Nothing Remained Of The
Indian Fort But A Few Embankments Gradually Sinking To The Level Of The
Surrounding Earth, And Already Overgrown In Part By Oaks And Other
Forest Trees, The Foliage Of Which Formed A Contrast To The Dark Pines
And Hemlocks Of The Swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old
fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself.
Any one but he
would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place,
for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed
down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the
savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit.
Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the
kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock,
listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his
walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up
the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He
raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with an
Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the
weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death blow had been
given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken
place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
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