place, when wending our steps from home, we next came upon the before described premises of Mr. Johnson-for that was the name of the singular man whom we have introduced to the reader above-but in no very cheerful mood, as may be supposed; and perhaps that was in part the reason of our looking upon him with more alarm than a regiment of warlocks could infuse into the bosom of a Scotsman. Certain it is, however, he was a most singular man, and to us a man of terror. But why we knew not; only that there was always some mysterious association in the mind, between him and the tragic reminiscences and traditions of the Buxton farm. The causes of this association I was unacquainted with until years after the period of which I am writing. But such was the fact with respect to Mr. Johnson; and his looks and demeanour in our youthful eyes were exceedingly dubious, and inspired us with many dark suspicions and unpleasant apprehensions. He was a spare man, of an athletic middlesized frame, large boned, with dark shaggy eye-brows, grisly hair, and an austere, melancholy look.

'Cruel to himself

They did report him: the cold earth his bed,
Water his drink, his food the shepherd's alms.'

Scarcely could any of us pass his residence, but to our regret we saw him; and if he were near, an involuntary shudder would run over us. He lived lone like a hermit; and when seen by me was always stand

N

ing still, either in the garden, the meadow, the field, or the lawn-always in the same antiquated attire, in the attitude of deep and heavy thoughtfulness. His fur⚫rowed features ever wore the same appearance of fixed imperturbable gravity—the same unapproachable and forbidding severity. I have seen him a hundred times, but never heard him speak, nor saw him smile. Every thing about his manners likewise looked strangely. At the easternmost end of the little lawn, in the centre of which stood his cottage, was a small oval enclosure, in the middle of which was a little knoll covered with green turf kept perfectly neat and clean. The ivy and wild honeysuckle intertwined their tendrils as they clung to the rude wicket fence, and the rose in its season bloomed at its head. This was said to be the tomb of his wife, whose burial took place before his solitude had been disturbed by other settlers. His orchard, instead of being planted in rows, like those of other people, grew in irregular clusters around his house and garden; and yet, without being separated, transplanted, or pruned, as was necessary with other people's apple trees, it seemed to grow more thriftily than any other. Even his cattle, as they grazed among the cowslips in the meadow or the field, and the fowls of his barn-yard, as they flapped their wings in the sun, or pecked upon the dunghill, appeared singular and different from those of other people. And I am sure that his old sturdy bull-dog had ten times more terrors for me than any bull-dog I

ever saw.

Indeed every thing conspired to invest Mr. Johnson, and the clearing in which he lived, and all that he possessed, with a strange, mysterious, and forbidding character, for which no one in our juvenile circle could have accounted, had such a thing been required. Yet the little farm was cultivated with care, and was always in excellent order; no hedge-rows of briers and bushes were suffered to spring up by his fences; its location was delightful; and to the eye of a stranger it would have appeared one of the sweetest places of residence that heart could desire.

As we grew older our terrors of course decreased, in passing both Johnson's and the Buxton farm; but the strange feelings and emotions never entirely left us; and I believe that, even to this day, were I to be set down in the dim hour of twilight in the once fearful spot, looking as it then did, a momentary shudder would come over me as in times past. But it must be borne in mind that I left that country soon after the first meeting-house was built, and before I had outgrown the fears and apprehensions of the days of my boyhood, when the mind, pliant as melted wax, is moulded at pleasure, and when, by the indiscretion of nurses and by old wives' tales, superstitious impressions are too often so deeply implanted, as to defy all the efforts of reason in future life to eradicate them. And it was not until years afterwards, when on a visit to the scenes of my boyhood, during which I spent a

week in searching for trees on the trunks of which I had inscribed my name, and in climbing rocks, clambering over hills, and stumbling through glens, merely because I had clambered and stumbled in those places twenty years before, that I ascertained the sad cause which had transformed one of the happiest and best of men into the gloomy solitary I had seen him, and whose aching heart had then but recently been relieved from pain by the kindest stroke he had felt for forty years-the stroke of death.

Before the period of the revolution, while the Germans had pushed their settlements as far up the rich vale of the Mohawk as Fort Schuyler, now the site of Utica, the beautiful queen of western villages, a few enterprising Englishmen had diverged more southerly, and penetrated the wilds beyond the sources of the Susquehanna. This they were enabled to do, and, though far separated from each other, live in comparative security under the powerful protection first of sir William Johnson, and subsequently, for a short time only, under that of sir John, the influence of both of whom, particularly the former, among the Indians on this side of the Iroquois was unbounded. Cherry Valley was considered the frontier settlement; but a family, by the name of Tunnicliff, had advanced westward a few miles beyond Caniaderaga lake; while two intimate and resolute friends, named Johnson and Buxton, had located themselves with their young wives in the deep forest ten miles south of Mr. Tunnicliff's

establishment, in the beautiful situation which we have before attempted to describe. Here, in remote but industrious seclusion, these pioneers dwelt for many happy years. The forests gradually receded before the axe-men, and some years before the troublous times of the revolution came on, each of the friends had an extensive and well cultivated farm; the first rude structure of logs had been superseded by more comfortable and substantial dwellings; and young, thrifty orchards began to repay the toil of the provident husbandman, who had transplanted them to those wilds, and reared them there. Their communications with their friends at Cherry Valley, Canajoharie, and beyond, were not frequent, and their own visits to the settlements, like those of angels, 'few and far between.' Their roads were mere bridle-paths through the woods, by which the few luxuries and comforts they enjoyed, beyond those produced on their own farms, were transported upon pack-horses. But in such a secluded spot the two families must necessarily have lived in the closest intimacy, even had they not been bound together by the stronger and more endearing bonds of relationship. Their wives were sisters, who together had heroically crossed the ocean with their husbands in search of the new world, and a home in the trackless wilderThus expatriated from society, the families were the world to each other. Their pursuits, their trials, their deprivations, and their joys were the same.

ness.