Roger Malvin's Burial
ONE OF THE few incidents of Indian warfare, naturally susceptible
of the moonlight of romance, was that expedition, undertaken, for
the defence of the frontiers, in the year 1725, which resulted in
the well-remembered "Lovell's Fight." Imagination, by casting
certain circumstances judiciously into the shade, may see much to
admire in the heroism of a little band, who gave battle to twice
their number in the heart of the enemy's country. The open
bravery displayed by both parties was in accordance with
civilized ideas of valor, and chivalry itself might not blush to
record the deeds of one or two individuals. The battle, though
so fatal to those who fought, was not unfortunate in its
consequences to the country; for it broke the strength of a
tribe, and conduced to the peace which subsisted during several
ensuing years. History and tradition are unusually minute in
their memorials of this affair; and the captain of a scouting
party of frontier-men has acquired as actual a military renown,
as many a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the incidents
contained in the following pages will be recognized,
notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by such as
have heard, from old men's lips, the fate of the few combatants
who were in a condition to retreat, after "Lovell's Fight."
The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree-tops, beneath
which two weary and wounded men had stretched their limbs the
night before. Their bed of withered oak-leaves was strewn upon
the small level space, at the foot of a rock, situated near the
summit of one of the gentle swells, by which the face of the
country is there diversified. The mass of granite, rearing its
smooth, flat surface, fifteen or twenty feet above their heads,
was not unlike a gigantic grave-stone, upon which the veins
seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters. On a
tract of several acres around this rock, oaks and other hard-wood
trees had supplied the place of the pines, which were the usual
growth of the land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close
beside the travellers.
The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of
sleep; for, so soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the
top of the highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his
recumbent posture, and sat erect. The deep lines of his
countenance, and the scattered grey of his hair, marked him as
past the middle age; but his muscular frame would, but for the
effects of his wound, have been as capable of sustaining fatigue,
as in the early vigor of life. Languor and exhaustion now sat
upon his haggard features, and the despairing glance which he
sent forward through the depths of the forest, proved his own
conviction that his pilgrimage was at an end. He next turned his
eyes to the companion, who reclined by his side. The youth, for
he had scarcely attained the years of manhood, lay, with his head
upon his arm, in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill
of pain from his wounds seemed each moment on the point of
breaking. His right hand grasped a musket, and, to judge from
the violent action of his features, his slumbers were bringing
back a vision of the conflict, of which he was one of the few
survivors. A shout,--deep and loud to his dreaming fancy,--found
its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips, and, starting even at
the slight sound of his own voice, he suddenly awoke. The first
act of reviving recollection, was to make anxious inquiries
respecting the condition of his wounded fellow traveller. The
latter shook his head.
"Reuben, my boy," said he, "this rock, beneath which we sit, will
serve for an old hunter's grave-stone. There is many and many a
long mile of howling wilderness before us yet; nor would it avail
me anything, if the smoke of my own chimney were but on the other
side of that swell of land. The Indian bullet was deadlier than
I thought."
"You are weary with our three days' travel," replied the youth,
"and a little longer rest will recruit you. Sit you here, while
I search the woods for the herbs and roots, that must be our
sustenance; and having eaten, you shall lean on me, and we will
turn our faces homeward. I doubt not, that, with my help, you
can attain to some one of the frontier garrisons."
"There is not two days' life in me, Reuben," said the other,
calmly, "and I will no longer burthen you with my useless body,
when you can scarcely support your own. Your wounds are deep,
and your strength is failing fast; yet, if you hasten onward
alone, you may be preserved. For me there is no hope; and I will
await death here."
"If it must be so, I will remain and watch by you," said Reuben,
resolutely.
"No, my son, no," rejoined his companion. "Let the wish of a
dying man have weight with you; give me one grasp of your hand,
and get you hence. Think you that my last moments will be eased
by the thought, that I leave you to die a more lingering death?
I have loved you like a father, Reuben, and, at a time like this,
I should have something of a father's authority. I charge you to
be gone, that I may die in peace."
"And because you have been a father to me, should I therefore
leave you to perish, and to lie unburied in the wilderness?"
exclaimed the youth. "No; if your end be in truth approaching, I
will watch by you, and receive your parting words. I will dig a
grave here by the rock, in which, if my weakness overcome me, we
will rest together; or, if Heaven gives me strength, I will seek
my way home."
