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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlemont, by W. Gilmore Simms
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Charlemont
+
+Author: W. Gilmore Simms
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6012]
+This file was first posted on October 16, 2002
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLEMONT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHARLEMONT;
+
+OR,
+
+THE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE
+
+A TALE OF KENTUCKY.
+
+BY W. GILMORE SIMMS,
+
+
+[Illustration: no caption, but contains the word Charlemont. Two men are
+riding a horse and a woman stands nearby.]
+
+
+
+
+   “Nor will I be secure.
+    In any confidence of mine own strength,
+    For such security is oft the mother
+    Of negligence, and that, the occasion
+    Of unremedy'd ruin.”
+
+            Microcosmus--THO. NABBES.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO THE HON. JAMES HALL, OF CINCINNATI:
+
+AS ONE OF THE ABLEST OF OUR LITERARY PIONEERS A GENUINE REPRESENTATIVE
+OF THE GREAT WEST;
+
+WHOSE WRITINGS EQUALLY ILLUSTRATE HER HISTORY AND GENIUS:
+
+this story of “CHARLEMONT,” and its Sequel “BEAUCHAMPE” are respectfully
+inscribed by
+
+THEIR AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+
+
+
+
+The domestic legend which follows, is founded upon actual events of
+comparatively recent occurrence in the state of Kentucky. However
+strange the facts may appear in the sequel--however in conflict with
+what are usually supposed to be the sensibilities and characteristics
+of woman--they are yet unquestionably true; most of them having been
+conclusively established, by the best testimony, before a court
+of justice. Very terrible, indeed, was the tragedy to which they
+conducted--one that startled the whole country when it took place, and
+the mournful interest of which will long be remembered. More on this
+subject need not be mentioned here. The narrative, it is hoped, will
+satisfy all the curiosity of the reader. It has been very carefully
+prepared from and according to the evidence; the art of the romancer
+being held in close subjection to the historical authorities. I have
+furnished only the necessary details which would fill such blanks in
+the story as are of domestic character; taking care that these should
+accord, in all cases, with the despotic facts. In respect to these,
+I have seldom appealed to invention. It is in the delineation and
+development of character, only, that I have made free to furnish scenes,
+such as appeared to me calculated to perfect the portraits, and the
+better to reconcile the reader to real occurrences, which, in their
+original nakedness, however unquestionably true, might incur the risk of
+being thought improbabilities.
+
+The reflections which will be most likely to arise from the perusal of
+such a history, lead us to a consideration of the social characteristics
+of the time and region, and to a consideration of the facility with
+which access to society is afforded by the manners and habits of our
+forest population. It is in all newly-settled countries, as among the
+rustic population of most nations, that the absence of the compensative
+resources of wealth leads to a singular and unreserved freedom among
+the people. In this way, society endeavors to find equivalents for those
+means of enjoyment which a wealthy people may procure from travel, from
+luxury, from the arts, and the thousand comforts of a well-provided
+homestead. The population of a frontier country, lacking such resources,
+scattered over a large territory, and meeting infrequently, feel the
+lack of social intercourse; and this lack tends to break down most
+of the barriers which a strict convention usually establishes for
+the protection, not only of sex and caste, but of its own tastes and
+prejudices. Lacking the resources of superior wealth, population, and
+civilization, the frontier people are naturally required to throw the
+doors open as widely as possible, in order to obtain that intercourse
+with their fellows which is, perhaps, the first great craving of
+humanity. As a matter of necessity, there is little discrimination
+exercised in the admission of their guests. A specious outside,
+agreeable manners, cleverness and good humor, will soon make their way
+into confidence, without requiring other guaranties for the moral of the
+stranger. The people are naturally frank and hospitable; for the simple
+reason that these qualities of character are essential for procuring
+them that intercourse which they crave. The habits are accessible, the
+restraints few, the sympathies are genial, active, easily aroused, and
+very confiding. It follows, naturally, that they are frequently wronged
+and outraged, and just as naturally that their resentments are keen,
+eager, and vindictive. The self-esteem, if not watchful, is revengeful;
+and society sanctions promptly the fierce redress--that wild justice of
+revenge--which punishes without appeal to law, with its own right hand,
+the treacherous guest who has abused the unsuspecting confidence which
+welcomed him to a seat upon the sacred hearth. In this brief portrait
+of the morale of society, upon our frontiers, you will find the materiel
+from which this story has been drawn, and its justification, as a
+correct delineation of border life in one of its more settled phases in
+the new states. The social description of Charlemont exhibits,
+perhaps, a THIRD advance in our forest civilization, from the original
+settlement.
+
+It is not less the characteristic of these regions to exhibit the
+passions and the talents of the people in equal and wonderful saliency.
+We are accordingly struck with two classes of social facts, which do not
+often arrest the attention in old communities. We see, for example, the
+most singular combination of simplicity and sagacity in the same person;
+simplicity in conventional respects, and sagacity in all that affects
+the absolute and real in life, nature and the human sensibilities. The
+rude man, easily imposed upon, in his faith, fierce as an outlaw in
+his conflicts with men, will be yet exquisitely alive to the nicest
+consciousness of woman; will as delicately appreciate her instincts and
+sensibilities, as if love and poetry had been his only tutors from the
+first, and had mainly addressed their labors to this one object of the
+higher heart, education; and in due degree with the tenderness with
+which he will regard the sex, will be the vindictive ferocity with
+which--even though no kinsman--he will pursue the offender who has dared
+to outrage them in the case of any individual. In due degree as his
+faith is easy will his revenges be extreme. In due degree as he is slow
+to suspect the wrong-doer, will be the tenacity of his pursuit when
+the offender requires punishment. He seems to throw wide his heart and
+habitation, but you must beware how you trespass upon the securities of
+either.
+
+The other is a mental characteristic which leads to frequent surprises
+among strangers from the distant cities. It consists in the wonderful
+inequality between his mental and social development. The same person
+who will be regarded as a boor in good society, will yet exhibit
+a rapidity and profundity of thought and intelligence--a depth and
+soundness of judgment--an acuteness in discrimination--a logical
+accuracy, and critical analysis, such as mere good society rarely shows,
+and such as books almost as rarely teach. There will be a deficiency
+of refinement, taste, art--all that the polished world values so
+highly--and which it seems to cherish and encourage to the partial
+repudiation of the more essential properties of intellect. However
+surprising this characteristic may appear, it may yet be easily
+accounted for by the very simplicity of a training which results in
+great directness and force of character--a frank heartiness of aim and
+object--a truthfulness of object which suffers the thoughts to turn
+neither to the right hand nor to the left, but to press forward
+decisively to the one object--a determined will, and a restless
+instinct--which, conscious of the deficiencies of wealth and position,
+is yet perpetually seeking to supply them from the resources within its
+reach. These characteristics will be found illustrated in the present
+legend, an object which it somewhat contemplates, apart from the mere
+story with which they are interwoven.
+
+A few words more in respect to our heroine, Margaret Cooper. It is our
+hope and belief, that she will be found a real character by most of our
+readers. She is drawn from the life, and with a severe regard to the
+absolute features of the original. In these days of “strong-minded
+women,” even more certainly than when the portrait was first taken, the
+identity of the sketch with its original will be sure of recognition.
+Her character and career will illustrate most of the mistakes which are
+made by that ambitious class, among the gentler sex, who are now seeking
+so earnestly to pass out from that province of humiliation to which the
+sex has been circumscribed from the first moment of recorded history.
+What she will gain by the motion, if successful, might very well be left
+to time, were it not that the proposed change in her condition threatens
+fatally some of her own and the best securities of humanity. We may
+admit, and cheerfully do so, that she might, with propriety, be allowed
+some additional legal privileges of a domestic sort. But the great
+object of attainment, which is the more serious need of the sex--her
+own more full development as a responsible being--seems mainly to depend
+upon herself, and upon self-education. The great first duty of woman
+is in her becoming the mother of men; and this duty implies her proper
+capacity for the education and training of the young. To fit her
+properly for this duty, her education should become more elevated, and
+more severe in degree with its elevation. But the argument is one of too
+grave, too intricate, and excursive a character, to be attempted here.
+It belongs to a very different connection. It is enough, in this place,
+to say that Margaret Cooper possesses just the sort of endowment to
+make a woman anxious to pass the guardian boundaries which hedge in her
+sex--her danger corresponds with her desires. Her securities, with
+such endowments, and such a nature, can only be found in a strict and
+appropriate education, such as woman seldom receives anywhere, and less,
+perhaps, in this country than in any other. To train fully the
+feminine mind, without in any degree impairing her susceptibilities and
+sensibilities, seems at once the necessity and the difficulty of the
+subject. Her very influence over man lies in her sensibilities. It will
+be to her a perilous fall from pride of place, and power, when, goaded
+by an insane ambition, in the extreme development of her mere intellect,
+she shall forfeit a single one of these securities of her sex.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SCENE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The stormy and rugged winds of March were overblown--the first fresh
+smiling days of April had come at last--the days of sunshine and shower,
+of fitful breezes, the breath of blossoms, and the newly-awakened song
+of birds. Spring was there in all the green and glory of her youth, and
+the bosom of Kentucky heaved with the prolific burden of the season. She
+had come, and her messengers were everywhere, and everywhere busy. The
+birds bore her gladsome tidings to
+
+    “Alley green,
+    Dingle or bushy dell of each wild wood,
+    And every bosky bourn from side to side--”
+
+nor were the lately-trodden and seared grasses of the forests left
+unnoted; and the humbled flower of the wayside sprang up at her summons.
+Like some loyal and devoted people, gathered to hail the approach of a
+long-exiled and well-beloved sovereign, they crowded upon the path over
+which she came, and yielded themselves with gladness at her feet. The
+mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing might be heard, and far-off
+murmurs of gratulation, rising from the distant hollows, or coming
+faintly over the hill-tops, in accents not the lees pleasing because
+they were the less distinct. That lovely presence which makes every land
+blossom, and every living thing rejoice, met, in the happy region in
+which we meet her now, a double tribute of honor and rejoicing.
+
+The “dark and bloody ground,” by which mournful epithets Kentucky was
+originally known to the Anglo-American, was dark and bloody no longer.
+The savage had disappeared from its green forests for ever, and no
+longer profaned with slaughter, and his unholy whoop of death, its broad
+and beautiful abodes. A newer race had succeeded; and the wilderness,
+fulfilling the better destinies of earth, had begun to blossom like the
+rose. Conquest had fenced in its sterile borders with a wall of fearless
+men, and peace slept everywhere in security among its green recesses.
+Stirring industry--the perpetual conqueror--made the woods resound with
+the echoes of his biting axe and ringing hammer. Smiling villages rose
+in cheerful white, in place of the crumbling and smoky cabins of
+the hunter. High and becoming purposes of social life and thoughtful
+enterprise superseded that eating and painful decay, which has
+terminated in the annihilation of the red man; and which, among every
+people, must always result from their refusal to exercise, according
+to the decree of experience, no less than Providence, their limbs and
+sinews in tasks of well-directed and continual labor.
+
+A great nation urging on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness,
+is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly
+and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and forest.
+Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence rose where the
+pines had fallen. Long and lovely vistas were opened through the dark
+and hitherto impervious thickets. The city sprang up beside the river,
+while hamlets, filled with active hope and cheerful industry, crowded
+upon the verdant hill-side, and clustered among innumerable valleys
+Grace began to seek out the homes of toil, and taste supplied their
+decorations. A purer form of religion hallowed the forest-homes of the
+red-man, while expelling for ever the rude divinities of his worship;
+and throughout the land, an advent of moral loveliness seemed
+approaching, not less grateful to the affections and the mind, than
+was the beauty of the infant April, to the eye and the heart of the
+wanderer.
+
+But something was still wanting to complete the harmonies of nature, in
+the scene upon which we are about to enter. Though the savage had for
+ever departed from its limits, the blessings of a perfect civilization
+were not yet secured to the new and flourishing regions of Kentucky.
+Its morals were still in that fermenting condition which invariably
+distinguishes the settlement of every new country by a various and
+foreign people. At the distant period of which we write, the population
+of Kentucky had not yet become sufficiently stationary to have made
+their domestic gods secure, or to have fixed the proper lines and limits
+regulating social intercourse and attaching precise standards to human
+conduct. The habits and passions of the first settlers--those fearless
+pioneers who had struggled foot to foot with the Indian, and lived in
+a kindred state of barbarity with him, had not yet ceased to have
+influence over the numerous race which followed them. That moral amalgam
+which we call society, and which recognises a mutual and perfectly equal
+condition of dependence, and a common necessity, as the great cementing
+principles of the human family, had not yet taken place; and it was
+still too much the custom, in that otherwise lovely region, for the wild
+man to revenge his own wrong, and the strong man to commit a greater
+with impunity. The repose of social order was not yet secured to the
+great mass, covering with its wing, as with a sky that never knew a
+cloud, the sweet homes and secure possessions of the unwarlike. The
+fierce robber sometimes smote the peaceful traveler upon the highway,
+and the wily assassin of reputation, within the limits of the city
+barrier, not unfrequently plucked the sweetest rose that ever adorned
+the virgin bosom of innocence, and triumphed, without censure, in the
+unhallowed spoliation.
+
+But sometimes there came an avenger;--and the highway robber fell before
+the unexpected patriot; and the virgin was avenged by the yet beardless
+hero, for the wrong of her cruel seducer. The story which we have to
+tell, is of times and of actions such as these. It is a melancholy
+narrative--the more melancholy as it is most certainly true. It will not
+be told in vain, if the crime which it describes in proper colors, and
+the vengeance by which it was followed, and which it equally records,
+shall secure the innocent from harm, and discourage the incipient
+wrongdoer from his base designs.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE TRAVELLERS.
+
+
+
+
+
+Let the traveller stand with us on the top of this rugged eminence, and
+look down upon the scene below. Around us, the hills gather in groups
+on every side, a family cluster, each of which wears the same general
+likeness to that on which we stand, yet there is no monotony in their
+aspect. The axe has not yet deprived them of a single tree, and they
+rise up, covered with the honored growth of a thousand summers. But they
+seem not half so venerable. They wear, in this invigorating season,
+all the green, fresh features of youth and spring. The leaves cover the
+rugged Limbs which sustain them, with so much ease and grace, as if for
+the first time they were so green and glossy, and as if the impression
+should be made more certain and complete, the gusty wind of March has
+scattered abroad and borne afar, all the yellow garments of the
+vanished winter. The wild flowers begin to flaunt their blue and crimson
+draperies about us, as if conscious that they are borne upon the bosom
+of undecaying beauty; and the spot so marked and hallowed by each
+charming variety of bud and blossom, would seem to have been a selected
+dwelling for the queenly Spring herself.
+
+Man, mindful of those tastes and sensibilities which in great part
+constitute his claim to superiority over the brute, has not been
+indifferent to the beauties of the place. In the winding hollows of
+these hills, beginning at our feet, you see the first signs of as lovely
+a little hamlet as ever promised peace to the weary and the discontent.
+This is the village of Charlemont.
+
+A dozen snug and smiling cottages seem to have been dropped in this
+natural cup, as if by a spell of magic. They appear, each of them, to
+fill a fitted place--not equally distant from, but equally near each
+other. Though distinguished, each by an individual feature, there is
+yet no great dissimilarity among them. All are small, and none of
+them distinguished by architectural pretension. They are now quite as
+flourishing as when first built, and their number has had no increase
+since the village was first settled. Speculation has not made it
+populous and prosperous, by destroying its repose, stifling its
+charities, and abridging the sedate habits and comforts of its people.
+The houses, though constructed after the fashion of the country, of
+heavy and ill-squared logs, roughly hewn, and hastily thrown together,
+perhaps by unpractised hands, are yet made cheerful by that tidy
+industry which is always sure to make them comfortable also. Trim hedges
+that run beside slender white palings, surround and separate them from
+each other. Sometimes, as you see, festoons of graceful flowers, and
+waving blossoms, distinguish one dwelling from the rest, declaring its
+possession of some fair tenant, whose hand and fancy have kept equal
+progress with habitual industry; at the same time, some of them appear
+entirely without the little garden of flowers and vegetables, which
+glimmers and glitters in the rear or front of the greater number.
+
+Such was Charlemont, at the date of our narrative. But the traveller
+would vainly look, now, to find the place as we describe it. The garden
+is no longer green with fruits and flowers--the festoons no longer grace
+the lowly portals--the white palings are down and blackening in the
+gloomy mould--the roofs have fallen, and silence dwells lonely among
+the ruins,--the only inhabitant of the place. It has no longer a human
+occupant.
+
+“Something ails it now--the spot is cursed.”
+
+Why this fate has fallen upon so sweet an abiding place--why the
+villagers should have deserted a spot, so quiet and so beautiful--it
+does not fall within our present purpose to inquire. It was most
+probably abandoned--not because of the unfruitfulness of the soil, or
+the unhealthiness of the climate--for but few places on the bosom of
+the earth, may be found either more fertile, more beautiful, or
+more healthful--but in compliance with that feverish restlessness of
+mood--that sleepless discontent of temper, which, perhaps, more than
+any other quality, is the moral failing in the character of the
+Anglo-American. The roving desires of his ancestor, which brought him
+across the waters, have been transmitted without diminution--nay, with
+large increase--to the son. The creatures of a new condition of things,
+and new necessities, our people will follow out their destiny. The
+restless energies which distinguish them, are, perhaps, the contemplated
+characteristics which Providence has assigned them, in order that they
+may the more effectually and soon, bring into the use and occupation of
+a yet mightier people, the wilderness of that new world in which their
+fortunes have been cast. Generation is but the pioneer of generation,
+and the children of millions, more gigantic and powerful than ourselves,
+shall yet smile to behold, how feeble was the stroke made by our axe
+upon the towering trees of their inheritance.
+
+It was probably because of this characteristic of our people, that
+Charlemont came in time to be deserted. The inhabitants were one day
+surprised with tidings of more attractive regions in yet deeper forests,
+and grew dissatisfied with their beautiful and secluded valley. Such
+is the ready access to the American mind, in its excitable state, of
+novelty and sudden impulse, that there needs but few suggestions to
+persuade the forester to draw stakes, and remove his tents, where the
+signs seem to be more numerous of sweeter waters and more prolific
+fields. For a time, change has the power which nature does not often
+exercise; and under its freshness, the waters DO seem sweeter, and the
+stores of the wilderness, the wild-honey and the locust, DO seem more
+abundant to the lip and eye.
+
+Where our cottagers went, and under what delusion, are utterly unknown
+to us; nor is it important to our narrative that we should inquire. Our
+knowledge of them is only desirable, while they were in the flourishing
+condition in which they have been seen. It is our trust that the
+novelty which seduced them from their homes, did not fail them in its
+promises--that they may never have found, in all their wanderings, a
+less lovely abiding-place, than that which they abandoned. But change
+has its bitter, as well as its sweet, and the fear is strong that the
+cottagers of Charlemont, in the weary hours, when life's winter
+is approaching, will still and vainly sigh after the once-despised
+enjoyments of their deserted hamlet.
+
+It was toward the close of one of those bright, tearful days in
+April, of which we have briefly spoken, when a couple of travellers on
+horseback, ascended the last hill looking down upon Charlemont. One of
+these travellers had passed the middle period of life; the other was,
+perhaps, just about to enter upon its heavy responsibilities, and more
+active duties. The first wore the countenance of one who had borne many
+sorrows, and borne them with that resignation, which, while it proves
+the wisdom of the sufferer, is at the same time, calculated to increase
+his benevolence. The expression of his eye, was full of kindness and
+benignity, while that of his mouth, with equal force, was indicative
+of a melancholy, as constant as it was gentle and unobtrusive. A feeble
+smile played over his lips while he spoke, that increased the sadness
+which it softened; as the faint glimmer of the evening sunlight, upon
+the yellow leaves of autumn, heightens the solemn tones in the rich
+coloring of the still decaying forest.
+
+The face of his companion, in many of its features, was in direct
+contrast with his own. It was well formed, and, to the casual glance,
+seemed no less handsome than intellectual. There was much in it to win
+the regard of the young and superficial. An eye that sparkled with fire,
+a mouth that glowed with animation--cheeks warmly colored, and a contour
+full of vivacity, seemed to denote properties of mind and heart equally
+valuable and attractive. Still, a keen observer would have found
+something sinister, in the upward glancing of the eye, at intervals,
+from the half-closed lids; and, at such moments, there was a curling
+contempt upon the lips, which seemed to denote a cynical and sarcastic
+turn of mind. A restless movement of the same features seemed equally
+significant of caprice of character, and a flexibility of moral; while
+the chin narrowed too suddenly and became too sharp at the extremity, to
+persuade a thorough physiognomist, that the owner could be either very
+noble in his aims, or very generous in his sentiments. But as these
+outward tokens can not well be considered authority in the work of
+judgment, let events, which speak for themselves, determine the true
+character of our travellers.
+
+They had reached the table land of the heights which looked down upon
+Charlemont, at a moment when the beauty of the scene could scarcely fail
+to impress itself upon the most indifferent observer. The elder of the
+travellers, who happened to be in advance, was immediately arrested by
+it; and, staying the progress of his horse, with hand lifted above
+his eye, looked around him with a delight which expressed itself in an
+abrupt ejaculation, and brought his companion to his side. The sun had
+just reached that point in his descent, which enabled him to level a
+shaft of rosy light from the pinnacle of the opposite hill, into the
+valley below, where it rested among the roofs of two of the cottages,
+which arose directly in its path. The occupants of these two cottages
+had come forth, as it were, in answer to the summons; and old and young,
+to the number of ten or a dozen persons, had met, in the winding pathway
+between, which led through the valley, and in front of every cottage
+which it contained. The elder of the cottagers sat upon the huge trunk
+of a tree, which had been felled beside the road, for the greater
+convenience of the traveller; and with eyes turned in the direction of
+the hill on which the sunlight had sunk and appeared to slumber, seemed
+to enjoy the vision with no less pleasure than our senior traveller.
+Two tall damsels of sixteen, accompanied by a young man something older,
+were strolling off in the direction of the woods; while five or six
+chubby girls and boys were making the echoes leap and dance along the
+hills, in the clamorous delight which they felt in their innocent but
+stirring exercises. The whole scene was warmed with the equal brightness
+of the natural and the human sun. Beauty was in the sky, and its
+semblance, at least, was on the earth. God was in the heavens, and in
+his presence could there be other than peace and harmony among men!
+
+“How beautiful!” exclaimed the elder of our travellers--“could
+anything be more so! How pure, how peaceful! See, Warham, how soft, how
+spirit-like, that light lies along the hill-side, and how distinct, yet
+how delicate, is the train which glides from it down the valley, even
+to the white dwellings at its bottom, from which it seems to shrink and
+tremble as if half conscious of intrusion. And yet the picture below
+is kindred with it. That, now, is a scene that I delight in--it is a
+constant picture in my mind. There is peace in that valley, if there
+be peace anywhere on earth. The old men sit before the door, and
+contemplate with mingled feelings of pride and pleasure, the vigorous
+growth of their children. They behold in them their own immortality,
+even upon earth. The young will preserve their memories, and transmit
+their names to other children yet unborn; and how must such a reflection
+reconcile them to their own time of departure, not unfitly shown in the
+last smiles of that sunlight, which they are so soon about to lose. Like
+him, they look with benevolence and love upon the world from which they
+will soon depart.”
+
+“Take my word for it, uncle, they will postpone their departure to the
+last possible moment, and, so far from looking with smiles upon what
+they are about to leave for ever, they will leave it with very great
+reluctance, and in monstrous bad humor. As for regarding their children
+with any such notions as those you dwell upon with such poetical
+raptures, they will infinitely prefer transmitting for themselves their
+names and qualities to the very end of the chapter. Ask any one of them
+the question now, and he will tell you that an immortality, each, in his
+own wig-wam, and with his weight of years and infirmity upon him, would
+satisfy all his expectations. If they look at the vigor of their young,
+it is to recollect that they themselves once were so, and to repine at
+the recollection. Take my word for it, there is not a dad among them,
+that does not envy his own son the excellence of his limbs, and the long
+time of exercise and enjoyment which they seemingly assure him.”
+
+“Impossible!” exclaimed the elder of the two travellers. “Impossible! I
+should be sorry to think as you do. But you, Warham, can not understand
+these things. You are an habitual unbeliever--the most unfortunate of
+all mankind.”
+
+“The most fortunate, rather. I have but few burdens of credulity to
+carry. The stars be blessed, my articles of faith are neither very many
+nor very cumbrous. I should be sorry if my clients were so few.”
+
+“I should be sorry, Warham, if I had so little feeling as yourself.”
+
+“And I should be still more sorry, uncle, if I had half so much. Why,
+sir, yours is in such excess, that you continually mistake the joys
+and sorrows of other people for your own. You laugh and weep with them
+alternately; and, until all's done and over, you never seem to discover
+that the business was none of yours;--that you had none of the pleasure
+which made you laugh, and might have been spared all the unnecessary
+suffering which moved your tears. 'Pon my soul, sir, you pass a most
+unprofitable life.”
+
+“You mistake, Warham, I have shared both; and my profits have been
+equally great from both sources. My susceptibility has been an exceeding
+great gain to me, and has quickened all my senses. There is a joy of
+grief, you know, according to Ossian.”
+
+“Nay, if you quote Ossian, uncle. I give you up. I don't believe in
+Ossian, and his raving stuff always sickens me.”
+
+“I sometimes think, Warham,” said the uncle, good naturedly, “that
+Providence has denied you some of the more human faculties. Nay, I fear
+that you are partially deficient in some of the senses. Do you see that
+sunlight to which I point--there, on the hill-side, a sort of rosy haze,
+which seems to me eminently beautiful?”
+
+“Yes, sir; and, if you will suffer me, I will get out of its reach as
+quickly as possible. I have been half blinded by it ever since you found
+it so beautiful. Sunlight is, I think, of very little importance to
+professional men, unless as a substitute for candles, and then it should
+come over the left shoulder, if you would not have it endanger the
+sight. Nay, I will go farther, and confess that it is better than
+candlelight, and certainly far less expensive. Shall we go forward,
+sir?”
+
+“Warham,” said the uncle, with increasing gravity, “I should be sorry to
+believe that a habit of speech so irreverential, springs from anything
+but an ambition for saying smart things, and strange things, which are
+not always smart. It would give me great pain to think that you were
+devoid of any of those sensibilities which soften the hearts of other
+men, and lead them to generous impulses.”
+
+“Nay, be not harsh, uncle. You should know me better. I trust my
+sensibilities, and senses too, may be sufficient for all proper
+purposes, when the proper time comes for their employment; but I can't
+flame up at every sunbeam, and grow enthusiastic in the contemplation of
+Bill Johnson's cottage, and Richard Higgins's hedgerow. A turnip-patch
+never yet could waken my enthusiasm, and I do believe, sir--I confess it
+with some shame and a slight misgiving, lest my admissions should give
+you pain--that my fancy has never been half so greatly enkindled by
+Carthula, of the bending spear, or Morven of the winds, as by the sedate
+and homely aspect of an ordinary dish of eggs and bacon, hot from the
+flaming frying-pan of some worthy housewife.”
+
+The uncle simply looked upon the speaker, but without answering. He was
+probably quite too much accustomed to his modes of thought and speech to
+be so much surprised as annoyed by what he said. Perhaps, too, his own
+benevolence of spirit interfered to save the nephew from that harsher
+rebuke which his judgment might yet have very well disposed him to
+bestow.
+
+Following the course of the latter in silence, he descended into the
+valley, and soon made his way among the sweet little cottages at
+its foot. An interchange of courtsies between the travellers and the
+villagers whose presence had given occasion to some portion of the
+previous dialogue, in which the manner of the younger traveller was
+civil, and that of the elder kind; and the two continued on their
+journey, though not without being compelled to refuse sundry
+invitations, given with true patriarchal hospitality, to remain among
+the quiet abodes through which they passed.
+
+As cottage after cottage unfolded itself to their eyes, along the
+winding avenue, the proprietors appeared at door and window, and, with
+the simple freedoms of rural life, welcomed the strangers with a
+smile, a nod, and sometimes, when sufficiently nigh, a friendly word
+of salutation, but without having the effect of arresting their onward
+progress. Yet many a backward glance was sent by the elder of the
+travellers, whose eyes, beaming with satisfaction, sufficiently declared
+the delight which he received from the contemplation of so many of the
+mingled graces of physical and moral nature. His loitering steps drew
+from his young companion an occasional remark, which, to ears less
+benevolent and unsuspecting than than those of the senior, might have
+been deemed a sarcasm; and more than once the lips of the nephew had
+curled with contemptuous smiles, as he watched the yearning glances of
+his uncle on each side of the avenue, as they wended slowly through it.
+
+At the end of the village, and at the foot of the opposite hills, they
+encountered a group of young people of both sexes, whose bursts of
+merriment were suddenly restrained as they emerged unexpectedly into
+sight. The girls had been sitting upon the grassy mead, with the young
+men before them; but they started to their feet at the sound of strange
+steps, and the look of strange faces. Charlemont, it must be remembered,
+was not in the thoroughfare of common travel. If visited at all by
+strangers, it was most usually by those only who came with a single
+purpose. Nothing, therefore could have been more calculated to surprise
+a community so insulated, than that they should attract, but not arrest
+the traveller. The natural surprise which the young people felt, when
+unexpectedly encountered in their rustic sports, was naturally increased
+by this unusual circumstance, and they looked after the departing forms
+of the wayfarers with a wonder and curiosity that kept them for some
+time silent. The elder of the two, meanwhile--one of whose habits of
+mind was always to give instantaneous utterance to the feeling which was
+upper-most--dilated, without heeding the sneers of his nephew, upon the
+apparent happiness which they witnessed.
+
+“Here, you see, Warham, is a pleasure which the great city never
+knows:--the free intercourse of the sexes in all those natural exercises
+which give health to the body, grace to the movement, and vivacity to
+the manners.”
+
+“The health will do well enough,” replied the skeptic, “but save me from
+the grace of Hob and Hinney; and as for their manners--did I hear you
+correctly, uncle, when you spoke of their manners?”
+
+“Surely, you did. I have always regarded the natural manners which
+belong to the life of the forester, as being infinitely more noble, as
+well as more graceful, than those of the citizen. Where did you ever
+see a tradesman whose bearing was not mean compared with that of the
+hunter?”
+
+“Ay, but these are no hunters, and scarcely foresters. I see not a
+single Nimrod among the lads; and as for the lasses, even your eyes,
+indulgent as they usually are, will scarcely venture to insist that I
+shall behold one nymph among them worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of
+Diana. The manners of the hunter are those of an elastic savage; but
+these lads shear sheep, raise hogs for the slaughter-pen, and seldom
+perform a nobler feat than felling a bullock. They have none of the
+elasticity which, coupled with strength, makes the grace of the man;
+and they walk as if perpetually in the faith that their corn-rows and
+potatoe-hills were between their legs.”
+
+“Did you note the young woman in the crimson body Warham? Was she not
+majestically made?”
+
+“It struck me she would weigh against any two of the company.”
+
+“She is rather heavy, I grant you, but her carriage, Warham!”
+
+“Would carry weight--nothing more.”
+
+“There was one little girl, just rising into womanhood:--you must admit
+that she had a very lovely face, and her form--”
+
+“My dear uncle, what is it that you will not desire me to believe? You
+are sadly given to proselytism, and take infinite pains to compel me
+to see with eyes that never do their owner so much wrong, as when
+they reject the aid of spectacles. How much would Charlemont and its
+inhabitants differ to your sight, were you only to take your green
+spectacles from the shagreen case in which they do no duty. But if you
+are resolved, in order to seem youthful, to let your age go unprovided
+with the means of seeing as youth would see, at least suffer me to enjoy
+the natural privileges of twenty-five. When, like you, my hairs whiten,
+and my eyes grow feeble, ten to one, I shall think with you that every
+third woodman is an Apollo, and every other peasant-girl is a Venus,
+whom--”
+
+The words of the speaker ceased--cut short by the sudden appearance of a
+form and face, the beauty and dignity of which silenced the skeptic, and
+made him doubtful, for the moment, whether he had not in reality reached
+that period of confused and confounding vision, which, as he alleged to
+be the case with his uncle, loses all power of discrimination. A maiden
+stood before him--tall, erect, majestic--beautiful after no ordinary
+standard of beauty. She was a brunette, with large dark eyes, which,
+though bright, seemed dark with excess of bright--and had a depth of
+expression which thrilled instantly through the bosom of the spectator.
+A single glance did she bestow upon the travellers, while she
+acknowledged, by a slight courtesy, the respectful bow which they made
+her. They drew up their horses as with mutual instinct, but she passed
+them quickly, courtesying a second time as she did so, and, in another
+moment a turn of the road concealed her from the eyes of the travellers.
+
+“What say you to that, Warham?” demanded the senior exultingly.
+
+“A Diana, in truth; but, uncle, we find her not among the rest. SHE is
+none of your cottagers. SHE is of another world and element. She is no
+Charlemonter.”
+
+And, as he spoke, the younger traveller looked back with straining eyes
+to catch another glance of the vanished object, but in vain.
+
+“You deserve never to see a lovely woman again, Warham, for your
+skepticism.”
+
+“But I will have a second look at her, uncle, though the skies fall,”
+ answered the young man, as, wheeling his horse round, he deliberately
+galloped back to the bend in the avenue, by which she had been hidden
+from his view.
+
+He had scarcely reached the desired point, when he suddenly recoiled
+to find the object of his pursuit standing motionless just beyond, with
+eyes averted to the backward path--her glance consequently encountering
+his own, the very moment when he discovered her. A deep crimson, visible
+even where he stood, suffused her cheeks when she beheld him; and
+without acknowledging the second bow which the traveller made, she
+somewhat haughtily averted her head with a suddenness which shook her
+long and raven tresses entirely free of the net-work which confined
+them.
+
+“A proud gipsy!” muttered the youth as he rode back to his uncle--“just
+such a spirit as I should like to tame.” He took especial care, however,
+that this sentiment did not reach the ears of his senior.
+
+“Well?” said the latter, inquiringly, at his approach.
+
+“I am right after all, uncle:--the wench is no better than the rest. A
+heavy bulk that seemed dignified only because she is too fat for levity.
+She walks like a blind plough-horse in a broken pasture, up and down,
+over and over; with a gait as rigid and deliberate as if she trod
+among the hot cinders, and had corns on all her toes. She took us so by
+surprise that if we had not thought her beautiful we must have thought
+her ugly, and the chances are equal, that, on a second meeting, we shall
+both think her so. I shall, I'm certain, and you must, provided you give
+your eyes the benefit, and your nose the burden of your green specs.”
+
+“Impossible! I can scarce believe it, Warham,” replied the senior. “I
+thought her very beautiful.”
+
+“I shall never rely on your judgment again;--nay, uncle, I am almost
+inclined to suspect your taste.”
+
+“Well, let them be beautiful or ugly, still I should think the same of
+the beauty of this village.”
+
+“While the sun shines it may be tolerable; but, uncle, in wet bad
+weather--it must become a mere pond, it lies so completely in the hollow
+of the hills.”
+
+“There is reason in that, Warham.”
+
+“And yet, even as a pond, it would have its advantages--it would be
+famous for duck-raising.”
+
+“Pshaw! you are worse than a Mahometan.”
+
+“Something of a just comparison, uncle, though scarcely aimed,” said
+the other; “like Mahomet, you know, I doubt the possession of souls by
+women.”
+
+“Yet if these of Charlemont have not souls, they have no small share of
+happiness on earth. I never heard more happy laughter from human lips
+than from theirs. They must be happy.”
+
+“I doubt that also,” was the reply. “See you not, uncle, that to nine or
+ten women there are but three lads? Where the disproportion is so great
+among the sexes, and where it is so unfavorable to the weaker, women
+never can be happy. Their whole lives will be lives of turmoil,
+jealousy, and pulling of caps. Nay, eyes shall not be secure under such
+circumstances; and Nan's fingers shall be in Doll's hair, and Doll's
+claws in Nanny's cheeks, whenever it shall so happen, that Tom Jenkins
+shall incline to Nan, or John Dobbins to Doll. Such a disparity between
+the sexes is one of the most fruitful causes of domestic war.”
+
+“Warham, where do you think to go when you die?”
+
+“Where there shall be no great inequality in the population. Believe me,
+uncle, though I am sometimes disposed to think with Mahomet, and deny
+the possession of souls to the sex, I also incline to believe, with
+other more charitable teachers--however difficult it may be to reconcile
+the two philosophies--that there will be no lack of them in either
+world.”
+
+“Hush, hush, Warham,” was the mild rebuke of the senior; “you go too
+far--you are irreverent. As for this maiden, I still think her
+very beautiful--of a high and noble kind of beauty. My eyes may be
+bad;--indeed I am willing to admit they are none of the best; but I feel
+certain that they cannot so far deceive me, when we consider how nigh we
+were to her.”
+
+“The matter deserves inquiry, uncle, if it were only to satisfy
+your faith;--suppose we ride back, both of us, and see for
+ourselves--closely, and with the aid of the green spectacles? Not that
+I care to see farther--not that I have any doubts--but I wish you to
+be convinced in this case, if only to make you sensible of the frequent
+injustice to which your indulgence of judgment, subjects the critical
+fastidiousness of mine. What say you; shall we wheel about?”
+
+“Why, you are mad, surely. It is now sunset, and we have a good eight
+miles before we get to Holme's Station.”
+
+“But we can sleep in Charlemont to-night. A night in this earthly
+Eden--”
+
+“And run the risk of losing our company? Oh, no, most worthy nephew.
+They will start at dawn to-morrow.”
+
+“We can soon come up with 'em.”
+
+“Perhaps not, and the risk is considerable. Travelling to the
+Mississippi is no such small matter at any time, and, in these times
+it is only with a multitude, that there is safety. The murder of old
+Whiteford, is a sufficient warning not to go alone with more gold than
+lead in one's pocket. We are two, it is true, but better ten than two.
+You are a brave fellow enough, Warham, I doubt not; but a shot will
+dispose of you, and after that I should be an easy victim. I could wink
+and hold out my iron as well as the best of you, but I prefer to escape
+the necessity. Let us mend our pace. We are burning daylight.”
+
+The nephew, with an air of some impatience, which, however, escaped the
+eyes of the senior, sent his horse forward by a sharp application of his
+spur, though looking back the while, with a glance of reluctance, which
+strongly disagreed with the sentiments which he expressed. Indeed,
+with both the travellers, the impression made by the little village
+of Charlemont was such that the subject seemed nowise displeasing to
+either, and furnished the chief staple of conversation between them,
+as they rode the remaining eight miles of their journey. The old man's
+heart had been subdued and won by the sweet air of peace which seemed to
+overspread and hallow the soft landscape, and the smiling cottages which
+made it human. The laughing maidens with their bright eyes and cheering
+accents, gave vivacity to its milder charms. We have heard from the lips
+of the younger traveller, that these attractions had failed to captivate
+his fancy. We may believe of this as we please. It is very probable that
+he had, in considerable part, spoken nothing but the truth. He was too
+much of a mocker;--one of those worldlings who derive their pleasures
+from circumstances of higher conventional attraction. He had no feeling
+for natural romance. His PENCHANT, was decidedly for the artificial
+existence of city life; and the sneers which he had been heard
+to express at the humble joys of rustic life, its tastes, and
+characteristics, were, in truth, only such as he really felt. But, even
+in his case, there was an evident disposition to know something more of
+Charlemont. He was really willing to return. He renewed the same subject
+of conversation, when it happened to flag, with obvious eagerness;
+and, though his language was still studiedly disparaging, a more deeply
+penetrating judgment than that of his uncle, would have seen that the
+little village, slightly as he professed to esteem it, was yet an object
+of thought and interest in his eyes. Of the sources of this new interest
+time must inform us.
+
+“Well, well, Warham,” at length exclaimed the uncle, in a tone that
+seemed meant to close the discussion of a topic which his nephew now
+appeared mischievously bent to thrust upon him, “you will return to
+Kentucky in the fall. Take Charlemont in your route. Stop a week there.
+It will do you no harm. Possibly you may procure some clients--may,
+indeed, include it in your tour of practice--at all events, you will not
+be unprofitably employed if you come to see the village and the people
+with MY eyes, which, I doubt not, you will in time.”
+
+“In time, perhaps, I may. It is well that you do not insist upon any
+hurried convictions. Were I at your years uncle mine,” continued the
+other irreverently, “I should no doubt see with your eyes, and possibly
+feel with your desires. Then, no doubt, I shall acquire a taste for
+warmingpans and nightcaps--shall look for landscapes rather than
+lands--shall see nothing but innocence among the young, and resignation
+and religion among the old; and fancy, in every aged pair of bumpkins
+that I see, a Darby and Joan, with perpetual peace at their fireside,
+though they may both happen to lie there drunk on apple-brandy. Between
+caudle-cups and 'John Anderson, my Jo-John,' it is my hope to pass the
+evening of my days with a tolerable grace, and leave behind me some
+comely representatives, who shall take up the burden of the ditty where
+I leave off. On this head be sure you shall have no cause to complain of
+me. I shall be no Malthusian, as you certainly have shown yourself. It
+is the strangest thing to me, uncle, that, with all your SPOKEN rapture
+for the sex, you should never have thought of securing for yourself at
+least one among the crowd which you so indiscriminately admire. Surely,
+a gentleman of your personal attractions--attractions which seem
+resolute to cling to you to the last--could not have found much
+difficulty in procuring the damsel he desired! And when, too, your
+enthusiasm for the sex is known, one would think it only necessary that
+you should fling your handkerchief, to have it greedily grappled by
+the fairest of the herd. How is it, uncle--how have you escaped from
+them--from yourself?”
+
+“Pshaw, Warham, you are a fool!” exclaimed the senior, riding forward
+with increasing speed. The words were spoken good naturedly, but the
+youth had touched a spot, scarcely yet thoroughly scarred over, in the
+old man's bosom; and memories, not less painful because they had been
+bidden so long, were instantly wakened into fresh and cruel activity.
+
+It will not diminish the offence of the nephew in the mind of the
+reader, when he is told that the youth was not ignorant of the
+particular tenderness of his relative in this respect. The gentle nature
+of the latter, alone, rescued him from the well-merited reproach of
+suffering his habitual levity of mood to prevail in reference to one
+whom even he himself was disposed to honor. But few words passed
+between the two, ere they reached the place of appointment. The careless
+reference of the youth had made the thoughts of the senior active at
+the expense of his observation. His eyes were now turned inward; and the
+landscape, and the evening sun, which streamed over and hallowed it with
+a tender beauty to the last, was as completely hidden from his vision,
+as if a veil had been drawn above his sight. The retrospect, indeed,
+is ever the old man's landscape; and perhaps, even had he not been so
+unkindly driven back to its survey, our aged traveller would have been
+reminded of the past in the momently-deepening shadows which the evening
+gathered around his path. Twilight is the cherished season for sad
+memories, even as the midnight is supposed to be that of guilty ghosts;
+and nothing, surely, can be more fitting than that the shadows of former
+hopes should revisit us in those hours when the face of nature itself
+seems darkening into gloom.
+
+It was night before the wayfarers reached the appointed baiting place.
+There they found their company--a sort of little caravan, such as is
+frequent in the history of western emigration--already assembled, and
+the supper awaiting them. Let us leave them to its enjoyment, and return
+once more to the village of Charlemont.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The young maiden last met by our travellers, and whose appearance had
+so favorably impressed them, had not been altogether uninfluenced by
+the encounter. Her spirit was of a musing and perhaps somewhat moody
+character, and the little adventure related in our last chapter, had
+awakened in her mind a train of vague and purposeless thought, from
+which she did not strive to disengage herself. She ceased to pursue the
+direct path back to Charlemont, the moment she had persuaded herself
+that the strangers had continued on their way; and turning from the
+beaten track, she strolled aside, following the route of a brooklet, the
+windings of which, as it led her forward, were completely hidden from
+the intrusive glance of any casual wayfarer. The prattle of the little
+stream as it wound upon its sleepless journey, contributed still more to
+strengthen the musings of those vagrant fancies that filled the maiden's
+thoughts.
+
+She sat down upon the prostrate trunk of a tree, and surrendered herself
+for a while to their control. Her thoughts were probably of a kind
+which, to a certain extent, are commended to every maiden. Among them,
+perpetually rose an image of the bold and handsome stranger, whose
+impudence, in turning back in pursuit of her, was somewhat qualified by
+the complimentary curiosity which such conduct manifested. Predominant
+even over this image, however, was the conviction of isolation which
+she felt where she was, and the still more painful conviction, that
+the future was without promise. Such thoughts and apprehensions may
+be natural enough to all young persons of active, earnest nature, not
+permitted to perform; but in the bosom of Margaret Cooper they were
+particularly so. Her mind was of a masculine and commanding character,
+and was ill-satisfied with her position and prospect in Charlemont. A
+quiet, obscure village, such as that we have described, held forth no
+promise for a spirit so proud, impatient, and ambitious as hers. She
+knew the whole extent of knowledge which it contained, and all its
+acquisitions and resources--she had sounded its depths, and traced all
+its shallows. The young women kept no pace with her own progress--they
+were good, silly girls enough--a chattering, playful set, whom small
+sports could easily satisfy, and who seemed to have no care, and scarce
+a hope, beyond the hilly limits of their homestead; and as for the young
+men--they were only suited to the girls, such as they were, and could
+never meet the demand of such an intellect as hers.
+
+This lofty self-estimate, which was in some sense just, necessarily gave
+a tone to her language and a coloring to all her thoughts, such as
+good sense and amiability should equally strive to suppress and
+conceal--unless, as in the case of Margaret Cooper, the individual
+herself was without due consciousness of their presence. It had the
+effect of discouraging and driving from her side many a good-natured
+damsel, who would have loved to condole with her, and might have been
+a pleasant companion. The young women regarded her with some dislike in
+consequence of her self-imposed isolation--and the young men with some
+apprehension. Her very knowledge of books, which infinitely surpassed
+that of all her sex within the limits of Charlemont, was also an object
+of some alarm. It had been her fortune, whether well or ill may be a
+question, to inherit from her father a collection, not well chosen,
+upon which her mind had preyed with an appetite as insatiate as it
+was undiscriminating. They had taught her many things, but among these
+neither wisdom nor patience was included;--and one of the worst lessons
+which she had learned, and which they had contributed in some respects
+to teach, was discontent with her condition--a discontent which
+saddened, if it did not embitter, her present life, while it left the
+aspects of the future painfully doubtful, even to her own eye.
+
+She was fatherless, and had been already taught some of those rude
+lessons which painfully teach dependence; but such lessons, which
+to most others would have brought submission, only provoked her to
+resistance. Her natural impetuosity of disposition, strengthened by
+her mother's idolatrous indulgence, increased the haughtiness of her
+character; and when, to these influences, we add that her surviving
+parent was poor, and suffered from privations which were unfelt by many
+of their neighbors, it may be easily conceived that a temper and mind
+such as we have described those of Margaret Cooper--ardent, commanding,
+and impatient, hourly found occasion, even in the secluded village where
+she dwelt, for the exercise of moods equally adverse to propriety and
+happiness. Isolated from the world by circumstances, she doubly exiled
+herself from its social indulgences, by the tyrannical sway of a
+superior will, strengthened and stimulated by an excitable and ever
+feverish blood; and, as we find her now, wandering sad and sternly by
+the brookside, afar from the sports and humbler sources of happiness,
+which gentler moods left open to the rest, so might she customarily be
+found, at all hours, when it was not absolutely due to appearances that
+she should be seen among the crowds.
+
+We will not now seek to pursue her musings and trace them out to their
+conclusions, nor will it be necessary that we should do more
+than indicate their character. That they were sad and solemn as
+usual--perhaps humbling--may be gathered from the fact that a big tear
+might have been seen, long gathering in her eye;--the next moment she
+brushed off the intruder with an impatience of gesture, that plainly
+showed how much her proud spirit resented any such intrusion. The tear
+dispersed the images which had filled her contemplative mood, and rising
+from her sylvan seat, she prepared to move forward, when a voice calling
+at some little distance, drew her attention. Giving a hasty glance
+in the direction of the sound, she beheld a young man making his way
+through the woods, and approaching her with rapid footsteps. His evident
+desire to reach her, did not, however, prompt her to any pause in her
+own progress; but, as if satisfied with the single glance which she gave
+him, and indifferent utterly to his object, she continued on her way,
+nor stopped for an instant, nor again looked back, until his salutation,
+immediately behind her, compelled her attention and answer.
+
+“Margaret--Miss Cooper!” said the speaker, who was a young rustic,
+probably twenty or twenty-one years of age, of tall, good person,
+a handsome face, which was smooth, though of dark complexion, and
+lightened by an eye of more than ordinary size and intelligence. His
+tones were those of one whose sensibilities were fine and active, and
+it would not have called for much keen observation to have seen that his
+manner, in approaching and addressing the maiden, was marked with some
+little trepidation. She, on the contrary, seemed too familiar with
+his homage, or too well satisfied of his inferiority, to deign much
+attention to his advances. She answered his salutation coldly, and was
+preparing to move forward, when his words again called for her reluctant
+notice.
+
+“I have looked for you, Margaret, full an hour. Mother sent me after you
+to beg that you will come there this evening. Old Jenks has come up from
+the river, and brought a store of fine things--there's a fiddle for
+Ned, and Jason Lightner has a flute, and I--I have a small lot of books,
+Margaret, that I think will please you.”
+
+“I thank you, William Hinkley, and thank your mother, but I can not come
+this evening.”
+
+“But why not, Margaret?--your mother's coming--she promised for you too,
+but I thought you might not get home soon enough to see her, and so I
+came out to seek you.”
+
+“I am very sorry you took so much trouble, William, for I cannot come
+this evening.”
+
+“But why not, Margaret? You have no other promise to go elsewhere have
+you?”
+
+“None,” was the indifferent reply.
+
+“Then--but, perhaps, you are not well, Margaret?”
+
+“I am quite well, I thank you, William Hinkley, but I don't feel like
+going out this evening. I am not in the humor.”
+
+Already, in the little village of Charlemont, Margaret Cooper was one
+of the few who were permitted to indulge in humors, and William Hinkley
+learned the reason assigned for her refusal, with an expression of
+regret and disappointment, if not of reproach. An estoppel, which
+would have been so conclusive in the case of a city courtier, was not
+sufficient, however, to satisfy the more frank and direct rustic, and
+he proceeded with some new suggestions, in the hope to change her
+determination.
+
+“But you'll be so lonesome at home, Margaret, when your mother's with
+us. She'll be gone before you can get back, and--”
+
+“I'm never lonesome, William, at least I'm never so well content or so
+happy as when I'm alone,” was the self-satisfactory reply.
+
+“But that's so strange, Margaret. It's so strange that you should be
+different from everybody else. I often wonder at it, Margaret; for I
+know none of the other girls but love to be where there's a fiddle, and
+where there's pleasant company. It's so pleasant to be where everybody's
+pleased; and then, Margaret, where one can talk so well as you, and of
+so many subjects, it's a greater wonder still that you should not like
+to be among the rest.”
+
+“I do not, however, William,” was the answer in more softened tones.
+There was something in this speech of her lover, that found its way
+through the only accessible avenues of her nature. It was a truth, which
+she often repeated to herself with congratulatory pride, that she had
+few feelings or desires in common with the crowd.
+
+“It is my misfortune,” she continued, “to care very little for the
+pastimes you speak of; and as for the company, I've no doubt it will
+be very pleasant for those who go, but to me it will afford very little
+pleasure. Your mother must therefore excuse me, William:--I should be a
+very dull person among the rest.”
+
+“She will be so very sorry, Margaret--and Ned, whose new fiddle has just
+come, and Jason Lightner, with his flute. They all spoke of you and
+look for you above all, to hear them this evening. They will be so
+disappointed.”
+
+William Hinkley spoke nothing of his own disappointment, but it was
+visible enough in his blank countenance, and sufficiently audible in the
+undisguised faltering of his accents.
+
+“I do not think they will be so much disappointed, William Hinkley.
+They have no reason to be, as they have no right to look for me in
+particular. I have very little acquaintance with the young men you speak
+of.”
+
+“Why, Margaret, they live alongside of you--and I'm sure you've met them
+a thousand times in company,” was the response of the youth, uttered
+in tones more earnest than any he had yet employed in the dialogue, and
+with something of surprise in his accents.
+
+“Perhaps so; but that makes them no intimates of mine, William Hinkley.
+They may be very good young men, and, indeed, so far as I know, they
+really are; but that makes no difference. We find our acquaintances and
+our intimates among those who are congenial, who somewhat resemble us in
+spirit, feeling, and understanding.”
+
+“Ah, Margaret!” said her rustic companion with a sigh, which amply
+testified to the humility of his own self-estimate, and of the decline
+of his hope which came with it--“ah, Margaret, if that be the rule,
+where are you going to find friends and intimates in Charlemont?”
+
+“Where!” was the single word spoken by the haughty maiden, as her eye
+wandered off to the cold tops of the distant hills along which the
+latest rays of falling sunlight, faint and failing, as they fell,
+imparted a hue, which though bright, still as it failed to warm, left an
+expression of October sadness to the scene, that fitly harmonized with
+the chilling mood under which she had spoken throughout the interview.
+
+“I don't think, Margaret,” continued the lover, finding courage as he
+continued, “that such a rule is a good one. I know it can't be a good
+one for happiness. There's many a person that never will meet his or her
+match in this world, in learning and understanding--and if they won't
+look on other persons with kindness, because they are not altogether
+equal to them, why there's a chance that they'll always be solitary and
+sad. It's a real blessing, I believe, to have great sense, but I don't
+see, that because one has great sense, that one should not think well
+and kindly of those who have little, provided they be good, and are
+willing to be friendly. Now, a good heart seems to be the very best
+thing that nature can give us; and I know, Margaret, that there's no
+two better hearts in all Charlemont--perhaps in all the world, though I
+won't say that--than cousin Ned Hinkley, and Jason Lightner, and--”
+
+“I don't deny their merits and their virtues, and their goodness of
+heart, William Hinkley,” was the answer of the maiden--“I only say
+that the possession of these qualities gives them no right to claim my
+sympathies or affection. These claims are only founded upon congeniality
+of character and mind, and without this congeniality, there can be no
+proper, no lasting intimacy between persons. They no doubt, will find
+friends between whom and themselves, this congeniality exists. I, on the
+other hand, must be permitted to find mine, after my own ideas, and as I
+best can. But if I do not--the want of them gives me no great concern. I
+find company enough, and friends enough, even in these woods, to satisfy
+the desires of my heart at present; I am not anxious to extend my
+acquaintance or increase the number of my intimates.”
+
+William Hinkley, who had become somewhat warmed by the argument, could
+have pursued the discussion somewhat further; but the tones and manner
+of his companion, to say nothing of her words, counselled him to
+forbear. Still, he was not disposed altogether to give up his attempts
+to secure her presence for the evening party.
+
+“But if you don't come for the company, Margaret, recollect the music.
+Even if Ned Hinkley was a perfect fool, which he is not, and Jason
+Lightner were no better,--nobody can say that they are not good
+musicians. Old Squire Bee says there's not in all Kentucky a better
+violinist than Ned, and Jason's flute is the sweetest sound that ear
+ever listened to along these hills. If you don't care anything for the
+players, Margaret, I'm sure you can't be indifferent to their music; and
+I know they are anything but indifferent to what you may think about
+it. They will play ten times as well if you are there; and I'm sure,
+Margaret, I shall be the last”--here the tone of the speaker's voice
+audibly faltered--“I shall be the very last to think it sweet if you are
+not there.”
+
+But the words and faltering accents of the lover equally failed in
+subduing the inflexible, perverse mood of the haughty maiden. Her cold
+denial was repeated; and with looks that did not fail to speak the
+disappointment of William Hinkley, he attended her back to the village.
+Their progress was marked by coldness on the one hand, and decided
+sadness on the other. The conversation was carried on in monosyllables
+only, on the part of Margaret, while timidity and a painful hesitancy
+marked the language of her attendant. But a single passage may be
+remembered of all that was said between the two, ere they separated at
+the door of the widow Cooper.
+
+“Did you see the two strangers, Margaret, that passed through Charlemont
+this afternoon?”
+
+The cheeks of the maiden became instantly flushed, and the rapid
+utterance of her reply in the affirmative, denoted an emotion which the
+jealous instincts of the lover readily perceived. A cold chill, on the
+instant, pervaded the veins of the youth; and that night he did not
+hear, any more than Margaret Cooper, the music of his friends. He was
+present all the time and he answered their inquiries as usual; but his
+thoughts were very far distant, and somehow or other, they perpetually
+mingled up the image of the young traveller, whom he too had seen, with
+that of the proud woman, whom he was not yet sure that he unprofitably
+worshipped.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIMPLICITY AND THE SERPENT.
+
+
+
+
+
+The mirth and music of Charlemont were enjoyed by others, but not by
+Margaret Cooper. The resolution not to share in the pleasures of the
+young around her, which she showed to her rustic lover, was a resolution
+firmly persevered in throughout the long summer which followed. Her
+wayward mood shut out from her contemplation the only sunshine of the
+place; and her heart, brooding over the remote, if not the impossible,
+denied itself those joys which were equally available and nigh. Her
+lonesome walks became longer in the forests, and later each evening grew
+the hour of her return to the village. Her solitude daily increased, as
+the youth, who really loved her with all the ardency of a first passion,
+and who regarded her at the same time with no little veneration for
+those superior gifts of mind and education which, it was the general
+conviction in Charlemont, that she possessed, became, at length,
+discouraged in a pursuit which hitherto had found nothing but coldness
+and repulse. Not that he ceased to love--nay, he did not cease entirely
+to hope. What lover ever did? He fondly ascribed to the object of his
+affections a waywardness of humor, which he fancied would pass away
+after a season, and leave her mind to the influence of a more sober
+and wholesome judgment. Perhaps, too, like many other youth in like
+circumstances, he did not always see or feel the caprice of which he was
+the victim. But for this fortunate blindness, many a fair damsel would
+lose her conquest quite as suddenly as it was made.
+
+But the summer passed away, and the forest put on the sere and sombre
+robes of autumn, and yet no visible change--none at least more favorable
+to the wishes of William Hinkley--took place in the character and
+conduct of the maiden. Her mind, on the contrary, seemed to take
+something of its hue from the cold sad tones of the forest. The serious
+depth of expression in her dark eyes seemed to deepen yet more, and
+become yet more concentrated--their glance acquired a yet keener
+intentness--an inflexibility of direction--which suffered them seldom
+to turn aside from those moody contemplations, which had made her, for
+a long time, infinitely prefer to gaze upon the rocks, and woods, and
+waters, than upon the warm and wooing features of humanity.
+
+At distance the youth watched and sometimes followed her, and when, with
+occasional boldness, he would draw nigh to her secret wanderings, a cold
+fear filled his heart, and he shrunk back with all the doubt and dread
+of some guilty trespasser. But his doubt, and we may add, his dread
+also, was soon to cease entirely, in the complete conviction of his
+hopelessness. The day and the fate were approaching, in the person of
+one, to whom a natural instinct had already taught him to look with
+apprehension, and whose very first appearance had inspired him with
+antipathy.
+
+What a strange prescience, in some respects, has the devoted and
+watchful heart that loves! William Hinkley, had seen but for a single
+instant, the face of that young traveller, who has already been
+introduced to us, and that instant was enough to awaken his
+dislike--nay, more, his hostility. Yet no villager in Charlemont but
+would have told you, that, of all the village, William Hinkley was
+the most gentle, the most generous--the very last to be moved by bad
+passions, by jealousy or hate.
+
+The youth whom we have seen going down with his uncle to the great
+valley of the Mississippi, was now upon his return. He was now
+unaccompanied by the benignant senior with whom we first made his
+acquaintance. He had simply attended the old bachelor, from whom he had
+considerable expectations, to his plantation, in requital of the spring
+visit which the latter had paid to his relatives in Kentucky; and having
+spent the summer in the southwest, was about to resume his residence,
+and the profession of the law, in that state. We have seen that, however
+he might have succeeded in disguising his true feelings from his uncle,
+he was not unmoved by the encounter with Margaret Cooper, on the edge
+of the village. He now remembered the casual suggestion of the senior,
+which concluded their discussion on the subject of her beauty; and he
+resolved to go aside from his direct path, and take Charlemont in the
+route of his return. Not that he himself needed a second glance to
+convince him of that loveliness which, in his wilfulness, he yet denied.
+He was free to acknowledge to himself that Margaret Cooper was one of
+the noblest and most impressive beauties he had ever seen. The very
+scorn that spoke in all her features, the imperious fires that kindled
+in her eyes, were better calculated than any more gentle expressions, to
+impose upon one who was apt to be skeptical on the subject of ordinary
+beauties. The confidence and consciousness of superiority, which too
+plainly spoke out in the features of Margaret, seemed to deny to his
+mind the privilege of doubting or discussing her charms--a privilege
+upon which no one could have been more apt to insist than himself. This
+seeming denial, while it suggested to him ideas of novelty, provoked
+his curiosity and kindled his pride. The haughty glance with which she
+encountered his second approach, aroused his vanity, and a latent desire
+arose in his heart, to overcome one who had shown herself so premature
+in her defiance. We will not venture to assert that the young traveller
+had formed any very deliberate designs of conquest, but, it may be
+said, as well here as elsewhere, that his self-esteem was great; and
+accustomed to easy conquests among the sex, in the region where he
+dwelt, it was only necessary to inflame his vanity, to stimulate him to
+the exercise of all his arts.
+
+It was about noon, on one of those bright, balmy days, early in October,
+when “the bridal of the earth and sky,” in the language of the good
+old Herbert, is going on--when, the summer heats subdued, there is
+yet nothing either cold, or repulsive in the atmosphere; and the soft
+breathing from the southwest has just power enough to stir the flowers
+and disperse their scents; that our young traveller was joined in
+his progress towards Charlemont, by a person mounted like himself and
+pursuing a similar direction.
+
+At the first glance the youth distinguished him as one of the homely
+forest preachers of the methodist persuasion, who are the chief agents
+and pioneers of religion in most of the western woods. His plain,
+unstudied garments all of black, rigid and unfashionable; his pale,
+demure features, and the general humility of his air and gesture, left
+our young skeptic little reason to doubt of this; and when the other
+expressed his satisfaction at meeting with a companion at last, after a
+long and weary ride without one, the tone of his expressions, the use of
+biblical phraseology, and the monotonous solemnity of his tones, reduced
+the doubts of the youth to absolute certainty. At first, with the
+habitual levity of the young and skeptical, he congratulated himself
+upon an encounter which promised to afford him a good subject for
+quizzing; but a moment's reflection counselled him to a more worldly
+policy, and he restrained his natural impulse in order that he might
+first sound the depths of the preacher, and learn in what respect he
+might be made subservient to his own purposes. He had already learned
+from the latter that he was on his way to Charlemont, of which place he
+seemed to have some knowledge; and the youth, in an instant, conceived
+the possibility of making him useful in procuring for himself a
+favorable introduction to the place. With this thought, he assumed the
+grave aspect and deliberate enunciation of his companion, expressed
+himself equally gratified to meet with a person who, if he did not much
+mistake, was a divine, and concluded his address by the utterance of one
+of those pious commonplaces which are of sufficiently easy acquisition,
+and which at once secured him the unscrupulous confidence of his
+companion.
+
+“Truly, it gladdens me, sir,” said the holy man in reply, “to meet with
+one, as a fellow-traveller in these lonesome ways, who hath a knowledge
+of God's grace and the blessings which he daily sheddeth, even as the
+falling of the dews, upon a benighted land. It is my lot, and I repine
+not that such it is, to be for ever a wayfarer, in the desert where
+there are but few fountains to refresh the spirit. When I say desert,
+young gentleman, I speak not in the literal language of the world,
+for truly it were a most sinful denial of God's bounty were I to say,
+looking round upon the mighty forests through which I pass, and upon the
+rich soil over which I travel, that my way lies not through a country
+covered, thrice covered, with the best worldly bounties of the Lord. But
+it is a moral desert which my speech would signify. The soul of man is
+here lacking the blessed fountains of the truth--the mind of man here
+lacketh the holy and joy-shedding lights of the spirit; and it rejoiceth
+me, therefore, when I meet with one, like thyself, in whose language I
+find a proof that thou hast neither heard the word with idle ears, nor
+treasured it in thy memory with unapplying mind. May I ask of thee, my
+young friend, who thou art, and by what name I shall call thee?--not for
+the satisfaction of an idle curiosity, to know either thy profession
+or thy private concerns, but that I may the better speak to thee in
+our conference hereafter, Thou hast rightly conjectured as to my
+calling--and my own name, which is one unknown to most even in these
+forests, is John Cross--I come of a family in North Carolina, which
+still abide in that state, by the waters of the river Haw. Perhaps, if
+thou hast ever travelled in those parts, thou hast happened upon some of
+my kindred, which are very numerous.”
+
+“I have never, reverend sir, travelled in those parts,” said the youth,
+with commendable gravity, “but I have heard of the Cross family, which I
+believe, as you say, to be very numerous--both male and female.”
+
+“Yea, I have brothers and sisters an equal number; I have aunts and
+uncles a store, and it has been the blessing of God so to multiply and
+increase every member thereof, that each of my brothers, in turn, hath
+a goodly flock, in testimony of his favors. I, alone, of all my kindred,
+have neither wife nor child, and I seem as one set apart for other ties,
+and other purposes.”
+
+“Ah, sir,” returned the other, quickly, and with a slyness of expression
+which escaped the direct and unsuspecting mind of the preacher, “but if
+you are denied the blessings which are theirs, you have your part in the
+great family of the world. If you have neither wife nor child of your
+own loins, yet, I trust, you have an abiding interest in the wives and
+children of all other men.”
+
+“I were but an unworthy teacher of the blessed word, had I not,” was the
+simple answer. “Verily, all that I teach are my children; there is not
+one crying to me for help, to whom I do not hasten with the speed of a
+father flying to bring succor to his young. I trust in God, that I have
+not made a difference between them; that I heed not one to the forfeit
+or suffering of the other; and for this impartial spirit toward the
+flock intrusted to my charge, do I pray, as well as for the needful
+strength of body and soul, through which my duties are to be done. But
+thou hast not yet spoken thy name, or my ears have failed to receive
+it.”
+
+There was some little hesitation on the part of the youth before he
+answered this second application; and a less unheeding observer than his
+fellow-traveller, might have noticed an increasing warmth of hue upon
+his cheek, while he was uttering his reply:--
+
+“I am called Alfred Stevens,” he replied at length, the color increasing
+upon his cheek even after the words were spoken. But they were spoken.
+The falsehood was registered against him beyond recall, though, of
+course, without startling the doubts or suspicions of his companion.
+
+“Alfred Stevens; there are many Stevenses: I have known several and
+sundry. There is a worthy family of that name by the waters of the Dan.”
+
+“You will find them, I suspect, from Dan to Beersheba,” responded the
+youth with a resumption of his former levity.
+
+“Truly, it may be so. The name is of good repute. But what is thy
+calling, Alfred Stevens? Methinks at thy age thou shouldst have one.”
+
+“So I have, reverend sir,” replied the other; “my calling heretofore has
+been that of the law. But it likes me not, and I think soon to give it
+up.”
+
+“Thou wilt take to some other then. What other hast thou chosen; or art
+thou like those unhappy youths, by far too many in our blessed country,
+whom fortune hath hurt by her gifts, and beguiled into idleness and
+sloth?”
+
+“Nay, not so, reverend sir; the gifts of fortune have been somewhat
+sparing in my case, and I am even now conferring with my own thoughts
+whether or not to take to school-keeping. Nay, perhaps, I should incline
+to something better, if I could succeed in persuading myself of my own
+worthiness in a vocation which, more than all others, demands a pure
+mind with a becoming zeal. The law consorts not with my desires--it
+teaches selfishness, rather than self-denial; and I have already found
+that some of its duties demand the blindness and the silence of that
+best teacher from within, the watchful and unsleeping conscience.”
+
+“Thou hast said rightly, Alfred Stevens; I have long thought that the
+profession of the law hardeneth the heart, and blindeth the conscience.
+Thou wilt do well to leave it, as a craft that leads to sin, and makes
+the exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly understand thee, thou
+lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation for which thy spirit
+yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise, and gird up thy loins;
+advance and falter not;--the field is open, and though the victory
+brings thee no worldly profit, and but little worldly honor, yet the
+reward is eternal, and the interest thereof, unlike the money which thou
+puttest out to usury in the hands of men, never fails to be paid, at the
+very hour of its due, from the unfailing treasury of Heaven. Verily, I
+rejoice, Alfred Stevens, that I have met with thee to-day. I had feared
+that the day had been lost to that goodly labor, to which all my days
+have been given for seventeen years, come the first sabbath in the next
+November. But what thou hast said, awakens hope in my soul that such
+will not be the case. Let not my counsels fail thee, Alfred;--let thy
+zeal warm; let thy spirit work within thee, and thy words kindle, in the
+service of the Lord. How it will rejoice me to see thee taking up
+the scrip and the staff and setting forth for the wildernesses of the
+Mississippi, of Arkansas, and Texas, far beyond;--bringing the wild man
+of the frontier, and the red savage, into the blessed fold and constant
+company of the Lord Jesus, to whom all praise!”
+
+“It were indeed a glorious service,” responded the young stranger--whom
+we shall proceed, hereafter, to designate by the name by which he
+has called himself. He spoke musingly, and with a gravity that was
+singularly inflexible--“it were indeed a glorious service. Let me see,
+there were thousands of miles to traverse before one might reach the
+lower Arkansas; and I reckon, Mr. Cross, the roads are mighty bad after
+you pass the Mississippi--nay, even in the Mississippi, through a part
+of which territory I have gone only this last summer, there is a sad
+want of causeways, and the bridges are exceedingly out of repair. There
+is one section of near a hundred miles, which lies between the bluffs
+of Ashibiloxi, and the far creek of Catahoula, that was a shame and
+reproach to the country and the people thereof. What, then, must be
+the condition of the Texas territory, beyond? and, if I err not, the
+Cumanchees are a race rather given to destroy than to build up. The
+chance is that the traveller in their country might have to swim his
+horse over most of the watercourses, and where he found a bridge, it
+were perhaps a perilous risk to cross it. Even then he might ride fifty
+miles a day, before he should see the smokes which would be a sign of
+supper that night.”
+
+“The greater the glory--the greater the glory, Alfred Stevens. The toil
+and the peril, the pain and the privation, in a good cause, increase
+the merit of the performance in the eyes of the Lord. What matters the
+roads and the bridges, the length of the way, or the sometimes lack of
+those comforts of the flesh, which are craved only at the expense of the
+spirit, and to the great delay of our day of conquest. These wants are
+the infirmities of the human, which dissipate and disappear, the more
+few they become, and the less pressing in their complaint. Shake thyself
+loose from them, Alfred Stevens, and thy way henceforth is perfect
+freedom.”
+
+“Alas! this is my very weakness, Mr. Cross:--it was because of these
+very infirmities, that I had doubt of my own worthiness to take up the
+better vocation which is yet my desire. I am sadly given to hunger and
+thirst toward noon and evening; and the travel of a long day makes me so
+weary at night, that I should say but a hurried grace before meal, and
+make an even more hurried supper after it. Nay, I have not yet been able
+to divest myself of a habit which I acquired in my boyhood; and I need
+at times, throughout the day, a mouthful of something stronger than mere
+animal food, to sustain the fainting and feeble flesh and keep my frame
+from utter exhaustion. I dare not go upon the road, even for the brief
+journey of a single day, without providing myself beforehand with a
+supply of a certain beverage, such as is even now contained within this
+vessel, and which is infallible against sinking of the the spirits,
+faintings of the frame, disordered nerves, and even against flatulence
+and indigestion. If, at any time, thou shouldst suffer from one or
+the other of these infirmities, Mr. Cross, be sure there is no better
+medicine for their cure than this.”
+
+The speaker drew from his bosom a little flask, such as is sufficiently
+well known to most western travellers, which he held on high, and which,
+to the unsuspecting eyes of the preacher, contained a couple of gills or
+more of a liquid of very innocent complexion.
+
+“Verily, Alfred Stevens, I do myself suffer from some of the weaknesses
+of which thou hast spoken. The sinking of the spirits, and the faintness
+of the frame, are but too often the enemies that keep me back from the
+plough when I would thereto set my hand; and that same flatulence--”
+
+“A most frequent disorder in a region where greens and collards form the
+largest dishes on the tables of the people,” interrupted Stevens, but
+without changing a muscle of his countenance.
+
+“I do believe as thou say'st, Alfred Stevens, that the disorder comes in
+great part from that cause, though, still, I have my doubts if it be not
+a sort of wind-melancholy, to which people, who preach aloud are greatly
+subject. It is in my case almost always associated with a sort of
+hoarseness, and the nerves of my frame twitch grievously at the same
+periods. If this medicine of thine be sovereign against so cruel an
+affliction, I would crave of thee such knowledge as would enable me to
+get a large supply of it, that I may overcome a weakness, which, as I
+tell thee, oftentimes impairs my ministry, and sometimes makes me wholly
+incapable of fervent preaching. Let me smell of it, I pray thee.”
+
+“Nay, taste of it, sir--it is just about the time when I find it
+beneficial to partake of it, as a medicine for my own weakness, and
+I doubt not, it will have a powerful effect also upon you. A single
+draught has been found to relieve the worst case of flatulence and
+colic.”
+
+“From colic too, I am also a great sufferer,” said the preacher as he
+took the flask in his hand, and proceeded to draw the stopper.
+
+“That is also the child of collards,” said Stevens, as he watched with
+a quiet and unmoved countenance the proceedings of his simple companion,
+who finding some difficulty in drawing the cork, handed it back to the
+youth. The latter, more practised, was more successful, and now returned
+the open bottle to the preacher.
+
+“Take from it first, the dose which relieves thee, Alfred Stevens,
+that I may know how much will avail in my own case;” and he watched
+curiously, while Stevens, applying the flask to his lips, drew from it
+a draught, which, in western experience of benefits, would have been
+accounted a very moderate potion. This done, he handed it back to his
+companion, who, about to follow his example, asked him:--
+
+“And by what name, Alfred Stevens, do they call this medicine, the
+goodly effect of which thou holdst to be so great?”
+
+Stevens did not immediately reply--not until the preacher had applied
+the bottle to his mouth, and he could see by the distension of his
+throat, that he had imbibed a taste, at least, of the highly-lauded
+medicine. The utterance then, of the single word--“Brandy”--was
+productive of an effect no less ludicrous in the sight of the youth,
+than it was distressing to the mind of his worthy companion. The
+descending liquor was ejected with desperate effort from the throat
+which it had fairly entered--the flask flung from his hands--and with
+choking and gurgling accents, startling eyes, and reddening visage, John
+Cross turned full upon his fellow-traveller, vainly trying to repeat,
+with the accompanying horror of expression which he felt, the single
+spellword, which had produced an effect so powerful.
+
+“Bran--bran--brandy!--Alfred Stevens!--thou hast given me poison--the
+soul's poison--the devil's liquor--liquor distilled in the vessels of
+eternal sin. Wherefore hast thou done this? Dost thou not know”--
+
+“Know--know what, Mr. Cross?” replied Stevens, with all the astonishment
+which he could possibly throw into his air, as he descended from his
+horse with all haste to recover his flask, and save its remaining
+contents from loss.
+
+“Call me not mister--call me plain John Cross,” replied the preacher--in
+the midst of a second fit of choking, the result of his vain effort to
+disgorge that portion of the pernicious liquid which had irretrievably
+descended into his bowels. With a surprise admirably affected, Stevens
+approached him.
+
+“My dear sir--what troubles you?--what can be the matter? What have I
+done? What is it you fear?”
+
+“That infernal draught--that liquor--I have swallowed of it a mouthful.
+I feel it in me. The sin be upon thy head, Alfred Stevens--why did you
+not tell me, before I drank, that it was the soul's poison?--the poison
+that slays more than the sword or the pestilence;--the liquor of the
+devil, distilled in the vessels of sin--and sent among men for the
+destruction of the soul! I feel it now within me, and it burns--it burns
+like the fires of damnation. Is there no water nigh that I may quench
+my thirst?--Show me, Alfred Stevens, show me where the cool waters lie,
+that I may put out these raging flames.”
+
+“There is a branch, if I mistake not, just above us on the road--I think
+I see it glistening among the leaves. Let us ride toward it, sir, and it
+will relieve you.”
+
+“Ah, Alfred Stevens, why have you served me thus? Why did you not tell
+me?”
+
+Repeated groans accompanied this apostrophe, and marked every step in
+the progress of the preacher to the little rivulet which trickled across
+the road. John Cross, descended with the rapidity of one whose hope
+hangs upon a minute, and dreads its loss, as equal to the loss of life.
+He straddled the stream and thrust his lips into the water, drawing up
+a quantity sufficient, in the estimation of Stevens, to have effectually
+neutralized the entire contents of his flask.
+
+“Blessed water! Blessed water! Holiest beverage! Thou art the creation
+of the Lord, and, next to the waters of eternal life, his best gift to
+undiscerning man. I drink of thee, and I am faint no longer. I rise up,
+strong and refreshed! Ah, my young friend, Alfred Stevens, I trust thou
+didst not mean me harm in giving me that poisonous liquor?”
+
+“Far from it, sir, I rather thought to do you a great benefit.”
+
+“How couldst thou think to do me benefit by proffering such poison to my
+lips? nay, wherefore dost thou thyself carry it with thee, and why dost
+thou drink of it, as if it were something not hurtful as well to the
+body as the soul? Take my counsel, I pray thee, Alfred Stevens, and cast
+it behind thee for ever. Look not after it when thou dost so, with an
+eye of regret lest thou forfeit the merit of thy self-denial. If thou
+wouldst pursue the higher vocation of the brethren, thou must seek for
+the needful strength from a better and purer spirit. But what unhappy
+teacher could have persuaded thee to an indulgence which the good men of
+all the churches agree to regard as so deadly?”
+
+“Nay, Mr. Cross--”
+
+“John Cross, I pray thee; do I not call thee Alfred Stevens?--Mr. is a
+speech of worldly fashion, and becomes not one who should put the world
+and its fashions behind him.”
+
+Stevens found it more difficult to comply with this one requisition of
+the preacher, than to pursue a long game of artful and complex scheming.
+He evaded the difficulty by dropping the name entirely.
+
+“You are too severe upon brandy, and upon those who use it. Nay, I am
+not sure, but you do injustice to those who make it. So far from its
+manufacturers being such as you call them, we have unquestionable proof
+that they are very worthy people of a distant but a Christian country;
+and surely you will not deny that we should find a medicine for our
+hurts, and a remedy for our complaints, in a liquor which, perhaps, it
+might be sinful to use as an ordinary beverage. Doctors, who have the
+care of human life, and whose business and desire it is to preserve it,
+nevertheless do sometimes administer poisons to their patients, which
+poisons, though deadly at other times, will, in certain diseases and
+certain conditions of disease, prove of only and great good.”
+
+“Impossible! I believe it not! I believe not in the good of brandy. It
+is hurtful--it is deadly. It has slain its thousands and its tens of
+thousands--it is worse than the sword and the summer pestilence. Many a
+man have I known to perish from strong drink. In my own parts, upon the
+river Haw, in North Carolina state, I have known many. Nay, wherefore
+should I spare the truth, Alfred Stevens?--the very father of my own
+life, Ezekiel Cross, perished miserably from this burning water of sin.
+I will not hear thee speak of it again; and if thou wouldst have me
+think of thee with favor, as one hopeful of the service of the brethren,
+cast the accursed beverage of Satan from thy hands.”
+
+The youth, without a word, deliberately emptied the contents of his
+vessel upon the sands, and the garrulous lips of the preacher poured
+forth as great a flood of speech in congratulation, as he had hitherto
+bestowed in homily. The good, unsuspecting man, did not perceive that
+the liquor thus thrown away, was very small in quantity, and that his
+companion, when the flask was emptied, quietly restored it to his bosom.
+John Cross had obtained a seeming victory, and did not care to examine
+its details.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The concession made by Stevens, and which had produced an effect so
+gratifying upon his companion, was one that involved no sacrifices.
+The animal appetite of the young lawyer was, in truth, comparatively
+speaking, indifferent to the commodity which he discarded; and even
+had it been otherwise, still he was one of those selfish, cool and
+calculating persons, who seem by nature to be perfectly able to subdue
+the claims of the blood, with great ease, whenever any human or social
+policy would appear to render it advisable. The greatest concession
+which he made in the transaction, was in his so readily subscribing to
+that false logic of the day, which reasons against the use of the gifts
+of Providence, because a diseased moral, and a failing education, among
+men, sometimes result in their abuse.
+
+The imperfections of a mode of reasoning so utterly illogical, were
+as obvious to the mind of the young lawyer as to anybody else; and
+the compliance which he exhibited to a requisition which his own sense
+readily assured him was as foolish as it was presumptuous, was as
+degrading to his moral character from the hypocrisy which it declared,
+as it was happy in reference to the small policy by which he had been
+governed. The unsuspecting preacher did not perceive the scornful sneer
+which curled his lips and flashed his eyes, by which his own vanity
+still asserted itself through the whole proceeding; or he would not have
+been so sure that the mantle of grace which he deemed to have surely
+fallen upon the shoulders of his companion, was sufficiently large and
+sound, to cover the multitude of sins which it yet enabled the wearer,
+so far, to conceal. Regarding him with all the favor which one is apt to
+feel for the person whom he has plucked as a brand from the burning, the
+soul of John Cross warmed to the young sinner; and it required no great
+effort of the wily Stevens to win from him the history, not only of all
+its own secrets and secret hopes--for these were of but small value in
+the eyes of the worldling--but of all those matters which belonged to
+the little village to which they were trending, and the unwritten lives
+of every dweller in that happy community.
+
+With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the
+testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those
+minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to
+the great matter immediately in hand--Stevens now propounded his direct
+inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly unconsidered insinuation, by
+which he drew from the preacher as much as he cared to know of the
+rustic lads and lasses of Charlemont. It does not concern our narrative
+to render the details thus unfolded to the stranger. And we will content
+ourselves, as did the younger of the travellers, who placed himself with
+hearty good will at the disposal of the holy man.
+
+“You shall find for me a place of lodging, Mr. Cross, while it shall
+suit me to stay in Charlemont. You have a knowledge of the people, and
+of the world, which I possess not; and it will be better that I should
+give myself up to your guidance. I know that you will not bring me to
+the dwelling of persons not in good repute; and, perhaps, I need not
+remind you that my worldly means are small--I must be at little charge
+wherever I stop.”
+
+“Ah, Brother Stevens, worldly goods and worldly wealth are no more
+needed in Charlemont, than they are necessary to the service of the
+blessed Redeemer. With an empty scrip is thy service blest;--God
+sees the pure heart through the threadbare garment. I have friends in
+Charlemont who will be too happy to receive thee in the name of the
+Lord, without money and without price.”
+
+The pride of Stevens, which had not shrunk from hypocrisy and falsehood,
+yet recoiled at a suggestion which involved the idea of his pecuniary
+dependence upon strangers, and he replied accordingly; though he still
+disguised his objections under the precious appearance of a becoming
+moral scruple.
+
+“It will not become me, Mr. Cross, to burden the brethren of the church
+for that hospitality which is only due to brethren.”
+
+“But thou art in the way of grace--the light is shining upon thee--the
+door is open, and already the voice of the Bridegroom is calling from
+within. Thou wilt become a burning and a shining light--and the brethren
+of the church will rejoice to hail thee among its chosen. Shall they
+hold back their hand when thou art even on the threshold?”
+
+“But, Mr. Cross--”
+
+“Call me not Mr., I pray thee. Call me plain John Cross, if it please
+thee not yet to apply to me that sweeter term of loving kindness which
+the flock of God are happy to use in speech one to another. If thou wilt
+call me Brother Cross, my heart shall acknowledge the bonds between us,
+and my tongue shall make answer to thine, in like fashion. Oh, Alfred
+Stevens, may the light shine soon upon thine eyes, that thou may'st know
+for a truth how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in the
+peace of of the Lord, and according to his law. I will, with God's
+grace, bring thee to this perfect knowledge, for I see the way clear
+because of the humility which thou hast already shown, and thy yielding
+to the counsels of the teacher. As for what thou sayest about charges to
+the brethren, let that give thee no concern. Thou shalt lodge with old
+Brother Hinkley, who is the pattern of good things and of, holiness
+in Charlemont. His house is more like unto the tent of the patriarch
+pitched upon the plain, than the house of the dweller among the cities.
+No lock fastens its doors against the stranger; and the heart of the
+aged man is even more open than the doorway of his dwelling. He standeth
+in the entrance like one looking out for him that cometh, and his first
+word to the messenger of God, is 'welcome!' Thou shalt soon see the
+truth of what I say to thee, for even now do we look down upon his house
+in the very midst of the village.”
+
+If the scruples of Stevens still continued to urge him against
+accepting the hospitality of the old patriarch of whom he had received
+a description at once just and agreeable, the recollection of the
+village-maiden whom he had gone aside from his direct path of travel,
+and made some even greater departures from the truth, to see, determined
+him at length to waive them; particularly when he ascertained from his
+fellow-traveller that he knew of nobody in Charlemont who accommodated
+strangers for money.
+
+Stevens was one of those persons who watch the progress of events, and
+he resolved, with a mental reservation--that seems strange enough in the
+case of one who had shown so little reluctance to say and do the thing
+which he could not maintain or defend--to avail himself of some means
+for requiting, to the uttermost farthing, the landlord, to whose
+hospitality he might be indebted during his stay in Charlemont.
+
+Such are the contradictions of character which hourly detect and
+describe the mere worldling--the man lacking in all principle, but that
+which is subservient to his selfish policy. To accept money or money's
+worth from a stranger, seemed mean and humbling to one, who did not
+hesitate, in the promotion of a scheme, which, had treachery for its
+object, to clothe himself in the garments of deception, and to make
+his appearance with a lie festering upon his lips. That evening, Alfred
+Stevens became, with his worthier companion, an inmate of the happy
+dwelling of William Hinkley, the elder--a venerable, white-headed
+father, whose whole life had made him worthy of a far higher eulogium
+than that which John Cross had pronounced upon him.
+
+The delight of the family to see their reverend teacher was heartfelt
+and unreserved. A vigorous gripe of the hand, by the elder dragged him
+into the house, and a sentence of unusual length, from his better half,
+assured him of that welcome which the blunter action of her venerable
+husband had already sufficiently declared. Nor was the young adventurer
+who accompanied the preacher, suffered to remain long unconsidered. When
+John Cross had told them who he was, or rather when he had declared
+his spiritual hopes in him--which he did with wonderful unction, in a
+breath--the reception of old Hinkley, which had been hospitable enough
+before, became warm and benignant; and Brother Stevens already became
+the word of salutation, whenever the old people desired to distinguish
+their younger guest.
+
+Brother Stevens, it may be said here, found no difficulty in maintaining
+the character he had assumed. He had, in high degree, the great art
+of the selfish man, and could, when his game required it, subdue with
+little effort, those emotions and impulses, which the frank and ardent
+spirit must speak out or die. He went into the house of the hospitable
+old man, and into the village of Charlemont, as if he had gone into the
+camp of an enemy. He was, indeed, a spy, seeking to discover, not the
+poverty, but the richness of the land. His mind, therefore, was like one
+who has clothed himself in armor, placed himself in waiting for the foe,
+and set all his sentinels on the watch. His caution measured every word
+ere it was spoken, every look ere it was shown, every movement ere he
+suffered his limbs to make it. The muscles of his face, were each put
+under curb and chain--the smiles of the lip and the glances of the eyes,
+were all subdued to precision, and permitted to go forth, only under
+special guard and restriction. In tone, look, and manner, he strove as
+nearly as he might to resemble the worthy but simple-minded man, who had
+so readily found a worthy adherent and pupil in him; and his efforts
+at deception might be held to be sufficiently successful, if the frank
+confiding faith of the aged heads of the Hinkley family be the fitting
+test of his experiment.
+
+With them he was soon perfectly at home--his own carriage seemed to them
+wondrously becoming, and the approbation of John Cross was of itself
+conclusive. The preacher was the oracle of the family, all of whom were
+only too happy of his favor not to make large efforts to be pleased
+with those he brought; and in a little while, sitting about the friendly
+fireside, the whole party had become as sociable as if they had been
+“hail fellow! well met,” a thousand years. Two young girls, children
+of a relative, and nieces of the venerable elder, had already perched
+themselves upon the knee of the stranger, and strove at moments over his
+neck and shoulder, without heeding the occasional sugary reproof of
+Dame Hinkley, which bade them “let Brother Stevens be;” and, already had
+Brother Stevens himself, ventured upon the use of sundry grave saws
+from the holy volume, the fruit of early reading and a retentive memory,
+which not a little helped to maintain his novel pretensions in the mind
+of the brethren, and the worthy teacher, John Cross himself. All things
+promised a long duration to a friendship suddenly begun; when William
+Hinkley, the younger, a youth already introduced to the reader, made his
+appearance within the happy circle. He wore a different aspect from all
+the rest as he recognised in the person of Brother Stevens, the handsome
+stranger, his antipathy to whom, at a first glance, months before,
+seemed almost to have the character of a warning instinct. A nearer
+glance did not serve to lessen his hostility.
+
+Our traveller was to the eye of a lover, one, indeed, who promised
+dangerous rivalship, and an intrepid air of confidence which, even his
+assumed character could not enable him to disguise from the searching
+eyes of jealousy, contributed to strengthen the dislike of the youth
+for a person who seemed so perfectly sure of his ground. Still, William
+Hinkley behaved as a civil and well-bred youth might be expected
+to behave. He did not suffer his antipathy to put on the aspect of
+rudeness; he was grave and cold, but respectful; and though he did
+not “be-brother” the stranger, he yet studiously subdued his tones to
+mildness, when it became necessary, in the course of the evening meal,
+that he should address him. Few words, however, were exchanged between
+the parties. If Hinkley beheld an enemy to his heart's hopes in Stevens,
+the latter was sufficiently well-read in the human heart to discover
+quite as soon, that the rustic was prepared to see in himself any
+character but that of a friend. The unwillingness with which Hinkley
+heard his suggestions--the absence of all freedom and ease in his
+deportment, toward himself, so different from the manner of the youth
+when speaking or listening to all other persons; the occasional gleam
+of jealous inquiry and doubt within his eye, and the utter lack of all
+enthusiasm and warmth in his tones while he spoke to him, satisfied
+Stevens, that he, of all the household of his hospitable entertainers,
+if not actually suspicious of his true character, was the one whose
+suspicions were those most easily to be awakened, and who of all others,
+needed most to be guarded against. It will not increase our estimate
+of the wisdom of the stranger, to learn that, with this conviction, he
+should yet arrogate to himself a tone of superiority, while speaking in
+hearing of the youth.
+
+This was shown in a manner that was particularly galling to a
+high-spirited youth, and one whose prejudices were already awakened
+against the speaker. It was that of a paternal and patronizing senior,
+whose very gentleness and benignity of look and accent, seem to arise
+from a full conviction of the vast difference which exists between
+himself and his hearer. An indignity like this, which can not be
+resented, is one which the young mind feels always most anxious to
+resent. The very difficulties in the way of doing so, stimulates the
+desire. Such was the feeling of William Hinkley. With such a feeling it
+may be conjectured that opportunity was not long wanting, or might soon
+be made, for giving utterance to the suppressed fires of anger which
+were struggling in his heart. Days and weeks may elapse, but the
+antipathy will declare itself at last. It would be easier to lock up the
+mountain torrent after the breath of the tornado has torn away its rocky
+seals, than to stifle in the heart that hates, because of its love, the
+fierce fury which these united passions enkindle within it.
+
+In the first hour of their first interview, William Hinkley and Alfred
+Stevens felt that they were mutual foes. In that little space of time,
+the former had but one thought, which, though it changed its aspect with
+each progressive moment, never for an instant changed its character. He
+panted with the hope of redressing himself for wrongs which he could not
+name; for injuries and indignities which he knew not how to describe.
+Stevens had neither done nor said anything which might be construed into
+an offence. And yet, nobody knew better than Stevens that he had been
+offensive. The worthy John Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never
+dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated
+in the fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as
+particularly favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of
+such unctuous moral delivery.
+
+“Surely,” he mused internally, “this is a becoming instrument which I
+have found, for the prosecution of the good work. He will bear the word
+like one sent forth to conquer. He will bind and loose with a strong
+hand. He will work wondrous things!”
+
+Not unlike these were the calculations of old Hinkley, as he hearkened
+to the reverend reasonings and the solemn commonplaces of the stranger.
+Stevens, like most recent converts, was the most uncompromising enemy of
+those sins from which he professed to have achieved with difficulty his
+own narrow escape; and finding, from the attentive ear of his audience,
+that he had made a favorable impression, he proceeded to manufacture for
+them his religious experience; an art which his general information, and
+knowledge of the world enabled him to perform without much difficulty.
+
+But the puritan declamation which pleased all the rest, disgusted young
+Hinkley, and increased his dislike for the declaimer. There was too much
+of the worldling in the looks, dress, air, and manner of Stevens, to
+satisfy the rustic of his sincerity. Something of his doubts had their
+source, without question, in the antipathy which he had formed against
+him; but William Hinkley was not without keen, quick, observing, and
+justly discriminating faculties, and much of his conclusions were the
+due consequence of a correct estimate of the peculiarities which we have
+named. Stevens, he perceived, declared his experiences of religion,
+with the air of one who expects the congratulations of his audience.
+The humility which thinks only of the acquisition itself, as the very
+perfection of human conquest, was wanting equally to his language and
+deportment. The very details which he gave, were ostentatious; and the
+gracious smiles which covered his lips as he concluded, were those of
+the self-complacent person, who feels that he has just been saying
+those good things, which, of necessity, must command the applause of his
+hearers.
+
+A decent pause of half an hour after the supper was finished, which was
+spent by the jealous youth in utter silence, and he then rose abruptly
+and hurried from the apartment, leaving the field entirely to his
+opponent. He proceeded to the house of his neighbor and cousin, Ned
+Hinkley, but without any hope of receiving comfort from his communion.
+Ned was a lively, thoughtless, light-hearted son of the soil, who was
+very slow to understand sorrows of any kind; and least of all, those
+which lie in the fancy of a dreaming and a doubtful lover. At this
+moment, when the possession of a new violin absorbed all his thoughts,
+his mind was particularly obtuse on the subject of sentimental
+grievances, and the almost voluptuous delight which filled his eyes
+when William entered his chamber, entirely prevented him from seeing the
+heavy shadow which overhung the brows of the latter.
+
+“What, back again, William? Why, you're as changeable as the last
+suit of a green lizard. When I asked you to stop, and hear me play
+'Cross-possum,' and 'Criss-cross,' off you went without giving me a
+civil answer. I've a mind now to put up the fiddle and send your ears
+to bed supperless. How would you like that, old fellow? but I'll be
+good-natured. You shall have it, though you don't deserve it; she's
+in prime tune, and the tones--only hear that, Bill--there. Isn't she
+delicious?”
+
+And as the inconsiderate cousin poured out his warmest eulogy of the
+favorite instrument, his right hand flourished the bow in air, in a
+style that would have cheered the heart of Jean Crapaud himself, and
+then brought it over the cat-gut in a grand crash, that sounded as
+harshly in the ears of his morbid visitor, as if the two worlds had
+suddenly come together with steam-engine velocity. He clapped his hands
+upon the invaded organs, and with something like horror in his voice,
+cried out his expostulations.
+
+“For heaven's sake, Ned, don't stun a body with your noise.”
+
+“Noise! Did you say noise, Bill Hinkley--noise?”
+
+“Yes, noise,” answered the other with some peevishness in his accents.
+The violinist looked at him incredulously, while he suffered the point
+of the fiddle-bow to sink on a line with the floor; then, after a
+moment's pause, he approached his companion, wearing in his face the
+while, an appearance of the most grave inquiry, and when sufficiently
+nigh, he suddenly brought the bow over the strings of the instrument,
+immediately in William's ears, with a sharp and emphatic movement,
+producing an effect to which the former annoying crash, might well
+have been thought a very gentle effusion. This was followed by an
+uncontrollable burst of laughter from the merry lips of the musician.
+
+“There--that's what I call a noise, Bill. Sweet Sall CAN make a noise
+when I worry her into it; she's just like other women in that respect;
+she'll be sure to squall out if you don't touch her just in the right
+quarter. But the first time she did NOT go amiss, and as for stunning
+you--but what's the matter? Where's the wind now?”
+
+“Nothing--only I don't want to be deafened with such a clatter.”
+
+“Something's wrong, Bill, I know it. You look now for all the world like
+a bottle of sour son, with the cork out, and ready to boil over. As
+for Sall making a noise the first time, that's all a notion, and a very
+strange one. She was as sweet-spoken then as she was when you left
+me before supper. The last time, I confess, I made her squall out on
+purpose. But what of that? you are not the man to get angry with a
+little fun!”
+
+“No, I'm not angry with you, Ned--I am not angry with anybody; but just
+now, I would rather not hear the fiddle. Put it up.”
+
+“There!” said the other good-naturedly, as he placed the favorite
+instrument in its immemorial case in the corner. “There; and now Bill,
+untie the pack, and let's see the sort of wolf-cubs you've got to carry;
+for there's no two horns to a wild bull, if something hasn't gored you
+to-night.”
+
+“You're mistaken, Ned--quite mistaken--quite!”
+
+“Deuse a bit! I know you too well, Bill Hinkley, so it's no use to hush
+up now. Out with it, and don't be sparing, and if there's any harm to
+come, I'm here, just as ready to risk a cracked crown for you, as if the
+trouble was my own. I'd rather fiddle than fight, it's true; but when
+there's any need for it, you know I can do one just as well as the
+other; and can go to it with just as much good humor. So show us the
+quarrel.”
+
+“There's no quarrel. Ned,” said the other, softened by the frank and
+ready feeling which his companion showed; “but I'm very foolish in some
+things, and don't know how it is. I'm not apt to take dislikes, but
+there's a man come to our house with John Cross, this evening, that I
+somehow dislike very much.”
+
+“A man! What's he like? Anything like Joe Richards? That was a fellow
+that I hated mightily. I never longed to lick any man but Joe Richards,
+and him I longed to lick three times, though you know I never got at him
+more than twice. It's a great pity he got drowned, for I owe him a third
+licking, and don't feel altogether right, since I know no sort of way to
+pay it. But if this man's anything like Joe, it may be just the same if
+I give it to HIM. Now--”
+
+“He's nothing like Richards,” said the other. “He's a taller and
+better-looking man.”
+
+“If he's nothing like Joe, what do you want to lick him for?” said the
+single-minded musician, with a surprise in his manner, which was mingled
+with something like rebuke.
+
+“I have expressed no such wish, Ned; you are too hasty; and if I did
+wish to whip him, I don't think I should trouble you or any man to
+help me. If I could not do it myself, I should give it up as a bad job,
+without calling in assistants.”
+
+“Oh, you're a spunky follow--a real colt for hard riding,” retorted the
+other with a good-natured mock in his tones and looks; “but if you don't
+want to lick the fellow, how comes it you dislike him? It seems to me
+if a chap behaved so as to make me dislike him, it wouldn't be an easy
+matter to keep my hands off him. I'd teach him how to put me into a bad
+humor, or I'd never touch violin again.”
+
+“This man's a parson, I believe.”
+
+“A parson--that's a difficulty. It is not altogether right to lick
+parsons, because they're not counted fighting people. But there's a
+mighty many on 'em that licking would help. No wonder you dislike the
+fellow, though if he comes with John Cross, he shouldn't be altogether
+so bad. Now, John Cross IS a good man. He's good, and he's good-humored.
+He don't try to set people's teeth on edge against all the pleasant
+things of this world, and he can laugh, and talk, and sing, like other
+people. Many's the time he's asked me, of his own mouth, to play the
+violin; and I've seen his little eyes caper again, when sweet Sall
+talked out her funniest. If it was not so late, I'd go over now and give
+him a reel or two, and then I could take a look at this strange chap,
+that's set your grinders against each other.”
+
+The fiddler looked earnestly at the instrument in the corner, his
+features plainly denoting his anxiety to resume the occupation which his
+friends coming had so inopportunely interrupted. William Hinkley saw the
+looks of his cousin, and divined the cause.
+
+“You shall play for me, Ned,” he remarked; “you shall give me that old
+highland-reel that you learned from Scotch Geordie. It will put me out
+of my bad humor, I think, and we can go to bed quietly. I've come to
+sleep with you to-night.”
+
+“You're a good fellow, Bill; I knew that you couldn't stand it long, if
+Sweet Sall kept a still tongue in her head. That reel's the very thing
+to drive away bad humors, though there's another that I learnt from John
+Blodget, the boat-man, that sounds to me the merriest and comicalest
+thing in the world. It goes--,” and here the fiddle was put in
+requisition to produce the required sounds: and having got carte
+blanche, our enthusiastic performer, without weariness, went through
+his whole collection, without once perceiving that his comical and
+merry tunes had entirely failed to change the grave, and even gloomy
+expression which still mantled the face of his companion. It was only
+when in his exhaustion he set down the instrument, that he became
+conscious of William Hinkley's continued discomposure.
+
+“Why, Bill, the trouble has given you a bigger bite than I thought for.
+What words did you have with the preacher?”
+
+“None: I don't know that he is a preacher. He speaks only as if he was
+trying to become one.”
