To thoughtful mind the hour for musing meet,
'Tis then the sage from forth his lone retreat,
The rolling universe around espies;
'Tis then the bard may hold communion sweet
With lovely shapes unkenned by grosser eyes,
And quick perception comes of finer mysteries.

Sands.

In the preceding chapter we closed the minuter narrative with a scene
at the Hut, in the spring of 1765. We must now advance the time just
ten years, opening, anew, in the month of May, 1775. This, it is
scarcely necessary to tell the reader, is bringing him at once up to
the earliest days of the revolution. The contest which preceded that
great event had in fact occurred in the intervening time, and we are
now about to plunge into the current of some of the minor incidents of
the struggle itself.

Ten years are a century in the history of a perfectly new settlement.
The changes they produce are even surprising, though in ordinary cases
they do not suffice to erase the signs of a recent origin. The forest
is opened, and the light of day admitted, it is true; but its remains
are still to be seen in multitudes of unsightly stumps, dead standing
trees, and ill-looking stubs. These vestiges of the savage state
usually remain a quarter of a century; in certain region they are to be
found for even more than twice that period. All this, however, had
captain Willoughby escaped, in consequence of limiting his clearing, in
a great measure, to that which had been made by the beavers, and from
which time and natural decay had, long before his arrival, removed
every ungainly object. It is true, here and there a few acres had been