristocrat, to
+surround themselves with menials, to make their neighbors concede to them
+submission and reverence. It was of them that Herkimer spoke, plainly
+enough, though he gave no names. Mark my words, they will come to grief
+with that man, if the question be ever put to the test."
+
+I had not seen enough of Englishmen to understand very clearly the
+differences between them and the Irish, and I said so. The conversation
+drifted upon race questions and distinctions, as they were presented by
+the curiously mixed population of New York province.
+
+My companion was of the impression that the distinctly British
+settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more
+powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his
+point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I
+cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this
+Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their wonderful
+patriotism and intelligence, and of the tremendous part they played in the
+Revolution, without smashing my pipe in wrath. Yet I am old enough now to
+see that all this is largely the fault of the New Yorkers themselves. We
+have given our time and attention to the making of money, and have left it
+to others to make the histories. If they write themselves down large, and
+us small, it is only what might have been expected. But at the time of
+which I am telling I was very young, and full of confidence in not only
+the existing superiority but the future supremacy of my race. I could not
+foresee how we were to be snowed under by the Yankees in our own State,
+and, what is worse, accept our subjugation without a protest--so that
+to-day the New York schoolboy supposes Fisher Ames, or any other of a
+dozen Boston talkers, to have been a greater man than Philip Schuyler.
+
+I remember that I greatly vaunted the good qualities of the Dutch that
+night. I pointed out how they alone had learned the idea of religious
+toleration toward others in the cruel school of European persecution; how
+their faith in liberty and in popular institutions, nobly exemplified at
+home in the marvellous struggle with Spain, had planted roots of civil and
+religious freedom in the New World which he could find neither to the east
+nor to the south of us; and how even the early Plymouth Puritans had
+imbibed all they knew of clemency and liberty during their stay
+in Holland.
+
+I fear that Mr. Cross inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and
+extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded
+the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable
+resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed
+always in Europe. But then he went on to declare that the Dutch could not
+hope to hold their own in strange lands against the extraordinary
+conquering and colonizing power of the more numerous English, who, by
+sheer force of will and energy, were destined in the end to dominate
+everything they touched. Note how Clive and the English had gradually
+undermined or overthrown French, Portuguese, and Dutch alike in the
+Indies, he said; the same thing has happened here, either by bloodshed or
+barter. No nation could resist the English in war; no people could
+maintain themselves in trade or the peaceful arts against the English.
+
+"But you yourself predicted, not an hour ago, that the young gentry down
+the Valley would come to grief in their effort to lord it over the Dutch
+and Palatines."
+
+"Oh, that indeed," my friend replied. "They are silly sprouts, grown up
+weak and spindling under the shadow of Sir William; when he is cut down
+the sun will shrivel them, no doubt. But the hardier, healthier plants
+which finally take their place will be of English stock--not Dutch
+or German."
+
+I hope devoutly that this lengthened digression into politics has not
+proved wearisome. I have touched upon but one of a hundred like
+conversations which we two had together on our slow journey, and this
+because I wanted to set forth the manner of things we discussed, and the
+views we severally had. Events proved that we both were partially right.
+The United States of the Netherlands was the real parent of the United
+States of America, and the constitution which the Dutch made for the
+infant State of New York served as the model in breadth and in freedom for
+our present noble Federal Constitution. In that much my faith was
+justified. But it is also true that my State is no longer Dutch, but
+English, and that the language of my mother has died out from among us.
+
+Before noon next day we reached Fort Stanwix, the forest-girdled
+block-house commanding the Great Carrying Place. Here we waited one day
+for the boats to come up, and half of another to get them through the
+sluices into Wood Creek. Then, as the horses and carts returned, we
+embarked and set our faces toward the Lakes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
+
+
+
+We had left what it pleases us to call civilization behind. Until our
+return we were scarcely again to see the blackened fields of stumps
+surrounding clearings, or potash kettles, or girdled trees, or chimneys.
+
+Not that our course lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we
+for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed
+westward farther and farther to be alone--to get away from their fellows.
+The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and
+honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. They traded a little,
+in a careless, desultory fashion, with the proceeds of their traps and
+rifles. But their desires were few--a pan and kettle, a case of needles
+and cord, some rum or brandy from cider or wild grapes, tobacco, lead, and
+powder--chiefly the last three. They fed themselves, adding to their own
+fish and game only a little pounded maize which they got mostly from the
+Indians, and cooked in mush or on a baking stone. In the infrequent cases
+where there were women with them, we sometimes saw candles, either dips or
+of the wax of myrtle-berries, but more often the pine-knot was used.
+Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story
+above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their
+habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires.
+They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally
+disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of
+view, but I judge both industrious and contented from their own.
+
+We should have had little favor or countenance from these fellows, I doubt
+not, but for Enoch Wade. He seemed to know all the saturnine, shaggy,
+lounging outcasts whom we met in unexpected places; if he did not, they
+knew him at a glance for one of their own kidney, which came to the same
+thing. It was on his account that we were tolerated, nay, even advised and
+helped and entertained.
+
+Enoch had been a prodigious traveller--or else was a still more prodigious
+liar--I never quite decided which. He told them, when we chanced to sit
+around their fires of an evening, most remarkable stories of field and
+forest--of caribou and seals killed in the North; of vast herds of bison
+on far Western prairies; of ice-bound winters spent in the Hudson Bay
+Company's preserves beyond the Lakes; of houses built of oyster-shells and
+cement on the Carolina coast. They listened gravely, smoking their
+cob-and-reed pipes, and eying him attentively. They liked him, and they
+did not seem to dislike Coppernol and our other white servants. But they
+showed no friendliness toward my poor Tulp, and exhibited only scant,
+frigid courtesy to Mr. Cross and me.
+
+The fact that my companion was a power in the East India Company, and a
+director in the new Northwestern Fur Company, did not interest them, at
+least favorably. It was indeed not until after we had got beyond the
+Sandusky that Enoch often volunteered this information, for the trappers
+of the East had little love for companies, or organized commerce and
+property of any sort.
+
+I like better to recall the purely physical side of our journey. Now our
+little flotilla would move for hours on broad, placid, still waters,
+flanked on each side by expanses of sedge and flags--in which great broods
+of water-fowl lived--and beyond by majestic avenues formed of pines,
+towering mast-like sheer sixty feet before they burst into intertwining
+branches. Again, we would pass through darkened, narrow channels, where
+adverse waters sped swiftly, and where we battled not only with deep
+currents, but had often to chop our way through barriers of green
+tree-trunks, hickory, ash, and birch, which the soft soil on the banks had
+been unable to longer hold erect. Now we flew merrily along under sail or
+energetic oars; now we toiled laboriously against strong tides, by poles
+or by difficult towing.
+
+But it was all healthful, heartening work, and we enjoyed it to the full.
+Toward sundown we would begin to look for a brook upon which to pitch our
+camp. When one was found which did not run black, showing its origin in a
+tamarack swamp, a landing was made with all the five boats. These
+secured, axes were out with, and a shelter soon constructed, while others
+heaped the fire, prepared the food and utensils, and cooked the welcome
+meal. How good everything tasted! how big and bright the stars looked! how
+sweet was the odor of the balsam in the air, later, as we lay on our
+blankets, looking skyward, and talked! Or, if the night was wild and wet,
+how cheerily the great fires roared in the draught, and how snugly we lay
+in our shelter, blinking at the fierce blaze!
+
+When in early July we drew near the country of the Outagamis, having left
+the Detroit settlement behind us, not to speak of Oswego and Niagara,
+which seemed as far off now as the moon, an element of personal danger was
+added to our experiences. Both white hunters and Indians were warmly
+affected toward the French interest, and often enough we found reason to
+fear that we would be made to feel this, though luckily it never came to
+anything serious. It was a novel experience to me to be disliked on
+account of the English, whom I had myself never regarded with friendship.
+I was able, fortunately, being thus between the two rival races, as it
+were, to measure them each against the other.
+
+I had no prejudice in favor of either, God knows. My earliest
+recollections were of the savage cruelty with which the French had
+devastated, butchered, and burned among the hapless settlements at the
+head of the Mohawk Valley. My maturer feelings were all colored with the
+strong repulsion we Dutch felt for the English rule, which so scornfully
+misgoverned and plundered our province, granting away our lands to court
+favorites and pimps, shipping to us the worst and most degraded of
+Old-World criminals, quartering upon us soldiers whose rude vices made
+them even more obnoxious than the convicts, and destroying our commerce by
+selfish and senseless laws.
+
+From the Straits west I saw the Frenchman for the first time, and read the
+reasons for his failure to stand against the English. Even while we
+suspected grounds for fearing his hostility, we found him a more courteous
+and affable man than the Englishman or Yankee. To be pleasant with us
+seemed a genuine concern, though it may really have been otherwise. The
+Indians about him, too, were a far more satisfactory lot than I had known
+in the Valley. Although many of our Mohawks could read, and some few
+write, and although the pains and devotion of my friend Samuel Kirkland
+had done much for the Oneidas, still these French-spoken, Jesuit-taught
+Indians seemed a much better and soberer class than my neighbors of the
+Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively
+plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived
+most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and
+this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going
+on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the
+English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So much for
+the good side.
+
+The medal had a reverse. The Frenchman contrived to get on with the
+Indian by deferring to him, cultivating his better and more generous side,
+and treating him as an equal. This had the effect of improving and
+softening the savage, but it inevitably tended to weaken and lower the
+Frenchman--at least, judged by the standard of fitness to maintain himself
+in a war of races. No doubt the French and Indians lived together much
+more quietly and civilly than did the English and Indians. But when these
+two systems came to be tested by results, it was shown that the
+Frenchman's policy and kindliness had only enervated and emasculated him,
+while the Englishman's rough domineering and rule of force had hardened
+his muscles and fired his resolution. To be sure, measured by the received
+laws of humanity, the Frenchman was right and the other wrong. But is it
+so certain, after all, that the right invariably wins?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well along in September when, standing on the eminence to the east
+of Fort Stanwix, I first looked again on my beloved Mohawk.
+
+The trip had been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four
+bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries,
+including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the
+remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of
+his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and
+silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied its value
+twenty-fold.
+
+Of course, this was of secondary importance. The true object of the
+journey had been to enable Mr. Jonathan Cross to see for himself the
+prospects of the new Northwestern Company--to look over the territory
+embraced in its grants, estimate its probable trade, mark points for the
+establishment of its forts and posts, and secure the information necessary
+to guard the company from the frauds or failings of agents. He professed
+himself vastly gratified at the results, physical as well as financial, of
+his experience, and that was the great thing.
+
+Or no!--perhaps for the purposes of this story there was something more
+important still. It is even now very pleasant to me to recall that he
+liked me well enough, after this long, enforced intimacy, to proffer me
+the responsible and exacting post of the company's agent at Albany.
+
+To say that the offer made me proud and glad would be to feebly understate
+my emotions. I could not be expected to decide all at once. Independent of
+the necessity of submitting the proposition to Mr. Stewart, there was a
+very deep distaste within me for fur-trading at Albany--of the meanness
+and fraudulency of which I had heard from boyhood. A good many hard
+stories are told of the Albanians, which, aside from all possible bias of
+race, I take the liberty of doubting. I do not, for instance, believe all
+the Yankee tales that the Albany Dutchmen bought from the Indians the
+silver plate which the latter seized in New England on the occasions of
+the French and Indian incursions--if for no other reason than the absence
+of proof that they ever had any plate in New England. But that the
+Indians used to be most shamefully drugged and cheated out of their
+eye-teeth in Albany, I fear there can be no reasonable doubt. An evil
+repute attached to the trade there, and I shrank from embarking in it,
+even under such splendid auspices. All the same, the offer gratified
+me greatly.
+
+To be in the woods with a man, day in and day out, is to know him through
+and through. If I had borne this closest of all conceivable forms of
+scrutiny, in the factor's estimation, there must be something good in me.
+
+So there was pride as well as joy in this first glance I cast upon the
+soft-flowing, shadowed water, upon the spreading, stately willows, upon
+the far-off furrow in the hazy lines of foliage--which spoke to me of
+home. Here at last was my dear Valley, always to me the loveliest on
+earth, but now transfigured in my eyes, and radiant beyond all dreams of
+beauty--because in it was my home, and in that home was the sweet maid
+I loved.
+
+Yes--I was returned a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the
+heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the
+swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of
+their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder.
+Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper
+breath for their absence. I had almost wept with excess of boyish feeling
+when I left the Valley--my fond old mother and protector. I gazed upon it
+now with an altogether variant emotion--as of one coming to take
+possession. Ah, the calm elation of that one moment, there alone on the
+knoll, with the sinking September sun behind me, and in front but the
+trifle of sixty miles of river route--when I realized that I was a man!
+
+Perhaps it was at this moment that I first knew I loved Daisy; perhaps it
+had been the truly dominant thought in my mind for months, gathering vigor
+and form from every tender, longing memory of the Cedars. I cannot decide,
+nor is it needful that I should. At least now my head was full of the
+triumphant thoughts that I returned successful and in high favor with my
+companion, that I had a flattering career opened for me, that the people
+at home would be pleased with me--and that I should marry Daisy.
+
+These remaining twenty leagues grew really very tedious before they were
+done with. We went down with the boats this time. I fear that Mr. Cross
+found me but poor company these last three days, for I sat mute in the bow
+most of the time, twisted around to look forward down the winding course,
+as if this would bring the Cedars nearer. I had not the heart to talk.
+"Now she is winding the yarn for my aunt," I would think; "now she is
+scattering oats for the pigeons, or filling Mr. Stewart's pipe, or running
+the candles into the moulds. Dear girl, does she wonder when I am coming?
+If she could know that I was here--here on the river speeding to
+her--what, would she think?"
+
+And I pictured to myself the pretty glance of surprise, mantling into a
+flush of joyous welcome, which would greet me on her face, as she ran
+gladly to my arms. Good old Mr. Stewart, my more than father, would stare
+at me, then smile with pleasure, and take both my hands in his, with warm,
+honest words straight from his great heart. What an evening it would be
+when, seated snugly around the huge blaze--Mr. Stewart in his arm-chair to
+the right, Daisy nestling on the stool at his knee and looking up into my
+face, and Dame Kronk knitting in the chimney-shadow to the left--I should
+tell of my adventures! How goodly a recital I could make of them, though
+they had been even tamer than they were, with such an audience! And how
+happy, how gratified they would be when I came to the climax, artfully
+postponed, of Mr. Cross's offer to me of the Albany agency!
+
+And then how natural, how easy, while these dear people were still smiling
+with pride and satisfaction at my good fortune, to say calmly--yes, calmly
+in tone, though my heart should be beating its way through my breast:
+
+"Even more, sir, I prize the hope that Daisy will share it with me--as my
+wife!"
+
+What with the delay at Caughnawaga, where Mr. Cross debarked, and Major
+Fonda would have us eat and drink while he told us the news, and Tulp's
+crazy rowing later, through excitement at nearing home, it was twilight
+before the boat was run up into our little cove, and I set my foot on
+land. The Cedars stood before us as yet lightless against the northern
+sky. The gate was open. The sweet voice of a negro singing arose from the
+cabins on the dusky hill-side. Tears came to my eyes as I turned to Tulp,
+who was gathering up the things in the boat, and said:
+
+"Do you see, boy? We're home--home at last!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
+
+
+
+I could hear the noisy clamor among the negroes over the advent of Tulp,
+whom I had sent off, desiring to be alone, while I still stood irresolute
+on the porch. My hand was on the familiar, well-worn latch, yet I almost
+hesitated to enter, so excited was I with eager anticipations of welcome.
+
+The spacious hall--our sitting-room--was deserted. A fire was blazing on
+the hearth, and plates were laid on the oak table as in preparation for a
+meal, but there was no one to speak to me. I lighted a candle, and opened
+the door to the kitchen; here too there was a fire, but my aunt was not
+visible. Mr. Stewart's room to the right of the hall, and mine to the
+left, were alike unoccupied. I threw aside my hat and watch-coat here, and
+then with the light went up-stairs, whistling as was my wont to warn Daisy
+of my coming. There was no sound or sign of movement. The door of her
+outer room stood open, and I entered and looked about.
+
+The furniture and appointments had been changed in position somewhat, so
+that the chamber seemed strange to me. There were numerous novel objects
+scattered through the rooms as well. A Spanish guitar which I had never
+seen before stood beside the old piano. There were several elegantly bound
+books, new to me, on the table; on the mantel-shelf were three miniatures,
+delicately painted, depicting a florid officer in scarlet, a handsome,
+proud-looking lady with towering powdered coiffure, and a fair-haired,
+proud-looking youth. This last I knew in an instant to be the likeness of
+Master Philip Cross, though it seemingly portrayed him at an age half-way
+between the two times I had seen him as boy and man. His resemblance to
+the lady, and then my own recurring recollection of the officer's
+features, helped me to place them as his parents.
+
+I called out "Daisy!" My voice had a faltering, mournful sound, and there
+was no answer.
+
+I came down the stairs again, burdened with a sudden sense of mental
+discomfort. Already the visions I had had of an enthusiastic welcome were
+but vague outlines of dreams. There had sprung up in my mind instead a
+sudden, novel doubt of my position in this house--a cruel idea that
+perhaps the affection which had so swelled and buoyed my heart was not
+reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the
+same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and
+the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic
+aspect, instead of the bright, honest glow of greeting.
+
+While I stood before the fire-place, still holding the candle in my hand,
+my aunt entered the room from the kitchen door. At sight of me the good
+soul gave a guttural exclamation, dropped flat an apronful of chips she
+was bringing in, and stared at me open-mouthed. When she was at last
+persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to
+be kissed by me--it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add--but
+it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were
+a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she
+brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that
+she had been out in the smoke-house.
+
+"Philip sent down two haunches yesterday by Marinus Folts," she said,
+apologetically, "and this muggy weather I was afraid they wouldn't keep."
+
+"This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not
+help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's
+infirmities. Aloud I said:
+
+"How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have
+the farms been doing?"
+
+"Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is
+the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course
+it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings
+alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor."
+
+"But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?"
+
+"But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did
+before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some,
+bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more
+elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just
+breaking the branches. And the--"
+
+"Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?"
+
+"Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they
+left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to
+the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything
+but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer
+but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I
+was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One
+of them is for you."
+
+Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working
+for me. My heart felt lighter.
+
+"But where _are_ they?" I repeated.
+
+"Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just
+built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the
+Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's
+made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and
+he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it.
+Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd
+had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."
+
+I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the
+home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when
+they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and
+began to find comfort of mind again.
+
+My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she
+came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm
+going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then,
+or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I
+would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I
+was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing
+it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with:
+
+"Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the
+trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs
+and toads?"
+
+This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had
+answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to
+the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended.
+
+I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled
+myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight
+at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him
+off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his
+jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his.
+This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck,
+and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could
+hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking
+strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of
+child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine----
+
+Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear
+ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate
+my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old
+slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with
+small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach
+upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether
+it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the
+matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the
+nights of my life!
+
+At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of
+voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and
+on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the
+slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly,
+enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark;
+but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and,
+judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party,
+I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night
+of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of
+the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these
+roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a
+time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of
+the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for
+the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them
+in any disguise.
+
+I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival--for
+which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads
+together--but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact,
+they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I
+learned afterward.
+
+All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as
+sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself
+almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and
+wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing
+me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my
+breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be
+kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation.
+
+And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour
+later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks
+flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on
+both sides.
+
+Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem
+very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another
+with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not
+possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for
+people nowadays.
+
+But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and
+quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable
+Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained.
+Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in
+fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed
+had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father.
+Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's.
+It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New
+York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very
+melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the
+house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir
+William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall--an ambitious enough name,
+surely, for a forest fishing-cottage.
+
+Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which
+they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were
+the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms,
+while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had
+ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its
+being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing
+there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been
+a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at
+pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain
+she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly
+laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen
+had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other
+habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough
+that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down.
+
+I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of
+uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under
+his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the
+house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the
+food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear.
+They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but
+to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I
+looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age
+and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep,
+nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies'
+boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had
+parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but
+still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there.
+
+It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady
+Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought
+forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but
+for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly
+cover of his simple middle life.
+
+If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them
+this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair
+cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile
+which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and
+more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of
+me, for I did not notice it.
+
+I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great
+swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion,
+fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which
+crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the
+bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all
+accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail,
+this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for
+Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr.
+Stewart was evidently much captivated by the young man's spirit and social
+qualities and demeanor generally.
+
+"He is his father's own boy, ay, and his mother's too," said the old man,
+with sparkling eyes. "Not much for books, perhaps, though no dullard. But
+he can break a wild colt, or turn a bottle inside out, or bore a
+pencilled hole with a pistol-bullet at thirty paces, or tell a story, or
+sing a song, or ride, dance, box, cross swords, with any gentleman in the
+Colony. You should have seen him stand Walrath the blacksmith on his head
+at the races a fortnight ago! I never saw it better done in the
+Tweed country."
+
+"A highly accomplished gentleman, truly," I said, with as little obvious
+satire as possible.
+
+"Ah, but he has mind as well as muscle," put in Mr. Stewart. "He is a very
+Bolingbroke with the ladies. It carries me back to my days at the play, I
+swear, to hear him and Lady Berenicia clashing rapiers in badinage. You
+shall hear them, my boy, and judge. And there's a sweet side to his
+tongue, too, or many a pretty, blushing cheek belies the little ear
+behind it."
+
+The old gentleman chuckled amiably to himself as he spoke, and poured more
+Madeira into my glass and his. Daisy somewhat hurriedly rose, bade us
+"good-night," and left us to ourselves.
+
+Oh, if I had only spoken the word that night!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
+
+
+
+I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season
+of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all
+unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and
+occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign
+barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness.
+
+Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too,
+there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had
+treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with
+affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever
+disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade
+himself that it was all for the best.
+
+But these five months had created a certain change in the social
+conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening,
+here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my
+absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now
+manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no
+doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social,
+part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible
+glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than
+elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through
+houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family
+fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers,
+husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the
+existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the
+man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it
+and I on the other.
+
+This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his
+manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had
+made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof
+of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance
+of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I
+ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to
+me, for the first time.
+
+"Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said.
+"If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing
+aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go
+to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's
+content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!"
+
+This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance
+with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded,
+looking at him. He went on:
+
+"What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these
+people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood.
+Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been,
+given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed,
+by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and
+people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would
+have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must,
+forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of
+their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence
+worth of goods!"
+
+What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a
+heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard
+to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from
+Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for
+irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have
+visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had
+engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear.
+
+Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me.
+Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even
+toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my
+poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time
+up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and
+elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of
+her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old.
+
+If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence,
+it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new
+Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft
+with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear
+girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or
+twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to
+confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she
+suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices,
+or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to
+her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me.
+
+I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long
+afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress
+at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her
+judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating
+between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with
+their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive,
+idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate,
+womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license,
+beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly
+watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind
+those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure
+might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different!
+
+But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was
+by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky.
+
+For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose,
+tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the
+old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch
+herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the
+joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us
+of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young
+Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a
+bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast,
+and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and
+gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning,
+when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see
+her cheerful once more.
+
+And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love.
+
+One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion
+she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a
+luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering
+mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise,
+and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy
+seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled
+insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter.
+
+To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to
+understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing
+but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his
+old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to
+me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no
+longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or
+say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the
+fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised
+to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or
+not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called.
+
+Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for
+the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready.
+She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my
+part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been
+invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed
+so much annoyed that I hastened to join them.
+
+It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the
+air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale
+changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way
+approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely
+red through the smoky haze.
+
+Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and
+I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the
+gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in
+fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the
+mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new
+bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep
+zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark
+rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to
+be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he
+would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side
+of the gulf was Philip's property.
+
+"It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth
+clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building
+a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the
+waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You
+know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek."
+
+Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking
+measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of
+erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the
+skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing
+edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have
+quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering,
+hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and
+about the structure.
+
+At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level,
+high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were
+assembled, and thither we bent our steps.
+
+Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my
+companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded,
+and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed
+sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly
+was handsome.
+
+He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the
+hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real
+delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers
+with his lips.
+
+"You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he
+murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with
+pleasure at him.
+
+To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is
+true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that
+he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention
+whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle
+outside the tent.
+
+Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others.
+By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was
+distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who
+took the trouble only to nod at me.
+
+Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was
+confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being
+nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was
+monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more
+discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall
+occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr.
+Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was
+chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she
+was telling.
+
+"Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to
+Tulp to follow me, I started.
+
+It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which
+forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage
+comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a
+profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon
+him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen
+and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very
+rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred
+dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no
+other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I
+made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an
+unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth
+I was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the
+very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of
+the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others,
+of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not
+been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well
+tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel
+above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I
+stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing.
+
+He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come,
+and what company I had quitted to visit him.
+
+"So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more
+vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple
+has fallen with less shaking than I thought for."
+
+I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have
+been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long,
+heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and
+saw nothing.
+
+At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day:
+
+"You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross
+asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From
+what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know
+it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'"
+
+This time I know I kept silence for a long time.
+
+I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying,
+in a voice which sounded like a stranger's:
+
+"I will go to Albany whenever you like."
+
+I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my
+path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
+
+
+
+Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road
+which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter
+weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track
+straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As
+it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a
+wayside stump, dead beat.
+
+"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick,"
+he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best
+I can."
+
+The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had
+put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention.
+"Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water
+which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at
+their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I
+stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I
+cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had
+not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the
+Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection
+as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop,
+and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale
+Adirondack outlines.
+
+As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze
+had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east
+and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them
+upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its
+cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his
+infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.
+
+"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody
+is waiting for me--nobody wants me."
+
+The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long
+afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion
+that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.
+
+"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of
+my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."
+
+Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He
+humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going
+by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road,
+and the rain was coming on.
+
+Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the
+distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.
+
+Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the
+settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a
+controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the
+hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not
+much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the
+vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my
+brain, almost frightened me.
+
+I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had
+spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah,
+fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in
+contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still
+nourished in my heart a hope--and these _were_ happiness! I laughed aloud
+at my folly in having deemed them less.
+
+She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes
+open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent
+cub!--so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I
+pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her
+grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile,
+the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed
+against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him--brawling
+dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and
+proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken
+wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration! Where were their eyes, that
+they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when
+he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?
+
+Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of
+his class, or of his pretence to class?
+
+Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could
+not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing,
+everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other
+friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John
+Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from
+boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class,"
+these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had
+never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me,
+grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink
+and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the
+gentry--save the mark!--of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never
+so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid,
+fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her;
+it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their
+congratulations.
+
+And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other
+affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge
+their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered
+stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action,
+my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before
+their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their
+hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time
+out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on
+my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as
+worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet
+with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a
+moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!
+
+Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.
+
+Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the
+self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute,
+tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal
+notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn
+to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little
+country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed
+rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed
+also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this
+Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive
+expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an
+intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all
+my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to
+employment!
+
+It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was
+more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three
+bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman
+was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the
+blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia
+was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel
+gilt, the gaudier the better!
+
+But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing
+pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason
+runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours'
+wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh
+murderous in its fierceness.
+
+The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of
+thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat.
+The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood.
+
+On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from
+the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn,
+rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A
+half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars,
+and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it
+was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart
+and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and
+that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to
+accompany them.
+
+"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's
+human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty
+beckon the other way."
+
+I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We
+resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily
+pelting upon our backs.
+
+When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the
+waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail
+was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you
+could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct
+mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly
+and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears,
+and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.
+
+At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.
+
+He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a
+walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion;
+yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a
+song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that
+neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on
+this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!
+
+He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not
+interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility
+toward me.
+
+"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I
+see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this
+"--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.
+
+I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I
+could only hope he failed to note:
+
+"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you
+like--here! now!"
+
+He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are
+drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"
+
+"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him
+square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was
+ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner
+that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."
+
+The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his
+surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his
+great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of
+mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.
+
+If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration.
+There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his
+knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my
+superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing,
+there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over,
+he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his
+coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully.
+I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and
+was vexed with myself for it.
+
+We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a
+final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not
+only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood
+upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift
+movement past me from behind.
+
+I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that
+followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful
+slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus
+place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.
+
+To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.
+
+There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close
+before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow
+in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side
+of the cliff!
+
+Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips
+over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very
+moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end,
+one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the
+Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which
+recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had
+chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till
+the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed
+me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he
+said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than
+poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless
+morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my
+readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled
+the Englishman.
+
+The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight
+out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.
+
+With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as
+possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty
+masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the
+far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably
+sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught
+sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine,
+limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but
+it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my
+antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked
+at him.
+
+The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently,
+for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had
+been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him.
+
+I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin
+defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and
+stood for a moment frowning down at me.
+
+"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a
+new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see
+you again."
+
+"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break
+every bone in your body."
+
+With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I
+continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp
+was waiting for me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
+
+
+
+The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding
+his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic.
+
+He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had
+from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been
+more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines.
+He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and
+some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though
+all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my
+neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as
+by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over
+the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall
+came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet
+and miserable affair.
+
+When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise
+to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what
+to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had
+overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far
+from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my
+part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word
+or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far
+as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest.
+Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage
+feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon
+the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive
+way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my
+fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my
+mortification and rage.
+
+When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself
+by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart;
+both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in
+the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as
+this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat
+at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then
+sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather,
+lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room.
+
+"Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened?
+There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?"
+
+I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her:
+
+"The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie
+it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by
+the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!"
+
+Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room,
+closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting
+over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them
+for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining
+at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for
+making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon
+as possible leave the Cedars.
+
+When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper.
+Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude,
+with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a
+complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the
+simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone
+to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt
+the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his
+curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the
+dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not
+ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was
+impendent.
+
+Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily:
+
+"Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your
+wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness
+in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been
+only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of
+truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet.
+But his scornful sternness hardened me.
+
+"Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper."
+
+More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred
+fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the
+chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I
+knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again:
+
+"Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association
+has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by
+want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back."
+
+I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly
+ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved
+toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the
+apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over
+now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He
+seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile,
+and he was some time in finding them.
+
+"In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my
+equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small
+matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment
+which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find
+myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person
+who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the
+appearance of respect for my gray hairs."
+
+He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender,
+ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on:
+
+"In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being
+wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has
+come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily
+observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I
+will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful,
+respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you
+developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of
+your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way,
+virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your
+credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much
+consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I
+had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken
+altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of
+my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours."
+
+"Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he
+paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you."
+
+He went on as if I had not spoken:
+
+"Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your
+voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position
+and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to
+dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not
+forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my
+disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your
+education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of
+what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting
+and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to
+me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her
+chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would
+fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my
+duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed."
+
+The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered
+under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul
+and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell.
+
+Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and
+foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct
+or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long,
+stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my
+actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly
+stood my ground.
+
+"If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly
+be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and
+to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can
+the simple truth affront?"
+
+"What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being
+thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose
+to describe him thus."
+
+"I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor
+devil escaped with his life."
+
+"How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days
+slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason."
+
+"Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not
+understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with
+rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as
+we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need
+for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off."
+
+"Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?"
+
+"I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have
+killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not
+put other things in our heads."
+
+"My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time,
+then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in
+apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than
+before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in
+this than I thought. Explain it to me."
+
+I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference,
+than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel.
+
+"What am I to explain?" I asked.
+
+"Why were you quarrelling with Philip?"
+
+"Because I felt like it--because I hate him!"
+
+"Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two?
+I demand to know!"
+
+"If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth
+in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he
+has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be
+worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his
+fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you
+and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to
+deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My
+throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might
+not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes.
+
+My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in
+the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed
+them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since
+familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing
+sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my
+voice came back to me.
+
+"If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first
+looked on the Valley--_our_ Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could
+only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from
+this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you
+could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that
+evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah,
+then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning
+with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and
+her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and
+sullen, _that_ is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and
+upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the
+displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if
+I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess
+of tenderness trampled underfoot."
+
+At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all
+events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old.
+He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly.
+
+"My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time
+gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not
+have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset,
+the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right
+in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go
+aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies
+and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a
+melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these
+sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to
+Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would
+be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the
+beginning."
+
+I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth.
+
+"Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them.
+
+He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly
+with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have,
+waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my
+heart--to have Daisy for my wife."
+
+As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether
+strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she
+and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we
+were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not
+infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and
+all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness
+of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a
+lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious,
+civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image
+of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the
+delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home
+that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now
+with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should
+crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover,
+that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as
+innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child
+approaching to kiss its mother.
+
+"Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom
+it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you
+will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling."
+
+His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly
+enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no
+fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the
+very wisest to bestow.
+
+He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments
+exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world.
+In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of
+every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other
+distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just
+the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he
+essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent.
+He added, I remember, a personal parallel:
+
+"I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my
+grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young
+Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other
+thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of
+her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and
+hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I
+verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket
+this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony
+Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are
+kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns
+sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if
+you would deny her the gallant of her choice?"
+
+"If I believed," I blurted out, "that it _was_ her own free choice!"
+
+"Whose else, then, pray?"
+
+"If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not
+been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--"
+
+"Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning
+testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all
+these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the
+youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had
+spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it
+might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We
+who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred
+bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be
+no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own
+judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I
+mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony.
+Perhaps--who knows?--he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of
+these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon
+enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow
+freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way."
+
+My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never
+abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went
+to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came.
+
+The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent
+down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal
+for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we
+hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task.
+
+It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the
+wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told
+Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and
+take up the proffered agency.
+
+He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong
+opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the
+best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or
+made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with
+my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by
+my perseverance in the project.
+
+Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences
+with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he
+was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with
+voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and
+much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among
+others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon,
+who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I
+never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of
+more utility.
+
+In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a
+departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few
+times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of
+that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the
+incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to
+Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I
+fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.
+At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with
+my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not
+sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.
+
+It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began
+life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried
+with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of
+compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of
+the Cedars.
+
+As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
+
+
+
+The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new
+world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with
+but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this
+distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost
+at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had
+left behind.
+
+For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.
+I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter
+was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was
+pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager
+national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places,
+to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly
+the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to
+prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as
+possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to
+encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome
+settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was
+easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from
+scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then,
+however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.
+
+Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in
+it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most
+delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were
+to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were
+equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed
+brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting
+water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I
+had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the
+Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses,
+here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New
+England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a
+pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the
+conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.
+
+And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There
+were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen
+had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had
+weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told
+of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the
+hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie
+Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great
+town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its
+population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four
+hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and
+were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect
+was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the
+grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The
+wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is
+thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps
+of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.
+Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from
+the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.
+
+Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when
+men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The
+only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to
+barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and
+occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his
+representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.
+For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and
+comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even
+to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea
+fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other
+town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our
+own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted
+slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.
+
+There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the
+firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the
+Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old
+age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass
+unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know
+how neither to rest nor to play.
+
+But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in
+the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already
+sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of
+books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself
+almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances
+were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was
+repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for
+them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies
+were mine.
+
+But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and
+rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the
+outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the
+uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost
+citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others
+not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen
+before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon
+terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger
+men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age,
+and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.
+
+These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not
+inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or
+to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had
+seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were
+masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had
+suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my
+surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with
+loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another
+name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen
+disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the
+ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence
+the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its
+citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political
+life, were of my way of thinking.
+
+More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against
+England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in
+our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth,
+and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and
+social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act
+crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly
+discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in
+our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious
+of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked
+the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret
+these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found
+myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils
+of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it,
+as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.
+Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became
+the most ardent of Whigs?
+
+Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established,
+there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole
+current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There
+were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern,
+to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a
+considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of
+provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at
+Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and
+there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped
+hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no
+obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare
+expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.
+
+Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had
+entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind
+and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting
+alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking
+of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the
+Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching
+completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.
+Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for
+me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the
+collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against
+Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.
+The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my
+disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of
+myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon
+other things.
+
+Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her
+ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had
+established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.
+I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed
+me, which was not at all.
+
+The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the
+company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business,
+push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English
+charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run
+over here."
+
+So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.
+
+It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held
+me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true
+that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city,
+for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always
+seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the
+town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This
+made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I
+am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who
+came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in
+estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.
+
+I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each
+quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the
+company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went
+to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my
+progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased
+at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But
+that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than
+the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year
+than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have
+learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my
+companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of
+mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden,
+and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.
+
+So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently
+rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped
+meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling
+tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs,
+twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent
+position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to
+mortal man.
+
+Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this
+correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of
+the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
+
+
+
+We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night
+not to be forgotten while memory remains to me.
+
+There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons,
+and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian
+lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon
+was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business
+which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer
+mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country
+roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been
+despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite
+the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson
+had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir
+John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this
+opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he
+had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in
+company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with
+more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and
+flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was
+I at last to meet Daisy?
+
+Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and
+decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the
+most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more
+beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening
+return to me.
+
+You may still see for yourselves how noble, one might say palatial, was
+the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on
+the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no
+power of fancy can restore for _you_--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic
+people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad,
+fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome;
+the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights,
+hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the
+stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their
+passengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich
+velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright
+eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair breasts--all radiant in the
+hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of
+gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the
+horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of
+color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the
+spacious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her
+son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests.
+No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You
+shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy.
+
+The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all,
+pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the
+best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery
+beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead.
+
+This round, lustrous orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to
+every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that
+this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm
+was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost
+stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman,
+when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the
+formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see
+sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one
+another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust
+over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it.
+
+It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess.
+She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The
+Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before
+her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my
+roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is
+trouble brewing."
+
+I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left,
+but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words
+with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of
+whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then
+rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all
+liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it
+would not do to pass him by unheeded.
+
+While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of
+the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the
+hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space
+clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I
+perforce followed.
+
+I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book
+had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been
+equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects.
+Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was
+now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of
+English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his
+office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered
+me his hand.
+
+It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his
+great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had
+Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his
+long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few
+words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I passed to make room for
+others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood.
+
+"The old fox!" he said, smilingly nodding toward Colden. "One may not but
+like him, for all his tricks. If England had had the wit to keep that rude
+boor of a Tryon at home, and make Colden governor, and listen to him,
+matters would have gone better. Who is that behind him? Oh, yes,
+De Lancey."
+
+Oliver de Lancey was chiefly notable on account of his late brother James,
+who had been chief justice and lieutenant-governor, and the most
+brilliant, unscrupulous, masterful politician of his time. Oliver was
+himself a man of much energy and ambition. I observed him curiously, for
+his mother had been a Van Cortlandt, and I had some of that blood in my
+veins as well. So far as it had contributed to shape his face, I was not
+proud of it, for he had a selfish and arrogant mien.
+
+It was more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of
+the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their
+characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip
+Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite
+forty years of age, almost of my stature--that is to say, a tall man. He
+held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air,
+which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under
+the powder, helped to confirm. But no one could speak in amity with him
+without finding him to be the most affable and sweet-natured of men. If he
+had had more of the personal vanity and self-love which his bearing seemed
+to indicate, it would have served him well, perhaps, when New England
+jealousy assailed and overbore him. But he was too proud to fight for
+himself, and too patriotic not to fight for his country, whether the just
+reward came or was withheld.
+
+Colonel Schuyler had been chosen as one of the five delegates of the
+Colony to attend the first Continental Congress, now sitting at
+Philadelphia, but ill-health had compelled him to decline the journey. He
+had since been to New York, however, where he had learned much of the
+situation, and now was in receipt of tidings from the Congress itself. By
+a compromise in the New York Assembly, both parties had been represented
+in our delegation, the Whigs sending Philip Livingston and Isaac Low, the
+Tories James Duane and John Jay, and the fifth man, one Alsopp, being a
+neutral-tinted individual to whom neither side could object. The
+information which Schuyler had received was to the effect that all five,
+under the tremendous and enthusiastic pressure they had encountered in
+Philadelphia, had now resolved to act together in all things for the
+Colonies and against the Crown.
+
+"That means," said he, "that we shall all adopt Massachusetts's cause as
+our own. After Virginia led the way with Patrick Henry's speech, there was
+no other course possible for even Jay and Duane. I should like to hear
+that man Henry. He must be wonderful."
+
+The space about Mr. Colden had shifted across the room, so that we were
+now upon its edge, and Schuyler went to him with outstretched hand. The
+two men exchanged a glance, and each knew what the other was thinking of.
+
+"Your excellency has heard from Philadelphia," said the Colonel, more as a
+statement of fact than as an inquiry.
+
+"Sad, sad!" exclaimed the aged politician, in a low tone. "It is a grief
+instead of a joy to have lived so long, if my life must end amid
+contention and strife."
+
+"He is really sincere in deploring the trouble," said Schuyler, when he
+had rejoined me. "He knows in his heart that the Ministry are pig-headedly
+wrong, and that we are in the right. He would do justice if he could, but
+he is as powerless as I am so far as influencing London goes, and here he
+is in the hands of the De Lanceys. To give the devil his due, I believe
+Sir William Johnson was on our side, too, at heart."
+
+We had talked of this before, and out of deference to my sentiments of
+liking and gratitude to Sir William, he always tried to say amiable things
+about the late baronet to me. But they did not come easily, for there was
+an old-time feud between the two families. The dislike dated back to the
+beginning of young Johnson's career, when, by taking sides shrewdly in a
+political struggle between Clinton and De Lancey, he had ousted John
+Schuyler, Philip's grandfather, from the Indian commissionership and
+secured it for himself. In later years, since the Colonel had come to
+manhood, he had been forced into rivalry, almost amounting to antagonism
+at times, with the baronet, in Colonial and Indian affairs; and even now,
+after the baronet's death, it was hard for him to acknowledge the
+existence of all the virtues which my boyish liking had found in Sir
+William. But still he did try, if only to please me.
+
+As we spoke, Sir John Johnson passed us, in company with several younger
+men, pushing toward the room to the right, where the punch-bowl
+was placed.
+
+"At least, _he_ is no friend of yours?" said Schuyler, indicating the
+red-faced young baronet.
+
+"No man less so," I replied, promptly. Two years ago I doubt I should have
+been so certain of my entire enmity toward Sir John. But in the interim
+all my accumulating political fervor had unconsciously stretched back to
+include the Johnstown Tories; I found myself now honestly hating them all
+alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude
+toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish
+dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to
+make him the chief object of my aversion.
+
+We talked of him now, and of his wife, a beautiful, sweet-faced girl of
+twenty, who had been Polly Watts of New York. My companion pointed her out
+to me, as one of a circle beyond the fire-place. He had only soft words
+and pity for her--as if foreseeing the anguish and travail soon to be
+brought upon her by her husband's misdeeds--but he spoke very slightingly
+and angrily of Sir John. To Schuyler's mind there was no good in him.
+
+"I have known him more or less since he was a boy and followed his father
+in the Lake George campaign. The officers then could not abide him, though
+some were submissive to him because of his father's position. So now,
+fifteen years afterward, although he has many toadies and flatterers, I
+doubt his having any real friends. Through all these score of years, I
+have yet to learn of any gracious or manly thing he has done."
+
+"At least he did gallop from the Fort to the Hall at news of his father's
+death, and kill his horse by the pace," I said.
+
+"Heirs can afford to ride swiftly," replied the Colonel, in a dry tone.
+"No: he has neither the honesty to respect the rights of others, nor the
+wit to enforce those which he arrogates to himself. Look at his management
+in the Mohawk Valley. Scarce two months after the old baronet's
+death--before he was barely warm in his father's bed--all the Dutch and
+Palatines and Cherry Valley Scotch were up in arms against him and his
+friends. I call that the work of a fool. Why, Tryon County ought, by all
+the rules, to be the Tories' strongest citadel. There, of all other
+places, they should be able to hold their own. Old Sir William would have
+contrived matters better, believe me. But this sulky, slave-driving cub
+must needs force the quarrel from the start. Already they have their
+committee in the Palatine district, with men like Frey and Yates and Paris
+on it, and their resolutions are as strong as any we have heard."
+
+Others came up at this, and I moved away, thinking to pay my respects to
+friends in the rooms on the left. The fine hall was almost overcrowded.
+One's knee struck a sword, or one's foot touched a satin train, at every
+step. There were many whom I knew, chiefly Albanians, and my progress was
+thus rendered slow. At the door I met my kinsman, Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn.
+
+"Ha! well met, Cousin Sobriety!" he cried. "Let us cross the hall, and get
+near the punch-bowl."
+
+"It is my idea that you have had enough," I answered.
+
+"'Too much is enough,' as the Indian said. He was nearer the truth than
+you are," replied Teunis, taking my arm.
+
+"No, not now! First let me see who is here."
+
+"Who is here? Everybody--from Hendrik Hudson and Killian the First down.
+Old Centenarian Colden is telling them about William the Silent, whom he
+remembers very well."
+
+"I have never heard any one speak of Teunis the Silent."
+
+"Nor ever will! It is not my _métier_, as the French students used to say.
+Well, then, I will turn back with you; but the punch will all be gone,
+mark my words. I saw Johnson and Watts and their party headed for the bowl
+five-and-twenty minutes ago. We shall get not so much as a lemon-seed. But
+I sacrifice myself."
+
+We entered the room, and my eyes were drawn, as by the force of a million
+magnets, to the place where Daisy sat.
+
+For the moment she was unattended. She was very beautifully attired, and
+jewels glistened from her hair and throat. Her eyes were downcast--looking
+upon the waxed floor as if in meditation. Even to this sudden, momentary
+glance, her fair face looked thinner and paler than I remembered it--and
+ah, how well did I remember it! With some muttered word of explanation I
+broke away from my companion, and went straight to her.
+
+She had not noted my presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood
+before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had
+expected. She smiled in a wan way, and gave me her hand.
+
+"I knew you were here," she said, in a soft voice which I scarcely
+recognized, so changed, I might say saddened, was it by the introduction
+of some plaintive, minor element. "Philip told me. I thought that sooner
+or later I should see you."
+
+"And I have thought of little else but the chance of seeing you," I
+replied, speaking what was in my heart, with no reflection save that this
+was our Daisy, come into my life again.
+
+She was silent for a moment, her eyes seeking the floor and a faint glow
+coming upon her cheeks. Then she raised them to my face, with something of
+the old sparkle in their glance.
+
+"Well, then," she said, drawing aside her skirts, "sit here, and see me."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust Upon Me.
+
+
+
+I sat beside Daisy, and we talked. It was at the beginning a highly
+superficial conversation, as I remember it, during which neither looked at
+the other, and each made haste to fill up any threatened lapse into
+silence by words of some sort, it mattered not much what.
+
+She told me a great deal about Mr. Stewart's health, which I learned was
+far less satisfactory than his letters had given reason to suspect. In
+reply to questions, I told her of my business and my daily life here in
+Albany. I did not ask her in return about herself. She seemed eager to
+forestall any possible inquiry on this point, and hastened to inform me as
+to my old acquaintances in the Valley.
+
+From her words I first realized how grave the situation there had suddenly
+become. It was not only that opposition to the Johnsons had been openly
+formulated, but feuds of characteristic bitterness had sprung up within
+families, and between old-time friends, in consequence. Colonel Henry
+Frey, who owned the upper Canajoharie mills, took sides with the Tories,
+and had fiercely quarrelled with his brother John, who was one of the Whig
+Committee. There was an equally marked division in the Herkimer family,
+where one brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, and his nephew, outraged the others
+by espousing the Tory cause. So instances might be multiplied. Already on
+one side there were projects of forcible resistance, and on the other ugly
+threats of using the terrible Indian power, which hung portentous on the
+western skirt of the Valley, to coerce the Whigs.
+
+I gained from this recital, more from her manner than her words, that her
+sympathies were with the people and not with the aristocrats. She went on
+to say things which seemed to offer an explanation of this.
+
+The tone of Valley society, at least so far as it was a reflection of
+Johnson Hall, had, she said, deteriorated wofully since the old baronet's
+death. A reign of extravagance and recklessness both as to money and
+temper--of gambling, racing, hard drinking, low sports, and coarse
+manners--had set in. The friends of Sir John were now a class by
+themselves, having no relations to speak of with the body of Whig farmers,
+merchants, inn-keepers, and the like. Rather it seemed to please the Tory
+clique to defy the good opinion of their neighbors, and show by very
+excess and license contempt for their judgment. Some of the young men whom
+I had known were of late sadly altered. She spoke particularly of Walter
+Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the
+evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a
+sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to distinguish sometimes
+from madness.
+
+In all this I found but one reflection--rising again and again as she
+spoke--and this was that she was telling me, by inference, the story of
+her own unhappiness.
+
+Daisy would never have done this consciously--of that I am positive. But
+it was betrayed in every line of her face, and my anxious ear caught it in
+every word she uttered as to the doings of the Johnson party. Doubtless
+she did not realize how naturally and closely I would associate her
+husband with that party.
+
+Underneath all our talk there had been, on both sides, I dare say, a sense
+of awkward constraint. There were so many things which we must not speak
+of--things which threatened incessantly to force their way to the surface.
+
+I thought of them all, and wondered how much she knew of the events that
+preceded my departure--how much she guessed of the heart-breaking grief
+with which I had seen her go to another. It came back to me now, very
+vividly, as I touched the satin fold of her gown with my shoe, and said to
+myself, "This is really she."
+
+The two years had not passed so uncomfortably, it is true; work and
+pre-occupation and the change of surroundings had brought me back my peace
+of mind and taken the keen edge from my despair--which was to have been
+life-long, and had faded in a month. Yet now her simple presence--with the
+vague added feeling that she was unhappy--sufficed to wipe out the whole
+episode of Albany, and transport me bodily back to the old Valley days. I
+felt again all the anguish at losing her, all the bitter wrath at the
+triumph of my rival--emphasized and intensified now by the implied
+confession that he had proved unworthy.
+
+To this gloom there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition,
+the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air
+about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence.
+The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping
+us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as
+I did?
+
+I looked up into her face. She had been silent for I know not how long,
+following her thoughts as I had followed mine. It was almost a shock to me
+to find that the talk had died away, and I fancied that I read a kindred
+embarrassment in her eyes. I seized upon the first subject which
+entered my head.
+
+"Tulp would be glad to see you," I said, foolishly enough.
+
+She colored slightly, and opened and shut her fan in a nervous way. "Poor
+Tulp!" she said, "I don't think he ever liked me as he did you. Is
+he well?"
+
+"He has never been quite the same since--since he came to Albany. He is a
+faithful body-servant now--nothing more."
+
+"Yes," she said, softly, with a sigh; then, after a pause, "Philip spoke
+of offering to make good to you your money loss in Tulp, but I told him he
+would better not."
+
+"It _was_ better not," I answered.
+
+Silence menaced us again. I did not find myself indignant at this
+insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly
+close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near
+Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts of him whatsoever.
+
+"You do Tulp a wrong," I said. "Poor little fellow! Do you remember--" and
+so we drifted into the happy, sunlit past, with its childish memories for
+both of games and forest rambles, and innocent pleasures making every day
+a little blissful lifetime by itself, and all the years behind our parting
+one sweet prolonged delight.
+
+Words came freely now; we looked into each other's faces without
+constraint, and laughed at the pastimes we recalled. It was so pleasant to
+be together again, and there was so much of charm for us both in the time
+which we remembered together.
+
+Sir John Johnson and his party had left the punch--or what remained of
+it--and came suddenly up to us. Behind the baronet I saw young Watts,
+young De Lancey, one or two others whom I did not know, and, yes!--it was
+he--Philip Cross.
+
+He had altered in appearance greatly. The two years had added much flesh
+to his figure, which was now burly, and seemed to have diminished his
+stature in consequence. His face, which even I had once regarded as
+handsome, was hardened now in expression, and bore an unhealthy, reddish
+hue. For that matter, all these young men were flushed with drink, and had
+entered rather boisterously, attracting attention as they progressed. This
+attention was not altogether friendly. Some of the ladies had drawn in
+their skirts impatiently, as they passed, and beyond them I saw a group of
+Dutch friends of mine, among them Teunis, who were scowling dark looks at
+the new-comers.
+
+Sir John recognized me as he approached, and deigned to say, "Ha!
+Mauverensen--you here?" after a cool fashion, and not offering his hand.
+
+I had risen, not knowing what his greeting would be like. It was only
+decent now to say: "I was much grieved to hear of your honored father's
+death last summer."
+
+"Well you might be!" said polite Sir John. "He served you many a good
+purpose. I saw you talking out yonder with Schuyler, that coward who dared
+not go to Philadelphia and risk his neck for his treason. I dare say he,
+too, was convulsed with grief over my father's death!"
+
+"Perhaps you would like to tell Philip Schuyler to his face that he is a
+coward," I retorted, in rising heat at the unprovoked insolence in his
+tone. "There is no braver man in the Colony."
+
+"But he didn't go to Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty
+scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list."
+
+"He did not go for a reason which is perfectly well known--his illness
+forbade the journey."
+
+"Yes," sneered the baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance;
+"too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told,
+he has been most of the time since your--what d'ye call it?--Congress
+assembled."
+
+I grew angry. "He went there to bury General Bradstreet. That, also, is
+well known. Information seems to reach the Valley but indifferently, Sir
+John. Everywhere else people understand and appreciate the imperative
+nature of the summons which called Colonel Schuyler to New York. The
+friendship of the two men has been a familiar matter of knowledge this
+fifteen years. I know not your notions of friendship's duties; but for a
+gentleman like Schuyler, scarcely a mortal illness itself could serve to
+keep him from paying the last respect to a friend whose death was such an
+affliction to him."
+
+Johnson had begun some response, truculent in tone, when an interruption
+came from a most unexpected source. Philip Cross, who had looked at me
+closely without betraying any sign of recognition, put his hand now on Sir
+John's shoulder.
+
+"Bradstreet?" he said. "Did I not know him? Surely he is the man who found
+his friend's wife so charming that he sent that friend to distant
+posts--to England, to Quebec, to Oswego, and Detroit--and amused himself
+here at home during the husband's absence. I am told he even built a
+mansion for her while the spouse was in London _on business._ So he is
+dead, eh?"
+
+I had felt the bitter purport of his words, almost before they were out.
+It was a familiar scandal in the mouths of the Johnson coterie--this foul
+assertion that Mrs. Schuyler, one of the best and most faithful of
+helpmates, as witty as she was beautiful, as good as she was diligent, in
+truth, an ideal wife, had pursued through many years a course of deceit
+and dishonor, and that her husband, the noblest son of our Colony, had
+been base enough to profit by it. Of all the cruel and malignant things to
+which the Tories laid their mean tongues, this was the lowest and most
+false. I could not refrain from putting my hand on my sword-hilt as
+I answered:
+
+"Such infamous words as these are an insult to every gentleman, the world
+over, who has ever presented a friend to his family!"
+
+Doubtless there was apparent in my face, as in the exaggerated formality
+of my bow to Cross, a plain invitation to fight. If there had not been,
+then my manner would have wofully belied my intent. It was, in fact, so
+plain that Daisy, who sat close by my side, and, like some others near at
+hand, had heard every word that had passed, half-started to her feet and
+clutched my sleeve, as with an appeal against my passionate purpose.
+
+Her husband had not stirred from his erect and arrogant posture until he
+saw his wife's frightened action. I could see that he noted this, and that
+it further angered him. He also laid his hand on his sword now, and
+frigidly inclined his wigged head toward me.
+
+"I had not the honor of addressing you, sir," he said, in a low voice,
+very much at variance with the expression in his eyes. "I had no wish to
+exchange words with you, or with any of your sour-faced tribe. But if you
+desire a conversation--a lengthy and more private conversation--I am at
+your disposition. Let me say here, however,"--and he glanced with fierce
+meaning at Daisy as he spoke--"I am not a Schuyler; I do not encourage
+'friends.'"
+
+Even Sir John saw that this was too much.
+
+"Come, come, Cross!" he said, going to his friend. "Your tongue runs away
+with you." Then, in a murmur, he added: "Damn it, man! Don't drag your
+wife into the thing. Skewer the Dutchman outside, if you like, and if you
+are steady enough, but remember what you are about."
+
+I could hear this muttered exhortation as distinctly as I had heard
+Cross's outrageous insult. Sir John's words appealed to me even more than
+they did to his companion. I was already ashamed to have been led into a
+display of temper and a threat of quarrelling, here in the company of
+ladies, and on such an occasion. We were attracting attention, moreover,
+and Teunis and some of his Dutch friends had drawn nearer, evidently
+understanding that a dispute was at hand. The baronet's hint about Daisy
+completed my mortification. _I_ should have been the one to think of her,
+to be restrained by her presence, and to prevent, at any cost, her name
+being associated with the quarrel by so much as the remotest inference.
+
+So I stood irresolute, with my hand still on my sword, and black rage
+still tearing at my heart, but with a mist of self-reproach and indecision
+before my eyes, in which lights, costumes, powdered wigs, gay figures
+about me, all swam dizzily.
+
+Stephen Watts, a man in manner, though a mere stripling in years, had
+approached me from the other group, a yard off, in a quiet way to avoid
+observation. He whispered:
+
+"There must be no quarrel _here_, Mr. Mauverensen. And there must be no
+notice taken of his last words--spoken in heat, and properly due, I dare
+say, to the punch rather than to the man."
+
+"I feel that as deeply as you can," I replied.
+
+"I am glad," said Watts, still in a sidelong whisper. "If you must fight,
+let there be some tolerable pretext."
+
+"We have one ready standing," I whispered back. "When we last met I warned
+him that at our next encounter I should break every bone in his skin. Is
+not that enough?"
+
+"Capital! Who is your friend?"
+
+By some remarkable intuition my kinsman Teunis was prompted to advance at
+this. I introduced the two young men to each other, and they sauntered
+off, past where Sir John was still arguing with Cross, and into the outer
+hall. I stood watching them till they disappeared, then looking aimlessly
+at the people in front of me, who seemed to belong to some strange
+phantasmagoria.
+
+It was Daisy's voice which awakened me from this species of trance. She
+spoke from behind her fan, purposely avoiding looking up at me.
+
+"You are going to fight--you two!" she murmured.
+
+I could not answer her directly, and felt myself flushing with
+embarrassment. "He spoke in heat," I said, stumblingly. "Doubtless he will
+apologize--to you, at least."