+
+“What, you hadn't any difference--no quarrel?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“And it's only to-night that you've seen him for the first time?”
+
+A flush passed over the grave features of William Hinkley as he heard
+this question, and it was with a hesitating manner and faltering
+accents, that he contrived to tell his cousin of the brief glimpse which
+he had of the same stranger several months before, on that occasion,
+when, in the emotion of Margaret Cooper, replying to a similar question,
+he first felt the incipient seed of jealousy planted within his bosom.
+But this latter incident he forbore to reveal to the inquirer; and Ned
+Hinkley, though certainly endowed by nature with sufficient skill
+to draw forth the very soul of music from the instrument on which he
+played, had no similar power upon the secret soul of the person whom he
+partially examined.
+
+“But 'tis very strange how you should take offence at a man you've seen
+so little; though I have heard before this of people taking dislikes
+at other people the first moment they set eyes on 'em. Now, I'm not a
+person of that sort, unless it was in the case of Joe Richards; and him
+I took a sort of grudge at from the first beginning. But even then there
+was a sort of reason for it; for, at the beginning, when Joe came down
+upon us here in Charlemont, he was for riding over people's necks,
+without so much as asking, 'by your leave.' He had a way about him that
+vexed me, though we did not change a word.”
+
+“And it's that very way that this person has that I don't like,” said
+William Hinkley. “He talks as if he made you, and when you talk, he
+smiles as if he thought you were the very worst work that ever went out
+of his hands. Then, if he has to say anything, be it ever so trifling,
+he says it just as if he was telling you that the world was to come to
+an end the day after to-morrow.”
+
+“Just the same with Joe Richards. I never could get at him but twice;
+though I give him then a mighty smart hammering; and if he hadn't got
+under the broadhorn and got drowned;--but this fellow?”
+
+“You'll see him at church to-morrow. I shouldn't wonder if he preaches;
+for John Cross was at him about it before I came away. What's worse, the
+old man's been asking him to live with us.”
+
+“What, here in Charlemont?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I'll be sure to lick him then, if he's anything like Joe Richards. But
+what's to make him live in Charlemont? Is he to be a preacher for us?”
+
+“Perhaps so, but I couldn't understand all, for I came in while they
+were at it, and left home before they were done. I'm sure if he stays
+there I shall not. I shall leave home, for I really dislike to meet
+him.”
+
+“You shall stay with me, Bill, and we'll have Sall at all hours,” was
+the hearty speech of the cousin, as he threw his arms around the neck
+of his morose companion, and dragged him gently toward the adjoining
+apartment, which formed his chamber. “To-morrow,” he continued, “as you
+say, we'll see this chap, and if he's anything like Joe Richards--” The
+doubled fist of the speaker, and his threatening visage, completed the
+sentence with which this present conference and chapter may very well
+conclude.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE TOAD ON THE ALTAR.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day was the sabbath. John Cross had timed his arrival at
+the village with a due reference to his duties, and after a minute
+calculation of days and distances, so that his spiritual manna might be
+distributed in equal proportions among his hungering flock. His arrival
+made itself felt accordingly, not simply in Charlemont, but throughout
+the surrounding country for a circuit of ten miles or more. There was a
+large and hopeful gathering of all sorts and sexes, white and black, old
+and young. Charlemont had a very pretty little church of its own; but
+one, and that, with more true Christianity than is found commonly in
+this world of pretence and little tolerance, was open to preachers of
+all denominations. The word of God, among these simple folks, was quite
+too important to make them scruple at receiving it from the lips of
+either Geneva, Rome, or Canterbury. The church stood out among the hills
+at a little distance from, but in sight of the village; a small, neat
+Grecian-like temple, glimmering white and saintlike through solemn
+visaged groves, and gaudy green foliage. The old trees about it were all
+kept neatly trimmed, the brush pruned away and cleared up, and a smooth
+sweet sward, lawn-like, surrounded it, such as children love to skip and
+scramble over, and older children rest at length upon, in pairs, talking
+over their sweet silly affections.
+
+Surrounded by an admiring crowd, each of whom had his respectful
+salutation, we see our friend John Cross toward noon approaching the
+sacred dwelling. Truly he was the most simple, fraternal of all God's
+creatures. He had a good word for this, an affectionate inquiry for
+that, a benevolent smile, and a kind pressure of the hand for all.
+He was a man to do good, for everybody saw that he thought for others
+before himself, and sincerity and earnestness constitute, with the
+necessary degree of talent, the grand secrets for making successful
+teachers in every department.
+
+Though a simple, unsophisticated, unsuspecting creature, John Cross
+was a man of very excellent natural endowments. He chose for his text
+a passage of the Scriptures which admitted of a direct practical
+application to the concerns of the people, their daily wants, their
+pressing interests, moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled to
+preach a discourse which sent home many of his congregation much wiser
+than they came, if only in reference to their homely duties of farmstead
+and family. John Cross was none of those sorry and self-constituted
+representatives of our eternal interests, who deluge us with a vain,
+worthless declamation, proving that virtue is a very good thing,
+religion a very commendable virtue, and a liberal contribution to the
+church-box at the close of the sermon one of the most decided proofs
+that we have this virtue in perfection. Nay, it is somewhat doubtful,
+indeed, if he ever once alluded to the state of his own scrip and the
+treasury of the church. His faith, sincere, spontaneous, ardent, left
+him in very little doubt that the Lord will provide, for is he not
+called “Jehovah-Jireh?”--and his faith was strengthened and confirmed
+by the experience of his whole life. But then John Cross had few
+wants--few, almost none! In this respect he resembled the first
+apostles. The necessities of life once cared for, never was mortal man
+more thoroughly independent of the world. He was not one of those fine
+preachers who, dealing out counsels of self-denial, in grave saws and
+solemn maxims, with wondrous grim visage and a most slow, lugubrious
+shaking of the head--are yet always religiously careful to secure the
+warmest seat by the fireside, and the best buttered bun on table.
+He taught no doctrine which he did not practise; and as for
+consideration--that test at once of the religionist and the
+gentleman--he was as humbly solicitous of the claims and feelings of
+others, as the lovely and lowly child to whom reverence has been well
+taught as the true beginning, equally of politeness and religion.
+
+Before going into church he urged his protege, Stevens, to consent to
+share in the ceremonies of the service as a layman; but there was still
+some saving virtue in the young man, which made him resolute in refusing
+to do so. Perhaps, his refusal was dictated by a policy like that which
+had governed him so far already; which made him reluctant to commit
+himself to a degree which might increase very much the hazards of
+detection. He feared, indeed, the restraints which the unequivocal
+adoption of the profession would impose upon him, fettering somewhat
+the freedom of his intercourse with the young of both sexes, and,
+consequently, opposing an almost insurmountable barrier to the
+prevailing object which had brought him to the village. Whatever may
+have been the feelings or motives which governed him, they, at least,
+saved him from an act which would have grievously aggravated his already
+large offence against truth and propriety. He declined, in language of
+the old hypocrisy. He did not feel justified in taking up the cross--he
+felt that he was not yet worthy; and, among the members of a church,
+which takes largely into account the momentary impulses and impressions
+of the professor, the plea was considered a sufficiently legitimate one.
+
+But though Stevens forbore to commit himself openly in the cause which
+he professed a desire to espouse, he was yet sufficiently heedful to
+maintain all those externals of devotion which a serious believer would
+be apt to exhibit. He could be a good actor of a part, and in this lay
+his best talent. He had that saving wisdom of the worldling, which is
+too often estimated beyond its worth, called cunning; and the frequent
+successes of which produces that worst of all the diseases that ever
+impaired the value of true greatness--conceit. Alfred Stevens fancied
+that he could do everything, and this fancy produced in him the
+appearance of a courage which his moral nature never possessed. He had
+the audacity which results from presumption, not the wholesome strength
+which comes from the conscious possession of a right purpose. But a
+truce to our metaphysics.
+
+Never did saint wear the aspect of such supernatural devotion. He knelt
+with the first, groaned audibly at intervals, and when his face became
+visible, his eyes were strained in upward glances, so that the spectator
+could behold little more in their orbs than a sea of white.
+
+“Oh! what a blessed young man!” said Mrs. Quackenbosh.
+
+“How I wish it was he that was to preach for us to-day,” responded that
+gem from the antique, Miss Polly Entwistle, who had joined every church
+in Kentucky in turn, without having been made a spouse in either.
+
+“How handsome he is!” simpered Miss Julia Evergreen--a damsel of
+seventeen, upon whom the bilious eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast with
+such an expression as the devil is said to put on when suddenly soused
+in holy water.
+
+“Handsome is that handsome does!” was the commentary of a venerable
+cormorant to whom Brother Cross had always appeared the special and
+accepted agent of heaven.
+
+“I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I wonder if he
+believes in the new-light doctrine?” purred one of the ancient tabbies
+of the conventicle.
+
+“The new light is but the old darkness, Sister Widgeon,” responded an
+old farmer of sixty four, who had divided his time so equally between
+the plough and the prayer-book, that his body had grown as crooked as
+the one, while his mind was bewildered with as many doctrines as ever
+worried all sense out of the other.
+
+We shall not suffer these to divert us, any more than Stevens permitted
+their speculations upon his person and religion to affect his devotion.
+He looked neither to the right nor to the left while entering the
+church, or engaging in the ceremonies. No errant glances were permitted
+to betray to the audience a mind wandering from the obvious duties
+before it; and yet Alfred Stevens knew just as well that every eye in
+the congregation was fixed upon him, as that he was himself there; and
+among those eyes, his own keen glance had already discovered those of
+that one for whom all these labors of hypocrisy were undertaken.
+
+Margaret Cooper sat on the opposite side of the church, but the line
+of vision was uninterrupted between them, and when--though very
+unfrequently--Stevens suffered his gaze to rest upon her form, it was
+with a sudden look of pleased abstraction, as if, in spite of himself,
+his mind was irresistibly drawn away from all recollection, of its
+immediate duties.
+
+If a word is sufficient for the wise, a look answers an equal purpose
+with the vain. Margaret Cooper left the church that morning with a
+pleased conviction that the handsome stranger had already paid his
+devotion to her charms. There was yet another passion to be gratified.
+The restless ambition of her foolish heart whispered to her momently,
+that if her person had done so much, what might she not hope to achieve
+when the treasures of her mind were known. She had long since made the
+comparison of her own intellect with that of every other maiden in the
+village, and she flattered herself that before many days, the young
+stranger should make it too. Her vain heart was rapidly preparing to
+smooth the path of the enemy and make his conquests easy.
+
+But it was not the women only, by whom the deportment of Alfred Stevens
+was so closely watched. The eyes of suspicion and jealousy were upon
+him. The two young men whose interview formed the conclusion of our last
+chapter, scanned his conduct and carriage with sufficient keenness of
+scrutiny.
+
+“I'll tell you what, Bill Hinkley,” said his cousin, “this fellow, to my
+thinking, is a very great rascal.”
+
+“What makes you think so?” demanded the former, with slow, dissatisfied
+accents; “he seems to pray very earnestly.”
+
+“That's the very reason I think him a rascal. His praying seems to me
+very unnatural. Here, he's a perfect stranger in the place, yet he never
+shows any curiosity to see the people. He never once looks around him.
+He walks to the church with his eye cast upon the ground, and sometimes
+he squints to this side and sometimes to that, but he seems to do it
+slyly, and seems to take pains that nobody should see him doing, it.
+All this might answer for an old man, who--believes that everything is
+vanity--as, indeed, everything must seem to old people; but to a young
+fellow, full of blood, who eats well, drinks well, sleeps well, and
+should naturally have a hankering after a young girl, all this is
+against nature. Now, what's against nature is wrong, and there's wrong
+at the bottom of it. Youth is the time to laugh, dance, sing, play on
+the violin, and always have a sweetheart when it can find one. If you
+can't get a beauty take a brown; and if Mary won't smile, Susan will.
+But always have a sweetheart; always be ready for fun and frolic;
+that's the way for the young, and when they don't take these ways, it's
+unnatural--there's something wrong about it, and I'm suspicious of THAT
+person. Now, I just have this notion of the young stranger. He's after
+no good. I reckon he's like a hundred others; too lazy to go to work,
+he goes to preaching, and learns in the first sermon to beg hard for the
+missionaries. I'll lick him, Bill, to a certainty, if he gives me the
+littlest end of an opportunity.”
+
+“Pshaw, Ned, don't think of such a thing. You are quite too fond of
+licking people.”
+
+“Deuse a bit. It does 'em good. Look you, this chap is monstrous like
+Joe Richards. I'll have to lick him on that account.”
+
+“You're mad, Ned; talk of whipping a preacher.”
+
+“He's no preacher yet,” said the other, “but if I lick him he may become
+one.”
+
+“No matter, he's never offended you.”
+
+“Ay, but he will. I see it in the fellow's looks. I never was mistaken
+in a fellow's looks in all my life.”
+
+“Wait till he does offend you then.”
+
+“Well, I'm willing to do that, for I know the time will come. I'm always
+sure, when I first see a man, to know whether I'll have to flog him or
+not. There's a something that tells me so. Isn't that very singular,
+Bill?”
+
+“No! you form a prejudice against a man, fancy that you ought to whip
+him, and then never rest till you've done so. You'll find your match
+some day.”
+
+“What! you think some other chap will fancy he ought to whip me?
+Well--maybe so. But this ain't the fellow to do that.”
+
+“He's a stout man, and I reckon strong. Besides, Ned, he's very
+handsome.”
+
+“Handsome! Lord, Bill, what a taste you have? How can a man be called
+handsome that never altogether opens his eyes, except when he turns up
+the whites until you'd think he'd never be able to get the balls back to
+their proper place? Then, what a chin he has--as sharp as a pitchfork,
+and who but a girl child would fancy a man with his hair combed sleek
+like a woman's on each side of his ears, with big whiskers at the
+same time that looks for all the world like the brush of a seven years
+running fox, Handsome! If my pup 'Dragon' was only half so much like a
+beast, I'd plump him into the horsepond!”
+
+It is probable that Ned Hinkley did not altogether think of the stranger
+as he expressed himself. But he saw how deep a hold his appearance had
+taken, in an adverse way, upon the mind and feelings of his relative and
+friend, and his rude, but well-meant endeavors were intended to console
+his companion, after his own fashion, by the exhibition of a certain
+degree of sympathy.
+
+His efforts, however well intended, did not produce any serious effect.
+William Hinkley, though he forbore the subject, and every expression
+which might indicate either soreness or apprehension, was still the
+victim of that presentiment which had touched him on the very first
+appearance of the stranger. He felt more than ever apprehensive on the
+score of his misplaced affections. While his cousin had been watching
+the stranger, HIS eyes had been fixed upon those of Margaret Cooper, and
+his fears were increased and strengthened, as he perceived that she was
+quite too much absorbed in other thoughts and objects to behold for an
+instant the close espionage which he maintained upon her person. His
+heart sunk within him, as he beheld how bold was her look, and how
+undisguised the admiration which it expressed for the handsome stranger.
+
+“You will go home with me, William?” said the cousin, The other
+hesitated.
+
+“I think,” said he, after a moment's pause, “I should rather go to my
+own home. It is a sort of weakness to let a stranger drive a man off
+from his own family, and though I somehow dislike this person's looks,
+and am very sorry that John Cross brought him to our house, yet I
+shouldn't let a prejudice which seems to have no good foundation take
+such possession of my mind. I will go home, Ned, and see--perhaps I may
+come to like the stranger more when I know him better.”
+
+“You'll never like him. I see it in the fellow's eye; but just as you
+please about going nome. You're right in one thing--never to give up
+your own dunghill, so long as you can get room on it for a fair fling
+with your enemy. Besides, you can see better, by going home, what the
+chap's after. I don't see why he should come here to learn to preach. We
+can't support a preacher. We don't want one. He could just as well have
+learned his business, where he came from.”
+
+With these words the cousins separated.
+
+“Now,” said Ned Hinkley as he took his own way homeward, in a deeper
+fit of abstraction than was altogether usual with him, “now will Bill
+Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's
+too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and
+mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody.--quite
+too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody
+knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll pick up
+his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder
+until there's no use in trying. If I don't push in and help him, he'll
+not help himself. As for Margaret Cooper, dang it, I'll court her for
+him myself. If he's afraid to pop the question, I ain't; though I'll
+have to be mighty careful about the words I use, or she'll be thinking
+I come on my own hook; and that would be a mighty scary sort of business
+all round the house. Then this stranger. If anybody can look through
+a stranger here in Charlemont, I reckon I'm that man. I suspect him
+already. I think he's after no good with his great religioning; and I'll
+tie such a pair of eyes to his heels, that his understanding will never
+be entirely out of my sight. I'll find him out if anybody can. But I
+won't lick him till I do. That wouldn't be altogether right, considering
+he's to be a parson, though I doubt he'll never make one.”
+
+And thus, with a head filled with cares of a fashion altogether new, the
+sturdy young Kentuckian moved homeward with a degree of abstraction in
+his countenance which was not among the smallest wonders of the day and
+place in the estimation of his friends and neighbors.
+
+Meanwhile, the work of mischief was in full progress. Everybody
+knows the degree of familiarity which exists among all classes in a
+country-village, particularly when the parties are brought together
+under the social and stimulating influences of religion. It was natural
+that the pastor, long known and well beloved, should be surrounded by
+his flock as he descended from the pulpit. The old ladies always have
+a saving interest in his presence, and they pave the way for the young
+ones. Alfred Stevens, as the protege of John Cross, naturally attended
+his footsteps, and was introduced by him to the little congregation,
+which had mostly remained to do honor to the preacher. Of these, not
+last, nor least, was the widow Cooper; and, unreluctant by her side,
+though in silence, and not without a degree of emotion, which she yet
+was able to conceal, stood her fair but proud-hearted daughter.
+
+Margaret, alas! Margaret stood there with a heart more proud, yet more
+humble, than ever. Proud in the consciousness of a new conquest--humble
+in the feeling that this conquest had not been made, but at the expense
+of some portion of her own independence. Hitherto, her suitors had
+awakened no other feeling in her heart but vanity. Now, she felt no
+longer able to sail on, “imperial arbitress,” smiling at woes which she
+could inflict, but never share. That instinct, which, in the heart of
+young Hinkley had produced fear, if not antipathy, had been as active in
+her case, though with a very different result. The first glimpse which
+she had of the handsome stranger, months before, had impressed her with
+a singular emotion; and now that he was returned, she could not divest
+herself of the thought that his return was a consequence of that one
+glimpse.
+
+With a keener judgment than belonged to her neighbors, she too had some
+suspicions that religion was scarcely the prevailing motive which
+had brought the youth back to their little village; for how could she
+reconcile with his present demure gravity and devout profession, the
+daring which he had shown in riding back to behold her a second
+time? That such had been his motive she divined by her own feeling of
+curiosity, and the instincts of vanity were prompt enough to believe
+that this was motive sufficient to bring him back once more, and under
+the guise of a character, which would the readiest secure an easy
+entrance to society. Pleased with the fancy that she herself was
+the object sought, she did not perceive how enormous was the sort of
+deception which the stranger had employed to attain the end desired.
+With all her intellect she had not the wisdom to suspect that he who
+could so readily practise so bold an hypocrisy, was capable of the worst
+performances; and when their names were mentioned, and his eyes were
+permitted to meet and mingle their glances with hers, she was conscious
+of nothing farther than a fluttering sentiment of pleasure, which was
+amply declared to the stranger, in the flash of animation which spoke
+openly in her countenance; eye speaking to lip and cheek, and these, in
+turn, responding with a kindred sentiment to the already tell-tale eye.
+
+William Hinkley, from a little distance, beheld this meeting. He had
+lingered with the curiosity which belongs to the natural apprehension
+of the lover. He saw them approach--nay, fancied he beheld the mutual
+expression of their sympathizing eyes, and he turned away, and hurried
+homeward, with the feeling of a heart already overborne, and defrauded
+in all its hopes and expectations. The flowers were threatened with
+blight in his Eden: but he did not conjecture, poor fellow, that a
+serpent had indeed entered it!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE GOOD YOUNG MAN IN MEDITATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+Perhaps, it may be assumed, with tolerable safety, that no first villany
+is ever entirely deliberate. There is something in events to give
+it direction--something to egg it on--to point out time, place, and
+opportunity. Of course, it is to be understood that the actor is one,
+in the first place, wanting in the moral sense. What we simply mean
+to affirm is, that the particular, single act, is, in few instances,
+deliberately meditated from the beginning. We very much incline to
+think that some one event, which we ordinarily refer to the chapter
+of accidents, has first set the mind to work upon schemes, which would
+otherwise, perhaps, never be thought of at all. Thus, we find persons
+who continue very good people, as the world goes, until middle age, or
+even seniority; then, suddenly breaking out into some enormous
+offence against decency and society, which startles the whole pious
+neighborhood. Folks start up, with outstretched hands and staring eyes,
+and cry aloud:--
+
+“Lord bless us, who would have thought so good a man could be so bad!”
+
+He, poor devil, never fancied it himself, till he became so, and it was
+quite too late to alter his arrangements. Perhaps his neighbors may
+have had some share in making him so. Pious persons are very frequently
+reduced to these straits by having the temptation forced too much
+upon them. Flesh and blood can not always withstand the provocation of
+earthly delicacies, even where the spirit is a tolerably stout one; and
+of the inadequacy of the mind, always to contend with the inclinations
+of the flesh, have we not a caution in that injunction of Holy Book
+which warns us to fly from temptation? But lame people can not fly, and
+he is most certainly lame who halts upon mere feet of circumstances.
+Such people are always in danger.
+
+Now, Alfred Stevens, properly brought up, from the beginning, at some
+theological seminary, would have been--though in moral respects pretty
+much the same person--yet in the eye of the world a far less criminal
+man. Not that his desires would have been a jot more innocent, but they
+would have taken a different direction. Instead of the recklessness of
+course, such as seems to have distinguished the conduct of our present
+subject--instead of his loose indulgences--his smart, licentious
+speeches--the sheep's-eye glances, right and left, which he was but
+too prone to bestow, without prudence or precaution, whenever he walked
+among the fair sisters--he, the said Alfred, would have taken counsel
+of a more worldly policy, which is yet popularly considered a more pious
+one. He would have kept his eyes from wandering to and fro; he would
+have held his blood in subjection. Patient as a fox on a long scent in
+autumn, he would have kept himself lean and circumspect, until, through
+the help of lugubrious prayer and lantern visage, he could have beguiled
+into matrimony some one feminine member of the flock--not always
+fair--whose worldly goods would have sufficed in full atonement for all
+those circumspect, self-imposed restraints, which we find usually so
+well rewarded. But Alfred Stevens was not a man of this pious temper.
+It is evident, from his present course, that he had some inkling of the
+MODUS OPERANDI; but all his knowledge fell short of that saving
+wisdom which would have defrauded the social world of one of its moral
+earthquakes, and possibly deprived the survivors of the present moral
+story--for moral it is, though our hero is not exactly so.
+
+It would be doing our subject and our theory equal injustice if we were
+to suppose that he had any fixed purpose, known to himself, when he
+borrowed the professional garment, and began to talk with the worthy
+John Cross in the language of theology, and with the tongue of a
+hypocrite. He designed to visit Charlemont--that was all--as he had
+really been impressed by the commanding figure and noble expression of
+beauty of that young damsel whom he had encountered by the roadside.
+Even this impression, however, would have been suffered to escape from
+his mind, had it not been so perfectly convenient to revisit the spot,
+on his return to his usual place of residence. During the summer,
+Charlemont and its rustic attractions had been the frequent subject of
+a conversation, running into discussion, between himself and the amiable
+old man, his uncle. The latter repeatedly urged upon his nephew to
+make the visit; fondly conceiving that a nearer acquaintance with
+the pleasant spot which had so won upon his own affections, would be
+productive of a like effect upon his nephew. Alas, how little did he
+know the mischief he was doing!
+
+In the very idleness of mood--with just that degree of curiosity which
+prompts one to turn about and look a second time--Alfred Stevens resumed
+the route which included Charlemont. But the devil had, by this time,
+found his way into the meditations of the youth, and lay lurking,
+unknown to himself, perhaps, at the bottom of this same curiosity. The
+look of pride and defiance which Margaret Cooper had betrayed, when the
+bold youth rode back to steal a second glance at her matchless person,
+was equivalent to an equally bold challenge; and his vanity hastily
+picked up the gauntlet which hers had thrown down. He wished to see
+the damsel again--to see if she WAS so beautiful--if she did, indeed,
+possess that intellectual strength and vivacity which flashed out
+so suddenly and with so much splendor from beneath her long, dark
+eye-lashes!
+
+In this mood he met with John Cross; and the simplicity of that worthy
+creature offered another challenge, not less provoking than the former,
+to the levity and love of mischief which also actively predominated in
+the bosom of the youth. Fond of a malicious sort of fun, and ever on the
+look-out for subjects of quizzing, it was in compliance with a purely
+habitual movement of his mind that he conjured up that false, glozing
+story of his religious inclinations, which had so easily imposed upon
+the unsuspecting preacher. Never was proceeding less premeditated, or
+so completely the result of an after-thought, than this; and now that it
+had proved so perfectly successful--now that he found himself admitted
+into the very heart of the little village, and into the bosoms of the
+people--he began, for the first time, to feel the awkwardness of the
+situation in which he had placed himself, and the responsibilities,
+if not dangers, to which it subjected him. To play the part of a mere
+preacher--to talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype
+phraseology of the profession--was no difficult matter to a clever young
+lawyer of the West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as
+profoundly familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself. But
+there was something awkward in the idea of detection, and he was not
+unaware of those summary dangers which are likely to follow, in those
+wild frontier regions, from the discovery of so doubtful a personage
+as “Bro' Wolf” in the clothing of a more innocent animal. Chief-Justice
+Lynch is a sacred authority in those parts; and, in such a case as his,
+Alfred Stevens did not doubt that the church itself would feel it only
+becoming to provide another sort of garment for the offender, which,
+whether pleasant or not, would at least be likely to stick more closely,
+and prove less comfortably warm.
+
+But, once in, there was no help but to play out the game as it had been
+begun. Villagers are seldom very sagacious people, and elegant strangers
+are quite too much esteemed among them to make them very particular in
+knowing the whys and wherefores about them--whence they come, what they
+do, and whither they propose to go. Stevens had only to preserve his
+countenance and a due degree of caution, and the rest was easy. He had
+no reason to suppose himself an object of suspicion to anybody; and
+should he become so, nothing was more easy than to take his departure
+with sufficient promptness, and without unnecessarily soliciting the
+prayers of the church in behalf of the hurried traveller! At all events,
+he could lose nothing by the visit: perhaps something might be gained.
+
+What was that something? Behold him in his chamber, preparing to ask and
+to answer this question for himself. The sabbath-day is finally over. He
+has been almost the lion of the day. We say almost, for the worthy John
+Cross could not easily be deprived, by any rivalry, of the loyal regards
+of his old parishioners. But, though the latter had most friends, the
+stranger, Alfred Stevens, had had most followers. All were anxious to
+know him--the young, in particular, maidens and men; and the grave old
+dames would have given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to
+have heard him discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in
+his profound, devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has
+shaken hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and
+feeling with but one only--and that one!--
+
+Of her he thinks in his chamber--his quiet, snug, little chamber--a mere
+closet, looking out upon a long garden-slip, in which he sees, without
+much heeding them, long lanes of culinary cabbage, and tracts of other
+growing and decaying vegetation, in which his interest is quite too
+small to make it needful that he should even ask its separate names. His
+chin rests upon his hands with an air of meditation; and gradually his
+thoughts rise up in soliloquy, which is suffered to invade no ear but
+ours:--
+
+“Well! who'd have thought it? a parson!--devilish good indeed! How it
+will tell at Murkey's! What a metamorphose! if it don't stagger 'em,
+nothing will! It's the best thing I've done yet! I shall have to do it
+over a hundred times, and must get up a sermon or two beforehand, and
+swear that I preached them--and, egad! I may have to do it yet before
+I'm done--ha! ha! ha!”
+
+The laughter was a quiet chuckle, not to be heard by vulgar ears; it
+subsided in the gorges of his throat. The idea of really getting up a
+sermon tickled him. He muttered over texts, all that he could remember;
+and proceeded to turn over the phrases for an introduction, such
+as, unctuous with good things in high degree, he fancied would be
+particularly commendable to his unsuspecting hearers. Alfred Stevens had
+no small talent for imitation, he derived a quiet sort of pleasure, on
+the present occasion, from its indulgence.
+
+“I should have made a famous parson, and, if all trades fail, may yet.
+But, now that I am here, what's to come of it? It's not so hard to put
+on a long face, and prose in scripture dialect; but, cui bono? Let me
+see--hem! The girl is pretty, devilish pretty--with such an eye, and
+looks so! There's soul in the wench--life--and a passion that speaks out
+in every glance and movement. A very Cressid, with a cross of Corinne!
+Should she be like her of Troy? At all events, it can do no harm to see
+what she's made of!
+
+“But I must manage warily. I have something to lose in the business.
+Frankfort is but fifty miles from Charlemont--fifty miles--and there's
+Ellisland, but fourteen. Fourteen!--an easy afternoon ride. That way it
+must be done. Ellisland shall be my post-town. I can gallop there in
+an afternoon, drop and receive my letters, and be back by a round-about
+which shall effectually baffle inquiry. A week or two will be enough.
+I shall see, by that time, what can be done with her; though still,
+cautiously, Parson Stevens!--cautiously.”
+
+The farther cogitations of Stevens were subordinate to these, but of the
+same family complexion. They were such as to keep him wakeful. The Bible
+which had been placed upon his table, by the considerate providence of
+his hostess, lay there unopened; though, more than once, he lifted the
+cover of the sacred volume, letting it fall again suddenly, as if with a
+shrinking consciousness that such thoughts as at that moment filled his
+mind were scarcely consistent with the employment, in any degree, of
+such a companion. Finally, he undressed and went to bed. The hour had
+become very late.
+
+“Good young man,” muttered worthy Mrs. Hinkley to her drowsy spouse, in
+the apartment below, as she heard the movements of her guest-“good young
+man, he's just now going to bed. He's been studying all this while. I
+reckon Brother Cross has been sound this hour.”
+
+The light from Stevens's window glimmered out over the cabbage-garden,
+and was seen by many an ancient dame as she prepared for her own
+slumbers.
+
+“Good young man,” said they all with one accord. “I reckon he's at the
+Bible now. Oh! he'll be a blessed laborer in the vineyard, I promise
+you, when Brother Cross is taken.”
+
+“If it were not for the cursed bore of keeping up the farce beyond
+the possibility of keeping up the fun, such a rig as this would be
+incomparably pleasant; but”--yawning--“that's the devil! I get monstrous
+tired of a joke that needs dry nursing!”
+
+Such were the last muttered words of Parson Stevens before he
+yielded himself up to his slumbers. Good young man--charitable old
+ladies--gullible enough, if not charitable! But the professions need
+such people, and we must not quarrel with them!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PAROCHIAL PERFORMANCES.
+
+
+
+
+
+The poor, conceited blackguards of this ungracious earth have a fancy
+that there must be huge confusion and a mighty bobbery in nature,
+corresponding with that which is for ever going on in their own little
+spheres. If we have a toothache, we look for a change of weather; our
+rheumatism is a sure sign that God has made his arrangements to give
+us a slapping rain; and, should the white bull or the brown heifer die,
+look out for hail, or thunderstorm, at least, as a forerunner of the
+event. Nothing less can possibly console or satisfy us for such a most
+unaccountable, not to say unnatural and unwarrantable, a dispensation.
+The poets have ministered largely to this vanity on the part of mankind.
+Shakspere is constantly at it, and Ben Jonson, and all the dramatists.
+Not a butcher, in the whole long line of the butchering Caesars, from
+Augustus down, but, according to them, died in a sort of gloom glory,
+resulting from the explosion of innumerable stars and rockets, and the
+apparitions of as many comets! “Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,”
+ invariably announce the coming stroke of fate; and five or seven moons
+of a night have suddenly arisen to warn some miserable sublunarian
+that orders had been issued that there should be no moon for him that
+quarter, or, in military and more precise phrase, that he should have
+no “quarters” during that moon. Even our venerable and stern old puritan
+saint, Milton--he who was blessed with the blindness of his earthly
+eye, that he should be more perfectly enabled to contemplate the Deity
+within--has given way to this superstition when he subjects universal
+nature to an earthquake because Adam's wife followed the counsels of the
+snake.
+
+A pretty condition of things it would be, if stars, suns, and systems,
+were to shoot madly from their spheres on such occasions! Well might the
+devil laugh if such were the case! How he would chuckle to behold globes
+and seas, and empires, fall into such irreverend antics because some
+poor earthling, be he kingling or common sodling, goes into desuetude,
+either by the operation of natural laws, or the sharp application of
+steel or shot! Verily, it makes precious little difference to the Great
+Reaper, by what process we finally become harvested. He is sure of us,
+though no graves gape, no stars fall, no comets rush out, like young
+colts from their stables, flinging their tails into the faces of
+the more sober and pacific brotherhood of lights. But, denied the
+satisfaction of chuckling at such sights as these, his satanic majesty
+chuckles not the less at the human vanity which looks for them. Nay, he
+himself is very likely to suggest this vanity. It is one of his forms of
+temptation--one of his manoeuvres; and we take leave, by way of warning,
+to hint to those worthy people, who judge of to-morrow's providence
+by the corns of their great toe, or their periodical lumbago, or the
+shooting of their warts, or the pricking of their palms, that it is in
+truth the devil which is at the bottom of all this, and that the Deity
+has nothing to do in the business. It is the devil instilling his
+vanities into the human heart, in that form which he thinks least likely
+to prove offensive, or rouse suspicion. The devil is most active in
+your affairs, Mrs. Thompson, the moment you imagine that there must be
+a revolution on your account in the universal laws of nature. At such a
+moment your best policy will be to have blood let, take physic, and go
+with all diligence to your prayers.
+
+There was no sort of warning on the part of the natural to the moral
+world, on the day when Alfred Stevens set forth with the worthy John
+Cross, to visit the flock of the latter. There was not a lovelier
+morning in the whole calendar. The sun was alone in heaven, without a
+cloud; and on earth, the people in and about Charlemont, having been to
+church only the day before, necessarily made their appearance everywhere
+with petticoats and pantaloons tolerably clean and unrumpled. Cabbages
+had not yet been frost-bitten. Autumn had dressed up her children in the
+garments of beauty, preparatory to their funeral. There was a good crop
+of grain that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all
+“looking-up,” in the language of the prices current. This was long
+before the time when Mr. M---- made his famous gammon speeches; but the
+people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful
+anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river.
+The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning
+to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were
+about to be established; old things were about to fleet and disappear;
+all things were becoming new; and the serpent entered Charlemont, and
+made his way among the people thereof, without any signs of combustion,
+or overthrow, or earthquake.
+
+Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a parson is,
+to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes one day, and
+the quarterly collector the next. He sits down with the “gude wife” in
+a corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in precisely the same
+low tones which cunning lovers are apt to use. If he knows any one art
+better than another, it is that of finding his way to the affections of
+the female part of his flock. A subdued tone of voice betrays a certain
+deference for the party addressed. The lady is pleased with such a
+preliminary. She is flattered again by the pains he takes in behalf of
+her eternal interests; she is pretty sure he takes no such pains with
+any of her neighbors. It is a sign that he thinks her soul the most
+becoming little soul in the flock, and when he goes away, she looks
+after him and sighs, and thinks him the most blessed soul of a parson.
+The next week she is the first to get up a subscription which she heads
+with her own name in connection with a sum realized by stinting her
+son of his gingerbread money, in order to make this excellent parson
+a life-member of the “Zion African Bible and Missionary Society, for
+disseminating the Word among the Heathen.” The same fifty dollars so
+appropriated, would have provided fuel for a month to the starving poor
+of her own parish.
+
+But Brother Cross gets no such windfalls. It is probable that he never
+heard of such a thing, and that if he did, he would unhesitatingly cry
+out, “Humbug,” at the first intimation of it. Besides, his voice was
+not capable of that modulation which a young lover, or a city parson can
+give it. Accustomed to cry aloud and spare not, he usually spoke as if
+there were some marrow in his bones, and some vigor in his wind-bags.
+When he came to see the good wife of his congregation, he gave her
+a hearty shake of the hand, congratulated her as he found her at her
+spinning-wheel; spoke with a hearty approbation, if he saw that her
+children were civil and cleanly; if otherwise, he blazed out with proper
+boldness, by telling her that all her praying and groaning, would
+avail nothing for her soul's safety, so long as Jackey's breeches were
+unclean; and that the mother of a rude and dirty child, was as sure
+of damnation, as if she never prayed at all. He had no scruples about
+speaking the truth. He never looked about him for the gentle, easy
+phrases, by which to distinguish the conduct which he was compelled to
+condemn. He knew not only that the truth must be spoken, and be spoken
+by him, if by anybody, but that there is no language too strong--perhaps
+none quite strong enough--for the utterance of the truth. But it must
+not be supposed, that John Cross was in any respect an intolerant, or
+sour man. He was no hypocrite, and did not, therefore, need to clothe
+his features in the vinegar costume of that numerous class. His limbs
+were put into no such rigid fetters as too often denote the unnatural
+restraints which such persons have imposed upon their inner minds. He
+could laugh and sing with the merriest, and though he did not absolutely
+shake a leg himself, yet none rejoiced more than he, when Ned Hinkley's
+fiddle summoned the village to this primitive exercise.
+
+“Now, Alfred Stevens,” said he, the breakfast being over, “what say'st
+thou to a visit with me among my people. Some of them know thee already;
+they will all be rejoiced to see thee. I will show thee how they live,
+and if thou shouldst continue to feel within thee, the growing of that
+good seed whose quickening thou hast declared to me, it will be well
+that thou shouldst begin early to practise the calling which may so
+shortly become thine own. Here mightest thou live a space, toiling in
+thy spiritual studies, until the brethren should deem thee ripe for thy
+office; meanwhile, thy knowledge of the people with whom thou livest,
+and their knowledge of thee, would be matter of equal comfort and
+consolation, I trust, to thee as to them.”
+
+Alfred Stevens expressed himself pleased with the arrangement. Indeed,
+he desired nothing else.
+
+“But shall we see all of them?” he demanded. The arch-hypocrite began
+to fear that his curiosity would be compelled to pay a heavy penalty to
+dullness.
+
+“The flock is small,” said John Cross. “A day will suffice, but I shall
+remain three days in Charlemont, and some I will see to-day, and some
+to-morrow, and some on the day after, which is Wednesday.”
+
+“Taken in moderate doses,” murmured Stevens to himself, “one may stand
+it.”
+
+He declared himself in readiness, and the twain set forth. The outward
+behavior of Stevens was very exemplary. He had that morning contrived to
+alter his costume in some respects to suit the situation of affairs. For
+example, he had adopted that slavish affectation which seems to insist
+that a preacher of God should always wear a white cravat, so constructed
+and worn as to hide the tips of his shirt collar. If they wore none,
+they would look infinitely more noble, and we may add, never suffer from
+bronchitis. In his deportment, Stevens was quite as sanctified as heart
+could wish. He spoke always deliberately, and with great unction. If he
+had to say “cheese and mousetrap,” he would look very solemn, shake his
+head with great gravity and slowness, and then deliberately and equally
+emphasizing every syllable, would roll forth the enormous sentence
+with all the conscious dignity of an ancient oracle. That “cheese and
+mousetrap,” so spoken, acquired in the ears of the hearer, a degree of
+importance and signification, which it confounded them to think they had
+never perceived before in the same felicitous collocation of syllables.
+John Cross was not without his vanities. Who is? Vanity is quite as
+natural as any other of our endowments. It is a guaranty for amiability.
+A vain man is always a conciliatory one. He is kind to others, because
+the approbation of others is a strong desire in his mind. Accordingly,
+even vanity is not wholly evil. It has its uses.
+
+John Cross had his share, and Alfred Stevens soon discovered that he
+ministered to it in no small degree. The good old preacher took to
+himself the credit of having effected his conversion, so far as it had
+gone. It was his hand that had plucked the brand from the burning. He
+spoke freely of his protege, as well before his face as behind his back.
+In his presence he dwelt upon the holy importance of his calling; to
+others he dilated upon the importance of securing for the church a young
+man of so much talent, yet of so much devotion: qualities not always
+united, it would seem, among the churchlings of modern times.
+
+Alfred Stevens seemed to promise great honor to his teacher. That
+cunning which is the wisdom of the worldling, and which he possessed
+in a very surprising degree, enabled him to adopt a course of conduct,
+look, and remark, which amply satisfied the exactions of the scrupulous,
+and secured the unhesitating confidence of those who were of a more
+yielding nature. He soon caught the phraseology of his companion, and
+avoiding his intensity, was less likely to offend his hearers. His
+manner was better subdued to the social tone of ordinary life, his voice
+lacked the sharp twang of the backwoods man; and, unlike John Cross, he
+was able to modulate it to those undertones, which, as we have
+before intimated, are so agreeable from the lips of young lovers and
+fashionable preachers. At all events, John Cross himself, was something
+more than satisfied with his pupil, and took considerable pains to show
+him off. He was a sort of living and speaking monument of the good man's
+religious prowess.
+
+It does not need that we should follow the two into all the abodes which
+they were compelled to visit. The reader would scarcely conceal his
+yawns though Stevens did. Enough, that a very unctuous business was made
+of it that morning. Many an old lady was refreshed with the spiritual
+beverage bestowed in sufficient quantity to last for another quarter;
+while many a young one rejoiced in the countenance of so promising a
+shepherd as appeared under the name of Alfred Stevens. But the latter
+thought of the one damsel only. He said many pleasant things to those
+whom he did see; but his mind ran only upon one. He began to apprehend
+that she might be among the flock who were destined to wait for the
+second or last day's visitation; when, to his great relief, John Cross
+called his attention to the dwelling of the widow Cooper, to whom they
+were fast approaching.
+
+Stevens remarked that the dwelling had very much the appearance of
+poverty--he did not fail to perceive that it lacked the flower-garden
+in front which distinguished the greater number of the cottages in
+Charlemont; and there was an appearance of coldness and loneliness about
+its externals which impressed itself very strongly upon his thoughts,
+and seemed to speak unfavorably for the taste of the inmates. One is
+apt to associate the love of flowers with sweetness and gentleness of
+disposition, and such a passion would seem as natural, as it certainly
+would be becoming, to a young lady of taste and sensibility. But the
+sign is a very doubtful one. Taste and gentleness may satisfy themselves
+with other objects. A passion for books is very apt to exclude a very
+active passion for flowers, and it will be found, I suspect, that these
+persons who are most remarkable for the cultivation of flowers are least
+sensible to the charms of letters. It seems monstrous, indeed, that a
+human being should expend hours and days in the nursing and tendance of
+such stupid beauties as plants and flowers, when earth is filled with
+so many lovelier objects that come to us commended by the superior
+sympathies which belong to humanity. Our cities are filled with the
+sweetest orphans--flowers destined to be immortal; angels in form, that
+might be angels in spirit--that must be, whether for good or evil--whom
+we never cultivate--whom we suffer to escape our tendance, and leave to
+the most pitiable ignorance, and the most wretched emergencies of want.
+The life that is wasted upon dahlias, must, prima facie, be the life
+of one heartless and insensible, and most probably, brutish in a high
+degree.
+
+But Alfred Stevens had very little time for further reflection. They
+were at the door of the cottage. Never did the widow Cooper receive
+her parson in more tidy trim, and with an expression of less qualified
+delight. She brought forth the best chair, brushed the deerskin-seat
+with her apron, and having adjusted the old man to her own satisfaction
+as well as his, she prepared to do a like office for the young one.
+Having seated them fairly, and smoothed her apron, and gone through the
+usual preliminaries, and placed herself a little aloof, on a third seat,
+and rubbed her hands, and struggled into a brief pause in her brisk
+action, she allowed her tongue to do the office for which her whole soul
+was impatient.
+
+“Oh, Brother Cross, what a searching sermon you gave us yesterday. You
+stirred the hearts of everybody, I warrant you, as you stirred up
+mine. We've been a needing it for a precious long time, I tell you; and
+there's no knowing what more's a wanting to make us sensible to the evil
+that's in us. I know from myself what it is, and I guess from the doings
+of others. We're none of us perfect, that's certain; but it's no harm
+to say that some's more and some's not so perfect as others. There's a
+difference in sin, Brother Cross, I'm a thinking, and I'd like you to
+explain why, and what's the difference. One won't have so much, and one
+will have more; one will take a longer spell of preaching, and half
+the quantity will be a dose to work another out clean, entire. I'm not
+boastful for myself, Brother Cross, but I do say, I'd give up in despair
+if I thought it took half so much to do me, as it would take for a
+person like that Mrs. Thackeray.”
+
+“Sister Cooper,” said brother Cross, rebukingly, “beware of the
+temptation to vain-glory. Be not like the Pharisee, disdainful of the
+publican. To be too well pleased with one's self is to be displeasing to
+the Lord.”
+
+“Oh, Brother Cross, don't be thinking that I'm over and above satisfied
+with the goodness that's in me. I know I'm not so good. I have a great
+deal of evil; but then it seems to me there's a difference in good and
+a difference in evil. One has most of one and one has most of another.
+None of us have much good, and all of us have a great deal of sin. God
+help me, for I need his help--I have my own share; but as for that Mrs.
+Thackeray, she's as full of wickedness as an an egg's full of meat.”
+
+“It is not the part of Christianity, Sister Cooper,” said John Cross
+mildly, “to look into our neighbors' accounts and make comparisons
+between their doings and our own. We can only do so at great risk of
+making a false reckoning. Besides, Sister Cooper, it is business enough
+on our hands, if we see to our own short-comings. As for Mrs. Thackeray,
+I have no doubt she's no better than the rest of us, and we are all, as
+you said before, children of suffering, and prone to sin as certain as
+that the sparks fly upward. We must only watch and pray without ceasing,
+particularly that we may not deceive ourselves with the most dangerous
+sin of being too sure of our own works. The good deeds that we boast
+of so much in our earthly day will shrivel and shrink up at the last
+account to so small a size that the best of us, through shame and
+confusion, will be only too ready to call upon the rocks and hills to
+cover us. We are very weak and foolish all, Sister Cooper. We can't
+believe ourselves too weak, or too mean, or too sinful. To believe this
+with all our hearts, and to try to be better with all our strength, is
+the true labor of religion. God send it to us, in all its sweetness and
+perfection, so that we may fight the good fight without ceasing.”
+
+“But if you could only hear of the doings of Mrs. Thackeray, Brother
+Cross, you'd see how needful it would be to put forth all your strength
+to bring her back to the right path.”
+
+“The Lord will know. None of us can hide our evil from the eyes of the
+Lord. I will strive with our sister, when I seek her, which will be
+this very noon, but it is of yourself, Sister Cooper, and your daughter
+Margaret, that I would speak. Where is she that I see her not?”
+
+This was the question that made our quasi hierophant look up with a
+far greater degree of interest than he had felt in the long and random
+twattle to which he had been compelled to listen. Where was she--that
+fair daughter? He was impatient for the answer. But he was not long
+detained in suspense. Next to her neighbors there was no subject of
+whom the mother so loved to speak as the daughter, and the daughter's
+excellences.
+
+“Ah! she is up-stairs, at her books, as usual. She does so love them
+books, Brother Cross, I'm afraid it'll do harm to her health. She cares
+for nothing half so well. Morning, noon, and night, all the same, you
+find her poring over them; and even when she goes out to ramble, she
+must have a book, and she wants no other company. For my part I can't
+see what she finds in them to love so; for except to put a body to sleep
+I never could see the use they were to any person yet.”
+
+“Books are of two kinds,” said Brother Cross gravely. “They are useful
+or hurtful. The useful kinds are good, the hurtful kinds are bad. The
+Holy Bible is the first book, and the only book, as I reckon it will be
+the book that'll live longest. The 'Life of Whitefield' is a good book,
+and I can recommend the sermons of that good man, Brother Peter Cummins,
+that preached when I was a lad, all along through the back parts of
+North Carolina, into South Carolina and Georgia. I can't say that
+he came as far back into the west as these parts; but he was a most
+faithful shepherd. There was a book of his sermons printed for the
+benefit of his widow and children. He died, like that blessed man, John
+Rogers, that we see in the primer-books, leaving a wife with eleven
+children and one at the breast. His sermons are very precious reading.
+One of them in particular, on the Grace of God, is a very falling of
+manna in the wilderness. It freshens the soul, and throws light upon the
+dark places in the wilderness. Ah! if only such books are printed, what
+a precious world for poor souls it would be. But they print a great many
+bad books now-a-days.”
+
+The natural love of mischief which prevailed in the bosom of Alfred
+Stevens now prompted him to take part in the conversation at this happy
+moment. The opportunity was a tempting one.
+
+“The printers,” said he, “are generally very bad men. They call
+themselves devils, and take young lads and bring them up to their
+business under that name!”
+
+The old lady threw up her hands, and John Cross, to whom this
+intelligence was wholly new, inquired with a sort of awe-struck
+gravity--
+
+“Can this be true, Alfred Stevens? Is this possible?”
+
+“The fact, sir. They go by no other name among themselves; and you may
+suppose, if they are not ashamed of the name, they are not unwilling
+to perform the doings of the devil. Indeed, they are busy doing his
+business from morning to night--and night to morning. They don't stop
+for the sabbath. They work on Sunday the same as any other day, and if
+they take any rest at all it is on Saturday, which would show them to be
+a kind of Jews.”
+
+“Good Lord deliver us!” ejaculated the widow.
+
+“Where, O! where?” exclaimed the Brother Cross with similar earnestness.
+The game was too pleasant for Alfred Stevens. He pursued it.
+
+“In such cities,” he continued, “as New York and Philadelphia, thousands
+of these persons are kept in constant employ sending forth those books
+of falsehood and folly which fill the hearts of the young with vain
+imaginings, and mislead the footsteps of the unwary. In one of these
+establishments, four persons preside, who are considered brothers; but
+they are brothers in sin only, and are by some supposed to be no other.
+They have called themselves after the names of saints and holy men; even
+the names of the thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in
+this fashion abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even
+in our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better
+enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to believe
+that these persons were no other than the evil demons who ruled in
+Ashdod and Assyria. Such is their perseverance in evil--such their busy
+industry, which keeps a thousand authors (which is but another name for
+priests and prophets) constantly at work to frame cunning falsehoods and
+curious devices, and winning fancies, which when printed and made into
+books, turn the heads of the young and unwary, and blind the soul to the
+wrath which is to come.”
+
+The uplifted hands of the widow Cooper still attested her wonder.
+
+“Lord save us!” she exclaimed, “I should not think it strange if Sister
+Thackeray had some of these very books. Do ask, Brother Cross, when
+you go to see her. She speaks much of books, and I see her reading them
+whenever I look in at the back window.”
+
+John Cross did not seem to give any heed to the remark of the old woman.
+There was a theological point involved in one of the remarks of Alfred
+Stevens which he evidently regarded as of the first importance.
+
+“What you say, Alfred Stevens, is very new and very strange to me, and I
+should think from what I already know of the evil which is sometimes put
+in printed books, that there was indeed a spirit of malice at work in
+this way, to help the progress and the conquests of Satan among our
+blind and feeble race. But I am not prepared to believe that God has
+left it to Satan to devise so fearful a scheme for prosecuting his evil
+designs as that of making the demons of Ashdod and Assyria take the
+names of mortal men, while teeming to follow mortal occupations. It
+would be fearful tidings for our poor race were this so. But if so, is
+it not seen that there is a difference in the shapes of these persons.
+If either of these brothers who blasphemously call themselves John and
+James, after the manner of the apostles, shall be in very truth and
+certainty that Dagon of the Philistines whom Jehovah smote before his
+altar, will he not be made fishlike from the waist downward, and will
+this not be seen by his followers and some of the thousands whom
+he daily perverts to his evil purposes and so leads to eternal
+destruction?”
+
+“It may be that it is permitted to such a demon to put on what shape he
+thinks proper,” replied Stevens; “but even if it is not, yet this would
+not be the subject of any difference--it would scarcely prevent the
+prosecution of this evil purpose. You are to remember, Mr. Cross--”
+
+“John Cross--plain John Cross, Alfred Stevens,” was the interruption of
+the preacher.
+
+“You are to remember,” Stevens resumed, “that when the heart is full
+of sin, the eyes are full of blindness. The people who believe in these
+evil beings are incapable of seeing their deformities.”
+
+“That is true--a sad truth.”
+
+“And, again,” continued Stevens, “there are devices of mere mortal art,
+by which the deformities and defects of an individual may be concealed.
+One of these brothers, I am told, is never to be seen except seated in
+one position at the same desk, and this desk is so constructed, as
+to hide his lower limbs in great part, while still enabling him to
+prosecute his nefarious work.”
+
+“It's clear enough, Brother Cross,” exclaimed the widow Cooper, now
+thoroughly convinced--“it's clear enough that there's something that he
+wants to hide. Lord help us! but these things are terrible.”
+
+“To the weak and the wicked, Sister Cooper, they are, as you say,
+terrible, and hence the need that we should have our lamps trimmed and
+lighted, for the same light which brings us to the sight of the Holy of
+Holies, shows us the shape of hatefuless, the black and crouching form
+of Satan, with nothing to conceal his deformity. Brother Stevens has
+well said that when the heart is full of sin, the eyes are full of
+blindness; and so we may say that when the heart is full of godliness,
+the eyes are full of seeing. You can not blind them with devilish arts.
+You can not delude them as to the true forms of Satan, let him take any
+shape The eye of godliness sees clean through the mask of sin, as the
+light of the sun pierces the thickest cloud, and brings day after the
+darkest night.”
+
+“Oh! what a blessed thing to hear you say so.”
+
+“More blessed to believe, Sister Cooper, and believing, to pray with all
+your heart for this same eye of godliness. But we should not only
+pray but work. Working for God is the best sort of prayer. We must do
+something in his behalf: and this reminds me, Sister Cooper, that if
+there is so much evil spread abroad in these books, we should look
+heedfully into the character of such as fall into the hands of the young
+and the unmindful of our flock.”
+
+“That is very true; that is just what I was thinking of, Brother Cross.
+You can not look too close, I'm thinking into such books as you'll find
+at the house of Widow Thackeray. I can give a pretty 'cute guess where
+she gets all that sort of talk, that seems so natural at the end of her
+tongue.”
+
+“Verily, I will speak with Sister Thackeray on this subject,” responded
+the pastor--“but your own books, Sister Cooper, and those of your
+daughter Margaret--if it is convenient, I should prefer to examine them
+now while I am here.”
+
+“What! Margaret's books! examine Margaret's books!”
+
+“Even so, while I am present and while Brother Stevens is here, also, to
+give me his helping counsel in the way of judgment.”
+
+“Why, bless us, Brother Cross, you don't suppose that my daughter
+Margaret would keep any but the properest books? she's too sensible, I
+can tell you, for that. She's no books but the best; none, I'll warrant
+you, like them you'll find at Widow Thackeray's. She's not to be put off
+with bad books. She goes through 'em with a glance of the eye. Ah! she's
+too smart to be caught by the contrivances of those devils, though in
+place of four brothers there was four thousand of 'em. No, no! let her
+alone for that--she's a match for the best of 'em.”
+
+“But as Brother Stevens said,” continued John Cross, “where sin gets
+into the heart, the eye is blinded to the truth. Now--”
+
+“Her eye's not blinded, Brother Cross, I can tell you. They can't cheat
+her with their books. She has none but the very best. I'll answer for
+them. None of them ever did me any harm; and I reckon none of them'll
+ever hurt her. But I'm mistaken, if you don't have a real burning when
+you get to Mrs. Thackeray's.”
+
+“But, Sister Cooper--” commenced the preacher.
+
+“Yes, Brother Cross,” replied the dame.
+
+“Books, as I said before, are of two kinds.”
+
+“Yes, I know--good and bad--I only wonder there's no indifferent ones
+among 'em,” replied the lady.
+
+“They should be examined for the benefit of the young and ignorant.”
+
+“Oh, yes, and for more besides, for Mrs. Thackeray's not young, that's
+clear enough; and I know there's a good many things that she's not
+ignorant of. She's precious knowing about many things that don't do her
+much good; and if the books could unlearn her, I'd say for one let her
+keep 'em. But as for looking at Margaret's books--why, Brother Cross,
+you surely know Margaret?”
+
+The preacher answered meekly, but negatively.
+
+“Ain't she about the smartest girl you ever met with?” continued the
+mother.
+
+“God has certainly blessed her with many gifts,” was the reply, “but
+where the trust is great, the responsibility is great also.”
+
+“Don't she know it?”
+
+“I trust she does, Sister Cooper.”
+
+“You may trust every bit of it. She's got the smartness, the same as it
+is in books--”
+
+“But the gift of talents, Sister Cooper, is a dangerous gift.”
+
+“I don't see, Brother Cross, how good things that come from God can be
+dangerous things.”
+
+“If I could see the books, Sister Cooper;--I say not that they are
+evil--”
+
+John Cross began in tones that denoted something like despair; certainly
+dissatisfaction was in them, when Alfred Stevens, who had long since
+tired of what was going on, heard a light footfall behind him. He turned
+his eyes and beheld the fair maiden, herself, the propriety of whose
+reading was under discussion, standing in the doorway. It appeared that
+she had gathered from what had reached her ears, some knowledge of what
+was going on, for a smile of ineffable scorn curled her classic and
+nobly-chiselled mouth, while her brow was the index to a very haughty
+volume. In turning, Alfred Stevens betrayed to her the playful smile
+upon his own lips--their eyes met, and that single glance established a
+certain understanding between them.
+
+Her coming did not avail to stifle the subject of discussion. John Cross
+was too resolute in the prosecution of his supposed duty, to give up the
+cause he had once undertaken. He had all the inveteracy of the stout
+old puritan. The usual introduction over and he resumed, though he now
+addressed himself to the daughter rather than the mother. She scarcely
+heard him to the end.
+
+“The books were my father's, Mr. Cross; they are valuable to me on
+that account. They are dear to me on their own. They are almost my only
+companions, and though I believe you would find nothing in them which
+might be held detrimental, yet I must confess, if there were, I should
+be sorry to be made acquainted with the fact. I have not yet discovered
+it myself, and should be loath to have it shown by another.”
+
+“But you will let me see them, Margaret?”
+
+“Yes, sir, whenever you please. I can have no objection to that, but if
+by seeing them you only desire an opportunity to say what I shall read
+and what not, I can only tell you that your labor will be taken in vain.
+Indeed, the evil is already done. I have not a volume which I have not
+read repeatedly.”
+
+It is needless to add that Brother Cross was compelled to forego his
+book examination at the widow Cooper's, though strongly recommended
+there to press it at Widow Thackeray's. Alfred Stevens was a mute
+observer during the interview, which did not last very long after the
+appearance of Margaret. He was confirmed in all his previous impressions
+of her beauty, nor did the brevity of the conference prevent him from
+perceiving her intense self-esteem, which under certain influences of
+temperament is only another name for vanity. Besides they had
+exchanged glances which were volumes, rendering unnecessary much future
+explanation. She had seen that he was secretly laughing at the simple
+preacher, and that was a source of sympathy between them. She was very
+much in the habit of doing the same thing. He, on the other hand, was
+very well satisfied that the daughter of such a mother must be perverse
+and vain; and he was moralist enough to know that there is no heart so
+accessible to the tempter as the proud and wilful heart. But few words
+had passed between them, but those were expressive, and they both
+parted, with the firm conviction that they must necessarily meet again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.
+
+
+
+
+
+Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we look in upon him at
+Mrs. Thackeray's, while, obeying the suggestion of the widow Cooper, he
+purges her library of twenty volumes, casting out the devils and setting
+up the true gods? It is scarcely necessary. Enough to know that,
+under his expurgatorial finger, our beloved and bosom friend, William
+Shakspere, was the first to suffer. Plays! The one word was enough.
+Some lying histories were permitted to escape. The name of history saved
+them! Robinson Crusoe was preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's
+Tale of a Tub escaped, as it was assumed (there being no time to read
+any of the books, and in this respect John Cross showed himself much
+more of a professional critic than he conjectured) to be a treatise
+on one branch of the cooperage business, and so, important to domestic
+mechanics in a new country. The reader will remember the manner in which
+the library of the knight of La Mancha was disposed of. He would err,
+however, if he supposed that John Cross dismissed the books from the
+window, or did anything farther than simply to open the eyes of Mrs.
+Thackeray to the bad quality of some of the company she kept. That
+sagacious lady did not think it worth while to dispute the ipse dixit of
+a teacher so single-minded, if not sagacious. She bowed respectfully
+to all his suggestions, promised no longer to bestow her smiles on the
+undeserving--a promise of no small importance when it is remembered
+that, at thirty-three, Mrs. Thackeray was for the first time a
+widow--and that night she might have been seen laughing heartily with
+Mesdames Ford and Quickly at the amorous pertinacity of the baffled
+knight of Eastcheap.
+
+Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens obtained the
+desired entree into the bosom of the flock. He was everywhere admitted
+with gladness--everywhere welcomed as to a home; and the unsophisticated
+old teacher by whose agency this was effected, congratulated his
+congregation and himself, on leaving the village, that he had left in it
+a person so full of grace, and one who, with the blessing of God, was
+so likely to bring about the birth of grace in others. The good old man
+bestowed long and repeated counsels upon his neophyte. The course of
+study which he prescribed was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and
+the Omega--it was the essential whole. It would be well to read other
+books if they could be had--Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken
+of--but they could be done without. The word of God was in the one
+volume, and it needed no help from commentators to win its way and
+suffice the hungering and thirsting soul.
+
+“If you could lay hands upon the book of sermons written by Brother
+Peter Cummins, which his wife had printed, I'm thinking it would serve,
+next to God's own blessed word, to put you in the right way. It's been
+a great helping to me, Alfred Stevens, that same book of sermons; and,
+I reckon it's because it's so good a book that it's not printed now.
+I don't see it much about. But I'll get you one if I can, and bring
+or send it to you, soon enough to help you to the wisdom that you're a
+seeking after. If it only wakes the spirit in you as it did in me--if
+it only stirs you up with the spirit of divine love--you'll find it easy
+enough to understand the teachings of the holy volume. All things become
+clear in that blessed light. By its help you read, and by its working
+you inwardly digest all the needful learning. The Lord be with you,
+Alfred Stevens, and bring to perfect ripening your present undertaking.”
+
+“Amen!” was the solemn response of the hypocrite, but we need not say
+what an irreverent and unholy thought lay at the bottom of his mind in
+making this ejaculation.
+
+Before the departure of John Cross, the latter had made terms with
+Squire Hinkley for the board and lodging of Brother Stevens and his
+horse. Hinkley would have preferred taking nothing, considering the
+praiseworthy purpose of the supposed theological student; but Stevens
+shrunk from receiving such an obligation with a feeling of pride, which
+yet had no scruples at practising so wretched an imposture. He insisted
+upon making compensation, or upon leaving the house; and, not to incur
+this risk, Hinkley consented to receive a weekly sum in payment; but the
+charge was considerably smaller, as we may suppose, than it would
+have been had the lodger simply appeared as an inoffensive traveller,
+practising no fraud and making no professions of religion.
+
+Having effected all these arrangements, to his own satisfaction and
+seemingly that of all others, John Cross departed once more into the
+wilderness on his single-hearted ministry of love. A sturdy and an
+honest worker was he in the tabernacle, with a right mind if not a very
+wise one; and doing more good in his generation, and after the fashion
+of his strength, than is often permitted to the stall-fed doctors of his
+vocation.
+
+The reader will suppose that the old man has been already gone some
+seven days. Meanwhile, the young student has fairly made himself at
+home in Charlemont. He has a snug room, entirely to himself, at Squire
+Hinkley's, and, by the excellent care of the worthy dame, it is provided
+with the best bedding and the finest furniture. Her own hands sweep it
+clean, morning and night, for the incipient parson; she makes up the
+bed, and, in customary phrase, puts it in all respects to rights. His
+wants are anticipated, his slightest suggestion met with the most prompt
+consideration; and John Cross himself, humble and unexacting as he was,
+might have felt some little twinges of mortal envy could he have
+known that his protege promised to become a much greater favorite than
+himself.
+
+This, indeed, seemed very likely to be the case. A good young man in the
+sight of the ladies is always a more attractive person than a good old
+man. Dame Hinkley, though no longer young herself, remembered that she
+had been so, and preserved all her sympathies, in consequence, for
+young people. She thought Alfred Stevens so handsome, and he smiled so
+sweetly, and he spoke so genty, and, in short, so great had been his
+progress in the affections of his hostess in the brief space of a single
+week, that we are constrained to confess ourselves rejoiced that she
+herself was an old woman, as well on her own account as on that of her
+worthy spouse.
+
+Her good man was very well satisfied, whether from confidence or
+indifference, that such should be the case. Her attentions to the young
+stranger probably diverted them from himself. But not so with William
+Hinkley--the son. We have already had some glimpses of the character
+of this young man. We may now add that the short week's residence of
+Stevens in Charlemont had increased the soreness at his heart. In that
+week he had seen fairly established that intimacy between his rival
+and the lady of his love which seemed to give the death-blow to any
+pretensions of his. He had seen them meet; had seen them go forth
+together; beheld their mutual eyes, and, turning his own inward, saw
+how deeply his heart was concerned in the probable sympathies of theirs.
+Then, to turn to his own habitation, and to behold THAT, mother and all,
+devoted to the same absolute stranger; to pass unheeded in the presence
+of those whom he best loved--over whom natural ties gave him inalienable
+rights; to feel himself put aside for one only known of yesterday; to
+look with yearning, and meet eyes only of disregard and indifference!
+Such being the suggestions of his jealous and suffering nature, it
+is surely no matter of wonder that the youth grew melancholy and
+abstracted.
+
+Our adventurer was snugly seated in the little but select chamber which
+had been given him in the house of Squire Hinkley. A table, neatly
+spread with a cotton cover, stood before him: a travelling-portfolio
+was opened beneath his hand, with a broad sheet of paper, already well
+written over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps the
+postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and nibbled
+into bits the feathery end of the gray goosequill of which he had been
+making such excellent use. While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the
+liberty of an old acquaintance to scan the letter--for such it is--which
+he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some matters which
+it may concern us yet to know:--
+
+“Dear Barnabas: The strangest adventure--positively the very
+strangest--that ever happened to a son of Murkey's, will keep me
+from the embraces of the brethren a few weeks longer. I am benighted,
+bewildered, taken with art-magic, transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, not
+myself nor yet another, but, as they say in Mississippi, 'a sort
+of betweenity.' Fancy me suddenly become a convert to the bluest
+presbyterianism, as our late excellent brother Woodford became, when he
+found that he could not get Moll Parkinson on any other terms--and your
+guess will not be very far from the true one. I am suddenly touched with
+conviction. I have seen a light on my way from Tarsus. The scales have
+fallen from my eyes. I have seen the wickedness of my ways, and yours
+too, you dog; and, having resolved on my own repentance, I am taking
+lessons which shall enable me to effect yours. Precious deal of salt
+will it need for that! Salt river will fall, while its value rises. But
+the glory of the thing--think of that, my boy! What a triumph it will
+be to revolutionize Murkey's!--to turnout the drinkers and smokers, and
+money-changers; to say, 'Hem! my brethren, let us pay no more taxes to
+sin in this place!' There shall be no more cakes and ale. Ginger shall
+have no heat i' the mouth there; and, in place of smoking meats and
+tobacco, give you nothing but smoking methodism! Won't that be a sight
+and a triumph which shall stir the dry bones in our valley--ay, and
+bones not so dry? There shall be a quaking of the flesh in sundry
+places. Flam will perish in the first fit of consternation; and if Joe
+Burke's sides do not run into sop and jelly, through the mere humor of
+the thing, then prophecy is out of its element quite.
+
+“Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student! Don't you see
+proofs of my progress in my unctuous phraseology. I was taken suddenly
+upon the highway--a brand plucked from the burning--and to be stuck up
+on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern and lighthouse to
+other wayfarers--wandering rogues like yourself, who need some better
+lights than your own if it only be to show you how to sin decently. I am
+professedly a convert to the true faith, though which that is, I think,
+has not well been determined among you at Murkey's, or, indeed, anywhere
+else. I believe the vox populi, vox Dei, still comprises the only
+wholesome decision which has yet been made on the subject. The popular
+vote here declares it to be methodism; with you it is baptism or
+presbyterianism--which? I am a flexible student, however, and when I meet
+you again at Murkey's, shall be prepared to concur with the majority.
+
+“But, in sober fact, I am a professor--actually recognised by my
+neighbors as one of the elect--set apart to be and do mighty things.
+How I came so, will call for a long story, which I defer to another
+occasion. Enough to tell you that an accidental rencontre with a silly
+old preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy, which I recommended
+to him, under another name, as a sovereign remedy against flatulence,
+and which nearly strangled him he took such a premeditated swallow),
+brought me into one of the loveliest little villages in all this western
+country, and there I saw many things--among others--a woman!--
+
+“A woman!--that one word, you dog, will explain the mystery--will
+show you why I am thus transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, and in 'a state of
+betweenity.' Nothing less, I assure you, could make me disguise myself
+after the present fashion; wear the sanctimonious and sour phiz which
+the common law of modern religion prescribes, and keep me much longer
+from the pleasanter communion of such glorious imps, as I suppose, are,
+even now, beginning to gather in the dingy smoke-room of our sovereign
+Murkey. But this woman, you will ask. Ay, ay, but you shall have no
+answer yet. It shall be enough for you that she is a queen of Sheba,
+after her own fashion. A proud, imperious, passionate creature--tall,
+really beautiful--and so majestic! You should see the flashing of her
+eyes to know what sort of a thing is moral lightning. Her face kindles
+up in an instant. She is an intensifier, and like most such, cursedly
+smart. Young too--scarce eighteen, I think; queer too--almost tyrannical
+at times--but full of blood, of unregulated passions, moody, capricious,
+and, of course, easy game, if the sportsman knows anything of the habits
+of the bird. She is a country-girl, but no hoyden. Her intensity of
+character, her pride and great self-esteem, have made her a solitary.
+Unsophisticated in some respects, she is yet not to be surprised. In
+solitude, and a taste for it, she has acquired a sort of moral composure
+which makes her secure against surprise. I am really taken with the
+girl, and COULD love her, I tell you--nay, do love her--so long as love
+can keep himself--out of a state of bondage! I do not think, at this
+moment, that I shall violate any of the laws of the conventicle, like
+small-witted Brother Woodford; though, so far as the woman is concerned,
+I should leave it without argument to the free vote of all the Lads of
+Fancy that ever gather round Murkey's round table, if my justification
+for turning traitor, would not prove immeasurably more complete than
+his.
+
+“So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch, you professional
+bandog. I had not meant to tell you half so much. There is some danger
+that one may lose his game altogether, if he suffers his nose to point
+unnecessarily to the cover where it lies. I know what keen scents are
+in the club, some of which would be on my track in no time if they knew
+where to find me; but I shall baffle you, you villains. My post-town is
+fifty miles from the place where I pursue my theological studies; you
+are too wise to attempt a wild-goose chase. You may smack your chaps,
+Barney, with envy; bite them too if you please, and it will only whet
+my own sense of pleasure to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless
+denunciations in the club. I shall be back in time for term--meanwhile
+get the papers in readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland,
+and remember to address me as Alfred Stevens--nay, perhaps, you may even
+say, 'Rev. Alfred Stevens,' it will grace the externals of the document
+with a more unctuous aspect, and secure the recipient a more wholesome
+degree of respect. Send all my letters to this town under envelope with
+this direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville. Did I tell you that
+old Hunks has been deused liberal? I can laugh at the small terms,
+yet go to Murkey's and shine through the smoke with the best of you. I
+solicit the prayers of the Round Table.
+
+“Faithfully, yours, &c.”
+
+So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate, when a tap
+was heard at the entrance of his chamber. Thrusting the written papers
+into his portfolio, he rose, and opening the door discovered his hostess
+at the entrance.
+
+“I came, Brother Stevens,” said the old lady, “if you not too busy in
+your studies, to have a little talk with you, and to get your counsel
+upon a subject that a little distresses me. But you look as if you were
+busy now--”
+
+“Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in any other
+respect,” replied the guest with suitable suavity of expression--“shall
+I attend you down stairs.”
+
+“Oh! no! it won't need,” said she. “I'll take a seat with you awhile. We
+shall be less liable to interruption here.”
+
+Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority of the old lady
+made her proceedings very innocent, however much they might have
+been adverse to the rules. He threw wide the door, and without more
+hesitation she followed him at once into the chamber.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her guest was
+a very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she expressed it in
+few words. That is scarcely possible at any time with an ancient lady.
+But the long story which she told, when compressed into intelligible
+form, related to her son William. She had some maternal fears on his
+account. The lad was a decided melancholic. His appetite was bad; his
+looks were thin and unhappy; he lacked the usual spirit of youth; he
+lacked his own usual spirit. What was the cause of the change which had
+come over him so suddenly, she could not divine. Her anxiety was for
+the remedy. She had consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he
+departed; but that good man, after a brief examination of the patient,
+had freely admitted his inability to say what was the matter with him,
+and what was proper for his cure. To the object of this solicitude
+himself, he had given much good counsel, concluding finally with a
+recommendation to read devoutly certain chapters in Job and Isaiah.
+It appears that William Hinkley submitted to all this scrutiny with
+exemplary fortitude, but gave no satisfactory answers to any of the
+questions asked him. He had no complaints, he denied any suffering;
+and expressed himself annoyed at the inquisition into his thoughts and
+feelings. This annoyance had been expressed, however, with the subdued
+tones and language of one habitually gentle and modest. Whenever he was
+approached on the subject, as the good old lady assured her guest, he
+shook off his questioners with no little haste, and took to the woods
+for the rest of the day. “That day,” said she, “you needn't look for
+William Hinkley to his dinner.”
+
+Stevens had been struck with the deportment of this youth, which had
+seemed to him haughty and repulsive; and, as he fancied, characterized
+by some sentiment of hostility for himself. He was surprised therefore
+to learn from the old lady that the lad was remarkable for his
+gentleness.
+
+“How long has he been in this way, Mrs. Hinkley?” he asked with some
+curiosity.
+
+“Well now, Brother Stevens, I can't tell you. It's been growing on him
+for some time. I reckon it's a matter of more than four months since I
+first seen it; but it's only been a few weeks that I have spoken to him.
+Brother Cross spoke to him only Monday of last week. My old man don't
+seem to see so much of it; but I know there's a great change in him now
+from what there used to be. A mother's eye sees a great way farther into
+the hearts of her children, Brother Stevens, than any other persons; and
+I can see plainly that William is no more the same boy--no! nor nothing
+like it--that he once was. Why, once, he was all life, and good humor;
+could dance and sing with the merriest among them; and was always so
+good and kind, and loved to do whatever would please a body; and was
+always with somebody, or other, making merry, and planning the prettiest
+sports. Now, he don't sing, nor dance, nor play; when you see him, you
+'most always see him alone. He goes by himself into the woods, and he'll
+be going over the hills all day, nobody with him, and never seeming to
+care about his food, and what's more strange, never looking at the books
+that he used to be so fond of.”
+
+“He has been fond of books, then--had he many?”
+
+“Oh, yes, a whole drawer of them, and he used to get them besides from
+the schoolmaster, Mr. Calvert, a very good man that lives about half a
+mile from the village, and has a world of books. But now he neither gets
+books from other people nor reads what he's got. I'm dubious, Brother
+Stevens, that he's read too much for his own good. Something's not right
+here, I'm a thinking.”
+
+The good old lady touched her head with her finger and in this manner
+indicated her conjecture as to the seat of her son's disease. Stevens
+answered her encouragingly.
+
+“I scarcely think, Mrs. Hinkley, that it can be anything so bad. The
+young man is at that age when a change naturally takes place in the
+mind and habits. He wants to go into the world, I suspect. He's probably
+tired of doing nothing. What is to be his business? It's high time that
+such a youth should have made a choice.”
+
+“That's true, Brother Stevens, but he's been the apple to our eyes,
+and we haven't been willing that he should take up any business that
+would--carry him away from us. He's done a little farming about the
+country, but that took him away, and latterly he's kept pretty much at
+home, going over his books and studying, now one and now another, just
+as Mr. Calvert gave them to him.”
+
+“What studies did he pursue?”
+
+“Well, I can't tell you. He was a good time at Latin, and then he wants
+to be a lawyer;--”
+
+“A lawyer!”
+
+“Yes, he had a great notion to be a lawyer and was at his books pretty
+hard for a good year, constant, day by day, until, as I said before,
+about four months ago, when I saw that he was growing thin, and that he
+had put down the books altogether, and had the change come over him just
+as I told you. You see how thin he is now. You'd scarce believe him to
+be the same person if you'd seen him then. Why his cheeks were as full
+and as red as roses, and his eye was always shining and laughing, and
+he had the liveliest step, and between him and Ned Hinkley, his cousin,
+what with flute and fiddle, they kept the house in a constant uproar,
+and we were all so happy. Now, it isn't once a month that we hear the
+sound of the fiddle in the house. He never sings, and he never dances,
+and he never plays, and what little he lets us see of him, is always so
+sad and so spiritless that I feel heartsick whenever I look upon him.
+Oh! Brother Stevens, if you could only find out what's the matter, and
+tell us what to do, it would be the most blessed kindness, and I'd never
+forget it, or forget you, to my dying day.”
+
+“Whatever I can do, Mrs. Hinkley, shall surely be done. I will see and
+speak with your son.”
+
+“Oh! do--that's a dear good sir. I'm sure if you only talk to him and
+advise him it will do him good.”
+
+“Without being so sure, ma'am, I will certainly try to please you.
+Though I think you see the matter with too serious eyes. Such changes
+are natural enough to young people, and to old ones too. But what may be
+your son's age.”
+
+“Nineteen last April.”
+
+“Quite a man for his years, Mrs. Hinkley.”
+
+“Isn't he?”
+
+“He will do you credit yet.”
+
+“Ah! if I could believe so. But you'll speak to him, Brother Stevens?
+You'll try and bring all to rights?”
+
+“Rely upon me to do what I can;--to do my best.”
+
+“Well, that's as much as any man can do, and I'm sure I'll be so
+happy--we shall all be so much indebted to you.”
+
+“Do not speak of it, my dear madam,” said Stevens, bowing with profound
+deference as the old lady took her departure. She went off with light
+heart, having great faith in the powers of the holy man, and an equal
+faith in his sincerity.
+
+“What a bore!” he muttered as he closed the door behind her. “This is
+one of the penalties, I suppose, which I must pay for my privileges. I
+shall be called upon to reform the morals and manners, and look into the
+petty cares of every chuckle-headed boor and boor's brat for ten miles
+round. See why boys reject their mush, and why the girls dislike to
+listen to the exhortations of a mamma, who requires them to leave undone
+what she has done herself--and with sufficient reason too, if her own
+experience be not wholly profitless. Well, I must submit. There are
+advantages, however; I shall have other pupils to tutor, and it shall
+go hard with me if all the grapes prove sour where the vines are so
+various.”
+
+The student of divinity, after these conclusions, prepared to make his
+toilet. Very few of these students, in their extreme solicitude for the
+well being of the inner man, show themselves wholly regardless of their
+externals. Even mourning, it appears, requires to be disposed by a
+fashionable costumer. Though the garments to which the necessities of
+travel limited Brother Stevens were not various, they were yet select.
+The good young man had an affection for his person, which was such
+certainly as to deserve his care. On this occasion he was more than
+usually particular. He did not scruple to discard the white cravat.
+For this he substituted a handkerchief which had the prettiest sprig
+of lilac, on a ground of the most delicate lemon color. He consulted
+complexions, and his mirror determined him in favor of this pattern.
+Brother Stevens would not have worn it had he been summoned, in his
+new vocation, to preach or pray at the conventicle; nor would he have
+dreamed of anything but a black stock had his business been to address
+the democracy from the top of a cider-barrel. His habits, under such
+necessities, would have been made to correspond with the principles
+with which such a situation more distinctly called for.
+
+But the thoughts of our worthy brother ran upon other objects. He was
+thinking of Margaret Cooper. He was about to pay that damsel a visit.
+His progress, we may suppose, had not been inconsiderable when we are
+told that his present visit was one of previous arrangement. They were
+about to go forth on a ramble together--the woods were so wild
+and lovely--the rocks surrounding Charlemont were so very
+picturesque;--there was the quietest tarn, a sort of basin in the bosom
+of the hills at a little distance, which she was to show him; and
+there was the sweetest stream in the world, that meandered in the
+neighborhood; and Brother Stevens so loved the picturesque--lakes
+embosomed in hills, and streams stealing through unbroken forests, and
+all so much the more devotedly, when he had such a companion as Margaret
+Cooper.
+
+And Margaret Cooper!--she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer--a
+muse--filled with ambitious thoughts--proud, vain, aspiring after the
+vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could speak her
+whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding ears!
+Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her books had been his
+books. The glowing passages which she loved to repeat, were also the
+favorite passages in his memory. Over the burning and thrilling strains
+of Byron, the tender and spiritual of Shelley, the graceful and soft of
+Campbell, she loved to linger. They filled her thoughts. They made her
+thoughts. She felt that her true utterance lay in their language; and
+this language, until now, had fallen dead and without fruit upon the
+dull ears of her companions in Charlemont. What was their fiddling and
+festivity to her! What their tedious recreations by hillside or
+stream, when she had to depress her speech to the base levels of their
+unimaginative souls! The loveliness of nature itself, unrepresented
+by the glowing hues of poetry, grew tame, if not offensive; and when
+challenged to its contemplation by those to whom the muse was nothing,
+the fancy of the true observer grew chilled and heavy, and the scenes of
+beauty seemed prostituted in their glance.
+
+We have all felt this. Nothing can more annoy the soul of taste or
+sensibility than to behold its favorite scene and subject fail in
+awakening others to that emotion which it has inspired in ourselves.
+We turn away in haste, lest the object of our worship should become
+degraded by a longer survey. Enthusiasm recoils at a denial of sympathy;
+and all the worth of our companion, in a thousand other respects, fails
+to reconcile us to his coldness and indifference.
+
+That Alfred Stevens had taste and talent--that he was well read in the
+volumes which had been her favorite study, Margaret Cooper needed no
+long time to discover. She soon ascribed to him qualities and tastes
+which were beyond his nature. Deceived by his tact, she believed in his
+enthusiasm. He soon discovered HER tastes; and she found equally soon
+that HIS were like her own. After this discovery, she gave him credit
+for other and more important possessions; and little dreamed that,
+while he responded to her glowing sentiments with others equally
+glowing--avowed the same love for the same authors, and concurred with
+her in the preference of the same passages--his feelings were as little
+susceptible of sympathy with hers as would have been those of the cold
+demon Mephistopheles! While her eye was flashing, her cheek flushed, her
+breast heaving with the burning thoughts and strains of the master to
+whom her beautiful lips were giving utterance, he was simply sensible
+to HER beauty--to its strange, wild charms--and meditating thoughts
+from which the soul of true poetry recoils with the last feelings of
+aversion. Even the passion which he felt while he surveyed her, foreign
+as it was to those legitimate emotions which her ambition and her genius
+would equally have tended to inspire in any justly-minded nature,
+might well be considered frigid--regarded as the result of deliberate
+artifice--the true offspring of an habitual and base indulgence.
+
+It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding girl,
+that Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his costume. He
+felt its deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity of making the
+most of it; for, though he perfectly well knew that such a woman as
+Margaret Cooper would have been the very last to regard the mere garment
+in which a congenial nature is arrayed, yet he also well knew that the
+costume is not less indicative of the tastes than the wealth of the
+wearer. You will see thousands of persons, men and women, richly
+dressed, and but one will be WELL dressed: that one, most generally,
+will be the individual who is perhaps of all others possessed of
+the least resources for dress, other than those which dwell in the
+well-arranged mind, the well-disposing taste, and the happy, crowning
+fancy.
+
+His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing to
+go forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed his hand
+upon the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his hostess, on
+the stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son. He was about to
+forbear his purpose of departure as the parties had retired, when,
+remembering the solicitude of the lady, and thinking it would show that
+zest in her service which he really could not entertain, he determined
+at once to to join the young man, and begin with him that certain degree
+of intimacy without which it could scarcely be supposed that he could
+broach the subject of his personal affairs. He felt somewhat the
+awkwardness of this assumed duty, but then he recollected his vocation;
+he knew the paramount influence of the clergy upon all classes of
+persons in the West, and, with the conscious superiority derived
+from greater years and better education, he felt himself fortified
+in undertaking the paternal office which the fond, foolish mother had
+confided to his hands. Accordingly, descending the stairs briskly, he
+joined the two at the entrance of the dwelling. The son was already on
+the outside; the mother stood in the doorway: and, as Stevens appeared
+and drew nigh, William Hinkley bowed, and turned away as if to withdraw.
+
+“If you have no objections, Mr. Hinkley,” said Stevens, “I will join
+you. You seem to be about to go my way.”
+
+The young man paused with an air of reluctance, muttered something
+which was not altogether intelligible, but which Stevens construed into
+assent, and the two set forth together--the good old matron giving a
+glance of gratitude to the benevolent young student which her son did
+not fail to note, while, at the same time, a sentence which evidently
+conveyed some motherly rebuke, was addressed to his already-irritated
+ears.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+WRESTLING.
+
+
+
+
+
+Alfred Stevens, as he walked behind his young companion, observed him
+with a more deliberate survey than he had yet taken. Hitherto, the young
+man had challenged but little of his scrutiny. He had simply noted him
+for a tall youth, yet in the green, who appeared of a sulky, retiring
+nature, and whose looks had seemed to him on one or more occasions
+to manifest something like distaste for himself. The complacency of
+Stevens, however, was too well grounded to be much disturbed by such an
+exhibition. Perhaps, indeed, he would have derived a malicious sort of
+satisfaction in making a presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He
+had just that smallness of spirit which would find its triumph in the
+success of such a performance.
+
+He now observed that the youth was well formed, tall, not
+ungraceful--with features of singular intelligence, though subdued to
+the verge of sadness. His face was pale and thin, his eyes were a little
+sunken, and his air, expression, and general outside, denoted a youth of
+keen sensibilities, who had suffered some disappointment.
+
+In making this examination, Alfred Stevens was not awakened to any
+generous purposes. He designed, in reality, nothing more than to
+acquit himself of the duty he had undertaken with the smallest possible
+exertion. His own mind was one of that mediocre character which the
+heart never informs. His scrutiny, therefore, though it enabled him to
+perceive that the young man had qualities of worth, was not such as to
+prompt any real curiosity to examine further. A really superior mind
+would have been moved to look into these resources; and, without other
+motive than that of bringing a young, laboring, and ardent soul out of
+the meshes of a new and bewildering thought or situation, would have
+addressed himself to the task with that degree of solicitous earnestness
+which disarms prejudice and invites and wins confidence. But, with his
+first impression, that the whole business was a “bore,” our benevolent
+young teacher determined on getting through with it with the least
+possible effort. He saw that the youth carried a book under his arm, the
+externals of which, so uniform and discouraging as they appear in every
+legal library, could not well be questioned as belonging to some such
+venerable receptacle of barbarous phrase and rigid authority. The
+circumstance afforded him an occasion to begin a conversation,
+the opening of which, with all his coolness, was a subject of some
+awkwardness.
+
+“You seem a student like myself, Mr. Hinkley, and, if I mistake not from
+the appearance of your book, you are taking up the profession which I am
+about to lay down.”
+
+“This is a law-book, sir,” said Hinkley, in accents which were rather
+meek than cold; “it is Blackstone.”
+
+“Ah! I thought as much. Have you been long a student?”
+
+“I may scarcely consider myself one yet. I have read, sir, rather than
+studied.”
+
+“A good distinction, not often made. But, do you incline to law
+seriously?”
+
+“Yes, sir--I know no occupation to which I so much incline.”
+
+“The law is a very arduous profession. It requires a rare union of
+industry, talent, and knowledge of mankind to be a good lawyer.”
+
+“I should think so, sir.”
+
+“Few succeed where thousands fail. Young men are very apt to mistake
+inclination for ability; and to be a poor lawyer--”
+
+“Is to be worse than poor--is to be despicable!” replied Hinkley with a
+half-smile, as he interrupted a speech which might have been construed
+into a very contemptuous commentary on his own pretensions. It would
+seem that the young man had so understood it. He continued thus:--
+
+“It may be so with me, sir. It is not improbable that I deceive myself,
+and confound inclination with ability.”
+
+“Oh, pardon me, my dear young friend,” said Stevens patronizingly;
+“but I do not say so. I utter a mere generality. Of course, I can know
+nothing on the subject of your abilities. I should be glad to know.
+I should like to converse with you. But the law is very arduous, very
+exacting. It requires a good mind, and it requires the whole of it.
+There is no such thing as being a good lawyer from merely reading law.
+You can't bolt it as we do food in this country. We must chew upon it.
+It must be well digested. You seem to have the right notion on this
+subject. I should judge so from two things: the distinction which
+you made between the reader and the student; and the fact that your
+appearance is that of the student. I am afraid, my young friend, that
+you overwork yourself. You look thin, and pale, and unhappy. You should
+be careful that your passion for study is not indulged in at the peril
+of your health.”
+
+The frame of the young man seemed to be suddenly agitated. His face was
+flushed, and a keen, quick, flash of anger seemed to lighten in his eyes
+as he looked up to the paternal counsellor and replied:--
+
+“I thank you, sir, for your interest, but it is premature. I am not
+conscious that my health suffers from this or any other cause.”
+
+“Nay, my young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate
+your own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much we can
+do and how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere thinking
+can determine this matter for us. It can only be decided by being able
+to see what others do and can endure. In a little country village like
+this, one can not easily determine; and the difficulty may be increased
+somewhat by one's own conviction, of the immense deal that one has to
+learn. If you were to spend a year in some tolerably large community.
+Perhaps you meditate some such plan?”.
+
+“I do not, sir,” was the cold reply.
+
+“Indeed; and have you no desire that way?”
+
+“None!”
+
+“Very strange! at your time of life the natural desire is to go into the
+great world. Even the student fancies he can learn better there than he
+can anywhere else--and so he can.”
+
+“Indeed, sir: if I may be so bold to ask, why, with this opinion, have
+you left the great city to bury yourself in a miserable village like
+Charlemont?”
+
+The question was so quickly put, and with so much apparent keenness,
+that Stevens found the tables suddenly reversed. But he was in nowise
+discomposed. He answered promptly.
+
+“You forget,” he said, “that I was speaking of very young men, of an
+ambitious temper, who were seeking to become lawyers. The student of
+divinity may very well be supposed to be one who would withdraw himself
+from the scene of ambition, strifes, vanities, and tumultuous passions.”
+
+“You speak, sir, as if there were a material difference in our years?”
+ said Hinkley inquiringly.
+
+“Perhaps it is less than in our experience, my young friend,” was the
+answer of the other, betraying that quiet sense of superiority which
+would have been felt more gallingly by Hinkley had he been of a less
+modest nature. Still, it had the effect of arousing some of the animal
+in his blood, and he responded in a sentence which was not entirely
+without its sneer, though it probably passed without penetrating such a
+buff of self-esteem as guarded the sensibilities of our adventurer.
+
+“You are fortunate sir, if, at your time of life, you have succeeded
+in withdrawing your thoughts and feelings, with your person, from such
+scenes of ambition as you speak of. But I fancy the passions dwell with
+us in the country as well as with the wiser people in the town; and I am
+not sure that there is any pursuit much more free from their intrusion
+than that of the law.”
+
+“Your remark exhibits penetration, Mr. Hinkley. I should not be
+surprised if you have chosen your profession properly. Still, I should
+counsel you not to overwork yourself. Bear with me, sir; I feel an
+interest in your behalf, and I must think you do so. Allow me to be
+something of a judge in this matter. You are aware, sir, that I too have
+been a lawyer.”
+
+The youth bowed stiffly.
+
+“If I can lend you any assistance in your studies, I will do so. Let me
+arrange them for you, and portion out your time. I know something about
+that, and will save you from injuring your health. On this point you
+evidently need instruction. You are doing yourself hurt. Your appearance
+is matter of distress and apprehension to your parents.”
+
+“To my parents, sir?”
+
+“Your mother, I mean! She spoke to me about you this very morning. She
+is distressed at some unaccountable changes which have taken place in
+your manners, your health, your personal appearance. Of course I can say
+nothing on the subject of the past, or of these changes; but I may be
+permitted to say that your present looks do not betoken health, and I
+have supposed this to be on account of your studies. I promised your
+good mother to confer with you, and counsel you, and if I can be of any
+help--“'
+
+“You are very good, sir!”
+
+The young man spoke bitterly. His gorge was rising. It was not easy to
+suppress his vexation with his mother, and the indignation which he
+felt at the supercilious approaches of the agent whom she had employed.
+Besides, his mind, not less than his feelings, was rising in vigor in
+due degree with the pressure put upon it.
+
+“You are very good, sir, and I am very much obliged to you. I could have
+wished, however, that my mother had not given you this trouble, sir. She
+certainly must have been thinking of Mr. John Cross. She could scarcely
+have hoped that any good could have resulted to me, from the counsel of
+one who is so little older than myself.”
+
+This speech made our adventurer elevate his eyebrows. He absolutely
+stopped short to look upon the speaker. William Hinkley stopped short
+also. His eye encountered that of Stevens with an expression as full of
+defiance as firmness. His cheeks glowed with the generous indignation
+which filled his veins.
+
+“This fellow has something in him after all,” was the involuntary
+reflection that rose to the other's mind. The effect was, however,
+not very beneficial to his own manner. Instead of having the effect of
+impressing upon Stevens the necessity of working cautiously, the show
+of defiance which he saw tended to provoke and annoy him. The youth had
+displayed so much propriety in his anger, had been so moderate as
+well as firm, and had uttered his answer with so much dignity and
+correctness, that he felt himself rebuked. To be encountered by an
+unsophisticated boy, and foiled, though but for an instant--slightly
+estimated, though but by a youth, and him too, a mere rustic--was
+mortifying to the self-esteem that rather precipitately hurried to
+resent it.
+
+“You take it seriously, Mr. Hinkley. But surely an offer of service
+need not be mistaken. As for the trifling difference which may be in
+our years, that is perhaps nothing to the difference which may be in our
+experience, our knowledge of the world, our opportunities and studies.”
+
+“Surely, sir; all these MAY be, but at all events we are not bound to
+assume their existence until it is shown.”
+
+“Oh, you are likely to prove an adept in the law, Mr. Hinkley.”
+
+“I trust, sir, that your progress may be as great in the church.”
+
+“Ha!--do I understand you? There is war between us then?” said Stevens,
+watching the animated and speaking countenance of William Hinkley with
+increasing curiosity.
+
+“Ay, sir--there is!” was the spirited reply of the youth. “Let it be
+war; I am the better pleased, sir, that you are the first to proclaim
+it.”
+
+“Very good,” said Stevens, “be it so, if you will. At all events you can
+have no objection to say why it should be so.”
+
+“Do you ask, sir?”
+
+“Surely; for I can not guess.”
+
+“You are less sagacious, then, than I had fancied you. You, scarce
+older than myself--a stranger among us--come to me in the language of a
+father, or a master, and without asking what I have of feeling, or
+what I lack of sense, undertake deliberately to wound the one, while
+insolently presuming to inform the other.”
+
+“At the request of your own mother!”
+
+“Pshaw! what man of sense or honesty would urge such a plea. Years, and
+long intimacy, and wisdom admitted to be superior, could alone justify
+the presumption.”
+
+The cheeks of Stevens became scalding hot.
+
+“Young man!” he exclaimed, “there is something more than this!”
+
+“What! would it need more were our positions reversed?” demanded Hinkley
+with a promptness that surprised himself.
+
+“Perhaps not! would you provoke me to personal violence?”
+
+“Ha! might I hope for that? surely you forget that you are a churchman?”
+
+Stevens paused awhile before he answered. His eyes looked vacantly
+around him. By this time they had left the more thickly-settled parts of
+the village considerably behind them. But a few more dwellings lay along
+the path on which they were approaching. On the left, a gorge opened in
+the hills by which the valley was dotted, which seemed a pathway, and
+did indeed lead to one or more dwellings which were out of sight in the
+opposite valley. The region to which this pathway led was very secluded,
+and the eye of Stevens surveyed it for a few moments in silence. The
+words of Hinkley unquestionably conveyed a challenge. According to the
+practice of the country, AS A LAWYER, he would have been bound to have
+taken it as such. A moment was required for reflection. His former and
+present position caused a conflict in his mind. The last sentence of
+Hinkley, and a sudden glimpse which he just then caught of the residence
+of Margaret Cooper, determined his answer.
+
+“I thank you, young man, for reminding me of my duties. You had nearly
+provoked the old passions and old practices into revival. I forgive
+you--you misunderstand me clearly. I know not how I have offended you,
+for my only purpose was to serve your mother and yourself. I may have
+done this unwisely. I will not attempt to prove that I have not. At all
+events, assured of my own motives, I leave you to yourself. You will
+probably ere long feel the injustice you have done me!”
+
+He continued on his way, leaving William Hinkley almost rooted to the
+spot. The poor youth was actually stunned, not by what was said to him,
+but by the sudden consciousness of his own vehemence. He had expressed
+himself with a boldness and an energy of which neither himself nor his
+friend, until now, would have thought him capable. A moment's pause in
+the provocation, and the feelings which had goaded him on were taken
+with a revulsion quite as sudden. As he knew not well what he had said,
+so he fancied he had said everything precisely as the passionate thought
+had suggested it in his own mind. Already he began to blame himself--to
+feel that he had done wrong--that there had been nothing in the conduct
+or manner of Stevens, however unpleasant, to justify his own violence;
+and that the true secret of his anger was to be found in that
+instinctive hostility which he had felt for his rival from the first.
+The more he mused, the more he became humbled by his thoughts; and when
+he recollected the avowed profession of Stevens his shame increased. He
+felt how shocking it was to intimate to a sworn non-combatant the idea
+of a personal conflict. To what point of self-abasement his thoughts
+would have carried him, may only be conjectured; he might have hurried
+forward to overtake his antagonist with the distinct purpose of making
+the most ample apology; nay, more, such was the distinct thought which
+was now pressing upon his mind, when he was saved from this humiliation
+by perceiving that Stevens had already reached, and was about to enter
+the dwelling of Margaret Cooper. With this sight, every thought and
+feeling gave place to that of baffled love, and disappointed affection.
+With a bitter groan he turned up the gorge, and soon shut himself from
+sight of the now hateful habitation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The course of the young rustic was pursued for half a mile further till
+he came to a little cottage of which the eye could take no cognizance
+from any part of the village. It was embowelled in a glen of its own--a
+mere cup of the slightly-rising hills, and so encircled by foliage that
+it needed a very near approach of the stranger before he became aware of
+its existence. The structure was very small, a sort of square box with
+a cap upon it, and consisted of two rooms only on a ground floor, with a
+little lean-to or shed-room in the rear, intended for a kitchen. As
+you drew nigh and passed through the thick fringe of wood by which
+its approach was guarded, the space opened before you, and you found
+yourself in a sort of amphitheatre, of which the cottage was the centre.
+A few trees dotted this area, large and massive trees, and seemingly
+preserved for purposes of shade only. It was the quietest spot in the
+world, and inspired just that sort of feeling in the contemplative
+stranger which would be awakened by a ramble among the roofless ruins of
+the ancient abbey. It was a home for contemplation--in which one might
+easily forget the busy world without, and deliver himself up, without an
+effort, to the sweetly sad musings of the anchorite.
+
+The place was occupied, however. A human heart beat within the humble
+shed, and there was a spirit, sheltered by its quiet, that mused many
+high thoughts, and dreamed in equal congratulation and self-reproach, of
+that busy world from which it was an exile. The visit of William Hinkley
+was not paid to the solitude. A venerable man, of large frame, and
+benignant aspect, sat beneath an aged tree, paternal in its appearance
+like himself. This person might be between fifty and sixty years of age.
+His hair, though very thick and vigorous, was as white as driven snow.
+But there were few wrinkles on his face, and his complexion was the
+clear red and white of a healthy and sanguine temperament. His brow was
+large and lofty. It had many more wrinkles than his face. There were two
+large horizontal seams upon it that denoted the exercise of a very
+busy thought. But the expression of his eye was that of the most
+unembarrassed benevolence and peace. It was subdued and sometimes sad,
+but then it had the sweetest, playfullest twinkle in the world.
+His mouth, which was small and beautifully formed, wore a similar
+expression. In short he was what we would call a handsome old gentleman,
+whose appearance did not offend taste, and whose kind looks invited
+confidence. Nor would we mistake his character.
+
+This person was the Mr. Calvert, the schoolmaster of the village, of
+whom Mrs. Hinkley spoke to Alfred Stevens in discussing the condition of
+her son. His tasks were over for the day. The light-hearted rabble whom
+he taught, released from his dominion which was not severe, were, by
+this time, scampering over the hills, as far from their usual place
+of restraint as the moderate strength of their legs could carry them.
+Though let loose, boys are not apt to feel their liberty in its prime
+and freshness, immediately in the neighborhood of the schoolhouse.
