FOREWORD
In issuing a new edition of Mrs. Ann S. Stephens’ historic novel, Mary Derwent, Dial Rock Chapter, Daughters American Revolution of West Pittston, in the upper end of Wyoming Valley, deems it well to state, for a new generation of readers, the circumstances that led to its being written. In the early 50’s of the last century, this brilliant and versatile author, then editor of Peterson’s Magazine, Philadelphia, spent several successive summers in West Pittston, at the beautiful and hospitable home of Mr. Samuel Benedict, whose young son, Frank Lee Benedict, was then winning his first recognition as an author, and had already become associated with the magazine under her editorship. During those summers, Mrs. Stephens became deeply interested in the history and traditions of Wyoming, studied every original source of its history within reach; listened to the story of the events of 1778 and the years preceding the tragedy of that memorable year, from the lips of men and women whose parents had escaped with their lives at that terrible time. A lover of scenery, a close observer alike of its broader aspects and its minute details, and happily gifted with remarkable clearness of vision “that,” as one biographer writes, “enabled her to be very realistic in the transcription of natural scenery”—this, added to her qualifications for writing the one standard historic novel that has ever appeared based upon Wyoming’s history, theme, incidents, characters and setting of the story were ready when the call came for “A Story of American Life in the Olden Times,” by one of the periodicals of the day, which offered a $400 prize for the one judged the best. “Mary Derwent” was the winner of that prize. Its first edition carries this Dedication:
 
To My Dear Friend,
Mrs. Samuel Benedict, of Wyoming Valley, in which the principal historic events of my story transpired, this book is affectionately dedicated.
 
Anna S. Stephens.
New York, June 1, 1858.
 
The book has gone through various editions; its latest issue being in the uniform edition of her works, in 23 volumes, published in 1886, the year of the author’s death. It was also republished serially in the Pittston Gazette in 1878, at the time of the Centennial “In Memoriam” gatherings around the Wyoming Monument. But it has been for some years out of print and its historic value, its accurate transcription of Wyoming’s beautiful scenery and its vivid delineations, both of character and events, has led to this new edition in behalf of Dial Rock Chapter, Daughters of American Revolution.
 
Susan E. Dickinson.
Scranton, Pa., March 10, 1908.
CHAPTER I THE VALLEY OF WYOMING

Monockonok Island lies in the stream of the Susquehanna, where the Valley of Wyoming presents its greenest fields and most level banks to the sunshine. It is a quiet little spot, lying dreamily in the river, which breaks and sparkles around it with a silvery tumult. The Indians have gathered up the music of these waters in a name that will live forever—Monockonok—rapid or broken waters. You scarcely notice the island amid the luxuriant scenery of Wyoming, it seems so insignificant in its prettiness. Hedges of black alder, hazel branches, and sedgy rushes stand in thickets, or droop in garlands along its shores.
 
A few miles below Monockonok, between a curve of the river and a picturesque sweep of the mountains, lies the town of Wilkesbarre, a gem among villages set in a haven of loveliness.
 
Two or three miles higher up may be seen the town of Pittston, with its mines, its forges, its mills, and its modern dwelling-houses, crowding close up to the heart of the valley, in which the Lackawanna and the Susquehanna unite among exhaustless coal beds and the eternal beat of human industry.
 
For twenty miles below the Lackawanna gap, the valley, though under partial cultivation for nearly a 2quarter of a century, seemed scarcely more than an unbroken forest. The beautiful river in its bosom was almost hidden beneath the huge black walnuts, the elms and sycamores that crowded to its banks.
 
But with all this beautiful wildness, the strife of disputed civilization had already been felt in the valley. Indian forages were frequent, and the Connecticut settlers had been twice driven from their humble dwellings by the Pennsylvanians, who were restive at the introduction of pioneers from the neighboring States into this fertile region.
 
The blackened ruins of a dwelling here and there left evidence of this unnatural contest, while stockades and block-houses of recent erection, scattered along the valley, gave picturesque proofs of continued anxiety and peril.
 
From twenty to thirty houses occupied the spot where Wilkesbarre now stands, while log-cabins were grouped near the forts, each with its clearing, its young fruit-orchard, and its patch of wheat or corn.
 
A single log-cabin, sheltered by a huge old elm with a slope of grass descending to the water in front, and a garden in the rear, enriched with variously tinted vegetables, and made cheerful by a few hollyhocks, marigolds, and sunflowers, stood like a mammoth bird’s nest on Monockonok Island.
 
Two immense black walnuts, with their mastlike trunks naked thirty feet high, stood back from the house. The shore was broken up with clumps of sycamores, oaks, maples, and groups of drooping willows, while an undergrowth of dogwood, mountain-ash and tamarisk trees chained into huge garlands by frost grape-vines and wild clematis, were seen in picturesque leafiness along the banks.
 
This log-cabin had been built years before, by a young man who came with his mother and his two little orphan girls to seek a home, and hide the deep grief occasioned 3by the loss of his wife in the wilderness. Derwent took up his residence in Wyoming with the New England settlers on their second return to the valley, when it was almost as much inhabited by the Indians as the whites.
 
Derwent struggled manfully in his new enterprise, but it was with a broken spirit and by stern moral force alone. His health, always delicate, sunk beneath the labor of establishing a new home, and though he worked on, month by month, it was as a Pilgrim toils toward a shrine, patiently and with endurance rather than hope.
 
Two little girls formed the sunshine of this humble family, and the fairy island was made brighter by their pleasant voices and graceful ways, as it was by the wild birds that haunted it with music. In the great indulgence of the invalid father, and the active love of that dear old grandmother, they had early lost all sense of orphanage, and were happy as the wild birds, free as the striped squirrels that peeped at them from the branches of the black walnut trees where they loved to play.
 
Very different were these two children from infancy up. Jane, the youngest, was a bright, happy little creature, full of fun, eager for a frolic, and heedless of everything else; endowed with commonplace goodness and a pleasant temper, she was simply a bright, lovable child. But Mary, who seemed younger by half than her robust sister, was so fragile, so delicate, that you dreaded to see the very winds of heaven blow upon her, even when they left the spring blossoms unhurt. Her large wistful eyes were full of earnestness. She was so fair, so fragile, swaying as she walked, like a flower too heavy for its stem, and with that look of unutterable sweetness forever about the little mouth.
 
With Derwent Little Mary was an object of singular tenderness, while the force and life of his warmer 4affections went to the younger child. He was their only teacher, and during the years that he lived it was a pleasant recreation to give them such instruction as his own rather superior attainments afforded.
 
Thus in primitive happiness the little family lived till Mary passed gently out of her childhood. There was little visiting among the pioneers, and a stranger seldom made way to Monockonok. An Indian sometimes touched the island with his canoe in his progress down the river; but this was always a happy event to the children, who received the savages with childish admiration, as if they had been orioles or golden robins. At the sight of a canoe, Jane would run gleefully to the river, waving kisses to the savage with her hand, and flaunting out her apron as a signal to win him shoreward. It was a singular fact, but the Indians seldom obeyed these signals unless Mary was by her side. A single gleam of her golden hair—a glimpse of her bent form—would prove more effectual than all her sister’s pretty wiles.
 
Why did these savages come so readily at her look? What was the meaning of the strange homage with which they approached her? Why did they never touch her dress, or smooth her hair, or give her any of those wild marks of liking which Jane received so cheerfully? Why did they lay eagles’ plumes and the skins of flame-colored birds at her feet, with so much humility? Mary could never comprehend this, but it filled her with vague awe, while the savages went away thoughtfully, like men filled with a spirit of worship.
 
One other person sometimes visited the island, who had a powerful influence over these children. This man was an Indian missionary, who, following the path of Zinzendorf, had made his home in the wilderness, about the time that Derwent entered the valley. He was evidently a man of birth and education, for even the wild habits of the woods had been insufficient to 5disguise the natural refinement of mind and manners which made the humility of his character so touchingly beautiful.
 
This man came often to the island. Sometimes he remained all night in the cabin. Sometimes he lingered days with the family, teaching the little girls those higher branches which their father could not control, and planting a thousand holy thoughts in the young minds, that lifted themselves to his knowledge, as the flower opens its cup for the night dew.
 
Under these beautiful and almost holy influences the children lived in their island home, each taking from the elements around her such nutriment as her nature craved, till Derwent, who had been ill since their first remembrance, sunk slowly to his deathbed.
 
The last attack came suddenly, while the missionary was absent among the Shawnees, far down the valley; but scarcely had the little family felt the need of his presence, when he appeared quietly and kindly. All one night he remained with the sick man; their conversation could be heard in broken fragments in the next room, where the old mother sat weeping over her grandchildren, holding Jane fondly in her lap, while Mary sat upon the floor, so chilled with grief that she did not feel the tender sorrow lavished upon her sister, as neglect of herself. Like a pure white lily broken at the stem, she sat wistfully gazing in the distance, wondering what death was, vaguely and in dreamy desolation. They were called at last, and with a dying effort Jane was drawn to her father’s bed, the last breath, the last blessing fell upon her. Mary had no time; the father’s life was exhausted in that one benediction.
 
The missionary led her forth into the open air. He said but little, and his voice fell dreamily on the senses of the child; but its first low cadence filled her soul with infinite resignation. From that time Mary could 6never realize that her father had died, leaving no blessing for her. It seemed as if the missionary had inhaled the life from his departing soul, and turned it all to love. The child recognized a double presence in this holy man. Not even her grandmother was permitted to kiss the forehead which his lips had touched. Her brow became sacred from that time, and she would shrink back with a cry of absolute pain if any one attempted to disturb the kiss which was to her the place of a lost blessing.
 
The missionary had many duties to perform, and his intercourse with the island was sometimes interrupted for months; but the little heart that clung to him could live upon a remembrance of his teachings, even when his presence was withheld. It was a wonderful influence, that which his strong, pure soul had obtained over the child. While these feelings were taking root in the nature of one sister, the other was working out her own life, and the grandmother took up the duties imposed by her bereavement with great resolution.
 
7
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II THE CRUEL ENLIGHTENMENT

Grandmother Derwent had contrived to purchase implements for spinning and weaving the coarse cloth, which constituted the principal clothing of the settlers. The inhabitants gave her plenty of work, and produce from her farm supplied her household with grain and vegetables.
 
Even the little girls, who under many circumstances would have been a burden, were in reality an assistance to her.
 
Jane was a bright and beautiful child, with dark silky hair, pleasant eyes, and lips like the damp petals of a red rose. She was, withal, a tidy, active little maiden, and, as Mrs. Derwent was wont to say, “saved grandma a great many steps” by running to the spring for water, winding quills, and doing what Miss Sedgwick calls the “odds and ends of housework.”
 
Jane led a pleasant life on the island. She was a frank, mirthful creature, and it suited her to paddle her canoe on the bosom of the river, or even to urge it down the current, when “grandma” wanted a piece of cloth carried to the village, or was anxious to procure tea and other delicacies for her household.
 
When Mrs. Derwent’s quill-box was full, and “the work all done up,” Jane might be found clambering among the wild rocks, which frowned along the eastern shore, looking over the face of some bold precipice at her image reflected in the stream below; or, perchance, perched in the foliage of a grape-vine, with her rosy face peering out from the leaves, and her 8laugh ringing merrily from cliff to cliff, while her little hands showered down the purple clusters to her sister below.
 
Such was Jane Derwent, at the age of fourteen; but poor little Mary Derwent! nature grew more and more cruel to her. While each year endowed her sister with new beauty and unclouded cheerfulness, she, poor delicate thing, was kept instinctively from the notice of her fellow-creatures. The inmates of that little cabin could not bear that strange eyes should gaze on her deformity—for it was this deformity which had ever made the child an object of such tender interest.
 
From her infancy the little girl had presented a strange mixture of the hideous and the beautiful. Her oval face, with its marvellous symmetry of features, might have been the original from which Dubufe drew the chaste and heavenly features of Eve, in his picture of the “Temptation.” The same sweetness and purity was there, but the expression was chastened and melancholy. Her soft blue eyes were always sad, and almost always moist; the lashes drooped over them, an expression of languid misery. A smile seldom brightened her mouth—the same mournful expression of hopelessness sat forever on that calm, white forehead; the faint color would often die away from her cheek, but it seldom deepened there.
 
Mary was fifteen before any person supposed her conscious of her horrible malformation, or was aware of the deep sensitiveness of her nature. The event which brought both to life occurred a few years after the death of her father. Both the children had been sent to school, and her first trial came on the clearing, before the little log schoolhouse of the village. Mary was chosen into the centre of the merry ring by Edward Clark, a bright-eyed, handsome boy, with manners bold and frank almost to carelessness.
 
The kind-hearted boy drew her gently into the ring, 9and joined the circle, without the laugh and joyous bound which usually accompanied his movements. There was an instinctive feeling of delicacy and tenderness towards the little girl which forbade all boisterous merriment when she was by his side. It was her turn to select a partner; she extended her hand timidly towards a boy somewhat older than herself—the son of a rich landholder in the valley; but young Wintermoot drew back with an insulting laugh, and refused to stand up with the hunchback.
 
Instantly the ring was broken up. Edward Clark leaped forward, and with a blow, rendered powerful by honest indignation, smote the insulter to the ground. For one moment Mary looked around bewildered, as if she did not comprehend the nature of the taunt; then the blood rushed up to her face, her soft blue eyes blazed with a sudden flash of fire, the little hand was clenched, and her distorted form dilated with passion. Instantly the blood flowed back upon her heart, her white lips closed over her clenched teeth, and she fell forward with her face upon the ground, as one stricken by unseen lightning.
 
The group gathered around her, awe-stricken and afraid. They could not comprehend this fearful burst of passion in a creature habitually so gentle and sweet-tempered. It seemed as if the insolent boy had crushed her to death with a sneer.
 
Her brave defender knelt and raised her head to his bosom, tears of generous indignation still lingered on his burning cheek, and his form shook with scarcely abated excitement.
 
At length Mary Derwent arose with the calmness of a hushed storm upon her face, and turning to her inevitable solitude walked silently away.
 
There was something terrible in the look of anguish with which she left her companions, taking, as it were, a silent and eternal farewell of all the joys that belong 10to childhood. The coarse taunt of the boy had been a cruel revelation, tearing away all the tender shields and loving delusions with which home-affection had so long sheltered her. She did not know what meaning lay in the word hunchback, but felt, with a sting of unutterable shame, that it was applied to her because she was unlike other girls. That she must never be loved as they were—never hope to be one of them again.
 
The school-children looked on this intense passion with silent awe. Even Jane dared not utter the sympathy that filled her eyes with tears, or follow after her sister.
 
So with terror and shame at the cruel discovery at her heart, Mary went away. The blood throbbed in her temples and rushed hotly through all her veins. An acute sense of wrong seized upon her, and thirsting to be alone she fled to the woods like a hunted animal, recoiling alike from her playfellows and her home.
 
Through the thick undergrowth and over wild rocks the poor creature tore her way, struggling and panting amid the thorny brushwood, as if life and death depended upon her progress.
 
A striped squirrel ran along the boughs of a chestnut-tree and peered down upon her from among the long green leaves and tassel-like blossoms. A flush came to her beautiful forehead, and with a cry that seemed in itself a pang, she tore up a stone to fling at it. The squirrel started away, uttering a broken noise that fell upon her sore heart like a taunt. Why did the little creature follow her? Why did it bend those sharp, black eyes upon her, with its head turned so mockingly upon one side? Was she never to be alone? Was the cruel animal still gibing at her through the chestnut-leaves?
 
The squirrel darted from bough to bough, and at last ran down the trunk of the chestnut. Mary followed it with eager glances till her eyes fell upon the 11root of the tree. The stone dropped from her hand, the angry color fled from her face, and stretching out her arms with a cry that perished on her lips she waited for the missionary to descend.
 
He came rather quickly, and the gentle serenity of his countenance was disturbed, but still a look of unutterable goodness rested upon it. When he reached Mary her eyes were flooded with tears, and she trembled from head to foot. His sympathy she could endure. His very look had opened the purest fountains of her heart again. She was not altogether alone.
 
“Crying, Mary, crying?” he said, in a tone of inquiry, rather than of reproach. “Who has taught you to weep?”
 
“Oh! father, father, what can I do? Where can I hide myself?” cried the poor girl, lifting her clasped hands piteously upward.
 
The missionary saw it all. For a moment the color left his lips, and his eyes were full of trouble to their azure depths. He sat down by her side, and drew her gently towards him.
 
“And this has driven you so far from home?” he said, smoothing her hair with one hand, which trembled among the golden tresses, for never had his sympathies been drawn more powerfully forth. “Who has done this cruel thing, Mary?”
 
She did not answer, but he felt a shudder pass over her frame as she made a vain effort to speak.
 
“Was it your playfellows at school?”
 
“I shall never have playfellows again,” broke from the trembling lips which seemed torn apart by the desolating words; “never again, for where does another girl like me live in the world? God has made no playfellow for me!”
 
The missionary allowed her to weep. He knew that a world of bitterness would be carried from her bosom with those tears.
 
12“But God has made us for something better than playfellows to each other,” he said at last, taking her little hand in his.
 
She looked at him wistfully, and answered with unutterable sadness, “But I cannot be even that; I am alone!”
 
“No,” answered the missionary, “not alone—not alone, though you never heard another human voice—even here in the deep woods you would find something to love and help, too—never think yourself alone, Mary, while any creature that God has made is near.”
 
“But who will love me? Who will help me?” cried the girl, with a burst of anguish.
 
“Who will love you, Mary! Do not I love you? Does not your grandmother and sister love you?”
 
“But now—now that they know about this—that I am a hunchback, it will be all over.”
 
“But they have known it, Mary, ever since you were a little child. Well, well! we must not talk about it, but think how much every one at home has loved you.”
 
“And they knew it all—they saw it while I was blind, and loved me still,” murmured the girl, while great tears of gratitude rolled down her cheeks, “and they will love me always just the same—you promise me this?”
 