+
+"You do not know him. He would have his tongue torn out before he would
+admit his wrong, or any sorrow for it."
+
+To this I could find no reply. It was on my tongue's end to say that men
+who had a pride in combining obstinacy with insolence must reap what they
+sow, but I wisely kept silence.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Promise me, Douw, that you will not fight. It chills my heart, even the
+thought of it. Let it pass. Go away now--anything but a quarrel! I
+beseech you!"
+
+"'Tis more easily said than done," I muttered back to her. "Men cannot
+slip out of du--out of quarrels as they may out of coats."
+
+"For my sake!" came the whisper, with a pleading quaver in it, from behind
+the feathers.
+
+"It is all on one side, Daisy," I protested. "I must be ridden over,
+insulted, scorned, flouted to my face--and pocket it all! That is a
+nigger's portion, not a gentleman's. You do not know what I have
+borne already."
+
+"Do I not? Ah, too well! For my sake, Douw, for the sake of our memories
+of the dear old home, I implore you to avoid an encounter. Will you
+not--for me?"
+
+"It makes a coward out of me! Every Tory in the two counties will cackle
+over the story that a Dutchman, a Whig, was affronted here under the
+Patroon's very roof, and dared not resent it."
+
+"How much do you value their words? Must a thing be true for them to say
+it? The real manhood is shown in the strength of restraint, not the
+weakness of yielding to the impulse of the moment. And you can be strong
+if you choose, Douw!"
+
+While I still pondered these words Teunis Van Hoorn returned to me, having
+finished his consultation with Watts, whom I now saw whispering to Sir
+John and the others who clustered about Cross.
+
+The doctor was in good spirits. He sidled up to me, uttering aloud some
+merry commonplace, and then adding, in a low tone:
+
+"I was a match for him. He insisted that they were the aggrieved party,
+and chose swords. I stuck to it that we occupied that position, and had
+the right to choose pistols. You are no Frenchman, to spit flesh with a
+wire; but you _can_ shoot, can't you? If we stand to our point, they
+must yield."
+
+I cast a swift glance toward the sweet, pleading face at my side, and made
+answer:
+
+"I will not fight!"
+
+My kinsman looked at me with surprise and vexation.
+
+"No," I went on, "it is not our way here. You have lived so long abroad
+that duelling seems a natural and proper thing. But we stay-at-homes no
+more recognize the right of these English fops to force their fighting
+customs upon us than we rush to tie our hair in queues because it is
+their fashion."
+
+I will not pretend that I was much in love with the line of action thus
+lamely defended. To the contrary, it seemed to me then a cowardly and
+unworthy course; but I had chosen it, and I could not retreat.
+
+There was upon the moment offered temptation enough to test my resolution
+sorely.
+
+Many of the ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let
+it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust
+upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson
+stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost our sole
+observers.
+
+Philip Cross shook himself loose from the restraining circle of friends,
+and strode toward me, his face glowing darkly with passion, and his
+hands clinched.
+
+"You run away, do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where
+you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?--here, where you stand!"
+
+"I hear you," I made answer, striving hard to keep my voice down and my
+resolution up. "Others hear you, too. There are ladies in the room. If you
+have any right to be among gentlemen, it is high time for you to show it.
+You are acting like a blackguard."
+
+"Hear the preaching Dutchman!" he called out, with a harsh, scornful
+laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his
+hiding-place behind the petticoats.--Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and
+I'll break that sword of yours over your back!"
+
+Where this all would have ended I cannot tell. My friends gathered around
+beside me, and at my back. Cross advanced a step or two nearer to me, his
+companions with him. I felt, rather than saw, the gestures preceding the
+drawing of swords. I cast a single glance toward the group of women across
+the room--who, huddled together, were gazing at us with pale faces and
+fixed eyes--and I dare say the purport of my glance was that I had borne
+all I could, and that the results were beyond my control--when suddenly
+there came an unlooked-for interruption.
+
+The dignified, sober figure of Abraham Ten Broeck appeared in our wrathful
+circle. Some one had doubtless told him, in the outer hall, of the
+quarrel, and he had come to interfere. A hush fell over us all at
+his advent.
+
+"What have we here, gentlemen?" asked the merchant, looking from one to
+another of our heated faces with a grave air of authority. "Are you well
+advised to hold discussions here, in what ought to be a pleasant and
+social company?"
+
+No ready answer was forthcoming. The quarrel was none of my manufacture,
+and it was not my business to explain it to him. The Tories were secretly
+disgusted, I fancy, with the personal aspects of the dispute, and had
+nothing to say. Only Cross, who unfortunately did not know the new-comer,
+and perhaps would not have altered his manner if he had known him, said
+uncivilly:
+
+"The matter concerns us alone, sir. It is no affair of outsiders."
+
+I saw the blood mount to Mr. Ten Broeck's dark cheeks, and the fire flash
+in his eyes. But the Dutch gentleman kept tight bit on his tongue
+and temper.
+
+"Perhaps I am not altogether an outsider, young sir," he replied, calmly.
+"It might be thought that I would have a right to civil answers here."
+
+"Who is he?" asked Cross, contemptuously turning his head toward Sir John.
+
+Mr. Ten Broeck took the reply upon himself. "I am the uncle and guardian
+of your boy-host," he said, quietly. "In a certain sense I am myself your
+host--though it may be an honor which I shall not enjoy again."
+
+There was a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to
+impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant,
+and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on
+the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the
+principals changed his posture with a sense of relief.
+
+Philip Cross presently went over to where the ladies stood, exchanged a
+few words with them, and then with his male friends left the room,
+affecting great composure and indifference. It was departing time; the
+outer hall was beginning to display cloaks, hoods, and tippets, and from
+without could be heard the voices of the negroes, bawling out demands for
+carriages.
+
+I had only a momentary chance of saying farewell to Daisy. Doubtless I
+ought to have held aloof from her altogether, but I felt that to be
+impossible. She gave me her hand, looking still very pale and distrait,
+and murmured only, "It was brave of you, Douw."
+
+I did not entirely agree with her, so I said in reply: "I hope you will
+be happy, dear girl; that I truly hope. Give my love and duty to Mr.
+Stewart, and--and if I may be of service to you, no matter in how exacting
+or how slight a matter, I pray you command me."
+
+We exchanged good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left
+me to join Lady Johnson and to depart with their company.
+
+Later, when I walked homeward with Teunis, sauntering in the moonlight, he
+imparted something to me which he had heard, in confidence of course, from
+one of the ladies who had formed the anxious little group that watched
+our quarrel.
+
+"After Ten Broeck came in, Cross went over to his wife, and brusquely said
+to her, in the hearing of her friends, that your acquaintance with her was
+an insult to him, and that he forbade her ever again holding converse
+with you!"
+
+We walked a considerable time in silence after this, and I will not essay
+to describe for you my thoughts. We had come into the shadow of the old
+Dutch church in the square, I know, before Teunis spoke again.
+
+"Be patient yet a little longer, Douw," he said. "The break must come soon
+now, and then we will drive all these insolent scoundrels before us
+into the sea!"
+
+I shook hands with him solemnly on this, as we parted.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
+
+
+
+To pass from October, 1774, to mid-June of 1775--from the moonlit streets
+of sleeping Albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the Mohawk
+Valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. To
+us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully
+long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement.
+
+War was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister
+conditions. Dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting
+themselves in Parliament, at London, by declaring that the Americans were
+cowards and would not fight. We boasted little, but we knew ourselves
+better. There was as yet small talk of independence, of separation.
+Another year was to elapse before Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_ should
+flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us
+both our real goal and the way to attain it. But about fighting, we had
+resolved our purpose.
+
+We should have been slaves otherwise.
+
+Turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable
+at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now
+it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North--all tediously
+alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of
+determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. To get justice, or
+even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. They
+listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of
+officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too
+worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England--who lied us
+impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the
+musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we
+were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition;
+the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town
+to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched
+under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and
+stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the Crown
+authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest
+men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up
+our substance in wanton taxation.
+
+There had been a chance that the new Parliament, meeting for the first
+time in the January of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to
+honestly set matters right. We had appealed from Crown and Commons to the
+English people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. But
+the hope speedily fell to the ground. The English, with that strange
+rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds
+their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal
+courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the
+cart-tail.
+
+To this we said no!
+
+In Albany, on this day in the latter part of June, when the thread of the
+story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague,
+tidings. Following upon the blow struck at Concord in April, a host of
+armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were
+investing Boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the
+beleaguered British General Gage. A great battle had been fought near the
+town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. But it meant
+War, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of
+excited comment.
+
+The windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming
+sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. Men had
+gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the
+Berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the
+mountains of how the fight had gone. No one talked of anything else.
+Assuredly I too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and
+discuss the news from Boston, but that my old friend Major Jelles Fonda
+had come down from Caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence
+from the Mohawk Valley.
+
+How well I remember him still, the good, square-set, solid
+merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm,
+resourceful, masterful air! He sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the
+day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and
+deliberate whiffs of his pipe. I listened with growing interest, until at
+last I forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which
+before had so absorbed me. He had much to tell.
+
+More than a month before, the two contending factions had come to
+fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the Whigs in and in front of John
+Veeder's house, at Caughnawaga. They were to raise a liberty pole there,
+and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. While they were
+deliberating, up rides Guy Johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in
+the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage.
+Back of him rode a whole company of the Hall cabal--Sir John Johnson,
+Philip Cross, the Butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the
+meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed.
+Many of these were drunk. Colonel Guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and
+began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had
+summoned them thither. Young Jake Sammons, with the characteristic
+boldness of his family, stood up to the Indian superintendent and answered
+him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the Johnson men fell upon
+Jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. Some insisted that it
+was peppery Guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded
+riding-whip, but on this point Major Jelles was not clear.
+
+"But what were our people about, to let this happen?" I asked, with some
+heat.
+
+"To tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away.
+Only a few of us held our place. Our men were unarmed, for one thing.
+Moreover, they are in awe of the power of the Hall. The magistrates, the
+sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office
+in Tryon County--take orders from the Hall. You can't get people to forget
+that. Besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down."
+
+Major Jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed
+force on the side of the Johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper
+of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. Sir
+John had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the Hall, and his Roman
+Catholic Highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as
+a military body. All sorts of stories came down from Johnstown and up from
+Guy Park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their
+retainers. Peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were
+Philip Cross and Walter Butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with
+the most violent party of the Tories. To them, indeed, was directly
+traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the Valley tribes proved to have
+been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder Indians were to be
+called down from the headwaters of the Three Rivers, and from the Lake
+plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if
+rebellion was persisted in.
+
+"But they would never dare do that!" I cried rising to my feet.
+
+"Why not?" asked Jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "After all,
+that is their chief strength. Make no mistake! They are at work with the
+red-skins, poisoning them against us. Guy Johnson is savage at the
+mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at Guy Park,
+and he has already procured orders from London to remove Dominie Kirkland,
+the missionary who has kept the Oneidas heretofore friendly to us. That
+means--You can see as well as the rest of us what it means."
+
+"It means war in the Valley--fighting for your lives."
+
+"Well, let it! My customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. I will
+give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from
+the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this Johnson nonsense any
+longer. And my old father and my brothers say it with me. My brother Adam,
+he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work,
+his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple
+for gun-stocks, and making bullets. That reminds me--Guy Johnson took all
+the lead weights out of the windows at Guy Park, and hid them, to keep
+them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away."
+
+"Before he ran away? Who ran away?"
+
+"Why, Guy, of course," was the calm reply.
+
+I stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "You never mentioned
+this!" I managed to say at last.
+
+"I hadn't got to it yet," the Dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly.
+"You young people hurry one so."
+
+By degrees I obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had
+purposely come down, I believe, to tell me. As he progressed, my fancy ran
+before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great
+Hall on the hill which I knew so well.
+
+I needed not his assurances to believe that Molly Brant, who had come down
+from the upper Mohawk Castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred
+on all the rest into malevolent resolves.
+
+I could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the
+table where in Sir William's time she had been mistress, and now was but a
+visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. I could see her watching with
+silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, Sir John,
+Colonel Guy, the Butlers, Cross, and Claus, and then her own brother
+Joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her,
+engrafting upon his full wolf-totem Mohawk blood the restraints of tongue
+and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. No one of the males,
+Caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. Each
+in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to
+them meant London--would think of their acts. No one, not even Joseph
+Brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to
+wit: that the recalcitrant Valley should be swept as with a besom of fire
+and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. This, when
+it came her time, the Indian woman said for them frankly, and with
+scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. I could fancy
+her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away
+from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest
+the powers with which the king had intrusted them.
+
+It was not hard, either, to imagine young Walter Butler and Philip Cross
+rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot
+and fast upon the echo of Mistress Molly's contemptuous rebuke, should
+have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed
+all to the use of the Indians.
+
+So that day, just a week since, it had been settled that Colonel Guy and
+the two Butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a
+council near Fort Schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against
+their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they
+had departed. Guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great
+Sir William, she would be of use in the work; but Mrs. John Butler had
+gone to the Hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower
+Indian Castle.
+
+The two houses thus deserted--Guy Park and the Butlers' home on Switzer's
+Hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their
+contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in
+their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity,
+or hidden.
+
+"My brother Adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest Jelles
+Fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. So their thoughts were on bullets
+as well as his. He has his eye now on the church roof at home."
+
+Here was news indeed! There could be no pretence that the clandestine
+flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. To the
+contrary, Colonel Guy, as Indian superintendent, had fully five hundred
+fighting men, Indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. They
+had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to
+assist Sir John, Sheriff White, and their Tory minions to hold Tryon
+County in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood.
+
+We sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a
+situation. At last I said:
+
+"Can I do anything? You all must know up there that I am with you, heart
+and soul."
+
+Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.
+
+"Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve
+us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and
+to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use
+here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things
+would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson
+is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying
+to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts
+and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to
+advise you. What do you think?"
+
+While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major
+Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul
+never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with
+tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he
+could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of
+his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that
+story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of
+vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!
+
+An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.
+
+He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County
+part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.
+
+It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found
+how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital,
+tidings for the last.
+
+"Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention
+it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the
+Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he
+deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
+
+
+
+There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry
+scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by
+this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome
+_ego_, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it
+essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be
+familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent
+enough as the tale unfolds.
+
+Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall
+at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be
+placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of
+the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and
+gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from
+the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom
+which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and
+warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as
+if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond
+its strength.
+
+Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled
+hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it
+was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these
+last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the
+erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone,
+the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair
+is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the
+neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face.
+The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the
+mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now
+to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still
+calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the
+querulous in tone.
+
+"I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is
+Philip."
+
+"Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays."
+
+Here the change _is_ in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy
+who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the
+other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the
+smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty
+efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take
+up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to
+emphasize her loneliness.
+
+"The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in
+comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders.
+"If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem
+home-like."
+
+The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no
+more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must
+be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a
+mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to
+them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday
+was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be.
+
+The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two.
+The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to
+accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this
+calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results
+without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two
+up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart
+beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the
+Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong
+ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see
+differently. And this was the saddest thing of all.
+
+Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his
+boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the
+two before the fire.
+
+"I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so
+uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?"
+
+"I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at
+the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers.
+He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He
+walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and
+neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair
+showed almost white--which both knew too well.
+
+"Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart.
+
+"There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all
+in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God!
+they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not
+whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!"
+
+Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held
+up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.
+
+"Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt,
+and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down
+from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would
+have none of her."
+
+"Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too,
+to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things
+will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful
+and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to
+God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!"
+
+Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift
+glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young
+wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
+Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:
+
+"Things are moving, you say. What is new?"
+
+"Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment,
+and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of
+milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will
+master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of
+rebellion!"
+
+"Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough,
+since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years
+younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of
+misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest
+enough, but they have small cunning."
+
+"That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We
+will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!"
+
+An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke,
+and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the
+stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over
+his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at
+bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries
+of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights
+lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it
+mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the
+prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his
+surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander,
+true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of
+thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly
+from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch
+were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing
+with types.
+
+"Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the
+tomahawk!"
+
+The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.
+
+"You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes,
+and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to
+interrogate her husband.
+
+He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed
+with his papers.
+
+After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet,
+walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.
+
+"I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting
+for me, and the evenings grow cold."
+
+"Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a
+perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever
+welcome here."
+
+"Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
+"But old bones are best couched at home."
+
+There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand
+affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.
+
+"I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I
+pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you,
+God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at
+which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day
+for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the
+counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words
+of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no
+good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first
+came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have
+known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push
+steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand
+its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
+Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err
+cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of
+the savages."
+
+"All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to
+these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man.
+
+"You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,"
+continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were
+too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley,
+of Bellêtre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you.
+Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk
+yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in
+terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world
+men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a
+willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is
+that you would do!"
+
+"It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot
+on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to
+fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I
+have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they
+deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you."
+
+"Go with them? Where are they going?"
+
+"Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego;
+perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and
+hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it
+really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that,
+you know."
+
+"And this flight is actually resolved upon?"
+
+"If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the
+Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They
+have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely
+pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at
+his command to shake my will."
+
+"Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr.
+Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive
+concert of thought.
+
+She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she
+had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her,
+she signified it not by glance or gesture.
+
+"No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged
+me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on
+Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming
+as possible."
+
+"Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon
+their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I
+have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he
+glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it
+_should_ be so little!"
+
+The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his
+papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts:
+
+"It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel
+scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to
+our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady
+and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to
+disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You
+yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by
+the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by
+those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now
+that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as
+well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany
+conspirators are pushing their schemes."
+
+"I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire
+to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon
+reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw
+regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany
+committee."
+
+Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture.
+Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who
+knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his
+manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke.
+
+"Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold
+regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy.
+Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked
+overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side
+and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other
+subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to
+recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second,
+and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to
+his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were
+pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!"
+
+The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first
+haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences
+followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now
+erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the
+shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young
+Mr. Cross full in the face.
+
+"Death of my life!" he stammered. "_You_ are saying these things to _me_!
+It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and _her_ son--the young man to
+whom I gave my soul's treasure!"
+
+Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling
+lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute
+the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What
+he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance
+came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then,
+seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously
+stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep
+his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room.
+
+When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned
+about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to
+be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling
+were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
+
+
+
+"You are, then, not even a gentleman!"
+
+The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as
+husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could
+not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the
+mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the
+strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also
+affronted.
+
+Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her
+first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had
+discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered,
+acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the
+burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have
+been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her
+nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young
+Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her
+tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her
+the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance.
+
+He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the
+instinct of combat in his scowl.
+
+"Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for
+folly."
+
+"Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You
+should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and
+done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the
+moment pierced even his thick skin.
+
+"He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for
+his interest. I intended no offence."
+
+"Will you follow him, and say so?"
+
+"Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of
+mine."
+
+"Then _I_ will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!"
+
+The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the
+position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined
+and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom,
+was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough
+countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay.
+
+"Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is
+not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer."
+
+The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence,
+you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives,
+and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you
+like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer
+whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your
+tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman
+in Albany!"
+
+The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words
+did not come readily with which to repel it.
+
+"I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I
+have been badly reared for such purposes."
+
+She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn
+with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being
+with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection
+came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's
+strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now,
+and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but
+the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And
+then the softness came to her voice too.
+
+"How _can_ you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real
+self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old
+self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she
+was mistaken.
+
+"Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?"
+
+"Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for
+me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal.
+
+"I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing
+himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture
+upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but
+I am not Dutch, and I don't like it."
+
+She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in
+the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly
+or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the
+house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to
+take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly
+interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very
+hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its
+improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing
+him again, yet was it not right that she should do so?
+
+The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to
+draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a
+motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of
+the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the
+foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward,
+head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily:
+
+"Get away! When I want you, I'll call!"
+
+The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat
+in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife
+approached him, and stood at the back of his chair.
+
+"You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be
+some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves
+all this misery?"
+
+"What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of
+having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on
+the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At
+least once in a while he points my way."
+
+"Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me
+aright, seeing my errors?"
+
+"There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or
+that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but
+ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money,
+position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house
+of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
+Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans,
+gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty
+face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins
+gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and
+distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of
+mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and
+chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit
+me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass.
+She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on
+the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be
+the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like
+a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I
+might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission
+in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure
+and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'"
+
+"You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if
+only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is
+not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame."
+
+"Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as
+temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it."
+
+"What folly!"
+
+"Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--"
+
+"Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly
+again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain
+fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years
+has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the
+same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body
+into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you
+really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you
+accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but
+please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you
+could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy
+of a wife!"
+
+Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at
+her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.
+
+"There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not
+like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are
+thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing
+to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in
+my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal
+and my wife is a rebel."
+
+"Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
+Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only
+wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more
+than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me
+I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers
+and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood;
+but as to my having ever spoken--"
+
+"Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words.
+"I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a
+Dutch foundling!"
+
+She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it
+had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That
+it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he
+the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished
+sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.
+
+While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the
+bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth
+papers from its recesses with angry haste.
+
+"Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared.
+
+The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons
+was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half
+trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the
+cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most
+trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his
+black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored
+hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance
+at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting
+papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be
+a long one; it may not."
+
+"It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar.
+
+"Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals
+with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things
+I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have
+the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like,
+properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in
+the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
+When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters
+which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of
+the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when
+the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them
+saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead
+Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be
+ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then."
+
+The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.
+
+"Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked.
+
+"Damnation! No!" growled Philip.
+
+"_If you do not, they shall be thrown after you_!"
+
+It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to
+keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The
+words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers.
+There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near
+upon swooning to think at all.
+
+Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory
+was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and
+of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and
+fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the
+self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry,
+motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about
+her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already
+dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet
+hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else
+besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought.
+
+Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her,
+and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of
+packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two
+negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they
+had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door
+was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward
+the gulf.
+
+It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this
+melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted
+and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging
+before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless,
+hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought
+and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage
+across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder
+ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these
+vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had
+passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the
+approaching rest.
+
+Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate.
+The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to
+awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before,
+but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising
+zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing.
+
+"They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured.
+
+A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a
+swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting
+from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her.
+
+The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on
+the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up
+at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness
+of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips.
+
+"I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily.
+
+He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning.
+
+"I have no longer any other home," she added.
+
+She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and
+brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then
+fell inert.
+
+Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see
+Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form
+lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the
+world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+The Night Attack upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
+
+
+
+Of these sad occurrences it was my fortune not to be informed for many
+months. In some senses this was a beneficent ignorance. Had I known that,
+under the dear old roof which so long sheltered me, Mr. Stewart was
+helplessly stricken with paralysis, and poor Daisy lay ill unto death with
+a brain malady, the knowledge must have gone far to unfit me for the work
+which was now given into my hands. And it was work of great magnitude and
+importance.
+
+Close upon the heels of the Bunker Hill intelligence came the news that a
+Continental army had been organized; that Colonel Washington of Virginia
+had been designated by Congress as its chief, and had started to assume
+command at Cambridge; and that our own Philip Schuyler was one of the four
+officers named at the same time as major-generals. There was great
+pleasure in Albany over the tidings; the patriot committee began to
+prepare for earnest action, and our Tory mayor, Abraham Cuyler,
+sagaciously betook himself off, ascending the Mohawk in a canoe, and
+making his way to Canada.
+
+Among the first wishes expressed by General Schuyler was one that I
+should assist and accompany him, and this, flattering enough in itself,
+was made delightful by the facts that my friend Peter Gansevoort was named
+as another aide, and that my kinsman Dr. Teunis was given a professional
+place in the general's camp family. We three went with him to the
+headquarters at Cambridge very shortly after, and thenceforward were too
+steadily engrossed with our novel duties to give much thought to
+home affairs.
+
+It was, indeed, a full seven months onward from the June of which I have
+written that my first information concerning the Cedars, and the dear folk
+within its walls, came to me in a letter from my mother. This letter found
+me, of all unlikely places in the world, lying in garrison on the frozen
+bank of the St. Lawrence--behind us the strange, unnatural silence of the
+northern waste of snow, before us the black, citadel-crowned,
+fire-spitting rock of Quebec.
+
+Again there presses upon me the temptation to put into this book the story
+of what I saw there while we were gathering our strength and resolution
+for the fatal assault. If I am not altogether proof against its wiles, at
+least no more shall be told of it than properly belongs here, insomuch as
+this is the relation of my life's romance.
+
+We had started in September with the expedition against Canada, while it
+was under the personal command of our general; and when his old sickness
+came unluckily upon him and forced his return, it was at his request that
+we still kept on, under his successor, General Richard Montgomery. It was
+the pleasanter course for us, both because we wanted to see fighting, and
+because Montgomery, as the son-in-law of Mr. Livingston, was known to us
+and was our friend. And so with him we saw the long siege of St. John's
+ended, and Chambly, and then Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, one by one
+submit, and the _habitants_ acclaim us their deliverers as we swept the
+country clean to the gates of Quebec.
+
+To this place we came in the first week of December, and found bold Arnold
+and his seven hundred scarecrows awaiting us. These men had been here for
+a month, yet had scarcely regained their strength from the horrible
+sufferings they encountered throughout their wilderness march. We were by
+this time not enamoured of campaigning in any large degree, from our own
+experience of it. Yet when we saw the men whom Arnold and Morgan had led
+through the trackless Kennebec forest, and heard them modestly tell the
+story of that great achievement--of their dreadful sustained battle with
+cold, exhaustion, famine, with whirling rapids, rivers choked with ice,
+and dangerous mountain precipices--we felt ashamed at having supposed we
+knew what soldiering was.
+
+Three weeks we lay waiting. Inside, clever Carleton was straining heaven
+and earth in his endeavor to strengthen his position; without, we could
+only wait. Those of us who were from the Albany and Mohawk country came to
+learn that some of our old Tory neighbors were within the walls, and the
+knowledge gave a new zest to our eager watchfulness.
+
+This, it should be said, was more eager than sanguine. It was evident from
+the outset that, in at least one respect, we had counted without our host.
+The French-Canadians were at heart on our side, perhaps, but they were not
+going to openly help us; and we had expected otherwise. Arnold himself,
+who as an old horse-dealer knew the country, had especially believed in
+their assistance and sympathy, and we had bills printed in the French
+language to distribute, calling upon them to rise and join us. That they
+did not do so was a grievous disappointment from the beginning.
+
+Yet we might have been warned of this. The common people were friendly to
+us--aided us privily when they could--but they were afraid of their
+seigneurs and curés. These gentry were our enemies for a good reason--in
+their eyes we were fighting New England's fight, and intolerant New
+England had only the year before bitterly protested to Parliament against
+the favor shown the Papist religion in Quebec. These seigneurs and priests
+stood together in a common interest. England had been shrewd enough to
+guarantee them their domains and revenues. Loyalty meant to them the
+security of their _rentes et dîmes_, and they were not likely to risk
+these in an adventure with the Papist-hating Yankees. Hence they stood by
+England, and, what is more, held their people practically aloof from us.
+
+But even then we could have raised Canadian troops, if we had had the
+wherewithal to feed or clothe or arm them. But of this Congress had taken
+no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our
+clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our
+food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the
+most desperate assault of known warfare.
+
+The weeks went by swiftly enough. Much of the time I was with the
+commander at our headquarters in Holland House, and I grew vastly attached
+to the handsome, gracious, devoted young soldier. Brigadier-General
+Montgomery had not, perhaps, the breadth of character that made Schuyler
+so notable; which one of all his contemporaries, save Washington, for that
+matter, had? But he was very single-minded and honorable, and had much
+charm of manner. Often, during those weeks, he told me of his beautiful
+young wife, waiting for his return at their new home on the Hudson, and of
+his hope soon to be able to abandon the strife and unrest of war, and
+settle there in peace. Alas! it was not to be so.
+
+And then, again, we would adventure forth at night, when there was no
+moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered
+force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the
+ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots
+filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than
+the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon,
+and once the General had his horse killed under him.
+
+I should say that he was hardly hopeful of the result of the attack
+already determined upon. But it was the only thing possible to be done,
+and with all his soul and mind he was resolved to as nearly do it as
+might be.
+
+The night came, the last night but one of that eventful, momentous year
+1775. Men had passed each day for a week between our quarters and Colonel
+Arnold's at St. Roch, concerting arrangements. There were Frenchmen inside
+the town from whom we were promised aid. What we did not know was that
+there were other Frenchmen, in our camp, who advised Carleton of all our
+plans. The day and evening were spent in silent preparations for the
+surprise and assault--if so be it the snow-storm came which was agreed
+upon as the signal. Last words of counsel and instruction were spoken.
+Suppressed excitement reigned everywhere.
+
+The skies were clear and moonlit in the evening; now, about midnight, a
+damp, heavy snowfall began and a fierce wind arose. So much the better for
+us and our enterprise, we thought.
+
+We left Holland House some hours after midnight, without lights and on
+foot, and placed ourselves at the head of the three hundred and fifty men
+whom Colonel Campbell (not the Cherry Valley man, but a vain and cowardly
+creature from down the Hudson, recently retired from the British army)
+held in waiting for us. Noiselessly we descended from the heights, passed
+Wolfe's Cove, and gained the narrow road on the ledge under the mountain.
+
+The General and his aide, McPherson, trudged through the deep snow ahead
+of all, with Gansevoort, and me keeping up to them as well as we could.
+What with the very difficult walking, the wildness of the gale, and the
+necessity for silence, I do not remember that anything was said. We panted
+heavily, I know, and more than once had to stop while the slender and less
+eager carpenters who formed the van came up.
+
+It was close upon the fence of wooden pickets which stretched across the
+causeway at Cape Diamond that the last of these halts was made. Through
+the darkness, rendered doubly dense by the whirling snowflakes with which
+the wind lashed our faces, we could only vaguely discern the barrier and
+the outlines of the little block-house beyond it.
+
+"Here is our work!" whispered the General to the half-dozen nearest him,
+and pointing ahead with his gauntleted hand. "Once over this and into the
+guard-house, and we can never be flanked, whatever else betide."
+
+We tore furiously at the posts, even while he spoke--we four with our
+hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay
+a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep
+in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur
+from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's
+troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more
+pickets. Somebody--it may have been I--said, "Cowards!" Some one else,
+doubtless the General, said, "Forward!"
+
+Then the ground shook violently under our feet, a great bursting roar
+deafened us, and before a scythe-like sweep of fire we at the front
+tumbled and fell!
+
+I got to my feet again, but had lost both sword and pistol in the snow. I
+had been hit somewhere--it seemed in the side--but of that I scarcely
+thought. I heard sharp firing and the sound of oaths and groans all around
+me, so it behooved me to fight, too. There were dimly visible dark forms
+issuing from the guard-house, and wrestling or exchanging blows with other
+forms, now upright, now in the snow. Here and there a flash of fire from
+some gun or pistol gave an instant's light to this Stygian hurly-burly.
+
+A heavy man, coming from the door of the block-house, fired a pistol
+straight at me; the bullet seemed not to have struck me, and I leaped upon
+him before he could throw the weapon. We struggled fiercely backward
+toward the pickets, I tearing at him with all my might, and striving with
+tremendous effort to keep my wits as well as my strength about me, in
+order to save my life. Curiously enough, I found that the simplest
+wrestling tricks I tried I had not the power for; even in this swift
+minute, loss of blood was telling on me. A ferocious last effort I made to
+swing and hurl him, and, instead, went staggering down into the drift with
+him on top.
+
+As I strove still to turn, and lifted my head, a voice sounded close in my
+ear, "It's you, is it? Damn you!" and then a great mashing blow on my face
+ended my fight.
+
+Doubtless some reminiscence in that voice caused my mind to carry on the
+struggle in the second after sense had fled, for I thought we still were
+in the snow wrestling, only it was inside a mimic fort in the clearing
+around Mr. Stewart's old log-house, and I was a little boy in an apron,
+and my antagonist was a yellow-haired lad with hard fists, with which he
+beat me cruelly in the face--and so off into utter blackness and void
+of oblivion.
+
+One morning in the latter half of January, nearly three weeks after, I
+woke to consciousness again. Wholly innocent of the lapse of time, I
+seemed to be just awakening from the dream of the snow fort, and of my
+boyish fight with little Philip Cross. I smiled to myself as I thought of
+it, but even while I smiled the vague shadows of later happenings came
+over my mind. Little by little the outlines of that rough December night
+took shape in my puzzled wits.
+
+I had been wounded, evidently, and had been borne back to Holland House,
+for I recognized the room in which I lay. My right arm was in stiff
+splints; with the other hand I felt of my head and discovered that my hair
+had been cut close, and that my skull and face were fairly thatched with
+crossing strips of bandage. My chest, too, was girdled by similar
+medicated bands. My mental faculties moved very sedately, it seemed, and I
+had been pondering these phenomena for a long time when my cousin Dr.
+Teunis Van Hoorn came tip-toeing into the room.
+
+This worthy young man was sincerely delighted to find me come by my
+senses once more. In his joy he allowed me to talk and to listen more than
+was for my good, probably, for I had some bad days immediately following;
+but the relapse did not come before I had learned much that was gravely
+interesting.
+
+It is a story of sufficient sorrow and shame to American ears even
+now--this tale of how we failed to carry Quebec. Judge how grievously the
+recital fell upon my ears then, in the little barrack-chamber of Holland
+House, within hearing of the cannonade by which the farce of a siege was
+still maintained from day to day! Teunis told me how, by that first volley
+of grape at the guard-house, the brave and noble Montgomery had been
+instantly killed; how Arnold, forcing his way from the other direction at
+the head of his men, and being early shot in the leg, had fought and
+stormed like a wounded lion in the narrow Sault-au-Matelot; how he and the
+gallant Morgan had done more than their share in the temerarious
+adventure, and had held the town and citadel at their mercy if only the
+miserable Campbell had pushed forward after poor Montgomery fell, and gone
+on to meet those battling heroes in the Lower Town. But I have not the
+patience, even at this late day, to write about this melancholy and
+mortifying failure.
+
+Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman,
+and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right,
+and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the
+headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken
+prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still
+keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our
+operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance
+among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to
+prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that
+when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw
+in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up.
+
+All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as
+if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did
+it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us.
+
+It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared
+that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at
+the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my
+ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm.
+They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which
+was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into
+an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed
+fist or a pistol-butt.
+
+"Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some
+of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and
+McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he
+and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels.
+You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with
+the rest, next morning."
+
+"Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?"
+
+"Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a
+colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are
+to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to
+travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if
+you please."
+
+"I have been dangerously ill, have I not?"
+
+"Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after
+the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody
+must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these,
+and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever.
+But I never feared for you."
+
+Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided
+to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that
+confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a
+week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a _son marquee_.
+But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that
+encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection.
+Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once
+it came to me.
+
+"Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who
+broke my head with his pistol-butt?"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for
+my confidence.
+
+"Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that
+gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into
+fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your
+whole carcass!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
+
+
+
+For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was
+nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious
+slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it
+became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my
+progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have
+come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and
+every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of
+what use is all this now, alas!"
+
+These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came
+in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing
+the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with
+re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many
+letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The
+physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin
+relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them.
+
+One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of
+the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English
+trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease
+concerning what remained of its interests.
+
+The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat,
+painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in
+no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document,
+which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame
+Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not
+inherited by her son.
+
+"_January 9,_ A. D. 1776.
+
+"Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most
+part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen
+you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you
+no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to
+be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a
+God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I
+surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do
+not reproach you.
+
+"The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars,
+was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was
+both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour
+with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the
+Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being
+dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in
+the way, and where others can help him to weep.
+
+"When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been
+deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with
+paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The
+burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it,
+but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her
+fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his
+wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful
+belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her
+from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal
+named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels,
+essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms
+that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant
+from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained
+nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at
+best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence.
+
+"Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief,
+and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign
+matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were
+still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I
+knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying
+that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out
+of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the
+matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads
+are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I
+was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as
+sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go
+her own gait, and so she may for all of me.
+
+"She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work
+when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a
+worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck
+of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying
+that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame
+Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my
+company was not desired longer.
+
+"I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry
+other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the
+Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If
+the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be
+peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all
+say matters will be worse before they mend.
+
+"Affectionately, your mother,
+
+"Katharine Mauverensen."
+
+As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated
+and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of
+Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to
+laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of
+my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its
+humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no
+more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided
+always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for
+everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing
+in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done
+for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the
+moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their
+own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing
+was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how
+she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to
+me, unconsciously revealing her pique.
+
+Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her,
+and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars
+since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a
+fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants;
+she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and
+foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a
+large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the
+fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and
+fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her
+bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring.
+
+From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day
+counts now. The sooner I get home the better."
+
+"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to
+Sorel to-morrow morning."
+
+"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"
+
+"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves
+are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion,
+like you, I should fear nothing."
+
+"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means
+of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my
+restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I
+gave him my mother's letter.
+
+My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient
+details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
+allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
+over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
+whistle softly.
+
+"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"
+
+"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
+great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
+his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
+credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
+potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
+much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
+too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
+God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"
+
+I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
+upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.
+
+"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
+seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
+from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
+doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
+Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
+well as fast as you like, and we will be off."
+
+This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
+judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
+Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
+accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his
+arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From
+our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of
+many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter
+jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of
+turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense
+of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and
+that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was
+impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small
+disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and
+attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled
+districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt
+that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for
+their courtesies.
+
+Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had
+evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it
+was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy
+preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General
+Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full
+fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he
+had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and
+difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with
+books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during
+my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the
+General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy.
+
+But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole
+spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with
+anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied
+and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his
+case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring
+illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that
+it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home.
+It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was
+really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk
+duty at such a time.
+
+But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed
+that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one
+morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform
+with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he
+called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans:
+
+"John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his
+Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came
+down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the
+woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month
+much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead
+near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots
+day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue
+for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who
+followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington
+is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no
+reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to
+send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the
+thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs
+them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and
+all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the
+neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest.
+
+"You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for
+you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached
+to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go
+with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near
+place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You
+need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you.
+But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative
+in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the
+prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further."
+
+When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
+
+
+
+I rode beside Colonel Elias Dayton one forenoon some ten days later, up
+the Valley road, my pulses beating fast at the growing familiarity of the
+scene before us. We had crossed the Chuctenunda Creek, and were within
+sight of the gray walls of Guy Park. Beyond rose the hills behind which
+lay Fort Johnson. I was on the very threshold of my boyhood's
+playfield--within a short hour's walk of my boyhood's home.
+
+The air was full of sounds. Birds sang with merry discordance all through
+the thicket to our right, flitting among the pale green tangle of spring's
+foliage. The May sunshine had lured forth some pioneer locusts, whose
+shrill cries came from who could tell where--the tall swale-grass on the
+river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown
+broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the
+squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers
+along the willow-fringed water--the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad
+small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears
+took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of
+armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road before us, behind us,
+at our side.
+
+For my second return to the Valley was at the head of troops, bringing
+violence, perhaps bloodshed, in their train. I could not but contrast it
+in my mind with that other home-coming, four years before, when I sat
+turned to look eastward in the bow of Enoch's boat, and every soft dip of
+the oars timed the glad carol in my heart of home and friends--and the
+sweet maid I loved. I was so happy then!--and now, coming from the other
+direction, with suggestions of force and cruel purposes in every echo of
+our soldiers' tread, I was, to tell the plain truth, very
+miserable withal.
+
+My talk with Colonel Dayton had, in a way, contributed to this gloomy
+feeling. We had, from choice, ridden side by side for the better part of
+two days, and, for very need of confiding in some one, I had talked with
+him concerning my affairs more freely than was my wont. This was the
+easier, because he was a contemplative, serious, and sensible man, whose
+words and manner created confidence. Moreover, he was neither Dutchman nor
+Yankee, but a native Jerseyman, and so considered my story from an equable
+and fair point of view, without bias.
+
+It was, indeed, passing strange that this man, on his way to seize or
+crush the Johnson clique, as the case might be, should have been the one
+to first arouse in my mind the idea that, after all, the Tories had their
+good side, and were doing what to them seemed right, at tremendous cost
+and sacrifice to themselves. I had been telling him what a ruffian was
+Philip Cross, and what grounds I had for hating him, and despitefully
+describing the other chief Tories of the district. He said in reply,
+I remember:
+
+"You seem to miss the sad phase of all this, my friend. Your young blood
+feels only the partisan promptings of dislike. Some day--soon, perhaps--
+you will all at once find this youthful heat gone; you will begin to walk
+around men and things, so to speak, and study them from all sides. This
+stage comes to every sober mind; it will come to you. Then you will
+realize that this baronet up yonder is, from his own stand-point, a
+chivalrous, gallant loyal gentleman, who imperils estates, power, peace,
+almost life itself, rather than do what he holds to be weak or wrong. Why,
+take even this enemy of yours, this Cross. He was one of the notables of
+these parts--rich, popular, influential; he led a life of utmost luxury
+and pleasure. All this he has exchanged for the rough work of a soldier,
+with its privations, cold, fatigue, and the risk of death. Ask yourself
+why he did it."
+
+"I see what you would enforce," I said. "Your meaning is that these men,
+as well as our side, think the right is theirs."
+
+"Precisely. They have inherited certain ideas. We disagree with them; we
+deem it our duty to silence them, fight them, drive them out of the
+country, and, with God's help, we will do it. But let us do this with our
+eyes open, and with the understanding that they are not necessarily
+scoundrels and heathen because they fail to see things as we see them."
+
+"But you would not defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages
+against their neighbors--against helpless women and children. That must be
+heathenish to any mind."
+
+"Defend it? No! I do not defend any acts of theirs. Rid your mind of the
+idea that because a man tries to understand a thing he therefore defends
+it. But I can see how they would defend it to their own consciences--just
+as these thrifty Whig farmers hereabout explain in their own minds as
+patriotic and public-spirited their itching to get hold of Johnson's
+Manor. Try and look at things in this light. Good and bad are relative
+terms; nothing is positively and unchangeably evil. Each group of men has
+its own little world of reasons and motives, its own atmosphere, its own
+standard of right and wrong. If you shut your eyes, and condemn or praise
+these wholly, without first striving to comprehend them, you may or may
+not do mischief to them; you assuredly injure yourself."
+
+Thus, and at great length, spoke the philosophical colonel. I could not
+help suspecting that he had too open a mind to be a very valuable fighter,
+and, indeed, this proved to be true. He subsequently built some good and
+serviceable forts along the Mohawk, one of which to this day bears his
+name, but he attained no distinction as a soldier in the field.
+
+But, none the less, his words impressed me greatly. What he said had never
+been put to me in clear form before, and at twenty-seven a man's mind is
+in that receptive frame, trembling upon the verge of the meditative
+stage, when the presentation of new ideas like these often marks a
+distinct turn in the progress and direction of his thoughts. It seems
+strange to confess it, but I still look back to that May day of 1776 as
+the date of my first notion that there could be anything admirable in
+my enemies.
+
+At the time, these new views and the tone of our talk helped to disquiet
+me. The swinging lines of shoulders, the tramp! tramp! in the mud, the
+sight of the guns and swords about me, were all depressing. They seemed to
+give a sinister significance to my return. It was my home, the dearest
+spot on earth--this smiling, peaceful, sunlit Mohawk Valley--and I was
+entering it with soldiers whose mission was to seize and despoil the son
+of my boyhood's friend, Sir William. More than one of my old play-mates,
+now grown to man's estate, would note with despair our approach, and curse
+me for being of it. The lady of Johnson Hall, to whom all this would be
+horrible nigh unto death, was a close, warm friend of Daisy's. So my
+thoughts ran gloomily, and I had no joy in any of the now familiar sights
+around me.
+
+The march up from Schenectady had been a most wearisome one for the men,
+owing to the miserable condition of the road, never over-smooth and now
+rendered doubly bad and difficult by the spring freshets and the oozing
+frost. When we reached the pleasant little hollow in which Fort Johnson
+nestles, a halt was accordingly ordered, and the tired soldiers prepared
+to refresh themselves with food by the banks of the creek. It was now
+afternoon; we were distant but a short mile from the Cedars, and I could
+not abide the thought of lingering here, to no purpose, so close to the
+goal of all my longings. I therefore exchanged some plans and suggestions
+with Colonel Dayton and his companion Judge Duer, who represented the
+civil law in the expedition, and so clapped spurs and dashed forward
+up the road.
+
+"It seems ten years, not four, since I was last here," I was saying to
+Daisy half an hour later, and unconsciously framing in words the thoughts
+which her face suggested.
+
+I know not how to describe the changes which this lapse of time had
+wrought upon her countenance and carriage. In the more obvious, outward
+sense, it had scarcely aged her. She was now twenty-three years of age,
+and I doubt a stranger would have deemed her older. Yet, looking upon her
+and listening to her, I seemed to feel that, instead of being four years
+her senior, I was in truth the younger of the two. The old buoyant,
+girlish air was all gone, for one thing. She spoke now with gentle,
+sweet-toned gravity; and her eyes, frankly meeting mine as of old, had in
+their glance a soft, reposeful dignity which was new to me.
+
+Almost another Daisy, too, she seemed in face. It was the woman in her
+features, I dare say, which disconcerted me. I had expected changes,
+perhaps, but not upon these lines. She had been the prettiest maiden of
+the Valley, beyond all others. She was not pretty now, I should say, but
+she _was_ beautiful--somewhat pallid, yet not to give an air of unhealth;
+the delicate chiselling of features yielded now not merely the pleasure
+of regularity, but the subtler charm of sensitive, thoughtful character.
+The eyes and hair seemed a deeper hazel, a darker brown, than they had
+been. The lips had lost some, thing of their childish curve, and met each
+other in a straight line--fairer than ever, I thought, because more firm.
+
+I am striving now, you see, against great odds, to revive in words the
+impressions of difference which came to me in those first hours, as I
+scanned her face. They furnish forth no real portrait of the dear lady:
+how could I hope they should? But they help to define, even if dimly, the
+changes toward strength and self-control I found in her.
+
+I was, indeed, all unprepared for what awaited me here at the Cedars. My
+heart had been torn by all manner of anxieties and concern. I had hastened
+forward, convinced that my aid and protection were direly needed. I sat
+now, almost embarrassed, digesting the fact that the fortunes of the
+Cedars were in sufficient and capable hands.
+
+Mr. Stewart's condition was in truth sad enough. He had greeted me with
+such cordiality and clear-wittedness of utterance and manner that at first
+I fancied his misfortunes to have been exaggerated in my mother's letter.
+His conversation for a moment or two was also coherent and timely. But his
+mind was prone to wander mysteriously. He presently said: "Assuredly I
+taught you to shave with both hands. I knew I could not be mistaken." I
+stole a glance toward Daisy at this, and her answering nod showed me the
+whole case. It was after old Eli had come in and wheeled Mr. Stewart in
+his big chair out into the garden, that I spoke to Daisy of the
+differences time had wrought.
+
+"Ay," she said, "it must be sadly apparent to you--the change in
+everything."
+
+How should I approach the subject--the one thing of which I knew we were
+both thinking? There seemed a wall between us. She had been unaffectedly
+glad to see me; had, for the instant, I fancied, thought to offer me her
+cheek to kiss--yet was, with it all, so self-possessed and reserved that I
+shrank from touching upon her trouble.
+
+"Perhaps not everything is sad," I made answer, falteringly. "Poor Mr.
+Stewart--that is indeed mournful; but, on the other hand--" I broke
+off abruptly.
+
+"On the other hand," she took up my words calmly, "you are thinking that I
+am advantaged by Philip's departure."
+
+My face must have showed that I could not deny it.
+
+"In some respects," she went on, "yes; in others, no. I am glad to be able
+to speak freely to you, Douw, for you are nearest to me of all that are
+left. I do not altogether know my own mind; for that matter, does any one?
+The Philip to whom I gave my heart and whom I married is one person; the
+Philip who trampled on the heart and fled his home seems quite another and
+a different man. I hesitate between the two sometimes. I cannot always say
+to myself: 'The first was all fancy; the second is the reality.' Rather,
+they blend themselves in my mind, and I seem to see the fond lover
+remaining still the good husband, if only I had had the knowledge and
+tenderness to keep him so!"
+
+"In what are you to be reproached, Daisy?" I said this somewhat testily,
+for the self-accusation nettled me.
+
+"It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom
+from the beginning."
+
+"It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with
+melancholy conviction.
+
+"Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My
+heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for
+finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest. I
+dreamed to be called 'My lady,' too, in good time. I forgot that I came
+from the poor people, and that I belonged to them. So well and truly did I
+forget this that the fact struck me like a whip when--when it was brought
+to my notice."
+
+"He taunted you with it, then!" I burst forth, my mind working quickly for
+once.
+
+She made no answer for the time, but rose from her chair and looked out
+upon the group in the garden. From the open door she saw the van of
+Dayton's soldiers trudging up the Valley road. I had previously told her
+of their mission and my business.
+
+"Poor Lady Johnson," she said, resting her head against her hand on the
+door-frame, and looking upon the advancing troops with a weary expression
+of face. "Her trouble is coming--mine is past." Then, after a pause:
+"Will they be harsh with Sir John, think you? I trust not. They have both
+been kind to me since--since Philip went. Sir John is not bad at heart,
+Douw, believe me. You twain never liked each other, I know. He is a bitter
+man with those who are against him, but his heart is good if you touch
+it aright."
+
+I had not much to say to this. "I am glad he was good to you," I managed
+to utter, not over-graciously, I fear.
+
+The troops went by, with no sound of drums now, lest an alarm be raised
+prematurely. We watched them pass in silence, and soon after I took my
+leave for the day, saying that I would go up to see the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, and cross the river to my mother's home, and would return
+next morning. We shook hands at parting, almost with constraint.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
+
+
+
+Early the next day, which was May 20th, we heard to our surprise and
+consternation that on the preceding afternoon, almost as Colonel Dayton
+and his soldiers were entering Johnstown, Sir John and the bulk of his
+Highlanders and sympathizers, to the number of one hundred and thirty, had
+privately taken to the woods at the north of the Hall, and struck out
+for Canada.
+
+Over six weeks elapsed before we learned definitely that the baronet and
+his companions had traversed the whole wilderness in safety and reached
+Montreal, which now was once more in British hands--our ill-starred Quebec
+expedition having finally quitted Canada earlier in the month. We could
+understand the stories of Sir John's travail and privations, for the snow
+was not yet out of the Adirondack trails, and few of his company were
+skilled in woodmen's craft. But they did accomplish the journey, and that
+in nineteen days.
+
+I, for one, was not very much grieved at Johnson's escape, for his
+imprisonment would have been an embarrassment rather than a service to us.
+But Colonel Dayton was deeply chagrined at finding the bird flown, and I
+fear that in the first hours of his discomfiture he may have forgotten
+some of his philosophical toleration for Tories in general. He had,
+moreover, the delicate question on his hands of what to do with Lady
+Johnson. Neither Judge Duer nor I could advise him, and so everything was
+held in suspense for the better part of a week, until General Schuyler's
+decision could be had.
+
+Meanwhile my time was fairly occupied in the fulfilment of matters
+intrusted to me by the General. I had to visit Colonel Herkimer at his
+home below Little Falls, and talk with him about the disagreeable fact
+that his brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, had deserted the militia command
+given him by the Whigs and fled to Canada. The stout old German was free
+to denounce his brother, however, and I liked the looks and blunt speech
+of Peter Bellinger, who had been made colonel of the deserted battalion of
+German Flatts. There were also conversations to be had with Colonel Klock,
+and Ebenezer Cox, and the Fondas, at their several homes, and a day to
+spend with my friend John Frey, now sheriff in place of the Tory White. It
+thus happened that I saw very little of the people at the Cedars, and had
+no real talk again with Daisy, until a full week had passed.
+
+It was a cool, overcast forenoon when I alighted next at the familiar
+gate, and gave my horse into Tulp's charge. The boy, though greatly
+rejoiced to see me back again, had developed a curious taciturnity in
+these latter years--since his accident, in fact--and no longer shouted out
+the news to me at sight. Hence I had to ask him, as I neared the door,
+what strange carriage was that in the yard beyond, and why it was there.
+As I spoke, a couple of men lounged in view from the rear of the house,
+and I recognized them as of Dayton's command. Tulp explained that Lady
+Johnson was being taken away, and that she had tarried here to rest on
+her journey.
+
+If I had known this at the gate, I doubt I should have stopped at all; but
+I had been seen from the window, and it was too late now to turn about. So
+I entered, much wishing that I had left off my uniform, or, still better,
+that I had stayed away altogether.
+
+There were present in the great room Daisy, Lady Johnson, a young lady who
+was her sister, two children--and a man in civilian's garb, with some few
+military touches, such as a belt and sword and a cockade, who sat by the
+window, his knees impudently spread apart and his hat on his head. I
+looked at this fellow in indignant inquiry.
+
+Daisy came eagerly to me, with an explanation on her lips:
+
+"It is the officer who is to take Lady Johnson to Albany. He insists upon
+forcing his presence upon us, and will not suffer us to be alone together
+in any room in the house."
+
+"Who are you?--and off with your hat!" I said to the man, sharply.
+
+My uniform was of service, after all. He looked me over, and evidently
+remembered having seen me with his colonel, for he stood up and took off
+his hat. "I am a lieutenant of the Connecticut line," he said, in a
+Yankee snarl, "and I am doing my duty."
+
+"I am a major in the Continental line, and I should be doing _my_ duty if
+I sent you back in irons to your colonel," I answered. "Get out of here,
+what time Lady Johnson is to remain, and leave these ladies to
+themselves!"
+
+He was clearly in two minds about obeying me, and I fancy it was my
+superior size rather than my rank that induced him to go, which he did in
+as disagreeable a fashion as possible. I made my bow to Lady Johnson, and
+said something about being glad that I had come, if I had been of use.
+
+She, poor young woman, was in a sad state of nervous excitement, what with
+her delicate condition and the distressing circumstances of the past week.
+She was, moreover, a very beautiful creature, naturally of soft and
+refined manners, and this made me the readier to overlook the way in which
+she met my kindly meant phrases.
+
+"I marvel that you are not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly,
+"to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that
+man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of
+calling such low fellows officers, or consorting with them!"
+
+I answered as gently as I could that, unfortunately, there were many such
+ill-conditioned men in every service, and pointed out that the man, by his
+speech, was a New Englander.
+
+"And who fetched them into this province, I should like to know!"
+
+Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hold a political discussion
+with this poor troubled wife, who saw her husband's peril, her own plight,
+and the prospective birth of her first child in captivity constantly
+before her eyes! So I strove to bring the talk upon other grounds, but not
+with much success. She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a
+fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady
+Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather
+those of her husband. She seemed not to have very clear notions of what
+the trouble was all about, but ascribed it loosely, I gathered, to the
+jealousy of Philip Livingston, who was vexed that the Scotch did not
+settle upon his patent instead of on Sir John's land, and to the malice of
+General Schuyler, whose feud with the Johnsons was notorious.
+
+"And to think, too," she added, "that Mr. Schuyler's mother and my
+mother's mother were sisters! A very pleasant and valuable cousin he is,
+to be sure! Driving my husband off into the forest to perhaps die of
+hunger, and dragging me down to Albany, in my condition, and thrusting a
+low Connecticut cobbler into my carriage with me! If my sickness overtakes
+me on the road, and I die, my blood will be on the head of Philip
+Schuyler."
+
+I read in Daisy's eyes a way out of this painful conversation, and so
+said: "Lady Johnson, it will perhaps render your journey less harrowing if
+I have some talk with this officer who is your escort. Let me leave you
+women-folk together here in peace, the while"--and went out into the
+garden again.
+
+I found the lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping
+in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some
+private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed
+out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been,
+through no fault of her own, nurtured in aristocratic ideas and ways; that
+those of whatever party who knew her well most heartily esteemed her; and
+that, moreover, she was nearly related by blood to General Schuyler--he
+professed himself ready to behave toward her with more politeness.
+
+The trouble with him really lay in his abiding belief that people
+underestimated his importance, and hence he sought to magnify his position
+in their eyes by insolent demeanor. Therein I discerned the true Yankee.
+
+That the men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would
+be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome,
+intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during
+the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how
+their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened
+poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too,
+of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices
+against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So
+mischievous did this attitude become at last--when old General Wooster
+came to us with his Connecticut troops, and these set themselves up to be
+independent of all our plans or rules, refusing even to mess with the
+others or to touch Continental provisions and munitions--that Congress had
+to interfere and put them sharply back into their proper places.
+Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and men from the Carolinas will
+bear me out in saying these things about the New England soldiery. I speak
+not in blame or bitterness. The truth is that they were too much akin in
+blood and conceit to the English not to have in themselves many of the
+disagreeable qualities which had impelled us all to revolt against
+British rule.
+
+When the lieutenant had ordered the horses to be brought out for a start,
+I went back into the house. The women had been weeping, I could see. Lady
+Johnson had softened in her mood toward me, and spoke now some gentle
+words of thanks for the little I had done. When I told her, in turn, that
+her escort would henceforth be more considerate in his conduct toward her,
+she was for a moment pleased, but then tears filled her eyes at the
+thoughts of the journey before her.
+
+"When I am out of sight of this house," she said, sadly, "it will seem as
+if my last friend had been left behind. Why could they not have left me at
+the Hall? I gave them the keys; I yielded up everything! What harm could I
+have done them--remaining there? I had no wish to visit my relatives in
+Albany! It is a trick--a device! I doubt I shall ever lay eyes on my dear
+home again."
+
+And, poor lady, she never did.
+
+We strove to speak words of comfort to her, but they came but feebly, and
+could not have consoled her much. When the lieutenant opened the door, the
+women made a tearful adieu, with sobs and kisses upon which I could not
+bear to look. Lady Johnson shook hands with me, still with a pathetic
+quivering of the lips. But then in an instant she straightened herself to
+her full height, bit her lips tight, and walked proudly past the obnoxious
+escort down the path to the carriage, followed by her weeping sister and
+the two big-eyed wondering children.
+
+"Will she ever come back?" said Daisy, half in inquiry, half in despairing
+exclamation, as we saw the last of the carriage and its guard. "How will
+it all end, Douw?"
+
+"Who can foresee?" I answered. "It is war now, at last, war open and
+desperate. I can see no peaceful way out of it. These aristocratic
+landlords, these Johnsons, Butlers, Phillipses, De Lanceys, and the rest,
+will not give up their estates without a hard fight for them. Of that you
+may be sure. _They_ will come back, if their wives do not, and all that
+they can do, backed by England, to regain their positions, will be done.
