But this part of the voyage was marked with an unexpected adventure, and one which seemed destined to lead to the operation of new and singular moral agencies, both in the near and more distant future, having an important bearing on the fate and fortunes of young Elwood. They had reached the last and most difficult of all the rapids yet encountered, and were resting, preparatory to the anticipated struggle, in a smooth piece of water under the lee of a huge rock, on either side of which the divided stream rushed in two foam-covered torrents, with the force and swiftness of a mill-race; when they were startled by the shrill exclamations of a female voice, in tones indicative of surprise and alarm. The sounds, which came from some unseen point not far above them in the stream, were evidently drawing near at a rapid rate. Presently a small Indian canoe, with a single female occupant, whose youth and beauty, even in the distance, were apparent, shot swiftly into view, and came tossing and whirling down the stream, unguided, and wholly at the mercy of the crooked and raging currents along which it was borne with the speed of the wind. The imperilled maiden uttered a cry of joy at the appearance of our voyagers, and held up the handle of a broken oar, to indicate to them at once the cause of her fearful dilemma and need of assistance.

"I will throw her one of our paddles, and she will best take care of herself," hurriedly exclaimed the hunter, seizing the implement, and awaiting her nearest approach to throw it within her reach.

The critical point was the next instant reached, but the hunter, in his nervous anxiety and haste, made his throw a little too soon and with too much force. The paddle struck directly under the prow of the canoe, and shot beyond, far out of reach of the expectant maiden's extended hands. Another oar was hurled after her, with no better effect; when, for the first time, a shade of despair passed over her agitated countenance; for she saw herself rapidly drifting directly into the jaws of a wild and fearful labyrinth of breakers not fifty yards below, where, in all probability, her fragile canoe would be dashed to pieces, and herself thrown against the slippery and jagged rock, drawn down, and lost. Claud, who had witnessed, with trembling anxiety, the hunter's vain attempts to place the means of self-preservation in the hands of the maiden, and who now perceived, in their full light, the perils of the path to which she was helplessly hastening, could restrain his generous impulses no longer; and, quickly throwing off his hat and coat, he leaped overboard, dashed headlong into the current, and struck boldly down it to overtake the receding canoe.

"Hold! madness! They will both perish together!" rapidly exclaimed the hunter, surprised and alarmed at the rash attempt of his young companion. "But I will share in their dangers,—perhaps save them, yet."

Accordingly he hastily headed round his canoe, and, hazardous as he knew must be the experiment, sent it surging down the current after his endangered young friends; for the one, as will soon appear, was no less his favorite than the other. In the mean time, Claud, in swimming over a sunken rock, luckily gained a foothold, which enabled him to rise and plunge forward again with redoubled speed; and, so well-timed and powerful were his exertions, that he came within reach of the stern of the fugitive canoe just as it was whirling round sideways in the reflux of the waves caused by the water dashing against a high rock standing partly in the current. It was a moment of life or death, both to the man and maiden; for the boat was on the point of going broadside over the first fall into the wild and seething waters, seen leaping and roaring in whirlpools and jets of foam among the intricate passes of the ragged rocks below. Making sure of his grasp on the end of the canoe that had been thus fortunately thrown within his reach, the struggling Claud made an effort to draw it from the edge of the abyss into which it was about to be precipitated; but, with his most desperate exertions, he was barely enabled to keep it in position, while his strength was rapidly giving way. The unequal contest was quickly noticed by the hapless girl; and, after watching a moment, with a troubled eye, the fruitless efforts and wasting strength of the young man, she calmly rose to her feet, exhibiting, as she stood upright in the boat, with the spray dashing over her marble forehead and long flowing hair, in the faultless symmetry of her person, the beautiful cast of her features, and the touching eloquence of her speaking countenance, a figure which might well serve as a subject for the pencil of the artist.

"Let go, brave stranger," she cried, in clear, silvery tones, after throwing a grateful and admiring glance down upon her gallant rescuer; "let me go, and save yourself. I can die as befits a daughter of my people."

"Hold on, there, Claud! Courage, girl! I see a way to save you both," at that critical instant rang above the roar of the waters the sharp voice of the hunter, who, with wonderful tact and celerity, had shot down obliquely across the main current, out of it through a narrow side pass, down that and round the intervening rocks, and was now driving with main strength up another pass, abreast of the objects of his anxiety. "There: now seize the head of my canoe, and hold on to both; and, on your life, be quick!" he continued, shouting to the exhausted young man, while he himself was struggling with all his might to get and keep his boat in the right position among the battling currents.

After one or two ineffectual attempts, Claud, with a last desperate effort, fortunately succeeded in securing his grasp on the hunter's boat, without losing his hold on the other; when, with one mighty effort of the latter, they were all drawn out of the vortex together, and soon brought safely to shore.

"Fluella, my fair young friend," said the hunter, taking a long breath, and respectfully turning to the rescued girl, as the party stepped on to the dry beach, "I have not often—no, never—felt more rejoiced than now, in seeing you stand here in safety."

"I know the danger I have been in," responded the maiden, feelingly. "O yes, know to remember, and know to remember, also, those who made my escape. Mr. Phillips, I am grateful much."

"Don't thank me," promptly replied the hunter. "I am ashamed not to have been the first in the rescue, when the chief's daughter was in danger."

"But, Mr. Phillips," rejoined the other, with an expressive smile, "you have not told me who this stranger is, who seemed to measure the value of his own life by such a worthless thing as mine."

"True, no," returned the hunter; "but this gentleman, Fluella, is young Mr. Claud Elwood, who, with his father and mother, has recently moved into the settlement; and they are now my nearest neighbors, at the foot of the lower lake. And to you, Claud, I have to say, that this young lady is the daughter of Wenongonet, the red chief, the original lord of these lakes, and still living on the one next above."

Both the maiden and her gallant young preserver seemed equally surprised, at the announcement of each others' name and character: the former, because it suggested questions in the solution of which she felt an interest, but which, with the characteristic prudence of her race, she forbore to ask; and the latter, because he found it hard to realize that the fair-complexioned and every way beautiful girl, who stood before him, readily speaking his own language, and neatly and even richly arrayed in the usual female habiliments of the day, with the single exception of the gay, beaded moccasins, that enveloped her small feet and ankles,—found it extremely difficult to realize that one of such an exterior, and of so much evident culture, could possibly have descended from the tawny and uncultivated sons of the forest.

"You two should hereafter be friends, should you not?" observed the hunter, perceiving their mutual restraint, of which he wished to relieve them.

Rousing himself, with a prompt affirmative reply to the question, Claud gallantly advanced, and extended his hand to his fair companion, who, with evident emotion, and a slight suffusion of the cheek, gave him her own in return, as she said:

"O yes. Mr. Phillips' friend is my friend, and, I—I—why, I can't thank him now; the words don't come; the thanks remain unshaped in my heart."

"Excuse me," replied Claud, "excuse me if I say, Miss Fluella, as Mr. Phillips calls you, that you have already expressed, and in the finest terms, far more than I am entitled to; so let that pass, and tell us how your mishap occurred?"

"O, naturally enough, though rather stupidly," responded the other, regaining her ease and usually animated manner. "You must know that I sometimes play the Indian girl, in doing my father's trouting. And, having rowed down to the rapids this morning for that purpose, I ran my canoe on to a rock, up here at the head of the falls, and threw into an eddy below, till I had taken a supply. But, like other folks, I must have the one more,—a large one I had seen playing round my hook; and, in my eagerness to take him, I did not notice that my canoe had slipped off the rock till I found it drifting down the current. I seized my oar, but, with the first blow in the water it snapt in my hands. You know the rest, unless, perhaps, the number of fish I caught," she added, pointing to a string of fine trout still lying safely in the bottom of her canoe.

"Brave girl!" exclaimed the hunter, going up to the boat with Claud, to inspect the fish, which they had not before noticed. "A good ten pounds, and fine ones, too. Claud shall remain here while I go a piece up the lake for a deer, and follow your example, except the race down the rapids; but that he can't do, for I shall take our canoe with me, and make him fish from the shore, which will be just as well. Are you agreed to that arrangement, young man?"

This proposition being accepted, and it being also settled by common consent that no further attempt should, at this time, be made to ascend the remaining rapids with either of the boats the hunter and Claud, accompanied by the light-footed Fluella, took up her canoe and set off with it, along shore, towards a convenient landing in the lake above, then not more than sixty or seventy rods distant. In a short time the proposed landing was reached, and the boat let down into the water. The maiden, with an easy and sprightly movement, then flung herself into her seat, and, with a paddle hastily whittled for her out of a piece of drift-wood, by the ever ready hunter, sent her little craft in a curving sweep into the lake; when, facing round to her preservers, while a sweet and grateful smile broke over her dimpling features, she bade and bowed them adieu, and went bounding over the undulating waves towards her home, on an island some miles distant, near the southeastern border of this romantic sheet of water.

"Can it be," half-soliloquized Claud, as he stood rivetting his wondering gaze on the beauteous figure, which, gracefully bowing with the lightly-dipping oar, was receding from his rapt view, and gradually melting away in the distance; "can it be that she is but a mere Indian girl, one of those wild, untutored children of the forest?"

