Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/218

 helpless on his bed, and careless of impending danger, and that the mother and her infant should escape, excited some degree of surprise. Could the savages have been interrupted in their work, and obliged to leave their vengeance unfinished?

Their visit had been recent; many hours had not elapsed since they prowled about these grounds. Had they wholly disappeared, and meant they not to return? To what new, I danger might I be exposed in remaining thus guideless and destitute of all defence?

In consequence of these reflections, I proceeded with more caution; I looked with suspicious glances before and on either side of me. I now approached the fence which, on this side, bounded the meadow: something was discerned, or imagined, stretched close to the fence on the ground, and filling up the pathway. My apprehensions of a lurking enemy had been previously awakened, and my fancy instantly figured to itself an armed man, lying on the ground, and waiting to assail the unsuspecting passenger.

At first I was prompted to fly; but a second thought showed me that I had already approached near enough to be endangered. Notwithstanding my pause, the form was motionless; the possibility of being misled in my conjectures was easily supposed: what I saw might be a log, or it might be another victim to savage ferocity. This tract was that which my safety required me to pursue; to turn aside, or go back, would be merely to bewilder my' self anew.

Urged by these motives I went nearer, and at last was close enough to perceive that the figure was human: he lay upon his face; near his right hand was a musket unclenched. This circumstance, his death—like attitude, and the garb and ornaments of an Indian, made me readily suspect the nature and cause of this catastrophe: here the invaders had been encountered and repulsed, and one, at least, of their number had been left upon the field.

I was weary of contemplating these rueful objects; custom, likewise, even in so short a period, had inured me to spectacles of horror—I was grown callous and immovable: