



Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online
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THE CHAINBEARER

OR

THE LITTLEPAGE MANUSCRIPTS

BY J. FENIMORE COOPER


    "O bid our vain endeavors cease,
    Revive the just designs of Greece;
    Return in all thy simple state,
    Confirm the tale her sons relate."

    COLLINS


    NEW YORK
    JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY
    150 Worth Street, corner Mission Place

    TROW'S
    PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
    NEW YORK.


[Illustration: "She held up the trap, and I descended into the hole that
answered the purpose of a cellar."]




PREFACE.


The plot has thickened in the few short months that have intervened
since the appearance of the first portion of our Manuscripts, and
bloodshed has come to deepen the stain left on the country by the
wide-spread and bold assertion of false principles. This must long since
have been foreseen; and it is perhaps a subject of just felicitation,
that the violence which has occurred was limited to the loss of a single
life, when the chances were, and still are, that it will extend to civil
war. That portions of the community have behaved nobly under this sudden
outbreak of a lawless and unprincipled combination to rob, is
undeniable, and ought to be dwelt on with gratitude and an honest pride;
that the sense of right of much the larger portion of the country has
been deeply wounded, is equally true; that justice has been aroused, and
is at this moment speaking in tones of authority to the offenders, is
beyond contradiction;