"It is even so, young man," responded the hunter, rousing himself from the reverie into which he also seemed to have fallen at the departure of his fair favorite; "it is even so; but, for all that, the very flower of all the womankind, white or red, according to my ideas, that ever graced the borders of these lakes."

"But how came she by those neatly-turned English features, and that clear, white complexion?"

"Why, her mother, who is now dead, was an uncommon handsome woman for a squaw, and had, as I perhaps should have qualified when I answered so about this girl, some white blood in her veins; or rather had, as the old chief once told me, somewhere away back among the gone-by generations, a female ancestor, a pure white woman, who was made captive by the Indians, and married into their tribe, and who was as handsome as a picture. But the white blood seemed to have been pretty much lost among the descendants, till the appearance of this nonsuch of a girl, in whom every drop of it seemed to have again been collected."

"Some might, perhaps, draw different conclusions in the case."

"Yes, and draw them very wrongfully, too, as I have no doubt many people do in such cases; for I have often noticed it among families, and ascertained it as a fact, that where a person of particular looks and character once lived, his or her like, though not coming out visibly in any of the descendants for a long time, is sure sooner or later to appear, and so will frequently leap out in a child four or five generations off; a complete copy, in looks, blood, and character, of the original (as far as can be judged from family tradition), who may have been dead an hundred years. This is my notion; and I hold that every person is destined to be at least once reproduced among some of his descendants. I, or the exact like of me, will likely enough be seen in some of my blood descendants, fifty or an hundred years hence, building dams or mills on these very falls, or even riding in a carriage around these wild lakes, where I have spent nearly my whole life in hunting moose, and the other wild animals known only in the unbroken forest."

"Your theory may be true, but it does not quite account, I think, for the evident intelligence and culture of this remarkable girl. To appear and converse as she does, she must have seen considerable of good society out of the forest, and, I should think, schools."

"She has, both. Her father, one fall, when she was a girl of ten or eleven, took her along with him to a city on the coast, where he went to sell his furs and nice basket-work, and where she, some how, excited the lively interest of a good family, and particularly of a wealthy gentleman then living in the family. Well, the short of the matter is, that they persuaded the chief to leave her through the winter; and, she becoming a favorite with them all, they instructed her, sent her to school, and dressed her as they would an own daughter, and would only part with her in the spring on condition of her returning in the fall. And so it has gone on till now, she living with them winters, and here with her father summers; for, though they would like to take her entirely out of the woods, she would not desert her father, who loves her as his life, and calls her the light of his lodge,—no, not for all the gold in the cities."

"You must then be well acquainted with this Indian family, and can give me their history."

"As far as is proper for me to tell, as well as anybody, perhaps. When I was a young man, I at times used to live with the chief, who always made me welcome to his lodge, and gave me his confidence. He was then but little past his prime, and one of the smartest men, every way, I ever knew. He was then worth property, and lived with his first wife, this girl's mother, who, as I told you, was very good-looking and intelligent. But his second wife was as homely as his first was handsome. As to Wenongonet himself, who has now got to be, though still active, an old man, he claims to have been a direct descendant of Paugus,—a grandson, I believe, of that noted chief,—who was slain in Lovewell's bloody fight, and whose tribe, once known as the Sokokis or Saco Indians, who were great fighters, it is said, were then forever broken up, the most of them fleeing over the British highlands and joining the St. Francis Indians in Canada. The family of Paugus, however, with a few of the head men, who survived the battle, concluded to remain this side of the mountain, and try to keep up a show of the tribe on these lakes, where they lived till Paugus' son, who on the death of his father became their sagamore or chief, died, when they gradually drew off into Canada, leaving Wenongonet, the last chief's son, the only permanent Indian resident, after a while, on these lakes. But come, young man, enough of Indian matters for to-day: we must now be stirring, or our day's work may come short. Help me to take my canoe up here into the lake; and, within four hours, the time to which I will limit my absence, we will see what can be done by each, in our different undertakings."

The employment of another half-hour fully sufficed to place the canoe of the hunter in the smooth water above the rapids; when the latter, with a cheery "heigh ho," at each light dip of his springy oar, struck off towards the foot of the pine-covered hills that lift their green summits from the western shores of the lake, leaving his young companion to proceed to his allotted portion of the sports or labors of the day. Preparing his long fishing-rod and tackle, according to the instructions which the hunter had given him for adapting his mode of fishing to the locality and season, Claud made his way along down the edge of the stream to a designated point, a short distance above the place where, on the occurrence of the incident before described, they had ceased to ascend the rapids in their canoes. He here found, as he had been told, below a traversing reach of bare breakers, a large, deep eddy of gently revolving water, in the centre of which lay tossing on the swell a broad spiral wreath of spotless foam. The hunter, in selecting these rapids, and especially this resting-spot of the ascending fish, as the place where he could safely warrant the taking of the needed supply of trout, had not spoken without knowledge; for it may well be doubted whether there could be found, in all the regions of the north, a reach of running water of equal length with this wild and singularly picturesque portion of the Androscoggin river, containing such quantities of this beautiful fish as are found about midsummer, swarming up the rapids on their way from the Umbagog to the upper lakes.

So, at least, Claud then found it; for, having passed to the most outward point of rocks inclosing the eddy, he no sooner threw in and drew his skip bait round the borders of the foam-island just named, than a dozen large trout shot up from beneath, and leaped splashing along the surface, in keen rivalry for the prize of the bait. With a second throw, he securely hooked one of a size which required all his strength to draw it, as he at length did, flapping and floundering to a safe landing. And for the next three hours he pursued the sport with a success which, notwithstanding the great number that broke away from his hook, well made good the augury of his beginning. By that time he had caught some dozens, of sizes varying from one to seven pounds, and enough, and more than he needed. But still he could not forego his exciting employment, and, insensible of the lapse of time, continued his drafts on the seemingly inexhaustible eddy, till roused by the long, shrill halloo of the returned hunter, summoning him to the landing above. Throwing down his pole by the side of his proud display of fish, he hastened up to the lake, where he found the hunter complacently employed in removing, for lightness of carriage, the head and offal of a noble fat buck; when the two, with mutual congratulations on their success, took up canoe, and, with a stop only long enough to take in the trout, carried and launched their richly-freighted craft at a convenient place in the stream below. Seeing Claud securely seated in the bottom of the canoe, and the freight nicely balanced, the hunter took his paddle, instead of setting-pole, the better to restrain the speed of the boat at the most rapid and dangerous passes, and struck out into the current, adown which, under the quick and skilful strokes of its experienced oarsman, it was borne with almost the swiftness of a bird on the wing, till it reached the quiet waters of the pond; and, this being soon passed over, they entered and descended the next reach of rapids with equal speed and safety. All the dangers and difficulties were now over; and, leisurely rowing homeward, they were, by sunset, at the cottage of the Elwoods, displaying the fruits of their enterprise, and recounting their singular adventures to the surprised and gratified inmates.



CHAPTER IX

"Then came the woodman with his sturdy-team Of broad-horned oxen, to complete the toil Which axe and fire had left him, to redeem, For culture's hand, the cold and root-bound soil."

The next morning, it being the day appointed for the "logging bee," the Elwoods were again up betimes, to be prepared for the reception of the expected visitants. On going out into the yard, while yet the coming sun was only beginning to flush the eastern horizon, Mr. Elwood perceived, early as it was, a man, whom he presumed, from the handspike and axe on his shoulder, to be one of the company, entering the opening and leisurely approaching, with an occasional glance backward along the road from the settlements below. Not recognizing the man as an acquaintance, Elwood noted his appearance closely as he was coming up. He was a rather young-looking man, of a short, compactly built figure, with quick motions, and that peculiar springy step which distinguishes men of active temperament and hopeful, buoyant spirits; while the fox like cut of his features, the lively gray eyes that beamed from them, and the evidently quick coming and going thoughts that seemed to flash from his thin-moving nostrils and play on his curling lips, served to indicate rapid perceptions, shrewdness, and a kind and perhaps fun-loving disposition.

"Hillo, captain,—or captain of the house, as I suppose you must be," he sang out cheerily, as with slackening step he approached Elwood; "did you ever hear spoken of, a certain rough-and-ready talking sort of a chap they call Jonas Codman?"

"I have heard of a Mr. Codman, and was told that he would probably be here to-day," doubtfully replied Elwood.

"Well, I am he, such as he is, pushed forward as a sort of advanced guard,—no, herald must be the book-word,—to tell you that you are taken. Did you mistrust it?"

"No, not exactly."

