One of the few incidents of Indian warfare naturally susceptible of the

moonlight of romance was that expedition undertaken for the defence of

the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in the well-remembered

"Lovell's Fight." Imagination, by casting certain circumstances

judicially into the shade, may see much to admire in the heroism of a

little band who gave battle to twice their number in the heart of the

enemy's country. The open bravery displayed by both parties was in

accordance with civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might not

blush to record the deeds of one or two individuals. The battle, though

so fatal to those who fought, was not unfortunate in its consequences

to the country; for it broke the strength of a tribe and conduced to

the peace which subsisted during several ensuing years. History and

tradition are unusually minute in their memorials of their affair; and

the captain of a scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual

a military renown as many a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the

incidents contained in the following pages will be recognized,

notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by such as have

heard, from old men's lips, the fate of the few combatants who were in

a condition to retreat after "Lovell's Fight."

 

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

 

The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree-tops, beneath which

two weary and wounded men had stretched their limbs the night before.

Their bed of withered oak leaves was strewn upon the small level space,

at the foot of a rock, situated near the summit of one of the gentle

swells by which the face of the country is there diversified. The mass

of granite, rearing its smooth, flat surface fifteen or twenty feet

above their heads, was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, upon which the

veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters. On a tract

of several acres around this rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees had

supplied the place of the pines, which were the usual growth of the

land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close beside the

travellers.

 

The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of sleep;

for, so soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the

highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his recumbent posture

and sat erect. The deep lines of his countenance and the scattered gray

of his hair marked him as past the middle age; but his muscular frame

would, but for the effect of his wound, have been as capable of

sustaining fatigue as in the early vigor of life. Languor and

exhaustion now sat upon his haggard features; and the despairing glance

which he sent forward through the depths of the forest proved his own

conviction that his pilgrimage was at an end. He next turned his eyes

to the companion who reclined by his side. The youth--for he had

scarcely attained the years of manhood--lay, with his head upon his

arm, in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill of pain from

his wounds seemed each moment on the point of breaking. His right hand

grasped a musket; and, to judge from the violent action of his

features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision of the conflict of

which he was one of the few survivors. A shout deep and loud in his

dreaming fancy--found its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips; and,

starting even at the slight sound of his own voice, he suddenly awoke.

The first act of reviving recollection was to make anxious inquiries

respecting the condition of his wounded fellow-traveller. The latter

shook his head.

 

"Reuben, my boy," said he, "this rock beneath which we sit will serve

for an old hunter's gravestone. There is many and many a long mile of

howling wilderness before us yet; nor would it avail me anything if the

smoke of my own chimney were but on the other side of that swell of

land. The Indian bullet was deadlier than I thought."

 

"You are weary with our three days' travel," replied the youth, "and a

little longer rest will recruit you. Sit you here while I search the

woods for the herbs and roots that must be our sustenance; and, having

eaten, you shall lean on me, and we will turn our faces homeward. I

doubt not that, with my help, you can attain to some one of the

frontier garrisons."

 

"There is not two days' life in me, Reuben," said the other, calmly,

"and I will no longer burden you with my useless body, when you can

scarcely support your own. Your wounds are deep and your strength is

failing fast; yet, if you hasten onward alone, you may be preserved.

For me there is no hope, and I will await death here."

 

"If it must be so, I will remain and watch by you," said Reuben,

resolutely.

 

"No, my son, no," rejoined his companion. "Let the wish of a dying man

have weight with you; give me one grasp of your hand, and get you

hence. Think you that my last moments will be eased by the thought that

I leave you to die a more lingering death? I have loved you like a

father, Reuben; and at a time like this I should have something of a

father's authority. I charge you to be gone that I may die in peace."

 

"And because you have been a father to me, should I therefore leave you

to perish and to lie unburied in the wilderness?" exclaimed the youth.

"No; if your end be in truth approaching, I will watch by you and

receive your parting words. I will dig a grave here by the rock, in

which, if my weakness overcome me, we will rest together; or, if Heaven

gives me strength, I will seek my way home."

