was the resort of lumberers at the proper season, and that we should there procure at least some food and shelter; whereas, by pushing on towards Great-Bend we might perish in the snow. It was impossible to resist or to escape; but the whole scheme was now clear. The driver was the accomplice of the villain who had marked me out four days before, at Newburg, as his victim. To have sprung out of the carriage, as I was more than once on the point of doing, would have been only to hasten the stroke of death, or at best to perish under the fury of the elements. I could do nothing but offer up a silent prayer, and resolve to sell my life as dearly as I could.
Much sooner than I had expected, we reached the proposed resting-place. It was more of a farmhouse than an inn, but its appearance and environs were dismal and squalid in the extreme. It stood on the brink of the Susquehanna, a stream here of no great width, partially frozen, but with here and there, where the water flowed more rapidly, an unfrozen pool, the Cimmerian darkness of which contrasted awfully with the universal white, and which I could not look at but as the probable hiding-place, after a few hours, of my murdered body. The house was so far a place of entertainment, that it contained a bar for the sale of liquor, at which, on entering, my fellow-traveller, for the first time during our journey, advised, or rather strongly pressed me, to drink, offering me some rum which he had caused to be poured into a small tumbler. I declined the offer, which only increased my suspicions. There were no inmates but the family, whose appearance did not reassure me. Vice and villainy were stamped on all their countenances. There were no young children among them. After some time, a more comfortable supper than might have been expected was provided, and I asked to be shown the place in which I was to pass the night. There was but one room for the use of all comers, containing four beds. I surveyed it as one might a grave into which he was about to be thrust alive; and yet I could devise no excuse for refusing to occupy it. I thought of pretending a fear of vermin, and proposing to sit by the fire in the bar-room all night; but I had by this time learnt that the bug, although believed to be a native of North America, and to have been imported from the New World into Europe, is rendered utterly powerless—in fact becomes torpid—during the terrible cold of an American winter, and I saw that the excuse would not avail me. I could assign no reason for declining to occupy, as before, the same apartment with my fellow-traveller, for, although circumstances left me no room to think of him otherwise than as a robber, he had shown me considerable kindness, and a readiness to do me, as a stranger, in his own way, the honours of his country. It is true that these marks of attention, and his occasional laboured pleasantries and evidently affected smiles, were only so many corroborations of my suspicions. But whatever I might believe, I could prove nothing. My perplexity was unspeakable. I could not think of sleeping. I sat down for a little beside a box-stove in the bed-room, in which, owing to the coldness of the weather, a fire had been lighted, and prepared my mind for the worst. I put into the stove two or three additional billets of wood, covered the fire with ashes, so that it might last till the morning, and resolved to sit beside it all night. My companion and the driver shortly afterwards entered the room, and threw themselves into two of the beds, where they soon appeared or feigned to fall into a sound sleep. The dreadful day I had spent was followed by a night of horror. The slightest sound made me clutch my knife and grasp firmly the tongs (there was no poker), which I constantly held in my hand. Exhausted as I was with fatigue and the watching of the previous night, even my awful fears could not keep me entirely awake. The struggle between terror and the craving for sleep was agonising, and almost maddened me. At last I fell asleep several times, but I verily believe I had not, on many of these occasions, spent fifteen seconds in the land of forgetfulness when I was driven back by visions of murderous assault to the horrors of my real situation. Under the promptings of the direst revenge, I could find it impossible to wish my worst enemy any greater suffering than I endured that night. At length, the room, which had been lighted only by a small chink of the stove-damper, which I had left open, began to be gradually illumined by the rays of the moon. It appeared that soon after our arrival the snow had ceased to fall; and now the moon and stars shone forth, a clear frost having succeeded. The room having become perfectly light, I at last ventured to lie down, but with no intention, no ability, as I imagined, to sleep. Some time, however, after the first unearthly crowing of the cock, tired nature exacted its rights. The bewildered mind could no longer agitate a healthy and vigorous frame; and I sank into slumber—the deepest, deadest sleep I ever knew.
When I awoke it was broad daylight. The sun, not the moon, was now pouring his rays into the apartment more brightly than in an English June. My fellow traveller stood by my side fully dressed; in fact, it was he who had awakened me. He informed me that the morning was far advanced, but that, knowing how much I needed rest, he had been unwilling to arouse me in order to proceed by the stage, which had started empty some hours before, to make its way to Great-Bend. Besides his wish that I should enjoy proper rest, he had, he said, another object. I had never yet made a trial of sleigh travelling, and, by way of affording me a treat, as well as of making the remainder of our journey more expeditiously and comfortably, he had engaged the sleigh and horses of our host to convey us, by a shorter road than could be travelled on wheels, across the country to Binghampton. The sleigh, which had been out of repair, had, he said, required a few hours’ labour before being fitted for the road, but it would be ready to start as soon as I had breakfasted. Although a sound sleep had restored the tone of my nerves, and, aided by the buoyancy and animal spirits of youth, had inspired me with coolness and resolution, I could not possibly see in his unexpected proposal anything but a new scheme, more cunning than any my enemy had yet contrived, for executing his nefarious