“Always the same, Mary!”
 
“Yes, yes—I see they have loved me always, more than if I were ever so beautiful—they were sorry for me; I understand!” There was a sting of bitterness in her voice. The love which came from compassion wounded her.
 
“But our Saviour loves his creatures most for this very reason. Their imperfections and feebleness appeal like an unuttered prayer to him. It is a beautiful love, Mary, that which strength gives to dependence, 13for it approaches nearest to that heavenly benevolence which the true soul always thirsts for.”
 
Mary lifted her eyes to his face as he spoke. The unshed tears trembled like diamonds within them. She became very thoughtful, and drooped slowly downward, coloring faintly beneath his eyes, as maidens sometimes blush at their own innocent thoughts when nothing but the eye of God is upon them.
 
“But there is another love, my father; I have seen it at the school and in the cabins, I have watched it as I have the mountain flowers, and thought that God meant this love for me, like the rest; but when I go among other girls, no one will ever think that I am one of them—no one but Edward Clark, and he only feels pity-love for me; to all the rest I am a hunchback.”
 
A look of great trouble came upon the face of the missionary. For some moments he did not answer, and the poor girl drooped by his side. The blush faded from the snow of her forehead, and she trembled all over with vague shame of the words she had spoken. His silence seemed like a reproach to her.
 
“My child!”—oh! with what holy sweetness the words fell from his lips—“my child, it is true; this love must never be yours.”
 
“Never!” echoed the pale lips of the child. “Never!”
 
“This dream of love, give it up, Mary, while it is but a dream,” added the missionary, in a firmer voice. “To many more than yourself it is a hope never, never realized. Do not struggle for it—do not pine for it—God help you! child—God help us all!”
 
The anguish in his voice thrilled her to the soul. She bent her forehead meekly to his knee, murmuring:
 
“I will try to be patient—but, oh! do not look at me so mournfully.”
 
He laid his hands softly under her forehead, and, 14lifting her face to his gazed mournfully upon it, as if his soul were looking far away through her eyes into the dim past.
 
“Father, believe me, I will try.”
 
His hands dropped downward at the sound of her voice, and his lips began to move, as if unuttered words were passing through them. Mary knew that he was praying, and her face drooped reverently downward. When or how this silence broke into words she never knew, but over her soul went the burning eloquence of his voice, carried heavenward by prayer—by the wind, and the rush of the mountain stream. The very breath lay still upon her lips as she listened, and she felt more like a winged angel close to the gate of heaven than the poor deformed girl, whose soul had, a few hours before, been so full of bitterness.
CHAPTER III THE FOREST WALK

When the missionary arose from his knees—for to that position he had unconsciously fallen—Mary stood beside him, quiet and smiling.
 
“Come, my child,” he said, taking Mary by the hand, and leading her up from the ravine. “It is almost night, and you have wandered far from the island; see, the woods are already dusky. The birds and squirrels are settling down in the leaves; you would have been afraid to go home in the dark.”
 
“I might have been lost, but not afraid,” answered Mary, in a sad voice; “after this, darkness will be my best friend.”
 
“But the forest is full of Indians, Mary, and now, since the English have excited them against us, no white person is safe after dark; I will go home with you; but, after this, promise me never to come alone to the woods again.”
 
“The Indians will not harm me,” answered Mary, with a mournful smile; “they pity me, I think, and love me a little, too. I am not afraid of them; their tomahawks are not so sharp as Jason Wintermoot’s words were this morning.”
 
As she spoke there was a rustling among the bushes at their right, and through the purple gloom of the woods they saw a group of Indians crouching behind a rock, and glaring at them through the undergrowth. One had his rifle lifted with a dusky hand, creeping towards the rock; the others were poised for a spring. 16Mary saw them, and leaped upon a rock close by, protecting the missionary from the aim taken at his life.
 
“Not him—not him!” she cried, flinging up both arms in wild appeal; “shoot me! You don’t know how I long to die.”
 
The Indians looked at each other in dismay. The threatening rifle fell with a clang upon the rock, and instead of an assault the savages crept out from their ambush, lighting up the dusky ravine with their gorgeous war-dresses, and gathered around the young girl, like a flock of tropical birds surrendering themselves to the charms of a serpent.
 
Mary met them fearlessly; a wild, spiritual beauty lighted up her face. The Indians lost their ferocity, and looked on her with grave tenderness; one of them reached forth his hand, she laid hers in the swarthy palm, where it rested like a snowdrop on the brown earth; he looked down upon it, and smiled; her courage charmed him.
 
“The white bird is brave, the Great Spirit folds his wing over her which is pure like the snow,” he said, addressing his companions in their own language.
 
Mary knew a little of the Shawnee tongue, and looking up at the savage said, very gently:
 
“Why harm my father? The Great Spirit covers him, also, with a wing which is broad and white, like the clouds. Look in his face. Is he afraid?”
 
The Indians drew back, and looked fiercely at the missionary, gathering up their rifles with menacing gestures.
 
He understood their language well, and spoke to them with that calm self-possession which gives dignity to courage.
 
“My children,” he said, “what wrong have I done that you should wish to kill me?”
 
The leading savage set down his gun with a clang upon the rock.
 
17“You have sat by the white man’s council-fire down yonder. The Great Father over the big water is our friend, but you hate the Indian, and will help them drive us through the wind gap into strange hunting grounds.”
 
“I am not your enemy. See, I carry no tomahawk or musket; my bosom is open to your knives. The Great Spirit has sent me here, and He will keep me free from harm.”
 
Unconsciously the missionary looked at the deformed girl as he spoke. The Indians followed his glance, and changed their defiant gestures.
 
“He speaks well. Mineto has sent his beautiful medicine spirit to guard him from our rifles. The medicine father of the Shawnees is dead, his lodge is empty. The white bird shall be our prophet. You shall be her brother, live in the great Medicine Lodge, and dream our dreams for us when we take the warpath. Do we speak well?”
 
The missionary pondered a moment before he spoke. He read more in these words than one not acquainted with Indian customs might have understood.
 
“Yes,” he said at last, “I will come to your Medicine Lodge, and tell you all the dreams which the Great Spirit sends to me. She, too, will love the Indians, and dream holy dreams for them, but not here, not in the Medicine Lodge. She must stay in Monockonok among the broken waters. The Great Spirit has built her lodge there, under the tall trees, where the Indians can seek her in their canoes. Go back to your council-fire, my children, before its smoke goes out. I will light the calumet, and smoke with you. Now the Great Spirit tells me to go with this child back to Monockonok. Farewell.”
 
He took Mary Derwent by the hand, turned his back on the menacing rifles without fear, and walked away unmolested.
 
18Mary had wandered miles away from home; nothing but the superior knowledge of her guardian could have found her way back through all that dense and unequal forest. It was now almost nightfall; but a full moon had risen, and by its light this man, accustomed to the woods, guided their way back towards the river. But after the wildest of her excitement had worn away, Mary began to feel the toil of her long walk. She did not complain, however, and the missionary was unconscious of this overtax of strength till she sank down on a broken fragment of rock utterly exhausted. He stopped in great distress, and bent over her. She smiled, and attempted to speak, but the pale lids drooped over her eyes, and the strength ebbing completely from her limbs left them pale and limp. She lay before him entirely senseless, with the moonbeams falling over her like a winding-sheet.
 
Nothing but the angels of Heaven could see or understand the look of unutterable thankfulness which came to his noble features as the missionary stooped and took the young girl in his arms. A smile luminous as the moonlight that played upon it stole over his whole face, and the words that broke from his lips were sweet and tender, such as the Madonna might have whispered to her holy child.
 
He took no pains to bring her back to life, but when she did come to, soothed her with hushes, and laid her head tenderly upon his shoulder till she fell asleep, smiling like himself.
 
As he came in sight of Monockonok a swell of regretful tenderness swept all his strength away more surely than fatigue could have done. He sat down upon a fallen tree on the bank just opposite the island and looked down into the sweet face with a gaze of heavenly affection. His head drooped slowly down, he folded her closer, and pressed his lips upon the closed eyes, the forehead, the lips, and cheeks of the 19sleeping child with a passion of tenderness that shook his whole frame.
 
“Oh, my God, my God! forgive me if this is sinful! my soul aches under this excess of love; the very fountains of my life are breaking up! Father of heaven, I am thine, all thine, but she is here on my breast, and I am but human.”
 
Deep sobs broke away from his heart, almost lifting her from his bosom; tears rained down his face, and dropped thick and fast amid the waves of her hair.
 
His sobs aroused Mary from her slumber. She was not quite awake, but stirred softly and folded her arms about his neck. How the strong man trembled under the clasp of those arms! how he struggled and wrested against the weakness that had almost overpowered him, and not in vain! A canoe was moored under a clump of alders, just below him. It belonged to the island, and in that Mary must be borne to her home. He was obliged to row the canoe, and of course must awake her. Once more he pressed his lips upon her face, once more he strained her to his heart, and then with loving violence aroused her.
 
“Mary—come, little one, wake up, wake up! See how late it is! Grandmother will be frightened.”
 
“Let me alone—oh! please let me alone!” murmured the weary child.
 
“No, Mary, arouse yourself; you and I have slept and dreamed too long. There, there! look around. See how the moonlight ripples upon the river! Look at the island; there is a light burning in the cabin. They are anxious no doubt at your long stay. Come, child, let us be strong: surely you can walk to the river’s brink.”
 
Yes, Mary could walk again; that sweet sleep had given back her strength. She sat down in the canoe, tranquilized and happier than she had ever hoped to be again. The bitterness of the morning had entirely 20passed away. They floated on down the river a few minutes. Then the missionary bent to his oars, and the canoe shot across the silvery rapids, and drew up in a little cove below the house.
 
The missionary stepped on shore. Mary followed him.
 
“Are you happier now? Are you content to live as God wills it?” he said, extending his hand, while his eyes beamed upon her.
 
“Yes, father, I am content.”
 
“To live even without earthly love?”
 
Mary shrunk within herself—it takes more than a few words, a struggle, or a single prayer to uproot a desire for human love from a woman’s heart.
 
He did not reason with her, or upbraid her then, but only said:
 
“God will find a way—have no fear, all human beings have some road to happiness if they will but let the Heavenly Father point it out. Good-night Mary.”
 
“Good-night,” responded the young girl, while her eyes filled with grateful tears; “good-night, my father!”
 
He turned around, laid his hands on her head, and blessed her, then stepped into the canoe and disappeared along the path of silver cast downward by the moon. The young girl smiled amid her tears. How dark it was when he found her at noontide; how bright when he went away!
 
Mary Derwent entered that log-cabin a changed being. She scarcely understood herself, or anything that had filled her life up to that day. Her own nature was inexplicable. One great shock had thrust her forward, as it were, to a maturity of suffering; her smile became mournful and sad in its expression, as if the poor creature had become weary of life and of all living things. She never again joined in the childish sports of her companions.
CHAPTER IV THE ISLAND COVE

The two sisters stood together under the willow trees that overhung the little cove from which Mary had landed with the missionary three years before. Both had grown into girlhood since then, and both had improved in loveliness; Jane in the bloom and symmetry of her person—Mary in that exquisite loveliness of countenance which touches the soul like music in a sound, or tints in a picture. Jane Derwent was just seventeen years old that day.
 
“And so you will go, Mary, dear—though this is my birthday? I have a great mind to cut the canoe loose and set it adrift.”
 
“And then how will your company get to the island?” said Mary Derwent, raising her eyes to the blooming face of her sister, while a quiet smile stole out from their blue depths.
 
“I don’t care for company! I don’t care for anything—you are so contrary—so hateful. You never stay at home when the young folks are coming—it’s too bad!” And Jane flung herself on the grass which surrounded the little cove where a bark canoe lay rocking in the water, and indulged her petulance by tearing up the strawberry-vines which her sister had planted there.
 
“Don’t spoil my strawberry-bed,” said Mary, bending over the wayward girl and kissing her forehead. “Come, be good-natured and let me go; I will bring you some honeysuckle-apples, and a whole canoe full 22of wood-lilies. Do say yes; I can’t bear to see you discontented to-day!”
 
“I would not care about it so much—though it is hard that you will never go to frolics, nor enjoy yourself like other folks—but Edward Clark made me promise to keep you at home to-day.”
 
A color, like the delicate tinting of a shell, stole into Mary’s cheek as it lay caressingly against the rich damask of her sister’s.
 
“If no one but Edward were coming I should be glad to stay,” she replied, in a soft voice; “but you have invited a great many, haven’t you? Who will be here from the village?”
 
Jane began to enumerate the young men who had been invited to her birthday party; they held precedence in her heart, and consequently in her speech; for, to own the truth, Jane Derwent was a perfect specimen of the rustic coquette; a beauty, and a spoiled one; but a warm-hearted, kind girl notwithstanding.
 
“There are the Ward boys, and John Smith, Walter Butler from the fort, and Jason Wintermoot——”
 
Jane stopped, for she felt a shiver run over the form around which her arms were flung as she pronounced the last name and saw the cheek of her sister blanch to the whiteness of snow.
 
“I had forgotten,” she said, timidly, after a moment; “I am sorry I asked him. You are not angry with me, Mary, are you?”
 
“Angry? No! I never am angry with you, Jane. I don’t want to refuse you anything on your birthday—but I will not meet these people. You cannot guess—you can have no idea of my sufferings when any one looks upon me except those I love very, very dearly.”
 
“That is just what they say,” replied Jane, while a flush of generous feeling spread over her forehead.
 
“What, who says?” inquired Mary, for her heart 23trembled with a dread that some allusion was threatened to her person.
 
After her question there was a moment’s silence. They had both arisen, and the deformed girl stood before her sister with a tremulous lip and a wavering, anxious eye.
 
Jane was quick-witted, and, with many faults, very kind of heart. When she saw the distress visible in her unfortunate sister’s face she formed her reply with more of tact and kind feeling than with strict regard to truth.
 
“Why, it is nothing,” she said; “the girls always loved you, and petted you so much when we were little children in school together that they don’t like it when you go away without seeing them. They think that you are grown proud since you have taken to reading and talking fine language. You don’t have to work like the rest of us, and they feel slighted, and think you put on airs.”
 
Tears stole into the eyes of the deformed girl, and a sudden light, the sunshine of an affectionate heart, broke over her face as she said:
 
“It is not that, my sister. I have loved them very much all these years that I have not seen them; but since that day—— Sister, you are very good; and, oh! how beautiful; but you cannot dream how a poor creature like myself feels when happy people are enjoying life together. Without sympathy, without companions, hunchbacked and crooked. Tell me, Jane, am I not hideous to look upon?”
 
This was the first time in her life that Mary had permitted a consciousness of her malformation to escape her in words. The question was put in a voice of mingled agony and bitterness, wrung from the very depths of her heart. She fell upon the grass as she spoke, and with her face to the ground lay grovelling at her sister’s feet, like some wounded animal; for 24now that the loveliness of her face was concealed her form seemed scarcely human.
 
All that was generous in the nature of Jane Derwent swelled in her heart as she bent over her sister. The sudden tears fell like rain, glistening in drops upon the warm damask of her cheeks and filling her voice with affectionate sobs as she strove to lift her from the ground; but Mary shrunk away with a shudder, and kneeling down Jane raised her head with gentle violence to her bosom.
 
“Hideous! Oh! Mary, how can you talk so? Don’t shake and tremble in this manner. You are not frightful nor homely; only think how beautiful your hair is. Edward Clark says he never saw anything so bright and silky as your curls—he said so; indeed he did, Mary; and the other day when he was reading about Eve, in the little book you love so well, he told grandmother that he fancied Eve must have had a face just like yours.”
 
“Did Edward say this?” murmured the poor deformed one as Jane half-lifted, half-persuaded her from the ground, and with one arm flung over her neck was pressing the face she had been praising to her own troubled bosom.
 
Poor Mary, though naturally tall, was so distorted that when she stood upright her head scarcely reached a level with the graceful bust of her sister, and Jane stooped low to plant reassuring kisses upon her forehead.
 
“Did he say it, Mary? Yes, he certainly did; and so did I say it. Look here.” And eagerly gathering the folds of a large shawl over the shoulders of the deformed, she gently drew her to the brink of the basin, where the canoes still lay moored. “Look there!” she exclaimed, as they bent together over the edge of the green sward; “can you wish for anything handsomer than that face? Dear, good Mary, look.”
 
25An elm-tree waved its branches over them, and the sunshine came shimmering through the leaves with a wavy light. The river was tranquil as a summer sky, and the sisters were still gazing on the lovely faces speaking to theirs from its clear depths, when a canoe swept suddenly round the grassy promontory which formed one side of the cove.
 
With a dash of the oar the fairy skiff shot, like an arrow, into the basin, and its occupant, a young man of perhaps two-and-twenty, leaped upon the green sward. The sisters started from their embrace. A glad smile dimpled the round cheek of the younger as she stepped forward to meet the newcomer. But Mary drew her shawl more closely over her person, and shrunk timidly back, with a quickened pulse, a soft welcome beaming from her eyes, and her face deluged with a flood of soft, rosy color, which she strove to conceal with the tresses that fell about her like a golden mist.
 
“I have just come in time to keep you at home for once,” said the youth, approaching the timid girl, after having gaily shaken hands with her sister. “I am sure we shall persuade you——”
 
He was interrupted by a call from Jane, who had run off to the other side of the cove; no doubt with the hope of being speedily followed by her visitor.
 
“Come here, Edward, do, and break me some of this sweet-brier; it scratches my fingers so.”
 
Clark dropped Mary’s hand and went to obey this capricious summons.
 
“Don’t try to persuade Mary to stay,” said Jane, as she took a quantity of the sweet-brier from the hands of her companion. “She is as restless when we have company as the mocking-bird you gave us; and which we never could tame, besides,” she added, with a little hesitation, “Wintermoot will be here, and she don’t like him.”
 