+The old gentleman left to himself, sat out in the open air, beneath
+a massive oak, the paternal stretching of whose venerable arms not
+unfrequently led to the employment of the shade below for carrying on
+the operations of the schoolhouse. There, squat on their haunches, the
+sturdy boys--germs of the finest peasantry in the world--surrounded
+their teacher in a group quite as pleasing as picturesque. The sway of
+the old man was paternal. His rod was rather a figurative than a real
+existence; and when driven to the use of the birch, the good man,
+consulting more tastes than one, employed the switch from the peach or
+some other odorous tree or shrub, in order to reconcile the lad, as
+well as he could, to the extraordinary application. He was one of those
+considerate persons, who disguise pills in gold-leaf, and if compelled,
+as a judge, to hang a gentleman, would decree that a rope of silk should
+carry out the painful requisitions of the laws.
+
+Seated beneath his tree, in nearly the same spot and position in which
+he had dismissed his pupils, William Calvert pored over the pages of
+a volume as huge of size as it was musty of appearance. It was that
+pleasant book--quite as much romance as history--the “Knights of
+Malta,” by our venerable father, Monsieur L'Abbe Vertot. Its dull, dim,
+yellow-looking pages--how yellow, dim, and dull-looking in comparison
+with more youthful works--had yet a life and soul which it is not easy
+to find in many of these latter. Its high wrought and elaborate pictures
+of strife, and toil, and bloodshed, grew vividly before the old man's
+eyes; and then, to help the illusion, were there not the portraits--mark
+me--the veritable portraits, engraved on copper, with all their titles,
+badges, and insignia, done to the life, of all those brave, grand, and
+famous masters of the order, by whom the deeds were enacted which
+he read, and who stared out upon his eyes, at every epoch, in full
+confirmation of the veracious narrative? No wonder that the old man
+became heedless of external objects. No wonder he forgot the noise of
+the retiring urchins, and the toils of the day, as, for the twentieth
+time, he glowed in the brave recital of the famous siege--the baffled
+fury of the Turk--the unshaken constancy and unremitted valor of the few
+but fearless defenders. The blood in his cheek might be seen hastening
+to and fro in accordance with the events of which he read. His eye
+was glowing--his pulse beating, and he half started from his seat, as,
+hearing a slight footstep, he turned to encounter the respectful homage
+of his former pupil, still his friend, our young acquaintance, William
+Hinkley.
+
+The old man laid down his book upon the grass, extended his hand to his
+visiter, and leaning back against the tree, surrendered himself to a
+quiet chuckle in which there was the hesitancy of a little shame.
+
+“You surprised me, William,” he said; “when I read old Vertot, and
+such books, I feel myself a boy again. You must have seen my emotion.
+I really had got so warm, that I was about to start up and look for
+the weapons of war; and had you but come a moment later, you might
+have suffered an assault. As it was, I took you for a Turk--Solyman
+himself--and was beginning to ask myself whether I should attack you
+tooth and nail, having no other weapons, or propose terms of
+peace. Considering the severe losses which you--I mean his Turkish
+highness--had sustained, I fancied that you would not be disinclined to
+an arrangement just at this moment. But this very notion, at the same
+time, led me to the conclusion that I might end the struggle for ever by
+another blow. A moment later, my boy, and you might have been compelled
+to endure it for the Turk.”
+
+The youth smiled sadly as he replied: “I must borrow that book from
+you, sir, some of these days. I have often thought to do so, but I am
+afraid.”
+
+“Afraid of what, William?”
+
+“That it will turn my head, sir, and make me dislike more difficult
+studies.”
+
+“It is a reasonable fear, my son; but there is no danger of this sort,
+if we will only take heed of one rule, and that is, to take such books
+as we take sweetmeats--in very small quantities at a time, and never to
+interfere with the main repast. I suspect that light reading--or reading
+which we usually call light, but which, as it concerns the fate of man
+in his most serious relations, his hopes, his affections, his heart,
+nay, his very people and nation--is scarcely less important than any
+other. I suspect that this sort of reading would be of great service
+to the student, by relieving the solemnity of more tedious and exacting
+studies, if taken sparingly and at allotted hours. The student usually
+finds a recreation of some kind. I would make books of this description
+his recreation. Many a thick-headed and sour parent has forced his son
+into a beer-shop, into the tastes for tobacco and consequently brandy,
+simply from denying him amusements which equally warm the blood and
+elevate the imagination. Studies which merely inform the head are very
+apt to endanger the heart. This is the reproach usually urged against
+the class of persons whom we call thorough lawyers. Their intense
+devotion to that narrow sphere of law which leaves out jury-pleading, is
+very apt to endanger the existence of feeling and imagination. The mere
+analysis of external principles begets a degree of moral indifference to
+all things else, which really impairs the intellect by depriving it
+of its highest sources of stimulus. Mathematicians suffer in the same
+way--become mere machines, and forfeit, in their concern for figures,
+all the social and most of the human characteristics. The mind is always
+enfeebled by any pursuit so single and absorbing in its aims as to leave
+out of exercise any of the moral faculties. That course of study is the
+only one to make a truly great man, which compels the mind to do all
+things of which it is capable.”
+
+“But how do you reconcile this, sir, with the opinion, so generally
+entertained, that no one man can serve two masters? Law, like the muse,
+is a jealous mistress. She is said to suffer no lachesse to escape with
+impunity.”
+
+“You mistake me. While I counsel one to go out of his profession for
+relief and recreation, I still counsel but the one pursuit. Men fail in
+their professions, not because they daily assign an hour to amusement,
+but because they halt in a perpetual struggle between some two leading
+objects. For example, nothing is more frequent in our country than to
+combine law and politics. Nothing is more apt to ruin the lawyer.”
+
+“Very true, sir. I now understand you. But I should think the great
+difficulty would be, in resorting to such pleasant books as this of
+Vertot for relief and recreation, that you could not cast him off when
+you please. The intoxication would continue even after the draught has
+been swallowed, and would thus interfere with the hours devoted to other
+employments.”
+
+“There is reason in that, William, and that, indeed, is the grand
+difficulty. But to show that a good scheme has its difficulties is not
+an argument for abandoning it.”
+
+“By no means, sir.”
+
+“The same individual whom Vertot might intoxicate, would most probably
+be intoxicated by more dangerous stimulants. Everything, however,
+depends upon the habits of self-control which a man has acquired in his
+boyhood. The habit of self-control is the only habit which makes mental
+power truly effective. The man who can not compel himself to do or to
+forbear, can never be much of a student. Students, if you observe, are
+generally dogged men--inflexible, plodding, persevering--among lawyers,
+those men whom you always find at their offices, and seldom see anywhere
+else. They own that mental habit which we call self-control, which
+supplies the deficiency in numerous instances of real talent. It is a
+power, and a mighty power, particularly in this country, where children
+are seldom taught it, and consequently grow up to be a sort of moral
+vanes that move with every change of wind, and never fix until they do
+so with their own rust. He who learns this power in boyhood will be very
+sure to master all his companions.”
+
+The darker expression of sadness passed over the countenance of the
+ingenuous youth.
+
+“I am afraid,” said he, “that I shall never acquire this habit.”
+
+“Why so? In your very fear I see a hope.”
+
+“Alas! sir, I feel my own instability of character. I feel myself the
+victim of a thousand plans and purposes, which change as soon and as
+often as they are made. I am afraid, sir, I shall be nothing!”
+
+“Do not despond, my son,” said the old man sympathizingly. “Your fear is
+natural to your age and temperament. Most young men at your time of life
+feel numerous yearnings--the struggle of various qualities of mind,
+each striving in newly-born activity, and striving adversely. Your
+unhappiness arises from the refusal of these qualities to act together.
+When they learn to co-operate, all will be easy. Your strifes will be
+subdued; there will be a calm like that upon the sea when the storms
+subside.”
+
+“Ah! but when will that be? A long time yet. It seems to me that the
+storm rather increases than subsides.”
+
+“It may seem so to you now, and yet, when the strife is greatest, the
+favorable change is at hand. It needs but one thing to make all the
+conflicting qualities of one's mind cooperate.”
+
+“What is that one thing, sir?”
+
+“An object! As yet, you have none.”
+
+“None, sir!”
+
+“None--or rather many--which is pretty much the same thing as having
+none.”
+
+“I am not sure, sir--but it seems to me, sir, that I have an object.”
+
+“Indeed, William! are you sure?”
+
+“I think so, sir.”
+
+“Well, name it.”
+
+“I have ambition, sir.”
+
+“Ah! that is a passion, not an object. Does your ambition point in one
+direction? Unless it does, it is objectless.”
+
+The youth was silent. The old man proceeded:--
+
+“I am disposed to be severe with you, my son. There is no surer sign of
+feebleness than in the constant beginnings and the never performings
+of a mind. Know thyself, is the first lesson to learn. Is it not very
+childish to talk of having ambition, without knowing what to do with it?
+If we have ambition, it is given to us to work with. You come to me,
+and declare this ambition! We confer together. Your ambition seeks for
+utterance. You ask, 'What sort of utterance will suit an ambition such
+as mine?' To answer this question, we ask, 'What are your qualities?'
+Did you think, William, that I disparaged yours when I recommended the
+law to you as a profession?”
+
+“No, sir! oh, no! Perhaps you overrated them. I am afraid so--I think
+so.”
+
+“No, William, unfortunately, you do not think about it. If you would
+suffer yourself to think, you would speak a different language.”
+
+“I can not think--I am too miserable to think!” exclaimed the youth in a
+burst of passion. The old man looked surprised. He gazed with a serious
+anxiety into the youth's face, and then addressed him:--
+
+“Where have you been, William, for the last three weeks? In all that
+time I have not seen you.”
+
+A warm blush suffused the cheeks of the pupil. He did not immediately
+answer.
+
+“Ask ME!” exclaimed a voice from behind them, which they both instantly
+recognised as that of Ned Hinkley, the cousin of William. He had
+approached them, in the earnestness of their interview, without having
+disturbed them. The bold youth was habited in a rough woodman's dress.
+He wore a round jacket of homespun, and in his hand he carried a
+couple of fishing-rods, which, with certain other implements, betrayed
+sufficiently the object of his present pursuit.
+
+“Ask me!” said he. “I can tell you what he's been about better than
+anybody else.”
+
+“Well, Ned,” said the old man, “what has it been? I am afraid it is your
+fiddle that keeps him from his Blackstone.”
+
+“My fiddle, indeed! If he would listen to my fiddle when she speaks
+out, he'd be wiser and better for it. Look at him, Mr. Calvert, and say
+whether it's book or fiddle that's likely to make him as lean as a March
+pickerel in the short space of three months. Only look at him, I say.”
+
+“Truly, William, I had not observed it before, but, as Ned says, you do
+look thin, and you tell me you are unhappy. Hard study might make you
+thin, but can not make you unhappy. What is it?”
+
+The more volatile and freespoken cousin answered for him.
+
+“He's been shot, gran'pa, since you saw him last.”
+
+“Shot?”
+
+“Yes, shot!--He THINKS mortally. I think not. A flesh wound to my
+thinking, that a few months more will cure.”
+
+“You have some joke at bottom, Edward,” said the old man gravely.
+
+“Joke, sir! It's a tough joke that cudgels a plump lad into a lean one
+in a single season.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean to use your own language, gran'pa. Among the lessons I got from
+you when you undertook to fill our heads with wisdom by applications of
+smartness to a very different place--among the books we sometimes read
+from was one of Master Ovid.”
+
+“Ha! ha! I see what you're after. I understand the shooting. So you
+think that the blind boy has hit William, eh?”
+
+“A flesh wound as I tell you; but he thinks the bolt is in his heart.
+I'm sure it can and will be plucked out, and no death will follow.”
+
+“Well! who's the maiden from whose eyes the arrow was barbed?”
+
+“Margaret Cooper.”
+
+“Ah! indeed!” said the old man gravely.
+
+“Do not heed him,” exclaimed William Hinkley; but the blush upon his
+cheeks, still increasing, spoke a different language.
+
+“I would rather not heed him, William. The passions of persons so young
+as yourself are seldom of a permanent character. The attractions which
+win the boy seldom compensate the man. There is time enough for this,
+ten years hence, and love then will be far more rational.”
+
+“Ah, lud!--wait ten years at twenty. I can believe a great deal in the
+doctrine of young men's folly, but I can't go that. I'm in love myself.”
+
+“You!”
+
+“Yes! I!--I'm hit too--and if you don't like it, why did you teach us
+Ovid and the rest? As for rational love, that's a new sort of thing that
+we never heard about before. Love was never expected to be rational.
+He's known the contrary. I've heard so ever since I was knee-high to
+the great picture of your Cupid that you showed us in your famous Dutch
+edition of Apuleius. The young unmarried men feel that it's irrational;
+the old married people tell us so in a grunt that proves the truth of
+what they say. But that don't alter the case. It's a sort of natural
+madness that makes one attack in every person's lifetime. I don't
+believe in repeated attacks. Some are bit worse than others; and some
+think themselves bit, and are mistaken. That's the case with William,
+and it's that that keeps him from your law-books and my fiddle. That
+makes him thin. He has a notion of Margaret Cooper, and she has none
+of him; and love that's all of one side is neither real nor rational. I
+don't believe it.”
+
+William Hinkley muttered something angrily in the ears of the speaker.
+
+“Well, well!” said the impetuous cousin, “I don't want to make you
+vexed, and still less do I come here to talk such politics with you.
+What do you say to tickling a trout this afternoon? That's what I come
+for.”
+
+“It's too cool,” said the old man.
+
+“Not a bit. There's a wind from the south, and a cast of cloud
+is constantly growing between us and the sun. I think we shall do
+something--something better than talking about love, and law, where
+nobody's agreed. You, gran'pa, won't take the love; Bill Hinkley can't
+stomach the law, and the trout alone can bring about a reconciliation.
+Come, gran'pa, I'm resolved on getting your supper to-night, and you
+must go and see me do it.”
+
+“On one condition only, Ned.”
+
+“What's that, gran'pa?”
+
+“That you both sup with me.”
+
+“Done for myself. What say you, Bill?”
+
+The youth gave a sad assent, and the rattling youth proceeded:--
+
+“The best cure of grief is eating. Love is a sort of pleasant grief.
+Many a case of affliction have I seen mended by a beefsteak. Fish is
+better. Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appetites, and, to the
+same extent, you lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the
+sensibilities; and, gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have the
+fiddle. If I don't make her speak to you to-night, my name's Brag, and
+you need never again believe me.”
+
+And the good-humored youth, gathering up his canes, led the way to the
+hills, slowly followed by his two less elastic companions.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The route, which conducted them--over a range of gently-ascending hills,
+through groves tolerably thick, an uncleared woodland tract comprising
+every variety of pleasant foliage, at length brought them to a lonely
+tarn or lake, about a mile in circumference, nestled and crouching in
+the hollow of the hills, which, in some places sloped gently down to
+its margin, at others hung abruptly over its deep and pensive waters.
+A thick fringe of shrubs, water-grasses, and wild flowers, girdled its
+edges, and gave a dark and mysterious expression to its face. There were
+many beaten tracks, narrow paths for individual wayfarers on foot, which
+conducted down to favorite fishing-spots. These were found chiefly on
+those sides of the lake where the rocks were precipitous. Perched on a
+jutting eminence, and half shrouded in the bushes which clothed it,
+the silent fisherman took his place, while his fly was made to kiss the
+water in capricious evolutions, such as the experienced angler knows how
+to employ to beguile the wary victim from close cove, or gloomy hollow,
+or from beneath those decaying trunks of overthrown trees which have
+given his brood a shelter from immemorial time.
+
+To one of these selected spots, Ned Hinkley proceeded, leaving his
+companions above, where, in shade themselves, and lying at ease upon the
+smooth turf, they could watch his successes, and at the same time enjoy
+the coup d'oeil, which was singularly beautiful, afforded by the whole
+surrounding expanse. The tarn, like the dark mysterious dwelling of an
+Undine, was spread out before them with the smoothness of glass, though
+untransparent, and shining beneath their eyes like a vast basin of
+the richest jet. A thousand pretty changes along the upland slopes, or
+abrupt hills which hemmed it in, gave it a singular aspect of variety
+which is seldom afforded by any scene very remarkable for its stillness
+and seclusion. Opposite to the rock on which Ned Hinkley was already
+crouching, the hill-slope to the lake was singularly unbroken, and so
+gradual was the ascent from the margin, that one was scarcely conscious
+of his upward movement, until looking behind him, he saw how far below
+lay the waters which he had lately left.
+
+The pathway, which had been often trodden, was very distinctly marked
+to the eyes of our two friends on the opposite elevation, and they could
+also perceive where the same footpath extended on either hand a few
+yards from the lake, so as to enable the wanderer to prolong his
+rambles, on either side, until reaching the foot of the abrupt masses
+of rock which distinguished the opposite margin of the basin. To ascend
+these, on that side, was a work of toil, which none but the lover of the
+picturesque is often found willing to encounter. Above, even to the
+eyes of our friends, though they occupied an eminence, the skies seemed
+circumscribed to the circumference of the lake and the hills by which it
+was surrounded; and the appearance of the whole region, therefore, was
+that of a complete amphitheatre, the lake being the floor, the hills
+the mighty pillars, and the roof, the blue, bright, fretted canopy of
+heaven.
+
+“I have missed you, my son, for some time past, and the beauty of the
+picture reminds me of what your seeming neglect has made me lose. When
+I was a young man I would have preferred to visit such a spot as this
+alone. But the sense of desolation presses heavily upon an old man under
+any circumstances; and he seeks for the company of the young, as if to
+freshen, with sympathy and memory, the cheerlessness and decay which
+attends all his own thoughts and fancies. To come alone into the woods,
+even though the scene I look on be as fair as this, makes me moody and
+awakens gloomy imaginations; and since you have been so long absent, I
+have taken to my books again, and given up the woods. Ah! books, alone,
+never desert us; never prove unfaithful; never chide us; never mock us,
+as even these woods do, with the memory of baffled hopes, and dreams of
+youth, gone, never to return again.
+
+“I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not
+wilfully neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but my
+heart was so full--I was so very unhappy--that I had not the spirit for
+it. I felt that I should not be any company for you, and feared that I
+would only affect you with some of my own dullness.”
+
+“Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should know
+that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies of age,
+provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune of age
+that its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the pulse, if not
+violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man. But these sorrows
+of yours, my son--do you not call them by too strong a name? I suspect
+they are nothing more than the discontents, the vague yearnings of
+the young and ardent nature, such as prompt enterprise and lead to
+nobleness. If you had them not, you would think of little else than how
+to squat with your cousin there, seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not
+so much--you would think only of the modes of cooking and the delight of
+eating the fish, and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive
+yourself. This sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial
+sorrow. It is the hope which is in you to be something--to DO
+something--for this DOING is after all, and before all, the great object
+of living. The hope of the heart is always a discontent--most generally
+a wholesome discontent--sometimes a noble discontent leading to
+nobleness. It is to be satisfied rather than nursed. You must do what it
+requires.”
+
+“I know not what it requires.”
+
+“Your DOING then must be confined at present to finding out what that
+is.”
+
+“Alas! sir, it seems to me as if I could no more THINK than I can DO”
+
+“Very likely;--that is the case at present; and there are several
+reasons for this feebleness. The energies which have not yet been
+tasked, do not know well how to begin. You have been a favored boy. Your
+wants have been well provided for. Your parents have loved you only too
+much.”
+
+“Too much! Why, even now, I am met with cold looks and reproachful
+words, on account of this stranger, of whom nobody knows anything.”
+
+“Even so: suppose that to be the case, my son; still it does not alter
+the truth of what I say. You can not imagine that your parents prefer
+this stranger to yourself, unless you imagine them to have undergone
+a very sudden change of character. They have always treated you
+tenderly--too tenderly.”
+
+“Too tenderly, sir?”
+
+“Yes, William, too tenderly. Their tenderness has enfeebled you, and
+that is the reason you know not in what way to begin to dissipate your
+doubts, and apply your energies. If they reproach you, that is because
+they have some interest in you, and a right in you, which constitutes
+their interest. If they treat the stranger civilly, it is because he is
+a stranger.”
+
+“Ay, sir, but what if they give this stranger authority to question and
+to counsel me? Is not this a cruel indignity?”
+
+“Softly, William, softly! There is something at the bottom of this which
+I do not see, and which perhaps you do not see. If your parents employ a
+stranger to counsel you, it proves that something in your conduct leads
+them to think that you need counsel.”
+
+“That may be, sir; but why not give it themselves? why employ a person
+of whom nobody knows anything?”
+
+“I infer from your tone, my son, rather than your words, that you have
+some dislike to this stranger.
+
+“No, sir--” was the beginning of the young man's reply, but he stopped
+short with a guilty consciousness. A warm blush overspread his cheek,
+and he remained silent. The old man, without seeming to perceive the
+momentary interruption, or the confusion which followed it, proceeded in
+his commentary.
+
+“There should be nothing, surely, to anger you in good counsel, spoken
+even by a stranger, my son; and even where the counsel be not good, if
+the motive be so, it requires our gratitude though it may not receive
+our adoption.”
+
+“I don't know, sir, but it seems to me very strange, and is very
+humiliating, that I should be required to submit to the instructions of
+one of whom we know nothing, and who is scarcely older than myself.”
+
+“It may be mortifying to your self-esteem, my son, but self-esteem,
+when too active, is compelled constantly to suffer this sort of
+mortification. It may be that one man shall not be older in actual years
+than another, yet be able to teach that other. Merely living, days and
+weeks and months, constitutes no right to wisdom: it is the crowding
+events and experience--the indefatigable industry--the living actively
+and well--that supply us with the materials for knowing and teaching. In
+comparison with millions of your own age, who have lived among men, and
+shared in their strifes and troubles, you would find yourself as feeble
+a child as ever yet needed the helping hand of counsel and guardianship;
+and this brings me back to what I said before. Your parents have treated
+you too tenderly. They have done everything for you. You have done
+nothing for yourself. They provide for your wants, hearken to your
+complaints, nurture you in sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so
+render you incapable. Hence it is, that, in the toils of manhood, you do
+not know how to begin. You lack courage and perseverance.”
+
+“Courage and perseverance!” was the surprised exclamation of the youth.
+
+“Precisely, and lest I should offend you, my son, I must acknowledge to
+you beforehand, that this very deficiency was my own.”
+
+“Yours, sir? I can not think it. What! lack courage?”
+
+“Exactly so!”
+
+“Why, sir--did I not see you myself, when everybody else looked on
+with trembling and with terror, throw yourself in the way of Drummond's
+horses and save the poor boy from being dashed to pieces? There was
+surely no lack of courage there!”
+
+“No! in that sense, my son, I labor under no deficiency. But this sort
+of courage is of the meanest kind. It is the courage of impulse, not
+of steadfastness. Hear me, William. You have more than once allowed the
+expression of a wonder to escape you, why a man, having such a passion
+for books and study, and with the appearance of mental resources, such
+as I am supposed to possess, should be content, retiring from the great
+city, to set up his habitation in this remote and obscure region. My
+chosen profession was the law; I was no unfaithful student. True, I had
+no parents to lament my wanderings and failures; but I did not wander. I
+studied closely, with a degree of diligence which seemed to surprise all
+my companions. I was ambitious--intensely ambitious. My head ran upon
+the strifes of the forum, its exciting contests of mind and soul--its
+troubles, its triumphs. This was my leading thought--it was my only
+passion. The boy-frenzies for women, which are prompted less by
+sentiment or judgment, than by feverish blood, troubled me little.
+Law was my mistress--took up all my time--absorbed all my devotion. I
+believe that I was a good lawyer--no pettifogger--the merely drilled
+creature who toils for his license, and toils for ever after solely for
+his petty gains, in the miserably petty arts of making gains for others,
+and eluding the snares set for his own feet by kindred spirits. As
+far as the teaching of this country could afford me the means and
+opportunity, I endeavored to procure a knowledge of universal law--its
+sources--its true objects--its just principles--its legitimate dicta.
+Mere authorities never satisfied me, unless, passing behind the black
+gowns, I could follow up the reasoning to the first fountains--the small
+original truths, the nicely discriminated requisitions of immutable
+justice--the clearly-defined and inevitable wants of a superior and
+prosperous society. Everything that could illustrate law as well as
+fortify it; every collateral aid, in the shape of history or moral
+truth, I gathered together, even as the dragoon whose chief agent is his
+sabre, yet takes care to provide himself with pistols, that may finish
+what the other weapon has begun. Nor did I content myself with the mere
+acquisition of the necessary knowledge. Knowing how much depends
+upon voice, manner and fluency, in obtaining success before a jury, I
+addressed myself to these particulars with equal industry. My voice,
+even now, has a compass which your unexercised lungs, though quite as
+good originally as mine, would fail entirely to contend with. I do not
+deceive myself, as I certainly do not seek to deceive you, when I say,
+that I acquired the happiest mastery over my person.”
+
+“Ah! sir--we see that now--that must have been the case!” said the youth
+interrupting him. The other continued, sadly smiling as he heard the
+eulogy which the youth meant to speak, the utterance of which was
+obviously from the heart.
+
+“My voice was taught by various exercises to be slow or rapid, soft
+or strong, harsh or musical, by the most sudden, yet unnoticeable
+transitions. I practised all the arts, which are recommended by
+elocutionists for this purpose, I rumbled my eloquence standing on
+the seashore, up to my middle in the breakers. I ran, roaring up steep
+hills--I stretched myself at length by the side of meandering brooks,
+or in slumberous forests of pine, and sought, by the merest whispers, to
+express myself with distinctness and melody. But there was something yet
+more requisite than these, and this was language. My labors to obtain
+all the arts of utterance did not seem less successful. I could dilate
+with singular fluency, with classical propriety, and great natural
+vigor of expression. I studied directness of expression by a frequent
+intercourse with men of business, and examined, with the nicest urgency,
+the particular characteristics of those of my own profession who were
+most remarkable for their plain, forcible speaking. I say nothing of my
+studies of such great masters in discourse and philosophy, as Milton,
+Shakspere, Homer, Lord Bacon, and the great English divines. As a model
+of pure English the Bible was a daily study of two hours; and from this
+noble well of vernacular eloquence, I gathered--so I fancied--no small
+portion of its quaint expressive vigor, its stern emphasis, its golden
+and choice phrases of illustration. Never did a young lawyer go into the
+forum more thoroughly clad in proof, or with a better armory as well for
+defence as attack.”
+
+“You did not fail, sir?” exclaimed the youth with a painful expression
+of eager anxiety upon his countenance.
+
+“I did fail--fail altogether! In the first effort to speak, I fainted,
+and was carried lifeless from the court-room.”
+
+The old man covered his face with his hands, for a few moments, to
+conceal the expression of pain and mortification which memory continued
+to renew in utter despite of time. The young man's hand rested
+affectionately on his shoulder. A few moments sufficed to enable the
+former to renew his narrative.
+
+“I was stunned but not crushed by this event. I knew my own resources.
+I recollected a similar anecdote of Sheridan; of his first attempt and
+wretched failure. I, too, felt that 'I had it in me,' and though I did
+not express, I made the same resolution, that 'I would bring it out.'
+But Sheridan and myself failed from different causes, though I did not
+understand this at that time. He had a degree of hardihood which I had
+not; and he utterly lacked my sensibilities. The very intenseness of my
+ambition; the extent of my expectation; the elevated estimate which I
+had made of my own profession; of its exactions; and, again, of what was
+expected from me; were all so many obstacles to my success. I did not
+so esteem them, then; and after renewing my studies in private, my
+exercises of expression and manner, and going through a harder course of
+drilling, I repeated the attempt to suffer a repetition of the failure.
+I did not again faint, but I was speechless. I not only lost the power
+of utterance, but I lost the corresponding faculty of sight. My eyes
+were completely dazed and confounded. The objects of sight around me
+were as crowded and confused as the far, dim ranges of figures, tribes
+upon tribes, and legions upon legions, which struggle in obscurity and
+distance, in any one of the begrimed and blurred pictures of Martin's
+Pandemonium. My second failure was a more enfeebling disaster than
+the first. The first procured me the sympathy of my audience, the last
+exposed me to its ridicule.”
+
+Again the old man paused. By this time, the youth had got one of his
+arms about the neck of the speaker, and had taken one of his hands
+within his grasp.
+
+“Yours is a generous nature, William,” said Mr. Calvert, “and I have not
+said to you, until to-day, how grateful your boyish sympathies have been
+to me from the first day when you became my pupil. It is my knowledge of
+these sympathies, and a desire to reward them, that prompts me to tell
+a story which still brings its pains to memory, and which would be
+given to no other ears than your own. I see that you are eager for the
+rest--for the wretched sequel.”
+
+“Oh, no! sir--do not tell me any more of it if it brings you pain. I
+confess I should like to know all, but--”
+
+“You shall have it all, my son. My purpose would not be answered unless
+I finished the narrative. You will gather from it, very possibly, the
+moral which I could not. You will comprehend something better, the
+woful distinction between courage of the blood and courage of the brain;
+between the mere recklessness of brute impulse, and the steady valor of
+the soul--that valor, which, though it trembles, marches forward to the
+attack--recovers from its fainting, to retrieve its defeat; and glows
+with self-indignation because it has suffered the moment of victory to
+pass, without employing itself to secure the boon!--
+
+“Shame, and a natural desire to retrieve myself, operated to make
+me renew my efforts. I need not go through the processes by which I
+endeavored to acquire the necessary degree of hardihood. In vain did
+I recall the fact that my competitors were notoriously persons far
+inferior to me in knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the capacity
+to analyze them; rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar with the
+language--mere delvers and diggers in a science in which I secretly felt
+that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to mind the fact that
+I knew the community before which I was likely to speak; I knew its
+deficiencies; knew the inferiority of its idols, and could and should
+have no sort of fear of its criticism. But it was myself that I feared.
+I had mistaken the true censor. It was my own standards of judgment that
+distressed and made me tremble. It was what I expected of myself--what
+I thought should be expected of me--that made my weak soul recoil in
+terror from the conviction that I must fail in its endeavor to reach the
+point which my ambitious soul strove to attain. The fear, in such cases,
+produced the very disaster, from the anticipated dread of which it had
+arisen. I again failed--failed egregiously--failed utterly and for
+ever! I never again attempted the fearful trial. I gave up the contest,
+yielded the field to my inferiors, better-nerved, though inferior,
+and, with all my learning, all my eloquence, my voice, my manner;
+my resources of study, thought, and utterance, fled from sight--fled
+here--to bury myself in the wilderness, and descend to the less
+ambitious, but less dangerous vocation of schooling--I trust, to better
+uses--the minds of others. I had done nothing with my own.”
+
+“Oh, sir, do not say so. Though you may have failed in one department of
+human performance, you have succeeded in others. You have lost none
+of the knowledge which you then acquired. You possess all the gifts of
+eloquence, of manner, of voice, of education, of thought.”
+
+“But of what use, my son? Remember, we do not toil for these possessions
+to lock them up--to content ourselves, as the miserable miser, with
+the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to ourselves
+only--useless to all others as to ourselves! Learning, like love, like
+money, derives its true value from its circulation.”
+
+“And you circulate yours, my dear sir. What do we not owe you in
+Charlemont? What do I not owe you, over all?”
+
+“Love, my son--love only. Pay me that. Do not desert me in my old age.
+Do not leave me utterly alone!”
+
+“I will not, sir--I never thought to do so.”
+
+“But,” said the old man, “to resume. Why did I fail is still the
+question. Because I had not been taught those lessons of steady
+endurance in my youth which would have strengthened me against failure,
+and enable me finally to triumph. There is a rich significance in what
+we hear of the Spartan boy, who never betrayed his uneasiness or agony
+though the fox was tearing out his bowels. There is a sort of moral
+roughening which boys should be made to endure from the beginning, if
+the hope is ever entertained, to mature their minds to intellectual
+manhood. Our American Indians prescribe the same laws, and in their
+practice, very much resemble the ancient Spartans. To bear fatigue, and
+starvation, and injury--exposure, wet, privation, blows--but never to
+complain. Nothing betrays so decidedly the lack of moral courage as the
+voice of complaint. It is properly the language of woman. It must not be
+your language. Do you understand me, William?”
+
+“In part, sir, but I do not see how I could have helped being what I
+am.”
+
+“Perhaps not, because few have control of their own education. Your
+parents have been too tender of you. They have not lessoned you in
+that proper hardihood which leads to performance. That task is before
+yourself, and you have shrunk from the first lessons.”
+
+“How, sir?”
+
+“Instead of clinging to your Blackstone, you have allowed yourself to be
+seduced from its pages, by such attractions as usually delude boys.
+The eye and lip of a pretty woman--a bright eye and a rosy cheek, have
+diverted you from your duties.”
+
+“But do our duties deny us the indulgence of proper sensibilities?”
+
+“Certainly not--PROPER sensibilities, on the contrary, prescribe our
+duties.”
+
+“But love, sir--is not love a proper sensibility?”
+
+“In its place, it is. But you are a boy only. Do you suppose that it
+was ever intended that you should entertain this passion before you had
+learned the art of providing your own food? Not so; and the proof of
+this is to be found in the fact that the loves of boyhood are never of
+a permanent character. No such passion can promote happiness if it is
+indulged before the character of the parties is formed. I now tell you
+that in five years from this time you will probably forget Miss Cooper.”
+
+“Never! never!”
+
+“Well, well--I go farther in my prophecy. Allow me to suppose you
+successful in your suit, which I fancy can never be the case--”
+
+“Why, sir, why?”
+
+“Because she is not the girl for you; or rather, she does not think you
+the man for her!”
+
+“But why do you think so, sir?”
+
+“Because I know you both. There are circumstances of discrepancy between
+you which will prevent it, and even were you to be successful in your
+suit, which I am very sure will never be the case, you would be the most
+miserably-matched couple under the sun.”
+
+“Oh, sir, do not say so--do not. I can not think so, sir.”
+
+“You WILL not think so, I am certain. I am equally certain from what I
+know of you both, that you are secure from any such danger. It is not my
+object to pursue this reference, but let me ask you, William, looking at
+things in the most favorable light, has Margaret Cooper ever given you
+any encouragement?”
+
+“I can not say that she has, sir, but--”
+
+“Nay, has she not positively discouraged you? Does she not avoid
+you--treat you coldly when you meet--say little, and that little of a
+kind to denote--I will not say dislike--but pride, rather than love?”
+
+The young man said nothing. The old one proceeded:--
+
+“You are silent, and I am answered. I have long watched your intercourse
+with this damsel, and loving you as my own son, I have watched it with
+pain. She is not for you, William. She loves you not. I am sure of it.
+I can not mistake the signs. She seeks other qualities than such as you
+possess. She seeks meretricious qualities, and yours are substantial.
+She seeks the pomps of mind, rather than its subdued performances. She
+sees not, and can not see, your worth; and whenever you propose to her,
+your suit will be rejected. You have not done so yet?”
+
+“No, sir--but I had hoped--”
+
+“I am no enemy, believe me, William, when I implore you to discard your
+hope in that quarter. It will do you no hurt. Your heart will suffer
+no detriment, but be as whole and vigorous a few years hence--perhaps
+months--as if it had never suffered any disappointment.”
+
+“I wish I could think so, sir.”
+
+“And you would not wish that you could think so, if you were not already
+persuaded that your first wish is hopeless.”
+
+“But I am not hopeless, sir.”
+
+“Your cause is. But, promise me that you will not press your suit at
+present.”
+
+The young man was silent.
+
+“You hesitate.”
+
+“I dare not promise.”
+
+“Ah, you are a foolish boy. Do you not see the rock on which you are
+about to split. You have never learned how to submit. This lesson of
+submission was that which made the Spartan boy famous. Here, you persist
+in your purpose, though your own secret convictions, as well as your
+friend's counsel, tell you that you strive against hope. You could
+not patiently submit to the counsel of this stranger, though he came
+directly from your parents, armed with authority to examine and to
+counsel.”
+
+“Submit to him! I would sooner perish!” exclaimed the indignant youth.
+
+“You will perish unless you learn this one lesson. But where now is your
+ambition, and what does it aim at?”
+
+The youth was silent.
+
+“The idea of an ambitious youth, at twenty, giving up book and candle,
+leaving his studies, and abandoning himself to despair, because his
+sweetheart won't be his sweetheart any longer, gives us a very queer
+idea of the sort of ambition which works in his breast.”
+
+“Don't, sir, don't, I pray you, speak any more in this manner.”
+
+“Nay, but, William, ask yourself. Is it not a queer idea?”
+
+“Spare me, sir, if you love me.”
+
+“I do love you, and to show you that I do, I now recommend to you to
+propose to Margaret Cooper.”
+
+“What, sir, you do not think it utterly hopeless then?”
+
+“Yes, I do.”
+
+“And you would have me expose myself to rejection?”
+
+“Exactly so!”
+
+“Really, sir, I do not understand you.”
+
+“Well, I will explain. Nothing short of rejection will possibly cure you
+of this malady; and it is of the last importance to your future career,
+that you should be freed as soon as possible from this sickly condition
+of thought and feeling--a condition in which your mind will do nothing,
+and in which your best days will be wasted. Blackstone can only hope to
+be taken up when you have done with her.”
+
+“Stay, sir--that is she below.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Margaret----”
+
+“Who is with her?”
+
+“The stranger--this man, Stevens.”
+
+“Ha! your counsellor, that would be? Ah! William, you did not tell me
+all.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE ENTHUSIAST.
+
+
+
+
+
+The cheeks of the youth glowed. He felt how much he had suppressed in
+his conference with his venerable counsellor. Mr. Calvert did not press
+the topic, and the two remained silent, looking down, from the shaded
+spot where they lay, upon the progress of Margaret Cooper and her
+present attendant, Stevens. The eminence on which they rested was
+sufficiently lofty, as we have seen, to enable them, though themselves
+almost concealed from sight, to take in the entire scene, not only below
+but around them; and the old man, sharing now in the interest of his
+young companion, surveyed the progress of the new-comers with a keen
+sense of curiosity which, for a time, kept him silent. The emotions of
+William Hinkley were such as to deprive him of all desire for speech;
+and each, accordingly, found sufficient employment in brooding over his
+own awakened fancies. Even had they spoken in the ordinary tone of their
+voices, the sounds could not have reached the persons approaching on the
+opposite side. They drew nigh, evidently unconscious that the scene was
+occupied by any other than themselves. Ned Hinkley was half-shrouded in
+the shrubbery that environed the jutting crag upon which his form
+was crouched, and they were not yet sufficiently nigh to the tarn to
+perceive his projecting rod, and the gaudy fly which he kept skipping
+about upon the surface. The walk which they pursued was an ancient
+Indian footpath, which had without doubt conducted the red warriors,
+a thousand times before, to a spot of seclusion and refreshment after
+their long day's conflict on the “DARK AND BLOODY GROUND.” It was narrow
+and very winding, and had been made so in order to lessen the fatigue of
+an ascent which, though gradual enough, was yet considerable, and
+would have produced great weariness, finally, had the pathway been more
+direct.
+
+The circuitousness of this route, which lay clear enough before the
+eyes of our two friends upon the eminence--crawling, as it did, up the
+woodland slopes with the sinuous course of a serpent--was yet visible to
+Ned Hinkley, on his lowlier perch, only at its starting-point, upon
+the very margin of the lake. He, accordingly, saw as little of the
+approaching persons as they had seen of him. They advanced slowly, and
+seemed to be mutually interested in their subject of conversation. The
+action of Stevens was animated; The air and attitude of Margaret Cooper
+was that of interest and attention. It was with something little short
+of agony that William Hinkley beheld them pause upon occasion, and
+confront each other as if the topic was of a nature to arrest the feet
+and demand the whole fixed attention of the hearer.
+
+It will be conjectured that Alfred Stevens had pressed his opportunities
+with no little industry. Enough has been shown to account for the
+readiness of that reception which Margaret Cooper was prepared to give
+him. Her intelligence was keen, quick, and penetrating. She discovered
+at a glance, not his hypocrisy, but that his religious enthusiasm was
+not of a sort to become very tyrannical. The air of mischief which was
+expressed upon his face when the venerable John Cross proposed to purge
+her library of its obnoxious contents, commended him to her as a sort of
+ally; and the sympathy with herself, which such a conjecture promised,
+made her forgetful of the disingenuousness of his conduct if her
+suspicions were true. But there were some other particulars which, in
+her mind, tended to dissipate the distance between them. She recognised
+the individual. She remembered the bold, dashing youth, who, a few
+months before, had encountered her on the edge of the village, and,
+after they had parted, had ridden back to the spot where she still
+loitered, for a second look. To that very spot had she conducted him on
+their ramble that afternoon.
+
+“Do you know this place, Mr. Stevens?” she demanded with an arch smile,
+sufficiently good-humored to convince the adventurer that, if she had
+any suspicions, they were not of a nature to endanger his hopes.
+
+“Do I not!” he said, with an air of EMPRESSMENT which caused her to look
+down.
+
+“I thought I recollected you,” she said, a moment after.
+
+“Ah! may I hope that I did not then offend you with my impertinence? But
+the truth is, I was so struck--pardon me if I say it--with the singular
+and striking difference between the group of damsels I had seen and THE
+ONE--the surprise was so great--the pleasure so unlooked for--that--”
+
+The eye of Margaret Cooper brightened, her cheek glowed, and her form
+rose somewhat proudly. The arch-hypocrite paused judiciously, and she
+spoke:--
+
+“Nay, nay, Mr. Stevens, these fine speeches do not pass current. You
+would make the same upon occasion to any one of the said group of
+damsels, were you to be her escort.”
+
+“But I would scarcely ride back for a second look,” he responded, in a
+subdued tone of voice, while looking with sad expressiveness into her
+eyes. These were cast down upon the instant, and the color upon her
+cheeks was heightened.
+
+“Come,” said she, making an effort, “there is nothing here to interest
+us.”
+
+“Except memory,” he replied; “I shall never forget the spot.”
+
+She hurried forward, and he joined her. She had received the impression
+which he intended to convey, without declaring as much--namely, that his
+return to Charlemont had been prompted by that one glimpse which he had
+then had of her person. Still, that nothing should be left in doubt, he
+proceeded to confirm the impression by other suggestions:--
+
+“You promise to show me a scene of strange beauty, but your whole
+village is beautiful, Miss Cooper. I remember how forcibly it struck me
+as I gained the ascent of the opposite hills coming in from the east.
+It was late in the day, the sun was almost setting, and his faintest
+but loveliest beams fell upon the cottages in the valley, and lay with a
+strange, quiet beauty among the grass-plats, and the flower-ranges, and
+upon the neat, white palings.”
+
+“It is beautiful,” she said with a sigh, “but its beauty does not
+content me. It is too much beauty; it is too soft; for, though it has
+its rocks and huge trees, yet it lacks wildness and sublimity. The rocks
+are not sufficiently abrupt, the steeps not sufficiently great; there
+are no chasms, no waterfalls--only purling brooks and quiet walks.”
+
+“I have felt this already,” he replied; “but there is yet a deficiency
+which you have not expressed, Miss Cooper.”
+
+“What is that?” she demanded.
+
+“It is the moral want. You have no life here; and that which would least
+content me would be this very repose--the absence of provocation--the
+strife--the triumph! These, I take it, are the deficiencies which
+you really feel when you speak of the want of crag, and chasm, and
+waterfall.”
+
+“You, too, are ambitious, then!” she said quickly; “but how do you
+reconcile this feeling with your profession?”
+
+She looked up, and caught his eye tenderly fixed upon her.
+
+“Ah!” said he, “Miss Cooper, there are some situations in which we find
+it easy to reconcile all discrepancies.”
+
+If the language lacked explicitness, the look did not. He proceeded:--
+
+“If I mistake not, Miss Cooper, you will be the last one to blame me
+for not having stifled my ambition, even at the calls of duty and
+profession.”
+
+“Blame you, sir? Far from it. I should think you very unfortunate
+indeed, if you could succeed in stifling ambition at any calls, nor do I
+exactly see how duty should require it.”
+
+“If I pursue the profession of the divine?” he answered hesitatingly.
+
+“Yes--perhaps--but that is not certain?” There was some timidity in the
+utterance of this inquiry. He evaded it.
+
+“I know not yet what I shall be,” he replied with an air of
+self-reproach; “I fear I have too much of this fiery ardor which we call
+ambition to settle down into the passive character of the preacher.”
+
+“Oh, do not, do not!” she exclaimed impetuously; then, as if conscious
+of the impropriety, she stopped short in the sentence, while increasing
+her forward pace.
+
+“What!” said he, “you think that would effectually stifle it?”
+
+“Would it not--does it not in most men?”
+
+“Perhaps; but this depends upon the individual. Churchmen have a great
+power--the greatest in any country.”
+
+“Over babes and sucklings!” she said scornfully.
+
+“And, through these; over the hearts of men and women.”
+
+“But these, too, are babes and sucklings--people to be scared by
+shadows--the victims of their own miserable fears and superstitions!”
+
+“Nevertheless, these confer power. Where there is power, there is room
+for ambition. You recollect that churchmen have put their feet upon the
+necks of princes.”
+
+“Yes, but that was when there was one church only in Christendom. It was
+a monopoly, and consequently a tyranny. Now there are a thousand, always
+in conflict, and serving very happily to keep each other from mischief.
+They no longer put their feet on princes' necks, though I believe that
+the princes are no better off for this forbearance--there are others who
+do. But only fancy that this time was again, and think of the comical
+figure our worthy brother John Cross would make, mounting from such a
+noble horse-block!”
+
+The idea was sufficiently pleasant to make Stevens laugh.
+
+“I am afraid I shall have greater trouble in converting you, Miss
+Cooper, than any other of the flock in Charlemont. I doubt that your
+heart is stubborn--that you are an insensible!”
+
+“I insensible!” she exclaimed, and with such a look! The expression of
+sarcasm had passed, as with the rapidity of a lightning-flash, from her
+beautiful lips; and a silent tear rose, tremulous and large, with the
+same instantaneous emotion, beneath her long, dark eyelashes. She
+said nothing more, but, with eyes cast down, went forward. Stevens
+was startled with the suddenness of these transitions. They proved,
+at least, how completely her mind was at the control of her blood.
+Hitherto, he had never met with a creature so liberally endowed by
+nature, who was, at the same time, so perfectly unsophisticated.
+The subject was gratifying as a study alone, even if it conferred no
+pleasure, and awakened no hopes.
+
+“Do not mistake me,” he exclaimed, hurrying after, “I had no purpose to
+impute to you any other insensibility except to that of the holy truths
+of religion.”
+
+She looked up and smiled archly. There was another transition from cloud
+to sunlight.
+
+“What! are you so doubtful of your own ministry?”
+
+“In your case, I am.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“You will force me to betake myself to studies more severe than any I
+have yet attempted.”
+
+She was flattered but she uttered a natural disclaimer.
+
+“No, no! I am presumptuous. I trust you will teach me. Begin--do not
+hesitate--I will listen.”
+
+“To move you I must not come in the garments of methodism. That faith
+will never be yours.”
+
+“What faith shall it be?”
+
+“That of Catholicism. I must come armed with authority. I must carry
+the sword and keys of St. Peter. I must be sustained by all the pomps of
+that church of pomps and triumphs. My divine mission must speak through
+signs and symbols, through stately stole, pontifical ornaments, the
+tiara of religious state on the day of its most solemn ceremonial; and
+with these I must bring the word of power, born equally of intellect and
+soul, and my utterance must be in the language of divinest poesy!”
+
+“Ah! you mistake! That last will be enough. Speak to me in poesy--let
+me hear that--and you will subdue me, I believe, to any faith that you
+teach. For I can not but believe the faith that is endowed with the
+faculty of poetic utterance.”
+
+“In truth it is a divine utterance--perhaps the only divine utterance.
+Would I had it for your sake.”
+
+“Oh! you must have it. I fancy I see it in some things that you have
+said. You read poetry, I am sure--I am sure you love it.”
+
+“I do! I know not anything that I love half so well.”
+
+“Then you write it?” she asked eagerly.
+
+“No! the gift has been denied me.”
+
+She looked at him with eyes of regret.
+
+“How unfortunate,” she said.
+
+“Doubly so, as the deficiency seems to disappoint you.”
+
+She did not seem to heed the flattery of this remark, nor did she
+appear to note the expression of face with which it was accompanied. Her
+feelings took the ascendency. She spoke out her uncommissioned thoughts
+and fancies musingly, as if without the knowledge of her will.
+
+“I fancy that I could kneel down and worship the poet, and feel no
+shame, no humility. It is the only voice that enchants me--that leads
+me out from myself; that carries me where it pleases and finds for me
+companions in the solitude; songs in the storm; affections in the barren
+desert! Even here, it brings me friends and fellowships. How voiceless
+would be all these woods to me had it no voice speaking to, and in,
+my soul. Hoping nothing, and performing nothing here, it is my only
+consolation. It reconciles me to this wretched spot. It makes endurance
+tolerable. If it were not for this companionship--if I heard not this
+voice in my sorrows, soothing my desolation, I could freely die!--die
+here, beside this rock, without making a struggle to go forward, even to
+reach the stream that flows quietly beyond!”
+
+She had stopped in her progress while this stream of enthusiasm poured
+from her lips. Her action was suited to her utterance. Unaccustomed
+to restraint--nay, accustomed only to pour herself forth to woods, and
+trees, and waters, she was scarcely conscious of the presence of any
+other companion, yet she looked even while she spoke, in the eyes of
+Stevens. He gazed on her with glances of unconcealed admiration. The
+unsophisticated nature which led her to express that enthusiasm which
+a state of conventional existence prompts us, through fear of ridicule,
+industriously to conceal, struck him with the sense of a new pleasure.
+The novelty alone had its charm; but there were other sources of
+delight. The natural grace and dignity of the enthusiastic girl,
+adapting to such words the appropriate action, gave to her beauty,
+which was now in its first bloom, all the glow which is derived from
+intellectual inspiration. Her whole person spoke. All was vital,
+spiritual, expressive, animated; and when the last word lingered on her
+lips, Stevens could scarcely repress the impulse which prompted him to
+clasp her in his embrace.
+
+“Margaret!” he exclaimed--“Miss Cooper!--you are yourself a poet!”
+
+“No, no!” she murmured, rather than spoke;--“would I were!--a dreamer
+only--a self-deluded dreamer.”
+
+“You can not deceive me!” he continued, “I see it in your eyes, your
+action; I hear it in your words. I can not be deceived. You are a
+poet--you will, and must be one!”
+
+“And if I were!” she said mournfully, “of what avail would it be here?
+What heart in this wilderness would be touched by song of mine? Whose
+ear could I soothe in this cold and sterile hamlet? Where would be the
+temple--who the worshippers--even were the priestess all that her vanity
+would believe, or her prayers and toils might make her? No, no! I am
+no poet; and if I were, better that the flame should go out--vanish
+altogether in the smoke of its own delusions--than burn with a feeble
+light, unseen, untrimmed, unhonored--perhaps, beheld with the scornful
+eye of vulgar and unappreciating ignorance!”
+
+“Such is not your destiny, Margaret Cooper,” replied Stevens, using
+the freedom of address, perhaps unconsciously, which the familiarity of
+country life is sometimes found to tolerate. “Such is not your destiny,
+Margaret. The flame will not go out--it will be loved and worshipped!”
+
+“Ah! never! what is here to justify such a hope--such a dream?”
+
+“Nothing HERE; but it was not of Charlemont I spoke. The destiny which
+has endowed you with genius will not leave it to be extinguished here.
+There will come a worshipper, Margaret. There will come one, equally
+capable to honor the priestess and to conduct her to befitting altars.
+This is not your home, though it may have been your place of trial
+and novitiate. Here, without the restraint of cold, oppressive, social
+forms, your genius has ripened--your enthusiasm has been kindled into
+proper glow--your heart, and mind, and imagination, have kept equal pace
+to an equal maturity! Perhaps this was fortunate. Had you grown up in
+more polished and worldly circles, you would have been compelled to
+subdue the feelings and fancies which now make your ordinary language
+the language of a muse.”
+
+“Oh! speak not so, I implore you. I am afraid you mock me.”
+
+“No! on my soul, I do not. I think all that I say. More than that, I
+feel it, Margaret. Trust to me--confide in me--make me your friend!
+Believe me, I am not altogether what I seem.”
+
+An arch smile once more possessed her eyes.
+
+“Ah! I could guess that! But sit you here. Here is a flower--a
+beautiful, small flower, with a dark blue eye. See it--how humbly it
+hides amid the grass. It is the last flower if the season. I know not
+its name. I am no botanist; but it is beautiful without a name, and it
+is the last flower of the season. Sit down on this rock, and I will sing
+you Moore's beautiful song, ''Tis the last of its kindred.'”
+
+“Nay, sing me something of your own, Margaret.”
+
+“No, no! Don't speak of me, and mine, in the same breath with Moore.
+You will make me repent of having seen you. Sit down and be content with
+Moore, or go without your song altogether.”
+
+He obeyed her, and the romantic and enthusiastic girl, seating herself
+upon a fragment of rock beside the path, sang the delicate and sweet
+verses of the Irish poet, with a natural felicity of execution, which
+amply compensated for the absence of those Italian arts, which so
+frequently elevate the music at the expense of the sentiment. Stevens
+looked and listened, and half forgot himself in the breathlessness of
+his attention--his eye fastened with a gaze of absolute devotion on her
+features, until, having finished her song, she detected the expression
+of his face, and started, with blushing cheeks, to her feet.
+
+“Oh! sweet!” he murmured as he offered to take her hand, but she darted
+forward, and following her, he found himself a few moments after,
+standing by her side, and looking down upon one of the loveliest lakes
+that ever slept in the embrace of jealous hills.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+
+
+
+“You disparage these scenes,” said Stevens, after several moments had
+been given to the survey of that before him, “and yet you have drawn
+your inspiration from them--the fresh food which stimulates poetry and
+strengthens enthusiasm. Here you learned to be contemplative; and here,
+in solitude, was your genius nursed. Do not be ungrateful, Margaret--you
+owe to these very scenes all that you are, and all that you may become.”
+
+“Stay! before I answer. Do you see yon bird?”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In the west--there!” she pointed with her fingers, catching his
+wrist unconsciously, at the same time, with the other hand, as if more
+certainly to direct his gaze.
+
+“I see it--what bird is it?”
+
+“An eagle! See how it soars and swings; effortless, as if supported by
+some external power!”
+
+“Indeed--it seems small for an eagle.”
+
+“It is one nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among
+the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are
+the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from
+this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now
+within his talons, with which to feed his young. He will feed them, and
+they will grow strong, and will finally use their own wings. Shall he
+continue to feed them after that? Must they never seek their own food?”
+
+“Surely they must.”
+
+“If these solitudes have nursed me, must they continue to nurse me
+always? Must I never use the wings to which they have given vigor? Must
+I never employ the sight to which they have imparted vigilance? Must I
+never go forth, and strive and soar, and make air, and earth, and sea,
+tributary to my wing and eye? Alas! I am a woman!--and her name is
+weakness! You tell me of what I am, and of what I may become. But what
+am I? I mock myself too often with this question to believe all your
+fine speeches. And what may I become? Alas! who can tell me that? I know
+my strength, but I also know my weakness. I feel the burning thoughts
+of my brain; I feel the yearning impulses in my heart; but they bring
+nothing--they promise nothing--I feel the pang of constant denial. I
+feel that I can be nothing!”
+
+“Say not so, Margaret--think not so, I beseech you. With your genius,
+your enthusiasm--your powers of expression--there is nothing, becoming
+in your sex, and worthy of it, which you may not be.”
+
+“You can not deceive me! It might be so, if this were Italy; there,
+where the very peasant burns with passion, and breathes his feeblest
+and meanest thoughts and desires in song. But here, they already call
+me mad! They look on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid me with
+sentiments and looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when I am looking
+into the cloud, striving to pierce, with dilating eye its wild yellow
+flashing centres, they draw their flaxen-headed infants to their
+breasts, and mutter their thanks to God, that he has not, in a fit of
+wrath, made them to resemble me! If, forgetful of earth, and trees,
+and the human stocks around me, I pour forth the language of the great
+song-masters, they grin at my insanity--they hold me incapable of
+reason, and declare their ideas of what that is, by asking who
+knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch, the spinning-wheel, the
+darning-needle--who can best wash Polly's or Patty's face and comb its
+head--can chop up sausage-meat the finest--make the lightest paste, and
+more economically dispense the sugar in serving up the tea! and these
+are what is expected of woman! These duties of the meanest slave! From
+her mind nothing is expected. Her enthusiasm terrifies, her energy
+offends, and if her taste is ever challenged, it is to the figures upon
+a quilt or in a flower-garden, where the passion seems to be to make
+flowers grow in stars, and hearts, and crescents. What has woman to
+expect where such are the laws; where such are the expectations from
+her? What am I to hope? I, who seem to be set apart--to feel nothing
+like the rest--to live in a different world--to dream of foreign
+things--to burn with a hope which to them is frenzy, and speak a
+language which they neither understand nor like! What can I be, in such
+a world? Nothing, nothing! I do not deceive myself. I can never hope to
+be anything.”
+
+Her enthusiasm hurried her forward. In spite of himself, Stevens was
+impressed. He ceased to think of his evil purposes in the superior
+thoughts which her wild, unregulated energy inspired. He scarcely
+wondered, indeed--if it were true--that her neighbors fancied
+her insane. The indignation of a powerful mind denied--denied
+justice--baffled in its aims--conscious of the importance of all
+its struggles against binding and blinding circumstances--is akin to
+insanity!--is apt to express itself in the defiant tones of a fierce and
+feverish frenzy.
+
+“Margaret,” said he, as she paused and waited for him, “you are not
+right in everything. You forget that your lonely little village of
+Charlemont, is not only not the world, but that it is not even an
+American world. America is not Italy, I grant you, nor likely soon to
+become so; but if you fancy there are not cities even in our country,
+where genius such as yours would be felt and worshipped, you are
+mistaken.”
+
+“Do you believe there are such?” she demanded incredulously.
+
+“I KNOW there are!”
+
+“No! no! I know better. You can not deceive me. It can not be so. I know
+the sort of genius which is popular in those cities. It is the gentleman
+and lady genius. Look at their verses for example. I can show you
+thousands of such things that come to us here, from all quarters of the
+Union--verses written by nice people--people of small tastes and petty
+invention, who would not venture upon the utterance of a noble
+feeling, or a bold sentiment of originality, for fear of startling the
+fashionable nerves with the strong words which such a novelty would
+require. Consider, in the first place, how conclusive it is of the
+feeblest sort of genius that these people should employ themselves,
+from morning to night, in spinning their small strains, scraps of verse,
+song, and sonnet, and invariably on such subjects of commonplace, as can
+not admit of originality, and do not therefore task reflection. Not
+an infant dies or is born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its
+smiles and tears are put on record; its hobby-horse, and its infant
+ideas as they begin to bud and breathe aloud. Then comes the eternal
+strain about summer blooms and spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and
+winter's storms, until one sickens of the intolerable monotony. Such
+are the things that your great cities demand. Such things content
+them. Speak the fearless and always strange language of originality and
+strength, and you confound and terrify them.”
+
+“But, Margaret, these things are held at precisely the same value in the
+big cities as they are held by you here in Charlemont. The intelligent
+people smile--they do not applaud. If they encourage at all it is by
+silence.”
+
+“No! no! that you might say, if, unhappily, public opinion did not
+express itself. The same magazines which bring us the verses bring us
+the criticism.”
+
+“That is to say, the editor puffs his contributors, and disparages those
+who are not. Look at the rival journal and you will find these denounced
+and another set praised and beplastered.”
+
+“Ah! and what would be my hope, my safety, in communities which tolerate
+these things; in which the number of just and sensible people is so
+small that they dare not speak, or can not influence those who have
+better courage? Where would be my triumphs? I, who would no more
+subscribe to the petty tyranny of conventional law, than to that baser
+despotism which is wielded by a mercenary editor, in the absence of a
+stern justice in the popular mind. Here I may pine to death--there, my
+heart would burst with its own convulsions.”
+
+“No! Margaret, no! It is because they have not the genius, that such
+small birds are let to sing. Let them but hear the true minstrel--let
+them but know that there is a muse, and how soon would the senseless
+twitter which they now tolerate be hushed in undisturbing silence.
+In the absence of better birds they bear with what they have. In the
+absence of the true muse they build no temple--they throng not to hear.
+Nay, even now, already, they look to the west for the minstrel and the
+muse--to these very woods. There is a tacit and universal feeling in the
+Atlantic country, that leads them to look with expectation to the Great
+West, for the genius whose song is to give us fame. 'When?' is the
+difficult--the only question. Ah! might I but say to them--'now'--the
+muse is already here!”
+
+He took her hand--she did not withhold it; but her look was subdued--the
+fires had left her eyes--her whole frame trembled with the recoil of
+those feelings--the relaxation of those nerves--the tension of which we
+have endeavored feebly to display. Her cheek was no longer flushed but
+pale; her lips trembled--her voice was low and faint--only a broken and
+imperfect murmur; and her glance was cast upon the ground.
+
+“You!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Yes, I! Have I not said I am not altogether what I seem? Ah! I may not
+yet say more. But I am not without power, Margaret, in other and more
+powerful regions. I too have had my triumphs; I too can boast that the
+minds of other men hang for judgment upon the utterance of mine.”
+
+She looked upward to his glance with a stranger expression of timidity
+than her features had before exhibited. The form of Stevens had
+insensibly risen in seeming elevation as he spoke, and the expression of
+his face was that of a more human pride. He continued:--
+
+“My voice is one of authority in circles where yours would be one of
+equal attraction and command. I can not promise you an Italian devotion,
+Margaret; our people, though sufficiently enthusiastic, are too sensible
+to ridicule to let the heart and blood speak out with such freedom as
+they use in the warmer regions of the South: but the homage will be more
+intellectual, more steady, and the fame more enduring. You must let your
+song be heard--you must give me the sweet privilege of making it known
+to ears whose very listening is fame.”
+
+“Ah!” she said, “what you say makes me feel how foolishly I have spoken.
+What is my song? what have I done? what am I? what have I to hope?
+I have done nothing--I am nothing! I have suffered, like a child, a
+miserable vanity to delude me, and I have poured into the ears of a
+stranger those ravings which I have hitherto uttered to the hills and
+forests. You laugh at me now--you must.”
+
+The paleness on her cheek was succeeded by the deepest flush of crimson.
+She withdrew her hand from his grasp.
+
+“Laugh at you, Margaret! You have awakened my wonder. Struck with you
+when we first met--”
+
+“Nay, no more of that, but let us follow these windings; they lead us to
+the tarn. It is the prettiest Indian path, and my favorite spot. Here
+I ramble morning and eve, and try to forget those vain imaginings and
+foolish strivings of thought which I have just inflicted upon you. The
+habit proved too much for my prudence, and I spoke as if you were not
+present. Possibly, had you not spoken in reply, I should have continued
+until now.”
+
+“Why did I speak?”
+
+“Ah! it is better. I wish you had spoken sooner. But follow me quickly.
+The sunlight is now falling in a particular line which gives us the
+loveliest effect, shooting its rays through certain fissures of the
+rock, and making a perfect arrow-path along the water. You would fancy
+that Apollo had just dismissed a golden shaft from his quiver, so direct
+is the levelled light along the surface of the lake.”
+
+Speaking thus, they came in sight of the party on the opposite hills,
+as we have already shown--without, however, perceiving them in turn. It
+will be conjectured without difficulty that, with a nature so full of
+impulse, so excitable, as that of Margaret Cooper--particularly in the
+company of an adroit man like Stevens, whose purpose was to encourage
+her in that language and feeling of egotism which, while it was the most
+grateful exercise to herself, was that which most effectually served to
+blind her to his designs--her action was always animated, expressively
+adapting itself, not only to the words she uttered, but, even when she
+did not speak, to the feelings by which she was governed. It was the art
+of Stevens to say little except by suggestives. A single word, or
+brief sentence, from his lips, judiciously applied to her sentiments or
+situation, readily excited her to speech; and this utterance necessarily
+brought with it the secret of her soul, the desire of her heart, nay,
+the very shape of the delusion which possessed it. The wily libertine,
+deliberate as the demon to which we have likened him, could provoke the
+warmth which he did not share--could stimulate the eloquence which
+he would not feel--could coldly, like some Mephistopheles of science,
+subject the golden-winged bird or butterfly to the torturous process of
+examination, with a pin thrust through its vitals, and gravely dilate
+on its properties, its rich plumage, and elaborate finish of detail,
+without giving heed to those writhings which declared its agonies. It is
+not meant to be understood that Stevens found no pleasure himself in the
+display of that wild, unschooled imagination which was the prevailing
+quality in the mind of Margaret Cooper. He was a man of education and
+taste. He could be pleased as an amateur; but he wanted the moral to be
+touched, and to sympathize with a being so gifted and so feeble--so high
+aiming, yet so liable to fall.
+
+The ardor of Margaret Cooper, and the profound devotion which it was
+the policy of Stevens to display, necessarily established their
+acquaintance, in a very short time, on the closest footing of
+familiarity. With a nature such as hers, all that is wanted is
+sympathy--all that she craves is sympathy--and, to win this, no toil is
+too great, no sufferance too severe; alas, how frequently do we see that
+no penalty is too discouraging! But the confiding spirit never looks for
+penalties, and seldom dreams of deceit.
+
+What, then, were the emotions of William Hinkley as he beheld the
+cordiality which distinguished the manner of Margaret Cooper as she
+approached the edge of the lake with her companion? In the space of a
+single week, this stranger had made greater progress in her acquaintance
+than HE had been able to make in a period of years. The problem which
+distressed him was beyond his power to solve. His heart was very full;
+the moisture was already in his eyes; and when he beheld the animated
+gestures of the maid--when he saw her turn to her companion, and
+meet his gaze without shrinking, while her own was fixed in gratified
+contemplation--he scarcely restrained himself from jumping to his feet.
+The old man saw his emotion.
+
+“William,” he said, “did I understand you that this young stranger was a
+preacher?”
+
+“No, sir, but he seeks to be one. He is studying for the ministry, under
+Brother Cross.”
+
+“Brother Cross is a good man, and is scarcely likely to have anything to
+do with any other than good men. I suppose he knows everything about the
+stranger?”
+
+William Hinkley narrated all that was known on the subject in the
+village. In the innocence of his heart, Brother Cross had described
+Alfred Stevens as a monument of his own powers of conversion. Under
+God, he had been a blessed instrument for plucking this brand from
+the burning. A modified account of the brandy-flask accompanied the
+narrative. Whether it was that Mr. Calvert, who had been a man of the
+world, saw something in the story itself, and in the ludicrousness of
+the event, which awakened his suspicions, or whether the carriage of
+Alfred Stevens, as he walked with Margaret Cooper, was rather that of a
+young gallant than a young student in theology, may admit of question;
+but it was very certain that the suspicions of the old gentleman were
+somewhat awakened.
+
+Believing himself to be alone with his fair companion, Alfred Stevens
+was not as scrupulous of the rigidity of manner which, if not actually
+prescribed to persons occupying his professional position, is certainly
+expected from them; and, by a thousand little acts of gallantry, he
+proved himself much more at home as a courtier and a ladies' man than as
+one filled with the overflow of divine grace, and thoughtful of nothing
+less than the serious earnest of his own soul. His hand was promptly
+extended to assist the progress of his fair companion--a service which
+was singularly unnecessary in the case of one to whom daily rambles,
+over hill and through forest, had imparted a most unfeminine degree
+of vigor. Now he broke the branch away from before her path; and now,
+stooping suddenly, he gathered for her the pale flower of autumn.
+
+These little acts of courtesy, so natural to the gentleman, were
+anything but natural to one suddenly impressed with the ascetical temper
+of methodism. Highly becoming in both instances, they were yet strangely
+at variance with the straight-laced practices of the thoroughgoing
+Wesleyan, who sometimes fancies that the condition of souls is so
+desperate as to leave no time for good manners. Mr. Calvert had no
+fault to find with Stevens's civility, but there was certainly an
+inconsistency between his deportment now, and those characteristics
+which were to be predicated of the manner and mode of his very recent
+conversion. Besides, there was the story of the brandy-flask, in which
+Calvert saw much less of honor either to John Cross or his neophyte. But
+the old man did not express his doubts to his young friend, and they
+sat together, watching, in a silence only occasionally broken by a
+monosyllable, the progress of the unconscious couple below.
+
+Meanwhile, our fisherman, occupying his lonely perch just above the
+stream, had been plying his vocation with all the silent diligence of
+one to the manner born. Once busy with his angle, and his world equally
+of thought and observation became confined to the stream before his
+eyes, and the victim before his imagination. Scarcely seen by his
+companions on the heights above, he had succeeded in taking several very
+fine fish; and had his liberality been limited to the supper-table of
+his venerable friend Calvert, he would long before have given himself
+respite, and temporary immunity to the rest of the finny tribe remaining
+in the tarn. But Ned Hinkley thought of all his neighbors, not omitting
+the two rival widows, Mesdames Cooper and Thackeray.
+
+Something too, there was in the sport, which, on the present occasion,
+beguiled him rather longer than his wont. More than once had his eye
+detected, from the advantageous and jutting rock where he lay concealed,
+just above the water, the dark outlines of a fish, one of the largest he
+had ever seen in the lake, whose brown sides, and occasionally flashing
+fins, excited his imagination and offered a challenge to his skill,
+which provoked him into something like a feeling of personal hostility.
+
+The fish moved slowly to and fro, not often in sight, but at such
+regularly-recurring periods as to keep up the exciting desire which his
+very first appearance had awakened in the mind of his enemy.
+
+To Ned Hinkley he was the beau-ideal of the trout genius. He was
+certainly the hermit-trout of the tarn. Such coolness, such strength,
+such size, such an outline, and then such sagacity. That trout was
+a triton among his brethren. A sort of Dr. Johnson among fishes. Ned
+Hinkley could imagine--for on such subjects his imagination kindled--how
+like an oracle must be the words of such a trout, to his brethren,
+gathering in council in their deep-down hole--or driven by a shower
+under the cypress log--or in any other situation in which an oracle
+would be apt to say, looking around him with fierceness mingled
+with contempt, “Let no dog bark.” Ned Hinkley could also fancy the
+contemplations of such a trout as he witnessed the efforts made to
+beguile him out of the water.
+
+“Not to be caught by a fly like that, my lad!” and precisely as if
+the trout had spoken what was certainly whispered in his own mind, the
+fisherman silently changed his gilded, glittering figure on his hook for
+one of browner plumage--one of the autumn tribe of flies which stoop to
+the water from the overhanging trees, and glide off for twenty paces in
+the stream, to dart up again to the trees, in as many seconds, if not
+swallowed by some watchful fisher-trout, like the one then before the
+eyes of our companion.
+
+Though his fancy had become excited, Ned Hinkley was not impatient.
+With a cautious hand he conducted the fly down the stream with the
+flickering, fidgety motion which the real insect would have employed.
+The keen-nosed trout turned with the movements of the fly, but
+philosophically kept aloof. Now he might be seen to sink, now to rise,
+now he glided close under the rock where the angler reclined, and, even
+in the very deep waters which were there, which were consequently very
+dark, so great was the size of the animal, that its brown outline was
+yet to be seen, with its slightly-waving tail, and at moments the flash
+of its glittering eye, as, inclining on its side, it glanced cunningly
+upward through the water.
+
+Again did Ned Hinkley consult his resources. Fly after fly was taken
+from his box, and suffered to glide upon the stream. The wary fish did
+not fail to bestow some degree of attention upon each, but his regards
+were too deliberate for the success of the angler, and he had almost
+began to despair, when he observed a slight quivering movement in the
+object of pursuit which usually prepares the good sportsman to expect
+his prey. The fins were laid aback. The motion of the fish became
+steady; a slight vibration of the tail only was visible; and in another
+moment he darted, and was hooked.
+
+Then came the struggle. Ned Hinkley had never met with a more formidable
+prey. The reel was freely given, but the strain was great upon shaft and
+line. There was no such thing as contending. The trout had his way, and
+went down and off, though it might have been observed that the fisherman
+took good care to baffle his efforts to retreat in the direction of the
+old log which had harbored him, and the tangling alders, which might
+have been his safest places of retreat. The fish carried a long stretch
+of line, but the hook was still in his jaws, and this little annoyance
+soon led him upon other courses. The line became relaxed, and with this
+sign, Ned Hinkley began to amuse himself in tiring his victim.
+
+This required skill and promptness rather than strength. The
+hermit-trout was led to and fro by a judicious turn of wrist or elbow.
+His efforts had subsided to a few spasmodic struggles--an occasional
+struggle ending with a shiver, and then he was brought to the surface.
+This was followed by a last great convulsive effort, when his tail
+churned the water into a little circle of foam, which disappeared the
+moment his struggles were over. But a few seconds more were necessary to
+lift the prey into sight of all the parties near to the lake. They had
+seen some of the struggle, and had imagined the rest. Neither Margaret
+Cooper nor Stevens had suspected the presence of the fisherman until
+drawn to the spot by this trial of strength.
+
+“What a prodigious fish!” exclaimed Stevens; “can we go to the spot?”
+
+“Oh! easily--up the rocks on the left there is a path. I know it well.
+I have traversed it often. Will you go? The view is very fine from that
+quarter.”
+
+“Surely: but who is the fisherman?”
+
+“Ned Hinkley, the nephew of the gentleman with whom you stay. He is
+a hunter, fisherman, musician--everything. A lively, simple, but
+well-meaning young person. It is something strange that his cousin
+William Hinkley is not with him. They are usually inseparable.”
+
+And with these words she led the way for her companion following the
+edge of the lake until reaching the point where the rocks seemed to form
+barriers to their further progress, but which her agility and energy had
+long since enabled her to overcome.
+
+“A bold damsel!” said Calvert, as he viewed her progress. “She certainly
+does not intend to clamber over that range of precipices. She will peril
+her life.”
+
+“No!” said William Hinkley; “she has done it often to my great terror. I
+have been with her more than once over the spot myself. She seems to me
+to have no fear, and to delight in the most dangerous places.”
+
+“But her companion! If he's not a more active man than he seems he will
+hardly succeed so well.”
+
+William was silent, his eye watching with the keenest interest the
+progress of the two. In a few moments he started to his feet with some
+appearance of surprise.
+
+“What's the matter?” demanded Calvert.
+
+“She does not seem as if she wished to ascend the rocks, but she's
+aiming to keep along the ledges that overhang the stream, so as to get
+where Ned is. That can hardly be done by the surest-footed, and most
+active. Many of the rocks are loose. The ledge is very narrow, and even
+where there is room for the feet there are such projections above as
+leave no room for the body. I will halloo to her, and tell her of the
+danger.”
+
+“If you halloo, you will increase the danger--you will alarm her,” said
+the old man.
+
+“It will be best to stop her now, in season, when she can go back. Stay
+for me, sir, I can run along on the heights so as to overlook them, and
+can then warn without alarming.”
+
+“Do so, my son, and hasten, for she seems bent on going forward. The
+preacher follows but slowly, and she stops for him. Away!”
+
+The youth darted along the hill, pursuing something of a table-line
+which belonged to the equal elevation of the range of rock on which he
+stood. The rock was formed of successive and shelving ledges, at such
+intervals, however, as to make it no easy task--certainly no safe
+one--to drop from one to the other. The perch of Ned Hinkley, was a
+projection from the lowest of these ledges, running brokenly along the
+margin of the basin until lost in the forest slope over which Margaret
+Cooper had led her companion.
+
+If it was a task to try the best vigor and agility--to say nothing of
+courage--of the ablest mountaineer, to ascend the abrupt ledges from
+below, aiming at the highest point of elevation. The attempt was still
+more startling to follow the lower ledges, some of which hung, loosened
+and tottering, just above the deepest parts of the lake. Yet, with that
+intrepidity which marked her character, this was the very task which
+Margaret Cooper had proposed to herself. William Hinkley had justly said
+that she did not seem to know fear; and when Stevens with the natural
+sense of caution which belongs to one to whom such performances are
+unusual, suggested to her that such a pathway seemed very dangerous--
+
+“Dangerous!” she exclaimed, standing upon the merest pinnacle of a
+loosened fragment which rested on the very margin of the stream.
+
+“Did you never perceive that there was a loveliness in danger which you
+scarcely felt to be half so great in any other object or situation. I
+love the dangerous. It seems to lift my soul, to make my heart bound
+with joy and the wildest delight. I know nothing so delightful as storm
+and thunder. I look, and see the tall trees shivering and going down
+with a roar, and feel that I could sing--sing aloud--and believe that
+there are voices, like mine, then singing through all the tempest. But
+there is no danger here. I have clambered up these ledges repeatedly--up
+to the very top. Here, you see, we have an even pathway along the edge.
+We have nothing to do but to set the foot down firmly.”
+
+But Stevens was not so sure, and his opinion on the beauties of the
+dangerous did not chime exactly with hers. Still, he did not lack for
+courage, and his pride did not suffer him to yield in a contest with a
+female. He gazed on her with increasing wonder. If he saw no loveliness
+in danger--he saw no little loveliness just then in her; and she might
+be said to personify danger to his eyes. Her tall, symmetrical, and
+commanding figure, perched on the trembling pinnacle of rock which
+sustained her, was as firm and erect as if she stood on the securest
+spot of land.
+
+Nor was her position that of simple security and firmness. The grace of
+her attitude, her extended and gently waving arm as she spoke, denoted
+a confidence which could only have arisen from a perfect unconsciousness
+of danger. Her swan-like neck, with the face slightly turned back to
+him; the bright flashing eyes, and the smile of equal pride and dignity
+on her exquisitely-chiselled mouth;--all formed a picture for the
+artist's study, which almost served to divert the thoughts of Stevens
+from the feeling of danger which he expressed.
+
+While he gazed, he heard a voice calling in tones of warning from above;
+and, at the sound, he perceived a change in the expression of Margaret
+Cooper's face, from confidence and pride, to scorn and contempt. At the
+same time she darted forward from rock to rock, with a sort of defying
+haste, which made him tremble for her safety, and left him incapable to
+follow. The call was repeated; and Stevens looked up, and recognised the
+person of the youth whom he had counselled that morning with such bad
+success.
+
+If the progress of Margaret Cooper appeared dangerous in his sight, that
+of the young man was evidently more so. He was leaping, with the cool
+indifference of one who valued his life not a pin's fee, from ledge to
+ledge, down the long steppes which separated the several reaches of the
+rock formation. The space between was very considerable, the descent
+abrupt; the youth had no steadying pole to assist him, but flying
+rather than leaping, was now beheld in air, and in the next moment stood
+balancing himself with difficulty, but with success, and without seeming
+apprehension, on the pinnacle of rock below him. In this way he was
+approaching the lower ledge along which Margaret Cooper was hurrying as
+rapidly as fearlessly, and calling to her as he came, implored her to
+forbear a progress which was so full of danger.
+
+Stevens fancied he had no reason to love the youth, but he could not
+help admiring and envying his equal boldness and agility; the
+muscular ease with which he flung himself from point to point, and his
+sure-footed descent upon the crags and fragments which trembled and
+tottered beneath the sudden and unaccustomed burden. Charitably wishing
+that, amid all his agility he might yet make a false step, and find an
+unexpected and rather cold bath in the lake below, Stevens now turned
+his eyes upon Margaret Cooper.
+
+She did not answer the counsels of William Hinkley--certainly did not
+heed them: and, but for the increased impatience of her manner might be
+supposed not to have heard them. The space between herself and Stevens
+had increased meanwhile, and looking back, she waited for his approach.
+She stood on a heavy mass which jutted above the lake, and not six feet
+from the water. Her right foot was upon the stone, sustaining the
+whole weight of her person. Her left was advanced and lifted to another
+fragment which lay beyond. As she looked back she met the eyes of
+Stevens. Just then he saw the large fragment yield beneath her feet. She
+seemed suddenly conscious of it in the same moment, and sprung rapidly
+on that to which her left foot was already advanced. The impetus of
+this movement, sent the rock over which she had left. This disturbed
+the balance of that to which she had risen, and while the breath of the
+stranger hung suspended in the utterance of the meditated warning, the
+catastrophe had taken place. The stone shrank from beneath her, and,
+sinking with it, in another moment, she was hidden from sight in the
+still, deep waters of the lake.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SOUSING A GURNET.
+
+
+
+
+
+The disappearance of Margaret Cooper was succeeded by a shriek from
+above--a single shriek--a cry of terror and despair; and in the same
+instant the form of William Hinkley might have been seen cleaving
+the air, with the boldness of a bird, secure always of his wing, and
+descending into the lake as nearly as it was possible for him to come,
+to the spot where she had sunk. Our cooler fisherman looked up to the
+abrupt eminence, just above his own head, from which his devoted cousin
+had sprung.
+
+“By gemini!” he exclaimed with an air of serious apprehension, “if
+William Hinkley hasn't knocked his life out by that plunge he's more
+lucky than I think him. It's well the lake's deep enough in this quarter
+else he'd have tried the strength of hard head against harder rock
+below. But there's no time for such nice calculations! We can all
+swim--that's a comfort.”
+
+Thus speaking, he followed the example of his cousin, though more
+quietly, plunging off from his lowlier perch, and cleaving the water,
+headforemost, with as little commotion as a sullen stone would make
+sent directly downward to the deep. By this time, however, our former
+companion, Stevens, had done the same thing. Stevens was no coward, but
+he had no enthusiasm. He obeyed few impulses. His proceedings were all
+the result of calculation. He could swim as well as his neighbors. He
+had no apprehensions on that score; but he disliked cold water; and
+there was an involuntary shrug of the shoulder and shiver of the limbs
+before he committed himself to the water, which he did with all the
+deliberation of the cat, who, longing for fish, is yet unwilling to
+wet her own feet. His deliberation, and the nearness of his position to
+Margaret Cooper, were so far favorable to his design that he succeeded
+in finding her first. It must be understood that the events, which
+we have taken so much time to tell, occupied but a few seconds in the
+performance. Stevens was in the water quite as quickly as Ned Hinkley,
+and only not so soon as his more devoted and desperate cousin. If it was
+an advantage to him to come first in contact with the form of Margaret
+Cooper, it had nearly proved fatal to him also. In the moment when he
+encountered her, her outstretched and grasping arms, encircled his neck.
+They rose together, but he was nearly strangled, and but for the timely
+interposition of the two cousins, they must probably have both perished.
+
+It was the fortune of our fisherman to relieve the maiden, whom he bore
+to the opposite shore with a coolness, a skill and spirit, which enabled
+him to save himself from her desperate but unconscious struggles,
+while supporting her with a degree of ease and strength which had
+been acquired while teaching some dozen of the village urchins how to
+practise an art in which he himself was reckoned a great proficient.
+
+It was fortunate for Stevens that the charities of William Hinkley were
+more active and indulgent than his own, since, without the timely succor
+and aid which he afforded, that devout young gentleman would have been
+made to discontinue his studies very suddenly and have furnished a
+summary conclusion to this veracious narrative--a consummation which, if
+it be as devoutly wished by the reader as by the writer, will be a much
+greater source of annoyance to our publisher than it has proved already.
+Never had poor mortal been compelled to drink, at one time, a greater
+quantity of that celestial beverage, which the Reverend Mr. Pierpont
+insists is the only liquor drunk at the hotels of heaven. We should be
+sorry to misrepresent that very gentle gentleman, but we believe that
+this is substantially his idea. It was unfortunate for Stevens that,
+previously to this, he had never been accustomed to drink much of this
+beverage in its original strength anywhere. He had been too much in the
+habit of diluting it; and being very temperate always in his enjoyment
+of the creature comforts, he had never taken it, even when thus diluted,
+except in very moderate quantities.
+
+In consequence of his former abstemiousness, the quantity which he now
+swallowed nearly strangled him. He was about to take his last draught
+with many wry faces, when the timely arms of the two cousins, by no very
+sparing application of force withdrew him from the grasp of the damsel;
+and without very well understanding the process, or any particulars of
+his extrication, he found himself stretched upon the banks over which he
+had lately wandered, never dreaming of any such catastrophe; discharging
+from his stomach by no effort of his own, a large quantity of foreign
+ingredients--the ordinary effect, we are given to understand, of every
+inordinate indulgence in strong waters.
+
+Our excellent old friend, Mr. Calvert, was soon upon the spot, and
+while Ned Hinkley was despatched to the village for assistance, he took
+himself the charge of recovering the unconscious maiden. Half-forgetting
+his hostility, William Hinkley undertook the same good service to
+Stevens, who really seemed to need succor much more than his fair
+companion. While William Hinkley busied himself by rolling, friction,
+fanning, and other practices, employed in such cases, to bring his
+patient back to life, he could not forbear an occasional glance to the
+spot where, at a little distance, lay the object of his affections.
+
+Her face was toward him, as she lay upon her side. Her head was
+supported on the lap of the old man. Her long hair hung dishevelled, of
+a more glossy black now when filled with water. Her eyes were shut, and
+the dark fringes of their lids lay like a pencil-streak across the pale,
+prominent orbs which they served to bind together. The glow of indignant
+pride with which she was wont to receive his approaches had all
+disappeared in the mortal struggle for life through which she had lately
+gone; and pure, as seemingly free from every passion, her pale beauties
+appeared to his doating eye the very perfection of human loveliness. Her
+breast now heaved convulsively--deep sighs poured their way through
+her parted lips. Her eyes alternately opened upon but shut against the
+light, and, finally, the exertions of the old man were rewarded as
+the golden gleam of expression began to relight and re-illumine those
+features which seemed never to be without it.
+
+She recovered her consciousness, started up, made an effort to rise,
+but, reeling with inability, sunk down again into the paternal grasp of
+the old man.
+
+“Mr. Calvert!” she murmured.
+
+“You are safe, my daughter,” said the old man.
+
+“But how did it happen?--where am I?”
+
+“By the lake.”
+
+“Ah! I remember. I was drowning. I felt it all--the choking--the
+struggle--the water in my ears and eyes! It was a dreadful feeling. How
+did I come here? Who saved me?”
+
+“Ned Hinkley brought you to land, but he was helped by his cousin
+William, who assisted the stranger.”
+
+“The stranger? ah! yes, I remember: but where is he?”
+
+She looked around wildly and anxiously, and beholding William Hinkley
+at a little distance, busy with the still unconscious form of Stevens,
+a quick, fearful shudder passed over her frame. She almost crouched into
+the old man's arms as she asked, in husky accents--
+
+“He is not dead--he lives?”
+
+“I hope so. He breathes.”
+
+She waited for no more, but, starting to her feet, she staggered to the
+spot where Stevens lay. The old man would have prevented her.
+
+“You are feeble; you will do yourself harm. Better, if you are able to
+walk, hurry homeward with me, when you can change your clothes.”
+
+“Would you have me ungrateful?” she exclaimed; “shall I neglect him when
+he risked his life for me?”
+
+There was a consciousness in her mind that it was not all gratitude
+which moved her, for the deathly paleness of her cheek was now succeeded
+by a warm blush which denoted a yet stronger and warmer emotion. The
+keen eyes of William Hinkley understood the meaning of this significant
+but unsyllabling mode of utterance, and his eyes spoke the reproach to
+hers which his lips left unsaid:--
+
+“Ah! did I not risk my life too, to prevent--to save? When would she
+feel such an interest in me? when would she look thus were my life at
+stake?”
+
+“He will not be neglected,” said the old man, gently endeavoring
+to restrain her. Perhaps she would not have given much heed to the
+interruption, for hers was the strength of an unfettered will, one
+accustomed to have way, but that, at this moment, the eyes of Stevens
+unclosed and met her own. His consciousness had returned, and, under the
+increasing expression in his looks, she sunk back, and permitted the old
+man to lead her along the homeward path. More than once she looked back,
+but, with the assurance of Mr. Calvert that there was no more danger to
+be apprehended, she continued to advance; the worthy old man, as they
+went, seeking to divert her mind, by pleasant and choice anecdotes of
+which his memory had abundant stores, from dwelling upon the unpleasant
+and exciting event which had just taken place.
+
+Margaret Cooper, whose habits previously had kept her from much intimacy
+with the village sage, was insensibly taken by his gentleness, the
+purity of his taste, the choiceness of his expression, the extent of his
+resources. She wondered how a mind so full should have remained unknown
+to her so long--committing the error, very common to persons of strong
+will and determined self-esteem, of assuming that she should, as a
+matter of inevitable necessity, have known everything and everybody of
+which the knowledge is at all desirable.
+
+In pleasant discourse he beguiled her progress, until Ned Hinkley was
+met returning with horses--the pathway did not admit of a vehicle, and
+the village had none less cumbrous than cart and wagon--on one of which
+she mounted, refusing all support or assistance; and when, Mr. Calvert
+insisted upon walking beside her, she grasped the bough of a tree, broke
+off a switch, and, giving an arch but good-natured smile and nod to the
+old man, laid it smartly over the horse's flank, and in a few moments
+was out of sight.
+
+“The girl is smart,” said Calvert, as he followed her retreating form
+with his eye--“too smart! She speaks well--has evidently read. No
+wonder that William loves her; but she will never do for him. She has
+no humility. Pride is the demon in her heart. Pride will overthrow her.
+These woods spoil her. Solitude is the natural nurse of self-esteem,
+particularly where it is strong at first, and is coupled with anything
+like talent. Better for such a one if sickness, and strife, and
+suffering, had taken her at the cradle, and nursed her with the milk
+of self-denial, which is the only humility worth having. And yet, why
+should I speak of her, when the sting remains in my own soul--when I yet
+feel the pang of my feebleness and self-reproach? Alas! I should school
+none. The voice speaks to me ever, 'Old man, to thy prayers! Thy own
+knees are yet stubborn as thy neck!'”
+
+Leaving him to the becoming abasement of that delusive self-comfort
+which ministers to our vain-glory, and which this good old man had so
+happily succeeded in rebuking, we will return to the spot where we left
+our other parties. Ned Hinkley had already joined them. With his horse
+he had providently brought a suit of his own clothes for the stranger,
+which, though made of homespun, and not of the most modern fashion,
+were yet warm and comfortable, and as Stevens was compelled to think,
+infinitely preferable to the chilly and dripping garments which he wore.
+A few moments, in the cover of the woods, sufficed the neophyte to
+make the alteration; while the two cousins, to whom the exigencies of
+forester and fisherman life were more familiar prepared to walk the
+water out of their own habits, by giving rapid circulation to their
+blood and limbs. While their preparations were in progress, however, Ned
+Hinkley could not deny himself the pleasure of discoursing at length on
+the subject of the late disaster.
+
+“Stranger,” he said, “I must tell you that you've had a souse in as fine
+a fishing-pond as you'll meet with from here to Salt river. I reckon,
+now, that while you were in, you never thought for a moment of the noble
+trout that inhabit it.”
+
+“I certainly did not,” said the other.
+
+“There, now! I could have sworn it. That a man should go with his eyes
+open into a country without ever asking what sort of folks lived there!
+Isn't it monstrous?”
+
+“It certainly seems like a neglect of the first duty of a traveller,”
+ said Stevens good-humoredly; “let me not show myself heedless of
+another. Let me thank you, gentlemen, for saving my life. I believe I
+owe it to one or both of you.”
+
+“To him, not to me,” said Ned Hinkley, pointing to his cousin. William
+was at a little distance, looking sullenly upon the two with eyes which,
+if dark and moody, seemed to denote a thought which was anywhere else
+but in the scene around him.
+
+“He saved you, and I saved the woman. I wouldn't have a woman drowned in
+this lake for all the houses in Charlemont.”
+
+“Ah! why?”
+
+“'Twould spoil it for fishing for ever.”
+
+“Why would a woman do this more than a man?”
+
+“For a very good reason, my friend. Because the ghost of a woman talks,
+and a man's don't, they say. The ghost of a man says what it wants to
+say with its eyes; a woman's with her tongue. You know there's nothing
+scares fish so much as one's talking.”
+
+“I have heard so. But is it so clear that there is such a difference
+between ghosts? How is it known that the female does all the talking?”
+
+“Oh, that's beyond dispute. There's a case that we all know about--all
+here in Charlemont--the case of Joe Barney's millpond. Barney lost
+one of his children and one of his negroes in the pond--drowned as
+a judgment, they say, for fishing a Sunday. That didn't make any
+difference with the fish: you could catch them there just the same as
+before. But when old Mrs. Prey fell in, crossing the dam, the case was
+altered. You might sit there for hours and days, night and day, and bob
+till you were weary; devil a bite after that! Now, what could make the
+difference but the tongue? Mother Frey had a tongue of her own, I tell
+you. 'Twas going when she fell in, and I reckon's been going ever
+since. She was a sulphury, spiteful body, to be sure, and some said she
+poisoned the fish if she didn't scare them. To my thinking, 'twas the
+tongue.”
+
+Stevens had been something seduced from his gravity by the blunt humor
+and unexpected manner of Ned Hinkley; besides, having been served, if
+not saved, by his hands, something, perhaps, of attention was due to
+what he had to say; but he recollected the assumed character which he
+had to maintain--something doubtful, too, if he had not already impaired
+it in the sight and hearing of those who had come so opportunely but
+so unexpectedly to his relief, He recovered his composure and dignity;
+forbore to smile at the story which might otherwise have provoked not
+only smile but corresponding answer; and, by the sudden coolness of
+his manner, tended to confirm in Ned Hinkley's bosom the half-formed
+hostility which the cause of his cousin had originally taught him to
+feel.
+
+“I'll lick the conceit out of him yet!” he muttered, as Stevens, turning
+away, ascended to the spot where William Hinkley stood.
+
+“I owe you thanks, Mr. Hinkley,” he began.
+
+The young man interrupted him.
+
+“You owe me nothing, sir,” he answered hastily, and prepared to turn
+away.
+
+“You have saved my life, sir.”
+
+“I should have saved your dog's life, sir, in the same situation. I have
+done but an act of duty.”
+
+“But, Mr. Hinkley--”
+
+“Your horse is ready for you, sir,” said the young man, turning off
+abruptly, and darting up the sides of the hill, remote from the pathway,
+and burying himself in the contiguous forests.
+
+“Strange!” exclaimed the neophyte--“this is very strange!”
+
+“Not so strange, stranger, as that I should stand your groom, without
+being brought up to such a business for any man. Here's your nag, sir.”
+
+“I thank you--I would not willingly trespass,” he replied, as he
+relieved our angler from his grasp upon the bridle.
+
+“You're welcome without the thanks, stranger. I reckon you know the
+route you come. Up hill, follow the track to the top, take the left turn
+to the valley, then you'll see the houses, and can follow your own nose
+or your nag's. Either's straight enough to carry you to his rack. You'll
+find your clothes at your boarding-house about the time that you'll get
+there.”
+
+“Nay, sir, I already owe you much. Let them not trouble you. I will take
+them myself.”
+
+“No, no, stranger!” was the reply of our fisherman, as he stooped down
+and busied himself in making the garments into a compact bundle; “I'm
+not the man to leave off without doing the thing I begin to do. I
+sometimes do more than I bargain for--sometimes lick a man soundly when
+I set out only to tweak his nose; but I make it a sort of Christian law
+never to do less. You may reckon to find your clothes home by the time
+you get there. There's your road.”
+
+“A regular pair of cubs!” muttered the horseman, as he ascended the
+hill.
+
+“To purse up his mouth as if I was giving him root-drink, when I was
+telling him about Mother Frey's spoiling the fish! Let him take care--he
+may get the vinegar next time, and not the fish!”
+
+And, with these characteristic commentaries, the parties separated for
+the time.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+PHILOSOPHY OP FIGHTING.
+
+
+
+
+
+“You're not a fighter, Bill Hinkley, and that's about the worst fault
+that I can find against you.”
+
+Such was the beginning of a dialogue between the cousins some three days
+after the affair which was narrated in our last chapter. The two young
+men were at the house of the speaker, or rather at his mother's house;
+where, a favorite and only son, he had almost supreme dominion. He was
+putting his violin in tune, and the sentences were spoken at intervals
+with the discordant scraps of sound which were necessarily elicited by
+this unavoidable musical operation. These sounds might be said to form a
+running accompaniment for the dialogue, and, considering the sombre mood
+of the person addressed, they were, perhaps, far more congenial than any
+more euphonious strains would have been.
+
+“Not a fighter!” said the other; “why, what do you mean?”
+
+“Why, just what I say--you are not a fighter. You love reading, and
+fiddling, and fishing sometimes, and sometimes dancing, and hunting, and
+swimming; but I'm pretty certain you don't love fighting. You needn't
+contradict, Bill--I've been thinking the matter over; and I'm sure of
+it. I recollect every battle or scrape you ever were in, from the time
+we went to old Chandler's, and I tell you, you're not a fighter--you
+don't love fighting!”
+
+This was concluded with a tremendous scrape over the strings, which
+seemed to say as well as scrape could speak--“There can be no mistake on
+the subject--I've said it.”
+
+“If I knew exactly what you were driving at,” said the other, “perhaps
+I might answer you. I never pretended to be a fighter; and as for loving
+it, as I love eating, drinking, books, fiddling, and dancing, why that
+needs no answer. Of course I do not, and I don't know who does.”
+
+“There it is. I told you. I knew it. You'd sooner do almost anything
+than fight.”
+
+“If you mean that I would submit to insult,” said the more peaceable
+cousin, with some displeasure in his tones and countenance, “sooner than
+resent it, you are very much mistaken. It wouldn't be advisable even for
+you to try the experiment.”
+
+“Poh, poh, Bill, you know for that matter that it wouldn't take much
+trying. I'd lick you as easily now as I did when we were boys together.”
+
+“We are boys no longer,” said the other gravely.
+
+“I'm as much a boy as ever, so far as the licking capacity calls for
+boyhood. I've pretty much the same spirit now that I had then, and ten
+times the same strength and activity. But don't look so blue. I'm not
+going to try my strength and spirit and activity on you. And don't
+suppose, Bill Hinkley, that I mean to say you're anything of a coward,
+or that you'd submit to any open insult; but still I do say, you're not
+only not fond of fighting, but you're just not as much inclined that way
+as you should be.”
+
+“Indeed! what more would you have? Do you not say that I would not
+submit to insult?--that I show the proper degree of courage in such
+cases?”
+
+“Not the PROPER degree. That's the very question. You're not quick
+enough. You wait for the first blow. You don't step out to meet the
+enemy. You look for him to come to you.”
+
+“Surely! I look upon fighting as brutal--to be waited for, not
+sought--to be resorted to only in compliance with necessity--to be
+avoided to the last!”
+
+“No such thing--all a mistake. Fighting and the desire to get on the
+shoulders of our neighbors is a natural passion. We see that every day.
+The biggest boy licks the one just below him, he whips the next, and
+so down, and there's not one that don't lick somebody and don't stand
+licked himself--for the master licks the biggest. The desire to fight
+and flog is natural, and this being the case, it stands to reason that
+we must lick our neighbor or he'll be sure to lick us.”
+
+“Pshaw! you speak like a boy yet. This is schoolhouse philosophy.”
+
+“And very good philosophy too. I'm thinking the schoolhouse and the
+play-ground is pretty much a sort of world to itself. It's no bad show
+of what the world without is; and one of its first lessons and that
+which I think the truest, is the necessity of having a trial of strength
+with every new-comer; until we learn where he's to stand in the ranks,
+number one or number nothing. You see there just the same passions,
+though, perhaps, on a small scale, that we afterward find to act upon
+the big world of manhood. There, we fight for gingerbread, for marbles,
+top and ball; not unfrequently because we venture to look at our
+neighbor's sweetheart; and sometimes, quite as often, for the love of
+the thing and to know where the spirit and the sinew are. Well, isn't
+that just what the big world does after us? As men, we fight for bigger
+playthings, for pounds, where before we fought for pence--for gold where
+before we fought for coppers--for command of a country instead of a
+schoolyard; for our wives instead of sweethearts, and through sheer
+deviltry and the love of the thing, when there's nothing else to fight
+about, just the same as we did in boyhood.”
+
+“But even were you to prove, and I to admit, that it is so, just as you
+say, that would not prove the practice to be a jot more proper, or a jot
+less brutal.”
+
+“Begging your pardon, Bill, it proves it to be right and proper, and
+accordingly, if brutal, a becoming brutality. If this is the natural
+disposition of boys and men, don't you see that this schoolboy licking
+and fighting is a necessary part of one's moral education? It learns one
+to use his strength, his limbs and sinews, as he may be compelled to use
+them, in self-defence, in every future day of his life. You know very
+well what follows a boy at school who doesn't show himself ready to bung
+up his neighbor's eye the moment he sees it at a cross-twinkle. He gets
+his own bunged up. Well, it's just the same thing when he gets to be
+a man. If you have a dispute with your enemy, I don't say that you
+shouldn't reason with him, but I do say that your reasoning will have
+very little effect upon him unless he sees that you are able and willing
+to write it in black and blue upon his sheepskin. And what better way
+could you find to show him THAT, unless by giving him word and blow, the
+blow first, as being the most impressive argument?”
+
+“You must have been dreaming of these subjects last night.” said the
+grave cousin--“you seem to have them unusually well cut and dried.”
+
+“I haven't been dreaming about it, Bill, but I confess I've been
+thinking about it very seriously all night, and considering all the
+arguments that I thought you would make use of against it. I haven't
+quite done with my discussion, which I took up entirely for your
+benefit.”
+
+“Indeed! you are quite philanthropic before breakfast; but let us hear
+you?”
+
+“You talk of the brutality of fighting--now in what does that brutality
+consist? Is it not in breaking noses, kicking shins, bunging up eyes,
+and making one's neighbor feel uncomfortable in thigh, and back, and
+arms, and face, and skin, and indeed, everywhere, where a big fist or a
+cowhide shoe may plant a buffet or a bruise?”
