* * * * *


CHAPTER I.

"Sing on! sing on! my mountain home,
The paths where erst I used to roam,
The thundering torrent lost in foam.
The snow-hill side all bathed in light,--
All, all are bursting on my sight!"



Towards night, on the twelfth of March, 1775, a richly-equipped double
sleigh, filled with a goodly company of well-dressed persons of the
different sexes, was seen descending from the eastern side of the
Green Mountains, along what may now be considered the principal
thoroughfare leading from the upper navigable portions of the Hudson
to those of the Connecticut River. The progress of the travellers was
not only slow, but extremely toilsome, as was plainly evinced by the
appearance of the reeking and jaded horses, as they labored and
floundered along the sloppy and slumping snow paths of the winter
road, which was obviously now fast resolving itself into the element
of which it was composed. Up to the previous evening, the dreary reign
of winter had continued wholly uninterrupted by the advent of his more
gentle successor in the changing rounds of the seasons; and the snowy
waste which enveloped the earth would, that morning, have apparently
withstood the rains and suns of months before yielding entirely to
their influences. But during the night there had occurred one of those
great and sudden transitions from cold to heat, which can only be