Literary Cadet And Rhode Island Statesman

hoisted the gate of the mill and set it rapidly a going, looked keenly around him in every direction, and retired to an eminence, a few rods distant, crowned with a clump of thick bushes, and crouched down to await the approach of his mysterious enemy. He was not however mysterious to Chamberlin. The old man remembered every trait in the Indian character, and calculated with great accuracy as to the time and manner of young Paugus's advance. Just as it was growing too dusky to distinguish a human form, except towards the West, the old man descried him creeping cautiously from a bunch of bushes eight or ten rods above the mill by the side of the torrent, with his cocked rifle before him, and his hand upon the lock. The young savage heard the noise of the saw gate and could discern it in rapid motion, and shrunk back in the thicket; he came out again a little distant from where he went in, and with the wary motions of the ambush, reconnoitered the mill. Chamberlin marked him all the while as the catamount eyes the fox. Young Paugus came out of the bushes the third time and in a new quarter, and was stealthily advancing, when something seemed to catch his eye in the form of his father's slayer—he stopped short—brought his rifle to his eye, and with quick aim fired. The report rung sharp and low upon the still air, as if the gun itself were muffled, or afraid to speak above its breath. Young Paugus crept out upon a mill log that extended over the rapid, and stretching himself up to his full height, as if to ascertain, without advancing, the success of his shot. The old man could spare him no longer. He saw the well remembered form of the old Pigwacket chief, as the young savage stood against the sky of the West which was still red with the rays of the sunken sun. He levelled the fatal gun—it blazed—young Paugus leaped into the air six feet as the ball whistled through his heart, and his lifeless body fell far down into the rapid that foamed below him—while his vengeful spirit fled and mingled with that sterner one, which parted long before at Lovewell's pond—In the land where their fathers had gone.

Chamberlin returned slowly and gloomily to his cottage. The next morning, a bullet hole through the centre of the old garment he had hung at the saw gate, admonished him, that the aim as well as the vengeance of old Paugus had descended to his sons, and as he mused upon those he had slain, and reflected that, although he was old, he still might have again to lift his gun against the blood of Paugus, or himself fall by their avenging hand—he wished bitterly that some other bullet than his own had slain that renowned Indian, and that they had never met, to quench their battle thirst and scour out their foul guns, upon the beach of Lovewell's pond.