Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/238

 near this hut, and at length gained a view of the building. Many persons were discovered in a sort of bustling inactivity before the hut: they were easily distinguished to be friends, and were therefore approached without scruple.

"The objects that presented themselves, on a nearer view, were five bodies stretched upon the ground: three of them were savages; the fourth was a girl, who, though alive, seemed to have received a mortal wound; the fifth, breathless and mangled, and his features almost concealed by the blood that overspread his face, was Edgar, the fugitive for whom I had made such anxious search.

"About the same hour on the last night I had met you hasting into Norwalk; now were you lying in the midst of savages, at the distance of thirty miles from your home, and in a spot which it was impossible for you to have reached, unless by an immense circuit over rocks and thickets. That you had found a rift at the basis of the hill, and thus permeated its solidities, and precluded so tedious and circuitous a journey as must otherwise have been made, was not to be imagined.

"But whence arose this scene? It was obvious to conclude that my associates had surprised their enemies in this house, and exacted from them the forfeit of their crimes; but how you should have been confounded with their foes, or whence came the wounded girl, was a subject of astonishment.

"You will judge how much this surprise was augmented, when I was informed, that the party whom we found had been attracted hither by the same signals by which we had been alarmed; that on reaching this spot you had been discovered alive, seated on the ground, and still sustaining the gun with which you had apparently completed the destruction of so many adversaries; in a moment after their arrival, you sunk down and expired.

"This scene was attended with inexplicable circumstances: the musket which lay beside you appeared to have belonged to one of the savages; the wound by which each had died was single. Of the four shots we had distinguished at a distance, three of them were therefore fatal to