MOHAWKS A Novel BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," "ISHMAEL," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET AND ST. BRIDE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C. [_All rights reserved_] LONDON: ROBSON AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAP. PAGE I. "ONE THAT DOTH WEAR HIMSELF AWAY IN LONENESS" 1 II. "A TEDIOUS ROAD THE WEARY WRETCH RETURNS" 40 III. "AND TO THE VIEWLESS SHADES HER SPIRIT FLED" 54 IV. "HOW BRIGHT SHE WAS, HOW LOVELY DID SHE SHOW!" 75 V. "I HAVE FORGOT WHAT LOVE AND LOVING MEANT" 110 VI. "YET WOULD I WISH TO LOVE, LIVE, DIE WITH THEE" 124 VII. "HOW SWEET AND INNOCENT'S THE COUNTRY MAID!" 144 VIII. "HE SPRINGS TO VENGEANCE WITH AN EAGER PACE" 177 IX. "BY VOW OBLIGED, BY PASSION LED 212 X. "AND SUDDENLY, SWEETLY, MY HEART BEAT STRONGER" 280 XI. "AND BEAUTY DRAWS US WITH A SINGLE HAIR" 290 XII. "LOVE IN THESE LABYRINTHS HIS SLAVES DETAINS" 304 MOHAWKS CHAPTER I. "ONE THAT DOTH WEAR HIMSELF AWAY IN LONENESS." "Nothing?" asked the farmer, standing upon a heathery knoll, with his gun under his arm, and his two clever spaniels, Nell and Beauty, crouched dutifully at his feet. "Nothing but this," answered the farmer's man, holding up a bundle of papers--pamphlets and manuscripts--dirty, crumpled, worn as if with much carrying to and fro over the face of the earth. They were tied up in a ragged old cotton handkerchief, and they had been carried in the breast-pocket of yonder wayfarer who lay stark and stiff, with his dead face staring up at the bright blue sky of early morning. A little child, a mere baby, lay asleep beside him, nestling against the arm that would never again shelter or defend her. It was a bright clear morning late in September, just one hundred and seventy-seven years ago, the year of the battle of Malplaquet, and the earth was so much the younger and fairer by all those years--innocent of railroads, speculating builders, gasworks, dust-destructors, sewage-farms, and telephones--a primitive world, almost in the infancy of civilisation as it seems to us, looking back upon those slow-pacing days from this age of improvement, invention, transmutation, and general enlightenment.