He who stood before me was the parent and fosterer of my mind, the
companion and instructor of my youth, from whom I had been parted for
years, from whom I believed myself to be forever separated,--Sarsefield
himself! Chapter XXIV. My deportment, at an interview so much desired and so wholly unforeseen,
was that of a maniac. The petrifying influence of surprise yielded to
the impetuosities of passion. I held him in my arms; I wept upon his
bosom; I sobbed with emotion which, had it not found passage at my eyes,
would have burst my heart-strings. Thus I, who had escaped the deaths
that had previously assailed me in so many forms, should have been
reserved to solemnize a scene like this by--_dying for joy_! The sterner passions and habitual austerities of my companion exempted
him from pouring out this testimony of his feelings. His feelings were,
indeed, more allied to astonishment and incredulity than mine had been. My person was not instantly recognised. He shrunk from my embrace as if
I were an apparition or impostor. He quickly disengaged himself from my
arms, and, withdrawing a few paces, gazed upon me as on one whom he had
never before seen. These repulses were ascribed to the loss of his affection. I was not
mindful of the hideous guise in which I stood before him, and by which
he might justly be misled to imagine me a ruffian or a lunatic. My tears
flowed now on a new account, and I articulated, in a broken and faint
voice, "My master! my friend! Have you forgotten, have you ceased to
love me?" The sound of my voice made him start and exclaim, "Am I alive? am I
awake? Speak again, I beseech you, and convince me that I am not
dreaming or delirious." "Can you need any proof," I answered, "that it is Edgar Huntly, your
pupil, your child, that speaks to you?" He now withdrew his eyes from me and fixed them on the floor. After a
pause he resumed, in emphatic accents:--"Well, I have lived to this age
in unbelief. To credit or trust in miraculous agency was foreign to my
nature, but now I am no longer skeptical. Call me to any bar, and exact
from me an oath that you have twice been dead and twice recalled to
life; that you move about invisibly, and change your place by the force,
not of muscles, but of thought, and I will give it. "How came you hither? Did you penetrate the wall? Did you rise through
the floor? "Yet surely 'tis an error. You could not be he whom twenty witnesses
affirmed to have beheld a lifeless and mangled corpse upon the ground,
whom my own eyes saw in that condition. "In seeking the spot once more to provide you a grave, you had vanished. Again I met you. You plunged into a rapid stream, from a height from
which it was impossible to fall and to live; yet, as if to set the
limits of nature at defiance, to sport with human penetration, you rose
upon the surface; you floated; you swam; thirty bullets were aimed at
your head, by marksmen celebrated for the exactness of their sight. I
myself was of the number, and I never missed what I desired to hit. "My predictions were confirmed by the event. You ceased to struggle; you
sunk to rise no more; and yet, after these accumulated deaths, you light
upon this floor, so far distant from the scene of your catastrophe, over
spaces only to be passed, in so short a time as has since elapsed, by
those who have wings. "My eyes, my ears, bear testimony to your existence now, as they
formerly convinced me of your death. What am I to think? what proofs am
I to credit?" There he stopped. Every accent of this speech added to the confusion of my thoughts. The
allusions that my friend had made were not unintelligible. I gained a
glimpse of the complicated errors by which we had been mutually
deceived. I had fainted on the area before Deb's hut. I was found by
Sarsefield in this condition, and imagined to be dead. The man whom I had seen upon the promontory was not an Indian. He
belonged to a numerous band of pursuers, whom my hostile and precipitate
deportment caused to suspect me for an enemy. They that fired from the
steep were friends. The interposition that screened me from so many
bullets was indeed miraculous. No wonder that my voluntary sinking, in
order to elude their shots, was mistaken for death, and that, having
accomplished the destruction of this foe, they resumed their pursuit of
others. But how was Sarsefield apprized that it was I who plunged into
the river? No subsequent event was possible to impart to him the
incredible truth. A pause of mutual silence ensued. At length Sarsefield renewed his
expressions of amazement at this interview, and besought me to explain
why I had disappeared by night from my uncle's house, and by what series
of unheard-of events this interview was brought about. Was it indeed
Huntly whom he examined and mourned over at the threshold of Deb's hut. Whom he had sought in every thicket and cave in the ample circuit of
Norwalk and Chetasco? Whom he had seen perish in the current of the
Delaware? Instead of noticing his questions, my soul was harrowed with anxiety
respecting the fate of my uncle and sisters. Sarsefield could
communicate the tidings which would decide on my future lot and set my
portion in happiness or misery. Yet I had not breath to speak my
inquiries. Hope tottered, and I felt as if a single word would be
sufficient for its utter subversion. At length I articulated the name of
my uncle. The single word sufficiently imparted my fears, and these fears needed
no verbal confirmation. At that dear name my companion's features were
overspread by sorrow. "Your uncle," said he, "is dead." "Dead? Merciful Heaven! And my sisters too! Both?" "Your sisters are alive and well." "Nay," resumed I, in faltering accents, "jest not with my feelings. Be
not cruel in your pity. Tell me the truth." "I have said the truth. They are well, at Mr. Inglefield's." My wishes were eager to assent to the truth of these tidings. The better
part of me was, then, safe: but how did they escape the fate that
overtook my uncle? How did they evade the destroying hatchet and the
midnight conflagration? These doubts were imparted in a tumultuous and
obscure manner to my friend. He no sooner fully comprehended them, than
he looked at me with some inquietude and surprise. "Huntly," said he, "are you mad? What has filled you with these hideous
prepossessions? Much havoc has indeed been committed in Chetasco and the
wilderness, and a log hut has been burnt, by design or by accident, in
Solesbury; but that is all. Your house has not been assailed by either
firebrand or tomahawk. Every thing is safe and in its ancient order. The
master indeed is gone, but the old man fell a victim to his own temerity
and hardihood. It is thirty years since he retired with three wounds
from the field of Braddock; but time in no degree abated his adventurous
and military spirit. On the first alarm, he summoned his neighbours, and
led them in pursuit of the invaders. Alas!