Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1886-09-06
and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if
a bachelor, in celibacy.
Ooo lor ,x,bo, To,, yNoll,or bod

One day when Tom Walker had
been to distant part of the neigh
borhood, he took what he considered
a short cut homeward, through the
swamp. Like most short cuts, it
was an ill-chosen route. The swamp
was thickly grown with great gloomy
pines and hemlocks, some of them
ninety feet high, which made it dark
at MONDAY, and retreat for all the
owls of the neighborhood. 1t was
full of pits and quagmires, partly
covered with weeds and mosses,
where the green surface often be-
trayed the traveller into a gulf of
black, smothering mud; there were
also dark and stagnant pools, the
abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog,
and the water-snake; where the
trunks of pines and hemlocks lay
half-drowned, half-rotting, looking
like alligators sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his
way through the treacherous forest !;
stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes
and roots, which had afforded preca-
rious footholds among deep sloughs !;
or pacing carefully, like cat, along
the PROSTATE trunks of trees start
led now and then by the screaming
of the blttern, OF the quacking of the
wild duck rising on the wing from
some dark, solitary pool. At length
he arrived at a firm piece of ground,
which ran out like a peninsular into
the deep bosom of the swamp.
1t had been one of the strongholds
of the Indians during their wars with
the first colonists. Here they had
thrown up kind of fort, which
they had looked upon as almost i'm
pregnable, and which they had used
as place of refuge for their squaws
and the children.
Nothing remained of the old In
dian fort but a few embankments,
gradually sinking to the level of the
surrounding earth, and already over
grown in part by oaks and other for
est trees, the foliage of which form
ed q contrast to the dark pines and
hemlocks of the swamp.
1t was late in the dusk of the ev-
ening when Tom Walker reached the
old fort, and he paused there awhile
to rest himself. Any one but he
would have felt unwilling to lInger in
this lonely, melancholy place, for the
common people had a bad opinion of
it from the stories handed down from
the time of the Indian wals, when il
was asserted that the savages held
incantations here, and made sacrifices
to the Evil Spirit
Tom Walker, however, was not o
man to be troubled with any fears OF
this kind. He reposed himself fol
some time on the trunk of fallen
hemlock, listening to the boding cry
of the tree-toad, and delving with his
walking-staff into a mound at his
feet.
Unconsciously turning up the soil,
his staff struck against something
hard. He raked out the vegetable
mould, and 10 a cloven skull, with
an Indian tomahawk buried IN it, lay
| before him. The rust on the weapon
showed the time that had elapsed
since this death blow had been given.
1t was a dreary memento of the fierce
struggle that had taken place in this
last foothold of the Indian warriors
''Humph! p said Tom Walker, as
he gave it a kick to shake the dir
from it.
LET that skull alone !" said yer,
gruff voice.
Tom lifted his eyes, and heheld ;
great man seated directly opposite
him, on the stump of tree. HI
was exceedingly surprised, having
neither heard OF seen any one ap
proach and he was still more per
picked on observing, as well as tn,
gathering gloom would permit, tina
the stranger was neither negro no
Indian. 1t is true he was dressed il
half Indian garb, and had red bel
or sash swathed around his body
but his face was neither black no
copper color, but swathy and dingy
and begrimmed with SCOT, as if h,
had been accustomed to toll among
fires and forges. He had a shock o
coarse black hair, that stood out from
his head in all directions, and bor
an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled a moment at Tom witt
pair of great red eyes.
"What are you doing on m,
grounds?" asked the black man, will
a hoarse, growing voice.
"Your grounds !" said Tom, witt
a sneer; "no more your ground
than mine; they belong TO Deacon
Peabody
deacon Peabody be DID," sai'
the stranger, ''as l fatter he will b
if he does not look more to his owl
sins, and less to those of his neigh
bors. Look yonder and see how Dea
con Peabody is faring.''
Tom looked in the direction tha
the stranger pointed, and beheld on
of the great trees, fair and flourish
ing without. but rotten at the core
and saw that it had been nearl,
hewn through, so that the first hig
wind was very likelv to hlow If down