“It were strange if she did,” replied the youth; and 26a frown passed over his fine forehead; “but, tell me, Jane, how it happened that you invited Col. Butler when you know that I dislike him almost as much as she does Wintermoot.”
 
Jane looked confused and, like most people when they intend to persist in a wrong, began to get into a passion.
 
“I am sure I thought I had the right to ask any one I pleased,” she said, petulantly and gathering her forehead into a frown.
 
“Yes, but one might expect that it would scarcely please you to encourage a man who has so often insulted your house with unwelcome visits; and Wintermoot—my blood boils when I think of the wretch! Poor Mary! I had hoped to see her enjoy herself to-day; but now she must wander off alone as usual. I have a great mind to go with her.”
 
And turning swiftly away from the angry beauty, Clark went to Mary, spoke a few words, and they stepped into his canoe together. But he had scarcely pushed it from the shore when Jane ran forward and leaped in after them.
 
“If you go, so will I!” she said angrily, seating herself in the bottom of the canoe.
 
Mary was amazed and perplexed. She looked into the stern, displeased face of the young man, and then at the sullen brow of her sister.
 
“What does this mean?” she inquired, gently; “what is the matter, Jane?”
 
Jane began to sob, but gave no answer, and they rowed across the river in silence. The canoe landed at the foot of a broken precipice that hung over the river like a ruined battlement. Clark assisted Mary to the shore, and was about to accompany her up the footpath, which wound over the precipice, but Jane, who had angrily refused his help to leave the boat, began to fear that she had carried her resentment too far, and timidly called him back.
 
27A few angry words from the young man—expostulation and tears from the maiden, all of which a bend in the path prevented Mary observing; and then Clark went up the hill—told the solitary girl not to wander far—to be careful and not sit on the damp ground—and that he would come for her by sundown; the young folks would have left the island by that time. They were all going down to Wilkesbarre, to have a dance in the schoolhouse. He and Jane were going, but they would wait and take her home first.
 
Edward was almost out of breath as he said all this, and he appeared anxious to go back to the canoe. But Mary had not expected him to join her lonely wanderings, and his solicitude about her safety, so considerate and kind, went to her heart like a breath of summer air. She turned up the mountain-path, lonely and companionless; but very happy. Her eyes were full of pleasant tears, and her heart was like a flower unfolding to the sunshine. There is pleasure in complying with the slightest request from those we love; and Mary confined her ramble to the precipice and the shore, merely because Edward Clark had asked her not to wander far. She saw him land on the island with her sister while half-sitting, half-reclining on a crag of the broken rock, at whose foot she had landed. She saw the boat sent again and again to the opposite shore, returning each time laden with her former companions.
 
She was aroused by the rustling of branches over her head, followed by a bounding step, as of a deer in flight; then a young girl sprang out upon a point of rock which shot over the platform on which she lay, and bending over the edge gazed eagerly down upon the river.
 
Mary held her breath and remained motionless, for her poetical fancy was aroused by the singular and picturesque attitude of the figure. There was a wildness and grace in it which she had never witnessed before. At the first glance she supposed the stranger 28to be a wandering Indian girl belonging to some of the tribes that roamed the neighboring forests. But her complexion, though darker than the darkest brunette of our own race, was still too light for any of the savage nations yet seen in the wilderness. It was of a clear, rich, brown, and the blood glowed through the round cheeks like the blush on a ripe peach.
 
Her hair was long, profusely braided, and of a deep black; not the dull, lustreless color common to the Indians; but with a bloom upon it like that shed by the sunlight on the wing of a flying raven. She appeared to be neither Indian nor white, but of a mixed race. The spirited and wild grace of the savage was blended with a delicacy of feature and nameless elegance more peculiar to the whites. In her dress, also, might be traced the same union of barbarism and refinement—a string of bright scarlet berries encircling her head, and interwoven with the long braids of her hair, glanced in the sunlight as she moved her head, like a chain of dim rubies.
 
A robe of gorgeous chintz, where crimson and deep brown were the predominating colors, was confined at the waist by a narrow belt of wampum, and terminated a little below the knee in a double row of heavy fringe, leaving the flexible and slender ankles free and uncovered. Her robe fell open at the shoulders; but the swelling outline of her neck, thus exposed, was unbroken, except by a necklace of cherry-colored cornelian, from which a small heart of the same blood-red stone fell to her bosom. The round and tapering beauty of her arms was fully revealed and unencumbered by a single ornament. Her moccasins were of dressed deer-skin, fringed and wrought with tiny beads, interwoven with a vine of silk buds and leaves done in such needlework as was, in those days, only taught to the most refined and highly educated class of whites. Mary had never seen anything so exquisitely beautiful in its workmanship 29as that embroidery, or so brightly picturesque as the whole appearance of the stranger.
 
For more than a minute the wild girl retained the position assumed by her last bounding step. There was something statue-like in the tension of those rounded and slender limbs as she stood on the shelf of rock, bending eagerly over the edge, with her weight thrown on one foot and the other strained back, as if preparing for a spring. All the grace, but not the chilliness, of marble lived in those boldly poised limbs, so full of warm, healthy life. There was spirit and fire in their very repose, for after an eager glance up and down the river she settled back, and with her arms folded remained for a moment in an attitude of dejection and disappointment.
 
A merry laugh which came ringing over the waters from the island drew her attention to the group of revellers glancing in and out of the shrubbery which surrounded Mother Derwent’s dwelling. Flinging back her hair with a gesture of fiery impatience, she sprang upward and dragged down the branch of a young tree, which she grasped for support while throwing herself still more boldly over the very edge of the cliff.
 
Mary almost screamed with affright. But there was something grand in the daring of the girl, which aroused her admiration even more than her fear. She knew that the breaking of that slender branch would precipitate her down a sheer descent into the river. But she felt as if the very sound of a human voice would startle her into eternity.
 
Motionless with dread, she fixed her eyes, like a fascinated bird, on the strange being thus hovering over death, so fearless and so beautiful. All at once those bright, dark eyes kindled, one arm was flung eagerly outward—her red lips parted and a gush of music, like the song of a mocking-bird, but louder and richer, burst from them.
 
30Mary started forward in amazement. Before she could lift her eyes to the cliff again, a low, shrill whistle came sharply up from the direction of the island. She caught one glance of those kindling cheeks and flashing eyes as the strange, wild girl leaped back from the cliff—a gleam of sunlight on her long hair as she darted into a thicket of wild cherry trees—and there was no sign of her remaining, save a rushing sound of the young trees, as the bent limb swayed back to its fellows. Again the notes, as of a wild, eager bird, arose from a hollow bank on the side of the mountain; and, after a moment, that shrill whistle was repeated from the water, and Mary distinctly heard the dipping of an oar.
 
She crept to the edge of the rock which had formed her concealment and looked down upon the river. A canoe rowed by a single oarsman was making its way swiftly to the island. She could not distinguish the face of the occupant; but there was a band of red paint around the edge of the canoe, and she remembered that Edward Clark’s alone was so ornamented. It was the same that had brought her from the island. Did the signal come from him—from Edward Clark? What had he in common with the wild, strange girl who had broken upon her solitude? A thrill of pain, such as she had never dreamed of before, shot through her heart as she asked these questions. She would have watched the landing of the canoe, but all strength suddenly left her, and she sunk upon a fragment of stone, almost powerless and in extreme suffering.
 
In a little more than an hour she saw the same solitary rower crossing the river, but with more deliberate motion. She watched him while he moored the canoe in the little cove, and caught another glimpse of him as he turned a corner of her dwelling and mingled with the group of young persons who were drinking tea on the green sward in front.
 
It was a weary hour to the deformed girl before the 31party broke up and were transported to the opposite shore, where farm-wagons stood ready to convey them to Wilkesbarre. The sun was almost down, and the island quiet again when she saw two persons coming from the house to the cove. She arose, and folding her shawl about her prepared to descend to the shore.
 
Mary had walked half-way down the ledge when she stopped abruptly in the path; for sitting on the moss beneath one of these pines was the strange girl who had so excited her wonder. Mary’s slow step had not disturbed her, and unconscious of a witness she was unbraiding the string of berries from her hair and supplying their place with a rope of twisted coral. The strings of scarlet ribbon with which she knotted it on her temple were bright, and had evidently never been tied before.
 
Mary’s heart beat painfully and she hurried forward, as if some fierce animal had sprung up in her path. An uncontrollable repulsion to that wild and beautiful girl, which she neither understood nor tried to account for, seized her. When she reached the shore the canoe with Edward Clark and her sister seated in it was making leisurely towards the mouth of the ravine, and she sat down on the shadowy side of an oak, to await their coming. Their approach was so noiseless that she did not know they had reached the shore till the voice of Edward Clark apprised her of it. He was speaking earnestly to her sister, and there was both agitation and deep tenderness in his voice—a breaking forth of the heart’s best feelings, which she had never witnessed in him before.
 
“No, Jane,” he said, in a resolute voice, shaken with a sorrowful tremor; “you must now choose between that man and me; there can be nothing of rivalry between us; I heartily despise him! I am not jealous—I could not be a creature so unworthy; but it grieves me to feel that you can place him for a moment on a level with 32yourself. If you persist in this degrading coquetry you are unworthy of the love which I have given you. Forgive me, Jane, if I speak harshly; don’t cry—it grieves me to wound your feelings, but——”
 
He was interrupted by a sound as of some one falling heavily to the ground. He leaped from the canoe, and there, behind the great oak, lay Mary Derwent helpless and insensible.
 
“She has wandered too far, and exhausted herself,” said the agitated young man as he bore her to the canoe. “Sit down, Jane, and take her head in your lap—your grandmother will know what to do for her.”
 
Jane reached forth her arms and received the insensible head on her bosom. She turned her face petulantly away from that of her lover, and repulsed him with sullen discontent when, in his attempts to restore Mary, his hand happened to touch hers.
 
“Set her down,” she said, pushing him indignantly away. “Attend to your oars; we neither want your help or your ill-natured grumblings. I tell you, Ned Clark, you are just the Grossest creature I ever saw. Take that for your pains!”
 
Clark did not answer this insolent speech, but gravely took up the oars and pushed off.
 
They were half-way across the river when Mary began to recover animation. Edward laid down his oar, and taking her hand in his was about to speak, but she drew it away with a faint shudder, and burying her face in her sister’s bosom remained still and silent as before.
CHAPTER V THE TEMPTER AND THE TEMPEST

Tahmeroo, the Indian girl, was sitting under the pine as Mary Derwent had left her. With the coral but half twisted in her hair, she had paused in her graceful task, and sinking gently back to the bank of moss which formed her seat reclined on one elbow, with her long tresses unbraided and floating in wavy masses over her person. She was yielding to the repose of a soft and dreamy reverie—new and very sweet to her wild, young heart—when the sound of voices and the dash of an oar aroused her. She started to her feet and listened. The fire flashed back to those large dark eyes but late so pleasant and soft in their expression, and a rich crimson rushed to her cheek. The voices ceased for a moment; then were renewed, and the rapid beat of the paddle became still more audible.
 
Tahmeroo sprang forward and ran up to a point of the hill which commanded a view of the river. The little canoe, with its band of red paint, was making from the shore, and in it sat Jane Derwent, with the head of the deformed girl resting in her lap. The back of the oarsman was towards the shore; his head was bent, and the eyes, the beautiful eyes of Jane Derwent were fixed on him with an expression which Tahmeroo’s heart, unlearned as it was, taught her to understand. A storm of surprise, anger and fear rushed through the heart of the young Indian. The oarsman turned his head, and the face was revealed. Then a smile, vivid and bright as a burst of sunshine after a tempest, broke over her features.
 
34Tahmeroo breathed deeply and turned away. It seemed as if an arrow had been withdrawn from her heart by the sight of that face. She hurried down the hill towards a clump of black alders that overhung the river’s brink and unmoored a light canoe hitherto concealed beneath the dark foliage. Placing herself in the bottom, she gave two or three vigorous strokes with the paddle, and shot like a bird up the stream.
 
As Tahmeroo proceeded up the river the scenery, till then half-pastoral, half-sublime, became more savage and gloomy in its aspect. Huge rocks shot up against the sky in picturesque grandeur; the foliage which clothed them grew dusky in the waning light and fell back to the ravines in dark, heavy shadows. A gloom hung about the towering precipices, and the thick masses of vegetation, like funeral drapery, swathing the pillars and wild arches of a monastic ruin. It was the darkness of a gathering tempest. There was something sublime and almost awful in the gradual and silent mustering of the elements.
 
Tahmeroo rested for a moment as she entered the rocky jaws of the mountain, and as her frail bark rocked to the current of wind which swept down the gorge she looked around with a feeling of hushed terror. A mountain, cleft in twain to the foundation, towered to the sky on either hand—bold, bleak and sombre. Through the rent, down hundreds of feet from the summit, crept the deep river stealthily and slow, like a huge serpent winding himself around the bulwark of a stronghold. The darkness of the forests was so dense, and the clouds so heavy, that there was nothing to distinguish the outline of the murky waters from the majestic ramparts through which they glided. All was wild, solemn and gloomy.
 
As the Indian girl looked upward the clouds swept back for a moment and the last rays of sunset fell with a glaring light on the bold summit of the mountain, 35rendering by contrast the depths of the chasm more dreary in its intense shadow.
 
The threatened storm had seemingly passed over, and a few stars trembled in the depths of the sky when she moored her canoe in a little inlet, washed up into the mouth of a narrow ravine which opened on the river’s brink.
 
Tahmeroo tore away the dry brambles and brushwood which clothed the entrance of the defile, and made her way through a scarcely defined footpath up the hillside. Through this ravine rushed a mountain torrent, known to the Indians as the Falling Spring, which filled the whole forest with its silvery tumult.
 
Tahmeroo kept close to the banks of this torrent, helping herself forward by the brushwood and trailing vines that grew thickly on its margin. Nothing less surefooted than an antelope could have forced a passage through the broken rocks and steep precipices which guarded the passage of this stream up to its source in Campbell’s Ledge. A little way from the river it came, with a single leap, through a chasm in the rocks, and lost itself in a storm of white spray among the mossy boulders which choked up the ravine.
 
The storm had mustered again so blackly that Tahmeroo could scarcely see her course, but lost herself among the rocks and young pines below the fall. Still she climbed upward, leaping from rock to rock, till the sheer precipices that walled in the cataract on either side obstructed her passage, and she stood poised half-way up, uncertain which way to turn or how to move.
 
A flash of lightning revealed her position, kindled up the young trees to a lurid green; gave the slippery brown precipices to view, and shot in and out of the foaming torrent as it leaped by like flashes of fire, tearing a snowdrift into flakes again and scattering it to the wind.
 
The lightning revealed her peril and her path. She 36sprang back from the precipice, from which the next leap would have precipitated her downward with the cataract into the depths of the ravine, and tore her way into the bosom of the hills, keeping Campbell’s Ledge on the right.
 
A less vigorous form would have fainted beneath the toil of that mountain-pass; but the young Indian scarcely thought of fatigue; for a dull, moaning sound came up from the depths of the forest, like the hollow beat of a far-off ocean; the pent-up thunder muttered and rumbled among the black clouds, floating like funeral banners above her, every other instant pierced and torn with arrowy lightning. These signs of the storm gathering so fearfully about the mountains terrified and bewildered the Indian girl. Though a wild rover of the forest, she had been gently nurtured, and for the first time in her life was alone among the hills after nightfall.
 
At length she stood on a high ledge of rocks, panting and in despair; she had lost the path that led to the Indian encampment, and found herself on the sweep of a mighty precipice, far above the valley. After one wild, hopeless look upon the sky, she sunk to the ground and, burying her face in her hands, muttered, in a trembling and husky voice:
 
“Tahmeroo has been wicked. She has acted a lie. The Great Spirit is very angry. Why should she strive to shut out his voice? Tahmeroo can die.”
 
While she spoke there was a hush in the elements and the sound of many hoarse, guttural voices arose from the foot of the ledge. The terrified Indian lifted her head, and a wild, doubtful joy gleamed over her face as the lightning revealed it, with the damp, unbraided hair floating back from the pallid temples, the lips parted, and the eyes charged with terror, doubt and eager joy. She listened intently for a moment, then sunk cautiously to the ground as one who fears to break a pleasant delusion, and crept to the edge of the rock.
 
 
 
A dozen watch-fires flashed up in a semicircle, flinging a broad light over the whole enclosure and gleaming redly on the waving vines, the weeping birches, and the budding hemlocks that intermingled along its broken ramparts. A hundred swarthy forms, half-naked and hideously painted, were moving about, and others lay crouching in the grass, apparently terrified by the tempest gathering so blackly above them.
 
The untrodden grass and fresh herbage told that this hollow had recently been made a place of encampment; yet, in the enclosure was one lodge, small and but rudely constructed—a sylvan hut, more picturesque than any cabin to be found in the settlements. How recently it had been constructed might be guessed by the green branches yet fresh on the half-hewn logs. A score of savage hands had been at work upon it the whole day, for the Chief of the Shawnees never rested in the open air with the lower members of his tribe when his fierce mother, his haughty wife, or beautiful daughter was of his hunting party.
 
Tahmeroo had wandered upward from the path which led to the encampment. She had madly clambered to the highest chain of rocks which surrounded the enclosure, when she should have made her way around its base to the opening which gave egress to the forest. She arose from the edge of the rock, where she had been lying, high above the encampment, and was about to descend to the path she had missed, when a sound like the roar and tramp of a great army came surging up from the forest. The tall trees swayed earthward, flinging their branches and green leaves to the whirlwind as it swept by. Heavy limbs were twisted off, and mighty trunks, splintered midway, mingled the sharp crash of their fall with the hoarse roar of the tempest. The 38thunder boomed among the rocks, peal after peal, and the quick lightning darted through the heaving trees like fiery serpents wrangling with the torn foliage.
 
The very mountain seemed to tremble beneath the maiden’s feet. She threw herself upon the ledge, and with her face buried in its moss lay motionless, but quaking at heart, as the whirlwind rushed over her.
 
