Read Ebook: A Man's Hearth by Ingram Eleanor M Eleanor Marie Frederick Edmund Illustrator

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Ebook has 958 lines and 62619 words, and 20 pages

"Perhaps not," answered Edith, with a quiet smile; "but let us have some lights, Walter, for I am well nigh in darkness."

The lights were brought, and Walter and his sister sat down to muse over books--I can hardly say to read--till their father reappeared; for the evening prayer and the parting kiss had never been omitted in their solitude ere they lay down to rest. The conference in the hall, however, was long, and more than an hour elapsed before the three gentlemen entered the room. Then a few minutes were passed in quiet conversation, and then, all standing round the table, Mr. Prevost raised his voice, saying: "Protect us, O Father Almighty, in the hours of darkness and unconsciousness. Give us thy blessing of sleep to refresh our minds and bodies; and if it be thy will, let us wake again to serve and praise thee through another day more perfectly than in the days past, for Christ's sake."

The Lord's Prayer succeeded, and then they separated to their rest.

Before daylight in the morning Sir William Johnson was on foot and in the stable. Some three or four negro slaves--for there were slaves then on all parts of the continent--lay sleeping soundly in a small sort of barrack hard by; and as soon as one of them could be roused, his horse was saddled, and he rode away without stopping to eat or say farewell. He bent his course direct toward the banks of the Mohawk, flowing at some twenty miles distance from the cottage of Mr. Prevost; and before he had been five minutes in the saddle was in the midst of the deep woods which surrounded the little well cultivated spot where the English wanderer had settled.

About a mile from the house a bright and beautiful stream crossed the road, flowing onward toward the greater river; but bridge there was none, and in the middle of the stream Sir William suffered his horse to stop and bend its head to drink. He gazed to the eastward, but all there was dark and gloomy under the thick overhanging branches. He turned his eyes to the westward, and they rested on a figure standing in the midst of the stream, with rod in hand, and his back turned toward him. He thought he saw another figure, too, amidst the trees upon the bank; but it was shadowy there, and the form seemed shadowy, too.

After gazing for a moment or two, he raised his voice and exclaimed: "Walter! Walter Prevost!"

The lad heard him, and laying his rod upon the bank, hastened along over the green turf to join him; but at the same moment the figure among the trees--if really figure it was--disappeared from sight.

"Thou art out early, Walter," said Sir William. "What do you at this hour?"

"I am catching trout for the stranger's breakfast," said the lad, with a gay laugh. "You should have had your share, had you but waited."

"Who was that speaking to you on the bank above?" asked the other, gravely.

"Merely an Indian girl, watching me fishing," replied Walter Prevost.

"I hope your talk was discreet," rejoined Sir William. "These are dangerous times, when trifles are of import, Walter."

"There was no indiscretion," replied the lad, with the color mounting slightly in his cheek. "She was noticing the feather flies with which I caught the fish, and blamed me for using them. She said it was a shame to catch anything with false pretences."

"She is wise," answered the other, with a faint smile, "but yet that is hardly the wisdom of her people. An Indian maiden!" he added, thoughtfully. "Of what tribe is she? One of the Five Nations, I trust."

"Oh, yes; an Oneida," replied Walter. "One of the daughters of the Stone, the child of a sachem who often lodges at our house."

"Well, be she who she may," said Sir William, "be careful of your speech, especially regarding your father's guest. I say not, to conceal that there is a stranger with you, for that cannot be; but whatever you see or guess of his station, or his errand, keep it to yourself, and let not a woman be the sharer of your thoughts till you have tried her with many a trial."

"She would not betray them, I am sure," answered the lad, warmly, and then added, with some slight embarrassment, as if he felt that he had in a degree betrayed himself, "but she has nothing to reveal or to conceal. Our talk was all of the river and the fish. We met by accident, and she is gone."

"Perhaps you may meet by accident again," said the other, "and then be careful. But now to more serious things. Perchance your father may have to send you to Albany--perchance to my castle. You can find your way speedily to either. Is it not so?"