+They may win, and if they do, it will be our necks that will be put into
+the yoke--or the halter. At all events, it has gone too far to be patched
+over now. We can only stand up and fight as stoutly as we may, and leave
+the rest to fate."
+
+"And it really was necessary to fight--I suppose it could not have been in
+reason avoided?"
+
+"They would have it so. They clung to the faith that they were by right
+the masters here, and we the slaves, and so infatuated were they that they
+brought in English troops and force to back them up. There was no
+alternative but to fight. Would you have had me on the other side--on the
+English side, Daisy?"
+
+"Oh, no, Douw," she answered, in a clear voice. "If war there must be,
+why, of course, the side of my people is my side."
+
+I was not surprised at this, but I said, "You speak of your people,
+Daisy--but surely mere birth does not count for more than one's whole
+training afterward, and you have been bred among another class altogether.
+Why, I should think nine out of every ten of your friends here in the
+Mohawk district must be Tories."
+
+"Not so great a proportion as that," she went on, with a faint smile upon
+her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. "You do not know the value of
+these 'friends,' as you call them, as closely as I do. Never have they
+forgotten on their side, even if I did on mine, that my parents were
+Palatine peasants. And you speak of my being bred among them! In what way
+more than you were? Was I not brought up side by side with you? Was there
+any difference in our rearing, in our daily life until--until you left us?
+Why should I not be a patriot, sir, as well as you?"
+
+She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it. We both
+were thinking, I felt, of the dear old days gone by, and of the melancholy
+fate which clouded over and darkened those days, and drove us apart.
+
+We still stood by the open door, whence we had watched the carriage
+disappear. After some seconds of silence I essayed to bring back the
+conversation to Lady Johnson, and talked of her narrow, ill-informed,
+purely one-sided way of regarding the troubles, and of how impossible it
+was that the class to which she belonged, no matter how amiable and good
+they might be, could ever adapt themselves to the enlarging social
+conditions of this new country.
+
+While I talked, there burst forth suddenly the racket of fifes and drums
+in the road. Some militia companies were marching past on their way to
+join Colonel Dayton's force. We stood and watched these go by, and in the
+noise that they made we failed to hear Mr. Stewart's tottering footsteps
+behind us.
+
+The din of the drums had called him out of his lethargy, and he came
+forward to watch the yeoman-soldiery.
+
+"They march badly--badly," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with
+his hand. "I do not know the uniform. But I have been away so long, and
+everything is changed since the King of Prussia began his wars. Yet I am
+happier here as I am--far happier with my fields, and my freedom, and my
+children."
+
+He had spoken in the tone, half-conversational, half-dreamy, which of late
+strangely marked most of his speech. He turned now and looked at us; a
+pleasant change came over his wan face, and he smiled upon us with a
+curious reflection of the old fond look.
+
+"You are good children," he said; "you shall be married in due time, and
+come after me when I am gone. There will be no handsomer, happier twain in
+the province."
+
+Daisy flushed crimson and looked pained at the old gentleman's childish
+babbling, and I made haste to get away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles.
+
+
+
+A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of
+unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business
+to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and
+encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice
+which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to
+time, assurance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler,
+and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these
+pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole
+Continental service no more unenviable post than mine.
+
+I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of
+fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the
+satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in
+which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the
+most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen
+Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing;
+but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning
+powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be
+posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly
+peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection.
+
+I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all
+the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley
+neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see
+now that they were not altogether without excuse.
+
+The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No
+sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental
+independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the
+declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden
+halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had
+been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the
+magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in
+New York, General Washington could not hold his own, and Congress lost the
+nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service,
+disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force
+became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and
+almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming
+numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally
+lamentable.
+
+There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift
+strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud
+which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening,
+before spring came.
+
+The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and
+intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side
+this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money,
+without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in
+their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and
+resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence
+and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German
+auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispassionately these two opposing
+forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General
+Washington would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London.
+
+I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or
+not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me
+in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was,
+but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for
+rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of
+1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no
+visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending
+danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month.
+I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my
+bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an
+irritable mind.
+
+The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small
+outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up
+communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the
+time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of
+disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a
+somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress.
+Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding
+them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim
+their sails that they should ship no water whichever way the wind blew.
+
+Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people
+had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Washington evacuated
+Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was
+wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively,
+then with less concealment, to drink the King's health.
+
+Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower
+district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all
+east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga.
+They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights
+to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British
+color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the
+county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig
+sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories,
+confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time passed, the dry-rot of
+doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that
+nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from
+home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and
+scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the
+other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King.
+
+It was my function to watch this shifting public opinion, to sway it where
+I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been
+conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I
+turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their
+sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with
+intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of
+promises to speedily glut the passions of war, circulated stealthily all
+about us. How it came, how it was passed from hearth to hearth, defied our
+penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and
+strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens.
+
+For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so
+long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the
+Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was
+more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of
+these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others
+flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that
+the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages
+to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly,
+over our heads.
+
+And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and
+selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and
+turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke.
+
+Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us
+if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to
+Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and
+patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of
+Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very
+gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted.
+
+It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that
+gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story
+was forged.
+
+Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Washington's call
+for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his
+poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York.
+The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in,
+and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told.
+Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New
+York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the
+Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an
+auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of
+our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once
+this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared
+not think!
+
+I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To
+comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter,
+but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife.
+Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this
+horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New
+England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a
+fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's
+pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the
+militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by
+suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and
+means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he,
+with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud
+just then.
+
+I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep,
+for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud
+pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and
+the messenger had thus found me out promptly.
+
+Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in
+response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on
+some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered
+from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could
+tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had
+been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see
+him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my
+sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous.
+
+Daylight broke before we crossed the river, and the sunrise gun sounded as
+we rode up into the court-house square at Johnstown. Soldiers were already
+to be seen moving about outside the block-houses at the corners of the
+palisade which, since Sir John's flight, had been built around the jail.
+Our coming seemed to be expected, for one of the soldiers told us to wait
+while he went inside, and after a few minutes John Frey came out, rubbing
+his eyes. As I dismounted, he briefly explained matters to me.
+
+It seemed that a Tory spy had made his way in from the woods, had
+delivered letters both at Cairncross and at the Cedars, and had then
+started to return, but by the vigilance of one of the Vrooman boys had
+been headed off and taken.
+
+"He is as close as the bark on a beech-tree," concluded the sheriff. "We
+could get nothing out of him. Even when I told him he would be hanged this
+morning after breakfast, he did not change color. He only said that if
+this was the case he would like first to see you; it seems he knows you,
+and has some information for you--probably about Philip Cross's wife.
+Perhaps he will tell _you_ what was in the letter he brought to her."
+
+It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my
+being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy
+sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy.
+
+"All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail.
+
+When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our
+interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the
+shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to
+accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at
+our presence.
+
+"Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as
+freely as the manacles would admit.
+
+I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded
+neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the
+open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as
+leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on
+me. I stepped forward, and said:
+
+"Is that you, Enoch Wade?"
+
+He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion.
+
+"It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried
+right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to
+make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a
+palaver with you, all by yourself?"
+
+"What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff.
+
+I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying
+"talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told
+Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon
+the sheriff and the soldier left us.
+
+"It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic
+smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that."
+
+"Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could.
+
+"Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't
+wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest
+Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young
+Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?"
+
+I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not
+prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more
+his conduct mystified me.
+
+"Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit
+down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all
+about it."
+
+The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep
+interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its
+essential points were these:
+
+After Sir William's death Enoch had remained on at the Hall, not feeling
+particularly bound to the new baronet, but having a cat's attachment to
+the Hall itself. When Sir John finally resolved to avoid arrest by flight,
+Enoch had been in two minds about accompanying him, but had finally
+yielded to the flattering reliance placed by all upon the value and
+thoroughness of his knowledge as a woodsman. It was largely due to his
+skill that the party got safely through the great wilderness, and reached
+Montreal so soon. Since his arrival in Canada, however, things had not
+been at all to his liking. There was but one thought among all his refugee
+companions, which was to return to the Mohawk Valley and put their old
+neighbors to fire and sword--and for this Enoch had no inclination
+whatever. He had accordingly resisted all offers to enrol him in the Tory
+regiment which Sir John was raising in Canada, and had looked for an
+opportunity to get away quietly and without reproach. This chance had only
+come to him a week or so ago, when Philip Cross offered to pay him well to
+take two letters down the Valley--one to his servant Rab, the other to
+Mrs. Cross. He had accepted this errand, and had delivered the letters as
+in duty bound. There his responsibility ended. He had no intention to
+return, and had allowed himself to be arrested by a slow and uninventive
+young man, solely because it seemed the best way of achieving his purpose.
+
+"What is your purpose, Enoch?"
+
+"Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from
+Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know
+who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory,
+with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel--Sillinger they called
+him--and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet
+the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians.
+Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come
+down the Valley!"
+
+You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch
+gave--details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west
+to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I
+returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query:
+
+"But why get yourself arrested?"
+
+"Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given
+you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can
+contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the
+Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
+
+
+
+The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to
+the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come
+to us.
+
+For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as
+well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing
+Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we
+despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam
+and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels.
+
+Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of
+the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs--skilled marksmen
+recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class--and that
+Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war
+party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the
+Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's
+regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of
+men we had long known in the Valley--men whose brothers and kinsmen were
+still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons
+could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was
+mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green"
+uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their
+own blood.
+
+"You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he
+shouted fiercely at Enoch.
+
+"Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly.
+
+But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the
+hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother,
+Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another
+brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were
+with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped.
+
+More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the
+position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and
+despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to
+Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at
+Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel,
+and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt
+of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred
+men--the Third New York Continentals--and I took it upon myself to urge
+now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him.
+
+This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the
+military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action,
+there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no
+word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun,
+and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most
+important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any
+question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he
+were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested
+that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination.
+
+Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down
+the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he
+walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the
+pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown
+followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and
+picking berries by the way.
+
+The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my
+thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents--which it turned
+out he did not--but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating
+upon them.
+
+During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her
+recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of
+her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for
+a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and
+maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually
+wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak
+of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole
+subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed
+the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have
+added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for
+revenge should come.
+
+That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl,
+I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the
+dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with
+no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For
+the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the
+neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting
+that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes
+of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.
+
+"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked
+Enoch.
+
+"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver
+it into her hands."
+
+"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"
+
+"Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood--his old accustomed
+temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most
+generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he
+is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition
+fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they
+started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts
+of themselves."
+
+I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I
+said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside
+of you."
+
+"No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is
+still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt
+these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon--it is
+rest itself--when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your
+task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see
+these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard
+fighting to come. It made me uneasy."
+
+"And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know."
+
+"Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift--it's more my way
+of thinking than the other--and you seem to need it powerfully, too.
+But"--here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to
+boot-tops--"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any
+regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,'
+but it would gag me from the first minute."
+
+We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort
+without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly
+Wemple appeared to let me in.
+
+"We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her
+apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little
+breathing-spell."
+
+The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had
+fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon.
+
+Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in
+hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness.
+
+"Oh, I am _so_ glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent
+Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never
+would come."
+
+"Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from--from----"
+
+"You know, then!"
+
+"Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger--he is
+an old friend of ours--told me that much, nothing more."
+
+Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The
+pleased excitement at my arrival--apparently so much desired--was
+succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment.
+
+"Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or--or how to
+tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea
+that nothing could be done without your advice and help--and yet, now you
+have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She
+paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to
+Cairncross."
+
+I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!"
+
+She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the
+truth, none the less."
+
+"You must be crazy!"
+
+"No, Douw, only very, very wretched!"
+
+The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the
+glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front
+through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with
+the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her.
+
+"Tell me about it all, Daisy--if you can."
+
+Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to
+me. She would have recalled it an instant later.
+
+"No--give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you
+should not see."
+
+But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again.
+
+"No--read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no
+difference--between _us_. You might as well know all!"
+
+The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded
+sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold
+character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature
+scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least:
+
+"Madam:--It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you
+are not to publish it.
+
+"If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I
+shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act
+accordingly.
+
+"I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my
+back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with
+ruffian foes to law and order generally.
+
+"All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including
+without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a
+major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me.
+After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to
+listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make
+no promise.
+
+"I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as
+your further instructions.
+
+"Philip."
+
+One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a
+letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading
+lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence,
+until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce
+to speak my mind.
+
+"I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband
+of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!"
+
+There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying,
+that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has
+convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the
+inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed;
+so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this
+narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women
+folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do
+it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must
+be written.
+
+This is what Daisy actually said:
+
+"But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but
+indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has
+done, and that he still loves me?"
+
+"I certainly see nothing of the kind!"
+
+She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his
+home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly
+with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared
+nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that
+by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he
+as much as says that he will forgive me."
+
+"Yes--perhaps--when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at
+the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after
+all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you."
+
+"He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything.
+
+"Yes, he is your husband--a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first
+makes your life wretched at home--you know you _were_ wretched, Daisy!
+Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes,
+humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty
+of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years--having
+you watched meanwhile, it seems--yet never vouchsafing you so much as a
+word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help
+enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down
+and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this
+letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his
+coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if
+you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your
+chief friends. And all this you take kindly--sifting his brutal words in
+search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished
+at you! I credited you with more spirit."
+
+She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases
+than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little
+pause, said to me quite calmly:
+
+"I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality."
+
+"You know him better than I--a thousand times better, more's the pity.
+Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of
+the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!"
+
+"Have you forgotten that he saved my life?"
+
+"No; but he forgot it--or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place
+of soft thoughts."
+
+"And he loved me--ah! he truly did--for a little!"
+
+"Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar;
+and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride."
+
+"How you hate him!"
+
+"Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?"
+
+"He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the
+gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a
+quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and
+as for Tulp--why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?"
+
+"Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia
+over the cliff, and left me _you_--I--I----"
+
+The words were out!
+
+I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers.
+Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have
+uttered--what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was
+covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over
+this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and
+finally--after what had seemed an age of silence--I stammered on:
+
+"What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever
+met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the
+ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany--in the Patroon's mansion,
+you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I
+went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery
+fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here,"
+I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was
+his doing."
+
+I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling
+that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the
+older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility
+overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder,
+and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind.
+
+"My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed
+superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest
+nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem
+sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your
+feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given
+me. I know what you would have said----"
+
+"It was exactly what I most of all would _not_ have said," I broke in
+with, in passing.
+
+"Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of
+course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it
+was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"--her voice softened
+and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in
+every detail of our youth--"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be,
+my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the
+two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter
+and sister."
+
+There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and
+self-sustained enough.
+
+She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross
+at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned
+out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to
+convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself
+accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown
+road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make
+assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that
+very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff
+at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX.
+
+From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
+
+
+
+And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that
+mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion.
+
+The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us.
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the
+approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude,
+with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort,
+working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the
+dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for
+supplies, for more men, and for militia support.
+
+At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for
+Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of
+Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this
+little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that
+this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more
+was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves.
+
+It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now
+stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the
+spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had
+disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and
+doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their
+grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or
+suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors.
+And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help
+was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be
+welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our
+blood--the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our
+midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail.
+
+General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia,
+apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen
+and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall.
+Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared
+raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming
+forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we
+must meet them!
+
+It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of
+that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley
+bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came
+out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their
+order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the
+forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield
+that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered
+and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine
+danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month
+hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling
+drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the
+early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in
+bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear;
+and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find
+them again at work upon some other farm.
+
+There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together
+to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we
+had grown selfish and solitary--each man for himself. We had forgotten, in
+the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that
+fine old word "neighbor"--the husbandman, or _boer_, who is nigh, and to
+whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was
+in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared
+everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as
+to fight for one another--each for all, and all for each. Forty years have
+gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk
+Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The
+poor _bauers_ and squatters from the bush came out then and did their
+share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings
+and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to
+this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the
+well-to-do than I know of anywhere else.
+
+When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly
+built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle
+for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the
+drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and
+filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was
+no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned,
+flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones
+threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the
+little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of
+their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix.
+
+By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to
+meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to
+be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might
+have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice
+of his day--grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under
+Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular
+troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said
+to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose
+to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory
+neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own
+fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets
+in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling,
+hissing stone.
+
+I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that
+in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great
+campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that
+strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last
+at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French
+overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical
+enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages
+or of the Don Cossacks--in none of these records, I aver, can you find so
+much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born
+Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter
+cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest
+painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian
+peasant was a nobleman.
+
+Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon
+these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of
+duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than
+once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of
+them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my
+generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this
+philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an
+army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their
+relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be
+slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at
+their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars
+apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one
+pretend not to hate such monsters?
+
+At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had
+never known before to marshal our yeomanry together.
+
+Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night--to
+Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in
+the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East
+Creek--organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a
+little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district
+regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at
+Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched
+forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to
+Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather
+together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better
+than a fortnight ago had seemed possible.
+
+They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard
+of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and
+Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the
+bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and
+villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among
+them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and
+imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher
+estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call
+such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many
+of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform,
+such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied
+largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply
+their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their
+hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their
+sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might
+well have shrunk from.
+
+These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else,
+though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They
+had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine
+friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence,
+though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above
+at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were
+richer in hate.
+
+At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to
+start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late
+in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her
+roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the
+Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on
+our horses.
+
+I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty
+toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole
+distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I
+yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear,
+after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly
+prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and
+who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again?
+
+I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my
+mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out
+for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I
+ought instead to be going toward Cairncross.
+
+Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very
+woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had
+apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me.
+
+"Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me--to say good-by?"
+asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of
+your starting to-morrow--for the battle."
+
+I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it
+in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in
+my words.
+
+"Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come--all day I have been thinking of
+little else--yet I feared that my visit might--might----"
+
+Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a
+superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow
+prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she
+showed now by leaving the room.
+
+"I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet
+with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to
+live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without
+a sign."
+
+We stood thus facing each other for a moment--mumbling forth some
+commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with
+a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "_Must you truly
+go_?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my
+shoulder and weeping violently.
+
+It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I
+would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence--as being too sacred a
+thing for aught of disclosure or speculation--were it not that some might,
+in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung
+by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of
+soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable.
+
+We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand,
+or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot.
+
+We talked of impersonal things--of the coming invasion, of the chances of
+relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a
+good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young
+commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted
+together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back--as we had
+so often returned before during these latter hateful months--to the sweet
+companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr.
+Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at
+Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary
+of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in
+the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these
+long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of
+yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the
+strange quality of the Roman faith--that its forms and customs, learned in
+youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after
+many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab
+Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the
+tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may
+linger pleasantly.
+
+Thus our conversation ran--decorous and harmless enough, in all
+conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a
+forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet
+influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole
+world of meaning evaded in our talk--were we to blame?
+
+I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you!
+This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we
+could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in
+common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly,
+the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman
+now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These
+had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time
+when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this
+we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor
+and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our
+thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and
+without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own
+choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of
+love's cherubim.
+
+We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her
+hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the
+white forehead she as gently inclined to me.
+
+"Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a
+soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!"
+
+"I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come
+back."
+
+The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and
+Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night
+with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she
+shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning.
+
+The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough
+made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There
+were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me
+searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was
+as mystified as I then thought.
+
+At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch
+and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her
+during my absence--and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI.
+
+The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
+
+
+
+I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm
+yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about
+the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said,
+they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it
+would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had
+flooded the kitchen with tears.
+
+Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for
+the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the
+narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous
+personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one
+another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.
+
+During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each
+other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had
+got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her
+letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that
+she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my
+vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from
+it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be;
+for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household
+of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen
+management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her
+own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not
+one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting
+respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction
+as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to
+manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was
+within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and
+anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a
+veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never
+marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly
+unattainable ideal.
+
+I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I
+was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at
+all deceived.
+
+The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed
+bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender,
+high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my
+hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me
+in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives
+before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the
+horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back.
+After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form
+that I was going.
+
+And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come
+to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving
+homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could
+save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and
+scalping-knife.
+
+I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the
+reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I
+should not take this ride for nothing!
+
+"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the
+scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."
+
+"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who
+through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that
+you are a Van Hoorn!"
+
+"I shall not forget."
+
+"And is that young Philip Cross--_her_ husband--with Johnson's crew?"
+
+"Yes, he is."
+
+"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your
+grandfather Baltus was!"
+
+These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had
+joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to
+overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was
+nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.
+
+We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked
+road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by
+the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the
+highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and
+children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall
+corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine
+with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were
+gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the
+Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while
+there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in
+every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to
+Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.
+
+We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth,
+near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine
+from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry
+Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the
+Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that
+Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General
+Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her
+promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when
+I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major
+John Frey.
+
+It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment,
+which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle.
+The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were
+sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting
+low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a
+refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for
+the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to
+find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves,
+Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.
+
+Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of
+the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly
+proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but
+the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might
+have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly
+Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living
+there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and
+that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless
+if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that
+messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we
+look backward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton
+was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia
+was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more
+were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There
+were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan
+volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations,
+and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in
+excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to
+perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting
+force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about
+seven hundred strong.
+
+It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered
+together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called
+into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the
+Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors,
+the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country
+larger than any one of several European monarchies.
+
+As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue
+and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and
+linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and
+huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and
+equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen
+different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch
+Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and
+here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who
+with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and
+Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the
+bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.
+
+Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled
+together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone
+Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had
+children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in
+bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his
+strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives
+down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never
+forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good
+clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of
+the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a
+Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all
+looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been
+always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.
+
+Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had
+small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer
+the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout
+Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock,
+and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of
+Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but
+others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel
+Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of
+the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a
+familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my
+business to check off.
+
+Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells,
+all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were
+five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it
+may well be five of more than one other family.
+
+The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the
+first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But
+soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts,
+and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer
+palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in
+the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new,
+deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force
+greater and more to be dreaded than was Bellêtre's, but because we were
+encamped on historic ground.
+
+From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort
+Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine
+settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth;
+and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in
+a low voice as the daylight faded.
+
+The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of
+northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night,
+and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing
+tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay
+the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow
+ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the
+wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the
+widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the
+current, drowned!
+
+How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should
+have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary
+of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how
+marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the
+captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I
+should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was
+food enough for thought.
+
+But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest
+were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river
+against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in
+emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was
+called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the
+fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that
+Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the
+place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was
+there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith,
+who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was
+Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept
+in our interest.
+
+The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas
+could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of
+savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly
+neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the
+foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded,
+they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their
+Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the
+savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for
+him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to
+say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep
+sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives.
+Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had
+the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of
+forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and
+ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland,
+whom for half a century he had loved so well.
+
+There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with
+their war-party, by all means.
+
+After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of
+stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of
+the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these
+do not concern the story.
+
+It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been
+blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in
+his quaint German dialect:
+
+"Come, walk with me outside the fort."
+
+We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom
+we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound
+to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank.
+There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple
+militia gathering.
+
+We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where
+we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the
+sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest
+old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.
+
+"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.
+
+I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this
+brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?"
+feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew
+not of.
+
+"_I_ am wrong," he said, simply.
+
+"I do not understand you, Brigadier."
+
+"Say rather that _they_, who ought to know me better, do not understand
+me."
+
+"They? Whom do you mean?"
+
+"All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own
+regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me.
+Nothing could be worse than that."
+
+"Suspect _you_, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"
+
+"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It
+has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a
+colonel with Johnson--up yonder."
+
+The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights
+of day were paling over the black line of trees.
+
+"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too,
+my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us,
+and his son _is_ with the Tories--up yonder."
+
+"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march
+to-morrow."
+
+"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and
+another married to Hendrick Frey, and _he_ is a Tory, too. All this is
+thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I
+feel they are talking of this."
+
+"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter
+Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe
+me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."
+
+"You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here.
+Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."
+
+"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I
+different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are
+all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours
+as well."
+
+"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and
+lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you
+get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now.
+Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are
+going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do.
+Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you
+leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to
+save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them
+and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here
+in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank
+in the State line."
+
+"I cannot credit that."
+
+"Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up
+my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"
+
+Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long
+after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying
+my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.
+
+To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling
+existing against him, it to a degree did exist.
+
+The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a
+few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered
+old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our
+Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who
+spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike.
+There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies,
+none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized
+their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the
+Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but
+still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some
+of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that
+matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it
+was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and
+suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once
+begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.
+
+All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy
+which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian
+fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into
+rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and
+wooden-headed Braddock.
+
+We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians
+bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of
+the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded
+the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed
+slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the
+Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which
+bears the name Oriskany.
+
+Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching,
+on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate
+to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with
+our attack.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII.
+
+"The Blood Be on Your Heads."
+
+
+
+A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the
+never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking
+rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the
+hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler
+darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.
+
+Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in
+the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close
+neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals
+prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It
+might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for
+we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of
+these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final
+six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently.
+Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter.
+Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the
+threshold of so grave an adventure.
+
+I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the
+spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some
+dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night
+of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely
+brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store
+of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the
+Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some
+sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of
+food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with
+a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized
+cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on
+their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed
+so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise
+there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"
+
+No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.
+
+Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All
+preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers
+were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had
+been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last
+look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the
+General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses
+harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!
+
+The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the
+prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day,
+instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's
+inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's
+faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days'
+stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay.
+
+The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the
+headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice
+before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands.
+I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident
+impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were
+not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six
+miles distant.
+
+The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of
+sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre
+of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees,
+bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during
+the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now,
+after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in
+camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers.
+These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front
+sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or
+six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with
+one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious
+to hear what was going on.
+
+I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the
+Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling
+differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and
+majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had
+the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every
+day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the
+only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served
+further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me
+only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the
+square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry
+Valley way.
+
+"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his _friseur_
+with him."
+
+"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers.
+Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.
+
+"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing,
+half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence.
+When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and
+fight next spring!"
+
+All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to
+hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.
+
+The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer
+for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the
+sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions
+upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if
+with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired
+we must have heard them.
+
+I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough
+stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the
+dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that
+either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and
+that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he
+held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he
+kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The
+beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to
+one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in
+Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and
+munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus
+supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them,
+unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort.
+In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.
+
+"But I say the sortie _will_ be made! They are waiting for us--only we are
+too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.
+
+"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the
+case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that
+fort two miles farther back."
+
+"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult
+travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's
+Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."
+
+"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or
+some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?"
+I asked.
+
+"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is
+to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."
+
+"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a
+great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"
+
+Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a
+swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be
+looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.
+
+His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.
+
+"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with
+his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.
+
+"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is
+not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here,
+as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the
+parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers
+in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."
+
+"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel
+Cox, angrily.
+
+He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered
+four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a
+loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came
+running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with
+difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one
+place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.
+
+"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall,"
+said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his
+feet as he spoke.
+
+"_Will_ you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone,
+pitched even higher.
+
+"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a
+general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back,
+misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.
+
+"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.
+
+Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.
+
+"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like
+this? Know you not your duty better?"
+
+"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least _we_
+are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.
+
+"_You_!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "_You_ will be the first to
+run when you see the British!"
+
+There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited
+farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising
+momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had
+no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we
+could hear nothing clearly.
+
+There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier,
+Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous
+colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and
+"coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and
+dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I
+could scarce bear to look upon it.
+
+There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the
+crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously
+drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.
+
+Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If
+you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool
+at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred
+could hear:
+
+"VORWÄRTS!"
+
+The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.
+
+There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To
+rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no
+dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back
+in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a
+hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps
+somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene
+before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the
+efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring
+their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his
+Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was
+ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of
+it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to
+bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles
+Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and
+Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.
+
+So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in
+the morning.
+
+The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of
+August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of
+the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the
+world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading
+to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut
+through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line,
+regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances
+bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when
+Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this
+time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough
+spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress
+was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.
+
+There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls
+of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled
+undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to
+be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us,
+and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.
+
+Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van.
+Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had
+been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but
+without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely
+there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of
+an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.
+
+We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in
+the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in
+part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We
+in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were
+resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon
+in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards
+farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in
+the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.
+
+While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This
+is where we camped five years ago."
+
+Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall
+headlong upon the neck of his horse.
+
+There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell,
+a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII.
+
+The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
+
+
+
+Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still
+not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed.
+
+I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his
+horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I
+saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the
+gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the
+dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental
+numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at
+all to comprehend it.
+
+Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his
+mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead
+of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming
+footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement.
+
+The air was filled now with shouts--what they were I did not know. The
+solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together
+like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking
+to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends
+off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had
+jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the
+mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the
+stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at
+random into the underbrush.
+
+All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier.
+
+As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange
+barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther
+side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the
+whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the
+Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all
+directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the
+causeway. It was a horrible spectacle--of naked, yelling devils, daubed
+with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and
+flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and
+neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence
+they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants
+with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the
+sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept
+pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush.
+
+By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine,
+here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis.
+
+Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and
+calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His
+orders I forget now--or what part I played at first in carrying them
+out--but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our
+needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the
+attack, our forces--or what was left of them--had been drawn out of the
+cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This
+could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his
+self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest.
+
+Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing
+to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired
+their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the
+fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the
+Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the
+ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again
+from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of
+the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see
+the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment--these Petries, Weavers,
+Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts--fight their path backward
+through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been
+egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and
+returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie
+regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the
+rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber
+as well as they could, north and south of the road.
+
+While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had,
+strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to
+ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was
+struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from
+his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General
+Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The
+Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the
+rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a
+step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball
+which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood.
+
+It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man
+was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two
+rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and
+bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well
+sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and
+resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at
+a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of
+the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely
+brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the
+maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly
+lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him.
+
+"Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked.
+
+"No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I
+will face the enemy till I die."
+
+All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the
+hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated.
+Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more
+than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little
+mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough,
+half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for
+the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob
+Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of
+his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across
+the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a
+captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat,
+and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the
+Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay.
+
+The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead
+and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist
+of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time,
+forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk
+was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and
+tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he
+missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming--and
+there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes.
+
+"Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when
+one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running
+forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better
+for us.
+
+There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An
+hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its
+clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting
+among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence
+upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet
+ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of
+dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as
+with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk
+stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by
+swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the
+shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible.
+Yes--horrible is the right word!
+
+A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy
+perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a
+compound is man!--we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its
+purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood
+in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!
+
+I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while
+others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now
+these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness
+and with a plenitude of minutiæ which surprise me, the more that I
+remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight
+for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he
+isn't, and that is about all he thinks of.
+
+I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the
+struggle--the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on
+the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of
+the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our
+rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade,
+sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories,
+meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and
+drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been
+wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately
+St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started;
+this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed
+too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action
+cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where
+the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our
+centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way
+backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories
+came upon us.
+
+The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point,
+where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of
+the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the
+hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts,
+crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy,
+shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small
+firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs.
+
+Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which
+promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse,
+perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body
+of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent
+Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and
+cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac
+Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be
+handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence.
+
+Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute
+bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril!
+
+We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things
+were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague
+intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now
+drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells
+of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed
+to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of
+some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which
+side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our
+vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep
+ourselves alive.
+
+All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great
+storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had
+been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the
+darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared
+through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed
+in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the
+blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight
+hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements.
+
+We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched
+under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for
+the fight, it ceased utterly.
+
+While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report
+from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder;
+there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from
+the fort!
+
+I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping
+brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance
+that the Brigadier had not heard the reports.
+
+The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had
+left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches
+above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to
+have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or
+no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied
+their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had
+heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it.
+
+"I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young
+men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off."
+
+The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree,
+avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof,
+told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred,
+nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward
+toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large
+part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to
+say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so
+broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest
+fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.
+
+What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who
+recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain.
+Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great
+catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.
+
+"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel
+Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll
+there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.
+
+Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only
+knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my
+brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry
+eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.
+
+I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of
+Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were
+saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were
+said to be dead already.
+
+The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew
+lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of
+white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at
+once the sun was shining.
+
+On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The
+fight began again.
+
+The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a
+few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what
+food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength.
+They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance
+they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their
+hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now.
+
+The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear
+the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties
+now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms,
+dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke
+arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe.
+Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable
+paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and
+with clinched fists.
+
+A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing
+through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us
+afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could
+reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this
+side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke
+bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses
+of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before
+us as we ran.
+
+Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and
+underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga
+men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the
+bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were
+looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old
+Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:
+
+"Help is here from the fort!"
+
+Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose
+musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the
+bushes, as they advanced in regular order.
+
+I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen
+shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear,
+the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the
+new-comers.
+
+"Who's there?" he roared at them.
+
+"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.
+
+Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to
+the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we
+clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all
+confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them
+to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.
+
+Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.
+
+Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a
+mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and
+left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet,
+and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as
+a shield.
+
+While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing
+with excitement.
+
+"In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"
+
+"Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his
+vast might. "These art Tories. _Fire_! you fools! _Fire_!"
+
+It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former
+friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their
+guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many
+more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.
+
+How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets
+seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a
+score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men
+had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade,
+dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These
+latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire
+to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with
+a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in
+wild pursuit.
+
+Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled
+tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our
+faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore
+forward, loading and firing as we ran.
+
+The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were
+driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of
+renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all
+our ears.
+
+I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying
+piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of
+some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening
+of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the
+Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and
+left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion
+for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood
+in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.
+
+I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where
+the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall
+rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch
+farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently
+attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed
+thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we
+came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.
+
+While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground
+for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:
+
+"They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a
+tree."
+
+I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me,
+his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back
+of his head, his long rifle over his arm.
+
+"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"
+
+"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he
+spoke.
+
+We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet
+struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.
+
+"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and
+leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps
+from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching
+almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.
+
+A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a
+momentary twinge of pain in my arm.
+
+"Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted
+excitedly from the bush.
+
+There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong
+upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting
+forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.
+
+"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars,
+resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his
+gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.
+
+I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained
+grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and
+looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV.
+
+Alone at Last with My Enemy.
+
+
+
+My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to
+speak, but no sound came from them.
+
+For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed
+upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this
+strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or
+over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I
+remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and
+scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay.
+
+There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look
+in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For
+all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing
+whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarrassed me. For relief I
+turned to Enoch, and said sharply:
+
+"You haven't told me yet what you were doing here."
+
+The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned
+his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me.
+
+"You can see for yourself, can't ye?" he said. "What do people mostly do
+when there's shooting going on, and they've got a gun?"
+
+"But how came you here at all? I thought you were to stay at--at the place
+where I put you."
+
+"That was likely, wasn't it! Me loafing around the house like a tame cat
+among the niggers while good fighting was going on up here!"
+
+"If you wanted to come, why not have marched with us? I asked you."
+
+"I don't march much myself. It suits me to get around on my own legs in my
+own way. I told you I wouldn't go into any ranks, or tote my gun on my
+shoulder when it was handier to carry it on my arm. But I didn't tell you
+I wouldn't come up and see this thing on my own hook."
+
+"Have you been here all day?"
+
+"If you come to that, it's none of your business, young man. I got here
+about the right time of day to save _your_ bacon, anyway. That's enough
+for _you_, ain't it?"
+
+The rebuke was just, and I put no further questions.
+
+A great stillness had fallen upon the forest behind us. In the distance,
+from the scrub-oak thickets on the lowlands by the river, there sounded
+from time to time the echo of a stray shot, and faint Mohawk cries of
+"Oonah! Oonah!" The battle was over.
+
+"They were beginning to run away before I came down," said Enoch, in
+comment upon some of these dying-away yells of defeat which came to us.
+"They got handled too rough. If their white officers had showed themselves
+more, and took bigger risks, they'd have stood their ground. But these
+Tory fine gentlemen are a pack of cowards. They let the Injuns get killed,
+but they kept darned well hid themselves."
+
+The man on the ground broke silence here.
+
+"You lie!" he said, fiercely.
+
+"Oh! you can talk, can you?" said Enoch. "No, I don't lie, Mr. Cross. I'm
+talking gospel truth. Herkimer's officers came out like men, and fought
+like men, and got shot by dozens; but till we struck you, I never laid
+eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good,
+too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there,
+within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ain't
+pretty fair shooting."
+
+The cool brutality of this talk revolted me. I had it on my tongue to
+interpose, when the wounded man spoke again, with a new accent of gloom
+in his tone.
+
+"What have I ever done to you?" he said, with his hand upon his breast.
+
+"Why, nothing at all, Mr. Cross," answered Enoch, amiably. "There wasn't
+any feeling about it, at least on my part. I'd have potted you just as
+carefully if we'd been perfect strangers."
+
+"Will you leave us here together for a little while, Enoch?" I broke in.
+"Come back in a few minutes; find out what the news is in the gulf--how
+the fight has gone. I desire some words with this--this gentleman."
+
+The trapper nodded at this, and started off with his cat-like, springing
+walk, loading his rifle as he went. "I'll turn up in about a quarter of
+an hour," he said.
+
+I watched his lithe, leather-clad figure disappear among the trees, and
+then wheeled around to my prostrate foe.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I said, hesitatingly, looking down
+upon him.
+
+He had taken his hand away from his breast, and was fumbling with it on
+the grass behind him. Suddenly he raised it, with a sharp cry of--
+
+"I know what to say to you!"
+
+There was a pistol in the air confronting me, and I, taken all aback,
+looked full into the black circle of its barrel as he pulled the trigger.
+The flint struck out a spark of flame, but it fell upon priming dampened
+by the wet grass.
+
+The momentary gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died
+piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would
+have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his
+nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which
+cold sweat stood out, and groaned aloud.
+
+"I do not know what to say to you," I went on, the episode of the pistol
+seeming, strangely enough, to have cleared my thoughts. "For two
+years--yes, for five years--I have been picturing to myself some such
+scene as this, where you should lie overthrown before me, and I should
+crush the life out of your hateful body with my heel, as one does with
+snakes. But now that it has come about, I am at a strange loss for words."
+
+"That you were not formerly," said the wounded man. "Since I have known
+you, you have fought always exceedingly well with your mouth. It was only
+in deeds that you were slow."
+
+He made this retort with a contemptuous coolness of tone which was belied
+by his white face and drawn brows, and by the troubled, clinging gaze in
+his eyes. I found myself looking with a curious impersonal interest upon
+this heavy, large-featured countenance, always heretofore so deeply
+flushed with color, and now coarsely blotched with varying depths
+of pallor.
+
+"Doubtless it would be best to leave you here. None of your party will
+straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and think of your
+misdeeds until-----"
+
+"Until the wolves come, you mean. Yes, go away. I prefer them to you."
+
+The sky to the west was one great lurid, brassy glare, overhung with banks
+of sinister clouds, a leaden purple above, fiery crimson below. The
+unnatural light fell strongly upon us both. A big shadow passed for an
+instant across the sunset, and we, looking instinctively up, saw the
+circling bulk of some huge bird of prey. I shuddered at the sight.
+
+"Yes, leave me to _them_!" he said, bitterly. "Go back and seize my lands,
+my house. While the beasts and the birds tear me to bits here in the
+forest, do you fatten upon my substance at home. You and they are of
+a kidney."
+
+"You know I would touch nothing of yours."
+
+"No--not even my wife!"
+
+The thrust went home. There was a world of sardonic disdain in his voice
+as he spoke, but in truth I thought little of his tone. The words
+themselves seemed to open a gulf before my feet. Was it indeed true, in
+welcoming this man's death, that I was thinking of the woman it would set
+free--for me?
+
+It seemed a long, long time before I found tongue again. I walked up and
+down among the small cedars, fighting out in my own mind the issue of
+honor which had been with such brutal frankness raised. I could not make
+it seem wholly untrue--this charge he so contemptuously flung at me. There
+was no softening of my heart toward him: he was still the repellent, evil
+ruffian I had for years held him to be. I felt that I hated him the more
+because he had put me in the wrong. I went back to him, ashamed for the
+source of the increase of temper I trembled under, yet powerless to
+dissemble it.
+
+"Why should I not kill you where you lie?" I shouted at him.
+
+He made an effort at shrugging his shoulders, but vouchsafed no other
+reply.
+
+"You"--I went on, in a whirl of rage at myself, at him, at the entire
+universe--"you have made my whole manhood bitter. I fought you the first
+time I saw you, when we were little boys. Even then you insulted, injured
+me. I have always hated you. You have always given me reason to hate you.
+It was you who poisoned Mr. Stewart's mind against me. It was you who
+stole my sweet sister away from me. Did this content you? No. You must
+drive the good old gentleman into paralysis and illness unto death--out of
+his mind--and you must overwhelm the poor, gentle girl with drunken
+brutality and cruelty, and to cap all, with desertion. And this is not
+enough--my God! think of it! _this_ is not enough!--but you must come with
+the others to force Indian war upon our Valley, upon your old neighbors!
+There are hundreds lying dead here to-day in these woods--honest men whose
+wives, parents, little children, are waiting for them at home. They will
+never lay eyes on them again. Why? Because of you and your scoundrel
+friends. You have done too much mischief already. It is high time to put
+an end to you."
+
+The wounded man had listened to me wearily, with his free hand clutched
+tight over his wound, and the other tearing spasmodically at the grass
+beside him.
+
+"I am bleeding to death," he said, with a voice obviously weakened since
+his last preceding words. "So much the better for you. You would like it
+so. You are not bold enough to knock me on the head, or merciful enough to
+go about your business and leave me in peace. I ought to be above bandying
+words with you; nor would I if it did not take my mind from my hurt. You
+are right--you have always been my enemy. You were jealous of me as a
+little boy. You had an apron, and you envied me my coat. When, like a
+fool, I came again to this cursed wilderness, your sour face rose up in
+front of me like an ugly dream. It was my first disagreeable thing. Still
+you were jealous of me, for I was a gentleman; you were a skin-pedler. I
+married a maiden who had beauty and wit enough to grace my station, even
+though she had not been born to it. It was you who turned her mind against
+me, and incited her to unhappiness in the home I had given her. It was you
+who made a damned rebel out of her, and drove me into going to Canada. She
+has ever been more your friend than mine. You are of her sort. An English
+gentleman could rightly have had no part or lot with either of you. Go
+back to her now--tell her you left me here waiting for the wolves--and
+that my dying message was--"
+
+He followed with some painfully bitter and malignant words which I have
+not the heart to set down here in cold blood against him.
+
+"Let me see your wound," I said, when he had finished and sank back,
+exhausted.
+
+I knelt beside him and opened his green coat, and the fine, ruffled shirt
+beneath it. Both were soaked with blood on the whole right side, but the
+soft cambric had, in a measure, checked the flow. He made no resistance,
+and I spread over the ugly aperture some of the plaster with which my
+mother had fitted me out, and bound it fast, with some difficulty, by
+passing my sash under his body and winding it about his chest.
+
+He kept his eyes closed while I was doing this. I could not tell whether
+he was conscious or not. Nor could I explain to myself why I was
+concerning myself with his wound. Was it to save, if possible, his life?
+Was it to lengthen out his term of torture here in the great final
+solitude, helplessly facing the end, with snarling wolves and screaming
+kites for his death-watch? I scarcely knew which.
+
+I try now to retrace the courses by which my thoughts, in the confused
+searchings of those few moments, reached finally a good conclusion; but
+the effort is beyond my powers. I know only that all at once it became
+quite clear to my mind that I must not leave my enemy to die. How much of
+this was due to purely physical compassion for suffering, how much to the
+higher pleadings of humanity, how much to the feeling that his taunts of
+baseness must be proved untrue, I cannot say.
+
+I was still kneeling beside him, I know, when Enoch suddenly stood in
+front of me. His practised footsteps had made no sound. He glanced gravely
+at me and at the white, inanimate face of Cross. Emotions did not play
+lightly upon Enoch's leather-like visage; there was nothing in his look to
+tell whether he was surprised or not.
+
+"Well, what news? How has the day gone?" I asked him.
+
+"Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were
+attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men."
+
+"What is Herkimer going to do?"
+
+"They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home
+again--down the Valley."
+
+"So, then, we have lost the fight."
+
+"Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded
+man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin
+with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?"
+
+"But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the
+fort?"
+
+"Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that
+both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want
+to rest for a spell."
+
+I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous
+carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on:
+
+"They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must
+be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along
+with 'em."
+
+"Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?"
+
+"I ain't quite a fool, young man," said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of
+smile. "If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to
+explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that
+strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an
+opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers
+were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a
+fortnight ago."
+
+All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed.
+He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our
+conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice:
+
+"I know you now--damn you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I
+gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in
+hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now.
+You make a good rebel."
+
+"Now look here, Mr. Cross," put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in
+his tone. "You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that
+way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and
+you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me
+to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and
+smoke it!"
+
+"Come, Enoch," I here interrupted, "enough of that. The man is suffering.
+You must not vex him further by words."
+
+"Suffering or not," returned the trapper, "he might keep a civil tongue in
+his head.--Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for," he went on,
+scowling down at the prostrate soldier. "I delivered your message here to
+this man" (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--"all that, you
+know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a
+Missisague dog."
+
+Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: "There
+may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't
+look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong
+to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck."
+
+The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered
+at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which
+helped me the better to make up my mind.
+
+Enoch had turned to me once more:
+
+"Come," he said, "we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so
+long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting
+from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them.
+As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long
+anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too
+many litters to carry already."
+
+"No," I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. "We will make
+our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the
+river--away from the others."
+
+"The hell you say!" said Enoch.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV.
+
+The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
+
+
+
+In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were
+wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the
+trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was
+never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and
+conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few,
+indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight
+later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my
+pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they
+all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at
+the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey.
+
+This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he
+protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my
+plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting,
+which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once
+embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal.
+
+The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went
+on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said,
+yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was
+not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings,
+covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side
+to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke:
+
+"Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you
+touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough
+for you."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand
+along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't
+know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help
+we want from you is for you to hold your jaw."
+
+"You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man,
+raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring
+affrightedly straight ahead of him.
+
+There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the
+swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had
+returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away
+from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group.
+
+A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and,
+on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion
+mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The
+savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were
+fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in
+an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had
+laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering.
+If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent
+upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned
+in spirit.
+
+"Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the
+sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help
+me God, I will not!"
+
+The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They
+looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not
+materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were
+all on the other side.
+
+"Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep
+cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give
+'em the word."
+
+Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into
+his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his
+arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast.
+
+"It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be
+tortured--scalped--by these devils!"
+
+I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said,
+bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from
+the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps."
+
+"Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your
+canting tongue to deny it."
+
+It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have
+their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending
+their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe
+them to take scalps."
+
+"Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me
+up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain."
+
+"Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for
+you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you
+here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going
+to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to _hide_ you at
+Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. _Now_
+will you keep still?"
+
+He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of
+mystification and utter weakness.
+
+Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my
+project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went,
+down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as
+a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him
+explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a
+magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress.
+
+Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical
+arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward
+should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey.
+
+"They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't
+help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one
+of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will
+be enough."
+
+The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired,
+together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the
+river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to
+the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my
+home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and
+lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done,
+and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the
+rude litter and started for the trail.
+
+I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last
+time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore
+still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of
+this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of
+fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of
+prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air
+stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no
+sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away.
+Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon
+this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly
+past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the
+leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in
+the sunset radiance, watching us gravely.
+
+We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field
+to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the
+forest primeval.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I
+recall no other equally wretched five days in my life.
+
+The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and
+fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be
+accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the
+sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing
+myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their
+sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced
+me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly
+along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face
+and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles,
+my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have
+wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on
+the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on
+the ground utterly worn out.
+
+We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on
+the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter
+we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had
+a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes,
+and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not
+build a fire.
+
+Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in
+a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous
+activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the
+fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we
+lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe,
+floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less
+and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at
+least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more
+than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed
+sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our
+ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man
+ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal
+service and attention for granted.
+
+After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night
+out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able
+to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful
+woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark,
+while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe
+well enough.
+
+The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We
+were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new
+pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there
+was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the
+white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks,
+the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black
+against the pale sky.
+
+There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows
+hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my
+glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at
+one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly
+to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the
+voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses
+stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue.
+
+"Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at
+best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more
+commodious boat."
+
+"Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made
+answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low,
+musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the
+wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at
+Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if
+we were going through a dead country."
+
+Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly
+blurted it out.
+
+"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I
+said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these
+brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really
+understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom!
+Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue."
+
+He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he
+had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression
+of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental.
+
+"Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat.
+"I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day
+long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there
+just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my
+friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out
+of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are
+the wolves!"
+
+He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous
+quaver.
+
+"These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child
+awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get
+where you can have rest and care."
+
+It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as
+powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and
+weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his
+face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it.
+
+He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled
+through a stretch of still water, in silence.
+
+"You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally.
+
+I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered:
+
+"Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches,
+in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?"
+
+"What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman."
+
+I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind.
+"For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that
+either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I
+remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van
+Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have
+brought you back."
+
+"Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily.
+
+After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not
+gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the
+alternate moonlight and shadow.
+
+The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of
+thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only
+not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation
+of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed
+upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless,
+stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not
+so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and
+happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive.
+
+More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the
+reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even
+now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me,
+but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary
+spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent
+before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the
+bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as
+one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent
+impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon
+the man himself.
+
+His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his
+character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the
+existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man
+strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and
+sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable,
+generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty,
+and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been
+two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one
+because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other.
+
+Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story.
+To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have
+behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain
+wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was
+plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable
+husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class
+of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new
+land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon
+himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he
+had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as
+he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of
+his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to
+dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common
+herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led
+him down the fell incline.
+
+I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I
+had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a
+knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other
+circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the
+same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of
+his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine.
+
+Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home
+as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of
+gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI.
+
+A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.
+
+
+
+Just before daybreak of the fifth day we stole past the sleeping hamlet of
+Caughnawaga, and as the sun was rising over the Schoharie hills I drew up
+the canoe into the outlet of Dadanoscara Creek, a small brook which came
+down through the woods from the high land whereon Cairncross stood. Our
+journey by water was ended.
+
+Enoch was waiting for us, and helped me lift Cross from the canoe. His
+body hung inert in our arms; not even my clumsy slipping on the bank of
+the rivulet startled him from the deep sleep in which he had lain for
+hours in the boat.
+
+"I have been frightened. Can he be dying?" I asked.
+
+Enoch knelt beside him, and put his hand over the patient's heart. He
+shook his head dubiously after a moment, and said: "It's tearing along
+like a racehorse. He's in a fever--the worst kind. This ain't
+sleep--it's stupor."
+
+He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his
+life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can
+make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to
+his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be
+different. As it is, I don't see but you will have to risk it, and bring
+somebody here."
+
+For once in my life my brain worked in flashes. I actually thought of
+something which had not occurred to Enoch!
+
+"Why not carry him in this canoe?" I asked. "It is lighter than any litter
+we could make."
+
+The trapper slapped his lank, leather-clad thigh in high approval. "By
+hokey!" he said, "you've hit it!"
+
+We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate
+the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and
+we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it
+over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course
+two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in
+the Valley an absolute secret. His life would have been in deadly peril
+hereabouts, even before the battle. How bitterly the hatred of him and his
+traitor-fellows must have been augmented by the slaughter of that cruel
+ambuscade, I could readily imagine. With what words could I have protected
+him against the righteous rage of a Snell, for example, or a Seeber, or
+any one of a hundred others who had left kinsmen behind in that fatal
+gulch? No! There must be no risk run by meeting any one.
+
+With the scanty meal finished our rest was at an end. We ought to lose no
+time. Each minute's delay in getting the wounded man under a roof, in
+bed, within reach of aid and nursing, might be fatal.
+
+It was no light task to get the canoe upon our shoulders, after we had put
+in it our guns, covered these with ferns and twigs, and upon these laid
+Philip's bulky form, and a very few moments' progress showed that the work
+before us was to be no child's play. The conformation of the canoe made it
+a rather awkward thing to carry, to begin with. To bear it right side up,
+laden as it was, over eight miles of almost continuous ascent, through a
+perfectly unbroken wilderness, was as laborious an undertaking as it is
+easy to conceive.
+
+We toiled along so slowly, and the wretched little brook, whose bed we
+strove to follow, described such a wandering course, and was so often
+rendered fairly impassable by rocks, driftwood, and overhanging thicket,
+that when the sun hung due south above us we had covered barely half our
+journey, and confronted still the hardest portion of it. We were so
+exhausted when this noon hour came, too, that I could make no objection
+when Enoch declared his purpose of getting some trout from the brook, and
+cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and
+from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly
+I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper
+stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity,
+tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under the stones.
+
+Soon he had enough for a meal--and, my word! it was a feast for emperors
+or angels. We stuffed the pink dainties with mint, and baked them in balls
+of clay. It seemed as if I had not eaten before in years.
+
+We tried to rouse Cross sufficiently to enable him to eat, and in a small
+way succeeded; but the effect upon him was scarcely beneficial, it
+appeared to us. His fever increased, and when we started out once more
+under our burden, the motion inseparable from our progress affected his
+head, and he began to talk incoherently to himself.
+
+Nothing can be imagined more weird and startling than was the sound of
+this voice above us, when we first heard it. Both Enoch and I
+instinctively stopped. For the moment we could not tell whence the sound
+came, and I know not what wild notions about it flashed through my mind.
+Even when we realized that it was the fever-loosed tongue of our companion
+which spoke, the effect was scarcely less uncanny. Though I could not see
+him, the noise of his ceaseless talking came from a point close to my
+head; he spoke for the most part in a bold, high voice--unnaturally raised
+above the pitch of his recent faint waking utterances. Whenever a fallen
+log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the
+prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe
+down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult
+connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of his
+disordered brain.
+
+For a long time--of course in a very disconnected way--he babbled about
+his mother, and of people, presumably English, of whom I knew nothing,
+save that one name, Digby, was that of his elder brother Then there began
+to be interwoven with this talk stray mention of Daisy's name, and soon
+the whole discourse was of her.
+
+The freaks of delirium have little significance, I believe, as clews to
+the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary
+speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching
+shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words
+addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to
+be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he was resting his
+head upon her bosom. Over and over again, with tiresome iteration, he kept
+entreating plaintively: "You _are_ glad to see me? You do _truly_ forgive
+me, and love me?"
+
+Nothing could have been sadder than to hear him. I reasoned that this
+ceaseless dwelling upon the sweets of a tender welcome doubtless reflected
+the train of his thoughts during the journey down from the battle-field.
+He had forborne to once mention Daisy's name during the whole voyage, but
+he must have thought deeply, incessantly of her--in all likelihood with a
+great softening of heart and yearning for her compassionate nursing. It
+was not in me to be unmoved by this. I declare that as I went painfully
+forward, with this strangely pathetic song of passion repeating itself in
+my ears, I got fairly away from the habit of mind in which my own love for
+Daisy existed, and felt myself only an agent in the working out of some
+sombre and exalted romance.
+
+In Foxe's account of the English martyrs there are stories of men at the
+stake who, when a certain stage of the torture was reached, really forgot
+their anguish in the emotional ecstasy of the ideas born of that terrible
+moment. In a poor and imperfect fashion I approached that same strange
+state--not far removed, in sober fact, from the delirium of the man in
+the canoe.
+
+The shadows were lengthening in the woods, and the reddening blaze of the
+sun flared almost level in our eyes through the tree-trunks, when at last
+we had crossed the water-shed of the two creeks, and stood looking down
+into the gulf of which I have so often spoken heretofore.
+
+We rested the canoe upon a great rock in the mystic circle of ancient
+Indian fire worship, and leaned, tired and panting, against its side. My
+arm was giving me much pain, and what with insufficient food and feverish
+sleep, great immediate fatigue, and the vast nervous strain of these past
+six days, I was well-nigh swooning.
+
+"I fear I can go no farther, Enoch," I groaned. "I can barely keep my feet
+as it is."
+
+The trapper himself was as close to utter exhaustion as one may be and
+have aught of spirit left, yet he tried to speak cheerily.
+
+"Come, come!" he said, "we mustn't give out now, right here at the
+finish. Why, it's only down over that bridge, and up again--and there
+we are!"
+
+I smiled in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a
+final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest,
+and we'll at it again."
+
+While we stood half reclining against the bowlder, looking with
+trepidation at the stiff ascent before us on the farther side of the gulf,
+the scene of the old quarrel of our youth suddenly came to my mind.
+
+"Do you see that spruce near the top, by the path--the one hanging over
+the edge? Five years ago I was going to fight this Philip Cross there, on
+that path. My little nigger Tulp ran between us, and he threw him head
+over heels to the bottom. The lad has never been himself since."
+
+"Pretty tolerable fall," remarked Enoch, glancing down the precipitous,
+brush-clad wall of rock. "But a nigger lands on his head as a cat does on
+her feet, and it only scratches him where it would kill anybody else."
+
+We resumed our burden now, and made our way with it down the winding path
+to the bottom. Here I was fain to surrender once for all.
+
+"It is no use, Enoch," I said, resolutely. "I can't even try to climb up
+there with this load. You must wait here; I will go ahead to Cairncross,
+prepare them for his coming, and send down some slaves to fetch him the
+rest of the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great square mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front.
+The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no
+wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life
+visible, Cairncross might have been uninhabited a twelve-month.
+
+It was only when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within
+view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not
+been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday,
+church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass,
+intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep
+that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they
+became aware of my presence.
+
+They looked for a minute at me in a perplexed way--my mud-baked clothes,
+unshaven face, and general unkempt condition evidently rendering me a
+stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's
+ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like
+scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of the great house.
+
+So I was supposed to be dead! Curiously enough, it had not occurred to me
+before that this would be the natural explanation of my failure to return
+with the others. The idea now gave me a queer quaking sensation about the
+heart, and I stood stupidly staring at the back balcony of the house, with
+my mind in a whirl of confused thoughts. It seemed almost as if I _had_
+come back from the grave.
+
+While I still stood, faint and bewildered, trying to regain control of my
+ideas, the door opened, and a white-faced lady, robed all in black, came
+swiftly out upon the porch. It was Daisy, and she was gazing at me with
+distended eyes and parted lips, and clinging to the carved balustrade
+for support.
