It was placed on the summit of a steep, conical hill; there was no smoke from its chimney, or voices to be heard, or persons to be seen, or other signs of life, in its precincts. The grass grew high and green all around the hillock, and there was no road, not even a foot-path, visible on its side. Nevertheless, I dismounted, left my horse to improve the opportunity of snatching a light repast on the abundant herbage, and forced my way up to the top of the knoll.
The building was constructed in the rude fashion of the country; but the chinking had fallen out from between the logs; the chimney had partly tumbled down; tall weeds sprung up between the stones of the door-steps; the door itself was fastened with a huge padlock; the windows were nearly all beaten in, and every thing about it gave evidence that it had not been inhabited for several years. The summit of the hill was smooth and level. A few stumps grew around the edge; and the ground seemed to have been, at some former time, a garden.
The situation was exceedingly fine, and the view on all sides very beautiful. The eminence commanded on one hand three or four miles of the river, and on the other an unlimited tract of prairie. At the particular moment when I first visited it, the level sun-light came glancing over the face of flood and field, tinging every thing that it touched with its own mellow hue, and casting gigantic and ill-defined shadows of the hill, the house, and myself, on the plain beyond. At the distance of a mile and a half below, stood a couple of one-story houses, the logs of which they were built newly hewed, evidently of recent construction. The inhabitants of this old building, then, must have stood where I am standing, and gazed over the vast extent of country that is spread out before me, without meeting a single habitation of man, or any thing having life, except perhaps a wolf or a buffalo. And it could not have been desire of wealth that induced a family of refinement and taste, such as the little decorations and ornaments show that this was, to select this solitude for their home; for not more than an acre of land, at the foot of the hill, had ever been invaded by the plough.
There were several circumstances like these, that were unusual and unaccountable; but not being in a mood just then to be much perplexed about it, I descended the knoll, remounted, and hurried on towards the more hospitable dwellings below.
Of course, the traveller was received with a welcome, and his bodily wants speedily and abundantly cared for. After this most important duty had been satisfactorily performed, and quietude of spirit consequent thereon was restored to my breast, it chanced that the host and his blue-eyed, golden-haired, neatly-dressed, smiling-faced, half-matron, and half-girlish young wife, who had lately set up business on their own account, and I, seated ourselves without the door, to feel the cool air of the evening. It chanced too that the door faced the east; and the old house towered up darkly in the distance before us. In answer to my inquiries, they were able to give but little information concerning it, and that chiefly derived from others.
It appeared that there was on the other side of the river, and a little lower down, a small settlement. It had stood there from time immemorial; at least, the memory of the tidy little wife did not run to the contrary, and she had received her birth and education there, and ought to know. She remembered, one of the first things that she could remember, a middle-aged gentleman, in a black hat and coat, who used to row over the river from the other shore in a small skiff, and walk into her father’s store to make his purchases, with a grave, but not cold or forbidding face, and used to pat her on the head, with such a fatherly smile, and say a few words in such a kind tone, as to fill her little breast quite full with delight. She remembered more distinctly, a few years later, how this same gentleman used to come into the settlement as often as once-a-week, and how glad every one appeared to meet him and shake hands with him. The villagers seemed to repose unlimited confidence in him. The moment he landed, half-a-dozen were ready to ask his advice, or to show him papers, to see if all were correctly done. He was the umpire in all differences and quarrels, and seldom failed to send away the disputants at peace with each other. If there was a wedding, he of course must be present. On May-day, when the boys and girls went out into the woods to romp, and afterward to sit down to a rustic pic-nic, he was sure to walk into their midst, just at the right moment, bearing in his hand a wreath of flowers, so beautiful, and so tastefully made, that all the girls cried when at length it fell to pieces; and he would place it on the head of the Queen of May with such a gentle, sweet little speech, that she would blush up to the tips of her ears, and all her subjects would clap their hands and laugh out with pleasure.
At Christmas parties his place was never empty; and while he was there, mirth never flagged. Perhaps their sports were not so boisterous as they would have been if he had not been a spectator; but they were quite as pleasant at the time, and a great deal pleasanter when looked back upon from the next day. He used to sit in one corner, by the huge, roaring fire, and look on, apparently as much interested as they themselves were. Nothing went amiss; and there was never wanting some slight, good-natured remark or act, to rectify mistakes and set them all going again.
But much as he was loved by the villagers, he was no less respected. They did not even know his name. Many would have been glad to, and wearied themselves by indirect methods to find it out. But as no one had courage to ask him, and as it never happened to fall from him incidentally, they remained in the dark about it. He was known and addressed however, by the appellation of ‘the Lawyer,’ as their conversation with him was chiefly asking his advice on points of law too knotty for them, which he freely gave. He affected no mystery or reserve; yet there was something in his bearing, affable and unaristocratic as it was, that caused those very men—who, if the governor of the state had come among them, would have slapped him on the back, and offered him a glass of liquor—to rise in his presence and approach him with respect.
My bright-eyed informant, with her musical voice, recollected, a good while ago, when she was about ten years old, and he had become gray and wrinkled—though he never needed a staff, nor was his eye dim—that he rowed over one spring afternoon, and requested the men to leave their work for a few minutes, and hear something that he had to say to them. Accordingly, they collected ‘considerable of a little crowd’ around her father’s store. The lawyer stood in the door, while she made her way through the throng and sat down on the door-step, at his feet. She did not remember all that he said; only that he talked to them for about half an hour, in a calm, conversational tone, on the importance of building school-houses and educating their children. They seemed to be much pleased with what he said; and after another half hour’s free discussion, the whole village turned out, and went to work felling trees and hewing timber; and in the course of a few days a substantial school-house was erected. From that time forth, she and all her brothers and sisters, and all her play-mates, at stated hours and seasons, were rigidly imprisoned therein, and diligently instructed in the rudiments of science.
About this time, she and a brother who was about two years older embarked on a voyage of discovery. They pulled up the river, at least he did, for she only held the rudder, two miles, till they come in sight of the residence of the Great Unknown. There stood the old house, as she had often gazed at it with wondering eyes from the opposite bank, just as grim, and dark, and gloomy. It had been their intention to make an open descent upon it, and boldly beat up the premises. But now, the building was so silent, and deserted, and frowning, their hearts failed them, and they crept cautiously along up the southern shore till they were concealed by a bend in the river; then striking across, they floated down, by accident as it were, close under the northern bank. When they arrived under the hill, on the top of which the object of their curiosity was placed, they looked anxiously up at it; but every thing was as silent as the grave. Seeing it thus unguarded, they took courage, ran the skiff ashore, and prepared to land. But when on the point of stepping on the beach, the door of the house opened, the man himself walked out therefrom and advanced to the brow of the eminence. There he stood; black all over, except his face, which at that instant appeared to wear a peculiarly terrible and ferocious aspect. The children were frightened, and hastily shoved off their little cockle-boat. But the man came down to the edge of the water, and called them by name to return. She thought how far off home was, and no one near to afford assistance in case of need; and when she thought, she would have been glad to have retreated as fast as possible; but her brother was commander of the expedition, and without more words he pushed back to land.