The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

  CHAPTER I.

  A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS.

  In the Jacobite army that followed Prince Charlie and shared defeat withhim at Culloden in 1746, were some who escaped hanging at Carlisle orelsewhere by fleeing to Scottish ports and obtaining passage over thewater. A few, like the Young Chevalier himself, fled to the continent ofEurope; but some crossed the ocean and made new lives for themselves inVirginia, Pennsylvania, and other provinces. Two of these refugees,tarrying not in the thickly settled strip of country along the Atlanticcoast, but pushing at once to the backwoods of Pennsylvania, were HughMercer, the young surgeon destined to die gloriously as an Americangeneral thirty years later, and Alexander Wetheral, one of the fewEnglishmen who had rallied to the Stuart standard at its last unfurling.From Philadelphia, where they disembarked from the vessel that hadbrought them from Leith, straight westward through Lancaster and acrossthe Susquehanna, the two young men made a journey which, thanks to theprivations they had to endure, was a good first lesson in the school ofwilderness life.

  They arrived one evening at the wigwams of a Shawnee village on theverge of a beaver pond, and were received in so friendly a manner by theIndians that Wetheral decided to live for a time among them. Mercer,joined by some other enterprising newcomers from the old country, wentfarther westward; but the two friends were destined to meet often again.Wetheral built himself a hut near the Indian village and indulged to thefull his love of hunting, fishing, and roaming the silent forest. Oftenhe saw other white men, for already the Scotch and Irish and English hadbegun to build their cabins and to clear small fields on both sides ofthe Susquehanna, across which river there were ferries at a fewinfantile settlements. By 1750 so many other English and Scotch, some ofthe men having their wives with them, had put up log cabins nearWetheral's, and had cleared ground for farming all around, that thesettlement merited a name, and took that of Carlisle. The Indians,succumbing to the inevitable, betook themselves elsewhere.

  Wetheral, with all his love for the free life of the woods, welcomedcivilization, for he was of gentle birth and of what passed in thosedays as good education, and had a taste for learning. His life was nowmore diversified. He not only hunted and fished, but also cultivated afew acres, and during a part of each year he did the duties ofschoolmaster to the settlement,--for the Scotch-Irish, like the Puritansof New England, went in for book-learning. He sent the skins obtained byhim in the chase to Philadelphia by pack-horse, and sometimes, for thesake of variety, accompanied them, passing, on the way, through the beltof country industriously tilled by the growing German Protestantpopulation, and through that occupied by Quakers and other English, inthe immediate vicinity of Philadelphia. In his own neighborhood thepeople of the best manners and information were Presbyterians, and incourse of time he came to count himself as one of them, less fromreligious ideas than from a natural wish to associate himself with therespectable and lettered element; for, much as he loved the roaming lifeof the hunter, he was repelled by the coarseness and violence and illliving of a certain class of nomadic frontiersmen who doubtless had goodreason to keep their distance from politer communities.

  He was one of the Pennsylvanians who went as pioneers in Braddock'sfatal expedition, and on that he saw Colonel Washington. He marched withhis old friend, Hugh Mercer, in the battalion of three hundred menunder Col. John Armstrong, of Carlisle, in 1756, from Fort Shirley tothe Indian town of Kittanning, which the troops destroyed after killingmost of its hostile inhabitants. During a part of that year and of thenext, he served in the provincial garrison at Fort Augusta, far northfrom Carlisle, and east of the Susquehanna.

  Returning home when his period of enlistment was up, he stopped at thelarge house of a prosperous English settler possessing part of a fineisland in the Susquehanna, fell in love with one of the settler'sdaughters, prolonged his visit two weeks, proposed marriage to thedaughter, was accepted, spoke to her father, was by him violentlyrejected and subsequently ejected, ran away with the girl, or ratherpaddled away, for the means of locomotion in this elopement was anIndian canoe, and was married in the settlement of Paxton, near JohnHarris's ferry, by the Reverend John Elder.

  As the young wife, who was kind of heart and wise of head, desired to benear the roof whence she had fled, that a reconciliation might be themore easily attempted, Wetheral traded off his field and cabin atCarlisle, returned northward across the Kitocktinning mountains to theneighborhood of his wife's former home, built a log house of two roomsand a loft, near the left bank of the Juniata, a few miles above thatriver's junction with the Susquehanna, and there, in the month ofApril, 1758, he became the father of Richard Wetheral, the hero of thisbook.