+
+“Quite a definition, Ned.”
+
+“I'm glad you think so: for if it's brutal in the boy to do so to his
+schoolmate, is it less so for the schoolmaster to do the same thing to
+the boy that's under his charge? He bruises my skin, makes my thighs,
+and arms, and back, and legs, and face, and hands, ache, and if my
+definition be a correct one, he is quite as brutal as the boys who do
+the same thing to one another.”
+
+“He does it because the boys deserve it, and in order to make them
+obedient and active.”
+
+“And when did a boy not deserve a flogging when he gets licked by his
+companion?” demanded the other triumphantly--“and don't the licking make
+him obedient, and don't the kicking make him active? By gemini, I've
+seen more activity from one chap's legs under the quick application of
+another's feet, than I think anything else could produce, unless it were
+feet made expressly for such a purpose and worked by a steam-engine.
+That might make them move something faster, but I reckon there would be
+no need in such a case of any such improvement.”
+
+“What are you driving at, Ned Hinkley? This is by far the longest
+argument, I think, that you've ever undertaken. You must be moved by
+some very serious considerations.”
+
+“I am, and you'll see what I'm driving at after a little while. I'm not
+fond of arguing, you know, but I look upon the fighting principle as a
+matter to be known and believed in, and I wish to make clear to you my
+reasons for believing in it myself. You don't suppose I'd put down the
+fiddle for a talk at any time if the subject was not a serious one?”
+
+“Give way--you have the line.”
+
+“About the brutality of fighting then, there's another thing to be
+said. Fighting produces good feeling--that is to say supposing one party
+fairly to have licked another.”
+
+“Indeed--that's new.”
+
+“And true too, Bill Hinkley. It cures the sulks. It lets off steam.
+It's like a thunderstorm that comes once in a while, and drives away the
+clouds, and clears the skies until all's blue again.”
+
+“Black and blue.”
+
+“No! what was black becomes blue. Chaps that have been growling at each
+other for weeks and months lose their bad blood--”
+
+“From the nostrils!”
+
+“Yes, from the nostrils. It's a sort of natural channel, and runs freely
+from that quarter. The one crows and the other runs and there's an end
+of the scrape and the sulks. The weaker chap, feeling his weakness,
+ceases to be impudent; the stronger, having his power acknowledged,
+becomes the protector of the weak. Each party falls into his place, and
+so far from the licking producing bad feeling it produces good feeling
+and good humor; and I conclude that one half of the trouble in the
+world, the squabbles between man and man, woman and woman, boy and
+boy--nay, between rival nations--is simply because your false and
+foolish notions of brutality and philanthropy keep them from coming
+to the scratch as soon as they should. They hang off, growling and
+grumbling, and blackguarding, and blaspheming, when, if they would only
+take hold, and come to an earnest grapple, the odds would soon show
+themselves--broken heads and noses would follow--the bad blood would
+run, and as soon as each party found his level, the one being finally
+on his back, peace would ensue, and there would be good humor for ever
+after, or at least until the blood thickened again. I think there's
+reason in my notion. I was thinking it over half the night. I've thought
+of it oftentimes before. I've never yet seen the argument that's strong
+enough to tumble it.”
+
+“Your views are certainly novel, Ned, if not sound. You will excuse
+me if I do not undertake to dispute them this morning. I give in,
+therefore, and you may congratulate yourself upon having gained a
+triumph if not a convert?”
+
+“Stop, stop, William Hinkley: you don't suppose I've done all this
+talking only to make a convert or to gain a triumph?”
+
+“Why, that's your object in fighting, why not in arguing?”
+
+“Well, that's the object of most persons when they dispute, I know; but
+it is not mine. I wish to make a practical application of my doctrine.”
+
+“Indeed! who do you mean to fight now?”
+
+“It's not for me to fight, it's for you.”
+
+“Me!”
+
+“Yes; you have the preference by rights, though if you don't--and I'm
+rather sorry to think, as I told you at the start, that the only fault
+I had to find with you is that you're not a fighter--I must take your
+place and settle the difference.”
+
+William Hinkley turned upon the speaker. The latter had laid down the
+violin, having, in the course of the argument, broken all its strings;
+and he stood now, unjacketed, and still in the chamber, where the two
+young men had been sleeping, almost in the attitude of one about to
+grapple with an antagonist. The serious face of him whose voice had been
+for war--his startling position--the unwonted eagerness of his eye,
+and the ludicrous importance which he attached to the strange principle
+which he had been asserting--conquered for a moment the graver mood
+of his love-sick companion, and he laughed outright at his pugnacious
+cousin. The latter seemed a little offended.
+
+“It's well you can laugh at such things, Bill Hinkley, but I can't.
+There was a time when every mother's son in Kentucky was a man, and
+could stand up to his rack with the best. If he couldn't keep the top
+place, he went a peg lower; but he made out to keep the place for which
+he was intended. Then, if a man disliked his neighbor he crossed over to
+him and said so, and they went at it like men, and as soon as the pout
+was over they shook hands, and stood side by side, and shoulder to
+shoulder, like true friends, in every danger, and never did fellows
+fight better against Indians and British than the same two men, that had
+lapped muscles, and rolled in the grain together till you couldn't say
+whose was whose, and which was which, till the best man jumped up, and
+shook himself, and gave the word to crow. After that it was all peace
+and good humor, and they drank and danced together, and it didn't lessen
+a man in his sweetheart's eyes, though he was licked, if he could say
+he had stood up like a man, and was downed after a good hug, because he
+couldn't help it. Now, there's precious little of that. The chap that
+dislikes his fellow, hasn't the soul to say it out, but he goes aside
+and sneers and snickers, and he whispers things that breed slanders,
+and scandals, and bad blood, until there's no trusting anybody; and
+everything is full of hate and enmity--but then it's so peaceful!
+Peaceful, indeed! as if there was any peace where there is no
+confidence, and no love, and no good feeling either for one thing or
+another.”
+
+“Really, Ned, it seems to me you're indignant without any occasion. I am
+tempted to laugh at you again.”
+
+“No, don't. You'd better not.”
+
+“Ha! ha! ha! I can not help it, Ned; so don't buffet me. You forced me
+into many a fight when I was a boy, for which I had no stomach; I trust
+you will not pummel me yourself because the world has grown so hatefully
+pacific. Tell me, in plain terms, who I am to fight now.”
+
+“Who! who but Stevens?--this fellow Stevens. He's your enemy, you
+say--comes between you and your sweetheart--between you and your own
+mother--seems to look down upon you--speaks to you as if he was wiser,
+and better, and superior in every way--makes you sad and sulky to your
+best friends--you growl and grumble at him--you hate him--you fear
+him--”
+
+“Fear him!”
+
+“Yes, yes, I say fear him, for it's a sort of fear to skulk off from
+your mother's house to avoid seeing him--”
+
+“What, Ned, do you tell me that--do you begrudge me a place with you
+here, my bed, my breakfast?”
+
+“Begrudge! dang it, William Hinkley, don't tell me that, unless you want
+me to lay heavy hand on your shoulder!”--and the tears gushed into
+the rough fellow's eyes as he spoke these words, and he turned off to
+conceal them.
+
+“I don't mean to vex you, Ned, but why tell me that I skulk--that I fear
+this man?”
+
+“Begrudge!” muttered the other.
+
+“Nay, forgive me; I didn't mean it. I was hasty when I said so; but
+you also said things to provoke me. Do you suppose that I fear this man
+Stevens?”
+
+“Why don't you lick him then, or let him lick you, and bring the
+matter to an ending? Find out who's the best man, and put an end to
+the growling and the groaning. As it now stands you're not the same
+person--you're not fit company for any man. You scarcely talk, you
+listen to nobody. You won't fish, you won't hunt: you're sulky yourself
+and you make other people so!”
+
+“I'm afraid, Ned, it wouldn't much help the matter even if I were to
+chastise the stranger.”
+
+“It would cure him of his impudence. It would make him know how to
+treat you; and if the rest of your grievance comes from Margaret Cooper,
+there's a way to end that too.”
+
+“How! you wouldn't have me fight her?” said William Hinkley, with an
+effort to smile.
+
+“Why, we may call it fighting,” said the advocate for such wholesale
+pugnacity, “since it calls for quite as much courage sometimes to face
+one woman as it does to face three men. But what I mean that you should
+do with her is to up and at her. Put the downright question like a man
+'will you?' or 'won't you?' and no more beating about the bush. If she
+says 'no!' there's no more to be said, and if I was you after that, I'd
+let Stevens have her or the d--l himself, since I'm of the notion that
+no woman is fit for me if she thinks me not fit for her. Such a woman
+can't be worth having, and after that I wouldn't take her as a gracious
+gift were she to be made twice as beautiful. The track's before you,
+William Hinkley. Bring the stranger to the hug, and Margaret Cooper too,
+if she'll let you. But, at all events, get over the grunting and the
+growling, the sulky looks, and the sour moods. They don't become a man
+who's got a man's heart, and the sinews of a man.”
+
+William Hinkley leaned against the fireplace with his head resting upon
+his hand. The other approached him.
+
+“I don't mean to say anything, Bill, or even to look anything, that'll
+do you hurt. I'm for bringing your trouble to a short cut. I've told
+you what I think right and reasonable, and for no other man in Kentucky
+would I have taken the pains to think out this matter as I have done.
+But you or I must lick Stevens.”
+
+“You forget, Ned. Your eagerness carries you astray. Would you beat a
+man who offers no resistance?”
+
+“Surely not.”
+
+“Stevens is a non-combatant. If you were to slap John Cross on one cheek
+he'd turn you the other. He'd never strike you back.”
+
+“John Cross and Stevens are two persons. I tell you the stranger WILL
+fight. I'm sure of it. I've seen it in his looks and actions.”
+
+“Do you think so?”
+
+“I do; I'm sure of it. But you must recollect besides, that John
+Cross is a preacher, already sworn in, as I may say. Stevens is only a
+beginner. Besides, John Cross is an old man; Stevens, a young one. John
+Cross don't care a straw about all the pretty girls in the country. He
+works in the business of souls, not beauties, and it's very clear that
+Stevens not only loves a pretty girl, but that he's over head and heels
+in love with your Margaret--”
+
+“Say no more. If he will fight, Ned Hinkley, he shall fight!”
+
+“Bravo, Bill--that's all that I was arguing for--that's all that I want.
+But you must make at Margaret Cooper also.”
+
+“Ah! Ned, there I confess my fears.”
+
+“Why, what are you afraid of?”
+
+“Rejection!”
+
+“Is that worse than this suspense--this anxiety--this looking out from
+morning till night for the sunshine, and this constant apprehension
+of the clouds--this knowing not what to be about--this sulking--this
+sadding--this growling--this grunting--this muling--this moping--this
+eternal vinegar-face and ditchwater-spirit?”
+
+“I don't know, Ned, but I confess my weakness--my want of courage in
+this respect!”
+
+“Psho! the bark's worse always than the bite. The fear worse than the
+danger! Suspense is the very d--l! Did you ever hear of the Scotch
+parson's charity? He prayed that God might suspend Napoleon over the
+very jaws of hell--but 'Oh, Lord!' said he, 'dinna let him fa' in!' To
+my mind, mortal lips never uttered a more malignant prayer!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+TRAILING THE FOX.
+
+
+
+
+
+This dialogue was broken by a summons to the breakfast-table. We have
+already intimated that while the hateful person of Stevens was an inmate
+of his own house, William Hinkley remained, the better portion of his
+time, at that of his cousin. It was not merely that Stevens was hateful
+to his sight, but such was the devotion of his father and mother to that
+adventurer, that the young man passed with little notice from either,
+or if he incurred their attention at all, it was only to receive their
+rebuke. He had not been able to disguise from them his dislike to
+Stevens. This dislike showed itself in many ways--in coldness, distance,
+silence--a reluctance to accord the necessary civilities, and in very
+unequivocal glances of hostility from the eyes of the jealous young
+villager.
+
+Such offences against good-breeding were considered by them as so many
+offences against God himself, shown to one who was about to profess
+his ministry; and being prepared to see in Brother Stevens an object of
+worth and veneration only, they lacked necessarily all that keenness
+of discrimination which might have helped somewhat to qualify the
+improprieties of which they believed their son to be guilty. Of his
+causes of jealousy they had no suspicion, and they shared none of his
+antipathies. He was subject to the daily lecture from the old man, and
+the nightly exhortation and expostulation of the old woman. The latter
+did her spiriting gently. The former roared and thundered. The mother
+implored and kissed--the father denounced and threatened. The one,
+amidst the faults of her you which she reproved, could see his virtues;
+she could also see that he was suffering--she knew not why--as well as
+sinning; the other could only see an insolent, disobedient boy who was
+taking airs upon himself, flying in the face of his parents, and doomed
+to perish like the sons of Eli, unless by proving himself a better
+manager than Eli, he addressed himself in time to the breaking in of
+the unruly spirit whose offences promised to be so heinous. It was
+not merely from the hateful sight of his rival, or the monotonous
+expostulation of his mother, that the poor youth fled; it was sometimes
+to escape the heavily chastening hand of his bigoted father.
+
+These things worked keenly and constantly in the mind of William
+Hinkley. They acquired additional powers of ferment from the coldness of
+Margaret Cooper, and from the goadings of his cousin. Naturally one of
+the gentlest of creatures, the young man was not deficient in spirit.
+What seemed to his more rude and elastic relative a token of imbecility,
+was nothing more than the softening influence of his reflective and
+mental over his physical powers. These, under the excitement of his
+blood were necessarily made subject to his animal impulses, and when he
+left the house that morning, with his Blackstone under his arm, on
+his way to the peaceful cottage of old Calvert, where he pursued his
+studies, his mind was in a perfect state of chaos. Of the chapter which
+he had striven to compass the previous night, in which the rights of
+persons are discussed with the usual clearness of style, but the usual
+one-sidedness of judgment of that smooth old monarchist, William Hinkley
+scarcely remembered a solitary syllable. He had read only with his eyes.
+His mind had kept no pace with his proceedings, and though he strove as
+he went along to recall the heads of topics, the points and principles
+of what he had been reading, his efforts at reflection, by insensible
+but sudden transitions, invariably concluded with some image of strife
+and commotion, in which he was one of the parties and Alfred Stevens
+another; the beautiful, proud face of Margaret Cooper being always
+unaccountably present, and seeming to countenance, with its scornful
+smiles, the spirit of strife which operated upon the combatants.
+
+This mood had the most decided effect upon his appearance; and the
+good old man, Calvert, whose attention had been already drawn to the
+condition of distress and suffering which he manifested, was now more
+than ever struck with the seemingly sudden increase of this expression
+upon his face. It was Saturday--the saturnalia of schoolboys--and a day
+of rest to the venerable teacher. He was seated before his door, under
+the shadows of his paternal oak, once more forgetting the baffled aims
+and profitless toils of his own youthful ambition, in the fascinating
+pages of that historical romancer the stout Abbe Vertot. But a glance at
+the youth soon withdrew his mind from this contemplation, and the sombre
+pages of the present opened upon his eye, and the doubtful ones of the
+future became, on the instant, those which he most desired to peruse.
+
+The study of the young is always a study of the past with the old. They
+seem, in such a contemplation, to live over the records of memory. They
+feel as one just returning from a long and weary journey, who encounters
+another, freshly starting to traverse the same weary but inviting track.
+Something in the character of William Hinkley, which seemed to resemble
+his own, made this feeling yet more active in the mind of Mr. Calvert;
+and his earnest desire was to help the youth forward on the path which,
+he soon perceived, it was destined that the other should finally take.
+He was not satisfied with the indecision of character which the youth
+displayed. But how could he blame it harshly? It was in this very
+respect that his own character had failed, and though he felt that all
+his counsels were to be addressed to this point, yet he knew not where;
+or in what manner, to begin. The volume of Blackstone which the youth
+carried suggested to him a course, however. He bade the young man bring
+out a chair, and taking the book in his hand, he proceeded to examine
+him upon parts of the volume which he professed to have been reading.
+
+This examination, as it had the effect of compelling the mind of the
+student to contract itself to a single subject of thought, necessarily
+had the further effect of clearing it somewhat from the chaos of clouds
+which had been brooding over it, obscuring the light, and defeating
+the warmth of the intellectual sun behind them; and if the examination
+proved the youth to have been very little of a student, or one who had
+been reading with a vacant mind, it also proved that the original powers
+of his intellect were vigorous and various--that he had an analytical
+capacity of considerable compass; was bold in opinion, ingenious in
+solution, and with a tendency to metaphysical speculation, which,
+modified by the active wants and duties of a large city-practice, would
+have made him a subtle lawyer, and a very logical debater. But the blush
+kept heightening on the youth's cheeks as the examination proceeded. He
+had answered, but he felt all the while how much his answer had sprung
+from his own conjectures and how little from his authorities. The
+examination convinced him that the book had been so much waste-paper
+under his thumb. When it was ended the old man closed the volume, laid
+it on the sward beside him, and looked, with a mingled expression of
+interest and commiseration, on his face. William Hinkley noted this
+expression, and spoke, with a degree of mortification in look and
+accent, which he did not attempt to hide:--
+
+“I am afraid, sir, you will make nothing of me. I can make nothing of
+myself. I am almost inclined to give up in despair. I will be nothing--I
+can be nothing. I feared as much from the beginning, sir. You only waste
+your time on me.”
+
+“You speak too fast, William--you let your blood mingle too much with
+your thoughts. Let me ask you one question. How long will you be content
+to live as you do now--seeking nothing--performing nothing--being
+nothing?”
+
+The youth was silent.
+
+“I, you see, am nothing,” continued the old man--“nay, do not interrupt
+me. You will tell me, as you have already told me, that I am much, and
+have done much, here in Charlemont. But, for all that I am, and have
+done here, I need not have gone beyond my accidence. My time has been
+wasted; my labors, considered as means to ends, were unnecessary; I have
+toiled without the expected profits of toil; I have drawn water in a
+sieve. It is not pleasant for me to recall these things, much less to
+speak of them; but it is for your good that I told you my story. You
+have, as I had, certain defects of character--not the same exactly, but
+of the same family complexion. To be something, you must be resolved.
+You must devote yourself, heart and mind, with all your soul and with
+all your strength, to the business you have undertaken. Shut your
+windows against the sunshine, your ears to the song of birds, your heart
+against the fascinations of beauty; and if you never think of the last
+until you are thirty, you will be then a better judge of beauty, a truer
+lover, a better husband, a more certain candidate for happiness. Let
+me assure you that, of the hundred men that take wives before they are
+thirty, there is scarcely one who, in his secret soul, does not repent
+it--scarcely one who does not look back with yearning to the days when
+he was free.”
+
+There was a pause. The young man became very much agitated. He rose from
+his chair, walked apart for a few moments, and then, returning, resumed
+his seat by the old man.
+
+“I believe you are right, sir--nay, I know you are; but I can not be
+at once--I can not promise--to be all that you wish. If Margaret Cooper
+would consent, I would marry her to-morrow.”
+
+The old man shook his head, but remained silent. The young one
+proceeded:--
+
+“One thing I will say, however: I will take to my studies after this
+week, whatever befalls, with the hearty resolution which you recommend.
+I will try to shut out the sunshine and the song. I will endeavor to
+devote soul and strength, and heart and mind, to the task before me. I
+KNOW that I can master these studies--I think I can”--he continued,
+more modestly, modifying the positive assertion--“and I know that it is
+equally my interest and duty to do so. I thank you sir, very much for
+what you have told me. Believe me, it has not fallen upon heedless or
+disrespectful ears.”
+
+The old man pressed his hand.
+
+“I know THAT, my son, and I rejoice to think that, having given me these
+assurances, you will strive hard to make them good.”
+
+“I will, sir!” replied William, taking up his cap to depart.
+
+“But whither are you going now?”
+
+The youth blushed as he replied frankly:--
+
+“To the widow Cooper's. I'm going to see Margaret.”
+
+“Well, well!” said the old man, as the youth disappeared, “if it must be
+done, the sooner it's over the better. But there's another moth to the
+flame. Fortunately, he will be singed only; but she!--what is left
+for her--so proud, yet so confiding--so confident of strength, yet so
+artless? But it is useless to look beyond, and very dismal.”
+
+And the speaker once more took up Vertot, and was soon lost amid the
+glories of the knights of St. John. His studies were interrupted by the
+sudden and boisterous salutation of Ned Hinkley:--
+
+“Well, gran'pa, hard at the big book as usual? No end to the fun of
+fighting, eh? I confess, if ever I get to love reading, it'll be in some
+such book as that. But reading's not natural to me, though you made me
+do enough of it while you had me. Bill was the boy for the books, and
+I for the hooks. By-the-way, talking of hooks, how did those trout eat?
+Fine, eh? I haven't seen you since the day of our ducking.”
+
+“No, Ned, and I've been looking for you. Where have you been?”
+
+“Working, working! Everything's been going wrong. Lines snapped,
+fiddle-strings cracked, hooks missing, gun rusty, and Bill Hinkley so
+sulky, that his frown made a shadow on the wall as large and ugly as a
+buffalo's. But where is he? I came to find him here.”
+
+While he was speaking, the lively youth squatted down, and deliberately
+took his seat on the favorite volume which Mr. Calvert had laid upon the
+sward at his approach.
+
+“Take the chair, Ned,” said the old man, with a smaller degree of
+kindness in his tone than was habitual with him. “Take the chair.
+Books are sacred things--to be worshipped and studied, not employed as
+footstools.”
+
+“Why, what's the hurt, gran'pa?” demanded the young man, though he rose
+and did as he was bidden. “If 'twas a fiddle, now, there would be some
+danger of a crash, but a big book like that seems naturally made to sit
+upon.”
+
+The old man answered him mildly:--
+
+“I have learned to venerate books, Ned, and can no more bear to see
+them abused than I could bear to be abused myself. It seems to me like
+treating their writers and their subjects with scorn. If you were to
+contemplate the venerable heads of the old knights with my eyes and
+feelings, you would see why I wish to guard them from everything like
+disrespect.”
+
+“Well, I beg their pardon--a thousand pardons! I meant no offence,
+gran'pa--and can't help thinking that it's all a notion of yours, your
+reverencing such old Turks and Spaniards that have been dead a thousand
+years. They were very good people, no doubt, but I'm thinking they've
+served their turn; and I see no more harm in squatting upon their
+histories than in walking over their graves, which, if I were in their
+country of Jericho--that was where they lived, gran'pa, wa'n't it?--I
+should be very apt to do without asking leave, I tell you.”
+
+Ned Hinkley purposely perverted his geography and history. There was a
+spice of mischief in his composition, and he grinned good-naturedly as
+he watched the increasing gravity upon the old man's face.
+
+“Come, come, gran'pa, don't be angry. You know my fun is a sort of
+fizz--there's nothing but a flash--nothing to hurt--no shotting. But
+where's Bill Hinkley, gran'pa?”
+
+“Gone to the widow Cooper's, to see Margaret.”
+
+“Ah! well, I'm glad he's made a beginning. But I'd much rather he'd have
+seen the other first.”
+
+“What other do you mean?” demanded the old man; but the speaker, though
+sufficiently random and reckless in what he said, saw the impolicy
+of allowing the purpose of his cousin in regard to Stevens to be
+understood. He contrived to throw the inquirer off.
+
+“Gran'pa, do you know there's something in this fellow Stevens that
+don't altogether please me? I'm not satisfied with him.”
+
+“Ah, indeed! what do you see to find fault with?”
+
+“Well, you see, he comes here pretending to study. Now, in the first
+place, why should he come here to study? why didn't he stay at home with
+his friends and parents?”
+
+“Perhaps he had neither. Perhaps he had no home. You might as well ask
+me why I came here, and settled down, where I was not born--where I had
+neither friends nor parents.”
+
+“Oh, no, but you told us why,” said the other. “You gave us a reason for
+what you did.”
+
+“And why may not the stranger give a reason too?”
+
+“He don't, though.”
+
+“Perhaps he will when you get intimate with him. I see nothing in
+this to be dissatisfied with. I had not thought you so suspicious, Ned
+Hinkley--so little charitable.”
+
+“Charity begins at home, gran'pa. But there's more in this matter.
+This man comes here to study to be a parson. How does he study? Can you
+guess?”
+
+“I really can not.”
+
+“By dressing spruce as a buck--curling his hair backward over his ears
+something like a girl's, and going out, morning, noon, and night, to see
+Margaret Cooper.”
+
+“As there is no good reason to suppose that a student of divinity
+is entirely without the affections of humanity, I still see nothing
+inconsistent with his profession in this conduct.”
+
+“But how can he study?”
+
+“Ah! it may be inconsistent with his studies though not with his
+profession. It is human without being altogether proper. You see that
+your cousin neglects his studies in the same manner. I presume that the
+stranger also loves Miss Cooper.”
+
+“But he has no such right as Bill Hinkley.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Why not? Why, Bill is a native here, has been loving her for the last
+year or more. His right certainly ought to be much greater than that of
+a man whom nobody knows--who may be the man in the moon for anything we
+know to the contrary--just dropped in upon us, nobody knows how, to do
+nobody knows what.”
+
+“All that may be very true, Ned, and yet his right to seek Miss Cooper
+may be just as good as that of yourself or mine. You forget that it all
+depends upon the young lady herself whether either of them is to have a
+right at all in her concerns.”
+
+“Well, that's a subject we needn't dispute about, gran'pa, when there's
+other things. Now, isn't it strange that this stranger should ride off
+once a week with his valise on his saddle, just as if he was starting on
+a journey--should be gone half a day--then come back with his nag all
+in a foam, and after that you should see him in some new cravat, or
+waistcoat, or pantaloons, just as if he had gone home and got a change?”
+
+“And does he do that?” inquired Mr. Calvert, with some show of
+curiosity.
+
+“That he does, and he always takes the same direction; and it seems--so
+Aunt Sarah herself says, though she thinks him a small sort of divinity
+on earth--that the day before, he's busy writing letters, and, according
+to her account, pretty long letters too. Well, nobody sees that he ever
+gets any letters in return. He never asks at the post-office, so Jacob
+Zandts himself tells me, and that's strange enough, too, if so be he has
+any friends or relations anywhere else.”
+
+Mr. Calvert listened with interest to these and other particulars which
+his young companion had gathered respecting the habits of the stranger;
+and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that there was
+something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps mysterious.
+Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the prying and
+suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this effect in the
+reply which finally dismissed the subject. Ned Hinkley was silenced not
+satisfied.
+
+“There's something wrong about it,” he muttered to himself on leaving
+the old man, “and, by dickens! I'll get to the bottom of it, or there's
+no taste in Salt-river. The fellow's a rascal; I feel it if I don't know
+it, and if Bill Hinkley don't pay him off, I must. One or t'other must
+do it, that's certain.”
+
+With these reflections, which seemed to him to be no less moral than
+social, the young man took his way back to the village, laboring with
+all the incoherence of unaccustomed thought, to strike out some process
+by which to find a solution for those mysteries which were supposed to
+characterize the conduct of the stranger. He had just turned out of
+the gorge leading from Calvert's house into the settlement, when he
+encountered the person to whom his meditations were given, on horseback;
+and going at a moderate gallop along the high-road to the country.
+Stevens bowed to him and drew up for speech as he drew nigh. At first
+Ned Hinkley appeared disposed to avoid him, but moved by a sudden
+notion, he stopped and suffered himself to speak with something more of
+civility than he had hitherto shown to the same suspected personage.
+
+“Why, you're not going to travel, Parson Stevens,” said he--“you're not
+going to leave us, are you?”
+
+“No, sir--I only wish to give myself and horse a stretch of a few miles
+for the sake of health. Too much stable, they say, makes a saucy nag.”
+
+“So it does, and I may say, a saucy man too. But seeing you with your
+valise, I thought you were off for good.”
+
+Stevens said something about his being so accustomed to ride with the
+valise that he carried it without thinking.
+
+“I scarcely knew I had it on!”
+
+“That's a lie all round,” said Ned Hinkley to himself as the other rode
+off. “Now, if I was mounted, I'd ride after him and see where he goes
+and what he's after. What's to hinder? It's but a step to the stable,
+and but five minutes to the saddle. Dang it, but I'll take trail this
+time if I never did before.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE DOOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+With this determination our suspicious youth made rapid progress in
+getting out his horse. A few minutes saw him mounted, and putting
+some of his resolution into his heels, he sent the animal forward at a
+killing start, under the keen infliction of the spur. He had marked with
+his eye the general course which Stevens had taken up the hills, and
+having a nag of equal speed and bottom, did not scruple, in the great
+desire which he felt, to ascertain the secret of the stranger, to make
+him display the qualities of both from the very jump. Stevens had been
+riding with a free rein, but in consequence of these energetic measures
+on the part of Hinkley, the latter soon succeeded in overhauling him.
+Still he had already gone a space of five miles, and this, too, in
+one direction. He looked back when he found himself pursued, and his
+countenance very clearly expressed the chagrin which he felt. This
+he strove, but with very indifferent success, to hide from the keen
+searching eyes of his pursuer. He drew up to wait his coming, and there
+was a dash of bitterness in his tones as he expressed his “gratification
+at finding a companion where he least expected one.”
+
+“And perhaps, parson, when you didn't altogether wish for one,” was the
+reply of the reckless fellow. “The truth is, I know I'm not the sort of
+company that a wise, sensible, learned, and pious young gentleman would
+like to keep, out the truth is what you said about taking a stretch, man
+and beast, seemed to me to be just about as wise a thing for me and
+my beast also. We've been lying by so long that I was getting a little
+stiff in my joints, and Flipflap, my nag here, was getting stiff in his
+neck, as they say was the case with the Jews in old times, so I took
+your idea and put after you, thinking that you'd agree with me that bad
+company's far better than none.”
+
+There was a mixture of simplicity and archness in the manner of the
+speaker that put Stevens somewhat at fault; but he saw that it wouldn't
+do to show the dudgeon which he really felt; and smoothing his quills
+with as little obvious effort as possible, he expressed his pleasure at
+the coming of his companion. While doing so, he wheeled his horse about,
+and signified a determination to return.
+
+“What! so soon? Why, Lord bless you, Flipflap has scarcely got in motion
+yet. If such a stir will do for your nag 'twont do for him.”
+
+But Stevens doggedly kept his horse's head along the back track, though
+the animal himself exhibited no small restlessness and a disposition to
+go forward.
+
+“Well, really, Parson Stevens, I take it as unkind that you turn back
+almost the very moment I join you. I seem to have scared ride out of you
+if not out of your creature; but do as you please. I'll ride on, now I'm
+out. I don't want to force myself on any man for company.”
+
+Stevens disclaimed any feeling of this sort, but declared he had ridden
+quite as far as he intended; and while he hesitated, Hinkley cut the
+matter short by putting spurs to his steed, and going out of sight in a
+moment.
+
+“What can the cur mean?” demanded Stevens of himself, the moment after
+they had separated. “Can he have any suspicions? Ha! I must be watchful!
+At all events, there's no going forward to-day. I must put it off for
+next week; and meanwhile have all my eyes about me. The fellow seems to
+have as much cunning as simplicity. He is disposed too, to be insolent
+I marked his manner at the lake, as well as that of his bull-headed
+cousin; but that sousing put anger out of me, and then, again, 'twill
+scarcely do in these good days for such holy men as myself to take up
+cudgels. I must bear it for awhile as quietly as possible. It will not
+be long. She at least is suspicionless. Never did creature so
+happily delude herself. Yet what a judgment in some things! What keen
+discrimination! What a wild, governless imagination! She would be a
+prize, if it were only to exhibit. How she would startle the dull,
+insipid, tea-table simperers on our Helicon--nay, with what scorn she
+would traverse the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a
+will in spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could
+be no prescribing to her the time when she should roar--no teaching her
+to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue, would
+speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when Mrs.
+Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems--her new versions
+of the Psalms and Scriptures--her blank verse elegiacs--oh! how
+blank!--beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'--or 'The evening veil
+hung low,' or, 'It slept,'--or after some other equally threatening form
+and fashion--I can fancy how the bright eye of Margaret would gleam with
+scorn; and while the Pollies and Dollies, the Patties and Jennies, the
+Corydons and Jemmy Jesamies, all round were throwing up hands and eyes
+in a sort of rapture, how she would look, with what equal surprise and
+contempt, doubting her own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the
+strange sycophancy which induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay,
+with a natural and patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to
+her about poetry, with that assured smile of self-excellence which such
+a venerable authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the
+dame and exclaim--'What! do you call that poetry?' What a concussion
+would follow. How the simperers would sheer off; the tea that night
+might as well be made of aqua-fortis. Ha! ha! I can fancy the scene
+before me. Nothing could be more rich. I must give her a glimpse of such
+a scene. It will be a very good mode of operation. Her pride and vanity
+will do the rest. I have only to intimate the future sway--the exclusive
+sovereignty which would follow--the overthrow of the ancient idols, and
+the setting up of a true divinity in herself. But shall it be so, Master
+Stevens? Verily, that will be seen hereafter. Enough, if the delusion
+takes. If I can delude the woman through the muse, I am satisfied. The
+muse after that may dispose of the woman as she pleases.”
+
+Such was a portion of the soliloquy of the libertine as he rode slowly
+back to Charlemont. His further musings we need not pursue at present.
+It is enough to say that they were of the same family character. He
+returned to his room as soon as he reached his lodging-house, and
+drawing from his pocket a bundle of letters which he had intended
+putting in the postoffice at Ellisland, he carefully locked them up in
+his portable writing-desk which he kept at the bottom of his valise.
+When the devout Mrs. Hinkley tapped at his door to summon him to dinner,
+the meritorious young man was to be seen, seated at his table, with the
+massive Bible of the family conspicuously open before him. Good young
+man! never did he invoke a blessing on the meats with more holy unction
+than on that very day.
+
+Meanwhile, let us resume our progress with William Hinkley, and inquire
+in what manner his wooing sped with the woman whom he so unwisely loved.
+We have seen him leaving the cottage of Mr. Calvert with the avowed
+purpose of seeking a final answer. A purpose from which the old man did
+not seek to dissuade him, though he readily conceived its fruitlessness.
+It was with no composed spirit that the young rustic felt himself
+approaching the house of Mrs. Cooper. More than once he hesitated
+and even halted. But a feeling of shame, and the efforts of returning
+manliness re-resolved him, and he hurried with an unwonted rapidity of
+movement toward the dwelling, as if he distrusted his own power, unless
+he did so, to conclude the labor he had begun.
+
+He gathered some courage when he found that Margaret was from home. She
+had gone on her usual rambles. Mrs. Cooper pointed out the course which
+she had taken, and the young man set off in pursuit. The walks of the
+maiden were of course well known to a lover so devoted. He had sought
+and followed her a thousand times, and the general direction which she
+had gone, once known, his progress was as direct as his discoveries were
+certain. The heart of the youth, dilated with better hopes as he felt
+himself traversing the old familiar paths. It seemed to him that the
+fates could scarcely be adverse in a region which had always been so
+friendly. Often had he escorted her along this very route, when their
+spirits better harmonized--when, more of the girl struggling into
+womanhood, the mind of Margaret Cooper, ignorant of its own resources
+and unconscious of its maturer desires, was more gentle, and could
+rejoice in that companionship for which she now betrayed so little
+desire. The sheltered paths and well-known trees, even the little
+clumps of shrubbery that filled up the intervals, were too pleasant and
+familiar to his eye not to seem favorable to his progress, and with a
+hope that had no foundation, save in the warm and descriptive colors of
+a young heart's fancy, William Hinkley pursued the route which led him
+to one of the most lovely and love-haunted glades in all Kentucky.
+
+So sweet a hush never hallowed the sabbath rest of any forest. The very
+murmur of a drowsy zephyr among the leaves was of slumberous tendency;
+and silence prevailed, with the least possible exertion of her
+authority, over the long narrow dell through which the maiden had gone
+wandering. At the foot of a long slope, to which his eye was conducted
+by a natural and lovely vista, the youth beheld the object of his
+search, sitting, motionless, with her back toward him. The reach of
+light was bounded by her figure which was seated on the decaying trunk
+of a fallen tree. She was deeply wrapped in thought, for she did not
+observe his approach, and when his voice reached her ears, and she
+started and looked round, her eyes were full of tears. These she hastily
+brushed away, and met the young man with a degree of composure which
+well might have put the blush upon his cheek, for the want of it.
+
+“In tears!--weeping, Margaret?” was the first address of the lover who
+necessarily felt shocked at what he saw.
+
+“They were secret tears, sir--not meant for other eyes,” was the
+reproachful reply.
+
+“Ah, Margaret! but why should you have secret tears, when you might have
+sympathy--why should you have tears at all? You have no sorrows.”
+
+“Sympathy!” was the exclamation of the maiden, while a scornful smile
+gleamed from her eyes; “whose sympathy, I pray?”
+
+The young man hesitated to answer. The expression of her eye discouraged
+him. He dreaded lest, in offering his sympathies, he should extort from
+her lips a more direct intimation of that scorn which he feared. He
+chose a middle course.
+
+“But that you should have sorrows, Margaret, seems very strange to me.
+You are young and hearty; endowed beyond most of your sex, and with
+a beauty which can not be too much admired. Your mother is hearty and
+happy, and for years you have had no loss of relations to deplore. I see
+not why you should have sorrows.”
+
+“It is very likely, William Hinkley, that you do not see. The ordinary
+sorrows of mankind arise from the loss of wives and cattle, children and
+property. There are sorrows of another kind; sorrows of the soul; the
+consciousness of denial; of strife--strife to be continued--strife
+without victory--baffled hopes--defeated aims and energies. These are
+sorrows which are not often computed in the general account. It is
+highly probable that none of them afflict you. You have your parents,
+and very good people they are. You yourself are no doubt a very good
+young man--so everybody says--and you have health and strength.
+Besides, you have property, much more, I am told, than falls to the lot
+ordinarily of young people in this country. These are reasons why you
+should not feel any sorrow; but were all these mine and a great deal
+more, I'm afraid it would not make me any more contented. You, perhaps,
+will not understand this, William Hinkley, but I assure you that such,
+nevertheless is my perfect conviction.”
+
+“Yes, I can, and do understand it, Margaret,” said the young man, with
+flushed cheek and a very tremulous voice, as he listened to language
+which, though not intended to be contemptuous, was yet distinctly
+colored by that scornful estimate which the maiden had long since made
+of the young man's abilities. In this respect she had done injustice to
+his mind, which had been kept in subjection and deprived of its ordinary
+strength and courage, by the enfeebling fondness of his heart.
+
+“Yes, Margaret,” he continued, “I can and do understand it, and I too
+have my sorrows of this very sort. Do not smile, Margaret, but hear me
+patiently, and believe, that, whatever may be the error which I commit,
+I have no purpose to offend you in what I say or do. Perhaps, we are
+both of us quite too young to speak of the sorrows which arise from
+defeated hopes, or baffled energies, or denial of our rights and claims.
+The yearnings and apprehensions which we are apt to feel of this sort
+are not to be counted as sorrows, or confounded with them. I had a
+conversation on this very subject only a few days ago, with old Mr.
+Calvert, and this was his very opinion.”
+
+The frankness with which William Hinkley declared the source of his
+opinions, though creditable to his sincerity, was scarcely politic--it
+served to confirm Margaret Cooper in the humble estimate which she had
+formed of the speaker.
+
+“Mr. Calvert,” said she, “is a very sensible old man, but neither he
+nor you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall, or what
+shall not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William Hinkley, that
+I have my cares--at least I fancy that I have them--and though I am
+very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that they can do me any
+good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline them.”
+
+“Oh, do not say so, Margaret--dear Margaret--it is to proffer them that
+I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved you: you
+can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary to my happiness!
+Do not repulse me--do not speak quickly. What I am, and what I have, is
+yours. We have grown up together; I have known no other hope, no other
+love, but that for you. Look not upon me with that scornful glance--hear
+me--I implore you--on my knee, dear Margaret. I implore you as for
+life--for something more dear than life--that which will make life
+precious--which may make it valuable. Be mine, dear Margaret--”
+
+“Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!” was the stern,
+almost deliberate answer of the maiden.
+
+“Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret--do not
+look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that the dearest
+hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips.”
+
+“And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold in
+yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?”
+
+“The meanest creature has it.”
+
+“Aye, but only of creatures like itself.”
+
+“Margaret!” exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.
+
+“Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates to
+a creature like itself--endowed with its own nature and fed with like
+sympathies. But you--what should make you hope of me? Have I not long
+avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you the pain of this
+moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps--you pursue me--you
+annoy me with attentions which I dare not receive for fear of
+encouraging you, and in spite of all this, which everybody in the
+village must have seen but yourself, you still press yourself upon me.”
+
+“Margaret Cooper, be not so proud!”
+
+“I am what I am! I know that I am proud--vain, perhaps, and having
+little to justify either pride or vanity; but to you, William Hinkley,
+as an act of justice, I must speak what I feel--what is the truth. I am
+sorry, from my very soul, that you love me, for I can have no feeling
+for you in return. I do not dislike you, but you have so oppressed me
+that I would prefer not to see you. We have no feelings in common. You
+can give me no sympathies. My soul, my heart, my hope--every desire of
+my mind, every impulse of my heart, leads me away from you--from
+all that you can give--from all that you can relish. To you it would
+suffice, if all your life could be spent here in Charlemont--to me it
+would be death to think that any such doom hung over me. From this one
+sentiment judge of the rest, and know, for good and all, that I can
+never feel for you other than I feel now. I can not love you, nor can
+the knowledge that you love me, give me any but a feeling of pain and
+mortification.”
+
+William Hinkley had risen to his feet. His form had put on an unusual
+erectness. His eye had gradually become composed; and now it wore an
+expression of firmness almost amounting to defiance. He heard her with
+only an occasional quiver of the muscles about his mouth. The flush of
+shame and pride was still red upon his cheek When she had finished,
+he spoke to her in tones of more dignity than had hitherto marked his
+speech.
+
+“Margaret Cooper, you have at least chosen the plainest language to
+declare a cruel truth.”
+
+The cheek of the girl became suddenly flushed.
+
+“Do you suppose,” she said, “that I found pleasure in giving you pain?
+No! William Hinkley, I am sorry for you! But this truth, which you call
+cruel, was shown to you repeatedly before. Any man but yourself would
+have seen it, and saved me the pain of its frequent repetition. You
+alone refused to understand, until it was rendered cruel. It was only by
+the plainest language that you could be made to believe a truth that you
+either would not or could not otherwise be persuaded to hear. If cold
+looks, reserved answers, and a determined rejection of all familiarity
+could have availed, you would never have heard from my lips a solitary
+word which could have brought you mortification. You would have seen my
+feelings in my conduct, and would have spared your own that pain, which
+I religiously strove to save them.”
+
+“I have, indeed, been blind and deaf,” said the young man; “but you have
+opened my eyes and ears, Margaret, so that I am fully cured of these
+infirmities. If your purpose, in this plain mode of speech, be such as
+you have declared it, then I must thank you; though it is very much as
+one would thank the dagger that puts him out of his pain by putting him
+out of life.”
+
+There was so much of subdued feeling in this address--the more intense
+in its effect, from the obvious restraint put upon it, that the heart of
+the maiden was touched. The dignified bearing of the young man, also--so
+different from that which marked his deportment hitherto--was not
+without its effect.
+
+“I assure you, William Hinkley, that such alone was my motive for what
+else would seem a most wanton harshness. I would not be harsh to you or
+to anybody; and with my firm rejection of your proffer, I give you my
+regrets that you ever made it. It gives me no pleasure that you should
+make it. If I am vain, my vanity is not flattered or quickened by a
+tribute which I can not accept; and if you never had my sympathy before,
+William Hinkley, I freely give it now. Once more I tell you, I am sorry,
+from the bottom of my heart, that you ever felt for me a passion which I
+can not requite, and that you did not stifle it from the beginning; as,
+Heaven knows, my bearing toward you, for a whole year, seemed to me to
+convey sufficient warning.”
+
+“It should have done so! I can now very easily understand it, Margaret.
+Indeed, Mr. Calvert and others told me the same thing. But as I have
+said, I was blind and deaf. Once more, I thank you, Margaret--it is a
+bitter medicine which you have given me, but I trust a wholesome one.”
+
+He caught her hand and pressed it in his own. She did not resist or
+withdraw it, and, after the retention of an instant only, he released
+it, and was about to turn away. A big tear was gathering in his eye,
+and he strove to conceal it. Margaret averted her head, and was about to
+move forward in an opposite direction, when the voice of the young man
+arrested her:--
+
+“Stay, but a few moments more, Margaret. Perhaps we shall never meet
+again--certainly not in a conference like this. I may have no other
+opportunity to say that which, in justice to you, should be spoken. Will
+you listen to me, patiently?”
+
+“Speak boldly, William Hinkley. It was the subject of which you spoke
+heretofore which I shrunk from rather than the speaker.”
+
+“I know not,” said he, “whether the subject of which I propose to speak
+now will be any more agreeable than that of which we have spoken. At
+all events, my purpose is your good, and I shall speak unreservedly. You
+have refused the prayer of one heart, Margaret, which, if unworthy of
+yours, was yet honestly and fervently devoted to it. Let me warn you to
+look well when you do choose, lest you fall into the snares of one,
+who with more talent may be less devoted, and with more claims to
+admiration, may be far less honest in his purpose.”
+
+“What mean you, sir?” she demanded hurriedly, with an increasing glow
+upon her face.
+
+“This stranger--this man, Stevens!”
+
+“What of him? What do you know of the stranger that you should give me
+this warning?”
+
+“What does anybody know of him? Whence does he come--whither would he
+go? What brings him here to this lonely village?--”
+
+A proud smile which curled the lips of Margaret Cooper arrested the
+speech of the youth. It seemed to say, very distinctly, that she, at
+least, could very well conjecture what brought the stranger so far from
+the travelled haunts.
+
+“Ha! do you then know, Margaret?”
+
+“And if I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations against
+the man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey the worst
+imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth from its proper
+balance. Go, sir--you have your answer. I need not your counsel. I
+should be sorry to receive it from such a source. Failing in your own
+attempt, you would seek to fill my mind with calumnious impressions
+in order to prejudice the prospects of another. For shame! for shame,
+William Hinkley. I had not thought this of you. But go! go! go, at once,
+lest I learn to loathe as well as despise you. I thought you simple and
+foolish, but honorable and generous. I was mistaken even in this. Go,
+sir, your slanderous insinuations have no effect upon me, and as
+for Alfred Stevens, you are as far below him in nobleness and honest
+purpose, as you are in every quality of taste and intellect.”
+
+Her face was the very breathing image of idealized scorn and beauty as
+she uttered these stinging words. Her nostrils were dilated, her eyes
+flashing fire, her lips slightly protruded and parted, her hand waving
+him off. The young man gazed upon her with wild looks equally expressive
+of anger and agony. His form fairly writhed beneath his emotions; but he
+found strength enough gaspingly to exclaim:--
+
+“And even this I forgive you, Margaret.”
+
+“Go! go!” she answered; “you know not what you say, or what you are. Go!
+go!”
+
+And turning away, she moved slowly up the long avenue before her, till,
+by a sudden turn of the path she was hidden from the sight. Then, when
+his eye could no longer follow her form, the agony of his soul burst
+forth in a single groan, and staggering, he fell forward upon the sward,
+hopeless, reckless, in a wretched condition of self-abandonment and
+despair.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+BLOWS--A CRISIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+But this mood lasted not long. Youth, pride, anger, asserted themselves
+before the lapse of many minutes. Darker feelings got possession of his
+mind. He rose to his feet. If love was baffled, was there not revenge?
+Then came the recollection of his cousin's counsel. Should this artful
+stranger triumph in everything? Margaret Cooper had scarcely disguised
+the interest which she felt in him. Nay, had not that exulting glance
+of the eye declared that she, at least, knew what was the purpose
+of Stevens in seeking the secluded village? His own wrongs were
+also present to his mind. This usurper had possessed himself of the
+affections of all he loved--of all of whose love he had till then
+felt himself secure--all but the good old schoolmaster, and the sturdy
+schoolmate and cousin. And how soon might he deprive him even of these?
+That was a new fear! So rapid had been the stranger's progress--so
+adroitly had he insinuated himself into this Eden of the
+wilderness--bringing discontent and suffering in his train--that the
+now thoroughly-miserable youth began to fancy that nothing could be safe
+from his influence. In a short time his garden would all be overrun, and
+his loveliest plants would wither.
+
+Was there no remedy for this? There was! and traversing the solemn
+recesses of that wood, he meditated the various modes by which the
+redress of wrong, and slight and indignity, were to be sought. He
+brooded over images of strife, and dark and savage ideas of power
+rioting over its victim, with entirely new feelings--feelings new at
+least to him. We have not succeeded in doing him justice, nor in our own
+design, if we have failed to show that he was naturally gentle of
+heart, rigidly conscientious, a lover of justice for its own sake, and
+solicitously sensitive on the subject of another's feelings. But the
+sense of suffering will blind the best judgment, and the feeling of
+injury will arouse and irritate the gentlest nature. Besides, William
+Hinkley, though meek and conscientious, had not passed through his
+youth, in the beautiful but wild border country in which he lived,
+without having been informed, and somewhat influenced, by those
+characteristic ideas of the modes and manner in which personal wrongs
+were to be redressed.
+
+Perhaps, had his cousin said nothing to him on this subject, his
+feelings would have had very much the same tendency and general
+direction which they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable
+anxiety to be in conflict with his rival--a deadly conflict--a close,
+hard death-struggle--was now the predominant feeling in his mind;--but
+the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had its pains and
+humiliations, also. Not that he had any fears--any dread of the issue.
+Of the issue he never thought. But it disturbed the long and peaceful
+order of his life. It conflicted with the subdued tastes of the student.
+It was at war with that gentle calm of atmosphere, which letters diffuse
+around the bower of the muse.
+
+In the conflict of his thoughts and feelings, the judgment of the youth
+was impaired. He forgot his prudence. In fact, he knew not what he did.
+He entered the dwelling of his father, and passed into the dining-room,
+at that solemn moment when the grace before meat was yet in course of
+utterance by our worthy Brother Stevens. Hitherto, old Mr. Hinkley had
+religiously exacted that, whenever any of the household failed to be
+present in season, this ceremony should never be disturbed. They were
+required, hat in hand, to remain at the entrance, until the benediction
+had been implored; and, only after the audible utterance of the word
+“Amen,” to approach the cloth.
+
+We have shown little of old Hinkley. It has not been necessary. The
+reader has seen enough, however, to understand that, in religious
+matters--at least in the forms and externals of religion--he was a rigid
+disciplinarian. Upon grace before and after meat he always insisted. His
+own prayers of this sort might have been unctuous, but they were never
+short; and the meats were very apt to grow cold, while the impatience
+of his hearers grew warm, before he finished. But through respect to the
+profession, he waived his own peculiar privilege in behalf of Brother
+Stevens; and this holy brother was in the middle of his entreaty, when
+William Hinkley appeared at the door. He paused for an instant without
+taking off his hat. Perhaps had his father been engaged in his office,
+William would have forborne, as usual, however long the grace, and have
+patiently waited without, hat off, until it had reached the legitimate
+conclusion. But he had no such veneration for Stevens; and without
+scruple he dashed, rather hastily, into the apartment, and flinging his
+hat upon a chair, strode at once to the table.
+
+The old man did not once raise his eyes until the prayer was over. He
+would not have done so had the house been on fire. But at the close, he
+looked up at his son with a brow of thunder. The cloud was of serious
+and very unusual blackness. He had for some time been dissatisfied with
+his son. He had seen that the youth entertained some aversion for his
+guest. Besides, he had learned from his worthy consort, that, in an
+endeavor of Brother Stevens to bestow good counsel upon the youth, he
+had been repulsed with as little respect as ceremony. There was one
+thing that the stern old man had not seen, and could not see; and that
+was the altered appearance of the lad. As he knew of no reason why he
+should be unhappy, so he failed to perceive in his appearance any of the
+signs of unhappiness. He saw nothing but the violation of his laws, and
+that sort of self-esteem which produces fanaticism, is always the most
+rigid in the enforcement of its own ordinances. Already he regarded the
+youth as in a state of rebellion and for such an offence his feeling was
+very much that of the ancient puritan. No one more insists upon duty,
+than he who has attained authority by flinging off the fetters of
+obedience. Your toughest sinner usually makes the sourest saint.
+
+“And is this the way, William Hinkley, that you show respect to God? Do
+you despise the blessing which Brother Stevens asks upon the food which
+sustains us?”
+
+“I presume, sir, that God has already blessed all the food which he
+bestows upon man. I do not think that any prayer of Brother Stevens can
+render it more blessed.”
+
+“Ha! you do not, do you? Please to rise from this table.”
+
+“Nay, sir--” began Stevens.
+
+“Rise, sir,” continued the old man, laying down knife and fork, and
+confronting the offender with that dogged look of determination which in
+a coarse nature is the sure sign of moral inflexibility.
+
+“Forgive him, sir, this time,” said Stevens; “I entreat you to forgive
+him. The young man knows not what he does.”
+
+“I will make him know,” continued the other.
+
+“Plead not for me, sir,” said William Hinkley, glaring upon Stevens
+with something of that expression which in western parlance is called
+wolfish, “I scorn and spurn your interference.”
+
+“William, William, my dear son, do not speak so--do not make your father
+angry.”
+
+“Will you leave the table, sir, or not?” demanded the father, his words
+being spoken very slowly, through his teeth, and with the effort of one
+who seeks to conceal the growing agitation. The eyes of the mother fell
+upon the youth full of tears and entreaty. His fine countenance betrayed
+the conflicting emotions of his soul. There was grief, and anger,
+despair and defiance; the consciousness of being wrong, and the more
+painful consciousness of suffering wrong. He half started from his
+chair, again resumed it, and gazing upon Stevens with the hate and agony
+which he felt, seemed to be entirely forgetful of the words and presence
+of the father. The old man deliberately rose from the table and left the
+room. The mother now started up in an agony of fear.
+
+“Run, my son--leave the room before your father comes back. Speak to
+him, Brother Stevens, and tell him of the danger.”
+
+“Do not call upon him, mother, if you would not have me defy you also.
+If YOUR words will not avail with me, be sure that his can not.”
+
+“What mean you, my son? You surely have no cause to be angry with
+Brother Stevens.”
+
+“No cause! no cause!--but it matters not! BROTHER Stevens knows that I
+have cause. He has heard my defiance--he knows my scorn and hate, and he
+shall feel them!”
+
+“William, my son, how--”
+
+The steps of the father, approaching through the passageway, diverted
+her mind to a new terror. She knew the vindictive and harsh nature of
+the old man; and apprehensions for her son superseded the feeling of
+anger which his language had provoked.
+
+“Oh, my son, be submissive, or fly. Jump out of the window, and leave
+Brother Stevens and me to pacify him. We will do all we can.”
+
+The unlucky allusion to Brother Stevens only increased the young man's
+obstinacy.
+
+“I ask you not, mother. I wish you to do nothing, and to say nothing.
+Here I will remain. I will not fly. It will be for my father and mother
+to say whether they will expel their only son from their home, to make
+room for a stranger.”
+
+“It shall not be said that I have been the cause of this,” said Stevens,
+rising with dignity from his chair; “I will leave your house, Mrs.
+Hinkley, only regretting that I should be the innocent cause of any
+misunderstanding or discontent among its members. I know not exactly
+what can be the meaning of your son's conduct. I have never offended
+him; but, as my presence does offend him, I will withdraw myself--”
+
+“You shall not!” exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room at this
+moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. “You shall not
+leave the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to behave in the
+manner of this viper, they should all leave it before you should stir
+from the threshold.”
+
+The old man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions
+of his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were now
+awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference, if
+not fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always inspired
+her.
+
+“Mr. Hinkley, you won't strike William with that whip--you must not--you
+shall not!” and, speaking thus, she started up and threw herself in the
+old man's way. He put her aside with no measured movement of his arm,
+and approached the side of the table where the young man sat.
+
+“Run, William, run, if you love me!” cried the terrified mother.
+
+“I will not run!” was the answer of the youth, who rose from his seat,
+however, at the same moment and confronted his father.
+
+“Do not strike me, father! I warn you--do not strike me. I may be wrong,
+but I have suffered wrong. I did not mean, and do not mean, to offend
+you. Let that content you, but do not strike me.”
+
+The answer was a blow. The whip descended once, and but once, upon the
+shoulders of the young man. His whole frame was in a convulsion.
+His eyes dilated with the anguish of his soul; his features worked
+spasmodically. There was a moment's hesitation. The arm that smote him
+was again uplifted--the cruel and degrading instrument of punishment a
+second time about to descend; when, with the strength of youth, and the
+determination of manhood, the son grasped the arm of the father, and
+without any more than the degree of violence necessary to effect his
+object, he tore the weapon from the uplifted hand.
+
+“I can not strike YOU.'” he exclaimed, addressing the old man. “That
+blow has lost you your son--for ever! The shame and the dishonor shall
+rest on other shoulders. They are better deserved here, and here I place
+them!”
+
+With these words, he smote Stevens over the shoulders, once, twice,
+thrice, before the latter could close with him, or the father interfere
+to arrest the attempt. Stevens sprang upon him, but the more athletic
+countryman flung him off, and still maintained his weapon. The father
+added his efforts to those of Stevens; but he shook himself free from
+both, and, by this time, the mother had contrived to place herself
+between the parties. William Hinkley then flung the whip from the
+window, and moved toward the door. In passing Stevens, he muttered a few
+words:--
+
+“If there is any skin beneath the cloak of the parson, I trust I have
+reached it.”
+
+“Enough!” said the other, in the same low tone. “You shall have your
+wish.”
+
+The youth looked back once, with tearful eyes, upon his mother; and
+making no other answer but a glance more full of sorrow than anger to
+the furious flood of denunciation which the old man continued to pour
+forth, he proceeded slowly from the apartment and the dwelling.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+CHALLENGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The whole scene passed in very few minutes. No time was given for
+reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his natural or habitual
+impulses. Old Hinkley, except when at prayers, was a man of few words.
+He was much more prompt at deeds than words--a proof of which has
+already been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and made a
+freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been willing to inflict
+upon our readers. Though she heartily disapproved of her son's conduct
+toward Stevens, and regarded it as one of the most unaccountable
+wonders, the offender was still her son. She never once forgot, or
+could forget, that. But the rage of the old man was unappeasable. The
+indignity to his guest, and that guest of a calling so sacred, was past
+all forgiveness, as it was past all his powers of language fitly to
+describe. He swore to pursue the offender with his wrath to the end of
+the world, to cut him off equally from his fortune and forgiveness; and
+when Brother Stevens, endeavoring to maintain the pacific and forgiving
+character which his profession required, uttered some commonplace
+pleading in the youth's behalf, he silenced him by saying that, “were he
+on the bed of death, and were the offender then to present himself,
+the last prayer that he should make to Heaven would be for sufficient
+strength to rise up and complete the punishment which he had then
+begun.”
+
+As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable spirit, his
+feelings were quite as hostile, and much more deadly. He was not without
+that conventional courage which makes one, in certain states of society,
+prompt enough to place himself in the fields of the duello. To this
+condition of preparedness it has hitherto been the training of the West
+that every man, at all solicitous of public life, must eventually come.
+As a student of divinity, it was not a necessity with Alfred Stevens.
+Nay, it was essential to the character which he professed that he should
+eschew such a mode of arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject, as
+well with reference to past habits as to future responsibilities. His
+present profession being simply a ruse d'amour (and, as he already began
+to perceive, a harmless one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought,
+and whose intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to
+perceive the serious defects of a character which should attempt so
+impious a fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat indifferent to its
+preservation; and, with the decline of his caution in this respect,
+arose the natural inquiry as to what would be expected of him in his
+former relations to society. Should it ever be known hereafter, at
+a time when he stood before the people as a candidate for some high
+political trust, that he had tamely submitted to the infliction of a
+cowskin, the revelation would be fatal to all his hopes of ambition,
+and conclusive against all his social pretensions. In short, so far as
+society was concerned, it would be his social death.
+
+These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed, their
+force can not well be conceived by the citizen of any community where
+the sense of individual responsibility is less rigid and exacting. They
+naturally outweighed all others in the mind of Alfred Stevens; and,
+though no fire-eater, he not only resolved on fighting with Hinkley,
+but, smarting under the strokes of the cowskin--heavily laid on as they
+had been--his resolution was equally firm that, in the conflict, they
+should not separate until blood was drawn. Of course, there were some
+difficulties to be overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where
+the parties are willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable
+ease. This being the case at present, it followed that both minds were
+busy at the same moment in devising the when, the how, and the where, of
+the encounter.
+
+William Hinkley went from the house of his father to that of his cousin;
+but the latter had not yet returned from that ride which he had taken
+in order to discover the course usually pursued by Stevens. Here he
+sat down to dinner, but the sister of Ned Hinkley observed that he ate
+little, and fancied he was sick. That he should come to dine with his
+cousin was too frequent a matter to occasion question or surprise. This
+lady was older than her brother by some seven years. She was a widow,
+with an only child, a girl. The child was a prattling, smiling,
+good-natured thing, about seven years old, who was never so happy
+as when on Cousin William's knee. Poor William, indeed, was quite a
+favorite at every house in the village except that of Margaret Cooper,
+and, as he sometimes used bitterly to add, his own. On this occasion,
+however, the child was rendered unhappy by the seeming indifference of
+Cousin William. The heart of the young man was too full of grief, and
+his mind of anxiety, to suffer him to bestow the usual caresses upon
+her; and when, putting her down, he passed into the chamber of Ned
+Hinkley, the little thing went off to her mother, to complain of the
+neglect she had undergone.
+
+“Cousin William don't love Susan any more, mamma,” was the burden of her
+complaint.
+
+“Why do you say so, Susan?”
+
+“He don't kiss me, mamma; he don't keep me in his lap. He don't say
+good things to me, and call me his little sweetheart. I'm afraid Cousin
+William's got some other sweetheart. He don't love Susan.”
+
+It was while the little prattler was pouring forth her infantile sorrows
+in her mother's ear, that the voice of William Hinkley was heard,
+calling her name from the chamber.
+
+“There, he's calling you now, Susan. Run to him and kiss him, and see
+what he wants. I'm sure he loves you just as much as ever. He's got no
+other sweetheart.”
+
+“I'll run, mamma--that I will. I'm so glad! I hope he loves me!” and the
+little innocent scampered away to the chamber. Her artless tongue, as
+she approached, enabled him to perceive what had been her grievances.
+
+“Do you call me to love me, and to kiss me, Cousin William, and to make
+me your sweetheart again?”
+
+“Yes, Susan, you shall be my only sweetheart. I will kiss nobody but
+you.”
+
+“You'll forget--you will--you'll put me out of your lap, and go away
+shaking your head, and looking so!--” and here the observant little
+creature attempted a childish imitation of the sad action and the
+strange, moody gestures with which he had put her down when he was
+retiring from the room--gestures and looks which the less quick eyes of
+her mother had failed utterly to perceive.
+
+“No, no!” said he, with a sad smile; “no, Susan. I'll keep you in my lap
+for an hour whenever I come, and you shall be my sweetheart always.”
+
+“Your LITTLE sweetheart, your LITTLE Susan, Cousin William.”
+
+“Yes, my dear little Susan, my dearest little sweetheart Susan.”
+
+And he kissed the child fondly while he spoke, and patted her rosy
+cheeks with a degree of tenderness which his sad and wandering thoughts
+did not materially diminish.
+
+“But now, Susan,” said he, “if I am to be your sweetheart, and to love
+you always, you must do all that I bid you. You must go where I send
+you.”
+
+“Don't I, Cousin William? When you send me to Gran'pa Calvert, don't I
+go and bring you books, and didn't I always run, and come back soon, and
+never play by the way?”
+
+“You're a dear Susan,” said he; “and I want you to carry a paper for me
+now. Do you see this little paper? What is it?”
+
+“A note--don't I know?”
+
+“Well, you must carry this note for me to uncle's, but you mustn't give
+it to uncle, nor to aunty, nor to anybody but the young man that lives
+there--young Mr. Stevens.”
+
+“Parson Stevens,” said the little thing, correcting him.
+
+“Ay, ay, Parson Stevens, if you please. You must give it to him, and him
+only; and he will give you a paper to bring back to me. Will you go now,
+Susan?”
+
+“Yes, I'll go: but, Cousin William, are you going to shoot the little
+guns? Don't shoot them till I come back, will you?”
+
+The child pointed to a pair of pistols which lay upon the table where
+William Hinkley had penned the billet. A flush of consciousness passed
+over the young man's cheek. It seemed to him as if the little innocent's
+inquiry had taken the aspect of an accusation. He promised and dismissed
+her, and, when she had disappeared, proceeded to put the pistols in some
+condition for use. In that time and region, duels were not often fought
+with those costly and powerful weapons, the pistols of rifle bore
+and sight. The rifle, or the ordinary horseman's pistol, answered the
+purposes of hate. The former instrument, in the hands of the Kentuckian,
+was a deadly weapon always; and, in the grasp of a firm hand, and under
+the direction of a practised eye, the latter, at ten paces, was scarcely
+less so. This being the case, but few refinements were necessary to
+bring about the most fatal issues of enmity; and the instruments which
+William Hinkley was preparing for the field were such as would produce
+a smile on the lips of more civilized combatants. They were of the
+coarsest kind of holster-pistols, and had probably seen service in the
+Revolution. The stocks were rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost
+large enough for grape, and really such as would receive and disgorge
+a three-ounce bullet with little straining or reluctance. They had been
+the property of his own grandfather, and their value for use was perhaps
+rather heightened than diminished by the degree of veneration which, in
+the family, was attached to their history.
+
+William Hinkley soon put them in the most efficient order. He was not
+a practised hand, but an American forester is a good shot almost by
+instinct; he naturally cleaves to a gun, and without instruction learns
+its use. William, however, did not think much of what he could hit, at
+what distance, and under what circumstances. Nothing, perhaps, could
+better show the confidence in himself and weapon than the inattention
+which the native-born woodman usually exhibits to these points. Let his
+weapon be such as he can rely upon, and his cause of quarrel such as
+can justify his anger, and the rest seems easy, and gives him little
+annoyance. This was now the case with our rustic. He never, for a
+moment, thought of practising. He had shot repeatedly, and knew what he
+could do. His simple object was to bring his enemy to the field, and to
+meet him there. Accordingly, when he had loaded both pistols, which he
+did with equal care, and with a liberal allowance of lead and powder, he
+carefully put them away without offering to test his own skill or their
+capacities. On this subject, his indifference would have appeared, to a
+regular duellist, the very extreme of obtuseness.
+
+His little courier conveyed his billet to Stevens in due season. As she
+had been instructed, she gave it into the hands of Stevens only; but,
+when she delivered it, old Hinkley was present, and she named the person
+by whom it was sent.
+
+“My son! what does he say?” demanded the old man, half-suspecting the
+purport of the billet.
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Stevens, with the readiness of a practised actor, “there
+is some hope, I am glad to tell you, Mr. Hinkley, of his coming to his
+senses. He declares his wish to atone, and invites me to see him. I have
+no doubt that he wishes me to mediate for him.”
+
+“I will never forgive him while I have breath!” cried the old man,
+leaving the room. “Tell him that!”
+
+“Wait a moment, my pretty one,” said Stevens, as he was about retiring
+to his chamber, “till I can write an answer.”
+
+The billet of Hinkley he again read. We may do so likewise. It was to
+the following effect:--
+
+“Sir: If I understood your last assurance on leaving you this day, I am
+to believe that the stroke of my whip has made its proper impression on
+your soul--that you are willing to use the ordinary means of ordinary
+persons, to avenge an indignity which was not CONFINED TO YOUR CLOTH.
+If so, meet me at the lake with whatever weapons you choose to bring. I
+will be there, provided with pistols for both, at any hour from three to
+six. I shall proceed to the spot as soon as I receive your answer.
+
+“W. H.”
+
+“Short and sharp!” exclaimed Stevens as he read the billet. “'Who would
+have thought that the YOUNG man had so much blood in him!' Well, we
+will not balk your desire, Master Hinkley. We will meet you, in verity,
+though it may compel me to throw up my present hand and call for other
+cards. N'importe: there is no other course.”
+
+While soliloquizing, he penned his answer, which was brief and to the
+purpose:--
+
+“I will meet you as soon as I can steal off without provoking suspicion.
+I have pistols which I will bring with me.
+
+“A. S.”
+
+“There, my little damsel,” said he, re-entering the dining-room, and
+putting the sealed paper into the hands of the child, “carry that to Mr.
+Hinkley, and tell him I will come and speak with him as he begs me. But
+the note will tell him.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“So----”
+
+Mrs. Hinkley entered the room at this moment. Her husband had apprized
+her of the communication which her son had made, and the disposition
+to atonement and repentance which he had expressed. She was anxious to
+confirm this good disposition, to have her son brought back within the
+fold, restored to her own affections and the favor of his father. The
+latter, it is true, had signified his determined hostility, even while
+conveying his intelligence; but the mother was sanguine--when was a
+mother otherwise?--that all things would come right which related to her
+only child. She now came to implore the efforts of Stevens; to entreat,
+that, like a good Christian, he would not suffer the shocking stripes
+which her son, in his madness, had inflicted upon him to outweigh his
+charity, to get the better of his blessed principles, and make him war
+upon the atoning spirit which had so lately, and so suddenly wakened
+up in the bosom of the unruly boy. She did not endeavor to qualify the
+offence of which her son had been guilty. She was far from underrating
+the indignity to which Stevens had been subjected; but the offender
+was her son--her only son--in spite of all his faults, follies, and
+imperfections, the apple of her eye--the only being for whom she cared
+to live!
+
+Ah! the love of a mother!--what a holy thing! sadly wanting in
+judgment--frequently misleading, perverting, nay, dooming the object
+which it loves; but, nevertheless, most pure; least selfish; truest;
+most devoted!
+
+And the tears gushed from the old woman's eyes as she caught the hand
+of Stevens in her own, and kissed it--kissed HIS hand--could William
+Hinkley have seen THAT, how it would have rankled, how he would have
+writhed! She kissed the hands of that wily hypocrite, bedewing them with
+her tears, as if he were some benign and blessing saint; and not because
+he had shown any merits or practised any virtues, but simply because
+of certain professions which he had made, and in which she had perfect
+faith because of the professions, and not because of any previous
+knowledge which she had of the professor. Truly, it behooves a rogue
+monstrous much to know what garment it is best to wear; the question is
+equally important to rogue and dandy.
+
+Stevens made a thousand assurances in the most Christian spirit--we can
+not say that he gave her tear for tear--promised to do his best to bring
+back the prodigal son to her embrace, and the better to effect this
+object, put his pistols under his belt! Within the hour he was on his
+way to the place of meeting.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+FOOT TO FOOT.
+
+
+
+
+
+William Hinkley was all impatience until, his little messenger returned,
+which she did with a speed which might deserve commendation in the
+case of our professional Mercuries--stage-drivers and mail contractors,
+hight! He did not withhold it from the little maid, but taking her in
+his arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched her to her mother, while
+he wrapped up his pistols and concealing them in the folds of his coat,
+hurried from the house with the anxious haste of one who is going to
+seek his prey. He felt somewhat like that broad-winged eagle which
+broods on the projecting pinnacle of yonder rocky peak in waiting for
+the sea-hawk who is stooping far below him, watching when the sun's rays
+shall glisten from the uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was
+not a selfish desire to secure the prey which the terror of the other
+might cause him to drop. It was simply to punish the prowler. Poor
+William could not exactly tell indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred
+Stevens; but his cause of hostility was not less cogent because it had
+no name. The thousand little details which induce our prejudices in
+regard to persons, are, singly, worth no one's thought, and would
+possibly provoke the contempt of all; but like the myriad threads which
+secured the huge frame of Gulliver in his descent upon Lilliput, they
+are, when united, able to bind the biggest giant of us all.
+
+The prejudices of William Hinkley, though very natural in such a case
+as his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It seemed to him, if
+he once reasoned on the matter, that, as he had good cause to hate the
+intruder, so there must be justification for shooting him. Were this
+not so, the policy of hating would be very questionable, and surely very
+unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a very laudable quantity
+of feeling--something like omitting one's bullet in discharging one's
+piece--a profligacy only justifiable in a feu de joie after victory,
+where the bullets have already done all necessary mischief, and will
+warrant a small subsequent waste of the more harmless material.
+
+Without designing any such child's play, our rustic hero, properly
+equipped with his antique pistols, well charged, close rammed,
+three-ounce bullets, or nearabouts, in each, stood, breathing fire but
+without cooling, on the edge of the lake, perched on an eminence and
+looking out for the coming enemy. He was playing an unwonted character,
+but he felt as if it were quite familiar to him. He had none of that
+nice feeling which, without impugning courage, is natural enough to
+inexperience in such cases. The muzzles of the pistols did not appear
+to him particularly large. He never once thought of his own ribs being
+traversed by his three-ounce messengers. He had no misgivings on the
+subject of his future digestion. He only thought of that blow from his
+father's hand--that keen shaft from the lips of Margaret Cooper--that
+desolation which had fallen upon his soul from the scorn of both; and
+the vengeance which it was in his power to inflict upon the fortunate
+interloper to whose arts he ascribed all his misfortunes! and with these
+thoughts his fury and impatience increased, and he ascended the highest
+hill to look out for his foe; descended, in the next moment, to the edge
+of the lake, the better to prepare for the meeting.
+
+In this state of excitement the meekness had departed from his
+countenance; an entire change of expression had taken place: he stood
+up, erect, bold, eagle-eyed, with the look of one newly made a man by
+the form of indomitable will, and feeling, for the first time, man's
+terrible commission to destroy. In a moment, with the acquisition of
+new moods, he had acquired a new aspect. Hitherto, he had been tame,
+seemingly devoid of spirit--you have not forgotten the reproaches of
+his cousin, which actually conveyed an imputation against his
+manliness?--shrinking, with a feeling of shyness akin to mauvaise honte,
+and almost submitting to injustice, to avoid the charge of ill-nature.
+The change that we have described in his soul, had made itself
+singularly apparent in his looks. They were full of a grim
+determination. Had he gazed upon his features, in the glassy surface of
+the lake beside him, he had probably recoiled from their expression.
+
+We have seen Mrs. Hinkley sending Stevens forth for the purpose of
+recalling her son to his senses, receiving his repentance, and bringing
+him once more home into the bosom of his flock. We have not forgotten
+the brace of arguments with which he provided himself in order to bring
+about this charitable determination. Stevens was a shot. He could snuff
+his candle at ten paces, sever his bamboo, divide the fingers of the
+hand with separate bullets without grazing the skin--nay, more, as
+was said in the euphuistic phraseology of his admirers, send his ball
+between soul and body without impairing the integrity of either.
+
+But men may do much shooting at candle or bamboo, who would do precious
+little while another is about to shoot at them. There is a world of
+difference between looking in a bull's-eye, and looking in the eye of
+man. A pistol, too, looks far less innocent, regarded through the medium
+of a yawning muzzle, than the rounded and neatly-polished butt. The huge
+mouth seems to dilate as you look upon it. You already begin to fancy
+you behold the leaden mass--the three-ounce bullet--issuing from its
+stronghold, like a relentless baron of the middle ages, going forth
+under his grim archway, seeking only whom he may devour. The sight is
+apt to diminish the influence of skill. Nerves are necessary to such
+sportsmen, and nerves become singularly untrue when frowned upon through
+such a medium.
+
+Under this view of the case, we are not so sure that the excellence
+of aim for which Alfred Stevens has been so much lauded, will make the
+difference very material between the parties; and now that he is fairly
+roused, there is a look of the human devil about William Hinkley, that
+makes him promise to be dangerous. Nay, the very pistols that he wields,
+those clumsy, rusty, big-mouthed ante-revolutionary machines, which
+his stout grandsire carried at Camden and Eutaw, have a look of service
+about them--a grim, veteran-like aspect, that makes them quite as
+perilous to face as to handle. If they burst they will blow on all
+sides. There will be fragments enough for friend and foe; and even
+though Stevens may not apprehend so much from the aim of his antagonist,
+something of deference is due to the possibility of such a concussion,
+as will make up all his deficiencies of skill.
+
+But they have not yet met, though Stevens, with praiseworthy
+Christianity, is on his way to keep his engagements, as well to mother
+as to son. He has his own pistols--not made for this purpose--but a
+substantial pair of traveller's babes--big of mouth, long of throat,
+thick of jaw, keen of sight, quick of speech, strong of wind, and
+weighty of argument. They are rifled bores also, and, in the hands of
+the owner, have done clever things at bottle and sapling. Stevens would
+prefer to have the legitimate things, but these babes are trustworthy;
+and he has no reason to suppose that the young rustic whom he goes
+to meet can produce anything more efficient. He had no idea of those
+ancient bull-pups, those solemn ante-revolutionary barkers, which our
+grandsire used upon harder heads than his, at Camden and the Eutaws. He
+is scarcely so confident in his own weapons when his eye rests on the
+rusty tools of his enemy.
+
+But it was not destined that this fight should take place without
+witnesses. In spite of all the precautions of the parties, and they were
+honest in taking them, our little village had its inklings of what was
+going on. There were certain signs of commotion and explosion which made
+themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan Hinkley, was the first,
+very innocently, to furnish a clue to the mystery. She had complained
+to her mother that Cousin William had not shot the little guns for her
+according to his promise.
+
+“But, perhaps, he didn't want to shoot them, Susan.”
+
+“Yes, mamma, he put them in his pockets. He's carried them to shoot; and
+he promised to shoot them for me as soon as I carried the note.”
+
+“And to whom did you carry the note, Susan?” asked the mother.
+
+“To the young parson, at Uncle William's.”
+
+The mother had not been unobservant of the degree of hostility which her
+brother, as well as cousin, entertained for Stevens. They had both
+very freely expressed their dislike in her presence. Some of their
+conferences had been overheard and were now recalled, in which
+this expression of dislike had taken the form of threats, vague and
+purposeless, seemingly, at the time; but which now, taken in connection
+with what she gathered from the lips of the child, seemed of portentous
+interest. Then, when she understood that Stevens had sent a note
+in reply--and that both notes were sealed, the quick, feminine mind
+instantly jumped to the right conclusion.
+
+“They are surely going to fight. Get my bonnet, Susan, I must run to
+Uncle William's, and tell him while there's time. Which way did Cousin
+William go?”
+
+The child could tell her nothing but that he had taken to the hills.
+
+“That brother Ned shouldn't be here now! Though I don't see the good of
+his being here. He'd only make matters worse. Run, Susan--run over to
+Gran'pa Calvert, and tell him to come and stop them from fighting,
+while I hurry to Uncle William's. Lord save us!--and let me get there in
+time.”
+
+The widow had a great deal more to say, but this was quite enough to
+bewilder the little girl. Nevertheless, she get forth to convey the
+mysterious message to Grand'pa Calvert, though the good mother never
+once reflected that this message was of the sort which assumes the party
+addressed to be already in possession of the principal facts. While she
+took one route the mother pursued another, and the two arrived at their
+respective places at about the same time. Stevens had already left
+old Hinkley's when the widow got there, and the consternation of Mrs.
+Hinkley was complete. The old man was sent for to the fields, and came
+in only to declare that some such persuasion had filled his own mind
+when first the billet of his son had been received. But the suspicion of
+the father was of a much harsher sort than that of the widow Hinkley.
+In her sight it was a duel only--bad enough as a duel--but still only a
+duel, where the parties incurring equal risks, had equal rights. But
+the conception of the affair, as it occurred to old Hinkley, was very
+different.
+
+“Base serpent!” he exclaimed--“he has sent for the good young man only
+to murder him. He implores him to come to him, in an artful writing,
+pretending to be sorely sorrowful and full of repentance; and he
+prepares the weapon of murder to slay him when he comes. Was there ever
+creature so base!--but I will hunt him out. God give me strength, and
+grant that I may find him in season.”
+
+Thus saying, the old man seized his crab-stick, a knotty club, that had
+been seasoned in a thousand smokes, and toughened by the use of twenty
+years. His wife caught up her bonnet and hurried with the widow Hinkley
+in his train. Meanwhile, by cross-examining the child, Mr. Calvert
+formed some plausible conjectures of what was on foot, and by the time
+that the formidable procession had reached his neighborhood he was
+prepared to join it. Events thickened with the increasing numbers. New
+facts came in to the aid of old ones partially understood. The widow
+Thackeray, looking from her window, as young and handsome widows are
+very much in the habit of doing, had seen William Hinkley going by
+toward the hill, with a very rapid stride and a countenance very much
+agitated; and an hour afterward she had seen Brother Stevens following
+on the same route--good young man!--with the most heavenly and benignant
+smile upon his countenance--the very personification of the cherub and
+the seraph, commissioned to subdue the fiend.
+
+“Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You have spoiled this
+boy of mine; turning his head with law studies; and making him
+disobedient--giving him counsel and encouragement against his
+father--and filling his mind with evil things. It is all your doing,
+and your books. And now he's turned out a bloody murderer, a papist
+murderer, with your Roman catholic doctrines.”
+
+“I am no Roman catholic, Mr. Hinkley,” was the mild reply--“and as for
+William becoming a murderer, I think that improbable. I have a better
+opinion of your son than you have.”
+
+“He's an ungrateful cub--a varmint of the wilderness--to strike the good
+young man in my own presence--to strike him with a cowskin--what do you
+think of that, sir? answer me that, if you please.”
+
+“Did William Hinkley do this?” demanded the old teacher earnestly.
+
+“Ay, that he did, did he!”
+
+“I can hardly understand it. There must have been some grievous
+provocation?”
+
+“Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have to wait for grace
+before meat.”
+
+“Was that all? can it be possible!”
+
+The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the story--and Calvert
+was somewhat relieved. Though he did not pretend to justify the assault
+of the youth, he readily saw how he had been maddened by the treatment
+of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high pitch of religious
+fury--his prodigious self-esteem taking part with it, naturally enough,
+against a son, who, until this instance, had never risen in defiance
+against either. Expostulation and argument were equally vain with him;
+and ceasing the attempt at persuasion, Calvert hurried on with the rest,
+being equally anxious to arrest the meditated violence, whether that
+contemplated the murderous assassination which the father declared, or
+the less heinous proceeding of the duel which he suspected.
+
+There was one thing which made him tremble for his own confidence in
+William Hinkley's propriety of course. It was the difficulty which he
+had with the rest, in believing that the young student of divinity would
+fight a duel. This doubt, he felt, must be that, of his pupil also:
+whether the latter had any reason to suppose that Stevens would depart
+from the principles of his profession, and waive the securities which
+it afforded, he had of course, no means for conjecturing; but his
+confidence in William induced him to believe that some such impression
+upon his mind had led him to the measure of sending a challenge, which,
+otherwise, addressed to a theologian, would have been a shameless
+mockery.
+
+There was a long running fire, by way of conversation and commentary,
+which was of course maintained by these toiling pedestrians, cheering
+the way as they went; but though it made old Hinkley peccant and wrathy,
+and exercised the vernacular of the rest to very liberal extent, we do
+not care to distress the reader with it. It may have been very fine or
+not. It is enough to say that the general tenor of opinion run heavily
+against our unhappy rustic, and in favor of the good young man, Stevens.
+Mrs. Thackeray, the widow, to whom Stevens had paid two visits or
+more since he had been in the village, and who had her own reasons for
+doubting that Margaret Cooper had really obtained any advantages in
+the general struggle to find favor in the sight of this handsome man of
+God--was loud in her eulogy upon the latter, and equally unsparing in
+her denunciations of the village lad who meditated so foul a crime
+as the extinguishing so blessed a light. Her denunciations at length
+aroused all the mother in Mrs. Hinkley's breast, and the two dames
+had it, hot and heavy, until, as the parties approached the lake, old
+Hinkley, with a manner all his own, enjoined the most profound silence,
+and hushed, without settling the dispute.
+
+Meanwhile, the combatants had met. William Hinkley, having ascended the
+tallest perch among the hills, beheld his enemy approaching at a natural
+pace and at a short distance. He descended rapidly to meet him and the
+parties joined at the foot of the woodland path leading down to the
+lake, where, but a few days before, we beheld Stevens and Margaret
+Cooper. Stevens was somewhat surprised to note the singular and imposing
+change which a day, almost an hour, had wrought in the looks and bearing
+of the young rustic. His good, and rather elevated command of language,
+had struck him previously as very remarkable, but this had been
+explained by his introduction to Mr. Calvert, who, as his teacher, he
+soon found was very well able to make him what he was. It was the high
+bearing, the courteous defiance, the superior consciousness of strength
+and character, which now spoke in the tone and manner of the youth. A
+choice military school, for years, could scarcely have brought about
+a more decided expression of that subdued heroism, which makes mere
+manliness a matter of chivalry, and dignifies brute anger and blind
+hostility into something like a sentiment. Under the prompting of a
+good head, a generous temper, and the goodness of a highly-roused, but
+legitimate state of feeling, William Hinkley wore the very appearance
+of that nobleness, pride, ease, firmness, and courtesy, which, in the
+conventional world, it is so difficult, yet held to be so important,
+to impress upon the champion when ready for the field. A genuine son of
+thunder would have rejoiced in his deportment, and though a sneering,
+jealous and disparaging temper, Alfred Stevens could not conceal from
+himself the conviction that there was stuff in the young man which it
+needed nothing but trial and rough attrition to bring out.
+
+William Hinkley bowed at his approach, and pointed to a close footpath
+leading to the rocks on the opposite shore.
+
+“There, sir, we shall be more secret. There is a narrow grove above,
+just suited to our purpose. Will it please you to proceed thither?”
+
+“As YOU please, Mr. Hinkley,” was the reply; “I have no disposition to
+balk your particular desires. But the sight of this lake reminds me that
+I owe you my life?”
+
+“I had thought, sir, that the indignity which I put upon you, would
+cancel all such memories,” was the stern reply.
+
+The cheek of Stevens became crimson--his eye flashed--he felt the
+sarcasm--but something was due to his position, and he was cool enough
+to make a concession to circumstances. He answered with tolerable
+calmness, though not without considerable effort.
+
+“It has cancelled the OBLIGATION, sir, if not the memory! I certainly
+can owe you nothing for a life which you have attempted to disgrace--”
+
+“Which I have disgraced!” said the other, interrupting him.
+
+“You are right, sir. How far, however, you have shown your manhood
+in putting an indignity upon one whose profession implies peace, and
+denounces war, you are as well prepared to answer as myself.”
+
+“The cloth seems to be of precious thickness!” was the answer of
+Hinkley, with a smile of bitter and scornful sarcasm.
+
+“If you mean to convoy the idea that I do not feel the shame of the
+blow, and am not determined on avenging it, young man, you are in error.
+You will find that I am not less determined because I am most cool. I
+have come out deliberately for the purpose of meeting you. My purpose in
+reminding you of my profession was simply to undeceive you. It appears
+to me not impossible that the knowledge of it has made you somewhat
+bolder than you otherwise might have been.”
+
+“What mean you?” was the stern demand of Hinkley, uttered in very
+startling accents.
+
+“To tell you that I have not always been a non-combatant, that I am
+scarcely one now, and that, in the other schools, in which I have been
+taught, the use of the pistol was an early lesson. You have probably
+fancied that such was not the case, and that my profession--”
+
+“Come, sir--will you follow this path?” said Hinkley, interrupting him
+impatiently.
+
+“All in good time, sir, when you have heard me out,” was the cool reply.
+“Now, sir,” he continued, “were you to have known that it would be no
+hard task for me to mark any button on your vest, at any distance--that
+I have often notched a smaller mark, and that I am prepared to do
+so again, it might be that your prudence would have tempered your
+courage--”
+
+“I regret for your sake,” said Hinkley, again interrupting him with a
+sarcasm, “that I have not brought with me the weapon with which MY marks
+are made. You seem to have forgotten that I too have some skill in
+my poor way. One would think, sir, that the memory would not fail of
+retaining what I suspect will be impressed upon the skin for some time
+longer.”
+
+“You are evidently bent on fighting, Mr. Hinkley, and I must gratify
+you!”
+
+“If you please, sir.”
+
+“But, before doing so, I should like to know in what way I have provoked
+such a feeling of hostility in your mind? I have not sought to do so.
+I have on the contrary, striven to show you my friendship, in part
+requital of the kindness shown me by your parents.”
+
+“Do not speak of them, if you please.”
+
+“Ay, but I must. It was at the instance of your worthy mother that I
+sought you and strove to confer with you on, the cause of your evident
+unhappiness.”
+
+“You were the cause.”
+
+“I?”
+
+“Yes--you! Did I not tell you then that I hated you; and did you not
+accept my defiance?”
+
+“Yes; but when you saved my life!--”
+
+“It was to spurn you--to put stripes upon you. I tell you, Alfred
+Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one feels for a reptile, whose
+cunning is as detestable as his sting is deadly. I loathe you from
+instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from the first moment
+that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are a
+villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced of it as thoroughly as
+if I knew it. You have wormed yourself into the bosom of my family. You
+have expelled me from the affections of my parents; and not content
+with this, you have stolen to the heart of the woman to whom my life was
+devoted, to have me driven thence also. Can I do less than hate you? Can
+I desire less than your destruction? Say, having heard so much, whether
+you will make it necessary that I should again lay my whip over your
+shoulders.”
+
+The face of Stevens became livid as he listened to this fierce and
+bitter speech. His eye watched that of the speaker with the glare of
+the tiger, as if noteful only of the moment when to spring. His frame
+trembled. His lip quivered with the struggling rage. All his feeling of
+self-superiority vanished when he listened to language of so unequivocal
+a character--language which so truly denounced, without defining, his
+villany. He felt, that if the instinct of the other was indeed so keen
+and quick, then was the combat necessary, and the death of the rustic
+essential, perhaps, to his own safety. William Hinkley met his glance
+with a like fire. There was no shrinking of his heart or muscles. Nay,
+unlike his enemy, he felt a strange thrill of pleasure in his veins as
+he saw the effect which his language had produced on the other.
+
+“Lead the way!” said Stevens; “the sooner you are satisfied the better.”
+
+“You are very courteous, and I thank you,” replied Hinkley, with a
+subdued but sarcastic smile, “you will pardon me for the seeming slight,
+in taking precedence of one so superior; but the case requires it. You
+will please to follow. I will show you my back no longer than it seems
+necessary.”
+
+“Lead on, sir--lead on.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+UNEXPECTED ISSUES.
+
+
+
+
+
+William Hinkley ascended the narrow path leading to the hills with an
+alacrity of heart which somewhat surprised himself. The apprehensions of
+danger, if he felt any, were not of a kind to distress or annoy him, and
+were more than balanced by the conviction that he had brought his enemy
+within his level. That feeling of power is indeed a very consolatory
+one. It satisfies the ambitious heart, though death preys upon his
+household, one by one; though suffering fevers his sleep; though the
+hopes of his affection wither; though the loves and ties of his youth
+decay and vanish. It makes him careless of the sunshine, and heedless of
+the storm. It deadens his ear to the song of birds, it blinds his eye to
+the seduction of flowers. It makes him fly from friendship and rush on
+hate. It compensates for all sorts of loneliness, and it produces them.
+It is a princely despotism; which, while it robs its slave of freedom,
+covers him with other gifts which he learns to value more; which,
+binding him in fetters, makes him believe that they are sceptres and
+symbols before which all things become what he desires them. His speech
+is changed, his very nature perverted, but he acquires an “open sesame”
+ by their loss, and the loss seems to his imagination an exceeding gain.
+We will not say that William Hinkley was altogether satisfied with HIS
+bargain, but in the moment when he stood confronting his enemy on the
+bald rock, with a deadly weapon in each hand--when he felt that he stood
+foot to foot in equal conflict with his foe, one whom he had dragged
+down from his pride of place, and had compelled to the fearful issue
+which made his arrogance quail--in that moment, if he did not forget, he
+did not so much feel, that he had lost family and friends, parents
+and love; and if he felt, it was only to induce that keener feeling of
+revenge in which even the affections are apt to be swallowed up.
+
+Stevens looked in the eye of the young man and saw that he was
+dangerous. He looked upon the ante-revolutionary pistols, and saw that
+they were dangerous too, in a double sense.
+
+“Here are pistols,” he said, “better suited to our purpose. You can
+sound them and take your choice.”
+
+“These,” said Hinkley, doggedly, “are as well suited as any. If you
+will, you can take your choice of mine; but if you think yours superior,
+use them. These are good enough for me.”
+
+“But this is out of all usage,” said Stevens.
+
+“What matters it, Mr. Stevens? If you are satisfied that yours are the
+best, the advantage is with you. If you doubt that mine can kill, try
+them. I have a faith in these pistols which will content me; but we will
+take one of each, if that will please you better, and use which we think
+proper.”
+
+Stevens expressed himself better pleased to keep his own.
+
+“Suit yourself as to distance,” said Hinkley, with all the coolness of
+an unmixed salamander. His opponent stepped off ten paces with great
+deliberation, and William Hinkley, moving toward a fragment of the rock
+upon which he had placed his “revolutions” for the better inspection of
+his opponent, possessed himself of the veterans and prepared to take the
+station which had been assigned him.
+
+“Who shall give the word?” demanded Stevens.
+
+“You may!” was the cool rejoinder.
+
+“If I do, I kill you,” said the other.
+
+“I have no fear, Mr. Stevens,” answered William Hinkley with a degree of
+phlegm which almost led Stevens to fancy he had to deal with a regular
+Trojan--“I have no fear,” he continued, “and if you fancy you can
+frighten me by this sort of bragging you have very much mistaken your
+man. Shoot when you please, word or no word.”
+
+William Hinkley stood with his back to the woods, his face toward the
+lake which spread itself, smooth and calm at a little distance. He
+did not perceive that his position was a disadvantageous one. The tree
+behind, and that beside him, rendered his body a most conspicuous mark;
+while his opponent, standing with his back to the uncovered rocks ranged
+with no other objects of any prominence. Had he even been sufficiently
+practised in the arts of the duello, he would most probably have been
+utterly regardless of these things. They would not have influenced
+his firmness in the slightest degree. His course was quite as much the
+result of desperation as philosophy. He felt himself an outcast as
+well from home as from love, and it mattered to him very little, in the
+morbid excitement of his present mind, whether he fell by the hand
+of his rival, or lived to pine out a wearisome existence, lonely and
+uninspired, a gloomy exile in the bitter world. He waited, it may be
+said, with some impatience for the fire of his antagonist. Once he saw
+the pistol of Stevens uplifted. He had one in each hand. His own hung
+beside him. He waited for the shot of the enemy as a signal when to lift
+and use his own weapon. But instead of this he was surprised to see
+him drop the muzzle of his weapon, and with some celerity and no small
+degree of slight of hand, thrust the two pistols under his coat-skirts.
+A buz reached his ears a moment after--the hum of voices--some rustling
+in the bushes, which signified confusion in the approach of strangers.
+He did not wish to look round as he preferred keeping his eye on his
+antagonist.
+
+“Shoot!” he exclaimed--“quickly, before we are interrupted.”
+
+Before he could receive any answer there was a rush behind him--he heard
+his father's voice, sudden, and in a high degree of fury, mingled with
+that of his mother and Mr. Calvert, as if in expostulation. From the
+latter the words distinctly reached his ears, warning him to beware.
+Such, also, was the purport of his mother's cry. Before he could turn
+and guard against the unseen danger, he received a blow upon his head,
+the only thing of which he was conscious for some time. He staggered and
+fell forward. He felt himself stunned, fancied he was shot, and sunk to
+the ground in an utter state of insensibility.
+
+The blow came from his father's crab-stick. It was so utterly unexpected
+by the parties who had attended old Hinkley to the place of meeting,
+that no efforts were made to prevent it. But the mother of the victim
+rushed in in time to defeat the second blow, which the father prepared
+to inflict, in the moment when his son was falling from the effects of
+the first. Grasping the coat skirts of her spouse, she pulled him back
+with no scrupulous hand, and effectually baffled his designs by bringing
+him down, though in an opposite direction, to the same level with the
+youth. Old Hinkley did not bite the dust, but the latter part of his
+skull most effectually butted it; and had not his head been quite as
+tough as his crab-stick, the hurt might have been quite as severe as
+that which the latter had inflicted on the son.
+
+The latter lay as perfectly quiet as if all had been over with him. So
+much so, that the impression became very general that such was the
+case. Under this impression the heart of the mother spoke out in mingled
+screams of lamentation and reproach. She threw herself down by the side
+of the youth and vainly attempted to stop the blood which was streaming
+from a deep gash on his skull. While engaged in this work, her apron and
+handkerchief being both employed for this purpose, she poured forth a
+torrent of wrath and denunciation against her spouse. She now forgot all
+the offences of the boy, and even Alfred Stevens came in for his share
+of the anger with which she visited the offence and the offender.
+
+“Shame! shame! you bloody-minded man,” she cried, “to slaughter your own
+son--your only son--to come behind him and knock him down with a club as
+if he had been an inhuman ox! You are no husband of mine. He sha'n't own
+you for a father. If I had the pick, I'd choose a thousand fathers for
+him, from here to Massassippi, sooner than you. He's only too good and
+too handsome to be son of yours. And for what should you strike him? For
+a stranger--a man we never saw before. Shame on you! You are a brute, a
+monster, William Hinkley, and I'm done with you for ever.
+
+“My poor, poor boy! Look up, my son. Look up, William. Open your eyes.
+It's your own dear mother that speaks to you. O my God! you've killed
+him--he will not open his eyes. He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!”
+
+And truly it seemed so, for the youth gave no sign of consciousness. She
+threw herself in a screaming agony upon his body, and gave herself up to
+the unmeasured despair, which, if a weakness, is at least a sacred
+one in the case of a mother mourning her only son. Old Hinkley was not
+without his alarms--nay, not altogether without his compunctions. But
+he was one of that round head genus whose self-esteem is too much at all
+times for fear, or shame, or sensibility. Without seeking to assist
+the lad, and ascertain what was his real condition, he sought only to
+justify himself for what he had done by repeating the real and supposed
+offences of the youth. He addressed himself in this labor chiefly to Mr.
+Calvert, who, with quite as much suffering as any of the rest, had more
+consideration, and was now busied in the endeavor to stanch the blood
+and cleanse the wound of the victim.
+
+“He's only got what he deserved,” exclaimed the sullen, stubborn father.
+
+“Do not speak so, Mr. Hinkley,” replied Calvert, with a sternness which
+was unusual with him; “your son may have got his death.”
+
+“And he deserves it!” responded the other doggedly.
+
+“And if he has,” continued Calvert, “you are a murderer--a cold-blooded
+murderer--and as such will merit and will meet the halter.”
+
+The face of the old man grew livid--his lips whitened with rage; and he
+approached Calvert, his whole frame quivering with fury, and, shaking
+his hand threateningly, exclaimed:--
+
+“Do you dare to speak to me in this manner, you miserable, white-headed
+pedagogue--do you dare?”
+
+“Dare!” retorted Calvert, rising to his feet with a look of majesty
+which, in an instant, awed the insolence of the offender. Never had he
+been faced by such defiance, so fearlessly and nobly expressed.
+
+“Dare!--Look on me, and ask yourself whether I dare or not. Approach me
+but a step nigher, and even my love for your unfortunate and much-abused
+but well-minded son will not protect you. I would chastise you, with all
+my years upon me, in spite of my white head. Yours, if this boy should
+die, will never become white, or will become so suddenly, as your
+soul will wither, with its own self-torture, within you. Begone!--keep
+back--do not approach me, and, above all, do not approach me with
+uplifted hand, or, by Heaven, I will fell you to the earth as surely
+as you felled this boy! You have roused a feeling within me, William
+Hinkley, which has slept for years. Do not provoke it too far. Beware in
+season. You have acted the brute and the coward to your son--you could
+do so with impunity to him--to me you can not.”
+
+There was something in this speech, from one whom old Hinkley was
+accustomed to look upon as a dreaming bookworm, which goaded the
+tyrannical father into irrepressible fury; and, grinding his teeth,
+without a moment's hesitation he advanced, and was actually about to lay
+the crab-stick over the shoulders of the speaker: but the latter was as
+prompt as he was fearless. Before Hinkley could conceive his intention,
+he had leaped over the still unconscious person of William, and,
+flinging the old man round with a sudden jerk, had grasped and wrested
+the stick from his hands with a degree of activity and strength which
+confounded all the bystanders, and the subject of his sudden exercise of
+manhood no less than the rest.
+
+“Were you treated justly,” said Calvert, regarding him with a look of
+the loftiest indignation, “you should yourself receive a taste of the
+cudgel you are so free to use on others. Let your feebleness, old man,
+be a warning to your arrogance.”
+
+With these words, he flung the crab-stick into the lake, old Hinkley
+regarding him with looks in which it was difficult to say whether
+mortification or fury had preponderance.
+
+“Go,” he continued--“your son lives; but it is God's mercy, and none of
+yours, which has spared his life. You will live, I hope, to repent
+of your cruelty and injustice to him; to repent of having shown a
+preference to a stranger, so blind as that which has moved you to
+attempt the life of one of the most gentle lads in the whole country.”
+
+“And did he not come here to murder the stranger? did we not find him
+even now with pistol ready to murder Brother Stevens? See the pistols
+now in his hands--my father's pistols. We came not a minute too soon.
+But for my blow, he had been a murderer.”
+
+Such was the justification which old Hinkley now offered for what he had
+done.
+
+“I am no advocate for duelling,” said Calvert, “but I believe that your
+son came with the stranger for this purpose, and not to murder him.”
