CHAPTER I.

What man that sees the ever-whirling wheele Of Change, the which all mortall thing doth sway, But that thereby doth find, and plainly feele, How Mutability in them doth play Her cruel sports to many men's decay. SPENSER--_Faerie Queene_.

America is especially the land of change. From the moment of discovery, its history has been a record of convulsions, such as necessarily attend a transition from barbarism to civilization; and to the end of time, it will witness those revolutions in society, which arise in a community unshackled by the restraints of prerogative. As no law of primogeniture can ever entail the distinctions meritoriously won, or the wealth painfully amassed, by a single individual, upon a line of descendants, the mutations in the condition of families will be perpetual. The Dives of to-day will be the Diogenes of to-morrow; and the 'man of the tub' will often live to see his children change place with those of the palace-builder. As it has been, so will it be,--

"Now up, now doun, as boket in a well;"

and the honoured and admired of one generation will be forgotten among the moth-lived luminaries of the next.

That American labours under a melancholy infatuation, who hopes, in the persons of his progeny, to preserve the state and consideration he has acquired for himself. He cannot bequeath, along with lands and houses, the wisdom and good fortune which obtained them; nor can he devise preventives against the natural consequences of folly and waste. His edifice of pride must crumble to dust, when both corner-stone and hypogeum are based upon the contingencies of expectation; and the funeral-stone and the elm of his family mausoleum will vanish, in course of time, before the axe and plough of a new proprietor.

This is the ordinance of Nature, who, if she scatters her good gifts of talents with a somewhat despotic capriciousness, is well content that men should employ them in republican and equal rivalry.

In a little valley bordering upon the Delaware, there stood, fifty years since, a fair dwelling, within an ample domain, which a few years of vicissitude had seen transferred from its founder to a stranger, although wealth and a family of seven sons, the boldest and strongest in the land, might have seemed to insure its possession to them during at least two generations. The vale lies upon the right bank of the river, imbosomed among those swelling hills that skirt the south-eastern foot of the Alleghanies, (using that term in the broad, generic sense given it by geographers,) the principal ridge of which,--the Ka-katch-la-na-min, or Kittatinny, or, as it is commonly called, the Blue Mountain,--is so near at hand, that, upon a clear day, the eye can count the pines bristling over its gray and hazy crags. It stretches, indeed, like some military rampart of the Titans, from the right hand to the left, farther than the eye can reach, broken only by the gaps that, for the most part, give passage to rivers; and but for these, it would be entirely impassable.

The original proprietor of the estate was an English emigrant of humble degree, and, at first, of painfully contracted circumstances; but having fallen heir to a considerable property in his own land, and events of a very peculiar nature altering the resolution he had formed to enjoy it within the limits of the chalk-cliffs of Albin, he sat himself down in good earnest to improve the windfall at home. The little farm which he had cultivated with his own hands, was speedily swelled into an extensive manor; and deserting the hovel of logs which had first contented his wants, he built a dwelling-house of stone, so spacious, and of a style of structure so irregular and fantastic, that it had, at a distance, the air rather of a hamlet than a single villa, and indeed looked not unlike a nest of dove-cots stuck together on the hill-side. Without possessing one single feature of architectural elegance, it had yet a romantic appearance, derived in part from the scenery around, from the beauty of the groves and clumps of trees that environed it, and the vines and trailing flowers that were made, in summer at least, to conceal many of its deformities. It was exceedingly sequestered also; for except the log hovel, into which Mr. Gilbert (for that was his name) had inducted a poor widow, befriended out of gratitude for kindness shown him, when their respective conditions were not so unequal, there was not another habitation to be seen from his house, though it commanded an extensive prospect even beyond the river. The highway to the neighbouring Water-Gap, indeed, ran through the estate; the broad river below often echoed to the cries of boatmen and raftsmen, floating merrily onward to their market; and the village dignified with the title of County-town, was not above seven or eight miles distant; so that the valley was not always invested with a Sabbath-day silence; and, besides, his protegée, the widow, had, with Mr. Gilbert's consent, converted her hovel into a house of entertainment, which sometimes seduced a wayfarer to sojourn for a period in the valley. Mr. Gilbert himself did all he could to add life and bustle to his possessions, by doing honour to such well behaved villagers, or even strangers, as he could induce to ruralize with him; for having built and planted, and torn down and transplanted, until he knew not well what to do with himself, he hit upon that expedient for driving away ennui which passes for hospitality,--namely, converting into guests all proper, and indeed improper, persons from whom he could derive amusement, and who could assist him to kill time. To this shift he was driven, in great part, by the undomestic character of his children; who, so soon as they arrived at an age for handling the rifle, individually and infallibly ran off into the woods, until, as the passion for hunting grew with their growth, they might be said almost to live in them. It was this wild propensity, acting upon a disposition unusually self-willed and inflexible, in the case of his eldest boy, Oran, that defeated his scheme of spending the remainder of his days in England. He actually crossed the sea, with his whole family, and remained in the neighbourhood of Bristol, his native town, for the space of a year; but in that time, Oran, a boy only twelve years old, 'heartily sick,' as he said, 'of a land where there were no woods, and no place where he could get by himself,' finding remonstrance and entreaty fail to move his father's heart to his purpose, took the desperate resolution of returning to America alone; which he did, having concealed himself in the hold of a vessel, until she was out of the Channel. His sufferings were great, but he endured them with incredible fortitude; and finally after many remarkable adventures, he found himself again in his happy valley, in the charge or protection, if it could be so called, of the good widow Bell,--for that was the name of the poor woman befriended by his father. In a few months, his father followed him, perhaps instigated by affection, (for Oran, being the worst, was therefore the most favoured of his children,) by the murmurs of the others, or by the discovery he undoubtedly made, that his wealth would secure him, if not equal comfort, at least superior consideration, in the New World.