"You are, nevertheless. But I'll tell you a story, which, if you can see the moral, may give you some hints to show you how to turn the affair to your advantage without suffering the least inconvenience yourself; and here it is:

"There was once a curious sort of a fellow, whose land was so covered with stones, which had rolled down from a mountain, that little or nothing could grow among them; and the question was, how he should ever remove them. Well, one day, when he was thinking on the matter, he found in the field an old Black-Art book, on the cover of which he read, 'One chapter will bring one, two chapters two, and so on; but set and keep them at work, lest a worst thing befall.' So, to see what would come of it, he read one chapter; when a great, stout, dubious-looking devil made his appearance, and asked what he should go about? 'Go to throwing these stones over the mountain,' said the man. The devil went at it. But the man, seeing the poor devil was having a hard job of it, read on till he had raised about a dozen of the same kind of chaps, and set them all at work. And so smashingly did they make the stones fly that, by sunset, the last were disappearing; and the man was about to set them to pulling up the stumps on his newly-cleared land. But they shook their heads at this, and, being pretty well tuckered out, agreed to quit even, if he would, and go off without the usual pay in such cases made and provided in devildom; when, he making no objections, they, with another squint at the green gnarly stumps, cut and run; and all the chapters he could read after that—for he began to like the fun of having his land cleared at so cheap a rate—would never bring them back again."

So saying, the speaker turned; and, without the explanation or addition of a single word, retraced his steps and disappeared in the woods, leaving the puzzled Elwood to construe the meaning of his story as he best could. Very soon, however, sounds reached his ears which enabled him to form some conjecture what the man intended by his odd announcement. The mingling voices of ox-team drivers, with their loud and peculiarly modulated "Haw Buck! gee! and up there, ye lazy loons!" were now heard resounding through the woods, and evidently approaching along the road from the settlement. And soon an array of eight sturdy pair of oxen, each bearing a bundle of hay bound on the top of their yoke with a log chain, and each attended by a driver, with a handspike on his shoulder, marching by their side, emerged one after another from the woods, and came filing up the road towards the spot where he stood. As the long column approached, Elwood, with a flutter of the heart, recognized in the driver most in advance, the erect, stalwart figure and the proud and haughty bearing of Gaut Gurley.

"Good-morning, good-morning, neighbor Elwood, as I have lately been pleased to find you," exclaimed Gurley, with an air of careless assurance, as he came within speaking distance. "We have come, as you see, to give you a lift at your logging. So show us right into your slash, and let us go at it, at once. We shall find time to talk afterwards."

Elwood, with some general remark expressive of his obligation to the whole of the company at hand for their voluntary and unexpected kindness, led the way to the burned slash, and went back to meet and salute the rest of the company, as they severally came up. Having performed this ceremony with those having the immediate charge of the oxen, till the whole had passed on to their work, he turned to the rest of the company, whom, though before unnoticed by him, he now found following immediately behind the teams. These consisted of some half-dozen sturdy logmen, with their implements, appointed to pair off with the drivers of the teams, so as to provide two men to each yoke of oxen; the hunter, Phillips, with his brisk wife and buxom daughter, bearing a basket of plates, knives, forks, spoons, and extra frying-pans, to supply any deficiency Mrs. Elwood might find in furnishing her tables or in cooking for so large a company; and lastly, Comical Codman, as he was often called by the settlers, who, though the first to come forward to meet Elwood, was now bringing up the rear.

"A merry morning to you," exclaimed the hunter, as the logmen turned off to the slash; "a merry morning to you, neighbor Elwood. This looks some like business to-day. You were not expecting us a very great sight earlier than this, I conclude," he added, with a jocular smile.

"Earlier? Why, it is hardly sunrise yet, and I am wholly at a loss to know how men living at such distances could get here at this hour."

"Well, that is easily explained. They haven't had to travel so far this morning as you imagine. They came on as far as my place last night, mostly, and such as could be accommodated nestled with me in my house. The rest camped out near by in the bush, which is just as well generally with us woodsmen. But you, having no mistrust of this, as it seems, were taken, I suppose, by surprise at our appearance so early."

"I should have been, wholly so, but for the coming ahead of this gentleman," replied Elwood, pointing to Codman; "and then, I was rather at loss to know what he intended by his queer way of announcing you."

"Very likely. He never does or says any thing like other folks. Jonas," continued the hunter, turning to the odd genius of whom he was speaking, "you are a good trapper, but I fear you make a bad fore-runner."

"Well, I am all right now here in the rear, I suppose," replied the other, with an oddly assumed air of abashment. "A man is generally good for one thing or t'other. If I ain't a good forerunner, it then follows that I am a good hind-runner."

"You see he must have his fol-de-rol, Mr. Elwood," said the hunter. "But, for all that, he is a good fellow enough at the bottom, if you can ever find it: ain't all that so, Jonas?"

"Sort of so and sort of not so; but a little more not than sorter, they may say, perhaps. And I don't think, myself, there is much either at the top or bottom to brag on," rejoined Codman, suddenly darting off to join his companions in the slash; and now whistling a tune, as he went, and now crowing like a cock, in notes and tones each of its kind so wondrous loud and shrill that the whole valley of the lake seemed wakened by the strange music.

The operations of the day having been thus auspicuously commenced in the slash, Elwood, retaining the hunter with him at the house to advise and assist in such arrangements and preparations for breakfast as might render the meal most acceptable to the company, entered at once upon his duties as host; and, it being found that neither the room nor tables in the house were sufficient to seat all the company, it was decided, for the purpose of avoiding every appearance of invidious distinction, to prepare temporary tables and seat the whole of them, except the females, in the open air near the house. Accordingly the hunter, who, from his experience as a woodman, was ever ready at such contrivances, went to work; and, clearing and levelling off a smooth place, driving into the ground three sets of short stout crotches, laying cross-pieces in each, and then two new pine planks longitudinally over the whole, he soon erected a neat and substantial table, long enough to seat a score of guests. Seats on each side were then supplied by a similar process; when Mrs. Elwood, who had watched the operation with a housewife's interest, made her appearance with a roll of fine white tablecloths, the relics of her better days, and covered the whole with the snowy drapery, making a table which might vie in appearance with those of the most fashionable restaurants of the cities. Upon this table, plates, knives and forks, with all other of the usual accompaniments, were speedily arranged by the quick-footed females; while the sounds of boiling pots, and the hissing frying-pans spreading through the house and around the yard the savory fumes of the cooking trout, betokened the advanced progress of the culinary operations within, which were now soon completed; when the fact was announced by Mr. Elwood by several long and loud blasts on his "tin horn" to the expectant laborers in the field, who, while the meal was being borne smoking on to the table, chained their oxen to stumps and saplings about the field, parcelled out to them the hay, and repaired to their morning banquet.

Banquet! A banquet among backwoodsmen? Yes; and why not? It is strange that a thousand generations of epicures should have lived, gluttonized, and passed away from the earth, without appearing to understand the chief requisite for that class of animal enjoyments which they seem to make the great end and aim of their lives,—without appearing to realize that it is the appetite, not the quality of the food, that makes the feast; that there can be no such thing as a feast, indeed, without a real not factitious appetite; and that there can be no real appetite without toil or some prolonged and vigorous exercise. Nero ransacked his whole kingdom, and expended millions for delicacies; and yet he never experienced, probably, one-half the enjoyments of the palate that were experienced from the coarsest fare by his poorest laboring subject. No, the men of ease and idleness may have surfeits, the men of toil can only have banquets. And it is doubtless a part of that nicely balanced system of compensations which Providence applies to men, that the appetites of the industrious poor should make good the deficiencies in the quality of their food, so that it should always afford equal enjoyment in the consumption with that experienced by the idle rich over their sumptuous tables.

The meal passed off pleasantly; and when finished, the gratified and chatty workmen, with their numbers now increased by the addition of the two Elwoods and the hunter, returned, with the eager alacrity of boys hurrying to an appointed game of football, to their voluntary labors in the field, in which they had already made surprising progress.

The business of the day was now resumed in earnest. The teamsters having quickly scattered to their respective teams and brought them with a lively step on to the ground, and having there each received their allotted quota of log-rollers, to pile up the logs as fast as drawn, at once penetrated at different points into the thickest parts of the blackened masses of timber before them, awaiting their sturdy labors. Here the largest log in a given space, and the one the most difficult to be removed, was usually selected as the nucleus of the proposed pile. Then two logs of the next largest size were drawn up on each side, and placed at a little distance in a line parallel with the first, when the intermediate spaces were filled with limbs, knots, and the smallest timber at hand; so that a fire, when the process of burning the piles should be commenced, communicated at the centre thus prepared, would spread through the whole, and not be likely to go out till all the logs were consumed. When this foundation was laid, the next nearest surrounding logs were drawn alongside and rolled up on skids, by the logmen stationed there with their handspikes for the purpose. Then generally commenced a keen strife between the teamster and the log-rollers, to see which should first do their part and keep the others the most closely employed. And the result was that in a very short time a large pile of logs was completed, and a space of ten or fifteen square rods was completely cleared around it. This done, an adjoining thicket of timber was sought out, another pile started, and another space cleared off in the same manner. And thus proceeded the work, with each team and its attendants, in every part of the slash; while the same spirit of rivalry which had thus began to be exhibited between the members of each gang soon took the form of a competition between one gang and another, who were now everywhere seen vieing with each other in the strife to do the most or to build up the largest and greatest number of log-heaps in the shortest space of time. The whole field, indeed, was thus soon made to exhibit the animated but singular spectacle of men, engaged in a wholly voluntary labor, putting forth all the unstinted applications of strength and displaying all the alertness and zeal of men at work for a wager. But, among all the participants in the labors of the day, no one manifested so much interest in advancing the work, no one was so active and laborious, as Gaut Gurley. Not only was he continually inciting and pressing up all others to the labor, but was ever foremost in the heaviest work himself, generally selecting the most difficult parts for himself, and often performing feats of strength that scarcely any two men on the ground were able to perform. Nor was the Herculean strength which he so often displayed before the eyes of the astonished workmen, ever made useless, as is sometimes the case with men of great physical powers, by any misapplication of his efforts. He seemed perfectly to understand the business in which they were engaged; and, while all wondered, though no one knew, where he had received his training for such work, it was soon, by common consent, decided that he was much the most efficient hand on the ground, many even going so far as to declare that his equal was never before seen in that part of the country.

