ads:
Roger Malvin's Burial
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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 judicially 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 their 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 gravestone, 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
gray of his hair marked him as past the middle age; but his muscular frame would, but for
the effect 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 in 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
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"Reuben, my boy," said he, "this rock beneath which we sit will serve for an old hunter's
gravestone. 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
burden 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 the cities and wherever 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 gray
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 faltering 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--"
ads:
"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 lifeblood 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 succor 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 on 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 succor, 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 affecting 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 your 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 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
to 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 succor 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 faltering
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 shrink 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 combined 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 bedside 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 burden myself
with him, but only to lead him to the lakeside, 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 tombstone 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 lawsuits; 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
affections 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 daydream, 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-
topped 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 fantasy; 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 snowdrifts 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 backwards 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 mossgrown 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 dies solitary and lies 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 under-growth, 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 practised marksman. A low moan, which told his
success, and by which even animals cars 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 gravestone. 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 lowerpart 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 bloodstained 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 that 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 shadows of evening had
deepened into the hollow where the encampment was made, and the firelight 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 the 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 burden 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 leaves 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 gravestone 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.
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