Beadle's Pocket Library No. 114

Piney Paul, the Mountain Boy (1886) This serial adventure by T. C. Harbaugh follows the exploits of Piney Paul, a sixteen-year-old wilderness expert in the Adirondacks. Lost in the forest during a rainy March night, two rough woodsmen—Tarsus Nightwell and Simon Oldfoot—wander in bewildering circles near the Ausable River, terrified by mysterious footsteps. Nightwell strikes at what he believes is a ghost, only to pass through empty air. The "phantom" is actually Piney Paul himself, a skilled mountain boy equipped with rifle, powder-horn bugle, and buckskin garb, who frightens the giants with his uncanny dog-trot gait. Paul mentions a "lost girl" and conspirators sent by city men seeking gold. He descends into a hidden cavern beside the Ausable via vine-covered rocks, where a fire illuminates stone walls decorated with crude drawings of animals and an idyllic cottage scene—suggesting a tragic history or lost home.