THE AID-DE-CAMP’S DISCOVERY.
There are few sights in the world as beautiful as an American mountain
side, clothed with forest to the summit, when early frosts have begun
to touch the leaves, and wake them into color.
In the midst of the wild mountains of Vermont, in those days almost
deserted by human beings, a young man on horseback was pursuing his
way at a smart trot along a narrow road that wound round the lower
ridges, in a way that showed the ingenuity of the rustic engineers in
economizing labor.
To all appearance there was not a creature in sight, save the wild
animals and the lonely traveler, who pursued the path as if he knew it
well. Once, when he stopped to water his horse at a stream, he startled
a herd of deer who were coming to drink, and caused them to scurry away
through the bushes in alarm.
The young traveler looked around him as the deer vanished in the
thicket, with great admiration. He was in the midst of a small valley,
hemmed in by rounded mountains, and through the midst of which ran a
brown, brawling stream, in which the spotted trout played by hundreds.
The mountains were clothed to the very summit with woods, and although
it was not yet the end of August, light frosts had already been there,
in the long nights on the mountain sides. Here and there amid the green
blazed out the scarlet of a distant tree, half of whose foliage had
been touched as with a fiery pencil, while the verdure of the rest
looked fresher by contrast. Now and then the golden hue of a maple
shed a glory of color over its vicinity, but there was, as yet, only
enough of this to set off the somber green of the pines and the lighter
foliage of the oak and birch.
The traveler was a young man, and handsome withal. His dress was,
perhaps, the most picturesque in the annals of military history,
for the youth was evidently a soldier, and an officer at that. The
towering fur cap, narrowing as it rose, and ornamented with gold cord
and white plumes, the furred and braided jacket, hanging from his
shoulder, the still more gorgeous dolman that fitted his slight form to
a nicety, blazing with gold embroidery, all over the sky-blue ground of
the breast, the light buck-skin breeches, with braided pocket-covers,
and the scarlet morocco boots, rising mid-leg and tasseled with gold
were unfailing indications to the eye practiced in military costume,
that the wearer was an officer of some German corps of hussars, then at
the zenith of their reputation under the great Frederick of Prussia.
The young hussar was magnificently mounted on a dapple-gray horse of
wonderful bone and sinew, though quite low in flesh from campaigning,
and his housings were as splendid as his dress and arms. The latter,
saber, pistols, and light carbine, were all silver inlaid, and of
exquisite finish.
To a hidden observer, the sight of this gay cavalier, alone in the
wilds of Vermont, would have suggested great wonder. How came he
there, and what was he doing? In those early days of the Revolutionary
struggle, rags and bare feet were the rule, brilliant uniforms the few
exceptions. There was no corps of hussars in the Continental service,
and the Hessians, on the English side, wore green, not pale blue.
Besides, the uniform of the hussar officer was distinctively Prussian,
the black eagle being worked on his horse’s housings.
Whatever he was, he seemed to be quite at home in the woods, for his
blue eye was calm and fearless, and the long fair mustache that drooped
over his chin covered as resolute a mouth as ever closed firmly over
shut teeth.
Having allowed his beast to drink, the young cavalier urged him through
the water to the other side, and trotted briskly up the lonely road
between the arches of the wood, till he had stopped opposite the ridge,
and beheld before him another valley and more hills.
The ridge on which he stood happened to command an extensive view;
reining up, he scanned it with a practiced eye.
“By heavens!” he exclaimed to himself, in a low tone, after a long and
searching look; “there is some one living on the haunted hill, where
even the Indians would not dare to go. I must investigate that.”
So saying, he shook his rein, and galloped down the hillside, in the
direction of a mountain, the largest of any in sight, from the side of
which a thin column of smoke curled up in the air.
Nothing very strange in that it may be said; but the young officer knew
better.
He was passing through a country in which there was no settlements
in the path he was riding, till he came to Derry field. The mountain
before him was well-known by the name of “Haunted Hill” to the whites,
and had the reputation of being haunted by a demon, who frightened
away all the Indians who ventured near it. This was well known to the
young cavalier who, being free from superstition, had chosen that way
to escape any danger from the outlying Indians of Burgoyne’s army,
then lying between Ticonderoga and Albany, slowly advancing. The young
officer himself was on the staff of General Schuyler, who was then
retreating before his formidable foe, and who had sent the aid-de-camp
on a secret mission on which he was now proceeding.
The sight of smoke on the side of the Haunted Hill excited the
curiosity of the young officer. Smoke meant settled habitation.
No Indian could be there, he felt certain, on account of their
superstitious fears of the mountain demon. If any one else were there,
might he not prove to be in some way connected with the mystery of the
demon? Full of curiosity, and for the moment forgetting his mission
the young aid-de-camp crossed the valley, and commenced to toil up the
sides of Haunted Hill.
He was not aware, keen as was his glance, that one still keener was
watching him. Hardly had he gained the foot of the mountain, than an
Indian warrior looked out of the cover he had quitted, and giving a
rapid signal to some one behind, plunged down the hillside, skirting
the road and keeping the cover, followed at a loping trot by at least a
dozen more, in full war-paint.
The course of the savages was after the cavalier, and so rapidly did
they run, that they reached the foot of the hill before he had got
half-way up the side of Haunted Hill.
It is true that the hussar had slackened his pace, and was now toiling
up the steep ascent, holding by the mane of his steed. The Indians,
on the other hand, pressed along at the same rapid, tireless lope, and
quickly came in sight of the aid-de-camp, whose steps they seemed to be
dogging with true savage pertinacity.
Once having him safe in sight, the warriors slackened their pace, and
contented themselves with following, step by step, gliding from tree to
tree, and keeping themselves carefully hidden.
Meanwhile, the young officer pursued his way up the hill in the
direction that promised to bring him close to the mysterious smoke
which had excited his curiosity.
In half an hour’s climbing he had reached the summit of the lower ridge
of Haunted Hill, and beheld before him a little basin, scooped by the
hand of nature in the side of the hill, about a hundred yards across,
bare of wood, in the center of which stood a low stone hut, thatched
with fir branches, from the summit of which curled the blue smoke that
he had first noticed.
The little basin was bounded on one side by a precipice of rock about
fifty feet in hight, crowned with trees, and surmounted by the steep
ascent of the upper mountain. At the right it ended abruptly in a
second precipice, which fell away into the valley, while the tops of
lofty trees below just showed themselves over the edge. The forest
bounded the other side, and a little spring trickled over the edge of
the lower precipice with a tinkling sound.
But what riveted the attention of the youth, was a group that he
discovered in the midst of the little valley standing in front of the
cabin door.
Several tame deer were crowding eagerly around a young girl, in a
quaint, picturesque dress, in strange proximity to a huge black bear
and three tall bloodhounds of the largest breed.
The officer reined in his horse in amazement as he looked, and
ejaculated aloud:
“Heavens! It is Diana herself.”