His representative on the estate was a certain Captain John Loring, who, with all the patriotism of his connexion, and perhaps a great deal more, had never been able to turn it to any account. On the contrary, beginning the world with an ample patrimony, at the time when Mr. Falconer commenced as an adventurer, he had descended in fortune with a rapidity only to be compared with that of his friend's exaltation. The love of glory had early driven him from his peaceful farm on the Brandywine; and after distinguishing himself as a volunteer in the Indo-Gallic wars of Western Pennsylvania, it was his hard fate to bring his career of effective service to a close on what he was always pleased to call the Fatal Field of Braddock. From that bloody encounter he came off with more honour than profit, and with a body so mangled and a constitution so shattered, that a quarter of a century had scarce served to repair the dilapidation of his animal man. But the Captain had lost neither his spirit nor his love of glory. At the first trump of the Revolution, he donned the panoply of valour; he snatched up the pistols he had taken from a dead Canadian at the Fatal Field of Braddock, strapped upon his thigh the sword he had received for his services in storming certain Indian forts on the Alleghany river, clapped into his pocket the commission which the colonial government had granted him in reward of that gallant exploit, and reported himself, among a crowd of younger patriots, as ready to do and die for his country. The Commissioners looked at his gray hairs and shattered leg, (the latter of which had once been as full of musket-bullets as was ever a cartouche-box,) commended his virtue and enthusiasm, and divided the honours of command among those who were better fitted to do the state service. The Captain retired to his patrimonial estate, and there contented himself as well as he could, until the current of conflict, diverted from one bloody channel into another, came surging at last into the pastoral haunts of the Brandywine. At that time, his home was blessed with two children, a gallant boy of eighteen, and a merry little maiden of twelve. But one morning, he heard a trumpet pealing over the hills and a cannon roaring hard by, behind the woods. He looked at the face of his son, and the eye of the boy reflected back the fire of his father's spirit. Their horses were saddled in the stalls, and the spurs were already on young Tom Loring's heels. It was enough—the Captain carried his son to the grave.—But, to his own dying day, he rejoiced over the young man's fall. On this subject, the Captain was commonly considered by his neighbours to be crack-brained.
After this, came other misfortunes; and the Captain was a ruined man, landless, homeless, and childless, save that his little Catherine was still left to share his poverty, and, like a lamp in a cavern, to exaggerate rather than enlighten the gloom of his desolation. At this critical juncture, he found a firm and prudent friend in Colonel Falconer, by whom he was installed into the privileges, if not the actual possession of Hawk-Hollow, in the supervision and improvement of which he seemed now likely to pass the remainder of his days. How far the kindly feelings of relationship, or how far the influence of his daughter's growing beauty, had contributed to secure him the benevolence of this friend in need, was a question frequently agitated by the curious villagers. It was settled among them, that there was a wedding in the wind; but whether the young lady was to share the lot of her distinguished patron, or to be given to his gay and somewhat wild-brained son, was a point on which busy bodies were long coming at a conclusion. The Captain, though frank enough in his way, was not exactly the individual whom one would think of troubling with impertinent questions; and Miss Loring, however hospitable and courteous, had not yet selected a confidante from among the blooming nymphs of Hillborough. She was, however, the theme of as much admiration as curiosity; and being very beautiful, and of manners always gentle, and at times irresistibly engaging, the village poet immortalized her in rhyme, and the village belles forgave the eulogium.
It remains but to say a word more of the Gilberts, as a necessary introduction to a record, designed to rescue the story of their fate from the uncertain and unfaithful lips of tradition. After mingling in all the border wars, both Indian and civil, that, from the time of Braddock's defeat to the dispersion of the Connecticut settlers, distracted the unhappy Susquehanna settlements, they deserted the cause of their countrymen at the beginning of the Revolution, and appeared in the guise of destroying demons, at Wyoming, on that occasion of massacre, which has given to the spot a celebrity so mournful. In other words they were traitors and refugees; and however dreadful the reputation they obtained as bold and successful depredators, their fate was such as might have been, and perhaps was, anticipated by themselves. One after another, they were cut off, some by the rifle and tomahawk, one even by the halter, and all who did perish, by deaths of violence. It was indeed, at the time we speak of, confidently believed that Oran, the eldest of all, and the last survivor, had fallen within the space of a year, at a conflict on the banks of the Mohawk, along with other refugees of the neighbouring commonwealth, with whom he had associated himself. Great were the rejoicings in consequence with all who dwelt among the scenes of his earlier exploits; though some professed to have their doubts on the subject, and swore, that Oran Gilbert was not to be trusted, dead or alive, until his scalp was seen nailed on the county court-house door.
