Harper's New Monthly Magazine

For, oh! through the midnight, across the stream, Gladsome it was when the ruddy dawn
Or echoing up the dell,

Naoman, the chief of the savage tribe

The children's friend was he-
Would light his pipe at Murdy's fire,
And take little Eve on his knee;
Would pat the head of the goodman's dog,
That was gentle as Eve's white lamb;
And the scarlet bird was Naoman's gift,
That sung them a morning psalm.
On their hearth the spotted panther's hide
And the fur of the shaggy bear
Were spread full oft, of a winter's night,
For Naoman to stretch him there.

And the children loved his bony face,
And would kiss his cheek so red:

II.

Brightened her lonely cot,

When all was safe, and she smiled again, And her fears were all forgot.

Happy was he with his happy wife:

She was young, and she loved him well: Like a deer she skipped when he moor'd his boat As the dews of even fell.

Like bucks the boys; but Eve, sweet maid,
She came like the timid hare,

With her snow-white hand o'er her sky-blue eyes
Screening the sunset's glare.

Then back amain the brothers twain

They bounded the maid before: Robin he shouldered his father's gun, And Ralph he tugged with an oar. Oh, then it was joy in Murdy's cot, When the savory meal was done,

Eve played with his necklace of eagles' claws, And songs he would sing till the stars came out And the feathery tuft on his head.

And, for that Naoman was sure their friend,

Of his tribe they had no fear:

Happily thus did Murdock live

With Elspeth, his wife so dear.

O'er the red of the sunken sun.

They were songs of the Scottish heath and tarn,
They were songs of the border fray,
They were songs of the bloody Forty-five,
And raids of the olden day.

He sung of the dance on the straths so green, And Eve would bound like the roe;

Of the fray he sang, and the boys looked fierce,
And they longed to the wars to go.

The thrush in the tree that all day long
Had frolicked about the door,

He listened the songs, with his mate on her nest,
And the next day sang them o'er.

Mother, look here! This arrow sharp

In my way to the woods I found;
Its feather is torn from the crow's jet wing,
And a snake-skin twines it round.

Elsie turned pale as she took the dart,
Looked white on the raven shaft;

IIL

Night after night so went, so came;
The summer so went it by:
Merry the weeks and merry the months,
Till the falling leaf was nigh.

But, day by day, when Murdy went
With his nets to sweep the mere,
Sadly the children saw his sail
'Mid the Highlands disappear.

And a savage he showed his wolfish teeth,
And he growled like a beast at bay;

His eye it glared like a fiend's at me,
As he slunk like a snake away.

The mother looked hard after Murdy's sail,
And paler she looked, but smiled;

But she patted the curls on Eve's bright head, And she said, No fear, 'twas a drunken rogue; And she made believe she laughed.

Don't cry, little Eve, my child.

And the child soon slept, but the mother wept, And paler her cheek it grew,

For the wind was wafting her husband's sail Where the river is hid from view.

The mother she sighed, and she said, Dear Lord, Startled she turned when a foot fell near, What can the meaning be?

Again and again at the cottage door

For her husband's sail looked she.

But there it lay, all idly still,

Far under the dark Crow-Nest;

And there stood she, with her straining eyes, And her hand on a heaving breast.

Mother, cried Eve, half dead with fright

(She came from the copse hard by), As I searched for nests, I saw-I saw An Indian's deadly eye.

I stretched my hand, for a feather stirred,
I thought 'twas the robin's wing;
Oh, mother, 'twas not-I laid my palm
On a scalp with a tufted thing;

Long was the dark that dismal night,
But the cold and gibbous moon

It rose at last o'er the Beacon mount,
And silvered the clouds aboon.

Then Murdy stole forth from his stilly cot,
And Elsie she followed near:

Two boys he bore in his brawny arms;
Her burden not less was dear.

Fast, fast asleep the children slept;

They had said their little prayers,

And now of the Shepherd Good they dreamt,
The lambs in His arms that bears.

