by the hollow, and reconnoitre."

"It needs not," said Roland, who now seeing the cabin of which they were
in search close at hand, and perceiving that Peter's uneasiness had
subsided, dismissed his own as being groundless. But notwithstanding, he
thought proper, as Nathan advanced, to ride forward himself, and inspect
the condition of the building, in which he was about to commit the safety
of the being he held most dear, and on whose account, only, he felt the
thousand anxieties and terrors he never could have otherwise experienced.

The building was a low cabin of logs, standing, as it seemed, on the
verge of an abyss, in which the river could be heard rushing
tumultuously, as if among rocks and other obstructions. It was one of
those double cabins so frequently found in the west; that is to say, it
consisted of two separate cots, or wings, standing a little distance
apart, but united by a common roof; which thus afforded shelter to the
open hall, or passage, between them; while the roof, being continued also
from the eaves, both before and behind, in pent-house fashion, it allowed
space for wide porches, in which, and in the open passage, the summer
traveller, resting in such a cabin, will almost always find the most
agreeable quarters.

How little soever of common wisdom and discretion the fate of the
builders might have shown them to possess, they had not forgotten to
provide their solitary dwelling with such defences as were common to all
others in the land at that period. A line of palisades, carelessly and
feebly constructed indeed, but perhaps sufficient for the purpose
intended, enclosed the ground on which the cabin stood; and this being
placed directly in the centre, and joining the palisades at the sides,
thus divided the enclosure into two little yards, one in front, the other
in the rear, in which was space sufficient for horses and cattle, as well
as for the garrison, when called to repel assailants. The space behind
extended to the verge of the river-bank, which, falling down a sheer
precipice of forty or fifty feet, required no defence of stakes, and
seemed never to have been provided with them; while that in front
circumscribed a portion of a cleared field entirely destitute of trees,
and almost of bushes.

Such had been the original plan and condition of a fortified
private-dwelling, a favourable specimen, perhaps, of the _family-forts_
of the day, and which, manned by five or six active and cour