"Do we take the war-path?" I asked.
"We do, sorr," he said, blandly. "McDonald's in the hills wid the McCraw
an'ten score renegades. Wan o' their scouts struck old man Schell's farm
an' he put buckshot into sivinteen o' them, or I'm a liar where
I shtand!"
"I knew it," muttered Elerson to Mount. "Where you see smoke, there's
fire; where you see Murphy, there's trouble. Look at the grin on
him--and his hatchet shined up like a Cayuga's war-axe!"
I opened the despatch; it was from Schuyler, countermanding his
instructions for me to go to Stanwix, and directing me to warn every
settlement in the Kingsland district that McDonald and some three
hundred Indians and renegades were loose on the Schoharie, and that
their outlying scouts had struck Broadalbin.
I broke the wax of the second despatch; it was from Harrow, briefly
thanking me for the capture of Beacraft, adding that the man had been
sent to Albany to await court-martial.
That meant that Beacraft must hang; a most disagreeable feeling came
over me, and I tore open the third and last paper, a bulky document,
and read it:
"VARICK MANOR,
"June the 2d.
"An hour to dawn.
"In my bedroom I am writing to you the adieu I should have
said the night you left. Murphy, a rifleman, goes to you with
despatches in an hour: he will take this to you, ...
wherever you are.
"I saw the man you sent in. Father says he must surely hang.
He was so pale and silent, he looked so dreadfully tired--and
I have been crying a little--I don't know why, because all
say he is a great villain.
"I wonder whether you are well and whether you remember me."
("me" was crossed out and "us" written very carefully.) "The
house is so strange without you. I go into your room
sometimes. Cato has pressed all your fine clothes. I go into
your room to read. The light is very good there. I am reading
the Poems of Pansard. You left a fern between the pages to
mark the poem called 'Our Deaths'; did you know it? Do you
admire that verse? It seems sad to me. And it is not true,
either. Lovers seldom die together." (This was crossed out,
and the letter went on.) "Two people who love--" ("love" was
crossed out heavily and the line continued)--"two friends
seldom die at the same instant. Otherwise there would be no
terror in death.
"I forgot to say that Isene, your mare, is very well. Papa
and the children are well, and Ruyven a-pestering General
Schuyler to make him a cornet in the legion of horse, and
Cecile, all airs, goes about with six officers to carry her
shawl and fan.
"For me--I sit with Lady Schuyler when I have the
opportunity. I love her; she is so quiet and gentle and lets
me sit by her for hours, perfectly silent. Yesterday she came
into your room, where I was sitting, and she looked at me for
a long time--so strangely--and I asked her why, and she shook
her head. And after she had gone I arranged your linen and
sprinkled lavender among it.
"You see there is so little to tell you, except that in the
afternoon some Senecas and Tories shot at one of our distant
tenants, a poor man, one Christian Schell; and he beat them
off and killed eleven, which was very brave, and one of the
soldiers made a rude song about it, and they have been
singing it all night in their quarters. I heard them from
your room--where I sometimes sleep--the air being good there;
and this is what they sang:
"'A story, a story
Unto you I will tell,
Concerning a brave hero,
One Christian Schell.
"'Who was attacked by the savages.
And Tories, it is said;
But for this attack
Most freely they bled.
"'He fled unto his house
For to save his life.
Where he had left his arms
In care of his wife.
"'They advanced upon him
And began to fire,
But Christian with his blunderbuss
Soon made them retire.
"'He wounded Donald McDonald
And drew him in the door,
Who gave an account
Their strength was sixty-four.
"'Six there was wounded
And eleven there was killed
Of this said party,
Before they quit the field.'
"And I think there are a hundred other verses, which I will
spare you; not that I forget them, for the soldiers sang them
over and over, and I had nothing better to do than to lie
awake and listen.
"So that is all. I hear my messenger moving about below; I am
to drop this letter down to him, as all are asleep, and to
open the big door might wake them.
"Good-bye.
* * * * *
"It was not my rifleman, only the sentry. They keep double
watch since the news came about Schell. "Good-bye. I am
thinking of you.
"DOROTHY.
"Postscript.--Please make my compliments and adieux to Sir
George Covert.
"Postscript.--The rifleman is here; he is whistling like a
whippoorwill. I must say good-bye. I am mad to go with him.
Do not forget me!
"My memories are so keen, so pitilessly real, I can scarce
endure them, yet cling to them the more desperately.
"I did not mean to write this--truly I did not! But here, in
the dusk, I can see your face just as it looked when you said
good-bye!--so close that I could take it in my arms despite
my vows and yours!
"Help me to reason; for even God cannot, or will not, help
me; knowing, perhaps, the dreadful after-life He has doomed
me to for all eternity. If it is true that marriages are made
in heaven, where was mine made? Can you answer? I cannot.
(The whimper of the whippoorwill again!) Dearest, good-bye.
Where my body lies matters nothing so that you hold my soul a
little while. Yet, even of that they must rob you one day.
Oh, if even in dying there is no happiness, where, where does
it abide? Three places only have I heard of: the world,
heaven, and hell. God forgive me, but I think the last could
cover all.
"Say that you love me! Say it to the forest, to the wind.
Perhaps my soul, which follows you, may hear if you only say
it. (Once more the ghost-call of the whippoorwill!) Dear lad,
good-bye!"