Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/217

 It now occurred to me that this was the dwelling of the Selbys, and I seemed to have gained some insight into the discord and domestic miseries by which the unhappy lady suffered. This was no time to waste my sympathy on others; I could benefit her nothing. Selby had probably returned from a carousal, with all his malignant passions raised into frenzy by intoxication: he had driven his desolate wife from her bed and house; and, to shun outrage and violence, she had fled, with her helpless infant, to the barn. To appease his fury, to console her, to suggest a remedy for this distress, was not in my power: to have sought an interview, would be merely to excite her terrors and alarm her delicacy, without contributing to alleviate her calamity. Here then was no asylum for me: a place of rest must be sought at some neighbouring habitation; it was probable that one would be found at no great distance; the path that led from the spot where I stood, through a gate into a meadow, might conduct me to the nearest dwelling; and this path I immediately resolved to explore.

I was anxious to open the gate without noise, but I could not succeed; some creaking of its hinges was unavoidably produced, which I feared would be overheard by the lady, and multiply her apprehensions and perplexities. This inconvenience was irremediable; I therefore closed the gate and pursued the footway before me with the utmost expedition. I had not gained the further end of the meadow when I lighted on something which lay across the path, and which, on being closely inspected, appeared to be a human body: it was the corpse of a girl, mangled by a hatchet; her head, gory and deprived of its locks, easily explained the kind of enemies by whom she had been assailed. Here was proof that this quiet and remote habitation had been visited, in their destructive progress, by the Indians; the girl had been slain by them, and her scalp, according to their savage custom, had been torn away to be preserved as a trophy.

The fire which had been kindled on the kitchen floor was now remembered, and corroborated the inferences which were drawn from this spectacle. And yet that the mischief had been thus limited, that the besotted wretch who lay