A still more fearful burst of the elements struck upon the heights, lifted a stout oak from its anchorage and hurled it to the earth. The splintered trunk fell with a crash, and the topmost boughs bent down the young saplings with a rushing sweep and fell like the wings of a great bird of prey, above the prostrate Indian. She sprang upward with a cry, and seizing the stem of a vine swung herself madly over the precipice. Fortunately the descent was rugged, and many a jutting angle afforded a foothold to the daring girl as she let herself fearlessly down—now clinging among the leaves of the vine—now grasping the sharp point of a rock, and dropping from one cleft to another. Twice she forced herself back, as if she would have sunk into the very rock, and dragged the heavy vines over her, when a fresh thunder-burst rolled by, or a flash of lightning blazed among the leaves; but when they had passed she again swung herself downward, and finally dropped unharmed upon the grass back of her father’s lodge.
 
The enclosure was now perfectly dark; for the rain had extinguished the watch-fires and the lightning but occasionally revealed a group of dark forms cowering together, awed by the violence of the tempest, and rendered abject by superstitious dread.
 
A twinkling light broke through the crevices of the lodge; but Tahmeroo lingered in the rain, for now that the fierceness of the storm was over she began to have a new fear—the dread of her mother’s stern presence. Cautiously, and with timid footsteps, she advanced to the entrance and lifted the huge bear-skin that covered 39it. She breathed freely; for there was no one present save her father, the great Chief of the Shawnees. He was sitting on the ground, with his arms folded on his knees, and his swarthy forehead buried in his robe of skins. The heart of the Indian King was sorely troubled, for he knew that the wing of the Great Spirit was unfolded in its wrath above his people.
 
Tahmeroo crept to the extremity of the lodge and sat down in silence upon the ground. She saw that preparations had been made for her comfort. A pile of fresh berries and a cake of cornbread lay on a stool nearby, and a couch of boughs woven rudely together stood in the corner heaped with the richest furs and overspread with a covering of martin-skins lined and bordered with fine scarlet cloth. A chain of gorgeous beadwork linked the deep scallops on the border, and heavy tassels fell upon the grass from the four corners. The savage magnificence of that couch was well worthy the daughter of a great chief.
 
Another couch, but of less costly furs, and without ornament, stood at the opposite extremity. Tahmeroo threw one timid look towards it, then bent her head, satisfied that it was untenanted, and that her mother was indeed absent. As if suddenly recollecting herself, she half-started from the ground and disentangled the string of coral from her damp hair. With her eyes fixed apprehensively on the chief, she thrust it under the fur pillows of her couch, and stole back to her former position.
 
Tahmeroo had scarcely seated herself when the bear-skin was flung back from the entrance of the lodge and Catharine, the wife of the Shawnee chief, presented herself in the opening. The light from a heap of pine knots fell on the woman’s face as she entered; but it failed to reveal the maiden where she sat in the shadowy side of the lodge.
 
The chief lifted his head and uttered a few words in 40the Indian tongue, but received no answer; while his wife gave one quick look around the lodge, then sallied back, clasped her hands tightly and groaned aloud.
 
Tahmeroo scarcely breathed, for never had she seen her mother so agitated. It was, indeed, a strange sight—those small, finely cut features usually so stern and cold, working with emotion—the pallid cheek, the high forehead, swollen and knitted at the brows—the trembling mouth—the eyes heavy with anguish. This was a sight which Tahmeroo had never witnessed before. And this was the stern, haughty woman—the white Indian—who ruled the Shawnee braves with despotic rigor—whose revenge was deadly, and whose hate was a terror. This was Catharine Montour!
 
When Tahmeroo heard her name mingled with the lamentations of her mother, she started forward, exclaiming, with tremulous and broken earnestness: “Mother, oh! mother, I am here!”
 
A burst of fierce thanksgiving broke from the lips of Catharine. She caught her daughter to her heart and kissed her wildly again and again.
 
“Thank God, oh! thank my God! I am not quite alone!” she exclaimed; and tears started in the eyes that had not known them for twenty summers.
 
Without a word of question as to her strange absence, Catharine drew her child to the couch, and seeing the bread and the berries yet untasted she forced her to eat while she wrung the moisture from her hair and took away the damp robe. She smoothed the cushions of crimson cloth that served as pillows, and drawing the coverlet of martin-skins over the form of her child sat beside her till she dropped to a gentle slumber. Then she heaped fresh knots on the burning pine and changed her own saturated raiment.
 
The sombre chief threw himself upon the unoccupied heap of furs, and Catharine was left alone with her thoughts. Long and sad were the vigils of that stern 41watcher; yet they had a good influence on her heart. There was tenderness and regret—nay, almost repentance—in her bosom as she gazed on the slumbers of her child—the only being on earth whom she dared to love. More than once she pressed her lips fondly to the forehead of the sleeper, as if to assure herself of her dear presence after the frightful dangers of the storm. She remained till after midnight, pondering upon past events with the clinging tenacity of one who seldom allowed herself to dwell on aught that could soften a shade of her haughty character; at length she was about to throw herself by the side of her daughter, more from the workings of unquiet thoughts than from a desire for rest. But the attempt disturbed the slumbering girl. She turned restlessly on her couch, and oppressed by its warmth pushed away the covering.
 
Catharine observed that the cheek which lay against the scarlet cloth was flushed and heated. She attempted to draw the pillow away, when her fingers became entangled in the string of coral concealed beneath it. Had a serpent coiled around her hand it could not have produced a more startling effect. She shook it off, and drew hastily back, as if something loathsome had clung to her. Then she snatched up the ornament, went to the pile of smouldering embers, stirred them to a flame and examined it minutely by the light. Her face settled to its habitual expression of iron resolution as she arose from her stooping posture. Her lips were firmly closed, and her forehead became calm and cold; yet there was more of doubt and sorrow than of anger in her forced composure.
 
She returned to the couch and placed herself beside it, with the coral still clenched in her hand. Her face continued passionless, but her eyes grew dim as she gazed on the sleeper; thoughts of her own youth lay heavily upon her heart.
 
Tahmeroo again turned restlessly on her pillow, her 42flushed cheeks dimpled with a smile, and she murmured softly in her sleep. Catharine laid her hand on the round arm, flung out upon the martin-skins, and bent her ear close to the red and smiling lips, thus betraying with their gentle whisperings the thoughts that haunted the bosom of the sleeper.
 
Tahmeroo dreamed aloud. A name was whispered in her soft, broken English, coupled with words of endearment and gentle chiding. The name was spoken imperfectly, and Catharine bent her ear still lower, as if in doubt that she had heard aright. Again that name was pronounced, and now there was no doubt; the enunciation was low, but perfectly distinct. The mother started upright; her face was ashy pale, and she looked strangely corpse-like in the dusky light. She snatched a knife from its sheath in her girdle, and bent a fierce glance on the sleeper. A moment the blade quivered above the heart of her only child, then the wretched woman flung it from her with a gesture of self-abhorrence, and sinking to the ground buried her face in both hands. After one fierce shudder she remained motionless as a statue.
 
It was more than an hour before that stern face was lifted again; shade after shade of deep and harrowing agony had swept over it while buried in the folded arms, and now it was very pale, but with a gentler expression upon it. She laid a hand on the rounded shoulder, from which the covering had been flung, passed the other quickly over her eyes and awoke the sleeper.
 
“Tahmeroo,” she said, but her voice was low and husky, and it died away in her throat.
 
The maiden started to her elbow and looked wildly about. When she saw her mother with the string of red coral in her hand she sunk back and buried her face in the pillow.
 
“Tahmeroo, look up!” said the mother, in a soft, 43low voice, from which all traces of emotion had flown. “Has Tahmeroo dreams which she does not tell her mother? The white man’s gift is under her pillow—whence came it?”
 
A blush spread over the face, neck and bosom of the young girl, and she shrunk from the steady gaze of her mother. She was sensible of no wrong, save that of concealment; yet her confusion was painful as guilt. Catharine had compassion on her embarrassment, and turned away her eyes.
 
“Tahmeroo,” she said, in a voice still more gentle and winning, “tell me all—am I not your mother? Do I not love you?”
 
The young Indian girl rose and looked timidly towards the couch of the Shawnee Chief.
 
“Does my father sleep?” and her eyes again fell beneath the powerful glance which she felt to be fixed upon her.
 
“Yes, he sleeps; speak in English, and have no fear.”
 
Catharine went to the heap of blazing pine and flung ashes on it; then returned to her daughter, folded her to her bosom, and for half an hour the low voice of Tahmeroo alone broke the stillness of the lodge.
 
Scarcely had Catharine interrupted the confession of her child with a word of question. She must have been powerless from emotion, for more than once her breath came quick and gaspingly; and the heavy throbbing of her heart was almost audible at every pause in that broken narrative. Yet her voice was strangely cold and calm when she spoke.
 
“And you saw him again this day?”
 
“Yes, mother.”
 
“Did he tell you to keep these meetings from my knowledge?”
 
“He said the Great Spirit would visit me with his thunder if I but whispered it to the wind.”
 
44“The name—tell me the name once more; but low, I would not hear it aloud. Whisper it in my ear—yet the hiss of a serpent were sweeter,” she muttered.
 
Tahmeroo raised her lips to her mother’s ear and whispered, as she was commanded. She felt a slight shudder creep over the frame against which she leaned, and all was still again.
 
“You first saw this—this man when we were at the encampment on the banks of Seneca Lake three moons since, and I was absent on a mission to Sir William Johnson: did I hear aright in this?” questioned the mother, after a few minutes of silence.
 
“It was there I first saw him, mother.”
 
“Listen to me, Tahmeroo: were I to command you never again to see this man, could you obey me?”
 
The young Indian started from her mother’s arms, and the fire of her dark eyes flashed even in the half-smothered light.
 
“Never see him? What, tear away all this light from my own heart? Obey? No, mother, no. Put me out from my father’s lodge—make me a squaw of burden, the lowest woman of our tribe—give me to the tomahawk, to the hot fire—but ask me not to rend the life from my bosom. The white blood which my heart drank from yours must curdle that of the Indian when his child gives or takes love at the bidding of anything but her own will! No, mother, I could not obey—I would not.”
 
Catharine Montour was struck dumb with astonishment. Was she, the despotic ruler of a fierce war-tribe, to be braved by her own child? The creature she had loved and cherished with an affection so deep and passionate—had she turned rebellious to her power? Her haughty spirit aroused itself; the gladiator broke from her eyes as they were bent on the palpitating and half-recumbent form of Tahmeroo.
 
The girl did not shrink from the fierce gaze, but met 45it with a glance of resolute daring. The young eaglet had begun to plume its wing! There was something of wild dignity in her voice and gesture, which assorted well with the curbless strength of her mother’s spirit.
 
Catharine Montour had studied the human heart as a familiar book, and she knew that it would be in vain to contend with the spirit so suddenly aroused in the strength of its womanhood. She felt that her power over that heart must hereafter be one of love unmixed with fear—an imperfect and a divided power. The heart of the strong woman writhed under the conviction, but she stretched herself on the couch without a word of expostulation. Her own fiery spirit had sprung to rapid growth in the bosom of her child; passions akin to those buried in her experience had shot up, budded and blossomed, in a night time. The stern mother trembled when she thought of the fruit which, in her own life, had turned to ashes in the ripening.
 
When Tahmeroo awoke in the morning the lodge was empty. Her mother had left the encampment at early dawn.
CHAPTER VI THE MISSIONARY’S CABIN

The history of Wyoming is interwoven with that of the Indian missionary whose paternal care had so long protected the family on Monockonok Island. Like Zinzendorf, his life was one errand of mercy, alike to the heathen and the believer. For years he had served as a link of union between the savage life of the woods and the civilization of the plains.
 
While a comparatively young man, he had come among the Six Nations nameless and unarmed, with his life in his hand, ready to live or die at his post. His home was in the wilderness; sometimes he passed through the white settlements, preached in their schoolhouses and slept in their cabins; but it was always as a guest; his mission lay with the forest children, and in the wilds where they dwelt was his home.
 
Almost the entire portion of years which had elapsed since his encounter with Mary Derwent in the hills, he had spent among the savages that kept possession of broad hunting grounds beyond the Wind Gap. But a movement of the tribes toward Wyoming, where a detachment of their own people from about Seneca Lake had been appointed to meet them in council, filled him with anxiety for his friends in the valley, and he came back also to watch over their safety. He knew what the settlers were ignorant of as yet—that the Shawnees were about to unite with the Tories, whose leader lay at Wintermoot Fort, and that great peril threatened the inhabitants of Wyoming in this union.
 
This man was alone in a log-cabin which Zinzendorf 47had once occupied on a curving bank of the Susquehanna, between Wilkesbarre and Monockonok Island. His face, always sad and merciful, now bore an anxious expression. The patient sweetness of his mouth was a little disturbed. He was pondering over the hostile attitude threatened by the Indians against the whites, and that subject could not be otherwise than a painful one.
 
The hut was small, and but for recent repairs would have been in ruins. It consisted only of one room. A deal-box stood in one corner, filled with books and rolls of manuscript. Two stools and a rude table, with a few cooking utensils, were the only remaining furniture. The missionary sat by the table, implements for writing were before him, and the pages of a worn Bible lay open, which, after a little while, he began to read.
 
It was a picture of holy thought and quiet study; but the crackling of branches and the sound of approaching footsteps interrupted its beautiful tranquillity.
 
The silvery flow of water from a spring close by was broken by the sound; the birds fluttered away from their green nestling places in the leaves, and a half-tamed fawn, which had been sleeping in a tuft of fern-leaves, started up, gazed a moment on the intruder with his dark, intelligent eye, and dashed up the river’s bank as she crossed the threshold of the lowly dwelling.
 
The missionary looked up as the stranger entered, and a feeling of astonishment mingled with the graciousness which long habit had made a portion of his nature. He arose, and with a slight inclination of the head placed the stool, on which he had been sitting, for her accommodation.
 
The intruder bent her head in acknowledgment of the courtesy, but remained standing. She was a woman majestic in her bearing, of well-developed form, and somewhat above the middle height; her air was courtly and graceful, but dashed with haughtiness approaching to arrogance. She had probably numbered forty years; 48her face, though slightly sunbrowned, bore traces of great beauty, in spite of its haughty expression. The mouth had been accustomed to smiles in its youth, and though an anxious frown clouded the broad forehead, it was still beautifully fair. The missionary had spent his life amid the aristocracy of European courts, and had passed from thence to the lowly settlement, and to the still more remote Indian encampment; but there was something in the appearance of this strange woman that filled him with vague uneasiness, and he looked upon her with a sort of terror. Her air and dress were not strictly those of any class with which he had as yet become familiar. There was wildness mingled with the majesty of her presence, and her rich and picturesque attire partook at once of the court and the wigwam.
 
Her long, golden, and still abundant hair was wreathed in braids around her head, and surmounted by a small coronet of gorgeous feathers. A serpent of fine, scaly gold, the neck and back striped and variegated with minute gems, was wreathed about the mass of braids on one side of her head, and formed a knot of slender coils where it clasped the coronet. There was something startlingly like vitality in these writhing folds when the light struck them, and the jewelled head shot out from the feathers and quivered over the pale temple with startling abruptness. There was an asp-like glitter in the sharp, emerald eye, and the tiny jaw seemed full of subtle venom. It was a magnificent and rare ornament to be found in the solitude of an American forest; yet scarcely less remarkable than the remainder of the strange woman’s apparel.
 
A robe of scarlet cloth, bordered with the blackest lynx fur, was girded at the waist by a cord of twisted silk, and fell back at the shoulders in lapels of rich black velvet. Above the fur border ran a wreath of embroidery, partly silk, partly wampum, but most exquisitely wrought in garlands of mountain flowers, with 49tiny golden serpents knotting them together and creeping downward, as it were, to hide themselves in the fur. It had loose, hanging sleeves, likewise lined with velvet, beneath which the white and still rounded arm gleamed out in strong contrast.
 
A serpent, mate to the one on her head, but glowing with still more costly jewels, coiled around the graceful swell of her right arm, a little below the elbow, but its brilliancy was concealed by the drapery of the sleeve, except when the arm was in motion. She wore elaborately wrought moccasins lined with crimson cloth, but the embroidery was soiled with dew, and the silken thongs with which they had been laced to the ankle had broken loose in the rough path through which she had evidently travelled.
 
The missionary stood by the table, while his visitor cast a hasty glance around the apartment and turned her eyes keenly on his face.
 
“I am not mistaken,” she said, slowly withdrawing her gaze. “You are the godly man of whom our people speak—the Indian missionary?”
 
The man of God bent his head in reply.
 
“You should be, and I suppose are, an ordained minister of the church?” she resumed.
 
“I am, madam.”
 
His voice was deep-toned and peculiarly sweet. The woman started as it met her ear; a gleam of unwonted expression shot over her features, and she fixed another penetrating glance on his face, as if some long-buried recollection had been aroused; then, satisfied with the scrutiny, she turned her eyes away, and drawing a deep breath spoke again.
 
“I ask no more than this; of what church matters little. But have you authority to perform marriages after the established law?”
 
“I have; but my services are seldom required. I mingle but little with the whites of the settlement, and 50Indians have their peculiar forms, which, to them, are alone binding,”
 
“True,” replied the woman, with a slight wave of the hand; “these forms shall not be wanting; all the bonds of a Christian church and savage custom will scarcely yield me security.”
 
She spoke as if unconscious of a second presence, and again abruptly addressed the missionary.
 
“Your services are needed in the Shawnee encampment a few miles back in the mountains. A guide shall be sent for you at the appointed time. Stay in this place during the next twenty-four hours, when you will be summoned.”
 
The missionary, though a humble man, was by no means wanting in the dignity of a Christian gentleman. He was displeased with the arrogant and commanding tone assumed by his singular visitor, and threw a slight degree of reproof into his manner when he answered.
 
