Black Nick, the hermit of the hills; or, The expiated crime

In the midst of the lonely forest, that stretched in an almost unbroken line of solitude from the head-waters of the Hudson to the Mississippi, during the last century, a small party of Indian warriors, in full war-paint, treading one in the other’s footsteps, to the number of five, stole into a little clearing formed by the hand of Nature, and halted by a spring.The sun was about to set, in an angry glow of crimson, that portended bad weather. The fiery beams shot aslant through the open arches of the forest, and the trunks of the trees stood out, as black as jet, against the red glow of evening.“He has not been here,” remarked the warrior who seemed to be the leader, as he scanned the earth around the little spring with a practiced eye.“The pale-faces are all liars,” said a young brave, disdainfully, as he leant upon his bow. “When was a Mohawk known to break his word?”“The Panther Cub is wrong,” he said, quietly. “There are good and bad pale-faces. I have never known the white chief to fail before. He has been stopped on the way. He will soon come, and show us how to strike the children who have rebelled against the great father who dwells beyond the sea.”