  The child's arrival was aided by his maternal grandmother, who hadalready melted towards the young couple, although her husband still heldout against them. The surgeon whom Mr. Wetheral had summoned from FortHunter, which the settlers were garrisoning because of signs of anIndian outbreak, arrived too late to do more than pronounce the boy ahealthy specimen and predict the speedy recovery of the mother, who wasindeed of sturdy stock. The household whose different members theobservant infant soon began to discriminate consisted of the father,whose dauntless and hearty character has already been slightlyindicated; the mother, who was comely and strong in nature as in faceand form; a younger sister of the mother's, and a raw but ready youthhired by the father to aid in working the little rude farm and inprotecting the family from any of the now rampant Indians who mightthreaten it. For Mr. Wetheral's house was so near Fort Hunter that hechose to stay and occupy it rather than to take refuge within thestockade of the fort, which latter course was followed by many settlersof the near-by valleys when the Indian alarm came in the month of ourhero's birth.

  But the Wetherals were not molested by any of the Indians that roamedthe woods in small parties, in quest of the scalps of palefaces, duringthe spring and summer of 1758. Often, though, there came news by horseand canoe, and carried from settlement to settlement, from farm-cabin tofarm-cabin, of frequent depredations: how in York County Robert Buck waskilled and scalped at Jamieson's house and all the rest of its dwellerswere carried away; how, near at home, in Sherman's Valley, a woman washorribly killed and scalped; how, in July, Captain Craig, riding aboutseven miles from Harris's Ferry, was suddenly struck in the face by atomahawk thrown from ambush, put spurs to his horse and fled from hisyelling savage assailants, escaping by sheer speed of his animal, theblood flowing from the huge gash cut in his cheek by the well-aimedhatchet; how fared the soldiers who set off in search and pursuit of thered-faced enemy, and who were none other than the hardiest of thesettlers themselves, accustomed to shoot Indians or bear, to burn outrattlesnake nests, or to farm the ill-cleared land, as occasion mightrequire.

  Thus the talk to which Dick Wetheral (for it was early settled that heshould be called Richard, a favorite name in his mother's family) becameaccustomed, as soon as he knew what any talk meant, was of frightfulperils and daring achievements. Such talk continued throughout all hischildhood, though after 1758 the Indians were peaceful towards centralPennsylvania until 1763.

  The boy early showed an adventurous disposition. His first explorations,conducted on all-fours, were confined to the two rooms on the groundfloor of the house, but at that stage of his career a journey to the endof the kitchen from the extremity of the other apartment, which servedas parlor and principal bedroom, was one of length and incident. Newterritory was opened to him to roam, on that eventful day when his auntcarried him up the ladder to the loft, which was divided by a partitioninto two rude sleeping-chambers, and in which he derived as great joyfrom being set at large as Alexander would have drawn from the discoveryof a new world to conquer.

  When the boy was in his second year, his world underwent a vastenlargement. This came about through his father's building a house towhich the original log cabin of his birth became merely the rear wing.The new structure, made of logs covered with rough-sawn planks, destinedto be annually whitewashed, provided two rooms on the ground floo
r, andtwo bed-chambers overhead. One of these lower rooms communicated by adoor with the original log building, of which the ground floor wastransformed, by the removal of the partition, into one large kitchen.From the new parlor a flight of stairs led to the room above, whence alow door and a few descending steps gave entrance to the old loft, sothat the young explorer, by dint of long exertion, could reach thesecond story unaided. And now his days were full of experiences. Fromhis favorite spot near the kitchen fireplace, to the farthest corner ofthe spare bedroom down-stairs, by way of the parlor (which wasinvariably called "the room"), was a trip sufficient for ordinary days.But in times of extraordinary energy and ambition, the crawling Dickwould make the grand tour up the stairs and through the foursecond-story apartments, which seemed countless in number, and each awhole province in itself. So long ago was yesterday from to-day, at thattime of his life, that this immense journey was full of novelty to himat each repetition, the adventures of one journey having been forgottenbefore another could be undertaken. And these adventures were asnumerous as befell Christian in his Pilgrim's Progress. There were darkcorners, queer-looking articles of furniture seemingly with life andexpression, shadows of strange shapes, that made the young travellerpause and hold his breath and half turn back, until reassured by thesound of his aunt's voice calling to the chickens in the kitchen yard,his father or the hired man sharpening his sickle or calling to theplow-horse in the field beyond, or--most welcome and reassuring ofall--his mother singing at her work in the rooms below.