“Lady, if the welfare of a human being—if the safety of an immortal soul can be secured by my presence, I will not hesitate to trust myself among your people, though they come here on an errand I can never approve; but for a less important matter I cannot promise to wait your pleasure.”
 
“Rash man! do you know who it is you are braving?” said the woman, fixing her eyes sternly on his face. “If your life is utterly valueless, delay but a moment in following the guide which I shall send, and you shall have the martyrdom you seem to brave! Catharine Montour’s will has never yet been disputed within twenty miles of her husband’s tent without frightful retribution.”
 
The missionary started at the mention of that name, but he speedily regained his composure, and answered her calmly and with firmness.
 
“Threats are powerless with me, lady. The man who places himself unarmed and defenceless in the midst of 51a horde of savages can scarcely be supposed to act against his conscience from the threat of a woman, however stern may be her heart, and however fearful her power. Tell me what the service is which I am required to perform, and then you shall have my answer.”
 
The haughty woman moved towards the door with an angry gesture, but returned again, and with more courtesy in her manner seated herself on the stool which had been placed for her.
 
“It is but just,” she said, “that you should know the service which you are required to perform. There is in the camp now lying beneath Campbell’s Ledge a maiden of mixed blood, my child—my only child; from the day that she first opened her eyes to mine in the solemn wilderness, with nothing but savage faces around me, with no heart to sympathize with mine, that child became a part of my own life. For years I had loved nothing; but the tenderness almost dead in my heart broke forth when she was born, the sweet feelings of humanity came back, and the infant became to me an idol. In the wide world I had but one object to love, and for the first time in a weary life affection brought happiness to me. You may be a father; think of the child who has lain in your bosom year after year, pure and gentle as a spring blossom, who has wound herself around your heart-strings—think of her, when dearest and loveliest, stolen from your bosom, and her innocent thoughts usurped by another.”
 
“Forbear—in mercy forbear!” said the missionary, in a voice of agony that for an instant silenced the woman.
 
Catharine looked up and saw that his eyes were full of tears; her own face was fearfully agitated, and she went on with a degree of energy but little in keeping with the pathos of her last broken speech.
 
“A white, one of my own race, came to the forest stealthily, like a thief, and with our Indian forms, which 52he taught her to believe were a bond of marriage among his people, also lured the heart of my child from her mother. Now, I beseech you, for I see that you are kind and feeling—I was wrong to command—come to the camp at nine to-night, for then and there shall my child be lawfully wedded.”
 
“I will be there at the hour,” replied the missionary, in a voice of deep sympathy. “Heaven forbid that I should refuse to aid in righting the wronged, even at the peril of life.”
 
“My own head shall not be more sacred in the Shawnee camp than yours,” said Catharine, with energy.
 
“I do not doubt it; and were it otherwise I should not shrink from a duty. I owe an atonement for the evil opinion I had of you. A heart which feels dishonor so keenly cannot delight in carnage and blood.”
 
“Can they repeat these things of me?” inquired Catharine, with a painful smile; “they do me deep wrong. Fear not; I appear before you with clean hands. If the heart is less pure it has sufficiently avenged itself; if it has wronged others, they have retribution; has not the love of my child gone forth to another? Am I not alone?”
 
“Lady,” said the missionary, with deep commiseration in his look and voice, for he was moved by her energetic grief, “this is not the language of a savage. Your speech is refined, your manner noble. Lady, what are you?”
 
There are seasons when the heart will claim sympathy, spite of all control which a will of iron may place upon it. This power was upon the heart of Catharine Montour.
 
“Yes, I will speak,” she muttered, raising her hand and pressing it heavily to her eyes. The motion flung back the drapery of the sleeve, and the light flashed full on the jewelled serpent coiled around her arm. The missionary’s eyes fell upon it, and he sallied back 53against the logs of the hut, with a death-like agony in his face.
 
Catharine Montour was too deeply engrossed by her own feelings to observe the strange agitation which had so suddenly come upon the missionary. She seated herself on the stool, and with her face buried in her robe remained minute after minute in deep silence, gathering strength to unlock the tumultuous secrets of her heart once more to a mortal’s knowledge.
 
When she raised her face there was nothing in the appearance of her auditor to excite attention. He still leaned against the rude wall, a little paler than before, but otherwise betraying no emotion, save that which a good man might be supposed to feel in the presence of a sinful and highly gifted fellow-creature.
 
She caught his pitying and mournful look fixed so earnestly upon her face as she raised it from the folds of her robe, and her eyes wavered and sunk beneath its sorrowful intensity. There was a yearning sympathy in his glance, which fell upon her heart like sunshine on the icy fetters of a rivulet; it awed her proud spirit, and yet encouraged confidence; but it was not till after his mild voice had repeated the question—“Lady, confide in me; who and what are you?”—that she spoke.
 
When she did find voice it was sharp, and thrilled painfully on the ear of the listener. The question aroused a thousand recollections that had long slumbered in the life of this wretched woman. She writhed under it, as if a knot of scorpions had suddenly begun to uncoil in her heart.
 
“What am I? It is a useless question. Who on earth can tell what he is, or what a moment shall make him? I am that which fate has ordained for me: Catharine Montour, the wife of Gi-en-gwa-tah, a great chief among his people. If at any time I have known another character, it matters little. Why should you 54arouse remembrances which may not be forced back to their lethargy again? I ask no sympathy, nor seek counsel; let me depart in peace.”
 
With a sorrowful and deliberate motion she arose and would have left the cabin, but the missionary laid his hand gently on her arm and drew her back.
 
“We cannot part thus,” he said. “The sinful have need of counsel, the sorrowing of sympathy. The heart which has been long astray requires an intercessor with the Most High.”
 
“And does the God whom you serve suffer any human heart to become so depraved that it may not approach his footstool in its own behalf? Is the immaculate purity of Jehovah endangered by the petition of the sinful or the penitent that you offer to mediate between me and my Creator? No! if I have sinned, the penalty has been dearly paid. If I have sorrowed, the tears shed in solitude have fallen back on my own heart and frozen there! I ask not intercession with the being you worship; and I myself lack the faith which might avail me, were I weak enough to repine over the irredeemable past. I have no hope, no God—wherefore should I pray?”
 
“This hardiness and impiety is unreal. There is a God, and despite of your haughty will and daring intellect you believe in him; aye, at this moment, when there is denial on your lips!”
 
“Believe—aye, as the devils, perchance; but I do not tremble!” replied the daring woman, with an air and voice of defiance.
 
The missionary fixed his eyes with stern and reproving steadiness on the impious woman. She did not shrink from his glance, but stood up, her eyes braving his with a forced determination, her brow locked in defiance beneath its gorgeous coronet, and a smile of scornful bitterness writhing her mouth. Her arms were folded over her bosom, flushed by the reflection 55of her robe, and the jewelled serpent glittered just over her heart, as if to guard it from all good influences. She seemed like a beautiful and rebellious spirit thrust out forever from the sanctuary of heaven.
 
A man less deeply read in the human heart, or less persevering in his Christian charities, would have turned away and left her, as one utterly irreclaimable, but the missionary was both too wise and too good thus to relinquish the influence he had gained. There was something artificial in the daring front and reckless impiety of the being before him, which betrayed a strange, but not uncommon, desire to be supposed worse than she really was.
 
With the ready tact of a man who has made character a study, he saw that words of reproof or authority were unlikely to soften a heart so stern in its mental pride, and his own kind feelings taught him the method of reaching hers. This keen desire to learn something of her secret history would have been surprising in a man of less comprehensive benevolence, and even in him there was a restless anxiety of manner but little in accordance with his usual quiet demeanor. His voice was like the breaking up of a fountain when he spoke again.
 
“Catharine,” he said.
 
She started at the name—her arms dropped—she looked wildly in his eyes:
 
“Oh! I mentioned the name,” she muttered, refolding her arms and drawing a deep breath.
 
“Catharine Montour, this hardihood is unreal; you are not thus unbelieving. Has the sweet trustfulness of your childhood departed forever? Have you no thought of those hours when the young heart is made up of faith and dependence—when prayer and helpless love break out from the soul, naturally as moisture exhales when the sun touches it? Nay,” he continued, with more powerful earnestness, as he saw her eyes 56waver and grow dim beneath the influence of his voice, “resist not the good spirit, which even now is hovering about your heart, as the ring-dove broods over its desolated nest. Hoarded thoughts of evil beget evil. Open your heart to confidence and counsel. Confide in one who never yet betrayed trust—one who is no stranger to sorrow, and who is too frail himself to lack charity for the sins of others. I beseech you to tell me, are you not of English birth?”
 
Tears, large and mournful tears, stood in Catharine Montour’s eyes. She was once more subdued and humble as an infant. A golden chord had been touched in her memory, and every heart-string vibrated to the music of other years. She sat down and opened her history to that strange man abruptly, and as one under the influence of a dream.
 
“Yes, I was born in England,” she said; “born in a place so beautiful that any human being might be happy from the mere influence of its verdant and tranquil quietness. No traveller ever passed through that village without stopping to admire its verdant and secluded tranquillity. Back from the church stood the parsonage, an irregular old building, surrounded by a grove of magnificent oaks, through which its pointed roof and tall chimneys alone could be seen from the village. A tribe of rooks dwelt in the oaks, and a whole bevy of wrens came and built their nests in the vines. With my earliest recollection comes the soft chirp of the nestlings under my window, and the carolling song which broke up from the larks when they left the long grass in the graveyard, where they nested during the summer nights.
 
“My father was rector of the parish, the younger son of a noble family. He had a small, independent fortune, which allowed him to distribute the income from his living among the poor of the village. My mother was a gentle creature, of refined and delicate, but not 57comprehensive, mind. She loved my father, and next to him, or rather as a portion of himself, me. As a child, I was passionate and wayward, but warm of heart, forgiving and generous. My spirit brooked no control; but my indulgent father and sweet mother could see nothing more dangerous than a quick intellect and over-abundant healthfulness in the capricious tyranny of my disposition. I was passionately fond of my mother, and when she sometimes stole to my bedside and hushed me to sleep with her soft kisses and pleasant voice I would promise in my innermost heart never to grieve her again; yet the next day I experienced a kind of pleasure in bringing the tears to her gentle eyes by some wayward expression of obstinacy or dislike.”
 
CHAPTER VII MY FATHER’S WARD

“When I was fifteen, an old college associate died and left my father guardian to his son and heir. This young gentleman’s arrival at the parsonage was an epoch in my life. A timid and feminine anxiety to please took possession of my heart. I gave up for his use my own little sitting-room, opening upon a wilderness of roses and tangled honeysuckles that had once been a garden, but which I had delighted to see run wild in unchecked luxuriance, till it had become as fragrant and rife with blossoms as an East India jungle.
 
“It was the first act of self-denial I had ever submitted to, and I found a pleasure in it which more than compensated for the pain I felt in removing my music and books, with the easel which I had taken such pains to place in its proper light, to a small chamber above.
 
“Heedless of my mother’s entreaty, that I would remain quiet and receive our guest in due form, I sprang out upon the balcony, and winding my arm around one of its pillars, pushed back the clustering passionflowers, and bent eagerly over, to obtain a perfect view of our visitor. He was a slight, aristocratic youth, with an air of thoughtful manliness beyond his years. He was speaking as he advanced up the serpentine walk which led to the balcony, and seemed to be making some observation on the wild beauty of the garden. There was something in the tones of his voice, a quiet dignity in his manner, that awed me. I shrunk back into the room, where my mother was sitting, and 59placed myself by her side. My cheek burned and my heart beat rapidly when he entered. But my confusion passed unnoticed, or, if remarked, was attributed to the bashfulness of extreme youth. Varnham was my senior by four years, and he evidently considered me as a child, for after a courteous bow on my introduction he turned to my mother and began to speak of the village and its remarkable quietude. I returned to my room that night out of humor with myself, and somewhat in awe of our guest.
 
“The history of the next two years would be one of the heart alone—a narrative of unfolding intellect and feeling. It was impossible that two persons, however dissimilar in taste and disposition, should be long domesticated in the same dwelling without gradually assimilating in some degree. Perhaps two beings more decidedly unlike never met than Varnham and myself, but after the first restraint which followed our introduction wore off he became to me a preceptor and most valuable friend.
 
“Two years brought Varnham to his majority. His fortune, though limited, was equal to his wants; he resolved to travel, and then take orders, for he had been intended for the church. It was a sorrowful day to us when he left the parsonage. The lonely feelings which followed his departure never gave place to cheerfulness again. In four weeks from that day my father was laid in the vault of his own loved church. My gentle mother neither wept nor moaned when she saw the beloved of her youth laid beside the gorgeous coffins of his lordly ancestors. But in three weeks after, I was alone in the wide world; for she was dead also.
 
“Two weary, sad nights I sat beside that beautiful corpse, still and tearless, in a waking dream. I remember that kind voices were around me, and that more than once pitying faces bent over me, and strove to persuade me away from my melancholy vigils. But 60I neither answered nor moved; they sighed as they spoke, and passed in and out, like the actors of a tragedy in which I had no part. I was stupefied by the first great trouble of my life!
 
“Then the passion of grief burst over me. I fell to the floor, and my very life seemed ebbing away in tears and lamentations. Hour after hour passed by, and I remained as I had fallen, in an agony of sorrow. I know not how it was, but towards morning I sunk into a heavy slumber.
 
“When I again returned to consciousness Varnham was sitting beside my bed; physicians and attendants were gliding softly about the room, and everything was hushed as death around me. I was very tired and weak; but I remembered that my mother was dead, and that I had fainted; I whispered a request to see her once more—she had been buried three weeks.
 
“Varnham had heard of my father’s death in Paris, and hastened home, to find me an orphan doubly bereaved, to become my nurse and my counsellor—my all. Most tenderly did he watch over me during my hours of convalescence. And I returned his love with a gratitude as fervent as ever warmed the heart of woman.
 
“I knew nothing of business, scarcely that money was necessary to secure the elegances I enjoyed. I had not even dreamed of a change of residence, and when information reached us that a rector had been appointed to supply my father’s place, and that Lord Granby, the elder brother of my lamented parent, had consented to receive me as an inmate of his own house I sunk beneath the blow as if a second and terrible misfortune had befallen me.
 
“The thought of being dragged from my home—from the sweet haunts which contained the precious remembrances of my parents—and conveyed to the 61cold, lordly halls of my aristocratic uncle nearly flung me back to a state of delirium.
 
“There was but one being on earth to whom I could turn for protection, and to him my heart appealed with the trust and tender confidence of a sister. I pleaded with him to intercede with my uncle, that I might be permitted still to reside at the parsonage—that I might not be taken from all my love could ever cling to. Varnham spoke kindly and gently to me; he explained the impropriety, if not the impossibility of Lord Granby’s granting my desire, and besought me to be resigned to a fate which many in my forlorn orphanage might justly covet. He spoke of the gaieties and distinction which my residence with Lord Granby would open to me, and used every argument to reconcile me to my destiny. But my heart clung tenaciously to its old idols, and refused to be comforted.
 
“It was deep in the morning—my uncle’s coroneted chariot was drawn up before my quiet home. The sun flashed brightly over the richly studded harness of four superb horses, which tossed their heads and pawed the earth impatient for the road. A footman in livery lounged upon the doorsteps, and the supercilious coachman stood beside his horses, dangling his silken reins, now and then casting an expectant look into the hall-door.
 
“It was natural that he should be impatient, for they had been kept waiting more than an hour. I thought that I had nerved myself to depart; but when I descended from my chamber, and saw that gorgeous carriage, with its silken cushions and gilded panels, ready to convey me to the hospitality of one who was almost a stranger, my heart died within me. I turned into the little room where I had spent that night of sorrow by my mother’s corpse; I flung myself on the sofa, and burying my face in the pillows sobbed aloud 62in the wretchedness of a heart about to be sundered from all it had ever loved. Varnham was standing over me, pale and agitated. He strove to comfort me—was prodigal in words of soothing and endearment, and at length of passionate supplication. I was led to the carriage his affianced wife.
 
“My year of mourning was indeed one of sorrow and loneliness of heart; I was a stranger in the home of my ancestors, and looked forward to the period of my marriage with an impatience that would have satisfied the most exacting love. It was a cheap mode of obliging the orphan niece, and Lord Granby presented the living which had been my father’s to Varnham, who had taken orders, and was ready to convey me back a bride to my old home.
 
“Had my relative lavished his whole fortune on me I should not have been more grateful! My capacities for enjoyment were chilled by the cold, formal dullness of his dwelling. I panted for the dear solitude of my old haunts, as the prisoned bird pines for his home in the green leaves. We were married before the altar where my father had prayed, and where I had received the sacrament of baptism. The register which recorded my birth bore witness to my union with Varnham, the only true friend my solitary destiny had left to me. We entered our old home, rich in gentle affections and holy memories. I was content with the pleasant vistas of life that opened to us.
 
“Our united fortunes were sufficient for our wants. We determined to live a life of seclusion, study, and well-performed duties, such as had made the happiness of my parents. Filled with these innocent hopes I took possession of my old home, a cheerful and contented wife. We saw but little company, but my household duties, my music, painting, and needlework gave me constant and cheerful occupation, and three years of almost thorough contentment passed by without 63bringing a wish beyond my own household. At this time a daughter was born to us, and in the fulness of my content I forgot to ask if there was a degree of happiness which I had never tasted.
 
“The fourth year after my marriage another coffin was placed in the family vault beside my parents—that of James, Earl of Granby. My cousin, Georgiana, scarcely outlived the period of her mourning; and, at the age of twenty-two, I, who had never dreamed of worldly aggrandizement, suddenly found myself a peeress in my own right, and possessor of one of the finest estates in England, for the Granby honors descended alike to male and female heirs, and I was the last of our race.
 
“At first I was bewildered by the suddenness of my exaltation; then, as if one burst of sunshine were only necessary to ripen the dormant ambition of my heart, a change came over my whole being. A new and brilliant career was opened to me; visions of power, greatness, and excitement floated through my imagination. The pleasant contentment of my life was broken up forever.
 
