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In the Valley

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In the Valley

By

Harold Frederic

Copyright 1890







Dedication.



_When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour._

London, _September 11_, 1890




Contents.



Chapter I. "The French Are in the Valley!"
Chapter II. Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
Chapter III. Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly
Chapter IV. In Which I Become the Son of the House.
Chapter V. How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
Chapter VI. Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
Chapter VII. Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
Chapter VIII. Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
Chapter IX. I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
Chapter X. The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
Chapter XI. As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
Chapter XII. Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.
Chapter XIII. To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
Chapter XIV. How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
Chapter XV. The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
Chapter XVI. Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
Chapter XVII. I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
Chapter XVIII. The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
Chapter XIX. I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
Chapter XX. A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.
Chapter XXI. Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
Chapter XXII. The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
Chapter XXIII. How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
Chapter XXIV. The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
Chapter XXV. A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
Chapter XXVI. I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
Chapter XXVII. The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
Chapter XXVIII. An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.
Chapter XXIX. The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
Chapter XXX. From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
Chapter XXXI. The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
Chapter XXXII. "The Blood Be on Your Heads."
Chapter XXXIII. The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
Chapter XXXIV. Alone at Last with My Enemy.
Chapter XXXV. The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
Chapter XXXVI. A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully
Spared.
Chapter XXXVII. The Peaceful Ending of It All.





In The Valley




Chapter I.

"The French Are in the Valley!"



It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.

Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
the story:

* * * * *

I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.

The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.

I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
after rains.

Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
hated them.

The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
I held my breath.

It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):

"The French are in the Valley!"

I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.

Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.

How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.

When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
gravely from within the door:

"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."

Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
Valley.

These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.

If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
content to return to his sleep.

I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
dreamed at all.




Chapter II.

Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.



When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
could sop my bread.

During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
any other large matter, I would have valued.

Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.

He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
look up and down the Valley.

It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
through the cold night.

To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
still by contrast.

Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.

It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
I trust there can be no doubt.

While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
the hill.

As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.

After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."

All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
the commotion.

Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
we saw on the highway.

What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.

Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
others had become calm.

As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:

"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"

To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.

With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!

He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
in the face, and laughed again.

All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.

The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:

"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
embrace."

The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
the rending of an ice-gorge.

"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
my breath.

It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
despatched onward to the fort.

While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.

The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
warrior should be.

It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.

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