Transcriber’s Notes:

The Table of Contents was created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

CONTENTS

Chapter I. Standing Alone. Chapter II. The Fatal Omen. Chapter III. Sorrowful Misgivings. Chapter IV. The Net-weaver. Chapter V. The “Elect.” Chapter VI. Apollo and Diana. Chapter VII. A Family Conclave. Chapter VIII. The Spider’s Webs. Chapter IX. The Fatal Dance. Chapter X. In Vain. Chapter XI. “Deserted are the Dwellings of Moina.” Chapter XII. A Man of Mettle. Chapter XIII. A Liking For Misery. Chapter XIV. The Crystal Stone. Chapter XV. Alone in the Wilderness. Chapter XVI. The Unseen Eye. Chapter XVII. A Reminiscence. Chapter XVIII. Snake vs. Spider Chapter XIX. The Priestess. Chapter XX. The Vigil. Chapter XXI. Dead Ashes. Chapter XXII. Below the Falls. Chapter XXIII. The Torch Extinguished. The Silent Hunter.

Semi-Monthly Novel Series.

No. 142.

BEADLE’S DIME NOVELS

THE SAGAMORE OF SACO.

BY MRS. E. OAKES SMITH.

BEADLE & CO., 118 WILLIAM STREET, NEW YORK.

T. B. Callender, cor. 3d & Walnut, Phila.

Beadle’s Dime Novels, No. 143—Ready February 11.

THE SWAMP SCOUT.

BY W. J. HAMILTON,

AUTHOR OF “PEDDLER SPY,” “SHAWNEES’ FOE,” “THE HUNCHBACK,” ETC.

Turning abruptly to the right, so as to get away from the main trail, he approached the island from behind. He did not expect to find Marion there. He knew very well that the Swamp Fox was in another part of the swamp, but he was confident that he should find either Peter Horry or his brother. Nor was he disappointed. As he approached the camp from behind he found himself safe from the view of the partisans by a fringe of low bushes. Lying prostrate behind these, he advanced on his belly, like a snake, until the sound of voices, evidently very near at hand, warned him to desist.

BEADLE AND COMPANY, Publishers, 118 William Street, N. Y.

THE SAGAMORE OF SACO.

BY MRS. E. OAKES SMITH,

AUTHOR OF “THE NEWSBOY,” “BERTHA AND LILY,” “BALD EAGLE,” ETC.

NEW YORK: BEADLE AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 118 WILLIAM STREET.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by

BEADLE AND COMPANY.

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

(No. 142.)

[9]

THE SAGAMORE OF SACO.

CHAPTER I. STANDING ALONE.

“John is a wild renegate, and a shame to the colony,” exclaimed Captain Richard Bonyton, in a burst of unfatherly indignation. It was evident that he neither understood nor loved this son John of his.

“I do not think so badly of him,” rejoined Sir Richard Vines. “We must bear in mind, my friend, that in breaking away from the trammels of society, we have helped to sow this unchartered license in our children, good neighbor.”

“That may be,” rejoined Bonyton, bitterly, “and we are likely to reap the fruits of it. My renegate son and your mad daughter are like to make a comely span.”

The Governor started and turned pale at this unceremonious speech, but he replied, in a calm voice:

“My daughter, Mr. Bonyton, shall be looked to.”

Bonyton grasped his hand warmly.

“Nay, nay, my noble friend, we are both stricken of God and afflicted in this matter; let us not add a drop to our bitter cup by estrangement between ourselves. Look yonder where they come.”

At this moment the two of whom they had been speaking emerged from the verge of the forest. The girl was evidently angry, for she gesticulated rapidly, and gave emphasis to her words by twanging her bowstring till it gave out a sharp, shrill sound like a subdued yell. As they approached, the two fathers stepped aside, where they could watch the pair unperceived.

At a glance they saw that both were dripping with water, and both were pale and excited.

The lips of John Bonyton were compressed to a single line of blue, his brow contracted sharply, and, as they paused on the verge of the forest, his flashing black eyes were fixed[10] upon the face of Hope, who stood looking upward to him, her exquisite head thrown back; while ever and anon she gave her long hair a shake to relieve it of the heavy drops of water, and then twanged the bowstring as a help to her expression, they heard her say:

“You know I can swim, John Bonyton. You know I never want help anywhere, nor for any thing.” (A shake of the hair, and twang of bow.)

