Reverend C. Campbell

“ All this is delightful in sensation and description; but he who, like me, has made his first sleigh-ride in the weird power of a murderer, who has sat during it with an open knife in his hand as his only hope of life, knows the power of a first impression to kill for years all enjoyment from such a source. I never entered a sleigh for many winters which did not conduct me in thought to the banks of the Susquehanna. ”

“ Intense curiosity gave rise to a distressing nervousness, which was at length changed, by certain questions and observations of my companion, into a gloomy apprehension of impending evil. He inquired if I was accustomed to travel armed. On my giving an evasive answer, he observed that most Englishmen, he understood, were more or less skilled in boxing. He had once, he said, seen at New York an exhibition of boxing by English pugilists, and had been much struck by the amazing rapidity, dexterity, and power with which they wielded the weapons with which nature had furnished them. ”

“ As the snow began to fall, the death-like stillness of the air was broken, and a beeeze arose, which speedily increased to a gale, and by about three o’clock had become a violent tempest, drifting the thickly-falling snow from the north-west horizontally, so as almost to blind the driver and the horses, and wreathing it here and there so as completely to obliterate the track. ”

“ He added, that on the afternoon on which we had met at Newburg, he had received a mysterious hint that he was known to travel with large sums of money, and that he might be waylaid, and perhaps murdered. Being naturally a fearless man, he resolved to proceed; and on seeing me had conceived the idea of making me his companion by the way, as a guard against nightly surprise—for he was a very sound sleeper—and as a help in case of attack. ”

“ It was evident, the driver said, that the farmers of the more fertile region we had entered, who had long been expecting snow—or sleighing, as he termed it,—had lost no time in availing themselves of its arrival to carry their produce that morning to Binghampton, to which all the tracks tended. I began to breathe more freely as I felt myself approaching the abodes of men. ”

“ A mystery began to gather about the man. I felt what in Scotland is termed “eerie” in being alone with him, and was sensibly relieved, I remember, when an occasional traveller joined us in the stage for a few miles. On this, the second night of our journey, we stopped at a decent country inn at Coshecton, on the river Delaware, which separates the States of New York and Pennsylvania, and as on the previous night, were shown into a double-bedded room, although there was room to have lodged us separately. ”

“ Shutting the door with his elbow, as he flew through it, pushing me before him, he cast off, more rapidly by far than I can relate it, his green blanket garment, then his coat, then an outer waistcoat, which last he flung on the table before me along with the bowie-knife saying, “Strayinger!—no words—oblige me by unripping that parcel as fast as you can;” pointing to a flat package of something, like a diminutive pillow, about eight inches by five, enclosed in a bandana silk handkerchief, which was neatly sown by a hundred small stitches to the inside of the waistcoat behind. ”

“ Bad as the weather and roads had evidently become, they did not appear to me to afford sufficient reason for diverging from our route when so near a proper resting-place. My suspicions of a sinister design were further strengthened by the reflection, that in so desolate a region there could be no place of entertainment frequented by travellers, or deserving of the name—in fact, no tavern even of the lowest class. I stated this objection, being determined that, at all hazards, we should push on to Great-Bend. ”

“ I sat down for a little beside a box-stove in the bed-room, in which, owing to the coldness of the weather, a fire had been lighted, and prepared my mind for the worst. I put into the stove two or three additional billets of wood, covered the fire with ashes, so that it might last till the morning, and resolved to sit beside it all night. My companion and the driver shortly afterwards entered the room, and threw themselves into two of the beds, where they soon appeared or feigned to fall into a sound sleep. ”

“ He had scarcely done this when the driver, all at once forsaking the beaten highway, drove into a narrow opening in a dense grove of swamp-elms through which we were passing, and urged his horses with savage strokes of the whip along a track by which it was evident no sleigh had yet passed since the fall of snow. Horror! On looking at my fellow traveller, I observed in his hand a large bowie-knife, which he had drawn from some place of concealment about his person. ”

“ His taking out of the bowie-knife, which had caused me such alarm, he accounted for by saying that in his fear of not reaching the bank in time, he had thought for a moment of proceeding while in the sleigh, as we were flying along the short cut which at his request the driver had taken, to rip up his secret repositories, so as to be ready to drive at once to the bank on reaching Binghampton, with the money in his hand. He laughed heartily when told of the terror he had occasioned me in springing back to his seat.
All was now explained. The man I had dreaded was as fearful as myself ”

“ But it was answered, that the inn at which it was proposed we should stop, although little frequented during the greater part of the year, was the resort of lumberers at the proper season, and that we should there procure at least some food and shelter; whereas, by pushing on towards Great-Bend we might perish in the snow. It was impossible to resist or to escape; but the whole scheme was now clear. The driver was the accomplice of the villain who had marked me out four days before, at Newburg, as his victim. ”

“ It was quite clear, the driver said, that we could not hope to reach Binghampton that night. We might be thankful if we could get as far as the inn at Great-Bend—a hamlet so called from its position on a loop of the Susquehanna. It now began to grow dark, and he soon announced to us that he could not venture to proceed even to Great-Bend. He proposed to turn aside to a small country tavern, which he said lay upon the river about a mile from the point at which we then were. ”

“ But he said that new comers seldom received the full amount of the advantage to which they were entitled. He added, that if I had any considerable number to dispose of, he could introduce me to a broker at Binghampton, through which we were to pass, who would deal fairly with me. I replied that I carried with me only a sufficient sum for the expenses of the journey. I had, in fact, only about ninety dollars, the remains of a hundred which I had drawn before leaving New York. ”

“ He had found, he said, a person about to proceed from Newburg to Buffalo by the longer route, to whom he had disposed of my ticket. I went to bed delighted with my good luck, my last remembered thought being one of regret that I had not had an opportunity of thanking my unknown companion at supper for the suggestion to which I owed it. I had seen him for the last time in private conversation with the landlord, a few minutes after supper. ”

“ His questions as to arms, and his observations on boxing, were prompted by a desire to know the value of my aid if he should be attacked; and his allusion to travelling with money had naturally grown out of his own apprehensions. ”

“ In one’s own country it is not difficult to draw from a fellow-traveller’s dress and bearing correct inferences as to his character and profession; but in a foreign land, and especially in America, it requires a residence of more than a few days to enable one do to so. ”