"I do," said the soldier, "and not more at your joyless tones, my fair cousin, than at the coincidence of our thoughts. I dreamed (for I also have had my visions) last night, that some one came to me and whispered in my ear to 'cross the river at the Lower Ford, the Upper being dangerous.' Verily, I shall hereafter treat my dreams with respect. I suppose,—I hope, were it only to prove we have a good angel in common,—that you dreamed the same thing."
"No,—it was not that," said Edith, with a sad and anxious countenance. "It was a dream that has always been followed by evil. I dreamed—. But it will offend you, cousin?"
"What!" said Roland, "a dream? You dreamed perhaps that I forgot both wisdom and affection, when, for the sake of this worthless beast, Briareus, I drew you into difficulty and peril?"
"No, no," said Edith, earnestly, and then added in a low voice, "I dreamed of Richard Braxley!"
"Curse him!" muttered the youth, with tones of bitter passion: "it is to him we owe all that now afflicts us,—poverty and exile, our distresses and difficulties, our fears and our dangers. For a wooer," he added, with a smile of equal bitterness, "methinks he has fallen on but a rough way of proving his regard. But you dreamed of him. Well, what was it? He came to you with the look of a beaten dog, fawned at your feet, and displaying that infernal will, 'Marry me,' quoth he, 'fair maid, and I will be a greater rascal than before,—I will burn this will, and consent to enjoy Roland Forrester's lands and houses in right of my wife, instead of claiming them in trust for an heir no longer in the land of the living.' Cur!—and but for you, Edith, I would have repaid his insolence as it deserved. But you ever intercede for your worst enemies. There is that confounded Stackpole, now: I vow to heaven, I am sorry I cut the rascal down!—But you dreamed of Braxley! What said the villain?"
"He said," replied Edith, who had listened mournfully, but in silence, to the young man's hasty expressions, like one who was too well acquainted with the impetuosity of his temper to think of opposing him in his angry moments, or perhaps because her spirits were too much subdued by her fears to allow her to play the monitress,—"He said, and frowningly too, 'that soft words were with him the prelude to hard resolutions, and that where he could not win as the turtle, he could take his prey like a vulture;'—or some such words of anger. Now, Roland, I have twice before dreamed of this man, and on each occasion a heavy calamity ensued, and that on the following day. I dreamed of him the night before our uncle died. I dreamed a second time, and the next day he produced and recorded the will that robbed us of our inheritance. I dreamed of him again last night; and what evil is now hovering over us I know not;—but, it is foolish of me to say so,—yet my fears tell me it will be something dreadful."
"Your fears, I hope, will deceive you," said Roland, smiling in spite of himself at this little display of weakness on the part of Edith. "I have much confidence in this girl, Telie, though I can scarce tell why. A free road and a round gallop will carry us to our journey's end by nightfall; and, at the worst, we shall have bright starlight to light us on. Be comforted, my cousin. I begin heartily to suspect yon cowardly Dodge, or Dodger, or whatever he calls himself, has been imposed upon by his fears, and that he has actually seen no Indians at all. The springing up of a bush from under his horse's feet, and the starting away of a dozen frighted rabbits, might easily explain his conceit of the long-legged Indian, and his five murderous accomplices; and as for the savages seen in ambush at the Ford, the shaking of the cane-brake by the breeze, or by some skulking bear, would as readily account for them. The idea of his being allowed to pass a crew of Indians in their lair, without being pursued, or even fired upon, is quite preposterous."
These ideas, perhaps devised to dispel his kinswoman's fears, were scarce uttered before they appeared highly reasonable to the inventor himself; and he straightway rode to Dodge's side, and began to question him more closely than he had before had leisure to do, in relation to those wondrous adventures, the recounting of which had produced so serious a change in the destination of the party. All his efforts, however, to obtain satisfactory confirmation of his suspicion were unavailing. The man, now in a great measure relieved of his terrors, repeated his story with a thousand details, which convinced Roland that it was, in its chief features, correct. That he had actually been attacked, or fired upon by some persons, Roland could not doubt, having heard the shots himself. As to the ambush at the Ford, all he could say was, that he had actually seen several Indians,—he knew not the number,—stealing through the wood in the direction opposite the river, as if on the outlook for some expected party,—Captain Forrester's, he supposed, of which he had heard among the emigrants; and that this giving him the advantage of the first discovery, he had darted ahead with all his speed, until arrested at an unexpected moment by the six warriors, whose guns and voices had been heard by the party.
Besides communicating all the information which he possessed on these points, he proceeded, without waiting to be asked, to give an account of his own history; and a very lamentable one it was. He was from the Down-East country, a representative of the Bay State, from which he had been seduced by the arguments of his old friend Josiah Jones, to go "a pedlering" with the latter to the new settlements in the West; where the situation of the colonists, so far removed from all markets, promised uncommon advantages to the adventurous trader. These had been in a measure realised on the Upper Ohio; but the prospect of superior gains in Kentucky had tempted the two friends to extend their speculations further; and in an evil hour they embarked their assorted notions and their own bodies in a flatboat on the Ohio; in the descent of which it was their fortune to be stripped of every thing, after enduring risks without number, and daily attacks from, Indians lying in wait on the banks of the river, which misadventures had terminated in the capture of their boat, and the death of Josiah, the unlucky projector of the expedition. Pardon himself barely escaping with his life. These calamities were the more distasteful to the worthy Dodge, whose inclinations were of no warlike cast, and whose courage never rose to the fighting point, as he freely professed, until goaded into action by sheer desperation. He had "got enough," as he said, "of the everlasting Injuns, and of Kentucky, where there was such a shocking deal of 'em that a peaceable trader's scalp was in no more security than a rambling scout's;" and cursing his bad luck, and the memory of the friend who had cajoled him into ruin, difficulty, and constant danger, his sole desire was now to return to the safer lands of the East, which he expected to effect most advantageously by advancing to some of the South-eastern stations, and throwing himself in the way of the first band of militia whose tour of duty in the district was completed, and who should be about to return to their native state. He had got enough of the Ohio as well as the Indians; the wilderness-road possessed fewer terrors, and therefore appeared to his imagination the more eligible route of escape.