“I know you fear nothing, Hope—”

“Fear!” interrupted the girl. “Fear! I scorn the idea. Haven’t I leaped a hundred times from rock to rock across the Saco falls? Leaped the wolve’s chasm?”

“I know it all, Hope, but—”

“But me no buts! Haven’t I defied Samoset himself when he made me angry? (A shake and a twang.) When that ugly Terrentine would have carried me off to make me into a medicine-woman, did he not barely escape with his life? and hadn’t I his scalping-knife out of his own girdle to defend myself with?”

Young Bonyton shuddered.

“You fear nothing, I know, Hope, but I could not see you drown.”

“Drown!” returned the other, twanging her bow till it fairly yelled; “do you not know I would rather drown ten times, than be brought out of the water in your arms? You know I would, John Bonyton.”

“I could not see you drown, Hope,” he reiterated, with more of softness in his look and tone.

“Suppose I chose to drown, John Bonyton, what right had you to interfere?”

“Hope—dear Hope, I know you did.”

“Well, and what if I did? Do you think I will be pulled out like a fish, and be laid upon the bank to open and shut my mouth for lack of breath, and you looking on? I tell you, John Bonyton, I hate you.”

The youth smiled—a manly, deferential smile, and whispered a word in her ear. Suddenly she started, gave one wild, earnest look into his face—then stepped aside. The blood rushed like a torrent to her face, and she fled homeward with the speed of a startled fawn.

[11]

At this moment the quick ear of young Bonyton detected the sound of footsteps, and he pressed forward to encounter his father and Sir Richard Vines. The whole truth flashed upon his mind.

“You have seen all and heard all,” cried the excited youth. “Sir Richard, give me little Hope to wife and I promise to do and be all you ask of me.”

The two calm, stern men glanced at each other, and each smiled, it might have been thoughtfully, it might have been in scorn; whichever it was, the effect was to irritate the already vehement youth and he went on:

“Yes, you contemn us both; we have always been met with scorn and contempt. Because we do not join your long, canting, hypocritical prayers, you have caused us to live like outcasts in the land. My very soul loathes the doings of this people, and by the God above, if you do not give me Hope to wife, I will have her, if I back my suit with an army of Indians.”

“In sooth, you would make a pretty pair,” retorted the elder Bonyton, in clear, cold tones and a sarcastic curl of the lip.

“Do not taunt me now, father; I can not bear it,” and he went on more calmly. “Give me Hope, Sir Richard, and I will leave this wild life; I will plant, study, fish, go to sea, and even aim to be eminent in the church; any thing that you and my father may exact, I will do, only give me this one desire of my life.”

It may be this appeal from the young, handsome lips of the boy touched some delicate, long-silent link in the chain of association in the mind of Sir Richard Vines, for his look and voice softened, and he laid his hand tenderly upon the shoulder of the youth, and said:

“On my soul, John, I am sorry for this, most sorry. Go to England, my dear boy; this wild land affords no scope for a mind like yours. I will give you letters to my noble kinsmen, who will promote your interest, and you will forget all this.”

“Never—never!” returned the youth.

“Time works wonders, my boy.”

“Alas! it makes the noble forget their youth and the true forget their truth!”

[12]

“Go, my son, to a land that needs just such ardent spirits as yours; go and help your king and country.”

A dark frown passed over the face of Captain Bonyton, for it was well known that the colonists, with few exceptions, sympathized with the parliament of England, and not with Charles First. But touched to finer issues, the headstrong youth felt a softness steal over him, and he answered to the sentiment rather than to the fact of paternity.

“Nay, my father, give me Hope; the world is nothing to me deprived of her.”

Here the natural sarcasm of the elder Bonyton broke forth.

“Go, John, go, in God’s name; it were a pity that so much chivalry should be wasted here in this wilderness. Go, fight with the king against his turbulent parliament. I doubt if thy single hand may not turn the scale. That bold man Cromwell is making hot work at home. It were better for thee to go there and die in harness, than stay here and marry a mad woman.”

Young Bonyton’s eyes glared momentarily upon the father who gave utterance to this cutting speech, but he turned to Sir Richard and said, imploringly:

“Tell me, yea or nay, my father.”

Sir Richard pressed his hand upon his brow, to crowd back the pang caused by the words of the elder Bonyton, and then he took the hand of John and said, in a voice so low and solemn that it was well-nigh inaudible:

“Young man, you know not what you ask. Hope must not be, can not be, a wife. She is God’s child, John. He has seen fit to reserve some of his gifts to be her eternal inheritance. She is incomplete in mind—not mad.”

