Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848

"Nay, Hope, never again. My tender, my beautiful bird, it has fared ill with thee;" and smoothing her white locks, the tears gushed to the eyes of the strong man. Indeed, he, in his full strength and manhood, she, diminutive and bleached by solitude and grief, contrasted so powerfully in his mind, that a paternal tenderness grew upon him, and he kissed her brow reverently, saying,

"How have I searched for thee, my birdie, my child; I have been haunted by the furies, and goaded well nigh to murder – but thou art here – yet not thou. Oh, Hope! Hope!"

The girl listened intent and breathless.

"I knew it would be so, John Bonyton; I knew if parted we could never be the same again – the same cloud returns not to the sky; the same blossom blooms not twice; human faces wear never twice the same look; and, alas! alas! the heart of to-day is not that of to-morrow."

"Say on, Hope – years are annihilated, and we are children again, hoping, loving children."

But the girl only buried her face in his bosom, weeping and sobbing. At this moment a red glare of light shot up into the sky, and Bridget sprung to her feet.

"I had forgotten. Come, John Bonyton, come and see the only work that poor little Hope could do to save thee;" and she darted forward with the eager step which Bonyton so well remembered. As they approached the falls, the light of the burning tree, kindled by the hands of Bridget below the falls, flickered and glared upon the waters; the winds had died away; the stars beamed forth, and nothing mingled with the roar of waters, save an occasional screech of some nocturnal creature prowling for its prey.

Ever and ever poured on the untiring flood, till one wondered it did not pour itself out; and the heart grew oppressed at the vast images crowding into it, swelling and pressing, as did the tumultuous waves over their impediment of granite – water, still water, till the nerves ached from weariness at the perpetual flow, and the mind questioned if the sound itself were not silence, so lonely was the spell – questioned if it were stopped if the heart would not cease to beat, and life become annihilate.

Suddenly the girl stopped with hand pointing to the falls. A black mass gleamed amid the foam – one wild, fearful yell arose, even above the roar of waters, and then the waves flowed on as before.

"Tell me, what is this?" cried John Bonyton, seizing the hand of Bridget, and staying her flight with a strong grasp.

"Ascáshe did not know I could plunge under the falls – she did not know the strength of little Hope, when she heard the name of John Bonyton. She then went on to tell how she had escaped the cave – how she had kindled a signal fire below the falls in advance of that to be kindled above – and how she had dared, alone, the terrors of the forest, and the black night, that she might once more look upon the face of her lover. When she had finished, she threw her arms tenderly around his neck, she pressed her lips to his, and then, with a gentleness unwonted to her nature, would have disengaged herself from his arms.

"Why do you leave me, Hope – where will you go?" asked the Sagamore.

She looked up with a face so pale, so hopeless, so mournfully tender, as was most affecting to behold. "I will go under the falls, and there sleep – oh! so long will I sleep, John Bonyton.

He folded her like a little child to his bosom. "You must not leave me, Hope – do you not love me?"

She answered only by a low wail, that was more affecting than any words; and when the Sagamore pressed her again to his heart, she answered, calling him John Bonyton, as she used to call him in the days of her childhood.

"Little Hope is a terror to herself, John Bonyton. Her heart is all love – all lost in yours; but she is a child, a child just as she was years ago; but you, you are not the same – more beautiful – greater; poor little Hope grows fearful before you;" and again her voice was lost in tears.

The sun now began to tinge the sky with his ruddy hue; the birds filled the woods with an out-gush of melody; the rainbow, as ever, spanned the abyss of waters, while below, drifting in eddies, were fragments of canoes, and still more ghastly fragments telling of the night's destruction. The stratagem of the girl had been entirely successful – deluded by the false beacon, the unhappy savages had drifted on with the tide, unconscious of danger, till the one terrible pang of danger, and the terrible plunge of death came at the one and same moment.

Upon a headland overlooking the falls stood the group of the cavern, stirred with feelings to which words give no utterance, and which find expression only in some deadly act. Ascáshe descended stealthily along the bank, watching intently the group upon the opposite shore, in the midst of which floated the white, abundant locks of Bridget Vines, visible at a great distance. She now stood beside the Sagamore, saying,

"Forget poor little Hope, John Bonyton, or only remember that her life was one long, long thought of thee."

She started – gave one wild look of love and grief at the Sagamore – and then darted down the bank, marking her path with streams of blood, and disappeared under the falls. The aim of the savage had done its work.

"Ascáshe is revenged, John Bonyton," cried a loud voice – and a dozen arrows stopped it in its utterance. Fierce was the pursuit, and desperate the flight of the few surviving foes. The "Sagamore of Saco" never rested day nor night till he and his followers had cut off the last vestige of the Terrantines, and avenged the blood of the unhappy maiden. Then for years did he linger about the falls in the vain hope of seeing once more her wild spectral beauty – but she appeared no more in the flesh; though to this, men not romantic nor visionary declare they have seen a figure, slight and beautiful, clad in robe of skin, with moccasoned feet, and long, white hair, nearly reaching to the ground, hovering sorrowfully around the falls; and this strange figure they believe to be the wraith of the lost Bridget Vines.

THE SACHEM's HILL

BY ALFRED B. STREET

'T was a green towering hill-top: on its sides
June showered her red delicious strawberries,
Spotting the mounds, and in the hollows spread
Her pink brier roses, and gold johnswort stars.
The top was scattered, here and there, with pines,
Making soft music in the summer wind,
And painting underneath each other's boughs
Spaces of auburn from their withered fringe.
Below, a scene of rural loveliness
Was pictured, vivid with its varied hues;
The yellow of the wheat – the fallow's black —
The buckwheat's foam-like whiteness, and the green
Of pasture-field and meadow, whilst amidst
Wound a slim, snake-like streamlet. Here I oft
Have come in summer days, and with the shade
Cast by one hollowed pine upon my brow,
Have couched upon the grass, and let my eye
Roam o'er the landscape, from the green hill's foot
To where the hazy distance wrapped the scene.
Beneath this pine a long and narrow mound
Heaves up its grassy shape; the silver tufts
Of the wild clover richly spangle it,
And breathe such fragrance that each passing wind
Is turned into an odor. Underneath
A Mohawk Sachem sleeps, whose form had borne
A century's burthen. Oft have I the tale
Heard from a pioneer, who, with a band
Of comrades, broke into the unshorn wilds
That shadowed then this region, and awoke
The echoes with their axes. By the stream
They found this Indian Sachem in a hut
Of bark and boughs. One of the pioneers
Had lived a captive 'mid the Iroquois.
And knew their language, and he told the chief
How they had come to mow the woods away,
And change the forest earth to meadows green,
And the tall trees to dwellings. Rearing up
His aged form, the Sachem proud replied,
That he had seen a hundred winters pass
Over this spot; that here his tribe had died,
Parents and children, braves, old men and all,
Until he stood a withered tree amidst
His prostrate kind; that he had hoped he ne'er
Would see the race, whose skin was like the flower
Of the spring dogwood, blasting his old sight;
And that beholding them amidst his haunts,
He called on Hah-wen-ne-yo to bear off
His spirit to the happy hunting-grounds.
Shrouding his face within his deer-skin robe,
And chanting the low death-song of his tribe,
He then with trembling footsteps left the hut
And sought the hill-top; here he sat him down
With his back placed within this hollowed tree,
And fixing his dull eye upon the scene