 

"In the cities and wherever men dwell," replied the other, "they bury

their dead in the earth; they hide them from the sight of the living;

but here, where no step may pass perhaps for a hundred years, wherefore

should I not rest beneath the open sky, covered only by the oak leaves

when the autumn winds shall strew them? And for a monument, here is

this gray rock, on which my dying hand shall carve the name of Roger

Malvin, and the traveller in days to come will know that here sleeps a

hunter and a warrior. Tarry not, then, for a folly like this, but

hasten away, if not for your own sake, for hers who will else be

desolate."

 

Malvin spoke the last few words in a faltering voice, and their effect

upon his companion was strongly visible. They reminded him that there

were other and less questionable duties than that of sharing the fate

of a man whom his death could not benefit. Nor can it be affirmed that

no selfish feeling strove to enter Reuben's heart, though the

consciousness made him more earnestly resist his companion's entreaties.

 

"How terrible to wait the slow approach of death in this solitude!"

exclaimed he. "A brave man does not shrink in the battle; and, when

friends stand round the bed, even women may die composedly; but here--"

 

"I shall not shrink even here, Reuben Bourne," interrupted Malvin. "I

am a man of no weak heart, and, if I were, there is a surer support

than that of earthly friends. You are young, and life is dear to you.

Your last moments will need comfort far more than mine; and when you

have laid me in the earth, and are alone, and night is settling on the

forest, you will feel all the bitterness of the death that may now be

escaped. But I will urge no selfish motive to your generous nature.

Leave me for my sake, that, having said a prayer for your safety, I may

have space to settle my account undisturbed by worldly sorrows."

 

"And your daughter,--how shall I dare to meet her eye?" exclaimed

Reuben. "She will ask the fate of her father, whose life I vowed to

defend with my own. Must I tell her that he travelled three days' march

with me from the field of battle and that then I left him to perish in

the wilderness? Were it not better to lie down and die by your side

than to return safe and say this to Dorcas?"

 

"Tell my daughter," said Roger Malvin, "that, though yourself sore

wounded, and weak, and weary, you led my tottering footsteps many a

mile, and left me only at my earnest entreaty, because I would not have

your blood upon my soul. Tell her that through pain and danger you were

faithful, and that, if your lifeblood could have saved me, it would

have flowed to its last drop; and tell her that you will be something

dearer than a father, and that my blessing is with you both, and that

my dying eyes can see a long and pleasant path in which you will

journey together."

 

As Malvin spoke he almost raised himself from the ground, and the

energy of his concluding words seemed to fill the wild and lonely

forest with a vision of happiness; but, when he sank exhausted upon his

bed of oak leaves, the light which had kindled in Reuben's eye was

quenched. He felt as if it were both sin and folly to think of

happiness at such a moment. His companion watched his changing

countenance, and sought with generous art to wile him to his own good.

 

"Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I have to live," he

resumed. "It may be that, with speedy assistance, I might recover of my

wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere this, have carried tidings of

our fatal battle to the frontiers, and parties will be out to succor

those in like condition with ourselves. Should you meet one of these

and guide them hither, who can tell but that I may sit by my own

fireside again?"

 

A mournful smile strayed across the features of the dying man as he

insinuated that unfounded hope,--which, however, was not without its

effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor even the desolate

condition of Dorcas, could have induced him to desert his companion at

such a moment--but his wishes seized on the thought that Malvin's life

might be preserved, and his sanguine nature heightened almost to

certainty the remote possibility of procuring human aid.

 

"Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to hope that friends are not

far distant," he said, half aloud. "There fled one coward, unwounded,

in the beginning of the fight, and most probably he made good speed.

Every true man on the frontier would shoulder his musket at the news;

and, though no party may range so far into the woods as this, I shall

perhaps encounter them in one day's march. Counsel me faithfully," he

added, turning to Malvin, in distrust of his own motives. "Were your

situation mine, would you desert me while life remained?"

 

"It is now twenty years," replied Roger Malvin,--sighing, however, as

he secretly acknowledged the wide dissimilarity between the two

cases,-"it is now twenty years since I escaped with one dear friend

from Indian captivity near Montreal. We journeyed many days through the

woods, till at length overcome with hunger and weariness, my friend lay

down and besought me to leave him; for he knew that, if I remained, we

both must perish; and, with but little hope of obtaining succor, I

heaped a pillow of dry leaves beneath his head and hastened on."

