Chapter XI.

  And now ’tis still! no sound to wake
  The primal forest’s awful shade;
  And breathless lies the covert brake,
  Where many an ambushed form is laid: 
  I see the red-man’s gleaming eye,
  Yet all so hushed the gloom profound,
  That summer birds flit heedlessly,
  And mocking nature smiles around.

  Lunt.

The eventful summer of 1776 had been genial and generous in the valley of the Hutted Knoll.  With a desire to drive away obtrusive thoughts, the captain had been much in his fields, and he was bethinking himself of making a large contribution to the good cause, in the way of fatted porkers, of which he had an unusual number, that he thought might yet be driven through the forest to Fort Stanwix, before the season closed.  In the way of intelligence from the seat of war, nothing had reached the family but a letter from the major, which he had managed to get sent, and in which he wrote with necessary caution.  He merely mentioned the arrival of Sir William Howe’s forces, and the state of his own health.  There was a short postscript, in the following words, the letter having been directed to his father:—­“Tell dearest Maud,” he said, “that charming women have ceased to charm me; glory occupying so much of my day-dreams, like an ignis fatuus, I fear; and that as for love, all my affections are centred in the dear objects at the Hutted Knoll.  If I had met with a single woman I admired half as much as I do her pretty self, I should have been married long since.”  This was written in answer to some thoughtless rattle that the captain had volunteered to put in his last letter, as coming from Maud, who had sensitively shrunk from sending a message when asked; and it was read by father, mother, and Beulah, as the badinage of a brother to a sister, without awaking a second thought in either.  Not so with Maud, herself, however.  When her seniors had done with this letter, she carried it to her own room, reading and re-reading it a dozen times; nor could she muster resolution to return it; but, finding at length that the epistle was forgotten, she succeeded in retaining it without awakening attention to what she had done.  This letter now became her constant companion, and a hundred times did the sweet gill trace its characters, in the privacy of her chamber, or in that of her now solitary walks in the woods.

As yet, the war had produced none of those scenes of ruthless frontier violence, that had distinguished all the previous conflicts of America.  The enemy was on the coast, and thither the efforts of the combatants had been principally directed.  It is true, an attempt on Canada had been made, but it failed for want of means; neither party being in a condition to effect much, as yet, in that quarter.  The captain had commented on this peculiarity of the present struggle; all those which had preceded it having, as a matter of course, taken the direction of the frontiers between the hostile provinces.