Bonyton groaned audibly, and Sir Richard continued: “Go to England, my dear boy. I see that Charles is wrong, very wrong. I see Cromwell will place his plebeian foot upon the royal purple. I see the virtuous Hampden will be crushed amidst conflicting interests. I foresee great, marvelous changes, the germs of a new order of things. Go, my son, and cast in your mite into the treasury of order and patriotism. You have youth, health, and the impulses of a generous and heroic nature: go, and feel your heart respond to the promptings of duty. Go, and God be with you.”

[13]

He had spoken with warmth and enthusiasm, the tears springing to his eyes, and the young man grasped his hand with energy, and replied:

“I will go, my father. I will be all that you depict, sure that Hope will be mine, or will remain as she now is. Shall it not be so, Sir Richard? Shall I not some day, when more worthy of her, call her wife?”

“John, men, who are men, prove their manhood by resisting inordinate desires. Such desires granted often come in the shape of a curse.”

“That they do,” responded Captain Bonyton with bitterness. “Like the hankerings of God’s people for flesh, the Almighty grants it to them, till they are filled with loathing and abhorrence, even of that for which they had lusted.”

Sir Richard Vines, obeying a sudden warm impulse of the heart, threw his arms around the unhappy youth and exclaimed:

“My poor boy! Forget my little Hope, or let her be to you only as a sister.”

CHAPTER II. THE FATAL OMEN.

It is necessary that we should go back in the details of our story, in order to give our readers the antecedents of the characters which we have so unceremoniously brought upon the stage of action, and that we may show the locality of our history.

The State of Maine, it must be remembered, was permanently settled so early as 1616, and it is most probable in the spring of that year, by Sir Richard Vines, the friend and companion of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Raleigh Gilbert, and the unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh, the half-brother of the latter. We say permanently, because there is no testimony of his having abandoned the colony he had thus founded, and there is abundant record of his movements, his enterprise and his history, till it was finally incorporated into the Plymouth charter.

[14]

Sir Richard Vines was a stanch Tory and Episcopalian, and as he was a fearless man, robust and hearty in character, he was not likely to greatly swerve from those principles inherent to his rank; hence, it may be inferred he was not over popular with the no less unflinching Puritan radicals of the Presbyterian order at the Plymouth colony.

The wife of Sir Richard Vines, the Lady Joanna, was sister to the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. Hence, in removing from the old world, the interests of the family were by no means dissevered from “merry old England,” as they were wont to tenderly call the “Fatherland.”

I must describe somewhat the location chosen by Sir Richard Vines for his habitation, that my readers may the better understand portions of our story.

It stood at the head of what is called the Pool, a sheet of water resembling in shape the Mediterranean sea as seen upon the maps. Indeed, it is a counterpart of the Mediterranean diminished vastly in size. The Pool is separated from the outside waves of the Atlantic by a long ridge or reef of sand, of more than a mile in extent—this reef hemming it in from the ocean, gives place to a beautiful inland basin, which is entered by a narrow strait, as if it were a young Gibraltar. Once in, the waters expand, and spread themselves with complacency at their successful attempt to oceanize upon a small scale.

Nothing can be conceived more daintily picturesque than the scenery surrounding the Pool. There are no marshes—no malaria of fogs; all is fresh, clear white sand—a long ocean reach, and the grand overhanging woods giving a pathway to the resounding Saco, or broken here and there by esplanades of green meadows, where the deer and her young disport themselves, and the beaver constructs his half-human habitation.

At the head of this beautiful sheet of water, as we have said, lived Sir Richard Vines; in a wilderness of thousands of miles, visited occasionally by some adventurous ship from the old world, or from the island of Barbadoes by some trader in fish, which had already become a valuable staple. His little boat rocked securely within the Pool, while his trusty followers joined him in the chase, or went on long fishing and exploring expeditions.

[15]

A frank, impulsive man, he gave and inspired confidence; brave himself, he repelled the aggressor, simply by the force of his presence. Just and kind in all his dealings with them, the Indians came and went about his premises exciting no fear, and conscious of no distrust.

Besides the castle of Sir Richard, there sprung up immediately about it, the less pretentious houses of his followers, and cabins constructed by occasional traders, to say nothing of the bark wigwams of the Indians, which clustered here and there near the river, the friendly owners of which gave the adventurers many a lesson in hunting the wild denizens of the forest, or spearing and netting the treasures of the water.