 

"And did you return in time to save him?" asked Reuben, hanging on

Malvin's words as if they were to be prophetic of his own success.

 

"I did," answered the other. "I came upon the camp of a hunting party

before sunset of the same day. I guided them to the spot where my

comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale and hearty man upon

his own farm, far within the frontiers, while I lie wounded here in the

depths of the wilderness."

 

This example, powerful in affecting Reuben's decision, was aided,

unconsciously to himself, by the hidden strength of many another

motive. Roger Malvin perceived that the victory was nearly won.

 

"Now, go, my son, and Heaven prosper you!" he said. "Turn not back with

your friends when you meet them, lest your wounds and weariness

overcome you; but send hitherward two or three, that may be spared, to

search for me; and believe me, Reuben, my heart will be lighter with

every step you take towards home." Yet there was, perhaps, a change

both in his countenance and voice as he spoke thus; for, after all, it

was a ghastly fate to be left expiring in the wilderness.

 

Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he was acting rightly, at length

raised himself from the ground and prepared himself for his departure.

And first, though contrary to Malvin's wishes, he collected a stock of

roots and herbs, which had been their only food during the last two

days. This useless supply he placed within reach of the dying man, for

whom, also, he swept together a bed of dry oak leaves. Then climbing to

the summit of the rock, which on one side was rough and broken, he bent

the oak sapling downward, and bound his handkerchief to the topmost

branch. This precaution was not unnecessary to direct any who might

come in search of Malvin; for every part of the rock, except its broad,

smooth front, was concealed at a little distance by the dense

undergrowth of the forest. The handkerchief had been the bandage of a

wound upon Reuben's arm; and, as he bound it to the tree, he vowed by

the blood that stained it that he would return, either to save his

companion's life or to lay his body in the grave. He then descended,

and stood, with downcast eyes, to receive Roger Malvin's parting words.

 

The experience of the latter suggested much and minute advice

respecting the youth's journey through the trackless forest. Upon this

subject he spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were sending Reuben to

the battle or the chase while he himself remained secure at home, and

not as if the human countenance that was about to leave him were the

last he would ever behold. But his firmness was shaken before he

concluded.

 

"Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that my last prayer shall be for

her and you. Bid her to have no hard thoughts because you left me

here,"--Reuben's heart smote him,--"for that your life would not have

weighed with you if its sacrifice could have done me good. She will

marry you after she has mourned a little while for her father; and

Heaven grant you long and happy days, and may your children's children

stand round your death bed! And, Reuben," added he, as the weakness of

mortality made its way at last, "return, when your wounds are healed

and your weariness refreshed,--return to this wild rock, and lay my

bones in the grave, and say a prayer over them."

 

An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps from the customs of the

Indians, whose war was with the dead as well as the living, was paid by

the frontier inhabitants to the rites of sepulture; and there are many

instances of the sacrifice of life in the attempt to bury those who had

fallen by the "sword of the wilderness." Reuben, therefore, felt the

full importance of the promise which he most solemnly made to return

and perform Roger Malvin's obsequies. It was remarkable that the

latter, speaking his whole heart in his parting words, no longer

endeavored to persuade the youth that even the speediest succor might

avail to the preservation of his life. Reuben was internally convinced

that he should see Malvin's living face no more. His generous nature

would fain have delayed him, at whatever risk, till the dying scene

were past; but the desire of existence and the hope of happiness had

strengthened in his heart, and he was unable to resist them.

 

"It is enough," said Roger Malvin, having listened to Reuben's promise.

"Go, and God speed you!"

 

The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, and was departing. His

slow and faltering steps, however, had borne him but a little way

before Malvin's voice recalled him.

 

"Reuben, Reuben," said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and knelt down

by the dying man.

 

"Raise me, and let me lean against the rock," was his last request. "My

face will be turned towards home, and I shall see you a moment longer

as you pass among the trees."

