The bold and decisive measures of the Council of Safety had by this time begun to manifest themselves in results little anticipated by the adherents of the royal cause in Vermont. The latter, emboldened both by the presence of a powerful British army on their borders, and the doubts and difficulties which, for a while, were known to have embarrassed and rendered ineffectual the deliberations of their opponents, had become so assured and confident of an easy conquest, that in some sections they proceeded openly in the work of enlistment, and in others pushed forward their parties into the very heart of the interior, before perceiving their error; while, by their representations at headquarters, they completely deceived Burgoyne and his advisers respecting the true state of feeling that animated the bosoms of the great mass of the people—a fact made abundantly evident, not only by the subsequent confessions of that general, but by all his operations at the time, and especially that of the short-sighted expedition, which we have before shown him to have planned and set afoot, under Peters, to the Connecticut River. It was no wonder, therefore, that when they now suddenly discovered the whole state in motion—armed men springing up in every glen, nook, and corner of the Green Mountains, and concentrating to join another no less unexpected, and no less formidable force, which was understood to be rapidly advancing from New Hampshire—it was no wonder they were taken wholly by surprise, and slunk silently away to their retreats, or immediately fled to the British army, whom they still neglected to undeceive.
It was about one week subsequent to the events last recited; and the interim had been marked with little, as far as immediately concerned the action of our story, and those of its personages to whom we must now return—with very little to which pen can do justice, except what the reader's imagination probably has already anticipated; for though thrilling events may be described with a good degree of adequacy, there are yet certain states of high wrought feeling that language can never but feebly portray. The search for the lost maiden, on the eventful night of her capture and escape, had been, as the reader will have inferred, as vain and fruitless as it was agonizing to her lover, and anxious to all. The renewal of the search next day, till afternoon, had been no better rewarded. More force having then arrived, the tory encampment was assailed, but found empty of occupants, who had, some hours before, scattered and fled. Still unwilling to relinquish his object, Woodburn, with a small party of his friends, continued his efforts in wider ranges through the forest, which, on the third morning, brought him to the cabin in which her most fearful trials had occurred; when the dead wolf, the remnants of the slain Indians, not yet wholly carried off by the foxes or returning wolves, the guns, the torn and blood-stained earth, and, above all, the white shreds of some part of female apparel, discolored and scattered round the room, told a tale, that, in spite of the entreaties of his sympathizing friends, who deemed the evidence not yet wholly conclusive, drove the appalled lover, in a frenzy of grief and horror, from the dreadful scene.
It was about a week, as we have said, after that night of adventure and excitement. Three companies of the newly-enlisted regiment of Rangers, embracing all the recruits yet raised on the east side of the mountains, were paraded in the road before Coffin's tavern, while their officers were standing listless on the grass in front, and occasionally throwing inquiring glances along the road to the east, as if awaiting some expected arrival from that quarter. At length Woodburn, on whose brow rested an air of gloomy sternness, advanced, and calling his sergeant and scoutmaster, Dunning, to his side, in a low tone, imparted to him some private order or suggestion; when the latter, beckoning from the ranks his and the reader's old acquaintance, Bill Piper, who was also a subaltern in the same company, the two laid aside their guns and equipments, and proceeded leisurely down the road, the way in which the attention of all seemed directed. After proceeding about a quarter of a mile, they came to a turn in the road, which, now becoming invisible from the tavern, led down a long hill, and entered an extended piece of woods nearly another quarter of a mile distant.
“Well,” said Dunning, here pausing and casting his eyes forward to the woods, “they der don't seem to make their appearance yet. I ditter think they must have halted there by the brook to drink and rest a little so we will stop at this point, where we can see both ways; and when the troops begin to show themselves, we'll then give the signal.”
With this, they threw themselves down in the cool shade of a tree by the way side, and, for a while, yielded themselves to that listless, dreamy mood, which reclining in the shade, after exercise, on a warm day, almost invariably induces.
“Dunning,” said Piper, at length rousing up a little, and drawing from his pocket a well-filled leathern purse, which he carelessly chinked against his upraised knee, by way of preliminary—“Dunning, it is a mystery to me where all this stuff comes from. Six weeks ago, it was thought there were scarcely a thousand hard dollars, except what was in tory families, in all the Grants. Now, there must be well on to that sum even in our own company, every recruit having been paid his bounty and month's advance pay, in silver or gold, on the spot. Where does it come from?”
“From the sales of the der tory estates, of which they have been making a clean sweep, you know,” replied the other.
“Yes, yes, we all know that, I suppose; but where do the purchasers of these estates get the money to buy with?” rejoined the former.
“I never ditter catechized them about it,” said the hunter, evasively.
“Nor I,” remarked Piper; “but I have lately heard a curious story about the matter. They say there has been a sort of homespun-looking old fellow, that nobody seems to know, following the commissioners of sales round, from place to place, with an old horse and cart, seemingly loaded with wooden ware, or some such kind of gear, for peddling; and that he has bid off a great part of all the farms, and stock on them, which have been sold, paying down for them on the spot in hard money, which they say he carries about with him tied up in old stockings, and hid away in his load of trumpery. Some mistrust he is a Jew; and some are afraid he is a British agent, not only buying up farms, but also the Council of Safety, who are also strangely full of money these days.”