"You see that, don't you, captain?" said Codman, coming up close to Elwood, and speaking in a half whisper, as he pointed to Gaut Gurley, who, having noticed two of the stoutest of the hands vainly trying to roll up a large log, rushed forward, and, bidding them stand aside, threw it up single-handed without appearing to exert half his strength. "You see that, don't you, captain?" he repeated, with an air of mingled wonder and waggishness. "Now, what do you think of my story, and the great, stout, black-looking devil that came, on reading the first chapter, and made the big stones fly so?"

"I haven't thought much about it," carelessly replied Elwood, evidently wishing not to appear to understand the allusion of the other. "But why do you ask such a question?"

"Don't know myself, it's a fact; but I happened to be thinking of things. But say, captain, you haven't been reading any chapters in any strange book yourself, lately, have you?" said Codman, with a queer look.

"No, I guess not," replied Elwood, laughingly, though visibly annoyed by the subject.

"No? Nor none of the family?" persisted the other, glancing towards Claud Elwood, who was standing near by. "Well, I wish I knew what put that story into my head, when I let it off this morning. It is de-ive-lish queer, at any rate, considering." So saying, he walked off to his work, croaking like a rooster at some questionable object.

Although none of the settlers present seemed disposed to attribute the extraordinary physical powers, which Gaut Gurley had so unmistakably shown, to any supernatural agency, as the trapper, Codman, whose other singularities were not without a smart sprinkling of superstition, was obviously inclining to do, yet those powers were especially calculated, as may well be supposed of men of their class, to make a strong impression on the minds of them all, and invest the possessor with an importance which, in their eyes, he could in no other way obtain. Accordingly he soon came to be looked upon as the lion of the day, and suddenly thus acquired, for the time being, as he doubtless shrewdly calculated he could do in this way, a consequence and influence of which no other man could boast, perhaps, in the whole settlement.

Meanwhile the work of clearing off the logs was prosecuted with increasing spirit and resolution. And so eagerly intent had all the hands become, in pressing forward to its completion their self-imposed task, which all could see was now fast drawing to a close, that they took no note of the flight of time, and were consequently taken by surprise when the sound of the horn summoned them to their midday meal.

"Why! it can't yet be noon," exclaimed one, glancing up at the sun.

"No" responded another. "Some of us here have been counting on seeing the whole job nearly done by noon, but it will take three hours yet to do that. No, the women must have made a mistake."

"Well, I don't know about that: let us see," said the hunter, turning his back to the sun, and throwing out one foot as far as he could while keeping his body perpendicular. "Now my clock, which, for noon on the 21st of June, or longest day of summer, is the shadow of my head falling on half my foot, and then passing off beyond it about half an inch each day for the rest of the season, makes it, as I should calculate the distance between my foot and the shadow of my head, now evidently receding,—makes it, for this last day of August, about a quarter past twelve."

"I am but little over half past eleven," said Codman, pulling out and inspecting an old watch. "Phillips, may be, is thinking of that deer that he has been promising himself and us for dinner; and, before I take his calculation on shadows and distances, I should like to know how many inches he allowed for the hurrying influence of his appetite."

"What nonsense, Comical! But what you mean by it is, I suppose, that I can't tell the time?"

"Not within half an hour by the sun."

"Why, man, it is the sun that makes the time; and, as that body never gets out of order or runs down, why not learn to read it, and depend directly upon it for the hour of the day? If half the time men spend in bothering over timepieces were devoted to studying the great clock of the heavens, they need not depend on such uncertain contrivances as common clocks and watches to know the time of day."

"But how in cloudy weather?"

"Tell the time of day by your feelings. Take note of the state of your appetite and general feelings at the various hours of the day, when it is fair and you know the time, and then apply the rule when you have no other means of judging; and you may thus train yourself, so that you need not be half an hour out of the way in your reckoning through the whole day."

"Well, supposing it is night?"

"Night is for sleep, and it is no consequence to know the time, except the time waking. And, as to that, none need be in fault, if they had you anywhere within two miles to crow for them."

"A regular hit! I own it a hit, Mr. Hunter. But here comes Mr. Elwood: we will leave the question of the time of day to him."

"We have a correct noon-mark at the house, and the women are probably right," replied Elwood. "At all events, men who have worked like lions, as you all have this forenoon, must by this time need refreshment. So, let us all drop work, and at once be off to dinner."

With such familiar jokes and converse, the light-hearted backwoodsmen threw off their crocky frocks, and, after washing up at a runlet at hand, marched off in chatty groups to the house, where they found awaiting their arrival the well-spread board of their appreciating hostess, this time made more tempting to their vigorous and healthy appetites by the addition, to the fine trout of the morning, of the variously-cooked haunches of the hunter's venison. And, having here done ample justice to their excellent meal, they again hastened back to their labor in the field, unanimously declaring for the good husbandman's rule, "Work first and play afterwards," and saying they would have no rest nor recreation till they had seen the last log of the slash disposed of. And with such animation did they resume their labors, and with such vigor continue to apply themselves in carrying out their resolution, and in hastening the hour of its fulfilment, that by the middle of the afternoon their task was ended; and the gratified Mr. Elwood had the satisfaction of seeing the formidable-looking slash of the morning converted into a comparatively smooth field, requiring only the action of the fire on the log heaps, with a few days' tending, to make it fit for the seed and harrow.

"Come, boys," said the hunter to the company, now all within speaking distance, except two or three who had somehow disappeared; "come, boys," he repeated, after pausing to see the last log thrown up in its place, "let us gather up here near the middle of the lot. Comical Codman and some others, I have noticed, have been putting their heads together, and I kinder surmise we may now soon expect some sort of christening ceremony of the field we have walked through in such fine style to-day; and, if they make out any thing worth the while, it may be well to give them a good cheer or two, to wind off with."

While the men were taking their stand at the spot designated by the hunter, Codman was seen mounting a conspicuous logheap at the southerly end of the field; and two more men, at the same time, made their appearance on the tops of different piles on opposite sides of the lot, and nearly abreast of the place where the expectant company were collected and standing, silently awaiting the commencement of the promised ceremony. Presently one of the two last-named, with a preliminary flourish of his hand, slowly and loudly began:

"Since we see the last logs fairly roll'd, And log-heaps full fifty, all told, We should deem it a shame If so handsome and well-cleared a field, Bidding fair for a hundred-fold yield, Be afforded no name."

To this, the man standing on the opposite pile, in the same loud and measured tone promptly responded:

"Then a name we will certainly give it, If you'll listen, and all well receive it, As justly you may:

We will call it the thing it will make, We will name it the Pride of the Lake, Or the Job of a Day."

Before the last words of this unique duet had died on the ear, Comical Codman on his distant perch straightened up, and, triumphantly clapping his sides like the boastful bird whose crowing he could so wonderfully imitate, raised his shrill, loud, and long-drawn kuk-kuk-ke-o-ho in a volume of sound that thrilled through the forest and sent its repeating echoes from hill to hill along the distant borders of the lake.

"There, the dog has got the start of us!" exclaimed the hunter, joining the rest of the company in their surprise and laughter at the prompt action of the trapper as well as at the striking character of his performance,—"fairly the start of us; but let's follow him up close, boys. So here goes for the new name!"

And the prolonged "hurra! hurra! hurra!" burst from the lips of the strong-voiced woodmen in three tremendous cheers for the "Pride of the Lake and the Job of a Day."

All the labors and performances of the field being now over, the company gathered up their tools, and by common consent moved towards the house, where, it was understood, an hour or so, before starting for their respective homes, should be spent in rest, chatting with the women, or other recreation, and a consultation also be held, among those interested, for forming a company, fixing on the time, and making other arrangements for the contemplated trapping and hunting expedition of the now fast-approaching season.

As the company were proceeding along promiscuously towards the house, Gaut Gurley, who had thus far through the day manifested no desire for any particular conversation with Mr. Elwood, nor in any way deported himself so as to lead others to infer a former acquaintance between them, now suddenly fell in by his side; when, contriving to detain him till the rest had passed on out of sight, he paused in his steps and said:

"Well, Elwood, I told you in the morning, you know, that we would do the work first and the talking afterwards. The work has now been done, and I hope to your satisfaction."