"In he cities, and whenever men dwell," replied the other, "they
bury their dead in the earth; they hide them from the sight of
the living; but here, where no step may pass, perhaps for a
hundred years, wherefore should I not rest beneath the open sky,
covered only by the oak-leaves, when the autumn winds shall strew
them? And for a monument, here is this grey rock, on which my
dying hand shall carve the name of Roger Malvin; and the
traveller in days to come will know, that here sleeps a hunter
and a warrior. Tarry not, then, for a folly like this, but
hasten away, if not for your own sake, for hers who will else be
desolate."
Malvin spoke the last few words in a faultering voice, and their
effect upon his companion was strongly visible. They reminded
him that there were other, and less questionable duties, than
that of sharing the fate of a man whom his death could not
benefit. Nor can it be affirmed that no selfish feeling strove
to enter Reuben's heart, though the consciousness made him more
earnestly resist his companion's entreaties.
"How terrible, to wait the slow approach of death, in this
solitude!" exclaimed he. "A brave man does not shrink in the
battle, and, when friends stand round the bed, even women may die
composedly; but here--"
"I shall not shrink, even here, Reuben Bourne," interrupted
Malvin. "I am a man of no weak heart; and, if I were, there is a
surer support than that of earthly friends. You are young, and
life is dear to you. Your last moments will need comfort far
more than mine; and when you have laid me in the earth,
and are alone, and night is settling on the forest, you will feel
all the bitterness of the death that may now be escaped. But I
will urge no selfish motive to your generous nature. Leave me
for my sake; that, having said a prayer for your safety, I may
have space to settle my account, undisturbed by worldly sorrows."
"And your daughter! How shall I dare to meet her eye?" exclaimed
Reuben. "She will ask the fate of her father, whose life I vowed
to defend with my own. Must I tell her, that he travelled three
days' march with me from the field of battle, and that then I
left him to perish in the wilderness? Were it not better to lie
down and die by your side, than to return safe, and say this to
Dorcas?"
"Tell my daughter," said Roger Malvin, "that, though yourself
sore wounded, and weak, and weary, you led my tottering footsteps
many a mile, and left me only at my earnest entreaty, because I
would not have your blood upon my soul. Tell her, that through
pain and danger you were faithful, and that, if your life-blood
could have saved me, it would have flowed to its last drop. And
tell her, that you will be something dearer than a father, and
that my blessing is with you both, and that my dying eyes can see
a long and pleasant path, in which you will journey together."
As Malvin spoke, he almost raised himself from the ground, and
the energy of his concluding words seemed to fill the wild and
lonely forest with a vision of happiness. But when he sank
exhausted upon his bed of oak-leaves, the light, which had
kindled in Reuben's eye, was quenched. He felt as if it were
both sin and folly to think of happiness at such a moment. His
companion watched his changing countenance, and sought, with
generous art, to wile him to his own good.
"Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I have to
live," he resumed. "It may be, that, with speedy assistance, I
might recover of my wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere
this, have carried tidings of our fatal battle to the frontiers,
and parties will be out to succour those in like condition with
ourselves. Should you meet one of these, and guide them hither,
who can tell but that I may sit by my own fireside again?"
A mournful smile strayed across the features of the dying man, as
he insinuated that unfounded hope; which, however, was not
without its effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor even
the desolate condition of Dorcas, could have induced him to
desert his companion, at such a moment. But his wishes seized
upon the thought, that Malvin's life might be preserved, and his
sanguine nature heightened, almost to certainty, the remote
possibility of procuring human aid.
"Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to hope that friends are
not far distant," he said, half aloud. "There fled one coward,
unwounded, in the beginning of the fight, and most probably he
made good speed. Every true man on the frontier would shoulder
his musket, at the news; and though no party may range so far
into the woods as this, I shall perhaps encounter them in one
day's march. Counsel me faithfully," he added, turning to
Malvin, in distrust of his own motives. "Were your situation
mine, would you desert me while life remained?"
"It is now twenty years," replied Roger Malvin, sighing, however,
as he secretly acknowledged the wide dissimilarity between the
two cases,--"it is now twenty years, since I escaped, with one
dear friend, from Indian captivity, near Montreal. We journeyed
many days through the woods, till at length, overcome with hunger
and weariness, my friend lay down, and besought me to leave him;
for he knew, that, if I remained, we both must perish. And, with
but little hope of obtaining succour, I heaped a pillow of dry
leaves beneath his head, and hastened on."