"Further than either," replied the lad, gayly.

"But you may have a heavy burden to carry," rejoined Sir William. "Do you think you can bear it--I mean the burden of a secret?"

"I will not drop it by the way," answered Walter, gravely.

"Not if the sachem's daughter offer to divide the load?" asked his companion.

"Doubt me not," said Walter.

"I do not," said Sir William. "I do not; but I would have you warned. And now farewell. You are very young to meet maidens in the wood. Be careful. Farewell."

He rode on, and the boy tarried by the roadside and meditated.

In about two minutes he took his way up the stream again, still musing, toward the place where he had laid down his rod.

He sprang up the bank, and in amongst the maples; and some ten minutes after, the sun rising higher, poured its light through the stems upon a boy and girl seated at the foot of an old tree; he with his arms around her, and his hand resting on the soft, brown, velvety skin, and she with her head upon his bosom, and her warm lips within the reach of his.

Her skin was brown, I have said, yes, very brown, but still hardly browner than his own. Her eyes were dark and bright, of the true Indian hue, but larger and more open than is at all common in many of the tribes of Iroquois. Her lips, too, were rosy, and as pure of all tinge of brown as those of any child of Europe; and her fingers, also, were stained of Aurora's own hue. But her long, silky black hair would have spoken her race at once had not each tress terminated in a wavy curl. The lines of the form and of the face were all wonderfully lovely, too, and yet were hardly those which characterize so peculiarly the Indian nations. The nose was straighter, the cheek bones less prominent, the head more beautifully set upon the shoulders. The expression, too, as she rested there with her cheek leaning on his breast, was not that of the usual Indian countenance. It was softer, more tender, more impassioned; for though romance and poetry have done all they could to spiritualize the character of Indian love, I fear, from what I have seen and heard and known, it is rarely what it has been portrayed. Her face, however, was full of love and tenderness and emotion; and the picture of the two as they sat there told at once of a tale of love just spoken to a willing ear.

The hour of breakfast had arrived when Walter Prevost returned with his river spoil; but the party at the house had not yet sat down to table. The guest who had arrived on the preceding night was standing at the door talking with Edith, while Mr. Prevost himself was within in conference with some of the slaves. Shaded by the little rustic porch, Edith was leaning against the door post in an attitude of exquisite grace, and the stranger, with his arms crossed upon his broad, manly chest, now raising his eyes to her face, now dropping them to the ground, seemed to watch with interest the effect his words produced as it was written on that beautiful countenance.

"I know not," said the stranger, speaking as the young man approached, "I know not how I should endure it myself for any length of time. The mere abstract beauty of nature would, soon pall upon my taste, I fear, without occupation."

"But you would make occupation," answered Edith, earnestly; "you would find it. Occupation for the body is never wanting when you have to improve and cultivate and ornament; and occupation flows in from a thousand gushing sources in God's universe--even were one deprived of books and music."

"Aye, but companionships and social converse, and the interchange of thought with thought," said the stranger; "where could one find those?" and he raised his eyes to her face.

"Have I not my brother and my father?" she asked.

"True, you have," said the other; "but I should have no such resource."

He had seen a slight hesitation in her last reply. He thought that he had touched the point where the yoke of solitude galled the spirit. He was not the one to plant or to nourish discontent in anyone, and he turned at once to her brother, saying: "What, at the stream so early, my young friend? Have you had sport?"

"Not very great," answered Walter. "My fish are few, but they are large. Look here!"

"I call such sport excellent," said the stranger, looking into the basket. "I must have you take me with you some fair morning, for I am a great lover of the angle."

The lad hesitated, and turned somewhat redder in the cheek than he had been the moment before; but his sister saved him from reply, saying, in a musing tone: "I cannot imagine what delight men feel in what they call the sports of the field. To inflict death may be a necessity, but surely should not be an amusement."

