rom the fact that the winter of
1616-17 was passed by Vines and his followers at this place. After a
residence of eighteen or twenty years, devoted to the interests of the
colony, the death of his patron, the transfer of the Maine plantation
to the Plymouth proprietors, together with domestic and pecuniary
misfortunes, induced Sir Richard Vines to retire to the Island of
Barbadoes, where we find him prosperous and respected, and still
mindful of the colony for which he had done and suffered so much.

Prior to his departure, and probably not altogether unconnected with
it, he had incurred the deadly hatred of John Bonyton, a young man of
the colony, who in after years was called, and is still remembered in
tradition as the "Sagamore of Saco." The cause of this hatred was in
some way connected with the disappearance of Bridget Vines, the
daughter of the governor, for whom John Bonyton had conceived a wild
and passionate attachment. Years before our story she had been
suddenly missing, to the permanent grief and dismay of the family, and
the more terrible agony of John Bonyton, who had conceived the idea
that Bridget had been sent to a European convent, to save her from his
presence. This idea he would never abandon, notwithstanding the most
solemn denials of Sir Richard, and the most womanly and sympathizing
asseverations of Mistress Vines. The youth listened with compressed
lip, his large, remarkable eye fixed with stern and searching scrutiny
upon the face of the speaker, and when he was done the reply was
always the same, "God knows if this be true; but, true or false, my
hand shall be against every man till she be found."

Accordingly we find the youth, who seems to have been possessed of
those rare and strong points of character which go to make the hero,
in constant collision with the people of the times. Moody and
revengeful, he became an alien to his father's house, and with gun and
dog passed months in the wildest regions of that wild country. With
the savage he slept in his wigwam, he threaded the forest and stood
upon the verge of the cataract; or penetrated up to the stormy regions
of the White Mountains; and anon, hushed the tumultuous beatings of
his heart in accordance with the stroke of his paddle, as he and his
red companions glided over that loveliest of lakes, Winnepisoge, or
"the smile of the Great Spirit."

There seemed no rest for the unhappy man. Unable to endure the
formalities and intermedlings