+
+As in a dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was
+gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in
+the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer
+exhaustion and rapture.
+
+When at last I could stand up, and felt myself coming back to something
+like self-possession, a score of eager questions and as many outbursts of
+deep thanksgiving were in my ears--all from her sweet voice. And I had
+tongue for none of them, but only looked into her dear face, and patted
+her hands between mine, and trembled like a leaf with excitement. So much
+was there to say, the sum of it beggared language.
+
+When finally we did talk, I was seated in a great chair one of the slaves
+had brought upon the sward, and wine had been fetched me, and my dear girl
+bent gently over me from behind, softly resting my head against her waist,
+her hands upon my arms.
+
+"You shall not look me in the face again," she said--with ah! such
+compassionate, tender playfulness--"until I have been told. How did you
+escape? Were you a prisoner? Were you hurt?"--and oh! a host of
+other things.
+
+Suddenly the sky seemed to be covered with blackness, and the joy in my
+heart died out as by the stroke of death. I had remembered something. My
+parched and twitching lips did their best to refuse to form the words:
+
+"I have brought Philip home. He is sorely wounded. Send the slaves to
+bring him from the gulf."
+
+After a long silence, I heard Daisy's voice, clear and without a tremor,
+call out to the blacks that their master had been brought as far as the
+gulf beyond, and needed assistance. They started off helter-skelter at
+this, with many exclamations of great surprise, a bent and misshapen
+figure dragging itself with a grotesque limping gait at their tail.
+
+I rose from my chair, now in some measure restored to calmness and cold
+resolution. In mercy I had been given a brief time of blind happiness--of
+bliss without the alloy of a single thought. Now I must be a man, and walk
+erect, unflinching, to the sacrifice.
+
+"Let us go and meet them. It is best," I said. The poor girl raised her
+eyes to mine, and their startled, troubled gaze went to my heart. There
+must have been prodigious effort in the self-command of her tone to the
+slaves, for her voice broke down utterly now, as she faltered:
+
+"You have--brought--him home! For what purpose? How will this all end? It
+terrifies me!"
+
+We had by tacit consent begun to walk down the path toward the road. It
+was almost twilight. I remember still how the swallows wheeled swiftly in
+the air about the eaves, and how their twittering and darting seemed to
+confuse and tangle my thoughts.
+
+The situation was too sad for silence. I felt the necessity of talking, of
+uttering something which might, at least, make pretence of occupying these
+wretched minutes, until I should say:
+
+"This is your husband--and farewell!"
+
+"It was clear enough to me," I said. "My duty was plain. I would have
+been a murderer had I left him there to die. It was very strange about my
+feelings. Up to a certain moment they were all bitter and merciless toward
+him. So many better men than he were dead about me, it seemed little
+enough that his life should go to help avenge them. Yet when the moment
+came--why, I could not suffer it. Not that my heart relented--no; I was
+still full of rage against him. But none the less it was my duty to save
+his life."
+
+"And to bring him home to _me_." She spoke musingly, completing my
+sentence.
+
+"Why, Daisy, would you have had it otherwise? Could I have left him there,
+to die alone, helpless in the swamp?"
+
+"I have not said you were not right, Douw," she answered, with saddened
+slowness. "But I am trying to think. It is so hard to realize--coming like
+this. I was told you were both dead. His name was reported in their camp,
+yours among our people. And now you are both here--and it is all so
+strange, so startling--and what is right seems so mingled and bound up
+with what is cruel and painful! Oh, I cannot think! What will come of it?
+How will it all end?"
+
+"We must not ask how it will end!" I made answer, with lofty decision.
+"That is not our affair. We can but do our duty--what seems clearly
+right--and bear results as they come. There is no other way. You ought to
+see this."
+
+"Yes, I ought to see it," she said, slowly and in a low, distressed voice.
+
+As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my
+wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coarse-fibred male animal,
+returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my
+hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and
+gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my title to do this?--to rebuke
+her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I
+not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought
+pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought
+much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and
+fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of
+my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from
+trouble and grief?
+
+My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not
+have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so
+well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence,
+feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better
+than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong.
+
+Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as
+to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange
+question of our far-away youth.
+
+There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of
+the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell,
+like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the
+thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds
+of other voices, excited and vibrant.
+
+Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some
+formless fear of she knew not what.
+
+"It is Tulp," she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. "Oh, I should have
+kept him back! Why did I not think of it?"
+
+"What about Tulp?" I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the
+narrow path. "I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among
+the others, was he?"
+
+"He has gone mad!"
+
+"What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange
+and slow of wit for years, but--"
+
+"Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you
+were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you
+came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father
+pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened?
+Who is this man?"
+
+In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of
+Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him
+huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was
+the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the
+common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean?
+
+When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.
+
+"Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness.
+
+"Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do
+not understand. I will join you in a moment.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him.
+"Tell me quick."
+
+"Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a
+nigger. That's about what it comes to."
+
+"Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?"
+
+"It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side
+nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs
+over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream
+like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it
+went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!"
+
+The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and
+clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh
+horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to
+where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed
+my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.
+
+Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall
+grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII.
+
+The Peaceful Ending of It All.
+
+
+
+In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon
+the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted.
+Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would
+never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places
+which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play
+and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest
+farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the
+dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of
+death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more
+new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre
+in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to
+bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and
+tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.
+
+So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People
+listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the
+cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true
+that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?"
+
+In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast
+of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in
+the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information
+by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated.
+Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been
+hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately
+follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much
+later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to
+Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the
+men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done.
+
+To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this
+truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have
+chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus
+it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for
+Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered
+to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but
+think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of
+the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper
+Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own
+Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there
+at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That
+failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had
+been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the
+forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory
+gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done,
+he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies
+from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first
+the Yankees, then the others at his leisure.
+
+Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of
+Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of
+things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the
+heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was
+compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no
+doubt who would in the long-run triumph.
+
+Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great
+souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch
+at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live.
+
+But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much
+of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and
+wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around
+the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and
+general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange
+occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf.
+
+I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret
+returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as
+might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the
+stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with
+material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as
+possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the
+scene's sad suggestions.
+
+From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the
+soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the
+other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent
+stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not
+visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the
+waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream.
+
+During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely
+engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to
+represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old
+Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful
+amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold
+and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood
+of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort,
+the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the
+hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant,
+and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from
+confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It
+was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the
+exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a
+hospital than for the saddle.
+
+I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the
+Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year
+1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and
+neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the
+children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact
+date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the
+knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the
+sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not
+less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to
+gather over it.
+
+Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part
+thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came
+to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I
+was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of
+the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so.
+
+Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the
+hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into
+the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled
+and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This
+meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place
+were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly
+as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the
+grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation.
+
+But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John
+personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home
+of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought,
+alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to
+steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife,
+and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very
+melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days
+of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn
+of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though
+they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to
+the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with
+Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also
+have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old
+Douw Fonda!
+
+There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it
+touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter
+Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief
+Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the
+old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood
+upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the
+lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely
+wish him alive again.
+
+Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child
+whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He
+bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the
+Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably.
+
+In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which
+the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was
+born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as
+sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's
+breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him
+accordingly, as is the wont of parents.
+
+When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's
+bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny,
+fair babe nestled upon her arm.
+
+"Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names,
+'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked.
+
+Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy
+into my eyes.
+
+"I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all
+so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much
+our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking,
+dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip."
+
+I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we
+had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of
+Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle
+sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet
+whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and
+fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any
+harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the
+room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in
+my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though
+the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal
+from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was
+easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which
+prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child
+because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and
+tragic romance.
+
+In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious
+little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and
+slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in
+particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could
+bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty
+spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even
+now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely
+obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of
+his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart
+smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath
+his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our
+fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to
+resist him.
+
+The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month
+Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it
+seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old
+man. He literally staggered and died under the blow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as
+peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of
+a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large
+advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having
+always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort,
+and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come
+to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We
+seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our
+childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof,
+where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very
+near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less
+peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of
+a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this
+interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for
+us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to
+both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and
+fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in
+happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts
+from scars.
+
+
+
+
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+Title: In the Valley
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+Author: Harold Frederic
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, IN THE VALLEY ***
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+<b>E-text prepared by<br />
+    Project Gutenbert Distributed Proofreaders</b>
+</center>
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h1>In the Valley</h1>
+
+<p align="center" class="smallcaps">By</p>
+
+<h2>Harold Frederic</h2>
+
+
+
+<h4>Copyright 1890</h4>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Dedication.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><i>When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
+was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
+would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
+the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
+upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
+was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
+thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
+adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
+Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
+welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
+this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
+Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
+bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
+affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
+grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour.</i></p>
+
+<p>London, <i>September 11</i>, 1890</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Contents.</h1>
+
+
+
+<p>Chapter I.      <a href="#01">"The French Are in the Valley!"</a><br />
+Chapter II.     <a href="#02">Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.</a><br />
+Chapter III.    <a href="#03">Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly</a><br />
+Chapter IV.     <a href="#04">In Which I Become the Son of the House.</a><br />
+Chapter V.      <a href="#05">How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.</a><br />
+Chapter VI.     <a href="#06">Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.</a><br />
+Chapter VII.    <a href="#07">Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.</a><br />
+Chapter VIII.   <a href="#08">Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.</a><br />
+Chapter IX.     <a href="#09">I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.</a><br />
+Chapter X.      <a href="#10">The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.</a><br />
+Chapter XI.     <a href="#11">As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.</a><br />
+Chapter XII.    <a href="#12">Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.</a><br />
+Chapter XIII.   <a href="#13">To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.</a><br />
+Chapter XIV.    <a href="#14">How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.</a><br />
+Chapter XV.     <a href="#15">The Rude Awakening from My Dream.</a><br />
+Chapter XVI.    <a href="#16">Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.</a><br />
+Chapter XVII.   <a href="#17">I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.</a><br />
+Chapter XVIII.  <a href="#18">The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.</a><br />
+Chapter XIX.    <a href="#19">I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.</a><br />
+Chapter XX.     <a href="#20">A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.</a><br />
+Chapter XXI.    <a href="#21">Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.</a><br />
+Chapter XXII.   <a href="#22">The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.</a><br />
+Chapter XXIII.  <a href="#23">How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.</a><br />
+Chapter XXIV.   <a href="#24">The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.</a><br />
+Chapter XXV.    <a href="#25">A Crestfallen Return to Albany.</a><br />
+Chapter XXVI.   <a href="#26">I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.</a><br />
+Chapter XXVII.  <a href="#27">The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.</a><br />
+Chapter XXVIII. <a href="#28">An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.</a><br />
+Chapter XXIX.   <a href="#29">The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.</a><br />
+Chapter XXX.    <a href="#30">From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXI.   <a href="#31">The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXII.  <a href="#32">"The Blood Be on Your Heads."</a><br />
+Chapter XXXIII. <a href="#33">The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXIV.  <a href="#34">Alone at Last with My Enemy.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXV.   <a href="#35">The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXVI.  <a href="#36">A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.</a><br />
+Chapter XXXVII. <a href="#37">The Peaceful Ending of It All.</a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>In The Valley</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="01"></a>Chapter I</h2>
+
+<h3>"The French Are in the Valley!"</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
+since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
+to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
+son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
+to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
+parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
+good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
+nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
+recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
+fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
+the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
+might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
+and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
+great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
+waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
+its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
+If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
+become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
+mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.</p>
+
+<p>Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
+keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
+I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
+confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
+their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
+so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
+the story:</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
+that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
+now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
+than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
+dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
+were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
+floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
+the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
+thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
+the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
+or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
+winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
+lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
+not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.</p>
+
+<p>I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
+whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
+did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
+their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
+and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
+women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
+for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
+mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
+behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
+after rains.</p>
+
+<p>Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
+longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
+kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
+time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
+duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
+bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
+the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
+me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
+and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
+too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
+sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
+flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
+hated them.</p>
+
+<p>The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
+these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
+knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
+ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
+commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
+vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
+inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
+snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
+the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
+timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
+our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
+nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
+lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
+I held my breath.</p>
+
+<p>It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
+dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
+set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
+noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
+hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
+great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
+heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):</p>
+
+<p>"The French are in the Valley!"</p>
+
+<p>I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
+and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.</p>
+
+<p>Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
+what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
+I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
+his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
+clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
+with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
+Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
+which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
+to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
+husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
+portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
+small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.</p>
+
+<p>How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
+considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
+Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
+mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
+my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
+fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
+aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
+momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
+suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
+another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
+gravely from within the door:</p>
+
+<p>"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
+and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
+Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."</p>
+
+<p>Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
+Valley.</p>
+
+<p>These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
+to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
+great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
+the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
+all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.</p>
+
+<p>If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
+explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
+I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
+master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
+with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
+my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
+both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
+Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
+conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
+while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
+first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
+hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
+reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
+content to return to his sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
+dreamed at all.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="02"></a>Chapter II</h2>
+
+<h3>Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
+small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
+original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
+might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
+late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
+Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
+fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
+white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
+could sop my bread.</p>
+
+<p>During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
+housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
+upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
+which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
+well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
+command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
+cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
+employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
+heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
+Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
+any other large matter, I would have valued.</p>
+
+<p>Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
+apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
+air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
+the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
+on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
+with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
+cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
+almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.</p>
+
+<p>He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
+themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
+pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
+labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
+speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
+French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
+notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
+me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
+better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
+look up and down the Valley.</p>
+
+<p>It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
+forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
+edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
+the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
+through the cold night.</p>
+
+<p>To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
+or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
+not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
+its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
+its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
+logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
+upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
+grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
+in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
+been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
+French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
+our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
+Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
+being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
+still by contrast.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
+adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
+were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
+and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
+houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.</p>
+
+<p>It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
+men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
+wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
+Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
+part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
+tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
+than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
+little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
+to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
+religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
+I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
+I trust there can be no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
+these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
+of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
+dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
+there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
+the hill.</p>
+
+<p>As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
+his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
+to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
+attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
+mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
+westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.</p>
+
+<p>After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
+cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."</p>
+
+<p>All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
+stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
+the commotion.</p>
+
+<p>Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
+and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
+also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
+yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
+about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
+household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
+we saw on the highway.</p>
+
+<p>What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
+terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
+generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
+or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
+somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
+phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
+out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
+before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
+French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
+above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
+Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
+auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
+had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
+in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
+answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
+the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
+others had become calm.</p>
+
+<p>As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
+cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
+had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"</p>
+
+<p>To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
+in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.</p>
+
+<p>With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
+straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
+cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!</p>
+
+<p>He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
+put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
+in the face, and laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
+all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
+himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
+puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
+staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
+with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
+some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
+wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
+comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.</p>
+
+<p>The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
+the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:</p>
+
+<p>"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
+embrace."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
+two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
+face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
+the rending of an ice-gorge.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
+came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
+my breath.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
+foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
+the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
+and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
+despatched onward to the fort.</p>
+
+<p>While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
+and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
+eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
+eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
+(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
+long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
+their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
+reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
+the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.</p>
+
+<p>The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
+backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
+the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
+I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
+showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
+full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
+pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
+being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
+weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
+it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
+swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
+ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
+warrior should be.</p>
+
+<p>It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
+troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
+and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
+as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
+Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
+roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I
+believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the
+frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was
+not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did
+not get into my favor after we came inside.</p>
+
+<p>Under this Master Philip's commands the negro squatted on his haunches and
+unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this
+bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps
+between three and four years of age.</p>
+
+<p>This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and
+looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her
+eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long,
+tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her
+feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure.
+She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face
+was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to
+me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the negro smiling upon
+us both.</p>
+
+<p>I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was
+already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly
+spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward
+the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude
+behavior and at his words.</p>
+
+<p>"I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child.</p>
+
+<p>He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him,
+clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to
+one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little
+girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great
+wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have
+her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus
+you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood
+finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But
+I had the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing,
+Douw, and what child is this?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions,
+and red with color.</p>
+
+<p>The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that
+Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even
+feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for
+me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one
+might feel the heat, and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as
+much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven."</p>
+
+<p>The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously:</p>
+
+<p>"She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village
+only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the
+other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When
+Bell&ecirc;tre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first
+attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in
+the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange
+enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered?--the infant was in
+some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
+great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
+for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
+to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
+friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
+frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
+cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
+start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
+Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
+brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
+said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
+saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
+one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
+bundled her in."</p>
+
+<p>"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
+yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
+friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
+young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
+people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
+Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
+that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
+not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Tom Lynch, and your grandfather was a king----"</p>
+
+<p>"No more," interposed Mr. Stewart, frowning and lifting his finger. "That
+folly is dead and in its grave. Not even so fair a youth as you must give
+it resurrection."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Bob," said the Major, with sudden alacrity. "Go outside with these
+children, and help them to some games."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="03"></a>Chapter III</h2>
+
+<h3>Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty
+years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see
+him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there
+would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above
+forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame,
+yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist
+and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He
+was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much,
+let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain,
+ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a
+swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals,
+much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness
+when agreed with.</p>
+
+<p>All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many
+other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers.
+He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he
+loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great
+warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be
+said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and
+evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns
+in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most
+instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he,
+so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the
+profession of arms.</p>
+
+<p>A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward
+prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and
+I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here,
+although at the time I was in ignorance of it.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had
+been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was
+the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who
+loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and
+sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court,
+of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the
+father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles
+the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch
+names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany.</p>
+
+<p>Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins,
+got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared
+meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew
+old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not
+forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast
+of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now,
+and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue
+and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a
+sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of
+Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse.</p>
+
+<p>With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had
+dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in
+a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally.
+After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the
+conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving
+himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to
+France, never to return.</p>
+
+<p>He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This
+boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court,
+now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting
+in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant
+existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon
+destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless
+alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous
+gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover,
+and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an
+injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts.</p>
+
+<p>Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a
+priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about
+Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the
+religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier,
+for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit
+to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the
+emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did
+Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning,
+honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the
+Jacobite gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a
+young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony
+Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with
+ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke.
+He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that
+his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the
+daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had
+gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this
+exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from
+the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The
+two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the
+lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance
+and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced,
+and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he
+never forgot her till his death.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for
+striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's
+lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his
+generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more
+selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among
+those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh
+and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of
+Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph,
+its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the
+Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was
+able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig
+influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to
+live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had
+fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to
+Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and
+peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of
+Stewart, and set sail to the New World.</p>
+
+<p>This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which
+perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish
+recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on
+which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the
+succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I
+still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to
+acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the
+question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out:</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me
+a fort!"</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and
+I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in
+the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the
+little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks
+and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no
+work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was
+to his mind, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the
+Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to
+drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he
+must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we
+must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come
+up.--Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing
+his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against
+my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a
+Frenchman than you are yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All
+foreigners are the same."</p>
+
+<p>"It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a
+foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of
+course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even
+speak English properly."</p>
+
+<p>This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr.
+Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to
+hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont
+to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English
+correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was
+true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by
+Philip's criticism.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a
+Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself
+when I <i>do</i> come," or words to that purport.</p>
+
+<p>We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all
+better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were
+some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic
+fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is
+enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls
+which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my
+head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I
+forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling
+him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down,
+with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would
+be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead,
+mumbling with his mouth full of snow:</p>
+
+<p>"Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know."</p>
+
+<p>My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
+little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
+unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
+two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
+Philip said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
+My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
+besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
+weren't Dutch."</p>
+
+<p>When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
+eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
+a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
+and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.</p>
+
+<p>The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
+know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
+They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
+disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
+senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
+deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
+of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
+knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.</p>
+
+<p>"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
+some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
+trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
+estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a
+single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be
+damned to them!"</p>
+
+<p>"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and
+now!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll <i>not</i> think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I
+too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of
+'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit
+to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no
+doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is,
+and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I
+dream--precisely what pleases me best."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk
+with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw,
+yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a
+second self."</p>
+
+<p>The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but
+without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon
+his plate:</p>
+
+<p>"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to
+be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help
+one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."</p>
+
+<p>Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing
+furiously. He smiled and said:</p>
+
+<p>"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."</p>
+
+<p>My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie
+over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow,
+struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school
+for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him.
+We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless
+grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut
+out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."</p>
+
+<p>The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the
+lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life,
+dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for
+my bride."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.</p>
+
+<p>The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with
+moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in
+this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and
+thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty
+despatches.</p>
+
+<p>While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over
+his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little
+waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore
+over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily
+and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm,
+Bob, for the journey."</p>
+
+<p>The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's
+arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could
+Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his
+fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine
+country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again.
+What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"</p>
+
+<p>I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr.
+Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him
+pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence
+which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I
+walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with
+deep joy.</p>
+
+<p>"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a
+load off my mind.--Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."</p>
+
+<p>"And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked,
+vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the
+question."</p>
+
+<p>The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat
+pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which
+Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips,
+and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me,
+red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at
+his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my
+apron, besides.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face,
+knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst
+into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a
+wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and
+screaming that he <i>would</i> have the child.</p>
+
+<p>I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle
+by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and
+then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob
+enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on
+the horse.
+
+Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a
+salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when
+once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of
+him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade,
+a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you--and yours, <i>mon fr&egrave;re</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the
+river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly
+back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their
+mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a
+father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the
+present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."</p>
+
+<p>To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the
+melting snow by his side.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log
+structure critically over.</p>
+
+<p>"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this
+house--to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Stewart."</p>
+
+<p>"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan
+out still another room for our abode."</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically
+begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="04"></a>Chapter IV</h2>
+
+<h3>In Which I Become the Son of the House.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage
+and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could
+scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the
+year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near
+the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that
+their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they
+did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in
+constant alarm. No household knew, on going to bed, that they would not be
+roused before morning by savage war-cries. No man ventured out of sight of
+his home without entertaining the idea that he might never get back alive.
+Hence, when the long-expected blow was really struck, and the town on the
+German Flatts devastated, everybody was in an agony of fear. To make
+matters worse, Sir William was at his home ill in bed, and there was some
+trouble between him and the English commanders, which stood in the way of
+troops being sent to our aid.</p>
+
+<p>Those few days following the dreadful news of the attack above us seem
+still like a nightmare. The settlers up the river began sending their
+household goods down to Albany; women and children, too, passed us in
+great parties, to take refuge in Fort Hunter or at Schenectady. The river
+suddenly became covered with boats once more, but this time representing
+the affrighted flight of whole communities instead of a peaceful commerce.</p>
+
+<p>During this season of terror I was, as may be conceived, indeed unhappy. I
+had no stomach even for play with the new addition to our household, yet
+scarcely dared to show my nose outside the stockade. Mr. Stewart spent his
+days abroad, either with Sir William, or up at Caughnawaga concerting
+means of defence with our friends the Fondas. He did, however, find time
+to cross the river and reassure my mother, who trembled with apprehension
+for her great brood of young, but was brave as a lion for herself. Weeks
+afterward, when I visited her once more, I saw baskets of lime in the
+attic which this devoted woman had stored there, to throw with water on
+the Indians when they came. This device she had learned from the family
+traditions of her ancestors' doings, when the Spaniards were in Holland.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the alarm wore away. The French and Indians, after killing fifty
+Palatines and taking thrice that number prisoners, turned tail and marched
+back to the Lake again, with some of Honikol Herkimer's lead in their
+miserable bodies. The Valley was rarely to be cursed with their presence
+again. It was as if a long fever had come to its climax in a tremendous
+convulsion, and then gone off altogether. We regained confidence, and
+faced the long winter of '57 with content.</p>
+
+<p>Before the next snowfall succeeded to that first November flurry, and the
+season closed in in earnest, Mr. Stewart was able, by the aid of a number
+of neighbors, to build and roof over two additions to his house. The
+structure was still all of logs, but with its new wings became almost as
+large, if not as imposing, as any frame-house round about. One of these
+wings was set aside for Dame Kronk and the little girl. The other, much to
+my surprise, was given to me. At the same time my benefactor formally
+presented me with my little black playmate, Tulp. He had heretofore been
+my friend; henceforth he was my slave, yet, let me add, none the less
+my friend.</p>
+
+<p>All this was equivalent to my formal adoption as Mr. Stewart's son. It was
+the custom in those days, when a slave child came of a certain age, to
+present it to the child of the family who should be of the same age and
+sex. The presentation was made at New Year's, ordinarily, and the white
+child acknowledged it by giving the little black a piece of money and a
+pair of shoes. My mother rather illogically shed some tears at this token
+that I was to belong henceforth to Mr. Stewart; but she gave me a bright
+Spanish dollar out of her small hoard, for Tulp, and she had old William
+Dietz, the itinerant cobbler of Schoharie, construct for him a very
+notable pair of shoes, which did him no good since his father promptly
+sold them over at Fort Hunter for rum. The old rascal would have made
+away with the coin as well, no doubt, but that Mr. Stewart threatened him
+with a hiding, and so Tulp wore it on a leather string about his neck.</p>
+
+<p>I did not change my name, but continued to be Douw Mauverensen. This was
+at the wish of both Mr. Stewart and my mother, for the name I bore was an
+honorable one. My father had been for years a clergyman in the Valley,
+preaching now in Dutch, now in German, according to the nationality of the
+people, and leading a life of much hardship, travelling up and down among
+them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is
+certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many
+people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly
+remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very
+small boy.</p>
+
+<p>As he had had no fixed charge during life, but had ministered to half a
+dozen communities, so it was nobody's business in particular to care for
+his family after his death. The owner of the horse did send my mother a
+bushel of apples, and the congregation at Stone Arabia took up a little
+money for her. But they were all poor people in those days, wresting a
+scanty livelihood from the wilderness, and besides, I have never noticed
+that to be free with their money is in the nature of either the Dutch or
+the Palatines. The new dominie, too, who came up from Albany to take my
+father's place, was of the opinion that there was quite little enough
+coming in for the living pastor, without shearing it, as he said, to keep
+alive dead folk's memories. Thus sadly a prospect of great destitution
+opened before my mother.</p>
+
+<p>But she was, if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain
+Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the
+knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my
+grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years
+his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or
+by crook to collect his old credits outstanding, and maintained at least
+enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after
+his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with
+her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie
+Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she
+was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the
+youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means
+of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new
+dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time
+he visited our village. To add to the wretchedness of her plight, at this
+very time her sister Margaret came back in destitution and weakness to
+her, having been both widowed and sorely shaken in wits by the small-pox.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Mr. Stewart, who had known my father, came to our relief.
+He first lent my mother a small sum of money--she would take no more, and
+was afterward very proud to repay him penny for penny. He further
+interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and
+others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort
+Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch.</p>
+
+<p>This language, which I have lived to see almost entirely fade from use,
+was even then thought to be most probably the tongue of the future in the
+colony, and there was the more need to teach it correctly, since, by the
+barbarous commingling of Rhenish peasant dialects, Irish and Scotch
+perversions of English, Indian phrases, the lingo of the slaves, and the
+curious expressions of the Yankees from the East, the most villanous
+jargon ever heard was commonly spoken in our Valley. My mother knew the
+noble language of her fathers in all its strength and sweetness, and her
+teaching was so highly prized that soon the school became a source of
+steady support to us all. Old "Uncle" Conrad--or Coonrod as we used to
+call him--the high-shouldered old pedagogue who was at once teacher,
+tithing-man, herb-doctor, and fiddler for our section, grumbled a little
+at the start; but either he had not the heart to take the bread from our
+mouths, or his own lips were soon silenced by the persuasion of
+our patrons.</p>
+
+<p>It was out of respect for one of these, good old Douw Fonda, who came from
+Schenectady to live at Caughnawaga when I was two years old, that I had
+been named. But even more we all owed to the quiet, lonely man who had
+built the log house opposite Aries Creek, and who used so often to come
+over on Sunday afternoons in the warm weather and pay us a
+friendly visit.</p>
+
+<p>My earliest recollections are of this Mr. Stewart, out of whom my boyish
+fancy created a beneficent sort of St. Nicholas, who could be good all the
+year round instead of only at New Year's. As I grew older his visits
+seemed more and more to be connected with me, for he paid little attention
+to my sisters, and rarely missed taking me on his knee, or, later on,
+leading me out for a walk. Finally I was asked to go over and stay with
+him for a week, and this practically was the last of my life with my
+mother. Soon afterward my aunt was engaged as his housekeeper, and I
+tacitly became a part of the household as well. Last of all, on my eighth
+birthday, in this same November of '57, I was formally installed as son of
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>It was a memorable day, as I have said, in that Tulp was given me for my
+own. But I think that at the time I was even more affected by the fact
+that I was presented with a coat, and allowed to forever lay aside my
+odious aprons. These garments, made by my mother's own hands, had long
+been the bane of my existence. To all my entreaties to be dressed as the
+other boys of my age were, like Matthew Wormuth or Walter Butler instead
+of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter
+Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he
+was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been
+my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my
+humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same
+pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and
+plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel
+any more like the other boys than before.</p>
+
+<p>It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual
+contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the
+history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the
+neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other
+countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's
+possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the
+<i>Gentleman's Magazine,</i> which I studied with delight. I had also from him
+<i>Roderick Random</i>, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now
+understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found
+favor with sensible people.</p>
+
+<p>My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little
+boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd
+sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the
+boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant
+as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the
+Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years
+after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's
+mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and
+fish and hunt instead. Young Butler was of a better sort mentally, but he
+too never cared to read much. Both he and the Groats, the Nellises, the
+Cosselmans, young Wormuth--in fact, all the boys of good families I knew
+in the Valley--derided education, and preferred instead to go into the
+woods with a negro, and hunt squirrels while he chopped, or to play with
+their traps.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps they were not to be blamed much, for the attractions of the rough
+out-of-door life which they saw men leading all about them might very
+easily outweigh the quiet pleasures of a book. But it was a misfortune
+none the less in after-years to some of them, when they allowed uninformed
+prejudices to lead them into a terrible course of crime against their
+country and their neighbors, and paid their estates or their lives as the
+penalty for their ignorance and folly.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, things are better ordered for the youth of the land in these
+days.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="05"></a>Chapter V</h2>
+
+<h3>How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It was on the morrow after my birthday that we became finally convinced of
+the French retreat. Mr. Stewart had returned from his journeys, contented,
+and sat now, after his hot supper, smoking by the fire. I lay at his feet
+on a bear-skin, I remember, reading by the light of the flames, when my
+aunt brought the baby-girl in.</p>
+
+<p>During the week that she had been with us, I had been too much terrified
+by the menace of invasion to take much interest in her, and Mr. Stewart
+had scarcely seen her. He smiled now, and held out his hands to her. She
+went to him very freely, and looked him over with a wise, wondering
+expression when he took her on his knee. It could be seen that she was
+very pretty. Her little white rows of teeth were as regular and pearly as
+the upper kernels on an ear of fresh sweet corn. She had a ribbon in her
+long, glossy hair, and her face shone pleasantly with soap. My aunt had
+made her some shoes out of deer-hide, which Mr. Stewart chuckled over.</p>
+
+<p>"What a people the Dutch are!" he said, with a smile. "The child is
+polished like the barrel of a gun. What's your name, little one?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl made no answer, from timidity I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>"Has she no name? I should think she would have one," said I. It was the
+first time I had ever spoken to Mr. Stewart without having been addressed.
+But my new position in the house seemed to entitle me to this much
+liberty, for once.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he replied, "your aunt is not able to discover that she has a
+name--except that she calls herself Pulkey, or something like that."</p>
+
+<p>"That is not a good name to the ear," I said, in comment.</p>
+
+<p>"No; doubtless it is a nickname. I have thought," he added, musingly, "of
+calling her Desideria."</p>
+
+<p>I sat bolt upright at this. It did not become me to protest, but I could
+not keep the dismay from my face, evidently, for Mr. Stewart
+laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Douw? Is it not to your liking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Y-e-s, sir--but she is such a very little girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the name is so great, eh? She'll grow to it, lad, she'll grow to it.
+And what kind of a Dutchman are you, sir, who are unwilling to do honor to
+the greatest of all Dutchmen? The Dr. Erasmus upon whose letters you are
+to try your Latin this winter--his name was Desiderius. Can you tell what
+it means? It signifies 'desired,' as of a mother's heart, and he took a
+form of the Greek verb <i>erao</i>, meaning about the same thing, instead. It's
+a goodly famous name, you see. We mean to make our little girl the truest
+lady, and love her the best, of all the women in the Valley. And so we'll
+give her a name--a fair-sounding, gracious, classical name--which no
+other woman bears, and one that shall always suggest home love--eh, boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"But if it be so good a name, sir," I said, gingerly being conscious of
+presumption, "why did Dr. Erasmus not keep it himself instead of turning
+it into Greek?"</p>
+
+<p>My patron laughed heartily at this. "A Dutchman for obstinacy!" he said,
+and leaned over to rub the top of my head, which he did when I specially
+pleased him.</p>
+
+<p>Late that night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling
+of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I
+determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was
+brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the
+fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. Mr.
+Stewart was reading by the candles on the table. Save for the singing of
+the kettle on the crane--for the mixing of his night-drink later on--and
+the click of my aunt's knitting-needles, there was perfect silence. I
+mustered my bravery, and called my wee playmate "Daisy."</p>
+
+<p>I dared not look at the master, and could not tell if he had heard or not.
+Presently I spoke the name again, and this time ventured to steal an
+apprehensive glance at him, and fancied I saw the workings of a smile
+repressed in the deep lines about his mouth. "A Dutchman for obstinacy"
+truly, since two days afterward Mr. Stewart himself called the girl
+"Daisy"--and there was an end of it. Until confirmation time, when she
+played a queenly part at the head of the little class of farmers' and
+villagers' daughters whom Dominie Romeyn baptized into full communion,
+the ponderous Latin name was never heard of again. Then it indeed emerged
+for but a single day, to dignify a state occasion, and disappeared
+forever. Except alone on the confirmation register of the Stone Church at
+Caughnawaga, she was Daisy thenceforth for all time and to all men.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of
+great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the
+roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good
+crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying
+settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to
+get food.</p>
+
+<p>I do not remember that our household stood in any such need, but
+occasionally some Indian who had been across the hills carrying venison
+would come in and rest, begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a
+strong smell like that of a tame bear as he toasted himself by the fire.
+Mr. Stewart was often amused by these fellows, and delighted to talk with
+them as far as their knowledge of language and inclination to use it went,
+but I never could abide them.</p>
+
+<p>It has become the fashion now to be sentimental about the red man, and
+young people who never knew what he really was like find it easy to extol
+his virtues, and to create for him a chivalrous character. No doubt there
+were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few
+just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion
+to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail
+me. But as a whole the race was a bad one--full of laziness and lies and
+cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and
+I know what I say.</p>
+
+<p>Probably there was no place on the whole continent where these Indians
+could be better studied than in the Mohawk Valley, near to Sir William's
+place. They came to him in great numbers, not only from the Six Nations,
+but often from far-distant tribes living beyond the Lakes and north of the
+St. Lawrence. They were on their best behavior with him, and no doubt had
+an affection for him in their way, but it was because he flattered their
+egregious vanity by acting and dressing in Indian fashion, and made it
+worth their while by constantly giving them presents and rum. Their liking
+seemed always to me to be that of the selfish, treacherous cat, rather
+than of the honest dog. Their teeth and claws were always ready for your
+flesh, if you did not give them enough, and if they dared to strike. And
+they were cowards, too, for all their boasting. Not even Sir William could
+get them to face any enemy in the open. Their notion of war was midnight
+skulking and shooting from behind safe cover. Even in battle they were
+murderers, not warriors.</p>
+
+<p>In peace they were next to useless. There was a little colony of them in
+our orchard one summer which I watched with much interest. The men never
+did one stroke of honest work all the season long, except to trot on
+errands when they felt like it, and occasionally salt and smoke fish
+which they caught in the river.</p>
+
+<p>But the wretched squaws--my word but <i>they</i> worked enough for both! These
+women, wrinkled, dirty, sore-eyed from the smoke in their miserable huts,
+toiled on patiently, ceaselessly, making a great variety of wooden
+utensils and things of deer-hide like snow-shoes, moccasins, and shirts,
+which they bartered with the whites for milk and vegetables and rum. Even
+the little girls among them had to gather berries and mandrake, and, in
+the fall, the sumach blows which the Indians used for savoring their food.
+And if these poor creatures obtained in their bartering too much bread and
+milk and too little rum and tobacco, they were beaten by their men as no
+white man would beat the meanest animal.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless much of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and
+hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all
+sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a
+score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp,
+that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs
+which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in
+the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, who herded
+together in a shanty at the edge of the clearing back of us, had their
+faults, no doubt; but they would work when they were bid, and they were
+grateful to those who fed and clothed and cared for them. These were
+reasons for their being despised by the Indians--and they seemed also
+reasons why I should like them, as I always did.</p>
+
+<p>There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a
+queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical
+sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably
+believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors
+or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge
+of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his
+ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over
+collecting tulip-bulbs.</p>
+
+<p>His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the
+possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened
+Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought
+him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the
+day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in
+his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing
+his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had
+some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could
+have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this
+warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living
+up to it.</p>
+
+<p>I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In
+truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season
+of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for
+me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head;
+that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close
+to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy,
+until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long
+months I never saw my mother and sisters, or went to church? It was very
+pleasant inside.</p>
+
+<p>I seem still to see the square, home-like central room of the old house,
+with Mr. Stewart's bed in one corner, covered with a great robe of pieced
+panther skins. The smoky rafters above were hung with strings of onions,
+red-peppers, and long ears of Indian corn, the gold of which shone through
+pale parted husks and glowed in the firelight. The rude home-made table,
+chairs, and stools stood in those days upon a rough floor of hewn planks,
+on projecting corners of which an unlucky toe was often stubbed. There
+were various skins spread on this floor, and others on the log walls, hung
+up to dry. Over the great stone mantel were suspended Mr. Stewart's guns,
+along with his sword and pistols. Back in the corners of the fireplace
+were hung traps, nets, and the like, while on the opposite side of the
+room was the master's bookcase, well filled with volumes in English,
+Latin, and other tongues. Three doors, low and unpanelled, opened from
+this room to the other chambers of the house--leading respectively to the
+kitchen, to my room, and to the room now set apart for my aunt and
+little Daisy.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt it was a poor abode, and scantily enough furnished, judged by
+present standards, but we were very comfortable in it, none the less. I
+worked pretty hard that winter on my Latin, conning C&aelig;sar for labor and
+Dr. Erasmus for play, and kept up my other studies as well, reading for
+the first time, I remember, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. For the
+rest, I busied myself learning to make snow-shoes, to twist cords out of
+flax, to mould bullets, and to write legibly, or else played with
+Daisy and Tulp.</p>
+
+<p>To confess how simply we amused ourselves, we three little ones, would be
+to speak in an unknown tongue, I fear, to modern children. Our stock of
+playthings was very limited. We had, as the basis of everything, the
+wooden works of the old clock, which served now for a gristmill like that
+of the Groats, now for a fort, again for a church. Then there were the
+spindles of a discarded spinning-wheel, and a small army of spools which
+my aunt used for winding linen thread. These we dressed in odd rags for
+dolls--soldiers, Indians, and fine ladies, and knights of old. To our
+contented fancy, there was endless interest in the lives and doings of
+these poor puppets. I made them illustrate the things I read, and the
+slave boy and tiny orphan girl assisted and followed on with equal
+enthusiasm, whether the play was of Alexander of Macedon, or Captain Kidd,
+or only a war-council of Delaware Indians, based upon Mr. Colden's book.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, when it was warm enough to leave the hearth, and Mr. Stewart
+desired not to be disturbed, we would transport ourselves and our games to
+my aunt's room. This would be a dingy enough place, I suppose, even to my
+eyes now, but it had a great charm then. Here from the rafters hung the
+dried, odoriferous herbs--sage, summer-savory, and mother-wort; bottles of
+cucumber ointment and of a liniment made from angle-worms--famous for cuts
+and bruises; strings of dried apples and pumpkins; black beans in their
+withered pods; sweet clover for the linen--and I know not what else
+besides. On the wall were two Dutch engravings of the killing of Jan and
+Cornelis de Wit by the citizens of The Hague, which, despite their hideous
+fidelity to details, had a great fascination for me.</p>
+
+<p>My childhood comes back vividly indeed to me as I recall the good old
+woman, in her white cap and short gown (which she had to lift to get at
+the pocket tied over her petticoat by a string to her waist), walking up
+and down with the yarn taut from the huge, buzzing wheel, crooning Dutch
+hymns to herself the while, and thinking about our dinner.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="06"></a>Chapter VI</h2>
+
+<h3>Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>If I relied upon my memory, I could not tell when the French war ended. It
+had practically terminated, so far as our Valley was concerned, with the
+episode already related. Sir William Johnson was away much of the time
+with the army, and several of the boys older than myself--John Johnson,
+John Frey, and Adam Fonda among them--went with him. We heard vague news
+of battles at distant places, at Niagara, at Quebec, and elsewhere. Once,
+indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did
+bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic
+in the lower settlements.</p>
+
+<p>Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in
+the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes.</p>
+
+<p>I remember one body of Highlanders in particular whose dress and mien
+impressed me greatly. Mr. Stewart, too, was much excited by the memories
+this noble uniform evoked, and had the officers into the house to eat and
+drink with him. I watched and listened to these tall, fierce, bare-kneed
+warriors in awe, from a distance. He brought out bottles from his rare
+stock of Madeira, and they drank it amid exclamations which, if I mistake
+not, were highly treasonable. This was almost the last occasion on which I
+heard references made to his descent, and he did his best to discourage
+them then. Most of these fine red-haired men, I learned afterward laid
+their bones on the bloody plateau overlooking Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>Far fresher in my recollection than these rumors of war is the fact that
+my Tulp caught the small-pox, in the spring of '60, the malady having been
+spread by a Yankee who came up the Valley selling sap-spouts that were
+turned with a lathe instead of being whittled. The poor little chap was
+carried off to a sheep-shed on the meadow clearing, a long walk from our
+house, and he had to remain there by himself for six weeks. At my urgent
+request, I was allowed to take his food to him daily, leaving it on a
+stone outside and then discreetly retiring. He would come out and get it,
+and then we would shout to each other across the creek. I took up some of
+our dolls to him, but he did not get much comfort out of them, being
+unable to remember any of the stories which I illustrated with them, or to
+invent any for himself. At his suggestion I brought him instead a piece of
+tanned calf-skin, with a sailor's needle and some twine, and the little
+fellow made out of this a lot of wallets for his friends, which had to be
+buried a long time before they could be safely used. I have one of these
+yet--mildewed with age, and most rudely stitched, but still a very
+precious possession.</p>
+
+<p>Tulp came out finally, scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward
+repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that
+Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than
+ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because
+women are more delicately made, and must perforce shudder at ugliness.</p>
+
+<p>How happily the years went by! The pictures in my memory, save those of
+the snug winter rooms already referred to, are all of a beautiful Valley,
+embowered in green, radiant with sunshine--each day live-long
+with delight.</p>
+
+<p>There was first of all in the spring, when the chorus of returning
+song-birds began, the gathering of maple-sap, still sacred to boyhood. The
+sheep were to be washed and sheared, too, and the awkward, weak-kneed
+calves to be fed. While the spring floods ran high, ducks and geese
+covered the water, and muskrats came out, driven from their holes. Then
+appeared great flocks of pigeons, well fattened from their winter's
+sojourn in the South, and everybody, young and old, gave himself up to
+their slaughter; while this lasted, the crack! crack! of guns was heard
+all the forenoon long, particularly if the day was cloudy and the birds
+were flying low--and ah! the buttered pigeon pies my aunt made, too.</p>
+
+<p>As the floods went down, and the snow-water disappeared, the fishing
+began, first with the big, silly suckers, then with wiser and more valued
+fish. The woods became dry, and then in long, joyous rambles we set traps
+and snares, hunted for nests among the low branches and in the
+marsh-grass, smoked woodchucks out of their holes, gathered wild flowers,
+winter-green, and dye-plants, or built great fires of the dead leaves and
+pithless, scattered branches, as boys to the end of time will delight
+to do.</p>
+
+<p>When autumn came, there were mushrooms, and beech-nuts, butter-nuts,
+hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of
+elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened
+the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the
+wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the
+combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by
+our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being
+boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk
+by my aunt.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, they were happy times indeed!</p>
+
+<p>Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early
+in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no
+reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are
+wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being
+invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew
+quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly
+upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular
+progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the
+pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high,
+uncompromising back made all my bones ache.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was
+a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the
+best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own
+to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on
+me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me
+personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed
+to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist
+clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of
+the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even
+to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree
+were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and
+spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst
+in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I could escape without discredit, and get across the river
+again, it was with the consoling thought that the next Sunday would be Mr.
+Stewart's Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>This meant a good long walk with my patron. Sometimes we would go down to
+Mount Johnson, if Sir William was at home, or to Mr. Butler's, or some
+other English-speaking house, where I would hear much profitable
+conversation, and then be encouraged to talk about it during our leisurely
+homeward stroll. But more often, if the day were fine, we would leave
+roads and civilization behind us, and climb the gradual elevation to the
+north of the house, through the woodland to an old Indian trail which led
+to our favorite haunt--a wonderful ravine.</p>
+
+<p>The place has still a local fame, and picnic parties go there to play at
+forestry, but it gives scarcely a suggestion now of its ancient wildness.
+As my boyish eyes saw it, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The
+creek, then a powerful stream, had cut a deep gorge in its exultant leap
+over the limestone barrier. On the cliffs above, giant hemlocks seemed to
+brush the very sky with their black, tufted boughs. Away below, on the
+shadowed bottomland, which could be reached only by feet trained to
+difficult descents, strange plants grew rank in the moisture of the
+waterfall, and misshapen rocks wrapped their nakedness in heavy folds of
+unknown mosses and nameless fern-growths. Above all was the ceaseless
+shout of the tumbling waters, which had in my ears ever a barbaric message
+from the Spirit of the Wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>The older Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot
+was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here,
+for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered
+about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had
+assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain,
+for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown.
+Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen
+or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this
+council place. Even the trail, winding its tortuous way from the Valley
+over the hills toward the Adirondack fastnesses, had been deserted for
+another long before--so long, in fact, that the young brave who chanced to
+follow the lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge,
+or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to
+learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the
+council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the
+chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part
+of his ancestral history.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart told me that when he first settled in the Valley, a
+disappointed and angry man, this gulf had much the satisfaction for him
+that men in great grief or wrath find in breasting a sharp storm. There
+was something congenial to his ugly unrest in this place, with its violent
+clamor, its swift dashing of waters, its dismal shadows, and damp
+chilliness of depths.</p>
+
+<p>But we were fallen now upon calmer, brighter days. He was no longer the
+discouraged, sullen misanthropist, but had come to be instead a pacific,
+contented, even happy, gentleman. And lo! the meaning of the wild gorge
+changed to reflect his mood. There was no stain of savagery upon the
+delight we had in coming to this spot. As he said, once listened rightly
+to, the music of the falling waters gave suggestions which, if they were
+sobering, were still not sad.</p>
+
+<p>This place was all our own, and hither we most frequently bent our steps
+on Sundays, after the snow-water had left the creek, and the danger of
+lurking colds had been coaxed from the earth by the May sun. Here he would
+sit for hours on one of the stones in the great Druid-like circle which
+some dead generation of savages had toiled to construct. Sometimes I
+would scour the steep sides of the ravine and the moist bottom for curious
+plants to fetch to him, and he would tell me of their structure and
+design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his
+pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and
+this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his
+past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable
+wealth of reminiscence, reflection, and helpful anecdote.</p>
+
+<p>On this spot, with the gaunt outlines of mammoth primeval trunks and
+twisted boughs above us, with the sacred memorials of extinct rites about
+us, and with the waters crashing down through the solitude beneath us on
+their way to turn Sir William's mill-wheel, one could get broad,
+comprehensive ideas of what things really meant. One could see wherein the
+age of Pitt differed from and advanced upon the age of Colbert, on this
+new continent, and could as in prophecy dream of the age of Jefferson yet
+to come. Did I as a lad feel these things? Truly it seems to me that
+I did.</p>
+
+<p>Half a century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle,
+its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan
+tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the
+blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound
+to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that not
+even the horrors of this death could shake his will, or wring a groan
+from his heaving breast. Here, too, above the unending din of the
+waterfall and the whisper of these hemlocks overhead, had often risen some
+such shrill-voiced, defiant deathsong, from the smoke and anguish of the
+stake, as that chant of the Algonquin son of Alknomuk which my
+grandchildren still sing at their school. This dead and horrible past of
+heathendom I saw as in a mirror, looking upon these council-stones.</p>
+
+<p>The children's children of these savages were still in the Valley. Their
+council fires were still lighted, no further distant than the Salt
+Springs. In their hearts burned all the old lust for torture and massacre,
+and the awful joys of rending enemies limb by limb. But the spell of
+Europe was upon them, and, in good part or otherwise, they bowed under it.
+So much had been gained, and two peaceful white people could come and talk
+in perfect safety on the ancient site of their sacrifices and cruelties.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this spell of Europe, accomplishing so much, left much to be desired.
+It was still possible to burn a slave to death by legal process, here in
+our Valley; and it was still within the power of careless, greedy noblemen
+in London, who did not know the Mohawk from the Mississippi, to sign away
+great patents of our land, robbing honest settlers of their all. There was
+to come the spell of America, which should remedy these things. I cannot
+get it out of my head that I learned to foresee this, to feel and to look
+for its coming, there in the gorge as a boy.</p>
+
+<p>But there are other reasons why I should remember the place--to be told
+later on.</p>
+
+<p>The part little Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is
+hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can
+recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade,
+and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds
+these old memories. We were happy together--that is all.</p>
+
+<p>I taught her to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from
+toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs.
+For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call
+her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I
+learned in turn to be merciful to helpless creatures, and to be honest and
+cleanly in my thoughts and talk. She would help me to seek for birds'
+nests with genuine enthusiasm, but it was her pity which prevented their
+being plundered afterward. Her pretty love for all living things, her
+delight in innocent, simple amusements, her innate repugnance to coarse
+and cruel actions--all served to make me different from the rough
+boys about me.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we grew up together, glad in each other's constant company, and
+holding our common benefactor, Mr. Stewart, in the greatest love and
+veneration.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="07"></a>Chapter VII</h2>
+
+<h3>Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>As we two children became slowly transformed into youths, the Valley with
+no less steadiness developed in activity, population, and wealth. Good
+roads were built; new settlements sprang up; the sense of being in the
+hollow of the hand of savagery wore off. Primitive conditions lapsed,
+disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven
+faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh
+outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began
+to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the
+common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the
+Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a
+pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore
+ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained
+hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that
+some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more
+attractions.</p>
+
+<p>There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was
+sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the
+gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London
+clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people
+all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the
+hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown
+how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be
+courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who
+fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses
+and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and
+close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed
+children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love
+for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others,
+the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his
+influence in London.</p>
+
+<p>They never liked him entirely; he in turn had so little regard for them
+and their pretensions that, when they came, he would suffer none of them
+to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom indeed they had often
+to meet as an associate and equal. Yet this bold, independent, really
+great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded
+water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to
+value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their
+painted spectacles--and thus to come to grief.</p>
+
+<p>Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr. Stewart all at once decided
+that he too would have a new house; and before snow flew the handsome,
+spacious "Cedars," as it was called, proudly fronted the Valley highway.
+Of course it was not, in size, a rival of the Hall at Johnstown, but it
+none the less was among the half-dozen best houses in the Mohawk Valley,
+and continued so to be until John Johnson burned it to the ground fifteen
+years later. It stood in front of our old log structure, now turned over
+to the slaves. It was of two stories, with lofty and spacious rooms, and
+from the road it presented a noble appearance, now that the old stockade
+had given place to a wall of low, regular masonry.</p>
+
+<p>With this new residence came a prodigious change in our way of life. Daisy
+was barely twelve years old, but we already thought of her as the lady of
+the house, for whom nothing was too good. The walls were plastered, and
+stiff paper from Antwerp with great sprawling arabesques, and figures of
+nymphs and fauns chasing one another up and down with ceaseless, fruitless
+persistency, was hung upon them, at least in the larger rooms. The floors
+were laid smoothly, each board lapping into the next by a then novel
+joiner's trick.</p>
+
+<p>On the floor in Daisy's room there was a carpet, too, a rare and
+remarkable thing in those days, and also from the Netherlands. In this
+same chamber, as well, were set up a bed of mahogany, cunningly carved and
+decorated, and a tall foreign cabinet of some rich dark wood, for linen,
+frocks, and the like. Here, likewise, were two gilt cages from Paris, in
+which a heart-breaking succession of native birds drooped and died, until
+four Dublin finches were at last imported for Daisy's special delight; and
+a case with glass doors and a lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her
+books; and, best of all, a piano--or was it a harpsichord?--standing on
+its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and
+bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling
+old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk,
+sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing
+to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that
+of the cherubim.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart and I lived in far less splendor. There was no foreign
+furniture to speak of in our portions of the house; we slept on beds the
+cords of which creaked through honest American maple posts; we walked on
+floors which offered gritty sand to the tread instead of carpet-stuffs.
+But there were two great stands laden with good books in our living-room;
+we had servants now within sound of a bell; we habitually wore garments
+befitting men of refinement and substance; we rode our own horses, and we
+could have given Daisy a chaise had the condition of our roads made it
+desirable.</p>
+
+<p>I say "we" because I had come to be a responsible factor in the control of
+the property. Mr. Stewart had never been poor; he was now close upon being
+wealthy. Upon me little by little had devolved the superintendence of
+affairs. I directed the burning over and clearing of land, which every
+year added scores of tillable acres to our credit; saw to the planting,
+care, and harvesting of crops; bought, bred, and sold the stock; watched
+prices, dickered with travelling traders, provisioned the house--in a
+word, grew to be the manager of all, and this when I was barely twenty.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart bore his years with great strength, physically, but he readily
+gave over to me, as fast as I could assume them, the details of out-door
+work. The taste for sitting indoors or in the garden, and reading, or
+talking with Daisy--the charm of simply living in a home made beautiful by
+a good and clever young girl--gained yearly upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with this sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second
+growth of old-world, medi&aelig;val notions--a sort of aristocratic aftermath.
+It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by
+ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the
+wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under
+the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to dwell
+upon this change, or rather upon its results, at this stage of the story.</p>
+
+<p>Social position was now a matter for consideration. With improved means of
+intercourse and traffic, each year found some family thrifty enough to
+thrust its head above the rude level of settlers' equality, and take on
+the airs of superiority. Twenty years before, it had been Colonel Johnson
+first, and nobody else second. Now the Baronet-General was still
+preeminently first; but every little community in the Valley chain had its
+two or three families holding themselves only a trifle lower than
+the Johnsons.</p>
+
+<p>Five or six nationalities were represented. Of the Germans, there were the
+Herkimers up above the Falls, the Lawyers at Schoharie, the Freys (who
+were commonly thus classed, though they came originally from Switzerland),
+and many others. Of important Dutch families, there were the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, the Mabies and Groats at Rotterdam, below us, and the
+Quackenbosses to the west of us, across the river. The Johnsons and
+Butlers were Irish. Over at Cherry Valley the Campbells and Clydes were
+Scotch--the former being, indeed, close blood relatives of the great
+Argyll house. Colonel Isaac Paris, a prominent merchant near Stone Arabia,
+came from Strasbourg, and accounted himself a Frenchman, though he spoke
+German better than French, and attended the Dutch Calvinistic church.
+There were also English families of quality. I mention them all to show
+how curious was the admixture of races in our Valley. One cannot
+understand the terrible trouble which came upon us later without some
+knowledge of these race divisions.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart held a place in social estimation rather apart from any of
+these cliques. He was both Scotch and Irish by ancestry; he was French by
+education; he had lived and served in the Netherlands and sundry German
+states. Thus he could be all things to all men--yet he would not. He
+indeed became more solitary as he grew older, for the reasons I have
+already mentioned. He once had been friendly with all his intelligent
+neighbors, no matter what their nationality. Gradually he came to be
+intimate with only the Johnsons and Butlers on the theory that they were
+alone well born. Hours upon hours he talked with them of the Warrens and
+the Ormund-Butlers in Ireland, from whom they claimed descent, and of the
+assurance of Dutch and German cobblers and tinkers, in setting up for
+gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>Sir William, in truth, had too much sense to often join or sympathize with
+these notions. But young Sir John and the Butlers, father and son, adopted
+them with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and
+German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these
+reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed
+lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for the friendship, of
+their critics.</p>
+
+<p>But let me defer these painful matters as long as possible. There are
+still the joys of youth to recall.</p>
+
+<p>I had grown now into a tall, strong young man, and I was in the way of
+meeting no one who did not treat me as an equal. It seems to me now that I
+was not particularly popular among my fellows, but I was conscious of no
+loneliness then. I had many things to occupy my mind, besides my regular
+tasks. Both natural history and botany interested me greatly, and I was
+privileged also to assist Sir William's investigations in the noble paths
+of astronomy. He had both large information and many fine thoughts on the
+subject, and used laughingly to say that if he were not too lazy he would
+write a book thereon. This was his way of saying that he had more labor to
+get through than any other man in the Colony. It was his idea that some
+time I should write the work instead; upon the Sacondaga hills, he said,
+we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our
+book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of
+planets. Alas! I also was too indolent--truly, not figuratively; the book
+was never written.</p>
+
+<p>In those days there was royal sport for rod and gun, but books also had a
+solid worth. We did not visit other houses much--Daisy and I--but held
+ourselves to a degree apart. The British people were, as a whole, nearer
+our station than the others, and had more ideas in common with us; but
+they were not of our blood, and we were not drawn toward many of them. As
+they looked down upon the Dutch, so the Dutch, in turn, were supercilious
+toward the Germans. I was Dutch, Daisy was German: but by a sort of tacit
+consent we identified ourselves with neither race, and this aided our
+isolation.</p>
+
+<p>There was also the question of religion. Mr. Stewart had been bred a
+Papist, and at the time of which I write, after the French war, Jesuit
+priests of that nation several times visited him to renew old European
+friendships. But he never went to mass, and never allowed them or anybody
+else to speak with him on the subject, no matter how deftly they
+approached it. This was prudent, from a worldly point of view, because the
+Valley, and for that matter the whole upper Colony, was bitterly opposed
+to Romish pretensions, and the first Scotch Highlanders who brought the
+mass into the Valley above Johnstown were openly denounced as idolaters.