"Yes—O yes—entirely," replied Elwood, hesitating in his doubt about what was to follow from the other, whose unexpected conduct and stand for his benefit he hardly knew how to construe. "Yes, the neighbors have done me a substantial favor, and you all deserve my hearty thanks."

"I was not fishing for thanks," returned Gaut, half-contemptuously, "but wished a few words with you on private matters which concern only you and myself. And, to come to the point at once, I would ascertain, in the first place, if you know whether you and I are understood, in this settlement, to be old acquaintances or new ones?"

"New ones, I suppose, of course, unless it be known to the contrary through your means. I have not said a word about it, nor have my family, I feel confident," replied Elwood, demurely.

"Very well; our former acquaintance is then wholly unsuspected here. Let it remain so. But have you ever hinted to any of the settlers what you may have known or heard about me, or any former passages of my life, which occurred when I used to operate in this section or elsewhere?"

"No, not one word."

"All is well, then. As you have kept and continue to keep my secrets, so shall yours be kept. It is a dozen or fifteen years since I have been in this section at all. It is filling up with new men. There are but two persons now in the settlement that can ever have seen or known me. And they will not disturb me."

"Then there are two that have known you? Who can they be?"

"One is Wenongonet, an old Indian chief, as he calls himself, still living on one of the upper lakes, they say, but too old to ramble or attend to anybody's business but his own. The other is Phillips, the hunter."

"Phillips! Phillips, did you say? Why, as much as he has been at our house, he has never dropt a word from which one could infer that you were not a perfect stranger to him."

"I did not suppose he had. Phillips is a peaceable, close-mouthed fellow; pretends not to know any thing about anybody, when he thinks the parties concerned would rather have him ignorant; keeps a secret by never letting anybody know he has one; and never means to cross another man's path. I can get along with him, too. And the only question now is whether you and I can live together in the same settlement."

"It will probably be your fault if we can't. I shall make war on no one."

"My fault! Why I wish to be on good terms with you; and yet, Elwood, you feel out of sorts with me, and, in spite of all I can do, seem disposed to keep yourself aloof."

"If I do seem so, it may be because the past teaches me that the best way to avoid quarrels is to avoid intimacies. You know how we last parted in that gambling-room. I had no business to be there, I admit; but that was no excuse for your treatment."

"Treatment! Why, Elwood, is it possible you have been under a misapprehension about that, all this time?" responded Gaut, with that peculiar wheedling manner which he so well knew how to assume when he wished to carry his point with another. "My object then was to save the money for you and me, so that we could divide it satisfactorily between ourselves. I was angry enough at those other fellows, whom I saw getting all your money in that way, I confess; and, in what I said, I was whipping them over your shoulders. I thought you understood it."

"I didn't understand it in that way," replied Elwood, surprised and evidently staggered at the bold and unexpected statement. "I didn't take you so: could that be all you intended?"

"Certainly it was," resumed Gaut, in the same insinuating tone. "Had I supposed it necessary, I should have seen you and explained it at the time. But it is explained now; so let it go, and every thing go that has been unpleasant between us; let us forget all, and henceforth be on good terms. Our children, as you may have suspected, seem intent on being friends; and why should not we be friends also? It will be a gratification to them, and we can easily make it the means of benefiting each other. You know how much I once did in helping you to property,—I can do so again, if we will but understand each other. What say you, Elwood? Will you establish the treaty, and give me your hand upon it?"

Elwood trembled as the other bent his fascinating gaze upon him, hesitated, began to demur feebly; but, being artfully answered, soon yielded and extended his hand, which Gaut seized and shook heartily; when at the suggestion of the latter they separated and proceeded by different courses, so that they might not be seen together, to join the company at the house, whom they found, as they expected, in consultation about the proposed trapping and hunting expedition to the upper lakes, the time of starting, and the names and number of those volunteering to join the association, only remaining to be fixed and ascertained. That time was finally fixed on the 15th of September, and the company was formed to consist of the two Elwoods, Phillips, Gurley, Codman, and such others as might thereafter wish to join them. This being settled, they broke up and departed for their respective homes.



CHAPTER X.

"All good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good"—

The next scene in the slowly unfolding panorama of our story opens at the house of Gaut Gurley, on the banks of the Magalloway. Gaut reached home, on the evening of the logging bee, about sunset; and, having put out his team, entered his house, where he found his wife alone, his daughter being absent on a visit to a neighbor. Contrary to what might have been expected, after the favorable impression he had so evidently made on the settlers that day, and the attainment of the still more important object with him, the regaining of his old fatal influence over Elwood, he appeared morose and dissatisfied. Something had not worked to his liking in the complicated machinery of his plans, and he showed his vexation so palpably as soon to attract the attention of his submissive but by no means unobservant wife, who, after a while, plucked up the courage to remark:

"What is the case, Gaut? Have you been working yourself to death for those Elwoods, to-day, or has something gone wrong with you, that makes you look so sour this evening?"

"I have worked hard enough, God knows; but that I intended, for I had objects in view, most of which I think I have accomplished, but—"

"But not all, I suppose you would say?"

"Well, yes, there is one thing that has not gone exactly to suit me, over there."

"What is that, Gaut?"

"It is of no consequence that you should know it. If I should name it, you would not see its bearing on my plans, I presume."

"Perhaps not, for I don't know what your plans are, these days. I used to be able to guess out the objects you had in view, before you came here, whether you told me or not. But, since you have been in this settlement, I have been at loss to know what you are driving at; I can't understand your movements at all."

"What movements do you mean, woman?"

"All of them; but particularly those that have to do with the Elwoods."

"What is there in my course toward them, since they came here, that you can't understand?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Gaut. When you believed Elwood to be rich, I could easily see that you thought it would be an object to bring about an acquaintance between his son and only heir, and our Avis; and I knew you was, those days, studying how it could be done, and I always suspected that you in some way disposed of that picture of her for the purpose, instead of sending it to your relations, and——"

"And what?" exclaimed Gaut, turning fiercely on his wife. "Suspected! What business had you to suspect? And you told Avis what you thought, I suppose?"

"Not a word, never one word; for I knew she was so proud and particular, that, if she mistrusted any thing of that kind to have been done, she would flounce in a minute. No, I never hinted it to her, or anybody else, and it was guesswork, after all," replied the abashed wife, in a deprecating tone,—she having been tempted, by the unusual mood which her stern husband had manifested for discussing his private affairs with her, to venture to speak much more freely than was her wont.

"Well, see that you don't hint any thing about that, nor any thing else you may take it into your silly head to guess about my objects," rejoined the other, in a somewhat mollified tone. "But now go on with what you were going to say."

"Well, I could understand your course before Elwood failed; but, when he did, I could see no object, either in following him here, or having any thing particular to do with him, or any of his family. But you seized on the first chance, after we came here, to court them, and have followed it up; first, in the affair of the young man and Avis, and then, in drumming up the whole settlement in getting up this logging bee for the old man. Now, Gaut, you don't generally drive matters at this rate without something in view that will pay; and, as I can see nothing to be gained worth so much pains, I don't understand it."

"I didn't suppose you did, and it is generally of little consequence whether you see through my plans or not; but, in this case—"

Here Gaut suddenly paused, rose, and took several turns across the room, evidently debating with himself how far it was policy to disclose his plans to his wife; when, appearing to make up his mind, he again seated himself and resumed:

"Yes, as this is a peculiar case, and coming, perhaps, in part within the range of a woman's help, if she knows what is wanted, and one which she may unintentionally hurt, if she don't, I suppose I must give you some insight into my movements, so that you can manage accordingly, help when you can, and do no mischief when you can't; as you probably will do, for you well know the consequences of doing otherwise."

"I will do all I can, if I can understand what you want, and can see any object in it," meekly responded the woman.

"Well, then, in the first place," resumed the other, "you know how many years I slaved myself, and what risks I run, to help Elwood make that fortune; how he threw me off with simple wages, instead of the share I always intended to have for such hard and dangerous services; and how he failed, like a fool, before I got it."

"I knew it all."

"Then you can easily imagine how much it went against my grain to be balked in that manner. At all events, it did; and I soon determined not to give up the game so, even if that was all. And ascertaining that Elwood, by allowances made by the creditors to his wife, and sales of furniture which they allowed the family to retain, brought quite a little sum of money into the settlement,—enough, at any rate, to pay for his place, put him well afloat, and make him a man of consequence in such a new place,—I soon made up my mind on buying and settling, for present purposes, here, too, as we did."

"Yes, but what do you expect to make here more than in any other new country? And what can you make out of the Elwoods, more than any other new settlers?"

"A good deal, if all things work to my mind. There is money to be made here. I could do well in the fur business alone, and at the worst. And, by the aid of one who could be made to favor my interests, there is no telling what could be done. Now, what claim had I on any other settler to be that one to aid me? On Elwood I had a claim to help me to property in turn; and I determined he should do it. But he must first be brought into the traces. He has got out with me, and must be reconciled before I can do much with him."