"And did you return in time to save him?" asked Reuben, hanging
on Malvin's words, as if they were to be prophetic of his own
success.
"I did," answered the other. "I came upon the camp of a hunting
party, before sunset of the same day. I guided them to the spot
where my comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale and
hearty man, upon his own farm, far within the frontiers, while I
lie wounded here, in the depths of the wilderness."
This example, powerful in effecting Reuben's decision, was aided,
unconsciously to himself, by the hidden strength of many another
motive. Roger Malvin perceived that the victory was nearly won.
"Now go, my son, and Heaven prosper you!" he said. "Turn not
back with our friends, when you meet them, lest your wounds and
weariness overcome you; but send hitherward two or three, that
may be spared, to search for me. And believe me, Reuben, my
heart will be lighter with every step you take towards home." Yet
there was perhaps a change, both in his countenance and voice, as
he spoke thus; for, after all, it was a ghastly fate, to be left
expiring in the wilderness.
Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he was acting rightly, at
length raised himself from the ground, and prepared himself for
his departure. And first, though contrary to Malvin's wishes, he
collected a stock of roots and herbs, which had been their only
food during the last two days. This useless supply he placed
within reach of the dying man, for whom, also, he swept together
a fresh bed of dry oak-leaves. Then, climbing to the summit of
the rock, which on one side was rough and broken, he bent the
oak-sapling downward, and bound his handkerchief to the topmost
branch. This precaution was not unnecessary, to direct any
who might come in search of Malvin; for every part of the rock,
except its broad, smooth front, was concealed, at a little
distance, by the dense undergrowth of the forest. The
handkerchief had been the bandage of a wound upon Reuben's arm;
and, as he bound it to the tree, he vowed, by the blood that
stained it, that he would return, either to save his companion's
life, or to lay his body in the grave. He then descended, and
stood, with downcast eyes, to receive Roger Malvin's parting
words.
The experience of the latter suggested much and minute advice,
respecting the youth's journey through the trackless forest.
Upon this subject he spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were
sending Reuben to the battle or the chase, while he himself
remained secure at home; and not as if the human countenance,
that was about to leave him, were the last he would ever behold.
But his firmness was shaken, before he concluded.
"Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that my last prayer shall
be for her and you. Bid her have no hard thoughts because you
left me here"--Reuben's heart smote him--"for that your life
would not have weighed with you, if its sacrifice could have done
me good. She will marry you, after she has mourned a little
while for her father; and Heaven grant you long and happy days!
and may your children's children stand round your death-bed!
And, Reuben," added he, as the weakness of mortality made its way
at last, "return, when your wounds are healed and your weariness
refreshed, return to this wild rock, and lay my bones in the
grave, and say a prayer over them."
An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps from the customs
of the Indians, whose war was with the dead, as well as the
living, was paid by the frontier inhabitants to the rites of
sepulture; and there are many instances of the sacrifice of life,
in the attempt to bury those who had fallen by the "sword of the
wilderness." Reuben, therefore, felt the full importance of the
promise, which he most solemnly made, to return, and perform
Roger Malvin's obsequies. It was remarkable, that the latter,
speaking his whole heart in his parting words, no longer
endeavored to persuade the youth, that even the speediest succour
might avail to the preservation of his life. Reuben was
internally convinced, that he should see Malvin's living face no
more. His generous nature would fain have delayed him, at
whatever risk, till the dying scene were past; but the desire of
existence, and the hope of happiness had strengthened in his
heart, and he was unable to resist them.
"It is enough," said Roger Malvin, having listened to Reuben's
promise. "Go, and God speed you!"
The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, and was departing.
His slow and faultering steps, however, had borne him but a
little way, before Malvin's voice recalled him.
"Reuben, Reuben," said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and knelt
down by the dying man.
"Raise me, and let me lean against the rock," was his last
request. "My face will be turned towards home, and I shall see
you a moment longer, as you pass among the trees."
Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his companion's
posture, again began his solitary pilgrimage. He walked more
hastily at first, than was consistent with his strength; for a
sort of guilty feeling, which sometimes torments men in their
most justifiable acts, caused him to seek concealment from
Malvin's eyes. But, after he had trodden far upon the rustling
forest-leaves, he crept back, impelled by a wild and painful
curiosity, and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn tree,
gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The morning sun was
unclouded, and the trees and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the
month of May; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature's face, as if
she sympathized with mortal pain and sorrow. Roger Malvin's
hands were uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words of
which stole through the stillness of the woods, and entered
Reuben's heart, torturing it with an unutterable pang. They were
the broken accents of a petition for his own happiness and that
of Dorcas; and, as the youth listened, conscience, or something
in its similitude, pleaded strongly with him to return, and lie
down again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom of the
kind and generous being whom he had deserted in his extremity.