“Varnham took no share in my restless delight; his nature was quiet and contemplative—his taste refined and essentially domestic. What happiness could he look for in the brilliant destiny prepared for us? From that time there was a shadow as of evil foreboding in his eye, and his manner became constrained and regretful. Perhaps with his better knowledge of the world he trembled to find me so near that vortex of artificial life into which I was eager to plunge myself.
 
“He made no opposition to my hasty plans—nay, admitted the necessity of a change in our mode of living; but that anxious expression never for a moment left his eyes. He seemed rather a victim than a partaker in my promised greatness. From that time our pursuits took different directions. I had thoughts and 64feelings with which he had no sympathy. When an estrangement of the mind commences, that of the heart soon follows.
 
“Again that splendid carriage stood before our home, ready to convey us to the pillared halls of my inheritance. There were few, and those few transient, regrets in my heart when, with a haughty consciousness of power and station, I sunk to the cushioned seat, swept proudly around that old church, and away from the sweet leafy bower in which I had known so much happiness.
 
“Everything rich and beautiful had been lavished by my predecessor in the adornment of Ashton. Paintings of priceless worth lined its galleries, and sculptured marble started up at every turn to charm me with the pure and classic loveliness of statuary. Tables of rare mosaic—ancient tapestry and articles of virtu gathered from all quarters of the globe were collected there; my taste for the arts—my love of the beautiful—made it almost a paradise, and it was long before I wearied of the almost regal magnificence which surrounded me. But after a time these things became familiar; excitement gradually wore away, and my now reckless spirit panted for change—for deeper draughts from the sparkling cup which I had found so pleasant in tasting.
 
“As the season advanced I proposed going up to London; Varnham consented, but reluctantly; I saw this almost without notice; the time had passed when his wishes predominated over mine.
 
“I am certain that Varnham doubted my strength to resist the temptations of a season in town. It was a groundless fear; there was nothing in the heartless supercilious people of fashion whom I met to captivate a heart like mine. I was young, beautiful, new, and soon became the fashion—the envy of women, and the worshipped idol of men. I was not for a moment 65deluded by the homage lavished upon me. I received the worship, but in my heart despised the worshippers.
 
“Varnham did not entirely relinquish his rectorship, but gave its emoluments to the curate who performed the duties, reserving the house which we both loved, to ourselves. He went down to the old place occasionally, and though I never accompanied him, it was pleasant to know that the haunts of my early love were still kept sacred. When the season broke up I invited a party to Ashton, but Varnham persuaded me to spend the month which would intervene before its arrival, at the parsonage. I was weary with the rush and bustle of my town life, and willingly consented to his plan.
 
“Our house was shut up, the servants went down to Ashton, and Varnham, one friend and myself settled quietly in our own former home. The repose of that beautiful valley had something heavenly in it, after the turmoil of London. Old associations came up to soften the heart, and I was happier than I had been since coming in possession of my inheritance.
 
“The friend whom Varnham invited to share the quiet of the parsonage with us had made himself conspicuous as a young man of great talent in the lower house; yet I knew less of him than of almost any distinguished person in society. We had met often in the whirl of town life, but a few passing words and cold compliments alone marked our intercourse. There was something of reserve and stiffness in his manner, by no means flattering to my self-love, and I was rather prejudiced against him than otherwise from his extreme popularity.
 
“There was something in my nature which refused to glide tamely down the current of other peopled opinions, and the sudden rise of young Murray with his political party, the adulation lavished upon him by the lion-loving women of fashion only served to excite 66my contempt for them, and to make me withhold from him the high opinion justly earned by talents of no ordinary character.
 
“When he took his seat in our travelling carriage, it was with his usual cold and almost uncourteous manner; but by degrees all restraint wore off, his conversational powers were excited, and I found myself listening with a degree of admiration seldom aroused in my bosom to his brilliant offhand eloquence. Varnham seemed pleased that my former unreasonable prejudices were yielding to the charm of his friend’s genius—and our ride was one of the most agreeable of my then pleasant life.
 
“It was not till after we had been at the parsonage several days that the speeches which had so suddenly lifted our guest into notice came under my observation. I was astonished at their depth and soundness. There was depth and brilliancy, flashes of rich, strong poetry mingled with the argument—a vivid, quick eloquence in the style that stirred my heart like martial music. By degrees the great wealth of Murray’s intellect, the manly strength and tenderness of his nature, revealed themselves. His character was a grand one; I could look up to that man with my whole being, and grow prouder from the homage.
 
“A love of intellectual greatness, a worship of mind, had ever been a leading trait in my character. In that man I found more than mind. He was strong in principle, rich in feeling—deep, earnest feeling—which a great soul might battle against if duty commanded, and restrain, but never wholly conquer.
 
“We had mistaken each other, and there lay the danger. I had believed him cold and ambitious. He had looked upon Lady Granby as a frivolous, selfish woman, who would be forever quaffing the foam of life, but never reach the pure wine; one with whom it was hardly worth while to become acquainted.
 
67“A few days in the old parsonage house sufficed to enlighten us both. There I was natural, gentle, loving—glad to get among innocent things again. In those little rooms I forgot everything but the pleasure of being at home. Weeks passed before I knew why that home had been turned into a paradise to which all previous memories were as nothing.
 
“I think he recognized the evil that was creeping over us first, for he began to avoid me, and for a time, though in the same house, we scarcely spoke together. But he loved me, spite of his struggles, his sensitive honor, his iron resolves; he loved me, his friend’s wife, but he was strong and honorable. The mighty spirit which had taken possession of his heart unawares could not all at once be driven forth, but it had no power to overcome his integrity. He was too brave and loyal for domestic treason.
 
“This nobility of character was enough to chain my soul to his forever. I did not attempt to deceive myself; well I knew that the sweet but terrible power growing up in my life was a sin to be atoned for with years of suffering, for souls like ours must avenge themselves for the wrong feelings more certainly than ordinary natures find retribution for evil deeds.
 
“When the first knowledge came upon me that I loved my husband’s friend it overwhelmed me with consternation. The danger of a thing like this had never entered my thoughts—my heart had been asleep—its awaking frightened me. Mine was not a mad passion that defies human laws and moral ties, or that deceives itself with sophistry. Never for a moment did I attempt to justify or excuse it. I knew that such love would have changed my whole being to gentleness, holiness, humility, anything bright and good, had freedom made it innocent; but I never once thought of breaking the ties that bound me. If I was a slave, my own will had riveted the chains upon my wrist; I was not one 68to tear them off because the iron began to gall me.
 
“No, no; the love that I bore him was deep and fervent, but not weak. It might kill, but never degrade me. I believed it then; I am certain of it now. I have trampled on my heart. It has been crushed, broken, thrust aside—but the love of that man lives there yet. I struggled against it—tortured my heart into madness—fled with this clinging love into the depths of the wilderness—to the wilderness, but it lives here yet—it lives here yet.”
 
Catharine Montour pressed one hand upon her heart as she spoke; her face was pallid with an expression of unutterable pain. Her eyes seemed to plead with the missionary for pity.
 
He answered that appeal with looks of sorrowful compassion.
 
“There was confidence between us at last; each knew that the other suffered, and that the other loved.
 
“I have said that Murray was an honorable man, but his love was a tyrant, or it would never have been expressed. He was no tempter, nor was I one to be tempted. It was in his goodness that our strength lay, for we were strong, and in every act of our lives faithful to the duties that chained us.
 
“Murray seized upon this passion with his grasping intellect, and strove to force it into friendship, or into that deceptive, Platonic sentiment which is neither friendship nor love. My heart followed him—my mind kept pace with his—anything that did not separate us, and which was not degradation, I was strong enough to endure. We could not give up each other’s society; that we did not attempt, for both felt its impossibility.”
CHAPTER VIII STRUGGLES AND PENALTIES

“Varnham was absent when our confession was first looked, then breathed, and at last desperately uttered. He had been gone more than a week, making preparations for our return to Ashton. Had every action of our lives been counted during that time, the most austere moralist could have detected no wrong. The sin with us was too subtle and deep for human eyes, even for our own. We could not believe that feelings which had no evil wish might be in themselves evil. But when my husband returned, the pang of shame and regret that fell upon us should have been proof enough of wrong. When had we ever blushed and trembled in his presence before?
 
“We were alone, Murray and myself, in the little boudoir which I have mentioned so often. He was sitting on the sofa, to which my husband had so tenderly lifted me on the night before my mother’s funeral, reading one of my favorite Italian poets. I sat a little way off, listening to the deep melody of his voice, watching the alternate fire and shadow that played within the depths of his large eyes, the clear, bold expression of his forehead, and the smile upon his lips, which seemed imbued with the soft poetry that dropped in melody from them.
 
“I had forgotten everything for the time, and was lost in the first bewildering dream which follows, with its delicious quietude, the entire outpouring of the soul; when thought itself arises but as sweet exhalation from the one grand passion which pervades the 70whole being; when even a sense of wrong but haunts the heart as the bee slumbers within the urn of a flower, rendered inert and stingless by the wealth of honey which surrounds it.
 
“Murray had been bred in society, and could not so readily fling off the consciousness of our position. A shadow, darker than the words of his author warranted, settled on his brow as he read, and more than once he raised his eyes from the page in the middle of a sentence, and fixed them with a serious and almost melancholy earnestness on my face. Then I would interrupt his thoughts with some of the pleasant words which love sends up from the full heart, naturally as song gushes from the bosom of a nightingale. He would muse a moment after this and resume his book, allowing his voice to revel in the melody of the language, then hurry on with a stern and abrupt emphasis, as one who strives by rapidity of utterance to conquer painful thoughts.
 
“The sudden recoil of my heart was suffocating, then its deep, heavy throbbing grew almost audible. I felt the blood ebbing away from my face and a faintness was upon me. Murray started and grasped my hand with a violence that pained me.
 
“‘Lady Granby, be yourself; why do you tremble? Have we in wish or act wronged this man?’
 
“‘No—no; the angels of Heaven must bear us witness—but I have a secret here; and oh, God! forgive me; I am not glad to see him.’
 
“‘And I,’ he said, turning pale, ‘am I the cause of this terror?—indeed, lady, it is better that we part now—this weakness——’
 
“The very thought of his departure drove me wild. ‘I am not weak—nor wicked either,’ I said, with a proud smile; ‘see if I prove so?’
 
“Then wringing my hand from his grasp I deliberately opened the sash-door and went out to meet my 71husband. He was already upon the balcony, and sprang forward to greet me with more eager affection than I had ever witnessed in him before. During one moment I was drawn to his bosom unresistingly. I was faint with agitation. He must have felt me tremble, but evidently imputed the emotion to joy at his sudden return; with his arms about my waist he drew me into the room. Oh! how thoroughly I loathed the hypocrisy which one forbidden feeling had imposed on the future! Murray nerved himself for the interview, and stood up, pale and collected, to receive his late friend. When he saw my position, a faint flush shot over his forehead, but his forced composure was in nothing else disturbed.
 
“I put away my husband’s arm and sunk to a seat, overwhelmed with a painful consciousness of the moral degradation I had heaped upon myself.
 
“Murray went up to London on the next day; a few brief words of farewell were all that could be granted me. I went away by myself and wept bitterly.
 
“The society of my husband grew wearisome, and yet I said again and again to myself: ‘We have done him no wrong; this love which fills my heart never was his—never existed before; it is pure and honorable.’ As I said this, my cheek burned with the falsehood. Was not deception itself a sin? Oh! how many painful apprehensions haunted my imagination. For two days I was tormented by shadowy evils. My mornings were full of inquietude, and my sleep was not rest. Then came his first letter, so considerate and gentle, so full of manly solicitude for my peace of mind. I flung aside all doubt and self-distrust. Happiness sprung back to my heart like a glad infant to its mother’s bosom. The earth seemed bursting into blossom around me. Again I surrendered my spirit to its first sweet dream of contentment, and strove to convince myself that feelings were harmless till they sprang 72into evil actions. When my intellect refused this sophistry I resolutely cast all thought aside.
 
“Murray joined us at Ashton. Among the guests who spent Christmas with us was a young lady of refined and pleasant manners, the orphan of a noble family, whose entailed property had fallen to a distant heir on the death of her father. Thus she was left almost penniless, dependent on a wealthy aunt, who seemed anxious to get rid of her trust with as little expense as possible.
 
“My sympathy was excited in the young lady’s behalf, for her coarse relative supplied her but sparingly with the means of supporting her station in society, and in her vulgar eagerness to have the poor girl settled and off her hands was continually compromising her delicacy and wounding her pride.
 
“Louisa was reserved, and somewhat cold in her disposition, but my feelings had been enlisted in her behalf, and I contrived every little stratagem in my power to supply her want of wealth and to shield her from the match-making schemes of her aunt.
 
“Being much in my society, she was thrown into constant companionship with Murray. He did not at first seem interested in her, for she was retiring and not really beautiful, but by degrees the gentle sweetness of her character won its way to his heart, and he seemed pleased with her society, but there was nothing in the intimacy to alarm me. I was rather gratified than otherwise that he should be interested in my protégée.
 
“When we again took up our residence in town I occasionally acted as chaperon to Miss Jameson, but as my hope centered more trustfully around one object, my taste for general society diminished, and I surrounded myself with a small circle of distinguished individuals, and mingled but little in the dissipations 73of the world, where her aunt was continually forcing her to exhibit herself. I was still interested in her, but the repulsive coarseness of her relative prevented a thorough renewal of the intimacy which had existed while she was yet my guest.
 
“A year passed by, in which had been crowded a whole life of mingled happiness and misery, a dreamy tumultuous year that had been one long struggle to preserve the love which had become a portion of my soul, and to maintain that integrity of thought and deed, without which life would be valueless.
 
“The blow fell at length; Murray was about to be married. He did not allow me to be tortured by public rumor, but came and told me with his own lips.
 
“I had been very sad all the morning, and when I heard his familiar knock at the street-door, and the footsteps to which my heart had never yet failed to thrill approaching my boudoir, a dark presentiment fell upon me, and I trembled as if a death-watch was sounding in my ears. But I had learned to conceal my feelings, and sat quietly in my cushioned chair, occupied with a piece of fine needlework when he entered.
 
“He was deeply agitated, and his hand shook violently when I arose to receive him. Mine was steady. I was not about to heap misery on the heart that had clung to me. He spoke of those days at the parsonage; of the dreams, those impossible dreams, out of which we were to win happiness, innocent happiness to ourselves—a happiness that should wrong no one, and yet fill our whole lives. He spoke of it all as a dream—a sad, mocking delusion, which was like feeding the soul on husks. It was in vain, he said, to deceive ourselves longer; the love which had existed—he did not say still existed—between us must inevitably perish under the restraints which honor and conscience 74imposed. We were sure of nothing, not even of those brief moments of social intercourse which society allows to those who have no secret feelings to conceal.
 
“I neither expostulated nor reasoned, but with a calmness which startled myself I inquired the name of my rival.
 
“It was Louisa Jameson, the creature whom I had cherished even as a sister. No matter; I had nerved myself to bear all. If my heart trembled, no emotions stirred my face. He had not yet proposed, but he knew that she loved him, and her position was one to excite his compassion. Still he would not propose unless I consented. He had come to throw himself on my generosity.
 
“I did consent. Measuredly and coldly the words were spoken, but they did not satisfy him. He would have me feel willing—his happiness should not be secured at the expense of mine, if from my whole heart I could not resign him. No advantage should be taken of a freedom rendered only from the lips.
 
“For three whole hours I remained numb and still. At last my maid came to remind me of a ball and supper to which I was engaged.
 
“I arose and bade her array me in my gayest apparel. Never do I remember myself so beautiful as on that night. There was fever in my cheek, the fire of a tortured spirit—a wild, sparkling wit flashed from my lips, and among the gay and the lovely I was most gay and most recklessly brilliant.
 
“Murray called in the morning, for we were to be friends still. I had suffered much during the night, but I put rouge on my pallid cheeks, and with forced cheerfulness went down to receive him. He appeared ill at ease. Perhaps he feared reproaches after I recovered from the first effect of his desertion, but the anguish it had wrought was too deep for tears or weak 75complaints; when the death-blow comes, we cease to struggle.
 
“I ascertained that Miss Jameson’s aunt had refused to bestow a fortune with her niece, and I knew that Murray was far, far from wealthy enough to meet the expenses of an establishment befitting his rank. I could not bear that his fine mind should be cramped by the petty annoyances of a limited income, nor his wife forever crushed beneath the humiliating consciousness of poverty. Varnham never allowed himself to exceed his own little income, and the revenues of the Granby estates far exceeded our general expenditure. It was, therefore, easy for me to raise a sum sufficient to endow my rival, and thus indirectly secure a competence to him.
 
“I gave orders to my agent that twenty thousand pounds should be immediately raised for me. When the sum was secured I went privately to the house of my rival, and, with little persuasion, induced her parsimonious relative to present it to Miss Jameson as the gift of her own generosity. I knew that my secret was safe, for she was a worldly woman and was not likely to deprive herself of the éclat of a generous deed by exposing my share in it.
 
“Then I thought of Varnham for the first time in many days, not as the husband I had been estranged from, but as the kind, good friend who had watched beside me, and loved me amid all my sorrows. I was not wholly in my right mind, and reflected imperfectly on the step that I was about to take. Mr. Varnham was at Ashton, and I resolved to go to him, but with no definite aim, for I was incapable of any fixed plan. But he was my only friend, and my poor heart turned back to him in its emergency of sorrow with the trust of former years. I forgot that it had locked up the only well-spring of sympathy left to it by the very course of its anguish.
 
76“I flung a large cloak over my splendid attire, and while my carriage was yet at the door entered it and ordered them to proceed to Ashton. We travelled all day; I did not once leave my seat, but remained muffled in my cloak, with the hood drawn over my head, lost in the misty half-consciousness of partial insanity. I believe that the carriage stopped more than once, that food and rest were urged on me by my servants, but I took no heed, only ordering them to drive forward, for the rapid motion relieved me.
 
