Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/230

 "Dead! Merciful Heaven! And sisters too?—both?"

"Your sisters are alive and well."

"Nay," resumed I, in faltering accents, "jest not with my feelings—be not cruel in your pity: tell me the truth."

"I have said the truth: they are well, at Mr. Inglefield's."

My wishes were eager to assent to the truth of these tidings. The better part of me was then safe: but how did they escape the fate that overtook my uncle?—how did they evade the destroying hatchet and the midnight conflagration? These doubts were imparted in a tumultuous and obscure manner to my friend: he no sooner fully comprehended them, than he looked at me with some inquietude and surprise.

"Huntly," said he, "are you mad? What has filled you with these hideous prepossessions? Much havoc has indeed been committed in Chetasco and the wilderness, and a log hut has been burned by design or by accident in Solebury, but that is all: your house has not been assailed by either firebrand or tomahawk; every thing is safe, and in its ancient order. The master indeed is gone; but the old man fell a victim to his own temerity and hardihood. It is thirty years since he retired with three wounds from the field of Braddock; but time in no degree abated his adventurous and military spirit. On the first alarm he summoned his neighbours, and led them in pursuit of the invaders: alas! he was the first to attack them, and the only one who fell in the contest!"

These words were uttered in a manner that left me no room to doubt of their truth. My uncle had already been lamented; and the discovery of the nature of his death, so contrary to my forebodings, and of the safety of my girls, made the state of my mind partake more of exultation and joy than of grief or regret.

But how was I deceived! Had not my fusee been found in the hands of an enemy? Whence could he have plundered it but from my own chamber? It hung against the wall of a closet, from which no stranger could have taken