Chapter IV.

  Hail! sober evening!  Thee the harass’d brain
  And aching heart with fond orisons greet;
  The respite thou of toil; the balm of pain;
  To thoughtful mind the hour for musing meet,
  ’Tis then the sage from forth his lone retreat,
  The rolling universe around espies;
  ’Tis then the bard may hold communion sweet
  With lovely shapes unkenned by grosser eyes,
  And quick perception comes of finer mysteries.

  Sands.

In the preceding chapter we closed the minuter narrative with a scene at the Hut, in the spring of 1765.  We must now advance the time just ten years, opening, anew, in the month of May, 1775.  This, it is scarcely necessary to tell the reader, is bringing him at once up to the earliest days of the revolution.  The contest which preceded that great event had in fact occurred in the intervening time, and we are now about to plunge into the current of some of the minor incidents of the struggle itself.

Ten years are a century in the history of a perfectly new settlement.  The changes they produce are even surprising, though in ordinary cases they do not suffice to erase the signs of a recent origin.  The forest is opened, and the light of day admitted, it is true; but its remains are still to be seen in multitudes of unsightly stumps, dead standing trees, and ill-looking stubs.  These vestiges of the savage state usually remain a quarter of a century; in certain region they are to be found for even more than twice that period.  All this, however, had captain Willoughby escaped, in consequence of limiting his clearing, in a great measure, to that which had been made by the beavers, and from which time and natural decay had, long before his arrival, removed every ungainly object.  It is true, here and there a few acres had been cleared on the firmer ground, at the margin of the flats, where barns and farm buildings had been built, and orchards planted; but, in order to preserve the harmony of his view, the captain had caused all the stumps to be pulled and burnt, giving to these places the same air of agricultural finish as characterized the fields on the lower land.

To this sylvan scene, at a moment which preceded the setting of the sun by a little more than an hour, and in the first week of the genial month of May, we must now bring the reader in fancy.  The season had been early, and the Beaver Manor, or the part of it which was cultivated, lying low and sheltered, vegetation had advanced considerably beyond the point that is usual, at that date, in the elevated region of which we have been writing.  The meadows were green with matted grasses, the wheat and rye resembled rich velvets, and the ploughed fields had the fresh and mellowed appearance of good husbandry and a rich soil.  The shrubbery, of which the captain’s English taste had introduced quantities, was already in leaf, and even portions of the forest began to veil their sombre mysteries with the delicate foliage of an American spring.