 

Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his companion's posture,

again began his solitary pilgrimage. He walked more hastily at first

than was consistent with his strength; for a sort of guilty feeling,

which sometimes torments men in their most justifiable acts, caused him

to seek concealment from Malvin's eyes; but after he had trodden far

upon the rustling forest leaves he crept back, impelled by a wild and

painful curiosity, and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn

tree, gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The morning sun was

unclouded, and the trees and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the month

of May; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature's face, as if she

sympathized with mortal pain and sorrow Roger Malvin's hands were

uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words of which stole through

the stillness of the woods and entered Reuben's heart, torturing it

with an unutterable pang. They were the broken accents of a petition

for his own happiness and that of Dorcas; and, as the youth listened,

conscience, or something in its similitude, pleaded strongly with him

to return and lie down again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom

of the kind and generous being whom he had deserted in his extremity.

Death would come like the slow approach of a corpse, stealing gradually

towards him through the forest, and showing its ghastly and motionless

features from behind a nearer and yet a nearer tree. But such must have

been Reuben's own fate had he tarried another sunset; and who shall

impute blame to him if he shrink from so useless a sacrifice? As he

gave a parting look, a breeze waved the little banner upon the sapling

oak and reminded Reuben of his vow.

 

     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

 

Many circumstances combined to retard the wounded traveller in his way

to the frontiers. On the second day the clouds, gathering densely over

the sky, precluded the possibility of regulating his course by the

position of the sun; and he knew not but that every effort of his

almost exhausted strength was removing him farther from the home he

sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied by the berries and other

spontaneous products of the forest. Herds of deer, it is true,

sometimes bounded past him, and partridges frequently whirred up before

his footsteps; but his ammunition had been expended in the fight, and

he had no means of slaying them. His wounds, irritated by the constant

exertion in which lay the only hope of life, wore away his strength and

at intervals confused his reason. But, even in the wanderings of

intellect, Reuben's young heart clung strongly to existence; and it was

only through absolute incapacity of motion that he at last sank down

beneath a tree, compelled there to await death.

 

In this situation he was discovered by a party who, upon the first

intelligence of the fight, had been despatched to the relief of the

survivors. They conveyed him to the nearest settlement, which chanced

to be that of his own residence.

 

Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the bedside of

her wounded lover, and administered all those comforts that are in the

sole gift of woman's heart and hand. During several days Reuben's

recollection strayed drowsily among the perils and hardships through

which he had passed, and he was incapable of returning definite answers

to the inquiries with which many were eager to harass him. No authentic

particulars of the battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers,

wives, and children tell whether their loved ones were detained by

captivity or by the stronger chain of death. Dorcas nourished her

apprehensions in silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke from an

unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more perfectly than at any

previous time. She saw that his intellect had become composed, and she

could no longer restrain her filial anxiety.

 

"My father, Reuben?" she began; but the change in her lover's

countenance made her pause.

 

The youth shrank as if with a bitter pain, and the blood gushed vividly

into his wan and hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to cover his

face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half raised himself

and spoke vehemently, defending himself against an imaginary accusation.

 

"Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas; and he bade me not

burden myself with him, but only to lead him to the lakeside, that he

might quench his thirst and die. But I would not desert the old man in

his extremity, and, though bleeding myself, I supported him; I gave him

half my strength, and led him away with me. For three days we journeyed

on together, and your father was sustained beyond my hopes, but,

awaking at sunrise on the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted;

he was unable to proceed; his life had ebbed away fast; and--"

 

"He died!" exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.

 

Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love of life

had hurried him away before her father's fate was decided. He spoke

not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and exhaustion, sank

back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept when her fears were

thus confirmed; but the shock, as it had been long anticipated, was on

that account the less violent.

 

"You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness, Reuben?" was the

question by which her filial piety manifested itself.

 

"My hands were weak; but I did what I could," replied the youth in a

smothered tone. "There stands a noble tombstone above his head; and I

would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!"

 

Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no

further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought that Roger

Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible to bestow.

The tale of Reuben's courage and fidelity lost nothing when she

communicated it to her friends; and the poor youth, tottering from his

sick chamber to breathe the sunny air, experienced from every tongue

the miserable and humiliating torture of unmerited praise. All

acknowledged that he might worthily demand the hand of the fair maiden

to whose father he had been "faithful unto death;" and, as my tale is

not of love, it shall suffice to say that in the space of a few months

Reuben became the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage

ceremony the bride was covered with blushes, but the bridegroom's face

was pale.