Consideration indeed he obtained, and increase of wealth; but the wild manners and habits of his children greatly afflicted him; and having married a second wife, he was induced, in the hope of 'making a gentleman,' as he called it, of the boy she bore him, (none of the others having that ambition,) to commit him to the protection of a sister, the widow of a Jamaica planter, who had divided with him the bequest that had made his fortune, and being childless herself, desired to adopt him as her heir.

Thus much of the early history of Mr. Gilbert was recollected with certainty, so late as the year 1782, by the villagers of Hillborough, the county-town already mentioned, who had so often shared his hospitality; but long before that time, he had vanished, with all his family, from the quiet, beautiful, and well-beloved valley. They were wont to speak with satisfaction of the good dinners they had eaten, the rare wines they had drunk, the merry frolics they had shared, in the Hawk's Hollow,--for so they perversely insisted upon calling what Mr. Gilbert, in right of possession, chose to designate as Avon-dale, in memory, or in honour of his own buxom river of Somerset; they related, too, to youthful listeners, the prophetic sagacity with which they had predicted violent ends to the young Hawks of Hawk-Hollow, (so they called the young Gilberts,) for their disobedience to father and mother, and their unusual passion for a life of adventure; and, finally, they shook their heads with suspicion and regret, when they spoke of Jessie, Gilbert's only daughter, of her early and mysterious death, and still more, to them, unaccountable burial. All that could be gathered in relation to this unhappy maiden, was dark and unsatisfactory: her death had seemingly, in some way, produced the destruction of the family and the alienation of the estate. It was an event of more than twenty years back; and from that period, until the time of his own sudden flight, Mr. Gilbert's doors were no longer open, and his sons were no more seen associated with the young men of the county. The maiden had died suddenly, and been interred in a private place on the estate.

In connexion with this event, some, more garrulous than others, were wont to speak of Colonel Falconer, the present proprietor of Hawk-Hollow, as having had some agency in the catastrophe; but what it was, they either knew not, or they feared to speak. Evil suspicions, however, gathered about this gentleman's name; and as he was seldom, if ever, seen in Hawk-Hollow in person, but had committed the stewardship of the property to the hands of a distant relative, who resided on it, the young felt themselves at liberty to fill up from imagination, the sketch left imperfect by the old; and accordingly, the Colonel, in time, came to be considered by those who had never seen him, as one of the darkest-hearted and most dangerous of his species. He was very rich; the station he occupied in the eyes of his country was lofty, and might have been esteemed noble; for he had shed his blood in the great and fearful battle of rights that was now approaching to a close; and after being disabled by severe and honourable wounds, he had changed the sphere of his exertions, and was now as ardent and devoted a patriot in the senate as he had been before in the field. Yet in this distant quarter, these recommendations to favour were forgotten; it was said, if he had done good deeds, there were evil ones enough to bury them as in a mountain, and if he had fought well for his country, he had struggled still more devotedly to aggrandize himself. In a word, he was called a hard, avaricious, rapacious man, whose chief business was to enrich himself at the cost of the less patriotic, and who had got the mastery of more sequestrated estates than an honest man could have come by. It was a sin of an unpardonable nature, that he had succeeded in getting possession of Hawk-Hollow, when there were so many others in the county who had set their hearts upon it.