"Man is a born hunter, Miss Prevost," replied the stranger, with a smile. "He must chase something. Oh, my dear young lady! few can tell the enjoyment, in the midst of busy, active, troublous life, of one calm day's angling by the side of a fair stream, with quiet beauty all around us, and no adversary but the speckled trout."

"And why should they be your foes?" asked Edith. "Why should you drag them from their cool, clear element to pant and die in the dry upper air?"

"'Cause we want to eat? em," said a voice from the door behind her; "they eats everything. Why shou'dn't we eat them? Darn this world; it is but a place for eating and being eaten. The bivers that I trap eat fish, and many a cunning trick the crafty critters use to catch 'em; the minks eat birds and birds' eggs. Men talk about beasts of prey. Why, everything is a beast of prey, eating the oxen and the sheep, and such like; and sometimes I have thought it hard to kill them, who never do harm to no one, and a great deal of good sometimes. But come, Master Walter, don't ye keep them fish in the sun. Give 'em to black Rosie, the cook, and let us have some on 'em for breakfast afore they're all wilted up."

The man who spoke might have been five feet five or six in height, and was anything but corpulent. Yet he was in chest and shoulders as broad as a bull; and though the lower limbs were more lightly formed than the upper, yet the legs, as well as the arms, displayed strong, rounded muscles, swelling forth at every movement. His hair was as black as jet, without the slightest mixture of gray, though he could not be less than fifty-four or fifty-five years of age; and his face, which was handsome, with features somewhat eagle-like, was browned by exposure to a color nearly resembling that of mahogany. With his shaggy bearskin cap, well worn, and a frock of deerskin, with the hair on, descending to the knees, he looked more like a bison than anything human; and, half expecting to hear him roar, the stranger was surprised to trace tones soft and gentle, though somewhat nasal, to such a rude and rugged form.

While Walter carried his basket of fish to the kitchen, and Mr. Prevost's guest was gazing at the newcomer, in whom Edith seemed to recognize an acquaintance, the master of the house himself approached from behind the latter, saying as he came. "Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Brooks, Major Kielmansegge--Captain Jack Brooks."

"Pooh, pooh, Prevost!" exclaimed the other. "Call me by my right name. I was Captain Brooks long agone. I'm new christened, and called Woodchuck now. That's because I burrow, Major. Them Ingians are wonderful circumdiferous; but they have found that when they try tricks with me, I can burrow under them; and so they call me Woodchuck, 'cause it's a burrowing sort of a beast."

"I do not exactly understand you," said the gentleman who had been called Major Kielmansegge. "What is the exact meaning of circumdiferous?"

"It means just circumventing like," answered the Woodchuck. "First and foremost, there's many of the Ingians--the Algonquin, for a sample--never tell a word of truth. No, no, not they. One of them told me so plainly one day. 'Woodchuck,' says he, 'Ingian seldom tell truth. He know better than that. Truth too good a thing to be used every day; keep that for time of need.' I believe at that precious moment he spoke the truth the first time for forty years."

The announcement that breakfast was ready interrupted the explanation of Captain Brooks, but seemed to afford him great satisfaction, and at the meal, certainly, he ate more than all the rest of the party put together, consuming everything set before him with a voracity truly marvelous. He seemed to think some apology necessary, indeed, for his furious appetite. "You see, Major," he said, as soon as he could bring himself to a pause sufficiently long to utter a sentence, "I eat well when I do eat; for sometimes I eat nothing for four or five days together. When I get to a lodge like this, I take in stores for my next voyage, as I can't tell what port I shall touch at again."

"Pray, do you anticipate a long cruise just now?" asked the stranger.

"No! no!" said the other, laughing; "but I always prepare against the worst. I am just going up the Mohawk for a step or two to make a trade with some of my friends of the Five Nations--the Iroquois, as the French folks call them. But I shall trot up afterward to Sandy Hill and Fort Lyman to see what is to be done there in the way of business. Fort Lyman I call it still, though it should be Fort Edward, for after the brush with Dieskau it has changed its name. Aye, that was a sharp affair, Major. You'd ha' liked to bin there, I guess."