 

There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incommunicable

thought--something which he was to conceal most heedfully from her whom

he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the moral

cowardice that had restrained his words when he was about to disclose

the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the

dread of universal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood. He

felt that for leaving Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. His

presence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own life, would have added

only another and a needless agony to the last moments of the dying man;

but concealment had imparted to a justifiable act much of the secret

effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him that he had done

right, experienced in no small degree the mental horrors which punish

the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain association of

ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a murderer. For years, also,

a thought would occasionally recur, which, though he perceived all its

folly and extravagance, he had not power to banish from his mind. It

was a haunting and torturing fancy that his father-in-law was yet

sitting at the foot of the rock, on the withered forest leaves, alive,

and awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental deceptions, however,

came and went, nor did he ever mistake them for realities: but in the

calmest and clearest moods of his mind he was conscious that he had a

deep vow unredeemed, and that an unburied corpse was calling to him out

of the wilderness. Yet such was the consequence of his prevarication

that he could not obey the call. It was now too late to require the

assistance of Roger Malvin's friends in performing his long-deferred

sepulture; and superstitious fears, of which none were more susceptible

than the people of the outward settlements, forbade Reuben to go alone.

Neither did he know where in the pathless and illimitable forest to

seek that smooth and lettered rock at the base of which the body lay:

his remembrance of every portion of his travel thence was indistinct,

and the latter part had left no impression upon his mind. There was,

however, a continual impulse, a voice audible only to himself,

commanding him to go forth and redeem his vow; and he had a strange

impression that, were he to make the trial, he would be led straight to

Malvin's bones. But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was

disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his

spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was

transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable man.

 

In the course of a few years after their marriage changes began to be

visible in the external prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas. The only

riches of the former had been his stout heart and strong arm; but the

latter, her father's sole heiress, had made her husband master of a

farm, under older cultivation, larger, and better stocked than most of

the frontier establishments. Reuben Bourne, however, was a neglectful

husbandman; and, while the lands of the other settlers became annually

more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same proportion. The

discouragements to agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation

of Indian war, during which men held the plough in one hand and the

musket in the other, and were fortunate if the products of their

dangerous labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn,

by the savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered condition

of the country; nor can it be denied that his intervals of industrious

attention to his affairs were but scantily rewarded with success. The

irritability by which he had recently become distinguished was another

cause of his declining prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels

in his unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring settlers. The

results of these were innumerable lawsuits; for the people of New

England, in the earliest stages and wildest circumstances of the

country, adopted, whenever attainable, the legal mode of deciding their

differences. To be brief, the world did not go well with Reuben Bourne;

and, though not till many years after his marriage, he was finally a

ruined man, with but one remaining expedient against the evil fate that

had pursued him. He was to throw sunlight into some deep recess of the

forest, and seek subsistence from the virgin bosom of the wilderness.

 

The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, now arrived at the age

of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a glorious

manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and already began to excel

in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life. His foot was fleet, his

aim true, his apprehension quick, his heart glad and high; and all who

anticipated the return of Indian war spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future

leader in the land. The boy was loved by his father with a deep and

silent strength, as if whatever was good and happy in his own nature

had been transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it.

Even Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for

Reuben's secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually made him

a selfish man, and he could no longer love deeply except where he saw

or imagined some reflection or likeness of his own mind. In Cyrus he

recognized what he had himself been in other days; and at intervals he

seemed to partake of the boy's spirit, and to be revived with a fresh

and happy life. Reuben was accompanied by his son in the expedition,

for the purpose of selecting a tract of land and felling and burning

the timber, which necessarily preceded the removal of the household

gods. Two months of autumn were thus occupied, after which Reuben

Bourne and his young hunter returned to spend their last winter in the

settlements.

 

     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

 

It was early in the month of May that the little family snapped asunder

whatever tendrils of affections had clung to inanimate objects, and

bade farewell to the few who, in the blight of fortune, called

themselves their friends. The sadness of the parting moment had, to

each of the pilgrims, its peculiar alleviations. Reuben, a moody man,

and misanthropic because unhappy, strode onward with his usual stern

brow and downcast eye, feeling few regrets and disdaining to

acknowledge any. Dorcas, while she wept abundantly over the broken ties

by which her simple and affectionate nature had bound itself to

everything, felt that the inhabitants of her inmost heart moved on with

her, and that all else would be supplied wherever she might go. And the

boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and thought of the adventurous

pleasures of the untrodden forest.