+
+“No, no! do you not see that Brother Stevens has no pistols? Did we not
+see him trying to escape--walking off--walking almost over the rocks to
+get out of the way?”
+
+Calvert comprehended the matter much more clearly.
+
+“Speak, sir!” he said to Stevens, “did you not come prepared to defend
+yourself?”
+
+“You see me as I am,” said Stevens, showing his empty hands.
+
+Calvert looked at him with searching eye.
+
+“I understand you, sir,” he said, with an expression not to be mistaken;
+“I understand you now. THIS LAD I KNOW. HE COULD NOT BE A MURDERER. HE
+COULD NOT TAKE ANY MAN AT ADVANTAGE. If you do not know the fact, Mr.
+Stevens, I can assure you that your life was perfectly secure from his
+weapon, so long as his remained equally unendangered. The sight of that
+lake, from which he rescued you but a few days ago, should sufficiently
+have persuaded you of this.”
+
+Stevens muttered something, the purport of which was, that “he did not
+believe the young man intended to murder him.”
+
+“Did he not send you a challenge?”
+
+“No!” said old Hinkley; “he sent him a begging note, promising atonement
+and repentance.”
+
+“Will you let me see that note?” said Calvert, addressing Stevens.
+
+“I have it not--I destroyed it,” said Stevens with some haste. Calvert
+said no more, but he looked plainly enough his suspicions. He now gave
+his attention to William Hinkley, whose mother, while this scene was
+in progress, had been occupied, as Calvert had begun, in stanching the
+blood, and trimming with her scissors, which were fortunately at her
+girdle, the hair from the wound. The son, meanwhile, had wakened to
+consciousness. He had been stunned but not severely injured by the blow,
+and, with the promptitude of a border-dame, Mrs. Hinkley, hurrying to
+a pine-tree, had gathered enough of its resin, which, spread upon a
+fragment of her cotton apron, and applied to the hurt, proved a very
+fair substitute for adhesive plaster. The youth rose to his feet, still
+retaining the pistols in his grasp. His looks were heavy from the stupor
+which still continued, but kindled into instant intelligence when he
+caught sight of Stevens and his father.
+
+“Go home, sir!” said the latter, waving his hand in the prescribed
+direction.
+
+“Never!” was the reply of the young man, firmly expressed; “never, sir,
+if I never have a home!”
+
+“You shall always have a home, William, while I have one,” said Mr.
+Calvert.
+
+“What! you encourage my son in rebellion? you teach him to fly in the
+face of his father?” shouted the old man.
+
+“No, sir; I only offer him a shelter from tyranny, a place of refuge
+from persecution. When you learn the duties and the feelings of a
+father, it will be time enough to assert the rights of one. I do not
+think him safe in your house against your vindictiveness and brutality.
+He is, however, of full age, and can determine for himself.”
+
+“He is not of age, and will not be till July.”
+
+“It matters not. He is more near the years of discretion than his
+father; and, judging him to be in some danger in your house, as a man
+and as a magistrate I offer him the protection of mine. Come home with
+me, William.”
+
+“Let him go, if he pleases--go to the d--l! He who honors not
+his father, says the Scriptures--what says the passage, Brother
+Stevens--does it not say that he who honors not his father is in danger
+of hell-fire?”
+
+“Not exactly, I believe,” said the other.
+
+“Matters not, matters not!--the meaning is very much the same.”
+
+“Oh, my son,” said the mother, clinging to his neck, “will you, indeed,
+desert me? can you leave me in my old age? I have none, none but you!
+You know how I have loved--you know I will always love you.”
+
+“And I love you, mother--and love him too, though he treats me as an
+outcast--I will always love you, but I will never more enter my father's
+dwelling. He has degraded me with his whip--he has attempted my life
+with his bludgeon. I forgive him, but will never expose myself again
+to his cruelties or indignities. You will always find me a son, and a
+dutiful one, in all other respects.”
+
+He turned away with Mr. Calvert, and slowly proceeded down the pathway
+by which he had approached the eminence. He gave Stevens a significant
+look as he passed him, and lifted one of the pistols which he still
+carried in his hands, in a manner to make evident his meaning. The other
+smiled and turned off with the group, who proceeded by the route along
+the hills, but the last words of the mother, subdued by sobs, still came
+to the ears of the youth:--
+
+“Oh, my son, come home! come home!”
+
+“No! no! I have no home--no home, mother!” muttered the young man, as
+if he thought the half-stifled response could reach the ears of the
+complaining woman.
+
+“No home! no hope!” he continued--“I am desolate.”
+
+“Not so, my son. God is our home; God is our companion; our strength,
+our preserver! Living and loving, manfully striving and working out our
+toils for deliverance, we are neither homeless, nor hopeless; neither
+strengthless, nor fatherless; wanting neither in substance nor
+companion. This is a sharp lesson, perhaps, but a necessary one. It will
+give you that courage, of the great value of which I spoke to you but a
+few days ago. Come with me to my home; it shall be yours until you can
+find a better.”
+
+“I thank you--oh! how much I thank you. It may be all as you pay, but I
+feel very, very miserable.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+EXILE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The artist in the moral world must be very careful not to suffer his
+nice sense of retributive justice, to get so much the better of his
+judgment, as an artist, as to make him forgetful of human probabilities,
+and the superior duty of preparing the mind of the young reader by
+sterling examples of patience and protracted reward, to bear up manfully
+against injustice, and not to despond because his rewards are slow. It
+would be very easy for an author to make everybody good, or, if any were
+bad, to dismiss them, out of hand, to purgatory and places even worse.
+But it would be a thankless toil to read the writings of such an author.
+His characters would fail in vraisemblance, and his incidents would lack
+in interest. The world is a sort of vast moral lazar-house, in which
+most have sores, either of greater or less degree of virulence. Some are
+nurses, and doctors, and guardians; and these are necessarily free from
+the diseases to which they minister. Some, though not many, are entirely
+incurable; many labor for years in pain, and when dismissed, still
+hobble along feebly, bearing the proofs of their trials in ugly seams
+and blotches, contracted limbs, and pale, haggard features. Others get
+off with a shorter and less severe probation. None are free from taint,
+and those who are the most free, are not always the greatest favorites
+with fortune.
+
+We are speaking of the moral world, good reader. We simply borrow an
+illustration from the physical. Our interest in one another is very much
+derived from our knowledge of each other's infirmities; and it may be
+remarked, passingly, that this interest is productive of very excellent
+philosophical temper, since it enables us to bear the worst misfortunes
+of our best friends with the most amazing fortitude. It is a frequent
+error with the reader of a book--losing sight of these facts--to expect
+that justice will always be done on the instant. He will suffer no delay
+in the book, though he sees that this delay of justice is one of the
+most decided of all the moral certainties whether in life or law. He
+does not wish to see the person in whom the author makes him interested,
+perish in youth--die of broken heart or more rapid disaster; and if he
+could be permitted to interfere, the bullet or the knife of the assassin
+would be arrested at the proper moment and always turned against the
+bosom of the wrong-doer.
+
+This is a very commendable state of feeling, and whenever it occurs, it
+clearly shows that the author is going right in his vocation. It proves
+him to be a HUMAN author, which is something better than being a mere,
+dry, moral one. But he would neither be a human nor a moral author were
+he to comply with the desires of such gentle readers, and, to satisfy
+their sympathies, arrest the progress of events. The fates must have
+their way, in the book as in the lazar-house; and the persons of his
+drama must endure their sores and sufferings with what philosophy they
+may, until, under the hands of that great physician, fortune, they
+receive an honorable discharge or otherwise.
+
+Were it with him, our young friend, William Hinkley, who is really a
+clever fellow, should not only be received to favor with all parties,
+but such should never have fallen from favor in the minds of any. His
+father should become soon repentant, and having convicted Stevens of
+his falsehood and hypocrisy, he should be rewarded with the hand of the
+woman to whom his young heart is so devoted. Such, perhaps, would be the
+universal wish with our readers; but would this be fortunate for William
+Hinkley? Our venerable friend and his, Mr. Calvert, has a very different
+opinion. He says:--
+
+“This young man is not only a worthy young man, but he is one, naturally
+of very vigorous intellect. He is of earnest, impassioned temperament,
+full of enthusiasm and imagination; fitted for work--great work--public
+work--head work--the noblest kind of work. He will be a great
+lawyer--perhaps a great statesman--if he addresses himself at once,
+manfully, to his tasks; but he will not address himself to these tasks
+while he pursues the rusting and mind-destroying life of a country
+village. Give him the object of his present desire and you deprive him
+of all motive for exertion. Give him the woman he seeks and you probably
+deprive him even of the degree of quiet which the country village
+affords. He would forfeit happiness without finding strength. Force him
+to the use of his tools and he builds himself fame and fortune.”
+
+Calvert was really not sorry that William Hinkley's treatment had been
+so harsh. He sympathized, it is true, in his sufferings, but he was not
+blind to their probable advantages; and he positively rejoiced in his
+rejection by Margaret Cooper.
+
+It was some four or five days after the events with which our last
+chapter was closed, that the old man and his young friend were to be
+seen sitting together, under the shade of the venerable tree where we
+have met them before. They had conferred together seriously, and finally
+with agreeing minds, on the several topics which have been adverted to
+in the preceding paragraph. William Hinkley had become convinced that it
+was equally the policy of his mind and heart to leave Charlemont. He was
+not so well satisfied, however, as was the case with Mr. Calvert, that
+the loss of Margaret Cooper was his exceeding gain. When did young lover
+come to such a conclusion? Not, certainly, while he was young. But when
+was young lover wise? Though a discontent, William Hinkley was not,
+however, soured nor despairing from the denial of his hopes. He had
+resources of thought and spirit never tested before, of the possession
+of which he, himself, knew nothing. They were to be brought into use and
+made valuable only by these very denials; by the baffling of his hope;
+by the provocation of his strength.
+
+His resolution grew rapidly in consequence of his disappointments.
+He was now prepared to meet the wishes of his venerable and wise
+preceptor--to grapple stoutly with the masters of the law; and, keeping
+his heart in restraint, if not absolute abeyance, to do that justice
+to his head, which, according to the opinion of Mr. Calvert, it
+well-deserved if hitherto it had not demanded it. But to pursue his
+studies as well as his practice, he was to leave Charlemont. How was
+this to be done--where was he to go--by what means? A horse, saddle, and
+bridle--a few books and the ante-revolutionary pistols of his grandsire,
+which recent circumstances seemed to have endeared to him, were all his
+available property. His poverty was an estoppel, at the outset, to his
+own reflections; and thinking of this difficulty he turned with a blank
+visage to his friend.
+
+The old man seemed to enter into and imagine his thoughts. He did not
+wait to be reminded, by the halting speech of the youth, of the one
+subject from which the latter shrunk to speak.
+
+“The next thing, my son,” said he, “is the necessary means. Happily, in
+the case of one so prudent and temperate as yourself, you will not need
+much. Food and clothing, and a small sum, annually, for contingencies,
+will be your chief expense; and this, I am fortunately able to provide.
+I am not a rich man, my son; but economy and temperance, with industry,
+have given me enough, and to spare. It is long since I had resolved that
+all I have should be yours; and I had laid aside small sums from time to
+time, intending them for an occasion like the present, which I felt
+sure would at length arrive. I am rejoiced that my foresight should have
+begun in time, since it enables me to meet the necessity promptly,
+and to interpose myself at the moment when you most need counsel and
+assistance.”
+
+“Oh, my friend, my kind generous friend, how it shames me for my own
+father to hear you speak thus!”
+
+The youth caught the hands of his benefactor, and the hot tears fell
+from his eyes upon them, while he fervently bent to kiss them.
+
+“Your father is a good but rough man, William, who will come to his
+senses in good time. Men of his education--governed as he is by the
+mistake which so commonly confounds God with his self-constituted
+representative, religion with its professor--will err, and can not be
+reasoned out of their errors. It is the unceasing operation of time
+which can alone teach them a knowledge of the truth. You must not think
+too hardly of your father, who does not love you the less because he
+fancies you are his particular property, with whom he may do what he
+pleases. As for what I have done, and am disposed to do for you, let
+that not become burdensome to your gratitude. In some respects you have
+been a son to me, and I send you from me with the same reluctance
+which a father would feel in the like circumstances. You have been my
+companion, you have helped to cheer my solitude; and I have learned to
+look on the progress of your mind with the interest of the philosopher
+who pursues a favorite experiment. In educating you, I have attempted an
+experiment which I should be sorry to see fail. I do not think now that
+it will fail. I think you will do yourself and me ample justice. If I
+have had my doubts, they were of your courage, not your talent. If
+you have a weakness, it is because of a deficiency of self-esteem--a
+tendency to self-disparagement. A little more actual struggle with the
+world, and an utter withdrawal from those helps and hands which in a
+youth's own home are very apt to be constantly employed to keep him from
+falling, and to save him from the consequences of his fall, and I do not
+despair of seeing you acquire that necessary moral hardihood which will
+enable you to think freely, and to make your mind give a fair utterance
+to the properties which are in it. When this is done, I have every hope
+of you. You will rise to eminence in your profession. I know, my son,
+that you will do me honor.”
+
+“Ah, sir, I am afraid you overrate my abilities. I have no consciousness
+of any such resources as you suppose me to possess.”
+
+“It is here that your deficiency speaks out. Be bold, my son--be bold,
+bolder, boldest. I would not have you presumptuous, but there is a
+courage, short of presumption, which is only a just confidence in one's
+energies and moral determination. This you will soon form, if, looking
+around you and into the performances of others, you see how easy they
+are, and how far inferior they are to your own ideas of what excellence
+should be. Do not look into yourself for your standards. I have perhaps
+erred in making these too high. Look out from yourself--look into
+others--analyze the properties of others; and, in attempting, seek only
+to meet the exigencies of the occasion, without asking what a great mind
+might effect beyond it. Your heart will fail you always if your beau
+ideal is for ever present to your mind.”
+
+“I will try, sir. My tasks are before me, and I know it is full time
+that I should discard my boyhood. I will go to work with industry, and
+will endeavor not to disappoint your confidence; but I must confess,
+sir, I have very little in myself.”
+
+“If you will work seriously, William, my faith is in this very humility.
+A man knowing his own weakness, and working to be strong, can not fail.
+He must achieve something more than he strives for.”
+
+“You make me strong as I hear you, sir. But I have one request to make,
+sir. I have a favor to ask, sir, which will make me almost happy if you
+grant it--which will at least reconcile me to receive your favors, and
+to feel them less oppressively.”
+
+“What is that, William? You know, my son, there are few things which I
+could refuse you.”
+
+“It is that _I_ MAY BE YOUR SON; that I may call you father, and bear
+henceforward your name. If you adopt me, rear me, teach me, provide me
+with the means of education and life, and do for me what a father should
+have done, you are substantially more than my father to me. Let me bear,
+your name. I shall be proud of it, sir. I will not disgrace it--nay,
+more, it will strengthen me in my desire to do it and myself honor. When
+I hear it spoken, it will remind me of my equal obligations to you and
+to myself.”
+
+“But this, my son, is a wrong done to your own father.”
+
+“Alas! he will not feel it such.”
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+“You speak now with a feeling of anger, William. The treatment of your
+father rankles in your mind.”
+
+“No, sir, no! I freely forgive him. I have no reference to him in the
+prayer I make. My purpose is simply what I declare. Your name will
+remind me of your counsels, will increase my obligation to pursue them,
+will strengthen me in my determination, will be to me a fond monitor in
+your place. Oh, sir, do not deny me! You have shown me the affections of
+a father--let me, I entreat you, bear the name of your son!”
+
+The youth flung his arms about the old man's neck, and wept with a gush
+of fondness which the venerable sire could not withstand. He was deeply
+touched: his lips quivered; his eyes thrilled and throbbed. In vain did
+he strive to resist the impulse. He gave him tear for tear.
+
+“My son, you have unmanned me.”
+
+“Ah, my father, I can not regret, since, in doing so, I have
+strengthened my own manhood.”
+
+“If it have this effect, William, I shall not regret my own weakness.
+There is a bird, you are aware, of which it is fabled that it nourishes
+its young by the blood of its own bosom, which it wounds for this
+purpose. Believe me, my dear boy, I am not unwilling to be this bird for
+your sake. If to feel for you as the fondest of fathers can give me the
+rights of one, then are you most certainly my son--my son!”
+
+Long, and fond, and sweet, was their embrace. For a full hour, but few
+words, and those of a mournful tenderness, were exchanged between the
+parties. But the scene and the struggle were drawing nigh their close.
+This was the day when they were to separate. It had been arranged that
+William Hinkley, or as he now calls himself, William Calvert, was to
+go into the world. The old man had recalled for his sake, many of the
+memories and associations of his youth. He had revived that period--in
+his case one of equal bitterness and pleasure--when, a youth like him he
+was about to send forth, he had been the ardent student in a profession
+whose honors he had so sadly failed to reap. In this profession he was
+then fortunate in having many sterling friends. Some of these were still
+so. In withdrawing from society, he had not withdrawn from all commerce
+with a select and sacred few; and to the friendly counsel and protection
+of these he now deputed the paternal trusts which had been just so
+solemnly surrendered to himself. There were long and earnest appeals
+written to many noble associates--men who had won great names by dint of
+honorable struggle in those fields into which the feebler temper of Mr.
+Calvert did not permit him to penetrate. Some of these letters bore for
+their superscriptions such names as the Clays, the Crittendens, and the
+Metcalfs--the strong men, not merely of Kentucky, but of the Union.
+The good old man sighed as he read them over, separately, to his young
+companion.
+
+“Once I stood with them, and like them--not the meanest among them--nay,
+beloved by them as an associate, and recognised as a competitor. But
+they are here--strong, high, glorious, in the eye of the nation--and I
+am nothing--a poor white-headed pedagogue in the obscurest regions
+of Kentucky. Oh, my son, remember this, and be strong! Beware of that
+weakness, the offspring of a miserable vanity, which, claiming too much
+for itself, can bestow nothing upon others. Strive only to meet the
+exigency, and you will do more--you will pass beyond it. Ask not what
+your fame requires--the poor fame of a solitary man struggling like an
+atom in the bosom of the great struggling world--ask only what is due
+to the task which you have assumed, and labor to do that. This is
+the simple, small secret, but be sure it is the one which is of more
+importance than all beside.”
+
+The departure of William Hinkley from his native village was kept a
+profound secret from all persons except his adopted father and his bosom
+friend and cousin, Fisherman Ned. We have lost sight of this young man
+for several pages, and, in justice equally to the reader and himself, it
+is necessary that we should hurriedly retrace our progress, at least so
+far as concerns his. We left him, if we remember, having driven Alfred
+Stevens from his purpose, riding on alone, really with no other aim than
+to give circulation to his limbs and fancies. His ride, if we are to
+believe his random but significant words, and his very knowing looks,
+was not without its results. He had certainly made some discoveries--at
+least he thought and said so; but, in truth, we believe these amounted
+to nothing more than some plausible conjectures as to the route which
+Alfred Stevens was in the habit of pursuing, on those excursions, in
+which the neighbors were disposed to think that there was something
+very mysterious. He certainly had jumped to the conclusion that, on such
+occasions, the journey of Stevens was prolonged to Ellisland; and, as
+such a ride was too long for one of mere pleasure and exercise, the next
+conclusion was, that such a journey had always some business in it.
+
+Now, a business that calls for so much secrecy, in a young student of
+theology, was certainly one that could have very little relation to the
+church. So far as Ned Hinkley knew anything of the Decalogue it could
+not well relate to that. There was nothing in St. Paul that required
+him to travel post to Ellisland; though a voyage to Tarsus might be
+justified by the authority of that apostle; and the whole proceeding,
+therefore, appeared to be a mystery in which gospelling had very little
+to do. Very naturally, having arrived at this conclusion, Ned Hinkley
+jumped to another. If the saints have nothing to do with this journey
+of Alfred Stevens, the sinners must have. It meant mischief--it was a
+device of Satan; and the matter seemed so clearly made out to his own
+mind, that he returned home with the further conviction, which was
+equally natural and far more easily arrived at, that he was now bound
+by religion, as he had previously been impelled by instinct, to give
+Stevens “a regular licking the very first chance that offered.” Still,
+though determined on this measure, he was not unmindful of the necessity
+of making other discoveries; and he returned to Charlemont with a
+countenance big with importance and almost black with mystery.
+
+But the events which had taken place in his absence, and which we have
+already related, almost put his own peculiar purposes out of his mind.
+That William Hinkley should have cowskinned Stevens would have been much
+more gratifying to him could he have been present; and he was almost
+disposed to join with the rest in their outcry against this sacrilegious
+proceeding, for the simple reason, that it somewhat anticipated his own
+rigorous intentions to the same effect. He was not less dissatisfied
+with the next attempt for two reasons.
+
+“You might have known, Bill, that a parson won't fight with pistols. You
+might have persuaded him to fist or cudgel, to a fair up and down, hand
+over, fight! That's not so criminal, they think. I heard once of Brother
+John Cross, himself trying a cudgel bout with another parson down
+in Mississippi, because he took the same text out of his mouth, and
+preached it over the very same day, with contrary reason. Everybody said
+that John Cross served him right, and nobody blamed either. But they
+would have done so if pistols had been used. You can't expect parsons
+or students of religion to fight with firearms. Swords, now, they think
+justifiable, for St. Peter used them; but we read nowhere in Old or New
+Testament of their using guns, pistols, or rifles.”
+
+“But he consented to fight, and brought his own pistols, Ned?”
+
+“Why, then, didn't you fight? That's the next thing I blame you
+for--that, when you were both ready, and had the puppies in your hands,
+you should have stood looking at each other without taking a crack. By
+jingo, had there been fifty fathers and mothers in the bush, I'd have
+had a crack at him. No, I blame you, William--I can't help it. You
+didn't do right. Oh! if you had only waited for me, and let me have
+fixed it, how finely we would have managed. What then, if your father
+had burst in, it was only shifting the barkers from your hands to mine.
+I'd have banged at him, though John Cross himself, and all his flock,
+stood by and kneed it to prevent me. They might have prayed to all
+eternity without stopping me, I tell you.”
+
+William Hinkley muttered something about the more impressive sort of
+procedure which his father had resorted to, and a little soreness about
+the parietal bones just at that moment giving a quick impatient air to
+his manner, had the effect of putting an end to all further discussion
+of this topic. Fisherman Ned concluded with a brief assurance, meant
+as consolation, that, when he took up the cudgels, his cousin need make
+himself perfectly easy with the conviction that he would balance both
+accounts very effectually. He had previously exhorted William to renew
+the attempt, though with different weapons, to bring his enemy into the
+field; but against this attempt Mr. Calvert had already impressively
+enjoined him; exacting from him a promise that he would not seek
+Stevens, and would simply abide any call for satisfaction which the
+latter might make. The worthy old man was well assured that in Stevens's
+situation there was very little likelihood of a summons to the field
+from him.
+
+Still, William Hinkley did not deem it becoming in him to leave the
+ground for several days, even after his preparations for departure were
+complete. He loitered in the neighborhood, showed himself frequently
+to his enemy, and, on some of these occasions, was subjected to the
+mortification of beholding the latter on his way to the house of
+Margaret Cooper, with whom, a few moments after, he might be seen in
+lonely rambles by the lake-side and in the wood. William had conquered
+his hopes from this quarter, but he vainly endeavored to suppress his
+pangs.
+
+At length the morning came for his departure. He had seen his mother for
+the last time the night before. They had met at the house of the widow
+Hinkley, between which and that of Calvert, his time had been chiefly
+spent, since the day of his affair with Stevens. His determination to
+depart was carefully concealed from his mother. He dreaded to hear
+her entreaties, and he doubted his own strength to endure them. His
+deportment, however, was sufficiently fond and tender, full of pain and
+passion, to have convinced her, had she been at all suspicious of the
+truth, of the design he meditated. But, as it was, it simply satisfied
+her affections; and the fond “good night” with which he addressed her
+ears at parting, was followed by a gush of tears which shocked the more
+sturdy courage of his cousin, and aroused the suspicions of the widow.
+
+“William Hinkley,” she said after the mother had gone home--“you must be
+thinking to leave Charlemont. I'm sure of it--I know it.”
+
+“If you do, say nothing, dear cousin; it will do no good--it can not
+prevent me now, and will only make our parting more painful.”
+
+“Oh, don't fear me,” said the widow--“I shan't speak of it, till it's
+known to everybody, for I think you right to go and do just as Gran'pa
+Calvert tells you; but you needn't have made it such a secret with me.
+I've always been too much of your friend to say a word.”
+
+“Alas!” said the youth mournfully, “until lately, dear cousin, I fancied
+that I had no friends--do not blame me, therefore, if I still sometimes
+act as if I had none.”
+
+“You have many friends, William, already--I'm sure you will find many
+more wherever you go; abler friends if not fonder ones, than you leave
+behind you.”
+
+The youth threw his arms round the widow's neck and kissed her tenderly.
+Her words sounded in his ears like some melodious prophecy.
+
+“Say no more, cousin,” he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm; “I am so
+well pleased to believe what you promise me of the future, that I am
+willing to believe all. God bless you. I will never forget you.”
+
+The parting with Calvert was more touching in reality, but with fewer of
+the external signs of feeling. A few words, a single embrace and squeeze
+of the hand, and they separated; the old man hiding himself and his
+feelings in the dimness of his secluded abode, while his adopted son,
+with whom Ned Hinkley rode a brief distance on his way, struck spurs
+into his steed, as if to lose, in the rapid motion of the animal, the
+slow, sad feelings which were pressing heavily upon his heart. He had
+left Charlemont for ever. He had left it under circumstances of doubt,
+and despondency--stung by injustice, and baffled in the first ardent
+hopes of his youthful mind. “The world was all before him, where to
+choose.” Let us not doubt that the benignant Providence is still his
+guide.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CONQUEST.
+
+
+
+
+
+The progress of events and our story necessarily brings as back to
+Charlemont. We shall lose sight of William Hinkley, henceforth Calvert,
+for some time; and here, par parenthese, let us say to our readers
+that this story being drawn from veritable life, will lack some of that
+compactness and close fitness of parts which make our novels too
+much resemble the course of a common law case. Instead of having our
+characters always at hand, at the proper moment, to do the business of
+the artist, like so many puppets, each working on a convenient wire, and
+waiting to be whistled in upon the scene, we shall find them sometimes
+absent, as we do in real life when their presence is most seriously
+desired, and when the reader would perhaps prefer that they should come
+in, to meet or make emergencies. Some are gone whom we should rather
+see; some present, whose absence, in the language of the Irishman, would
+be the best company they could give us; and some, not forthcoming, like
+the spirits of Owen Glendower, even when most stoutly called for. The
+vast deeps of human progress do not release their tenants at the beck
+and call of ordinary magicians, and we, who endeavor to describe events
+as we find them, must be content to take them and persons, too, only
+when they are willing. Were we writing the dramatic romance, we should
+be required to keep William Hinkley always at hand, as a convenient foil
+to Alfred Stevens. He should watch his progress; pursue his sinuosities
+of course; trace him out in all his ill-favored purposes, and be
+ready, at the first act--having, like the falcon, by frequent and
+constantly-ascending gyrations, reached the point of command--to pounce
+down upon the fated quarry, and end the story and the strife together.
+But ours is a social narrative, where people come and go without much
+regard to the unities, and without asking leave of the manager. William
+Hinkley, too, is a mere man and no hero. He has no time to spare, and he
+is conscious that he has already wasted too much. He has work to do and
+is gone to do it. Let it console the reader, in his absence, to know
+that he WILL do it--that his promise is a good one--and that we have
+already been shown, in the dim perspective of the future, glimpses of
+his course which compensate him for his mishaps, and gladden the heart
+of his adopted father, by confirming its prophecies and hopes.
+
+The same fates which deny that he should realize the first fancies of
+his boyhood, are, in the end, perhaps, not a jot kinder to others whom
+they now rather seem to favor. His absence did not stop the social
+machine of Charlemont from travelling on very much as before. There was
+a shadow over his mother's heart, and his disappearance rather aroused
+some misgiving and self-reproachful sensations in that of his father.
+Mr. Calvert, too, had his touch of hypochondria in consequence of his
+increased loneliness, and Ned Hinkley's fighting monomania underwent
+startling increase; but, with the rest, the wheel went on without much
+sensible difference. The truth is, that, however mortifying the truth
+may be, the best of us makes but a very small sensation in his absence.
+Death is a longer absence, in which our friends either forget us, or
+recollect our vices. Our virtues are best acknowledged when we are
+standing nigh and ready to enforce them. Like the argumentative
+eloquence of the Eighth Harry, they are never effectual until the
+halberdiers clinch their rivets forcibly.
+
+It does not necessarily impugn the benevolence or wisdom of Providence
+to show that crime is successful for a season in its purposes. Vice may
+prevail, and victims perish, without necessarily disparaging the career,
+or impeding the progress of virtue. To show that innocence may fall,
+is sometimes to strengthen innocence, so that it may stand against
+all assailants. To show vice, even in its moments of success, is not
+necessarily to show that such success is desirable. Far from it! As none
+of us can look very deeply into the future, so it happens that the boon
+for which we pray sometimes turns out to be our bane; while the hardship
+and suffering, whose approach we deprecate in sackcloth and ashes, may
+come with healing on their wings, and afford us a dearer blessing
+than any ever yet depicted in the loom of a sanguine and brilliant
+imagination.
+
+We are, after all, humbling as this fact may be to our clamorous vanity,
+only so many agents and instruments, blind, and scuffling vainly in our
+blindness, in the perpetual law of progress. As a soul never dies, so it
+is never useless or unemployed. The Deity is no more profligate in the
+matter of souls than he is in that of seeds. They pass, by periodical
+transitions, from body to body; perhaps from sphere to sphere; and as
+the performance of their trusts have been praiseworthy or censurable,
+so will be the character of their trusts in future. He who has shown
+himself worthy of confidence in one state, will probably acquire a
+corresponding increase of responsibility in another. He who has betrayed
+his trusts or impaired them, will share less of the privileges of the
+great moral credit system.
+
+In all these transitions, however, work is to be done. The fact that
+there is a trust, implies duty and performance; and the practice of
+virtue is nothing more than the performance of this work to the best of
+our abilities. Well, we do not do our work. We fail in our trusts. We
+abuse tuem. Such a man as Alfred Stevens abuses them. Such a woman as
+Margaret Cooper fails in them. What then? Do we destroy the slave who
+fails in his duty, or chasten him, and give him inferior trusts? Do you
+suppose that the Deity is more profligate in souls than in seeds--that
+he creates and sends forth millions of new souls, annually, in place of
+those which have gone astray? Hardly so! He is too good an economist for
+that. We learn this from all the analogies. As a soul can not perish,
+so it never remains unemployed. It still works, though its labors may be
+confined to a treadmill.
+
+The mere novel-reader may regard all this as so much unnecessary
+digression. But let him not deceive himself. It would be the most
+humiliating and painful thought, indeed, could we believe that the
+genius which informs and delights us--which guides the bark of state
+through a thousand storms and dangers to its port of safety--which
+conquers and commands--which sings in melodies that make melodies
+in human hearts for thousands of succeeding years--is suddenly to be
+suspended--to have no more employment--to do no more work--guide no more
+states--make no more melodies! Nay, the pang would be scarcely less to
+believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred Stevens, or a wild,
+irregular genius, like that of Margaret Cooper--because of its erring,
+either through perversity or blindness, is wholly to become defunct,
+so far as employment is concerned--that they are to be deprived of all
+privilege of working up to the lost places--regaining the squandered
+talents--atoning, by industry and humble desire, the errors and
+deficiencies of the past! We rather believe that heaven is a world where
+the labors are more elevated, the necessities less degrading; that it
+is no more permanent than what we esteem present life; nay, that it is
+destined to other transitions; that we may still ascend, on and on,
+and that each heaven has its higher heaven yet. We believe that our
+immortality is from the beginning; that time is only a periodical step
+in eternity----that transition is the true meaning of life--and death
+nothing more than a sign of progress. It may be an upward or a downward
+progress, but it is not a toilsome march to a mere sleep. Lavish as is
+the bounty of God, and boundless as are his resources, there is
+nothing of him that we do know which can justify the idea of such utter
+profligacy of material.
+
+We transgress. Our business is with the present doings of our dramatis
+persons and not with the future employment of their souls. Still, we
+believe, the doctrine which we teach not only to be more rational, but
+absolutely more moral than the conjectures on this subject which are
+in ordinary use. More rational as relates to the characteristics of the
+Deity, and more moral as it affects the conduct and the purposes of
+man himself. There is something grand beyond all things else, in the
+conception of this eternal progress of the individual nature; its
+passage from condition to condition; sphere to sphere; life to life;
+always busy, working for the mighty Master; falling and sinking to mere
+menial toils, or achieving and rising to more noble trusts; but, at all
+events, still working in some way in the great world-plantation, and
+under the direct eye of the sovereign World-Planter. The torture of
+souls on the one hand, and the singing of psalms on the other, may
+be doctrines infinitely more orthodox; but, to our mind, they seem
+immeasurably inferior in grandeur, in propriety, in noble conception of
+the appointments of the creature, and the wondrous and lovely designs of
+the benignant Father.
+
+The defeat of such a soul as that of Margaret Cooper can surely be a
+temporary defeat only. It will regain strength, it must rise in the
+future, it must recover the lost ground, and reassert the empire whose
+sway it has unwillingly abandoned; for it is not through will,
+wholly, by which we lose the moral eminence. Something is due to human
+weaknesses; to the blindness in which a noble spirit is sometimes
+suffered to grow into stature; disproportioned stature--that, reaching
+to heaven, is yet shaken down and overthrown by the merest breath of
+storm that sweeps suddenly beneath its skies. The very hopelessness of
+Margaret Cooper's ambition, which led her to misanthropy, was the source
+of an ever-fertile and upspringing confidence. Thus it was that the
+favoring opinions which Alfred Stevens expressed--a favoring opinion
+expressed by one whom she soon discovered was well able to form
+one--accompanied by an assurance that the dream of fame which her wild
+imagination had formed should certainly be realized, gave him a large
+power over her confidence. Her passion was sway--the sway of mind over
+mind--of genius over sympathy--of the syren Genius over the subject
+Love. It was this passion which had made her proud, which had filled
+her mind with visions, and yielded to her a world by itself, and like
+no other, filled with all forms of worship and attraction; chivalrous
+faith, unflagging zeal, generous confidence, pure spirits, and the most
+unquestioning loyalty! Ignorant of the world which she had not seen, and
+of those movements of human passion which she had really never felt, she
+naturally regarded Alfred Stevens as one of the noble representatives
+of that imaginary empire which her genius continually brought before her
+eyes. She saw in him the embodiment of that faith in her intellect which
+it was the first and last hope of her intellect to inspire; and seeing
+thus, it will be easy to believe that her full heart, which, hitherto,
+had poured itself forth on rocks, and trees, and solitary places,
+forgetful of all prudence--a lesson which she had never learned--and
+rejoicing in the sympathy of a being like herself, now gushed forth
+with all the volume of its impatient fullness. The adroit art of her
+companion led her for ever into herself; she was continually summoned to
+pour forth the treasures of her mind and soul; and, toiling in the same
+sort of egoisme in which her life heretofore had been consumed, she
+was necessarily diverted from all doubts or apprehensions of the occult
+purposes of him who had thus beguiled her over the long frequented
+paths. As the great secret of success with the mere worldling, is to pry
+into the secret of his neighbor while carefully concealing his own, so
+it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to be soon blinded to a purpose
+which its own ardent nature neither allows it to suspect nor penetrate.
+Enthusiasm is a thing of utter confidence; it has no suspicion; it sets
+no watch on other hearts; it is too constantly employed in pouring forth
+the treasures of its own. It is easy, therefore, to deceive and betray
+it, to beguile it into confidence, and turn all its revelations against
+itself. How far the frequency of this usage in the world makes it
+honorable, is a question which we need not discuss on this occasion.
+
+Alfred Stevens had now been for some weeks in the village of Charlemont,
+where, in the meantime, he had become an object of constantly-increasing
+interest. The men shrank from him with a feeling of inferiority; the
+women--the young ones being understood--shrank from him also, but
+with that natural art of the sex which invites pursuit, and strives
+to conquer even in flight. But it was soon evident enough that Stevens
+bestowed his best regards solely upon Margaret Cooper. If he sought
+the rest, it was simply in compliance with those seeming duties of his
+ostensible profession which were necessary to maintain appearances.
+Whether he loved Margaret Cooper or not, he soon found a pleasure in
+her society which he sought for in no other quarter of the village. The
+days, in spite of the strife with William Hinkley, flew by with equal
+pleasantness and rapidity to both. The unsophisticated mind of
+Margaret Cooper left her sensible to few restraints upon their ordinary
+intercourse; and, indeed, if she did know or regard them for an instant,
+it was only to consider them as necessary restraints for the protection
+of the ignorant and feeble of her sex--a class in which she never once
+thought to include herself. Her attachment to Alfred Stevens, though
+it first arose from the pleasure which her mind derived from its
+intercourse with his, and not from any of those nice and curious
+sympathies of temperament and taste which are supposed to constitute the
+essence and comprise the secret of love, was yet sufficient to blind her
+judgment to the risks of feeling, if nothing more, which were likely to
+arise from their hourly-increasing intimacy; and she wandered with
+him into the devious woods, and they walked by moonlight among
+the solemn-shaded hills, and the unconscious girl had no sort of
+apprehension that the spells of an enslaving passion were rapidly
+passing over her soul.
+
+How should she apprehend such spells? how break them? For the first time
+in her life had she found intellectual sympathy--the only moral response
+which her heart longed to hear. For the first time had she encountered
+a mind which could do justice to, and correspond on anything like equal
+terms with, her own. How could she think that evil would ensue from
+an acquisition which yielded her the only communion which she had ever
+craved Her confidence in herself, in her own strength, and her ignorance
+of her own passions, were sufficient to render her feelings secure; and
+then she was too well satisfied of the superiority and nobleness of his.
+But, in truth, she never thought upon the subject. Her mind dwelt
+only on the divine forms and images of poetry. The ideal world had
+superseded, not only the dangers, but the very aspect, of the real.
+Under the magic action of her fancy, she had come to dwell
+
+   “With those gay creatures of the element
+    That in the colors of the rainbow live,
+    And play i' the plighted clouds”--
+
+she had come to speak only in the one language, and of the one topic;
+and, believing now that she had an auditor equally able to comprehend
+and willing to sympathize with her cravings, she gave free scope to
+the utterance of her fancies, and to the headlong impulse of that
+imagination which had never felt the curb.
+
+The young heart, not yet chilled by the world's denials, will readily
+comprehend the beguiling influence of the dreaming and enthusiastic
+nature of some dear spirit, in whose faith it has full confidence, and
+whose tastes are kindred with its own. How sweet the luxury of moonlight
+in commerce with such a congenial spirit! how heavenly the occasional
+breath of the sweet southwest! how gentle and soothing fond the whispers
+of night--the twirling progress of sad-shining stars--the gentle sway of
+winds among the tree-tops--the plaintive moan of billows, as they gather
+and disperse themselves along the shores! To speak of these delights;
+to walk hand-in-hand along the gray sands by the seaside, and whisper in
+murmuring tones, that seem to gather sympathies from those of ocean;
+to guide the eye of the beloved associate to the sudden object; to
+challenge the kindred fancy which comments upon our own; to remember
+together, and repeat, the happy verse of inspired poets, speaking of
+the scene, and to the awakened heart which feels it; and, more, to pour
+forth one's own inspirations in the language of tenderness and song, and
+awaken in the heart of our companion the rapture to which our own
+has given speech--these, which are subjects of mock and scorn to the
+worldling, are substantial though not enduring joys to the young and
+ardent nature.
+
+In this communion, with all her pride, strength, and confidence,
+Margaret Cooper was the merest child. Without a feeling of guile, she
+was dreaming of the greatness which her ambition craved, and telling her
+dreams, with all the artless freedom of the child who has some golden
+fancy of the future, which it seeks to have confirmed by the lips
+of experience. The wily Stevens led her on, gave stimulus to her
+enthusiasm, made her dreams become reasonable in her eyes, and laughed
+at them in his secret heart. She sung at his suggestion, and sang her
+own verses with all that natural tremor which even the most self-assured
+poet feels on such an occasion.
+
+“Beautiful!” the arch-hypocrite would exclaim, as if unconscious
+of utterance; “beautiful!” and his hand would possess itself of the
+trembling fingers of hers. “But beautiful as it is, Margaret, I am
+sure that it is nothing to what you could do under more auspicious
+circumstances.”
+
+“Ah! if there were ears to hear, if there were hearts to feel, and eyes
+to weep, I feel, I know, what might be done. No, no! this is nothing.
+This is the work of a child.”
+
+“Nay, Margaret, if the work of a child, it is that of a child of
+genius.”
+
+“Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive me. I am too
+willing to believe you, for it is so dear a feeling to think that I
+too am a poet. Yet, at the first, I had not the smallest notion of this
+kind: I neither knew what poetry was, nor felt the desire to be a poet.
+Yet I yearned with strange feelings, which uttered themselves in that
+form ere I had seen books or read the verses of others. It was an
+instinct that led me as it would. I sometimes fear that I have been
+foolish in obeying it; for oh, what has it brought me? What am I? what
+are my joys? I am lonely even with my companions. I share not the sports
+and feel not the things which delight my sex. Their dances and frolics
+give me no pleasure. I have no sympathy with them or their cares. I
+go apart--I am here on the hills, or deep in the forests--sad, lonely,
+scarcely knowing what I am, and what I desire.”
+
+“You are not alone, nor are your pleasures less acute than theirs. If
+they laugh, their laughter ends in sleep. If you are sad, you lose not
+the slightest faculty of perception or sensibility, but rather gain them
+in consequence. Laughter and tears are signs neither of happiness nor
+grief, and as frequently result from absolute indifference as from any
+active emotion. If you are absent from them, you have better company.
+You can summon spirits to your communion, Margaret; noble thoughts
+attend you; eyes that cheer, lips that assure you, and whispers, from
+unknown attendants, that bid you be of good heart, for the good time is
+coming. Ah! Margaret, believe me when I tell you that time is at hand.
+Such a genius as yours, such a spirit, can not always be buried in these
+woods.”
+
+It was in such artful language as this that the arch-hypocrite flattered
+and beguiled her. They were wandering along the edge of the streamlet to
+which we have more than once conducted the footsteps of the reader. The
+sun was about setting. The autumn air was mild with a gentle breathing
+from the south. The woods were still and meek as the slumbers of an
+infant. The quiet of the scene harmonized with the temper of their
+thoughts and feelings. They sat upon a fragment of the rock. Margaret
+was silent, but her eyes were glistening bright--not with hope only,
+but with that first glimmering consciousness of a warmer feeling, which
+gives a purple light to hope, and makes the heart tremble, for the first
+time, with its own expectations. It did not escape Alfred Stevens that,
+for the first time, her eye sank beneath his glance; for the first time
+there was a slight flush upon her cheek. He was careful not to startle
+and alarm the consciousness which these signs indicated. The first
+feeling which the young heart has of its dependence upon another is one
+little short of terror; it is a feeling which wakens up suspicion, and
+puts all the senses upon the watch. To appear to perceive this emotion
+is to make it circumspect; to disarm it, one must wear the aspect of
+unconsciousness. The wily Stevens, practised in the game, and master of
+the nature of the unsuspecting girl, betrayed in his looks none of the
+intelligence which he felt. If he uttered himself in the language of
+admiration, it was that admiration which would be natural to a profound
+adorer of literature and all its professors. His words were those of the
+amateur:--
+
+“I can not understand, Margaret, how you have studied--how you have
+learned so much--your books are few--you have had no masters. I never
+met in my life with so remarkable an instance of unassisted endeavor.”
+
+“My books were hero in the woods--among these old rocks. My teacher was
+solitude. Ah! there is no teacher like one's own heart. My instinct made
+me feel my deficiencies--my deficiencies taught me contemplation--and
+from contemplation came thoughts and cravings, and you know, when the
+consciousness of our lack is greatest, then, even the dumb man finds a
+voice. I found my voice in consequence of my wants. My language you see
+is that of complaint only.”
+
+“And a sweet and noble language it is, Margaret; but it is not in poetry
+alone that your utterance is so distinct and beautiful--you sing too
+with a taste as well as power which would prove that contemplation was
+as happy in bringing about perfection in the one as in the other art.
+Do sing me, Margaret, that little ditty which you sang here the other
+night?”
+
+His hand gently detained and pressed hers as he urged the request.
+
+“I would rather not sing to-night,” she replied, “I do not feel as if I
+could, and I trust altogether to feeling. I will sing for you some other
+time when you do not ask, and, perhaps would prefer not to hear me.”
+
+“To hear you at all, Margaret, is music to my ears.”
+
+She was silent, and her fingers made a slight movement to detach
+themselves from his.
+
+“No, Margaret, do not withdraw them! Let me detain them
+thus--longer--for ever! My admiration of you has been too deeply felt
+not to have been too clearly shown, Your genius is too dear to me now to
+suffer me to lose it. Margaret--dear Margaret!”
+
+She spoke not--her breathing became quick and hard.
+
+“You do not speak, let me hope that you are not angry with me?”
+
+“No, no!” she whispered faintly. He continued with more boldness, and
+while he spoke, his arm encircled her waist.
+
+“A blessed chance brought me to your village. I saw you and returned.
+I chose a disguise in which I might study you, and see how far the
+treasures of your mind confirmed the noble promise of your face. They
+have done more. Like him who finds the precious ore among the mountains,
+I can not part with you so found. I must tear you from the soil. I must
+bear you with me. You must be mine, Margaret--you must go with me where
+the world will see, and envy me my prize.”
+
+He pressed her to his bosom. She struggled slightly.
+
+“Do not, do not, Alfred Stevens, do not press me--do not keep me. You
+think too much of me. I am no treasure--alas! this is all deception. You
+can not--can not desire it?”
+
+“Do I not! Ah! Margaret, what else do I desire now? Do you think me only
+what I appear in Charlemont?”
+
+“No! no!”
+
+“I have the power of a name, Margaret, in my profession--among a
+numerous people--and that power is growing into wealth and sway. I am
+feared and honored, loved by some, almost worshipped by others; and what
+has led me from this sway, to linger among these hills--to waste hours
+so precious to ambition--to risk the influence which I had already
+secured--what, but a higher impulse--a dearer prospect--a treasure,
+Margaret, of equal beauty and genius.”
+
+Her face was hidden upon his bosom. He felt the beating of her heart
+against his hand.
+
+“If you have a genius for song, Margaret Cooper, I, too, am not without
+my boast. In my profession, men speak of my eloquence as that of a
+genius which has few equals, and no superior.”
+
+“I know it--it must be so!”
+
+“Move me not to boast, dear Margaret; it is in your ears only that I
+do so--and only to assure you that, in listening to my love, you do not
+yield to one utterly obscure, and wanting in claims, which, as yours
+must be finally, are already held to be established and worthy of the
+best admiration of the intelligent and wise. Do you hear me, Margaret?”
+
+“I do, I do! It must be as you say. But of love I have thought nothing.
+No, no! I know not, Alfred Stevens, if I love or not--if I can love.”
+
+“You mistake, Margaret. It is in the heart that the head finds its
+inspiration. Mere intellect makes not genius. All the intellect in the
+world would fail of this divine consummation. It is from the fountains
+of feeling that poetry drinks her inspiration. It is at the altars of
+love that the genius of song first bends in adoration. You have loved,
+Margaret, from the first moment when you sung. It did not alter the case
+that there was no object of sight. The image was in your mind--in your
+hope. One sometimes goes through life without ever meeting the human
+counterpart of this ideal; and the language of such a heart will be that
+of chagrin--distaste of life--misanthropy, and a general scorn of his
+own nature. Such, I trust, is not your destiny. No, Margaret, that is
+impossible. I take your doubt as my answer, and unless your own lips
+undeceive me, dearest Margaret, I will believe that your love is willing
+to requite my own.”
+
+She was actually sobbing on his breast. With an effort she struggled
+into utterance.
+
+“My heart is so full, my feelings are so strange--oh! Alfred Stevens, I
+never fancied I could be so weak.”
+
+“So weak--to love! surely, Margaret, you mistake the word. It is in
+loving only that the heart finds its strength. Love is the heart's
+sole business; and not to exercise it in its duties is to impair its
+faculties, and deprive it equally of its pleasures and its tasks. Oh,
+I will teach you of the uses of this little heart of yours, dear
+Margaret--ay, till it grow big with its own capacity to teach. We will
+inform each other, every hour, of some new impulses and objects. Our
+dreams, our hopes, our fears, and our desires, ah! Margaret--what a
+study of love will these afford us. Nor to love only. Ah! dearest, when
+your muse shall have its audience, its numerous watching eyes and eager
+ears, then shall you discover how much richer will be the strain from
+your lips once informed by the gushing fullness of this throbbing
+heart.”
+
+She murmured fondly in his embrace, “Ah! I ask no other eyes and ears
+than yours.”
+
+In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such indeed was her
+feeling. He gathered her up closer in his arms. He pressed his lips upon
+the rich ripe beauties of hers, as some hungering bee, darting upon the
+yet unrifled flower which it first finds in the shadows of the forest,
+clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness, as if appetite could
+only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled and freed herself from
+his embrace: but, returning home that evening her eye was cast upon the
+ground; her step was set down hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her
+heart; a timid expression in her face and manner! These were proofs of
+the discovery which she then seems to have made for the first time, that
+there is a power stronger than mere human will--a power that controls
+genius; that mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is
+independent of the loss of friends! She now first knew her weakness. She
+had felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever
+his hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes forth
+to victory.
+
+Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and turned
+her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which, with every
+movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon her cheek. Yet,
+while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed and trembled with
+the birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how sweet is our first
+secret pleasure--shared by one other only--sweet to that other as to
+ourself--so precious to him also. To be carried into our chamber--to be
+set up ostentatiously--there, where none but ourselves may see--to be
+an object of our constant tendance, careful idolatry, keen suspicion,
+delighted worship!
+
+Ah! but if the other makes it no idol--his toy only--what shall
+follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse,
+humiliation, perhaps death!--alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love which
+had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was no divinity
+with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such things, but like
+the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the good doctrines which he
+can not feel and is slow to practise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+FALL.
+
+
+
+
+
+We should speak unprofitably and with little prospect of being
+understood, did our readers require to be told, that there is a certain
+impatient and gnawing restlessness in the heart of love, which keeps it
+for ever feverish and anxious. Where this passion is associated with a
+warm, enthusiastic genius, owning the poetic temperament, the anxiety
+is proportionatly greater. The ideal of the mind is a sort of classical
+image of perfect loveliness, chaste, sweet, commanding, but, how cold!
+But love gives life to this image, even as the warm rays of the sun
+falling upon the sullen lips of the Memnon, compel its utterance in
+music. It not only looks beauty--it breathes it. It is not only the
+aspect of the Apollo, it is the god himself; his full lyre strung, his
+golden bow quivering at his back with the majesty of his motion; and his
+lips parting with the song which shall make the ravished spheres stoop,
+and gather round to listen.
+
+Hitherto Margaret Cooper had been a girl of strong will; will nursed
+in solitude, and by the wrong-headed indulgence of a vain and foolish
+mother. She was conscious of that bounding, bursting soul of genius
+which possessed her bosom; that strange, moody, and capricious god;
+pent-up, denied, crying evermore for utterance, with a breath more
+painful to endure, because of the suppression. This consciousness, with
+the feeling of denial which attended it, had cast a gloomy intensity
+over her features not less than her mind. The belief that she was
+possessed of treasures which were unvalued--that she had powers which
+were never to be exercised--that with a song such as might startle an
+empire, she was yet doomed to a silent and senseless auditory of rocks
+and trees; this belief had brought with it a moody arrogance of temper
+which had made itself felt by all around her. In one hour this mood had
+departed. Ambition and love became united for a common purpose; for the
+object of the latter, was also the profound admirer of the former.
+
+The anxious restlessness which her newly-acquired sensations occasioned
+in her bosom, was not diminished by a renewal of those tender interviews
+with her lover, which we have endeavored, though so faultily, already to
+describe. Evening after evening found them together; the wily hypocrite
+still stimulating, by his glozing artifices, the ruling passion for
+fame, which, in her bosom, was only temporarily subservient to
+love, while he drank his precious reward from her warm, lovely, and
+still-blushing lips and cheeks. The very isolation in which she had
+previously dwelt in Charlemont, rendered the society of Stevens still
+more dear to her heart. She was no longer alone--no longer unknown--not
+now unappreciated in that respect in which hitherto she felt her great
+denial. “Here is one--himself a genius--who can do justice to mine.”
+
+The young poet who finds an auditor, where he has never had one before,
+may be likened to a blind man suddenly put in possession of his sight.
+He sees sun and moon and stars, the forms of beauty, the images of
+grace; and his soul grows intoxicated with the wonders of its new
+empire. What does he owe to him who puts him in possession of these
+treasures? who has given him his sight? Love, devotion, all that his
+full heart has to pay of homage and affection.
+
+Such was very much the relation which Margaret Cooper bore to Alfred
+Stevens; and when, by his professions of love, he left the shows of his
+admiration no longer doubtful, she was at once and entirely his. She was
+no longer the self-willed, imperious damsel, full of defiance, dreaming
+of admiration only, scornful of the inferior, and challenging the
+regards of equals. She was now a timid, trembling girl--a dependant,
+such as the devoted heart must ever be, waiting for the sign to speak,
+looking eagerly for the smile to reward her sweetest utterance. If now
+she walked with Stevens, she no longer led the way; she hung a little
+backward, though she grasped his arm--nay, even when her hand was
+covered with a gentle pressure in the folds of his. If she sung, she did
+not venture to meet his eyes, which she FELT must be upon hers, and now
+it was no longer her desire that the village damsels should behold them
+as they went forth together on their rambles. She no longer met their
+cunning and significant smiles with confidence and pride, but with
+faltering looks, and with cheeks covered with blushes. Great, indeed,
+was the change which had come over that once proud spirit--change
+surprising to all, but as natural as any other of the thousand changes
+which are produced in the progress of moments by the arch-magician,
+Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the ordinary topics of the
+youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to the eagle,
+soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming thunder-storm;
+to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness, which no foot
+travelled but her own; to the silent glooms of the forest--to the
+majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The dove and the zephyr
+now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly closed it. She was changed
+from what she was. The affections had suddenly bounded into being,
+trampling the petty vanities underfoot; and those first lessons of
+humility which are taught by love, had subdued a spirit which, hitherto,
+had never known control.
+
+Alfred Stevens soon perceived how complete was his victory. He soon
+saw the extent of that sudden change which had come over her character.
+Hitherto, she had been the orator. When they stood together by the
+lake-side, or upon the rock, it was her finger which had pointed out the
+objects for contemplation; it was her voice whose eloquence had charmed
+the ear, dilating upon the beauties or the wonders which they surveyed.
+She was now no longer eloquent in words. But she looked a deeper
+eloquence by far than any words could embody. He was now the speaker;
+and regarding him through the favoring media of kindled affections, it
+seemed to her ear, that there was no eloquence so sweet as his. He spoke
+briefly of the natural beauties by which they were surrounded.
+
+“Trees, rocks, the valley and the hill, all realms of solitude and
+shade, inspire enthusiasm and ardor in the imaginative spirit. They are
+beneficial for this purpose. For the training of a great poet they are
+necessary. They have the effect of lifting the mind to the contemplation
+of vastness, depth, height, profundity. This produces an intensity of
+mood--the natural result of any association between our own feelings and
+such objects as are lofty and noble in the external world. The feelings
+and passions as they are influenced by the petty play of society,
+which diffuses their power and breaks their lights into little, become
+concentrated on the noble and the grand. Serious earnestness of nature
+becomes habitual--the heart flings itself into all the subjects of its
+interest--it trifles with none--all its labors become sacred in its
+eyes, and the latest object of study and analysis is that which is
+always most important. The effect of this training in youth on the
+poetic mind, is to the last degree beneficial; since, without a degree
+of seriousness amounting to intensity--without a hearty faith in the
+importance of what is to be done--without a passionate fullness of
+soul which drives one to his task--there will be no truthfulness, no
+eloquence, no concentrated thought and permanent achievement. With, you,
+dear Margaret, such has already been the effect. You shrink from the
+ordinary enjoyments of society. Their bald chat distresses you, as the
+chatter of so many jays. You prefer the solitude which feeds the serious
+mood which you love, and enables your imagination, unrepressed by
+the presence of shallow witlings, to evoke its agents from storm and
+shadow--from deep forest and lonesome lake--to minister to the cravings
+of an excited heart, and a soaring and ambitious fancy.”
+
+“Oh, how truly, Alfred, do you speak it,” she murmured as he closed.
+
+“So far, so good; but, dear Margaret--there are other subjects of study
+which are equally necessary for the great poet. The wild aspects of
+nature are such as are of use in the first years of his probation. To
+grow up in the woods and among the rocks, so that a hearty simplicity,
+an earnest directness, with a constant habit of contemplation should be
+permanently formed, is a first and necessary object. But it is in this
+training as in every other. There are successive steps. There is a law
+of progressive advance. You must not stop there. The greatest moral
+study for the poet must follow. This is the study of man in society--in
+the great world--where he puts on a thousand various aspects--far other
+than those which are seen in the country--in correspondence with the
+thousand shapes of fortune, necessity, or caprice, which attend him
+there. Indeed, it may safely be said, that he never knows one half of
+the responsibility of his tasks who toils without the presence of those
+for whom he toils. It is in the neighborhood of man that we feel his and
+our importance. It is while we are watching his strifes and struggles
+that we see the awful importance of his destiny; and the great trusts of
+self, and truth, and the future, which have been delivered to his hands.
+Here you do not see man. You see certain shapes, which are employed in
+raising hay, turnips, and potatoes; which eat and drink very much as man
+does; but which, as they suffer to sleep and rest most of those latent
+faculties, the exercise of which can alone establish the superiority of
+the intellectual over the animal nature, so they have no more right
+to the name of man than any other of those animals who eat as
+industriously, and sleep as profoundly, as themselves. The contemplation
+of the superior being, engaged in superior toils, awakens superior
+faculties in the observer. He who sees nothing but the gathering of
+turnips will think of nothing but turnips. As we enlarge the sphere
+of our observation, the faculty of thought becomes expanded. You will
+discover this wonderful change when you go into the world. Hitherto,
+your inspirers have been these groves, these rocks, lakes, trees,
+and silent places. But, when you sit amid crowds of bright-eyed,
+full-minded, and admiring people; when you see the eyes of thousands
+looking for the light to shine from yours; hanging, with a delight that
+still hungers, on the words of truth and beauty which fall from your
+lips--then, then only, dearest Margaret, will you discover the true
+sources of inspiration and of fame.”
+
+“Ah!” she murmured despondingly--“you daunt me when you speak of these
+crowds--crowds of the intellectual and the wise. What should I be--how
+would I appear among them?”
+
+“As you appear to me, Margaret--their queen, their idol, their divinity,
+not less a beauty than a muse?”
+
+The raptures which Stevens expressed seemed to justify the embrace which
+followed it; and it was some moments before she again spoke. When she
+did the same subject was running in her mind.
+
+“Ah! Alfred, still I fear!”
+
+“Fear nothing, Margaret. It will be as I tell you--as I promise! If I
+deceive you, I deceive myself. Is it not for the wife of my bosom that I
+expect this homage?”
+
+Her murmurs were unheard. They strolled on--still deeper into the
+mazes of the forest, and the broad disk of the moon, suddenly gleaming,
+yellow, through the tops of the trees, surprised them in their
+wanderings.
+
+“How beautiful!” he exclaimed. “Let us sit here, dearest Margaret.
+The rock here is smooth and covered with the softest lichen. A perfect
+carpet of it is at our feet, and the brooklet makes the sweetest
+murmuring as it glides onward through the grove, telling all the while,
+like some silly schoolgirl, where you may look for it. See the little
+drops of moonlight falling here--and there in the small openings of the
+forest, and lying upon the greensward like so many scattered bits of
+silver. One might take it for fairy coin. And, do you note the soft
+breeze that seems to rise with the moon as from some Cytherean isle,
+breathing of love, love only--love never perishing!”
+
+“Ah! were it so, Alfred!”
+
+“Is it not, Margaret? If I could fancy that you would cease to love me
+or I you--could I think that these dear joys were to end--but no! no!
+let us not think of it. It is too sweet to believe, and the distrust
+seems as unholy as it is unwholesome. That bright soft planet seems to
+persuade to confidence as it inspires love. Do you not feel your heart
+soften in the moonlight, Margaret? your eye glistens, dearest--and
+your heart, I know, must be touched. It is--I feel its beating! What a
+tumult, dear Margaret, is here!”
+
+“Do not, do not!” she murmured, gently striving to disengage herself
+from his grasp.
+
+“No! no!--move not, dearest,” he replied in a subdued tone--a murmur
+most like hers. “Are we not happy? Is there anything, dear Margaret,
+which we could wish for?”
+
+“Nothing! nothing!”
+
+“Ah! what a blessed chance it was that brought me to these hills. I
+never lived till now. I had my joys, Margaret--my triumphs! I freely
+yield them to the past! I care for them no more! They are no longer joys
+or triumphs! Yes, Margaret you have changed my heart within me. Even
+fame which I so much worshipped is forgotten.”
+
+“Say not that; oh, say not that!” she exclaimed, but still in subdued
+accents.
+
+“I must--it is too far true. I could give up the shout of applause--the
+honor of popular favor--the voice of a people's approbation--the shining
+display and the golden honor--all, dear Margaret, sooner than part with
+you.”
+
+“But you need not give them up, Alfred.”
+
+“Ah, dearest, but I have no soul for them now. You are alone my soul, my
+saint--the one dear object, desire, and pride, and conquest.”
+
+“Alas! and have you not conquered, Alfred?”
+
+“Sweet! do I not say that I am content to forfeit all honors, triumphs,
+applauses--all that was so dear to me before--and only in the fond
+faith that I had conquered? You are mine--you tell me so with your dear
+lips--I have you in my fond embrace--ah! do not talk to me again of
+fame.”
+
+“I were untrue to you as to myself, dear Alfred, did I not. No! with
+your talents, to forego their uses--to deliver yourself up to love
+wholly, were as criminal as it would be unwise.”
+
+“You shall be my inspiration then, dear Margaret. These lips shall send
+me to the forum--these eyes shall reward me with smiles when I return.
+Your applause shall be to me a dearer triumph than all the clamors of
+the populace.”
+
+“Let us return home--it is late.”
+
+“Not so!--and why should we go? What is sleep to us but loss? What the
+dull hours, spent after the ordinary fashion, among ordinary people.
+Could any scene be more beautiful than this--ah! can any feeling be more
+sweet? Is it not so to you, dearest? tell me--nay, do not tell me--if
+you love as I do, you can not leave me--not now--not thus--while such is
+the beauty of earth and heaven--while such are the rich joys clustering
+in our hearts. Nay, while, in that hallowing moonlight, I gaze upon thy
+dark eyes, and streaming hair, thy fair, beautiful cheeks, and those
+dear rosy lips!”
+
+“Oh! Alfred, do not speak so--do not clasp me thus. Let us go. It is
+late--very late, and what will they say?”
+
+“Let them say! Are we not blessed? Can all their words take from us
+these blessings--these sacred, sweet, moments--such joys, such delights?
+Let them dream of such, with their dull souls if they can. No! no!
+Margaret--we are one! and thus one, our world is as free from their
+control as it is superior to their dreams and hopes. Here is our heaven,
+Margaret--ah! how long shall it be ours! at what moment may we lose it,
+by death, by storm, by what various mischance! What profligacy to fly
+before the time! No! no! but a little while longer--but a little while!”
+
+And there they lingered! He, fond, artful, persuasive; she, trembling
+with the dangerous sweetness of wild, unbidden emotions. Ah! why did she
+not go? Why was the strength withheld which would have carried out her
+safer purpose? The moon rose until she hung in the zenith, seeming to
+linger there in a sad, sweet watch, like themselves--the rivulet ran
+along, still prattling through the groves; the breeze, which had been a
+soft murmur among the trees at the first rising of the moon, now blew
+a shrill whistle among the craggy hills; but they no longer heard the
+prattle of the rivulet--even the louder strains of the breeze were
+unnoticed, and it was only when they were about to depart, that poor
+Margaret discovered that the moon had all the while been looking down
+upon them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE BIRTH OF THE AGONY.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was now generally understood in Charlemont that Margaret Cooper had
+made a conquest of the handsome stranger. We have omitted--as a matter
+not congenial to our taste--the small by-play which had been carried on
+by the other damsels of the village to effect the same object. There had
+been setting of caps, without number, ay, and pulling them too, an the
+truth were known among the fair Stellas and Clarissas, the Daphnes and
+Dorises, of Charlemont, but, though Stevens was sufficiently considerate
+of the claims of each, so far as politeness demanded it, and contrived
+to say pleasant things, pour passer le temps, with all of them, it was
+very soon apparent to the most sanguine, that the imperial beauties and
+imperious mind of Margaret Cooper had secured the conquest for herself.
+
+As a matter of course, the personal and intellectual attractions of
+Stevens underwent no little disparagement as soon as this fact was
+known. It was now universally understood that he was no such great
+things, after all; and our fair friend the widow Thackeray, who was not
+without her pretensions to wit and beauty, was bold enough to say that
+Mr. Stevens was certainly too fat in the face, and she rather thought
+him stupid. Such an opinion gave courage to the rest, and pert Miss
+Bella Tompkins, a romp of first-rate excellence, had the audacity to say
+that he squinted!--and this opinion was very natural, since neither of
+his eyes had ever rested with satisfaction on her pouting charms.
+
+It may be supposed that the discontent of the fair bevy, and its
+unfavorable judgment of himself, did not reach the ears of Alfred
+Stevens, and would scarcely have disturbed them if it did. Margaret
+Cooper was more fortunate than himself in this respect. She could not
+altogether be insensible to the random remarks which sour envy and
+dark-eyed jealousy continued to let fall in her hearing; but her scorn
+for the speakers, and her satisfaction with herself, secured her from
+all annoyance from this cause. Such, at least, had been the case in the
+first days of her conquest. Such was not exactly the case now. She had
+no more scorn of others. She was no longer proud, no longer strong. Her
+eyes no longer flashed with haughty defiance on the train which, though
+envious, were yet compelled to follow. She could no longer speak in
+those superior tones, the language equally of a proud intellect, and
+a spirit whose sensibilities had neither been touched by love nor
+enfeebled by anxiety and apprehension. A sad change had come over her
+heart and all her features in the progress of a few days. Her courage
+had departed. Her step was no longer firm; her eye no longer uplifted
+like that of the mountain-eagle, to which, in the first darings of her
+youthful muse, she had boldly likened herself. Her look was downcast,
+her voice subdued; she was now not less timid than the feeblest damsel
+of the village in that doubtful period of life when, passing from
+childhood to girlhood, the virgin falters, as it were, with bashful
+thoughts, upon the threshold of a new and perilous condition. The
+intercourse of Margaret Cooper with her lover had had the most serious
+effect upon her manners and her looks. But the change upon her spirit
+was no less striking to all.
+
+“I'm sure if I did love any man,” was the opinion of one of the damsels,
+“I'd die sooner than show it to him, as she shows it to Alfred Stevens.
+It's a guess what he must think of it.”
+
+“And no hard guess neither,” said another; “I reckon there's no reason
+why he should pick out Margaret Cooper except that he saw that it was no
+such easy matter any where else.”
+
+“Well! there can be no mistake about it with them; for now they're
+always together--and Betty, her own maid, thinks--but it's better not to
+say!”
+
+And the prudent antique pursed up her mouth in a language that said
+everything.
+
+“What!--what does she say?” demanded a dozen voices.
+
+“Well! I won't tell you that. I won't tell you all; but she does say,
+among other things, that the sooner John Cross marries them, the better
+for all parties.”
+
+“Is it possible!”
+
+“Can it be!”
+
+“Bless me! but I always thought something wrong.”
+
+“And Betty, her own maid, told you? Well, who should know, if she
+don't?”
+
+“And this, too, after all her airs!”
+
+“Her great smartness, her learning, and verse-making! I never knew any
+good come from books yet.”
+
+“And never will, Jane,” said another, with an equivocal expression,
+with which Jane was made content; and, after a full half-hour's
+confabulation, in the primitive style, the parties separated--each,
+in her way, to give as much circulation to Betty's inuendoes as the
+importance of the affair deserved.
+
+Scandal travels along the highways, seen by all but the victim. Days and
+nights passed; and in the solitude of lonely paths, by the hillside or
+the rivulet, Margaret Cooper still wandered with her lover. She heard
+not the poisonous breath which was already busy with her virgin fame.
+She had no doubts, whatever might be the event, that the heart of Alfred
+Stevens could leave her without that aliment which, in these blissful
+moments, seemed to be her very breath of life. But she felt many fears,
+many misgivings, she knew not why. A doubt, a cloud of anxiety, hung
+brooding on the atmosphere. In a heart which is unsophisticated, the
+consciousness, however vague, that all is not right, is enough to
+produce this cloud; but, with the gradual progress of that heart to the
+indulgence of the more active passions, this consciousness necessarily
+increases and the conflict then begins between the invading passion and
+the guardian principle. We have seen enough to know what must be
+the result of such a conflict with a nature such as hers, under the
+education which she had received. It did not end in the expulsion of her
+lover. It did not end in the discontinuance of those long and frequent
+rambles amid silence, and solitude, and shadow. She had not courage
+for this; and the poor, vain mother, flattered with the idea that her
+son-in-law would be a preacher, beheld nothing wrong in their nightly
+wanderings, and suffered her daughter, in such saintly society, to go
+forth without restraint or rebuke.
+
+There was one person in the village who was not satisfied that Margaret
+Cooper should fall a victim, either to the cunning of another, or to her
+own passionate vanity. This was our old friend Calvert. He was rather,
+inclined to be interested in the damsel, in spite of the ill treatment
+of his protege, if it were only in consequence of the feelings with
+which she had inspired him. It has been seen that, in the affair of the
+duel, he was led to regard the stranger with an eye of suspicion. This
+feeling had been further heightened by the statements of Ned Hinkley,
+which, however loose and inconclusive, were yet of a kind to show that
+there was some mystery about Stevens--that he desired concealment in
+some respects--a fact very strongly inferred from his non-employment
+of the village postoffice, and the supposition--taken for true--that he
+employed that of some distant town. Ned Hinkley had almost arrived at
+certainty in this respect; and some small particulars which seemed
+to bear on this conviction, which he had recently gathered, taken
+in connection with the village scandal in reference to the parties,
+determined the old man to take some steps in the matter to forewarn
+the maiden, or at least her mother, of the danger of yielding too much
+confidence to one of whom so little was or could be known.
+
+It was a pleasant afternoon, and Calvert was sitting beneath his
+roof-tree, musing over this very matter, when he caught a glimpse of
+the persons of whom he thought, ascending one of the distant hills,
+apparently on their way to the lake. He rose up instantly, and, seizing
+his staff, hurried off to see the mother of the damsel. The matter was
+one of the nicest delicacy--not to be undertaken lightly--not to be
+urged incautiously. Nothing, indeed, but a strong sense of duty could
+have determined him upon a proceeding likely to appear invidious,
+and which might be so readily construed, by a foolish woman, into an
+impertinence. Though a man naturally of quick, warm feelings,
+Calvert had been early taught to think cautiously--indeed, the modern
+phrenologist would have said that, in the excess of this prudent organ
+lay the grand weakness of his moral nature. This delayed him in the
+contemplated performance much longer than his sense of its necessity
+seemed to justify. Having now resolved, however, and secure in the
+propriety of his object, he did not scruple any longer.
+
+A few minutes sufficed to bring him to the cottage of the old lady, and
+her voice in very friendly tenor commanded him to enter. Without useless
+circumlocution, yet without bluntness, the old man broached the subject;
+and, without urging any of the isolated facts of which he was possessed,
+and by which his suspicions were awakened, he dwelt simply upon the
+dangers which might result from such a degree of confidence as was given
+to the stranger. The long, lonely rambles in the woods, by night as well
+as day, were commented on, justly, but in an indulgent spirit; and the
+risks of a young and unsuspecting maiden, under such circumstances, were
+shown with sufficient distinctness for the comprehension of the mother,
+had she been disposed to hear. But never was good old man, engaged in
+the thankless office of bestowing good advice, so completely confounded
+as he was by the sort of acknowledgments which his interference
+obtained. A keen observer might have seen the gathering storm while
+he was speaking; and, at every sentence, there was a low, running
+commentary, bubbling up from the throat of the opinionated dame,
+somewhat like rumbling thunder, which amply denoted the rising tempest.
+It was a sort of religious effort which kept the old lady quiet till
+Calvert had fairly reached a conclusion. Then, rising from her seat,
+she approached him, smoothed back her apron, perked out her chin, and,
+fixing her keen gray eyes firmly upon his own, with her nose elongated
+to such a degree as almost to suggest the possibility of a pointed
+collision between that member and the corresponding one of his own face,
+she demanded--
+
+“Have you done--have you got through?”
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Cooper, this is all I came to say. It is the suggestion of
+prudence--the caution of a friend--your daughter is young, very young,
+and--”
+
+“I thank you! I thank you! My daughter is young, very young; but she is
+no fool, Mr. Calvert--let me tell you that! Margaret Cooper is no fool.
+If you don't know that, I do. I know her. She's able to take care of
+herself as well as the best of us.”
+
+“I am glad you think so, Mrs. Cooper, but the best of us find it a
+difficult matter to steer clear of danger, and error and misfortune;
+and the wisest, my dear madam, are only too apt to fall when they place
+their chief reliance on their wisdom.”
+
+“Indeed! that's a new doctrine to me, and I reckon to everybody else. If
+it's true, what's the use of all your schooling, I want to know?”
+
+“Precious little, Mrs. Cooper, if--”
+
+“Ah! precious little; and let me tell you, Mr. Calvert, I think it's
+mighty strange that you should think Margaret Cooper in more need of
+your advice, than Jane Colter, or Betsy Barnes, or Susan Mason, or
+Rebecca Forbes, or even the widow Thackeray.”
+
+“I should give the same advice to them under the same circumstances,
+Mrs. Cooper.”
+
+“Should you, indeed! Then I beg you will go and give it to them, for if
+they are not in the same circumstances now, they'd give each of them an
+eye to be so. Ay, wouldn't they! Yes! don't I know, Mr. Calvert,
+that it's all owing to envy that you come here talking about Brother
+Stevens.”
+
+“But I do not speak of Mr. Stevens, Mrs. Cooper; were it any other young
+man with whom your daughter had such intimacy I should speak in the same
+manner.”
+
+“Would you, indeed? Tell that to the potatoes. Don't I know better.
+Don't I know that if your favorite, that you made so much of--your
+adopted son, Bill Hinkley--if he could have got her to look at him, they
+might have walked all night and you'd never have said the first word.
+He'd have given one eye for her, and so would every girl in the village
+give an eye for Brother Stevens. I'm not so old but I know something.
+But it won't do. You can go to the widow Thackeray, Mr. Calvert. It'll
+do her good to tell her that it's very dangerous for her to be thinking
+about young men from morning to night. It's true you can't say anything
+about the danger, for precious little danger she's in; but, lord,
+wouldn't she jump to it if she had a chance. Let her alone for that.
+You'd soon have cause enough to give her your good advice about the
+danger, and much good would come of it. She'd wish, after all was said,
+that the danger was only twice as big and twice as dangerous.”
+
+Such was the conclusion of Mr. Calvert's attempt to give good counsel.
+It resulted as unprofitably in this as in most cases; but it had
+not utterly fallen, like the wasted seed, in stony places. There was
+something in it to impress itself upon the memory of Mrs. Cooper; and
+she resolved that when her daughter came in, it should be the occasion
+of an examination into her feelings and her relation to the worthy
+brother, such as she had more than once before meditated to make.
+
+But Margaret Cooper did not return till a comparatively late hour; and
+the necessity of sitting up after her usual time of retiring, by making
+the old lady irritable, had the effect of giving some additional force
+to the suggestions of Mr. Calvert. When Margaret did return, she came
+alone. Stevens had attended her only to the wicket. She did not expect
+to find her mother still sitting up; and started, with an appearance of
+disquiet, when she met her glance. The young girl was pale and haggard.
+Her eye had a dilated, wild expression. Her step faltered; her voice was
+scarcely distinct as she remarked timidly--
+
+“Not yet abed, mother?”
+
+“No! it's a pretty time for you to keep me up.”
+
+“But why did you sit up, mother? It's not usual with you to do so.”
+
+“No! but it's high time for me to sit up, and be on the watch too, when
+here's the neighbors coming to warn me to do so--and telling me all
+about your danger.”
+
+“Ha! my danger--speak--what danger, mother?”
+
+“Don't you know what danger? Don't you know?”
+
+“Know!” The monosyllable subsided in a gasp. At that moment Margaret
+Cooper could say no more.
+
+“Well, I suppose you don't know, and so I'll tell you. Here's been that
+conceited, stupid old man, Calvert, to tell me how wrong it is for you
+to go out by night walking with Brother Stevens; and hinting to me that
+you don't know how to take care of yourself with all your learning; and
+how nobody knows anything about Brother Stevens; as if nobody was wise
+for anything but himself. But I gave him as good as he brought, I'll
+warrant you. I sent him off with a flea in his ear!”
+
+It was fortunate for the poor girl that the light, which was that of a
+dipped candle, was burning in the corner of the chimney, and was too dim
+to make her features visible. The ghastly tale which they told could not
+have been utterly unread even by the obtuse and opinionated mind of the
+vain mother. The hands of Margaret were involuntarily clasped in her
+agony, and she felt very much like falling upon the floor; but, with
+a strong effort, her nerves were braced to the right tension, and she
+continued to endure, in a speechless terror, which was little short
+of frenzy, the outpourings of her mother's folly which was a frenzy of
+another sort.
+
+“I sent him off,” she repeated, “with a flea in his ear. I could see
+what the old fool was driving after, and I as good as told him so. If it
+had been his favorite, his adopted son, Bill Hinkley, it would have been
+another guess-story--I reckon. Then you might have walked out where you
+pleased together, at all hours, and no harm done, no danger; old Calvert
+would have thought it the properest thing in the world. But no Bill
+Hinkley for me. I'm for Brother Stevens, Margaret; only make sure of
+him, my child--make sure of him.”
+
+“No more of this, dear mother, I entreat you. Let us go to bed, and
+think no more of it.”
+
+“And why should we not think of it? I tell you, Margaret, YOU MUST THINK
+OF IT! Brother Stevens soon will be a preacher, and a fine speck he will
+be. There'll be no parson like him in all west Kentucky. As for John
+Cross, I reckon he won't be able to hold a candle to him. Brother
+Stevens is something to try for. You must play your cards nicely,
+Margaret. Don't let him see too soon that you like him. Beware of that!
+But don't draw off too suddenly as if you didn't like him--that's worse
+still; for very few men like to see that they ain't altogether pleasing
+even at first sight to the lady that they like. There's a medium in all
+things, and you must just manage it, as if you wa'n't thinking at all
+about him, or love, or a husband, or anything; only take care always to
+turn a quick ear to what he says, and seem to consider it always as if
+'twas worth your considering. And look round when he speaks, and smile
+softly sometimes; and don't be too full of learning and wisdom in what
+you say, for I've found that men of sense love women best when they seem
+to talk most like very young children--maybe because they think it's a
+sign of innocence. But I reckon, Margaret, you don't want much teaching.
+Only be sure and fix him; and don't stop to think when he asks. Be
+sure to have your answer ready, and you can't say 'yes' too quickly
+now-a-days, when the chances are so very few.”
+
+The mother paused to take breath. Her very moral and maternal counsel
+had fallen upon unheeding ears. But Margaret was sensible of the pause,
+and was desirous of taking advantage of it. She rose from her chair,
+with the view of retiring; but the good old dame, whose imagination had
+been terribly excited by the delightful idea of having a preacher for
+her son-in-law who was to take such precedence over all the leaders of
+the other tribes, was not willing to abridge her eloquence.
+
+“Why, you're in a great hurry now, Margaret. Where was your hurry when
+you were with Brother Stevens? Ah! you jade, can't I guess--don't I
+know? There you were, you two, under the trees, looking at the moon, and
+talking such sweet, foolish nonsense. I reckon, Margaret, 'twould puzzle
+you to tell what HE said, or what YOU said, I can guess he didn't talk
+much religion to you, heh? Ah! I know it all. It's the old story. It's
+been so with all young people, and will be so till the end. Love is the
+strangest thing, and it does listen to the strangest nonsense. Ain't it
+so, Margaret? I know nothing but love would ever dumbfounder you in this
+way; why, child, have you lost your tongue? What's the matter with you?”
+
+“Oh, mother, let me retire now, I have such a headache.”
+
+“Heartache, you mean.”
+
+“Heartache it is,” replied the other desperately, with an air of
+complete abandonment.
+
+“Ah! well, it's clear that he's got the heartache quite as much as you,
+for he almost lives with you now. But make him speak out, Margaret--get
+him to say the word, and don't let him be too free until he does. No
+squeezing of hands, no kissing, no--”
+
+“No more, no more, I entreat you, mother, if you would not--drive me
+mad! Why do you speak to me thus--why counsel me in this manner? Leave
+me alone, I pray you, let me retire--I must--I must sleep now!”
+
+The mother was not unaccustomed to such passionate bursts of speech from
+her daughter, and she ascribed the startling energy of her utterance
+now, to an excited spirit in part, and partly to the headache of which
+she complained.
+
+“What! do you feel so bad, my child? Well, I won't keep you up any
+longer. I wouldn't have kept you up so long, if I hadn't been vexed by
+that old fool, Calvert.”
+
+“Mr. Calvert is a good man, mother.”
+
+“Well, he may be--I don't say a word against that,” replied the mother,
+somewhat surprised at the mildly reproachful nature of that response
+which her daughter had made, so different from her usual custom:--“he
+may be very good, but I think he's very meddlesome to come here talking
+about Brother Stevens.”
+
+“He meant well, mother.”
+
+“Well or ill, it don't matter. Do you be ready when Brother Stevens
+says the word. He'll say it before long. He's mighty keen after you,
+Margaret. I've seen it in his eyes; only you keep a little off, till he
+begins to press and be anxious; and after that he can't help himself.
+He'll be ready for any terms; and look you, when a man's ready none
+of your long bargains. Settle up at once. As for waiting till he gets
+permission to preach, I wouldn't think of it. A man can be made a
+preacher or anything, at any time, but 'tain't so easy in these times,
+for a young woman to be made a wife. It's not every day that one can get
+a husband, and such a husband! Look at Jane Colter, and Betsy Barnes,
+and Rebecca Forbes, and Susan Mason; they'll be green again, I reckon,
+before the chance comes to them; ay, and the widow Thackeray--though
+she's had her day already. If 'twas a short one she's got no reason to
+complain. She'll learn how to value it before it begins again. But, go
+to bed, my child, you oughtn't to have a headache. No! no! you should
+leave it to them that's not so fortunate. They'll have headaches and
+heartaches enough, I warrant you, before they get such a man as Brother
+Stevens.”
+
+At last, Margaret Cooper found herself alone and in her chamber. With
+unusual vigilance she locked and doublelocked the door. She then flung
+herself upon the bed. Her face was buried in the clothes. A convulsion
+of feeling shook her frame. But her eyes remained dry, and her cheeks
+were burning. She rose at length and began to undress, but for this she
+found herself unequal. She entered the couch and sat up in it--her
+hands crossed upon her lap--her face wan, wild, the very picture of
+hopelessness if not desperation! The words of her weak mother had
+tortured her; but what was this agony to that which was occasioned by
+her own thoughts.
+
+“Oh God!” she exclaimed at length, “can it be real? Can it be true? Do
+I wake? Is it no dream? Am I, am I what I dare not name to myself--and
+dread to hear from any other? Alas! it is true--too true. That shade,
+that wood!--oh, Alfred Stevens! Alfred Stevens! What have you done! To
+what have you beguiled me!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+STRENGTH AFTER FALL.
+
+
+
+
+
+That weary night no sleep came to the eyelids of the hapless Margaret
+Cooper. The garrulous language of the mother had awakened far other
+emotions in her bosom than those which she labored to inspire; and the
+warning of Mr. Calvert, for the first time impressed upon herself
+the terrible conviction that she was lost. In the wild intoxicating
+pleasures of that new strange dream, she had been wofully unconscious
+of the truth. So gradual had been the progress of passion, that it
+had never alarmed or startled her. Besides, it had come to her under a
+disguise afforded by the customary cravings of her soul. Her vanity
+had been the medium by which her affections had been won, by which her
+confidence had been beguiled, by which the guardian watchers of her
+virtue had been laid to sleep.
+
+What a long and dreadful night was that when Margaret Cooper was first
+brought to feel the awful truth in its true impressiveness of wo. Alas!
+how terribly do the pleasures of sin torture us. The worst human foe is
+guilt. The severest censure the consciousness of wrong doing. Poverty
+may be endured--nay is--and virtue still be secure; since the mind may
+be made strong to endure the heaviest toil, yet cherish few desires;
+the loss of kin may call for few regrets, if we feel that we have
+religiously performed our duties toward them, and requited all their
+proper claims upon us. Sickness and pain may even prove benefits and
+blessings, if it shall so happen that we resign ourselves without
+complaint, to the scourge of the chastener, and grow patient beneath his
+stripes. But that self-rebuke of one's own spirit from which we may
+not fly--that remorseful and ever-vexing presence which haunts us,
+and pursues with a wing even more fleet than that of fear--which tells
+clamorously of what we had, and scornfully of what we have lost--lost
+for ever! that is the demon from whom there is no escape, and beyond
+whom there is no torture. Vainly would we strive with this relentless
+enemy. Every blow aimed at its shadowy bosom recoils upon our own. In
+the crowd, it takes the place of other forms and dogs us with suspicious
+glances; in the solitude, it stalks boldly to our side, confronts us
+with its audacious truths and terrible denunciations--leaves no moment
+secure, waking or sleeping! It is the ghost of murdered virtue, brooding
+over its grave in that most dark and dismal of all sepulchres, the human
+heart. And if we cry aloud, as did Margaret Cooper, with vain prayer
+for the recall of a single day, with what a yell of derisive mockery it
+answers to our prayer.
+
+The night was passed in the delusive effort of the mind to argue
+itself into a state of fancied security. She endeavored to recall those
+characteristics in Alfred Stevens, by which her confidence had been
+beguiled. This task was not a difficult one in that early day of her
+distress; before experience had yet come to confirm the apprehensions of
+doubt--before the intoxicating dream of a first passion had yet begun
+to stale upon her imagination. Her own elastic mind helped her in this
+endeavor. Surely, she thought, where the mind is so noble and expansive,
+where the feelings are so tender and devoted, the features so lofty and
+impressive, the look so sweet, the language so delicate and refined,
+there can be no falsehood.
+
+“The devotion of such a man,” she erringly thought, “might well sanction
+the weakness of a woman's heart--might well persuade to the momentary
+error which none will seek more readily to repair than himself. If he be
+true to me, what indeed should I care for the scorn of others.”
+
+Alas! for the credulous victim. This was the soul of her error. This
+scorn of others--of the opinions of the world around her, is the saddest
+error of which woman, who is the most dependant of all beings in the
+moral world, can ever be guilty. But such philosophy did not now deceive
+even the poor girl by whom it was uttered. It is a melancholy truth,
+that, where there is no principle, the passions can not be relied on;
+and the love of Alfred Stevens had hitherto shown itself in selfishness.
+Margaret Cooper felt this, but she did not dare to believe it.
+
+“No! no!” she muttered--“I will not doubt--I will not fear! He is too
+noble, too generous, too fond! I could not be deceived.”
+
+Her reliance was upon her previous judgment, not upon his principles.
+Her self-esteem assisted to make this reference sufficient for the
+purposes of consolation, and this was all that she desired in this first
+moment of her doubt and apprehension.
+
+“And if he be true--if he keep for ever the faith that his lips and
+looks declare--then will I heed nothing of the shame and the sin. The
+love of such a man is sufficient recompense for the loss of all
+besides. What to me is the loss of society? what should I care for the
+association and opinions of these in Charlemont? And elsewhere--he will
+bear me hence where none can know. Ah! I fear not: he will be true.”
+
+Her self-esteem was recovering considerably from its first overthrow.
+Her mind was already preparing to do battle with those, the scorn
+of whom she anticipated, and whose judgments she had always hitherto
+despised. This was an easy task. She was yet to find that it was not the
+only task. Her thoughts are those of many, in like situations, and it
+is for this reason that we dwell upon them. Our purpose is, to show the
+usual processes of self-deception.
+
+Margaret Cooper, like a large class of persons of strong natural mind
+and sanguine temper, was only too apt to confound the cause of virtue
+with its sometimes uncouth, harsh and self-appointed professors. She
+overlooked the fact that public opinion, though a moral object
+against which woman dares not often offend, is yet no standard for
+her government; that principles are determinable elsewhere; and that,
+whatever the world may think of them, and whatever may be their seeming
+unimportance under existing circumstances, are the only real moral
+securities of earth. She might fly from Charlemont, either into a
+greater world, or into a more complete solitude, but she would fly to
+no greater certainties than she now possessed. Her securities were
+still based upon the principles of Alfred Stevens, and of these she knew
+nothing. She knew that he was a man of talent--of eloquence; alas
+for her! she had felt it; of skill--she had been its victim; of rare
+sweetness of utterance, of grace and beauty; and as she enumerated to
+herself these his mental powers and personal charms, she felt, however
+numerous the catalogue, that none of these afforded her the guaranty she
+sought.
+
+She arose the next day somewhat more composed, and with a face which
+betrayed sleeplessness, but nothing worse. This she ascribed to the
+headache with which she had retired. She had not slept an instant, and
+she arose entirely unrefreshed. But the stimulating thoughts which had
+kept her wakeful, furnished her with sufficient strength to appear as
+usual in the household, and to go through her accustomed duties. But
+it was with an impatience scarcely restrainable that she waited for the
+approach of evening which would bring her lover. Him she felt it now
+absolutely of the last necessity that she should see; that she should
+once more go with him to those secret places, the very thought of which
+inspired her with terror, and, laying bare her soul to his eyes, demand
+of him the only restitution which he could make.
+
+He came. Once more she descended the steps to meet him--Her mother
+arrested her on the stairway. A cunning leer was in her eye, as she
+looked into the woful, impassive eyes of her daughter. She grinned with
+a sort of delight expressive of the conviction that the advice she had
+given the night before was to be put in execution soon.
+
+“Fix him, Margaret; he's mighty eager for you. You've cut your
+eye-tooth--be quick, and you'll have a famous parson for a husband yet.”
+
+The girl shrunk from the counsellor as if she had been a serpent. The
+very counsel was enough to show her the humiliating attitude in which
+she stood to all parties.
+
+“Remember,” said the old woman, detaining her--“don't be too willing at
+first. Let him speak fairly out. A young maiden can't be too backward,
+until the man offers to make her a young wife!”
+
+The last words went to her soul like an arrow.
+
+“A young maiden!” she almost murmured aloud, as she descended the
+steps--“O God! how lovely now, to my eyes, appears the loveliness of a
+young maiden!”
+
+She joined Stevens in silence, the mother watching them with the eyes
+of a maternal hawk as they went forth together. They pursued a customary
+route, and, passing through one of the gorges of the surrounding
+hills, they soon lost sight of the village. When the forest-shadows had
+gathered thickly around them, and the silence of the woods became felt,
+Stevens approached more nearly, and, renewing a former liberty, put his
+arm about her waist. She gently but firmly removed it, but neither of
+them spoke a word. A dense copse appeared before them. Toward it he
+would have led the way. But she resolutely turned aside, and, while a
+shudder passed over her frame, exclaimed--
+
+“Not there--not there!”
+
+Breathlessly she spoke. He well enough understood her. They pursued an
+opposite direction, and, in the shade of a wood which before they had
+never traversed, they at length paused. Stevens, conducting her to the
+trunk of a fallen tree, seated her, and placed himself beside her. Still
+they were silent. There was a visible constraint upon both. The thoughts
+and feelings of both were alike active--but very unlike in character.
+With him, passion, reckless passion, was uppermost; selfish in all its
+phases, and resolute on its own indulgence at every hazard. In her bosom
+was regret if not remorse, mingled with doubts and hopes in pretty equal
+proportion. Yet had she, even then, but little doubt of him. She accused
+him of no practice. She fancied, foolish girl, that his error, like
+her own, had been that of blind impulse, availing itself of a moment
+of unguarded reason to take temporary possession of the citadel of
+prudence. That he was calculating, cunning--that his snares had been
+laid beforehand--she had not the least idea. But she was to grow wiser
+in this and other respects in due season. How little did she then
+conjecture the coldness and hardness of that base and selfish heart
+which had so fanned the consuming flame in hers!
+
+Her reserve and coolness were unusual. She had been the creature,
+heretofore, of the most uncalculating impulse. The feeling was spoken,
+the thought uttered, as soon as conceived. Now she was silent. He
+expected her to speak--nay, he expected reproaches, and was prepared to
+meet them. He had his answer for any reproaches which she might make.
+But for that stony silence of her lips he was not prepared. The passive
+grief which her countenance betrayed--so like despair--repelled and
+annoyed him. Yet, wherefore had she come, if not to complain bitterly,
+and, after exhaustion, be soothed at last? Such had been his usual
+experience in all such cases. But the unsophisticated woman before
+him had no language for such a situation as was hers. Her pride, her
+ambition--the very intensity of all her moods--rendered the effort at
+speech a mockery, and left her dumb.
+
+“You are sad, Margaret--silent and very cold to me,” he said, at last
+breaking the silence. His tones were subdued to a whisper, and how full
+of entreating tenderness! She slowly raised her eyes from the ground,
+and fixed them upon him. What a speech was in that one look! There was
+no trace of excitement, scarcely of expression, in her face. There was
+no flush upon her cheeks. She was pale as death. She was still silent.
+Her eye alone had spoken; and from its searching but stony glance his
+own fell in some confusion to the ground. There was a dreary pause,
+which he at length broke:--
+
+“You are still silent, Margaret--why do you not speak to me?”
+
+“It is for you to speak, Alfred,” was her reply. It was full of
+significance, understood but not FELT by her companion. What, indeed,
+had she to say--what could she say--while he said nothing? She was
+the victim. With him lay the means of rescue and preservation. She but
+waited the decision of one whom, in her momentary madness, she had
+made the arbiter of her destiny. Her reply confused him. He would have
+preferred to listen to the ordinary language of reproach. Had she burst
+forth into tears and lamentations--had she cried, “You have wronged
+me--you must do me justice!”--he would have been better pleased than
+with the stern, unsuggestive character that she assumed. To all this,
+his old experience would have given him an easy answer. But to be driven
+to condemn himself--to define his own doings with the name due to his
+deserts--to declare his crime, and proffer the sufficient atonement--was
+an unlooked-for necessity.
+
+“You are displeased with me, Margaret.”
+
+He dared not meet her glance while uttering this feeble and purposeless
+remark. It was so short of all that he should have said--of all that
+she expected--that her eyes glistened with a sudden expression of
+indignation which was new to them in looking upon him. There was a
+glittering sarcasm in her glance, which showed the intensity of her
+feelings in the comment which they involuntarily made on the baldness
+and poverty of his. Displeasure, indeed! That such an epithet should be
+employed to describe the withering pang, the vulturous, gnawing torture
+in her bosom--and that fiery fang which thought, like some winged
+serpent, was momentarily darting into her brain!
+
+“Displeased!” she exclaimed, in low, bitter tones, which she seemed
+rather desirous to suppress--“no, no! sir--not displeased. I am
+miserable, most miserable--anything but displeased. I am too wretched to
+feel displeasure!”
+
+“And to me you owe this wretchedness, dear Margaret--THAT--THAT is what
+you would say. Is it not, Margaret? I have wronged--I have ruined you!
+From me comes this misery! You hate, you would denounce me.”
+
+He put his arm about her waist--he sank upon his knee beside her--his
+eye, now that he had found words, could once more look courageously into
+hers.
+
+“Wronged--ruined!” she murmured, using a part of his words, and
+repeating them as if she did not altogether realize their perfect sense.
+
+“Ay, you would accuse me, Margaret,” he continued--“you would reproach
+and denounce me--you hate me--I deserve it--I deserve it.”
+
+She answered with some surprise:--
+
+“No, Alfred Stevens, I do not accuse--I do not denounce you. I am
+wretched--I am miserable. It is for you to say if I am wronged and
+ruined. I am not what I was--I know THAT!--What I am--what I will be!--”
+
+She paused! Her hands were clasped suddenly and violently--she looked to
+heaven, and, for the first time, the tears, streamed from her eyes like
+rain--a sudden, heavy shower, which was soon over.
+
+“Ah, Margaret, you would have me accuse myself--and I do. The crime is
+mine! I have done you this wrong---”
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+“No, Alfred Stevens, _I_ have done wrong! I FEEL that I have done wrong.
+That I have been feeble and criminal, _I_ KNOW. I will not be so base as
+to deny what I can not but feel. As for your crime, you know best what
+it is. I know mine. I know that my passions are evil and presumptuous;
+and though I blush to confess their force, it is yet due to the truth
+that I should do so, though I sink into the earth with my shame. But
+neither your self-reproaches nor my confession will acquit us. Is there
+nothing, Alfred Stevens, that can be done? Must I fall before you, here,
+amidst the woods which have witnessed my shame, and implore you to save
+me? I do! Behold me! I am at your feet--my face is in the dust. Oh!
+Alfred Stevens--when I called your eyes to watch, in the day of my
+pride, the strong-winged eagle of our hills, did I look as now? Save
+me from this shame! save me! For, though I have no reproaches, yet God
+knows, when we looked on that eagle's flight together, my soul had no
+such taint as fills it now. Whatever were my faults, my follies, my
+weaknesses, Heaven knows, I felt not, feared not this! a thought--a
+dream of such a passion, then--never came to my bosom. From you it came!
+You put it there! You woke up the slumbering emotion--you--but no!--I
+will not accuse you! I will only implore you to save me! Can it be done?
+can you do it--will you--will you not?”
+
+“Rise, dearest Margaret--let me lift you!” She had thrown herself upon
+the earth, and she clung to it.
+
+“No, no! your words may lift me, Alfred Stevens, when your hands can
+not. If you speak a hope, a promise of safety, it will need no other
+help to make me rise! If you do not!--I would not wish to rise again.
+Speak! let me hear, even as I am, what my doom shall be? The pride which
+has made me fall shall be reconciled to my abasement.”
+
+“Margaret, this despair is idle. There is no need for it. Do I not tell
+you that there is no danger?”
+
+“Why did you speak of ruin?” she demanded.
+
+“I know not--the word escaped me. There is no ruin. I will save you. I
+am yours--yours only. Believe me, I will do you right. I regard you as
+sacredly my wife as if the rites of the church had so decreed it.”
+
+“I dare not disbelieve you, Alfred! I have no hope else. Your words lift
+me! Oh! Alfred Stevens, you did not mean the word, but how true it was;
+what a wreck, what a ruin do I feel myself now--what a wreck have I
+become!”
+
+“A wreck, a ruin! no, Margaret, no! never were you more beautiful than
+at this very moment. These large, sad eyes--these long, dark lashes seem
+intended to bear the weight of tears. These cheeks are something paler
+than their wont, but not less beautiful, and these lips--”
+
+He would have pressed them with his own--he would have taken her into
+his arms, but she repulsed him.
+
+“No, no! Alfred--this must not be. I am yours. Let me prove to you that
+I am firm enough to protect your rights from invasion.”
+
+“But why so coy, dearest? Do you doubt me?”
+
+“Heaven forbid!”
+
+“Ah! but you do. Why do you shrink from me--why this coldness? If you
+are mine, if these charms are mine, why not yield them to me? I fear,
+Margaret, that you doubt me still?”
+
+“I do not--dare not doubt you, Alfred Stevens. My life hangs upon this
+faith.”
+
+“Why so cold, then?”
+
+“I am not cold. I love you--I will be your wife; and never was wife
+more faithful, more devoted, than I will be to you; but, if you knew the
+dreadful agony which I have felt, since that sad moment of my weakness,
+you would forbear and pity me.”
+
+“Hear me, Margaret; to-morrow is Saturday. John Cross is to be here in
+the evening. He shall marry us on Sunday. Are you willing?”
+
+“Oh, yes! thankful, happy! Ah! Alfred, why did I distrust you for an
+instant?”
+
+“Why, indeed! But you distrust me no longer--you have no more
+misgivings?”
+
+“No, none!”
+
+“You will be no longer cold, no longer coy, dear Margaret--here in the
+sweet evening, among these pleasant shades, love, alone, has supremacy.
+Here, in the words of one of your favorites:--
+
+   “'Where transport and security entwine,
+    Here is the empire of thy perfect bliss,
+    And here thou art a god--'”
+
+concluding this quotation, he would have taken her in his embrace--he
+would have renewed those dangerous endearments which had already proved
+so fatal; but she repulsed the offered tenderness, firmly, but with
+gentleness.
+
+“Margaret, you still doubt me,” he exclaimed reproachfully.
+
+“No, Alfred, I doubt you not. I believe you. I have only been too ready
+and willing to believe you. Ah! have you not had sufficient proof of
+this? Leave me the consciousness of virtue--the feeling of strength
+still to assert it, now that my eyes are open to my previous weakness.”