  What a great evening was that when the little indoor explorer found afellow traveller! Dick was already in bed and asleep, having retiredsomewhat against his will, as he would have preferred to remain up untilhis father's return from a horseback journey on business down the river.When he was awakened by his mother, on whose face he saw a smile thatpromised something pleasant, he blinked once or twice in thecandle-light, and looked eagerly around. He saw his father standing nearhis mother, and between the two a great black head whose long jaws wereopen in a kind of merry grin of good-fellowship, and from between whosewhite teeth protruded a red tongue that evinced an impulse to meet thewondering Dickie's face half way. The boy gazed for a moment, then threwout his hands towards the beaming face of the newcomer, and screamedwith gleeful laughter. A moment later the dog was licking theyoungster's face, while Dick, still laughing, was burying his fingers inthe animal's shaggy black coat. Thereafter, the boy Dick was attended onall his expeditions by the dog Rover, and never were two more devotedcomrades. The dog was a mixture of Scotch collie and black spaniel, and,though in size between those two breeds, looked a huge animal from theview-point of two years. If Dick required less than the usual grown-upassistance in learning to walk, it was because Rover was of just thesize to serve as a support.

  Dick now began to make excursions outdoors. Of course he had alreadyspent much time in the open air, but always under the eye of some memberof the household. His previous travels from the house had, by thisguardianship, been robbed of the zest of adventure. The first tripsabroad that he made independently were clandestine. Thus, one afternoonwhen the men were in the fields, and his aunt was busy tracing figuresin the fresh sand that had been laid on the parlor floor, he availedhimself of his mother's preoccupation over her spinning-wheel to sallyforth from the kitchen door with no other company than Rover. Hismother, humming a tune while she span, did not at first notice thesilence in that part of the kitchen where Dick's presence was usuallymanifest to the ear. At last, the bark of Rover, coming with a note ofalarm from a distance of several rods beyond the kitchen door, rousedher to a sense of the boy's absence. With wildly beating heart she ranout, and towards the sound, which came from beyond the fruit-trees andwild grapevines that bounded the kitchen yard. She soon saw that Rover'scall for help had reason. Little Dick was leaning over the edge of adeep spring, staring with amusement at his own image in the clearshaded water. Who knows but the nymphs of the spring would have drawnhim in, as Hylas was drawn, had not the mother arrived at that moment,for the boy was reaching out to grasp the face in the water when shecaught him by the waist?

  Another time, it was not the warning bark of Rover, but the merestaccident, that rescued the boy from a situation as perilous. His aunt,going into the little barn near the house, to look for eggs, saw himsitting directly under one of the plow-horses in a stall, watching withinterest the movements of the animal's fore-feet, as they regularlypawed the ground. On being taken back to the house, little Dick was madeto understand that solitary expeditions were forbidden, and in so sharpa manner that thereafter he rarely violated orders. He was carefullywatched against the recurrence of temptation to travel. A constantsource of terror to the mother, on Dick's account, was the nearness ofthe river, whose bed lay a few rods to the south, not far from the footof a steep bank which fell from the piece of ground on which the housestood. This piece of ground was surrounded by a rude fence, and the boyspent many a longing quarter of an hour in looking through the rails atthe river that flowed gently, with constant murmur, below. Between theriver and the bank ran what some called a road, what may have formerlybeen an Indian trail, and what in Dick's time was really but a roughpath for horses. It led from the farms farther back up the river, behindthe azure mountains at the west, down to the more thickly settledcountry beyond the mountains at the east, and afar it joined the road toLancaster and Philadelphia.