 

Oh, who, in the enthusiasm of a daydream, has not wished that he were a

wanderer in a world of summer wilderness, with one fair and gentle

being hanging lightly on his arm? In youth his free and exulting step

would know no barrier but the rolling ocean or the snow-topped

mountains; calmer manhood would choose a home where Nature had strewn a

double wealth in the vale of some transparent stream; and when hoary

age, after long, long years of that pure life, stole on and found him

there, it would find him the father of a race, the patriarch of a

people, the founder of a mighty nation yet to be. When death, like the

sweet sleep which we welcome after a day of happiness, came over him,

his far descendants would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped by

tradition in mysterious attributes, the men of future generations would

call him godlike; and remote posterity would see him standing, dimly

glorious, far up the valley of a hundred centuries.

 

The tangled and gloomy forest through which the personages of my tale

were wandering differed widely from the dreamer's land of fantasy; yet

there was something in their way of life that Nature asserted as her

own, and the gnawing cares which went with them from the world were all

that now obstructed their happiness. One stout and shaggy steed, the

bearer of all their wealth, did not shrink from the added weight of

Dorcas; although her hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter

part of each day's journey, by her husband's side. Reuben and his son,

their muskets on their shoulders and their axes slung behind them, kept

an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's eye for the game that

supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and prepared their

meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest brook, which, as they knelt

down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a

maiden at love's first kiss. They slept beneath a hut of branches, and

awoke at peep of light refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas

and the boy went on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at

intervals with an outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold cold

sorrow, which he compared to the snowdrifts lying deep in the glens and

hollows of the rivulets while the leaves were brightly green above.

 

Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the travel of the woods to

observe that his father did not adhere to the course they had pursued

in their expedition of the preceding autumn. They were now keeping

farther to the north, striking out more directly from the settlements,

and into a region of which savage beasts and savage men were as yet the

sole possessors. The boy sometimes hinted his opinions upon the

subject, and Reuben listened attentively, and once or twice altered the

direction of their march in accordance with his son's counsel; but,

having so done, he seemed ill at ease. His quick and wandering glances

were sent forward apparently in search of enemies lurking behind the

tree trunks, and, seeing nothing there, he would cast his eyes

backwards as if in fear of some pursuer. Cyrus, perceiving that his

father gradually resumed the old direction, forbore to interfere; nor,

though something began to weigh upon his heart, did his adventurous

nature permit him to regret the increased length and the mystery of

their way.

 

On the afternoon of the fifth day they halted, and made their simple

encampment nearly an hour before sunset. The face of the country, for

the last few miles, had been diversified by swells of land resembling

huge waves of a petrified sea; and in one of the corresponding hollows,

a wild and romantic spot, had the family reared their hut and kindled

their fire. There is something chilling, and yet heart-warming, in the

thought of these three, united by strong bands of love and insulated

from all that breathe beside. The dark and gloomy pines looked down

upon them, and, as the wind swept through their tops, a pitying sound

was heard in the forest; or did those old trees groan in fear that men

were come to lay the axe to their roots at last? Reuben and his son,

while Dorcas made ready their meal, proposed to wander out in search of

game, of which that day's march had afforded no supply. The boy,

promising not to quit the vicinity of the encampment, bounded off with

a step as light and elastic as that of the deer he hoped to slay; while

his father, feeling a transient happiness as he gazed after him, was

about to pursue an opposite direction. Dorcas in the meanwhile, had

seated herself near their fire of fallen branches upon the mossgrown

and mouldering trunk of a tree uprooted years before. Her employment,

diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to simmer

over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year's Massachusetts

Almanac, which, with the exception of an old black-letter Bible,

comprised all the literary wealth of the family. None pay a greater

regard to arbitrary divisions of time than those who are excluded from

society; and Dorcas mentioned, as if the information were of

importance, that it was now the twelfth of May. Her husband started.

 

"The twelfth of May! I should remember it well," muttered he, while

many thoughts occasioned a momentary confusion in his mind. "Where am

I? Whither am I wandering? Where did I leave him?"