+
+“But there is no reason to be so cold. Remember you are mine by every
+tie of the heart--another day will make you wholly mine. Surely, there
+is no need for this frigid bearing. No, no! you doubt--you do not
+believe me, Margaret!”
+
+“If I did not believe you, Alfred Stevens,” she answered gravely, “my
+prayer would be for death, and I should find it. These woods which have
+witnessed my fault should have witnessed my expiation. The homes which
+have known me should know me no more.”
+
+The solemnity of her manner rather impressed him, but having no real
+regard for her, he was unwilling to be baffled in his true desires.
+
+“If you doubt me not--if you have faith in me, Margaret, why this
+solemnity, this reserve? Prove to me, by your looks, by your actions,
+by the dear glances, the sweet murmurs, and the fond embrace, what these
+cold assurances do not say.”
+
+His hand rested on her neck. She gently raised and removed it.
+
+“I have already proved to you my weakness. I will now prove my strength.
+It is better so, Alfred. If I have won your love, let me now command
+your esteem, or maintain what is left me of my own. Do not be angry with
+me if I insist upon it. I am resolute now to be worthy of you and of
+myself.”
+
+“Ah! you call this love?” said he bitterly. “If you ever loved, indeed,
+Margaret--”
+
+“If I ever loved--and have I given you no proofs?” she exclaimed in a
+burst of passion; “all the proofs that a woman can give, short of her
+blood; and that, Alfred Stevens--that too, I was prepared to give, had
+you not promptly assured me of your faith.”
+
+She drew a small dagger from her sleeve, and bared it beneath his
+glance.
+
+“Think you I brought this without an object? No! Alfred Stevens--know me
+better! I came here prepared to die, as well as a frail and erring
+woman could be prepared. You disarmed the dagger. You subdued the
+determination when you bid me live for you. In your faith, I am willing
+to live. I believe you, and am resolved to make myself worthy of your
+belief also. I have promised to be your wife, and here before Heaven, I
+swear to be your faithful wife; but, until then, you shall presume in no
+respect. Your lip shall not touch mine; your arms shall not embrace me;
+you shall see, dear Alfred, that, with my eyes once opened fully upon my
+own weakness, I have acquired the most certain strength.”
+
+“Give me the dagger,” he said.
+
+She hesitated.
+
+“You doubt me still?”
+
+“No, no!” she exclaimed, handing him the weapon--“no, no! I do not doubt
+you--I dare not. Doubt you, Alfred?--that were death, even without the
+dagger!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+BULL-PUPS IN TRAINING.
+
+
+
+
+
+Alfred Stevens was sufficiently familiar with the sex to perceive that
+Margaret Cooper was resolved. There was that in her look and manner
+which convinced him that she was not now to be overcome. There was no
+effort or constraint in either her looks or language. The composure of
+assured strength was there. The discovery of her weakness, which he
+had so unexpectedly made, had rendered her vigilant. Suspecting
+herself--which women are not apt to do--she became watchful, not only of
+the approach of her lover, but of every emotion of her own soul; and
+it was with a degree of chagrin which he could scarcely refrain from
+showing, that he was compelled to forego, at least for the present, all
+his usual arts of seduction.
+
+Yet he knew not how to refrain. Never had Margaret Cooper seemed so
+lovely in his eyes, so commanding, so eloquent with beauty, as now,
+when remorse had touched her eyes with an unwonted shadow, and tears and
+nightwatching had subdued the richer bloom upon her cheek. Proud still,
+but pensive in her pride, she walked silently beside him, still brooding
+over thoughts which she would not willingly admit were doubts, and
+grasping every word of assurance that fell from his lips as if it had
+been some additional security.
+
+These assurances he still suffered to escape him, with sufficient
+frequency and solemnity, to confirm that feeling of confidence which
+his promise of marriage had inspired in her mind. There was a subdued
+fondness in his voice, and an EMPRESSMENT in his manner, which was not
+all practice. The character which Margaret Cooper had displayed in this
+last interview--her equal firmness and fear--the noble elevation of
+soul which, admitting her own errors, disdained to remind him of his--a
+course which would have been the most ready of adoption among the weaker
+and less generous of the sex--had touched him with a degree of respect
+akin to admiration; and so strong was the impression made upon him of
+her great natural superiority of mind to almost all the women he had
+ever met, that, but for her one unhappy lapse, he had sought no other
+wife. Had she been strong at first as she proved herself at last, this
+had been inevitable.
+
+When in his own chamber that night, he could not help recalling to his
+memory the proud elevation of her character as it had appeared in that
+interview. The recollection really gave him pain, since along with it
+arose the memory also of that unfortunate frailty, which became more
+prominent as a crime in connection with that intellectual merit which,
+it is erroneously assumed, should have made it sure.
+
+“But for that, Margaret Cooper, and this marriage were no vain promise.
+But that forbids. No, no--no spousals for me: let John Cross and the
+bride be ready or not, there shall be a party wanting to that contract!
+And yet, what a woman to lose! what a woman to win! No tragedy queen
+ever bore herself like that. Talk of Siddons, indeed! SHE would have
+brought down the house in that sudden prostration--that passionate
+appeal. She made even me tremble. I could have loved her for that, if
+for that only. To make ME tremble! and with such a look, such an eye,
+such a stern, sweet, fierce beauty! By Heavens! I know not how to
+give her up. What a sensation she would make in Frankfort! Were she my
+wife--but no, no! bait for gudgeons! I am not so great a fool as that.
+She who is mine on my terms, is yours, sir, or yours--is anybody's, when
+the humor suits and the opportunity. I can not think of that. Yet, to
+lose her is as little to be thought of. I must manage it. I must get
+her off from this place. It need not be to Frankfort! Let me
+see--there is--hum!--hum!--yes, a ride of a few miles--an afternoon
+excursion--quite convenient, yet not too near. It must be managed;
+but, at all events, I must evade this marriage--put it off for the
+present--get some decent excuse. That's easy enough, and for the rest,
+why, time that softens all things, except man and woman, time will make
+that easy too. To-morrow for Ellisland, and the rest after.”
+
+Thus, resolving not to keep his vows to his unhappy victim, the criminal
+was yet devising plans by which to continue his power over her. These
+plans, yet immature in his own mind, at least unexpressed, need not be
+analyzed here, and may be conjectured by the reader.
+
+That night, Stevens busied himself in preparing letters. Of these he
+wrote several. It will not further our progress to look over him as he
+writes; and we prefer rather, in this place, to hurry on events which,
+it may be the complaint of all parties, reader not omitted, have been
+too long suffered to stagnate. But we trust not. Let us hurry Stevens
+through Friday night--the night of that last interview.
+
+Saturday morning, we observe that his appetite is unimpaired. He
+discusses the breakfast at Hinkley's as if he had never heard of
+suffering. He has said an unctuous grace. Biscuits hot, of best Ohio
+flour, are smoking on his plate. A golden-looking mass of best fresh
+butter is made to assimilate its luscious qualities with those of the
+drier and hotter substance. A copious bowl of milk, new from the dugs of
+old Brindle, stands beside him, patiently waiting to be honored by his
+unscrupulous but not unfastidious taste. The grace is said, and the
+gravy follows. He has a religious regard for the goods and gifts of this
+life. He eats heartily, and the thanks which follow, if not from the
+bottom of the soul, were sufficiently earnest to have emanated from the
+bottom of his stomach.
+
+This over, he has a chat with his hosts. He discusses with old Hinkley
+the merits of the new lights. What these new lights were, at that
+period, we do not pretend to remember. Among sectarians, there are
+periodical new lights which singularly tend to increase the moral
+darkness. From these, after a while, they passed to the love festivals
+or feasts--a pleasant practice of the methodist church, which is
+supposed to be very promotive of many other good things besides love;
+though we are constrained to say that Brother Stevens and Brother
+Hinkley--who, it may be remarked, had very long and stubborn arguments,
+frequently without discovering, till they reached the close, that they
+were thoroughly agreed in every respect except in words--concurred in
+the opinion that there was no portion of the church practice so highly
+conducive to the amalgamation of soul with soul, and all souls with God,
+as this very practice of love-feasts!
+
+Being agreed on this and other subjects, Mr. Hinkley invited Brother
+Stevens out to look at his turnips and potatoes; and when this delicate
+inquiry was over, toward ten o'clock in the day, Brother Stevens
+concluded that he must take a gallop; he was dyspeptic, felt queerish,
+his studies were too close, his mind too busy with the great concerns
+of salvation. These are enough to give one dyspepsia. Of course, the
+hot rolls and mountains of volcanic butter--steam-ejecting--could have
+produced no such evil effects upon a laborer in the vineyard. At all
+events, a gallop was necessary, and the horse was brought. Brother
+Hinkley and our matronly sister of the same name watched the progress of
+the pious youth, as, spurring up the hills, he pursued the usual route,
+taking at first the broad highway leading to the eastern country.
+
+There were other eyes that watched the departure of Brother Stevens
+with no less interest, but of another kind, than those of the venerable
+couple. Our excellent friend Calvert started up on hearing the tread
+of the horse, and, looking out from his porch, ascertained with some
+eagerness of glance that the rider was Alfred Stevens.
+
+Now, why was the interest of Calvert so much greater on this than on any
+other previous occasion? We will tell you, gentle reader. He had been
+roused at an early hour that morning by a visit from Ned Hinkley.
+
+“Gran'pa,” was the reverent formula of our fisherman at beginning,
+“to-day's the day. I'm pretty certain that Stevens will be riding out
+to-day, for he missed the last Saturday. I'll take my chance for it,
+therefore, and brush out ahead of him. I think I've got it pretty
+straight now, the place that he goes to, and I'll see if I can't get
+there soon enough to put myself in a comfortable fix, so as to see
+what's a-going on and what he goes after. Now, gran'pa, I'll tell
+you what I want from you--them pocket-pistols of your'n. Bill Hinkley
+carried off grandad's, and there's none besides that I can lay hold on.”
+
+“But, Ned, I'm afraid to lend them to you.”
+
+“What 'fraid of?”
+
+“That you'll use them.”
+
+“To be sure I will, if there's any need, gran'pa. What do I get them
+for?”
+
+“Ah, yes! but I fear you'll find a necessity where there is none. You'll
+be thrusting your head into some fray in which you may lose your ears.”
+
+“By Jupiter, no! No, gran'pa, I'll wait for the necessity. I won't look
+for it. I'm going straight ahead this time, and to one object only. I
+think Stevens is a rascal, and I'm bent to find him out. I've had no
+disposition to lick anybody but him, ever since he drove Bill Hinkley
+off--you and him together.”
+
+“You'll promise me, Ned?”
+
+“Sure as a snag in the forehead of a Mississippi steamer. Depend upon
+me.”
+
+“But there must be no quarrelling with Stevens either, Ned.”
+
+“Look you, gran'pa, if I'm to quarrel with Stevens or anybody else,
+'twouldn't be your pistols in my pocket that would make me set on, and
+'twouldn't be the want of 'em that would make me stop. When it's my cue
+to fight, look you, I won't need any prompter, in the shape of friend
+or pistol. Now THAT speech is from one of your poets, pretty near, and
+ought to convince you that you may as well lend the puppies and say no
+more about it. If you don't you'll only compel me to carry my rifle, and
+that'll be something worse to an enemy, and something heavier for me.
+Come, come, gran'pa, don't be too scrupulous in your old age. YOUR
+HAVING them is a sufficient excuse for MY HAVING them too. It shows that
+they ought to be had.”
+
+“You're logic-chopping this morning, Ned--see that you don't get to
+man-chopping in the afternoon. You shall have the pistols, but do not
+use them rashly. I have kept them simply for defence against invasion;
+not for the purpose of quarrel, or revenge.”
+
+“And you've kept them mighty well, gran'pa,” replied the young man, as
+he contemplated with an eye of anxious admiration, the polish of the
+steel barrels, the nice carving of the handles, and the fantastic but
+graceful inlay of the silver-mounting and setting. The old man regarded
+him with a smile.
+
+“Yes, Ned, I've kept them well. They have never taken life, though they
+have been repeatedly tried upon bull's eye and tree-bark. If you will
+promise me not to use them to-day, Ned, you shall have them.”
+
+“Take 'em back, gran'pa.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Why, I'd feel the meanest in the world to have a weapon, and not use it
+when there's a need to do so; and I'm half afraid that the temptation
+of having such beautiful puppies for myself--twin-puppies, I may
+say--having just the same look out of the eyes, and just the same spots
+and marks, and, I reckon, just the same way of giving tongue--I'm half
+afraid, I say, that to get to be the owner of them, might tempt me to
+stand quiet and let a chap wink at me--maybe laugh outright--may be suck
+in his breath, and give a phew-phew-whistle just while I'm passing! No!
+no! gran'pa, take back your words, or take back your puppies. Won't risk
+to carry both. I'd sooner take Patsy Rifle, with all her weight, and no
+terms at all.”
+
+“Pshaw, Ned, you're a fool.”
+
+“That's no news, gran'pa, to you or me. But it don't alter the case. Put
+up your puppies.”
+
+“No, Ned; you shall have them on your own terms. Take 'em as they are. I
+give them to you.”
+
+“And I may shoot anybody I please this afternoon, gran'pa?”
+
+“Ay, ay, Ned--; anybody--”
+
+Thus far the old man, when he stopped himself, changed his manner, which
+was that of playful good-humor, to that of gravity, while his tones
+underwent a corresponding change--
+
+“But, Ned, my son, while I leave it to your discretion, I yet beg you
+to proceed cautiously--seek no strife, avoid it--go not into the
+crowd--keep from them where you see them drinking, and do not use
+these or any weapons for any trifling provocation. Nothing but the last
+necessity of self-preservation justifies the taking of life.”
+
+“Gran'pa--thank you--you've touched me in the very midst of my
+tender-place, by this handsome present. One of these puppies I'll name
+after you, and I'll notch it on the butt. The other I'll call Bill
+Hinkley, and I won't notch that. Yours, I'll call my pacific puppy,
+and I'll use it only for peace-making purposes. The other I'll call my
+bull-pup, and him I'll use for baiting and butting, and goring. But, as
+you beg, I promise you I'll keep 'em both out of mischief as long as I
+can. Be certain sure that it won't be my having the pups that'll make
+me get into a skrimmage a bit the sooner; for I never was the man to ask
+whether my dogs were at hand before I could say the word, 'set-on!' It's
+a sort of nature in a man that don't stop to look after his weapons, but
+naturally expects to find 'em any how, when his blood's up, and there's
+a necessity to do.”
+
+This long speech and strong assurance of his pacific nature and
+purposes, did not prevent the speaker from making, while he spoke,
+certain dextrous uses of the instrument's which were given into his
+hands. Right and left were equally busy; one muzzle was addressed to the
+candle upon the mantelpiece, the other pursued the ambulatory movements
+of a great black spider upon the wall. The old man surveyed him with
+an irrepressible smile. Suddenly interrupting himself the youth
+exclaimed:--
+
+“Are they loaded, gran'pa?”
+
+He was answered in the negative.
+
+“Because, if they were,” said he, “and that great black spider was
+Brother Stevens, I'd show you in the twinkle of a musquito, how I'd put
+a finish to his morning's work. But I'd use the bull-pup, gran'pa--see,
+this one--the pacific one I'd empty upon him with powder only, as a sort
+of feu de joie--and then I'd set up the song--what's it? ah! Te Deum. A
+black spider always puts me in mind of a rascal.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE FOX IN THE TRAP.
+
+
+
+
+
+The youth barely stopped to swallow his breakfast, when he set off from
+the village. He managed his movements with considerable caution; and,
+fetching a circuit from an opposite quarter, after having ridden some
+five miles out of his way, passed into the road which he suspected that
+Stevens would pursue. We do not care to show the detailed processes by
+which he arrived at this conclusion. The reader may take for granted
+that he had heard from some way-side farmer, that a stranger rode by his
+cottage once a week, wearing such and such breeches, and mounted upon a
+nag of a certain color and with certain qualities. Enough to say, that
+Ned Hinkley was tolerably certain of his route and man.
+
+He sped on accordingly--did not once hesitate at turns, right or left,
+forks and crossroads, but keeping an inflexible course, he placed
+himself at such a point on the road as to leave it no longer doubtful,
+should Stevens pass, of the place which usually brought him up. Here he
+dismounted, hurried his horse, out of sight and hearing, into the
+woods, and choosing a position for himself, with some nicety, along the
+road-side, put himself in close cover, where, stretching his frame at
+length, he commenced the difficult labor of cooling his impatience with
+his cogitations.
+
+But cogitating, with a fellow of his blood, rather whets impatience.
+He was monstrous restiff. At his fishing pond, with a trout to hook,
+he would have lain for hours, as patient as philosophy itself, and as
+inflexible as the solid rock over which he brooded. But without an angle
+at his hand, how could he keep quiet? Not by thinking, surely; and,
+least of all, by thinking about that person for whom his hostility was
+so active. Thinking of Stevens, by a natural association, reminded
+him of the pistols which Calvert had given him. Nothing could be more
+natural than to draw them from his bosom. Again and again he examined
+them in fascinated contemplation. He had already charged them, and he
+amused himself by thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single
+touch upon the trigger, to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice
+ran along a decaying log some five steps from his feet. But his object
+being secrecy, the rat brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused
+himself by aiming at this and other objects, until suddenly reminded
+of the very important difference which he had promised Calvert to make
+between the pistols in his future use of them. With this recollection he
+drew out his knife, and laid the weapons before him.
+
+“This,” said he, after a careful examination, in which he fancied
+he discovered some slight difference between them in the hang of the
+trigger--“this shall be my bull-pup--this my peace-maker!”
+
+The latter was marked accordingly with a “P,” carved rudely enough by
+one whose hand was much more practised in slitting the weasand of a
+buck, than in cutting out, with crayon, or Italian crow-quill, the
+ungainly forms of the Roman alphabet. Ned Hinkley shook his head with
+some misgiving when the work was done; as he could not but see that
+he had somewhat impaired the beauty of the peacemaker's butt by the
+hang-dog looking initial which he had grafted upon it. But when he
+recollected the subordinate uses to which this “puppy” was to be put,
+and considered how unlikely, in his case, it would be exposed to
+sight in comparison with its more masculine brother, he grew partially
+reconciled to an evil which was now, indeed, irreparable.
+
+It does not require that we should bother the reader with the numberless
+thoughts and fancies which bothered our spy, in the three mortal
+hours in which he kept his watch. Nothing but the hope that he should
+ultimately be compensated to the utmost by a full discovery of all that
+he sought to know, could possibly have sustained him during the trying
+ordeal. At every new spasm of impatience which he felt, he drew up his
+legs, shifted from one side to the other and growled out some small
+thunder in the shape of a threat that “it would be only so much the
+worse for him when the time came!” HIM--meaning Stevens.
+
+At last Stevens came. He watched the progress of his enemy with keen
+eyes; and, with his “bull-pup” in his hand, which a sort of instinct
+made him keep in the direction of the highway, he followed his form upon
+the road. When he was out of sight and hearing, the spy jumped to his
+feet. The game, he felt, was secure now--in one respect at least.
+
+“He's for Ellisland. That was no bad guess then. He might have been for
+Fergus, or Jonesboro', or Debarre, but there's no turn now in the clear
+track to Ellisland. He's there for certain.”
+
+Ned Hinkley carefully restored his pistols to his bosom and buttoned up.
+He was mounted in a few moments, and pressing slowly forward in pursuit.
+He had his own plans which we will not attempt to fathom; but we fear we
+shall be compelled to admit that he was not sufficiently a gentleman to
+scruple at turning scout in a time of peace (though, with him, by
+the way, and thus he justified, he is in pursuit of an enemy, and
+consequently is at war), and dodging about, under cover, spying out
+the secrets of the land, and not very fastidious in listening to
+conversation that does not exactly concern him. We fear that there is
+some such flaw in the character of Ned Hinkley, though, otherwise, a
+good, hardy fellow--with a rough and tumble sort of good nature, which,
+having bloodied your nose, would put a knife-handle down your back, and
+apply a handful of cobwebs to the nasal extremity in order to arrest the
+haemorrhage. We are sorry that there is such a defect in his character;
+but we did not put it there. We should prefer that he should be
+perfect--the reader will believe us--but there are grave lamentations
+enough over the failures of humanity to render our homilies unnecessary.
+Ned Hinkley was not a gentleman, and the only thing to be said in
+his behalf, is, that he was modest enough to make pretensions to the
+character. As he once said in a row the company muster:--
+
+“I'm blackguard enough, on this occasion, to whip e'er a gentleman among
+you!”
+
+Without any dream of such a spectre at his heels to disturb his
+imagination, Alfred Stevens was pursuing his way toward Ellisland, at
+that easy travelling gait, which is the best for man and beast, vulgarly
+called a “dog-trot.” Some very fine and fanciful people insist upon
+calling it a “jog-trot.” We beg leave, in this place, to set them
+right. Every trot is a jog, and so, for that matter, is every canter. A
+dog-trot takes its name from the even motion of the smaller quadruped,
+when it is seized with no particular mania, and is yet disposed to go
+stubbornly forward. It is in more classical dialect, the festina lente
+motion. It is regularly forward, and therefore fast--it never puts
+the animal out of breath, and is therefore slow. Nobody ever saw a dog
+practice this gait, with a tin canister at his tail, and a huddle of
+schoolboys at his heels. No! it is THE travelling motion, considering
+equally the health of all parties, and the necessity of getting on.
+
+In this desire, Ned Hinkley pressed too closely on the heels of Stevens.
+He once nearly overhauled him; and falling back, he subdued his
+speed, to what, in the same semi-figurative language, he styled “the
+puppy-trot.” Observing these respective gaits, Brother Stevens rode into
+Ellisland at a moderately late dinner-hour, and the pursuer followed
+at an unspeakable, but not great, distance behind him. We will,
+henceforward, after a brief glance at Ellisland, confine ourselves more
+particularly to the progress of Brother Stevens.
+
+Ellisland was one of those little villages to which geographers scarcely
+accord a place upon the maps. It is not honored with a dot in any map
+that we have ever seen of Kentucky. But, for all this, it is a place!
+Some day the name will be changed into Acarnania or Etolia, Epirus or
+Scandinavia, and then be sure you shall hear of it. Already, the village
+lawyers--there are two of them--have been discussing the propriety of
+a change to something classical; and we do not doubt that, before
+long, their stupidity will become infectious. Under these circumstances
+Ellisland will catch a name that will stick. At present you would
+probably never hear of the place, were it not necessary to our purposes
+and those of Brother Stevens.
+
+It has its tavern and blacksmith shop--its church--the meanest fabric in
+the village--its postoffice and public well and trough. There is also a
+rack pro bono publico, but as it is in front of the tavern, the owner
+of that establishment has not wholly succeeded in convincing the people
+that it was put there with simple reference to the public convenience.
+The tavern-keeper is, politically, a quadrupled personage. He combines
+the four offices of post-master, justice of the peace, town council, and
+publican; and is considered a monstrous small person with all. The truth
+is, reader--this aside--he has been democrat and whig, alternately,
+every second year of his political life. His present politics, being
+loco-foco, are in Ellisland considered contra bonos mores. It is hoped
+that he will be dismissed from office, and a memorial to that effect is
+in preparation; but the days of Harrison--“and Tyler too”--have not yet
+come round, and Jerry Sunderland, who knows what his enemies are driving
+at, whirls his coat-skirts, and snaps his fingers, in scorn of all their
+machinations. He has a friend at Washington, who spoons in the
+back parlor of the white-house--in other words, is a member o f the
+kitchen-cabinet, of which, be it said, en passant, there never was a
+president of the United States yet entirely without one--and--there
+never will be! So much for politics and Ellisland.
+
+There was some crowd in the village on the day of Brother Stevens's
+arrival. Saturday is a well known day in the western and southern
+country for making a village gathering; and when Brother Stevens, having
+hitched his horse at the public rack, pushed his way to the postoffice,
+he had no small crowd to set aside. He had just deposited his letters,
+received others in return, answered some ten or fifteen questions which
+Jerry Sunderland, P. M., Q. U., N. P., M. C., publican and sinner--such
+were all deservedly his titles--had thought it necessary to address to
+him, when he was suddenly startled by a familiar tap upon the shoulder;
+such a tap as leads the recipient to imagine that he is about to be
+honored with the affectionate salutation of some John Doe or Richard
+Roe of the law. Stevens turned with some feeling of annoyance, if not
+misgiving, and met the arch, smiling, and very complacent visage of a
+tall, slender young gentleman in black bushy whiskers and a green coat,
+who seized him by the hand and shook it heartily, while a chuckling
+half-suppressed laughter gurgling in his throat, for a moment, forbade
+the attempt to speak. Stevens seemed disquieted and looked around him
+suspiciously.
+
+“What! you here, Ben?”
+
+“Ay, you see me! You didn't expect to see me, Warham---”
+
+“Hush!” was the whispered word of Stevens, again looking round him in
+trepidation.
+
+“Oh! ay!” said the other with a sly chuckle, and also in a whisper, “Mr.
+Stevens--Brother Stevens--hem! I did not think. How is your holiness
+to-day?”
+
+“Come aside,” muttered Stevens; and, taking the arm of the incautious
+speaker, he led him away from the crowd and took the way out of the
+village. Their meeting and departure did not occasion much, if any,
+sensation. The visitors in the village were all too busy in discussing
+the drink and doctrines, pretty equally distributed, of Jerry the
+publican. But there was one eye that noted the meeting of the friends;
+that beheld the concern and confusion of Stevens: that saw their
+movements, and followed their departing steps.
+
+“Take your horse--where is he?” demanded Stevens.
+
+“Here, at hand; but what do you mean to do?”
+
+“Nothing, but get out of hearing and sight; for your long tongue, Ben,
+and significant face, would blab any secret, however deep.”
+
+“Ah! did I not say that I would find you out? Did you get my last
+letter?”
+
+“Ay, I did: but I'm devilish sorry, Ben, that you've come. You'll do
+mischief. You have always been a mar-plot.”
+
+“Never, never! You don't know me.”
+
+“Don't I?--but get your horse, and let's go into the woods, while we
+talk over matters.”
+
+“Why not leave the nags here?”
+
+“For a very good reason. My course lies in that direction, so that I am
+in my way; while yours, if your purpose be to go back to Frankfort, will
+lie on the upper side. Neither of us need come back to the village.”
+
+“And you think to shuffle me off so soon, do you?”
+
+“What would you have me do?”
+
+“Why, give us a peep at this beauty--this Altamira of yours--at least.”
+
+“Impossible! Do not think of it, Ben; you'd spoil all. But, get the
+horse. These billet-heads will suspect mischief if they see us talking
+together, particularly when they behold your conceited action. This
+political landlord will surmise that you are a second Aaron Burr, about
+to beat up recruits to conquer California. Your big whiskers--what
+an atrocious pair!--with your standing collar, will confirm the
+impression.”
+
+The two were soon mounted, and rode into the adjoining woods. They were
+only a stone's-throw from the village, when Stevens alighted, followed
+by his companion. They hitched their horses to some swinging branches
+of a sheltering tree, and, going aside a few paces beyond, seated
+themselves upon the grass, as they fancied, in a place of perfect
+security.
+
+“And now, Ben, what in truth brings you here?” demanded Stevens, in
+tones of voice and with a look which betrayed anything but satisfaction
+with the visit.
+
+“Curiosity, I tell you, and the legs of my horse.”
+
+“Pshaw! you have some other motive.”
+
+“No, 'pon honor. I resolved to find you out--to see what you were
+driving at, and where. I could only guess a part from your letter to
+Barnabas, and that costive scrawl with which you honored me. Perhaps,
+too--and give my friendship credit for the attempt--I came with some
+hope to save you.”
+
+“Save me--from what?”
+
+“Why, wedlock--the accursed thing! The club is in terror lest you should
+forget your vows. So glowing were your descriptions of your Cleopatra,
+that we knew not what to make. We feared everything.”
+
+“Why, Barnabas might have opened your eyes: he knew better.”
+
+“You're not married, then?”
+
+“Pshaw! no.”
+
+“Nor engaged?”
+
+The other laughed as he replied:--
+
+“Why, on that head, the least said the better. The roving commission
+permits you to run up any flag that the occasion requires.”
+
+“Ah, you sly dog!--and what success?”
+
+“Come, come, Ben, you must not be so inquisitive. The game's my own, you
+know; and the rules of the club give me immunity from a fellow-member.”
+
+“By Gad, I'll resign! I must see this forest beauty.”
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“Where's she? How will you prevent?”
+
+“By a very easy process. Do you know the bird that shrieks farthest from
+her young ones when the fowler is at hand? I'll follow her example.”
+
+“I'll follow you to the uttermost ends of the earth, Warham!”
+
+“Hush! you forget! Am I not Brother Stevens? Ha! ha! ha! You are not
+sufficiently reverent, brother. See you no divinity in my look and
+bearing? Hark you, Ben, I've been a sort of small divinity in the eyes
+of a whole flock for a month past!”
+
+“You pray?”
+
+“And preach!”
+
+“Ha! ha! ha!--devilish good; but I must see you in order to believe. I
+must, indeed, Brother Stevens. Why, man, think of it--success in this
+enterprise will make you head of the fraternity--you will be declared
+pope: but you must have witnesses!”
+
+“So I think; and hark ye, Ben”--laying a finger on the arm of the
+other--“I am successful!”
+
+“What! you don't say so! This queen, this princess of Egypt, Cleopatra,
+Altamira--eh?”
+
+“Is mine--soul and body--she is mine!”
+
+“And is what you say? Come, come, you don't mean that such a splendid
+woman as you describe--such a genius, poet, painter, musician--beauty
+too!--you don't mean to say that--”
+
+“I do, every bit of it.”
+
+“'Gad! what a fellow!--what a lucky dog! But you must let me see her,
+Warham!”
+
+“What! to spoil all--to blurt out the truth?--for, with every
+disposition to fib, you lack the ability. No, no, Ben: when the game's
+up--when I'm tired of the sport, and feel the necessity of looking out
+fresh viands--you shall then know all; I'll give the clue into your own
+hands, and you may follow it to your heart's content. But not now!”
+
+“But how will you get rid of me, mon ami, if my curiosity is stubborn?”
+
+“Do as the kill-deer does--travel from the nest--go home with you,
+rather than you should succeed in your impertinence, and have you
+expelled from the club for thrusting your spoon into the dish of a
+brother-member.”
+
+“You're a Turk, with no bowels of compassion. But, at all events,
+you promise me the dish when you're done with it? you give me the
+preference?”
+
+“I do!”
+
+“Swear by Beelzebub and Mohammed; by Jupiter Ammon and Johannes
+Secundus; by the ghost of Cardinal Bembo, and the gridiron of the
+fraternity!”
+
+“Ay, and by the virginity of Queen Elizabeth!”
+
+“Simulacrum! no! no! no such oath for me! That's swearing by the thing
+that is not, was not--could not be! You shall swear by the oaths of
+the club--you must be bound on the gridiron of the fraternity, before I
+believe you. Swear!”
+
+“You are as tenacious as the ghost of buried Denmark But you shall be
+satisfied. I swear by the mystic gridiron of the fraternity, and by
+the legs thereof, of which the images are Beelzebub, Mohammed, Johannes
+Secundus, and so forth--nay, by that memorable volume, so revered in the
+eyes of the club, the new edition of 'The Basiad,' of which who among us
+has been the true exponent?--that profound mystery of sweets, fathomed
+hourly, yet unfathomable still--for which the commentators, already
+legions, are hourly becoming legions more;--by these, and by the
+mysteries of the mirror that reflects not our own, but the image we
+desire;--by these things--by all things that among the brotherhood are
+held potent--I swear to--”
+
+“Give me the preference in the favor of this princess; the clue to
+find her when you have left her; and the assurance that you will get a
+surfeit as soon as possible: swear!”
+
+“Nay, nay! I swear not to that last! I shall hold on while appetite
+holds, and make all efforts not to grow dyspeptic in a hurry. I'll keep
+my stomach for a dainty, be sure, as long as I can. I were no brother,
+worthy of our order, if I did not.”
+
+“Well, well--to the rest! Swear to the rest, and I am satisfied.”
+
+“You go back, then, instanter?”
+
+“What! this very day?”
+
+“This hour!”
+
+“The d---l! you don't mean THAT, Warham?” returned the other in some
+consternation.
+
+“Ay, this very hour! You must swear to that. Your oath must precede
+mine.”
+
+“Ah! man, remember I only got here last night--long ride--hard-trotting
+horse. We have not seen each other for months. I have a cursed sight to
+tell you about the boys--girls too--love, law, logic, politics. Do you
+know they talk of running you for the house?”
+
+“All in good season, Ben; not now. No, no! you shall see me when you
+least look for me, and there will be time enough for all these matters
+then. They'll keep. For the present, let me say to you that we must
+part now within the hour. You must swear not to dog my steps, and I
+will swear to give you carte blanche, and the first privileges at my
+princess, when I leave her. This is my bargain. I make no other.”
+
+“I've a great mind not to leave you,” said the other doggedly.
+
+“And what will that resolution bring you, do you fancy? Do you suppose
+I am to be tracked in such a manner? No, Ben! The effect will be to make
+me set off for the east instantly, whether you go with me or not; and an
+equally certain effect will be to make us cut loose for ever.”
+
+“You're a d---d hard colt to manage,” said the other moodily.
+
+“I sha'n't let myself be straddled by every horse-boy, I assure you.”
+
+“Come, come, old fellow, that's too much like horse-play. Don't be angry
+with me. I'll accept your conditions.”
+
+“Very good,” said Stevens; “if you did not, Ben, it would be no better
+for you; for, otherwise, you should never even see my beauty!”
+
+“Is she so very beautiful, old boy?”
+
+“A queen, I tell you! a proud, high-spirited, wild beauty of the
+mountains--a thing of fire and majesty--a glorious woman, full of song
+and sentiment and ambition--a genius, I tell you--who can improvise
+like Corinne, and, by the way, continually reminds one of that glorious
+creature. In Italy, she would have been greater than Corinne.”
+
+“And you've won her--and she loves you?”
+
+“Ay--to doting! I found her a sort of eagle--soaring, striving--always
+with an eye upon the hills, and fighting with the sunbeams. I have
+subdued her. She is now like a timid fawn that trembles at the very
+falling of a leaf in the forests. She pants with hope to see me, and
+pants with tremulous delight when I come. Still, she shows every now
+and then, a glimmering of that eagle spirit which she had at first. She
+flashes up suddenly, but soon sinks again. Fancy a creature, an idolater
+of fame before, suddenly made captive by love, and you have a vain,
+partial image of my forest-princess.”
+
+“What a lucky dog! You'll marry her yet, old boy, in spite of all!”
+
+“Pshaw! You are green to talk so.”
+
+“You'll be devilish loath to give her up; I'm afraid I'll have to wait a
+cursed long time.”
+
+“No, not long! Do not despair. Easy won, easy valued.”
+
+“And was she easily won?”
+
+“Very! the game was a short one. She is a mere country-girl, you know,
+but eighteen or thereabouts--suspecting nobody, and never dreaming that
+she had a heart or passions at all. She thought only of her poetry and
+her books. It was only necessary to work upon heart and passions while
+talking of poetry and books, and they carried her out of her depth
+before she could recover. She's wiser now, Ben, I can assure you, and
+will require more dexterity to keep than to conquer.”
+
+“And she has no brother to worry a body--no d---d ugly Hobnail, who has
+a fancy for her, and may make a window between the ribs of a gallant,
+such as nature never intended, with the ounce-bullet of some d---d
+old-fashioned seven-foot rifle--eh?”
+
+“There was a silly chap, one Hinkley, who tried it on me--actually
+challenged me, though I was playing parson, and there might have been
+work for me but for his own bull-headed father, who came to my rescue,
+beat the boy and drove him from the place. There is nobody else to give
+me any annoyance, unless it be a sort of half-witted chap, a cousin of
+the former--a sleepy dog that is never, I believe, entirely awake unless
+when he's trout-fishing. He has squinted at me, as if he could quarrel
+if he dared, but the lad is dull--too dull to be very troublesome. You
+might kiss his grandmother under his nose, and he would probably regard
+it only as a compliment to her superior virtues, and would thank you
+accordingly--”
+
+A voice a little to the left interrupted the speaker.
+
+“So he does, my brave parson, for his grandmother's sake and his own,”
+ were the words of the speaker. They turned in sudden amaze to the spot
+whence the sounds issued. The bushes opening in this quarter, presented
+to the astonished eyes of Brother Stevens, the perfect image of the
+dull lad of whom he had been speaking. There was Ned Hinkley in proper
+person--perfectly awake, yet not trout-fishing! A sarcastic grin was
+upon his visage, and rolling his eyes with a malicious leer, he repeated
+the words which had first interrupted the progress of the dialogue
+between the friends.
+
+“I thank you, Brother Stevens, for the compliment to my grandmother's
+virtues. I thank you, on her account as well as my own. I'm very
+grateful, I assure you, very grateful, very!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+“ABSQUATULATING.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Had a bolt suddenly flashed and thundered at the feet of the two
+friends, falling from a clear sky in April, they could not have been
+more astounded. They started, as with one impulse, in the same moment to
+their feet.
+
+“Keep quiet,” said the intruder; “don't let me interrupt you in so
+pleasant a conversation. I'd like to hear you out. I'm refreshed by it.
+What you say is so very holy and sermon-like, that I'm like a new man
+when I hear it. Sit down, Brother Stevens, and begin again; sit down,
+Ben, my good fellow, and don't look so scary! You look as if you had a
+window in your ribs already!”
+
+The intruder had not moved, though he had startled the conspirators. He
+did not seem to share in their excitement. He was very coolly seated,
+with his legs deliberately crossed, while his two hands parted the
+bushes before him in order to display his visage--perhaps with the
+modest design of showing to the stranger that his friend had grievously
+misrepresented its expression. Certainly, no one could say that, at this
+moment, it lacked anything of spirit or intelligence. Never were eyes
+more keen--never were lips more emphatically made to denote sarcasm
+and hostility. The whole face was alive with scorn, and hate, and
+bitterness; and there was defiance enough in the glance to have put
+wings to fifty bullets.
+
+His coolness, the composure which his position and words manifested,
+awakened the anger of Brother Stevens as soon as the first feeling of
+surprise had passed away. He felt, in a moment, that the game was up
+with him--that he could no longer play the hypocrite in Charlemont.
+He must either keep his pledges to Margaret Cooper, without delay or
+excuse, or he must abandon all other designs which his profligate heart
+may have suggested in its cruel purposes against her peace.
+
+“Scoundrel!” he exclaimed; “how came you here? What have you heard?”
+
+“Good words, Brother Stevens. You forget, you are a parson.”
+
+“Brain the rascal!” exclaimed the whiskered stranger, looking more
+fierce than ever. The same idea seemed to prompt the actions of Stevens.
+Both of them, at the same moment, advanced upon the intruder, with their
+whips uplifted; but still Ned Hinkley did not rise. With his legs still
+crossed, he kept his position, simply lifting from the sward beside him,
+where they had been placed conveniently, his two “puppies.” One of these
+he grasped in his right hand and presented as his enemies approached.
+
+“This, gentlemen,” said he, “is my peace-maker. It says, 'Keep your
+distance.' This is my bull-pup, or peace-breaker; it says, 'Come on.'
+Listen to which you please. It's all the same to me. Both are ready to
+answer you, and I can hardly keep 'em from giving tongue. The bull-pup
+longs to say something to you, Brother Stevens--the pacificator is
+disposed to trim your whiskers, Brother Ben; and I say, for 'em both,
+come on, you black-hearted rascals, if you want to know whether a girl
+of Charlemont can find a man of Charlemont to fight her battles. I'm man
+enough, by the Eternal, for both of you!”
+
+The effect of Hinkley's speech was equally great upon himself and the
+enemy. He sprang to his feet, ere the last sentence was concluded,
+and they recoiled in something like indecent haste. The language of
+determination was even more strongly expressed by the looks of the
+rustic than by his language and action. They backed hurriedly at his
+approach.
+
+“What! won't you stand?--won't you answer to your villanies?--won't you
+fight? Pull out your barkers and blaze away, you small-souled scamps;
+I long to have a crack at you--here and there--both at a time! Aint you
+willing? I'm the sleepy trout-fisherman! Don't you know me? You've waked
+me up, my lads, and I sha'n't sleep again in a hurry! As for you, Alfred
+Stevens--you were ready to fight Bill Hinkley--here's another of the
+breed--won't you fight him?”
+
+“Yes--give me one of your pistols, if you dare, and take your stand,”
+ said Stevens boldly.
+
+“You're a cunning chap--give you one of my puppies--a stick for my own
+head--while this bush-whiskered chap cudgels me over from behind. No!
+no! none of that! Besides, these pistols were a gift from a good man,
+they sha'n't be disgraced by the handling of a bad one. Get your own
+weapons, Brother Stevens, and every man to his tree.”
+
+“They are in Charlemont!”
+
+“Well!--you'll meet me there then?”
+
+“Yes!” was the somewhat eager answer of Stevens, “I will meet you
+there--to-morrow morning--”
+
+“Sunday--no! no!”
+
+“Monday, then; this evening, if we get home in season.”
+
+“It's a bargain then,” replied Hinkley, “though I can hardly keep from
+giving you the teeth of the bull! As for big-whiskered Ben, there, I'd
+like to let him taste my pacificator. I'd just like to brush up his
+whiskers with gun-powder--they look to have been done up with bear's
+grease before, and have a mighty fine curl; but if I wouldn't frizzle
+them better than ever a speckled hen had her feathers frizzled, then
+I don't know the virtues of gun-powder. On Monday morning, Brother
+Stevens!”
+
+“Ay, ay! on Monday morning!”
+
+Had Ned Hinkley been more a man of the world--had he not been a simple
+backwoodsman, he would have seen, in the eagerness of Stevens to make
+this arrangement, something, which would have rendered him suspicious
+of his truth. The instantaneous thought of the arch-hypocrite, convinced
+him that he could never return to Charlemont if this discovery was once
+made there. His first impulse was to put it out of the power of
+Ned Hinkley to convey the tidings. We do not say that he would have
+deliberately murdered him; but, under such an impulse of rage and
+disappointment as governed him in the first moments of detection, murder
+has been often done. He would probably have beaten him into incapacity
+with his whip--which had a heavy handle--had not the rustic been
+sufficiently prepared. The pistols of Stevens were in his valise, but
+he had no purpose of fighting, on equal terms, with a man who spoke with
+the confidence of one who knew how to use his tools; and when the simple
+fellow, assuming that he would return to Charlemont for his chattels,
+offered him the meeting there, he eagerly caught at the suggestion as
+affording himself and friend the means of final escape.
+
+It was not merely the pistols of Hinkley of which he had a fear. But
+he well knew how extreme would be the danger, should the rustic gather
+together the people of Ellisland, with the story of his fraud, and the
+cruel consequences to the beauty of Charlemont, by which the deception
+had been followed. But the simple youth, ignorant of the language of
+libertinism, had never once suspected the fatal lapse from virtue of
+which Margaret Cooper had been guilty. He was too unfamiliar with the
+annals and practices of such criminals, to gather this fact from
+the equivocal words, and half-spoken sentences, and sly looks of the
+confederates. Had he dreamed this--had it, for a moment, entered into
+his conjecturings--that such had been the case, he would probably have
+shot down the seducer without a word of warning. But that the crime was
+other than prospective, he had not the smallest fancy; and this may
+have been another reason why he took the chances of Stevens's return to
+Charlemont, and let him off at the moment.
+
+“Even should he not return,” such may have been his reflection--“I have
+prevented mischief at least. He will be able to do no harm. Margaret
+Cooper shall be warned of her escape, and become humbler at least, if
+not wiser in consequence. At all events, the eyes of Uncle Hinkley will
+be opened, and poor Bill be restored to us again!”
+
+“And now mount, you scamps,” said Hinkley, pressing upon the two with
+presented pistols. “I'm eager to send big-whiskered Ben home to his
+mother; and to see you, Brother Stevens, on your way back to Charlemont.
+I can hardly keep hands off you till then; and it's only to do so, that
+I hurry you. If you stay, looking black, mouthing together, I can't
+stand it. I will have a crack at you. My peace-maker longs to brush up
+them whiskers. My bull-pup is eager to take you, Brother Stevens, by the
+muzzle! Mount you, as quick as you can, before I do mischief.”
+
+Backing toward their horses, they yielded to the advancing muzzles,
+which the instinct of fear made them loath to turn their backs upon.
+Never were two hopeful projectors so suddenly abased--so completely
+baffled. Hinkley, advancing with moderate pace, now thrust forward
+one, and now the other pistol, accompanying the action with a specific
+sentence corresponding to each, in manner and form as follows:--
+
+“Back, parson--back, whiskers! Better turn, and look out for the roots,
+as you go forward. There's no seeing your way along the road by looking
+down the throats of my puppies. If you want to be sure that they'll
+follow till you're mounted, you have my word for it. No mistake, I tell
+you. They're too eager on scent, to lose sight of you in a hurry, and
+they're ready to give tongue at a moment's warning. Take care not to
+stumble, whiskers, or the pacificator 'll be into your brush.”
+
+“I'll pay you for this!” exclaimed Stevens, with a rage which was not
+less really felt than judiciously expressed. “Wait till we meet!”
+
+“Ay, ay! I'll wait; but be in a hurry. Turn now, your nags are at your
+backs. Turn and mount!”
+
+In this way they reached the tree where their steeds were fastened.
+Thus, with the muzzle of a pistol bearing close upon the body of
+each--the click of the cock they had heard--the finger close to the
+trigger they saw--they were made to mount--in momentary apprehension
+that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen
+in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle
+their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that
+they drew a breath of partial confidence.
+
+“Now,” said Hinkley, “my lads, let there be few last words between you.
+The sooner you're off the better. As for you, Alfred Stevens, the sooner
+you're back in Charlemont the more daylight we'll have to go upon. I'll
+be waiting you, I reckon, when you come.”
+
+“Ay, and you may wait,” said Stevens, as the speaker turned off and
+proceeded to the spot where his own horse was fastened.
+
+“You won't return, of course?” said his companion.
+
+“No! I must now return with you, thanks to your interference. By
+Heavens, Ben, I knew, at your coming, that you would do mischief; you
+have been a marplot ever; and after this, I am half-resolved to forswear
+your society for ever.”
+
+“Nay, nay! do not say so, Warham. It was unfortunate, I grant you; but
+how the devil should either of us guess that such a Turk as that was in
+the bush?”
+
+“Enough for the present,” said the other. “It is not now whether I
+wish to ride with you or not. There is no choice. There is no return to
+Charlemont.”
+
+“And that's the name of the place, is it?”
+
+“Yes! yes! Much good may the knowledge of it do you.”
+
+“How fortunate that this silly fellow concluded to let you off on such a
+promise. What an ass!”
+
+“Yes! but he may grow wiser! Put spurs to your jade, and let us see
+what her heels are good for, for the next three hours. I do not yet feel
+secure. The simpleton may grow wiser and change his mind.”
+
+“He can scarcely do us harm now, if he does.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Stevens--“you know nothing. There's such a thing as hue
+and cry, and its not unfrequently practised in these regions, when the
+sheriff is not at hand and constables are scarce. Every man is then a
+sheriff.”
+
+“Well--but there's no law-process against us!”
+
+“You are a born simpleton, I think,” said Stevens, with little scruple.
+He was too much mortified to be very heedful of the feelings of his
+companion. “There needs no law in such a case, at least for the CAPTURE
+of a supposed criminal; and, for that matter, they do not find it
+necessary for his punishment either. Hark ye, Ben--there's a farmhouse?”
+
+“Yes, I see it!”
+
+“Don't you smell tar?--They're running it now!”
+
+“I think I do smell something like it. What of it?”
+
+“Do you see that bed hanging from yon window?”
+
+“Yes! of course I see it!”
+
+“It is a feather-bed!”
+
+“Well--what of that? Why tell me this stuff? Of course I can guess as
+well as you that it's a feather-bed, since I see a flock of geese in the
+yard with their necks all bare.”
+
+“Hark ye, then! There's something more than this, which you may yet see!
+Touch up your mare. If this fellow brings the mob at Ellisland upon us,
+that tar will be run, and that feather-bed gutted, for our benefit. What
+they took from the geese will be bestowed on us. Do you understand me?
+Did you ever hear of a man whose coat was made of tar and feathers, and
+furnished at the expense of the county?”
+
+“Hush, for God's sake, Warham! you make my blood run cold with your
+hideous notions!”
+
+“That fellow offered to frizzle your whiskers. These would anoint them
+with tar, in which your bear's oil would be of little use.”
+
+“Ha! don't you hear a noise?” demanded the whiskered companion, looking
+behind him.
+
+“I think I do,” replied the other musingly.
+
+“A great noise!” continued Don Whiskerandos.
+
+“Yes, it seems to me that it is a great noise.”
+
+“Like people shouting?”
+
+“Somewhat--yes, by my soul, that DOES sound something like a shout!”
+
+“And there! Don't stop to look and listen, Warham,” cried his companion;
+“it's no time for meditation. They're coming! hark!--” and with a single
+glance behind him--with eyes dilating with the novel apprehensions
+of receiving a garment, unsolicited, bestowed by the bounty of the
+county--he drove his spurs into the flanks of his mare, and went ahead
+like an arrow. Stevens smiled in spite of his vexation.
+
+“D--n him!” he muttered as he rode forward, “it's some satisfaction, at
+least, to scare the soul out of him!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE REVELATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+Having seen his enemy fairly mounted, and under way, as he thought, for
+Charlemont, Ned Hinkley returned to Ellisland for his own horse. Here
+he did not suffer himself to linger, though, before he could succeed
+in taking his departure, he was subjected to a very keen and searching
+examination by the village publican and politician. Having undergone
+this scrutiny with tolerable patience, if not to the entire satisfaction
+of the examiner, he set forward at a free canter, determined that his
+adversary should not be compelled to wait.
+
+It was only while he rode that he began to fancy the possibility of the
+other having taken a different course; but as, upon reflection, he saw
+no other plan which he might have adopted--for lynching for suspected
+offences was not yet a popular practice in and about Charlemont--he
+contented himself with the reflection that he had done all that could
+have been done; and if Alfred Stevens failed to keep his appointment,
+he, at least, was one of the losers. He would necessarily lose the
+chance of revenging an indignity, not to speak of the equally serious
+loss of that enjoyment which a manly fight usually gave to Ned
+Hinkley himself, and which, he accordingly assumed, must be an equal
+gratification to all other persons. When he arrived at Charlemont, he
+did not make his arrival known, but, repairing directly to the lake
+among the hills, he hitched his horse, and prepared, with what patience
+he could command, to await the coming of the enemy.
+
+The reader is already prepared to believe that the worthy rustic waited
+in vain. It was only with the coming on of night that he began to
+consider himself outwitted. He scratched his head impatiently, not
+without bringing away some shreds of the hair, jumped on his horse, and,
+without making many allowances for the rough and hilly character of the
+road, went off at a driving pace for the house of Uncle Hinkley. Here he
+drew up only to ask if Brother Stevens had returned.
+
+“No!”
+
+“Then, dang it! he never will return. He's a skunk, uncle--as great a
+skunk as ever was in all Kentucky!”
+
+“How! what!--what of Brother Stevens?” demanded the uncle, seconded by
+John Cross, who had only some two hours arrived at the village, and now
+appeared at the door. But Ned Hinkley was already off.
+
+“He's a skunk!--that's all!”
+
+His last words threw very little light over the mystery, and certainly
+gave very little satisfaction to his hearers. The absence of Alfred
+Stevens, at a time when John Cross was expected, had necessarily
+occasioned some surprise; but, of course, no apprehensions were
+entertained by either the worthy parson or the bigoted host that he
+could be detained by any cause whatsoever which he could not fully
+justify.
+
+The next course of Ned Hinkley was for the cottage of Mr. Calvert. To
+the old man he gave a copious detail of all his discoveries--not only
+the heads of what he heard from the conspirators in the wood, but
+something of the terms of the dialogue. The gravity of Calvert increased
+as the other proceeded. He saw more deeply into the signification of
+certain portions of this dialogue than did the narrator; and when the
+latter, after having expressed his disappointment at the non-appearance
+of Stevens on the field of combat, at least congratulated himself at
+having driven him fairly from the ground, the other shook his head
+mournfully.
+
+“I am afraid it's too late, my son.”
+
+“Too late, gran'pa! How? Is it ever too late to send such a rascal
+a-packing?”
+
+“It may be for the safety of some, my son.”
+
+“What! Margaret you mean? You think the poor fool of a girl's too far
+gone in love of him, do you?”
+
+“If that were all, Ned--”
+
+“Why, what more, eh? You don't mean!--”
+
+The apprehensions of the simple, unsuspecting fellow, for the first time
+began to be awakened to the truth.
+
+“I am afraid, my son, that this wretch has been in Charlemont too long.
+From certain words that you have dropped, as coming from Stevens, in
+speaking to his comrade, I should regard him as speaking the language of
+triumph for successes already gained.”
+
+“Oh, hardly! I didn't think so. If I had only guessed that he meant such
+a thing--though I can't believe it--I'd ha' dropped him without a word.
+I'd have given him the pacificator as well as the peace-breaker. Oh, no!
+I can't think it--I can't--I won't! Margaret Cooper is not a girl to my
+liking, but, Lord help us! she's too beautiful and too smart to suffer
+such a skunk, in so short a time, to get the whip-hand of her. No,
+gran'pa, I can't and won't believe it!”
+
+“Yet, Ned, these words which you have repeated convey some such fear to
+my mind. It may be that the villain was only boasting to his companion.
+There are scoundrels in this world who conceive of no higher subject
+of boast than the successful deception and ruin of the artless and
+confiding. I sincerely hope that this may be the case now--that it was
+the mere brag of a profligate, to excite the admiration of his comrade.
+But when you speak of the beauty and the smartness of this poor girl, as
+of securities for virtue, you make a great mistake. Beauty is more apt
+to be a betrayer than a protector; and as for her talent, that is seldom
+a protection unless it be associated with humility. Hers was not. She
+was most ignorant where she was most assured. She knew just enough to
+congratulate herself that she was unlike her neighbors, and this is the
+very temper of mind which is likely to cast down its possessor in shame.
+I trust that she had a better guardian angel than either her beauty or
+her talents. I sincerely hope that she is safe. At all events, let me
+caution you not to hint the possibility of its being otherwise. We will
+take for granted that Stevens is a baffled villain.”
+
+“I only wish I had dropped him!”
+
+“Better as it is.”
+
+“What! even if the poor girl is--”
+
+“Ay, even then!”
+
+“Why, gran'pa, can it be possible YOU say so?”
+
+“Yes, my son; I say so here, in moments of comparative calmness, and
+in the absence of the villain. Perhaps, were he present, I should say
+otherwise.”
+
+“And DO otherwise! You'd shoot him, gran'pa, as soon as I.”
+
+“Perhaps! I think it likely. But, put up your pistols, Ned. You have
+nobody now to shoot. Put them up, and let us walk over to your
+uncle's at once. It is proper that he and John Cross should know these
+particulars.”
+
+Ned agreed to go, but not to put up his pistols.
+
+“For, you see, gran'pa, this rascal may return. His friend may have kept
+him in long talk. We may meet him coming into the village.”
+
+“It is not likely; but come along. Give me that staff, my son, and your
+arm on the other side. I feel that my eyes are no longer young.”
+
+“You could shoot still, gran'pa?”
+
+“Not well.”
+
+“What, couldn't you hit a chap like Stevens between the eyes at ten
+paces? I'm sure I could do it, blindfolded, by a sort of instinct.”
+
+And the youth, shutting his eyes, as if to try the experiment, drew
+forth one of his pistols from his bosom, and began to direct its muzzle
+around the room.
+
+“There was a black spider THERE, gran'pa! I'm sure, taking him for
+Stevens, I could cut his web for him.”
+
+“You have cut that of Stevens himself, and his comb too, Ned.”
+
+“Yes, yes--but what a fool I was not to make it his gills!”
+
+By this time the old man had got on his spencer, and, with staff in
+hand, declared himself in readiness. Ned Hinkley lowered his pistol with
+reluctance. He was very anxious to try the weapon and his own aim, on
+somebody or something. That black spider which lived so securely in the
+domicil of Mr. Calvert would have stood no chance in any apartment of
+the widow Hinkley. Even the “pacificator” would have been employed
+for its extermination, if, for no other reason, because of the fancied
+resemblance which it had always worn to Brother Stevens--a resemblance
+which occurred to him, perhaps, in consequence of the supposed
+similarity between the arts of the libertine and those for the
+entrapping of his victims which distinguish the labors of the spider.
+
+The two were soon arrived at old Hinkley's, and the tale of Ned was
+told; but, such was the bigotry of the hearers, without securing belief.
+
+“So blessed a young man!” said the old lady.
+
+“A brand from the burning!” exclaimed Brother Cross.
+
+“It's all an invention of Satan!” cried old Hinkley, “to prevent the
+consummation of a goodly work.”
+
+“We should not give our faith too readily to such devices of the enemy,
+Friend Calvert,” said John Cross, paternally.
+
+“I never saw anything in him that wasn't perfectly saint-like,” said
+Mrs. Hinkley. “He made the most heartfelt prayer, and the loveliest
+blessing before meat! I think I hear him now--'Lord, make us
+thankful'--with his eyes shut up so sweetly, and with such a voice.”
+
+“There are always some people, Brother Cross, to hate the saints of the
+Lord and to slander them! They lie in wait like thieves of the night,
+and roaring lions of the wilderness, seeking what they may devour.”
+
+“Ah,” exclaimed Brother Cross, “how little do such know that they
+devour themselves; for whoso destroyeth his best friend is a devourer of
+himself.”
+
+“The blindness of Satan is upon them, and they do his work.”
+
+And thus--purr, purr, purr--they went on, to the end of the chapter.
+Poor Ned Hinkley found the whole kennel was upon him. Not only did they
+deny everything that could by possibility affect the fair fame of the
+absent brother, but, from defending him, they passed, with an easy
+transition, to the denunciation of those who were supposed to be his
+defamers. In this the worthy old man Calvert came in for his share.
+
+“All this comes of your supporting that worthless boy of mine in
+defiance of my will,” said old Hinkley. “You hate Brother Stevens
+because that boy hated him, and because I love him.”
+
+“You are mistaken, Mr. Hinkley,” said Calvert, mildly. “I hate nobody;
+at the same time I suffer no mere prejudices to delude me against sight
+and reason.”
+
+“Ah!” said Brother Cross, gently, “it's that very reason, Brother
+Calvert, that ruins you worldlings. You must not rely on human reason.
+Build on faith, and you build on the Rock of Ages.”
+
+“I propose to use reason only in worldly matters, Mr. Cross,” said the
+other; “for which use, only, I believe it was given us. I employ it in
+reference to a case of ordinary evidence, and I beg your regards now,
+while I draw your attention to the use I make of it in the present
+instance. Will you hear me without interruption?”
+
+“Surely, Brother Calvert, but call me not Mr. Cross. I am not a Mister.
+I am plain John Cross; by virtue of my business, a brother, if it so
+please you to esteem me. Call me Brother Cross, or Brother John Cross,
+or plain John Cross, either of these will be acceptable unto me.”
+
+“We are all brothers, or should be,” said Calvert; “and it will not
+need that there should be any misunderstanding between us on so small a
+matter.”
+
+“The matter is not small in the eye of the Lord,” said the preacher.
+“Titles of vanity become not us, and offend in his hearing.”
+
+The old teacher smiled, but proceeded.
+
+“Now, Brother Cross, if you will hear me, I will proceed, according to
+my reason, to dwell upon the proofs which are here presented to you, of
+the worthlessness of this man, Alfred Stevens; and when you consider how
+much the feelings and the safety of the daughters of your flock depend
+upon the character of those moral and religious teachers to whom the
+care of them is intrusted, you will see, I think, the necessity of
+listening patiently, and determining without religious prejudice,
+according to the truth and reason of the case.”
+
+“I am prepared to listen patiently, Brother Calvert,” said John Cross,
+clasping his hands together, setting his elbows down upon the table,
+shutting his eyes, and turning his face fervently up to heaven. Old
+Hinkley imitated this posture quite as nearly as he was able; while
+Mrs. Hinkley, sitting between the two, maintained a constant to-and-fro
+motion, first on one side, then on the other, as they severally spoke to
+the occasion, with her head deferentially bowing, like a pendulum, and
+with a motion almost as regular and methodical. The movements of her
+nephew, Ned Hinkley, were also a somewhat pleasant study, after a
+fashion of his own. Sitting in a corner, he amused himself by drawing
+forth his “puppies,” and taking occasional aim at a candle or flowerpot;
+and sometimes, with some irreverence, at the curved and rather
+extravagant proboscis of his worthy uncle, which, cocked up in air, was
+indeed something of a tempting object of sight to a person so satisfied
+of his skill in shooting as the young rustic. The parties being thus
+arranged in a fit attitude for listening, Mr. Calvert began somewhat
+after the following fashion:--
+
+“Our first knowledge of Alfred Stevens was obtained through Brother John
+Cross.”
+
+“And what better introduction would you have?” demanded old Hinkley.
+
+“None,” said the other, “if Brother Cross knew anything about the
+party he introduced. But it so happens, as we learn from Brother Cross
+himself, that the first acquaintance he had with Stevens was made upon
+the road, where Stevens played a trick upon him by giving him brandy to
+drink.”
+
+“No trick, Brother Calvert; the young man gave it me as a medicine, took
+it as a medicine himself, and, when I bade him, threw away the accursed
+beverage.”
+
+“Ordinary men, governed by ordinary reason, Brother Cross, would say
+that Stevens knew very well what he was giving you, and that it was a
+trick.”
+
+“But only think, Mr. Calvert,” said Mrs. Hinkley, lifting her hands
+and eyes at the same moment, “the blessed young man threw away the evil
+liquor the moment he was told to do so. What a sign of meekness was
+that!”
+
+“I will not dwell on this point,” was the reply of Calvert. “He comes
+into our village and declares his purpose to adopt the profession of
+the preacher, and proceeds to his studies under the direction of Brother
+Cross.”
+
+“And didn't he study them?” demanded Mrs. Hinkley. “Wasn't he, late and
+early, at the blessed volume? I heard him at all hours above stairs.
+Oh! how often was he on his bended knees in behalf of our sinful race,
+ungrateful and misbelieving that we are!”
+
+“I am afraid, madam,” said Calvert, “that his studies were scarcely so
+profound as you think them. Indeed. I am at a loss to conceive how you
+should blind your eyes to the fact that the greater part of his time was
+spent among the young girls of the village.”
+
+“And where is it denied,” exclaimed old Hinkley, “that the lambs of God
+should sport together?”
+
+“Do not speak in that language, I pray you, Mr. Hinkley,” said Calvert,
+with something of pious horror in his look; “this young man was no lamb
+of God, but, I fear, as you will find, a wolf in the fold. It is, I say,
+very well known that he was constantly wandering, even till a late hour
+of the night, with one of the village maidens.”
+
+“Who was that one, Brother Calvert?” demanded John Cross.
+
+“Margaret Cooper.”
+
+“Hem!” said the preacher.
+
+“Well, he quarrels with my young friend, the worthy son of Brother
+Hinkley--”
+
+“Do not speak of that ungrateful cub. Brother Stevens did not quarrel
+with him. He quarrelled with Brother Stevens, and would have murdered
+him, but that I put in in time to save.”
+
+“Say not so, Mr. Hinkley. I have good reason to believe that Stevens
+went forth especially to fight with William.”
+
+“I would not believe it, if a prophet were to tell me it.”
+
+“Nevertheless, I believe it. We found both of them placed at the usual
+fighting-distance.”
+
+“Ah! but where were Brother Stevens's pistols?”
+
+“In his pocket, I suppose.”
+
+“He had none. He was at a distance from my ungrateful son, and flying
+that he should not be murdered. The lamb under the hands of the butcher.
+And would you believe it, Brother Cross, he had gone forth only to
+counsel the unworthy boy--only to bring him back into the fold--gone
+forth at his own prayer, as Brother Stevens declared to Betsy, just
+before he went out.”
+
+“I am of opinion that he deceived her and yourself.”
+
+“Where were his pistols then?”
+
+“He must have concealed them. He told Ned Hinkley, this very day, that
+he had pistols, but that they were here.”
+
+“Run up, Betsy, to Brother Stevens's room and see.”
+
+The old lady disappeared. Calvert proceeded.
+
+“I can only repeat my opinion, founded upon the known pacific and
+honorable character of William Hinkley, and certain circumstances in
+the conduct of Stevens, that the two did go forth, under a previous
+arrangement, to fight a duel. That they were prevented, and that Stevens
+had no visible weapon, is unquestionably true. But I do not confine
+myself to these circumstances. This young man writes a great many
+letters, it is supposed to his friends, but never puts them in the
+post here, but every Saturday rides off, as we afterward learn, to the
+village of Ellisland, where he deposites them and receive others. This
+is a curious circumstance, which alone should justify suspicion.
+
+“The ways of God are intricate, Brother Calvert,” said John Cross, “and
+we are not to suspect the truth which we can not understand.”
+
+“But these are the ways of man, Brother Cross.”
+
+“And the man of God is governed by the God which is in him. He obeys a
+law which, perhaps, is ordered to be hidden from thy sight.”
+
+“This doctrine certainly confers very extraordinary privileges upon the
+man of God,” said Calvert, quietly, “and, perhaps, this is one reason
+why the profession is so prolific of professors now-a-days; but
+the point does not need discussion. Enough has been shown to awaken
+suspicion and doubt in the case of any ordinary person; and I now come
+to that portion of the affair which is sustained by the testimony of
+Ned Hinkley, our young friend here, who, whatever his faults may be,
+has been always regarded in Charlemont, as a lover and speaker of the
+truth.”
+
+“Ay, ay, so far as he knows what the truth is,” said old Hinkley,
+scornfully.
+
+“And I'm just as likely to know what the truth is as you, uncle!','
+retorted the young man, rising and coming forward from his corner.
+
+“Come, come,” he continued, “you're not going to ride rough shod over
+me as you did over Cousin Bill. I don't care a snap of the finger, I can
+tell you, for all your puffed cheeks and big bellied speeches. I don't,
+I tell you!” and suiting the action to the word, the sturdy fellow
+snapped his fingers almost under the nose of his uncle, which was now
+erected heavenward, with a more scornful pre-eminence than ever.
+The sudden entrance of Mrs. Hinkley, from her search after Stevens's
+pistols, prevented any rough issue between these new parties, as it
+seemed to tell in favor of Stevens. There were no pistols to be found.
+The old lady did not add, indeed, that there was nothing of any kind to
+be found belonging to the same worthy.
+
+“There! That's enough!” said old Hinkley.
+
+“Did you find anything of Stevens's, Mrs. Hinkley?” inquired Mr.
+Calvert.
+
+“Nothing, whatever.”
+
+“Well, madam,” said Calvert, “your search, if it proves anything, proves
+the story of Ned Hinkley conclusively. This man has carried off all his
+chattels.”
+
+John Cross looked down from heaven, and stared inquiringly at Mrs.
+Hinkley.
+
+“Is this true? Have you found nothing, Sister Betsy?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“And Brother Stevens has not come back?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“And reason for it, enough,” said old Hinkley. “Didn't you hear that Ned
+Hinkley threatened to shoot him if he came back?”
+
+“Look you, uncle,” said the person thus accused, “if you was anybody
+else, and a little younger, I'd thrash you for that speech the same as
+if it was a lie! I would.”
+
+“Peace!” said Calvert, looking sternly at the youth. Having obtained
+temporary silence, he was permitted at length to struggle through his
+narrative, and to place, in their proper lights, all the particulars
+which Ned Hinkley had obtained at Ellisland. When this was done the
+discussion was renewed, and raged, with no little violence, for a full
+hour. At length it ceased through the sheer exhaustion of the parties.
+Calvert was the first to withdraw from it, as he soon discovered that
+such was the bigotry of old Hinkley and his wife, and even of John Cross
+himself, that nothing short of divine revelation could persuade them of
+the guilt of one who had once made a religious profession.
+
+Brother Cross, though struck with some of the details which Calvert
+had given, was afterward prepared to regard them as rather trivial than
+otherwise, and poor Ned was doomed to perceive that the conviction
+was general in this holy family, that he had, by his violence, and the
+terror which his pistols had inspired, driven away, in desperation,
+the most meek and saintly of all possible young apostles. The youth was
+nearly furious ere the evening and the discussion were over. It was very
+evident to Calvert that nothing was needed, should Stevens come back,
+but a bold front and a lying tongue, to maintain his position in the
+estimation of the flock, until such time as the truth WOULD make itself
+known--a thing which, eventually, always happens. That night Ned Hinkley
+dreamed of nothing but of shooting Stevens and his comrade and of
+thrashing his uncle. What did Margaret Cooper dream of?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+STORM AND CONVULSION.
+
+
+
+
+
+What did Margaret Cooper dream of? Disappointment, misery, death. There
+was a stern presentiment in her waking thoughts, sufficiently keen and
+agonizing to inspire such dreadful apprehensions in her dreams. The
+temperament which is sanguine, and which, in a lively mood, inspires
+hope, is, at the same time, the source of those dark images of thought
+and feeling, which appal it with the most terrifying forms of fear; and
+when Saturday and Saturday night came and passed, and Alfred Stevens
+did not appear, a lurking dread that would not be chidden or kept down,
+continued to rise within her soul, which, without assuming any real form
+or decisive speech, was yet suggestive of complete overthrow and ruin.
+
+Her dreams were of this complexion. She felt herself abandoned. Nor
+merely abandoned. She was a victim. In her desolation she had even lost
+her pride. She could no longer meet the sneer with scorn. She could
+no longer carry a lofty brow among the little circle, who, once having
+envied, were now about to despise her. To the impatient spirit, once so
+strong--so insolent in its strength--what a pang--what a humiliation
+was here! In her dreams she saw the young maidens of the village stand
+aloof, as she had once stood aloof from them:--she heard the
+senseless titter of their laugh; and she had no courage to resent
+the impertinence. Her courage was buried in her shame. No heart is so
+cowardly as that which is conscious of guilt. Picture after picture of
+this sort did her fancy present to her that night; and when she awoke
+the next morning, the sadness of her soul had taken the color of a deep
+and brooding misanthropy. Such had been the effect of her dreams. Her
+resolution came only from despair; and resolution from such a source, we
+well know, is usually only powerful against itself.
+
+It is one proof of a religious instinct, and of a universal belief in a
+controlling and benevolent Deity, that all men however abased, scornful
+of divine and human law, invariably, in their moments of desperation,
+call upon God. Their first appeal is, involuntarily, to him. The
+outlaw, as the fatal bullet pierces his breast--the infidel, sinking
+and struggling in the water--the cold stony heart of the murderer, the
+miser, the assassin of reputation as of life--all cry out upon God in
+the unexpected paroxysms of death. Let us hope that the instinct which
+prompts this involuntary appeal for mercy, somewhat helps to secure its
+blessings. It is thus also with one who, in the hey-day of the youthful
+heart, has lived without thought or prayer--a tumultuous life of uproar
+and riot--a long carnival of the passions--the warm blood suppressing
+the cool thought, and making the reckless heart impatient of
+consideration. Let the sudden emergency arise, with such a heart--let
+the blood become stagnant with disease--and the involuntary appeal is
+to that God, of whom before there was no thought. We turn to him as to a
+father who is equally strong to help and glad to preserve us.
+
+Margaret Cooper, in the ordinary phrase, had lived without God. Her
+God was in her own heart, beheld by the lurid fires of an intense,
+unmethodized ambition. Her own strength--or rather the persuasion of her
+own strength--had been so great, that hitherto she had seen no necessity
+for appealing to any other source of power. She might now well begin to
+distrust that strength. She did so. Her desperation was not of that sort
+utterly to shut out hope; and, while there is hope, there is yet a moral
+assurance that the worst is not yet--perhaps not to be. But she was
+humbled--not enough, perhaps--but enough to feel the necessity of
+calling in her allies. She dropped by her bedside, in prayer, when
+she arose that morning. We do not say that she prayed for forgiveness,
+without reference to her future earthly desires. Few of us know how to
+simplify our demands upon the Deity to this one. We pray that he may
+assist us in this or that grand speculation: the planter for a great
+crop; the banker for investments that give him fifty per cent.; the
+lawyer for more copious fees; the parson for an increase of salary. How
+few pray for mercy--forgiveness for the past--strength to sustain the
+struggling conscience in the future! Poor Margaret was no wiser, no
+better, than the rest of us. She prayed--silly woman!--that Alfred
+Stevens might keep his engagement!
+
+He did not! That day she was to be married! She had some reference to
+this in making her toilet that morning. The garments which she put on
+were all of white. A white rose gleamed palely from amid the raven hair
+upon her brow. Beautiful was she, exceedingly. How beautiful! but alas!
+the garb she wore--the pale, sweet flower on her forehead--they were
+mockeries--the emblems of that purity of soul, that innocence of heart,
+which were gone--gone for ever! She shuddered as she beheld the flower,
+and meditated this thought. Silently she took the flower from her
+forehead, and, as if it were precious as that lost jewel of which it
+reminded her, she carefully placed it away in her toilet-case.
+
+Yet her beauty was heightened rather than diminished. Margaret Cooper
+was beautiful after no ordinary mould. Tall in stature, with a frame
+rounded by the most natural proportions into symmetry, and so formed for
+grace; with a power of muscle more than common among women, which, by
+inducing activity, made her movements as easy as they were graceful;
+with an eye bright like the morning-star, and with a depth of expression
+darkly clear, like that of the same golden orb at night; with a face
+exquisitely oval; a mouth of great sweetness; cheeks on which the
+slightest dash of hue from the red, red rose in June, might be seen to
+come and go under the slightest promptings of the active heart within;
+a brow of great height and corresponding expansion; with a bust that
+impressed you with a sense of the maternal strength which might
+be harbored there, even as the swollen bud gives promises of the
+full-bosomed luxuriance of the flower when it opens: add to these a
+lofty carriage, a look where the quickened spirit seems ever ready for
+utterance; a something of eager solemnity in her speech; and a play of
+expression on her lips which, if the brow were less lofty and the eye
+less keenly bright, might be a smile--and you have some idea of that
+noble and lovely temple on which fires of lava had been raised by an
+unholy hand; in which a secret worship is carried on which dreads the
+light, shrinks from exposure, and trembles to be seen by the very Deity
+whose favor it yet seeks in prayer and apprehension.
+
+These beauties of person as we have essayed, though most feebly, to
+describe them, were enhanced rather than lessened by that air of anxiety
+by which they were now overcast. Her step was no longer free. It was
+marked by an unwonted timidity. Her glance was no longer confident; and
+when she looked round upon the faces of the young village-maidens, it
+was seen that her lip trembled and moved, but no longer with scorn. If
+the truth were told, she now envied the meanest of those maidens that
+security which her lack of beauty had guarantied. She, the scorner of
+all around her, now envied the innocence of the very meanest of her
+companions.
+
+Such was the natural effect of her unhappy experience upon her heart.
+What would she not have given to be like one of them? She dared not take
+her place, in the church, among them. It was a dread that kept her back.
+Strange, wondrous power of innocence! The guilty girl felt that she
+might be repulsed; that her frailty might make itself known--MUST make
+itself known; and she would be driven with shame from that communion
+with the pure to which she had no longer any claim! She sunk into one of
+the humblest seats in the church, drawing her reluctant mother into the
+lowly place beside her.
+
+John Cross did not that day address himself to her case: but sin has
+a family similitude among all its members. There is an unmistakeable
+likeness, which runs through the connection. If the preacher speaks
+fervently to one sin, he is very apt to goad, in some degree, all the
+rest: and though Brother Cross had not the most distant idea of singling
+out Margaret Cooper for his censure, yet there was a whispering devil at
+her elbow that kept up a continual commentary upon what he said, filling
+her ears with a direct application of every syllable to her own peculiar
+instance.
+
+“See you not,” said the demon, “that every eye is turned upon you? He
+sees into your soul; he knows your secret. He declares it, as you hear,
+aloud, with a voice of thunder, to all the congregation. Do you not
+perceive that you sit alone; that everybody shrinks from your side; that
+your miserable old mother alone sits with you; that the eyes of some
+watch you with pity, but more with indignation? Look at the young
+damsels--late your companions--they are your companions no longer! They
+triumph in your shame. Their titter is only suppressed because of the
+place in which they are. They ask: 'Is this the maiden who was so wise,
+so strong--who scorned us--scorned US, indeed!--and was not able to
+baffle the serpent in his very first approaches?' Ha! ha! How they
+laugh! Well, indeed, they may. It is very laughable, Margaret--not less
+laughable and amusing than strange!--that YOU should have fallen!--so
+easily, so blindly--and not even to suspect what every one else was sure
+of! O Margaret! Margaret! can it be true? Who will believe in your
+wit now, your genius, your beauty? Smutched and smutted! Poor, weak,
+degraded! If there is pity for you, Margaret, it is full of mockery too;
+it is a pity that is full of bitterness. You should now cast yourself
+down, and cover yourself with ashes, and cry, 'Wo is me!' and call upon
+the rocks and the hills to cover you!”
+
+Such was the voice in her soul, which to HER senses seemed like that of
+some jibing demon at her elbow. Margaret tried to pray--to expel him by
+prayer; but the object of his mockery had not been attained. She could
+not surrender herself entirely to the chastener. She was scourged,
+but not humbled; and the language of the demon provoked defiance, not
+humility. Her proud spirit rose once more against the pressure put upon
+it. Her bright, dazzling eye flashed in scorn upon the damsels whom she
+now fancied to be actually tittering--scarcely able to suppress their
+laughter--at her obvious disgrace. On John Cross she fixed her fearless
+eye, like that of some fallen angel, still braving the chastener,
+whom he can not contend with. A strange strength--for even sin has its
+strength for a season--came to her relief in that moment of fiendish
+mockery. The strength of an evil spirit was accorded her. Her heart once
+more swelled with pride. Her soul once more insisted on its ascendency.
+She felt, though she did not say:--
+
+“Even as I am, overthrown, robbed of my treasure, I feel that I am
+superior to these. I feel that I have strength against the future. If
+they are pure and innocent, it is not because of their greater strength,
+but their greater obscurity. If I am overthrown by the tempter, it was
+because I was the more worthy object of overthrow. In their littleness
+they live: if I am doomed to the shaft, at least it will be as the
+eagle is doomed; it will be while soaring aloft--while aiming for the
+sun--while grasping at the very bolt by which I am destroyed!”
+
+Such was the consolation offered by the twin-demons of pride and vanity.
+The latter finds its aliment in the heart which it too completely
+occupies, even from those circumstances which, in other eyes, make its
+disgrace and weakness. The sermon which had touched her sin had not
+subdued it. Perhaps no sermon, no appeal, however powerful and touching,
+could at that moment have had power over her. The paroxysm of her first
+consciousness of ruin had not yet passed off. The condition of mind was
+not yet reached in which an appeal could be felt.
+
+As in the case of physical disease, so with that of the mind and heart,
+there is a period when it is neither useful nor prudent to administer
+the medicines which are yet most necessary to safety. The judicious
+physician will wait for the moment when the frame is prepared--when the
+pulse is somewhat subdued--before he tries the most powerful remedy. The
+excitement of the wrong which she had suffered was still great in her
+bosom. It was necessary that she should have repose. That excitement
+was maintained by the expectation that Stevens would yet make his
+appearance. Her eye, at intervals, wandered over the assembly in search
+of him. The demon at her elbow understood her quest.
+
+“He will not come,” it said; “you look in vain. The girls follow your
+eyes; they behold your disappointment; they laugh at your credulity.
+If he leads any to the altar, think you it will be one whom he could
+command at pleasure without any such conditions--one who, in her wild
+passions and disordered vanity, could so readily yield to his desires,
+without demanding any corresponding sacrifices? Margaret, they laugh
+now at those weaknesses of a mind which they once feared if not honored.
+They wonder, now, that they could have been so deceived. If they do
+not laugh aloud, Margaret, it is because they would spare your shame.
+Indeed, indeed, they pity you!”
+
+The head of the desperate, but still haughty woman, was now more proudly
+uplifted, and her eyes shot forth yet fiercer fires of indignation.
+What a conflict was going on in her bosom. Her cheeks glowed with the
+strife--her breast heaved; with difficulty she maintained her seat
+inflexibly, and continued, without other signs of discomposure, until
+the service was concluded. Her step was more stately than ever as she
+walked from church; and while her mother lingered behind to talk with
+Brother Cross, and to exchange the sweetest speeches with the
+widow Thackeray and others, she went on alone--seeing none, heeding
+none--dreading to meet any face lest it should wear a smile and look the
+language in which the demon at her side still dealt. HE still clung to
+her, with the tenacity of a fiendish purpose. He mocked her with her
+shame, goading her, with dart upon dart, of every sort of mockery. Truly
+did he mutter in her ears:--
+
+“Stevens has abandoned you. Never was child, before yourself, so silly
+as to believe such a promise as he made you. Do you doubt?--do you still
+hope? It is madness? Why came he not yesterday--last night--to-day? He
+is gone. He has abandoned you. You are not only alone--you are lost!
+lost for ever!”
+
+The tidings of this unsolicited attendant were confirmed the next day,
+by the unsuspecting John Cross. He came to visit Mrs. Cooper and her
+daughter among the first of his parishioners. He had gathered from the
+villagers already that Stevens had certainly favored Miss Cooper beyond
+all the rest of the village damsels. Indeed, it was now generally
+bruited that he was engaged to her in marriage. Though the worthy
+preacher had very stoutly resisted the suggestions of Mr. Calvert, and
+the story of Ned Hinkley, he was yet a little annoyed by them; and he
+fancied that, if Stevens were, indeed, engaged to Margaret, she, or
+perhaps the old lady, might relieve his anxiety by accounting for the
+absence of his protege. The notion of Brother John was, that, having
+resolved to marry the maiden, he had naturally gone home to apprize his
+parents and to make the necessary preparations.
+
+But this conjecture brought with it a new anxiety. It, now, for the
+first time, seemed something strange that Stevens had never declared to
+himself, or to anybody else who his parents were--what they were--where
+they were--what business they pursued; or anything about them. Of his
+friends, they knew as little. The simple old man had never thought of
+these things, until the propriety of such inquiries was forced upon him
+by the conviction that they would now be made in vain. The inability to
+answer them, when it was necessary that an answer should be found, was
+a commentary upon his imprudence which startled the good old man not
+a little. But, in the confident hope that a solution of the difficulty
+could be afforded by the sweetheart or the mother, he proceeded to her
+cottage. Of course, Calvert, in his communication to him, had forborne
+those darker conjectures which he could not help but entertain; and his
+simple auditor, unconscious himself of any thought of evil, had never
+himself formed any such suspicions.
+
+Margaret Cooper was in her chamber when Brother Cross arrived. She had
+lost that elasticity of temper which would have carried her out at
+that period among the hills in long rambles, led by those wild, wooing
+companions, which gambol along the paths of poetic contemplation. The
+old man opened his stores of scandal to Mrs. Cooper with little or no
+hesitation. He told her all that Calvert had said, all that Ned Hinkley
+had fancied himself to have heard, and all the village tattle touching
+the engagement supposed to exist between Stevens and her daughter.
+
+“Of course, Sister Cooper,” said he, “I believe nothing of this sort
+against the youth. I should be sorry to think it of one whom I plucked
+as a brand from the burning. I hold Brother Stevens to be a wise young
+man and a pious; and truly I fear, as indeed I learn, that there is in
+the mind of Ned Hinkley a bitter dislike to the youth, because of some
+quarrel which Brother Stevens is said to have had with William Hinkley.
+This dislike hath made him conceive evil things of Brother Stevens
+and to misunderstand and to pervert some conversation which he hath
+overheard which Stevens hath had with his companion. Truly, indeed, I
+think that Alfred Stevens is a worthy youth of whom we shall hear a good
+account.”
+
+“And I think so too, Brother Cross. Brother Stevens will be yet a
+burning and a shining light in the church. There is a malice against
+him; and I think I know the cause, Brother Cross.”
+
+“Ah! this will be a light unto our footsteps, Sister Cooper.”
+
+“Thou knowest, Brother Cross,” resumed the old lady in a subdued tone
+but with a loftier elevation of eyebrows and head--“thou knowest the
+great beauty of my daughter Margaret?”
+
+“The maiden is comely, sister, comely among the maidens; but beauty is
+grass. It is a flower which blooms at morning and is cut down in the
+evening. It withereth on the stalk where it bloomed, until men turn from
+it with sickening and with sorrow, remembering what it hath been. Be not
+boastful of thy daughter's beauty, Sister Cooper, it is the beauty of
+goodness alone which dieth not.”
+
+“But said I not, Brother Cross, of her wisdom, and her wit, as well
+as her beauty?” replied the old lady with some little pique. “I was
+forgetful of much, if I spoke only of the beauty of person which
+Margaret Cooper surely possesseth, and which the eyes of blindness
+itself might see.”
+
+“Dross, dross all, Sister Cooper. The wit of man is a flash which
+blindeth and maketh dark; and the wisdom of man is a vain thing. The one
+crackleth like thorns beneath the pot--the other stifleth the heart and
+keepeth down the soul from her true flight. I count the wit and wisdom
+of thy daughter even as I count her beauty. She hath all, I think--as
+they are known to and regarded by men. But all is nothing. Beauty hath a
+day's life like the butterfly; wit shineth like the sudden flash of the
+lightning, leaving only the cloud behind it; and oh! for the vain wisdom
+of man which makes him vain and unsteady--likely to falter--liable
+to fall--rash in his judgment--erring in his aims--blind to his
+duty--wilful in his weakness--insolent to his fellow--presumptuous in
+the sight of God. Talk not to me of worldly wisdom. It is the foe to
+prayer and meekness. The very fruit of the tree which brought sin and
+death into the world. Thy daughter is fair to behold--very fair among
+the maidens of our flock--none fairer, none so fair: God hath otherwise
+blessed her with a bright mind and a quick intelligence; but I think not
+that she is wise to salvation. No, no! she hath not yearned to the holy
+places of the tabernacle, unless it be that Brother Stevens hath been
+more blessed in his ministry than I!”
+
+“And he hath!” exclaimed the mother. “I tell you, Brother John, the
+heart of Margaret Cooper is no longer what it was. It is softened. The
+toils of Brother Stevens have not been in vain. Blessed young man,
+no wonder they hate and defame him. He hath had a power over Margaret
+Cooper such as man never had before; and it is for this reason that Bill
+Hinkley and Ned conspired against him, first to take his life, and then
+to speak evil of his deeds. They beheld the beauty of my daughter, and
+they looked on her with famishing eyes. She sent them a-packing, I tell
+you. But this youth, Brother Stevens, found favor in her heart. They
+beheld the two as they went forth together. Ah! Brother John, it is
+the sweetest sight to behold two young, loving people walk forth in
+amity--born, as it would seem, for each other; both so tall, and young,
+and handsome; walking together with such smiles, as if there was no
+sorrow in the world; as if there was nothing but flowers and sweetness
+on the path; as if they could see nothing but one another; and as if
+there were no enemies looking on. It did my heart good to see them,
+Brother Cross; they always looked so happy with one another.”
+
+“And you think, Sister Cooper, that Brother Stevens hath agreed to take
+Margaret to wife?”
+
+“She hath not told me this yet, but in truth, I think it hath very nigh
+come to that.”
+
+“Where is she?”
+
+“In her chamber.”
+
+“Call her hither, Sister Cooper; let us ask of her the truth.”
+
+Margaret Cooper was summoned, and descended with slow steps and an
+unwilling spirit to meet their visiter.
+
+“Daughter,” said the good old man, taking her hand, and leading her to a
+seat, “thou art, even as thy mother sayest, one of exceeding beauty. Few
+damsels have ever met mine eyes with a beauty like to thine. No wonder
+the young men look on thee with eyes of love; but let not the love of
+youth betray thee. The love of God is the only love that is precious to
+the heart of wisdom.”
+
+Thus saying, the old man gazed on her with as much admiration as was
+consistent with the natural coldness of his temperament, his years, and
+his profession. His address, so different from usual, had a soothing
+effect upon her. A sigh escaped her, but she said nothing. He then
+proceeded to renew the history which had been given to him and which
+he had already detailed to her mother. She heard him with patience, in
+spite of all his interpolations from Scripture, his ejaculations, his
+running commentary upon the narrative, and the numerous suggestive
+topics which took him from episode to episode, until the story seemed
+interminably mixed up in the digression.
+
+But when he came to that portion which related to the adventure of
+Ned Hinkley, to his espionage, the conference of Stevens with his
+companion--then she started--then her breathing became suspended, then
+quickened--then again suspended--and then, so rapid in its rush, that
+her emotion became almost too much for her powers of suppression.
+
+But she did suppress it, with a power, a resolution, not often
+paralleled among men--still more seldom among women. After the first
+spasmodic acknowledgment given by her surprise, she listened with
+comparative calmness. She, alone, had the key to that conversation. She,
+alone, knew its terrible signification. She knew that Ned Hinkley was
+honest--was to be believed--that he was too simple, and too sincere, for
+any such invention; and, sitting with hands clasped upon that chair--the
+only attitude which expressed the intense emotion which she felt--she
+gazed with unembarrassed eye upon the face of the speaker, while every
+word which he spoke went like some keen, death-giving instrument into
+her heart.
+
+The whole dreadful history of the villany of Stevens, her irreparable
+ruin--was now clearly intelligible. The mocking devil at her elbow had
+spoken nothing but the truth. She was indeed the poor victim of a crafty
+villain. In the day of her strength and glory she had fallen--fallen,
+fallen, fallen!
+
+“Why am I called to hear this?” she demanded with singular composure.
+
+The old man and the mother explained in the same breath--that she might
+reveal the degree of intercourse which had taken place between them,
+and, if possible, account for the absence of her lover. That, in short,
+she might refute the malice of enemies and establish the falsehood of
+their suggestions.
+
+“You wish to know if I believe this story of Ned Hinkley?”
+
+“Even so, my daughter.”
+
+“Then, I do!”
+
+“Ha! what is it you say, Margaret?”
+
+“The truth.”
+
+“What?” demanded the preacher, “you can not surely mean that Brother
+Stevens hath been a wolf in sheep's clothing--that he hath been a
+hypocrite.”
+
+“Alas!” thought Margaret Cooper--“have I not been my own worst
+enemy--did I not know him to be this from the first?”
+
+Her secret reflection remained, however, unspoken. She answered the
+demand of John Cross without a moment's hesitation.
+
+“I believe that Alfred Stevens is all that he is charged to be--a
+hypocrite--a wolf in sheep's clothing!--I see no reason to doubt the
+story of Ned Hinkley. He is an honest youth.”
+
+The old lady was in consternation. The preacher aghast and confounded.
+
+“Tell me, Margaret,” said the former, “hath he not engaged himself to
+you? Did he not promise--is he not sworn to be your husband?”
+
+“I have already given you my belief. I see no reason to say anything
+more. What more do you need? Is he not gone--fled--has he not failed--”
+
+She paused abruptly, while a purple flush went over her face. She rose
+to retire.
+
+“Margaret!” exclaimed the mother.
+
+“My daughter!” said John Cross.
+
+“Speak out what you know--tell us all--”
+
+“No! I will say no more. You know enough already. I tell you, I believe
+Alfred Stevens to be a hypocrite and a villain. Is not that enough? What
+is it to you whether he is so or not? What is it to me, at least? You
+do not suppose that it is anything to me? Why should you? What should he
+be? I tell you he is nothing to me--nothing--nothing--nothing! Villain
+or hypocrite, or what not--he is no more to me than the earth on which
+I tread. Let me hear no more about him, I pray you. I would not hear his
+name! Are there not villains enough in the world, that you should think
+and speak of one only?”
+
+With these vehement words she left the room, and hurried to her chamber.
+She stopped suddenly before the mirror.
+
+“And is it thus!” she exclaimed--“and I am--”
+
+The mother by this time had followed her into the room.
+
+“What is the meaning of this, Margaret?--tell me!” cried the old woman
+in the wildest agitation.
+
+“What should it be, mother? Look at me!--in my eyes--do they not tell
+you? Can you not read?”
+
+“I see nothing--I do not understand you, Margaret.”
+
+“Indeed! but you shall understand me! I thought my face would tell you
+without my words. _I_ see it there, legible enough, to myself. Look
+again!--spare me if you can--spare your own ears the necessity of
+hearing me speak!”
+
+“You terrify me, Margaret--I fear you are out of your mind.
+
+“No! no! that need not be your fear; nor, were it true, would it be a
+fear of mine. It might be something to hope--to pray for. It might
+bring relief. Hear me, since you will not see. You ask me why I believe
+Stevens to be a villain. I KNOW it.”
+
+“Ha! how know it!”
+
+“How! How should I know it? Well, I see that I must speak. Listen then.
+You bade me seek and make a conquest of him, did you not? Do not deny
+it, mother--you did.”
+
+“Well, if I did?”
+
+“I succeeded! Without trying, I succeeded! He declared to me his
+love--he did!--he promised to marry me. He was to have married me
+yesterday--to have met me in church and married me. John Cross was
+to have performed the ceremony. Well! you saw me there--you saw me in
+white--the dress of a bride!--Did he come? Did you see him there? Did
+you see the ceremony performed?”
+
+“No, surely not--you know without asking.”
+
+“I know without asking!--surely I do!--but look you, mother--do you
+think that conquests are to be made, hearts won, loves confessed,
+pledges given, marriage-day fixed--do these things take place, as
+matters of pure form? Is there no sensation--no agitation--no beating
+and violence about the heart--in the blood--in the brain! I tell you
+there is--a blinding violence, a wild, stormy, sensation--fondness,
+forgetfulness, madness! I say, madness! madness! madness!”
+
+“Oh, my daughter, what can all this mean? Speak calmly, be deliberate!”
+
+“Calm! deliberate! What a monster if I could be! But I am not mad now.
+I will tell you what it means. It means that, in taking captive Alfred
+Stevens--in winning a lover--securing that pious young man--there was
+some difficulty, some peril. Would you believe it?--there were some
+privileges which he claimed. He took me in his arms. Ha! ha! He held me
+panting to his breast. His mouth filled mine with kisses--”
+
+“No more, do not say more, my child!”
+
+“Ay, more! more! much more! I tell you--then came blindness and madness,
+and I was dishonored--made a woman before I was made a wife! Ruined,
+lost, abused, despised, abandoned! Ha! ha! ha! no marriage ceremony.
+Though I went to the church. No bridegroom there, though he promised to
+come. Preacher, church, bride, all present, yet no wedding. Ha! ha! ha!
+How do I know!--Good reason for it, good reason--Ha! ha!--ah!”
+
+The paroxysm, terminated in a convulsion. The unhappy girl fell to the
+floor as if stricken in the forehead. The blood gushed from her mouth
+and nostrils, and she lay insensible in the presence of the terrified
+and miserable mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE FATES FIND THE DAGGER AND THE BOWL.
+
+
+
+
+
+For a long time she lay without showing any signs of life. Her passions
+rebelled against the restraint which her mind had endeavored to put upon
+them. Their concentrated force breaking all bonds, so suddenly, was like
+the terrific outburst of the boiling lava from the gorges of the frozen
+mountain. Believing her dead, the mother rushed headlong into the
+highway, rending the village with her screams. She was for the time
+a perfect madwoman. The neighbors gathered to her assistance. That
+much-abused woman, the widow Thackeray, was the first to come. Never was
+woman's tenderness more remarkable than hers--never was woman's watch by
+the bed of sickness and suffering--that watch which woman alone knows
+so well how to keep--more rigidly maintained than by her! From the first
+hour of that agony under which Margaret Cooper fell to earth insensible,
+to the last moment in which her recovery was doubtful, that widow
+Thackeray--whose passion for a husband had been described by Mrs. Cooper
+as so very decided and evident--maintained her place by the sick bed of
+the stricken girl with all the affection of a mother. Widow Thackeray
+was a woman who could laugh merrily, but she could shed tears with
+equal readiness. These were equally the signs of prompt feeling and nice
+susceptibility; and the proud Margaret, and her invidious mother, were
+both humbled by that spontaneous kindness for which, hitherto, they had
+given the possessor so very little credit, and to which they were now
+equally so greatly indebted.
+
+Medical attendance was promptly secured. Charlemont had a very clever
+physician of the old school. He combined as was requisite in the
+forest region of our country, the distinct offices of the surgeon and
+mediciner. He was tolerably skilful in both departments. He found
+his patient in a condition of considerable peril. She had broken a
+blood-vessel; and the nicest care and closest attendance were necessary
+to her preservation. It will not need that we should go through the long
+and weary details which followed to her final cure. Enough, that she did
+recover. But for weeks her chance was doubtful. She lay for that space
+of time, equally in the arms of life and death. For a long period, she
+herself was unconscious of her situation.
+
+When she came to know, the skill of her attendants derived very little
+aid from her consciousness. Her mind was unfavorable to her cure; and
+this, by the way, is a very important particular in the fortunes of the
+sick. To despond, to have a weariness of life, to forbear hope as well
+as exertion, is, a hundred to one, to determine against the skill of
+the physician. Margaret Cooper felt a willingness to die. She felt her
+overthrow in the keenest pangs of its shame; and, unhappily, the mother,
+in her madness, had declared it.
+
+The story of her fall--of the triumph of the serpent--was now the
+village property, and of course put an end to all further doubts on the
+score of the piety of Brother Stevens; though, by way of qualification
+of his offence, old Hinkley insisted that it was the fault of the poor
+damsel.
+
+“She,” he said, “had tempted him--had thrown herself in his way--had
+been brazen,” and all that, of which so much is commonly said in all
+similar cases. We, who know the character of the parties, and have
+traced events from the beginning, very well know how little of this
+is true. Poor Margaret was a victim before she was well aware of those
+passions which made her so. She was the victim not of lust but of
+ambition. Never was woman more unsophisticated--less moved by unworthy
+and sinister design. She had her weaknesses--her pride, her vanity; and
+her passions, which were tremendous, worked upon through these, very
+soon effected her undoing. But, for deliberate purpose of evil--of any
+evil of which her own intellect was conscious--the angels were not more
+innocent.
+
+But mere innocence of evil design, in any one particular condition,
+is not enough for security. We are not only to forbear evil; virtue
+requires that we should be exercised for the purposes of good. She
+lacked the moral strength which such exercises, constantly pursued,
+would have assured her. She was a creature of impulse only, not of
+reflection. Besides, she was ignorant of her particular weaknesses. She
+was weak where she thought herself strong. This is always the error of
+a person having a very decided will. The will is constantly mistaken
+for the power. She could not humble herself, and in her own personal
+capacities--capacities which had never before been subjected to any
+ordeal-trial--she relied for the force which was to sustain her in every
+situation. Fancy a confident country-girl--supreme in her own district
+over the Hobs and Hinnies thereabouts--in conflict with the adroit man
+of the world, and you have the whole history of Margaret Cooper, and
+the secret of her misfortune. Let the girl have what natural talent you
+please, and the case is by no means altered. She must fall if she
+seeks or permits the conflict. She can only escape by flight. It is in
+consideration of this human weakness, that we pray God, nightly, not to
+suffer us to be exposed to temptation.
+
+When the personal resources of her own experience and mind failed
+Margaret Cooper, as at some time or other they must fail all who trust
+only in them, she had no further reliance. She had never learned to draw
+equal strength and consolation from the sweet counsels of the sacred
+volume. Regarding the wild raving and the senseless insanity, which
+are but too frequently the language of the vulgar preacher, as gross
+ignorance and debasing folly, she committed the unhappy error of
+confounding the preacher with his cause. She had never been taught to
+make an habitual reference to religion; and her own experience of life,
+had never forced upon her those sage reflections which would have shown
+her that TRUE religion is the very all of life, and without it life has
+nothing. The humility of the psalmist, which was the real source of all
+the strength allotted to the monarch minstrel, was an unread lesson with
+her; and never having been tutored to refer to God, and relying upon
+her own proud mind and daring imagination, what wonder that these frail
+reeds should pierce her side while giving way beneath her.
+
+It was this very confidence in her own strength--this fearlessness
+of danger (and we repeat the lesson here, emphatically, by way of
+warning)--a confidence which the possession of a quick and powerful mind
+naturally enough inspires--that effected her undoing. It was not by the
+force of her affections that she fell. THE AFFECTIONS ARE NOT APT TO BE
+STRONG IN A WOMAN WHOSE MIND LEADS HER OUT FROM HER SEX!
+
+The seducer triumphed through the medium of her vanity. Her feeling of
+self-assurance had been thus active from childhood, and conspicuous in
+all her sports and employments. SHE HAD NEVER BEEN A CHILD HERSELF. SHE
+LED ALWAYS IN THE PASTIMES OF HER PLAYMATES, MANY OF WHOM WERE OLDER
+THAN HERSELF.
+
+She had no fears when others trembled; and, if she did not, at any time,
+so far transcend the bounds of filial duty as to defy the counsels of
+her parents, it was certainly no less true that she never sought for,
+and seldom seemed to need them. IT IS DANGEROUS WHEN THE WOMAN, THROUGH
+SHEER CONFIDENCE IN HER OWN STRENGTH, VENTURES UPON THE VERGE OF
+THE MORAL PRECIPICE. THEY VERY EXPERIMENTAL, WHERE THE PASSIONS ARE
+CONCERNED, PROVES HER TO BE LOST.