Death would come, like the slow approach of a corpse, stealing
gradually towards him through the forest, and showing its ghastly
and motionless features from behind a nearer, and yet a nearer
tree. But such must have been Reuben's own fate, had he tarried
another sunset; and who shall impute blame to him, if he shrank
from so useless a sacrifice? As he gave a parting look, a breeze
waved the little banner upon the sapling-oak, and reminded Reuben
of his vow.
Many circumstances contributed to retard the wounded traveller,
in his way to the frontiers. On the second day, the clouds,
gathering densely over the sky, precluded the possibility of
regulating his course by the position of the sun; and he knew not
but that every effort of his almost exhausted strength, was
removing him farther from the home he sought. His scanty
sustenance was supplied by the berries, and other spontaneous
products of the forest. Herds of deer, it is true, sometimes
bounded past him, and partridges frequently whirred up before his
footsteps; but his ammunition had been expended in the fight, and
he had no means of slaying them. His wounds, irritated by the
constant exertion in which lay the only hope of life, wore away
his strength, and at intervals confused his reason. But, even in
the wanderings of intellect, Reuben's young heart clung strongly
to existence, and it was only through absolute incapacity of
motion, that he at last sank down beneath a tree, compelled
there to await death. In this situation he was discovered by a
party, who, upon the first intelligence of the fight, had been
despatched to the relief of the survivors. They conveyed him to
the nearest settlement, which chanced to be that of his own
residence.
Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the
bed-side of her wounded lover, and administered all those
comforts, that are in the sole gift of woman's heart and hand.
During several days, Reuben's recollection strayed drowsily among
the perils and hardships through which he had passed, and he was
incapable of returning definite answers to the inquiries, with
which many were eager to harass him. No authentic particulars of
the battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers, wives, and
children tell, whether their loved ones were detained by
captivity, or by the stronger chain of death. Dorcas nourished
her apprehensions in silence, till one afternoon, when Reuben
awoke from an unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more
perfectly than at any previous time. She saw that his intellect
had become composed, and she could no longer restrain her
filial anxiety.
"My father, Reuben?" she began; but the change in her lover's
countenance made her pause.
The youth shrank, as if with a bitter pain, and the blood gushed
vividly into his wan and hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to
cover his face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half
raised himself, and spoke vehemently, defending himself against
an imaginary accusation.
"Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas, and he bade
me not burthen myself with him, but only to lead him to the
lake-side, that he might quench his thirst and die. But I would
not desert the old man in his extremity, and, though bleeding
myself, I supported him; I gave him half my strength, and led him
away with me. For three days we journeyed on together, and your
father was sustained beyond my hopes; but, awaking at sunrise on
the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted,--he was unable
to proceed,--his life had ebbed away fast,--and--"
"He died!" exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.
Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge, that his selfish love
of life had hurried him away, before her father's fate was
decided. He spoke not; he only bowed his head; and, between
shame and exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in the pillow.
Dorcas wept, when her fears were thus confirmed; but the shock,
as it had been long anticipated, was on that account the less
violent.
"You dug a grave for my poor father, in the wilderness, Reuben?"
was the question by which her filial piety manifested itself.
"My hands were weak, but I did what I could," replied the youth
in a smothered tone. "There stands a noble tomb-stone above his
head, and I would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!"
Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no
further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought,
that Roger Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was
possible to bestow. The tale of Reuben's courage and fidelity
lost nothing, when she communicated it to her friends; and the
poor youth, tottering from his sick chamber to breathe the sunny
air, experienced from every tongue the miserable and humiliating
torture of unmerited praise. All acknowledged that he might
worthily demand the hand of the fair maiden, to whose father he
had been "faithful unto death"; and, as my tale is not of love,
it shall suffice to say, that, in the space of a few months,
Reuben became the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage
ceremony, the bride was covered with blushes, but the
bridegroom's face was pale.
