The grandfathers of some who read this have told them how the settlements of their childhood were put in fear by the irruption of the Indians; an evil as little feared in our own day as the ravages of the minotaur or other mythic monsters. These onsets were frequently made into the secluded valleys of that rugged district through which the Kanawha finds its course to the Ohio, from the great spine of mountains which traverses Virginia and Carolina. Striking across from the Ohio to the Sciota, the Shawnees used to pursue a “trail” well-known to hunters, and passing in its route the town of Major-Jack, where Chilicothe now stands. Thither in more than one instance they carried away captive men, women and children. Although their usual practice was to slay and scalp all able-bodied men, yet the aboriginal caprice sometimes led them to make exceptions in favor of a fine fellow taken even in arms; as for example when the chief who was prowling was visited with some mysterious yearning to supply by adoption the loss of a darling son. These statements are necessary to explain the absence of Albert, who, to say truth, had fallen into the hands of a party of Shawnees, after being surprised in the mountain lodge to which he had retreated from the storm. I am not about to tell an Indian story; such may be better heard in any frontier inn; I will therefore return to my disconsolate abbÉ.

When Guerin awoke to the reality of his loss, and had allowed two days to pass without any signs of his young friend, he was almost beside himself. Scarcely was there a man on earth less fitted for the adventures of a new country. Yet he set on foot a variety of explorations, by means of mountain rangers, and more especially of Sambo, whose habits and training assimilated him to the native tribes. The mountain lodge showed signs, obscure indeed to the eye of civilization, but patent and convincing to the sagacity of foresters, that a party had halted there. It was manifest that there had been a recent fire, and some remnants of a wild turkey were near the edifice of logs. What was more significant, the body of poor Thwackthwart was found a few miles nearer to the river. Following this clew, Sambo divined, by infallible signs, that a party had taken canoes at a certain bluff, where also was discovered an illegible sentence freshly cut, or began to be cut, on the smooth bark of a beech. The heart-broken priest, as his only resource, betook himself to Richmond for aid and counsel; and after waiting there for some months, with no news of de Mornay, he sadly obeyed a vocation to the island of Martinique, fully persuaded that his companion had fallen under the ruthless weapons of the savage; an event by no means uncommon in that stage of our history.

This most untoward event it was, which brought me acquainted with the friend whom of all others I shall ever remember with the liveliest and tenderest regard; perpetually applying to him since his death the expressions of Shenstone’s celebrated epitaph—

Let me purposely abridge the horrors of the tale. De Mornay, after being taken by a wearisome series of posts northward through what is now the state of Ohio, was inducted into the Indian life not far from a British block-house near Lake Erie. One day, when he was accompanying his chief and father, We-mo-tox, or Burning Broomgrass, to a talk with the whites, he was recognized by a Highland major, who had a brother among the Frazers of North Carolina. A correspondence ensued, and the gallant Major Frazer, in the depth of winter, set out with De Mornay, who was gaunt and half-crippled from the exposures and chagrins of captivity, and brought him in a sort of triumph to the banks of the Roanoke. I was on a visit at Duncan Frazer’s, when the major, long expected, arrived with the young stranger, whose story had come before him. Pallid and haggard as he was, with long, tangled hair, and habiliments in which the deer-skin oddly mingled with the cut of a garrison tailor on the lakes, Albert struck me as I have seldom been struck by a first appearance. The deep black eye shone with a melancholy lustre of natural gayety subdued by sudden and early grief. Gentleness, pain, courage and meditation were in his brow, his glance, and his reluctant smile. That night I prayed him to share my habitation and my pursuits, and he was my companion till—how shall I utter it—he sank away during years of beautiful decline.

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