“It was deep in the night when we reached Ashton. Everything was dark and gloomy; but one steady lamp glimmered from the library window, and I knew that Varnham was up, and there. The library was in the back part of the house, and the sound of the carriage had not reached it.
 
“I made my way through the darkened hall and entered my husband’s presence. For one moment the feverish beating of my heart was hushed by the holy tranquillity of that solitary student. There was something appalling in the sombre, gloomy magnificence of the room in which he sat. The noble, painted window seemed thick and impervious in the dim light. The rich bookcases were in shadow, and cold marble statues looked down from their pedestals with a pale, grave-like beauty as I entered.
 
“Varnham was reading. One small lamp alone shed its lustre on the rare Mosaic table over which he bent, and threw a broad light across the pale, calm forehead which had something heavenly in its tranquil smoothness. I was by his side, and yet he did not see me. The solemn stillness of the room had cleared away my brain, and for a moment I felt the madness of my intended confidence. I staggered, and should have fallen but for the edge of the table, which I grasped with a force that made the lamp tremble.
 
“Varnham started up astonished at my sudden presence; 77but when he saw me standing before him, with the fire of excitement burning in my eyes and crimsoning my cheeks, with jewels twinkling in my hair and blazing on my girdle, where it flashed out from the cloak which my trembling hand had become powerless to hold, he seemed intuitively to feel the evil destiny that I had wrought for myself. His face became pale, and it was a minute before he could speak. Then he came forward, drew me kindly to his bosom and kissed my forehead with a tenderness that went to my heart like the hushing of my mother’s voice. I flung myself upon his bosom and wept with a burst of passionate grief. He seated himself, drew me closer to his heart, and besought me to tell him the cause of my sorrow.
 
“I did tell him—and then he put me from his bosom as if I had been a leper, with a cry of rage, bitter rage on the lips that had never till then known aught but blessings; not against me—no, he could never have denounced me—but on Murray. Then I bethought me of the evil that might follow. I arose from the floor and fell before him, where he stood, and tried to plead and to call back all I had said. He lifted me again in his arms, though I felt a tremor run through his whole frame as he did so; he told me to be comforted, said many soothing words, and promised never to reproach me again, but he said nothing of him, and when I again strove to plead in his defence he put me sternly away. Then I went wholly mad.
 
“I can never describe the cold, hopeless struggle of my heart to retain the delusions which haunted my insane moments when my intellect began to resume its functions. It seemed as if some cruel spirit were gradually tightening the bonds of earth about me, and ruthlessly dragging me back to reason, while my spirit clung with intense longing to its own wild ideal.
 
“It was a sad, sad night to me when that star arose in the sky and sent its pure beams down to the bosom 78of my acacia, and I knew that the clear orb would henceforth be to me only a star—that the realms which I had located in its distant bosom were but the dream of a diseased fancy that would return no more with its beautiful and vivid faith which had no power to reason or doubt.
 
“But we can force the fantasies of a mind no more than the affections of the heart. My disease left me; then the passions and aspirations of my old nature started up, one after another, like marble statues over which a midnight blackness had fallen. And there in the midst, more firmly established than ever, his image remained—his name, his being, and the sad history of my own sufferings had, for one whole year, been to me but as an indefinite and painful dream. But sorrow and insanity itself had failed to uproot the love which had led to such misery. Can I be blamed that I prayed for insensibility again?”
 
CHAPTER IX THE LOST YEAR

“Varnham had watched me for one year as a mother guards her wayward child. But the sudden illness of a near relative forced him from his guardianship. In my wildest moments I had always been gentle and submissive, but I was told that he left me with much reluctance to the care of my own maid, the housekeeper, and my medical attendant. They loved me, and he knew that with them I should be safe. When I began to question them of what had passed during my confinement, they appeared surprised by the quietness and regularity of my speech, but were ready to convince themselves that it was only one of the fitful appearances of insanity which had often deceived them during my illness. They, however, answered me frankly and with the respect which Varnham had ever enjoined upon them, even when he supposed that I could neither understand nor resent indignity.
 
“They told me that on the night of my arrival at Ashton they were all summoned from their beds by a violent ringing of the library bell; when they entered, my husband was forcibly holding me in his arms, though he was deadly pale and trembling so violently that the effort seemed too much for his strength. At first they dared not attempt to assist him; there was something so terrible in my shrieks and wild efforts to free myself that they were appalled. It was not till I had exhausted my strength, and lay breathless and faintly struggling on his bosom that they ventured to approach.
 
80“I must have been a fearful sight, as they described me, with the white foam swelling to my lips, my face flushed, my eyes vivid with fever, and both hands clenched wildly in the long hair which fell over my husband’s arms and bosom, matted with the jewels which I had worn at Murray’s wedding. At every fresh effort I made to extricate myself, some of these gems broke loose, flashed to the floor and were trampled beneath the feet of my servants, for everything was unheeded in the panic which my sudden frenzy had created.
 
“‘Oh! it was an awful scene!’ exclaimed the old housekeeper, breaking off her description and removing the glasses from her tearful eyes as she spoke. ‘I was frightened when I looked at you, but when my master lifted his face, and the light lay full upon it, my heart swelled, and I began to cry like a child. There was something in his look—I cannot tell what it was—something that made me hold my breath with awe, yet sent the tears to my eyes. I forgot you when I looked at him.
 
“‘We carried you away to this chamber and when we laid you on the bed you laughed and sung in a wild, shrill voice that made the blood grow cold in my veins. I have never heard a sound so painful and thrilling as your cries were that night. For many hours you raved about some terrible deed that was to be done, and wildly begged that there might be no murder. Then you would start up and extend your arms in a pleading, earnest way to my master, and would entreat him with wild and touching eloquence to let you die—to imprison you in some cold, drear place where you would never see him again, but not to wound you so cruelly with his eyes.
 
“‘I knew that all this was but the effect of a brain fever—that there could be no meaning in your words. Yet it seemed to me that my master should have striven 81to tranquillize you more than he did. Had he promised all you required, it might have had a soothing influence; for you were strangely anxious that he should give a pledge not to hate or even condemn some person who was not named. Yet, though you would at moments plead for mercy and protection with a piteous helplessness that might have won the heart of an enemy to compassion, he stood over you unchanged in that look of stern sorrow which had struck me so forcibly in the library. He scarcely seemed to comprehend the wild pathos of your words, but his composure was stern and painful to look upon.
 
“‘At last you appeared to become more quiet, but still kept your eyes fixed pleadingly on his face and a wild, sweet strain breathed from your lips with a rise and fall so sad and plaintive that it seemed as if half your voice must have dissolved to tears and a broken heart was flowing away in its own low melody.
 
“‘While the music yet lingered about your lips you began to talk of your mother, of a stone church where she had first taught you to pray—of a coffin, and a large white rose-tree that grew beneath a window which you had loved because her dear hand had planted it; then you besought him to bring some of those roses—white and pure, you said—that they might be laid upon your heart and take the fever away; then none need be ashamed to weep when you died, and perhaps they might bury you beside your mother.
 
“‘It was enough to break one’s heart to hear you plead in that sad, earnest way, and I saw, through the tears which almost blinded me, that my master was losing his self-command. The veins began to swell on his forehead, and a tremulous motion became visible about his mouth, which had till then remained as firm and almost as white as marble. He made a movement as if about to go away; but just then you raised your arms and, winding them about his neck, said: “Nay, 82Varnham, you will not leave me to die here. Let us go to our own old home. I will be very quiet, and will not try to live—only promise me this: bury me beneath the balcony, and let that lone, white rose-tree blossom over me forever and ever. I cannot exactly tell why, but they will not let me rest beside my mother, so my spirit shall stay among those pure flowers in patient bondage till all shall proclaim it purified and stainless enough to go and dwell with her. Kiss me once more, and say that you will go.”
 
“‘My master could but feebly resist the effort with which his face was drawn to yours; but when your lips met his he began to tremble again, and strove to unwind your arms from his neck; but you laid your head on his bosom, and that low, sad melody again broke from your lips, and your arms still wound more clingingly about him at every effort to undo their clasp.
 
“‘He looked down upon the face that would not be removed from its rest; his bosom heaved, he wound his arms convulsively about your form for a moment, then forced you back to the pillow, and fell upon his knees by the bedside. His face was buried in the counterpane, but the sound of his half-stifled sobs grew audible throughout the room, and the bed shook beneath the violent trembling of his form. I beckoned the maid, and we stole from his presence, for it seemed wrong to stand by and gaze upon such grief.
 
“‘When we returned you were silent and apparently asleep. He was sitting by the bed, and his eyes were fixed on your face with the same mournful, forgiving look with which I have seen him regard you a thousand times since. He spoke in his usual gentle way, and told us to tread lightly, that we might not disturb you. It was many hours before you awoke. My master was concealed by the drapery; you started up with a wild cry, and asked if he had gone to do murder. He caught you in his arms as you were about to spring from the 83bed, and with gentle violence forced you back to the pillows again. Then he waved his hand for us to draw back, and spoke to you in a solemn and impressive voice; but the last words only reached me. They were:
 
“‘“I have promised, solemnly promised, Caroline—try to comprehend me and be at rest.”
 
“‘Your fever raged many days after that, and you were constantly delirious, but never violent, and that frightful dread of some impending evil seemed to have left you entirely. Your disease at length abated, and the bloom gradually returned to your cheek, but every new mark of convalescence only seemed to deepen the melancholy which had settled on my master.
 
“‘When the physicians decided that your mind would never regain its former strength, but that it would ever remain wandering and gentle, and full of beautiful images as the fever had left it, my master became almost cheerful. He would allow no restraint to be placed upon you, and gave orders that you should be attended with all the respect and deference that had ever been rendered to your station. He never seemed more happy than while wandering with you about the gardens, and in the park; yet there were times when he would sit and gaze on your face as you slept, with a sad, regretful look that betrayed how truly he must have sorrowed over your misfortune. There was a yearning tenderness in his eye at such times, more touching far than tears. I could see that he struggled against these feelings, as if there existed something to be ashamed of in them, but they would return again.’
 
“All this and much more my good housekeeper said in answer to the questions which I put to her as my reason began to connect the present with the past. She did not hesitate to inform me of anything that I might wish to know, for she had no belief in my power to understand and connect her narrative. I had often questioned her before, and invariably forgot her answers 84as they fell from her lips; but every word of this conversation was graven on my memory, and if I have not repeated her exact language, the spirit and detail of her information is preserved.
 
“There was one subject that my housekeeper had not mentioned—my child. At first my intellect was too feeble for continued thought, and I did not notice this strange omission. Besides, some painful intuition kept me silent; the very thought of my own child was painful.
 
“At last I questioned her.
 
“‘Where,’ I said, ‘is my daughter? Surely, in my illness he has not kept her from me?’
 
“The old woman became deadly pale; she turned away, repulsing the subject with a gesture of her withered hands, which terrified me.
 
“‘My child!’ I said; ‘why are you silent? What have you done with her?’
 
“Still the old woman was speechless; but I could see tears stealing down her face.
 
“‘Bring her hither,’ I said, sick with apprehension; ‘I wish to see how much my daughter has grown.’
 
“The old woman flung herself at my feet. Her hands gathered up mine and held them fast.
 
“‘Do not ask—do not seek to remember. Oh! my lady, forget that you ever had a child!’
 
“‘Forget—and why? Who has dared to harm the child of my bosom, the heiress of my house?’
 
“She hid her face in my lap; she clung to my knees, moaning piteously.
 
“A vague remembrance seized upon me—that pale form shrouded in its golden hair—my heart was like ice. I bent down and whispered in the old woman’s ear:
 
“‘Who was it harmed my child?’
 
“She lifted her head with a wild outbreak of sorrow—my question almost drove her mad.
 
85“‘Oh! lady, my master would let her come to your room—we were not to blame; you had always been so sweet-tempered and loving with her that we had no fear.’
 
“She stopped short, frightened by my looks. I whispered hoarsely:
 
“‘My child! my child!’
 
“That horrible pause was broken at last. She lifted her hands to heaven, the tears streamed down her face like rain.
 
“‘Do not ask—oh! my lady, I beseech you, do not ask.’
 
“‘My child—my child’
 
“I could feel the whispers lose themselves in my throat; but she understood them, and her own voice sunk so low that, had not my soul listened, the terrible truth could not have reached it.
 
“‘With your own hands you destroyed her—with your own hands you dashed her from the window!’
 
“Slowly from heart to limb the blood froze in my veins; for two days I lay in rigid silence, praying only for death. No, not even insanity would return. As yet I had only spent the holiday of my error. God would permit my brain to slumber no longer.
 
“I had but one wish—to escape that house, to flee from everything and everybody that had ever known me. It was no mad desire—no remnant of insanity. I reasoned coldly and well. Why not? utter hopelessness is wise.
 
“I dreaded but one thing on earth—the return of my husband. We never could be united again. He would not find the helpless being he had left, but a proud woman, whose heart if not her life had wronged him. He would not find the mother of his child, but its innocent, wretched murderer. I felt how bitter must be the news of my returning reason to the man who had forgiven the errors of my real character, because they had 86been so painfully lost in a visionary one, which disarmed resentment only from its very helplessness. I understood all Varnham’s generosity, all his extraordinary benevolence; but I knew also that he was a proud man, with an organization so exquisitely refined that the sins of an alienated affection would affect him more deeply than actual crime, with ordinary men. I felt that it was impossible for me ever to see him again.
 
“My plan for the future was soon formed. I resolved to leave England forever. My heart sickened when I thought of mingling in society, of meeting with people who might talk to me of things which would rend my heart continually with recollections of the past. The love which had been the great error of my life still held possession of my heart with a strength which would not be conquered. Could I go forth, then, into the world? Could I live in my own house, where everything was associated with recollections of that love—where every bush and flower would breathe a reproach to the heart which still worshipped on, when worship was double guilt and double shame? Could I look upon the spot where my child had perished, and live? No, I resolved to leave all, to break every tie which bound me to civilized man, and to fling myself into a new state of existence. I thought, and still think, that it was the only way by which I could secure any portion of tranquillity to my husband. It would be terrible for him to believe that I had died by my own hands, but much more terrible if he returned and, in place of the mindless being who had become so utterly helpless, so completely the object of his compassion, found the woman who had wronged him fully conscious of her fault, yet without the humility and penitence which should have followed his generous forgiveness. There was too much of the pride of my old nature left. I could not have lived in the same house with the man I had so injured.
 
87“The Granby property was unentailed, with the exception of one small estate which went with the title. Immediately on coming into possession of the estates I had made a will, bequeathing the whole vast property to my child, and making my husband her trustee; but, in case of her death, all was to revert to him. He knew nothing of this; but the will was consigned to the hands of honorable men, and I was certain that it would be legally acted upon. In raising the sum which I devoted to Murray my agent had sold stocks to more than quadruple the amount. This amount had been paid to me, but in the excitement of my feelings I had neglected to place it with my banker and had left it in an escritoire at our town house, where was also deposited the most valuable portion of my jewels. I had no arrangements to make which could in any way reveal the course I had determined to pursue.
 
“There was one subject which I had not yet ventured to mention. My cheek burned and my heart beat quick when I at last brought myself to inquire about Murray. He was living a secluded life at a small cottage near Richmond. It was all I cared to learn.
 
“The second night after the conversation with my housekeeper I stole softly to the room of a sleeping housemaid and dressed myself in a suit of cast-off clothing which was not likely to be missed; then, with a few guineas which I found in my desk I went cautiously out, and left my house forever.
 
“Along the edge of the park ran a stream of small magnitude, but remarkable for its depth. On the brink of this stream I left a portion of the garments I had worn; then departed on foot for the nearest post-town, where I procured a passage to London. I found my house closed, but entered it with a private key and took from my escritoire the money and jewels which had been left there more than a year before.
 
“The third evening after leaving Ashton I stood in 88front of a beautiful cottage, separated from the thickly settled portions of Richmond by pleasure grounds, rather more spacious than is usual in that neighborhood, and still farther secluded by groups of ornamental trees. A light broke softly through the wreathing foliage which draped the windows of a lower room and I could distinguish the shadow of a man walking to and fro within.
 
“I knew that it was Murray, and that I should see him once more that night, yet my heart beat slow and regularly, without a throb to warn me of the deep feeling which still lived there in undying strength. I had no hope, and entire hopelessness is rest. I inquired for the housekeeper, and told her that I had been informed she wished to hire a housemaid; that I was without a place, and had come all the way from the city to secure one with her. I knew that she could not find it in her heart to send me back to London late at night and alone, and, as I anticipated, was invited to stay till morning.
 
“When the kind housekeeper was asleep I stole from her chamber and sought the apartment where I had seen the light. It was a small room, partly fitted up as a study, and partly as a parlor. Books and musical instruments lay scattered about; a few cabinet pictures hung upon the walls, and a portrait of Murray looked down upon me from over the mantelpiece as I entered. A lamp was still burning, and an open work-box seemed to have been pushed from its station on the table, directly beneath it, to make room for a small book of closely filled manuscript which lay open, as if it had just been written in. A pen lay by, and the ink was yet damp on the unfinished page. Even across the room I knew the handwriting; the impulse to read which seized upon me was unconquerable. I held my breath, for the stillness around was like a hush of a tomb, and the characters seemed to start up like living witnesses 89beneath my eyes as I bent over the book. Thus the page ran:
 
“‘They tell me she is mad—that her fine mind is broken, and her warm heart unstrung forever. They say this, and comment and speculate upon causes in my presence, as if I could not feel. I sit with apparent calmness, and listen to things which would break a common heart.
 
“‘The soft smile of my wife is ever upon me, the cheek of my boy dimples beneath my glance if I but raise my eyes to his innocent face, and yet there are times when I cannot look upon them. The image of that noble and ruined being is forever starting up between me and them. I did not intend this when I took upon myself the right to regulate the destiny of a fellow-being—madness—no, no, I never thought of that! I did not dream that my own nature—but why should I write this? Yet I cannot keep these feelings forever pent up in my heart.
 