Stealthy and slow they reach his boat;
Softly he pushed from shore:

IV.

And she whispered the Lord's dear Name: The thicket stirred-naught else was heard—And a savage-Naoman-came.

Sullen he came and stern, for naught

He answered when sweet spake she;
Dumb on this stone he sat him down-
Dumb as the stone sat he.

But where is Murdy, thine own goodman?
He is gone to the mere, she said.
'Twas so the silence broke at last
'Twixt the pale-face and the red.

Few words they spent; no ear was lent
That white or red could spy;
But skulking close was one that heard,
And flashed like a fiend's his eye.

But, oh! it was sad he had come so late
From his fishing adown the tide;

'Twas shame that the mischievous moon arose
If his shimmering sail were spied !
But there was the rocky Polopfels:
They have gained the middle mere;
Give I may win a bow-shot yond,
Quoth Murdy, there'll be no fear!
Slowly but safely glides the bark;
Soundly the babes sleep on;

Then Murdy he pulled with his muffled oar,
And said, We'll be there anon.

And now they have passed the current's sweep, And hark!-'tis the voice of rills;

You could hear from the glen the brawling brook 'Tis the fall they hear, o'er the miller's wheel,

But never a dip of his oar.

His oar plied he, till he lifted sail,

At the friendly Fishers'-kills.

But-whoop! And a sharp canoe shoots forth From the shade of the Polopfels.

And steered for the further coast:

Glimmered the sheet through the moon-lit mist, Robin wakes up: I dreamed, cried he,

Like a dead man's hovering ghost.

Then calmer grew Murdy's throbbing heart,
Though his cot he no more could see:
No dog had barked, no sound told tale
Of his flight from his own roof-tree.

That I heard the Indian yells. Robin, my boy, pull thou this oar, Poor Murdy he groaned and said; Mother shall steer, and you and I We must push the boat ahead.

Mother, look there! It was Eve's sweet voice, 'Tis a hellish crew, with their paddles twelve, As she woke with affrighted eye; "Tis their tufted scalps she sees;

And she pointed athwart the moon-path broad-And Elsie she folded her daughter dear

Look there! she could only cry.

Murdy hath lifted his firelock true,
Twice hath he ta'en his aim,
And twice hath Elsie stayed his hand:
Hold thee! in Jesu's name.

Quick was the breath that Murdy drew;
Once more his gun took he;
Fire! fire! cried Ralph and Robin both;
But the mother-Nay, quoth she;
For, if ye should shoot, my husband dear—
Yes, father, said Eve beside-

They will burn us all, and our cottage too,
Before the morning-tide.

Liever had I they should burn but me;
Naoman will shield thee well.
Naoman is good, poor Murdy groaned,
But his tribe are hounds of hell.

With sinewy arm he plies his oar,

He pulls, till it breaks amain,

To her heart; but it seemed to freeze.

Loudly the war-whoop rang, and near,
It rang on the cold night air;
But Murdy sprung where Elsie sank,
Like a panther from his lair.
And the wail of the children's sorrow rose
As he wrestled with sinewy arm,
Till safe once more his prize he bore,
And they saw she had no harm.
But nearer the war-whoop rang again;
Murdy has fired his shot;
Again, again, his carbine blazed,
It blazed and it failed him not.

Paddles and scalp-locks down they dropped;
Six foemen-how fast they fell!
But all in vain: six fiends are slain,
But six-at his side they yell.

Pinioned his hands and bound his feet,
Like a slaughtered thing he lies;

Then hid he his face; through his honest Robin is tethered, but bold he looks,

hands

His tears they were shed like rain.

He can do no more: but Elsie's voice
She lifts it clear and high;

O Christ, said she, take only me-
For these sweet babes I die.

Light be the boat, the breeze upsprings,
Tighten thy sail, she cried;
Flutters her robe like angels' wings
As she leaps from the shallop's side.