There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incommunicable
thought; something which he was to conceal most heedfully from
her whom he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deeply and
bitterly, the moral cowardice that had restrained his words, when
he was about to disclose the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear
of losing her affection, the dread of universal scorn, forbade
him to rectify this falsehood. He felt, that, for leaving Roger
Malvin, he deserved no censure. His presence, the gratuitous
sacrifice of his own life, would have added only another, and a
needless agony to the last moments of the dying man. But
concealment had imparted to a justifiable act, much of the secret
effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him that he had
done right, experienced, in no small degree, the mental horrors,
which punish the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain
association of ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a
murderer. For years, also, a thought would occasionally recur,
which, though he perceived all its folly and extravagance, he had
not power to banish from his mind; it was a haunting and
torturing fancy, that his father-in-law was yet sitting at the
foot of the rock, on the withered forest-leaves, alive, and
awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental deceptions,
however, came and went, nor did he ever mistake them for
realities; but in the calmest and clearest moods of his mind, he
was conscious that he had a deep vow unredeemed, and that an
unburied corpse was calling to him, out of the wilderness. Yet,
such was the consequence of his prevarication, that he could not
obey the call. It was now too late to require the assistance of
Roger Malvin's friends, in performing his long-deferred
sepulture; and superstitious fears, of which none were more
susceptible than the people of the outward settlements, forbade
Reuben to go alone. Neither did he know where, in the pathless
and illimitable forest, to seek that smooth and lettered rock, at
the base of which the body lay; his remembrance of every portion
of his travel thence was indistinct, and the latter part had left
no impression upon his mind. There was, however, a continual
impulse, a voice audible only to himself, commanding him to go
forth and redeem his vow; and he had a strange impression, that,
were he to make the trial, he would be led straight to Malvin's
bones. But, year after year, that summons, unheard but felt, was
disobeyed. His one secret thought, became like a chain, binding
down his spirit, and, like a serpent, gnawing into his heart; and
he was transformed into a sad and downcast, yet irritable man.
In the course of a few years after their marriage, changes began
to be visible in the external prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas.
The only riches of the former had been his stout heart and strong
arm; but the latter, her father's sole heiress, had made her
husband master of a farm, under older cultivation, larger, and
better stocked than most of the frontier establishments. Reuben
Bourne, however, was a neglectful husbandman; and while the lands
of the other settlers became annually more fruitful, his
deteriorated in the same proportion. The discouragements to
agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation of Indian war,
during which men held the plough in one hand, and the musket in
the other; and were fortunate if the products of their dangerous
labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn, by
the savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered
condition of the country; nor can it be denied, that his
intervals of industrious attention to his affairs were but
scantily rewarded with success. The irritability, by which he
had recently become distinguished, was another cause of his
declining prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels, in his
unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring settlers. The
results of these were innumerable law-suits; for the people of
New England, in the earliest stages and wildest circumstances of
the country, adopted, whenever attainable, the legal mode of
deciding their differences. To be brief, the world did not go
well with Reuben Bourne, and, though not till many years after
his marriage, he was finally a ruined man, with but one remaining
expedient against the evil fate that had pursued him. He was to
throw sunlight into some deep recess of the forest, and seek
subsistence from the virgin bosom of the wilderness.
The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, now arrived at the
age of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a
glorious manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and already
began to excel in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life.
His foot was fleet, his aim true, his apprehension quick, his
heart glad and high; and all, who anticipated the return of
Indian war, spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future leader in the land.
The boy was loved by his father, with a deep and silent strength,
as if whatever was good and happy in his own nature had been
transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it. Even
Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for
Reuben's secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually
made him a selfish man; and he could no longer love deeply,
except where he saw, or imagined, some reflection or likeness of
his own mind. In Cyrus he recognized what he had himself been in
other days; and at intervals he seemed to partake of the boy's
spirit, and to be revived with a fresh and happy life. Reuben
was accompanied by his son in the expedition, for the purpose of
selecting a tract of land, and felling and burning the timber,
which necessarily preceded the removal of the household gods.
Two months of autumn were thus occupied; after which Reuben
Bourne and his young hunter returned, to spend their last winter
in the settlements.
It was early in the month of May, that the little family snapped
asunder whatever tendrils of affection had clung to inanimate
objects, and bade farewell to the few, who, in the blight of
fortune, called themselves their friends. The sadness of the
parting moment had, to each of the pilgrims, its peculiar
alleviations. Reuben, a moody man, and misanthropic because
unhappy, strode onward, with his usual stern brow and downcast
eye, feeling few regrets, and disdaining to acknowledge any.
