Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/220

 of the blast; yet how should I know, but by trial; whether my stock of energy was not sufficient for this last exploit?

My resolution to proceed was nearly formed, when the figure of a man moving slowly across the road, at some distance before me, was observed. Hard by this ford lived a man by name Bisset, of whom I had slight knowledge: he tended his two hundred acres with a plodding and money-doting spirit, while his son overlooked a grist-mill on the river; he was a creature of gain, coarse and harmless: the man whom I saw might be he, or some one belonging to his family. Being armed for defence, I less scrupled a meeting with any thing in the shape of man; I therefore called. The figure stopped and answered me, without surliness or anger. The voice was unlike that of Bisset; but this person's information I believed would be of some service.

Coming up to him, he proved to be a clown, belonging to Bisset's habitation. His panic and surprise on seeing me made him aghast: in my present garb I should not have easily been recognised by my nearest kinsman, and much less easily by one who had seldom met me.

It may be easily conceived that my thoughts, when allowed to wander from the objects before me, were tormented with forebodings and inquietudes on account of the ills which I had so much reason to believe had befallen my family. I had no doubt that some evil had happened; but the full extent of it was still uncertain. I desired and dreaded to discover the truth, and was unable to interrogate this person in a direct manner; I could deal only in circuities and hints: I shuddered while I waited for an answer to my enquiries.

Had not Indians, I asked, been lately seen in this neighbourhood? Were they not suspected of hostile designs? Had they not already committed some mischief? Some passenger, perhaps, had been attacked; or fire had been set to some house? On which side of the river had their steps been observed, or any devastation been committed? Above the ford, or below it? At what distance from the river?

When his attention could be withdrawn from my person and bestowed upon my questions, he answered that some