"Were you there, Captain?" asked Mr. Prevost. "I did not know you had seen so much service."

"There I was," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh; "though, as to service, I did more than I was paid for, seeing I had no commission. I'll tell you how it was, Prevost. Just in the beginning of September--the seventh or eighth, I think--of the year afore last, that is, seventeen fifty-five, I was going up to the head of the lake to see if I could not get some paltry, for I had been unlucky down westward, and had made a bargain in Albany that I did not like to break. Just at the top of the hill, near where the King's road comes down to the ford, who should I stumble upon amongst the trees but old Hendrick, as they call him--why, I can't tell--the sachem of the Tortoise totem of the Mohawks. He was there with three young men at his feet; but we were always good friends, he and I, and over and above, I carried the calumet, so there was no danger. Well, we sat down, and he told me that the General, that is, Sir William as is now, had dug up the tomahawk, and was encamped near Fort Lyman, to give battle to You-non-de-yok; that is to say, in their jargon, the French governor. He told me, too, that he was on his way to join the General, but that he did not intend to fight, but only to witness the brave deeds of the Corlear men; that is to say, the English. He was a cunning old fox, old Hendrick, and I fancied from that he thought we should be defeated. But when I asked him, he said, no; that it was all on account of a dream he had had, forbidding him to fight on the penalty of his scalp. So I told him I was minded to go with him and see the fun. Well, we mustered before the sun was quite down well nigh upon three hundred Mohawks, all beautifully painted and feathered; but they all told me they had not sung their war song, nor danced their war dance before they left their lodges, so I could see well enough that they had no intention to fight, and the tarnation devil wouldn't make 'em. However, we got to the camp, where they were all busy throwing up breastworks, and we heard that Dieskau was coming down from Hunter's in force. The next morning we heard that he had turned back again from Fort Lyman, and Johnson sent out Williams with seven or eight hundred men to get hold of his haunches. I tried hard to get old Hendrick to go along, for I stuck fast by my Ingians, knowing the brutes can be serviceable when you trust them. But the sachem only grunted, and did not stir. In an hour and a half we heard a mighty large rattle of muskets, and the Ingians could not stand the sound quietly, but began looking at their rifle flints and fingering their tomahawks. However, they did not stir, and old Hendrick sat as grave and as brown as an old hemlock stump. Then we saw another party go out of camp to help the first; but in a very few minutes they came running back with Dieskau at their heels. In they tumbled over the breastworks head over heels--anyhow; and a pretty little considerable quantity of fright brought they with them. If Dieskau had charged straight on that minute, we should have all been smashed to everlasting flinders, and I don't doubt no more than that a bear's a critter that Hendrick and his painted devils would have had as many English scalps as French ones. But the old coon of a Garman halted up short some two hundred yards off, and Johnson did not give him much time to look about him, for he poured all the cannon shot he had got into him as hard as he could pelt. Well, the French Ingians, and there was a mighty sight of them, did not like that game of ball, and they squattered off to the right and left, some into the trees and some into the swamps; and I could stand it no longer, but up with my rifle and give them all I had to give; and old Hendrick, seeing how things were likely to go, took to the right end, too, but a little too fast, for the old devil came into him, and he must needs have scalps. So out he went with the rest, and just as he had got his forefinger in the hair of a young Frenchman, whiz came a bullet into his dirty red skin, and down he went like an old moose. Some twenty of his Ingians got shot, too; but, in the end, Dieskau had to run. Johnson was wounded, too; and them folks have since said that he had no right to the honor of the battle, but that it was Lyman, who took the command when he could fight no longer. But that's all trash! Dieskau had missed his chance, and all his irregulars were sent skimming by the first fire long before Johnson was hit. Lyman had nothing to do but hold what Johnson left him, and pursue the enemy. The first he did well enough, but the second he forgot to do, though he was a brave man and a good soldier, for all that."

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