First, it is clear, from the narrative, that Talbot was a gentleman of rank in the old Province,--for he was kinsman to the Lord Proprietary; and there is one of the oldest counties of Maryland that bears the name of his family,--perhaps called so in honor of himself. Then he kept his hawks, which showed him to be a man of condition, and fond of the noble sport which figures so gracefully in the annals of Chivalry. Secondly, this hawking carries the period of the story back to the time of one of the early Lords Baltimore; for falconry was not common in the eighteenth century: and yet the date could not have been much earlier than that century, because the hawks had been seen by old persons of the last generation somewhere about the period of our Revolution; and this bird does not live much over a hundred years. So we fix a date not far from sixteen hundred and eighty for Talbot's sojourn on the river. Thirdly, the crime for which he was outlawed could scarcely have been a mean felony, perpetrated for gain, but more likely some act of passion,--a homicide, probably, provoked by a quarrel, and enacted in hot blood. This Talbot was too well conditioned for a sordid crime; and his flight to the wilderness and his abode there would seem to infer a man of strong purpose and self-reliance. And, lastly, as he must have had friends and confederates on the frontier, to aid him in his concealment, and to screen him from the pursuit of the government officers, and, moreover, had made himself acceptable to the Indians, to whose power he had committed himself, we may conclude that he possessed some winning points of character; and I therefore assume him to have been of a brave, frank, and generous nature, capable of attracting partisans and enlisting the sympathies and service of bold men for his personal defence. So, with the help of a little obvious speculation, founded upon the circumstantial evidence, we weave the network of quite a natural story of Talbot; and our meagre tradition takes on the form, and something of the substance, of an intelligible incident. CHAPTER II. STRANGE REVELATIONS. At this point I leave the hero of my narrative for a while, in order that I may open another chapter. Many years elapsed, during which the tradition remained in this unsatisfactory state, and I had given up all hope of further elucidation of it, when an accidental discovery brought me once more upon the track of inquiry.