  The boy's parents early taught him his letters, for the elder Wetheralhad brought a few books with his meagre baggage from the old country,and had since acquired, from some of the settlers of the best class, afew more, two by dying bequest, two by gift, and four or five bypurchase and trade. With the contents of some of these, Dick firstbecame acquainted through his father's reading aloud on Sundays andrainy days, before the kitchen fire. One of these was Capt. John Smith'saccount of his marvellous achievements. Strangely enough, or rathernaturally enough, the parts of this book that most interested Dick werenot where Smith told of his adventures with Indians in America, butwhere he related his doings in Europe; for Indians and primitivesurroundings were familiar matters to Dick, whereas accounts of the oldworld had for him all that charm which a boy reared in the midst ofcivilization finds in pictures of wilderness life. A few of the bookswere illustrated with prints, which the boy studied by the hour. One ofthese books was an odd volume of a history of the world, and containedmainly that part which related to France. It had crude engravings of twoor three palaces, a few kings, three or four queens, a Catholic killinga Huguenot in front of the Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, a royalhunt, and the Pont Neuf, backed by the towers of Notre Dame and flankedby buildings along the Seine. These rough pictures, thanks to somemysterious cause or other, exercised on little Dick a potentfascination.

  "Who is that?" he asked his mother one day, pointing to a wood-cut thatpurported to portray a human being, as he lay sprawling on the floor,his favorite book opened out before him.

  "That is a king," replied his mother, looking down from her sewing. Themother and the boy were alone in the kitchen.

  "King David?"

  "No; a king of France."

  "King George?"

  "No; King George is king of England, where your father came from, andyour grandfather, and of America, where we are. France is anothercountry."

  "Where does this king live?" pointing to the wood-cut.

  "He is dead now. He died long ago. He lived in a city called Paris, inthe country called France."

  "Is that a house?" The boy had turned to a supposed picture of theLouvre.

  "Yes, a great, big house, a palace they call it, because it belongs tothe king."

  "Did it belong to that king?"

  "Yes, I think so. It is in the city where I told you that king lived,Paris."

  "Is this house in that city, too?" He indicated a building in thepicture that showed the Pont Neuf.

  "Yes." The mother laid down her sewing and stooped beside the boy. "Andso is this house in Paris. And this. And this, too. All these h
ouses arein Paris."

  "Do all these people live there, the pretty ladies and soldiers?"

  "They all did, I suppose."

  "How many houses are there in Paris?"

  "Oh, a great many thousand."

  "More than there are in Carlisle?"

  "Oh, yes! A hundred times more."

  "Where is Paris?"

  "Oh, very, very far away."

  "Which way?"

  "Why, that way, I think." She pointed towards the east. "Your father cantell you exactly, when he comes in."

  "How far away is it? As far as Carlisle?"

  "Much farther than that. Your father can tell you."

  "As far as Lancaster?"

  "Oh, farther. Farther than Philadelphia. Away across land and water."

  "As far away as the farthest mountains yonder, the blue ones against thesky?" He had risen from the floor, and he pointed eastward through theopen kitchen doorway.

  "Oh, yes. If you went clear across those mountains, you wouldn't be nearParis yet."

  "But if I went on and on, far enough, I'd get to Paris at last, wouldn'tI?"

  "Yes, at last," said the mother, smiling, and drawing the boy to her andkissing him, impelled by the mere thought of the separation his querysuggested to the fancy.

  When she returned to her sewing, he continued looking for awhile towardsthe distant east, then resumed his study of the pictures. At supper thatevening he made his father laugh by asking which way a body should go,to get to Paris. His mother explained how his curiosity had beenaroused. His father, laughing again, and winking at the mother, said:

  "Why, boy, a body would have to start by the road that goes down theriver to your grandfather's, that's certain. And if a body travelledlong enough, and never lost his way, yes, he would surely get to Parisat the end."

  "Would he be very tired when he got there?"

  "Very tired, indeed, if he didn't rest several times on the way,"replied Wetheral, Senior, keeping up the joke.

  The next afternoon Dick's mother, having baked some cakes of a kind thatshe knew her husband liked hot, sent some of them by the boy to the twomen in the field, which was not far from the house but was partly hiddentherefrom by the barn and out-buildings and some fruit-trees. Dick,being now four years old, had often gone to the fields with his aunt ormother when water or food had been carried out to the men at work, andas the way did not lie near the river, there seemed no risk in sendinghim now alone. When, after due time, he did not return to the house, thetwo women supposed the men had kept him with them in the field. But thiswas not the case. Mr. Wetheral and the hired man, having seen littleDick tripping back towards the house, ate the cakes in the shade of atree and returned with sickles to their attack on the wheat, with nothought of the boy but that he was now safe home. When they returned inthe evening for supper, their surprise in not finding him there wasreciprocated by that of the women at his not coming back with the men.The dog, which had accompanied him to the field and from it, also wasmissing. The men immediately started in search.

