o
identify them with these invaders who were never seen. Their not
being seen did not, however, prevent the growth of the belief in their
existence. Little indications and rumors, each trivial in itself, became
a mass of testimony that could not be disposed of because of its very
indefiniteness, but which appealed strongly to man's noblest faculty,
his imagination, or credulity.

The cave existed; and it was inhabited by men who came and went on
mysterious errands, and transacted their business by night. What this
band of adventurers or desperadoes lived on, how they conveyed their
food through the trackless woods to their high eyrie, and what could
induce men to seek such a retreat, were questions discussed, but never
settled. They might be banditti; but there was nothing to plunder in
these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies and raids either in the
settlements of the hills or the distant lake shore were unknown. In
another age, these might have been hermits, holy men who had retired
from the world to feed the vanity of their godliness in a spot where
they were subject neither to interruption nor comparison; they would
have had a shrine in the cave, and an image of the Blessed Virgin, with
a lamp always burning before it and sending out its mellow light over
the savage waste. A more probable notion was that they were romantic
Frenchmen who had grow weary of vice and refinement together,--possibly
princes, expectants of the throne, Bourbon remainders, named Williams or
otherwise, unhatched eggs, so to speak, of kings, who had withdrawn out
of observation to wait for the next turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do
such things. If they were not Frenchmen, they might be honest-thieves or
criminals, escaped from justice or from the friendly state-prison of New
York. This last supposition was, however, more violent than the others,
or seems so to us in this day of grace. For what well-brought-up New
York criminal would be so insane as to run away from his political
friends the keepers, from the easily had companionship of his pals
outside, and from the society of his criminal lawyer, and, in short, to
put himself into the depths of a wilderness out of which escape, when
escape was desired, is a good deal more difficult than it is out of the
swarming jails of the Empire State? Besides, how foolish for a man, if
he were a really hardened and professional criminal, having established
connections and a regular business, to run away