Mistress Joanna was an intrepid as well as handsome dame, who entered warmly into all the pursuits of her husband, while at the same time she had a certain self-distrust, most winning and lovely in a woman who finds herself allied to a wise, protective husband, whose authority she is proud to accept with wifely tenderness, and womanly grace.

We must now describe an incident which occurred toward the close of the year 1618, which is too intimately associated with the character of our heroine to be passed by in silence.

It was a gusty, raw twilight near the end of October. A fall of rain, with now and then a “spit of snow,” had made a gloomy day in that cold region; the gorgeous autumnal trees were fast scattering their rainbow baldrick to the earth, and the summer birds, long away upon their pilgrimage to sunnier skies, were replaced only by the little snow-birds, which pecked about the piazza, darted from branch to branch of the denuded trees, content and joyous in themselves at a time when nature is a very niggard of her favors.

A ship was hourly expected from England, and recent intelligence of a more favorable view taken by the court of the case of Sir Walter Raleigh, (who had been imprisoned in the Tower of London,) had awakened not only a hope of his release, but even a hope that the ship might bring him out to the home so affectionately provided for him by his brother-in-law. So strongly had this hope wrought upon the mind of Mistress Vines, that she had even caused fires to be built in the “Raleigh rooms,” and had hung evergreens and ruby[16] berries along the rafters, amid silken drapery and snowy linen, till the apartment wore a look not only of warmth and comfort, but of sumptuous elegance also.

She stood in the center of the room, dreamily contemplating the glowing, crackling flame upon the hearth, and feasting her thoughts with the sweet hope of a union with her sister Raleigh, when she was conscious of a shadowy outline that passed before her, and a drop of blood fell upon her hand. Cold rigors lifted her hair upon her head; her eyes distended; and with a loud shriek she fell convulsed upon the floor.

When consciousness returned, she desired to be left alone with Sir Richard, to whom she related the cause of her sudden attack.

“I am fully persuaded,” she went on to say, “that the worst has come upon our brother, and we have been deceived by a base court, and lying officials.”

Sir Richard tried to soothe her with better hopes, but in vain. Calling her old nurse to her side, he strove by every means to restore her to warmth and her wonted cheer; but, day by day she sickened, and at length in the Raleigh rooms became the mother of a daughter. This circumstance, while it restored her to a more equable and healthful state of mind, did not dispel the impression which had produced the attack. It is needless to say that the next ship brought out the fatal news of the beheading of Sir Walter Raleigh, upon that 29th of October, so well remembered by Mistress Vines.

She named her little one Hope, with a sad irony. She was a small, weird-looking baby, with large, dark-gray eyes, and skin white, even waxen white; never did the least tinge of the rose visit the cheek. Her eyes were shaded by long, black lashes, but, as she grew, it became evident that her hair was to be snowy white. It would seem that this feature of the human frame being more volatile than all others, is the one most likely to be affected with change, and that that moment of horror, which had struck the mother to the earth, changed forever the color of her child’s hair, and blanched its cheek to a perpetual paleness.

Years passed, and sons and daughters graced the mansion of Sir Richard Vines; fair, even beautiful were the children, trained to all gentle usages by the father and mother, and[17] finally they were sent to England to be “finished” and presented at court, for the true Englishman never neglects the duties of his birth, or the privileges of his rank.

Little Hope had reached the age of seventeen. She was exceedingly diminutive in stature, but most exquisitely formed. Her cheek was still colorless, and her long, abundant hair still white; but this, while it gave a peculiarity, did not detract from her beauty. Sometimes the sisters of Hope would call her “white head,” a term which she resented in a manner unwonted to her character, in which was no ingredient of vanity.

It was evident that she considered her hair a sacred badge, and tenderly associated with the fate of her uncle Raleigh; hence, any jest aimed at this peculiarity not only shocked her reverence, but offended her taste. She held long and solemn talks with the old English nurse, Aunt Sallie, about the period of her birth, and the cruel death of Sir Walter, and the good creature did not fail to impress her mind with her own superstitious belief in the supernatural omen which we have heretofore related.

“Your hair is a mark, my pretty darling,” she would say; “it is a mark, and you are none the worse for it. Not one of your sisters can compare with my pretty, for handsome looks, with all their airs.”