Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker

Sarsefield continues his dialogue-bound narrative of events—he describes the conflict between the whites and the “marauders” (228) where Edgar’s uncle was killed, and his musket taken by the Native Americans. Sarsefield’s party, while searching for “savages” and Edgar, heard shots at Queen Mab’s hut. This led to the first time Sarsefield presumed Edgar was dead thirty miles from home.

While tending to the captive girl’s health, Sarsefield questions her and some of her story seems to corroborate Edgar’s narrative in the cave, but her recollection of events in the hut are “incoherent” (230). Sarsefield thinks the same man killed both Edgar and his uncle but realizes he didn’t check Edgar for a pulse or other signs of life and returns to the hut. There, he discovers that Edgar had “risen from the dead” and wandering the wilderness. The search is reinvigorated by signs of Edgar from the “good woman” (mentioned in Chapter 20), and Sarsefield extinguishes the fire that Edgar finds in the Selby house.

Their next crossing is when Sarsefield mistakes Edgar for a “foe” by the river, and Edgar’s shot left a hole in his sleeve. Sarsefield believes the foe is dead but finds Edgar’s gun and then concludes it was not a foe after all.