Many a day has passed since such a sight hath been
witnessed in this vale; but my eye greatly deceives me, or yonder cometh
one ready to ask for hospitality, and, peradventure, for Christian and
brotherly communion."
The sight of the aged emigrant had not deceived him. One, who appeared
a wayworn and weary traveller, had indeed ridden out of the forest, at a
point where a path, that was easier to be traced by the blazed trees
that lay along its route, than by any marks on the earth itself, issued
into the cleared land. The progress of the stranger had, at first, been
so wary and slow, as to bear the manner of exceeding and mysterious
caution. The blind road, along which he must have ridden not only far
but hard, or night had certainly overtaken him in the woods, led to one
of the distant settlements that lay near to the fertile banks of the
Connecticut. Few ever followed its windings, but they who had especial
affairs, or extraordinary communion, in the way of religious
friendships, with the proprietors of the Wish-Ton-Wish, as, in
commemoration of the first bird that had been seen by the emigrants, the
valley of the Heathcotes was called.
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