The
name of the chief actor coincided with that of the tradition; the
time, that of James the Second, conformed pretty nearly to my
conjecture derived from the age of the hawks; and the nature of the
crime was what I had imagined. There was just enough in this brief
revelation to revive the desire for further investigation. But where
was the search to be made? No history that I was aware of, no sketch
of our early time that I had ever seen, nothing in print was known to
be in existence that could furnish a clue to the story of the
Outlaw's Cave.
And here the matter rested again for some years. But after this
lapse, chance brought me upon the highway of further development,
which led me in due time to a strange realization of the old proverb
that "Murder will out,"--though, in this case, its discovery could
bring no other retribution than the settlement of an historical
doubt, and give some posthumous fame to the subject of the
disclosure.
In the month of May, 1836, I had a motive and an opportunity to make
a visit to the County of St. Mary's. I had been looking into the
histories of our early Maryland settlement, as they are recounted in
the pages of Bozman, Chalmers, and Grahame, and found there some
inducements to persuade me to make an exploration of the whereabouts
of the old city which was planted near the Potomac by our first
pilgrims.
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