“‘It was terrible news! Why did that officious physician come here to tell me there was no hope, and this day above all others in the year? Was it any reason that he should wound me with this news, because I was known to be a friend of the family—a friend truly? How coldly the man told me that she could never recover her reason! It was like the slow stab of a poignard; my heart quivered under it. Just then my wife must come with her innocent and loving voice to give me the good-night kiss before she left me. Poor thing! she little dreamed of the melancholy tidings which caused me to return her caress so coldly. I will try and seek rest, but not with them; sometimes I wish that I might never see them again. I must be alone to-night!’
 
“It was but the fulfillment of my own prophecy. I knew that he could not be happy; that he never would 90be again; never even tranquil till he believed me in my grave. My resolution was more firmly established, I would not live a continual cause of torment to him. I had no desire that he, too, should be miserable; in my most wretched moments the feeling had never entered my heart.
 
“The rustle of silk caused me to start from my position as I was bending over the book. It was only the night wind sweeping through an open casement that sent the curtain, which had dropped over it, streaming out like a banner into the room. I stood upright, silent and breathless; for, on a low couch, which the window drapery had half-concealed till now, lay Grenville Murray. The lamp shone full upon his face, and even from the distance I could see the change which a year of mental agitation had made in it.
 
“I went softly to the couch, knelt down, and gazed upon him with a hushed and calm feeling, like that which a mother might know while bending over the couch of a beloved, but wayward, child. Twice the clock chimed the hour, and still I knelt by that couch and gazed on that pale, sleeping face, with a cold, hopeless sorrow which had no voice for lamentation.
 
“A third time the clock beat. I bent forward and pressed my lips to his forehead for the first time in my life. Oh! how my heart swelled to my lips with that one soft kiss. It seemed breaking with solemn tenderness—such tenderness as we give to the dead before the beloved clay is taken from us forever. My lips were cold and tremulous, but he did not awake beneath the pressure, and I did not repeat it, nor look on him again. I knew we were parting forever, but had no power to look back.
 
“I passed from the house slowly, and with a solemn feeling of desolation, as one might tread through a graveyard alone, and at midnight.
 
“In the disguise which had served me so well I 91sailed for America. I had no wish to mingle with my race, but took my way from New York to the valley of the Mohawk and sought the presence of Sir William Johnson. To him I revealed myself and as much of my history as was necessary to ensure his co-operation in my plan for the future. Under a solemn promise of secrecy, which has never been broken, I entrusted my wealth to his agency and procured his promise of an escort to the tribe of Indians then located in his neighborhood. Among these savages I hoped to find perfect isolation from my race; to begin a new life and cast the old one away forever; this was more like rising from the grave into another life than anything human existence had to offer. I remained some months in the Mohawk Valley, waiting for news from England. I was anxious to hear that my efforts at concealment had been effectual and that my friends really believed me dead. News came at last that shook my soul to its centre once more. Varnham, my husband, was dead. He would not believe in my destruction, and after strict search traced me to London, and on shipboard, spite of my disguise.
 
“He put my property in trust, and taking the next ship that sailed followed me to America, with what purpose I never knew. The ship was lost, and every soul on board perished.”
 
CHAPTER X QUEEN ESTHER

“The Shawnee Indians had long been governed by a woman, whose name was both feared and respected through all the Six Nations. I need not dwell either upon her cruelty or her greatness. Had Elizabeth, of blessed memory, as sarcastic history names her, been thrown among savages, she would have been scarcely a rival to this remarkable chieftainess. The same indomitable love of power—the same ferocious affections, caressing the neck one day, which she gave to the axe on the next—the same haughty assumption of authority marked Queen Esther, the forest sovereign, and Elizabeth, the monarch of England. Both were arrogant, crafty, selfish and ruthless, proving their power to govern, only as they became harsh and unwomanly.
 
“Queen Esther was the widow of a great chief, whose authority she had taken up at his grave, and never laid down during twenty-five years, when Gi-engwa-tah, her eldest son, had earned a right to wear the eagle plume and fill his father’s place on the warpath and at the council table. The great secret of this woman’s power over her tribe lay in her superior intelligence and the remnants of an early education; for she was a white woman, brought in the bloom of girlhood from Canada, where she had been taken prisoner in the wars between the French and the Six Nations. Her father was a governor of Canada, and she had been destined to fill a high station in civilized life, but she soon learned to prefer savage rule to all the remembrances 93of a delicately nurtured childhood, and, wedded to a native chief, flung off the refinements of life, save where they added to her influence among the savages.
 
“Her name, like her history, was thrown back upon the past—the very blood in her veins seemed to have received a ferocious tint. She was, doubtless, from the first, a savage at heart. Because this woman was, like myself, cast out by her own free will from civilized life, I sought her in her wild home, and, under an escort from Sir William Johnson, claimed a place in her tribe. The lands around Seneca Lake were then in possession of the Shawnees. Queen Esther occupied a spacious lodge at the head of this lake and had put large tracts of land under cultivation around it.
 
“Around this dwelling she had gathered all the refinements of her previous life that could be wrested from rude nature or animal strength. Her lodge possessed many comforts that the frontier settlers might have envied. The lands were rich with corn and fruit. Her apple orchards blossomed and cast their fruit on the edge of the wilderness. The huts of her people were embowered with peach-trees, and purple plums dropped upon the forest sward at their doors. In times of peace Queen Esther was a provident and wise sovereign. In war—but I need not say how terrible she was in war. Beautiful as I have described it, was the country of the Shawnees when my escort drew up in front of Queen Esther’s lodge. She came forth to meet me, arrayed in her wild, queenly garb and treading the green turf like an empress. She was then more than sixty years of age, but her stately form bore no marks of time; there was not a thread of silver in her black hair, and her eyes were like those of an eagle—clear and piercing.
 
“She read Sir William’s letter, casting glances from that to my face, as if perusing the two with one thought; then, advancing to my horse, she lifted me to the ground 94and gave me her hand to kiss, as if I had been a child and she an emperor who had vouchsafed an act of gallantry. ‘It is well,’ she said. ‘You shall have a mat in my lodge. Gi-en-gwa-tah shall spread it with his own hands, for we of the white blood bring wise thoughts and sweet words to the tribe, and must not work like squaws. When women sit in council the braves spread their mats and spear salmon for them. This is my law.’
 
“I answered promptly that I had brought gold, knowledge and a true heart into the wilderness; that all I asked was a corner in her lodge, and permission to rest among her people; to learn their ways and be one of them till death called me away.
 
“‘It is well,’ she answered. ‘This letter says that you have fled from many tears, and brought wisdom and gold from over the big waters. Come, I have a robe embroidered with my own hand, and plumage from flame-colored birds, with which my women shall crown you before my son comes from the war-council of the Six Nations. My eyes are getting dim, and I can no longer string the wampum or work garlands on the robes my women have prepared for my needle. You shall be eyes to me; when my voice grows weak you shall talk sweet words to the warriors, and they will obey me still. When I am dead, struck down with the white frost of age, then you shall be queen in my place; I will teach the chiefs to obey you. Have I spoken well?’
 
“She waited for no answer, but led me into the lodge, brought forth a robe of embroidered skins such as clothed her own stately person, and clothed me in it with her own hands. If she used any other ceremony of adoption, I did not understand it, nor indeed how much this act portended. Queen Esther was a shrewd woman, ambitious for herself and her tribe. She knew well the value of the gold which I had deposited with Sir William 95Johnson, and how rich a harvest my coming might secure to them.
 
“Queen Esther kept her promise. Her influence placed me at once in a position of power. She never asked my name, but gave me that which she had cast aside on renouncing her own race—Catharine Montour.
 
“I was among the children of nature, in the broad, deep forests of a new world. I had broken every tie which had bound me to my kind, and was free. For the first time in my life I felt the force of liberty and the wild, sublime pleasures of an unshackled spirit. Every new thought which awoke my heart in that deep wilderness was full of sublimity and wild poetic strength. There was something of stern, inborn greatness in the savages who had adopted me—something picturesque in their raiment, and majestic in their wild, untaught eloquence, that aroused the new and stern properties of my nature till my very being seemed changed.
 
“The wish to be loved and cherished forsook me forever. New energies started to life, and I almost scorned myself that I had ever bowed to the weakness of affection. What was dominion over one heart compared to the knowledge that the wild, fierce spirits of a thousand savage beings were quelled by the sound of my footsteps?—not with a physical and cowardly fear, but with an awe which was of the spirit—a superstitious dread, which was to them a religion. Without any effort of my own, I became a being of fear and wonder to the whole savage nation. They looked upon me as a spirit from the great hunting-ground, sent to them by Manitou, endowed with beauty and supernatural powers, which demanded all their rude worship, and fixed me among them as a deity.
 
“I encouraged this belief, for a thirst for rule and ascendency was strong upon me. I became a despot and yet a benefactress in the exercise of my power, and the 96distribution of my wealth. Did one of those strong, savage creatures dare to offend me, I had but to lift my finger, and he was stripped of his ornaments and scourged forth from his nation, a disgraced and abandoned alien, without home, or people, or friends. On the other hand, did they wish for trinkets, or beads, or powder for the rifles which I had presented to them, they had to bend low to their ‘White Prophetess’ as she passed; to weave her lodge with flowers, and line it with rich furs; to bring her a singing-bird, or to carry her litter through the rough passes of the mountains, and a piece of smooth bark, covered with signs which they knew nothing of, was sent to Sir William Johnson, and lo, their wants were supplied.
 
“This was power, such as my changed heart panted for. I grew stern, selfish and despotic, among these rude savages, but never cruel. Your people wrong me there; no drop of blood has ever been shed by me or through my instrumentality; but my gold has brought many poor victims from the stake, who falsely believe that my vindictive power had sent them there; my entreaties have saved many a village from the flames, and many hearths from desolation, where my name is spoken as a word of fear.
 
“The eldest son of Queen Esther was a noble. He came of his father’s race, with something of refinement, which his mother never could entirely cast aside, blended with it. From her early recollections Queen Esther had given him fragments of a rude poetical education, and this, with the domestic refinement of her lodge, had lifted him unconsciously above the other chiefs of his tribe.
 
“He not only possessed that bravery which won the admiration of his people, and was essential to their respect, but in his character were combined all the elements of a warrior and a statesman. Independent of this superior knowledge, his mind was naturally too majestic 97and penetrating to yield me the homage which was so readily rendered by the more ignorant of his tribe.
 
“It is painful to dwell on this period of my life. Suffice it, again I heard the pleadings of love from the untutored lips of a savage chief. I, who had fled from the very name of affection as from a pestilence—who had given up country, home, the semblance of existence that my heart might be at rest, was forced to listen to the pleadings of love from a savage, in the heart of an American wilderness. A savage chief, proud of his prowess, haughty in his barbarous power, came with a lordly confidence to woo me as his wife. My heart recoiled at the unnatural suggestion, but I had no scorn for the brave Indian who made it. If his mode of wooing was rough, it was also eloquent, sincere, manly; and those were properties which my spirit had ever answered with respect. No; I had nothing of scorn for the red warrior, but I rebuked him for his boldness, and threatened to forsake his tribe forever should he dare to renew the subject.
 
“A month or two after the kingly savage declared his bold wishes a contest arose between the Shawnees and a neighboring tribe, and the chief went angry to the warpath. One day his party returned to the encampment, bringing with them three prisoners, a white man, his wife and child. My heart ached when I heard of this, for I dared not, as usual, entreat the chief for their release, nor even offer to purchase their freedom with gold. His disappointment had rendered him almost morose, and I shuddered to think of the reward he might require for the liberation of his prisoners. I had full cause for apprehension.
 
“From the day that I rejected her son, Queen Esther had kept proudly aloof from me. She did not deign to expostulate, but guarded her pride with stern silence, while a storm of savage passions lowered on her brow, and sounded in her fierce tread, till her presence would 98have been a terror to me had I been of a nature to fear anything.
 
“This woman seemed to rejoice at the idea of wreaking the vengeance she would not express in words on my helpless compatriots, and prepared herself to join this horrid festival of death in all the pomp of her war-plumes and most gorgeous raiment. For the first time in my life I humbled myself before this woman, on my knees, for she was one to exact the most abject homage. I besought her to save my countrymen from death.
 
“She met my entreaties with a cold sneer that froze me to the heart.
 
“‘It is well,’ she said, wrapping her robe around her with a violence that made its wampum fringes rattle like a storm of shot. ‘The woman who refuses the great chief of the Shawnees when he would build her a lodge larger than his mother’s, should be proud, and stand up with her face to the sun, not whine like a baby because her people do not know how to die.’
 
“Her air and voice were more cruel than her words. I saw that my intercession would only add to the tortures that I was powerless to prevent, for if the mother was so unrelenting what had I to expect from the son?
 
“Queen Esther tore her garments from my clasp, and plunged into the forest to join her son.
 
“I shudder even now, when I think of the horrible sensation which crept over me, as the warriors went forth from the camp, file after file, painted and plumed with gorgeous leathers, each with his war-club and tomahawk, to put three beings, of my blood and nation, to a death of torture.
 
“I dared not plead for their release in person, but sent to offer ransom, earnestly appealing to the generosity of the chief in my message. He returned me no answer. I could do nothing more, but as the hours crept by, my heart was very, very heavy; it seemed as if the sin of blood were about to be heaped upon it.
 
99“The night came on, dark and gloomy as the grave. The whole tribe, even to the women and children, had gone into the forest, and I was alone in the great lodge—almost alone in the village. There was something more appalling than I can describe in the dense gloom that settled on the wilderness, in the whoop and fierce cries of the revelling savages, which surged up through the trees like the roar and rant of a herd of wild beasts wrangling over their prey.
 
“Not a star was in the sky, not a sound stirred abroad—nothing save the black night and the horrid din of those blood-thirsty savages met my senses. Suddenly, a sharp yell cut through the air like the cry of a thousand famished hyenas, then a spire of flame darted up from the murky forest, and shot into the darkness with a clear, lurid brightness, like the flaming tongue of a dragon, quivering and afire with its own venom. Again that yell rang out—again and again, till the very air seemed alive with savage tongues.
 
“I could bear no more; my nerves had been too madly excited. I sprang forward with a cry that rang through the darkness almost as wildly as theirs, and rushed into the forest.
 
“They were congregated there in the light of that lurid fire, dancing and yelling like a troop of carousing demons; their tomahawks and scalping-knives flashed before me, and their fierce eyes glared more fiercely as I rushed through them to the presence of their chief. The dance was stopped by a motion of his war-club, and he listened with grave attention to my frantic offer of beads or blankets or gold to any amount, in ransom for his prisoners. He refused all; but one ransom could purchase the lives of those three human beings, and that I could not pay. It was far better that blood should be shed than that I should force my heart to consummate a union so horrible as mine with this savage.
 
“I turned from the relentless chief, sorrowing and 100heart-stricken. The blood of his poor victims seemed clogging my feet as I made my way through the crowd of savage forms that only waited my disappearance to drag them forth to death. Even while I passed the death-fire, fresh pine was heaped upon it, and a smothered cry burst forth from the dusky crowd as a volume of smoke rolled up and revealed the victims.
 
“They were bound to the trunk of a large pine, which towered within the glare of the death-fire, its heavy limbs reddening and drooping in the cloud of smoke and embers that surged through them to the sky, and its slender leaves falling in scorched and burning showers to the earth, whenever a gust of wind sent the flames directly among its foliage.
 
“The prisoners were almost entirely stripped of clothing, and the lurid brightness shed over the pine revealed their pale forms with terrible distinctness. The frightened child crouched upon the ground, clinging to the knees of his mother, and quaking in all its tiny limbs as the flames swept their reeking breath more and more hotly upon them. The long, black hair of the mother fell over her bent face; her arms were extended downward towards the boy, and she struggled weakly against the thongs that bound her waist, at every fresh effort which the poor thing made to find shelter in her bosom. There was one other face, pale and stern as marble, yet full of a fixed agony, which spoke of human suffering frightful to behold. That face was Grenville Murray’s.
 
“My feelings had been excited almost to the verge of renewed insanity, but now they became calm—calm from the force of astonishment, and from the strong resolve of self-sacrifice which settled upon them. I turned and forced my way through the crowd of savage forms, rushing toward that hapless group, and again stood before their chief. I pointed toward the prisoners now concealed by the smoke and eddying flames.
 
“‘Call away those fiends,’ I said. ‘Give back all that 101has been taken from the prisoners. Send them to Canada, with a guard of fifty warriors, and I will become your wife.’
 
“A blaze of exultation swept over that savage face, and the fire kindled it up with wild grandeur. I saw the heaving of his chest, the fierce joy that flashed from his eyes, but in that moment of stern resolve, my heart would not have shrunk from its purpose though the fang of an adder had been fixed in it. The chief lifted his war-club and uttered a long peculiar cry. Instantly the savages that were rushing like so many demons toward their prey fell back and ranged themselves in a broad circle around their chief.
 
“He spoke a few sentences in the Indian tongue. Words of energetic eloquence they must have been to have torn that savage horde from their destined victim’s, for like wild beasts they seemed athirst for blood. When the chief ceased speaking, the tribe arose with a morose gravity that concealed their disappointment, and dispersed among the trees; the mellow tramp of their moccasins died away, and fifty warriors alone stood around their chief, ready to escort the prisoners to a place of safety.
 
“I drew back beneath the concealment of a tree, and secure in my changed dress, saw them lead forth the prisoners. I heard the sobs of the happy mother as the boy clung, half in joy and half in affright, to her bosom. I saw tears stand on the pale and quivering cheek of the father, as he strove to utter his gratitude. I heard the tramp of the horses, and the measured tread of the fifty warriors come faintly from the distance; then the fire which was to have been the death-flame of Grenville Murray and his household, streamed up into the solitude, and in its red glare I stood before the savage whose slave I had become.”