"Well, I should think he ought to be by this time, after what you have been doing for him, without his asking."

"Without asking? Why, that was just the way to do it. As I calculated, he was taken by surprise, disarmed, and yielded; so that object is accomplished, as well as making the right impression on the other settlers by beating them at their own work."

"I begin to understand, now."

"You will understand more, soon; that was only part of my object."

"What was the other part?"

"To insure the consummation of the match between Avis and young Elwood, which now seems in fair progress, but which would be liable to be broken off, if his family should continue to be unfriendly to me."

"Why, that was the thing I could understand least of all. The young man is well enough, I suppose, but I thought you had looked to have Avis make more of herself, and do better for us. She is still young, and we don't know what chances she may have. If she and the young man should keep on intimate, and set their hearts on it, I don't know that I should oppose it much; but what object we can have in helping it on, I can't, for the life of me, see. I have not said a word against it, because I saw that you were for it. But, if I had been governed by my own notions, I should have sooner discouraged than helped it on."

"I suspected so; and, for that reason, as well as others, I see I must tell you a secret, which the Elwoods themselves don't know, and which I meant should never pass my lips; and, when I tell it to you, see that it never passes yours. That young man, Claud Elwood, whom you think so ordinary a match, is heir to a large property. A will is already executed making him so."

"Is that so, Gaut?"

"Yes, I have known it for months. I made the discovery before I decided to move here."

"It is a wonder how you could keep it from me."

"Humph! It is a greater wonder how I came to tell you at all, and I fear I shall yet repent it; but things had come to a pass that seemed to make it necessary."

"But who is the man, and where, who is going to give the young man such a property?"

"It is not for you to know. I have told you enough for all my purposes. And this brings me back to your first question, when I admitted that there was one thing which had not gone to my liking. There was, indeed, one thing that disturbed and vexed me; and that was the discovery I made, over there, today, that Elwood's wife is an enemy to me. I contrived all ways to get speech with her, but she studiously avoided giving me a chance, nor was I able once even to catch her eye, that I might give her a friendly nod of recognition. I know she never wished me about, in former times, but I then attributed her coldness to the pride of the rich over the poor. But I now think it was because she hated me. I am satisfied she is an enemy, at heart; and will, for that reason, prove a secret and I fear dangerous opposer to a match which will connect me with her family, unless something is done to reconcile her."

"How can that be done?"

"Perhaps you can do something. We start, in about a fortnight, on the fall hunt,—both the Elwoods, myself, and others. When we are gone, you can go down into that neighborhood, get acquainted with some of the women, and get them to call with you on Mrs. Elwood; and, if Avis could be made to go and see her, so much the better. She would make an impression without trying. You would have to manage, but how, I am not now prepared to decide. I will think of it, and you may, and we will talk it over again. I have told you this, now, that you might understand the situation of affairs; and the object, which you will now see, is worth playing for. And, if we can carry this last point, the last danger will be removed,—unless Claud himself proves fickle."

"I guess there will not be much danger of that in this settlement. What girl is there that he could think of in comparison with Avis?"

"I think there is none; and still, there is one whom I would rather he would not see."

"Who can that be, I should like to know?"

"She is the daughter, or is claimed to be, of an old Indian chief, called Wenongonet, who lives up the lakes, and was once a man of some consequence, both with Indians and whites."

"An Indian girl! Fudge!"

"You might alter that tune, if you should see her. She is white as you are, and has, most of the time, of late years, lived in some of the old settlements, been schooled, and so on. I saw her, soon after we came here, with another woman, at the south end of the lake, where she was visiting in the family of one of the settlers, and I inquired her out, as she appeared so much above the common run of girls. But she is courted, they say, by a young educated Indian, called Tomah, from Connecticut-river way, where I used to see him. He ought to be able to take care of her. But hark! what was that? It sounded like the trotting of some heavy horse. I'll see."

So saying, Gaut rose and went to the window, when, after casting a searching look out into the road, and pausing a moment, in evident doubt and surprise at what met his gaze, he muttered: "The devil is always at hand when you are talking about him; for that must be the very fellow,—Tomah himself! But what a rig-out! Wife, look here."

The woman promptly came to the window, when her eyes were greeted with the appearance of a smart-looking and jauntily-equipped young Indian, mounted on the back of a stately, antlered moose, that, by some contrivance answering to a bridle, he was about bringing to a stand in the road, opposite to the house. Without heeding the exclamations of surprise and questions of his wife, who had never seen an animal of the kind, Gaut stepped out of the door, and, after pausing long enough to satisfy himself that he was not known to the other, said, after the distant greeting customary among strangers had been exchanged:

"That is a strange horse you are travelling on, friend."

"No matter that, when he carry you well," replied the Indian, whose language was a little idiomatic, notwithstanding his education.

"Perhaps not; but I should think he would be a hard trotter for most riders."

"Moose don't care for that: he say, he carry you ten miles an hour, you not the one to complain: if you no like, you no ride."

"How did you tame him to be so manageable?"

"Caught him a little calf, four years ago; trained him young to mind halter; then ox-work, horse-work. This year ride him. No trouble, you let him enough to eat."

"Where did you catch him?"

"Over the mountain. Live there. My name John Tomah. Been here to hunt some, but not see you before. Another man live in this house last spring."

"Yes, I am a new-comer. But I have heard some of the settlers speak of you, I think. You are the Indian that has been to college?"

"Yes, been there some, but in the woods more. Love to hunt, catch beaver, sable, and such things. Come here to hunt now, soon as time. But must have moose kept when off hunting: thought the man lived here do that. May be you keep him, while I come back. Pay you, all right."

"Yes, if I could; but where could I keep him? He would jump any pasture or yard fence there is here, and then run away, would he not?"

"No. Stay, after week or two, and get wonted, same as horse or cow. I go to work, make yard, keep him in a while, and feed him with grass or browse. I tend him first. You keep him,—you keep me, till go hunting; then get boy. Pay well, much as you suit."

Gaut Gurley never acted without a strong secret motive. He had been intently studying the young Indian during the conversation just detailed, with a view of forming an opinion how far his subservience could be secured; and, appearing to become satisfied on this point, and believing the first great step for making him what was desired would be accomplished by yielding to his request gracefully, however much family inconvenience it might occasion, Gaut now turned cordially to him, and said:

"Yes, Tomah, I will do it. I like your looks, and I will do it for you, but wouldn't for anybody else. We can get along with your animal, somehow; and you shall stay, too, till our company start on our hunt, and then you shall go with us. I will see that you have fair play. I will be your friend; and perhaps I may want a good turn of you some time."

"Like that; go with you; show you how catch beaver. Do all I can."

"Very well; and perhaps I can help you in some way. You have an affair that you feel a peculiar interest in, with somebody on the upper lake, and—"

"You know that?" interrupted the startled but evidently not displeased Indian.

"Yes, I have heard something about it."

"But how you help there?"

"O, I can contrive a way for you to make the matter work as you wish, if you will only persevere."

"Persevere? Ah, means keep trying. Yes, do that; but she don't talk right, now; perhaps, will, you help, then we be great friends, sure."

The treaty being thus concluded, the gratified young Indian dismounted, with his rifle and pack, containing his blanket, hunting-suit, etc., which he carried before him, laid across the shoulder of his novel steed; and, under the guidance of Gaut, he led the animal into the cow-yard, where he was tied and fed, and the fence, already made high to exclude the wolves, as usual among first settlers, was topped out by laying on a few additional poles, so as to prevent the possibility of his escape. This being done, Gaut conducted his new-found friend into the house, and introduced him, to his wife and also to his daughter, who had by this time returned, as the young Indian that had been to college, but still had a liking for the woods.

"I have often thought I should feel interested in seeing an educated native of the forest," remarked Avis, after the civilities of the introduction had been exchanged. "Books, when you became able to read and understand them," she continued, turning to the Indian, "books must have opened a new world to you, and the many new and curious things you found in them must have been exceedingly gratifying to you, Mr. Tomah."

"Yes, many curious things in books," replied Tomah, indifferently.

"And also much valuable knowledge?" rejoined Avis, interrogatively.

"Valuable enough to some folks, suppose," replied the other, with the air of one speaking on a subject in which he felt no particular interest. "Lawyers make money; preachers get good pay for talking what they learn in books; so doctors."

"But surely," persisted the former, who, though disappointed in his replies, yet still expected to see, if she could draw him out, the naturally shrewd mind of the native made brilliant by the light of science, "surely you consider an education a good thing for all, giving those who receive it a great advantage over those who do not?"

"Yes, education good thing," responded Tomah, his stolid countenance beginning to lighten up at the idea which now struck him as involving the chief if not the sole benefit of his scientific acquirements; "yes, education good, very good, sometime. Instance: I go to Boston with my moose next winter; show him for pay, one, two days; then reckon up money—add; then reckon up expenses—subtract; tell how much I make. Make much, stay; make little, go to other place. Yes, education good thing."