CHAPTER II.
| Come here, my good hostess, pray how do you do? Where is Cicely so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue? And where is the widow that dwelt here?—— PRIOR. |
The year 1782 was distinguished on the western continent as the close of the great contest, which obtained for America the name and privileges of a free nation. The harbingers of peace came flitting into the land, with the swallows of spring; and before the autumn had withered into winter, so little doubt prevailed of a speedy reconciliation taking place between Great Britain and the United States, founded upon a full recognition by the former of all the claims of the latter, that the Continental Congress passed a resolve for the reduction of its army, to take effect on the first day of the coming year. War was no longer waged upon any scale of magnitude; such hostilities as continued, were conducted almost solely by the desperate and lawless of both parties, and consisted of predatory incursions, occasionally attempted in the wilder parts of the country, by some skulking band of refugees, and of expeditions of vengeance, planned and executed in a moment of wrath, by the excited sufferers. At this period, the only portion of the States, north of the Potomac, in the hands of the British, was the city of New York, with its dependencies; and around these narrow possessions the lines of the Continental army were drawn, extending from the Highlands of New York to the plains of Monmouth in New Jersey. Military posts therefore existed at no great distance from the Hawk's Valley; and although the wild and mountainous country on either bank of the Delaware offered the strongest retreats to men of desperate character, it had been very long since the inhabitants had apprehended any danger from the presence of enemies. In the earlier part of the year, at least, they had no cause for alarm; and accordingly they mingled, without alloy, their raptures at the prospect of returning peace with their rejoicings over the death of Oran Gilbert, the most dreaded and detested of the Hawks of Hawk-Hollow.
One atrocity had indeed been committed, in a neighbouring state, which, besides exciting the fiercest indignation, had taught the occupants of the valley how little their security was owing to any relenting of spirit, or want of military daring, on the part of the refugees, whom the general success of the republican arms had driven in great numbers into the city of New York. A certain Captain Joshua, or Jonathan, Huddy, of the New Jersey state troops, having been captured, after a gallant resistance, at one of the posts in Monmouth county of that state, by a party of loyalists from New York, was for a while immured in prison, then carried back to his native state, and finally hanged by his captors, without trial, sentence, or any authority whatever, except what was derived from the verbal orders of a body of men calling themselves the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists. The result of this wanton and brutal murder, and of the failure of the British authorities to bring the chief perpetrator to justice, was an instant order on the part of the American Commander-in-chief, to retaliate upon a British prisoner of equal rank; and before the month of May was over, young Asgill of the British Guards, whose story is familiar to all readers of American history, was conducted to the lines at Morristown, to await, in painful uncertainty, the fate that now depended, or seemed to depend, upon the movements of his countrymen in relation to the true criminal.
Late in the spring of this year, Hawk-Hollow received a new addition to its society, in the person of a stranger, who, one pleasant evening, rode up to the hovel, which, as was before mentioned, Dame Alice, or as she was more familiarly called, Elsie Bell, had, so many years before, converted into a house of entertainment. But the credit of the poor woman, now aged, infirm, and almost friendless, had long since departed; and the tongues of the ignorant and foolish, in an age when the most ridiculous superstitions were not wholly confined to the brains of children, had invested her habitation with a character which repelled alike the curious and the weary. Her age, her poverty, her loneliness, her unsocial character, and perhaps also her attachment to the memory of a family all others had learned to detest, had brought her into bad odour; and some thoughtless or malicious persons having persuaded themselves that a certain famous mortality among their cattle could have been caused by nothing short of witchcraft, it was soon determined that old Elsie had stronger claims to the character of a broom-rider than any other person in the county. It was fortunate for her that the imputation fell upon her in a land, which once, in the case of an old woman brought before a jury under the same charge, had rendered the wise and humane verdict, that they found her "guilty, not of being a witch, but of being suspected." It never once occurred to any individual to prosecute, or even persecute, poor Elsie; nor is it supposed that any sane man ever seriously believed a charge so cruel and absurd; yet the stain rested upon the unfortunate creature, and was the cause of her losing all the little custom of her house, and being, at one period, reduced to great straits.
Her house had a very lonely appearance, especially dreadful, at nightfall, in the eyes of the passing urchin. It was in a hollow place on the road-side, the head of a gully, which, expanding into a wide, though broken and winding ravine, ran down to the river, half a mile distant, receiving, before it had yet reached it, the waters of a foaming rivulet coming from another quarter. A little enclosure, or yard, serving as an approach to the house, was surrounded by oak-trees. Its surface was broken, and on one side was a rough and jagged rock, almost a crag, sprinkled with sumach and other wild plants, that hid one half of the lowly fabric, while the other peeped insidiously from under the boughs of an antique, spectral-looking sycamore, springing from the side of the ravine, which was, in part, overlooked by the hovel. A little runnel crossed the road immediately before the house; and flowing through the yard, and making its way among the naked roots of the sycamore, it fell, with a gurgling sound, into the ravine. The murmurs of this little cascade, affected variously by drought and rain, and by the echoes of the hollow, sent many a superstitious thrill to the heart of the countryman whom any unlucky accident compelled to pass by the cabin at midnight.