purpose. I was to be carried, under pretence of kindness, to a distance from the usual route of travellers, into remote by-ways, where I might be more secretly robbed or murdered. So fully was I impressed with this idea, that I was on the point of availing myself of a circumstance which arrested my fellow traveller’s attention, and seemed to call for some explanation on my part, to tell him to his face of my suspicions and fears, and to offer him all I had—amounting, as I have said, to less than a hundred dollars—on condition of his ridding me of his hated company.
The circumstance was this. On my throwing off the coverlet, in getting out of bed, he gave a look of great surprise, of which a moment’s consideration showed me the cause. He saw that I had gone to bed dressed, and, what was more, his eye lighted on the tongs which lay beside me under the coverlet, with the two ends tied tightly together with a piece of tape, as I had arranged them during the night, in order to wield them more easily as a weapon of defence. He started, and expressed the surprise he felt, and I was on the point of coming at once to a full explanation with him. But the bare possibility (although I could scarcely admit it) of my being mistaken as to his intentions, and a feeling of shame, restrained me from this open declaration of fear. I stammered out something about somnambulism and strange things done by persons in sleep after fatigue or excitement. In utter perplexity as to what to do, I went to breakfast, and seeing no other resource, resolved to proceed, placing my trust in Providence. Thus I started on my first sleigh-ride,—which, before coming to America, I had looked forward to as a great and novel pleasure,—with an awful presentiment that it would probably be my last ride on earth. Travellers in North America descant gloriously on the joys of their first sleigh-ride—the bright day, the brilliant sky, the sparkling snow, the excitement of the delighted rider, shared by the equally delighted horse, who finds he has exchanged the heavy draught of the wheel carriage for the scarce perceptible weight of the skate-borne berline or cutter. All this is delightful in sensation and description; but he who, like me, has made his first sleigh-ride in the weird power of a murderer, who has sat during it with an open knife in his hand as his only hope of life, knows the power of a first impression to kill for years all enjoyment from such a source. I never entered a sleigh for many winters which did not conduct me in thought to the banks of the Susquehanna.
Our advance at first was extremely slow, for although the snow, when undrifted, or “on a level,” as it is called, as we found it in the shelter of the woods, was not much above a foot in depth, it was quite unbroken, and we ploughed our way at the rate of less than three miles an hour. During this time we passed through several dark tracts of woodland, and near many open pools of the river, along which our route lay, which seemed to invite my enemy to the execution, without further hesitation, of his horrid design. The driver—our host of the previous night—was, doubtless, an accomplice. What could be the cause of his delay? It could scarcely be fear, for although guilt is cowardly, two such men could have overmastered me with ease. Could it be that the untrodden snow, which covered every spot of ground, rendered it impossible that a murder or even a struggle could take place without traces which would infallibly betray the deed? Sitting on this occasion not opposite to my companion, as when we travelled in the stage, but side by side, I could not watch his eye and expression as I had done on former days, but I did not fail to observe that his mind was more upon the stretch and that he was more silent than before. More than once he expressed an impatience at the slowness of our pace, and urged the driver to greater speed.
After about two hours’ travel, we struck for the first time upon the track of another farm-sleigh, which had entered our line of road by a side-way, but had already passed on out of sight. This awakened within me a feeling of hope. In a few minutes we reached a road which had been broken that morning by several sleighs and teams, and along which we were able to advance more rapidly. As we proceeded, the road was found to be still better beaten, and our horses trotted out as if they really enjoyed their work. It was evident, the driver said, that the farmers of the more fertile region we had entered, who had long been expecting snow—or sleighing, as he termed it,—had lost no time in availing themselves of its arrival to carry their produce that morning to Binghampton, to which all the tracks tended. I began to breathe more freely as I felt myself approaching the abodes of men. We were now drawing near a considerable market-town, to which at least a hundred teams had preceded us that morning, and I could throw myself into the arms of a crowd of fellow creatures, as a refuge from the dark fiend whose presence had maddened me so long. My joy, alas! was of short duration. My companion was becoming restless; his brow began to knit; he looked at his watch; at length, springing forward to the driver’s seat, after a few observations regarding the road which I could not understand, he whispered something, through clenched teeth, convulsively into his ear. He had scarcely done this when the driver, all at once forsaking the beaten highway, drove into a narrow opening in a dense grove of swamp-elms through which we were passing, and urged his horses with savage strokes of the whip along a track by which it was evident no sleigh had yet passed since the fall of snow. Horror! On looking at my fellow traveller, I observed in his hand a large bowie-knife, which he had drawn from some place of concealment about his person. He tried quickly to hide it, but must have known that it had caught my eye. He looked round at me, as I thought, once or twice in a stealthy manner, and then, suddenly springing back, resumed his former place beside me. I involuntarily made an effort to throw myself out of the sleigh on my own side, and at the same time to draw from my great-coat pocket my right hand with the open knife which I had held in it since we started; but before I could do either, I was drawn back by the powerful arm of my assailant, who, to my surprise, apologised for his clumsiness, just as if he had not seen that my movement had been a