+But it was certainly not caution which induced Mr. Stewart's backsliding.
+He was not the man to defer in that way to the prejudices of others. The
+truth was that he had no religious beliefs or faith whatever. But his
+scepticism was that of the French noble of the time, that of Voltaire and
+Mirabeau, rather than of the English plebeian and democrat, Thomas Paine.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally Daisy and I were not reared as theologians. We nominally
+belonged to the Calvinistic church, but not being obliged to attend its
+services, rarely did so. This tended to further separate us from our
+neighbors, who were mainly prodigious church-goers.</p>
+
+<p>But, more than all else, we lived by ourselves because, by constant
+contact with refined associations, we had grown to shrink from the
+coarseness which ruled outside. All about us marriages were made between
+mere children, each boy setting up for himself and taking a wife as soon
+as he had made a voyage to the Lakes and obtained a start in fur-trading.
+There was precious little sentiment or delicacy in these early courtships
+and matches, or in the state of society which they reflected--uncultured,
+sordid, rough, unsympathetic, with all its elementary instincts bluntly
+exposed and expressed. This was of course a subject not to be discussed by
+us. Up to the spring of 1772, when I was twenty-three years of age and
+Daisy was eighteen, no word of all the countless words which young men and
+women have from the dawn of language spoken on this great engrossing topic
+had ever been exchanged between us. In earlier years, when we were on the
+threshold of our teens, Mr. Stewart had more than once thought aloud in
+our hearing upon the time when we should inherit his home and fortune as a
+married couple. Nothing of that talk, though, had been heard for a
+long while.</p>
+
+<p>I had not entirely forgotten it; but I carried the idea along in the attic
+of my mind, as a thing not to be thrown away, yet of no present use or
+value or interest.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, indeed, I did recall it for the moment, and cast a diffident
+conjecture as to whether Daisy also remembered. Who shall say? I have been
+young and now am old, yet have I not learned the trick of reading a
+woman's mind. Very far indeed was I from it in those callow days.</p>
+
+<p>And now, after what I fear has been a tiresome enough prologue, my story
+awaits.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="08"></a>Chapter VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were
+entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness
+of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve
+upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times,
+there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief
+inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and
+her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she
+stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson
+Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight.
+I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my
+companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first
+visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this
+morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion
+behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly
+along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this
+full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued
+hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever
+under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean
+face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown
+sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together,
+from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of
+himself and of the beautiful girl behind him.</p>
+
+<p>And she <i>was</i> beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed
+with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance
+as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in
+its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's
+thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought
+that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so
+delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and
+thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the
+edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the
+hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought,
+as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was
+she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And
+I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my
+head a little, too.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been strange otherwise, for the day and the scene must have
+stirred the coldest pulse. We moved through a pale velvety panorama of
+green--woodland and roadside and river reflections and shadows, all of
+living yet young and softening green; the birds all about us filled the
+warm air with song; the tapping of the woodpeckers and the shrill chatter
+of squirrels came from every thicket; there was nothing which did not
+reflect our joyous, buoyant delight that spring had come again. And I rode
+by Daisy's side, and thought more of her, I'm bound, than I did of the
+flood-dismantled dike on the river-bend at home which I had left
+unrestored for the day.</p>
+
+<p>Over the heads of the negroes, who, spying us, came headlong to take our
+horses, we saw Sir William standing in the garden with an unknown lady.
+The baronet himself, walking a little heavily with his cane, approached us
+with hearty salutations, helped Daisy to unmount, and presented us to this
+stranger--Lady Berenicia Cross.</p>
+
+<p>I am not so sure that people can fall in love at first sight. But never
+doubt their ability to dislike from the beginning! I know that I felt
+indignantly intolerant of this woman even before, hat in hand, I had
+finished my bow to her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it might well have been that I was over-harsh in my judgment. She had
+been a pretty woman in her time, and still might be thought well-favored.
+At least <i>she</i> must have thought so, for she wore more paint and ribbons,
+and fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since.
+Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in
+outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids
+and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet
+so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that
+it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous
+black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an
+unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin.</p>
+
+<p>I may say that I was a wholesome-enough looking young fellow, very tall
+and broad-shouldered, with a long, dark face, which was ugly in childhood,
+but had grown now into something like comeliness. I am not parading
+special innocence either, but no woman had ever looked into my eyes with
+so bold, I might say impudent, an expression as this fine lady put on to
+greet me. And she was old enough to be my mother, almost, into
+the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>But even more than her free glances, which, after all, meant no harm, but
+only reflected London manners, her dress grated upon me. We were not
+unaccustomed to good raiment in the Valley. Johnson Hall, which reared its
+broad bulk through the trees on the knoll above us, had many a time
+sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us.
+But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place--like her
+feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains
+and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet,
+whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and
+Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and
+knowing our position, were also genuine parts of the scene. The English
+lady was pinchbeck by contrast with all about her.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you give the ladies an arm, Douw?" said Sir William. "We were
+walking to see the lilacs I planted a year ago. We old fellows, with so
+much to say to each other, will lead the way."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing occurred to me to say to the new acquaintance, who further annoyed
+me by clinging to my arm with a zeal unpleasantly different from Daisy's
+soft touch on the other side. I walked silent, and more or less sulky,
+between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks
+so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you
+content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet!
+And you never weary of it--never sigh when it is time to return to it from
+New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Never to New York! nor even to Albany! <i>Une vraie belle sauvage!</i> How you
+amaze me, poor child!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily. "My father
+and brother are so good to me--just like a true father and brother--that
+if I but hinted a wish to visit the moon, they would at once set about to
+arrange the voyage. I do not always stay at home. Twice I have been on a
+visit to Mr. Campbell, at Cherry Valley, over the hills yonder. And then
+once we made a grand excursion up the river, way to Fort Herkimer, and
+beyond to the place where my poor parents lost their lives."</p>
+
+<p>As we stood regarding the lilac bushes, planted in a circle on the slope,
+and I was congratulating myself that my elbows were free again, two
+gentlemen approached us from the direction of the Hall.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady
+Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There,
+that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we
+came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his
+rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke
+pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake
+country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until his return, at
+Johnson Hall.</p>
+
+<p>His companion was Walter Butler, and of him I ought to speak more closely,
+since long generations after this tale is forgotten his name will remain
+written, blood-red, in the Valley's chronicles. I walked away from the
+lilacs with him, I recall, discussing some unremembered subject. I always
+liked Walter: even now, despite everything, there continues a soft spot in
+my memory for him.</p>
+
+<p>He was about my own age, and, oh! such a handsome youth, with features cut
+as in a cameo, and pale-brown smooth skin, and large deep eyes, that look
+upon me still sometimes in dreams with ineffable melancholy. He was
+somewhat beneath my stature, but formed with perfect delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>In those old days of breeches and long hose, a man's leg went for a good
+deal. I have often thought that there must be a much closer connection
+between trousers and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man
+like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a
+Whig in the Revolutionary time--as if by natural prejudice against the
+would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and
+dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own
+country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still
+largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World
+ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the
+symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and
+silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction
+of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of
+republican trousers--a popular decree that henceforth all men should be
+equal as to legs?</p>
+
+<p>To return. Walter Butler was most perfectly built--a living picture of
+grace. He dressed, too, with remarkable taste, contriving always to appear
+the gentleman, yet not out of place in the wilderness. He wore his own
+black hair, carelessly tied or flowing, and with no thought of powder.</p>
+
+<p>We had always liked each other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn
+and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he
+was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he
+held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also
+be able to revere them for upholding a false-tongued king against the
+rights of his people. For my own part, I did not pin much faith upon his
+descent, being able to remember his grandfather, the old lieutenant, who
+seemed a peasant to the marrow of his bones.</p>
+
+<p>Nor could I see any special value in the fact of descent, even were it
+unquestioned. Walter, it seemed to me, would do much better to work at the
+law, to which he was bred, and make a name for himself by his own
+exertions. Alas, he did make a name!</p>
+
+<p>But though our paths would presently diverge we still were good friends,
+and as we walked he told me what he had heard that day of Lady Berenicia
+Cross. It was not much. She had been the daughter of a penniless,
+disreputable Irish earl, and had wedded early in life to escape the
+wretchedness of her paternal home. She had played quite a splendid part
+for a time in the vanities of London court-life, after her husband gained
+his wealth, but had latterly found her hold upon fashion's favor loosened.
+Why she had accompanied her serious spouse on this rough and wearisome
+journey was not clear. It might be that she came because he did not care
+for her company. It might be that he thought it wisest not to leave her in
+London to her own devices. In any case, here she indubitably was, and
+Walter was disposed to think her rather a fine woman <b>for her years</b>,
+which he took to be about twoscore.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>We strolled back again to the lilacs, where the two women were seated on a
+bench, with Mr. Cross and Colonel Claus--the brighter and better of Sir
+William's two sons-in-law--standing over them. Lady Berenicia beckoned to
+my companion with her fan.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray come and amuse us, Mr. Butler," she said, in her high, mincing
+tones. "Were it not for the fear of ministering to your vanity, I might
+confess we two have been languishing for an hour for your company.
+Mistress Daisy and I venerate these cavaliers of ours vastly--we hold
+their grave wisdom in high regard--but our frivolous palates need lighter
+things than East India Companies and political quarrels in Boston. I
+command you to discourse nonsense, Mr. Butler--pure, giddy nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>Walter bowed, and with a tinge of irony acknowledged the compliment, but
+all pleasantly enough. I glanced at our Daisy, expecting to discover my
+own distaste for this silly speech mirrored on her face. It vexed me a
+little to see that she seemed instead to be pleased with the London lady.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall it be, my lady?" smiled Walter; "what shall be the
+shuttlecock--the May races, the ball, the Klock scandal, the--"</p>
+
+<p>If it was rude, it is too late to be helped now. I interrupted the foolish
+talk by asking Colonel Claus what the news from Boston was, for the
+post-boy had brought papers to the Hall that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"The anniversary speech is reported. Some apothecary, named Warren, held
+forth this year, and his seems the boldest tongue yet. If his talk stinks
+not of treason in every line, why then I have no smelling sense. They are
+talking of it in the library now; but I am no statesman, and it suits me
+better out here in the sun."</p>
+
+<p>"But," I replied, "I have heard of this Dr. Warren, and he is not reputed
+to be a rash or thoughtless speaker."</p>
+
+<p>Young Butler burst into the conversation with eager bitterness:</p>
+
+<p>"Thoughtless! Rash! No--the dogs know better! There'll be no word that can
+be laid hold upon--all circumspect outside, with hell itself underneath.
+Do we not know the canters? Oh, but I'd smash through letter and seal of
+the law alike to get at them, were I in power! There'll be no peace till
+some strong hand does do it."</p>
+
+<p>Walter's deep eyes flashed and glowed as he spoke, and his face was
+shadowed with grave intensity of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence--broken by the thin voice of the London lady:
+"<i>Bravo</i>! admirable! Always be in a rage, Mr. Butler, it suits you so
+much.--Isn't he handsome, Daisy, with his feathers all on end?"</p>
+
+<p>While our girl, unused to such bold talk, looked blushingly at the young
+grass, Mr. Cross spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless you gentry of New York have your own good reasons for disliking
+Boston men, as I find you do. But why rasp your nerves and spoil your
+digestion by so fuming over their politics? I am an Englishman: if I can
+keep calm on the subject, you who are only collaterally aggrieved, as it
+were, should surely be able to do so. My word for it, young men, life
+brings vexations enough to one's very door, without setting out in
+quest of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, Mr. Cross," languidly sneered my lady, "what is there in the
+heavens or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, which could
+stir your blood by one added beat an hour, save indigo and spices?"</p>
+
+<p>There was so distinct a menace of domestic discord in this iced query that
+Butler hastened to take up the talk:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, <i>you</i> can keep cool! There are thousands of miles of water
+between you English and the nest where this treason is hatched. It's close
+to us. Do you think you can fence in a sentiment as you can cattle? No: it
+will spread. Soon what is shouted in Boston will be spoken in Albany,
+whispered in Philadelphia, winked and nodded in Williamsburg, thought in
+Charleston. And how will it be here, with us? Let me tell you, Mr. Cross,
+we are really in an alien country here. The high Germans above us, like
+that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for
+the King? And these damned sour-faced Dutch traders below, have they
+forgotten that this province was their grandfathers'? The moment it
+becomes clear to their niggard souls that there's no money to be lost by
+treason, will they not delight to help on any trouble the Yankees contrive
+to make for England? I tell you, sir, if you knew these Dutch as I know
+them--their silent treachery, their jealousy of us, their greed--"</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to have gone far enough. "Come, you forget that I am a
+Dutchman," I said, putting my hand on Butler's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Quivering with the excitement into which he had worked himself, he shook
+off my touch, and took a backward step, eying me angrily. I returned his
+gaze, and I dare say it was about as wrathful as his own.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia made a diversion. "It grows cool," she said. "Come inside
+with me, Mistress Daisy, and I will show you all my chests and boxes. Mr.
+Cross made a great to-do about bringing them, but--"</p>
+
+<p>As the ladies rose, Walter came to me with outstretched hand. "I was at
+fault, Douw," said he, frankly. "Don't think more about it."</p>
+
+<p>I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his
+words.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with
+disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="09"></a>Chapter IX</h2>
+
+<h3>I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>In the library room of the Hall, across from the dining-chamber, and at
+the foot of the great staircase, on the bannister of which you may still
+see the marks of Joseph Brant's hatchet, we men had a long talk in the
+afternoon. I recall but indifferently the lesser topics of conversation.
+There was, of course, some political debate, in which Sir William and I
+were alone on the side of the Colonist feeling, and Mr. Stewart, the two
+Butlers, and Sir John Johnson were all for choking discontent with the
+rope. Nothing very much to the point was said, on our part at least; for
+the growing discord pained Sir William too deeply to allow him pleasure in
+its discussion, and I shrank from appearing to oppose Mr. Stewart, hateful
+as his notions seemed.</p>
+
+<p>Young Sir John stood by the window, I remember, sulkily drumming on the
+diapered panes, and purposely making his interjections as disagreeable to
+me as he could; at least, I thought so. So, apparently, did his father
+think, for several times I caught the wise old baronet glancing at his son
+in reproof, with a look in his grave gray eyes as of dawning doubt about
+the future of his heir.</p>
+
+<p>Young Johnson was now a man of thirty, blond, aquiline-faced, with cold
+blue eyes and thin, tight lips, which pouted more readily than they
+smiled. His hair was the pale color of bleached hay, a legacy from his low
+born German mother, and his complexion was growing evenly florid from too
+much Madeira wine. We were not friends, and we both knew it.</p>
+
+<p>There was other talk--about the recent creation of our part into a county
+by itself to be named after the Governor; about the behavior of the French
+traders at Oswego and Detroit, and a report from Europe in the latest
+gazettes that the "Young" Pretender, now a broken old rake, was at last to
+be married. This last was a subject upon which Mr. Stewart spoke most
+entertainingly, but with more willingness to let it be known that he had a
+kinsman's interest in the matter than he would formerly have shown. He was
+getting old, in fact, and an almost childish pride in his equivocal
+ancestry was growing upon him. Still his talk and reminiscences were
+extremely interesting.</p>
+
+<p>They fade in my recollection, however, before the fact that it was at this
+little gathering, this afternoon, that my career was settled for me. There
+had been some talk about me while I remained alone outside to confer with
+Sir William's head farmer, and Mr. Cross had agreed with Mr. Stewart and
+Sir William that I was to accompany him on his trip to the far Western
+region the following week. My patron had explained that I needed some
+added knowledge of the world and its affairs, yet was of too serious a
+turn to gather this in the guise of amusement, as Mr. John Butler advised
+I should, by being sent on a holiday to New York. Mr. Cross had been good
+enough to say that he liked what he had seen of me, and should be glad of
+my company.</p>
+
+<p>Of all this I knew nothing when I entered the library. The air was heavy
+with tobacco-smoke, and the table bore more bottles and glasses
+than books.</p>
+
+<p>"Find a chair, Douw," said Sir William. "I have sent for my man, Enoch
+Wade, who is to go westward with Mr, Cross next week. If he's drunk enough
+there'll be some sport."</p>
+
+<p>There entered the room a middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame,
+with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He
+bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian in his clothes
+of deer-hide.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Enoch Wade, gentlemen," said the baronet, indicating the
+new-comer with a wave of his glass, and stretching out his legs to enjoy
+the scene the more. "He is my land-sailor. Between his last sale at
+Albany, and his first foot westward from here, he professes all the vices
+and draws never a sober breath. Yet when he is in the woods he is
+abstemious, amiable, wise, resourceful, virtuous as a statue--a paragon of
+trappers. You can see him for yourselves. Yet, I warn you, appearances are
+deceitful; he is always drunker than he looks. He was, I know, most
+sinfully tipsy last night."</p>
+
+<p>"It was in excellent good company, General," said the hunter, drawling his
+words and no whit abashed.</p>
+
+<p>"He has no manners to speak of," continued the baronet, evidently with
+much satisfaction to himself; "he can outlie a Frontenac half-breed, he is
+more greedy of gain than a Kinderhook Dutchman, he can drink all the
+Mohawks of both castles under the bench, and my niggers are veritable
+Josephs in comparison with him--wait a moment, Enoch!--this is while he is
+in contact with civilization. Yet once on the trail, so to speak, he is
+probity personified. I know this, since he has twice accompanied me
+to Detroit."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, in the woods, you know, some one of the party must remain sober,"
+said Enoch, readily, still stiffly erect, but with a faint grin twitching
+on the saturnine corners of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>This time Sir William laughed aloud, and pointed to a decanter and glass,
+from which the trapper helped himself with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Look you, rogue," said the host, "there is a young gentleman to be added
+to your party next week, and doubtless he will of needs have a nigger with
+him. See to it that the boat and provision arrangements are altered to
+meet this, and to-morrow be sober enough to advise him as to his outfit.
+For to-night, soak as deep as you like."</p>
+
+<p>Enoch poured out for himself a second tumbler of rum, but not showing the
+first signs of unsteadiness in gait or gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"This young gentleman"--he said, gravely smacking his lips--"about him; is
+he a temperate person, one of the sort who can turn a steadfast back upon
+the bottle?"</p>
+
+<p>A burst of Homeric laughter was Sir William's reply--laughter in which
+all were fain to join.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, General," said Enoch, as he turned to go; "don't mind my
+asking. One never can tell, you know, what kind of company he is like to
+pick up with here at the Hall."</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>My surprise and delight when I learned that I was the young gentleman in
+question, and that I was really to go to the Lakes and beyond, may be
+imagined. I seemed to walk on air, so great was my elation. You will not
+marvel now that I fail to recall very distinctly the general talk
+which followed.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation finally lagged, as the promptings of hunger, not less than
+the Ethiopian shouting and scolding from the kitchen below, warned us of
+approaching dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The drinking moderated somewhat, and the pipes were one by one laid aside,
+in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were
+persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against
+tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of
+hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence
+of interest in the fitful talk.</p>
+
+<p>There came a sharp double knock on the door, which a second later was
+pushed partly open. Some of us rose, pulling our ruffles into place, and
+ready to start at once, for there were famous appetites in the wild Valley
+of those days. But the voice from behind the door was not a servant's, nor
+did it convey the intelligence we all awaited. It was, instead, the
+sharp, surface voice of Lady Berenicia, and it said:</p>
+
+<p>"We are weary of waiting for you in civilized quarters of the Hall. May we
+come in here, or are you too much ashamed of your vices to court
+inspection?"</p>
+
+<p>Walter Butler hastened to open the door, bowing low as he did so, and
+delivering himself of some gallant nonsense or other.</p>
+
+<p>The London lady entered the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of
+carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer.</p>
+
+<p>If her morning attire had seemed over-splendid, what shall I say of her
+appearance now? I looked in amazement upon her imposing tower of whitened
+hair, upon the great fluffs of lace, the brocaded stomacher and train, the
+shining satin petticoat front, the dazzling, creamy surfaces of throat and
+shoulders and forearms, all rather freely set forth.</p>
+
+<p>If the effect was bewildering, it was not unpleasant. The smoke-laden air
+of the dim old room seemed suddenly clarified, made radiant. A movement of
+chairs and of their occupants ran through the chamber, like a murmur of
+applause, as we rose to greet the resplendent apparition. But there came a
+veritable outburst of admiration when my lady's companion appeared
+in view.</p>
+
+<p>It was our Daisy, robed like a princess, who dawned upon our vision. She
+was blushing as much from embarrassment as from novel pride, yet managed
+to keep her pretty head up, smiling at us all, and to bear herself
+with grace.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia, from the wealth of finery in those bulky chests which
+honest Mr. Cross in vain had protested against bringing over the ocean and
+up to this savage outpost, had tricked out the girl in wondrous fashion.
+Her gown was not satin, like the other, but of a soft, lustreless stuff,
+whose delicate lavender folds fell into the sweetest of violet shadows. I
+was glad to see that her neck and arms were properly covered. The laces on
+the sleeves were tawny with age; the ribbon by which the little white
+shawl was decorously gathered at the bosom carried the faint suggestion of
+yellow to a distinct tone, repeated and deepened above by the color of the
+maiden's hair. This hair, too, was a marvel of the dresser's art--reared
+straight and tight from the forehead over a high-arched roll, and losing
+strictness of form behind in ingenious wavy curls, which seemed the very
+triumph of artlessness; it was less wholly powdered than Lady Berenicia's,
+so that the warm gold shone through the white dust in soft gradations of
+half tints; at the side, well up, was a single salmon tea-rose, that
+served to make everything else more beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Picture to yourself this delicious figure--this face which had seemed
+lovely before, and now, with deft cosmetics, and a solitary tiny patch,
+and the glow of exquisite enjoyment in the sweet hazel eyes, was nothing
+less than a Greuze's dream--picture our Daisy to yourself, I say, and you
+may guess in part how flattering was her reception, how high and fast rose
+the gallant congratulations that the Valley boasted such a beauteous
+daughter. Sir William himself gave her his arm, jovially protesting that
+this was not the Mohawk country, but France--not Johnson Hall, but
+Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>I came on at the tail of the dinner procession, not quite easy in my mind
+about all this.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="10"></a>Chapter X</h2>
+
+<h3>The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>There were, in all, ten of us at the table. Sir William beamed upon us
+from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the
+London dame on the other--in the place of distinction to which she was, I
+suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and
+Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come
+back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner.</p>
+
+<p>I could not see Daisy from where I sat, but all through the meal I watched
+the effect she was producing upon those opposite us. To do her justice,
+Lady Berenicia seemed to have no alloy of jealousy in the delight with
+which she regarded the result of her handiwork. Mr. Stewart could not keep
+his fond eyes off the girl; they fairly glowed with satisfied pride and
+affection. Both Sir John and Walter gave more attention to our beautiful
+maiden than they did to their plates, and both faces told an open tale of
+admiration, each after its kind.</p>
+
+<p>There was plenty of gay talk at the head of the table--merry chatter of
+which I recall nothing, save vaguely that it was about the triumph of art
+over unadorned nature at which we were assisting.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cross and I bore our small part in the celebration in silence for a
+time. Then we fell to talking quietly of the journey upon which we were so
+soon to embark; but our minds were not on the subject, and after a little
+its discussion lapsed. All at once he said, as if speaking the thoughts
+which tied my tongue:</p>
+
+<p>"To my mind the young woman is not improved by these furbelows and
+fal-lals my wife has put upon her. What wit or reason is there in a
+homely, sensible little maiden like this--a pretty flower growing, as God
+designed it to, in modest sweetness on its own soil--being garnished out
+in the stale foppery of the last London season?"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is only a masquerade, sir," I pleaded--as much to my own judgment
+as to his--"and it does make her very beautiful, does it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"She <i>was</i> beautiful before," he replied, in the same low tones. "Can a
+few trumpery laces and ribbons, a foolish patch, a little powder, affect
+what is real about a woman, think you? And do any but empty heads value
+unreal things?"</p>
+
+<p>"True enough, sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry.
+Women are that way. See how pleased she is--how full of smiles and
+happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor
+Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to begrudge her
+this innocent pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Innocent--yes, no doubt; but, do you know, she will never be the same
+girl again. She will never feel quite the same pretty little Mistress
+Daisy, in her woollen gown and her puttical kerchief. She will never get
+the taste of this triumph out of her mouth. You do not know women, young
+man, as I do. I have studied the sex in a very celebrated and costly
+school. Mark my words, ideas have been put into her head that will never
+come out."</p>
+
+<p>I tried to believe that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other
+women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself--so prudent
+and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem
+all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books--never
+anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr.
+Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn her
+dear head."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, somewhat compassionately I thought, and made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Was I so firm in my faith, after all? The doubt rose in my thoughts, and
+would not down, as the gallant talk flowed and bubbled around me. <i>Would</i>
+this Daisy be quite the same next day, or next week, singing to us at the
+old harpsichord in the twilight, with the glare of the blaze on the hearth
+making red gold of that hair, plaited once more in simple braids? I tried
+with all my might to call up this sweet familiar figure before my mental
+vision: it would not freely come.</p>
+
+<p>She was laughing now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing
+quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom
+employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting
+things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other than
+Daisy laughing.</p>
+
+<p>I was still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the
+ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to
+ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand,
+to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see
+the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with
+Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent
+of powder left on the air annoyed me, as something stifling those thoughts
+of the good little adopted sister, whom I had brought to the Hall and lost
+there, which I would fain dwell upon.</p>
+
+<p>We sat over our Madeira and pipes longer than usual. Candles were brought
+in by Sir William's young body-servant Pontiac, for there was a full moon,
+and we might thus prolong our stay after nightfall. The talk was chiefly
+about our coming trip--a very serious undertaking. Sir William and Mr.
+Butler had adventures of their own early trading days to recall, and they
+gave us great stores of advice drawn from experience, and ranging from
+choice of shirts and spirits to needful diplomacy with the Algonquins
+and Sakis.</p>
+
+<p>Then the company drank the health of Mr. Cross, and were good enough to
+couple mine with it. A comical little yellow boy danced for us before the
+hearth--an admiring wall of black faces and rolling white eyeballs filling
+up the open door meanwhile. Walter Butler sang a pretty song--everybody,
+negroes and all, swelling the chorus. Rum was brought in, and mixed in hot
+glasses, with spice, molasses, and scalding water from the kettle on the
+crane. So evening deepened to night; but I never for a moment, not even
+when they drank my health, shook off the sense of unrest born of Daisy's
+masquerade.</p>
+
+<p>It was Molly Brant herself, nobly erect and handsome in her dark, sinister
+way, who came to us with word that the moon was up over the pine-ridged
+hills, and that Mistress Daisy was attired for the homeward ride,
+and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the pictures in Memory's portfolio, none is more distinct than this
+of the departure that evening from the Hall. A dozen negroes were about
+the steps, two or three mounted ready to escort us home, others bearing
+horn lanterns which the moonlight darkened into inutility, still others
+pulling the restive horses about on the gravel. Mr. Stewart swung himself
+into the saddle, and Daisy stepped out to mount behind him. She wore her
+own garments once more, but there was just a trace of powder on the hair
+under the hood, and the patch was still on her chin. I moved forward to
+lift her to the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she
+did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John
+and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight,
+flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held
+Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of
+even this.</p>
+
+<p>So we rode away, pursued down the path to the lilacs by shouts of
+"Good-night! Safe home!" Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I
+saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his
+hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing
+above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on
+either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark
+front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky.</p>
+
+<p>As I recall the scene, it seems to me that then and there I said farewell,
+not alone to pleasant friends, but to the Daisy of my childhood and youth.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The Hall slaves rode well ahead in the narrow road; we could just hear
+faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears
+the murmur of an &AElig;olian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous:
+the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping
+helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly
+safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness,
+not danger.</p>
+
+<p>I did indeed rest my free hand on the pistol in my holster as I jogged
+along close behind the old gray horse and his double burden; but the act
+was more an unconscious reflection of my saturnine mood, I fear, than a
+recognition of need. There was every reason why I should dwell with
+delight upon the prospect opening before me--upon the idea of the great
+journey so close at hand; but I scarcely thought of it at all, and I was
+not happy. The moon threw a jaundiced light over my mind, and in its
+discolored glare I saw things wrongly, and with gratuitous pain to myself.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, my brooding was the creature of the last few hours, born of a
+childish pique. But as I rode gloomily silent behind my companions, it
+seemed as if I had long suffered a growing separation from them. "Three is
+a clumsy number," I said to myself, "in family affection not less than in
+love; there was never any triad of friends since the world began, no
+matter how fond their ties, in which two did not build a little interior
+court of thoughts and sympathies from which the third was shut out. These
+two people whom I hold dearer than everything else on earth--this good
+gentleman to whom I owe all, this sweet girl who has grown up from
+babyhood in my heart--would scout the idea that there was any line of
+division running through our household. They do not see it--cannot see it.
+Yet they have a whole world of ideas and sentiments in common, a whole
+world of communion, which I may never enter."</p>
+
+<p>This was what, in sulky, inchoate fashion, I said to myself, under the
+spur of the jealous spirits which sometimes get rein over the thoughts of
+the best of us. And it was all because the London woman had tricked out
+our Daisy, for but a little hour or two, in the presentment of a
+court lady!</p>
+
+<p>Conversation went briskly forward, meanwhile, from the stout back of the
+gray horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you note, papa, how white and soft her hands were?" said Daisy.
+"Mine were so red beside them! It is working in the garden, I believe,
+although Mary Johnson always wore gloves when she was out among the
+flowers and vegetables, and her hands were red, too. And Lady Berenicia
+was so surprised to learn that I had never read any of the romances which
+they write now in England! She says ladies in London, and in the provinces
+too, do not deem themselves fit to converse unless they keep abreast of
+all these. She has some of them in her chests, and there are others in the
+Hall, she has found, and I am to read them, and welcome."</p>
+
+<p>"You are old enough now, my girl," replied Mr. Stewart. "They seem to me
+to be trivial enough things, but no doubt they have their use. I would not
+have you seem as inferior to other ladies in knowledge of the matters they
+talk of, as they are inferior to you in honest information."</p>
+
+<p>"How interested she was when I told her of the serious books I read, and
+of my daily occupations--moulding the candles, brewing the beer, carding
+wool, making butter, and then caring for the garden! She had never seen
+celery in trenches, she said, and would not know beans from gourds if she
+saw them growing. It seems that in England ladies have nothing to do with
+their gardens--when, indeed, they have any at all--save to pluck a rose
+now and then, or give tea to their gentlemen under the shrubbery when it
+is fine. And I told her of our quilting and spinning bees, and the
+coasting on clear winter evenings, and of watching the blacks on Pinkster
+night, and the picnics in the woods, and she vowed London had no
+pleasures like them. She was jesting though, I think. Oh, shall we ever go
+to London, papa?"</p>
+
+<p>"By all means, let us go," chuckled Mr. Stewart. "You would see something
+there she never saw--my grizzled old head upon Temple Bar. Shall we be off
+to-morrow? My neck tingles with anticipation."</p>
+
+<p>"Old tease!" laughed Daisy, patting his shoulder. "You know there have
+been no heads put there since long before I was born. Never flatter
+yourself that they would begin again now with yours. They've forgotten
+there was ever such a body as you."</p>
+
+<p>"Faith! the world doesn't go round so fast as you young people think. Only
+to-day I read in the London mail that two months ago one of the polls that
+had been there since '46 fell down; but if it was Fletcher's or Townley's
+no one can tell--like enough not even they themselves by this time. So
+there's a vacant spike now for mine. No, child--I doubt these old bones
+will ever get across the sea again. But who knows?--it may be your fortune
+to go some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Berenicia says I must come to the Hall often, papa, while she is
+there," said the girl, returning to the subject which bewitched her; "and
+you must fetch me, of course. She admires you greatly; she says gentlemen
+in London have quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your
+bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep
+each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and
+Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them--the two
+solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness."</p>
+
+<p>The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection
+of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less
+malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on
+my ears.</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be
+disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and
+glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all
+the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to
+your liking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go."</p>
+
+<p>It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody
+would specially miss me, but I held it back.</p>
+
+<p>"He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured
+sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has
+when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at
+dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he
+would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I
+looked well in the--the citified costume."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for."</p>
+
+<p>She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and
+went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes:</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable
+Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the
+lilacs, this very morning--and in the presence of ladies, too."</p>
+
+<p>"No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was
+before a lady too--or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own
+eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and
+run at him with both fists out--and all on your account, too, my lady;
+and then--"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am reminded!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped
+her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come
+out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up
+at the Hall--Lady Berenicia's husband--is a cousin to the old Major who
+brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?"
+
+"Is <i>that</i> your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago."</p>
+
+<p>"How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then
+a General, and died last winter, poor man."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all
+walk that way."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year,
+papa. And now tell me, did not this Major--<i>my</i> Major, though I do not
+remember him--take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir
+William, while he was on this side of the water?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he
+knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a
+tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched
+beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked
+by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the
+property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water
+running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock
+wall, farther down, of which I have already written.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you
+ask, girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i> for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits
+the English house and lands. The other son, Philip--the boy you fought
+with, Douw--is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it.
+He sailed with the others--he is in New York--he is coming here to live!"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest
+comment I could screw my tongue to.</p>
+
+<p>Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we
+quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="11"></a>Chapter XI</h2>
+
+<h3>As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the
+searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and
+slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was
+high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my
+aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum
+between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be
+vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its
+inmates, now that the hour had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day,
+dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but
+without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the
+adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins
+while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home--my true home--my heart
+quivered and sank at thought of departure.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than
+Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all
+things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is
+different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed
+after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod.
+You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be
+at a good school with him."</p>
+
+<p>He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred
+indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental
+order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my
+feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have
+preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet
+coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet
+felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I
+listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts
+vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside.</p>
+
+<p>Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with
+advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key.
+Their shouts and wailing--they could not have made more ado if he had just
+been sold to Jamaica--came through the open door. It was not of this din I
+thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were
+piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond.</p>
+
+<p>I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to
+gather a nosegay for me.</p>
+
+<p>Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending
+in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden
+filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing
+more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit,
+the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts
+of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad
+thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much--this dear
+girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the
+tears <i>were</i> coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned
+my head away.</p>
+
+<p>There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices.
+Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman
+had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to
+the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption.</p>
+
+<p>Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the
+wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden,
+presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with
+her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of her neck she
+was blushing.</p>
+
+<p>There was enough for her to blush at. The stranger was bowing very low,
+putting one hand up to his breast. With the other he had taken her fingers
+and raised them formally to his lips. This was not a custom in our parts.
+Sir William did it now and then on state occasions, but young men,
+particularly strangers, did not.</p>
+
+<p>As we advanced, this gallant morning-caller drew himself up and turned
+toward us. You may be sure I looked him over attentively.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen few handsomer young men. In a way, so far as light hair, blue
+eyes, ruddy and regular face went, he was not unlike Sir John. But he was
+much taller, and his neck and shoulders were squared proudly--a trick
+Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a
+fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the
+shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl
+buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run
+into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in
+one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in
+its ruffles, he stretched out now toward Mr. Stewart with a free,
+pleasant gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"With my father's oldest friend," he said, "I must not wait for ceremony.
+I am Philip Cross, from England, and I hope you will be my friend, sir,
+now that my father is gone."</p>
+
+<p>That this speech found instant favor need not be doubted. Mr. Stewart
+shook him again and again by the hand, and warmly bade him welcome to the
+Valley and the Cedars a dozen times in as many breaths. Young Cross
+managed to explain between these cordial ejaculations, that he had
+journeyed up from New York with the youthful Stephen Watts--to whose
+sister Sir John was already betrothed; that they had reached Guy Park the
+previous evening; that Watts was too wearied this morning to think of
+stirring out, but that hardly illness itself could have prevented him,
+Cross, from promptly paying his respects to his father's ancient comrade.</p>
+
+<p>The young man spoke easily and fluently, looking Mr. Stewart frankly in
+the eye, with smiling sincerity in glance and tone. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"How changed everything is roundabout!--all save you, who look scarcely
+older or less strong. When I was here as a boy it was winter, cold and
+bleak. There was a stockade surrounded by wilderness then, I remember, and
+a log-house hardly bigger than the fireplace inside it. Where we stand now
+the ground was covered with brush and chips, half hidden by snow.
+Now--<i>presto!</i> there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden
+neatly made, and"--turning with a bow to Daisy--"a fair mistress for them
+all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as
+a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would have
+held her entire."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw the cart laden outside," put in Sir John, "and fancied perhaps we
+should miss you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no," said Mr. Stewart; "I had forgotten for the moment that this was
+a house of mourning. Douw is starting to the Lake country this very day.
+Mr. Cross, you must remember my boy, my Douw?"</p>
+
+<p>The young Englishman turned toward me, as I was indicated by Mr. Stewart's
+gesture. He looked me over briefly, with a half-smile about his eyes,
+nodded to me, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You were the Dutch boy with the apron, weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>I assented by a sign of the head, as slight as I could politely make it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I recall you quite distinctly. I used to make my brother Digby
+laugh by telling about your aprons. He made quite a good picture of you in
+one of them, drawn from my descriptions. We had a fort of snow, too, did
+we not? and I beat you, or you me, I forget which. I got snow down the
+back of my neck, I know, and shivered all the way to the fort."</p>
+
+<p>He turned lightly at this to Mr. Stewart, and began conversation again. I
+went over to where Daisy stood, by the edge of the flower-bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go now, dear sister," I said. The words were choking me.</p>
+
+<p>We walked slowly to the house, she and I. When I had said good-by to my
+aunt, and gathered together my hat, coats, and the like, I stood
+speechless, looking at Daisy. The moment was here, and I had no word for
+it which did not seem a mockery.</p>
+
+<p>She raised herself on tiptoe to be kissed. "Good-by, big brother," she
+said, softly. "Come back to us well and strong, and altogether homesick,
+won't you? It will not be like home, without you, to either of us."</p>
+
+<p>And so the farewells were all made, and I stood in the road prepared to
+mount. Tulp was already on the cart, along with another negro who was to
+bring back my horse and the vehicle after we had embarked in the boats.
+There was nothing more to say--time pressed--yet I lingered dumb and
+irresolute. At the moment I seemed to be exchanging everything for
+nothing--committing domestic suicide. I looked at them both, the girl and
+the old man, with the gloomy thought that I might never lay eyes on them
+again. I dare say I wore my grief upon my face, for Mr. Stewart tried
+cheerily to hearten me with, "Courage, lad! We shall all be waiting for
+you, rejoiced to welcome you back safe and sound."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy came to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned
+upon my lapel some of the pale blue blossoms she had gathered.</p>
+
+<p>"There's 'rosemary for remembrance,'" she murmured. "Poor Ophelia could
+scarce have been sadder than we feel, Douw, at your going."</p>
+
+<p>"And may I be decorated too--for remembrance' sake?" asked handsome young
+Philip Cross, gayly.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, sir," the maiden answered, with a smile of sweet sorrowfulness.
+"You have a rightful part in the old memories--in a sense, perhaps, the
+greatest part of all."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, you two were friends before ever you came to us, dear," said Mr.
+Stewart.</p>
+
+<p>So as I rode away, with smarting eyes and a heart weighing like lead, my
+last picture of the good old home was of Daisy fastening flowers on the
+young Englishman's breast, just as she had put these of mine in
+their place.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="12"></a>Chapter XII</h2>
+
+<h3>Old-Time Politics Pondered Under the Forest Starlight.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Among the numerous books which at one time of another I had resolved to
+write, and which the evening twilight of my life finds still unwritten,
+was one on Fur-trading. This volume, indeed, came somewhat nearer to a
+state of actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have
+yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in
+earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical
+Delusions--which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary--and
+the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point
+of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation
+now in deciding not to put into this narrative a great deal about my
+experiences in, and information concerning, the almost trackless West of
+my youth. My diary of this first and momentous journey with Mr. Jonathan
+Cross, yellow with age and stained by damp and mildew, lies here before
+me; along with it are many odd and curious incidents and reflections
+jotted down, mirroring that strange, rude, perilous past which seems so
+far away to the generation now directing a safe and almost eventless
+commerce to the Pacific and the Gulf. But I will draw from my stock only
+the barest outlines, sufficient to keep in continuity the movement of
+my story.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached Caughnawaga Mr. Cross and his party were waiting for us at
+the trading store of my godfather, good old Douw Fonda. I was relieved to
+learn that I had not delayed them; for it was still undecided, I found,
+whether we should all take to the river here, or send the boats forward
+with the men, and ourselves proceed to the Great Carrying Place at Fort
+Stanwix by the road. Although it was so early in the season, the Mohawk
+ran very low between its banks. Major Jelles Fonda, the eldest son of my
+godfather, and by this time the true head of the business, had only
+returned from the Lakes, and it was by his advice that we settled upon
+riding and carting as far as we could, and leaving the lightened boats to
+follow. So we set out in the saddle, my friend and I, stopping one night
+with crazy old John Abeel--he who is still remembered as the father of the
+Seneca half-breed chieftain Corn-Planter--and the next night with
+Honnikol Herkimer.</p>
+
+<p>This man, I recall, greatly impressed Mr. Cross. We were now in an
+exclusively German section of the Valley, where no Dutch and very little
+English was to be heard. Herkimer himself conversed with us in a dialect
+that must often have puzzled my English friend, though he gravely forbore
+showing it. I had known Colonel Herkimer all my life; doubtless it was
+this familiarity with his person and speech which had prevented my
+recognizing his real merit, for I was not a little surprised when Mr.
+Cross said to me that night: "Our host is one of the strongest and most
+sagacious men I have ever encountered in the Colonies; he is worth a
+thousand of your Butlers or Sir Johns."</p>
+
+<p>It became clear in later years that my friend was right. I remember that I
+regarded the hospitable Colonel, at breakfast next morning, with a closer
+and more respectful attention than ever before, but it was not easy to
+discern any new elements of greatness in his talk.</p>
+
+<p>Herkimer was then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and
+sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no
+time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the
+Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side.
+One thing which he said, in his effort to make my friend understand the
+difference between his position and the more abstract and educated
+discontent of New England and Virginia, sticks in my memory.</p>
+
+<p>"We Germans," he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers
+remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and
+wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some
+scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector
+might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of
+their daughters, worked to death, frozen by the cold in their nakedness,
+dragged off into the armies to be sold to any prince who could pay for
+their blood and broken bones. The French who overran the Palatinate were
+bad enough; the native rulers were even more to be hated. The exiles of
+our race have not forgotten this; they have told it all to us, their
+children and grandchildren born here in this Valley. We have made a new
+home for ourselves over here, and we owe no one but God anything for it.
+If they try to make here another aristocracy over us, then we will die
+first before we will submit."</p>
+
+<p>The case for the Mohawk Valley's part in the great revolt has never been
+more truly stated, I think, than it was thus, by the rough, uneducated,
+little frontier trader, in his broken English, on that May morning years
+before the storm broke.</p>
+
+<p>We rode away westward in the full sunshine that morning, in high spirits.
+The sky was pure blue overhead; the birds carolled from every clump of
+foliage about us; the scenery, to which Mr. Cross paid much delighted
+attention, first grew nobly wild and impressive when we skirted the Little
+Falls--as grand and gloomy in its effect of towering jagged cliffs and
+foaming cataracts as one of Jacob Ruysdael's pictures--and then softened
+into a dream of beauty as it spread out before us the smiling, embowered
+expanses of the German Flatts. Time and time again my companion and I
+reined up our horses to contemplate the charms of this lovely scene.
+
+We had forded the river near Fort Herkimer, where old Hon Yost Herkimer,
+the father of the Colonel, lived, and were now once more on the north
+side. From an open knoll I pointed out to my friend, by the apple and pear
+blossoms whitening the deserted orchards, the site of the Palatines'
+village where Daisy's father had been killed, fifteen years ago, in the
+midnight rout and massacre.</p>
+
+<p>"It was over those hills that the French stole in darkness. Back yonder,
+at the very ford we crossed, her poor mother was trampled under foot and
+drowned in the frightened throng. It was at the fort there, where we had
+the buttermilk and <i>Kuchen,</i> that your cousin, Major Cross, found the
+little girl. I wonder if he ever knew how deeply grateful to him we
+were--and are."</p>
+
+<p>This brought once more to my mind--where indeed it had often enough before
+intruded itself--the recollection of young Philip's arrival at the Cedars.
+For some reason I had disliked to speak of it before, but now I told Mr.
+Cross of it as we walked our horses along over the rough, muddy road,
+under the arching roof of thicket.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be bound Mr. Stewart welcomed him with open arms," said my
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, indeed! No son could have asked a fonder greeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the lad is very like his mother; that of itself would suffice to
+warm the old gentleman's heart. You knew he was a suitor for her hand long
+before Tony Cross ever saw her?"</p>
+
+<p>I didn't know this, but I nodded silently.</p>
+
+<p>"Curious creature she was," mused he, as if to himself. "Selfish,
+suspicious, swift to offence, jealous of everything and everybody about
+her--yet with moods when she seemed to all she met the most amiable and
+delightful of women. She had her fine side, too. She would have given her
+life gladly for the success of the Jacobites, of that I'm sure. And
+proud!--no duchess could have carried her head higher."</p>
+
+<p>"You say her son is very like her?"</p>
+
+<p>"As like as two leaves on a twig. Perhaps he has something of his father's
+Irish openness of manner as well. His father belonged to the younger, what
+we call the Irish, branch of our family, you know, though it is as English
+in the matter of blood as I am. We were only second cousins, in point of
+fact, and his grandfather was set up in Ireland by the bounty of mine. Yet
+Master Philip condescends to me, patronizes me, as if the case had been
+reversed."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cross did not speak as if he at all resented this, but in a calm,
+analytical manner, and with a wholly impersonal interest. I have never
+known another man who was so totally without individual bias, and regarded
+all persons and things with so little reference to his own feelings. If he
+had either prejudices or crotchets on any point, I never discovered them.
+He was, I feel assured, a scrupulously honest and virtuous gentleman, yet
+he never seemed to hate people who were not so. He was careful not to let
+them get an advantage over him, but for the rest he studied them and
+observed their weaknesses and craft, with the same quiet interest he
+displayed toward worthier objects. A thoroughly equable nature was
+his--with little capacity for righteous indignation on the one side, and
+no small tendencies toward envy or peevishness on the other. There was not
+a wrinkle on his calm countenance, nor any power of angry flashing in his
+steadfast, wide-apart, gray eyes. But his tongue could cut deep
+on occasion.</p>
+
+<p>We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the
+Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that
+crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and
+the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along,
+partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had
+been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under
+a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the
+brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground.
+We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer
+wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and
+crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up
+the fires.</p>
+
+<p>We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well
+wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep
+the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard
+the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the
+moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises
+and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London
+companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very
+acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no
+degree nervous.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer
+had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we
+talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying
+on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting,
+wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle,
+under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank
+affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon
+this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with
+fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves
+we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly
+halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my
+friends and comrades.</p>
+
+<p>We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully,
+contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the
+air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank,
+uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer
+heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form,
+with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side?</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke about Philip's having some of his father's adopted Irish traits,"
+said Mr. Cross, after a longer interval of silence than usual. "One of
+them is the desire to have subordinates, dependents, about him. There is
+no Irishman so poor or lowly that he will not, if possible, encourage some
+still poorer, lowlier Irishman to hang to his skirts. It is a reflection
+of their old Gaelic tribal system, I suppose, which, between its chiefs
+above and its clansmen below, left no place for a free yeomanry. I note
+this same thing in the Valley, with the Johnsons and the Butlers. So far
+as Sir William is concerned, the quality I speak of has been of service to
+the Colony, for he has used his fondness and faculty for attracting
+retainers and domineering over subordinates to public advantage. But then
+he is an exceptional and note-worthy man--one among ten thousand. But his
+son Sir John, and his son-in-law Guy Johnson, and the Butlers, father and
+son, and now to them added our masterful young Master Philip--these own no
+such steadying balance-wheel of common-sense. They have no restraining
+notion of public interest. Their sole idea is to play the aristocrat, to
+surround themselves with menials, to make their neighbors concede to them
+submission and reverence. It was of them that Herkimer spoke, plainly
+enough, though he gave no names. Mark my words, they will come to grief
+with that man, if the question be ever put to the test."</p>
+
+<p>I had not seen enough of Englishmen to understand very clearly the
+differences between them and the Irish, and I said so. The conversation
+drifted upon race questions and distinctions, as they were presented by
+the curiously mixed population of New York province.</p>
+
+<p>My companion was of the impression that the distinctly British
+settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more
+powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his
+point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I
+cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this
+Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their wonderful
+patriotism and intelligence, and of the tremendous part they played in the
+Revolution, without smashing my pipe in wrath. Yet I am old enough now to
+see that all this is largely the fault of the New Yorkers themselves. We
+have given our time and attention to the making of money, and have left it
+to others to make the histories. If they write themselves down large, and
+us small, it is only what might have been expected. But at the time of
+which I am telling I was very young, and full of confidence in not only
+the existing superiority but the future supremacy of my race. I could not
+foresee how we were to be snowed under by the Yankees in our own State,
+and, what is worse, accept our subjugation without a protest--so that
+to-day the New York schoolboy supposes Fisher Ames, or any other of a
+dozen Boston talkers, to have been a greater man than Philip Schuyler.</p>
+
+<p>I remember that I greatly vaunted the good qualities of the Dutch that
+night. I pointed out how they alone had learned the idea of religious
+toleration toward others in the cruel school of European persecution; how
+their faith in liberty and in popular institutions, nobly exemplified at
+home in the marvellous struggle with Spain, had planted roots of civil and
+religious freedom in the New World which he could find neither to the east
+nor to the south of us; and how even the early Plymouth Puritans had
+imbibed all they knew of clemency and liberty during their stay
+in Holland.</p>
+
+<p>I fear that Mr. Cross inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and
+extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded
+the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable
+resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed
+always in Europe. But then he went on to declare that the Dutch could not
+hope to hold their own in strange lands against the extraordinary
+conquering and colonizing power of the more numerous English, who, by
+sheer force of will and energy, were destined in the end to dominate
+everything they touched. Note how Clive and the English had gradually
+undermined or overthrown French, Portuguese, and Dutch alike in the
+Indies, he said; the same thing has happened here, either by bloodshed or
+barter. No nation could resist the English in war; no people could
+maintain themselves in trade or the peaceful arts against the English.</p>
+
+<p>"But you yourself predicted, not an hour ago, that the young gentry down
+the Valley would come to grief in their effort to lord it over the Dutch
+and Palatines."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that indeed," my friend replied. "They are silly sprouts, grown up
+weak and spindling under the shadow of Sir William; when he is cut down
+the sun will shrivel them, no doubt. But the hardier, healthier plants
+which finally take their place will be of English stock--not Dutch
+or German."</p>
+
+<p>I hope devoutly that this lengthened digression into politics has not
+proved wearisome. I have touched upon but one of a hundred like
+conversations which we two had together on our slow journey, and this
+because I wanted to set forth the manner of things we discussed, and the
+views we severally had. Events proved that we both were partially right.
+The United States of the Netherlands was the real parent of the United
+States of America, and the constitution which the Dutch made for the
+infant State of New York served as the model in breadth and in freedom for
+our present noble Federal Constitution. In that much my faith was
+justified. But it is also true that my State is no longer Dutch, but
+English, and that the language of my mother has died out from among us.</p>
+
+<p>Before noon next day we reached Fort Stanwix, the forest-girdled
+block-house commanding the Great Carrying Place. Here we waited one day
+for the boats to come up, and half of another to get them through the
+sluices into Wood Creek. Then, as the horses and carts returned, we
+embarked and set our faces toward the Lakes.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="13"></a>Chapter XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>We had left what it pleases us to call civilization behind. Until our
+return we were scarcely again to see the blackened fields of stumps
+surrounding clearings, or potash kettles, or girdled trees, or chimneys.</p>
+
+<p>Not that our course lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we
+for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed
+westward farther and farther to be alone--to get away from their fellows.
+The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and
+honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. They traded a little,
+in a careless, desultory fashion, with the proceeds of their traps and
+rifles. But their desires were few--a pan and kettle, a case of needles
+and cord, some rum or brandy from cider or wild grapes, tobacco, lead, and
+powder--chiefly the last three. They fed themselves, adding to their own
+fish and game only a little pounded maize which they got mostly from the
+Indians, and cooked in mush or on a baking stone. In the infrequent cases
+where there were women with them, we sometimes saw candles, either dips or
+of the wax of myrtle-berries, but more often the pine-knot was used.
+Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story
+above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their
+habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires.
+They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally
+disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of
+view, but I judge both industrious and contented from their own.</p>
+
+<p>We should have had little favor or countenance from these fellows, I doubt
+not, but for Enoch Wade. He seemed to know all the saturnine, shaggy,
+lounging outcasts whom we met in unexpected places; if he did not, they
+knew him at a glance for one of their own kidney, which came to the same
+thing. It was on his account that we were tolerated, nay, even advised and
+helped and entertained.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch had been a prodigious traveller--or else was a still more prodigious
+liar--I never quite decided which. He told them, when we chanced to sit
+around their fires of an evening, most remarkable stories of field and
+forest--of caribou and seals killed in the North; of vast herds of bison
+on far Western prairies; of ice-bound winters spent in the Hudson Bay
+Company's preserves beyond the Lakes; of houses built of oyster-shells and
+cement on the Carolina coast. They listened gravely, smoking their
+cob-and-reed pipes, and eying him attentively. They liked him, and they
+did not seem to dislike Coppernol and our other white servants. But they
+showed no friendliness toward my poor Tulp, and exhibited only scant,
+frigid courtesy to Mr. Cross and me.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that my companion was a power in the East India Company, and a
+director in the new Northwestern Fur Company, did not interest them, at
+least favorably. It was indeed not until after we had got beyond the
+Sandusky that Enoch often volunteered this information, for the trappers
+of the East had little love for companies, or organized commerce and
+property of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>I like better to recall the purely physical side of our journey. Now our
+little flotilla would move for hours on broad, placid, still waters,
+flanked on each side by expanses of sedge and flags--in which great broods
+of water-fowl lived--and beyond by majestic avenues formed of pines,
+towering mast-like sheer sixty feet before they burst into intertwining
+branches. Again, we would pass through darkened, narrow channels, where
+adverse waters sped swiftly, and where we battled not only with deep
+currents, but had often to chop our way through barriers of green
+tree-trunks, hickory, ash, and birch, which the soft soil on the banks had
+been unable to longer hold erect. Now we flew merrily along under sail or
+energetic oars; now we toiled laboriously against strong tides, by poles
+or by difficult towing.</p>
+
+<p>But it was all healthful, heartening work, and we enjoyed it to the full.
+Toward sundown we would begin to look for a brook upon which to pitch our
+camp. When one was found which did not run black, showing its origin in a
+tamarack swamp, a landing was made with all the five boats. These
+secured, axes were out with, and a shelter soon constructed, while others
+heaped the fire, prepared the food and utensils, and cooked the welcome
+meal. How good everything tasted! how big and bright the stars looked! how
+sweet was the odor of the balsam in the air, later, as we lay on our
+blankets, looking skyward, and talked! Or, if the night was wild and wet,
+how cheerily the great fires roared in the draught, and how snugly we lay
+in our shelter, blinking at the fierce blaze!</p>
+
+<p>When in early July we drew near the country of the Outagamis, having left
+the Detroit settlement behind us, not to speak of Oswego and Niagara,
+which seemed as far off now as the moon, an element of personal danger was
+added to our experiences. Both white hunters and Indians were warmly
+affected toward the French interest, and often enough we found reason to
+fear that we would be made to feel this, though luckily it never came to
+anything serious. It was a novel experience to me to be disliked on
+account of the English, whom I had myself never regarded with friendship.
+I was able, fortunately, being thus between the two rival races, as it
+were, to measure them each against the other.</p>
+
+<p>I had no prejudice in favor of either, God knows. My earliest
+recollections were of the savage cruelty with which the French had
+devastated, butchered, and burned among the hapless settlements at the
+head of the Mohawk Valley. My maturer feelings were all colored with the
+strong repulsion we Dutch felt for the English rule, which so scornfully
+misgoverned and plundered our province, granting away our lands to court
+favorites and pimps, shipping to us the worst and most degraded of
+Old-World criminals, quartering upon us soldiers whose rude vices made
+them even more obnoxious than the convicts, and destroying our commerce by
+selfish and senseless laws.</p>
+
+<p>From the Straits west I saw the Frenchman for the first time, and read the
+reasons for his failure to stand against the English. Even while we
+suspected grounds for fearing his hostility, we found him a more courteous
+and affable man than the Englishman or Yankee. To be pleasant with us
+seemed a genuine concern, though it may really have been otherwise. The
+Indians about him, too, were a far more satisfactory lot than I had known
+in the Valley. Although many of our Mohawks could read, and some few
+write, and although the pains and devotion of my friend Samuel Kirkland
+had done much for the Oneidas, still these French-spoken, Jesuit-taught
+Indians seemed a much better and soberer class than my neighbors of the
+Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively
+plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived
+most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and
+this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going
+on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the
+English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So much for
+the good side.</p>
+
+<p>The medal had a reverse. The Frenchman contrived to get on with the
+Indian by deferring to him, cultivating his better and more generous side,
+and treating him as an equal. This had the effect of improving and
+softening the savage, but it inevitably tended to weaken and lower the
+Frenchman--at least, judged by the standard of fitness to maintain himself
+in a war of races. No doubt the French and Indians lived together much
+more quietly and civilly than did the English and Indians. But when these
+two systems came to be tested by results, it was shown that the
+Frenchman's policy and kindliness had only enervated and emasculated him,
+while the Englishman's rough domineering and rule of force had hardened
+his muscles and fired his resolution. To be sure, measured by the received
+laws of humanity, the Frenchman was right and the other wrong. But is it
+so certain, after all, that the right invariably wins?</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>It was well along in September when, standing on the eminence to the east
+of Fort Stanwix, I first looked again on my beloved Mohawk.</p>
+
+<p>The trip had been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four
+bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries,
+including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the
+remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of
+his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and
+silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied its value
+twenty-fold.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, this was of secondary importance. The true object of the
+journey had been to enable Mr. Jonathan Cross to see for himself the
+prospects of the new Northwestern Company--to look over the territory
+embraced in its grants, estimate its probable trade, mark points for the
+establishment of its forts and posts, and secure the information necessary
+to guard the company from the frauds or failings of agents. He professed
+himself vastly gratified at the results, physical as well as financial, of
+his experience, and that was the great thing.</p>
+
+<p>Or no!--perhaps for the purposes of this story there was something more
+important still. It is even now very pleasant to me to recall that he
+liked me well enough, after this long, enforced intimacy, to proffer me
+the responsible and exacting post of the company's agent at Albany.</p>
+
+<p>To say that the offer made me proud and glad would be to feebly understate
+my emotions. I could not be expected to decide all at once. Independent of
+the necessity of submitting the proposition to Mr. Stewart, there was a
+very deep distaste within me for fur-trading at Albany--of the meanness
+and fraudulency of which I had heard from boyhood. A good many hard
+stories are told of the Albanians, which, aside from all possible bias of
+race, I take the liberty of doubting. I do not, for instance, believe all
+the Yankee tales that the Albany Dutchmen bought from the Indians the
+silver plate which the latter seized in New England on the occasions of
+the French and Indian incursions--if for no other reason than the absence
+of proof that they ever had any plate in New England. But that the
+Indians used to be most shamefully drugged and cheated out of their
+eye-teeth in Albany, I fear there can be no reasonable doubt. An evil
+repute attached to the trade there, and I shrank from embarking in it,
+even under such splendid auspices. All the same, the offer gratified
+me greatly.</p>
+
+<p>To be in the woods with a man, day in and day out, is to know him through
+and through. If I had borne this closest of all conceivable forms of
+scrutiny, in the factor's estimation, there must be something good in me.</p>
+
+<p>So there was pride as well as joy in this first glance I cast upon the
+soft-flowing, shadowed water, upon the spreading, stately willows, upon
+the far-off furrow in the hazy lines of foliage--which spoke to me of
+home. Here at last was my dear Valley, always to me the loveliest on
+earth, but now transfigured in my eyes, and radiant beyond all dreams of
+beauty--because in it was my home, and in that home was the sweet maid
+I loved.</p>
+
+<p>Yes--I was returned a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the
+heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the
+swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of
+their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder.
+Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper
+breath for their absence. I had almost wept with excess of boyish feeling
+when I left the Valley--my fond old mother and protector. I gazed upon it
+now with an altogether variant emotion--as of one coming to take
+possession. Ah, the calm elation of that one moment, there alone on the
+knoll, with the sinking September sun behind me, and in front but the
+trifle of sixty miles of river route--when I realized that I was a man!</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was at this moment that I first knew I loved Daisy; perhaps it
+had been the truly dominant thought in my mind for months, gathering vigor
+and form from every tender, longing memory of the Cedars. I cannot decide,
+nor is it needful that I should. At least now my head was full of the
+triumphant thoughts that I returned successful and in high favor with my
+companion, that I had a flattering career opened for me, that the people
+at home would be pleased with me--and that I should marry Daisy.</p>
+
+<p>These remaining twenty leagues grew really very tedious before they were
+done with. We went down with the boats this time. I fear that Mr. Cross
+found me but poor company these last three days, for I sat mute in the bow
+most of the time, twisted around to look forward down the winding course,
+as if this would bring the Cedars nearer. I had not the heart to talk.
+"Now she is winding the yarn for my aunt," I would think; "now she is
+scattering oats for the pigeons, or filling Mr. Stewart's pipe, or running
+the candles into the moulds. Dear girl, does she wonder when I am coming?
+If she could know that I was here--here on the river speeding to
+her--what, would she think?"</p>
+
+<p>And I pictured to myself the pretty glance of surprise, mantling into a
+flush of joyous welcome, which would greet me on her face, as she ran
+gladly to my arms. Good old Mr. Stewart, my more than father, would stare
+at me, then smile with pleasure, and take both my hands in his, with warm,
+honest words straight from his great heart. What an evening it would be
+when, seated snugly around the huge blaze--Mr. Stewart in his arm-chair to
+the right, Daisy nestling on the stool at his knee and looking up into my
+face, and Dame Kronk knitting in the chimney-shadow to the left--I should
+tell of my adventures! How goodly a recital I could make of them, though
+they had been even tamer than they were, with such an audience! And how
+happy, how gratified they would be when I came to the climax, artfully
+postponed, of Mr. Cross's offer to me of the Albany agency!</p>
+
+<p>And then how natural, how easy, while these dear people were still smiling
+with pride and satisfaction at my good fortune, to say calmly--yes, calmly
+in tone, though my heart should be beating its way through my breast:</p>
+
+<p>"Even more, sir, I prize the hope that Daisy will share it with me--as my
+wife!"</p>
+
+<p>What with the delay at Caughnawaga, where Mr. Cross debarked, and Major
+Fonda would have us eat and drink while he told us the news, and Tulp's
+crazy rowing later, through excitement at nearing home, it was twilight
+before the boat was run up into our little cove, and I set my foot on
+land. The Cedars stood before us as yet lightless against the northern
+sky. The gate was open. The sweet voice of a negro singing arose from the
+cabins on the dusky hill-side. Tears came to my eyes as I turned to Tulp,
+who was gathering up the things in the boat, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see, boy? We're home--home at last!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="14"></a>Chapter XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I could hear the noisy clamor among the negroes over the advent of Tulp,
+whom I had sent off, desiring to be alone, while I still stood irresolute
+on the porch. My hand was on the familiar, well-worn latch, yet I almost
+hesitated to enter, so excited was I with eager anticipations of welcome.</p>
+
+<p>The spacious hall--our sitting-room--was deserted. A fire was blazing on
+the hearth, and plates were laid on the oak table as in preparation for a
+meal, but there was no one to speak to me. I lighted a candle, and opened
+the door to the kitchen; here too there was a fire, but my aunt was not
+visible. Mr. Stewart's room to the right of the hall, and mine to the
+left, were alike unoccupied. I threw aside my hat and watch-coat here, and
+then with the light went up-stairs, whistling as was my wont to warn Daisy
+of my coming. There was no sound or sign of movement. The door of her
+outer room stood open, and I entered and looked about.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture and appointments had been changed in position somewhat, so
+that the chamber seemed strange to me. There were numerous novel objects
+scattered through the rooms as well. A Spanish guitar which I had never
+seen before stood beside the old piano. There were several elegantly bound
+books, new to me, on the table; on the mantel-shelf were three miniatures,
+delicately painted, depicting a florid officer in scarlet, a handsome,
+proud-looking lady with towering powdered coiffure, and a fair-haired,
+proud-looking youth. This last I knew in an instant to be the likeness of
+Master Philip Cross, though it seemingly portrayed him at an age half-way
+between the two times I had seen him as boy and man. His resemblance to
+the lady, and then my own recurring recollection of the officer's
+features, helped me to place them as his parents.</p>
+
+<p>I called out "Daisy!" My voice had a faltering, mournful sound, and there
+was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>I came down the stairs again, burdened with a sudden sense of mental
+discomfort. Already the visions I had had of an enthusiastic welcome were
+but vague outlines of dreams. There had sprung up in my mind instead a
+sudden, novel doubt of my position in this house--a cruel idea that
+perhaps the affection which had so swelled and buoyed my heart was not
+reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the
+same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and
+the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic
+aspect, instead of the bright, honest glow of greeting.</p>
+
+<p>While I stood before the fire-place, still holding the candle in my hand,
+my aunt entered the room from the kitchen door. At sight of me the good
+soul gave a guttural exclamation, dropped flat an apronful of chips she
+was bringing in, and stared at me open-mouthed. When she was at last
+persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to
+be kissed by me--it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add--but
+it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were
+a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she
+brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that
+she had been out in the smoke-house.</p>
+
+<p>"Philip sent down two haunches yesterday by Marinus Folts," she said,
+apologetically, "and this muggy weather I was afraid they wouldn't keep."</p>
+
+<p>"This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not
+help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's
+infirmities. Aloud I said:</p>
+
+<p>"How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have
+the farms been doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is
+the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course
+it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings
+alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor."</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did
+before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some,
+bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more
+elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just
+breaking the branches. And the--"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they
+left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to
+the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything
+but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer
+but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I
+was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One
+of them is for you."</p>
+
+<p>Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working
+for me. My heart felt lighter.</p>
+
+<p>"But where <i>are</i> they?" I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just
+built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the
+Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's
+made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and
+he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it.
+Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd
+had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."</p>
+
+<p>I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the
+home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when
+they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and
+began to find comfort of mind again.</p>
+
+<p>My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she
+came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm
+going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then,
+or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I
+would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I
+was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing
+it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the
+trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs
+and toads?"</p>
+
+<p>This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had
+answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to
+the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended.</p>
+
+<p>I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled
+myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight
+at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him
+off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his
+jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his.
+This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck,
+and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could
+hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking
+strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of
+child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine----</p>
+
+<p>Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear
+ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate
+my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old
+slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with
+small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach
+upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether
+it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the
+matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the
+nights of my life!</p>
+
+<p>At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of
+voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and
+on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the
+slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly,
+enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark;
+but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and,
+judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party,
+I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night
+of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of
+the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these
+roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a
+time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of
+the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for
+the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them
+in any disguise.</p>
+
+<p>I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival--for
+which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads
+together--but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact,
+they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I
+learned afterward.</p>
+
+<p>All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as
+sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself
+almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and
+wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing
+me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my
+breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be
+kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation.</p>
+
+<p>And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour
+later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks
+flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on
+both sides.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem
+very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another
+with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not
+possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for
+people nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and
+quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable
+Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained.
+Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in
+fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed
+had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father.
+Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's.
+It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New
+York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very
+melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the
+house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir
+William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall--an ambitious enough name,
+surely, for a forest fishing-cottage.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which
+they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were
+the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms,
+while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had
+ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its
+being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing
+there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been
+a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at
+pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain
+she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly
+laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen
+had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other
+habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough
+that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down.</p>
+
+<p>I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of
+uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under
+his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the
+house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the
+food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear.
+They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but
+to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I
+looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age
+and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep,
+nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies'
+boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had
+parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but
+still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there.</p>
+
+<p>It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady
+Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought
+forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but
+for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly
+cover of his simple middle life.</p>
+
+<p>If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them
+this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair
+cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile
+which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and
+more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of
+me, for I did not notice it.</p>
+
+<p>I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great
+swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion,
+fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which
+crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the
+bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all
+accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail,
+this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for
+Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr.
+Stewart was evidently much captivated by the young man's spirit and social
+qualities and demeanor generally.</p>
+
+<p>"He is his father's own boy, ay, and his mother's too," said the old man,
+with sparkling eyes. "Not much for books, perhaps, though no dullard. But
+he can break a wild colt, or turn a bottle inside out, or bore a
+pencilled hole with a pistol-bullet at thirty paces, or tell a story, or
+sing a song, or ride, dance, box, cross swords, with any gentleman in the
+Colony. You should have seen him stand Walrath the blacksmith on his head
+at the races a fortnight ago! I never saw it better done in the
+Tweed country."</p>
+
+<p>"A highly accomplished gentleman, truly," I said, with as little obvious
+satire as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but he has mind as well as muscle," put in Mr. Stewart. "He is a very
+Bolingbroke with the ladies. It carries me back to my days at the play, I
+swear, to hear him and Lady Berenicia clashing rapiers in badinage. You
+shall hear them, my boy, and judge. And there's a sweet side to his
+tongue, too, or many a pretty, blushing cheek belies the little ear
+behind it."</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman chuckled amiably to himself as he spoke, and poured more
+Madeira into my glass and his. Daisy somewhat hurriedly rose, bade us
+"good-night," and left us to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if I had only spoken the word that night!</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="15"></a>Chapter XV</h2>
+
+<h3>The Rude Awakening from My Dream.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season
+of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all
+unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and
+occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign
+barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too,
+there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had
+treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with
+affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever
+disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade
+himself that it was all for the best.</p>
+
+<p>But these five months had created a certain change in the social
+conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening,
+here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my
+absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now
+manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no
+doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social,
+part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible
+glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than
+elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through
+houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family
+fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers,
+husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the
+existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the
+man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it
+and I on the other.</p>
+
+<p>This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his
+manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had
+made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof
+of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance
+of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I
+ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to
+me, for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said.
+"If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing
+aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go
+to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's
+content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance
+with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded,
+looking at him. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these
+people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood.
+Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been,
+given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed,
+by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and
+people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would
+have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must,
+forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of
+their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence
+worth of goods!"</p>
+
+<p>What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a
+heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard
+to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from
+Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for
+irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have
+visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had
+engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear.</p>
+
+<p>Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me.
+Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even
+toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my
+poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time
+up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and
+elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of
+her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old.</p>
+
+<p>If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence,
+it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new
+Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft
+with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear
+girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or
+twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to
+confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she
+suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices,
+or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to
+her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me.</p>
+
+<p>I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long
+afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress
+at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her
+judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating
+between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with
+their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive,
+idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate,
+womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license,
+beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly
+watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind
+those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure
+might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different!</p>
+
+<p>But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was
+by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky.</p>
+
+<p>For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose,
+tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the
+old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch
+herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the
+joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us
+of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young
+Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a
+bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast,
+and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and
+gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning,
+when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see
+her cheerful once more.</p>
+
+<p>And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion
+she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a
+luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering
+mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise,
+and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy
+seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled
+insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to
+understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing
+but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his
+old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to
+me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no
+longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or
+say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the
+fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised
+to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or
+not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for
+the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready.
+She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my
+part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been
+invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed
+so much annoyed that I hastened to join them.</p>
+
+<p>It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the
+air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale
+changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way
+approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely
+red through the smoky haze.</p>
+
+<p>Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and
+I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the
+gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in
+fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the
+mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new
+bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep
+zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark
+rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to
+be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he
+would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side
+of the gulf was Philip's property.</p>
+
+<p>"It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth
+clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building
+a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the
+waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You
+know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek."</p>
+
+<p>Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking
+measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of
+erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the
+skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing
+edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have
+quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering,
+hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and
+about the structure.</p>
+
+<p>At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level,
+high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were
+assembled, and thither we bent our steps.</p>
+
+<p>Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my
+companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded,
+and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed
+sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly
+was handsome.</p>
+
+<p>He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the
+hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real
+delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers
+with his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he
+murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with
+pleasure at him.</p>
+
+<p>To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is
+true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that
+he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention
+whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle
+outside the tent.</p>
+
+<p>Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others.
+By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was
+distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who
+took the trouble only to nod at me.</p>
+
+<p>Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was
+confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being
+nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was
+monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more
+discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall
+occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr.
+Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was
+chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she
+was telling.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to
+Tulp to follow me, I started.</p>
+
+<p>It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which
+forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage
+comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a
+profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon
+him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen
+and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very
+rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred
+dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no
+other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I
+made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an
+unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth
+I was.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the
+very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of
+the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others,
+of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not
+been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well
+tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel
+above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I
+stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come,
+and what company I had quitted to visit him.</p>
+
+<p>"So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more
+vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple
+has fallen with less shaking than I thought for."</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have
+been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long,
+heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and
+saw nothing.</p>
+
+<p>At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day:</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross
+asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From
+what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know
+it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'"</p>
+
+<p>This time I know I kept silence for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying,
+in a voice which sounded like a stranger's:</p>
+
+<p>"I will go to Albany whenever you like."</p>
+
+<p>I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my
+path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="16"></a>Chapter XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road
+which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter
+weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track
+straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As
+it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a
+wayside stump, dead beat.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick,"
+he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best
+I can."</p>
+
+<p>The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had
+put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention.
+"Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water
+which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at
+their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I
+stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I
+cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had
+not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the
+Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection
+as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop,
+and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale
+Adirondack outlines.</p>
+
+<p>As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze
+had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east
+and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them
+upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its
+cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his
+infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody
+is waiting for me--nobody wants me."</p>
+
+<p>The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long
+afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion
+that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of
+my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."</p>
+
+<p>Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He
+humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going
+by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road,
+and the rain was coming on.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the
+distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.</p>
+
+<p>Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the
+settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a
+controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the
+hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not
+much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the
+vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my
+brain, almost frightened me.</p>
+
+<p>I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had
+spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah,
+fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in
+contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still
+nourished in my heart a hope--and these <i>were</i> happiness! I laughed aloud
+at my folly in having deemed them less.</p>
+
+<p>She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes
+open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent
+cub!--so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I
+pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her
+grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile,
+the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed
+against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him--brawling
+dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and
+proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken
+wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration! Where were their eyes, that
+they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when
+he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?</p>
+
+<p>Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of
+his class, or of his pretence to class?</p>
+
+<p>Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could
+not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing,
+everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other
+friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John
+Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from
+boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class,"
+these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had
+never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me,
+grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink
+and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the
+gentry--save the mark!--of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never
+so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid,
+fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her;
+it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their
+congratulations.</p>
+
+<p>And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other
+affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge
+their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered
+stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action,
+my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before
+their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their
+hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time
+out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on
+my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as
+worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet
+with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a
+moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!</p>
+
+<p>Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the
+self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute,
+tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal
+notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn
+to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little
+country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed
+rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed
+also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this
+Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive
+expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an
+intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all
+my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to
+employment!</p>
+
+<p>It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was
+more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three
+bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman
+was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the
+blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia
+was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel
+gilt, the gaudier the better!</p>
+
+<p>But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing
+pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason
+runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours'
+wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh
+murderous in its fierceness.</p>
+
+<p>The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of
+thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat.
+The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood.</p>
+
+<p>On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from
+the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn,
+rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A
+half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars,
+and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it
+was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart
+and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and
+that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to
+accompany them.</p>
+
+<p>"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's
+human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty
+beckon the other way."</p>
+
+<p>I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We
+resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily
+pelting upon our backs.</p>
+
+<p>When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the
+waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail
+was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you
+could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct
+mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly
+and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears,
+and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.</p>
+
+<p>At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.</p>
+
+<p>He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a
+walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion;
+yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a
+song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that
+neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on
+this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not
+interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility
+toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I
+see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this
+"--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.</p>
+
+<p>I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I
+could only hope he failed to note:</p>
+
+<p>"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you
+like--here! now!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are
+drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him
+square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was
+ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner
+that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."</p>
+
+<p>The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his
+surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his
+great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of
+mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.</p>
+
+<p>If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration.
+There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his
+knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my
+superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing,
+there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over,
+he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his
+coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully.
+I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and
+was vexed with myself for it.</p>
+
+<p>We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a
+final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not
+only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood
+upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift
+movement past me from behind.</p>
+
+<p>I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that
+followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful
+slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus
+place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.</p>
+
+<p>To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.</p>
+
+<p>There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close
+before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow
+in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side
+of the cliff!</p>
+
+<p>Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips
+over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very
+moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end,
+one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the
+Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which
+recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had
+chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till
+the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed
+me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he
+said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than
+poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless
+morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my
+readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled
+the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight
+out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as
+possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty
+masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the
+far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably
+sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught
+sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine,
+limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but
+it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my
+antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked
+at him.</p>
+
+<p>The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently,
+for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had
+been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him.</p>
+
+<p>I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin
+defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and
+stood for a moment frowning down at me.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a
+new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see
+you again."</p>
+
+<p>"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break
+every bone in your body."</p>
+
+<p>With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I
+continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp
+was waiting for me.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="17"></a>Chapter XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding
+his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic.</p>
+
+<p>He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had
+from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been
+more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines.
+He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and
+some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though
+all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my
+neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as
+by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over
+the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall
+came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet
+and miserable affair.</p>
+
+<p>When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise
+to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what
+to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had
+overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far
+from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my
+part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word
+or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far
+as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest.
+Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage
+feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon
+the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive
+way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my
+fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my
+mortification and rage.</p>
+
+<p>When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself
+by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart;
+both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in
+the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as
+this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat
+at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then
+sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather,
+lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened?
+There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?"</p>
+
+<p>I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her:</p>
+
+<p>"The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie
+it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by
+the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!"</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room,
+closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting
+over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them
+for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining
+at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for
+making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon
+as possible leave the Cedars.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper.
+Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude,
+with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a
+complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the
+simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone
+to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt
+the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his
+curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the
+dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not
+ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was
+impendent.</p>
+
+<p>Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your
+wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness
+in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been
+only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of
+truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet.
+But his scornful sternness hardened me.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper."</p>
+
+<p>More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred
+fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the
+chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I
+knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association
+has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by
+want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back."</p>
+
+<p>I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly
+ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved
+toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the
+apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over
+now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He
+seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile,
+and he was some time in finding them.</p>
+
+<p>"In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my
+equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small
+matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment
+which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find
+myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person
+who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the
+appearance of respect for my gray hairs."</p>
+
+<p>He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender,
+ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on:</p>
+
+<p>"In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being
+wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has
+come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily
+observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I
+will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful,
+respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you
+developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of
+your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way,
+virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your
+credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much
+consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I
+had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken
+altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of
+my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he
+paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you."</p>
+
+<p>He went on as if I had not spoken:</p>
+
+<p>"Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your
+voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position
+and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to
+dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not
+forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my
+disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your
+education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of
+what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting
+and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to
+me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her
+chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would
+fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my
+duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed."</p>
+
+<p>The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered
+under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul
+and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell.</p>
+
+<p>Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and
+foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct
+or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long,
+stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my
+actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly
+stood my ground.</p>
+
+<p>"If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly
+be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and
+to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can
+the simple truth affront?"</p>
+
+<p>"What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being
+thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose
+to describe him thus."</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor
+devil escaped with his life."</p>
+
+<p>"How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days
+slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not
+understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with
+rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as
+we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need
+for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off."</p>
+
+<p>"Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have
+killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not
+put other things in our heads."</p>
+
+<p>"My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time,
+then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in
+apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than
+before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in
+this than I thought. Explain it to me."</p>
+
+<p>I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference,
+than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to explain?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why were you quarrelling with Philip?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I felt like it--because I hate him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two?
+I demand to know!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth
+in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he
+has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be
+worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his
+fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you
+and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to
+deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My
+throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might
+not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in
+the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed
+them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since
+familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing
+sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my
+voice came back to me.</p>
+
+<p>"If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first
+looked on the Valley--<i>our</i> Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could
+only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from
+this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you
+could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that
+evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah,
+then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning
+with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and
+her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and
+sullen, <i>that</i> is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and
+upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the
+displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if
+I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess
+of tenderness trampled underfoot."</p>
+
+<p>At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all
+events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old.
+He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time
+gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not
+have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset,
+the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right
+in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go
+aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies
+and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a
+melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these
+sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to
+Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would
+be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the
+beginning."</p>
+
+<p>I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them.</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly
+with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have,
+waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my
+heart--to have Daisy for my wife."</p>
+
+<p>As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether
+strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she
+and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we
+were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not
+infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and
+all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness
+of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a
+lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious,
+civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image
+of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the
+delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home
+that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now
+with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should
+crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover,
+that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as
+innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child
+approaching to kiss its mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom
+it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you
+will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling."</p>
+
+<p>His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly
+enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no
+fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the
+very wisest to bestow.</p>
+
+<p>He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments
+exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world.
+In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of
+every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other
+distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just
+the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he
+essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent.
+He added, I remember, a personal parallel:</p>
+
+<p>"I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my
+grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young
+Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other
+thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of
+her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and
+hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I
+verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket
+this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony
+Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are
+kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns
+sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if
+you would deny her the gallant of her choice?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I believed," I blurted out, "that it <i>was</i> her own free choice!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whose else, then, pray?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not
+been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--"</p>
+
+<p>"Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning
+testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all
+these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the
+youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had
+spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it
+might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We
+who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred
+bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be
+no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own
+judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I
+mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony.
+Perhaps--who knows?--he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of
+these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon
+enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow
+freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way."</p>
+
+<p>My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never
+abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went
+to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent
+down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal
+for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we
+hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task.</p>
+
+<p>It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the
+wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told
+Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and
+take up the proffered agency.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong
+opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the
+best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or
+made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with
+my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by
+my perseverance in the project.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences
+with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he
+was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with
+voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and
+much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among
+others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon,
+who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I
+never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of
+more utility.</p>
+
+<p>In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a
+departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few
+times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of
+that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the
+incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to
+Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I
+fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.
+At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with
+my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not
+sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began
+life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried
+with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of
+compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of
+the Cedars.</p>
+
+<p>As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="18"></a>Chapter XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new
+world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with
+but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this
+distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost
+at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had
+left behind.</p>
+
+<p>For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.
+I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter
+was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was
+pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager
+national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places,
+to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly
+the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to
+prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as
+possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to
+encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome
+settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was
+easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from
+scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then,
+however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.</p>
+
+<p>Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in
+it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most
+delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were
+to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were
+equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed
+brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting
+water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I
+had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the
+Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses,
+here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New
+England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a
+pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the
+conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.</p>
+
+<p>And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There
+were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen
+had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had
+weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told
+of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the
+hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie
+Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great
+town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its
+population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four
+hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and
+were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect
+was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the
+grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The
+wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is
+thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps
+of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.
+Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from
+the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.</p>
+
+<p>Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when
+men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The
+only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to
+barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and
+occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his
+representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.
+For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and
+comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even
+to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea
+fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other
+town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our
+own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted
+slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.</p>
+
+<p>There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the
+firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the
+Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old
+age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass
+unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know
+how neither to rest nor to play.</p>
+
+<p>But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in
+the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already
+sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of
+books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself
+almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances
+were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was
+repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for
+them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies
+were mine.
+
+But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and
+rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the
+outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the
+uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost
+citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others
+not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen
+before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon
+terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger
+men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age,
+and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.</p>
+
+<p>These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not
+inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or
+to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had
+seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were
+masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had
+suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my
+surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with
+loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another
+name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen
+disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the
+ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence
+the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its
+citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political
+life, were of my way of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against
+England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in
+our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth,
+and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and
+social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act
+crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly
+discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in
+our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious
+of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked
+the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret
+these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found
+myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils
+of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it,
+as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.
+Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became
+the most ardent of Whigs?</p>
+
+<p>Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established,
+there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole
+current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There
+were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern,
+to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a
+considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of
+provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at
+Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and
+there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped
+hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no
+obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare
+expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had
+entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind
+and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting
+alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking
+of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the
+Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching
+completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.
+Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for
+me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the
+collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against
+Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.
+The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my
+disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of
+myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon
+other things.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her
+ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had
+established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.
+I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed
+me, which was not at all.</p>
+
+<p>The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the
+company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business,
+push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English
+charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run
+over here."</p>
+
+<p>So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.</p>
+
+<p>It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held
+me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true
+that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city,
+for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always
+seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the
+town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This
+made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I
+am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who
+came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in
+estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.</p>
+
+<p>I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each
+quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the
+company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went
+to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my
+progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased
+at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But
+that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than
+the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year
+than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have
+learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my
+companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of
+mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden,
+and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.</p>
+
+<p>So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently
+rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped
+meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling
+tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs,
+twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent
+position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to
+mortal man.</p>
+
+<p>Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this
+correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of
+the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="19"></a>Chapter XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night
+not to be forgotten while memory remains to me.</p>
+
+<p>There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons,
+and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian
+lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon
+was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business
+which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer
+mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country
+roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been
+despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite
+the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson
+had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir
+John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this
+opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he
+had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in
+company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with
+more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and
+flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was
+I at last to meet Daisy?</p>
+
+<p>Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and
+decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the
+most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more
+beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening
+return to me.</p>
+
+<p>You may still see for yourselves how noble, one might say palatial, was
+the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on
+the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no
+power of fancy can restore for <i>you</i>--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic
+people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad,
+fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome;
+the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights,
+hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the
+stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their
+passengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich
+velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright
+eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair breasts--all radiant in the
+hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of
+gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the
+horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of
+color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the
+spacious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her
+son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests.
+No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You
+shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all,
+pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the
+best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery
+beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead.</p>
+
+<p>This round, lustrous orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to
+every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that
+this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm
+was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost
+stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman,
+when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the
+formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see
+sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one
+another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust
+over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it.</p>
+
+<p>It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess.
+She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The
+Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before
+her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my
+roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is
+trouble brewing."</p>
+
+<p>I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left,
+but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words
+with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of
+whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then
+rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all
+liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it
+would not do to pass him by unheeded.</p>
+
+<p>While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of
+the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the
+hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space
+clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I
+perforce followed.</p>
+
+<p>I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book
+had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been
+equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects.
+Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was
+now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of
+English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his
+office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered
+me his hand.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his
+great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had
+Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his
+long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few
+words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I passed to make room for
+others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood.</p>
+
+<p>"The old fox!" he said, smilingly nodding toward Colden. "One may not but
+like him, for all his tricks. If England had had the wit to keep that rude
+boor of a Tryon at home, and make Colden governor, and listen to him,
+matters would have gone better. Who is that behind him? Oh, yes,
+De Lancey."</p>
+
+<p>Oliver de Lancey was chiefly notable on account of his late brother James,
+who had been chief justice and lieutenant-governor, and the most
+brilliant, unscrupulous, masterful politician of his time. Oliver was
+himself a man of much energy and ambition. I observed him curiously, for
+his mother had been a Van Cortlandt, and I had some of that blood in my
+veins as well. So far as it had contributed to shape his face, I was not
+proud of it, for he had a selfish and arrogant mien.</p>
+
+<p>It was more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of
+the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their
+characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip
+Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite
+forty years of age, almost of my stature--that is to say, a tall man. He
+held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air,
+which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under
+the powder, helped to confirm. But no one could speak in amity with him
+without finding him to be the most affable and sweet-natured of men. If he
+had had more of the personal vanity and self-love which his bearing seemed
+to indicate, it would have served him well, perhaps, when New England
+jealousy assailed and overbore him. But he was too proud to fight for
+himself, and too patriotic not to fight for his country, whether the just
+reward came or was withheld.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Schuyler had been chosen as one of the five delegates of the
+Colony to attend the first Continental Congress, now sitting at
+Philadelphia, but ill-health had compelled him to decline the journey. He
+had since been to New York, however, where he had learned much of the
+situation, and now was in receipt of tidings from the Congress itself. By
+a compromise in the New York Assembly, both parties had been represented
+in our delegation, the Whigs sending Philip Livingston and Isaac Low, the
+Tories James Duane and John Jay, and the fifth man, one Alsopp, being a
+neutral-tinted individual to whom neither side could object. The
+information which Schuyler had received was to the effect that all five,
+under the tremendous and enthusiastic pressure they had encountered in
+Philadelphia, had now resolved to act together in all things for the
+Colonies and against the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>"That means," said he, "that we shall all adopt Massachusetts's cause as
+our own. After Virginia led the way with Patrick Henry's speech, there was
+no other course possible for even Jay and Duane. I should like to hear
+that man Henry. He must be wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>The space about Mr. Colden had shifted across the room, so that we were
+now upon its edge, and Schuyler went to him with outstretched hand. The
+two men exchanged a glance, and each knew what the other was thinking of.</p>
+
+<p>"Your excellency has heard from Philadelphia," said the Colonel, more as a
+statement of fact than as an inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Sad, sad!" exclaimed the aged politician, in a low tone. "It is a grief
+instead of a joy to have lived so long, if my life must end amid
+contention and strife."</p>
+
+<p>"He is really sincere in deploring the trouble," said Schuyler, when he
+had rejoined me. "He knows in his heart that the Ministry are pig-headedly
+wrong, and that we are in the right. He would do justice if he could, but
+he is as powerless as I am so far as influencing London goes, and here he
+is in the hands of the De Lanceys. To give the devil his due, I believe
+Sir William Johnson was on our side, too, at heart."</p>
+
+<p>We had talked of this before, and out of deference to my sentiments of
+liking and gratitude to Sir William, he always tried to say amiable things
+about the late baronet to me. But they did not come easily, for there was
+an old-time feud between the two families. The dislike dated back to the
+beginning of young Johnson's career, when, by taking sides shrewdly in a
+political struggle between Clinton and De Lancey, he had ousted John
+Schuyler, Philip's grandfather, from the Indian commissionership and
+secured it for himself. In later years, since the Colonel had come to
+manhood, he had been forced into rivalry, almost amounting to antagonism
+at times, with the baronet, in Colonial and Indian affairs; and even now,
+after the baronet's death, it was hard for him to acknowledge the
+existence of all the virtues which my boyish liking had found in Sir
+William. But still he did try, if only to please me.</p>
+
+<p>As we spoke, Sir John Johnson passed us, in company with several younger
+men, pushing toward the room to the right, where the punch-bowl
+was placed.</p>
+
+<p>"At least, <i>he</i> is no friend of yours?" said Schuyler, indicating the
+red-faced young baronet.</p>
+
+<p>"No man less so," I replied, promptly. Two years ago I doubt I should have
+been so certain of my entire enmity toward Sir John. But in the interim
+all my accumulating political fervor had unconsciously stretched back to
+include the Johnstown Tories; I found myself now honestly hating them all
+alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude
+toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish
+dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to
+make him the chief object of my aversion.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of him now, and of his wife, a beautiful, sweet-faced girl of
+twenty, who had been Polly Watts of New York. My companion pointed her out
+to me, as one of a circle beyond the fire-place. He had only soft words
+and pity for her--as if foreseeing the anguish and travail soon to be
+brought upon her by her husband's misdeeds--but he spoke very slightingly
+and angrily of Sir John. To Schuyler's mind there was no good in him.</p>
+
+<p>"I have known him more or less since he was a boy and followed his father
+in the Lake George campaign. The officers then could not abide him, though
+some were submissive to him because of his father's position. So now,
+fifteen years afterward, although he has many toadies and flatterers, I
+doubt his having any real friends. Through all these score of years, I
+have yet to learn of any gracious or manly thing he has done."</p>
+
+<p>"At least he did gallop from the Fort to the Hall at news of his father's
+death, and kill his horse by the pace," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Heirs can afford to ride swiftly," replied the Colonel, in a dry tone.
+"No: he has neither the honesty to respect the rights of others, nor the
+wit to enforce those which he arrogates to himself. Look at his management
+in the Mohawk Valley. Scarce two months after the old baronet's
+death--before he was barely warm in his father's bed--all the Dutch and
+Palatines and Cherry Valley Scotch were up in arms against him and his
+friends. I call that the work of a fool. Why, Tryon County ought, by all
+the rules, to be the Tories' strongest citadel. There, of all other
+places, they should be able to hold their own. Old Sir William would have
+contrived matters better, believe me. But this sulky, slave-driving cub
+must needs force the quarrel from the start. Already they have their
+committee in the Palatine district, with men like Frey and Yates and Paris
+on it, and their resolutions are as strong as any we have heard."</p>
+
+<p>Others came up at this, and I moved away, thinking to pay my respects to
+friends in the rooms on the left. The fine hall was almost overcrowded.
+One's knee struck a sword, or one's foot touched a satin train, at every
+step. There were many whom I knew, chiefly Albanians, and my progress was
+thus rendered slow. At the door I met my kinsman, Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! well met, Cousin Sobriety!" he cried. "Let us cross the hall, and get
+near the punch-bowl."</p>
+
+<p>"It is my idea that you have had enough," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Too much is enough,' as the Indian said. He was nearer the truth than
+you are," replied Teunis, taking my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not now! First let me see who is here."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is here? Everybody--from Hendrik Hudson and Killian the First down.
+Old Centenarian Colden is telling them about William the Silent, whom he
+remembers very well."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never heard any one speak of Teunis the Silent."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor ever will! It is not my <i>m&eacute;tier</i>, as the French students used to say.
+Well, then, I will turn back with you; but the punch will all be gone,
+mark my words. I saw Johnson and Watts and their party headed for the bowl
+five-and-twenty minutes ago. We shall get not so much as a lemon-seed. But
+I sacrifice myself."</p>
+
+<p>We entered the room, and my eyes were drawn, as by the force of a million
+magnets, to the place where Daisy sat.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment she was unattended. She was very beautifully attired, and
+jewels glistened from her hair and throat. Her eyes were downcast--looking
+upon the waxed floor as if in meditation. Even to this sudden, momentary
+glance, her fair face looked thinner and paler than I remembered it--and
+ah, how well did I remember it! With some muttered word of explanation I
+broke away from my companion, and went straight to her.</p>
+
+<p>She had not noted my presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood
+before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had
+expected. She smiled in a wan way, and gave me her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you were here," she said, in a soft voice which I scarcely
+recognized, so changed, I might say saddened, was it by the introduction
+of some plaintive, minor element. "Philip told me. I thought that sooner
+or later I should see you."</p>
+
+<p>"And I have thought of little else but the chance of seeing you," I
+replied, speaking what was in my heart, with no reflection save that this
+was our Daisy, come into my life again.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a moment, her eyes seeking the floor and a faint glow
+coming upon her cheeks. Then she raised them to my face, with something of
+the old sparkle in their glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," she said, drawing aside her skirts, "sit here, and see me."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="20"></a>Chapter XX</h2>
+
+<h3>A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust Upon Me.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I sat beside Daisy, and we talked. It was at the beginning a highly
+superficial conversation, as I remember it, during which neither looked at
+the other, and each made haste to fill up any threatened lapse into
+silence by words of some sort, it mattered not much what.</p>
+
+<p>She told me a great deal about Mr. Stewart's health, which I learned was
+far less satisfactory than his letters had given reason to suspect. In
+reply to questions, I told her of my business and my daily life here in
+Albany. I did not ask her in return about herself. She seemed eager to
+forestall any possible inquiry on this point, and hastened to inform me as
+to my old acquaintances in the Valley.</p>
+
+<p>From her words I first realized how grave the situation there had suddenly
+become. It was not only that opposition to the Johnsons had been openly
+formulated, but feuds of characteristic bitterness had sprung up within
+families, and between old-time friends, in consequence. Colonel Henry
+Frey, who owned the upper Canajoharie mills, took sides with the Tories,
+and had fiercely quarrelled with his brother John, who was one of the Whig
+Committee. There was an equally marked division in the Herkimer family,
+where one brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, and his nephew, outraged the others
+by espousing the Tory cause. So instances might be multiplied. Already on
+one side there were projects of forcible resistance, and on the other ugly
+threats of using the terrible Indian power, which hung portentous on the
+western skirt of the Valley, to coerce the Whigs.</p>
+
+<p>I gained from this recital, more from her manner than her words, that her
+sympathies were with the people and not with the aristocrats. She went on
+to say things which seemed to offer an explanation of this.</p>
+
+<p>The tone of Valley society, at least so far as it was a reflection of
+Johnson Hall, had, she said, deteriorated wofully since the old baronet's
+death. A reign of extravagance and recklessness both as to money and
+temper--of gambling, racing, hard drinking, low sports, and coarse
+manners--had set in. The friends of Sir John were now a class by
+themselves, having no relations to speak of with the body of Whig farmers,
+merchants, inn-keepers, and the like. Rather it seemed to please the Tory
+clique to defy the good opinion of their neighbors, and show by very
+excess and license contempt for their judgment. Some of the young men whom
+I had known were of late sadly altered. She spoke particularly of Walter
+Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the
+evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a
+sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to distinguish sometimes
+from madness.</p>
+
+<p>In all this I found but one reflection--rising again and again as she
+spoke--and this was that she was telling me, by inference, the story of
+her own unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy would never have done this consciously--of that I am positive. But
+it was betrayed in every line of her face, and my anxious ear caught it in
+every word she uttered as to the doings of the Johnson party. Doubtless
+she did not realize how naturally and closely I would associate her
+husband with that party.</p>
+
+<p>Underneath all our talk there had been, on both sides, I dare say, a sense
+of awkward constraint. There were so many things which we must not speak
+of--things which threatened incessantly to force their way to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of them all, and wondered how much she knew of the events that
+preceded my departure--how much she guessed of the heart-breaking grief
+with which I had seen her go to another. It came back to me now, very
+vividly, as I touched the satin fold of her gown with my shoe, and said to
+myself, "This is really she."</p>
+
+<p>The two years had not passed so uncomfortably, it is true; work and
+pre-occupation and the change of surroundings had brought me back my peace
+of mind and taken the keen edge from my despair--which was to have been
+life-long, and had faded in a month. Yet now her simple presence--with the
+vague added feeling that she was unhappy--sufficed to wipe out the whole
+episode of Albany, and transport me bodily back to the old Valley days. I
+felt again all the anguish at losing her, all the bitter wrath at the
+triumph of my rival--emphasized and intensified now by the implied
+confession that he had proved unworthy.</p>
+
+<p>To this gloom there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition,
+the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air
+about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence.
+The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping
+us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as
+I did?</p>
+
+<p>I looked up into her face. She had been silent for I know not how long,
+following her thoughts as I had followed mine. It was almost a shock to me
+to find that the talk had died away, and I fancied that I read a kindred
+embarrassment in her eyes. I seized upon the first subject which
+entered my head.</p>
+
+<p>"Tulp would be glad to see you," I said, foolishly enough.</p>
+
+<p>She colored slightly, and opened and shut her fan in a nervous way. "Poor
+Tulp!" she said, "I don't think he ever liked me as he did you. Is
+he well?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has never been quite the same since--since he came to Albany. He is a
+faithful body-servant now--nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, softly, with a sigh; then, after a pause, "Philip spoke
+of offering to make good to you your money loss in Tulp, but I told him he
+would better not."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>was</i> better not," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>Silence menaced us again. I did not find myself indignant at this
+insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly
+close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near
+Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts of him whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>"You do Tulp a wrong," I said. "Poor little fellow! Do you remember--" and
+so we drifted into the happy, sunlit past, with its childish memories for
+both of games and forest rambles, and innocent pleasures making every day
+a little blissful lifetime by itself, and all the years behind our parting
+one sweet prolonged delight.</p>
+
+<p>Words came freely now; we looked into each other's faces without
+constraint, and laughed at the pastimes we recalled. It was so pleasant to
+be together again, and there was so much of charm for us both in the time
+which we remembered together.</p>
+
+<p>Sir John Johnson and his party had left the punch--or what remained of
+it--and came suddenly up to us. Behind the baronet I saw young Watts,
+young De Lancey, one or two others whom I did not know, and, yes!--it was
+he--Philip Cross.</p>
+
+<p>He had altered in appearance greatly. The two years had added much flesh
+to his figure, which was now burly, and seemed to have diminished his
+stature in consequence. His face, which even I had once regarded as
+handsome, was hardened now in expression, and bore an unhealthy, reddish
+hue. For that matter, all these young men were flushed with drink, and had
+entered rather boisterously, attracting attention as they progressed. This
+attention was not altogether friendly. Some of the ladies had drawn in
+their skirts impatiently, as they passed, and beyond them I saw a group of
+Dutch friends of mine, among them Teunis, who were scowling dark looks at
+the new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>Sir John recognized me as he approached, and deigned to say, "Ha!
+Mauverensen--you here?" after a cool fashion, and not offering his hand.</p>
+
+<p>I had risen, not knowing what his greeting would be like. It was only
+decent now to say: "I was much grieved to hear of your honored father's
+death last summer."</p>
+
+<p>"Well you might be!" said polite Sir John. "He served you many a good
+purpose. I saw you talking out yonder with Schuyler, that coward who dared
+not go to Philadelphia and risk his neck for his treason. I dare say he,
+too, was convulsed with grief over my father's death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you would like to tell Philip Schuyler to his face that he is a
+coward," I retorted, in rising heat at the unprovoked insolence in his
+tone. "There is no braver man in the Colony."</p>
+
+<p>"But he didn't go to Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty
+scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list."</p>
+
+<p>"He did not go for a reason which is perfectly well known--his illness
+forbade the journey."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," sneered the baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance;
+"too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told,
+he has been most of the time since your--what d'ye call it?--Congress
+assembled."</p>
+
+<p>I grew angry. "He went there to bury General Bradstreet. That, also, is
+well known. Information seems to reach the Valley but indifferently, Sir
+John. Everywhere else people understand and appreciate the imperative
+nature of the summons which called Colonel Schuyler to New York. The
+friendship of the two men has been a familiar matter of knowledge this
+fifteen years. I know not your notions of friendship's duties; but for a
+gentleman like Schuyler, scarcely a mortal illness itself could serve to
+keep him from paying the last respect to a friend whose death was such an
+affliction to him."</p>
+
+<p>Johnson had begun some response, truculent in tone, when an interruption
+came from a most unexpected source. Philip Cross, who had looked at me
+closely without betraying any sign of recognition, put his hand now on Sir
+John's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Bradstreet?" he said. "Did I not know him? Surely he is the man who found
+his friend's wife so charming that he sent that friend to distant
+posts--to England, to Quebec, to Oswego, and Detroit--and amused himself
+here at home during the husband's absence. I am told he even built a
+mansion for her while the spouse was in London <i>on business.</i> So he is
+dead, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>I had felt the bitter purport of his words, almost before they were out.
+It was a familiar scandal in the mouths of the Johnson coterie--this foul
+assertion that Mrs. Schuyler, one of the best and most faithful of
+helpmates, as witty as she was beautiful, as good as she was diligent, in
+truth, an ideal wife, had pursued through many years a course of deceit
+and dishonor, and that her husband, the noblest son of our Colony, had
+been base enough to profit by it. Of all the cruel and malignant things to
+which the Tories laid their mean tongues, this was the lowest and most
+false. I could not refrain from putting my hand on my sword-hilt as
+I answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Such infamous words as these are an insult to every gentleman, the world
+over, who has ever presented a friend to his family!"</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless there was apparent in my face, as in the exaggerated formality
+of my bow to Cross, a plain invitation to fight. If there had not been,
+then my manner would have wofully belied my intent. It was, in fact, so
+plain that Daisy, who sat close by my side, and, like some others near at
+hand, had heard every word that had passed, half-started to her feet and
+clutched my sleeve, as with an appeal against my passionate purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband had not stirred from his erect and arrogant posture until he
+saw his wife's frightened action. I could see that he noted this, and that
+it further angered him. He also laid his hand on his sword now, and
+frigidly inclined his wigged head toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"I had not the honor of addressing you, sir," he said, in a low voice,
+very much at variance with the expression in his eyes. "I had no wish to
+exchange words with you, or with any of your sour-faced tribe. But if you
+desire a conversation--a lengthy and more private conversation--I am at
+your disposition. Let me say here, however,"--and he glanced with fierce
+meaning at Daisy as he spoke--"I am not a Schuyler; I do not encourage
+'friends.'"</p>
+
+<p>Even Sir John saw that this was too much.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Cross!" he said, going to his friend. "Your tongue runs away
+with you." Then, in a murmur, he added: "Damn it, man! Don't drag your
+wife into the thing. Skewer the Dutchman outside, if you like, and if you
+are steady enough, but remember what you are about."</p>
+
+<p>I could hear this muttered exhortation as distinctly as I had heard
+Cross's outrageous insult. Sir John's words appealed to me even more than
+they did to his companion. I was already ashamed to have been led into a
+display of temper and a threat of quarrelling, here in the company of
+ladies, and on such an occasion. We were attracting attention, moreover,
+and Teunis and some of his Dutch friends had drawn nearer, evidently
+understanding that a dispute was at hand. The baronet's hint about Daisy
+completed my mortification. <i>I</i> should have been the one to think of her,
+to be restrained by her presence, and to prevent, at any cost, her name
+being associated with the quarrel by so much as the remotest inference.</p>
+
+<p>So I stood irresolute, with my hand still on my sword, and black rage
+still tearing at my heart, but with a mist of self-reproach and indecision
+before my eyes, in which lights, costumes, powdered wigs, gay figures
+about me, all swam dizzily.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Watts, a man in manner, though a mere stripling in years, had
+approached me from the other group, a yard off, in a quiet way to avoid
+observation. He whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"There must be no quarrel <i>here</i>, Mr. Mauverensen. And there must be no
+notice taken of his last words--spoken in heat, and properly due, I dare
+say, to the punch rather than to the man."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel that as deeply as you can," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad," said Watts, still in a sidelong whisper. "If you must fight,
+let there be some tolerable pretext."</p>
+
+<p>"We have one ready standing," I whispered back. "When we last met I warned
+him that at our next encounter I should break every bone in his skin. Is
+not that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"Capital! Who is your friend?"</p>
+
+<p>By some remarkable intuition my kinsman Teunis was prompted to advance at
+this. I introduced the two young men to each other, and they sauntered
+off, past where Sir John was still arguing with Cross, and into the outer
+hall. I stood watching them till they disappeared, then looking aimlessly
+at the people in front of me, who seemed to belong to some strange
+phantasmagoria.</p>
+
+<p>It was Daisy's voice which awakened me from this species of trance. She
+spoke from behind her fan, purposely avoiding looking up at me.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to fight--you two!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>I could not answer her directly, and felt myself flushing with
+embarrassment. "He spoke in heat," I said, stumblingly. "Doubtless he will
+apologize--to you, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know him. He would have his tongue torn out before he would
+admit his wrong, or any sorrow for it."</p>
+
+<p>To this I could find no reply. It was on my tongue's end to say that men
+who had a pride in combining obstinacy with insolence must reap what they
+sow, but I wisely kept silence.</p>
+
+<p>She went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me, Douw, that you will not fight. It chills my heart, even the
+thought of it. Let it pass. Go away now--anything but a quarrel! I
+beseech you!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis more easily said than done," I muttered back to her. "Men cannot
+slip out of du--out of quarrels as they may out of coats."</p>
+
+<p>"For my sake!" came the whisper, with a pleading quaver in it, from behind
+the feathers.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all on one side, Daisy," I protested. "I must be ridden over,
+insulted, scorned, flouted to my face--and pocket it all! That is a
+nigger's portion, not a gentleman's. You do not know what I have
+borne already."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I not? Ah, too well! For my sake, Douw, for the sake of our memories
+of the dear old home, I implore you to avoid an encounter. Will you
+not--for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It makes a coward out of me! Every Tory in the two counties will cackle
+over the story that a Dutchman, a Whig, was affronted here under the
+Patroon's very roof, and dared not resent it."</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you value their words? Must a thing be true for them to say
+it? The real manhood is shown in the strength of restraint, not the
+weakness of yielding to the impulse of the moment. And you can be strong
+if you choose, Douw!"</p>
+
+<p>While I still pondered these words Teunis Van Hoorn returned to me, having
+finished his consultation with Watts, whom I now saw whispering to Sir
+John and the others who clustered about Cross.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was in good spirits. He sidled up to me, uttering aloud some
+merry commonplace, and then adding, in a low tone:</p>
+
+<p>"I was a match for him. He insisted that they were the aggrieved party,
+and chose swords. I stuck to it that we occupied that position, and had
+the right to choose pistols. You are no Frenchman, to spit flesh with a
+wire; but you <i>can</i> shoot, can't you? If we stand to our point, they
+must yield."</p>
+
+<p>I cast a swift glance toward the sweet, pleading face at my side, and made
+answer:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not fight!"</p>
+
+<p>My kinsman looked at me with surprise and vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I went on, "it is not our way here. You have lived so long abroad
+that duelling seems a natural and proper thing. But we stay-at-homes no
+more recognize the right of these English fops to force their fighting
+customs upon us than we rush to tie our hair in queues because it is
+their fashion."</p>
+
+<p>I will not pretend that I was much in love with the line of action thus
+lamely defended. To the contrary, it seemed to me then a cowardly and
+unworthy course; but I had chosen it, and I could not retreat.</p>
+
+<p>There was upon the moment offered temptation enough to test my resolution
+sorely.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let
+it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust
+upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson
+stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost our sole
+observers.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross shook himself loose from the restraining circle of friends,
+and strode toward me, his face glowing darkly with passion, and his
+hands clinched.</p>
+
+<p>"You run away, do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where
+you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?--here, where you stand!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you," I made answer, striving hard to keep my voice down and my
+resolution up. "Others hear you, too. There are ladies in the room. If you
+have any right to be among gentlemen, it is high time for you to show it.
+You are acting like a blackguard."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear the preaching Dutchman!" he called out, with a harsh, scornful
+laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his
+hiding-place behind the petticoats.--Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and
+I'll break that sword of yours over your back!"</p>
+
+<p>Where this all would have ended I cannot tell. My friends gathered around
+beside me, and at my back. Cross advanced a step or two nearer to me, his
+companions with him. I felt, rather than saw, the gestures preceding the
+drawing of swords. I cast a single glance toward the group of women across
+the room--who, huddled together, were gazing at us with pale faces and
+fixed eyes--and I dare say the purport of my glance was that I had borne
+all I could, and that the results were beyond my control--when suddenly
+there came an unlooked-for interruption.</p>
+
+<p>The dignified, sober figure of Abraham Ten Broeck appeared in our wrathful
+circle. Some one had doubtless told him, in the outer hall, of the
+quarrel, and he had come to interfere. A hush fell over us all at
+his advent.</p>
+
+<p>"What have we here, gentlemen?" asked the merchant, looking from one to
+another of our heated faces with a grave air of authority. "Are you well
+advised to hold discussions here, in what ought to be a pleasant and
+social company?"</p>
+
+<p>No ready answer was forthcoming. The quarrel was none of my manufacture,
+and it was not my business to explain it to him. The Tories were secretly
+disgusted, I fancy, with the personal aspects of the dispute, and had
+nothing to say. Only Cross, who unfortunately did not know the new-comer,
+and perhaps would not have altered his manner if he had known him, said
+uncivilly:</p>
+
+<p>"The matter concerns us alone, sir. It is no affair of outsiders."</p>
+
+<p>I saw the blood mount to Mr. Ten Broeck's dark cheeks, and the fire flash
+in his eyes. But the Dutch gentleman kept tight bit on his tongue
+and temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I am not altogether an outsider, young sir," he replied, calmly.
+"It might be thought that I would have a right to civil answers here."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" asked Cross, contemptuously turning his head toward Sir John.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ten Broeck took the reply upon himself. "I am the uncle and guardian
+of your boy-host," he said, quietly. "In a certain sense I am myself your
+host--though it may be an honor which I shall not enjoy again."</p>
+
+<p>There was a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to
+impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant,
+and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on
+the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the
+principals changed his posture with a sense of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross presently went over to where the ladies stood, exchanged a
+few words with them, and then with his male friends left the room,
+affecting great composure and indifference. It was departing time; the
+outer hall was beginning to display cloaks, hoods, and tippets, and from
+without could be heard the voices of the negroes, bawling out demands for
+carriages.</p>
+
+<p>I had only a momentary chance of saying farewell to Daisy. Doubtless I
+ought to have held aloof from her altogether, but I felt that to be
+impossible. She gave me her hand, looking still very pale and distrait,
+and murmured only, "It was brave of you, Douw."</p>
+
+<p>I did not entirely agree with her, so I said in reply: "I hope you will
+be happy, dear girl; that I truly hope. Give my love and duty to Mr.
+Stewart, and--and if I may be of service to you, no matter in how exacting
+or how slight a matter, I pray you command me."</p>
+
+<p>We exchanged good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left
+me to join Lady Johnson and to depart with their company.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when I walked homeward with Teunis, sauntering in the moonlight, he
+imparted something to me which he had heard, in confidence of course, from
+one of the ladies who had formed the anxious little group that watched
+our quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>"After Ten Broeck came in, Cross went over to his wife, and brusquely said
+to her, in the hearing of her friends, that your acquaintance with her was
+an insult to him, and that he forbade her ever again holding converse
+with you!"</p>
+
+<p>We walked a considerable time in silence after this, and I will not essay
+to describe for you my thoughts. We had come into the shadow of the old
+Dutch church in the square, I know, before Teunis spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Be patient yet a little longer, Douw," he said. "The break must come soon
+now, and then we will drive all these insolent scoundrels before us
+into the sea!"</p>
+
+<p>I shook hands with him solemnly on this, as we parted.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="21"></a>Chapter XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>To pass from October, 1774, to mid-June of 1775--from the moonlit streets
+of sleeping Albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the Mohawk
+Valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. To
+us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully
+long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement.</p>
+
+<p>War was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister
+conditions. Dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting
+themselves in Parliament, at London, by declaring that the Americans were
+cowards and would not fight. We boasted little, but we knew ourselves
+better. There was as yet small talk of independence, of separation.
+Another year was to elapse before Thomas Paine's <i>Common Sense</i> should
+flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us
+both our real goal and the way to attain it. But about fighting, we had
+resolved our purpose.</p>
+
+<p>We should have been slaves otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable
+at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now
+it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North--all tediously
+alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of
+determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. To get justice, or
+even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. They
+listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of
+officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too
+worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England--who lied us
+impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the
+musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we
+were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition;
+the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town
+to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched
+under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and
+stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the Crown
+authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest
+men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up
+our substance in wanton taxation.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a chance that the new Parliament, meeting for the first
+time in the January of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to
+honestly set matters right. We had appealed from Crown and Commons to the
+English people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. But
+the hope speedily fell to the ground. The English, with that strange
+rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds
+their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal
+courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the
+cart-tail.
+
+To this we said no!</p>
+
+<p>In Albany, on this day in the latter part of June, when the thread of the
+story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague,
+tidings. Following upon the blow struck at Concord in April, a host of
+armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were
+investing Boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the
+beleaguered British General Gage. A great battle had been fought near the
+town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. But it meant
+War, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of
+excited comment.</p>
+
+<p>The windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming
+sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. Men had
+gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the
+Berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the
+mountains of how the fight had gone. No one talked of anything else.
+Assuredly I too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and
+discuss the news from Boston, but that my old friend Major Jelles Fonda
+had come down from Caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence
+from the Mohawk Valley.</p>
+
+<p>How well I remember him still, the good, square-set, solid
+merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm,
+resourceful, masterful air! He sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the
+day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and
+deliberate whiffs of his pipe. I listened with growing interest, until at
+last I forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which
+before had so absorbed me. He had much to tell.</p>
+
+<p>More than a month before, the two contending factions had come to
+fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the Whigs in and in front of John
+Veeder's house, at Caughnawaga. They were to raise a liberty pole there,
+and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. While they were
+deliberating, up rides Guy Johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in
+the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage.
