Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/199

 but her pretensions to royalty, the wildness of her aspect and garb, her shrivelled and diminutive form, a constitution that seemed to defy the ravages of time and the influence of the elements, her age, which some did not scruple to affirm exceeded a hundred years, her romantic solitude and mountainous haunts, suggested to my fancy the appellation of Queen Mab. There appeared to me some rude analogy between this personage and her whom the poets of old time have delighted to celebrate: thou, perhaps, wilt discover nothing but incongruities between them; but, be that as it may, Old Deb and Queen Mab soon came into indiscriminate and general use.

She dwelt in Norwalk upwards of twenty years. She was not forgotten by her countrymen, and generally received from her brothers and sons an autumnal visit; but no solicitations or entreaties could prevail on her to return with them. Two years ago some suspicion or disgust induced her to forsake her ancient habitation, and to seek a new one. Happily, she found a more convenient habitation twenty miles to the westward, and in a spot abundantly sterile and rude.

This dwelling was of logs, and had been erected by a Scottish emigrant, who not being rich enough to purchase land, and entertaining a passion for solitude and independence, cleared a field in the unappropriated wilderness, and subsisted on its produce. After some time he disappeared: various conjectures were formed as to the cause of his absence; none of them were satisfactory; but that which obtained most credit was, that he had been murdered by the Indians who, about the same period, paid their annual visit to the Queen. This conjecture acquired some force by observing that the old woman shortly after took possession of his but, his implements of tillage, and his cornfield.

She was not molested in her new abode; and her life passed in the same quiet tenor as before. Her periodical rambles, her regal claims, her guardian wolves, and her uncouth volubility, were equally remarkable; but her circuits were new. Her distance made her visits to Solebury more