His representative on the estate was a certain Captain John Loring, who, with all the patriotism of his connexion, and perhaps a great deal more, had never been able to turn it to any account. On the contrary, beginning the world with an ample patrimony, at the time when Mr. Falconer commenced as an adventurer, he had descended in fortune with a rapidity only to be compared with that of his friend's exaltation. The love of glory had early driven him from his peaceful farm on the Brandywine; and after distinguishing himself as a volunteer in the Indo-Gallic wars of Western Pennsylvania, it was his hard fate to bring his career of effective service to a close on what he was always pleased to call the Fatal Field of Braddock. From that bloody encounter he came off with more honour than profit, and with a body so mangled and a constitution so shattered, that a quarter of a century had scarce served to repair the dilapidation of his animal man. But the Captain had lost neither his spirit nor his love of glory. At the first trump of the Revolution, he donned the panoply of valour; he snatched up the pistols he had taken from a dead Canadian at the Fatal Field of Braddock, strapped upon his thigh the sword he had received for his services in storming certain Indian forts on the Alleghany river, clapped into his pocket the commission which the colonial government had granted him in reward of that gallant exploit, and reported himself, among a crowd of younger patriots, as ready to do and die for his country. The Commissioners looked at his gray hairs and shattered leg, (the latter of which had once been as full of musket-bullets as was ever a cartouche-box,) commended his virtue and enthusiasm, and divided the honours of command among those who were better fitted to do the state service. The Captain retired to his patrimonial estate, and there contented himself as well as he could, until the current of conflict, diverted from one bloody channel into another, came surging at last into the pastoral haunts of the Brandywine. At that time, his home was blessed with two children, a gallant boy of eighteen, and a merry little maiden of twelve. But one morning, he heard a trumpet pealing over the hills and a cannon roaring hard by, behind the woods. He looked at the face of his son, and the eye of the boy reflected back the fire of his father's spirit. Their horses were saddled in the stalls, and the spurs were already on young Tom Loring's heels. It was enough--the Captain carried his son to the grave.--But, to his own dying day, he rejoiced over the young man's fall. On this subject, the Captain was commonly considered by his neighbours to be crack-brained.

After this, came other misfortunes; and the Captain was a ruined man, landless, homeless, and childless, save that his little Catherine was still left to share his poverty, and, like a lamp in a cavern, to exaggerate rather than enlighten the gloom of his desolation. At this critical juncture, he found a firm and prudent friend in Colonel Falconer, by whom he was installed into the privileges, if not the actual possession of Hawk-Hollow, in the supervision and improvement of which he seemed now likely to pass the remainder of his days. How far the kindly feelings of relationship, or how far the influence of his daughter's growing beauty, had contributed to secure him the benevolence of this friend in need, was a question frequently agitated by the curious villagers. It was settled among them, that there was a wedding in the wind; but whether the young lady was to share the lot of her distinguished patron, or to be given to his gay and somewhat wild-brained son, was a point on which busy bodies were long coming at a conclusion. The Captain, though frank enough in his way, was not exactly the individual whom one would think of troubling with impertinent questions; and Miss Loring, however hospitable and courteous, had not yet selected a confidante from among the blooming nymphs of Hillborough. She was, however, the theme of as much admiration as curiosity; and being very beautiful, and of manners always gentle, and at times irresistibly engaging, the village poet immortalized her in rhyme, and the village belles forgave the eulogium.

It remains but to say a word more of the Gilberts, as a necessary introduction to a record, designed to rescue the story of their fate from the uncertain and unfaithful lips of tradition. After mingling in all the border wars, both Indian and civil, that, from the time of Braddock's defeat to the dispersion of the Connecticut settlers, distracted the unhappy Susquehanna settlements, they deserted the cause of their countrymen at the beginning of the Revolution, and appeared in the guise of destroying demons, at Wyoming, on that occasion of massacre, which has given to the spot a celebrity so mournful. In other words they were traitors and refugees; and however dreadful the reputation they obtained as bold and successful depredators, their fate was such as might have been, and perhaps was, anticipated by themselves. One after another, they were cut off, some by the rifle and tomahawk, one even by the halter, and all who did perish, by deaths of violence. It was indeed, at the time we speak of, confidently believed that Oran, the eldest of all, and the last survivor, had fallen within the space of a year, at a conflict on the banks of the Mohawk, along with other refugees of the neighbouring commonwealth, with whom he had associated himself. Great were the rejoicings in consequence with all who dwelt among the scenes of his earlier exploits; though some professed to have their doubts on the subject, and swore, that Oran Gilbert was not to be trusted, dead or alive, until his scalp was seen nailed on the county court-house door.