Dorcas, while she wept abundantly over the broken ties by which
her simple and affectionate nature had bound itself to
everything, felt that the inhabitants of her inmost heart moved
on with her, and that all else would be supplied wherever she
might go. And the boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and
thought of the adventurous pleasures of the untrodden forest.
Oh! who, in the enthusiasm of a day-dream, has not wished that
he were a wanderer in a world of summer wilderness, with one fair
and gentle being hanging lightly on his arm? In youth, his free
and exulting step would know no barrier but the rolling ocean or
the snow-topt mountains; calmer manhood would choose a home,
where Nature had strewn a double wealth, in the vale of some
transparent stream; and when hoary age, after long, long years of
that pure life, stole on and found him there, it would find him
the father of a race, the patriarch of a people, the founder of a
mighty nation yet to be. When death, like the sweet sleep which
we welcome after a day of happiness, came over him, his far
descendants would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped by
tradition in mysterious attributes, the men of future generations
would call him godlike; and remote posterity would see him
standing, dimly glorious, far up the valley of a hundred
centuries!
The tangled and gloomy forest, through which the personages of my
tale were wandering, differed widely from the dreamer's Land of
Fantasie; yet there was something in their way of life that
Nature asserted as her own; and the gnawing cares, which went
with them from the world, were all that now obstructed their
happiness. One stout and shaggy steed, the bearer of all their
wealth, did not shrink from the added weight of Dorcas; although
her hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter part of each
day's journey, by her husband's side. Reuben and his son, their
muskets on their shoulders, and their axes slung behind them,
kept an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's eye for the
game that supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and
prepared their meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest-brook,
which, as they knelt down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a
sweet unwillingness, like a maiden, at love's first kiss. They
slept beneath a hut of branches, and awoke at peep of light,
refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas and the boy went
on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at intervals with an
outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold, cold sorrow,
which he compared to the snow-drifts, lying deep in the glens and
hollows of the rivulets, while the leaves were brightly green
above.
Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the travel of the woods,
to observe, that his father did not adhere to the course they had
pursued, in their expedition of the preceding autumn. They were
now keeping farther to the north, striking out more directly from
the settlements, and into a region, of which savage beasts and
savage men were as yet the sole possessors. The boy sometimes
hinted his opinions upon the subject, and Reuben listened
attentively, and once or twice altered the direction of their
march in accordance with his son's counsel. But having so done,
he seemed ill at ease. His quick and wandering glances were sent
forward, apparently in search of enemies lurking behind the
tree-trunks; and seeing nothing there, he would cast his eyes
backward, as if in fear of some pursuer. Cyrus, perceiving that
his father gradually resumed the old direction, forbore to
interfere; nor, though something began to weigh upon his heart,
did his adventurous nature permit him to regret the increased
length and the mystery of their way.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, they halted and made their
simple encampment, nearly an hour before sunset. The face of the
country, for the last few miles, had been diversified by swells
of land, resembling huge waves of a petrified sea; and in one of
the corresponding hollows, a wild and romantic spot, had the
family reared their hut, and kindled their fire. There is
something chilling, and yet heart-warming, in the thought of
these three, united by strong bands of love, and insulated from
all that breathe beside. The dark and gloomy pines looked down
upon them, and, as the wind swept through their tops, a pitying
sound was heard in the forest; or did those old trees groan, in
fear that men were come to lay the axe to their roots at last?
Reuben and his son, while Dorcas made ready their meal, proposed
to wander out in search of game, of which that day's march had
afforded no supply. The boy, promising not to quit the vicinity
of the encampment, bounded off with a step as light and elastic
as that of the deer he hoped to slay; while his father, feeling a
transient happiness as he gazed after him, was about to pursue an
opposite direction. Dorcas, in the meanwhile, had seated herself
near their fire of fallen branches, upon the moss-grown and
mouldering trunk of a tree, uprooted years before. Her
employment, diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now
beginning to simmer over the blaze, was the perusal of the
current year's Massachusetts Almanac, which, with the exception
of an old black-letter Bible, comprised all the literary wealth
of the family. None pay a greater regard to arbitrary divisions
of time, than those who are excluded from society; and Dorcas
mentioned, as if the information were of importance, that it was
now the twelfth of May. Her husband started.
"The twelfth of May! I should remember it well," muttered he,
while many thoughts occasioned a momentary confusion in his mind.
