The Guide Said Then - And He Mentioned It Casually, In Reply To Our
Inquiries About Ascending The Mountain - That There Was A Cave High Up
Among The Precipices On The Southeast Side Of Nipple Top.
He
scarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctance
gave us any particulars about it.
I always admire this art by which
the accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant
tale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsible
for its improbability. If this is well managed, the listener is
always eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seems
willing to tell, and always resents the assumed reservations and
doubts of the latter.
There were strange reports about this cave when the old guide was a
boy, and even then its very existence had become legendary. Nobody
knew exactly where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been
inhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had seen a light late
at night twinkling through the trees high up the mountain, and now
and then a ruddy glare as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers
were few in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were well
known. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by strangers, and by
men who had some secret purpose in seeking this seclusion and eluding
observation. If suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or
if any such landed from the steamers on the shore of Lake Champlain,
it was impossible to identify them with these invaders who were never
seen. Their not being seen did not, however, prevent the growth of
the belief in their existence. Little indications and rumors, each
trivial in itself, became a mass of testimony that could not be
disposed of because of its very indefiniteness, but which appealed
strongly to man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.
The cave existed; and it was inhabited by men who came and went on
mysterious errands, and transacted their business by night. What
this band of adventurers or desperadoes lived on, how they conveyed
their food through the trackless woods to their high eyrie, and what
could induce men to seek such a retreat, were questions discussed,
but never settled. They might be banditti; but there was nothing to
plunder in these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies and raids
either in the settlements of the hills or the distant lake shore were
unknown. In another age, these might have been hermits, holy men who
had retired from the world to feed the vanity of their godliness in a
spot where they were subject neither to interruption nor comparison;
they would have had a shrine in the cave, and an image of the Blessed
Virgin, with a lamp always burning before it and sending out its
mellow light over the savage waste. A more probable notion was that
they were romantic Frenchmen who had grow weary of vice and
refinement together, - possibly princes, expectants of the throne,
Bourbon remainders, named Williams or otherwise, unhatched eggs, so
to speak, of kings, who had withdrawn out of observation to wait for
the next turn-over in Paris.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 56 of 70
Words from 28490 to 29023
of 35746