In a wigwam's hive the captives five
They lie on the hard dank ground,
And chiefs a score and warriors more
Like wolves inclose them round.
And Naoman sits those chiefs among
Like a stone that bears no trace;
Silent and stern, like a Roman bust,
He has set his copper face.

Vainly the woman's eye explores,
In vain the children three;

Brother and friend he was theirs yestreen,
Now naught of them all knows he.

Then a sachem rose, and Eve's fair locks
He clutched as he drew her nigh:
So have ye seen the taloned hawk
On the trembling ring-dove fly.
Tell me, thou pale-faced wife, he cried,
As he twisted the golden hair,
Who is the traitor betrayed his tribe?

And his scalp-knife he made it bare.
And Eve, as she writhed in the Indian's grasp,
'Twas her father's groan she heard;
And her streaming eyes to her mother's eyes
Looked up, but she spake no word.
Woman-once more the savage growled,
And the tomahawk waved on high-
What red man's tongue, like a woman's tongue
And a traitor's. bade thee fly?

Speak, or anon thy child shall bleed,
Thy boys, and thy husband dear,
Then deep in thy brain this flinty blade
I'll bury from ear to ear.

Up sprang the lads, but their sire was bound;
They strove for the darling girl
E'en while the hatchet o'er her head
Waved like the vulture's whirl.
Nay, said Naoman. Stern he rose,
And his pipe he laid it down;
He touched the scalp-lock sullenly

That rose from his shaven crown.
The pale-faced wife keeps faith, said he,
But false to my tribe was I:
Woman, for love of these white lambs,
Thou shalt see Naoman die.

Grandly he drew his shaggy robe

His stalwart shoulders round,
And terribly rose the savage whoop
As he bowed him to the ground.
Deep in the cleft of the old man's skull
They drove the hatchet's blade;
So quick, it seemed the very blow

That was aimed at the little maid.
Silent the bleeding corse it lay,

Silent they all looked on;

But the children wept and their father moaned. Their only friend was gone.

Brightly the sun o'er the Beacon shone

Why should I tell thee more?

Merrily sang the little bird

In the cage by Murdy's door.

The yeoman rose, as these words he spake;
My foot from the stone moved I.
This was the stone of their door, he said,
And they laid them there to die.
Look, it is green with the velvet moss;

It was red with their blood that day:
To God their innocent souls went up;
But the fiends-they shall burn for aye.
Murdy and Elsie and Eve are gone;
Robin and Ralph-they saw
Their mother and sister bleed like lambs
In the wolf's devouring paw.

Like a tartaned chief on Scotia's heath,
No savage more cool than he,
Robin, said Ralph, as father died,
So like his sons must we.

And the boys they bled as martyrs bleed,
With a cry, half hymn, half prayer;
And the savage that saw and told it me
Became a Christian there.

VIL.

Merrily flows the Moodna now:
Horrid it flowed that day;
For one and four the dead it bore;
It carried them far away.

And when, that day, the sun went down,
Silent was all and drear;

But hot through the ashes the embers glowed
Of the cottage that once stood here.

See, cried the man-for sunset then
O'er the stream its crimson threw-
Looked ever a wave so red before

When all around 'tis blue?

That is the stain of their blood, said he;
At sunset it comes each night;

In winter, this brook it freezes not,
For nothing can make it white.
They call it the Murderer's Brook, full well,
Quoth he, as he dried his eye;

But for innocent souls and true, like theirs,
'Twas harder to live than die.

It was hard to live in those heathen days,
If half be true that's told;

And the Christian that came to the howling woods
Was a daring man and bold.

RATS.

T was really true, then!

was becoming a rat-catcher that enabled
him to marry.
When he was a field-mar-
shal he could no more marry than a church
mouse. A church mouse, indeed, was not
so poor as he, for the little rodent always
has the candle ends to gnaw, and there
were times when, for want of a meal, old
Barrada had been at his wits' ends.