"Where am I? Whither am I wandering? Where did I leave him?"
Dorcas, too well accustomed to her husband's wayward moods to
note any peculiarity of demeanor, now laid aside the Almanac, and
addressed him in that mournful tone, which the tender-hearted
appropriate to griefs long cold and dead.
"It was near this time of the month, eighteen years ago, that my
poor father left this world for a better. He had a kind arm to
hold his head, and a kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his last
moments; and the thought of the faithful care you took of him,
has comforted me, many a time since. Oh! death would have been
awful to a solitary man, in a wild place like this!"
"Pray Heaven, Dorcas," said Reuben, in a broken voice, "pray
Heaven, that neither of us three die solitary, and lie unburied,
in this howling wilderness!" And he hastened away, leaving her to
watch the fire, beneath the gloomy pines.
Reuben Bourne's rapid pace gradually slackened, as the pang,
unintentionally inflicted by the words of Dorcas, became less
acute. Many strange reflections, however, thronged upon him;
and, straying onward, rather like a sleep-walker than a hunter,
it was attributable to no care of his own, that his devious
course kept him in the vicinity of the encampment. His steps
were imperceptibly led almost in a circle, nor did he observe
that he was on the verge of a tract of land heavily timbered, but
not with pine-trees. The place of the latter was here supplied
by oaks, and other of the harder woods; and around their roots
clustered a dense and bushy undergrowth, leaving, however, barren
spaces between the trees, thick-strewn with withered leaves.
Whenever the rustling of the branches, or the creaking of the
trunks made a sound, as if the forest were waking from slumber,
Reuben instinctively raised the musket that rested on his arm,
and cast a quick, sharp glance on every side; but, convinced by
a partial observation that no animal was near, he would again
give himself up to his thoughts. He was musing on the strange
influence, that had led him away from his premeditated course,
and so far into the depths of the wilderness. Unable to
penetrate to the secret place of his soul, where his motives lay
hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him
onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat.
He trusted that it was Heaven's intent to afford him an
opportunity of expiating his sin; he hoped that he might find the
bones, so long unburied; and that, having laid the earth over
them, peace would throw its sunlight into the sepulchre of his
heart. From these thoughts he was aroused by a rustling in the
forest, at some distance from the spot to which he had wandered.
Perceiving the motion of some object behind a thick veil of
undergrowth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter, and the aim
of a practiced marksman. A low moan, which told his success, and
by which even animals can express their dying agony, was unheeded
by Reuben Bourne. What were the recollections now breaking upon
him?
The thicket, into which Reuben had fired, was near the summit of
a swell of land, and was clustered around the base of a rock,
which, in the shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, was
not unlike a gigantic grave-stone. As if reflected in a mirror,
its likeness was in Reuben's memory. He even recognized the
veins which seemed to form an inscription in forgotten
characters; everything remained the same, except that a thick
covert of bushes shrouded the lower part of the rock, and would
have hidden Roger Malvin, had he still been sitting there. Yet,
in the next moment, Reuben's eye was caught by another change,
that time had effected, since he last stood, where he was now
standing again, behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The
sapling, to which he had bound the blood-stained symbol of his
vow, had increased and strengthened into an oak, far indeed from
its maturity, but with no mean spread of shadowy branches. There
was one singularity, observable in this tree, which made Reuben
tremble. The middle and lower branches were in luxuriant life,
and an excess of vegetation had fringed the trunk, almost to the
ground; but a blight had apparently stricken the upper part of
the oak, and the very topmost bough was withered, sapless, and
utterly dead. Reuben remembered how the little banner had
fluttered on the topmost bough, when it was green and lovely,
eighteen years before. Whose guilt had blasted it?
Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, continued her
preparations for their evening repast. Her sylvan table was the
moss-covered trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest part
of which she had spread a snow-white cloth, and arranged what
were left of the bright pewter vessels, that had been her pride
in the settlements. It had a strange aspect--that one little
spot of homely comfort, in the desolate heart of Nature. The
sunshine yet lingered upon the higher branches of the trees that
grew on rising ground; but the shades of evening had deepened
into the hollow, where the encampment was made; and the
fire-light began to redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of
the pines, or hovered on the dense and obscure mass of foliage,
that circled round the spot. The heart of Dorcas was not sad;
for she felt that it was better to journey in the wilderness,
with two whom she loved, than to be a lonely woman in a crowd
that cared not for her. As she busied herself in arranging seats
of mouldering wood, covered with leaves, for Reuben and her son,
her voice danced through the gloomy forest, in the measure of a
song that she had learned in youth. The rude melody, the
production of a bard who won no name, was descriptive of a winter
evening in a frontier-cottage, when, secured from savage inroad
by the high-piled snow-drifts, the family rejoiced by their own
fireside. The whole song possessed that nameless charm, peculiar
to unborrowed thought; but four continually-recurring lines shone
out from the rest, like the blaze of the hearth whose joys they
celebrated. Into them, working magic with a few simple words,
the poet had instilled the very essence of domestic love and
household happiness, and they were poetry and picture joined in
one. As Dorcas sang, the walls of her forsaken home seemed to
encircle her; she no longer saw the gloomy pines, nor heard the
wind, which still, as she began each verse, sent a heavy breath
through the branches, and died away in a hollow moan, from the
burthen of the song. She was aroused by the report of a gun, in
the vicinity of the encampment; and either the sudden sound, or
her loneliness by the glowing fire, caused her to tremble
violently. The next moment, she laughed in the pride of a
mother's heart.
"My beautiful young hunter! my boy has slain a deer!" she
exclaimed, recollecting that, in the direction whence the shot
proceeded, Cyrus had gone to the chase.
She waited a reasonable time, to hear her son's light step
bounding over the rustling leaves, to tell of his success. But
he did not immediately appear, and she sent her cheerful voice
among the trees, in search of him.
"Cyrus! Cyrus!"
His coming was still delayed, and she determined, as the report
had apparently been very near, to seek for him in person. Her
assistance, also, might be necessary in bringing home the
venison, which she flattered herself he had obtained. She
therefore set forward, directing her steps by the long-past
sound, and singing as she went, in order that the boy might be
aware of her approach, and run to meet her. From behind the
trunk of every tree, and from every hiding place in the thick
foliage of the undergrowth, she hoped to discover the countenance
of her son, laughing with the sportive mischief that is born of
affection. The sun was now beneath the horizon, and the light
that came down among the trees was sufficiently dim to create
many illusions in her expecting fancy. Several times she seemed
indistinctly to see his face gazing out from among the leaves;
and once she imagined that he stood beckoning to her, at the base
of a craggy rock. Keeping her eyes on this object, however, it
proved to be no more than the trunk of an oak, fringed to the
very ground with little branches, one of which, thrust out
farther than the rest, was shaken by the breeze. Making her way
round the foot of the rock, she suddenly found herself close to
her husband, who had approached in another direction. Leaning
upon the butt of his gun, the muzzle of which rested upon the
withered leaves, he was apparently absorbed in the contemplation
of some object at his feet.
"How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the deer, and fallen asleep
over him?" exclaimed Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her first
slight observation of his posture and appearance.
He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes towards her; and a
cold, shuddering fear, indefinite in its source and object, began
to creep into her blood. She now perceived that her husband's
face was ghastly pale, and his features were rigid, as if
incapable of assuming any other expression than the strong
despair which had hardened upon them. He gave not the slightest
evidence that he was aware of her approach.
"For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to me!" cried Dorcas, and
the strange sound of her own voice affrighted her even more than
the dead silence.
Her husband started, stared into her face; drew her to the front
of the rock, and pointed with his finger.
Oh! there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless, upon the fallen
forest-leaves! his cheek rested upon his arm, his curled locks
were thrown back from his brow, his limbs were slightly relaxed.
Had a sudden weariness overcome the youthful hunter? Would his
mother's voice arouse him? She knew that it was death.
"This broad rock is the grave-stone of your near kindred,
Dorcas," said her husband. "Your tears will fall at once over
your father and your son."
She heard him not. With one wild shriek, that seemed to force
its way from the sufferer's inmost soul, she sank insensible by
the side of her dead boy. At that moment, the withered topmost
bough of the oak loosened itself, in the stilly air, and fell in
soft, light fragments upon the rock, upon the leaves, upon
Reuben, upon his wife and child, and upon Roger Malvin's bones.
Then Reuben's heart was stricken, and the tears gushed out like
water from a rock. The vow that the wounded youth had made, the
blighted man had come to redeem. His sin was expiated, the curse
was gone from him; and, in the hour, when he had shed blood
dearer to him than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went
up to Heaven from the lips of Reuben Bourne.