  The boy by this time was some distance away. He had crawled through thefence, near the barn, descended the declivity to the horse-path by theriver, turned his face eastward, and trudged resolutely on with Rover athis heels. It was some time before he would admit to himself that he wasbecoming a little tired, and that the stones and twigs in the way werebruising his bare feet perceptibly. At last he conceded himself a shortrest, and, following Rover's example, leaned over where the bank was lowand the river shallow, and drank. He was soon up again and goingforward, forgetful of his former fatigue, and heedless that the sunbehind him was nearing the horizon. So long a time is a day to a child!In the afternoon the doings of the morning are of the dim past, or areforgotten, while the evening is yet far away, and countless things maybe done before the night comes. He could surely reach those farthestblue mountains in an hour or so, and a little walking thereafter mustbring him to this strange, wonderful Paris, so entirely different fromhis own home and from his grandfather's place down the river. He wouldhave to pass his grandfather's place, by the way, on his walk, and itnever occurred to him how long a time it would take him to reach merelyhis grandfather's, so vague was his recollection of his former visitsthere. He could see Paris, the king and the palaces and the soldiers andthe beautiful ladies and the great bridge, and return home bysupper-time; and he would have so many things to tell that his fatherand mother would make his punishment a light one, or might even forgetto punish him at all.

  He came to a place where the path divided. After a moment's hesitation,he took the wider branch, which carried him from the riverside, straightinto the unbroken woods. Presently this path ended abruptly, so thatthere was nothing before him but thick undergrowth. Rather than retracehis steps to reach the branch that he had rejected, which must be theone he ought to have taken, he started to reach it directly through thewoods, moving towards where he thought it should be. He made his waycautiously, lest he might tread on some rattlesnake or other serpent,which could not be as easily seen in the dimness of the forest as in thepath by the river. That dimness increased apace, and still he had notfound the path. At last the boy paused, perplexed and a little appalled.The chill of evening came on. He was very tired now. He began to thinkof Indians, bears, and other savage things with whose existence in theneighborhood he was well acquainted, and of monsters of which he hadheard from his parents, such as giants, lions, and other horriblethings. Wherever his view lost itself in the dark arches of the trees,he imagined mysterious and frightful creatures were concealed, ready toappear at any moment. He summoned heart, and trudged on again. Finallyit became so dark that he feared to proceed lest he might, at any step,land in a nest of snakes. Rover stopped close beside him, and looked inhis face, as if for counsel. He put his arm around the dog's neck, andthe two together sank down on some mossy turf at the foot of a tree.Rover curled up with his chin on the boy's shoulder, and Dick lay withhis head on the dog's shaggy side. Dick would have cried, had hisimpulse ruled, but he was already too proud to make such an exhibitionof weakness in the presence of Rover. Thus they lay while night fell.Now and then Rover raised his head a little and listened. The boy wastoo much overcome by his situation to think of what might ultimatelybefall. He could only wish, with an intensity as keen as could beendured, that he was home by his mother's side in the candle-litkitchen, and nestle closer to the dog. The insects of the forest kept upan ear-piercing chorus of chirps, whirrs, and calls. At last realitymelted imperceptibly into dreams, in which the boy was again toilingforward on the road to Paris. A terrible noise broke in upon his dream.Starting up, he found it was only the barking of Rover, a bark ofeagerness and joy rather than of alarm or threat. A faint lightapproached slowly through the trees. It resolved itself at last into alantern, and the huge dark object beside it became a man, who calledout, as he came rapidly nearer:

  "Dick, lad, are you there with the dog?"

  A minute later the boy was in the arms of his father, who was stridingback towards the path, while Rover ran yelping gleefully before andbehind and on every side.

  How short was the journey back to the house, compared with that whichDick had made from it in the afternoon! Almost before Dick had finishedhis explanation to his father, in somewhat incoherent speeches and arather unsteady voice, they beheld the kitchen's open door, in which themother stood waiting. She caught the boy in her arms, covered his facewith kisses and tears, and declared he should never go out of her sightagain.

  "But I'll go some day, when I'm grown up," said little Dick, as he satfilling himself with supper a half-hour later. "I didn't know the roadto Paris was so long."

  And he didn't know his road to Paris should one day be taken with nothought of its leading him there, and how very roundabout that roadshould be.