Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/243

 parting, with which your uncle had equipped himself, and which had been ravished from him by a savage. What was I hence to infer respecting the person of the last possessor?

"My enquiries respecting you of the woman whose milk and bread you had eaten were minute. You entered, she said, with a hatchet and gun in your hand. While you ate, the gun was laid upon the table; she sat near, and the piece became the object of inquisitive attention. The stock and barrels were described by her in such terms as left no doubt that this was the fusee.

"A comparison of incidents enabled me to trace the manner in which you came into possession of this instrument:—one of those whom you found in the cavern was the assassin of your uncle; according to the girl's report, on issuing from your hiding-place, you seized a gun that was unoccupied, and this gun chanced to be your own.

"Its two barrels were probably the cause of your success in that unequal contest at Mab's hut. On recovering from deliquium, you found it where it had been dropped by you, out of sight, and unsuspected by the party that had afterwards arrived. In your passage to the river, had it once more fallen into hostile hands; or had you missed the way, wandered to this promontory, and mistaken a troop of friends for a band of Indian marauders?

"Either supposition was dreadful; the latter was the most plausible. No motives were conceivable by which one of the fugitives could be induced to post himself here in this conspicuous station: Whereas the road which led you to the summit of the hill, to that spot where descent to the river road was practicable, could not be found but by those who were accustomed to traverse it. The directions which you had exacted from your hostess, proved your previous unacquaintance with these tracts.

"I acquiesced in this opinion with a heavy and desponding heart. Fate had led us into a maze, which could only terminate in the destruction of one or of the other. By the breadth of a hair had I escaped death from your hand; the same fortune had not befriended you. After my tedious search, I had lighted on you, forlorn,