"But I should think you might do better with your education than you could by following the usual employments of your kind of people," resumed the other, still unwilling to see the subject of her scrutiny fall so much below her preconception of an educated Indian. "You say, lawyers, preachers, and doctors make money from the superiority which their education has given them; now, why don't you profit by your education, and go into a profession like one of theirs, and obtain by it the same wealth and position which you see them enjoying?"

"Did try," replied Tomah, with an evident effort to elevate his language, and meet the question candidly. "When I came home from the school, people all say, Now you go and live like white folks, in village, and study to be doctor, make money, be great man. So went; study one year; try hard to like; but no use. Uneasy all the time; could not keep down the Indian in me; he always rising up, more every day, all the time drawing me away to the woods,—pull, pull, pull. I fight against him; put him down little some time; but he soon up again, stronger than ever. Found could not make myself over again; must be as first made; so gave up; left study for the woods; and said, Now let Indian be Indian as long as he like."

Satisfied, or rather silenced, by Tomah's reasons, Avis turned the conversation by asking him to relate to her how he caught and tamed his moose. She found him completely at home in this and other of his adventures in the forest, which he was thus encouraged to relate, and in which he often became a graphic and interesting narrator, and displayed the keen observation of the objects of nature, together with the other peculiar qualities of his race, to so much advantage that she soon relinquished her favorite idea of ever finding a philosopher in an educated Indian.

In presenting the above picture, drawn from one of the many living prototypes that have fallen within our personal observation, or come within our knowledge derived from reliable sources, we had no wish to disparage the praiseworthy acts and motives of those spirited and patriotic men who, like Moore, in establishing his well-known charity school, in connection with Dartmouth college, may have, in times past, founded and endowed schools for the education of the natives of the forest; nor would we dampen the faith and hopes of those philanthropists who still believe in the redemption of that dwindling race by the aids of science and civilization; but we confess our inability to perceive any general results, flowing from the attempts of that character, at all adequate to the pains and outlay bestowed on the experiment. And we think we cannot be alone in this opinion. We believe that those results, when gathered up so that all their meagreness could be seen, have sadly disappointed public expectations; that this once favorite object and theory, of elevating and benefiting the red man by taking him from his native woods and immuring him in the schoolroom, has been, in the great majority of the cases, a futile one; and that whole system, indeed, can now be regarded as but little less than a magnificent failure.

There have been, it is true, some brilliant exceptions to the application of our remarks, such as may be found in the pious and comparatively learned Samson Occom, the noted Indian preacher of the times of the Pilgrims; in the eloquent Ojibway chief of our own times, and a few others; as well as in the person we have already introduced into this work, the intelligent and beautiful Fluella. But only as exceptions to the general rule, we fear, can we fairly regard them,—for, where there is one Occom, there are probably ten Tomahs.

Education, or so much of it as he has the patience and ability to acquire, seems often to unsettle and confuse the mind of the red man; for, while his old notions and traditions are disturbed or swept away by it, he fails of grasping and digesting the new ones which science and civilization present to his mind; and he falters and gropes, like an owl in the too strong light of the unaccustomed sun. In his natural condition, he can at least realize the happy picture which the poet has drawn of him:

"Lo the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind: His soul proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way; Yet simple nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven, Some safer world in depth of wood embraced; Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christian thirsts for gold. To be content's his natural desire; He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company."

But now, in his new and anomalous position, even this happiness and this content is taken away, while he is unable to embrace an adequate substitute. His old faith is shaken, but no new one is established. Before, he could see God in clouds or hear him in the wind; but now he can scarcely see God in any thing. His physical system, in the mean while, deprived as it is of the forest atmosphere, in which it was alone fitted to exist and reach its greatest perfection, suffers even more than his mental one. And his whole man, both mental and physical, begins to degenerate, and soon dwindles into insignificance. Yes, it is only in his native forests that the Indian appears in his wild and peculiar dignity of character. There only can he become a being of romance, and there only a hero. And there, in conclusion, we would say, in view of the unsatisfactory results of the experiments made to elevate him by any of the methods yet adopted,—there we would let him remain.

But we must now on with our tale, the main incidents of which we have only foreshadowed, not touched.



CHAPTER XI.

"Hearts will be prophets still."

The week succeeding the logging bee was an extremely busy one with the Elwoods, who still had a heavy task to perform on their new field, before it could be considered properly cleared or fitted for seeding and harrowing. Sixty days before, that field was covered with a heavy growth of primitive forest, standing in its native majesty, a mountain mass of green vigor and sturdy life, and as seemingly invincible against the assaults of man as it had been against those of the elements whose fury it had so long withstood. But the busy and fatal axe had done its work. That towering forest had been laid prostrate with the earth, and the first process of the Herculean task of converting the forest into the field had been completed. The second and third process, also, in the burning of the slash and the gathering the trunks of the trees into log-heaps, as we have seen, had been in turn successfully accomplished. But the fourth and last process still remained to be performed. Those unseemly log-heaps, cumbering no inconsiderable portion of the field, must be disposed of, to complete the work. This was now the first task of the Elwoods, and time pressed for its speedy execution. Accordingly, the next morning after the bee, they sallied out, each with a blazing brand in his hand, and commenced the work of firing the piles,—a work which, unlike that of firing a combustible and readily catching slash, required not only considerable time, but often the exercise of much skill and patience. But they steadily persevered, and, before sunset, had the gratification of beholding every one of those many scores of huge log-piles, that thickly dotted the ground, clearly within the grasp of the devouring element; and afterwards of seeing that grasp grow stronger and stronger on the solid material on which it had securely fastened, till, to the eye of fancy, the dark old forest seemed by day to be reproduced in the numerous, thickly-set columns of smoke that shot upward and spread out into over-arching canopies above, while, with the gathering darkness of the night, that forest seemed gradually to take the form of a distant burning city in the manifold tapering pillars of fire which everywhere rose from the field, fiercely illuminating the dark and sombre wood-wall of the surrounding forest, and dimly glimmering over the sleeping waters of river and lake beyond.

They had now made the fire their servant, and got it safely at work for them; but that servant, to insure its continued and profitable action, must be constantly fed and fostered. The logs, becoming by the action of the fire partially consumed, and, by thus losing their contact with each other, ceasing to burn, required, every few hours, to be rolled together, adjusted, and repacked; when, being already thoroughly heated and still partly on fire, they would soon burst out again into a brisk blaze. This tending and re-packing of the piles demanded, for many of the succeeding days, the constant attention of the Elwoods; who, going out early each morning, and keeping up their rounds at short intervals through the day and to a late hour at night, assiduously pursued their object, till they had seen every log-heap disappear from the field, and the last step of their severe task fully accomplished.

Few of those who live in cities, villages, or other places than those where agricultural pursuits prevail; few of those, indeed, who have been tillers only of the subdued and time-mellowed soils of the old States and countries, have any adequate conception of the immense amount of hard labor required to clear off the primitive forest, and prepare the land for the first crop; nor have they, consequently, any just appreciation of the degree of resolution, energy, and endurance necessary to insure continued perseverance in subduing one piece of forest-land after another, till a considerable opening is effected. It is the labor of one man's life to clear up a new farm; and few there be, among the multitudes found making the attempt, who have the sustaining will and resolution—even if the pecuniary ability is not wanting—to accomplish that formidable achievement. Probably not one in five of all the first pioneer settlers of a new country ever remain to become its permanent settlers. The first set of emigrants, or pioneers, are seen beginning with great resolution and energy, and persevering unfalteringly till the usual ten-acre lot is cleared, the log-house thrown up, and the settlement of the family effected. Another piece of forest is the next year attacked, but with a far less determined will, and the clearing prosecuted with a proportionate lack of energy and resolution; and the job, after being suffered to linger along for months beyond the usual period for completion, is finally finished. But, in view of the hard labors and prolonged struggles they have experienced in their two former trials for conquering the wilderness, they too often now falter and hesitate at a third attempt. Perhaps the lack of means to hire that help, which would make the toil more endurable, comes also into the case; and the result is that no new clearing is begun. They live along a while as they are; but, for want of the first crops of the newly-cleared land and the usual accessions to their older fields, they soon find themselves on the retrograde, and finally sell out to a new set of incoming settlers, who in their turn begin with fresh vigor, and with more means generally for prosecuting advantageously the work which had discouraged or worn out their predecessors. But even of this second set a large proportion fail to succeed, and, like the former, eventually yield their places to more enterprising and able men, who, with those of the two former sets of settlers that had succeeded in overcoming the difficulties and retaining their places, now join in making up the permanent settlers of the country.

Such is generally the history of the early settlement of every new country. Those who have endured the most hardship, encountered the greatest difficulties, and performed the hardest labor, do not generally reap the reward which might eventually crown their toils, but leave that reward to be enjoyed by those to whom such hardships and toils are comparatively unknown. This seems hard and unjust; but, from the unequal conditions and characters of men, it is doubtless a necessary state of things, and one which, though it may occasionally be somewhat modified, will never, probably, as a general thing, be very essentially altered.