+Back of him rode a whole company of the Hall cabal--Sir John Johnson,
+Philip Cross, the Butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the
+meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed.
+Many of these were drunk. Colonel Guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and
+began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had
+summoned them thither. Young Jake Sammons, with the characteristic
+boldness of his family, stood up to the Indian superintendent and answered
+him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the Johnson men fell upon
+Jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. Some insisted that it
+was peppery Guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded
+riding-whip, but on this point Major Jelles was not clear.</p>
+
+<p>"But what were our people about, to let this happen?" I asked, with some
+heat.</p>
+
+<p>"To tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away.
+Only a few of us held our place. Our men were unarmed, for one thing.
+Moreover, they are in awe of the power of the Hall. The magistrates, the
+sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office
+in Tryon County--take orders from the Hall. You can't get people to forget
+that. Besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down."</p>
+
+<p>Major Jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed
+force on the side of the Johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper
+of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. Sir
+John had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the Hall, and his Roman
+Catholic Highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as
+a military body. All sorts of stories came down from Johnstown and up from
+Guy Park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their
+retainers. Peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were
+Philip Cross and Walter Butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with
+the most violent party of the Tories. To them, indeed, was directly
+traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the Valley tribes proved to have
+been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder Indians were to be
+called down from the headwaters of the Three Rivers, and from the Lake
+plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if
+rebellion was persisted in.</p>
+
+<p>"But they would never dare do that!" I cried rising to my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "After all,
+that is their chief strength. Make no mistake! They are at work with the
+red-skins, poisoning them against us. Guy Johnson is savage at the
+mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at Guy Park,
+and he has already procured orders from London to remove Dominie Kirkland,
+the missionary who has kept the Oneidas heretofore friendly to us. That
+means--You can see as well as the rest of us what it means."</p>
+
+<p>"It means war in the Valley--fighting for your lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let it! My customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. I will
+give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from
+the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this Johnson nonsense any
+longer. And my old father and my brothers say it with me. My brother Adam,
+he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work,
+his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple
+for gun-stocks, and making bullets. That reminds me--Guy Johnson took all
+the lead weights out of the windows at Guy Park, and hid them, to keep
+them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away."</p>
+
+<p>"Before he ran away? Who ran away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Guy, of course," was the calm reply.</p>
+
+<p>I stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "You never mentioned
+this!" I managed to say at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I hadn't got to it yet," the Dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly.
+"You young people hurry one so."</p>
+
+<p>By degrees I obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had
+purposely come down, I believe, to tell me. As he progressed, my fancy ran
+before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great
+Hall on the hill which I knew so well.</p>
+
+<p>I needed not his assurances to believe that Molly Brant, who had come down
+from the upper Mohawk Castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred
+on all the rest into malevolent resolves.</p>
+
+<p>I could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the
+table where in Sir William's time she had been mistress, and now was but a
+visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. I could see her watching with
+silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, Sir John,
+Colonel Guy, the Butlers, Cross, and Claus, and then her own brother
+Joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her,
+engrafting upon his full wolf-totem Mohawk blood the restraints of tongue
+and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. No one of the males,
+Caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. Each
+in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to
+them meant London--would think of their acts. No one, not even Joseph
+Brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to
+wit: that the recalcitrant Valley should be swept as with a besom of fire
+and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. This, when
+it came her time, the Indian woman said for them frankly, and with
+scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. I could fancy
+her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away
+from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest
+the powers with which the king had intrusted them.</p>
+
+<p>It was not hard, either, to imagine young Walter Butler and Philip Cross
+rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot
+and fast upon the echo of Mistress Molly's contemptuous rebuke, should
+have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed
+all to the use of the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>So that day, just a week since, it had been settled that Colonel Guy and
+the two Butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a
+council near Fort Schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against
+their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they
+had departed. Guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great
+Sir William, she would be of use in the work; but Mrs. John Butler had
+gone to the Hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower
+Indian Castle.</p>
+
+<p>The two houses thus deserted--Guy Park and the Butlers' home on Switzer's
+Hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their
+contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in
+their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity,
+or hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother Adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest Jelles
+Fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. So their thoughts were on bullets
+as well as his. He has his eye now on the church roof at home."</p>
+
+<p>Here was news indeed! There could be no pretence that the clandestine
+flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. To the
+contrary, Colonel Guy, as Indian superintendent, had fully five hundred
+fighting men, Indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. They
+had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to
+assist Sir John, Sheriff White, and their Tory minions to hold Tryon
+County in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood.</p>
+
+<p>We sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a
+situation. At last I said:</p>
+
+<p>"Can I do anything? You all must know up there that I am with you, heart
+and soul."</p>
+
+<p>Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve
+us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and
+to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use
+here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things
+would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson
+is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying
+to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts
+and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to
+advise you. What do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major
+Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul
+never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with
+tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he
+could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of
+his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that
+story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of
+vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!</p>
+
+<p>An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.</p>
+
+<p>He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County
+part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.</p>
+
+<p>It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found
+how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital,
+tidings for the last.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention
+it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the
+Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he
+deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="22"></a>Chapter XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry
+scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by
+this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome
+<i>ego</i>, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it
+essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be
+familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent
+enough as the tale unfolds.</p>
+
+<p>Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall
+at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be
+placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of
+the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and
+gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from
+the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom
+which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and
+warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as
+if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond
+its strength.</p>
+
+<p>Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled
+hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it
+was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these
+last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the
+erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone,
+the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair
+is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the
+neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face.
+The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the
+mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now
+to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still
+calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the
+querulous in tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is
+Philip."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>Here the change <i>is</i> in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy
+who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the
+other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the
+smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty
+efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take
+up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to
+emphasize her loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>"The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in
+comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders.
+"If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem
+home-like."</p>
+
+<p>The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no
+more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must
+be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a
+mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to
+them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday
+was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be.</p>
+
+<p>The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two.
+The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to
+accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this
+calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results
+without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two
+up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart
+beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the
+Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong
+ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see
+differently. And this was the saddest thing of all.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his
+boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the
+two before the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so
+uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at
+the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers.
+He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He
+walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and
+neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair
+showed almost white--which both knew too well.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart.</p>
+
+<p>"There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all
+in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God!
+they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not
+whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held
+up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt,
+and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down
+from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would
+have none of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too,
+to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things
+will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful
+and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to
+God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!"</p>
+
+<p>Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift
+glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young
+wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
+Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Things are moving, you say. What is new?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment,
+and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of
+milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will
+master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of
+rebellion!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough,
+since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years
+younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of
+misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest
+enough, but they have small cunning."</p>
+
+<p>"That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We
+will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!"</p>
+
+<p>An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke,
+and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the
+stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over
+his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at
+bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries
+of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights
+lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it
+mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the
+prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his
+surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander,
+true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of
+thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly
+from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch
+were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing
+with types.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the
+tomahawk!"</p>
+
+<p>The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes,
+and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to
+interrogate her husband.</p>
+
+<p>He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed
+with his papers.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet,
+walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting
+for me, and the evenings grow cold."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a
+perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever
+welcome here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
+"But old bones are best couched at home."</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand
+affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I
+pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you,
+God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at
+which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day
+for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the
+counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words
+of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no
+good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first
+came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have
+known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push
+steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand
+its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
+Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err
+cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of
+the savages."</p>
+
+<p>"All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to
+these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,"
+continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were
+too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley,
+of Bell&ecirc;tre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you.
+Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk
+yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in
+terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world
+men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a
+willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is
+that you would do!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot
+on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to
+fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I
+have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they
+deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you."</p>
+
+<p>"Go with them? Where are they going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego;
+perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and
+hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it
+really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And this flight is actually resolved upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the
+Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They
+have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely
+pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at
+his command to shake my will."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr.
+Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive
+concert of thought.</p>
+
+<p>She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she
+had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her,
+she signified it not by glance or gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged
+me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on
+Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming
+as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon
+their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I
+have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he
+glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it
+<i>should</i> be so little!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his
+papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts:</p>
+
+<p>"It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel
+scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to
+our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady
+and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to
+disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You
+yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by
+the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by
+those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now
+that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as
+well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany
+conspirators are pushing their schemes."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire
+to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon
+reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw
+regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany
+committee."</p>
+
+<p>Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture.
+Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who
+knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his
+manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold
+regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy.
+Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked
+overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side
+and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other
+subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to
+recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second,
+and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to
+his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were
+pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!"</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first
+haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences
+followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now
+erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the
+shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young
+Mr. Cross full in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Death of my life!" he stammered. "<i>You</i> are saying these things to <i>me</i>!
+It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and <i>her</i> son--the young man to
+whom I gave my soul's treasure!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling
+lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute
+the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What
+he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance
+came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then,
+seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously
+stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep
+his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned
+about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to
+be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling
+were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="23"></a>Chapter XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>"You are, then, not even a gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as
+husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could
+not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the
+mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the
+strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also
+affronted.</p>
+
+<p>Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her
+first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had
+discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered,
+acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the
+burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have
+been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her
+nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young
+Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her
+tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her
+the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the
+instinct of combat in his scowl.</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for
+folly."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You
+should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and
+done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the
+moment pierced even his thick skin.</p>
+
+<p>"He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for
+his interest. I intended no offence."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you follow him, and say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>I</i> will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!"</p>
+
+<p>The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the
+position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined
+and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom,
+was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough
+countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is
+not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer."</p>
+
+<p>The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence,
+you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives,
+and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you
+like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer
+whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your
+tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman
+in Albany!"</p>
+
+<p>The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words
+did not come readily with which to repel it.</p>
+
+<p>"I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I
+have been badly reared for such purposes."</p>
+
+<p>She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn
+with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being
+with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection
+came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's
+strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now,
+and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but
+the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And
+then the softness came to her voice too.</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>can</i> you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real
+self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old
+self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she
+was mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for
+me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing
+himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture
+upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but
+I am not Dutch, and I don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in
+the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly
+or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the
+house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to
+take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly
+interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very
+hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its
+improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing
+him again, yet was it not right that she should do so?</p>
+
+<p>The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to
+draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a
+motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of
+the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the
+foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward,
+head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily:</p>
+
+<p>"Get away! When I want you, I'll call!"</p>
+
+<p>The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat
+in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife
+approached him, and stood at the back of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be
+some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves
+all this misery?"</p>
+
+<p>"What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of
+having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on
+the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At
+least once in a while he points my way."</p>
+
+<p>"Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me
+aright, seeing my errors?"</p>
+
+<p>"There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or
+that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but
+ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money,
+position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house
+of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
+Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans,
+gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty
+face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins
+gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and
+distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of
+mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and
+chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit
+me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass.
+She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on
+the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be
+the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like
+a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I
+might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission
+in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure
+and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'"</p>
+
+<p>"You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if
+only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is
+not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as
+temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it."</p>
+
+<p>"What folly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly
+again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain
+fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years
+has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the
+same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body
+into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you
+really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you
+accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but
+please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you
+could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy
+of a wife!"</p>
+
+<p>Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at
+her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not
+like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are
+thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing
+to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in
+my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal
+and my wife is a rebel."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
+Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only
+wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more
+than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me
+I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers
+and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood;
+but as to my having ever spoken--"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words.
+"I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a
+Dutch foundling!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it
+had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That
+it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he
+the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished
+sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.</p>
+
+<p>While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the
+bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth
+papers from its recesses with angry haste.</p>
+
+<p>"Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared.</p>
+
+<p>The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons
+was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half
+trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the
+cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most
+trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his
+black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored
+hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance
+at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting
+papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be
+a long one; it may not."</p>
+
+<p>"It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals
+with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things
+I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have
+the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like,
+properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in
+the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
+When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters
+which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of
+the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when
+the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them
+saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead
+Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be
+ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then."</p>
+
+<p>The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Damnation! No!" growled Philip.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>If you do not, they shall be thrown after you</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to
+keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The
+words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers.
+There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near
+upon swooning to think at all.</p>
+
+<p>Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory
+was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and
+of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and
+fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the
+self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry,
+motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about
+her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already
+dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet
+hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else
+besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her,
+and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of
+packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two
+negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they
+had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door
+was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward
+the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this
+melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted
+and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging
+before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless,
+hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought
+and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage
+across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder
+ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these
+vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had
+passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the
+approaching rest.</p>
+
+<p>Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate.
+The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to
+awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before,
+but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising
+zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing.</p>
+
+<p>"They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured.</p>
+
+<p>A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a
+swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting
+from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on
+the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up
+at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness
+of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no longer any other home," she added.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and
+brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then
+fell inert.</p>
+
+<p>Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see
+Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form
+lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the
+world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="24"></a>Chapter XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>The Night Attack upon Quebec--And My Share in It.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Of these sad occurrences it was my fortune not to be informed for many
+months. In some senses this was a beneficent ignorance. Had I known that,
+under the dear old roof which so long sheltered me, Mr. Stewart was
+helplessly stricken with paralysis, and poor Daisy lay ill unto death with
+a brain malady, the knowledge must have gone far to unfit me for the work
+which was now given into my hands. And it was work of great magnitude and
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>Close upon the heels of the Bunker Hill intelligence came the news that a
+Continental army had been organized; that Colonel Washington of Virginia
+had been designated by Congress as its chief, and had started to assume
+command at Cambridge; and that our own Philip Schuyler was one of the four
+officers named at the same time as major-generals. There was great
+pleasure in Albany over the tidings; the patriot committee began to
+prepare for earnest action, and our Tory mayor, Abraham Cuyler,
+sagaciously betook himself off, ascending the Mohawk in a canoe, and
+making his way to Canada.</p>
+
+<p>Among the first wishes expressed by General Schuyler was one that I
+should assist and accompany him, and this, flattering enough in itself,
+was made delightful by the facts that my friend Peter Gansevoort was named
+as another aide, and that my kinsman Dr. Teunis was given a professional
+place in the general's camp family. We three went with him to the
+headquarters at Cambridge very shortly after, and thenceforward were too
+steadily engrossed with our novel duties to give much thought to
+home affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, a full seven months onward from the June of which I have
+written that my first information concerning the Cedars, and the dear folk
+within its walls, came to me in a letter from my mother. This letter found
+me, of all unlikely places in the world, lying in garrison on the frozen
+bank of the St. Lawrence--behind us the strange, unnatural silence of the
+northern waste of snow, before us the black, citadel-crowned,
+fire-spitting rock of Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>Again there presses upon me the temptation to put into this book the story
+of what I saw there while we were gathering our strength and resolution
+for the fatal assault. If I am not altogether proof against its wiles, at
+least no more shall be told of it than properly belongs here, insomuch as
+this is the relation of my life's romance.</p>
+
+<p>We had started in September with the expedition against Canada, while it
+was under the personal command of our general; and when his old sickness
+came unluckily upon him and forced his return, it was at his request that
+we still kept on, under his successor, General Richard Montgomery. It was
+the pleasanter course for us, both because we wanted to see fighting, and
+because Montgomery, as the son-in-law of Mr. Livingston, was known to us
+and was our friend. And so with him we saw the long siege of St. John's
+ended, and Chambly, and then Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, one by one
+submit, and the <i>habitants</i> acclaim us their deliverers as we swept the
+country clean to the gates of Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>To this place we came in the first week of December, and found bold Arnold
+and his seven hundred scarecrows awaiting us. These men had been here for
+a month, yet had scarcely regained their strength from the horrible
+sufferings they encountered throughout their wilderness march. We were by
+this time not enamoured of campaigning in any large degree, from our own
+experience of it. Yet when we saw the men whom Arnold and Morgan had led
+through the trackless Kennebec forest, and heard them modestly tell the
+story of that great achievement--of their dreadful sustained battle with
+cold, exhaustion, famine, with whirling rapids, rivers choked with ice,
+and dangerous mountain precipices--we felt ashamed at having supposed we
+knew what soldiering was.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks we lay waiting. Inside, clever Carleton was straining heaven
+and earth in his endeavor to strengthen his position; without, we could
+only wait. Those of us who were from the Albany and Mohawk country came to
+learn that some of our old Tory neighbors were within the walls, and the
+knowledge gave a new zest to our eager watchfulness.</p>
+
+<p>This, it should be said, was more eager than sanguine. It was evident from
+the outset that, in at least one respect, we had counted without our host.
+The French-Canadians were at heart on our side, perhaps, but they were not
+going to openly help us; and we had expected otherwise. Arnold himself,
+who as an old horse-dealer knew the country, had especially believed in
+their assistance and sympathy, and we had bills printed in the French
+language to distribute, calling upon them to rise and join us. That they
+did not do so was a grievous disappointment from the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we might have been warned of this. The common people were friendly to
+us--aided us privily when they could--but they were afraid of their
+seigneurs and cur&eacute;s. These gentry were our enemies for a good reason--in
+their eyes we were fighting New England's fight, and intolerant New
+England had only the year before bitterly protested to Parliament against
+the favor shown the Papist religion in Quebec. These seigneurs and priests
+stood together in a common interest. England had been shrewd enough to
+guarantee them their domains and revenues. Loyalty meant to them the
+security of their <i>rentes et d&icirc;mes</i>, and they were not likely to risk
+these in an adventure with the Papist-hating Yankees. Hence they stood by
+England, and, what is more, held their people practically aloof from us.</p>
+
+<p>But even then we could have raised Canadian troops, if we had had the
+wherewithal to feed or clothe or arm them. But of this Congress had taken
+no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our
+clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our
+food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the
+most desperate assault of known warfare.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks went by swiftly enough. Much of the time I was with the
+commander at our headquarters in Holland House, and I grew vastly attached
+to the handsome, gracious, devoted young soldier. Brigadier-General
+Montgomery had not, perhaps, the breadth of character that made Schuyler
+so notable; which one of all his contemporaries, save Washington, for that
+matter, had? But he was very single-minded and honorable, and had much
+charm of manner. Often, during those weeks, he told me of his beautiful
+young wife, waiting for his return at their new home on the Hudson, and of
+his hope soon to be able to abandon the strife and unrest of war, and
+settle there in peace. Alas! it was not to be so.</p>
+
+<p>And then, again, we would adventure forth at night, when there was no
+moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered
+force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the
+ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots
+filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than
+the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon,
+and once the General had his horse killed under him.</p>
+
+<p>I should say that he was hardly hopeful of the result of the attack
+already determined upon. But it was the only thing possible to be done,
+and with all his soul and mind he was resolved to as nearly do it as
+might be.</p>
+
+<p>The night came, the last night but one of that eventful, momentous year
+1775. Men had passed each day for a week between our quarters and Colonel
+Arnold's at St. Roch, concerting arrangements. There were Frenchmen inside
+the town from whom we were promised aid. What we did not know was that
+there were other Frenchmen, in our camp, who advised Carleton of all our
+plans. The day and evening were spent in silent preparations for the
+surprise and assault--if so be it the snow-storm came which was agreed
+upon as the signal. Last words of counsel and instruction were spoken.
+Suppressed excitement reigned everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>The skies were clear and moonlit in the evening; now, about midnight, a
+damp, heavy snowfall began and a fierce wind arose. So much the better for
+us and our enterprise, we thought.</p>
+
+<p>We left Holland House some hours after midnight, without lights and on
+foot, and placed ourselves at the head of the three hundred and fifty men
+whom Colonel Campbell (not the Cherry Valley man, but a vain and cowardly
+creature from down the Hudson, recently retired from the British army)
+held in waiting for us. Noiselessly we descended from the heights, passed
+Wolfe's Cove, and gained the narrow road on the ledge under the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>The General and his aide, McPherson, trudged through the deep snow ahead
+of all, with Gansevoort, and me keeping up to them as well as we could.
+What with the very difficult walking, the wildness of the gale, and the
+necessity for silence, I do not remember that anything was said. We panted
+heavily, I know, and more than once had to stop while the slender and less
+eager carpenters who formed the van came up.</p>
+
+<p>It was close upon the fence of wooden pickets which stretched across the
+causeway at Cape Diamond that the last of these halts was made. Through
+the darkness, rendered doubly dense by the whirling snowflakes with which
+the wind lashed our faces, we could only vaguely discern the barrier and
+the outlines of the little block-house beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is our work!" whispered the General to the half-dozen nearest him,
+and pointing ahead with his gauntleted hand. "Once over this and into the
+guard-house, and we can never be flanked, whatever else betide."</p>
+
+<p>We tore furiously at the posts, even while he spoke--we four with our
+hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay
+a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep
+in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur
+from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's
+troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more
+pickets. Somebody--it may have been I--said, "Cowards!" Some one else,
+doubtless the General, said, "Forward!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the ground shook violently under our feet, a great bursting roar
+deafened us, and before a scythe-like sweep of fire we at the front
+tumbled and fell!</p>
+
+<p>I got to my feet again, but had lost both sword and pistol in the snow. I
+had been hit somewhere--it seemed in the side--but of that I scarcely
+thought. I heard sharp firing and the sound of oaths and groans all around
+me, so it behooved me to fight, too. There were dimly visible dark forms
+issuing from the guard-house, and wrestling or exchanging blows with other
+forms, now upright, now in the snow. Here and there a flash of fire from
+some gun or pistol gave an instant's light to this Stygian hurly-burly.</p>
+
+<p>A heavy man, coming from the door of the block-house, fired a pistol
+straight at me; the bullet seemed not to have struck me, and I leaped upon
+him before he could throw the weapon. We struggled fiercely backward
+toward the pickets, I tearing at him with all my might, and striving with
+tremendous effort to keep my wits as well as my strength about me, in
+order to save my life. Curiously enough, I found that the simplest
+wrestling tricks I tried I had not the power for; even in this swift
+minute, loss of blood was telling on me. A ferocious last effort I made to
+swing and hurl him, and, instead, went staggering down into the drift with
+him on top.</p>
+
+<p>As I strove still to turn, and lifted my head, a voice sounded close in my
+ear, "It's you, is it? Damn you!" and then a great mashing blow on my face
+ended my fight.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless some reminiscence in that voice caused my mind to carry on the
+struggle in the second after sense had fled, for I thought we still were
+in the snow wrestling, only it was inside a mimic fort in the clearing
+around Mr. Stewart's old log-house, and I was a little boy in an apron,
+and my antagonist was a yellow-haired lad with hard fists, with which he
+beat me cruelly in the face--and so off into utter blackness and void
+of oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>One morning in the latter half of January, nearly three weeks after, I
+woke to consciousness again. Wholly innocent of the lapse of time, I
+seemed to be just awakening from the dream of the snow fort, and of my
+boyish fight with little Philip Cross. I smiled to myself as I thought of
+it, but even while I smiled the vague shadows of later happenings came
+over my mind. Little by little the outlines of that rough December night
+took shape in my puzzled wits.</p>
+
+<p>I had been wounded, evidently, and had been borne back to Holland House,
+for I recognized the room in which I lay. My right arm was in stiff
+splints; with the other hand I felt of my head and discovered that my hair
+had been cut close, and that my skull and face were fairly thatched with
+crossing strips of bandage. My chest, too, was girdled by similar
+medicated bands. My mental faculties moved very sedately, it seemed, and I
+had been pondering these phenomena for a long time when my cousin Dr.
+Teunis Van Hoorn came tip-toeing into the room.</p>
+
+<p>This worthy young man was sincerely delighted to find me come by my
+senses once more. In his joy he allowed me to talk and to listen more than
+was for my good, probably, for I had some bad days immediately following;
+but the relapse did not come before I had learned much that was gravely
+interesting.</p>
+
+<p>It is a story of sufficient sorrow and shame to American ears even
+now--this tale of how we failed to carry Quebec. Judge how grievously the
+recital fell upon my ears then, in the little barrack-chamber of Holland
+House, within hearing of the cannonade by which the farce of a siege was
+still maintained from day to day! Teunis told me how, by that first volley
+of grape at the guard-house, the brave and noble Montgomery had been
+instantly killed; how Arnold, forcing his way from the other direction at
+the head of his men, and being early shot in the leg, had fought and
+stormed like a wounded lion in the narrow Sault-au-Matelot; how he and the
+gallant Morgan had done more than their share in the temerarious
+adventure, and had held the town and citadel at their mercy if only the
+miserable Campbell had pushed forward after poor Montgomery fell, and gone
+on to meet those battling heroes in the Lower Town. But I have not the
+patience, even at this late day, to write about this melancholy and
+mortifying failure.</p>
+
+<p>Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman,
+and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right,
+and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the
+headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken
+prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still
+keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our
+operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance
+among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to
+prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that
+when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw
+in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up.</p>
+
+<p>All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as
+if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did
+it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared
+that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at
+the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my
+ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm.
+They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which
+was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into
+an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed
+fist or a pistol-butt.</p>
+
+<p>"Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some
+of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and
+McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he
+and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels.
+You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with
+the rest, next morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a
+colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are
+to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to
+travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if
+you please."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been dangerously ill, have I not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after
+the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody
+must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these,
+and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever.
+But I never feared for you."</p>
+
+<p>Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided
+to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that
+confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a
+week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a <i>son marquee</i>.
+But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that
+encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection.
+Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once
+it came to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who
+broke my head with his pistol-butt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for
+my confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that
+gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into
+fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your
+whole carcass!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="25"></a>Chapter XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>A Crestfallen Return to Albany.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was
+nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious
+slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it
+became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my
+progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have
+come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and
+every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of
+what use is all this now, alas!"</p>
+
+<p>These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came
+in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing
+the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with
+re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many
+letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The
+physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin
+relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them.</p>
+
+<p>One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of
+the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English
+trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease
+concerning what remained of its interests.</p>
+
+<p>The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat,
+painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in
+no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document,
+which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame
+Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not
+inherited by her son.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>January 9,</i> A. D. 1776.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most
+part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen
+you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you
+no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to
+be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a
+God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I
+surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do
+not reproach you.</p>
+
+<p>"The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars,
+was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was
+both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour
+with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the
+Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being
+dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in
+the way, and where others can help him to weep.</p>
+
+<p>"When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been
+deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with
+paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The
+burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it,
+but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her
+fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his
+wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful
+belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her
+from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal
+named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels,
+essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms
+that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant
+from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained
+nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at
+best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief,
+and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign
+matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were
+still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I
+knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying
+that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out
+of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the
+matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads
+are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I
+was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as
+sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go
+her own gait, and so she may for all of me.</p>
+
+<p>"She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work
+when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a
+worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck
+of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying
+that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame
+Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my
+company was not desired longer.</p>
+
+<p>"I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry
+other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the
+Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If
+the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be
+peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all
+say matters will be worse before they mend.</p>
+
+<p>"Affectionately, your mother,</p>
+
+<p>"Katharine Mauverensen."</p>
+
+<p>As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated
+and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of
+Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to
+laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of
+my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its
+humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no
+more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided
+always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for
+everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing
+in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done
+for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the
+moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their
+own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing
+was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how
+she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to
+me, unconsciously revealing her pique.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her,
+and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars
+since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a
+fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants;
+she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and
+foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a
+large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the
+fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and
+fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her
+bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring.</p>
+
+<p>From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day
+counts now. The sooner I get home the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to
+Sorel to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves
+are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion,
+like you, I should fear nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means
+of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my
+restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I
+gave him my mother's letter.</p>
+
+<p>My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient
+details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
+allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
+over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
+whistle softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"</p>
+
+<p>"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
+great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
+his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
+credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
+potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
+much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
+too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
+God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"</p>
+
+<p>I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
+upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.</p>
+
+<p>"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
+seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
+from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
+doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
+Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
+well as fast as you like, and we will be off."</p>
+
+<p>This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
+judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
+Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
+accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his
+arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From
+our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of
+many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter
+jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of
+turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense
+of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and
+that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was
+impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small
+disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and
+attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled
+districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt
+that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for
+their courtesies.</p>
+
+<p>Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had
+evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it
+was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy
+preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General
+Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full
+fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he
+had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and
+difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with
+books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during
+my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the
+General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy.</p>
+
+<p>But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole
+spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with
+anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied
+and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his
+case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring
+illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that
+it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home.
+It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was
+really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk
+duty at such a time.</p>
+
+<p>But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed
+that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one
+morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform
+with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he
+called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans:</p>
+
+<p>"John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his
+Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came
+down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the
+woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month
+much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead
+near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots
+day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue
+for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who
+followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington
+is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no
+reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to
+send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the
+thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs
+them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and
+all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the
+neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest.</p>
+
+<p>"You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for
+you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached
+to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go
+with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near
+place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You
+need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you.
+But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative
+in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the
+prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further."</p>
+
+<p>When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="26"></a>Chapter XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I rode beside Colonel Elias Dayton one forenoon some ten days later, up
+the Valley road, my pulses beating fast at the growing familiarity of the
+scene before us. We had crossed the Chuctenunda Creek, and were within
+sight of the gray walls of Guy Park. Beyond rose the hills behind which
+lay Fort Johnson. I was on the very threshold of my boyhood's
+playfield--within a short hour's walk of my boyhood's home.</p>
+
+<p>The air was full of sounds. Birds sang with merry discordance all through
+the thicket to our right, flitting among the pale green tangle of spring's
+foliage. The May sunshine had lured forth some pioneer locusts, whose
+shrill cries came from who could tell where--the tall swale-grass on the
+river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown
+broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the
+squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers
+along the willow-fringed water--the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad
+small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears
+took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of
+armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road before us, behind us,
+at our side.</p>
+
+<p>For my second return to the Valley was at the head of troops, bringing
+violence, perhaps bloodshed, in their train. I could not but contrast it
+in my mind with that other home-coming, four years before, when I sat
+turned to look eastward in the bow of Enoch's boat, and every soft dip of
+the oars timed the glad carol in my heart of home and friends--and the
+sweet maid I loved. I was so happy then!--and now, coming from the other
+direction, with suggestions of force and cruel purposes in every echo of
+our soldiers' tread, I was, to tell the plain truth, very
+miserable withal.</p>
+
+<p>My talk with Colonel Dayton had, in a way, contributed to this gloomy
+feeling. We had, from choice, ridden side by side for the better part of
+two days, and, for very need of confiding in some one, I had talked with
+him concerning my affairs more freely than was my wont. This was the
+easier, because he was a contemplative, serious, and sensible man, whose
+words and manner created confidence. Moreover, he was neither Dutchman nor
+Yankee, but a native Jerseyman, and so considered my story from an equable
+and fair point of view, without bias.</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, passing strange that this man, on his way to seize or
+crush the Johnson clique, as the case might be, should have been the one
+to first arouse in my mind the idea that, after all, the Tories had their
+good side, and were doing what to them seemed right, at tremendous cost
+and sacrifice to themselves. I had been telling him what a ruffian was
+Philip Cross, and what grounds I had for hating him, and despitefully
+describing the other chief Tories of the district. He said in reply,
+I remember:</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to miss the sad phase of all this, my friend. Your young blood
+feels only the partisan promptings of dislike. Some day--soon, perhaps--
+you will all at once find this youthful heat gone; you will begin to walk
+around men and things, so to speak, and study them from all sides. This
+stage comes to every sober mind; it will come to you. Then you will
+realize that this baronet up yonder is, from his own stand-point, a
+chivalrous, gallant loyal gentleman, who imperils estates, power, peace,
+almost life itself, rather than do what he holds to be weak or wrong. Why,
+take even this enemy of yours, this Cross. He was one of the notables of
+these parts--rich, popular, influential; he led a life of utmost luxury
+and pleasure. All this he has exchanged for the rough work of a soldier,
+with its privations, cold, fatigue, and the risk of death. Ask yourself
+why he did it."</p>
+
+<p>"I see what you would enforce," I said. "Your meaning is that these men,
+as well as our side, think the right is theirs."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely. They have inherited certain ideas. We disagree with them; we
+deem it our duty to silence them, fight them, drive them out of the
+country, and, with God's help, we will do it. But let us do this with our
+eyes open, and with the understanding that they are not necessarily
+scoundrels and heathen because they fail to see things as we see them."</p>
+
+<p>"But you would not defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages
+against their neighbors--against helpless women and children. That must be
+heathenish to any mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Defend it? No! I do not defend any acts of theirs. Rid your mind of the
+idea that because a man tries to understand a thing he therefore defends
+it. But I can see how they would defend it to their own consciences--just
+as these thrifty Whig farmers hereabout explain in their own minds as
+patriotic and public-spirited their itching to get hold of Johnson's
+Manor. Try and look at things in this light. Good and bad are relative
+terms; nothing is positively and unchangeably evil. Each group of men has
+its own little world of reasons and motives, its own atmosphere, its own
+standard of right and wrong. If you shut your eyes, and condemn or praise
+these wholly, without first striving to comprehend them, you may or may
+not do mischief to them; you assuredly injure yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Thus, and at great length, spoke the philosophical colonel. I could not
+help suspecting that he had too open a mind to be a very valuable fighter,
+and, indeed, this proved to be true. He subsequently built some good and
+serviceable forts along the Mohawk, one of which to this day bears his
+name, but he attained no distinction as a soldier in the field.</p>
+
+<p>But, none the less, his words impressed me greatly. What he said had never
+been put to me in clear form before, and at twenty-seven a man's mind is
+in that receptive frame, trembling upon the verge of the meditative
+stage, when the presentation of new ideas like these often marks a
+distinct turn in the progress and direction of his thoughts. It seems
+strange to confess it, but I still look back to that May day of 1776 as
+the date of my first notion that there could be anything admirable in
+my enemies.</p>
+
+<p>At the time, these new views and the tone of our talk helped to disquiet
+me. The swinging lines of shoulders, the tramp! tramp! in the mud, the
+sight of the guns and swords about me, were all depressing. They seemed to
+give a sinister significance to my return. It was my home, the dearest
+spot on earth--this smiling, peaceful, sunlit Mohawk Valley--and I was
+entering it with soldiers whose mission was to seize and despoil the son
+of my boyhood's friend, Sir William. More than one of my old play-mates,
+now grown to man's estate, would note with despair our approach, and curse
+me for being of it. The lady of Johnson Hall, to whom all this would be
+horrible nigh unto death, was a close, warm friend of Daisy's. So my
+thoughts ran gloomily, and I had no joy in any of the now familiar sights
+around me.</p>
+
+<p>The march up from Schenectady had been a most wearisome one for the men,
+owing to the miserable condition of the road, never over-smooth and now
+rendered doubly bad and difficult by the spring freshets and the oozing
+frost. When we reached the pleasant little hollow in which Fort Johnson
+nestles, a halt was accordingly ordered, and the tired soldiers prepared
+to refresh themselves with food by the banks of the creek. It was now
+afternoon; we were distant but a short mile from the Cedars, and I could
+not abide the thought of lingering here, to no purpose, so close to the
+goal of all my longings. I therefore exchanged some plans and suggestions
+with Colonel Dayton and his companion Judge Duer, who represented the
+civil law in the expedition, and so clapped spurs and dashed forward
+up the road.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems ten years, not four, since I was last here," I was saying to
+Daisy half an hour later, and unconsciously framing in words the thoughts
+which her face suggested.</p>
+
+<p>I know not how to describe the changes which this lapse of time had
+wrought upon her countenance and carriage. In the more obvious, outward
+sense, it had scarcely aged her. She was now twenty-three years of age,
+and I doubt a stranger would have deemed her older. Yet, looking upon her
+and listening to her, I seemed to feel that, instead of being four years
+her senior, I was in truth the younger of the two. The old buoyant,
+girlish air was all gone, for one thing. She spoke now with gentle,
+sweet-toned gravity; and her eyes, frankly meeting mine as of old, had in
+their glance a soft, reposeful dignity which was new to me.</p>
+
+<p>Almost another Daisy, too, she seemed in face. It was the woman in her
+features, I dare say, which disconcerted me. I had expected changes,
+perhaps, but not upon these lines. She had been the prettiest maiden of
+the Valley, beyond all others. She was not pretty now, I should say, but
+she <i>was</i> beautiful--somewhat pallid, yet not to give an air of unhealth;
+the delicate chiselling of features yielded now not merely the pleasure
+of regularity, but the subtler charm of sensitive, thoughtful character.
+The eyes and hair seemed a deeper hazel, a darker brown, than they had
+been. The lips had lost some, thing of their childish curve, and met each
+other in a straight line--fairer than ever, I thought, because more firm.</p>
+
+<p>I am striving now, you see, against great odds, to revive in words the
+impressions of difference which came to me in those first hours, as I
+scanned her face. They furnish forth no real portrait of the dear lady:
+how could I hope they should? But they help to define, even if dimly, the
+changes toward strength and self-control I found in her.</p>
+
+<p>I was, indeed, all unprepared for what awaited me here at the Cedars. My
+heart had been torn by all manner of anxieties and concern. I had hastened
+forward, convinced that my aid and protection were direly needed. I sat
+now, almost embarrassed, digesting the fact that the fortunes of the
+Cedars were in sufficient and capable hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stewart's condition was in truth sad enough. He had greeted me with
+such cordiality and clear-wittedness of utterance and manner that at first
+I fancied his misfortunes to have been exaggerated in my mother's letter.
+His conversation for a moment or two was also coherent and timely. But his
+mind was prone to wander mysteriously. He presently said: "Assuredly I
+taught you to shave with both hands. I knew I could not be mistaken." I
+stole a glance toward Daisy at this, and her answering nod showed me the
+whole case. It was after old Eli had come in and wheeled Mr. Stewart in
+his big chair out into the garden, that I spoke to Daisy of the
+differences time had wrought.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," she said, "it must be sadly apparent to you--the change in
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>How should I approach the subject--the one thing of which I knew we were
+both thinking? There seemed a wall between us. She had been unaffectedly
+glad to see me; had, for the instant, I fancied, thought to offer me her
+cheek to kiss--yet was, with it all, so self-possessed and reserved that I
+shrank from touching upon her trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not everything is sad," I made answer, falteringly. "Poor Mr.
+Stewart--that is indeed mournful; but, on the other hand--" I broke
+off abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"On the other hand," she took up my words calmly, "you are thinking that I
+am advantaged by Philip's departure."</p>
+
+<p>My face must have showed that I could not deny it.</p>
+
+<p>"In some respects," she went on, "yes; in others, no. I am glad to be able
+to speak freely to you, Douw, for you are nearest to me of all that are
+left. I do not altogether know my own mind; for that matter, does any one?
+The Philip to whom I gave my heart and whom I married is one person; the
+Philip who trampled on the heart and fled his home seems quite another and
+a different man. I hesitate between the two sometimes. I cannot always say
+to myself: 'The first was all fancy; the second is the reality.' Rather,
+they blend themselves in my mind, and I seem to see the fond lover
+remaining still the good husband, if only I had had the knowledge and
+tenderness to keep him so!"</p>
+
+<p>"In what are you to be reproached, Daisy?" I said this somewhat testily,
+for the self-accusation nettled me.</p>
+
+<p>"It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom
+from the beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with
+melancholy conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My
+heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for
+finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest. I
+dreamed to be called 'My lady,' too, in good time. I forgot that I came
+from the poor people, and that I belonged to them. So well and truly did I
+forget this that the fact struck me like a whip when--when it was brought
+to my notice."</p>
+
+<p>"He taunted you with it, then!" I burst forth, my mind working quickly for
+once.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer for the time, but rose from her chair and looked out
+upon the group in the garden. From the open door she saw the van of
+Dayton's soldiers trudging up the Valley road. I had previously told her
+of their mission and my business.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Lady Johnson," she said, resting her head against her hand on the
+door-frame, and looking upon the advancing troops with a weary expression
+of face. "Her trouble is coming--mine is past." Then, after a pause:
+"Will they be harsh with Sir John, think you? I trust not. They have both
+been kind to me since--since Philip went. Sir John is not bad at heart,
+Douw, believe me. You twain never liked each other, I know. He is a bitter
+man with those who are against him, but his heart is good if you touch
+it aright."</p>
+
+<p>I had not much to say to this. "I am glad he was good to you," I managed
+to utter, not over-graciously, I fear.</p>
+
+<p>The troops went by, with no sound of drums now, lest an alarm be raised
+prematurely. We watched them pass in silence, and soon after I took my
+leave for the day, saying that I would go up to see the Fondas at
+Caughnawaga, and cross the river to my mother's home, and would return
+next morning. We shook hands at parting, almost with constraint.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="27"></a>Chapter XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Early the next day, which was May 20th, we heard to our surprise and
+consternation that on the preceding afternoon, almost as Colonel Dayton
+and his soldiers were entering Johnstown, Sir John and the bulk of his
+Highlanders and sympathizers, to the number of one hundred and thirty, had
+privately taken to the woods at the north of the Hall, and struck out
+for Canada.</p>
+
+<p>Over six weeks elapsed before we learned definitely that the baronet and
+his companions had traversed the whole wilderness in safety and reached
+Montreal, which now was once more in British hands--our ill-starred Quebec
+expedition having finally quitted Canada earlier in the month. We could
+understand the stories of Sir John's travail and privations, for the snow
+was not yet out of the Adirondack trails, and few of his company were
+skilled in woodmen's craft. But they did accomplish the journey, and that
+in nineteen days.</p>
+
+<p>I, for one, was not very much grieved at Johnson's escape, for his
+imprisonment would have been an embarrassment rather than a service to us.
+But Colonel Dayton was deeply chagrined at finding the bird flown, and I
+fear that in the first hours of his discomfiture he may have forgotten
+some of his philosophical toleration for Tories in general. He had,
+moreover, the delicate question on his hands of what to do with Lady
+Johnson. Neither Judge Duer nor I could advise him, and so everything was
+held in suspense for the better part of a week, until General Schuyler's
+decision could be had.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile my time was fairly occupied in the fulfilment of matters
+intrusted to me by the General. I had to visit Colonel Herkimer at his
+home below Little Falls, and talk with him about the disagreeable fact
+that his brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, had deserted the militia command
+given him by the Whigs and fled to Canada. The stout old German was free
+to denounce his brother, however, and I liked the looks and blunt speech
+of Peter Bellinger, who had been made colonel of the deserted battalion of
+German Flatts. There were also conversations to be had with Colonel Klock,
+and Ebenezer Cox, and the Fondas, at their several homes, and a day to
+spend with my friend John Frey, now sheriff in place of the Tory White. It
+thus happened that I saw very little of the people at the Cedars, and had
+no real talk again with Daisy, until a full week had passed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cool, overcast forenoon when I alighted next at the familiar
+gate, and gave my horse into Tulp's charge. The boy, though greatly
+rejoiced to see me back again, had developed a curious taciturnity in
+these latter years--since his accident, in fact--and no longer shouted out
+the news to me at sight. Hence I had to ask him, as I neared the door,
+what strange carriage was that in the yard beyond, and why it was there.
+As I spoke, a couple of men lounged in view from the rear of the house,
+and I recognized them as of Dayton's command. Tulp explained that Lady
+Johnson was being taken away, and that she had tarried here to rest on
+her journey.</p>
+
+<p>If I had known this at the gate, I doubt I should have stopped at all; but
+I had been seen from the window, and it was too late now to turn about. So
+I entered, much wishing that I had left off my uniform, or, still better,
+that I had stayed away altogether.</p>
+
+<p>There were present in the great room Daisy, Lady Johnson, a young lady who
+was her sister, two children--and a man in civilian's garb, with some few
+military touches, such as a belt and sword and a cockade, who sat by the
+window, his knees impudently spread apart and his hat on his head. I
+looked at this fellow in indignant inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy came eagerly to me, with an explanation on her lips:</p>
+
+<p>"It is the officer who is to take Lady Johnson to Albany. He insists upon
+forcing his presence upon us, and will not suffer us to be alone together
+in any room in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?--and off with your hat!" I said to the man, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>My uniform was of service, after all. He looked me over, and evidently
+remembered having seen me with his colonel, for he stood up and took off
+his hat. "I am a lieutenant of the Connecticut line," he said, in a
+Yankee snarl, "and I am doing my duty."</p>
+
+<p>"I am a major in the Continental line, and I should be doing <i>my</i> duty if
+I sent you back in irons to your colonel," I answered. "Get out of here,
+what time Lady Johnson is to remain, and leave these ladies to
+themselves!"</p>
+
+<p>He was clearly in two minds about obeying me, and I fancy it was my
+superior size rather than my rank that induced him to go, which he did in
+as disagreeable a fashion as possible. I made my bow to Lady Johnson, and
+said something about being glad that I had come, if I had been of use.</p>
+
+<p>She, poor young woman, was in a sad state of nervous excitement, what with
+her delicate condition and the distressing circumstances of the past week.
+She was, moreover, a very beautiful creature, naturally of soft and
+refined manners, and this made me the readier to overlook the way in which
+she met my kindly meant phrases.</p>
+
+<p>"I marvel that you are not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly,
+"to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that
+man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of
+calling such low fellows officers, or consorting with them!"</p>
+
+<p>I answered as gently as I could that, unfortunately, there were many such
+ill-conditioned men in every service, and pointed out that the man, by his
+speech, was a New Englander.</p>
+
+<p>"And who fetched them into this province, I should like to know!"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hold a political discussion
+with this poor troubled wife, who saw her husband's peril, her own plight,
+and the prospective birth of her first child in captivity constantly
+before her eyes! So I strove to bring the talk upon other grounds, but not
+with much success. She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a
+fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady
+Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather
+those of her husband. She seemed not to have very clear notions of what
+the trouble was all about, but ascribed it loosely, I gathered, to the
+jealousy of Philip Livingston, who was vexed that the Scotch did not
+settle upon his patent instead of on Sir John's land, and to the malice of
+General Schuyler, whose feud with the Johnsons was notorious.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think, too," she added, "that Mr. Schuyler's mother and my
+mother's mother were sisters! A very pleasant and valuable cousin he is,
+to be sure! Driving my husband off into the forest to perhaps die of
+hunger, and dragging me down to Albany, in my condition, and thrusting a
+low Connecticut cobbler into my carriage with me! If my sickness overtakes
+me on the road, and I die, my blood will be on the head of Philip
+Schuyler."</p>
+
+<p>I read in Daisy's eyes a way out of this painful conversation, and so
+said: "Lady Johnson, it will perhaps render your journey less harrowing if
+I have some talk with this officer who is your escort. Let me leave you
+women-folk together here in peace, the while"--and went out into the
+garden again.</p>
+
+<p>I found the lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping
+in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some
+private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed
+out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been,
+through no fault of her own, nurtured in aristocratic ideas and ways; that
+those of whatever party who knew her well most heartily esteemed her; and
+that, moreover, she was nearly related by blood to General Schuyler--he
+professed himself ready to behave toward her with more politeness.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble with him really lay in his abiding belief that people
+underestimated his importance, and hence he sought to magnify his position
+in their eyes by insolent demeanor. Therein I discerned the true Yankee.</p>
+
+<p>That the men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would
+be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome,
+intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during
+the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how
+their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened
+poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too,
+of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices
+against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So
+mischievous did this attitude become at last--when old General Wooster
+came to us with his Connecticut troops, and these set themselves up to be
+independent of all our plans or rules, refusing even to mess with the
+others or to touch Continental provisions and munitions--that Congress had
+to interfere and put them sharply back into their proper places.
+Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and men from the Carolinas will
+bear me out in saying these things about the New England soldiery. I speak
+not in blame or bitterness. The truth is that they were too much akin in
+blood and conceit to the English not to have in themselves many of the
+disagreeable qualities which had impelled us all to revolt against
+British rule.</p>
+
+<p>When the lieutenant had ordered the horses to be brought out for a start,
+I went back into the house. The women had been weeping, I could see. Lady
+Johnson had softened in her mood toward me, and spoke now some gentle
+words of thanks for the little I had done. When I told her, in turn, that
+her escort would henceforth be more considerate in his conduct toward her,
+she was for a moment pleased, but then tears filled her eyes at the
+thoughts of the journey before her.</p>
+
+<p>"When I am out of sight of this house," she said, sadly, "it will seem as
+if my last friend had been left behind. Why could they not have left me at
+the Hall? I gave them the keys; I yielded up everything! What harm could I
+have done them--remaining there? I had no wish to visit my relatives in
+Albany! It is a trick--a device! I doubt I shall ever lay eyes on my dear
+home again."</p>
+
+<p>And, poor lady, she never did.</p>
+
+<p>We strove to speak words of comfort to her, but they came but feebly, and
+could not have consoled her much. When the lieutenant opened the door, the
+women made a tearful adieu, with sobs and kisses upon which I could not
+bear to look. Lady Johnson shook hands with me, still with a pathetic
+quivering of the lips. But then in an instant she straightened herself to
+her full height, bit her lips tight, and walked proudly past the obnoxious
+escort down the path to the carriage, followed by her weeping sister and
+the two big-eyed wondering children.</p>
+
+<p>"Will she ever come back?" said Daisy, half in inquiry, half in despairing
+exclamation, as we saw the last of the carriage and its guard. "How will
+it all end, Douw?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can foresee?" I answered. "It is war now, at last, war open and
+desperate. I can see no peaceful way out of it. These aristocratic
+landlords, these Johnsons, Butlers, Phillipses, De Lanceys, and the rest,
+will not give up their estates without a hard fight for them. Of that you
+may be sure. <i>They</i> will come back, if their wives do not, and all that
+they can do, backed by England, to regain their positions, will be done.
+They may win, and if they do, it will be our necks that will be put into
+the yoke--or the halter. At all events, it has gone too far to be patched
+over now. We can only stand up and fight as stoutly as we may, and leave
+the rest to fate."</p>
+
+<p>"And it really was necessary to fight--I suppose it could not have been in
+reason avoided?"</p>
+
+<p>"They would have it so. They clung to the faith that they were by right
+the masters here, and we the slaves, and so infatuated were they that they
+brought in English troops and force to back them up. There was no
+alternative but to fight. Would you have had me on the other side--on the
+English side, Daisy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Douw," she answered, in a clear voice. "If war there must be,
+why, of course, the side of my people is my side."</p>
+
+<p>I was not surprised at this, but I said, "You speak of your people,
+Daisy--but surely mere birth does not count for more than one's whole
+training afterward, and you have been bred among another class altogether.
+Why, I should think nine out of every ten of your friends here in the
+Mohawk district must be Tories."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so great a proportion as that," she went on, with a faint smile upon
+her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. "You do not know the value of
+these 'friends,' as you call them, as closely as I do. Never have they
+forgotten on their side, even if I did on mine, that my parents were
+Palatine peasants. And you speak of my being bred among them! In what way
+more than you were? Was I not brought up side by side with you? Was there
+any difference in our rearing, in our daily life until--until you left us?
+Why should I not be a patriot, sir, as well as you?"</p>
+
+<p>She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it. We both
+were thinking, I felt, of the dear old days gone by, and of the melancholy
+fate which clouded over and darkened those days, and drove us apart.</p>
+
+<p>We still stood by the open door, whence we had watched the carriage
+disappear. After some seconds of silence I essayed to bring back the
+conversation to Lady Johnson, and talked of her narrow, ill-informed,
+purely one-sided way of regarding the troubles, and of how impossible it
+was that the class to which she belonged, no matter how amiable and good
+they might be, could ever adapt themselves to the enlarging social
+conditions of this new country.</p>
+
+<p>While I talked, there burst forth suddenly the racket of fifes and drums
+in the road. Some militia companies were marching past on their way to
+join Colonel Dayton's force. We stood and watched these go by, and in the
+noise that they made we failed to hear Mr. Stewart's tottering footsteps
+behind us.</p>
+
+<p>The din of the drums had called him out of his lethargy, and he came
+forward to watch the yeoman-soldiery.</p>
+
+<p>"They march badly--badly," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with
+his hand. "I do not know the uniform. But I have been away so long, and
+everything is changed since the King of Prussia began his wars. Yet I am
+happier here as I am--far happier with my fields, and my freedom, and my
+children."</p>
+
+<p>He had spoken in the tone, half-conversational, half-dreamy, which of late
+strangely marked most of his speech. He turned now and looked at us; a
+pleasant change came over his wan face, and he smiled upon us with a
+curious reflection of the old fond look.</p>
+
+<p>"You are good children," he said; "you shall be married in due time, and
+come after me when I am gone. There will be no handsomer, happier twain in
+the province."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy flushed crimson and looked pained at the old gentleman's childish
+babbling, and I made haste to get away.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="28"></a>Chapter XXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of
+unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business
+to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and
+encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice
+which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to
+time, assurance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler,
+and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these
+pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole
+Continental service no more unenviable post than mine.</p>
+
+<p>I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of
+fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the
+satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in
+which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the
+most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen
+Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing;
+but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning
+powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be
+posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly
+peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection.</p>
+
+<p>I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all
+the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley
+neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see
+now that they were not altogether without excuse.</p>
+
+<p>The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No
+sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental
+independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the
+declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden
+halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had
+been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the
+magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in
+New York, General Washington could not hold his own, and Congress lost the
+nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service,
+disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force
+became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and
+almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming
+numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally
+lamentable.</p>
+
+<p>There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift
+strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud
+which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening,
+before spring came.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and
+intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side
+this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money,
+without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in
+their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and
+resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence
+and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German
+auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispassionately these two opposing
+forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General
+Washington would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or
+not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me
+in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was,
+but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for
+rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of
+1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no
+visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending
+danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month.
+I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my
+bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an
+irritable mind.</p>
+
+<p>The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small
+outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up
+communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the
+time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of
+disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a
+somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress.
+Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding
+them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim
+their sails that they should ship no water whichever way the wind blew.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people
+had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Washington evacuated
+Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was
+wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively,
+then with less concealment, to drink the King's health.</p>
+
+<p>Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower
+district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all
+east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga.
+They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights
+to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British
+color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the
+county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig
+sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories,
+confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time passed, the dry-rot of
+doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that
+nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from
+home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and
+scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the
+other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King.</p>
+
+<p>It was my function to watch this shifting public opinion, to sway it where
+I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been
+conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I
+turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their
+sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with
+intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of
+promises to speedily glut the passions of war, circulated stealthily all
+about us. How it came, how it was passed from hearth to hearth, defied our
+penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and
+strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens.</p>
+
+<p>For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so
+long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the
+Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was
+more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of
+these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others
+flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that
+the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages
+to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly,
+over our heads.</p>
+
+<p>And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and
+selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and
+turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke.</p>
+
+<p>Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us
+if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to
+Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and
+patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of
+Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very
+gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that
+gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story
+was forged.</p>
+
+<p>Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Washington's call
+for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his
+poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York.
+The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in,
+and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told.
+Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New
+York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the
+Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an
+auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of
+our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once
+this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared
+not think!</p>
+
+<p>I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To
+comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter,
+but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife.
+Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this
+horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New
+England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a
+fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's
+pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the
+militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by
+suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and
+means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he,
+with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud
+just then.</p>
+
+<p>I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep,
+for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud
+pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and
+the messenger had thus found me out promptly.</p>
+
+<p>Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in
+response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on
+some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered
+from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could
+tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had
+been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see
+him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my
+sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight broke before we crossed the river, and the sunrise gun sounded as
+we rode up into the court-house square at Johnstown. Soldiers were already
+to be seen moving about outside the block-houses at the corners of the
+palisade which, since Sir John's flight, had been built around the jail.
+Our coming seemed to be expected, for one of the soldiers told us to wait
+while he went inside, and after a few minutes John Frey came out, rubbing
+his eyes. As I dismounted, he briefly explained matters to me.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that a Tory spy had made his way in from the woods, had
+delivered letters both at Cairncross and at the Cedars, and had then
+started to return, but by the vigilance of one of the Vrooman boys had
+been headed off and taken.</p>
+
+<p>"He is as close as the bark on a beech-tree," concluded the sheriff. "We
+could get nothing out of him. Even when I told him he would be hanged this
+morning after breakfast, he did not change color. He only said that if
+this was the case he would like first to see you; it seems he knows you,
+and has some information for you--probably about Philip Cross's wife.
+Perhaps he will tell <i>you</i> what was in the letter he brought to her."</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my
+being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy
+sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy.</p>
+
+<p>"All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail.</p>
+
+<p>When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our
+interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the
+shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to
+accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at
+our presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as
+freely as the manacles would admit.</p>
+
+<p>I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded
+neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the
+open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as
+leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on
+me. I stepped forward, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Enoch Wade?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried
+right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to
+make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a
+palaver with you, all by yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff.</p>
+
+<p>I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying
+"talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told
+Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon
+the sheriff and the soldier left us.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic
+smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't
+wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest
+Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young
+Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?"</p>
+
+<p>I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not
+prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more
+his conduct mystified me.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit
+down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep
+interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its
+essential points were these:</p>
+
+<p>After Sir William's death Enoch had remained on at the Hall, not feeling
+particularly bound to the new baronet, but having a cat's attachment to
+the Hall itself. When Sir John finally resolved to avoid arrest by flight,
+Enoch had been in two minds about accompanying him, but had finally
+yielded to the flattering reliance placed by all upon the value and
+thoroughness of his knowledge as a woodsman. It was largely due to his
+skill that the party got safely through the great wilderness, and reached
+Montreal so soon. Since his arrival in Canada, however, things had not
+been at all to his liking. There was but one thought among all his refugee
+companions, which was to return to the Mohawk Valley and put their old
+neighbors to fire and sword--and for this Enoch had no inclination
+whatever. He had accordingly resisted all offers to enrol him in the Tory
+regiment which Sir John was raising in Canada, and had looked for an
+opportunity to get away quietly and without reproach. This chance had only
+come to him a week or so ago, when Philip Cross offered to pay him well to
+take two letters down the Valley--one to his servant Rab, the other to
+Mrs. Cross. He had accepted this errand, and had delivered the letters as
+in duty bound. There his responsibility ended. He had no intention to
+return, and had allowed himself to be arrested by a slow and uninventive
+young man, solely because it seemed the best way of achieving his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your purpose, Enoch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from
+Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know
+who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory,
+with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel--Sillinger they called
+him--and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet
+the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians.
+Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come
+down the Valley!"</p>
+
+<p>You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch
+gave--details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west
+to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I
+returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query:</p>
+
+<p>"But why get yourself arrested?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given
+you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can
+contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the
+Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="29"></a>Chapter XXIX</h2>
+
+<h3>The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to
+the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come
+to us.</p>
+
+<p>For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as
+well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing
+Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we
+despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam
+and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels.</p>
+
+<p>Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of
+the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs--skilled marksmen
+recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class--and that
+Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war
+party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the
+Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's
+regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of
+men we had long known in the Valley--men whose brothers and kinsmen were
+still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons
+could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was
+mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green"
+uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their
+own blood.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he
+shouted fiercely at Enoch.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly.</p>
+
+<p>But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the
+hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother,
+Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another
+brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were
+with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped.</p>
+
+<p>More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the
+position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and
+despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to
+Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at
+Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel,
+and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt
+of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred
+men--the Third New York Continentals--and I took it upon myself to urge
+now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him.</p>
+
+<p>This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the
+military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action,
+there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no
+word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun,
+and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most
+important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any
+question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he
+were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested
+that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down
+the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he
+walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the
+pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown
+followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and
+picking berries by the way.</p>
+
+<p>The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my
+thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents--which it turned
+out he did not--but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating
+upon them.</p>
+
+<p>During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her
+recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of
+her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for
+a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and
+maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually
+wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak
+of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole
+subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed
+the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have
+added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for
+revenge should come.</p>
+
+<p>That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl,
+I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the
+dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with
+no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For
+the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the
+neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting
+that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes
+of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked
+Enoch.</p>
+
+<p>"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver
+it into her hands."</p>
+
+<p>"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood--his old accustomed
+temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most
+generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he
+is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition
+fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they
+started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts
+of themselves."</p>
+
+<p>I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I
+said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is
+still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt
+these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon--it is
+rest itself--when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your
+task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see
+these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard
+fighting to come. It made me uneasy."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift--it's more my way
+of thinking than the other--and you seem to need it powerfully, too.
+But"--here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to
+boot-tops--"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any
+regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,'
+but it would gag me from the first minute."</p>
+
+<p>We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort
+without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly
+Wemple appeared to let me in.</p>
+
+<p>"We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her
+apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little
+breathing-spell."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had
+fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in
+hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am <i>so</i> glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent
+Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never
+would come."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from--from----"</p>
+
+<p>"You know, then!"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger--he is
+an old friend of ours--told me that much, nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The
+pleased excitement at my arrival--apparently so much desired--was
+succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or--or how to
+tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea
+that nothing could be done without your advice and help--and yet, now you
+have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She
+paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to
+Cairncross."</p>
+
+<p>I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the
+truth, none the less."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Douw, only very, very wretched!"</p>
+
+<p>The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the
+glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front
+through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with
+the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about it all, Daisy--if you can."</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to
+me. She would have recalled it an instant later.</p>
+
+<p>"No--give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you
+should not see."</p>
+
+<p>But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again.</p>
+
+<p>"No--read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no
+difference--between <i>us</i>. You might as well know all!"</p>
+
+<p>The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded
+sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold
+character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature
+scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least:</p>
+
+<p>"Madam:--It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you
+are not to publish it.</p>
+
+<p>"If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I
+shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act
+accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my
+back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with
+ruffian foes to law and order generally.</p>
+
+<p>"All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including
+without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a
+major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me.
+After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to
+listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make
+no promise.</p>
+
+<p>"I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as
+your further instructions.</p>
+
+<p>"Philip."</p>
+
+<p>One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a
+letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading
+lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence,
+until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce
+to speak my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband
+of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!"</p>
+
+<p>There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying,
+that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has
+convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the
+inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed;
+so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this
+narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women
+folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do
+it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must
+be written.</p>
+
+<p>This is what Daisy actually said:</p>
+
+<p>"But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but
+indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has
+done, and that he still loves me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly see nothing of the kind!"</p>
+
+<p>She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his
+home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly
+with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared
+nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that
+by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he
+as much as says that he will forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes--perhaps--when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at
+the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after
+all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you."</p>
+
+<p>"He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is your husband--a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first
+makes your life wretched at home--you know you <i>were</i> wretched, Daisy!
+Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes,
+humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty
+of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years--having
+you watched meanwhile, it seems--yet never vouchsafing you so much as a
+word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help
+enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down
+and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this
+letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his
+coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if
+you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your
+chief friends. And all this you take kindly--sifting his brutal words in
+search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished
+at you! I credited you with more spirit."</p>
+
+<p>She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases
+than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little
+pause, said to me quite calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality."</p>
+
+<p>"You know him better than I--a thousand times better, more's the pity.
+Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of
+the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you forgotten that he saved my life?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but he forgot it--or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place
+of soft thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"And he loved me--ah! he truly did--for a little!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar;
+and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride."</p>
+
+<p>"How you hate him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?"</p>
+
+<p>"He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the
+gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a
+quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and
+as for Tulp--why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia
+over the cliff, and left me <i>you</i>--I--I----"</p>
+
+<p>The words were out!</p>
+
+<p>I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers.
+Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have
+uttered--what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was
+covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over
+this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and
+finally--after what had seemed an age of silence--I stammered on:</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever
+met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the
+ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany--in the Patroon's mansion,
+you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I
+went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery
+fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here,"
+I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was
+his doing."</p>
+
+<p>I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling
+that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the
+older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility
+overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder,
+and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed
+superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest
+nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem
+sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your
+feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given
+me. I know what you would have said----"</p>
+
+<p>"It was exactly what I most of all would <i>not</i> have said," I broke in
+with, in passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of
+course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it
+was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"--her voice softened
+and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in
+every detail of our youth--"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be,
+my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the
+two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter
+and sister."</p>
+
+<p>There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and
+self-sustained enough.</p>
+
+<p>She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross
+at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned
+out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to
+convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself
+accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown
+road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make
+assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that
+very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff
+at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="30"></a>Chapter XXX</h2>
+
+<h3>From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that
+mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion.</p>
+
+<p>The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us.
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the
+approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude,
+with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort,
+working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the
+dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for
+supplies, for more men, and for militia support.</p>
+
+<p>At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for
+Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of
+Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this
+little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that
+this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more
+was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now
+stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the
+spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had
+disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and
+doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their
+grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or
+suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors.
+And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help
+was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be
+welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our
+blood--the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our
+midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail.</p>
+
+<p>General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia,
+apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen
+and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall.
+Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared
+raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming
+forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we
+must meet them!</p>
+
+<p>It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of
+that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley
+bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came
+out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their
+order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the
+forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield
+that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered
+and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine
+danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month
+hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling
+drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the
+early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in
+bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear;
+and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find
+them again at work upon some other farm.</p>
+
+<p>There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together
+to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we
+had grown selfish and solitary--each man for himself. We had forgotten, in
+the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that
+fine old word "neighbor"--the husbandman, or <i>boer</i>, who is nigh, and to
+whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was
+in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared
+everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as
+to fight for one another--each for all, and all for each. Forty years have
+gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk
+Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The
+poor <i>bauers</i> and squatters from the bush came out then and did their
+share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings
+and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to
+this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the
+well-to-do than I know of anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly
+built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle
+for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the
+drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and
+filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was
+no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned,
+flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones
+threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the
+little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of
+their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix.</p>
+
+<p>By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to
+meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to
+be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might
+have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice
+of his day--grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under
+Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular
+troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said
+to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose
+to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory
+neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own
+fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets
+in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling,
+hissing stone.</p>
+
+<p>I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that
+in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great
+campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that
+strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last
+at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French
+overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical
+enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages
+or of the Don Cossacks--in none of these records, I aver, can you find so
+much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born
+Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter
+cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest
+painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian
+peasant was a nobleman.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon
+these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of
+duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than
+once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of
+them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my
+generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this
+philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an
+army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their
+relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be
+slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at
+their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars
+apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one
+pretend not to hate such monsters?</p>
+
+<p>At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had
+never known before to marshal our yeomanry together.</p>
+
+<p>Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night--to
+Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in
+the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East
+Creek--organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a
+little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district
+regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at
+Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched
+forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to
+Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather
+together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better
+than a fortnight ago had seemed possible.</p>
+
+<p>They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard
+of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and
+Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the
+bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and
+villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among
+them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and
+imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher
+estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call
+such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many
+of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform,
+such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied
+largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply
+their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their
+hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their
+sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might
+well have shrunk from.</p>
+
+<p>These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else,
+though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They
+had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine
+friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence,
+though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above
+at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were
+richer in hate.</p>
+
+<p>At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to
+start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late
+in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her
+roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the
+Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on
+our horses.</p>
+
+<p>I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty
+toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole
+distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I
+yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear,
+after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly
+prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and
+who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again?</p>
+
+<p>I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my
+mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out
+for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I
+ought instead to be going toward Cairncross.</p>
+
+<p>Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very
+woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had
+apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me--to say good-by?"
+asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of
+your starting to-morrow--for the battle."</p>
+
+<p>I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it
+in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in
+my words.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come--all day I have been thinking of
+little else--yet I feared that my visit might--might----"</p>
+
+<p>Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a
+superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow
+prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she
+showed now by leaving the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet
+with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to
+live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without
+a sign."</p>
+
+<p>We stood thus facing each other for a moment--mumbling forth some
+commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with
+a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "<i>Must you truly
+go</i>?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my
+shoulder and weeping violently.</p>
+
+<p>It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I
+would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence--as being too sacred a
+thing for aught of disclosure or speculation--were it not that some might,
+in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung
+by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of
+soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand,
+or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of impersonal things--of the coming invasion, of the chances of
+relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a
+good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young
+commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted
+together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back--as we had
+so often returned before during these latter hateful months--to the sweet
+companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr.
+Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at
+Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary
+of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in
+the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these
+long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of
+yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the
+strange quality of the Roman faith--that its forms and customs, learned in
+youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after
+many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab
+Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the
+tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may
+linger pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>Thus our conversation ran--decorous and harmless enough, in all
+conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a
+forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet
+influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole
+world of meaning evaded in our talk--were we to blame?</p>
+
+<p>I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you!
+This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we
+could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in
+common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly,
+the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman
+now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These
+had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time
+when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this
+we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor
+and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our
+thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and
+without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own
+choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of
+love's cherubim.</p>
+
+<p>We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her
+hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the
+white forehead she as gently inclined to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a
+soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come
+back."</p>
+
+<p>The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and
+Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night
+with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she
+shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough
+made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There
+were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me
+searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was
+as mystified as I then thought.</p>
+
+<p>At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch
+and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her
+during my absence--and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="31"></a>Chapter XXXI</h2>
+
+<h3>The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm
+yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about
+the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said,
+they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it
+would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had
+flooded the kitchen with tears.</p>
+
+<p>Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for
+the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the
+narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous
+personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one
+another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.</p>
+
+<p>During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each
+other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had
+got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her
+letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that
+she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my
+vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from
+it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be;
+for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household
+of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen
+management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her
+own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not
+one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting
+respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction
+as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to
+manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was
+within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and
+anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a
+veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never
+marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly
+unattainable ideal.</p>
+
+<p>I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I
+was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at
+all deceived.</p>
+
+<p>The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed
+bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender,
+high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my
+hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me
+in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives
+before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the
+horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back.
+After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form
+that I was going.</p>
+
+<p>And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come
+to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving
+homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could
+save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and
+scalping-knife.</p>
+
+<p>I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the
+reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I
+should not take this ride for nothing!</p>
+
+<p>"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the
+scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who
+through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that
+you are a Van Hoorn!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not forget."</p>
+
+<p>"And is that young Philip Cross--<i>her</i> husband--with Johnson's crew?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is."</p>
+
+<p>"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your
+grandfather Baltus was!"</p>
+
+<p>These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had
+joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to
+overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was
+nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.</p>
+
+<p>We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked
+road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by
+the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the
+highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and
+children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall
+corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine
+with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were
+gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the
+Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while
+there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in
+every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to
+Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.</p>
+
+<p>We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth,
+near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine
+from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry
+Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the
+Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that
+Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General
+Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her
+promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when
+I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major
+John Frey.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment,
+which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle.
+The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were
+sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting
+low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a
+refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for
+the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to
+find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves,
+Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of
+the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly
+proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but
+the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might
+have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly
+Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living
+there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and
+that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless
+if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that
+messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we
+look backward.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton
+was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia
+was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more
+were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There
+were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan
+volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations,
+and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in
+excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to
+perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting
+force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about
+seven hundred strong.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered
+together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called
+into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the
+Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors,
+the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country
+larger than any one of several European monarchies.</p>
+
+<p>As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue
+and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and
+linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and
+huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and
+equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen
+different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch
+Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and
+here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who
+with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and
+Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the
+bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.</p>
+
+<p>Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled
+together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone
+Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had
+children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in
+bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his
+strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives
+down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never
+forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good
+clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of
+the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a
+Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all
+looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been
+always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had
+small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer
+the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout
+Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock,
+and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of
+Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but
+others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel
+Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of
+the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a
+familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my
+business to check off.</p>
+
+<p>Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells,
+all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were
+five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it
+may well be five of more than one other family.</p>
+
+<p>The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the
+first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But
+soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts,
+and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer
+palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in
+the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new,
+deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force
+greater and more to be dreaded than was Bell&ecirc;tre's, but because we were
+encamped on historic ground.</p>
+
+<p>From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort
+Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine
+settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth;
+and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in
+a low voice as the daylight faded.</p>
+
+<p>The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of
+northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night,
+and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing
+tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay
+the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow
+ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the
+wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the
+widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the
+current, drowned!</p>
+
+<p>How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should
+have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary
+of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how
+marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the
+captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I
+should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was
+food enough for thought.</p>
+
+<p>But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest
+were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river
+against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in
+emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was
+called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the
+fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that
+Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the
+place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was
+there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith,
+who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was
+Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept
+in our interest.</p>
+
+<p>The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas
+could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of
+savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly
+neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the
+foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded,
+they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their
+Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the
+savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for
+him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to
+say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep
+sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives.
+Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had
+the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of
+forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and
+ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland,
+whom for half a century he had loved so well.</p>
+
+<p>There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with
+their war-party, by all means.</p>
+
+<p>After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of
+stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of
+the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these
+do not concern the story.</p>
+
+<p>It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been
+blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in
+his quaint German dialect:</p>
+
+<p>"Come, walk with me outside the fort."</p>
+
+<p>We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom
+we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound
+to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank.
+There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple
+militia gathering.</p>
+
+<p>We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where
+we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the
+sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest
+old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this
+brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?"
+feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew
+not of.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> am wrong," he said, simply.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand you, Brigadier."</p>
+
+<p>"Say rather that <i>they</i>, who ought to know me better, do not understand
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"They? Whom do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own
+regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me.
+Nothing could be worse than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Suspect <i>you</i>, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It
+has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a
+colonel with Johnson--up yonder."</p>
+
+<p>The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights
+of day were paling over the black line of trees.</p>
+
+<p>"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too,
+my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us,
+and his son <i>is</i> with the Tories--up yonder."</p>
+
+<p>"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and
+another married to Hendrick Frey, and <i>he</i> is a Tory, too. All this is
+thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I
+feel they are talking of this."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter
+Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe
+me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."
+
+"You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here.
+Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I
+different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are
+all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours
+as well."</p>
+
+<p>"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and
+lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you
+get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now.
+Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are
+going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do.
+Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you
+leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to
+save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them
+and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here
+in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank
+in the State line."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot credit that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up
+my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"</p>
+
+<p>Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long
+after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying
+my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.</p>
+
+<p>To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling
+existing against him, it to a degree did exist.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a
+few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered
+old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our
+Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who
+spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike.
+There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies,
+none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized
+their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the
+Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but
+still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some
+of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that
+matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it
+was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and
+suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once
+begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.</p>
+
+<p>All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy
+which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian
+fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into
+rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and
+wooden-headed Braddock.</p>
+
+<p>We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians
+bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of
+the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded
+the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed
+slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the
+Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which
+bears the name Oriskany.</p>
+
+<p>Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching,
+on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate
+to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with
+our attack.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="32"></a>Chapter XXXII</h2>
+
+<h3>"The Blood Be on Your Heads."</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the
+never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking
+rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the
+hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler
+darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in
+the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close
+neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals
+prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It
+might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for
+we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of
+these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final
+six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently.
+Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter.
+Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the
+threshold of so grave an adventure.</p>
+
+<p>I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the
+spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some
+dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night
+of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely
+brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store
+of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the
+Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some
+sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of
+food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with
+a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized
+cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on
+their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed
+so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise
+there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"</p>
+
+<p>No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.</p>
+
+<p>Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All
+preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers
+were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had
+been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last
+look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the
+General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses
+harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!</p>
+
+<p>The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the
+prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day,
+instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's
+inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's
+faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days'
+stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay.</p>
+
+<p>The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the
+headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice
+before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands.
+I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident
+impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were
+not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six
+miles distant.</p>
+
+<p>The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of
+sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre
+of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees,
+bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during
+the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now,
+after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in
+camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers.
+These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front
+sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or
+six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with
+one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious
+to hear what was going on.</p>
+
+<p>I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the
+Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling
+differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and
+majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had
+the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every
+day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the
+only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served
+further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me
+only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the
+square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry
+Valley way.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his <i>friseur</i>
+with him."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers.
+Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.</p>
+
+<p>"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing,
+half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence.
+When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and
+fight next spring!"</p>
+
+<p>All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to
+hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.</p>
+
+<p>The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer
+for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the
+sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions
+upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if
+with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired
+we must have heard them.</p>
+
+<p>I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough
+stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the
+dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that
+either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and
+that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he
+held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he
+kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The
+beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to
+one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in
+Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and
+munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus
+supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them,
+unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort.
+In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.</p>
+
+<p>"But I say the sortie <i>will</i> be made! They are waiting for us--only we are
+too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.</p>
+
+<p>"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the
+case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that
+fort two miles farther back."</p>
+
+<p>"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in
+Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult
+travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's
+Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."</p>
+
+<p>"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or
+some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?"
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is
+to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."</p>
+
+<p>"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a
+great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"</p>
+
+<p>Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a
+swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be
+looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.</p>
+
+<p>His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.</p>
+
+<p>"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with
+his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is
+not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here,
+as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the
+parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers
+in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."</p>
+
+<p>"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel
+Cox, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered
+four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a
+loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came
+running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with
+difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one
+place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall,"
+said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his
+feet as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Will</i> you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone,
+pitched even higher.</p>
+
+<p>"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a
+general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back,
+misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.</p>
+
+<p>"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.</p>
+
+<p>Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.</p>
+
+<p>"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like
+this? Know you not your duty better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least <i>we</i>
+are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i>!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "<i>You</i> will be the first to
+run when you see the British!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited
+farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising
+momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had
+no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we
+could hear nothing clearly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier,
+Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous
+colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and
+"coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and
+dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I
+could scarce bear to look upon it.</p>
+
+<p>There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the
+crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously
+drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.</p>
+
+<p>Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If
+you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool
+at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred
+could hear:</p>
+
+<p>"VORW&Auml;RTS!"</p>
+
+<p>The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.</p>
+
+<p>There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To
+rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no
+dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back
+in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a
+hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps
+somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene
+before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the
+efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring
+their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his
+Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was
+ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of
+it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to
+bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles
+Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and
+Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.</p>
+
+<p>So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in
+the morning.</p>
+
+<p>The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of
+August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of
+the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the
+world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading
+to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut
+through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line,
+regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances
+bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when
+Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this
+time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough
+spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress
+was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.</p>
+
+<p>There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls
+of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled
+undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to
+be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us,
+and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van.
+Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had
+been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but
+without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely
+there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of
+an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.</p>
+
+<p>We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in
+the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in
+part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We
+in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were
+resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon
+in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards
+farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in
+the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.</p>
+
+<p>While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This
+is where we camped five years ago."</p>
+
+<p>Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall
+headlong upon the neck of his horse.</p>
+
+<p>There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell,
+a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="33"></a>Chapter XXXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still
+not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed.</p>
+
+<p>I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his
+horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I
+saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the
+gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the
+dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental
+numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at
+all to comprehend it.</p>
+
+<p>Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his
+mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead
+of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming
+footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement.</p>
+
+<p>The air was filled now with shouts--what they were I did not know. The
+solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together
+like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking
+to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends
+off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had
+jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the
+mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the
+stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at
+random into the underbrush.</p>
+
+<p>All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier.</p>
+
+<p>As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange
+barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther
+side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the
+whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the
+Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all
+directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the
+causeway. It was a horrible spectacle--of naked, yelling devils, daubed
+with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and
+flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and
+neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence
+they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants
+with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the
+sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept
+pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush.</p>
+
+<p>By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine,
+here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis.</p>
+
+<p>Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and
+calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His
+orders I forget now--or what part I played at first in carrying them
+out--but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our
+needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the
+attack, our forces--or what was left of them--had been drawn out of the
+cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This
+could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his
+self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest.</p>
+
+<p>Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing
+to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired
+their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the
+fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the
+Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the
+ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again
+from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of
+the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see
+the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment--these Petries, Weavers,
+Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts--fight their path backward
+through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been
+egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and
+returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie
+regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the
+rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber
+as well as they could, north and south of the road.</p>
+
+<p>While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had,
+strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to
+ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was
+struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from
+his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General
+Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The
+Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the
+rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a
+step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball
+which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood.</p>
+
+<p>It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man
+was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two
+rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and
+bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well
+sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and
+resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at
+a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of
+the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely
+brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the
+maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly
+lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him.</p>
+
+<p>"Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I
+will face the enemy till I die."</p>
+
+<p>All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the
+hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated.
+Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more
+than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little
+mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough,
+half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for
+the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob
+Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of
+his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across
+the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a
+captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat,
+and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the
+Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay.</p>
+
+<p>The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead
+and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist
+of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time,
+forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk
+was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and
+tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he
+missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming--and
+there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes.</p>
+
+<p>"Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when
+one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running
+forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better
+for us.</p>
+
+<p>There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An
+hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its
+clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting
+among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence
+upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet
+ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of
+dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as
+with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk
+stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by
+swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the
+shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible.
+Yes--horrible is the right word!</p>
+
+<p>A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy
+perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a
+compound is man!--we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its
+purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood
+in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!</p>
+
+<p>I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while
+others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now
+these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness
+and with a plenitude of minuti&aelig; which surprise me, the more that I
+remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight
+for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he
+isn't, and that is about all he thinks of.</p>
+
+<p>I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the
+struggle--the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on
+the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of
+the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our
+rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade,
+sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories,
+meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and
+drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been
+wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately
+St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started;
+this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed
+too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action
+cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where
+the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our
+centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way
+backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories
+came upon us.</p>
+
+<p>The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point,
+where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of
+the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the
+hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts,
+crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy,
+shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small
+firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs.</p>
+
+<p>Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which
+promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse,
+perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body
+of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent
+Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and
+cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac
+Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be
+handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence.</p>
+
+<p>Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute
+bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril!</p>
+
+<p>We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things
+were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague
+intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now
+drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells
+of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed
+to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of
+some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which
+side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our
+vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep
+ourselves alive.</p>
+
+<p>All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great
+storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had
+been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the
+darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared
+through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed
+in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the
+blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight
+hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements.</p>
+
+<p>We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched
+under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for
+the fight, it ceased utterly.</p>
+
+<p>While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report
+from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder;
+there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from
+the fort!</p>
+
+<p>I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping
+brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance
+that the Brigadier had not heard the reports.</p>
+
+<p>The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had
+left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches
+above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to
+have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or
+no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied
+their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had
+heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young
+men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off."</p>
+
+<p>The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree,
+avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof,
+told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred,
+nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward
+toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large
+part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to
+say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so
+broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest
+fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.</p>
+
+<p>What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who
+recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain.
+Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great
+catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.</p>
+
+<p>"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel
+Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll
+there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.</p>
+
+<p>Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only
+knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my
+brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry
+eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.</p>
+
+<p>I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of
+Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were
+saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were
+said to be dead already.</p>
+
+<p>The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew
+lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of
+white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at
+once the sun was shining.</p>
+
+<p>On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The
+fight began again.</p>
+
+<p>The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a
+few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what
+food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength.
+They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance
+they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their
+hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now.</p>
+
+<p>The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear
+the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties
+now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms,
+dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke
+arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe.
+Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable
+paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and
+with clinched fists.</p>
+
+<p>A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing
+through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us
+afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could
+reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this
+side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke
+bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses
+of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before
+us as we ran.</p>
+
+<p>Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and
+underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga
+men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the
+bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were
+looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old
+Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:</p>
+
+<p>"Help is here from the fort!"</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose
+musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the
+bushes, as they advanced in regular order.</p>
+
+<p>I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen
+shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear,
+the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the
+new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" he roared at them.</p>
+
+<p>"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.</p>
+
+<p>Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to
+the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we
+clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all
+confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them
+to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a
+mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and
+left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet,
+and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as
+a shield.</p>
+
+<p>While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing
+with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"</p>
+
+<p>"Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his
+vast might. "These art Tories. <i>Fire</i>! you fools! <i>Fire</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former
+friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their
+guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many
+more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.</p>
+
+<p>How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets
+seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a
+score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men
+had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade,
+dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These
+latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire
+to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with
+a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in
+wild pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled
+tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our
+faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore
+forward, loading and firing as we ran.</p>
+
+<p>The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were
+driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of
+renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all
+our ears.</p>
+
+<p>I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying
+piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of
+some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening
+of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the
+Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and
+left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion
+for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood
+in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.</p>
+
+<p>I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where
+the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall
+rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch
+farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently
+attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed
+thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we
+came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.</p>
+
+<p>While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground
+for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:</p>
+
+<p>"They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a
+tree."</p>
+
+<p>I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me,
+his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back
+of his head, his long rifle over his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet
+struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and
+leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps
+from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching
+almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.</p>
+
+<p>A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a
+momentary twinge of pain in my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted
+excitedly from the bush.</p>
+
+<p>There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong
+upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting
+forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars,
+resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his
+gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.</p>
+
+<p>I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained
+grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and
+looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="34"></a>Chapter XXXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>Alone at Last with My Enemy.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to
+speak, but no sound came from them.</p>
+
+<p>For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed
+upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this
+strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or
+over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I
+remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and
+scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look
+in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For
+all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing
+whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarrassed me. For relief I
+turned to Enoch, and said sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't told me yet what you were doing here."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned
+his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me.</p>
+
+<p>"You can see for yourself, can't ye?" he said. "What do people mostly do
+when there's shooting going on, and they've got a gun?"</p>
+
+<p>"But how came you here at all? I thought you were to stay at--at the place
+where I put you."</p>
+
+<p>"That was likely, wasn't it! Me loafing around the house like a tame cat
+among the niggers while good fighting was going on up here!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you wanted to come, why not have marched with us? I asked you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't march much myself. It suits me to get around on my own legs in my
+own way. I told you I wouldn't go into any ranks, or tote my gun on my
+shoulder when it was handier to carry it on my arm. But I didn't tell you
+I wouldn't come up and see this thing on my own hook."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been here all day?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you come to that, it's none of your business, young man. I got here
+about the right time of day to save <i>your</i> bacon, anyway. That's enough
+for <i>you</i>, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The rebuke was just, and I put no further questions.</p>
+
+<p>A great stillness had fallen upon the forest behind us. In the distance,
+from the scrub-oak thickets on the lowlands by the river, there sounded
+from time to time the echo of a stray shot, and faint Mohawk cries of
+"Oonah! Oonah!" The battle was over.</p>
+
+<p>"They were beginning to run away before I came down," said Enoch, in
+comment upon some of these dying-away yells of defeat which came to us.
+"They got handled too rough. If their white officers had showed themselves
+more, and took bigger risks, they'd have stood their ground. But these
+Tory fine gentlemen are a pack of cowards. They let the Injuns get killed,
+but they kept darned well hid themselves."</p>
+
+<p>The man on the ground broke silence here.</p>
+
+<p>"You lie!" he said, fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you can talk, can you?" said Enoch. "No, I don't lie, Mr. Cross. I'm
+talking gospel truth. Herkimer's officers came out like men, and fought
+like men, and got shot by dozens; but till we struck you, I never laid
+eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good,
+too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there,
+within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ain't
+pretty fair shooting."</p>
+
+<p>The cool brutality of this talk revolted me. I had it on my tongue to
+interpose, when the wounded man spoke again, with a new accent of gloom
+in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"What have I ever done to you?" he said, with his hand upon his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, nothing at all, Mr. Cross," answered Enoch, amiably. "There wasn't
+any feeling about it, at least on my part. I'd have potted you just as
+carefully if we'd been perfect strangers."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you leave us here together for a little while, Enoch?" I broke in.
+"Come back in a few minutes; find out what the news is in the gulf--how
+the fight has gone. I desire some words with this--this gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper nodded at this, and started off with his cat-like, springing
+walk, loading his rifle as he went. "I'll turn up in about a quarter of
+an hour," he said.</p>
+
+<p>I watched his lithe, leather-clad figure disappear among the trees, and
+then wheeled around to my prostrate foe.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what to say to you," I said, hesitatingly, looking down
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>He had taken his hand away from his breast, and was fumbling with it on
+the grass behind him. Suddenly he raised it, with a sharp cry of--</p>
+
+<p>"I know what to say to you!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pistol in the air confronting me, and I, taken all aback,
+looked full into the black circle of its barrel as he pulled the trigger.
+The flint struck out a spark of flame, but it fell upon priming dampened
+by the wet grass.</p>
+
+<p>The momentary gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died
+piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would
+have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his
+nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which
+cold sweat stood out, and groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what to say to you," I went on, the episode of the pistol
+seeming, strangely enough, to have cleared my thoughts. "For two
+years--yes, for five years--I have been picturing to myself some such
+scene as this, where you should lie overthrown before me, and I should
+crush the life out of your hateful body with my heel, as one does with
+snakes. But now that it has come about, I am at a strange loss for words."</p>
+
+<p>"That you were not formerly," said the wounded man. "Since I have known
+you, you have fought always exceedingly well with your mouth. It was only
+in deeds that you were slow."</p>
+
+<p>He made this retort with a contemptuous coolness of tone which was belied
+by his white face and drawn brows, and by the troubled, clinging gaze in
+his eyes. I found myself looking with a curious impersonal interest upon
+this heavy, large-featured countenance, always heretofore so deeply
+flushed with color, and now coarsely blotched with varying depths
+of pallor.</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless it would be best to leave you here. None of your party will
+straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and think of your
+misdeeds until-----"
+
+"Until the wolves come, you mean. Yes, go away. I prefer them to you."</p>
+
+<p>The sky to the west was one great lurid, brassy glare, overhung with banks
+of sinister clouds, a leaden purple above, fiery crimson below. The
+unnatural light fell strongly upon us both. A big shadow passed for an
+instant across the sunset, and we, looking instinctively up, saw the
+circling bulk of some huge bird of prey. I shuddered at the sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, leave me to <i>them</i>!" he said, bitterly. "Go back and seize my lands,
+my house. While the beasts and the birds tear me to bits here in the
+forest, do you fatten upon my substance at home. You and they are of
+a kidney."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I would touch nothing of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"No--not even my wife!"</p>
+
+<p>The thrust went home. There was a world of sardonic disdain in his voice
+as he spoke, but in truth I thought little of his tone. The words
+themselves seemed to open a gulf before my feet. Was it indeed true, in
+welcoming this man's death, that I was thinking of the woman it would set
+free--for me?</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a long, long time before I found tongue again. I walked up and
+down among the small cedars, fighting out in my own mind the issue of
+honor which had been with such brutal frankness raised. I could not make
+it seem wholly untrue--this charge he so contemptuously flung at me. There
+was no softening of my heart toward him: he was still the repellent, evil
+ruffian I had for years held him to be. I felt that I hated him the more
+because he had put me in the wrong. I went back to him, ashamed for the
+source of the increase of temper I trembled under, yet powerless to
+dissemble it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I not kill you where you lie?" I shouted at him.</p>
+
+<p>He made an effort at shrugging his shoulders, but vouchsafed no other
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"You"--I went on, in a whirl of rage at myself, at him, at the entire
+universe--"you have made my whole manhood bitter. I fought you the first
+time I saw you, when we were little boys. Even then you insulted, injured
+me. I have always hated you. You have always given me reason to hate you.
+It was you who poisoned Mr. Stewart's mind against me. It was you who
+stole my sweet sister away from me. Did this content you? No. You must
+drive the good old gentleman into paralysis and illness unto death--out of
+his mind--and you must overwhelm the poor, gentle girl with drunken
+brutality and cruelty, and to cap all, with desertion. And this is not
+enough--my God! think of it! <i>this</i> is not enough!--but you must come with
+the others to force Indian war upon our Valley, upon your old neighbors!
+There are hundreds lying dead here to-day in these woods--honest men whose
+wives, parents, little children, are waiting for them at home. They will
+never lay eyes on them again. Why? Because of you and your scoundrel
+friends. You have done too much mischief already. It is high time to put
+an end to you."</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man had listened to me wearily, with his free hand clutched
+tight over his wound, and the other tearing spasmodically at the grass
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am bleeding to death," he said, with a voice obviously weakened since
+his last preceding words. "So much the better for you. You would like it
+so. You are not bold enough to knock me on the head, or merciful enough to
+go about your business and leave me in peace. I ought to be above bandying
+words with you; nor would I if it did not take my mind from my hurt. You
+are right--you have always been my enemy. You were jealous of me as a
+little boy. You had an apron, and you envied me my coat. When, like a
+fool, I came again to this cursed wilderness, your sour face rose up in
+front of me like an ugly dream. It was my first disagreeable thing. Still
+you were jealous of me, for I was a gentleman; you were a skin-pedler. I
+married a maiden who had beauty and wit enough to grace my station, even
+though she had not been born to it. It was you who turned her mind against
+me, and incited her to unhappiness in the home I had given her. It was you
+who made a damned rebel out of her, and drove me into going to Canada. She
+has ever been more your friend than mine. You are of her sort. An English
+gentleman could rightly have had no part or lot with either of you. Go
+back to her now--tell her you left me here waiting for the wolves--and
+that my dying message was--"</p>
+
+<p>He followed with some painfully bitter and malignant words which I have
+not the heart to set down here in cold blood against him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see your wound," I said, when he had finished and sank back,
+exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>I knelt beside him and opened his green coat, and the fine, ruffled shirt
+beneath it. Both were soaked with blood on the whole right side, but the
+soft cambric had, in a measure, checked the flow. He made no resistance,
+and I spread over the ugly aperture some of the plaster with which my
+mother had fitted me out, and bound it fast, with some difficulty, by
+passing my sash under his body and winding it about his chest.</p>
+
+<p>He kept his eyes closed while I was doing this. I could not tell whether
+he was conscious or not. Nor could I explain to myself why I was
+concerning myself with his wound. Was it to save, if possible, his life?
+Was it to lengthen out his term of torture here in the great final
+solitude, helplessly facing the end, with snarling wolves and screaming
+kites for his death-watch? I scarcely knew which.</p>
+
+<p>I try now to retrace the courses by which my thoughts, in the confused
+searchings of those few moments, reached finally a good conclusion; but
+the effort is beyond my powers. I know only that all at once it became
+quite clear to my mind that I must not leave my enemy to die. How much of
+this was due to purely physical compassion for suffering, how much to the
+higher pleadings of humanity, how much to the feeling that his taunts of
+baseness must be proved untrue, I cannot say.</p>
+
+<p>I was still kneeling beside him, I know, when Enoch suddenly stood in
+front of me. His practised footsteps had made no sound. He glanced gravely
+at me and at the white, inanimate face of Cross. Emotions did not play
+lightly upon Enoch's leather-like visage; there was nothing in his look to
+tell whether he was surprised or not.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what news? How has the day gone?" I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were
+attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men."</p>
+
+<p>"What is Herkimer going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home
+again--down the Valley."</p>
+
+<p>"So, then, we have lost the fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded
+man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin
+with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the
+fort?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that
+both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want
+to rest for a spell."</p>
+
+<p>I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous
+carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on:</p>
+
+<p>"They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must
+be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along
+with 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't quite a fool, young man," said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of
+smile. "If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to
+explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that
+strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an
+opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers
+were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a
+fortnight ago."</p>
+
+<p>All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed.
+He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our
+conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I know you now--damn you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I
+gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in
+hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now.
+You make a good rebel."</p>
+
+<p>"Now look here, Mr. Cross," put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in
+his tone. "You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that
+way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and
+you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me
+to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and
+smoke it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Enoch," I here interrupted, "enough of that. The man is suffering.
+You must not vex him further by words."</p>
+
+<p>"Suffering or not," returned the trapper, "he might keep a civil tongue in
+his head.--Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for," he went on,
+scowling down at the prostrate soldier. "I delivered your message here to
+this man" (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--"all that, you
+know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a
+Missisague dog."</p>
+
+<p>Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: "There
+may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't
+look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong
+to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck."</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered
+at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which
+helped me the better to make up my mind.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch had turned to me once more:</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said, "we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so
+long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting
+from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them.
+As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long
+anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too
+many litters to carry already."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. "We will make
+our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the
+river--away from the others."</p>
+
+<p>"The hell you say!" said Enoch.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="35"></a>Chapter XXXV</h2>
+
+<h3>The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were
+wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the
+trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was
+never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and
+conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few,
+indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight
+later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my
+pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they
+all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at
+the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey.</p>
+
+<p>This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he
+protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my
+plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting,
+which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once
+embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal.</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went
+on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said,
+yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was
+not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings,
+covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side
+to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you
+touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand
+along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't
+know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help
+we want from you is for you to hold your jaw."</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man,
+raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring
+affrightedly straight ahead of him.</p>
+
+<p>There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the
+swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had
+returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away
+from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group.</p>
+
+<p>A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and,
+on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion
+mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The
+savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were
+fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in
+an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had
+laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering.
+If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent
+upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned
+in spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the
+sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help
+me God, I will not!"</p>
+
+<p>The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They
+looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not
+materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were
+all on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>"Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep
+cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give
+'em the word."</p>
+
+<p>Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into
+his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his
+arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be
+tortured--scalped--by these devils!"</p>
+
+<p>I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said,
+bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from
+the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your
+canting tongue to deny it."</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have
+their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending
+their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe
+them to take scalps."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me
+up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for
+you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you
+here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going
+to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to <i>hide</i> you at
+Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. <i>Now</i>
+will you keep still?"</p>
+
+<p>He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of
+mystification and utter weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my
+project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went,
+down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as
+a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him
+explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a
+magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical
+arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward
+should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey.</p>
+
+<p>"They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't
+help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one
+of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will
+be enough."</p>
+
+<p>The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired,
+together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the
+river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to
+the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my
+home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and
+lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done,
+and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the
+rude litter and started for the trail.</p>
+
+<p>I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last
+time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore
+still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of
+this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of
+fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of
+prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air
+stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no
+sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away.
+Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon
+this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly
+past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the
+leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in
+the sunset radiance, watching us gravely.</p>
+
+<p>We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field
+to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the
+forest primeval.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I
+recall no other equally wretched five days in my life.</p>
+
+<p>The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and
+fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be
+accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the
+sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing
+myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their
+sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced
+me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly
+along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face
+and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles,
+my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have
+wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on
+the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on
+the ground utterly worn out.</p>
+
+<p>We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on
+the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter
+we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had
+a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes,
+and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not
+build a fire.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in
+a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous
+activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the
+fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we
+lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe,
+floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less
+and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at
+least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more
+than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed
+sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our
+ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man
+ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal
+service and attention for granted.</p>
+
+<p>After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night
+out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able
+to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful
+woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark,
+while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe
+well enough.</p>
+
+<p>The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We
+were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new
+pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there
+was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the
+white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks,
+the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black
+against the pale sky.</p>
+
+<p>There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows
+hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my
+glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at
+one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly
+to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the
+voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses
+stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at
+best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more
+commodious boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made
+answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low,
+musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the
+wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at
+Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if
+we were going through a dead country."</p>
+
+<p>Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly
+blurted it out.</p>
+
+<p>"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I
+said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these
+brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really
+understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom!
+Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue."</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he
+had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression
+of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat.
+"I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day
+long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there
+just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my
+friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out
+of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are
+the wolves!"</p>
+
+<p>He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous
+quaver.</p>
+
+<p>"These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child
+awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get
+where you can have rest and care."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as
+powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and
+weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his
+face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it.</p>
+
+<p>He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled
+through a stretch of still water, in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally.</p>
+
+<p>I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches,
+in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind.
+"For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that
+either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I
+remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van
+Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have
+brought you back."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not
+gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the
+alternate moonlight and shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of
+thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only
+not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation
+of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed
+upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless,
+stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not
+so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and
+happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive.</p>
+
+<p>More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the
+reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even
+now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me,
+but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary
+spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent
+before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the
+bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as
+one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent
+impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon
+the man himself.</p>
+
+<p>His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his
+character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the
+existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man
+strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and
+sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable,
+generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty,
+and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been
+two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one
+because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other.</p>
+
+<p>Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story.
+To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have
+behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain
+wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was
+plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable
+husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class
+of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new
+land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon
+himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he
+had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as
+he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of
+his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to
+dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common
+herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led
+him down the fell incline.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I
+had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a
+knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other
+circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the
+same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of
+his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine.</p>
+
+<p>Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home
+as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of
+gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="36"></a>Chapter XXXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Just before daybreak of the fifth day we stole past the sleeping hamlet of
+Caughnawaga, and as the sun was rising over the Schoharie hills I drew up
+the canoe into the outlet of Dadanoscara Creek, a small brook which came
+down through the woods from the high land whereon Cairncross stood. Our
+journey by water was ended.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch was waiting for us, and helped me lift Cross from the canoe. His
+body hung inert in our arms; not even my clumsy slipping on the bank of
+the rivulet startled him from the deep sleep in which he had lain for
+hours in the boat.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been frightened. Can he be dying?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Enoch knelt beside him, and put his hand over the patient's heart. He
+shook his head dubiously after a moment, and said: "It's tearing along
+like a racehorse. He's in a fever--the worst kind. This ain't
+sleep--it's stupor."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his
+life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can
+make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to
+his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be
+different. As it is, I don't see but you will have to risk it, and bring
+somebody here."</p>
+
+<p>For once in my life my brain worked in flashes. I actually thought of
+something which had not occurred to Enoch!</p>
+
+<p>"Why not carry him in this canoe?" I asked. "It is lighter than any litter
+we could make."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper slapped his lank, leather-clad thigh in high approval. "By
+hokey!" he said, "you've hit it!"</p>
+
+<p>We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate
+the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and
+we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it
+over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course
+two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in
+the Valley an absolute secret. His life would have been in deadly peril
+hereabouts, even before the battle. How bitterly the hatred of him and his
+traitor-fellows must have been augmented by the slaughter of that cruel
+ambuscade, I could readily imagine. With what words could I have protected
+him against the righteous rage of a Snell, for example, or a Seeber, or
+any one of a hundred others who had left kinsmen behind in that fatal
+gulch? No! There must be no risk run by meeting any one.</p>
+
+<p>With the scanty meal finished our rest was at an end. We ought to lose no
+time. Each minute's delay in getting the wounded man under a roof, in
+bed, within reach of aid and nursing, might be fatal.</p>
+
+<p>It was no light task to get the canoe upon our shoulders, after we had put
+in it our guns, covered these with ferns and twigs, and upon these laid
+Philip's bulky form, and a very few moments' progress showed that the work
+before us was to be no child's play. The conformation of the canoe made it
+a rather awkward thing to carry, to begin with. To bear it right side up,
+laden as it was, over eight miles of almost continuous ascent, through a
+perfectly unbroken wilderness, was as laborious an undertaking as it is
+easy to conceive.</p>
+
+<p>We toiled along so slowly, and the wretched little brook, whose bed we
+strove to follow, described such a wandering course, and was so often
+rendered fairly impassable by rocks, driftwood, and overhanging thicket,
+that when the sun hung due south above us we had covered barely half our
+journey, and confronted still the hardest portion of it. We were so
+exhausted when this noon hour came, too, that I could make no objection
+when Enoch declared his purpose of getting some trout from the brook, and
+cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and
+from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly
+I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper
+stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity,
+tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under the stones.</p>
+
+<p>Soon he had enough for a meal--and, my word! it was a feast for emperors
+or angels. We stuffed the pink dainties with mint, and baked them in balls
+of clay. It seemed as if I had not eaten before in years.</p>
+
+<p>We tried to rouse Cross sufficiently to enable him to eat, and in a small
+way succeeded; but the effect upon him was scarcely beneficial, it
+appeared to us. His fever increased, and when we started out once more
+under our burden, the motion inseparable from our progress affected his
+head, and he began to talk incoherently to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be imagined more weird and startling than was the sound of
+this voice above us, when we first heard it. Both Enoch and I
+instinctively stopped. For the moment we could not tell whence the sound
+came, and I know not what wild notions about it flashed through my mind.
+Even when we realized that it was the fever-loosed tongue of our companion
+which spoke, the effect was scarcely less uncanny. Though I could not see
+him, the noise of his ceaseless talking came from a point close to my
+head; he spoke for the most part in a bold, high voice--unnaturally raised
+above the pitch of his recent faint waking utterances. Whenever a fallen
+log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the
+prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe
+down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult
+connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of his
+disordered brain.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time--of course in a very disconnected way--he babbled about
+his mother, and of people, presumably English, of whom I knew nothing,
+save that one name, Digby, was that of his elder brother Then there began
+to be interwoven with this talk stray mention of Daisy's name, and soon
+the whole discourse was of her.</p>
+
+<p>The freaks of delirium have little significance, I believe, as clews to
+the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary
+speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching
+shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words
+addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to
+be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he was resting his
+head upon her bosom. Over and over again, with tiresome iteration, he kept
+entreating plaintively: "You <i>are</i> glad to see me? You do <i>truly</i> forgive
+me, and love me?"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been sadder than to hear him. I reasoned that this
+ceaseless dwelling upon the sweets of a tender welcome doubtless reflected
+the train of his thoughts during the journey down from the battle-field.
+He had forborne to once mention Daisy's name during the whole voyage, but
+he must have thought deeply, incessantly of her--in all likelihood with a
+great softening of heart and yearning for her compassionate nursing. It
+was not in me to be unmoved by this. I declare that as I went painfully
+forward, with this strangely pathetic song of passion repeating itself in
+my ears, I got fairly away from the habit of mind in which my own love for
+Daisy existed, and felt myself only an agent in the working out of some
+sombre and exalted romance.</p>
+
+<p>In Foxe's account of the English martyrs there are stories of men at the
+stake who, when a certain stage of the torture was reached, really forgot
+their anguish in the emotional ecstasy of the ideas born of that terrible
+moment. In a poor and imperfect fashion I approached that same strange
+state--not far removed, in sober fact, from the delirium of the man in
+the canoe.</p>
+
+<p>The shadows were lengthening in the woods, and the reddening blaze of the
+sun flared almost level in our eyes through the tree-trunks, when at last
+we had crossed the water-shed of the two creeks, and stood looking down
+into the gulf of which I have so often spoken heretofore.</p>
+
+<p>We rested the canoe upon a great rock in the mystic circle of ancient
+Indian fire worship, and leaned, tired and panting, against its side. My
+arm was giving me much pain, and what with insufficient food and feverish
+sleep, great immediate fatigue, and the vast nervous strain of these past
+six days, I was well-nigh swooning.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I can go no farther, Enoch," I groaned. "I can barely keep my feet
+as it is."</p>
+
+<p>The trapper himself was as close to utter exhaustion as one may be and
+have aught of spirit left, yet he tried to speak cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come!" he said, "we mustn't give out now, right here at the
+finish. Why, it's only down over that bridge, and up again--and there
+we are!"</p>
+
+<p>I smiled in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a
+final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest,
+and we'll at it again."</p>
+
+<p>While we stood half reclining against the bowlder, looking with
+trepidation at the stiff ascent before us on the farther side of the gulf,
+the scene of the old quarrel of our youth suddenly came to my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that spruce near the top, by the path--the one hanging over
+the edge? Five years ago I was going to fight this Philip Cross there, on
+that path. My little nigger Tulp ran between us, and he threw him head
+over heels to the bottom. The lad has never been himself since."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty tolerable fall," remarked Enoch, glancing down the precipitous,
+brush-clad wall of rock. "But a nigger lands on his head as a cat does on
+her feet, and it only scratches him where it would kill anybody else."</p>
+
+<p>We resumed our burden now, and made our way with it down the winding path
+to the bottom. Here I was fain to surrender once for all.</p>
+
+<p>"It is no use, Enoch," I said, resolutely. "I can't even try to climb up
+there with this load. You must wait here; I will go ahead to Cairncross,
+prepare them for his coming, and send down some slaves to fetch him the
+rest of the way."</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>The great square mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front.
+The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no
+wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life
+visible, Cairncross might have been uninhabited a twelve-month.</p>
+
+<p>It was only when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within
+view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not
+been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday,
+church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass,
+intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep
+that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they
+became aware of my presence.</p>
+
+<p>They looked for a minute at me in a perplexed way--my mud-baked clothes,
+unshaven face, and general unkempt condition evidently rendering me a
+stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's
+ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like
+scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of the great house.</p>
+
+<p>So I was supposed to be dead! Curiously enough, it had not occurred to me
+before that this would be the natural explanation of my failure to return
+with the others. The idea now gave me a queer quaking sensation about the
+heart, and I stood stupidly staring at the back balcony of the house, with
+my mind in a whirl of confused thoughts. It seemed almost as if I <i>had</i>
+come back from the grave.</p>
+
+<p>While I still stood, faint and bewildered, trying to regain control of my
+ideas, the door opened, and a white-faced lady, robed all in black, came
+swiftly out upon the porch. It was Daisy, and she was gazing at me with
+distended eyes and parted lips, and clinging to the carved balustrade
+for support.</p>
+
+<p>As in a dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was
+gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in
+the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer
+exhaustion and rapture.</p>
+
+<p>When at last I could stand up, and felt myself coming back to something
+like self-possession, a score of eager questions and as many outbursts of
+deep thanksgiving were in my ears--all from her sweet voice. And I had
+tongue for none of them, but only looked into her dear face, and patted
+her hands between mine, and trembled like a leaf with excitement. So much
+was there to say, the sum of it beggared language.</p>
+
+<p>When finally we did talk, I was seated in a great chair one of the slaves
+had brought upon the sward, and wine had been fetched me, and my dear girl
+bent gently over me from behind, softly resting my head against her waist,
+her hands upon my arms.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not look me in the face again," she said--with ah! such
+compassionate, tender playfulness--"until I have been told. How did you
+escape? Were you a prisoner? Were you hurt?"--and oh! a host of
+other things.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the sky seemed to be covered with blackness, and the joy in my
+heart died out as by the stroke of death. I had remembered something. My
+parched and twitching lips did their best to refuse to form the words:</p>
+
+<p>"I have brought Philip home. He is sorely wounded. Send the slaves to
+bring him from the gulf."</p>
+
+<p>After a long silence, I heard Daisy's voice, clear and without a tremor,
+call out to the blacks that their master had been brought as far as the
+gulf beyond, and needed assistance. They started off helter-skelter at
+this, with many exclamations of great surprise, a bent and misshapen
+figure dragging itself with a grotesque limping gait at their tail.</p>
+
+<p>I rose from my chair, now in some measure restored to calmness and cold
+resolution. In mercy I had been given a brief time of blind happiness--of
+bliss without the alloy of a single thought. Now I must be a man, and walk
+erect, unflinching, to the sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go and meet them. It is best," I said. The poor girl raised her
+eyes to mine, and their startled, troubled gaze went to my heart. There
+must have been prodigious effort in the self-command of her tone to the
+slaves, for her voice broke down utterly now, as she faltered:</p>
+
+<p>"You have--brought--him home! For what purpose? How will this all end? It
+terrifies me!"</p>
+
+<p>We had by tacit consent begun to walk down the path toward the road. It
+was almost twilight. I remember still how the swallows wheeled swiftly in
+the air about the eaves, and how their twittering and darting seemed to
+confuse and tangle my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The situation was too sad for silence. I felt the necessity of talking, of
+uttering something which might, at least, make pretence of occupying these
+wretched minutes, until I should say:</p>
+
+<p>"This is your husband--and farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was clear enough to me," I said. "My duty was plain. I would have
+been a murderer had I left him there to die. It was very strange about my
+feelings. Up to a certain moment they were all bitter and merciless toward
+him. So many better men than he were dead about me, it seemed little
+enough that his life should go to help avenge them. Yet when the moment
+came--why, I could not suffer it. Not that my heart relented--no; I was
+still full of rage against him. But none the less it was my duty to save
+his life."</p>
+
+<p>"And to bring him home to <i>me</i>." She spoke musingly, completing my
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Daisy, would you have had it otherwise? Could I have left him there,
+to die alone, helpless in the swamp?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not said you were not right, Douw," she answered, with saddened
+slowness. "But I am trying to think. It is so hard to realize--coming like
+this. I was told you were both dead. His name was reported in their camp,
+yours among our people. And now you are both here--and it is all so
+strange, so startling--and what is right seems so mingled and bound up
+with what is cruel and painful! Oh, I cannot think! What will come of it?
+How will it all end?"</p>
+
+<p>"We must not ask how it will end!" I made answer, with lofty decision.
+"That is not our affair. We can but do our duty--what seems clearly
+right--and bear results as they come. There is no other way. You ought to
+see this."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I ought to see it," she said, slowly and in a low, distressed voice.</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my
+wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coarse-fibred male animal,
+returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my
+hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and
+gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my title to do this?--to rebuke
+her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I
+not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought
+pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought
+much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and
+fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of
+my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from
+trouble and grief?</p>
+
+<p>My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not
+have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so
+well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence,
+feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better
+than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as
+to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange
+question of our far-away youth.</p>
+
+<p>There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of
+the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell,
+like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the
+thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds
+of other voices, excited and vibrant.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some
+formless fear of she knew not what.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Tulp," she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. "Oh, I should have
+kept him back! Why did I not think of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What about Tulp?" I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the
+narrow path. "I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among
+the others, was he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has gone mad!"</p>
+
+<p>"What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange
+and slow of wit for years, but--"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you
+were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you
+came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father
+pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened?
+Who is this man?"</p>
+
+<p>In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of
+Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him
+huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was
+the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the
+common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean?</p>
+
+<p>When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do
+not understand. I will join you in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him.
+"Tell me quick."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a
+nigger. That's about what it comes to."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side
+nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs
+over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream
+like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it
+went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!"</p>
+
+<p>The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and
+clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh
+horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to
+where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed
+my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall
+grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="37"></a>Chapter XXXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Peaceful Ending of It All.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon
+the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted.
+Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would
+never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places
+which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play
+and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest
+farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the
+dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of
+death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more
+new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre
+in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to
+bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and
+tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.</p>
+
+<p>So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People
+listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the
+cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true
+that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?"</p>
+
+<p>In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast
+of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in
+the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information
+by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated.
+Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been
+hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately
+follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much
+later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to
+Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the
+men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done.</p>
+
+<p>To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this
+truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have
+chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus
+it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for
+Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered
+to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but
+think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of
+the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper
+Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own
+Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there
+at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That
+failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had
+been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the
+forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory
+gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done,
+he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies
+from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first
+the Yankees, then the others at his leisure.</p>
+
+<p>Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of
+Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of
+things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the
+heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was
+compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no
+doubt who would in the long-run triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great
+souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch
+at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live.</p>
+
+<p>But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much
+of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and
+wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around
+the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and
+general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange
+occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret
+returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as
+might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the
+stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with
+material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as
+possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the
+scene's sad suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the
+soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the
+other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent
+stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not
+visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the
+waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream.</p>
+
+<p>During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely
+engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to
+represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old
+Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful
+amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold
+and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood
+of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort,
+the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the
+hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant,
+and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from
+confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It
+was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the
+exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a
+hospital than for the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the
+Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year
+1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and
+neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the
+children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact
+date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the
+knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the
+sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not
+less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to
+gather over it.</p>
+
+<p>Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part
+thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came
+to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I
+was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of
+the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so.</p>
+
+<p>Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the
+hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into
+the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled
+and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This
+meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place
+were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly
+as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the
+grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John
+personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home
+of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought,
+alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to
+steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife,
+and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very
+melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days
+of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn
+of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though
+they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to
+the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with
+Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also
+have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old
+Douw Fonda!</p>
+
+<p>There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it
+touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter
+Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief
+Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the
+old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood
+upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the
+lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely
+wish him alive again.</p>
+
+<p>Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child
+whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He
+bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the
+Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably.</p>
+
+<p>In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which
+the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was
+born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as
+sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's
+breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him
+accordingly, as is the wont of parents.</p>
+
+<p>When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's
+bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny,
+fair babe nestled upon her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names,
+'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy
+into my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all
+so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much
+our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking,
+dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip."</p>
+
+<p>I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we
+had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of
+Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle
+sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet
+whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and
+fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any
+harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the
+room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in
+my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though
+the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal
+from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was
+easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which
+prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child
+because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and
+tragic romance.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious
+little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and
+slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in
+particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could
+bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty
+spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even
+now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely
+obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of
+his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart
+smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath
+his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our
+fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to
+resist him.</p>
+
+<p>The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month
+Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it
+seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old
+man. He literally staggered and died under the blow.</p>
+
+<hr width="80%" size="1" />
+
+<p>There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as
+peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of
+a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large
+advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having
+always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort,
+and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come
+to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We
+seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our
+childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof,
+where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very
+near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less
+peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of
+a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this
+interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for
+us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to
+both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and
+fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in
+happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts
+from scars.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<pre>
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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