+
+Margaret Cooper, confident in her own footsteps, soon learned to despise
+every sort of guardianship. The vanity of her mother had not only
+counselled and stimulated her own, but was of that gross and silly
+order, as to make itself offensive to the judgment of the girl herself.
+This had the effect of losing her all the authority of a parent; and we
+have already seen, in the few instances where this authority took the
+shape of counsel, that its tendency was to evil rather than to good.
+
+The arts of Alfred Stevens had, in reality, been very few. It was only
+necessary that he should read the character of his victim. This, as an
+experienced worldling--experienced in such a volume--he was soon very
+able to do. He saw enough to discover, that, while Margaret Cooper was
+endowed by nature with an extraordinary measure of intellect, she was
+really weak because of its possession. In due proportion to the degree
+of exercise to which she subjected her mere mind--making that busy and
+restless--was the neglect of her sensibilities--those nice ANTENNAE OF
+THE HEART.
+
+“Whose instant touches, slightest pause,”
+
+teach the approach of the smallest forms of danger, however inoffensive
+their shapes, however unobtrusive their advance. When the sensibilities
+are neglected and suffered to fall into disrepute, they grow idle first,
+and finally obtuse! even as the limb which you forbear to exercise loses
+its muscle, and withers into worthlessness.
+
+When Alfred Stevens discovered this condition, his plan was simple
+enough. He had only to stimulate her mind into bolder exercise--to
+conduct it to topics of the utmost hardihood--to inspire that sort of
+moral recklessness which some people call courage--which delights to
+sport along the edge of the precipice, and to summon audacious spirits
+from the great yawning gulfs which lie below. This practice is always
+pursued at the expense of those guardian feelings which keep watch over
+the virtues of the tender heart.
+
+The analysis of subjects commonly forbidden to the sex, necessarily
+tends to make dull those habitual sentinels over the female conduct.
+These sentinels are instincts rather than principles. Education can take
+them away, but does not often confer them. When, through the arts of
+Alfred Stevens, Margaret Cooper was led to discuss, perhaps to despise,
+those nice and seemingly purposeless barriers which society--having
+the experience of ages for its authority--has wisely set up between the
+sexes--she had already taken a large stride toward passing them. But of
+this, which a judicious education would have taught her, she was wholly
+ignorant. Her mind was too bold to be scrupulous; too adventurous to be
+watchful; and if, at any moment, a pause in her progress permitted her
+to think of the probable danger to her sex of such adventurous freedom,
+she certainly never apprehended it in her own case. Such restraints she
+conceived to be essential only for the protection of THE WEAK among
+her sex. Her vanity led her to believe that she was strong; and the
+approaches of the sapper were conducted with too much caution, with a
+progress too stealthy and insensible, to startle the ear or attract the
+eye of the unobservant, yet keen-eyed guardian of her citadel. An eagle
+perched upon a rock, with wing outspread for flight, and an eye fixed
+upon the rolling clouds through which it means to dart, is thus heedless
+of the coiled serpent which lies beneath its feet.
+
+The bold eye of Margaret Cooper was thus heedless. Gazing upon the sun,
+she saw not the serpent at her feet. It was not because she slept: never
+was eye brighter, more far-stretching; never was mind more busy, more
+active, than that of the victim at the very moment when she fell. It was
+because she watched the remote, not the near--the region in which there
+was no enemy, nothing but glory--and neglected that post which is always
+in danger. Her error is that of the general who expends his army upon
+some distant province, leaving his chief city to the assault and sack of
+the invader.
+
+We have dwelt somewhat longer upon the moral causes which, in our story,
+have produced such cruel results, than the mere story itself demands;
+but no story is perfectly moral unless the author, with a wholesome
+commentary, directs the attention of the reader to the true weaknesses
+of his hero, to the point where his character fails; to the causes of
+this failure, and the modes in which it may be repaired or prevented.
+In this way alone may the details of life and society be properly welded
+together into consistent doctrine, so that instruction may keep pace
+with delight, and the heart and mind be informed without being conscious
+of any of those tasks which accompany the lessons of experience.
+
+To return now to our narrative.
+
+Margaret Cooper lived! She might as well have died. This was HER
+thought, at least. She prayed for death. Was it in mercy that her prayer
+was denied? We shall see! Youth and a vigorous constitution successfully
+resisted the attacks of the assailant. They finally obtained the
+victory. After a weary spell of bondage and suffering, she recovered.
+But she recovered only to the consciousness of a new affliction. All the
+consequences of her fatal lapse from virtue have not yet been told. She
+bore within her an indelible witness of her shame. She was destined to
+be a mother without having been a wife!
+
+This, to her mother at least, was a more terrible discovery than the
+former. She literally cowered and crouched beneath it. It was the
+WRITTEN shame, rather than the actual, which the old woman dreaded. She
+had been so vain, so criminally vain, of her daughter--she had made
+her so constantly the subject of her brag--that, unwitting of having
+declared the whole melancholy truth, in the first moment of her madness,
+she shrank, with an unspeakable horror, from the idea that the little
+world in which she lived should become familiar with the whole cruel
+history of her overthrow. She could scarcely believe it herself though
+the daughter, with an anguish in her eyes that left little to be told,
+had herself revealed the truth. Her pride as well as her life, was
+linked with the pride and the beauty of her child. She had shared in
+her constant triumphs over all around her; and overlooking, as a fond,
+foolish mother is apt to do, all her faults of temper or of judgment,
+she had learned to behold nothing but her superiority. And now to see
+her fallen! a thing of scorn, which was lately a thing of beauty!--the
+despised, which was lately the worshipped and the wondered at! No wonder
+that her weak, vain heart was crushed and humbled, and her head bowed in
+sorrow to the earth. She threw herself upon the floor, and wept bitter
+and scalding tears.
+
+The daughter had none. Without sob or sigh, she stooped down and
+tenderly assisted the old woman to rise. Why had she no tears? She asked
+herself this question, but in vain. Her external emotions promised
+none. Indeed, she seemed to be without emotions. A weariness and general
+indifference to all things was now the expression of her features.
+But this was the deceitful aspect of the mountain, on whose breast
+contemplation sits with silence, unconscious of the tossing flame which
+within is secretly fusing the stubborn metal and the rock. Anger was in
+her breast--feelings of hate mingled up with shame--scorn of herself,
+scorn of all--feelings of defiance and terror, striving at mastery; and,
+in one corner, a brooding image of despair, kept from the brink of the
+precipice only by the entreaties of some fiercer principle of hate. She
+felt life to be insupportable. Why did she live? This question came to
+her repeatedly. The demon was again at work beside her.
+
+“Die!” said he. “It is but a blow--a moment's pang--the driving a needle
+into an artery--the prick of a pin upon the heart. Die! it will save you
+from exposure--the shame of bringing into the world an heir of shame!
+What would you live for? The doors of love, and fame, even of society,
+are shut against you for ever. What is life to you now? a long denial--a
+protracted draught of bitterness--the feeling of a death-spasm
+carried on through sleepless years; perhaps, under a curse of peculiar
+bitterness, carried on even into age! Die! you can not be so base as to
+wish for longer life!”
+
+The arguments of the demon were imposing. His suggestions seemed to
+promise the relief she sought. Hers seemed the particular case where the
+prayer is justified which invokes the mountains and the rocks upon the
+head of the guilty. But the rock refused to fall, the mountain to cover
+her shame, and its exposure became daily more and more certain. Death
+was the only mode of escape from the mountain of pain which seemed to
+rest upon her heart. The means of self-destruction were easy. With
+a spirit so impetuous as hers, to imagine was to determine. She did
+determine. Yet, even while making so terrible a resolve, a singular calm
+seemed to overspread her soul. She complained of nothing--wished for
+nothing--sought for nothing--trembled at nothing. A dreadful lethargy,
+which made the old mother declaim as against a singular proof of
+hardihood, possessed her spirit. Little did the still-idolizing mother
+conjecture how much that lethargy concealed!
+
+The moment that Margaret Cooper conceived the idea of suicide, it
+possessed all her mind. It became the one only thought. There were few
+arguments against it, and these she rapidly dismissed or overcame. To
+leave her mother in her old age was the first which offered itself; but
+this became a small consideration when she reflected that the latter
+could not, under any circumstances, require her assistance very long;
+and to spare her the shame of public exposure was another consideration.
+The evils of the act to herself were reduced with equal readiness to the
+transition from one state to another by a small process, which, whether
+by the name of stab or shot, was productive only of a momentary spasm;
+for, though as fully persuaded of the soul's immortality as the best
+of us, the unhappy girl, like all young free-thinkers, had persuaded
+herself that, in dying by her own hands, she was simply exercising a
+discretionary power under the conviction that her act in doing so was
+rendered by circumstances a judicious one. The arguments by which
+she deceived herself are sufficiently commonplace, and too easy of
+refutation, to render necessary any discussion of them here. Enough to
+state the fact. She deliberately resolved upon the fatal deed which
+was to end her life and agony together, and save her from that more
+notorious exposure which must follow the birth of that child of sin whom
+she deemed it no more than a charity to destroy.
+
+There was an old pair of pistols in the house, which had been the
+property of her father. She had often, with a boldness not common to the
+sex, examined these pistols. They were of brass, well made, of English
+manufacture, with common muzzles, and a groove for a sight instead of
+the usual drop. They were not large, but, in a practised hand, were
+good travelling-pistols, being capable of bringing down a man at twelve
+paces, provided there was anything like deliberation in the holder.
+Often and again had she handled these weapons, poising them and
+addressing them at objects as she had seen her father do. On
+one occasion she had been made to discharge them, under his own
+instructions; she had done so without terror. She recalled these events.
+She had seen the pistols loaded. She did not exactly know what quantity
+of powder was necessary for a charge, but she was in no mood to
+calculate the value of a thimbleful.
+
+Availing herself of the temporary absence of her mother, she possessed
+herself of these weapons. Along with them, in the same drawer, she found
+a horn which still contained a certain quantity of powder. There were
+bullets in the bag with the pistols which precisely fitted them. There,
+too, was the mould--there were flints--the stock was sufficiently ample
+for all her desires; and she surveyed the prize, in her own room, with
+the look of one who congratulates himself in the conviction that he
+holds in his hand the great medicine which is to cure his disease.
+In her chamber she loaded the weapons, and, with such resignation as
+belonged to her philosophy, she waited for the propitious moment when
+she might complete the deed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+FOLDING THE ROBES ABOUT HER.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was the sabbath and a very lovely day. The sun never shone more
+brightly in the heavens; and as Margaret Cooper surveyed its mellow
+orange light, lying, like some blessed spirit, at sleep upon the hills
+around her, and reflected that she was about to behold it for the last
+time, her sense of its exceeding beauty became more strong than ever.
+Now that she was about to lose it for ever, it seemed more beautiful
+than it had ever been before.
+
+This is a natural effect, which the affections confer upon the objects
+which delight and employ them. Even a temporary privation increases the
+loveliness of the external nature. How we linger and look. That shade
+seems so inviting; that old oak so venerable! That rock--how often have
+we sat upon it, evening and morning, and mused strange, wild, sweet
+fancies! It is an effort to tear one's self away--it is almost like
+tearing away from life itself; so many living affections feel the
+rending and the straining--so many fibres that have their roots in the
+heart, are torn and lacerated by the separation.
+
+Poor Margaret! she looked from her window upon the bright and beautiful
+world around her. Strange that sorrow should dwell in a world so bright
+and beautiful! Stranger still, that, dwelling in such a world, it should
+not dwell there by sufferance only and constraint! that it should have
+such sway--such privilege. That it should invade every sanctuary and
+leave no home secure. Ah! but the difference between mere sorrow and
+guilt! Poor Margaret could not well understand that! If she could--but
+no! She was yet to learn that the sorrows of the innocent have a healing
+effect. That they produce a holy and ennobling strength, and a juster
+appreciation of those evening shades of life which render the lights
+valuable and make their uses pure. It is only guilt which finds life
+loathsome. It is only guilt that sorrow weakens and enslaves. Virtue
+grows strong beneath the pressure of her enemies, and with such a power
+as was fabled of the king of Pontus, turns the most poisonous fruits of
+earth into the most wholesome food.
+
+But, even in the heart of Margaret Cooper, where the sense of the
+beautiful was strong, the loveliness of the scene was felt. She drank
+in, with strange satisfaction--a satisfaction to which she had long
+been a stranger--its soft and inviting beauties. They did not lessen her
+sense of suffering, perhaps, but they were not without their effect in
+producing other moods, which, once taken in company with the darker ones
+of the soul, may, in time, succeed in alleviating them. Never, indeed,
+had the prospect been more calm and wooing. Silence, bending from the
+hills, seemed to brood above the valley even as some mighty spirit,
+at whose bidding strife was hushed, and peace became the acknowledged
+divinity of all. The humming voices of trade and merriment were all
+hushed in homage to the holy day; and if the fitful song of a truant
+bird, that presumed beside the window of Margaret Cooper, did break the
+silence of the scene, it certainly did not disturb its calm. The forest
+minstrel sung in a neighboring tree, and she half listened to his lay.
+The strain seemed to sympathize with her sadness. She thought upon her
+own songs, which had been of such a proud spirit; and how strange and
+startling seemed the idea that with her, song would soon cease for ever.
+The song of the bird would be silent in her ears, and her own song! What
+song would be hers? What strain would she take up? In what abode--before
+what altars?
+
+This train of thought, which was not entirely lost, however, was broken,
+for the time, by a very natural circumstance. A troop of the village
+damsels came in sight, on their way to church. She forgot the song of
+birds, as her morbid spirit suggested to her the probable subject of
+their meditations.
+
+“They have seen me,” she muttered to herself as she hastily darted from
+the window. “Ay, they exult. They point to me--me, the abandoned--the
+desolate--soon to be the disgraced! But, no! no! that shall never
+be. They shall never have that triumph, which is always so grateful a
+subject of regale to the mean and envious!”
+
+The voice of her mother from below disturbed these unhappy meditations.
+The old lady was prepared for church, and was surprised to find that
+Margaret had not made her toilet.
+
+“What! don't you mean to go, Margaret?”
+
+“Not to-day, mother.”
+
+“What, and the new preacher too, that takes the place of John Cross!
+They say he makes a most heavenly prayer.”
+
+But the inducement of the heavenly prayer of the new preacher was not
+enough for Margaret. The very suggestion of a new preacher would have
+been conclusive against her compliance. The good old lady was too eager
+herself to get under way to waste much time in exhortation, and hurrying
+off, she scarcely gave herself time to answer the inquiry of the widow
+Thackeray, at her own door, after the daughter's health.
+
+“I will go in and see her,” said the lighthearted but truehearted woman.
+
+“Do, do, ma'am---if you please! She'll be glad to see you. I'll hurry
+on, as I see Mrs. Hinkley just ahead.”
+
+The widow Thackeray looked after her with a smile, which was exchanged
+for another of different character when she found herself in the chamber
+of Margaret. She put her arms about the waist of the sufferer; kissed
+her cheeks, and with the tenderest solicitude spoke of her health and
+comfort. To her, alone, with the exception of her mother--according to
+the belief of Margaret--her true situation had been made known.
+
+“Alas!” said she, “how should I feel--how should I be! You should know.
+I am as one cursed--doomed, hopeless of anything but death.”
+
+“Ah! do not speak of death, Margaret,” said the other kindly. “We must
+all die, I know, but that does not reconcile me any more to the thought.
+It brings always a creeping horror through my veins. Think of life--talk
+of life only.”
+
+“They say that death is life.”
+
+“So it is, I believe, Margaret; and now I think of it, dress yourself
+and go to church where we may hear something on this subject to make us
+wiser and better. Come, my dear--let us go to God.”
+
+“I can not--not to-day, dear Mrs. Thackeray.”
+
+“Ah, Margaret, why not? It is to the church, of all places, you should
+now go.”
+
+“What! to be stared at? To see the finger of scorn pointing at me
+wherever I turn? To hear the whispered insinuation? To be conscious only
+of sneer and sarcasm on every hand? No, no, dear Mrs. Thackeray, I can
+not go for this. Feeling this, I should neither pray for myself, nor
+find benefit from the prayers of others. Nay, THEY would not pray. They
+would only mock.”
+
+“Margaret, these thoughts are very sinful.”
+
+“So they are, but I can not think of any better. They can not but be
+sinful since they are mine.”
+
+“But you are not wedded to sin, dearest. Such thoughts can give you no
+pleasure. Come with me to church! Come and pray! Prayer will do you
+good.”
+
+“I would rather pray here. Let me remain. I will try to go out among the
+hills when you are all engaged in church, and will pray there. Indeed I
+must. I must pray then and pray there, if prayer is ever to do me good.”
+
+“The church is the better place, Margaret. One prays better where one
+sees that all are praying.”
+
+“But when I KNOW that they are not praying! When I know that envy is in
+their hearts, and malice, and jealousy and suspicion--that God is not in
+their hearts, but their fellow; and not him with friendly and fond, but
+with spiteful and deceitful thoughts!”
+
+“Ah! Margaret, how can you know this? Judge not lest ye be judged.”
+
+“It matters not, dear Mrs. Thackeray. God is here, or there. He will be
+among the hills if anywhere. I will seek him there. If I can command my
+thoughts anywhere, it will be in the woods alone. In the church I can
+not. Those who hate me are there--and their looks of hate would only
+move my scorn and defiance.”
+
+“Margaret, you do our people wrong. You do yourself wrong. None hate
+you--none will point to you, or think of your misfortune; and if they
+did, it is only what you might expect, and what you must learn patiently
+to bear, as a part of the punishment which God inflicts on sin. You must
+submit, Margaret, to the shame as you have submitted to the sin. It is
+by submission only that you can be made strong. The burden which you are
+prepared to bear meekly, becomes light to the willing spirit. Come, dear
+Margaret, I will keep with you, sit by you--show you, and all, that I
+forget your sin and remember only your suffering.”
+
+The good widow spoke with the kindest tones. She threw her arms around
+the neck of the desolate one, and kissed her with the affection of a
+sister. But the demon of pride was uppermost. She withstood entreaty and
+embrace.
+
+“I can not go with you. I thank you, truly thank you, dear Mrs.
+Thackeray, but I can not go. I have neither the courage nor the
+strength.”
+
+“They will come--the courage and the strength--only try. God is watchful
+to give us help the moment he sees that we really seek his assistance.
+By prayer, Margaret--”
+
+“I will pray, but I must pray alone. Among the hills I will pray. My
+prayer will not be less acceptable offered among his hills. My voice
+will not remain unheard, though no chorus swells its appeal.”
+
+“Margaret, this is pride.”
+
+“Perhaps!”
+
+“Ah! go with me, and pray for humility.”
+
+“My prayer would rather be for death.”
+
+“Say not so, Margaret--this is impiety.”
+
+“Ay, death!--the peace, the quiet of the grave--of a long sleep--an
+endless sleep--where the vulture may no longer gnaw the heart, nor the
+fire burn within the brain! For these I must pray.”
+
+And, thus speaking, the unhappy woman smote her throbbing head with
+violent hand.
+
+“Shocking thought! But you do not believe in such a sleep? Surely,
+Margaret, you believe in life eternal?”
+
+“Would I did not!”
+
+“O Margaret!--but you are sick; you are very feverish. Your eyeballs
+glare like coals of fire; your face seems charged with blood. I am
+afraid you are going to have another attack, like the last.”
+
+“Be not afraid. I have no such fear.”
+
+“I will sit with you, at least,” said the kind-hearted woman.
+
+“Nay, that I must positively forbid, Mrs. Thackeray; I will not suffer
+it. I will not sit with YOU. Go you to church. You will be late. Do not
+waste your time on me. I mean to ramble among the hills this morning.
+THAT, I think, will do me more good than anything else. There, I am
+sure--there only--I will find peace.”
+
+The worthy widow shook her head doubtfully.
+
+“But I am sure of it,” said Margaret. “You will see. Peace, peace--the
+repose of the heart--the slumber of the brain!--I shall find all there!”
+
+Mrs. Thackeray, finding her inflexible, rose to depart, but with some
+irresoluteness.
+
+“If you would let me walk with you, Margaret--”
+
+“No! no!--dear Mrs. Thackeray--I thank you very much; but, with a mood
+such as mine, I shall be much better alone.”
+
+“Well, if you are resolved--”
+
+“I am resolved! never more so.”
+
+These words were spoken in tones which might have startled a suspicious
+mind. But the widow was none.
+
+“God bless you!” she said, kissing her at parting. “I will see you when
+I come from church.”
+
+“Will you?” said Margaret, with a significant but sad smile. Then,
+suddenly rising, she exclaimed:--
+
+“Let me kiss you, dear Mrs. Thackeray, and thank you again, before you
+go. You have been very kind to me, very kind, and you have my thanks and
+gratitude.”
+
+Mrs. Thackeray was touched by her manner. This was the first time
+that the proud spirit of Margaret Cooper had ever offered such an
+acknowledgment. It was one that the gentle and unremitting kindnesses
+of the widow amply deserved. After renewing her promise to call on her
+return from church, Mrs. Thackeray took her departure.
+
+Margaret Cooper was once more alone. When she heard the outer door shut,
+she then threw herself upon the bed, and gave way to the utterance of
+those emotions which, long restrained, had rendered her mind a terrible
+anarchy. A few tears, but very few, were wrung from her eyes; but she
+groaned audibly, and a rapid succession of shivering-fits passed through
+her frame, racking the whole nervous system, until she scarcely found
+herself able to rise from the couch where she had thrown herself. A
+strong, determined will alone moved her, and she rose, after a lapse of
+half an hour, to the further prosecution of her purpose. Her temporary
+weakness and suffering of frame had no effect upon her resolves. She
+rather seemed to be strengthened in them. This strength enabled her to
+sit down and dictate a letter to her mother, declaring her intention,
+and justifying it by such arguments as were presented by the ingenious
+demon who assists always in the councils of the erring heart.
+
+She placed this letter in her bosom, that it might be found upon her
+person. It was curious to observe, next, that she proceeded to tasks
+which were scarcely in unison with the dreadful deed she meditated. She
+put her chamber in nice order. Her books, of which she had a tolerably
+handsome collection for a private library in our forest-country, she
+arranged and properly classed upon their shelves. Then she made her
+toilet with unusual care. It was for the last time. She gazed upon the
+mirror, and beheld her own beauties with a shudder.
+
+“Ah!” she thought, though she gave no expression to the thought, “to be
+so beautiful, yet fail!”
+
+It was a reflection to touch any heart with sorrow. Her dress was of
+plain white; she wore no ornament--not even a riband. Her hair, which
+was beautifully long and thick, was disposed in a clubbed mass upon her
+head, very simply but with particular neatness; and, when all was done,
+concealing the weapon of death beneath a shawl which she wrapped around
+her, she left the house, and stole away unobserved along the hills, in
+the seclusion and sacred silence of which she sought to avoid the evil
+consequences of one crime by the commission of another far more heinous.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+SUSPENSE AND AGONY.
+
+
+
+
+
+At the risk of seeming monotonous, we must repeat the reflection made
+in our last chapter, that the things we are about to lose for ever seem
+always more valuable in the moment of their loss. They acquire a newer
+interest in our eyes at such a time, possibly under the direction of
+some governing instinct which is intended to render us tenacious of
+life to the very last. Privation teaches us much more effectually than
+possession the value of all human enjoyments; and the moralist has more
+than once drawn his sweetest portraits of liberty from the gloom and the
+denials of a dungeon. How eloquent of freedom is he who yearns for it in
+vain! How glowing is that passion which laments the lost!
+
+To one dying, as we suppose few die, in the perfect possession of
+their senses, how beautiful must seem the fading hues of the sunlight,
+flickering along the walls of a chamber! how heavenly the brief glimpses
+of the blue sky through the half-opened window! how charming the green
+bit of foliage that swings against the pane! how cheering and unwontedly
+sweet and balmy the soft, sudden gust of the sweet south, breathing up
+from the flowers, and stirring the loose drapery around the couch! How
+can we part with these without tears? how reflect, without horror, upon
+the close coffin, the damp clod, the deep hollows of the earth in which
+we are to be cabined? Oh, with what earnestness, at such a moment, must
+the wholly conscious spirit pray for life! now greedily will he drink
+the nauseous draught in the hope to secure its boon! how fondly will he
+seize upon every chimera, whether of his own or of another's fancy, in
+order to gain a little respite--in order still to keep within the grasp
+of mind and sight, these lovely agents of earth and its Master, which,
+in our day of strength and exultation, we do not value at one half
+their worth! And how full of dread and horror must be that first awful
+conviction which assures him that the struggle is in vain--that the last
+remedy is tried--that nothing is left him now but despair--despair and
+death! Then it is that Christianity comes to his relief. If he believes,
+he gains by his loss. Its godlike promise assures him then that the
+things which his desires make dear, his faith has rendered immortal.
+
+The truth of many of these reflections made their way into the mind of
+Margaret Cooper, as she pursued the well-known path along the hills. She
+observed the objects along the route more narrowly than ever. She was
+taking that path for the last time. Her eyes would behold these objects
+no more. How often had she pursued the same route with Alfred Stevens!
+But then she had not seen these things; she had not observed these
+thousand graces and beauties of form and shadow which now seemed to
+crowd around, challenging her regard and demanding her sympathies.
+Then she had seen nothing but him. The bitterness which this reflection
+occasioned made her hurry her footsteps; but there was an involuntary
+shudder that passed through her frame, when, in noting the strange
+beauty of the path, she reflected that it would be trodden by her for
+the last time. Her breathing became quickened by the reflection. She
+pressed forward up the hills. The forests grew thick around her--deep,
+dim, solemn, and inviting. The skies above looked down in little blessed
+blue tufts, through the crowding tree-tops. The long vista of the woods
+led her onward in wandering thoughts.
+
+To fix these thoughts--to keep them from wandering! This was a
+difficulty. Margaret Cooper strove to do so, but she could not.
+Never did her mind seem such a perfect chaos--so full of confused and
+confusing objects and images. Her whole life seemed to pass in review
+before her. All her dreams of ambition, all the struggles of her genius!
+Were these to be thrown away? Were these all to be wasted? Was her song
+to be unheard? Was her passionate and proud soul to have no voice?
+If death is terrible to man, it is terrible, not as a pang, but as an
+oblivion; and to the soul of genius, oblivion is a soul-death, and its
+thought is a source of tenfold terror.
+
+“But of what avail were life to me now? Even should I live,” said the
+wretched woman, “would it matter more to the ambition which I have had,
+and to the soul which flames and fevers within me? Who would hearken to
+the song of the degraded? Who, that heard the story of my shame, would
+listen to the strains of my genius? Say that its utterance is even as
+proud as my own vanity of heart would esteem it--say that no plaint like
+mine had ever touched the ear or lifted the heart of humanity! Alas! of
+what avail! The finger of scorn would be uplifted long before the voice
+of applause. The sneer and sarcasm of the worldling would anticipate the
+favoring judgment of the indulgent and the wise. Who would do justice to
+my cause? Who listen? Alas! the voice of genius would be of little avail
+speaking from the lips of the dishonored.
+
+“To the talent which I have, and the ambition which still burns within
+me, life then can bring nothing--no exercise--no fruition. Suppose,
+then, that the talent is left to slumber--the ambition stifled till it
+has no further longings! Will life yield anything to the mere creature
+of society--to my youth--to my beauty--to my sense of delight--if still
+there be any such sense left to me? Shall I be less the creature
+of social scorn, because I have yielded my ambition--because I have
+forborne the employment of those glorious gifts which Heaven in its
+bounty has allotted me?
+
+“Alas! no! am I not a woman, one of that frail, feeble sex, whose name
+is weakness?--of whom, having no strength, man yet expects the proofs of
+the most unyielding--of a firmness which he himself can not exercise--of
+a power of self-denial and endurance of which he exhibits no example. If
+I weep, he smiles at my weakness. If I stifle my tears, he denounces
+my unnatural hardihood. If I am cold and unyielding, I am masculine and
+neglected--if I am gentle and pliant, my confidence is abused and my
+person dishonored. What can society, which is thus exacting, accord
+to me, then, as a mere woman? What shame will it not thrust upon me--a
+woman--and as I am?
+
+“Life then promises me nothing. The talent which I have, lies within me
+idle and without hope of use. The pure name of the woman is lost to me
+for ever. Shame dogs my footsteps. Scorn points its finger. Life, and
+all that it brings to others--love, friends, fame, fortune--which are
+the soul of life--these are lost to me for ever. The moral death is here
+already. The mere act of dying, is simply the end of a strife, and a
+breathing and an agony. That is all!”
+
+The day became overcast. A cloud obscured the sunlight. The blue tufts
+of sky no longer looked downward through the openings of the trees.
+The scene, dim and silent before, became unusually dark. The aspect
+of nature seemed congenial with the meditated deed. She had reasoned
+herself into its commission, and she reproached herself mentally with
+her delay. Any self-suggestion of an infirmity of purpose, with a nature
+such as hers, would have produced precipitation. She turned down a
+slight gorge among the hills where the forest was more close. She knelt
+beneath a tree and laid down her pistol at its foot.
+
+She knelt--strange contradiction!--she knelt for the purposes of prayer.
+But she could not pray. It would seem that she attributed this effort to
+the sight of the pistols, and she put them behind her without changing
+her position. The prayer, if she made any, was internal; and, at all
+events it did not seem to be satisfactory. Yet, before it was ended, she
+started with an expression of painful thought upon her face. The voice
+of her reason had ceased its utterance. The voice of her conscience,
+perhaps, had been unheard; but there was yet another voice to be heard
+which was more potent than all.
+
+It was the mother's voice!
+
+She placed her hand upon her side with a spasmodic effort. The
+quickening of a new life within her, made that new voice effectual. She
+threw herself on the ground and wept freely. For the first time she wept
+freely. The tears were those of the mother. The true fountain of tears
+had been touched. That first throb of the innocent pledge of guilty
+passion subdued the fiend. She could have taken her own life, but dared
+not lift the deadly weapon against that. The arm of the suicide--was
+arrested. She groaned, she wept, bitterly and freely. She was at once
+feebler and more strong. Feebler, as regarded her late resolution;
+stronger as regarded the force of her affections, the sweet humanities,
+not altogether subdued within her heart. The slight pulsation of that
+infant in her womb had been more effectual than the voice of reason,
+or conscience, or feminine dread. The maternal feeling is, perhaps, the
+most imperious of all those which gather in the heart of woman.
+
+Margaret Cooper, however, had not altogether resolved against the deed.
+She only could not do it there and then. Her wretched determination
+was not wholly surrendered, but it was touched, enfeebled; and with
+the increasing powers of reflection, the impetuosity of the will became
+naturally lessened. Those few glimpses along the roadside which had made
+her sensible to the beauties she was about to lose, had prepared her
+mind to act in counteraction of her impulse; and the event which had
+brought into play the maternal instinct, naturally helped the cause of
+reason in her soul.
+
+Still, with the erring pride of youth she reproached herself with her
+infirmity of purpose. She resolved to change her ground, as if the
+instinct which had been awakened in one spot would not everywhere pursue
+her. Time was gained, and in such cases, to gain time is everything.
+Perhaps no suicide would ever take place if the individual would wait
+ten minutes. The soul takes its color from the cloud, and changes its
+moods as often. It is one of the best lessons to the young, to wait!
+wait! wait! One of the surest signs of strength is where the individual
+waits patiently and makes no complaint.
+
+Margaret Cooper changed her ground. The spot was a wild one. A broken
+ledge of rock was at her feet, and just below it ran a dark, narrow
+winding footpath half-obscured by the undergrowth. Here she once more
+proceeded to nerve her mind for the commission of the deed, but she had
+not been there an instant when she was surprised to hear the sound of
+voices.
+
+This was unusual. Who could they be? The villagers were not apt to stray
+from church-service whenever a preacher was to be found, and there was a
+new one, and consequently a new attraction, that day, for the spiritual
+hungry of Charlemont. The path below was seldom trodden except by
+herself and an occasional sportsman. The idea that entered her mind was,
+that her purpose had been suspected, and that she was pursued.
+
+With this idea, she placed the pistol to her breast. She had already
+cocked the weapon. Her finger was on the trigger. But the tones
+of another voice reached her ears from below. They were those of a
+woman--sweet, musical, and tender.
+
+A new light broke in upon her mind. This was the language of love. And
+who were these new lovers in Charlemont? Could it be that the voice of
+the male speaker was that of Stevens? Something in the tone sounded like
+it, Involuntarily, with this impression, the weapon was turned from her
+own bosom, and addressed in the direction in which the persons below
+were approaching. A sudden, joyous feeling touched her soul. The thought
+to destroy the criminal by whom she had been destroyed was a source
+of exultation. She felt that she could do it. Both pistols were in
+her hand. The pathway was not more than twenty paces distant; and her
+nerves, for the first time, braced to an unusual tension, trembled with
+the new excitement in her soul.
+
+The intruders continued to approach. Their voices became more distinct,
+and Margaret Cooper was soon undeceived as to one of them being that
+of Alfred Stevens. She was compelled to lie close, that she might not
+betray her position and purpose. The male speaker was very urgent; the
+voice seemed that of a stranger. That of the female was not so clearly
+distinguishable, yet it seemed more familiar to the unintentional
+listener.
+
+Something of feminine curiosity now entered the bosom of Margaret
+Cooper. Crouching where she was, she deposited the pistols at her
+feet. She remained breathlessly, for the slightest movement would have
+revealed her to the persons who were now just below. They passed close
+beneath the place of her concealment, and she soon discovered that they
+were lovers; and what their language was, even if she had not heard it,
+might have been conjectured.
+
+The girl was a very pretty brunette of Charlemont--a sweet, retiring
+damsel of her own age, named Rivers--whom she knew only slightly. She
+was a shy, gentle, unpresuming girl, whom, for this reason, perhaps,
+Margaret had learned to look upon without dislike or scorn. Her
+companion was a youth whom Margaret had known when a lad, but who had
+been absent on the Mississippi for two years. His tall and masculine
+but well-made and graceful person sufficiently accounted for, while it
+justified, the taste of the maiden. He was a youth of fine, frank, manly
+countenance. His garb was picturesque, that of a bold border-hunter,
+with hunting-frock of yellow buckskin, and Indian leggings.
+
+The girl looked up to him with an expression at once of eagerness and
+timidity. Confidence and maiden bashfulness spoke equally in the delight
+which glowed upon her features. The bright eyes and sun-burned features
+of the youth were flushed with the feeling of happy triumph and assuring
+love. The relation of the two was sufficiently evident from their looks,
+even had they no other language.
+
+What were the emotions of Margaret Cooper as she looked down upon this
+pair? At first she thought, as will most persons: “Surely there is
+nothing in nature so lovely as the union of two--fond, devoted hearts.
+The picture is one equally of moral and physical beauty. The slight,
+fragile, depending damsel, hanging in perfect confidence on the arm of
+the manly, lofty, and exulting youth--looking up into his eyes in hope,
+while he returns the gaze with pride and fondness! Unconscious of all
+things but the love which to them is life and all things besides, they
+move along the forest way and know not its solitude; they linger and
+loiter along its protracted paths, and see not their length; they cling
+together through the lengthened hours, and fancy they have lost no time;
+they hear each other's voices, and believe that life is all music and
+delight.”
+
+While Margaret Cooper looked down and heard the pleadings and promises
+of the youth, and beheld the sweet emotions of his companion, engaged
+in a pleasant struggle between her hopes and misgivings, she scarcely
+restrained herself from rising where she was and crying aloud--like
+another Cassandra, not to be believed: “Beware! beware!”
+
+But the warning of Margaret Cooper would have been unnecessary. The girl
+was not only free from danger, but she was superior to it. She had
+the wholesome fear of doing wrong too strongly impressed upon her
+by education--she had too little confidence in herself--was too well
+assured of her own weakness--to suffer herself, even for a moment,
+to depart, in either thought or deed, from those quiet but stern
+proprieties of conduct which are among the best securities of the young.
+While she looked in her lover's face with confidence, and held his arm
+with the grasp of one who is sure of a right to do so, there was an air
+of childish simplicity in her manner which was wholly at variance with
+wild passions and improper fancies. While the hunter maintained her on
+his arm, and looked down into her eyes with love, his glance was yet as
+respectful, as unexpressive of presumption, as her own. Had the eyes of
+all Charlemont been looking on, they would have beheld nothing in the
+conduct of either which could have incurred the censure of the most
+becoming delicacy.
+
+Keen was the emotion and bitter was the thought which worked in the mind
+of Margaret Cooper. She looked on the deportment of that young maiden,
+whose intellect at another day she would have despised, with envy and
+regret. Truer thoughts and feelings came to her as she listened to the
+innocent but fond dialogue between the unconscious pair. The hunter was
+pursuing an erratic life of enterprise and industry, then very common
+among the western youth. He had been down upon the Mississippi, seeking
+his fortune in such adventures as make border-life in our country
+something like the more civilized life of the middle ages. He had
+returned after a long absence, to claim the bride whose affections he
+had won long before he had departed.
+
+Never had knight-errant been more true to his mistress. Her image had
+been his talisman as well against danger from without, as against the
+demon within. It had never left his mind, and he now returned for his
+reward. He had returned to Charlemont just before the church service had
+begun, and, being unprepared to go thither, had found no difficulty
+in persuading his sweetheart to give the hour of morning service to
+himself.
+
+Mixed up with his professions of love was the story of his wanderings.
+Never were adventures more interesting to any auditor. Never was auditor
+more easily moved by the transitions of the tale from tears to smiles,
+and from smiles again to tears. His risks and rewards; his defeats
+and successes; his wild adventures by fell and flood--not perhaps so
+perilous as those of Othello, but such as proved he had the soul to
+encounter the worst in Othello's experience, and maintain himself as
+well--drew largely on the maiden's wonder and delight, increased her
+tenderness and tremors, and made her quite as devoted to her hero as
+ever was Desdemona to her dusky chief. As they went from hearing below,
+the manner in which the hunter concluded his narrative provided a
+sufficient test for the faith of his companion.
+
+“And now, Selina, you see all the risks and the dangers. There's
+work and perhaps trouble for you to go down with me along the Choctaw
+borders. But if there's work, I am the man to do my own share, and help
+you out in yours; and, if there's trouble, here's the breast to stand it
+first, and here's the arm to drive it back, so that it'll never trouble
+yours. No danger shall come to you, so long as I can stand up between it
+and you. If so be that you love me as you say, there's one way to show
+it: you'll soon make up your mind to go with me. If you don't, why--”
+
+“But you know I do love you, John--” murmured the girl.
+
+“Don't I believe it? Well, if what you say means what it should, you're
+ready. Here's my hand, and all that it's good for. It can work for you
+and fight for you, Selina, and it's yours etarnally, with all that I
+have.”
+
+The hand of the girl was silently put into that of the speaker. The
+tears were in her eyes; but, if she made any other answer, it was
+unheard by Margaret Cooper. The rustic pair moved from sight even as
+they spoke, and the desolate woman once more remained alone!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+SHAME AND DEATH--THE OATH.
+
+
+
+
+
+Margaret Cooper was at length permitted to emerge from the place of her
+concealment. The voices of the lovers were lost, as well as their forms,
+in the wooded distance. Dreaming, like children as they were, of life
+and happiness, they had wandered off, too happy to fancy for a moment
+that the world contained, in its wide, vast bosom, one creature half so
+wretched as she who hung above them, brooding, like some wild bird of
+the cliff, over the storm which had robbed her of her richest plumage.
+
+She sank back into the woods. She no longer had the heart to commit the
+meditated crime. This purpose had left her mind. It had given place to
+another, however, scarcely less criminal. We have seen her, under the
+first impression that the stranger whose voice she heard was Alfred
+Stevens, turning the muzzle of the pistol from her breast to the path on
+which he was approaching. Though she discovered her error, and laid the
+weapon down, the sudden suggestion of her mind, at that moment, gave a
+new direction to her mood.
+
+Why should she not seek to avenge her wrong? Was he to escape without
+penalty? was she to be a quiescent victim? True, she was a woman,
+destined it would seem to suffer--perhaps with a more than ordinary
+share of that suffering which falls to her sex. But she had also a
+peculiar strength--the strength of a man in some respects; and in her
+bosom she now felt the sudden glow of one of his fiercest passions.
+Revenge might be in her power. She might redress her wrong by her own
+hand. It was a weapon of death which she grasped. In her grasp it might
+be made a weapon of power. The suggestion seemed to be that of justice
+only. It was one that filled her whole soul with a triumphant and a wild
+enthusiasm.
+
+“I shall not be stricken down without danger to mine enemy. For
+THIS--this, at least--strength is allotted me. Let him tremble! In his
+place of seeming security let him tremble! I shall pursue his steps. I
+will find him out. There shall be a day of retribution! Alfred Stevens,
+there is a power within me which tells me you are no longer safe!
+
+“And why may I not secure this justice--this vengeance? Why? Because I
+am a woman. Ha! We shall see. If I am a woman, I can be an enemy--and
+such an enemy! An enemy not to be appeased, not to be overcome. War
+always with my foe--war to the knife--war to the last!”
+
+Such a nature as that of Margaret Cooper needed some such object to give
+it the passionate employment without which it must recoil upon itself
+and end either in suicide or madness. She brooded upon this new thought.
+She found in it a grateful exercise. From the moment when she conceived
+the idea of being the avenger of her own wrong, her spirit became more
+elastic--she became less sensible to the possible opinions upon her
+condition which might be entertained by others. She found consolation,
+in retreating to this one thought, from all the rest. Of the
+difficulties in the way of her design, it was not in her impetuous
+character to think. She never once suspected that the name of Alfred
+Stevens had been an assumed one. She never once asked how she was to
+pursue and hunt him up. She thought of a male disguise for herself, it
+is true; but of the means and modes of travel--in what direction to go,
+and after what plan to conduct her pursuit, she had not the most distant
+idea.
+
+She addressed herself to her new design, however, in one respect, with
+amazing perseverance. It diverted her from other and more oppressive
+thoughts. Her pistols she carried secretly to a very distant wood, where
+she concealed them in the hollow of a tree. To this wood she repaired
+secretly and daily. Here she selected a tree as a mark. A small section
+of the bark, which she tore away, at a given height, she learned to
+regard as the breast of her seducer. This was the object of her aim.
+Without any woman fears, she began her practice and continued it, day by
+day, until, as we are told by one of the chroniclers of her melancholy
+story, “she could place a ball with an accuracy, which, were it
+universally equalled by modern duellists, would render duelling much
+more fatal than it commonly is.”
+
+In secret she procured gunpowder and lead, by arts so ingenious as to
+baffle detection. At midnight when her mother slept she moulded her
+bullets. Well might the thoughts and feelings which possessed her mind,
+while engaged in this gloomy labor, have endowed every bullet with a
+wizard spell to make it do its bidding truly. Bitter, indeed, were
+the hours so appropriated; but they had their consolations. Dark and
+terrible were the excited moods in which she retired from her toils to
+that slumber which she could not always secure. And when it did come,
+what were its images! The tree, the mark, the weapon, the deep, dim
+forest, all the scenes and trials of the day, were renewed in her sleep.
+A gloomy wood filled her eyes--a victim dabbled in blood lay before her;
+and, more than once, her own fearful cry of vengeance and exultation
+awakened her from those dreams of sleep, which strengthened her in the
+terrible pursuit of the object which occasioned them.
+
+Such thoughts and practices, continued with religious pertinacity, from
+day to day, necessarily had their effect upon her appearance as well as
+her character. Her beauty assumed a wilder aspect. Her eye shot forth a
+supernatural fire. She never smiled. Her mouth was rigid and compressed
+as if her heart was busy in an endless conflict. Her gloom, thus
+nurtured by solitude and the continual presence of a brooding
+imagination of revenge, darkened into something like ferocity. Her
+utterance became brief and quick--her tones sharp, sudden, and piercing.
+She had but one thought which never seemed to desert her, yet of this
+thought no ear ever had cognizance. It was of the time when she should
+exercise the skill which she had now acquired upon that destroyer of
+herself, whom she now felt herself destined to destroy.
+
+Of course we are describing a madness--one of those peculiar forms of
+the disease which seems to have its origin in natural and justifiable
+suggestions of reason. Not the less a madness for all that.
+
+Succeeding in her practice at one distance, Margaret Cooper changed it.
+From one point to another she constantly varied her practice, until her
+aim grew certain at almost any distance within the ordinary influence of
+the weapon. To strike her mark at thirty feet became, in a little while,
+quite as easy as to do so at five; and, secure now of her weapon, her
+next object--though there was no cessation of her practice--was how to
+seek and where to find the victim.
+
+In this new object she meditated to disguise herself in the apparel of
+a man. She actually commenced the making up of the several garments
+of one. This was also the secret labor of the midnight hour, when her
+feeble-minded mother slept. She began to feel some of the difficulties
+lying in the way of this pursuit, and her mind grew troubled to consider
+them, without however, relaxing in its determination. That seemed a
+settled matter.
+
+While she brooded over this new feature of her purpose--as if
+fortunately to arrest the mad design--her mother fell seriously sick,
+and was for some time in danger. The duty of attending upon her, put a
+temporary stop to her thoughts and exercises; though without having the
+effect of expelling them from her mind.
+
+But another event, upon her mother's recovery, tended to produce a
+considerable alteration in her thoughts. A new care filled her heart
+and rendered her a different being, in several respects. She was soon
+to become a mother. The sickness of soul which oppressed her under
+this conviction, gave a new direction to her mood without lessening its
+bitterness; and, in proportion as she found her vengeance delayed, so
+was the gratification which it promised, a heightened desire in her
+mind.
+
+For the humiliating and trying event which was at hand, Margaret
+Cooper prepared with a degree of silent firmness which denoted quite as
+strongly the resignation of despair as any other feeling.
+
+The child is born.
+
+Margaret Cooper has at length become a mother. She has suffered the
+agony, without being able to feel the compensating pride and pleasure
+of one. It was the witness of her shame--could she receive it with any
+assurances of love? It is doubtful if she did.
+
+For some time after its birth, the hapless woman seemed to be
+unconscious, or half-conscious only, of her charge. A stupor weighed
+upon her senses. When she did awaken, and her eyes fell upon the
+face and form of the infant with looks of recognition, one long, long
+piercing shriek burst from her lips. She closed her eyes--she turned
+away from the little unoffending, yet offensive object with a feeling of
+horror.
+
+Its features were those of Alfred Stevens. The likeness was indelible;
+and this identity drew upon the child a share of that loathing hatred
+with which she now remembered the guilty father.
+
+It may very well be supposed that the innocent babe suffered under these
+circumstances. The milk which it drew from the mother's breast, was the
+milk of bitterness, and it did not thrive. It imbibed gall instead of
+nutriment. Day after day it pined in hopeless misery; and though
+the wretched mother strove to supply its wants and soothe its little
+sorrows, with a gradually increasing interest which overcame her first
+loathing, there was yet that want of sweetest sympathy which nothing
+merely physical could well supply.
+
+Debility was succeeded by disease--fever preyed upon its little frame,
+which was now reduced to a skeleton. One short month only had elapsed
+from its birth, and it lay, in the silence of exhaustion upon the arm
+of its mother. Its eyes, whence the flickering light was escaping fast,
+looked up into hers, as she fancied, with an expression of reproach. She
+felt, on the instant, the pang of the maternal conscience. She forgot
+the unworthy father, as she thought of the neglectful mother. She bent
+down, and, for the first time, imprinted on its little lips the maternal
+kiss.
+
+A smile seemed to glimmer on its tiny features; and, from that moment,
+Margaret Cooper resolved to forget her injuries, for the time, at least,
+in the consideration of her proper duties. But her resolution came too
+late. Even while her nipple was within its boneless gums, a change
+came over the innocent. She did not heed it. Her eyes and thoughts were
+elsewhere; and thus she mused, gazing vacantly upon the wall of her
+chamber until her mother entered the room. Mrs. Cooper gave but a single
+glance at the infant when she saw that its little cares were over.
+
+“Oh, Margaret!” she exclaimed, “the child is dead.”
+
+The mother looked down with a start and shudder. A big tear fell from
+her eyes upon the cold cheek of the innocent. She released it to her
+mother, turned her face upon the couch, and uttered her thanks to Heaven
+that had secured it--that had left her again free for that darker
+purpose which had so long filled her mind.
+
+“Better so,” she murmured to her mother. “It is at peace. It will
+neither know its own nor its mother's griefs. It is free from that shame
+for which I must live!”
+
+“Come now, Margaret, no more of that,” said the mother sharply. “There's
+no need of shame. There are other things to live for besides shame.”
+
+“There are--there are!” exclaimed the daughter, with spasmodic energy.
+“Were there not, I should, indeed, be desperate.”
+
+“To be sure you would, my child. You have a great deal to live for yet;
+and let a little time blow over, and when everything's forgotten, you
+will get as good a husband as any girl in the country.”
+
+“For Heaven's sake, mother, none of this?”
+
+“But why not! Though you are looking a little bad just now--quite pale
+and broken--yet it's only because you have been so ill; and this nursing
+of babies, and having 'em too, is a sort of business to make any young
+woman look bad; but in spite of all, there's not a girl in the village,
+no matter how fresh she may be looking, that can hold a candle to you.”
+
+“For mercy, mother!--”
+
+“Let me speak, I tell you! Don't I know? You're young, and you'll get
+over it. You will get all your beauty and good looks back, now that the
+baby's out of the way, and there's no more nursing to be done. And what
+with your beauty and your talents, Margaret--”
+
+“Peace! mother! Peace--peace! You will drive me to madness if you
+continue to speak thus.”
+
+“Well, I'm sure there's no knowing what to say to please you. I'm sure,
+I only want to cheer you up, and to convince you that things are not so
+bad as you think them now. The cloud will blow over soon, and everything
+will be forgotten, and then, you see--”
+
+The girl waved her hand impatiently.
+
+“Death--death!” she exclaimed. “Oh! child of shame, and bitterness, and
+wrath!” she murmured, kneeling down beside the infant, “thou art
+the witness that I have no future but storm, and cloud, and wrath,
+and--Vengeance!”
+
+The last word was inaudible to her mother's ears.
+
+“It is an oath!” she cried; “an oath!” And her hands were uplifted in
+solemn adjuration.
+
+“Come--come, Margaret! none of this swearing. You frighten me with your
+swearing. There's nothing that you need to swear about! What's done
+can't be helped now, by taking it so seriously. You must only be
+patient, and give yourself time. Time's the word for us now; after a
+little while you'll see the sky become brighter. It's a bad business,
+it's true; but it needn't break a body's heart. How many young girls
+I've known in my time, that's been in the same fix. There was Janet
+Bonner, and Emma Loring, and Mary Peters--I knew 'em all, very well.
+Well, they all made a slip once in their lives, and they never broke
+their hearts about it, and didn't look very pale and sad in the face
+either; but they just kept quiet and behaved decent for awhile, and
+every one of 'em got good husbands. Janet Bonner, she married Dick
+Pyatt, who came from Massachusetts, and kept the school down by
+Clayton's Meadow; Emma Loring married a baptist-preacher from Virginia,
+named Stokes. I never saw him to know him; and as for Mary Peters, there
+never was a girl that had a slip that was ever so fortunate, for she's
+been married no less than three times since, and as she's a widow
+again, there's no telling what may happen to her yet. So don't you be so
+downcast. You're chance is pretty nigh as good as ever, if you will only
+hold up your head, and put the best face on it.”
+
+“Oh! torture--torture! Mother, will you not be silent? Let the dead
+speak to me only. I would hear but the voice of this one witness--”
+
+And she communed only with the dead infant, sitting or kneeling beside
+it. But the communion was not one of contrition or tears--not of
+humility and repentance--not of self-reproach and a broken spirit. Pride
+and other passions had summoned up deities and angels of terror and of
+crime, before the eyes and thoughts of the wretched mourner, and the
+demon who had watched with her and waited on her, and had haunted her
+with taunt and bitter mockeries, night and day, was again busy with
+terrible suggestions, which gradually grew to be divine laws to her
+diseased imagination.
+
+“Yes!” she exclaimed unconsciously.
+
+“I hear! I obey! Yet speak again. Repeat the lesson. I must learn it
+every syllable, so that I shall not mistake--so that I can not fail!”
+
+“Who are you talking to, Margaret?” asked the mother anxiously.
+
+“Do you not see them, where they go? There--through the doors; the open
+windows--wrapped in shadows, with great wings at their shoulders, each
+carrying a dart in his bony grasp.”
+
+“Lord, have mercy! She's losing her senses again!” and the mother
+was about to rush from the apartment to seek assistance; but with
+the action, the daughter suddenly arose, wearing a look of singular
+calmness, and motioning to the child, she said:--
+
+“Will you not dress it for the grave?”
+
+“I'm going about it now. The poor lovely little creature. The innocent
+little blossom. We must put it in white, Margaret--virgin white--and put
+white flowers in its little hands and on its breast, and under its head.
+Oh! it will look so sweet in its little coffin!”
+
+“God! I should go mad with all this!” exclaimed the daughter, “were it
+not for that work which is before me! I must be calm for that-calm
+and stern! I must not hear--I must not think--not feel--lest I forget
+myself, and the deed which I have to do. That oath--that oath! It is
+sworn! It is registered in heaven, by the fatal angel of remorse, and
+wrath, and vengeance!”
+
+And again, a whisper at her ears repeated:--
+
+“For this, Margaret, and for this only, must thou live”.
+
+“I must! I will!” she muttered, as it were in reply, and her eye glared
+upon the opened door, as she heard a voice and footsteps without; and
+the thought smote her:--
+
+“Should it be now! Come for the sacrifice! Ha!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE PALL UPON THE COFFIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The noise which arrested the attention of Margaret Cooper, and kindled
+her features into an expression of wild and fiery ferocity, was of
+innocent origin. The widow Thackeray was the intruder. Her kindness,
+sympathy, and unwearied attentions, so utterly in conflict with the
+estimates hitherto made of her heart and character, by Mrs Cooper, had,
+in some degree, disarmed the censures of that excellent mother, if they
+had not wholly changed her sentiments. She professed to be very grateful
+to Thackeray's attentions, and, without making any profession, Margaret
+certainly showed her that she felt them. She now only pointed the widow
+to the corpse of the child, in that one action telling to the other all
+that was yet unknown. Then she seated herself composedly, folded her
+hands, and, beside the corpse, forgot its presence, forgot the presence
+of all--heard no voice, save that of the assiduous demon whom nothing
+could expel from her companionship.
+
+“Poor little thing!” murmured the widow Thackeray, as she proceeded to
+assist Mrs. Cooper in decking it for the grave.
+
+The duty was finally done. Its burial was appointed for the morrow.
+
+A village funeral is necessarily an event of some importance. The lack
+of excitements in small communities, in vests even sorrow and grief and
+death with a peculiar interest in the eyes of curiosity. On the present
+occasion, all the villagers attended. The funeral itself might have
+sufficed to collect them with few exceptions; but now there was a
+more eager influence still, working upon the gossippy moods of the
+population. To see Margaret Cooper in her affliction--to see that
+haughty spirit humbled and made ashamed--was, we fear, a motive, in the
+minds of many, much stronger than the ostensible occasion might have
+awakened. Had Margaret been a fashionable woman, in a great city, she
+might have disappointed the vulgar desire, by keeping to her chamber.
+Nay, even according to the free-and-easy standards prevailing at
+Charlemont, she might have done the same thing, and incurred no
+additional scandal.
+
+It was, indeed, to the surprise of a great many, that she made her
+appearance. It was still more a matter of surprise--nay, pious and
+virgin horror--that she seemed to betray neither grief nor shame,
+surrounded as she was by all whom she knew, and all, in particular,
+whom, in the day of her pride, she had kept at a distance.
+
+“What a brazen creature!” whispered Miss Jemima Parkinson, an
+interesting spinster of thirty-six, to Miss Ellen Broadhurst, who was
+only thirty-four; and Miss Ellen whispered back, in reply:--
+
+“She hasn't the slightest bit of shame!”
+
+Interesting virgins! they had come to gloat over the spectacle of shame.
+To behold the agonizing sense of degradation declare itself under the
+finger-pointing scorn of those who, perhaps, were only innocent from
+necessity, and virtuous because of the lack of the necessary attractions
+in the eyes of lust.
+
+But Margaret Cooper seemed quite as insensible to their presence as
+to their scorn and her own shame. She, in truth, saw none of them.
+She heard not their voices. She conjectured non (sic) nts. She had
+anticipated all of them; and having, in consequence, reached a point
+of intensity in her agony which could bear no addition, she had been
+relieved only by a still more intense passion, by which the enfeebling
+one, of mere society, stood rebuked and almost forgotten.
+
+They little dreamed the terrible thoughts which were working, beneath
+that stolid face, in that always eager-working brain. They never fancied
+what a terrible demon now occupied that fiery heart which they supposed
+was wholly surrendered to the consciousness of shame. Could they
+have heard that voice of the fiend whispering in her ears, while they
+whispered to one another--heard his terrible exhortations--heard her no
+less terrible replies--they would have shrunk away in horror, and felt
+fear rather than exultation.
+
+Margaret Cooper was insensible to all that they could say or do. She
+knew them well--knew what they would say, and feel, and do; but the very
+extremity of her suffering had placed it out of their power any longer
+to mortify or shame.
+
+Some few of the villagers remained away. Ned Hinkley and his widowed
+sister were absent from the house, though they occupied obscure places
+in the church when the funeral-procession took place. An honorable
+pity kept them from meeting the eyes of the poor shame-stricken but not
+shame-showing woman.
+
+And Margaret followed the little corpse to its quiet nook in the village
+graveyard. In that simple region the procession was wholly on foot; and
+she walked behind the coffin as firmly as if she knew not what it held.
+There was a single shiver that passed over her frame, as the heavy clods
+fell upon the coffin-lid--but that was all; and when her mother and the
+widow Thackeray took each of them one of her arms, and led her away from
+the grave, and home, she went quietly, calmly, it would seem, and with
+as firm a step as ever!
+
+“She has not a bit of feeling!” said Miss Jemima to Miss Ellen.
+
+“That's always the case with your very smart women,” was the reply.
+“It's all head with 'em; there's no heart. They can talk fine things
+about death, and sorrow, and affliction, but it's talk only. They don't
+feel what they say.”
+
+Ned Hinkley had a juster notion of the state of the poor victim--of her
+failings and her sensibilities, her equal strength and weakness.
+
+“Now,” said he to his sister, “there's a burning volcano in that woman's
+heart, that will tear her some day to pieces. For all that coldness, and
+calmness, and stateliness, her brain is on fire, and her heart ready for
+a convulsion. Her thoughts now, if she thinks at all, are all desperate.
+She's going through a very hell upon earth! When you think of her
+pride--and she's just as proud now as the devil himself--her misfortune
+hasn't let her down--only made her more fierce--you wonder that she lets
+herself be seen; you wonder that she lives at all. I only wonder that
+she hasn't thrown herself from the rocks and into the lake. She'll do it
+yet, I'm a-thinking.
+
+“And just so she always was. I knew her long ago. She once told me she
+was afraid of nothing--would do as she pleased--she could dare anything!
+From that moment I saw she wasn't the girl for Bill Hinkley. I told
+him so, but he was so crazy after her, he'd hear to nothing. A woman--a
+young woman--a mere girl of fifteen--boasting that she can dare and do
+things that would set any woman in a shiver! I tell you what, sis, the
+woman that's bolder than her sex is always in danger of falling from
+the rocks. She gets such a conceit of her mind, that the devil is always
+welcome. Her heart, after that, stands no sort of chance!
+
+“Protect me, say I, from all that class of women that pride themselves
+on their strongmindedness! They get insolent upon it. They think that
+mind can do everything. They're so vain, that they never can see the
+danger, even when it's yawning at their feet. A woman's never safe
+unless she's scary of herself, and mistrusts herself, and never lets her
+thoughts and fancies get from under a tight rein of prudence. For, after
+all, the passions will have their way some day, and then what's the
+use of the mind? I tell you, sis, that the passions are born deaf--they
+never listen to any argument.
+
+“But I'm sorry for her--God knows I'm sorry for her! I'd give all
+I'm worth to have a fair shot or clip at that rascal Stevens. Brother
+Stevens! Ain't it monstrous, now, that a sheep's cover should be all
+that's sufficient to give the wolf freedom in the flock?--that you've
+only to say, 'This is a brother--a man of God'--and no proof is asked!
+nobody questions! The blind, beastly, bigoted, blathering blockheads!
+I feel very much like setting off straight, and licking John Hinkley,
+though he's my own uncle, within an inch of his life! He and John
+Cross--the old fools who are so eager to impose their notions of
+religion upon everybody, that anybody may impose upon them--they two
+have destroyed this poor young creature. It's at their door, in part,
+this crime, and this ruin! I feel it in my heart to lick 'em both out of
+their breeches!
+
+“Yet, as I'm a living sinner, they'll stand up in the congregation, and
+exhort about this poor girl's misfortune, just as if they were not to
+blame at all who brought the wolf into the farmyard! They'll talk about
+her sins, and not a word, to themselves or anybody else, about their own
+stupidities! I feel it in my heart to lather both of them right away!”
+
+The sister said little, and sorrowfully walked on in silence homeward,
+listening to the fierce denunciations of Ned Hinkley. Ned was affected,
+or, rather, he showed his sympathies, in a manner entirely his own. He
+was so much for fight, that he totally forgot his fiddle that night, and
+amused himself by putting his two “barking-pups” in order--getting
+them ready, as he said, “in case he ever should get a crack at Brother
+Stevens!”
+
+The cares of the child's burial over, and the crowd dispersed, the
+cottage of the widow Cooper was once more abandoned to the cheerlessness
+and wo (sic) within. Very dismal was the night of that day to the two,
+the foolish mother and wretched daughter, as they sat brooding together,
+in deep silence, by the light of a feeble candle. The mother rocked a
+while in her easy-chair. The daughter, hands clasped in her lap, sat
+watching the candlelight in almost idiotic vacancy of gaze. At length
+she stood up and spoke--slowly, deliberately, and apparently in as calm
+a mood as she had ever felt in all her life:--
+
+“We must leave this place, mother. We must go hence--to-morrow if we
+can.”
+
+“Go?--leave this place? I want to know why! I'm sure we're very
+comfortable here. I can't be going just when you please, and leaving all
+my company and friends.”
+
+“Friends!”
+
+“Yes, friends! There's the widow Thackeray--and there's--”
+
+“And how long is it since Mrs. Thackeray was such a dear friend,
+mother?” asked the daughter, with ill-suppressed scorn.
+
+“No matter how long: she's a good friend now. She's not so foolish
+as she used to be. She's grown good; she's got religion; and I don't
+consider what she was. No!--I'm willing--”
+
+“Pshaw, mother! tell me nothing of your friendships. You'll find,
+wherever you go, as many friends as you please, valued quite as much as
+Mrs. Thackeray.”
+
+“Well, I do say, Margaret, it's very ungrateful of you to speak
+so disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray, after all her kindness and
+attention.”
+
+“I do not speak disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray. I NEVER did speak ill
+of her, even when it was your favorite practice to do so. I only speak
+of your newly-acquired appreciation of her. But this is nothing to
+the purpose. I repeat, mother, we can not remain here. I will depart,
+whether you resolve to go or not. I can not, I will not, exist another
+week in Charlemont.”
+
+“And where would you go?”
+
+“Back--back to that old farm, from which you brought me in evil hour!
+It is poor, obscure, profitless, unsought, unseen: it will give me a
+shelter--it may bring me peace. I must have solitude for a season; I
+must sleep for months.”
+
+“Sleep for months! La me, child, what a notion's that!”
+
+“No matter--thither let us go. I seem to see it, stretching out its
+hands, and imploring us to come.”
+
+“Bless me, Margaret! a farm stretching out its hands! Why, you're in a
+dream!”
+
+“Don't wake me, then! Better I should so dream! Thither I go. It is
+fortunate that you have not been able to sell it. It is a mercy that it
+still remains to us. It was my childhood's home. Would it could again
+receive me as a child! It will cover my head for a while, at least, and
+that is something. We must leave this place. Here every thing offends
+me--every spot, every face, every look, every gesture.”
+
+“It's impossible, Margaret!--”
+
+“What! you suppose it an honorable distinction, do you, when the folks
+here point to your daughter, and say--ha! ha!--listen what they say! It
+is the language of compliment! They are doing me honor, with tongue and
+finger! Repeat, mother; tell me what they say--for it evidently gives
+you great pleasure.”
+
+“O Margaret! Margaret!--”
+
+“You understand, do you? Well, then, we go. We can not depart too soon.
+If I stay here, I madden! And I must not madden. I have something which
+needs be done--which must be done. It is an oath! an oath in heaven! The
+child was a witness. She heard all--every syllable!”
+
+“What all? what did you hear?”
+
+“No matter! I'm sworn to be secret. But you shall hear in time. We have
+no time for it now. It is a very long story. And we must now be packing.
+Yes, we must go. _I_ must go, at least. Shall I go alone?”
+
+“But you will not leave your mother, Margaret!”
+
+“Father and mother--all will I leave, in obedience to that oath. Believe
+me or not, mother--go with me or not--still I go. Perhaps it is better
+that I should go alone.”
+
+The strong will naturally swayed the feebler, as it had ever done
+before. The mother submitted to an arrangement which she had not the
+resolution to oppose. A few days were devoted to necessary arrangements,
+and then they left Charlemont for ever. Margaret Cooper looked not once
+behind them as they traversed the lonely hills looking down upon the
+village--those very hills from which, at the opening of this story, the
+treacherous Alfred Stevens and his simple uncle beheld the lovely little
+settlement. She recognised the very spot, as they drove over it,
+where Stevens first encountered her, and the busy demon, at her ears
+whispered:--
+
+“It was here! You remember!”
+
+And she clinched her teeth firmly together, even though she shuddered
+at her memories; and she renewed her oath to the demon, who, thereupon,
+kept her company the rest of the journey, till she reached the ancient
+and obscure farmstead in which she was born.
+
+“She retired,” says the rude chronicle from which we have borrowed many
+of the materials for this sombre history, “to a romantic little farm
+in---, there to spend in seclusion, with her aged mother and a few
+servants, the remainder of her days.”
+
+Our simple chronicler takes too much for granted. Margaret Cooper
+retired with no such purpose. She had purposes entirely at conflict with
+any idea of repose or quiet. She thought nothing of the remainder of
+her days. Her mother was not so aged but that she could still think, six
+months afterward, of the reported marriage of the widow Thackeray with
+repining, and with the feeling of one who thinks that she has suffered
+neglect and injustice at the hands of the world. Touching the romance
+of the ancient farmstead, we are more modestly content to describe it
+as sterile, lonely, and unattractive; its obscurity offering, for the
+present, its chief attractions to our desolate heroine, and the true
+occasion for that deep disgust with which her amiable mother beheld it.
+
+Our chronicle of Charlemont is ended. We have no further object or
+interest within its precincts. William Hinkley is gone, no one knows
+whither, followed by his adopted father, the retired lawyer, whose
+sensibilities were fatal to his success. It was not long before Ned
+Hinkley and his widowed sister found it their policy to depart
+also, seeking superior objects in another county; and at this moment
+Charlemont is an abandoned and deserted region. It seemed to decline
+from the moment when the cruel catastrophe occurred which precipitated
+Margaret Cooper from her pride of place. Beautiful as the village
+appeared at the opening of our legend, it was doomed to as rapid a decay
+as growth. “Something ails it now--the spot is cursed!”
+
+But OUR history does not finally conclude with the fate of Charlemont.
+That chronicle is required now to give place to another, in which we
+propose to take up the sundered clues, and reunite them in a fresh
+progress. We shall meet some of the old parties once more, in new
+situations. We shall again meet with Margaret Cooper, in a new guise,
+under other aspects, but still accompanied by her demon--still inspired
+by her secret oath--still glowing with all the terrible memories of the
+past--still laboring with unhallowed pride; and still destined for a
+lark catastrophe. Our scene, however, lies in another region, to which
+the reader, who has thus far kept pace with our progress, is entreated
+still to accompany us. The chronicle of “CHARLEMONT” will find its
+fitting sequel in that of “BEAUCHAMPE”--known proverbially as “THE
+KENTUCKY TRAGEDY.”
+
+END OF CHARLEMONT.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlemont, by W. Gilmore Simms
+
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diff --git a/6012-0.zip b/6012-0.zip
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+++ b/6012-h/6012-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,17414 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Charlemont;, by W. Gilmore Simms,
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: right; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; margin-left: 0.8em; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlemont, by W. Gilmore Simms
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Charlemont
+
+Author: W. Gilmore Simms
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6012]
+This file was first posted on October 16, 2002
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLEMONT ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      CHARLEMONT
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      OR,
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      THE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE <br /> <br /> A TALE OF KENTUCKY.
+    </h2>
+    <h2>
+      By W. Gilmore Simms
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                  &ldquo;Nor will I be secure.
+                   In any confidence of mine own strength,
+                   For such security is oft the mother
+                   Of negligence, and that, the occasion
+                   Of unremedy'd ruin.&rdquo;
+
+                           Microcosmus&mdash;THO. NABBES.
+               </pre>
+    <h5>
+      TO THE HON. JAMES HALL, OF CINCINNATI: <br /> <br /> AS ONE OF THE ABLEST OF
+      OUR LITERARY PIONEERS A GENUINE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE GREAT WEST; <br />
+      <br /> WHOSE WRITINGS EQUALLY ILLUSTRATE HER HISTORY AND GENIUS: <br />
+      <br /> This story of &ldquo;CHARLEMONT,&rdquo; and its Sequel &ldquo;BEAUCHAMPE&rdquo; are
+      respectfully inscribed by <br /> <br /> THEIR AUTHOR
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> ADVERTISEMENT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; THE SCENE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TRAVELLERS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; SIMPLICITY AND THE SERPENT.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; THE TOAD ON THE ALTAR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; THE GOOD YOUNG MAN IN
+      MEDITATION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; PAROCHIAL PERFORMANCES.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. &mdash; HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE
+      ALTAR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. &mdash; THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. &mdash; WRESTLING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. &mdash; THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; THE ENTHUSIAST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. &mdash; A CATASTROPHE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; SOUSING A GURNET. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; PHILOSOPHY OP FIGHTING.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TRAILING THE FOX. &mdash;
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; THE DOOM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. &mdash; BLOWS&mdash;A CRISIS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; CHALLENGE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; FOOT TO FOOT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; UNEXPECTED ISSUES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; EXILE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; CONQUEST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; FALL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; THE BIRTH OF THE AGONY.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; STRENGTH AFTER FALL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; BULL-PUPS IN TRAINING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; THE FOX IN THE TRAP. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; &ldquo;ABSQUATULATING.&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE REVELATION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII. &mdash; STORM AND CONVULSION.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXXIV. &mdash; THE FATES FIND THE DAGGER
+      AND THE BOWL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXV. &mdash; FOLDING THE ROBES ABOUT
+      HER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER XXXVI. &mdash; SUSPENSE AND AGONY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER XXXVII. &mdash; SHAME AND DEATH&mdash;THE
+      OATH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER XXXVIII. &mdash; THE PALL UPON THE
+      COFFIN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADVERTISEMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The domestic legend which follows, is founded upon actual events of
+      comparatively recent occurrence in the state of Kentucky. However strange
+      the facts may appear in the sequel&mdash;however in conflict with what are
+      usually supposed to be the sensibilities and characteristics of woman&mdash;they
+      are yet unquestionably true; most of them having been conclusively
+      established, by the best testimony, before a court of justice. Very
+      terrible, indeed, was the tragedy to which they conducted&mdash;one that
+      startled the whole country when it took place, and the mournful interest
+      of which will long be remembered. More on this subject need not be
+      mentioned here. The narrative, it is hoped, will satisfy all the curiosity
+      of the reader. It has been very carefully prepared from and according to
+      the evidence; the art of the romancer being held in close subjection to
+      the historical authorities. I have furnished only the necessary details
+      which would fill such blanks in the story as are of domestic character;
+      taking care that these should accord, in all cases, with the despotic
+      facts. In respect to these, I have seldom appealed to invention. It is in
+      the delineation and development of character, only, that I have made free
+      to furnish scenes, such as appeared to me calculated to perfect the
+      portraits, and the better to reconcile the reader to real occurrences,
+      which, in their original nakedness, however unquestionably true, might
+      incur the risk of being thought improbabilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reflections which will be most likely to arise from the perusal of
+      such a history, lead us to a consideration of the social characteristics
+      of the time and region, and to a consideration of the facility with which
+      access to society is afforded by the manners and habits of our forest
+      population. It is in all newly-settled countries, as among the rustic
+      population of most nations, that the absence of the compensative resources
+      of wealth leads to a singular and unreserved freedom among the people. In
+      this way, society endeavors to find equivalents for those means of
+      enjoyment which a wealthy people may procure from travel, from luxury,
+      from the arts, and the thousand comforts of a well-provided homestead. The
+      population of a frontier country, lacking such resources, scattered over a
+      large territory, and meeting infrequently, feel the lack of social
+      intercourse; and this lack tends to break down most of the barriers which
+      a strict convention usually establishes for the protection, not only of
+      sex and caste, but of its own tastes and prejudices. Lacking the resources
+      of superior wealth, population, and civilization, the frontier people are
+      naturally required to throw the doors open as widely as possible, in order
+      to obtain that intercourse with their fellows which is, perhaps, the first
+      great craving of humanity. As a matter of necessity, there is little
+      discrimination exercised in the admission of their guests. A specious
+      outside, agreeable manners, cleverness and good humor, will soon make
+      their way into confidence, without requiring other guaranties for the
+      moral of the stranger. The people are naturally frank and hospitable; for
+      the simple reason that these qualities of character are essential for
+      procuring them that intercourse which they crave. The habits are
+      accessible, the restraints few, the sympathies are genial, active, easily
+      aroused, and very confiding. It follows, naturally, that they are
+      frequently wronged and outraged, and just as naturally that their
+      resentments are keen, eager, and vindictive. The self-esteem, if not
+      watchful, is revengeful; and society sanctions promptly the fierce redress&mdash;that
+      wild justice of revenge&mdash;which punishes without appeal to law, with
+      its own right hand, the treacherous guest who has abused the unsuspecting
+      confidence which welcomed him to a seat upon the sacred hearth. In this
+      brief portrait of the morale of society, upon our frontiers, you will find
+      the materiel from which this story has been drawn, and its justification,
+      as a correct delineation of border life in one of its more settled phases
+      in the new states. The social description of Charlemont exhibits, perhaps,
+      a THIRD advance in our forest civilization, from the original settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not less the characteristic of these regions to exhibit the passions
+      and the talents of the people in equal and wonderful saliency. We are
+      accordingly struck with two classes of social facts, which do not often
+      arrest the attention in old communities. We see, for example, the most
+      singular combination of simplicity and sagacity in the same person;
+      simplicity in conventional respects, and sagacity in all that affects the
+      absolute and real in life, nature and the human sensibilities. The rude
+      man, easily imposed upon, in his faith, fierce as an outlaw in his
+      conflicts with men, will be yet exquisitely alive to the nicest
+      consciousness of woman; will as delicately appreciate her instincts and
+      sensibilities, as if love and poetry had been his only tutors from the
+      first, and had mainly addressed their labors to this one object of the
+      higher heart, education; and in due degree with the tenderness with which
+      he will regard the sex, will be the vindictive ferocity with which&mdash;even
+      though no kinsman&mdash;he will pursue the offender who has dared to
+      outrage them in the case of any individual. In due degree as his faith is
+      easy will his revenges be extreme. In due degree as he is slow to suspect
+      the wrong-doer, will be the tenacity of his pursuit when the offender
+      requires punishment. He seems to throw wide his heart and habitation, but
+      you must beware how you trespass upon the securities of either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other is a mental characteristic which leads to frequent surprises
+      among strangers from the distant cities. It consists in the wonderful
+      inequality between his mental and social development. The same person who
+      will be regarded as a boor in good society, will yet exhibit a rapidity
+      and profundity of thought and intelligence&mdash;a depth and soundness of
+      judgment&mdash;an acuteness in discrimination&mdash;a logical accuracy,
+      and critical analysis, such as mere good society rarely shows, and such as
+      books almost as rarely teach. There will be a deficiency of refinement,
+      taste, art&mdash;all that the polished world values so highly&mdash;and
+      which it seems to cherish and encourage to the partial repudiation of the
+      more essential properties of intellect. However surprising this
+      characteristic may appear, it may yet be easily accounted for by the very
+      simplicity of a training which results in great directness and force of
+      character&mdash;a frank heartiness of aim and object&mdash;a truthfulness
+      of object which suffers the thoughts to turn neither to the right hand nor
+      to the left, but to press forward decisively to the one object&mdash;a
+      determined will, and a restless instinct&mdash;which, conscious of the
+      deficiencies of wealth and position, is yet perpetually seeking to supply
+      them from the resources within its reach. These characteristics will be
+      found illustrated in the present legend, an object which it somewhat
+      contemplates, apart from the mere story with which they are interwoven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few words more in respect to our heroine, Margaret Cooper. It is our
+      hope and belief, that she will be found a real character by most of our
+      readers. She is drawn from the life, and with a severe regard to the
+      absolute features of the original. In these days of &ldquo;strong-minded women,&rdquo;
+       even more certainly than when the portrait was first taken, the identity
+      of the sketch with its original will be sure of recognition. Her character
+      and career will illustrate most of the mistakes which are made by that
+      ambitious class, among the gentler sex, who are now seeking so earnestly
+      to pass out from that province of humiliation to which the sex has been
+      circumscribed from the first moment of recorded history. What she will
+      gain by the motion, if successful, might very well be left to time, were
+      it not that the proposed change in her condition threatens fatally some of
+      her own and the best securities of humanity. We may admit, and cheerfully
+      do so, that she might, with propriety, be allowed some additional legal
+      privileges of a domestic sort. But the great object of attainment, which
+      is the more serious need of the sex&mdash;her own more full development as
+      a responsible being&mdash;seems mainly to depend upon herself, and upon
+      self-education. The great first duty of woman is in her becoming the
+      mother of men; and this duty implies her proper capacity for the education
+      and training of the young. To fit her properly for this duty, her
+      education should become more elevated, and more severe in degree with its
+      elevation. But the argument is one of too grave, too intricate, and
+      excursive a character, to be attempted here. It belongs to a very
+      different connection. It is enough, in this place, to say that Margaret
+      Cooper possesses just the sort of endowment to make a woman anxious to
+      pass the guardian boundaries which hedge in her sex&mdash;her danger
+      corresponds with her desires. Her securities, with such endowments, and
+      such a nature, can only be found in a strict and appropriate education,
+      such as woman seldom receives anywhere, and less, perhaps, in this country
+      than in any other. To train fully the feminine mind, without in any degree
+      impairing her susceptibilities and sensibilities, seems at once the
+      necessity and the difficulty of the subject. Her very influence over man
+      lies in her sensibilities. It will be to her a perilous fall from pride of
+      place, and power, when, goaded by an insane ambition, in the extreme
+      development of her mere intellect, she shall forfeit a single one of these
+      securities of her sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; THE SCENE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The stormy and rugged winds of March were overblown&mdash;the first fresh
+      smiling days of April had come at last&mdash;the days of sunshine and
+      shower, of fitful breezes, the breath of blossoms, and the newly-awakened
+      song of birds. Spring was there in all the green and glory of her youth,
+      and the bosom of Kentucky heaved with the prolific burden of the season.
+      She had come, and her messengers were everywhere, and everywhere busy. The
+      birds bore her gladsome tidings to
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;Alley green,
+    Dingle or bushy dell of each wild wood,
+    And every bosky bourn from side to side&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      nor were the lately-trodden and seared grasses of the forests left
+      unnoted; and the humbled flower of the wayside sprang up at her summons.
+      Like some loyal and devoted people, gathered to hail the approach of a
+      long-exiled and well-beloved sovereign, they crowded upon the path over
+      which she came, and yielded themselves with gladness at her feet. The
+      mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing might be heard, and far-off
+      murmurs of gratulation, rising from the distant hollows, or coming faintly
+      over the hill-tops, in accents not the lees pleasing because they were the
+      less distinct. That lovely presence which makes every land blossom, and
+      every living thing rejoice, met, in the happy region in which we meet her
+      now, a double tribute of honor and rejoicing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;dark and bloody ground,&rdquo; by which mournful epithets Kentucky was
+      originally known to the Anglo-American, was dark and bloody no longer. The
+      savage had disappeared from its green forests for ever, and no longer
+      profaned with slaughter, and his unholy whoop of death, its broad and
+      beautiful abodes. A newer race had succeeded; and the wilderness,
+      fulfilling the better destinies of earth, had begun to blossom like the
+      rose. Conquest had fenced in its sterile borders with a wall of fearless
+      men, and peace slept everywhere in security among its green recesses.
+      Stirring industry&mdash;the perpetual conqueror&mdash;made the woods
+      resound with the echoes of his biting axe and ringing hammer. Smiling
+      villages rose in cheerful white, in place of the crumbling and smoky
+      cabins of the hunter. High and becoming purposes of social life and
+      thoughtful enterprise superseded that eating and painful decay, which has
+      terminated in the annihilation of the red man; and which, among every
+      people, must always result from their refusal to exercise, according to
+      the decree of experience, no less than Providence, their limbs and sinews
+      in tasks of well-directed and continual labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great nation urging on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness, is
+      one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly and
+      hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and forest. Under
+      the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence rose where the pines
+      had fallen. Long and lovely vistas were opened through the dark and
+      hitherto impervious thickets. The city sprang up beside the river, while
+      hamlets, filled with active hope and cheerful industry, crowded upon the
+      verdant hill-side, and clustered among innumerable valleys Grace began to
+      seek out the homes of toil, and taste supplied their decorations. A purer
+      form of religion hallowed the forest-homes of the red-man, while expelling
+      for ever the rude divinities of his worship; and throughout the land, an
+      advent of moral loveliness seemed approaching, not less grateful to the
+      affections and the mind, than was the beauty of the infant April, to the
+      eye and the heart of the wanderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But something was still wanting to complete the harmonies of nature, in
+      the scene upon which we are about to enter. Though the savage had for ever
+      departed from its limits, the blessings of a perfect civilization were not
+      yet secured to the new and flourishing regions of Kentucky. Its morals
+      were still in that fermenting condition which invariably distinguishes the
+      settlement of every new country by a various and foreign people. At the
+      distant period of which we write, the population of Kentucky had not yet
+      become sufficiently stationary to have made their domestic gods secure, or
+      to have fixed the proper lines and limits regulating social intercourse
+      and attaching precise standards to human conduct. The habits and passions
+      of the first settlers&mdash;those fearless pioneers who had struggled foot
+      to foot with the Indian, and lived in a kindred state of barbarity with
+      him, had not yet ceased to have influence over the numerous race which
+      followed them. That moral amalgam which we call society, and which
+      recognises a mutual and perfectly equal condition of dependence, and a
+      common necessity, as the great cementing principles of the human family,
+      had not yet taken place; and it was still too much the custom, in that
+      otherwise lovely region, for the wild man to revenge his own wrong, and
+      the strong man to commit a greater with impunity. The repose of social
+      order was not yet secured to the great mass, covering with its wing, as
+      with a sky that never knew a cloud, the sweet homes and secure possessions
+      of the unwarlike. The fierce robber sometimes smote the peaceful traveler
+      upon the highway, and the wily assassin of reputation, within the limits
+      of the city barrier, not unfrequently plucked the sweetest rose that ever
+      adorned the virgin bosom of innocence, and triumphed, without censure, in
+      the unhallowed spoliation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But sometimes there came an avenger;&mdash;and the highway robber fell
+      before the unexpected patriot; and the virgin was avenged by the yet
+      beardless hero, for the wrong of her cruel seducer. The story which we
+      have to tell, is of times and of actions such as these. It is a melancholy
+      narrative&mdash;the more melancholy as it is most certainly true. It will
+      not be told in vain, if the crime which it describes in proper colors, and
+      the vengeance by which it was followed, and which it equally records,
+      shall secure the innocent from harm, and discourage the incipient
+      wrongdoer from his base designs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TRAVELLERS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Let the traveller stand with us on the top of this rugged eminence, and
+      look down upon the scene below. Around us, the hills gather in groups on
+      every side, a family cluster, each of which wears the same general
+      likeness to that on which we stand, yet there is no monotony in their
+      aspect. The axe has not yet deprived them of a single tree, and they rise
+      up, covered with the honored growth of a thousand summers. But they seem
+      not half so venerable. They wear, in this invigorating season, all the
+      green, fresh features of youth and spring. The leaves cover the rugged
+      Limbs which sustain them, with so much ease and grace, as if for the first
+      time they were so green and glossy, and as if the impression should be
+      made more certain and complete, the gusty wind of March has scattered
+      abroad and borne afar, all the yellow garments of the vanished winter. The
+      wild flowers begin to flaunt their blue and crimson draperies about us, as
+      if conscious that they are borne upon the bosom of undecaying beauty; and
+      the spot so marked and hallowed by each charming variety of bud and
+      blossom, would seem to have been a selected dwelling for the queenly
+      Spring herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Man, mindful of those tastes and sensibilities which in great part
+      constitute his claim to superiority over the brute, has not been
+      indifferent to the beauties of the place. In the winding hollows of these
+      hills, beginning at our feet, you see the first signs of as lovely a
+      little hamlet as ever promised peace to the weary and the discontent. This
+      is the village of Charlemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen snug and smiling cottages seem to have been dropped in this
+      natural cup, as if by a spell of magic. They appear, each of them, to fill
+      a fitted place&mdash;not equally distant from, but equally near each
+      other. Though distinguished, each by an individual feature, there is yet
+      no great dissimilarity among them. All are small, and none of them
+      distinguished by architectural pretension. They are now quite as
+      flourishing as when first built, and their number has had no increase
+      since the village was first settled. Speculation has not made it populous
+      and prosperous, by destroying its repose, stifling its charities, and
+      abridging the sedate habits and comforts of its people. The houses, though
+      constructed after the fashion of the country, of heavy and ill-squared
+      logs, roughly hewn, and hastily thrown together, perhaps by unpractised
+      hands, are yet made cheerful by that tidy industry which is always sure to
+      make them comfortable also. Trim hedges that run beside slender white
+      palings, surround and separate them from each other. Sometimes, as you
+      see, festoons of graceful flowers, and waving blossoms, distinguish one
+      dwelling from the rest, declaring its possession of some fair tenant,
+      whose hand and fancy have kept equal progress with habitual industry; at
+      the same time, some of them appear entirely without the little garden of
+      flowers and vegetables, which glimmers and glitters in the rear or front
+      of the greater number.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was Charlemont, at the date of our narrative. But the traveller would
+      vainly look, now, to find the place as we describe it. The garden is no
+      longer green with fruits and flowers&mdash;the festoons no longer grace
+      the lowly portals&mdash;the white palings are down and blackening in the
+      gloomy mould&mdash;the roofs have fallen, and silence dwells lonely among
+      the ruins,&mdash;the only inhabitant of the place. It has no longer a
+      human occupant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something ails it now&mdash;the spot is cursed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Why this fate has fallen upon so sweet an abiding place&mdash;why the
+      villagers should have deserted a spot, so quiet and so beautiful&mdash;it
+      does not fall within our present purpose to inquire. It was most probably
+      abandoned&mdash;not because of the unfruitfulness of the soil, or the
+      unhealthiness of the climate&mdash;for but few places on the bosom of the
+      earth, may be found either more fertile, more beautiful, or more healthful&mdash;but
+      in compliance with that feverish restlessness of mood&mdash;that sleepless
+      discontent of temper, which, perhaps, more than any other quality, is the
+      moral failing in the character of the Anglo-American. The roving desires
+      of his ancestor, which brought him across the waters, have been
+      transmitted without diminution&mdash;nay, with large increase&mdash;to the
+      son. The creatures of a new condition of things, and new necessities, our
+      people will follow out their destiny. The restless energies which
+      distinguish them, are, perhaps, the contemplated characteristics which
+      Providence has assigned them, in order that they may the more effectually
+      and soon, bring into the use and occupation of a yet mightier people, the
+      wilderness of that new world in which their fortunes have been cast.
+      Generation is but the pioneer of generation, and the children of millions,
+      more gigantic and powerful than ourselves, shall yet smile to behold, how
+      feeble was the stroke made by our axe upon the towering trees of their
+      inheritance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was probably because of this characteristic of our people, that
+      Charlemont came in time to be deserted. The inhabitants were one day
+      surprised with tidings of more attractive regions in yet deeper forests,
+      and grew dissatisfied with their beautiful and secluded valley. Such is
+      the ready access to the American mind, in its excitable state, of novelty
+      and sudden impulse, that there needs but few suggestions to persuade the
+      forester to draw stakes, and remove his tents, where the signs seem to be
+      more numerous of sweeter waters and more prolific fields. For a time,
+      change has the power which nature does not often exercise; and under its
+      freshness, the waters DO seem sweeter, and the stores of the wilderness,
+      the wild-honey and the locust, DO seem more abundant to the lip and eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where our cottagers went, and under what delusion, are utterly unknown to
+      us; nor is it important to our narrative that we should inquire. Our
+      knowledge of them is only desirable, while they were in the flourishing
+      condition in which they have been seen. It is our trust that the novelty
+      which seduced them from their homes, did not fail them in its promises&mdash;that
+      they may never have found, in all their wanderings, a less lovely
+      abiding-place, than that which they abandoned. But change has its bitter,
+      as well as its sweet, and the fear is strong that the cottagers of
+      Charlemont, in the weary hours, when life's winter is approaching, will
+      still and vainly sigh after the once-despised enjoyments of their deserted
+      hamlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was toward the close of one of those bright, tearful days in April, of
+      which we have briefly spoken, when a couple of travellers on horseback,
+      ascended the last hill looking down upon Charlemont. One of these
+      travellers had passed the middle period of life; the other was, perhaps,
+      just about to enter upon its heavy responsibilities, and more active
+      duties. The first wore the countenance of one who had borne many sorrows,
+      and borne them with that resignation, which, while it proves the wisdom of
+      the sufferer, is at the same time, calculated to increase his benevolence.
+      The expression of his eye, was full of kindness and benignity, while that
+      of his mouth, with equal force, was indicative of a melancholy, as
+      constant as it was gentle and unobtrusive. A feeble smile played over his
+      lips while he spoke, that increased the sadness which it softened; as the
+      faint glimmer of the evening sunlight, upon the yellow leaves of autumn,
+      heightens the solemn tones in the rich coloring of the still decaying
+      forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of his companion, in many of its features, was in direct contrast
+      with his own. It was well formed, and, to the casual glance, seemed no
+      less handsome than intellectual. There was much in it to win the regard of
+      the young and superficial. An eye that sparkled with fire, a mouth that
+      glowed with animation&mdash;cheeks warmly colored, and a contour full of
+      vivacity, seemed to denote properties of mind and heart equally valuable
+      and attractive. Still, a keen observer would have found something
+      sinister, in the upward glancing of the eye, at intervals, from the
+      half-closed lids; and, at such moments, there was a curling contempt upon
+      the lips, which seemed to denote a cynical and sarcastic turn of mind. A
+      restless movement of the same features seemed equally significant of
+      caprice of character, and a flexibility of moral; while the chin narrowed
+      too suddenly and became too sharp at the extremity, to persuade a thorough
+      physiognomist, that the owner could be either very noble in his aims, or
+      very generous in his sentiments. But as these outward tokens can not well
+      be considered authority in the work of judgment, let events, which speak
+      for themselves, determine the true character of our travellers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the table land of the heights which looked down upon
+      Charlemont, at a moment when the beauty of the scene could scarcely fail
+      to impress itself upon the most indifferent observer. The elder of the
+      travellers, who happened to be in advance, was immediately arrested by it;
+      and, staying the progress of his horse, with hand lifted above his eye,
+      looked around him with a delight which expressed itself in an abrupt
+      ejaculation, and brought his companion to his side. The sun had just
+      reached that point in his descent, which enabled him to level a shaft of
+      rosy light from the pinnacle of the opposite hill, into the valley below,
+      where it rested among the roofs of two of the cottages, which arose
+      directly in its path. The occupants of these two cottages had come forth,
+      as it were, in answer to the summons; and old and young, to the number of
+      ten or a dozen persons, had met, in the winding pathway between, which led
+      through the valley, and in front of every cottage which it contained. The
+      elder of the cottagers sat upon the huge trunk of a tree, which had been
+      felled beside the road, for the greater convenience of the traveller; and
+      with eyes turned in the direction of the hill on which the sunlight had
+      sunk and appeared to slumber, seemed to enjoy the vision with no less
+      pleasure than our senior traveller. Two tall damsels of sixteen,
+      accompanied by a young man something older, were strolling off in the
+      direction of the woods; while five or six chubby girls and boys were
+      making the echoes leap and dance along the hills, in the clamorous delight
+      which they felt in their innocent but stirring exercises. The whole scene
+      was warmed with the equal brightness of the natural and the human sun.
+      Beauty was in the sky, and its semblance, at least, was on the earth. God
+      was in the heavens, and in his presence could there be other than peace
+      and harmony among men!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How beautiful!&rdquo; exclaimed the elder of our travellers&mdash;&ldquo;could
+      anything be more so! How pure, how peaceful! See, Warham, how soft, how
+      spirit-like, that light lies along the hill-side, and how distinct, yet
+      how delicate, is the train which glides from it down the valley, even to
+      the white dwellings at its bottom, from which it seems to shrink and
+      tremble as if half conscious of intrusion. And yet the picture below is
+      kindred with it. That, now, is a scene that I delight in&mdash;it is a
+      constant picture in my mind. There is peace in that valley, if there be
+      peace anywhere on earth. The old men sit before the door, and contemplate
+      with mingled feelings of pride and pleasure, the vigorous growth of their
+      children. They behold in them their own immortality, even upon earth. The
+      young will preserve their memories, and transmit their names to other
+      children yet unborn; and how must such a reflection reconcile them to
+      their own time of departure, not unfitly shown in the last smiles of that
+      sunlight, which they are so soon about to lose. Like him, they look with
+      benevolence and love upon the world from which they will soon depart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my word for it, uncle, they will postpone their departure to the
+      last possible moment, and, so far from looking with smiles upon what they
+      are about to leave for ever, they will leave it with very great
+      reluctance, and in monstrous bad humor. As for regarding their children
+      with any such notions as those you dwell upon with such poetical raptures,
+      they will infinitely prefer transmitting for themselves their names and
+      qualities to the very end of the chapter. Ask any one of them the question
+      now, and he will tell you that an immortality, each, in his own wig-wam,
+      and with his weight of years and infirmity upon him, would satisfy all his
+      expectations. If they look at the vigor of their young, it is to recollect
+      that they themselves once were so, and to repine at the recollection. Take
+      my word for it, there is not a dad among them, that does not envy his own
+      son the excellence of his limbs, and the long time of exercise and
+      enjoyment which they seemingly assure him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; exclaimed the elder of the two travellers. &ldquo;Impossible! I
+      should be sorry to think as you do. But you, Warham, can not understand
+      these things. You are an habitual unbeliever&mdash;the most unfortunate of
+      all mankind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The most fortunate, rather. I have but few burdens of credulity to carry.
+      The stars be blessed, my articles of faith are neither very many nor very
+      cumbrous. I should be sorry if my clients were so few.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be sorry, Warham, if I had so little feeling as yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I should be still more sorry, uncle, if I had half so much. Why, sir,
+      yours is in such excess, that you continually mistake the joys and sorrows
+      of other people for your own. You laugh and weep with them alternately;
+      and, until all's done and over, you never seem to discover that the
+      business was none of yours;&mdash;that you had none of the pleasure which
+      made you laugh, and might have been spared all the unnecessary suffering
+      which moved your tears. 'Pon my soul, sir, you pass a most unprofitable
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mistake, Warham, I have shared both; and my profits have been equally
+      great from both sources. My susceptibility has been an exceeding great
+      gain to me, and has quickened all my senses. There is a joy of grief, you
+      know, according to Ossian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, if you quote Ossian, uncle. I give you up. I don't believe in
+      Ossian, and his raving stuff always sickens me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sometimes think, Warham,&rdquo; said the uncle, good naturedly, &ldquo;that
+      Providence has denied you some of the more human faculties. Nay, I fear
+      that you are partially deficient in some of the senses. Do you see that
+      sunlight to which I point&mdash;there, on the hill-side, a sort of rosy
+      haze, which seems to me eminently beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; and, if you will suffer me, I will get out of its reach as
+      quickly as possible. I have been half blinded by it ever since you found
+      it so beautiful. Sunlight is, I think, of very little importance to
+      professional men, unless as a substitute for candles, and then it should
+      come over the left shoulder, if you would not have it endanger the sight.
+      Nay, I will go farther, and confess that it is better than candlelight,
+      and certainly far less expensive. Shall we go forward, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Warham,&rdquo; said the uncle, with increasing gravity, &ldquo;I should be sorry to
+      believe that a habit of speech so irreverential, springs from anything but
+      an ambition for saying smart things, and strange things, which are not
+      always smart. It would give me great pain to think that you were devoid of
+      any of those sensibilities which soften the hearts of other men, and lead
+      them to generous impulses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, be not harsh, uncle. You should know me better. I trust my
+      sensibilities, and senses too, may be sufficient for all proper purposes,
+      when the proper time comes for their employment; but I can't flame up at
+      every sunbeam, and grow enthusiastic in the contemplation of Bill
+      Johnson's cottage, and Richard Higgins's hedgerow. A turnip-patch never
+      yet could waken my enthusiasm, and I do believe, sir&mdash;I confess it
+      with some shame and a slight misgiving, lest my admissions should give you
+      pain&mdash;that my fancy has never been half so greatly enkindled by
+      Carthula, of the bending spear, or Morven of the winds, as by the sedate
+      and homely aspect of an ordinary dish of eggs and bacon, hot from the
+      flaming frying-pan of some worthy housewife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The uncle simply looked upon the speaker, but without answering. He was
+      probably quite too much accustomed to his modes of thought and speech to
+      be so much surprised as annoyed by what he said. Perhaps, too, his own
+      benevolence of spirit interfered to save the nephew from that harsher
+      rebuke which his judgment might yet have very well disposed him to bestow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Following the course of the latter in silence, he descended into the
+      valley, and soon made his way among the sweet little cottages at its foot.
+      An interchange of courtsies between the travellers and the villagers whose
+      presence had given occasion to some portion of the previous dialogue, in
+      which the manner of the younger traveller was civil, and that of the elder
+      kind; and the two continued on their journey, though not without being
+      compelled to refuse sundry invitations, given with true patriarchal
+      hospitality, to remain among the quiet abodes through which they passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As cottage after cottage unfolded itself to their eyes, along the winding
+      avenue, the proprietors appeared at door and window, and, with the simple
+      freedoms of rural life, welcomed the strangers with a smile, a nod, and
+      sometimes, when sufficiently nigh, a friendly word of salutation, but
+      without having the effect of arresting their onward progress. Yet many a
+      backward glance was sent by the elder of the travellers, whose eyes,
+      beaming with satisfaction, sufficiently declared the delight which he
+      received from the contemplation of so many of the mingled graces of
+      physical and moral nature. His loitering steps drew from his young
+      companion an occasional remark, which, to ears less benevolent and
+      unsuspecting than than those of the senior, might have been deemed a
+      sarcasm; and more than once the lips of the nephew had curled with
+      contemptuous smiles, as he watched the yearning glances of his uncle on
+      each side of the avenue, as they wended slowly through it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the village, and at the foot of the opposite hills, they
+      encountered a group of young people of both sexes, whose bursts of
+      merriment were suddenly restrained as they emerged unexpectedly into
+      sight. The girls had been sitting upon the grassy mead, with the young men
+      before them; but they started to their feet at the sound of strange steps,
+      and the look of strange faces. Charlemont, it must be remembered, was not
+      in the thoroughfare of common travel. If visited at all by strangers, it
+      was most usually by those only who came with a single purpose. Nothing,
+      therefore could have been more calculated to surprise a community so
+      insulated, than that they should attract, but not arrest the traveller.
+      The natural surprise which the young people felt, when unexpectedly
+      encountered in their rustic sports, was naturally increased by this
+      unusual circumstance, and they looked after the departing forms of the
+      wayfarers with a wonder and curiosity that kept them for some time silent.