The Elwoods, having now thus brought the labors of clearing to a successful close, next proceeded to the lighter and more cleanly task of taking the incipient step towards securing the ever-important first crop which was to reward them, in a good part, for their arduous toils. Accordingly, the previously engaged supply of winter wheat intended for seed was brought home, the requisite help and ox-work enlisted, the seed sown, and the harrows and hoes put in motion to insure its lodgment beneath the surface of the broken soil. And, by the end of the second day from its commencement, this task was also completed, leaving our two persevering settlers only the work of gathering in the small crops of grain and potatoes they had succeeded in raising on their older grounds, to be performed before leaving home on the contemplated trapping and hunting expedition; the appointed day for which was still sufficiently distant to allow them abundant time to do this, and also to make all other of the necessary arrangements and preparations for that, to them, novel and interesting event.

But how, in the meanwhile, stood that domestic drama of love and its entanglements, which was destined to be deeply interwoven with the other principal incidents of this singular story? All on the surface seemed as bright and unruffled as the halcyon waters of the sleeping ocean before the days of storm have come to move and vex it. But how was it within the vail of the heart and teeming mind, where the currents and counter-currents of that subtle but powerful passion flow and clash unseen, often gaining their full height and unmasterable strength before any event shall occur to betray their existence to the public. How was it there? We shall see.

While the events we have described in the last foregoing chapters were transpiring, Mrs. Elwood held her peace, studiously avoiding all allusion to what still constituted the burden of her mind,—the thickening intimacy between her family and the Gurleys; but, though she was silent on the subject, yet her heart was not any the less sad, nor her thoughts any the less busy. She had been made aware that a reconciliation had taken place between her husband and Gaut Gurley; and she had seen how artfully the latter had brought it about, and regained his old fatal influence over the former. She believed she fully understood the motives which actuated Gaut in all these movements. And she now looked on in helpless anguish of heart to see the toils thus drawn tighter and tighter around the unconscious victims, and those victims, too, her husband and son, with whose happiness and welfare her own was indissolubly connected. She saw it with anguish, because her feelings never for once were permitted even the alleviation of a doubt that it could result in aught else than evil to her family. She could not reason herself into any belief of Gaut's reformation. She felt his black heart constantly throwing its shadow on to her own; she felt this, but could not give to others, nor perhaps even to herself, what might be deemed a satisfactory reason for her impressions and forebodings; for in her was exemplified the words of the poet:

"The mind is capable to show Thoughts of so dim a feature, That consciousness can only know Their presence and their nature."

Such thoughts were hers,—dim and flitting, indeed; but she felt conscious of their continued presence, of their general character, and deeply conscious what they portended. They took one shape, moved in one course, and all pointed one way, and that was to evil,—some great impending evil to the two objects of her love and solicitude.

"But is there no hope?" she murmured aloud, in the fullness of her heart, while deeply pondering the matter, one day, as she sat alone at her open window, looking out on her husband and son engaged in their harvest, which she knew they were hurrying on to a close, before leaving her on the contemplated long, and perhaps perilous, expedition into the wilderness,—a circumstance that doubtless caused the subject, in the thus awakened state of her anxieties, to weigh at this time peculiarly heavy on her mind. "Is there no hope," she repeated, with a sigh, "that this impending calamity may in some part be averted? Must they both be sacrificed? Must the faults of the erring father be visited on the innocent son, who had become the last hope of the mother's heart? Kind Heaven! may not that son, at least, be delivered from the web of toils into which he has so strangely fallen, and yet be saved? Grant, O grant that hope—that one ray of hope—in this my hour of darkness!"

But what sound was that which now fell upon her ear, as if responsive to her ejaculation? It was a light tap or two on the door, which, after the customary bidding of walk in had been pronounced, was gently opened, when a young female of extreme beauty and loveliness entered. Mrs. Elwood involuntarily rose, and stood a moment, mute with surprise, in the unexpected presence. Soon recovering, however, she invited the fair stranger to a seat, still deeply wondering who she could be and what had occasioned her visit.

"You are the good woman of the house?—the wife of the new settler?—the mother of Mr. Claud Elwood?" asked the stranger girl, pausing between each interrogatory, till she had received an affirmative nod from Mrs. Elwood.

"Yes," replied the latter kindly, but with an air of increasing curiosity, "yes, I am Mrs. Elwood. Would you like to see my son, Claud?"

"No," rejoined the girl, in the same subdued and musical accents. "No, it was not him, but you, I came to see and speak with," she added, carefully, withdrawing a screening handkerchief from a light parcel she bore in her hand, and displaying a small work-basket of exquisite make, which, advancing with hesitating steps, she presented to the other, as she resumed:

"I came with this, good lady, to see if you would be suited to have such an article?"

"It is very pretty," said Mrs. Elwood, examining the workmanship with admiration, "beautiful, indeed. Did you make it?"

"I did, lady," said the other modestly.

"Well, it certainly does great credit to your skill and taste," rejoined the other. "I should, of course, be pleased to own it, but I have little money to pay for such things. You ought to sell it for quite a sum."

"But I do not wish to sell it," responded the girl, looking up to Mrs. Elwood with an expostulating and wounded expression. "I do not wish to take money for it; but hoped you would like it well enough to accept it for a gift,—a small token."

"O, I should," said Mrs. Elwood, "if I was entitled to any such present; but what have I ever done to deserve it of you? I do not even know who you are, kind stranger."

"They, call me Fluella," responded the other, the blood slightly suffusing her fair, rounded cheek. "You have not seen me, I know. You have not done me the great favor that brings my gratitude. It is your brave son that has done both."

"O, I understand now," exclaimed Mrs. Elwood. "You are the chief's daughter, whom Claud and Mr. Phillips helped out of a difficulty and danger on the rapids, some time since. But your token should be given to Claud, should it not?"

"It would be unsuitable, too much," quickly replied the maiden, in a low, hurried tone. "I could not do a thing like that. But if you would accept such a small thing?"

"I cannot but appreciate and honor your delicacy," returned Mrs. Elwood, with a look of mingled admiration and respect. "I think you must be an excellent girl; and I will accept your present,—yes, thankfully,—and never forget the manner in which it was bestowed."

"Your words are in my heart, lady. I came, feeling much doubtful; I return, much happy," said the maiden, rising to depart.

"Do not go yet," interposed the matron, who was beginning to feel a lively interest in the other; "do not go yet. Claud should know you are here. I will call him," she added, starting for the door.

"O no, no,—do not, do not. He would not wish to be troubled by one like me," hurriedly entreated the maiden, with a look of alarmed delicacy.

"O, you are mistaken. He would be pleased to see you, and expect to be called," said Mrs. Elwood, in a tone of gentle remonstrance, while pausing at the unexpected objection. "But it is unnecessary; for I see that he is already coming, and in a moment will be here," she added, glancing out of the window.

Having made the announcement, she turned encouragingly to the maiden, to reassure her, believing her request that Claud should not be called in proceeded entirely from over-diffidence. But one glance of her quick and searching eye was sufficient to apprise the former that there was a deeper cause for those tender alarms. The cheeks of the beautiful girl were deeply suffused with crimson, her bosom was heaving wildly, and her whole frame was trembling like an aspen. As her eyes met the surprised gaze of the matron, she became conscious that her looks had betrayed the secret she was the most anxious to conceal; and she cast an imploring look on the face of the other, as if to entreat the mercy of shielding the weakness.

Mrs. Elwood understood the silent appeal; and, approaching and laying her hand gently on the shoulder of the other, said, in a low, kindly tone:

"Have no fears. You have made a friend of me."

The girl silently removed the hand, brought it to her lips, and, as a bright tear-drop fell upon it, kissed it eagerly. The two then separated, and resumed their respective seats, to compose themselves before the expected entrance should be made.

In a few moments Claud carelessly entered the house; but stopped short in surprise, at the threshold, on so unexpectedly seeing the well-remembered face and form of the heroine of his late romantic adventure on the rapids, in the room with his mother. But, almost instantly recovering his usual manner, he gallantly advanced to the trembling maiden, took her by the hand, and respectfully inquired about her welfare, and pleasantly adverted to the singular circumstances under which they had become acquainted. Soon becoming in a good measure assured, by a reception so much more condescending and cordial than she had dared hope for, from one whose image she had been cherishing as that of some superior being, the grateful and happy girl, now forgetful of her wish to depart, gradually regained her natural ease and vivacity, and sustained her part in the general conversation that now ensued, with an intelligence and instinctive refinement of thought and expression that equally charmed and surprised her listeners. She at length, however, rose to depart, observing that her father, who was in waiting for her at the landing, would chide her for her long delay; when Claud offered to attend her to the lake. To this she at first objected; but, on Claud's assurance that he should be pleased with the walk, and that it would afford him the opportunity of meeting her father, whom he had a curiosity to see, she blushingly assented, and the couple sociably took their way to the lake together, leaving Mrs. Elwood deeply revolving in her mind the new train of thoughts that had been awakened by the remarkable personal beauty and evident rare qualities of her fair visitor, and the discovery of the state of her feelings,—thoughts which the matron laid up in her heart, but forbade her tongue to utter.