The Black Eagle; or, Ticonderoga

by G. P. R. James

"I think not," answered Edith; "they are evidently old, and seemed to have belonged to one person. Besides, there are a number of drawings, all evidently done by one hand--not what any one would purchase, and apparently the production of an amateur, rather than of an artist."

Mr. Prevost fell into a fit of thought, and leaned his head upon his hand; but Woodchuck said,--

"Oh, they are her mother's; beyond doubt, they are her mother's. She was quite a lady every inch of her; you could hear it in the tone of her voice; you could see it in her walk; her words too were all those of a lady, and her hand was so small and delicate, it could never have seen work. Do you know, Miss Edith, she was wonderful like you--more like you than Otaitsa; but I'll tell you all about it just as I heard it from the old squaw.

"At the time I talk of," continued he, "that's a good many years ago--eighteen or nineteen may be--Black Eagle was the handsomest young man that had ever been seen in the tribes, they say, and the fiercest warrior too. He was always ready to take part in any war; and whenever fighting was going on, he was there. Well, the Delawares had not been quite brought under at that time by the Five Nations; and he went down with his warriors, and the Mohawks, to fight against the Mohaguns--they were Delawares too, you know; some were on the Monongahela river, just at the corner of Pennsylvania and Virginny. Our people had given some help to the Mohaguns, and they were at that time just laying the foundations of a fort, which the French got hold of afterwards, and called Fort Du Quesne.

"Well, there was an old general officer, who thought he would go up and see how the works were going on; and, as things were quiet enough just then--though it was but a calm before a storm--he took his daughter with him, and journeyed away pleasantly enough through the woods, I dare say, though it must have been slow work; for, as he intended to stay all the summer, the old man took a world of baggage with him; but, the third or fourth night after leaving the civilized parts, they lodged in an Ingian village; when, all in a minute, just as they were going to bed, down comes Black Eagle upon them, with his warriors. There was a dreadful fight in the village; nothing but screams, and war-whoops, and rifle-shots; and the Mohaguns, poor devils! were almost put out that night, for they were taken unawares, and they do say, not a man escaped alive out of the wigwam.

"At the first fire, out runs the old general from the hut, and at the same minute a rifle ball, perhaps from a friend, perhaps from an enemy, no one can tell, goes right through his heart. Black Eagle was collecting scalps all this time; but when he turned round, or came back, or however it might be, there he found this poor young lady, the officer's daughter, crying over her father. Well, he wouldn't suffer them to hurt her; but he took her away to the Oneida country with him, and gathered up all her goods and chattels, and her father's, and carried them off too, but all for her; for it seems that he fell in love with her at first sight. What, they say, made her first like him, was, that he wouldn't let his savages scalp the old man, telling them that the English were allies, and declaring that the ball that killed him had not come from an Oneida rifle.

"However that may be, the poor girl had no choice but to marry Black Eagle, though his mother said that, being a great chief's daughter, she made him promise never to have another wife; and, if ever a Christian priest came there, to be married to her according to her own fashion."

While he spoke, Mr. Prevost remained apparently buried in deep and very gloomy thought. But he had heard every word; and his mind had more than once wandered wide away, as was its wont, to collateral things, not only in the present, but in the past. It was a strange habit of his--a sort of discrepancy in his character--thus to suffer his thoughts to be turned aside by any accidental circumstance even in matters of deep interest; for, in times of action--when it was necessary to decide and do--no intellect was ever more prompt and decisive than his own, going straight forward to its object with great and startling rapidity. Where there was nothing to be done, however, where it was all a matter of mere thought, this rambling mood almost always prevailed: but still, like a stream flowing through a level country, and turning aside at every little obstacle, though pursuing its onward course towards the sea and reaching it at length, his mind, sooner or later, got back into the course from which it had deviated. When Woodchuck stopped, he raised his head and gazed at him for a moment in the face, with a look of earnest and melancholy inquiry.

"Did you ever hear her name?" he asked. "Can you tell me her father's name?"

"No," replied Woodchuck. "I had the history almost all from the old squaw, and if she had tried to give me an English name she would have manufactured something such as never found its way into an English mouth. All she told me was that the father was a great chief among the English, by which I made out that she meant a general."