When he was a field-marshal? Oh yes; old Barrada had all the decorations. He was a Knight Della Morte of one royal rebellion; he had the stars and ribbons of anPoor old Barrada, after so many years, other, conferred upon the field. The only happy at last! Well, that was good. So trouble about them was that he had no coat much snatched from sorrow, at any rate. quite suitable to wear with them. WherAnd how pretty she was! yet forty, if a ever there had been revolt against tyranny, day-Barrada nearly half again as old-wherever there had been foot-hold for a filiand she had waited for him twenty years. bustero, there, all at once, old Barrada had It had been a standing joke with us that seemed to appear, like a precipitate from the when Barrada's ship came in he was to mar-revolutionary atmosphere. He had been ry-was to marry this faithful but mythical hunted by blood-hounds with a kingly preLouisa, who, somewhere unseen in the back- tender in Spain; he had floated down the ground, was waiting for the shabby old fel- mountain streams of Oriental Europe on low in whom she believed enough to wait, bladders, carrying dispatches in his mouth but who, although he contrived in various from one insurgent army to another; he mysterious ways to procure a livelihood for had chased slavers a stern chase from ocean one, had never proved quite equal to pro- to ocean; he had seen the inside of the Khecuring that livelihood for two, notwith- dive's prisons; it was whispered under the standing that he was always on the point breath that he knew more than he chose to of fortune, just about to command success-- tell concerning certain dark uprisings under a fair wind blowing in the sails of his ship the outrageous rule of British India; while that never came to shore. the political hurricanes that infest the islands of the West Indian waters had drawn him into their vortex, when he was beaching his boatful of arms on remote shores under shadow of overhanging palm groves, or else escaping the garrote in the public plazas; and as to the tempests in the South American tea-pots, he had been an unfailing constituent of them, hanged on a lamp post by one party just in time to be cut down by the other too frequently for the occurrence to be worthy of special note. If in all this he sought liberty, without doubt there was a grain of self-seeking there too. He never forgot the ingots of the incas, nor that De Soto shod his horse with silver.

It seemed absurd to think of Barrada's marrying at all. But that a lovely woman -and he always said she was lovely-should cherish a romantic and sentimental attachment to the old fellow seemed the most chimerical of all his chimeras. And here it was, really true.

I was passing the Church of St. Cecilia, and I saw them come out, married. I had been attracted by the sound of the low-rolling organ, and had turned my head just in time to lift my hat to old Barrada and his bride. But it was a wasted courtesy so far as they were concerned: they never saw me. They were in the condition of the little creature whose world is narrowed to the focus of his vision, and who sees no farther than he can dart his tongue; they saw only each other and the next step as they walked. A sweet apple-blossom face was hers, with its blue eyes, its dimple, its confiding smile, framed in a ripple of chestnut hair; a stately, well-made shape. And old Barrada-he looked a mercenary Don Quixote in modern morning costume. With his hawk nose, his riotous gray hair, his dark eye blazing from under a jungle of black eyebrow, his warlike mustache, the erect height of his figure, his haughty bearing-indeed you would have taken him for nothing less than a field-mar-about-old Barrada used to button his coat shal; you would never have suspected him the more tightly, and live uncomplainingly to be a rat-catcher. And yet he was: a rat- upon apples, solacing himself with views of catcher. the future and Lonisa; of the Mexican silThat is, he had become a rat-catcher. It ver mine, in which his interest was undi

For the rest of the time he received a precarious income from various newspapers, to which he contributed elaborate reviews of the campaign in Beloochistan, and of the military pretensions of the chief of the Laklacs-to do him justice, excellently written articles, although they were upon ṣubjects which for popular apprehension might be called abstruse, and their honors were always worn modestly by the editors who, through their means, were accredited with a fund of curious and useless but unsuspected knowledge. When every other means failed—no rebellions to join and none to write

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Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 52