 

Dorcas, too well accustomed to her husband's wayward moods to note any

peculiarity of demeanor, now laid aside the almanac and addressed him

in that mournful tone which the tender hearted appropriate to griefs

long cold and dead.

 

"It was near this time of the month, eighteen years ago, that my poor

father left this world for a better. He had a kind arm to hold his head

and a kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his last moments; and the

thought of the faithful care you took of him has comforted me many a

time since. Oh, death would have been awful to a solitary man in a wild

place like this!"

 

"Pray Heaven, Dorcas," said Reuben, in a broken voice,--"pray Heaven

that neither of us three dies solitary and lies unburied in this

howling wilderness!" And he hastened away, leaving her to watch the

fire beneath the gloomy pines.

 

Reuben Bourne's rapid pace gradually slackened as the pang,

unintentionally inflicted by the words of Dorcas, became less acute.

Many strange reflections, however, thronged upon him; and, straying

onward rather like a sleep walker than a hunter, it was attributable to

no care of his own that his devious course kept him in the vicinity of

the encampment. His steps were imperceptibly led almost in a circle;

nor did he observe that he was on the verge of a tract of land heavily

timbered, but not with pine-trees. The place of the latter was here

supplied by oaks and other of the harder woods; and around their roots

clustered a dense and bushy under-growth, leaving, however, barren

spaces between the trees, thick strewn with withered leaves. Whenever

the rustling of the branches or the creaking of the trunks made a

sound, as if the forest were waking from slumber, Reuben instinctively

raised the musket that rested on his arm, and cast a quick, sharp

glance on every side; but, convinced by a partial observation that no

animal was near, he would again give himself up to his thoughts. He was

musing on the strange influence that had led him away from his

premeditated course, and so far into the depths of the wilderness.

Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives

lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him

onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat. He

trusted that it was Heaven's intent to afford him an opportunity of

expiating his sin; he hoped that he might find the bones so long

unburied; and that, having laid the earth over them, peace would throw

its sunlight into the sepulchre of his heart. From these thoughts he

was aroused by a rustling in the forest at some distance from the spot

to which he had wandered. Perceiving the motion of some object behind a

thick veil of undergrowth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter and

the aim of a practised marksman. A low moan, which told his success,

and by which even animals cars express their dying agony, was unheeded

by Reuben Bourne. What were the recollections now breaking upon him?

 

The thicket into which Reuben had fired was near the summit of a swell

of land, and was clustered around the base of a rock, which, in the

shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, was not unlike a gigantic

gravestone. As if reflected in a mirror, its likeness was in Reuben's

memory. He even recognized the veins which seemed to form an

inscription in forgotten characters: everything remained the same,

except that a thick covert of bushes shrouded the lowerpart of the

rock, and would have hidden Roger Malvin had he still been sitting

there. Yet in the next moment Reuben's eye was caught by another change

that time had effected since he last stood where he was now standing

again behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The sapling to which

he had bound the bloodstained symbol of his vow had increased and

strengthened into an oak, far indeed from its maturity, but with no

mean spread of shadowy branches. There was one singularity observable

in this tree which made Reuben tremble. The middle and lower branches

were in luxuriant life, and an excess of vegetation had fringed the

trunk almost to the ground; but a blight had apparently stricken the

upper part of the oak, and the very topmost bough was withered,

sapless, and utterly dead. Reuben remembered how the little banner had

fluttered on that topmost bough, when it was green and lovely, eighteen

years before. Whose guilt had blasted it?

 

     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

 

Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, continued her

preparations for their evening repast. Her sylvan table was the

moss-covered trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest part of

which she had spread a snow-white cloth and arranged what were left of

the bright pewter vessels that had been her pride in the settlements.

