But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass.The western walls of it are formed by the precipices of Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bare as the great slides of Dix which glisten in the sun like silver, but rough and repelling, and consequently alluring.I have a great desire to scale them.I have always had an unreasonable wish to explore the rough summit of this crabbed hill, which is too broken and jagged for pleasure and not high enough for glory.This desire was stimulated by a legend related by our guide that night in the Mud Pond cabin.The guide had never been through the pass before;although he was familiar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Top in the winter in pursuit of the sable.The story he told doesn't amount to much, none of the guides' stories do, faithfully reported, and I should not have believed it if I had not had a good deal of leisure on my hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and Imay say in rather of a starved condition as to any romance in this region.
The guide said then--and he mentioned it casually, in reply to our inquiries about ascending the mountain--that there was a cave high up among the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top.He scarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctance gave us any particulars about it.I always admire this art by which the accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsible for its improbability.If this is well managed, the listener is always eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, and always resents the assumed reservations and doubts of the latter.
There were strange reports about this cave when the old guide was a boy, and even then its very existence had become legendary.Nobody knew exactly where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been inhabited.Hunters in the forests south of Dix had seen a light late at night twinkling through the trees high up the mountain, and now and then a ruddy glare as from the flaring-up of a furnace.Settlers were few in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were well known.If the cave was inhabited, it must be by strangers, and by men who had some secret purpose in seeking this seclusion and eluding observation.If suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or if any such landed from the steamers on the shore of Lake Champlain, it was impossible to 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 from the governor's pardon, which might have difficulty in finding him in the craggy bosom of Nipple Top!
This gang of men--there is some doubt whether they were accompanied by women--gave little evidence in their appearance of being escaped criminals or expectant kings.Their movements were mysterious but not necessarily violent.If their occupation could have been discovered, that would have furnished a clew to their true character.