y had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as
almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and
children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments
gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already
overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which
formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.

It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort,
and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but he would have
felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common
people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time
of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held
incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker,
however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.

He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock,
listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his
walking-staff into a mound of black mold at his feet. As he turned up the
soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it
out of the vegetable mold, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk
buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time
that had elapsed since this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary
memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold
of the Indian warriors.

"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt
from it.

"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice.

Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man, seated directly
opposite him on the stump of a tree.

He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one
approach, and he was still more perplexed on observing, as well as the
gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor
Indian.

It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian garb, and had a red belt
or sash swathed round his body, but his face was neither black nor copper
color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had been
accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black
hair that stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an ax on his
shoulder.

He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.

"What are you doing in my grounds?" said the black man