It had a strange aspect that one little spot of homely comfort in the

desolate heart of Nature. The sunshine yet lingered upon the higher

branches of the trees that grew on rising ground; but the shadows of

evening had deepened into the hollow where the encampment was made, and

the firelight began to redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of the

pines or hovered on the dense and obscure mass of foliage that circled

round the spot. The heart of Dorcas was not sad; for she felt that it

was better to journey in the wilderness with two whom she loved than to

be a lonely woman in a crowd that cared not for her. As she busied

herself in arranging seats of mouldering wood, covered with leaves, for

Reuben and her son, her voice danced through the gloomy forest in the

measure of a song that she had learned in youth. The rude melody, the

production of a bard who won no name, was descriptive of a winter

evening in a frontier cottage, when, secured from savage inroad by the

high-piled snow-drifts, the family rejoiced by their own fireside. The

whole song possessed the nameless charm peculiar to unborrowed thought,

but four continually-recurring lines shone out from the rest like the

blaze of the hearth whose joys they celebrated. Into them, working

magic with a few simple words, the poet had instilled the very essence

of domestic love and household happiness, and they were poetry and

picture joined in one. As Dorcas sang, the walls of her forsaken home

seemed to encircle her; she no longer saw the gloomy pines, nor heard

the wind which still, as she began each verse, sent a heavy breath

through the branches, and died away in a hollow moan from the burden of

the song. She was aroused by the report of a gun in the vicinity of the

encampment; and either the sudden sound, or her loneliness by the

glowing fire, caused her to tremble violently. The next moment she

laughed in the pride of a mother's heart.

 

"My beautiful young hunter! My boy has slain a deer!" she exclaimed,

recollecting that in the direction whence the shot proceeded Cyrus had

gone to the chase.

 

She waited a reasonable time to hear her son's light step bounding over

the rustling leaves to tell of his success. But he did not immediately

appear; and she sent her cheerful voice among the trees in search of

him.

 

"Cyrus! Cyrus!"

 

His coming was still delayed; and she determined, as the report had

apparently been very near, to seek for him in person. Her assistance,

also, might be necessary in bringing home the venison which she

flattered herself he had obtained. She therefore set forward, directing

her steps by the long-past sound, and singing as she went, in order

that the boy might be aware of her approach and run to meet her. From

behind the trunk of every tree, and from every hiding-place in the

thick foliage of the undergrowth, she hoped to discover the countenance

of her son, laughing with the sportive mischief that is born of

affection. The sun was now beneath the horizon, and the light that came

down among the leaves was sufficiently dim to create many illusions in

her expecting fancy. Several times she seemed indistinctly to see his

face gazing out from among the leaves; and once she imagined that he

stood beckoning to her at the base of a craggy rock. Keeping her eyes

on this object, however, it proved to be no more than the trunk of an

oak fringed to the very ground with little branches, one of which,

thrust out farther than the rest, was shaken by the breeze. Making her

way round the foot of the rock, she suddenly found herself close to her

husband, who had approached in another direction. Leaning upon the butt

of his gun, the muzzle of which rested upon the withered leaves, he was

apparently absorbed in the contemplation of some object at his feet.

 

"How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the deer and fallen asleep over

him?" exclaimed Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her first slight

observation of his posture and appearance.

 

He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes towards her; and a cold,

shuddering fear, indefinite in its source and object, began to creep

into her blood. She now perceived that her husband's face was ghastly

pale, and his features were rigid, as if incapable of assuming any

other expression than the strong despair which had hardened upon them.

He gave not the slightest evidence that he was aware of her approach.

 

"For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to me!" cried Dorcas; and the

strange sound of her own voice affrighted her even more than the dead

silence.

 

Her husband started, stared into her face, drew her to the front of the

rock, and pointed with his finger.

 

Oh, there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless, upon the fallen forest

leaves! His cheek rested upon his arm--his curled locks were thrown

back from his brow--his limbs were slightly relaxed. Had a sudden

weariness overcome the youthful hunter? Would his mother's voice arouse

him? She knew that it was death.

 

"This broad rock is the gravestone of your near kindred, Dorcas," said

her husband. "Your tears will fall at once over your father and your

son."

 

She heard him not. With one wild shriek, that seemed to force its way

from the sufferer's inmost soul, she sank insensible by the side of her

dead boy. At that moment the withered topmost bough of the oak loosened

itself in the stilly air, and fell in soft, light fragments upon the

rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben, upon his wife and child, and upon

Roger Malvin's bones. Then Reuben's heart was stricken, and the tears

gushed out like water from a rock. The vow that the wounded youth had

made the blighted man had come to redeem. His sin was expiated,--the

curse was gone from him; and in the hour when he had shed blood dearer

to him than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up to Heaven

from the lips of Reuben Bourne.