+      The elder of the two, meanwhile&mdash;one of whose habits of mind was
+      always to give instantaneous utterance to the feeling which was upper-most&mdash;dilated,
+      without heeding the sneers of his nephew, upon the apparent happiness
+      which they witnessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, you see, Warham, is a pleasure which the great city never knows:&mdash;the
+      free intercourse of the sexes in all those natural exercises which give
+      health to the body, grace to the movement, and vivacity to the manners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The health will do well enough,&rdquo; replied the skeptic, &ldquo;but save me from
+      the grace of Hob and Hinney; and as for their manners&mdash;did I hear you
+      correctly, uncle, when you spoke of their manners?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, you did. I have always regarded the natural manners which belong
+      to the life of the forester, as being infinitely more noble, as well as
+      more graceful, than those of the citizen. Where did you ever see a
+      tradesman whose bearing was not mean compared with that of the hunter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, but these are no hunters, and scarcely foresters. I see not a single
+      Nimrod among the lads; and as for the lasses, even your eyes, indulgent as
+      they usually are, will scarcely venture to insist that I shall behold one
+      nymph among them worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of Diana. The manners of
+      the hunter are those of an elastic savage; but these lads shear sheep,
+      raise hogs for the slaughter-pen, and seldom perform a nobler feat than
+      felling a bullock. They have none of the elasticity which, coupled with
+      strength, makes the grace of the man; and they walk as if perpetually in
+      the faith that their corn-rows and potatoe-hills were between their legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you note the young woman in the crimson body Warham? Was she not
+      majestically made?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It struck me she would weigh against any two of the company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is rather heavy, I grant you, but her carriage, Warham!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would carry weight&mdash;nothing more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was one little girl, just rising into womanhood:&mdash;you must
+      admit that she had a very lovely face, and her form&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear uncle, what is it that you will not desire me to believe? You are
+      sadly given to proselytism, and take infinite pains to compel me to see
+      with eyes that never do their owner so much wrong, as when they reject the
+      aid of spectacles. How much would Charlemont and its inhabitants differ to
+      your sight, were you only to take your green spectacles from the shagreen
+      case in which they do no duty. But if you are resolved, in order to seem
+      youthful, to let your age go unprovided with the means of seeing as youth
+      would see, at least suffer me to enjoy the natural privileges of
+      twenty-five. When, like you, my hairs whiten, and my eyes grow feeble, ten
+      to one, I shall think with you that every third woodman is an Apollo, and
+      every other peasant-girl is a Venus, whom&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words of the speaker ceased&mdash;cut short by the sudden appearance
+      of a form and face, the beauty and dignity of which silenced the skeptic,
+      and made him doubtful, for the moment, whether he had not in reality
+      reached that period of confused and confounding vision, which, as he
+      alleged to be the case with his uncle, loses all power of discrimination.
+      A maiden stood before him&mdash;tall, erect, majestic&mdash;beautiful
+      after no ordinary standard of beauty. She was a brunette, with large dark
+      eyes, which, though bright, seemed dark with excess of bright&mdash;and
+      had a depth of expression which thrilled instantly through the bosom of
+      the spectator. A single glance did she bestow upon the travellers, while
+      she acknowledged, by a slight courtesy, the respectful bow which they made
+      her. They drew up their horses as with mutual instinct, but she passed
+      them quickly, courtesying a second time as she did so, and, in another
+      moment a turn of the road concealed her from the eyes of the travellers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What say you to that, Warham?&rdquo; demanded the senior exultingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Diana, in truth; but, uncle, we find her not among the rest. SHE is
+      none of your cottagers. SHE is of another world and element. She is no
+      Charlemonter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, as he spoke, the younger traveller looked back with straining eyes to
+      catch another glance of the vanished object, but in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You deserve never to see a lovely woman again, Warham, for your
+      skepticism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I will have a second look at her, uncle, though the skies fall,&rdquo;
+       answered the young man, as, wheeling his horse round, he deliberately
+      galloped back to the bend in the avenue, by which she had been hidden from
+      his view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had scarcely reached the desired point, when he suddenly recoiled to
+      find the object of his pursuit standing motionless just beyond, with eyes
+      averted to the backward path&mdash;her glance consequently encountering
+      his own, the very moment when he discovered her. A deep crimson, visible
+      even where he stood, suffused her cheeks when she beheld him; and without
+      acknowledging the second bow which the traveller made, she somewhat
+      haughtily averted her head with a suddenness which shook her long and
+      raven tresses entirely free of the net-work which confined them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A proud gipsy!&rdquo; muttered the youth as he rode back to his uncle&mdash;&ldquo;just
+      such a spirit as I should like to tame.&rdquo; He took especial care, however,
+      that this sentiment did not reach the ears of his senior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the latter, inquiringly, at his approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am right after all, uncle:&mdash;the wench is no better than the rest.
+      A heavy bulk that seemed dignified only because she is too fat for levity.
+      She walks like a blind plough-horse in a broken pasture, up and down, over
+      and over; with a gait as rigid and deliberate as if she trod among the hot
+      cinders, and had corns on all her toes. She took us so by surprise that if
+      we had not thought her beautiful we must have thought her ugly, and the
+      chances are equal, that, on a second meeting, we shall both think her so.
+      I shall, I'm certain, and you must, provided you give your eyes the
+      benefit, and your nose the burden of your green specs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible! I can scarce believe it, Warham,&rdquo; replied the senior. &ldquo;I
+      thought her very beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall never rely on your judgment again;&mdash;nay, uncle, I am almost
+      inclined to suspect your taste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let them be beautiful or ugly, still I should think the same of the
+      beauty of this village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While the sun shines it may be tolerable; but, uncle, in wet bad weather&mdash;it
+      must become a mere pond, it lies so completely in the hollow of the
+      hills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is reason in that, Warham.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet, even as a pond, it would have its advantages&mdash;it would be
+      famous for duck-raising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! you are worse than a Mahometan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something of a just comparison, uncle, though scarcely aimed,&rdquo; said the
+      other; &ldquo;like Mahomet, you know, I doubt the possession of souls by women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet if these of Charlemont have not souls, they have no small share of
+      happiness on earth. I never heard more happy laughter from human lips than
+      from theirs. They must be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt that also,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;See you not, uncle, that to nine or
+      ten women there are but three lads? Where the disproportion is so great
+      among the sexes, and where it is so unfavorable to the weaker, women never
+      can be happy. Their whole lives will be lives of turmoil, jealousy, and
+      pulling of caps. Nay, eyes shall not be secure under such circumstances;
+      and Nan's fingers shall be in Doll's hair, and Doll's claws in Nanny's
+      cheeks, whenever it shall so happen, that Tom Jenkins shall incline to
+      Nan, or John Dobbins to Doll. Such a disparity between the sexes is one of
+      the most fruitful causes of domestic war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Warham, where do you think to go when you die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where there shall be no great inequality in the population. Believe me,
+      uncle, though I am sometimes disposed to think with Mahomet, and deny the
+      possession of souls to the sex, I also incline to believe, with other more
+      charitable teachers&mdash;however difficult it may be to reconcile the two
+      philosophies&mdash;that there will be no lack of them in either world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, hush, Warham,&rdquo; was the mild rebuke of the senior; &ldquo;you go too far&mdash;you
+      are irreverent. As for this maiden, I still think her very beautiful&mdash;of
+      a high and noble kind of beauty. My eyes may be bad;&mdash;indeed I am
+      willing to admit they are none of the best; but I feel certain that they
+      cannot so far deceive me, when we consider how nigh we were to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter deserves inquiry, uncle, if it were only to satisfy your
+      faith;&mdash;suppose we ride back, both of us, and see for ourselves&mdash;closely,
+      and with the aid of the green spectacles? Not that I care to see farther&mdash;not
+      that I have any doubts&mdash;but I wish you to be convinced in this case,
+      if only to make you sensible of the frequent injustice to which your
+      indulgence of judgment, subjects the critical fastidiousness of mine. What
+      say you; shall we wheel about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you are mad, surely. It is now sunset, and we have a good eight
+      miles before we get to Holme's Station.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can sleep in Charlemont to-night. A night in this earthly Eden&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And run the risk of losing our company? Oh, no, most worthy nephew. They
+      will start at dawn to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can soon come up with 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not, and the risk is considerable. Travelling to the Mississippi
+      is no such small matter at any time, and, in these times it is only with a
+      multitude, that there is safety. The murder of old Whiteford, is a
+      sufficient warning not to go alone with more gold than lead in one's
+      pocket. We are two, it is true, but better ten than two. You are a brave
+      fellow enough, Warham, I doubt not; but a shot will dispose of you, and
+      after that I should be an easy victim. I could wink and hold out my iron
+      as well as the best of you, but I prefer to escape the necessity. Let us
+      mend our pace. We are burning daylight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The nephew, with an air of some impatience, which, however, escaped the
+      eyes of the senior, sent his horse forward by a sharp application of his
+      spur, though looking back the while, with a glance of reluctance, which
+      strongly disagreed with the sentiments which he expressed. Indeed, with
+      both the travellers, the impression made by the little village of
+      Charlemont was such that the subject seemed nowise displeasing to either,
+      and furnished the chief staple of conversation between them, as they rode
+      the remaining eight miles of their journey. The old man's heart had been
+      subdued and won by the sweet air of peace which seemed to overspread and
+      hallow the soft landscape, and the smiling cottages which made it human.
+      The laughing maidens with their bright eyes and cheering accents, gave
+      vivacity to its milder charms. We have heard from the lips of the younger
+      traveller, that these attractions had failed to captivate his fancy. We
+      may believe of this as we please. It is very probable that he had, in
+      considerable part, spoken nothing but the truth. He was too much of a
+      mocker;&mdash;one of those worldlings who derive their pleasures from
+      circumstances of higher conventional attraction. He had no feeling for
+      natural romance. His PENCHANT, was decidedly for the artificial existence
+      of city life; and the sneers which he had been heard to express at the
+      humble joys of rustic life, its tastes, and characteristics, were, in
+      truth, only such as he really felt. But, even in his case, there was an
+      evident disposition to know something more of Charlemont. He was really
+      willing to return. He renewed the same subject of conversation, when it
+      happened to flag, with obvious eagerness; and, though his language was
+      still studiedly disparaging, a more deeply penetrating judgment than that
+      of his uncle, would have seen that the little village, slightly as he
+      professed to esteem it, was yet an object of thought and interest in his
+      eyes. Of the sources of this new interest time must inform us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, Warham,&rdquo; at length exclaimed the uncle, in a tone that seemed
+      meant to close the discussion of a topic which his nephew now appeared
+      mischievously bent to thrust upon him, &ldquo;you will return to Kentucky in the
+      fall. Take Charlemont in your route. Stop a week there. It will do you no
+      harm. Possibly you may procure some clients&mdash;may, indeed, include it
+      in your tour of practice&mdash;at all events, you will not be unprofitably
+      employed if you come to see the village and the people with MY eyes,
+      which, I doubt not, you will in time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In time, perhaps, I may. It is well that you do not insist upon any
+      hurried convictions. Were I at your years uncle mine,&rdquo; continued the other
+      irreverently, &ldquo;I should no doubt see with your eyes, and possibly feel
+      with your desires. Then, no doubt, I shall acquire a taste for warmingpans
+      and nightcaps&mdash;shall look for landscapes rather than lands&mdash;shall
+      see nothing but innocence among the young, and resignation and religion
+      among the old; and fancy, in every aged pair of bumpkins that I see, a
+      Darby and Joan, with perpetual peace at their fireside, though they may
+      both happen to lie there drunk on apple-brandy. Between caudle-cups and
+      'John Anderson, my Jo-John,' it is my hope to pass the evening of my days
+      with a tolerable grace, and leave behind me some comely representatives,
+      who shall take up the burden of the ditty where I leave off. On this head
+      be sure you shall have no cause to complain of me. I shall be no
+      Malthusian, as you certainly have shown yourself. It is the strangest
+      thing to me, uncle, that, with all your SPOKEN rapture for the sex, you
+      should never have thought of securing for yourself at least one among the
+      crowd which you so indiscriminately admire. Surely, a gentleman of your
+      personal attractions&mdash;attractions which seem resolute to cling to you
+      to the last&mdash;could not have found much difficulty in procuring the
+      damsel he desired! And when, too, your enthusiasm for the sex is known,
+      one would think it only necessary that you should fling your handkerchief,
+      to have it greedily grappled by the fairest of the herd. How is it, uncle&mdash;how
+      have you escaped from them&mdash;from yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw, Warham, you are a fool!&rdquo; exclaimed the senior, riding forward with
+      increasing speed. The words were spoken good naturedly, but the youth had
+      touched a spot, scarcely yet thoroughly scarred over, in the old man's
+      bosom; and memories, not less painful because they had been bidden so
+      long, were instantly wakened into fresh and cruel activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will not diminish the offence of the nephew in the mind of the reader,
+      when he is told that the youth was not ignorant of the particular
+      tenderness of his relative in this respect. The gentle nature of the
+      latter, alone, rescued him from the well-merited reproach of suffering his
+      habitual levity of mood to prevail in reference to one whom even he
+      himself was disposed to honor. But few words passed between the two, ere
+      they reached the place of appointment. The careless reference of the youth
+      had made the thoughts of the senior active at the expense of his
+      observation. His eyes were now turned inward; and the landscape, and the
+      evening sun, which streamed over and hallowed it with a tender beauty to
+      the last, was as completely hidden from his vision, as if a veil had been
+      drawn above his sight. The retrospect, indeed, is ever the old man's
+      landscape; and perhaps, even had he not been so unkindly driven back to
+      its survey, our aged traveller would have been reminded of the past in the
+      momently-deepening shadows which the evening gathered around his path.
+      Twilight is the cherished season for sad memories, even as the midnight is
+      supposed to be that of guilty ghosts; and nothing, surely, can be more
+      fitting than that the shadows of former hopes should revisit us in those
+      hours when the face of nature itself seems darkening into gloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was night before the wayfarers reached the appointed baiting place.
+      There they found their company&mdash;a sort of little caravan, such as is
+      frequent in the history of western emigration&mdash;already assembled, and
+      the supper awaiting them. Let us leave them to its enjoyment, and return
+      once more to the village of Charlemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The young maiden last met by our travellers, and whose appearance had so
+      favorably impressed them, had not been altogether uninfluenced by the
+      encounter. Her spirit was of a musing and perhaps somewhat moody
+      character, and the little adventure related in our last chapter, had
+      awakened in her mind a train of vague and purposeless thought, from which
+      she did not strive to disengage herself. She ceased to pursue the direct
+      path back to Charlemont, the moment she had persuaded herself that the
+      strangers had continued on their way; and turning from the beaten track,
+      she strolled aside, following the route of a brooklet, the windings of
+      which, as it led her forward, were completely hidden from the intrusive
+      glance of any casual wayfarer. The prattle of the little stream as it
+      wound upon its sleepless journey, contributed still more to strengthen the
+      musings of those vagrant fancies that filled the maiden's thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down upon the prostrate trunk of a tree, and surrendered herself
+      for a while to their control. Her thoughts were probably of a kind which,
+      to a certain extent, are commended to every maiden. Among them,
+      perpetually rose an image of the bold and handsome stranger, whose
+      impudence, in turning back in pursuit of her, was somewhat qualified by
+      the complimentary curiosity which such conduct manifested. Predominant
+      even over this image, however, was the conviction of isolation which she
+      felt where she was, and the still more painful conviction, that the future
+      was without promise. Such thoughts and apprehensions may be natural enough
+      to all young persons of active, earnest nature, not permitted to perform;
+      but in the bosom of Margaret Cooper they were particularly so. Her mind
+      was of a masculine and commanding character, and was ill-satisfied with
+      her position and prospect in Charlemont. A quiet, obscure village, such as
+      that we have described, held forth no promise for a spirit so proud,
+      impatient, and ambitious as hers. She knew the whole extent of knowledge
+      which it contained, and all its acquisitions and resources&mdash;she had
+      sounded its depths, and traced all its shallows. The young women kept no
+      pace with her own progress&mdash;they were good, silly girls enough&mdash;a
+      chattering, playful set, whom small sports could easily satisfy, and who
+      seemed to have no care, and scarce a hope, beyond the hilly limits of
+      their homestead; and as for the young men&mdash;they were only suited to
+      the girls, such as they were, and could never meet the demand of such an
+      intellect as hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lofty self-estimate, which was in some sense just, necessarily gave a
+      tone to her language and a coloring to all her thoughts, such as good
+      sense and amiability should equally strive to suppress and conceal&mdash;unless,
+      as in the case of Margaret Cooper, the individual herself was without due
+      consciousness of their presence. It had the effect of discouraging and
+      driving from her side many a good-natured damsel, who would have loved to
+      condole with her, and might have been a pleasant companion. The young
+      women regarded her with some dislike in consequence of her self-imposed
+      isolation&mdash;and the young men with some apprehension. Her very
+      knowledge of books, which infinitely surpassed that of all her sex within
+      the limits of Charlemont, was also an object of some alarm. It had been
+      her fortune, whether well or ill may be a question, to inherit from her
+      father a collection, not well chosen, upon which her mind had preyed with
+      an appetite as insatiate as it was undiscriminating. They had taught her
+      many things, but among these neither wisdom nor patience was included;&mdash;and
+      one of the worst lessons which she had learned, and which they had
+      contributed in some respects to teach, was discontent with her condition&mdash;a
+      discontent which saddened, if it did not embitter, her present life, while
+      it left the aspects of the future painfully doubtful, even to her own eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was fatherless, and had been already taught some of those rude lessons
+      which painfully teach dependence; but such lessons, which to most others
+      would have brought submission, only provoked her to resistance. Her
+      natural impetuosity of disposition, strengthened by her mother's
+      idolatrous indulgence, increased the haughtiness of her character; and
+      when, to these influences, we add that her surviving parent was poor, and
+      suffered from privations which were unfelt by many of their neighbors, it
+      may be easily conceived that a temper and mind such as we have described
+      those of Margaret Cooper&mdash;ardent, commanding, and impatient, hourly
+      found occasion, even in the secluded village where she dwelt, for the
+      exercise of moods equally adverse to propriety and happiness. Isolated
+      from the world by circumstances, she doubly exiled herself from its social
+      indulgences, by the tyrannical sway of a superior will, strengthened and
+      stimulated by an excitable and ever feverish blood; and, as we find her
+      now, wandering sad and sternly by the brookside, afar from the sports and
+      humbler sources of happiness, which gentler moods left open to the rest,
+      so might she customarily be found, at all hours, when it was not
+      absolutely due to appearances that she should be seen among the crowds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will not now seek to pursue her musings and trace them out to their
+      conclusions, nor will it be necessary that we should do more than indicate
+      their character. That they were sad and solemn as usual&mdash;perhaps
+      humbling&mdash;may be gathered from the fact that a big tear might have
+      been seen, long gathering in her eye;&mdash;the next moment she brushed
+      off the intruder with an impatience of gesture, that plainly showed how
+      much her proud spirit resented any such intrusion. The tear dispersed the
+      images which had filled her contemplative mood, and rising from her sylvan
+      seat, she prepared to move forward, when a voice calling at some little
+      distance, drew her attention. Giving a hasty glance in the direction of
+      the sound, she beheld a young man making his way through the woods, and
+      approaching her with rapid footsteps. His evident desire to reach her, did
+      not, however, prompt her to any pause in her own progress; but, as if
+      satisfied with the single glance which she gave him, and indifferent
+      utterly to his object, she continued on her way, nor stopped for an
+      instant, nor again looked back, until his salutation, immediately behind
+      her, compelled her attention and answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret&mdash;Miss Cooper!&rdquo; said the speaker, who was a young rustic,
+      probably twenty or twenty-one years of age, of tall, good person, a
+      handsome face, which was smooth, though of dark complexion, and lightened
+      by an eye of more than ordinary size and intelligence. His tones were
+      those of one whose sensibilities were fine and active, and it would not
+      have called for much keen observation to have seen that his manner, in
+      approaching and addressing the maiden, was marked with some little
+      trepidation. She, on the contrary, seemed too familiar with his homage, or
+      too well satisfied of his inferiority, to deign much attention to his
+      advances. She answered his salutation coldly, and was preparing to move
+      forward, when his words again called for her reluctant notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have looked for you, Margaret, full an hour. Mother sent me after you
+      to beg that you will come there this evening. Old Jenks has come up from
+      the river, and brought a store of fine things&mdash;there's a fiddle for
+      Ned, and Jason Lightner has a flute, and I&mdash;I have a small lot of
+      books, Margaret, that I think will please you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you, William Hinkley, and thank your mother, but I can not come
+      this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why not, Margaret?&mdash;your mother's coming&mdash;she promised for
+      you too, but I thought you might not get home soon enough to see her, and
+      so I came out to seek you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry you took so much trouble, William, for I cannot come this
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why not, Margaret? You have no other promise to go elsewhere have
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; was the indifferent reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;but, perhaps, you are not well, Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite well, I thank you, William Hinkley, but I don't feel like
+      going out this evening. I am not in the humor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Already, in the little village of Charlemont, Margaret Cooper was one of
+      the few who were permitted to indulge in humors, and William Hinkley
+      learned the reason assigned for her refusal, with an expression of regret
+      and disappointment, if not of reproach. An estoppel, which would have been
+      so conclusive in the case of a city courtier, was not sufficient, however,
+      to satisfy the more frank and direct rustic, and he proceeded with some
+      new suggestions, in the hope to change her determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you'll be so lonesome at home, Margaret, when your mother's with us.
+      She'll be gone before you can get back, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm never lonesome, William, at least I'm never so well content or so
+      happy as when I'm alone,&rdquo; was the self-satisfactory reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that's so strange, Margaret. It's so strange that you should be
+      different from everybody else. I often wonder at it, Margaret; for I know
+      none of the other girls but love to be where there's a fiddle, and where
+      there's pleasant company. It's so pleasant to be where everybody's
+      pleased; and then, Margaret, where one can talk so well as you, and of so
+      many subjects, it's a greater wonder still that you should not like to be
+      among the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not, however, William,&rdquo; was the answer in more softened tones. There
+      was something in this speech of her lover, that found its way through the
+      only accessible avenues of her nature. It was a truth, which she often
+      repeated to herself with congratulatory pride, that she had few feelings
+      or desires in common with the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my misfortune,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;to care very little for the
+      pastimes you speak of; and as for the company, I've no doubt it will be
+      very pleasant for those who go, but to me it will afford very little
+      pleasure. Your mother must therefore excuse me, William:&mdash;I should be
+      a very dull person among the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will be so very sorry, Margaret&mdash;and Ned, whose new fiddle has
+      just come, and Jason Lightner, with his flute. They all spoke of you and
+      look for you above all, to hear them this evening. They will be so
+      disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley spoke nothing of his own disappointment, but it was
+      visible enough in his blank countenance, and sufficiently audible in the
+      undisguised faltering of his accents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think they will be so much disappointed, William Hinkley. They
+      have no reason to be, as they have no right to look for me in particular.
+      I have very little acquaintance with the young men you speak of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Margaret, they live alongside of you&mdash;and I'm sure you've met
+      them a thousand times in company,&rdquo; was the response of the youth, uttered
+      in tones more earnest than any he had yet employed in the dialogue, and
+      with something of surprise in his accents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps so; but that makes them no intimates of mine, William Hinkley.
+      They may be very good young men, and, indeed, so far as I know, they
+      really are; but that makes no difference. We find our acquaintances and
+      our intimates among those who are congenial, who somewhat resemble us in
+      spirit, feeling, and understanding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Margaret!&rdquo; said her rustic companion with a sigh, which amply
+      testified to the humility of his own self-estimate, and of the decline of
+      his hope which came with it&mdash;&ldquo;ah, Margaret, if that be the rule,
+      where are you going to find friends and intimates in Charlemont?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where!&rdquo; was the single word spoken by the haughty maiden, as her eye
+      wandered off to the cold tops of the distant hills along which the latest
+      rays of falling sunlight, faint and failing, as they fell, imparted a hue,
+      which though bright, still as it failed to warm, left an expression of
+      October sadness to the scene, that fitly harmonized with the chilling mood
+      under which she had spoken throughout the interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think, Margaret,&rdquo; continued the lover, finding courage as he
+      continued, &ldquo;that such a rule is a good one. I know it can't be a good one
+      for happiness. There's many a person that never will meet his or her match
+      in this world, in learning and understanding&mdash;and if they won't look
+      on other persons with kindness, because they are not altogether equal to
+      them, why there's a chance that they'll always be solitary and sad. It's a
+      real blessing, I believe, to have great sense, but I don't see, that
+      because one has great sense, that one should not think well and kindly of
+      those who have little, provided they be good, and are willing to be
+      friendly. Now, a good heart seems to be the very best thing that nature
+      can give us; and I know, Margaret, that there's no two better hearts in
+      all Charlemont&mdash;perhaps in all the world, though I won't say that&mdash;than
+      cousin Ned Hinkley, and Jason Lightner, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't deny their merits and their virtues, and their goodness of heart,
+      William Hinkley,&rdquo; was the answer of the maiden&mdash;&ldquo;I only say that the
+      possession of these qualities gives them no right to claim my sympathies
+      or affection. These claims are only founded upon congeniality of character
+      and mind, and without this congeniality, there can be no proper, no
+      lasting intimacy between persons. They no doubt, will find friends between
+      whom and themselves, this congeniality exists. I, on the other hand, must
+      be permitted to find mine, after my own ideas, and as I best can. But if I
+      do not&mdash;the want of them gives me no great concern. I find company
+      enough, and friends enough, even in these woods, to satisfy the desires of
+      my heart at present; I am not anxious to extend my acquaintance or
+      increase the number of my intimates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley, who had become somewhat warmed by the argument, could
+      have pursued the discussion somewhat further; but the tones and manner of
+      his companion, to say nothing of her words, counselled him to forbear.
+      Still, he was not disposed altogether to give up his attempts to secure
+      her presence for the evening party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you don't come for the company, Margaret, recollect the music.
+      Even if Ned Hinkley was a perfect fool, which he is not, and Jason
+      Lightner were no better,&mdash;nobody can say that they are not good
+      musicians. Old Squire Bee says there's not in all Kentucky a better
+      violinist than Ned, and Jason's flute is the sweetest sound that ear ever
+      listened to along these hills. If you don't care anything for the players,
+      Margaret, I'm sure you can't be indifferent to their music; and I know
+      they are anything but indifferent to what you may think about it. They
+      will play ten times as well if you are there; and I'm sure, Margaret, I
+      shall be the last&rdquo;&mdash;here the tone of the speaker's voice audibly
+      faltered&mdash;&ldquo;I shall be the very last to think it sweet if you are not
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the words and faltering accents of the lover equally failed in
+      subduing the inflexible, perverse mood of the haughty maiden. Her cold
+      denial was repeated; and with looks that did not fail to speak the
+      disappointment of William Hinkley, he attended her back to the village.
+      Their progress was marked by coldness on the one hand, and decided sadness
+      on the other. The conversation was carried on in monosyllables only, on
+      the part of Margaret, while timidity and a painful hesitancy marked the
+      language of her attendant. But a single passage may be remembered of all
+      that was said between the two, ere they separated at the door of the widow
+      Cooper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see the two strangers, Margaret, that passed through Charlemont
+      this afternoon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cheeks of the maiden became instantly flushed, and the rapid utterance
+      of her reply in the affirmative, denoted an emotion which the jealous
+      instincts of the lover readily perceived. A cold chill, on the instant,
+      pervaded the veins of the youth; and that night he did not hear, any more
+      than Margaret Cooper, the music of his friends. He was present all the
+      time and he answered their inquiries as usual; but his thoughts were very
+      far distant, and somehow or other, they perpetually mingled up the image
+      of the young traveller, whom he too had seen, with that of the proud
+      woman, whom he was not yet sure that he unprofitably worshipped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; SIMPLICITY AND THE SERPENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The mirth and music of Charlemont were enjoyed by others, but not by
+      Margaret Cooper. The resolution not to share in the pleasures of the young
+      around her, which she showed to her rustic lover, was a resolution firmly
+      persevered in throughout the long summer which followed. Her wayward mood
+      shut out from her contemplation the only sunshine of the place; and her
+      heart, brooding over the remote, if not the impossible, denied itself
+      those joys which were equally available and nigh. Her lonesome walks
+      became longer in the forests, and later each evening grew the hour of her
+      return to the village. Her solitude daily increased, as the youth, who
+      really loved her with all the ardency of a first passion, and who regarded
+      her at the same time with no little veneration for those superior gifts of
+      mind and education which, it was the general conviction in Charlemont,
+      that she possessed, became, at length, discouraged in a pursuit which
+      hitherto had found nothing but coldness and repulse. Not that he ceased to
+      love&mdash;nay, he did not cease entirely to hope. What lover ever did? He
+      fondly ascribed to the object of his affections a waywardness of humor,
+      which he fancied would pass away after a season, and leave her mind to the
+      influence of a more sober and wholesome judgment. Perhaps, too, like many
+      other youth in like circumstances, he did not always see or feel the
+      caprice of which he was the victim. But for this fortunate blindness, many
+      a fair damsel would lose her conquest quite as suddenly as it was made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the summer passed away, and the forest put on the sere and sombre
+      robes of autumn, and yet no visible change&mdash;none at least more
+      favorable to the wishes of William Hinkley&mdash;took place in the
+      character and conduct of the maiden. Her mind, on the contrary, seemed to
+      take something of its hue from the cold sad tones of the forest. The
+      serious depth of expression in her dark eyes seemed to deepen yet more,
+      and become yet more concentrated&mdash;their glance acquired a yet keener
+      intentness&mdash;an inflexibility of direction&mdash;which suffered them
+      seldom to turn aside from those moody contemplations, which had made her,
+      for a long time, infinitely prefer to gaze upon the rocks, and woods, and
+      waters, than upon the warm and wooing features of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At distance the youth watched and sometimes followed her, and when, with
+      occasional boldness, he would draw nigh to her secret wanderings, a cold
+      fear filled his heart, and he shrunk back with all the doubt and dread of
+      some guilty trespasser. But his doubt, and we may add, his dread also, was
+      soon to cease entirely, in the complete conviction of his hopelessness.
+      The day and the fate were approaching, in the person of one, to whom a
+      natural instinct had already taught him to look with apprehension, and
+      whose very first appearance had inspired him with antipathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a strange prescience, in some respects, has the devoted and watchful
+      heart that loves! William Hinkley, had seen but for a single instant, the
+      face of that young traveller, who has already been introduced to us, and
+      that instant was enough to awaken his dislike&mdash;nay, more, his
+      hostility. Yet no villager in Charlemont but would have told you, that, of
+      all the village, William Hinkley was the most gentle, the most generous&mdash;the
+      very last to be moved by bad passions, by jealousy or hate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth whom we have seen going down with his uncle to the great valley
+      of the Mississippi, was now upon his return. He was now unaccompanied by
+      the benignant senior with whom we first made his acquaintance. He had
+      simply attended the old bachelor, from whom he had considerable
+      expectations, to his plantation, in requital of the spring visit which the
+      latter had paid to his relatives in Kentucky; and having spent the summer
+      in the southwest, was about to resume his residence, and the profession of
+      the law, in that state. We have seen that, however he might have succeeded
+      in disguising his true feelings from his uncle, he was not unmoved by the
+      encounter with Margaret Cooper, on the edge of the village. He now
+      remembered the casual suggestion of the senior, which concluded their
+      discussion on the subject of her beauty; and he resolved to go aside from
+      his direct path, and take Charlemont in the route of his return. Not that
+      he himself needed a second glance to convince him of that loveliness
+      which, in his wilfulness, he yet denied. He was free to acknowledge to
+      himself that Margaret Cooper was one of the noblest and most impressive
+      beauties he had ever seen. The very scorn that spoke in all her features,
+      the imperious fires that kindled in her eyes, were better calculated than
+      any more gentle expressions, to impose upon one who was apt to be
+      skeptical on the subject of ordinary beauties. The confidence and
+      consciousness of superiority, which too plainly spoke out in the features
+      of Margaret, seemed to deny to his mind the privilege of doubting or
+      discussing her charms&mdash;a privilege upon which no one could have been
+      more apt to insist than himself. This seeming denial, while it suggested
+      to him ideas of novelty, provoked his curiosity and kindled his pride. The
+      haughty glance with which she encountered his second approach, aroused his
+      vanity, and a latent desire arose in his heart, to overcome one who had
+      shown herself so premature in her defiance. We will not venture to assert
+      that the young traveller had formed any very deliberate designs of
+      conquest, but, it may be said, as well here as elsewhere, that his
+      self-esteem was great; and accustomed to easy conquests among the sex, in
+      the region where he dwelt, it was only necessary to inflame his vanity, to
+      stimulate him to the exercise of all his arts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was about noon, on one of those bright, balmy days, early in October,
+      when &ldquo;the bridal of the earth and sky,&rdquo; in the language of the good old
+      Herbert, is going on&mdash;when, the summer heats subdued, there is yet
+      nothing either cold, or repulsive in the atmosphere; and the soft
+      breathing from the southwest has just power enough to stir the flowers and
+      disperse their scents; that our young traveller was joined in his progress
+      towards Charlemont, by a person mounted like himself and pursuing a
+      similar direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first glance the youth distinguished him as one of the homely
+      forest preachers of the methodist persuasion, who are the chief agents and
+      pioneers of religion in most of the western woods. His plain, unstudied
+      garments all of black, rigid and unfashionable; his pale, demure features,
+      and the general humility of his air and gesture, left our young skeptic
+      little reason to doubt of this; and when the other expressed his
+      satisfaction at meeting with a companion at last, after a long and weary
+      ride without one, the tone of his expressions, the use of biblical
+      phraseology, and the monotonous solemnity of his tones, reduced the doubts
+      of the youth to absolute certainty. At first, with the habitual levity of
+      the young and skeptical, he congratulated himself upon an encounter which
+      promised to afford him a good subject for quizzing; but a moment's
+      reflection counselled him to a more worldly policy, and he restrained his
+      natural impulse in order that he might first sound the depths of the
+      preacher, and learn in what respect he might be made subservient to his
+      own purposes. He had already learned from the latter that he was on his
+      way to Charlemont, of which place he seemed to have some knowledge; and
+      the youth, in an instant, conceived the possibility of making him useful
+      in procuring for himself a favorable introduction to the place. With this
+      thought, he assumed the grave aspect and deliberate enunciation of his
+      companion, expressed himself equally gratified to meet with a person who,
+      if he did not much mistake, was a divine, and concluded his address by the
+      utterance of one of those pious commonplaces which are of sufficiently
+      easy acquisition, and which at once secured him the unscrupulous
+      confidence of his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly, it gladdens me, sir,&rdquo; said the holy man in reply, &ldquo;to meet with
+      one, as a fellow-traveller in these lonesome ways, who hath a knowledge of
+      God's grace and the blessings which he daily sheddeth, even as the falling
+      of the dews, upon a benighted land. It is my lot, and I repine not that
+      such it is, to be for ever a wayfarer, in the desert where there are but
+      few fountains to refresh the spirit. When I say desert, young gentleman, I
+      speak not in the literal language of the world, for truly it were a most
+      sinful denial of God's bounty were I to say, looking round upon the mighty
+      forests through which I pass, and upon the rich soil over which I travel,
+      that my way lies not through a country covered, thrice covered, with the
+      best worldly bounties of the Lord. But it is a moral desert which my
+      speech would signify. The soul of man is here lacking the blessed
+      fountains of the truth&mdash;the mind of man here lacketh the holy and
+      joy-shedding lights of the spirit; and it rejoiceth me, therefore, when I
+      meet with one, like thyself, in whose language I find a proof that thou
+      hast neither heard the word with idle ears, nor treasured it in thy memory
+      with unapplying mind. May I ask of thee, my young friend, who thou art,
+      and by what name I shall call thee?&mdash;not for the satisfaction of an
+      idle curiosity, to know either thy profession or thy private concerns, but
+      that I may the better speak to thee in our conference hereafter, Thou hast
+      rightly conjectured as to my calling&mdash;and my own name, which is one
+      unknown to most even in these forests, is John Cross&mdash;I come of a
+      family in North Carolina, which still abide in that state, by the waters
+      of the river Haw. Perhaps, if thou hast ever travelled in those parts,
+      thou hast happened upon some of my kindred, which are very numerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never, reverend sir, travelled in those parts,&rdquo; said the youth,
+      with commendable gravity, &ldquo;but I have heard of the Cross family, which I
+      believe, as you say, to be very numerous&mdash;both male and female.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yea, I have brothers and sisters an equal number; I have aunts and uncles
+      a store, and it has been the blessing of God so to multiply and increase
+      every member thereof, that each of my brothers, in turn, hath a goodly
+      flock, in testimony of his favors. I, alone, of all my kindred, have
+      neither wife nor child, and I seem as one set apart for other ties, and
+      other purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, sir,&rdquo; returned the other, quickly, and with a slyness of expression
+      which escaped the direct and unsuspecting mind of the preacher, &ldquo;but if
+      you are denied the blessings which are theirs, you have your part in the
+      great family of the world. If you have neither wife nor child of your own
+      loins, yet, I trust, you have an abiding interest in the wives and
+      children of all other men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I were but an unworthy teacher of the blessed word, had I not,&rdquo; was the
+      simple answer. &ldquo;Verily, all that I teach are my children; there is not one
+      crying to me for help, to whom I do not hasten with the speed of a father
+      flying to bring succor to his young. I trust in God, that I have not made
+      a difference between them; that I heed not one to the forfeit or suffering
+      of the other; and for this impartial spirit toward the flock intrusted to
+      my charge, do I pray, as well as for the needful strength of body and
+      soul, through which my duties are to be done. But thou hast not yet spoken
+      thy name, or my ears have failed to receive it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was some little hesitation on the part of the youth before he
+      answered this second application; and a less unheeding observer than his
+      fellow-traveller, might have noticed an increasing warmth of hue upon his
+      cheek, while he was uttering his reply:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am called Alfred Stevens,&rdquo; he replied at length, the color increasing
+      upon his cheek even after the words were spoken. But they were spoken. The
+      falsehood was registered against him beyond recall, though, of course,
+      without startling the doubts or suspicions of his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alfred Stevens; there are many Stevenses: I have known several and
+      sundry. There is a worthy family of that name by the waters of the Dan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find them, I suspect, from Dan to Beersheba,&rdquo; responded the
+      youth with a resumption of his former levity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly, it may be so. The name is of good repute. But what is thy calling,
+      Alfred Stevens? Methinks at thy age thou shouldst have one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I have, reverend sir,&rdquo; replied the other; &ldquo;my calling heretofore has
+      been that of the law. But it likes me not, and I think soon to give it
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou wilt take to some other then. What other hast thou chosen; or art
+      thou like those unhappy youths, by far too many in our blessed country,
+      whom fortune hath hurt by her gifts, and beguiled into idleness and
+      sloth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, not so, reverend sir; the gifts of fortune have been somewhat
+      sparing in my case, and I am even now conferring with my own thoughts
+      whether or not to take to school-keeping. Nay, perhaps, I should incline
+      to something better, if I could succeed in persuading myself of my own
+      worthiness in a vocation which, more than all others, demands a pure mind
+      with a becoming zeal. The law consorts not with my desires&mdash;it
+      teaches selfishness, rather than self-denial; and I have already found
+      that some of its duties demand the blindness and the silence of that best
+      teacher from within, the watchful and unsleeping conscience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou hast said rightly, Alfred Stevens; I have long thought that the
+      profession of the law hardeneth the heart, and blindeth the conscience.
+      Thou wilt do well to leave it, as a craft that leads to sin, and makes the
+      exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly understand thee, thou lookest
+      to the gospel as that higher vocation for which thy spirit yearneth, then
+      would I say to thee, arise, and gird up thy loins; advance and falter not;&mdash;the
+      field is open, and though the victory brings thee no worldly profit, and
+      but little worldly honor, yet the reward is eternal, and the interest
+      thereof, unlike the money which thou puttest out to usury in the hands of
+      men, never fails to be paid, at the very hour of its due, from the
+      unfailing treasury of Heaven. Verily, I rejoice, Alfred Stevens, that I
+      have met with thee to-day. I had feared that the day had been lost to that
+      goodly labor, to which all my days have been given for seventeen years,
+      come the first sabbath in the next November. But what thou hast said,
+      awakens hope in my soul that such will not be the case. Let not my
+      counsels fail thee, Alfred;&mdash;let thy zeal warm; let thy spirit work
+      within thee, and thy words kindle, in the service of the Lord. How it will
+      rejoice me to see thee taking up the scrip and the staff and setting forth
+      for the wildernesses of the Mississippi, of Arkansas, and Texas, far
+      beyond;&mdash;bringing the wild man of the frontier, and the red savage,
+      into the blessed fold and constant company of the Lord Jesus, to whom all
+      praise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It were indeed a glorious service,&rdquo; responded the young stranger&mdash;whom
+      we shall proceed, hereafter, to designate by the name by which he has
+      called himself. He spoke musingly, and with a gravity that was singularly
+      inflexible&mdash;&ldquo;it were indeed a glorious service. Let me see, there
+      were thousands of miles to traverse before one might reach the lower
+      Arkansas; and I reckon, Mr. Cross, the roads are mighty bad after you pass
+      the Mississippi&mdash;nay, even in the Mississippi, through a part of
+      which territory I have gone only this last summer, there is a sad want of
+      causeways, and the bridges are exceedingly out of repair. There is one
+      section of near a hundred miles, which lies between the bluffs of
+      Ashibiloxi, and the far creek of Catahoula, that was a shame and reproach
+      to the country and the people thereof. What, then, must be the condition
+      of the Texas territory, beyond? and, if I err not, the Cumanchees are a
+      race rather given to destroy than to build up. The chance is that the
+      traveller in their country might have to swim his horse over most of the
+      watercourses, and where he found a bridge, it were perhaps a perilous risk
+      to cross it. Even then he might ride fifty miles a day, before he should
+      see the smokes which would be a sign of supper that night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The greater the glory&mdash;the greater the glory, Alfred Stevens. The
+      toil and the peril, the pain and the privation, in a good cause, increase
+      the merit of the performance in the eyes of the Lord. What matters the
+      roads and the bridges, the length of the way, or the sometimes lack of
+      those comforts of the flesh, which are craved only at the expense of the
+      spirit, and to the great delay of our day of conquest. These wants are the
+      infirmities of the human, which dissipate and disappear, the more few they
+      become, and the less pressing in their complaint. Shake thyself loose from
+      them, Alfred Stevens, and thy way henceforth is perfect freedom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! this is my very weakness, Mr. Cross:&mdash;it was because of these
+      very infirmities, that I had doubt of my own worthiness to take up the
+      better vocation which is yet my desire. I am sadly given to hunger and
+      thirst toward noon and evening; and the travel of a long day makes me so
+      weary at night, that I should say but a hurried grace before meal, and
+      make an even more hurried supper after it. Nay, I have not yet been able
+      to divest myself of a habit which I acquired in my boyhood; and I need at
+      times, throughout the day, a mouthful of something stronger than mere
+      animal food, to sustain the fainting and feeble flesh and keep my frame
+      from utter exhaustion. I dare not go upon the road, even for the brief
+      journey of a single day, without providing myself beforehand with a supply
+      of a certain beverage, such as is even now contained within this vessel,
+      and which is infallible against sinking of the the spirits, faintings of
+      the frame, disordered nerves, and even against flatulence and indigestion.
+      If, at any time, thou shouldst suffer from one or the other of these
+      infirmities, Mr. Cross, be sure there is no better medicine for their cure
+      than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker drew from his bosom a little flask, such as is sufficiently
+      well known to most western travellers, which he held on high, and which,
+      to the unsuspecting eyes of the preacher, contained a couple of gills or
+      more of a liquid of very innocent complexion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Verily, Alfred Stevens, I do myself suffer from some of the weaknesses of
+      which thou hast spoken. The sinking of the spirits, and the faintness of
+      the frame, are but too often the enemies that keep me back from the plough
+      when I would thereto set my hand; and that same flatulence&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A most frequent disorder in a region where greens and collards form the
+      largest dishes on the tables of the people,&rdquo; interrupted Stevens, but
+      without changing a muscle of his countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do believe as thou say'st, Alfred Stevens, that the disorder comes in
+      great part from that cause, though, still, I have my doubts if it be not a
+      sort of wind-melancholy, to which people, who preach aloud are greatly
+      subject. It is in my case almost always associated with a sort of
+      hoarseness, and the nerves of my frame twitch grievously at the same
+      periods. If this medicine of thine be sovereign against so cruel an
+      affliction, I would crave of thee such knowledge as would enable me to get
+      a large supply of it, that I may overcome a weakness, which, as I tell
+      thee, oftentimes impairs my ministry, and sometimes makes me wholly
+      incapable of fervent preaching. Let me smell of it, I pray thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, taste of it, sir&mdash;it is just about the time when I find it
+      beneficial to partake of it, as a medicine for my own weakness, and I
+      doubt not, it will have a powerful effect also upon you. A single draught
+      has been found to relieve the worst case of flatulence and colic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From colic too, I am also a great sufferer,&rdquo; said the preacher as he took
+      the flask in his hand, and proceeded to draw the stopper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is also the child of collards,&rdquo; said Stevens, as he watched with a
+      quiet and unmoved countenance the proceedings of his simple companion, who
+      finding some difficulty in drawing the cork, handed it back to the youth.
+      The latter, more practised, was more successful, and now returned the open
+      bottle to the preacher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take from it first, the dose which relieves thee, Alfred Stevens, that I
+      may know how much will avail in my own case;&rdquo; and he watched curiously,
+      while Stevens, applying the flask to his lips, drew from it a draught,
+      which, in western experience of benefits, would have been accounted a very
+      moderate potion. This done, he handed it back to his companion, who, about
+      to follow his example, asked him:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And by what name, Alfred Stevens, do they call this medicine, the goodly
+      effect of which thou holdst to be so great?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens did not immediately reply&mdash;not until the preacher had applied
+      the bottle to his mouth, and he could see by the distension of his throat,
+      that he had imbibed a taste, at least, of the highly-lauded medicine. The
+      utterance then, of the single word&mdash;&ldquo;Brandy&rdquo;&mdash;was productive of
+      an effect no less ludicrous in the sight of the youth, than it was
+      distressing to the mind of his worthy companion. The descending liquor was
+      ejected with desperate effort from the throat which it had fairly entered&mdash;the
+      flask flung from his hands&mdash;and with choking and gurgling accents,
+      startling eyes, and reddening visage, John Cross turned full upon his
+      fellow-traveller, vainly trying to repeat, with the accompanying horror of
+      expression which he felt, the single spellword, which had produced an
+      effect so powerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bran&mdash;bran&mdash;brandy!&mdash;Alfred Stevens!&mdash;thou hast given
+      me poison&mdash;the soul's poison&mdash;the devil's liquor&mdash;liquor
+      distilled in the vessels of eternal sin. Wherefore hast thou done this?
+      Dost thou not know&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know&mdash;know what, Mr. Cross?&rdquo; replied Stevens, with all the
+      astonishment which he could possibly throw into his air, as he descended
+      from his horse with all haste to recover his flask, and save its remaining
+      contents from loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call me not mister&mdash;call me plain John Cross,&rdquo; replied the preacher&mdash;in
+      the midst of a second fit of choking, the result of his vain effort to
+      disgorge that portion of the pernicious liquid which had irretrievably
+      descended into his bowels. With a surprise admirably affected, Stevens
+      approached him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear sir&mdash;what troubles you?&mdash;what can be the matter? What
+      have I done? What is it you fear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That infernal draught&mdash;that liquor&mdash;I have swallowed of it a
+      mouthful. I feel it in me. The sin be upon thy head, Alfred Stevens&mdash;why
+      did you not tell me, before I drank, that it was the soul's poison?&mdash;the
+      poison that slays more than the sword or the pestilence;&mdash;the liquor
+      of the devil, distilled in the vessels of sin&mdash;and sent among men for
+      the destruction of the soul! I feel it now within me, and it burns&mdash;it
+      burns like the fires of damnation. Is there no water nigh that I may
+      quench my thirst?&mdash;Show me, Alfred Stevens, show me where the cool
+      waters lie, that I may put out these raging flames.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a branch, if I mistake not, just above us on the road&mdash;I
+      think I see it glistening among the leaves. Let us ride toward it, sir,
+      and it will relieve you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Alfred Stevens, why have you served me thus? Why did you not tell
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Repeated groans accompanied this apostrophe, and marked every step in the
+      progress of the preacher to the little rivulet which trickled across the
+      road. John Cross, descended with the rapidity of one whose hope hangs upon
+      a minute, and dreads its loss, as equal to the loss of life. He straddled
+      the stream and thrust his lips into the water, drawing up a quantity
+      sufficient, in the estimation of Stevens, to have effectually neutralized
+      the entire contents of his flask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blessed water! Blessed water! Holiest beverage! Thou art the creation of
+      the Lord, and, next to the waters of eternal life, his best gift to
+      undiscerning man. I drink of thee, and I am faint no longer. I rise up,
+      strong and refreshed! Ah, my young friend, Alfred Stevens, I trust thou
+      didst not mean me harm in giving me that poisonous liquor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far from it, sir, I rather thought to do you a great benefit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How couldst thou think to do me benefit by proffering such poison to my
+      lips? nay, wherefore dost thou thyself carry it with thee, and why dost
+      thou drink of it, as if it were something not hurtful as well to the body
+      as the soul? Take my counsel, I pray thee, Alfred Stevens, and cast it
+      behind thee for ever. Look not after it when thou dost so, with an eye of
+      regret lest thou forfeit the merit of thy self-denial. If thou wouldst
+      pursue the higher vocation of the brethren, thou must seek for the needful
+      strength from a better and purer spirit. But what unhappy teacher could
+      have persuaded thee to an indulgence which the good men of all the
+      churches agree to regard as so deadly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, Mr. Cross&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Cross, I pray thee; do I not call thee Alfred Stevens?&mdash;Mr. is
+      a speech of worldly fashion, and becomes not one who should put the world
+      and its fashions behind him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens found it more difficult to comply with this one requisition of the
+      preacher, than to pursue a long game of artful and complex scheming. He
+      evaded the difficulty by dropping the name entirely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too severe upon brandy, and upon those who use it. Nay, I am not
+      sure, but you do injustice to those who make it. So far from its
+      manufacturers being such as you call them, we have unquestionable proof
+      that they are very worthy people of a distant but a Christian country; and
+      surely you will not deny that we should find a medicine for our hurts, and
+      a remedy for our complaints, in a liquor which, perhaps, it might be
+      sinful to use as an ordinary beverage. Doctors, who have the care of human
+      life, and whose business and desire it is to preserve it, nevertheless do
+      sometimes administer poisons to their patients, which poisons, though
+      deadly at other times, will, in certain diseases and certain conditions of
+      disease, prove of only and great good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible! I believe it not! I believe not in the good of brandy. It is
+      hurtful&mdash;it is deadly. It has slain its thousands and its tens of
+      thousands&mdash;it is worse than the sword and the summer pestilence. Many
+      a man have I known to perish from strong drink. In my own parts, upon the
+      river Haw, in North Carolina state, I have known many. Nay, wherefore
+      should I spare the truth, Alfred Stevens?&mdash;the very father of my own
+      life, Ezekiel Cross, perished miserably from this burning water of sin. I
+      will not hear thee speak of it again; and if thou wouldst have me think of
+      thee with favor, as one hopeful of the service of the brethren, cast the
+      accursed beverage of Satan from thy hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth, without a word, deliberately emptied the contents of his vessel
+      upon the sands, and the garrulous lips of the preacher poured forth as
+      great a flood of speech in congratulation, as he had hitherto bestowed in
+      homily. The good, unsuspecting man, did not perceive that the liquor thus
+      thrown away, was very small in quantity, and that his companion, when the
+      flask was emptied, quietly restored it to his bosom. John Cross had
+      obtained a seeming victory, and did not care to examine its details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The concession made by Stevens, and which had produced an effect so
+      gratifying upon his companion, was one that involved no sacrifices. The
+      animal appetite of the young lawyer was, in truth, comparatively speaking,
+      indifferent to the commodity which he discarded; and even had it been
+      otherwise, still he was one of those selfish, cool and calculating
+      persons, who seem by nature to be perfectly able to subdue the claims of
+      the blood, with great ease, whenever any human or social policy would
+      appear to render it advisable. The greatest concession which he made in
+      the transaction, was in his so readily subscribing to that false logic of
+      the day, which reasons against the use of the gifts of Providence, because
+      a diseased moral, and a failing education, among men, sometimes result in
+      their abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The imperfections of a mode of reasoning so utterly illogical, were as
+      obvious to the mind of the young lawyer as to anybody else; and the
+      compliance which he exhibited to a requisition which his own sense readily
+      assured him was as foolish as it was presumptuous, was as degrading to his
+      moral character from the hypocrisy which it declared, as it was happy in
+      reference to the small policy by which he had been governed. The
+      unsuspecting preacher did not perceive the scornful sneer which curled his
+      lips and flashed his eyes, by which his own vanity still asserted itself
+      through the whole proceeding; or he would not have been so sure that the
+      mantle of grace which he deemed to have surely fallen upon the shoulders
+      of his companion, was sufficiently large and sound, to cover the multitude
+      of sins which it yet enabled the wearer, so far, to conceal. Regarding him
+      with all the favor which one is apt to feel for the person whom he has
+      plucked as a brand from the burning, the soul of John Cross warmed to the
+      young sinner; and it required no great effort of the wily Stevens to win
+      from him the history, not only of all its own secrets and secret hopes&mdash;for
+      these were of but small value in the eyes of the worldling&mdash;but of
+      all those matters which belonged to the little village to which they were
+      trending, and the unwritten lives of every dweller in that happy
+      community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the
+      testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those
+      minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to
+      the great matter immediately in hand&mdash;Stevens now propounded his
+      direct inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly unconsidered insinuation, by
+      which he drew from the preacher as much as he cared to know of the rustic
+      lads and lasses of Charlemont. It does not concern our narrative to render
+      the details thus unfolded to the stranger. And we will content ourselves,
+      as did the younger of the travellers, who placed himself with hearty good
+      will at the disposal of the holy man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall find for me a place of lodging, Mr. Cross, while it shall suit
+      me to stay in Charlemont. You have a knowledge of the people, and of the
+      world, which I possess not; and it will be better that I should give
+      myself up to your guidance. I know that you will not bring me to the
+      dwelling of persons not in good repute; and, perhaps, I need not remind
+      you that my worldly means are small&mdash;I must be at little charge
+      wherever I stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Brother Stevens, worldly goods and worldly wealth are no more needed
+      in Charlemont, than they are necessary to the service of the blessed
+      Redeemer. With an empty scrip is thy service blest;&mdash;God sees the
+      pure heart through the threadbare garment. I have friends in Charlemont
+      who will be too happy to receive thee in the name of the Lord, without
+      money and without price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pride of Stevens, which had not shrunk from hypocrisy and falsehood,
+      yet recoiled at a suggestion which involved the idea of his pecuniary
+      dependence upon strangers, and he replied accordingly; though he still
+      disguised his objections under the precious appearance of a becoming moral
+      scruple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will not become me, Mr. Cross, to burden the brethren of the church
+      for that hospitality which is only due to brethren.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But thou art in the way of grace&mdash;the light is shining upon thee&mdash;the
+      door is open, and already the voice of the Bridegroom is calling from
+      within. Thou wilt become a burning and a shining light&mdash;and the
+      brethren of the church will rejoice to hail thee among its chosen. Shall
+      they hold back their hand when thou art even on the threshold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mr. Cross&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call me not Mr., I pray thee. Call me plain John Cross, if it please thee
+      not yet to apply to me that sweeter term of loving kindness which the
+      flock of God are happy to use in speech one to another. If thou wilt call
+      me Brother Cross, my heart shall acknowledge the bonds between us, and my
+      tongue shall make answer to thine, in like fashion. Oh, Alfred Stevens,
+      may the light shine soon upon thine eyes, that thou may'st know for a
+      truth how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in the peace of of
+      the Lord, and according to his law. I will, with God's grace, bring thee
+      to this perfect knowledge, for I see the way clear because of the humility
+      which thou hast already shown, and thy yielding to the counsels of the
+      teacher. As for what thou sayest about charges to the brethren, let that
+      give thee no concern. Thou shalt lodge with old Brother Hinkley, who is
+      the pattern of good things and of, holiness in Charlemont. His house is
+      more like unto the tent of the patriarch pitched upon the plain, than the
+      house of the dweller among the cities. No lock fastens its doors against
+      the stranger; and the heart of the aged man is even more open than the
+      doorway of his dwelling. He standeth in the entrance like one looking out
+      for him that cometh, and his first word to the messenger of God, is
+      'welcome!' Thou shalt soon see the truth of what I say to thee, for even
+      now do we look down upon his house in the very midst of the village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If the scruples of Stevens still continued to urge him against accepting
+      the hospitality of the old patriarch of whom he had received a description
+      at once just and agreeable, the recollection of the village-maiden whom he
+      had gone aside from his direct path of travel, and made some even greater
+      departures from the truth, to see, determined him at length to waive them;
+      particularly when he ascertained from his fellow-traveller that he knew of
+      nobody in Charlemont who accommodated strangers for money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens was one of those persons who watch the progress of events, and he
+      resolved, with a mental reservation&mdash;that seems strange enough in the
+      case of one who had shown so little reluctance to say and do the thing
+      which he could not maintain or defend&mdash;to avail himself of some means
+      for requiting, to the uttermost farthing, the landlord, to whose
+      hospitality he might be indebted during his stay in Charlemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such are the contradictions of character which hourly detect and describe
+      the mere worldling&mdash;the man lacking in all principle, but that which
+      is subservient to his selfish policy. To accept money or money's worth
+      from a stranger, seemed mean and humbling to one, who did not hesitate, in
+      the promotion of a scheme, which, had treachery for its object, to clothe
+      himself in the garments of deception, and to make his appearance with a
+      lie festering upon his lips. That evening, Alfred Stevens became, with his
+      worthier companion, an inmate of the happy dwelling of William Hinkley,
+      the elder&mdash;a venerable, white-headed father, whose whole life had
+      made him worthy of a far higher eulogium than that which John Cross had
+      pronounced upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The delight of the family to see their reverend teacher was heartfelt and
+      unreserved. A vigorous gripe of the hand, by the elder dragged him into
+      the house, and a sentence of unusual length, from his better half, assured
+      him of that welcome which the blunter action of her venerable husband had
+      already sufficiently declared. Nor was the young adventurer who
+      accompanied the preacher, suffered to remain long unconsidered. When John
+      Cross had told them who he was, or rather when he had declared his
+      spiritual hopes in him&mdash;which he did with wonderful unction, in a
+      breath&mdash;the reception of old Hinkley, which had been hospitable
+      enough before, became warm and benignant; and Brother Stevens already
+      became the word of salutation, whenever the old people desired to
+      distinguish their younger guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother Stevens, it may be said here, found no difficulty in maintaining
+      the character he had assumed. He had, in high degree, the great art of the
+      selfish man, and could, when his game required it, subdue with little
+      effort, those emotions and impulses, which the frank and ardent spirit
+      must speak out or die. He went into the house of the hospitable old man,
+      and into the village of Charlemont, as if he had gone into the camp of an
+      enemy. He was, indeed, a spy, seeking to discover, not the poverty, but
+      the richness of the land. His mind, therefore, was like one who has
+      clothed himself in armor, placed himself in waiting for the foe, and set
+      all his sentinels on the watch. His caution measured every word ere it was
+      spoken, every look ere it was shown, every movement ere he suffered his
+      limbs to make it. The muscles of his face, were each put under curb and
+      chain&mdash;the smiles of the lip and the glances of the eyes, were all
+      subdued to precision, and permitted to go forth, only under special guard
+      and restriction. In tone, look, and manner, he strove as nearly as he
+      might to resemble the worthy but simple-minded man, who had so readily
+      found a worthy adherent and pupil in him; and his efforts at deception
+      might be held to be sufficiently successful, if the frank confiding faith
+      of the aged heads of the Hinkley family be the fitting test of his
+      experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With them he was soon perfectly at home&mdash;his own carriage seemed to
+      them wondrously becoming, and the approbation of John Cross was of itself
+      conclusive. The preacher was the oracle of the family, all of whom were
+      only too happy of his favor not to make large efforts to be pleased with
+      those he brought; and in a little while, sitting about the friendly
+      fireside, the whole party had become as sociable as if they had been &ldquo;hail
+      fellow! well met,&rdquo; a thousand years. Two young girls, children of a
+      relative, and nieces of the venerable elder, had already perched
+      themselves upon the knee of the stranger, and strove at moments over his
+      neck and shoulder, without heeding the occasional sugary reproof of Dame
+      Hinkley, which bade them &ldquo;let Brother Stevens be;&rdquo; and, already had
+      Brother Stevens himself, ventured upon the use of sundry grave saws from
+      the holy volume, the fruit of early reading and a retentive memory, which
+      not a little helped to maintain his novel pretensions in the mind of the
+      brethren, and the worthy teacher, John Cross himself. All things promised
+      a long duration to a friendship suddenly begun; when William Hinkley, the
+      younger, a youth already introduced to the reader, made his appearance
+      within the happy circle. He wore a different aspect from all the rest as
+      he recognised in the person of Brother Stevens, the handsome stranger, his
+      antipathy to whom, at a first glance, months before, seemed almost to have
+      the character of a warning instinct. A nearer glance did not serve to
+      lessen his hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our traveller was to the eye of a lover, one, indeed, who promised
+      dangerous rivalship, and an intrepid air of confidence which, even his
+      assumed character could not enable him to disguise from the searching eyes
+      of jealousy, contributed to strengthen the dislike of the youth for a
+      person who seemed so perfectly sure of his ground. Still, William Hinkley
+      behaved as a civil and well-bred youth might be expected to behave. He did
+      not suffer his antipathy to put on the aspect of rudeness; he was grave
+      and cold, but respectful; and though he did not &ldquo;be-brother&rdquo; the stranger,
+      he yet studiously subdued his tones to mildness, when it became necessary,
+      in the course of the evening meal, that he should address him. Few words,
+      however, were exchanged between the parties. If Hinkley beheld an enemy to
+      his heart's hopes in Stevens, the latter was sufficiently well-read in the
+      human heart to discover quite as soon, that the rustic was prepared to see
+      in himself any character but that of a friend. The unwillingness with
+      which Hinkley heard his suggestions&mdash;the absence of all freedom and
+      ease in his deportment, toward himself, so different from the manner of
+      the youth when speaking or listening to all other persons; the occasional
+      gleam of jealous inquiry and doubt within his eye, and the utter lack of
+      all enthusiasm and warmth in his tones while he spoke to him, satisfied
+      Stevens, that he, of all the household of his hospitable entertainers, if
+      not actually suspicious of his true character, was the one whose
+      suspicions were those most easily to be awakened, and who of all others,
+      needed most to be guarded against. It will not increase our estimate of
+      the wisdom of the stranger, to learn that, with this conviction, he should
+      yet arrogate to himself a tone of superiority, while speaking in hearing
+      of the youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was shown in a manner that was particularly galling to a
+      high-spirited youth, and one whose prejudices were already awakened
+      against the speaker. It was that of a paternal and patronizing senior,
+      whose very gentleness and benignity of look and accent, seem to arise from
+      a full conviction of the vast difference which exists between himself and
+      his hearer. An indignity like this, which can not be resented, is one
+      which the young mind feels always most anxious to resent. The very
+      difficulties in the way of doing so, stimulates the desire. Such was the
+      feeling of William Hinkley. With such a feeling it may be conjectured that
+      opportunity was not long wanting, or might soon be made, for giving
+      utterance to the suppressed fires of anger which were struggling in his
+      heart. Days and weeks may elapse, but the antipathy will declare itself at
+      last. It would be easier to lock up the mountain torrent after the breath
+      of the tornado has torn away its rocky seals, than to stifle in the heart
+      that hates, because of its love, the fierce fury which these united
+      passions enkindle within it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first hour of their first interview, William Hinkley and Alfred
+      Stevens felt that they were mutual foes. In that little space of time, the
+      former had but one thought, which, though it changed its aspect with each
+      progressive moment, never for an instant changed its character. He panted
+      with the hope of redressing himself for wrongs which he could not name;
+      for injuries and indignities which he knew not how to describe. Stevens
+      had neither done nor said anything which might be construed into an
+      offence. And yet, nobody knew better than Stevens that he had been
+      offensive. The worthy John Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never
+      dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated in the
+      fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as
+      particularly favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of
+      such unctuous moral delivery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; he mused internally, &ldquo;this is a becoming instrument which I have
+      found, for the prosecution of the good work. He will bear the word like
+      one sent forth to conquer. He will bind and loose with a strong hand. He
+      will work wondrous things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not unlike these were the calculations of old Hinkley, as he hearkened to
+      the reverend reasonings and the solemn commonplaces of the stranger.
+      Stevens, like most recent converts, was the most uncompromising enemy of
+      those sins from which he professed to have achieved with difficulty his
+      own narrow escape; and finding, from the attentive ear of his audience,
+      that he had made a favorable impression, he proceeded to manufacture for
+      them his religious experience; an art which his general information, and
+      knowledge of the world enabled him to perform without much difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the puritan declamation which pleased all the rest, disgusted young
+      Hinkley, and increased his dislike for the declaimer. There was too much
+      of the worldling in the looks, dress, air, and manner of Stevens, to
+      satisfy the rustic of his sincerity. Something of his doubts had their
+      source, without question, in the antipathy which he had formed against
+      him; but William Hinkley was not without keen, quick, observing, and
+      justly discriminating faculties, and much of his conclusions were the due
+      consequence of a correct estimate of the peculiarities which we have
+      named. Stevens, he perceived, declared his experiences of religion, with
+      the air of one who expects the congratulations of his audience. The
+      humility which thinks only of the acquisition itself, as the very
+      perfection of human conquest, was wanting equally to his language and
+      deportment. The very details which he gave, were ostentatious; and the
+      gracious smiles which covered his lips as he concluded, were those of the
+      self-complacent person, who feels that he has just been saying those good
+      things, which, of necessity, must command the applause of his hearers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A decent pause of half an hour after the supper was finished, which was
+      spent by the jealous youth in utter silence, and he then rose abruptly and
+      hurried from the apartment, leaving the field entirely to his opponent. He
+      proceeded to the house of his neighbor and cousin, Ned Hinkley, but
+      without any hope of receiving comfort from his communion. Ned was a
+      lively, thoughtless, light-hearted son of the soil, who was very slow to
+      understand sorrows of any kind; and least of all, those which lie in the
+      fancy of a dreaming and a doubtful lover. At this moment, when the
+      possession of a new violin absorbed all his thoughts, his mind was
+      particularly obtuse on the subject of sentimental grievances, and the
+      almost voluptuous delight which filled his eyes when William entered his
+      chamber, entirely prevented him from seeing the heavy shadow which
+      overhung the brows of the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, back again, William? Why, you're as changeable as the last suit of
+      a green lizard. When I asked you to stop, and hear me play 'Cross-possum,'
+      and 'Criss-cross,' off you went without giving me a civil answer. I've a
+      mind now to put up the fiddle and send your ears to bed supperless. How
+      would you like that, old fellow? but I'll be good-natured. You shall have
+      it, though you don't deserve it; she's in prime tune, and the tones&mdash;only
+      hear that, Bill&mdash;there. Isn't she delicious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the inconsiderate cousin poured out his warmest eulogy of the
+      favorite instrument, his right hand flourished the bow in air, in a style
+      that would have cheered the heart of Jean Crapaud himself, and then
+      brought it over the cat-gut in a grand crash, that sounded as harshly in
+      the ears of his morbid visitor, as if the two worlds had suddenly come
+      together with steam-engine velocity. He clapped his hands upon the invaded
+      organs, and with something like horror in his voice, cried out his
+      expostulations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For heaven's sake, Ned, don't stun a body with your noise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noise! Did you say noise, Bill Hinkley&mdash;noise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, noise,&rdquo; answered the other with some peevishness in his accents. The
+      violinist looked at him incredulously, while he suffered the point of the
+      fiddle-bow to sink on a line with the floor; then, after a moment's pause,
+      he approached his companion, wearing in his face the while, an appearance
+      of the most grave inquiry, and when sufficiently nigh, he suddenly brought
+      the bow over the strings of the instrument, immediately in William's ears,
+      with a sharp and emphatic movement, producing an effect to which the
+      former annoying crash, might well have been thought a very gentle
+      effusion. This was followed by an uncontrollable burst of laughter from
+      the merry lips of the musician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&mdash;that's what I call a noise, Bill. Sweet Sall CAN make a noise
+      when I worry her into it; she's just like other women in that respect;
+      she'll be sure to squall out if you don't touch her just in the right
+      quarter. But the first time she did NOT go amiss, and as for stunning you&mdash;but
+      what's the matter? Where's the wind now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;only I don't want to be deafened with such a clatter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something's wrong, Bill, I know it. You look now for all the world like a
+      bottle of sour son, with the cork out, and ready to boil over. As for Sall
+      making a noise the first time, that's all a notion, and a very strange
+      one. She was as sweet-spoken then as she was when you left me before
+      supper. The last time, I confess, I made her squall out on purpose. But
+      what of that? you are not the man to get angry with a little fun!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not angry with you, Ned&mdash;I am not angry with anybody; but
+      just now, I would rather not hear the fiddle. Put it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; said the other good-naturedly, as he placed the favorite
+      instrument in its immemorial case in the corner. &ldquo;There; and now Bill,
+      untie the pack, and let's see the sort of wolf-cubs you've got to carry;
+      for there's no two horns to a wild bull, if something hasn't gored you
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're mistaken, Ned&mdash;quite mistaken&mdash;quite!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deuse a bit! I know you too well, Bill Hinkley, so it's no use to hush up
+      now. Out with it, and don't be sparing, and if there's any harm to come,
+      I'm here, just as ready to risk a cracked crown for you, as if the trouble
+      was my own. I'd rather fiddle than fight, it's true; but when there's any
+      need for it, you know I can do one just as well as the other; and can go
+      to it with just as much good humor. So show us the quarrel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no quarrel. Ned,&rdquo; said the other, softened by the frank and ready
+      feeling which his companion showed; &ldquo;but I'm very foolish in some things,
+      and don't know how it is. I'm not apt to take dislikes, but there's a man
+      come to our house with John Cross, this evening, that I somehow dislike
+      very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man! What's he like? Anything like Joe Richards? That was a fellow that
+      I hated mightily. I never longed to lick any man but Joe Richards, and him
+      I longed to lick three times, though you know I never got at him more than
+      twice. It's a great pity he got drowned, for I owe him a third licking,
+      and don't feel altogether right, since I know no sort of way to pay it.
+      But if this man's anything like Joe, it may be just the same if I give it
+      to HIM. Now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's nothing like Richards,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;He's a taller and
+      better-looking man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he's nothing like Joe, what do you want to lick him for?&rdquo; said the
+      single-minded musician, with a surprise in his manner, which was mingled
+      with something like rebuke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have expressed no such wish, Ned; you are too hasty; and if I did wish
+      to whip him, I don't think I should trouble you or any man to help me. If
+      I could not do it myself, I should give it up as a bad job, without
+      calling in assistants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you're a spunky follow&mdash;a real colt for hard riding,&rdquo; retorted
+      the other with a good-natured mock in his tones and looks; &ldquo;but if you
+      don't want to lick the fellow, how comes it you dislike him? It seems to
+      me if a chap behaved so as to make me dislike him, it wouldn't be an easy
+      matter to keep my hands off him. I'd teach him how to put me into a bad
+      humor, or I'd never touch violin again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This man's a parson, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A parson&mdash;that's a difficulty. It is not altogether right to lick
+      parsons, because they're not counted fighting people. But there's a mighty
+      many on 'em that licking would help. No wonder you dislike the fellow,
+      though if he comes with John Cross, he shouldn't be altogether so bad.
+      Now, John Cross IS a good man. He's good, and he's good-humored. He don't
+      try to set people's teeth on edge against all the pleasant things of this
+      world, and he can laugh, and talk, and sing, like other people. Many's the
+      time he's asked me, of his own mouth, to play the violin; and I've seen
+      his little eyes caper again, when sweet Sall talked out her funniest. If
+      it was not so late, I'd go over now and give him a reel or two, and then I
+      could take a look at this strange chap, that's set your grinders against
+      each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fiddler looked earnestly at the instrument in the corner, his features
+      plainly denoting his anxiety to resume the occupation which his friends
+      coming had so inopportunely interrupted. William Hinkley saw the looks of
+      his cousin, and divined the cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall play for me, Ned,&rdquo; he remarked; &ldquo;you shall give me that old
+      highland-reel that you learned from Scotch Geordie. It will put me out of
+      my bad humor, I think, and we can go to bed quietly. I've come to sleep
+      with you to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a good fellow, Bill; I knew that you couldn't stand it long, if
+      Sweet Sall kept a still tongue in her head. That reel's the very thing to
+      drive away bad humors, though there's another that I learnt from John
+      Blodget, the boat-man, that sounds to me the merriest and comicalest thing
+      in the world. It goes&mdash;,&rdquo; and here the fiddle was put in requisition
+      to produce the required sounds: and having got carte blanche, our
+      enthusiastic performer, without weariness, went through his whole
+      collection, without once perceiving that his comical and merry tunes had
+      entirely failed to change the grave, and even gloomy expression which
+      still mantled the face of his companion. It was only when in his
+      exhaustion he set down the instrument, that he became conscious of William
+      Hinkley's continued discomposure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Bill, the trouble has given you a bigger bite than I thought for.
+      What words did you have with the preacher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None: I don't know that he is a preacher. He speaks only as if he was
+      trying to become one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, you hadn't any difference&mdash;no quarrel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it's only to-night that you've seen him for the first time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A flush passed over the grave features of William Hinkley as he heard this
+      question, and it was with a hesitating manner and faltering accents, that
+      he contrived to tell his cousin of the brief glimpse which he had of the
+      same stranger several months before, on that occasion, when, in the
+      emotion of Margaret Cooper, replying to a similar question, he first felt
+      the incipient seed of jealousy planted within his bosom. But this latter
+      incident he forbore to reveal to the inquirer; and Ned Hinkley, though
+      certainly endowed by nature with sufficient skill to draw forth the very
+      soul of music from the instrument on which he played, had no similar power
+      upon the secret soul of the person whom he partially examined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But 'tis very strange how you should take offence at a man you've seen so
+      little; though I have heard before this of people taking dislikes at other
+      people the first moment they set eyes on 'em. Now, I'm not a person of
+      that sort, unless it was in the case of Joe Richards; and him I took a
+      sort of grudge at from the first beginning. But even then there was a sort
+      of reason for it; for, at the beginning, when Joe came down upon us here
+      in Charlemont, he was for riding over people's necks, without so much as
+      asking, 'by your leave.' He had a way about him that vexed me, though we
+      did not change a word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it's that very way that this person has that I don't like,&rdquo; said
+      William Hinkley. &ldquo;He talks as if he made you, and when you talk, he smiles
+      as if he thought you were the very worst work that ever went out of his
+      hands. Then, if he has to say anything, be it ever so trifling, he says it
+      just as if he was telling you that the world was to come to an end the day
+      after to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the same with Joe Richards. I never could get at him but twice;
+      though I give him then a mighty smart hammering; and if he hadn't got
+      under the broadhorn and got drowned;&mdash;but this fellow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll see him at church to-morrow. I shouldn't wonder if he preaches;
+      for John Cross was at him about it before I came away. What's worse, the
+      old man's been asking him to live with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, here in Charlemont?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be sure to lick him then, if he's anything like Joe Richards. But
+      what's to make him live in Charlemont? Is he to be a preacher for us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps so, but I couldn't understand all, for I came in while they were
+      at it, and left home before they were done. I'm sure if he stays there I
+      shall not. I shall leave home, for I really dislike to meet him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall stay with me, Bill, and we'll have Sall at all hours,&rdquo; was the
+      hearty speech of the cousin, as he threw his arms around the neck of his
+      morose companion, and dragged him gently toward the adjoining apartment,
+      which formed his chamber. &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;as you say, we'll
+      see this chap, and if he's anything like Joe Richards&mdash;&rdquo; The doubled
+      fist of the speaker, and his threatening visage, completed the sentence
+      with which this present conference and chapter may very well conclude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; THE TOAD ON THE ALTAR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day was the sabbath. John Cross had timed his arrival at the
+      village with a due reference to his duties, and after a minute calculation
+      of days and distances, so that his spiritual manna might be distributed in
+      equal proportions among his hungering flock. His arrival made itself felt
+      accordingly, not simply in Charlemont, but throughout the surrounding
+      country for a circuit of ten miles or more. There was a large and hopeful
+      gathering of all sorts and sexes, white and black, old and young.
+      Charlemont had a very pretty little church of its own; but one, and that,
+      with more true Christianity than is found commonly in this world of
+      pretence and little tolerance, was open to preachers of all denominations.
+      The word of God, among these simple folks, was quite too important to make
+      them scruple at receiving it from the lips of either Geneva, Rome, or
+      Canterbury. The church stood out among the hills at a little distance
+      from, but in sight of the village; a small, neat Grecian-like temple,
+      glimmering white and saintlike through solemn visaged groves, and gaudy
+      green foliage. The old trees about it were all kept neatly trimmed, the
+      brush pruned away and cleared up, and a smooth sweet sward, lawn-like,
+      surrounded it, such as children love to skip and scramble over, and older
+      children rest at length upon, in pairs, talking over their sweet silly
+      affections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surrounded by an admiring crowd, each of whom had his respectful
+      salutation, we see our friend John Cross toward noon approaching the
+      sacred dwelling. Truly he was the most simple, fraternal of all God's
+      creatures. He had a good word for this, an affectionate inquiry for that,
+      a benevolent smile, and a kind pressure of the hand for all. He was a man
+      to do good, for everybody saw that he thought for others before himself,
+      and sincerity and earnestness constitute, with the necessary degree of
+      talent, the grand secrets for making successful teachers in every
+      department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though a simple, unsophisticated, unsuspecting creature, John Cross was a
+      man of very excellent natural endowments. He chose for his text a passage
+      of the Scriptures which admitted of a direct practical application to the
+      concerns of the people, their daily wants, their pressing interests,
+      moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled to preach a discourse which
+      sent home many of his congregation much wiser than they came, if only in
+      reference to their homely duties of farmstead and family. John Cross was
+      none of those sorry and self-constituted representatives of our eternal
+      interests, who deluge us with a vain, worthless declamation, proving that
+      virtue is a very good thing, religion a very commendable virtue, and a
+      liberal contribution to the church-box at the close of the sermon one of
+      the most decided proofs that we have this virtue in perfection. Nay, it is
+      somewhat doubtful, indeed, if he ever once alluded to the state of his own
+      scrip and the treasury of the church. His faith, sincere, spontaneous,
+      ardent, left him in very little doubt that the Lord will provide, for is
+      he not called &ldquo;Jehovah-Jireh?&rdquo;&mdash;and his faith was strengthened and
+      confirmed by the experience of his whole life. But then John Cross had few
+      wants&mdash;few, almost none! In this respect he resembled the first
+      apostles. The necessities of life once cared for, never was mortal man
+      more thoroughly independent of the world. He was not one of those fine
+      preachers who, dealing out counsels of self-denial, in grave saws and
+      solemn maxims, with wondrous grim visage and a most slow, lugubrious
+      shaking of the head&mdash;are yet always religiously careful to secure the
+      warmest seat by the fireside, and the best buttered bun on table. He
+      taught no doctrine which he did not practise; and as for consideration&mdash;that
+      test at once of the religionist and the gentleman&mdash;he was as humbly
+      solicitous of the claims and feelings of others, as the lovely and lowly
+      child to whom reverence has been well taught as the true beginning,
+      equally of politeness and religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before going into church he urged his protege, Stevens, to consent to
+      share in the ceremonies of the service as a layman; but there was still
+      some saving virtue in the young man, which made him resolute in refusing
+      to do so. Perhaps, his refusal was dictated by a policy like that which
+      had governed him so far already; which made him reluctant to commit
+      himself to a degree which might increase very much the hazards of
+      detection. He feared, indeed, the restraints which the unequivocal
+      adoption of the profession would impose upon him, fettering somewhat the
+      freedom of his intercourse with the young of both sexes, and,
+      consequently, opposing an almost insurmountable barrier to the prevailing
+      object which had brought him to the village. Whatever may have been the
+      feelings or motives which governed him, they, at least, saved him from an
+      act which would have grievously aggravated his already large offence
+      against truth and propriety. He declined, in language of the old
+      hypocrisy. He did not feel justified in taking up the cross&mdash;he felt
+      that he was not yet worthy; and, among the members of a church, which
+      takes largely into account the momentary impulses and impressions of the
+      professor, the plea was considered a sufficiently legitimate one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though Stevens forbore to commit himself openly in the cause which he
+      professed a desire to espouse, he was yet sufficiently heedful to maintain
+      all those externals of devotion which a serious believer would be apt to
+      exhibit. He could be a good actor of a part, and in this lay his best
+      talent. He had that saving wisdom of the worldling, which is too often
+      estimated beyond its worth, called cunning; and the frequent successes of
+      which produces that worst of all the diseases that ever impaired the value
+      of true greatness&mdash;conceit. Alfred Stevens fancied that he could do
+      everything, and this fancy produced in him the appearance of a courage
+      which his moral nature never possessed. He had the audacity which results
+      from presumption, not the wholesome strength which comes from the
+      conscious possession of a right purpose. But a truce to our metaphysics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never did saint wear the aspect of such supernatural devotion. He knelt
+      with the first, groaned audibly at intervals, and when his face became
+      visible, his eyes were strained in upward glances, so that the spectator
+      could behold little more in their orbs than a sea of white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! what a blessed young man!&rdquo; said Mrs. Quackenbosh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How I wish it was he that was to preach for us to-day,&rdquo; responded that
+      gem from the antique, Miss Polly Entwistle, who had joined every church in
+      Kentucky in turn, without having been made a spouse in either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How handsome he is!&rdquo; simpered Miss Julia Evergreen&mdash;a damsel of
+      seventeen, upon whom the bilious eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast with
+      such an expression as the devil is said to put on when suddenly soused in
+      holy water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Handsome is that handsome does!&rdquo; was the commentary of a venerable
+      cormorant to whom Brother Cross had always appeared the special and
+      accepted agent of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I wonder if he believes
+      in the new-light doctrine?&rdquo; purred one of the ancient tabbies of the
+      conventicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The new light is but the old darkness, Sister Widgeon,&rdquo; responded an old
+      farmer of sixty four, who had divided his time so equally between the
+      plough and the prayer-book, that his body had grown as crooked as the one,
+      while his mind was bewildered with as many doctrines as ever worried all
+      sense out of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall not suffer these to divert us, any more than Stevens permitted
+      their speculations upon his person and religion to affect his devotion. He
+      looked neither to the right nor to the left while entering the church, or
+      engaging in the ceremonies. No errant glances were permitted to betray to
+      the audience a mind wandering from the obvious duties before it; and yet
+      Alfred Stevens knew just as well that every eye in the congregation was
+      fixed upon him, as that he was himself there; and among those eyes, his
+      own keen glance had already discovered those of that one for whom all
+      these labors of hypocrisy were undertaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper sat on the opposite side of the church, but the line of
+      vision was uninterrupted between them, and when&mdash;though very
+      unfrequently&mdash;Stevens suffered his gaze to rest upon her form, it was
+      with a sudden look of pleased abstraction, as if, in spite of himself, his
+      mind was irresistibly drawn away from all recollection, of its immediate
+      duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a word is sufficient for the wise, a look answers an equal purpose with
+      the vain. Margaret Cooper left the church that morning with a pleased
+      conviction that the handsome stranger had already paid his devotion to her
+      charms. There was yet another passion to be gratified. The restless
+      ambition of her foolish heart whispered to her momently, that if her
+      person had done so much, what might she not hope to achieve when the
+      treasures of her mind were known. She had long since made the comparison
+      of her own intellect with that of every other maiden in the village, and
+      she flattered herself that before many days, the young stranger should
+      make it too. Her vain heart was rapidly preparing to smooth the path of
+      the enemy and make his conquests easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not the women only, by whom the deportment of Alfred Stevens
+      was so closely watched. The eyes of suspicion and jealousy were upon him.
+      The two young men whose interview formed the conclusion of our last
+      chapter, scanned his conduct and carriage with sufficient keenness of
+      scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what, Bill Hinkley,&rdquo; said his cousin, &ldquo;this fellow, to my
+      thinking, is a very great rascal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think so?&rdquo; demanded the former, with slow, dissatisfied
+      accents; &ldquo;he seems to pray very earnestly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the very reason I think him a rascal. His praying seems to me very
+      unnatural. Here, he's a perfect stranger in the place, yet he never shows
+      any curiosity to see the people. He never once looks around him. He walks
+      to the church with his eye cast upon the ground, and sometimes he squints
+      to this side and sometimes to that, but he seems to do it slyly, and seems
+      to take pains that nobody should see him doing, it. All this might answer
+      for an old man, who&mdash;believes that everything is vanity&mdash;as,
+      indeed, everything must seem to old people; but to a young fellow, full of
+      blood, who eats well, drinks well, sleeps well, and should naturally have
+      a hankering after a young girl, all this is against nature. Now, what's
+      against nature is wrong, and there's wrong at the bottom of it. Youth is
+      the time to laugh, dance, sing, play on the violin, and always have a
+      sweetheart when it can find one. If you can't get a beauty take a brown;
+      and if Mary won't smile, Susan will. But always have a sweetheart; always
+      be ready for fun and frolic; that's the way for the young, and when they
+      don't take these ways, it's unnatural&mdash;there's something wrong about
+      it, and I'm suspicious of THAT person. Now, I just have this notion of the
+      young stranger. He's after no good. I reckon he's like a hundred others;
+      too lazy to go to work, he goes to preaching, and learns in the first
+      sermon to beg hard for the missionaries. I'll lick him, Bill, to a
+      certainty, if he gives me the littlest end of an opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw, Ned, don't think of such a thing. You are quite too fond of
+      licking people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deuse a bit. It does 'em good. Look you, this chap is monstrous like Joe
+      Richards. I'll have to lick him on that account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're mad, Ned; talk of whipping a preacher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's no preacher yet,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;but if I lick him he may become
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter, he's never offended you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, but he will. I see it in the fellow's looks. I never was mistaken in
+      a fellow's looks in all my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till he does offend you then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm willing to do that, for I know the time will come. I'm always
+      sure, when I first see a man, to know whether I'll have to flog him or
+      not. There's a something that tells me so. Isn't that very singular,
+      Bill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! you form a prejudice against a man, fancy that you ought to whip him,
+      and then never rest till you've done so. You'll find your match some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you think some other chap will fancy he ought to whip me? Well&mdash;maybe
+      so. But this ain't the fellow to do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a stout man, and I reckon strong. Besides, Ned, he's very handsome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Handsome! Lord, Bill, what a taste you have? How can a man be called
+      handsome that never altogether opens his eyes, except when he turns up the
+      whites until you'd think he'd never be able to get the balls back to their
+      proper place? Then, what a chin he has&mdash;as sharp as a pitchfork, and
+      who but a girl child would fancy a man with his hair combed sleek like a
+      woman's on each side of his ears, with big whiskers at the same time that
+      looks for all the world like the brush of a seven years running fox,
+      Handsome! If my pup 'Dragon' was only half so much like a beast, I'd plump
+      him into the horsepond!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that Ned Hinkley did not altogether think of the stranger
+      as he expressed himself. But he saw how deep a hold his appearance had
+      taken, in an adverse way, upon the mind and feelings of his relative and
+      friend, and his rude, but well-meant endeavors were intended to console
+      his companion, after his own fashion, by the exhibition of a certain
+      degree of sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His efforts, however well intended, did not produce any serious effect.
+      William Hinkley, though he forbore the subject, and every expression which
+      might indicate either soreness or apprehension, was still the victim of
+      that presentiment which had touched him on the very first appearance of
+      the stranger. He felt more than ever apprehensive on the score of his
+      misplaced affections. While his cousin had been watching the stranger, HIS
+      eyes had been fixed upon those of Margaret Cooper, and his fears were
+      increased and strengthened, as he perceived that she was quite too much
+      absorbed in other thoughts and objects to behold for an instant the close
+      espionage which he maintained upon her person. His heart sunk within him,
+      as he beheld how bold was her look, and how undisguised the admiration
+      which it expressed for the handsome stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will go home with me, William?&rdquo; said the cousin, The other hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said he, after a moment's pause, &ldquo;I should rather go to my own
+      home. It is a sort of weakness to let a stranger drive a man off from his
+      own family, and though I somehow dislike this person's looks, and am very
+      sorry that John Cross brought him to our house, yet I shouldn't let a
+      prejudice which seems to have no good foundation take such possession of
+      my mind. I will go home, Ned, and see&mdash;perhaps I may come to like the
+      stranger more when I know him better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll never like him. I see it in the fellow's eye; but just as you
+      please about going nome. You're right in one thing&mdash;never to give up
+      your own dunghill, so long as you can get room on it for a fair fling with
+      your enemy. Besides, you can see better, by going home, what the chap's
+      after. I don't see why he should come here to learn to preach. We can't
+      support a preacher. We don't want one. He could just as well have learned
+      his business, where he came from.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words the cousins separated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Ned Hinkley as he took his own way homeward, in a deeper fit
+      of abstraction than was altogether usual with him, &ldquo;now will Bill Hinkley
+      beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's too late to do
+      anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and mealy-mouthed with the
+      man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody.&mdash;quite too soft-hearted and
+      too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody knows, just like some crow
+      from another corn-field, that'll pick up his provisions from under his
+      very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder until there's no use in trying.
+      If I don't push in and help him, he'll not help himself. As for Margaret
+      Cooper, dang it, I'll court her for him myself. If he's afraid to pop the
+      question, I ain't; though I'll have to be mighty careful about the words I
+      use, or she'll be thinking I come on my own hook; and that would be a
+      mighty scary sort of business all round the house. Then this stranger. If
+      anybody can look through a stranger here in Charlemont, I reckon I'm that
+      man. I suspect him already. I think he's after no good with his great
+      religioning; and I'll tie such a pair of eyes to his heels, that his
+      understanding will never be entirely out of my sight. I'll find him out if
+      anybody can. But I won't lick him till I do. That wouldn't be altogether
+      right, considering he's to be a parson, though I doubt he'll never make
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And thus, with a head filled with cares of a fashion altogether new, the
+      sturdy young Kentuckian moved homeward with a degree of abstraction in his
+      countenance which was not among the smallest wonders of the day and place
+      in the estimation of his friends and neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, the work of mischief was in full progress. Everybody knows the
+      degree of familiarity which exists among all classes in a country-village,
+      particularly when the parties are brought together under the social and
+      stimulating influences of religion. It was natural that the pastor, long
+      known and well beloved, should be surrounded by his flock as he descended
+      from the pulpit. The old ladies always have a saving interest in his
+      presence, and they pave the way for the young ones. Alfred Stevens, as the
+      protege of John Cross, naturally attended his footsteps, and was
+      introduced by him to the little congregation, which had mostly remained to
+      do honor to the preacher. Of these, not last, nor least, was the widow
+      Cooper; and, unreluctant by her side, though in silence, and not without a
+      degree of emotion, which she yet was able to conceal, stood her fair but
+      proud-hearted daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret, alas! Margaret stood there with a heart more proud, yet more
+      humble, than ever. Proud in the consciousness of a new conquest&mdash;humble
+      in the feeling that this conquest had not been made, but at the expense of
+      some portion of her own independence. Hitherto, her suitors had awakened
+      no other feeling in her heart but vanity. Now, she felt no longer able to
+      sail on, &ldquo;imperial arbitress,&rdquo; smiling at woes which she could inflict,
+      but never share. That instinct, which, in the heart of young Hinkley had
+      produced fear, if not antipathy, had been as active in her case, though
+      with a very different result. The first glimpse which she had of the
+      handsome stranger, months before, had impressed her with a singular
+      emotion; and now that he was returned, she could not divest herself of the
+      thought that his return was a consequence of that one glimpse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a keener judgment than belonged to her neighbors, she too had some
+      suspicions that religion was scarcely the prevailing motive which had
+      brought the youth back to their little village; for how could she
+      reconcile with his present demure gravity and devout profession, the
+      daring which he had shown in riding back to behold her a second time? That
+      such had been his motive she divined by her own feeling of curiosity, and
+      the instincts of vanity were prompt enough to believe that this was motive
+      sufficient to bring him back once more, and under the guise of a
+      character, which would the readiest secure an easy entrance to society.
+      Pleased with the fancy that she herself was the object sought, she did not
+      perceive how enormous was the sort of deception which the stranger had
+      employed to attain the end desired. With all her intellect she had not the
+      wisdom to suspect that he who could so readily practise so bold an
+      hypocrisy, was capable of the worst performances; and when their names
+      were mentioned, and his eyes were permitted to meet and mingle their
+      glances with hers, she was conscious of nothing farther than a fluttering
+      sentiment of pleasure, which was amply declared to the stranger, in the
+      flash of animation which spoke openly in her countenance; eye speaking to
+      lip and cheek, and these, in turn, responding with a kindred sentiment to
+      the already tell-tale eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley, from a little distance, beheld this meeting. He had
+      lingered with the curiosity which belongs to the natural apprehension of
+      the lover. He saw them approach&mdash;nay, fancied he beheld the mutual
+      expression of their sympathizing eyes, and he turned away, and hurried
+      homeward, with the feeling of a heart already overborne, and defrauded in
+      all its hopes and expectations. The flowers were threatened with blight in
+      his Eden: but he did not conjecture, poor fellow, that a serpent had
+      indeed entered it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; THE GOOD YOUNG MAN IN MEDITATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, it may be assumed, with tolerable safety, that no first villany
+      is ever entirely deliberate. There is something in events to give it
+      direction&mdash;something to egg it on&mdash;to point out time, place, and
+      opportunity. Of course, it is to be understood that the actor is one, in
+      the first place, wanting in the moral sense. What we simply mean to affirm
+      is, that the particular, single act, is, in few instances, deliberately
+      meditated from the beginning. We very much incline to think that some one
+      event, which we ordinarily refer to the chapter of accidents, has first
+      set the mind to work upon schemes, which would otherwise, perhaps, never
+      be thought of at all. Thus, we find persons who continue very good people,
+      as the world goes, until middle age, or even seniority; then, suddenly
+      breaking out into some enormous offence against decency and society, which
+      startles the whole pious neighborhood. Folks start up, with outstretched
+      hands and staring eyes, and cry aloud:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord bless us, who would have thought so good a man could be so bad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He, poor devil, never fancied it himself, till he became so, and it was
+      quite too late to alter his arrangements. Perhaps his neighbors may have
+      had some share in making him so. Pious persons are very frequently reduced
+      to these straits by having the temptation forced too much upon them. Flesh
+      and blood can not always withstand the provocation of earthly delicacies,
+      even where the spirit is a tolerably stout one; and of the inadequacy of
+      the mind, always to contend with the inclinations of the flesh, have we
+      not a caution in that injunction of Holy Book which warns us to fly from
+      temptation? But lame people can not fly, and he is most certainly lame who
+      halts upon mere feet of circumstances. Such people are always in danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Alfred Stevens, properly brought up, from the beginning, at some
+      theological seminary, would have been&mdash;though in moral respects
+      pretty much the same person&mdash;yet in the eye of the world a far less
+      criminal man. Not that his desires would have been a jot more innocent,
+      but they would have taken a different direction. Instead of the
+      recklessness of course, such as seems to have distinguished the conduct of
+      our present subject&mdash;instead of his loose indulgences&mdash;his
+      smart, licentious speeches&mdash;the sheep's-eye glances, right and left,
+      which he was but too prone to bestow, without prudence or precaution,
+      whenever he walked among the fair sisters&mdash;he, the said Alfred, would
+      have taken counsel of a more worldly policy, which is yet popularly
+      considered a more pious one. He would have kept his eyes from wandering to
+      and fro; he would have held his blood in subjection. Patient as a fox on a
+      long scent in autumn, he would have kept himself lean and circumspect,
+      until, through the help of lugubrious prayer and lantern visage, he could
+      have beguiled into matrimony some one feminine member of the flock&mdash;not
+      always fair&mdash;whose worldly goods would have sufficed in full
+      atonement for all those circumspect, self-imposed restraints, which we
+      find usually so well rewarded. But Alfred Stevens was not a man of this
+      pious temper. It is evident, from his present course, that he had some
+      inkling of the MODUS OPERANDI; but all his knowledge fell short of that
+      saving wisdom which would have defrauded the social world of one of its
+      moral earthquakes, and possibly deprived the survivors of the present
+      moral story&mdash;for moral it is, though our hero is not exactly so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be doing our subject and our theory equal injustice if we were to
+      suppose that he had any fixed purpose, known to himself, when he borrowed
+      the professional garment, and began to talk with the worthy John Cross in
+      the language of theology, and with the tongue of a hypocrite. He designed
+      to visit Charlemont&mdash;that was all&mdash;as he had really been
+      impressed by the commanding figure and noble expression of beauty of that
+      young damsel whom he had encountered by the roadside. Even this
+      impression, however, would have been suffered to escape from his mind, had
+      it not been so perfectly convenient to revisit the spot, on his return to
+      his usual place of residence. During the summer, Charlemont and its rustic
+      attractions had been the frequent subject of a conversation, running into
+      discussion, between himself and the amiable old man, his uncle. The latter
+      repeatedly urged upon his nephew to make the visit; fondly conceiving that
+      a nearer acquaintance with the pleasant spot which had so won upon his own
+      affections, would be productive of a like effect upon his nephew. Alas,
+      how little did he know the mischief he was doing!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the very idleness of mood&mdash;with just that degree of curiosity
+      which prompts one to turn about and look a second time&mdash;Alfred
+      Stevens resumed the route which included Charlemont. But the devil had, by
+      this time, found his way into the meditations of the youth, and lay
+      lurking, unknown to himself, perhaps, at the bottom of this same
+      curiosity. The look of pride and defiance which Margaret Cooper had
+      betrayed, when the bold youth rode back to steal a second glance at her
+      matchless person, was equivalent to an equally bold challenge; and his
+      vanity hastily picked up the gauntlet which hers had thrown down. He
+      wished to see the damsel again&mdash;to see if she WAS so beautiful&mdash;if
+      she did, indeed, possess that intellectual strength and vivacity which
+      flashed out so suddenly and with so much splendor from beneath her long,
+      dark eye-lashes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this mood he met with John Cross; and the simplicity of that worthy
+      creature offered another challenge, not less provoking than the former, to
+      the levity and love of mischief which also actively predominated in the
+      bosom of the youth. Fond of a malicious sort of fun, and ever on the
+      look-out for subjects of quizzing, it was in compliance with a purely
+      habitual movement of his mind that he conjured up that false, glozing
+      story of his religious inclinations, which had so easily imposed upon the
+      unsuspecting preacher. Never was proceeding less premeditated, or so
+      completely the result of an after-thought, than this; and now that it had
+      proved so perfectly successful&mdash;now that he found himself admitted
+      into the very heart of the little village, and into the bosoms of the
+      people&mdash;he began, for the first time, to feel the awkwardness of the
+      situation in which he had placed himself, and the responsibilities, if not
+      dangers, to which it subjected him. To play the part of a mere preacher&mdash;to
+      talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype phraseology of the
+      profession&mdash;was no difficult matter to a clever young lawyer of the
+      West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as profoundly
+      familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself. But there was
+      something awkward in the idea of detection, and he was not unaware of
+      those summary dangers which are likely to follow, in those wild frontier
+      regions, from the discovery of so doubtful a personage as &ldquo;Bro' Wolf&rdquo; in
+      the clothing of a more innocent animal. Chief-Justice Lynch is a sacred
+      authority in those parts; and, in such a case as his, Alfred Stevens did
+      not doubt that the church itself would feel it only becoming to provide
+      another sort of garment for the offender, which, whether pleasant or not,
+      would at least be likely to stick more closely, and prove less comfortably
+      warm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, once in, there was no help but to play out the game as it had been
+      begun. Villagers are seldom very sagacious people, and elegant strangers
+      are quite too much esteemed among them to make them very particular in
+      knowing the whys and wherefores about them&mdash;whence they come, what
+      they do, and whither they propose to go. Stevens had only to preserve his
+      countenance and a due degree of caution, and the rest was easy. He had no
+      reason to suppose himself an object of suspicion to anybody; and should he
+      become so, nothing was more easy than to take his departure with
+      sufficient promptness, and without unnecessarily soliciting the prayers of
+      the church in behalf of the hurried traveller! At all events, he could
+      lose nothing by the visit: perhaps something might be gained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was that something? Behold him in his chamber, preparing to ask and
+      to answer this question for himself. The sabbath-day is finally over. He
+      has been almost the lion of the day. We say almost, for the worthy John
+      Cross could not easily be deprived, by any rivalry, of the loyal regards
+      of his old parishioners. But, though the latter had most friends, the
+      stranger, Alfred Stevens, had had most followers. All were anxious to know
+      him&mdash;the young, in particular, maidens and men; and the grave old
+      dames would have given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to have
+      heard him discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in his
+      profound, devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has shaken
+      hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and feeling
+      with but one only&mdash;and that one!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of her he thinks in his chamber&mdash;his quiet, snug, little chamber&mdash;a
+      mere closet, looking out upon a long garden-slip, in which he sees,
+      without much heeding them, long lanes of culinary cabbage, and tracts of
+      other growing and decaying vegetation, in which his interest is quite too
+      small to make it needful that he should even ask its separate names. His
+      chin rests upon his hands with an air of meditation; and gradually his
+      thoughts rise up in soliloquy, which is suffered to invade no ear but
+      ours:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! who'd have thought it? a parson!&mdash;devilish good indeed! How it
+      will tell at Murkey's! What a metamorphose! if it don't stagger 'em,
+      nothing will! It's the best thing I've done yet! I shall have to do it
+      over a hundred times, and must get up a sermon or two beforehand, and
+      swear that I preached them&mdash;and, egad! I may have to do it yet before
+      I'm done&mdash;ha! ha! ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The laughter was a quiet chuckle, not to be heard by vulgar ears; it
+      subsided in the gorges of his throat. The idea of really getting up a
+      sermon tickled him. He muttered over texts, all that he could remember;
+      and proceeded to turn over the phrases for an introduction, such as,
+      unctuous with good things in high degree, he fancied would be particularly
+      commendable to his unsuspecting hearers. Alfred Stevens had no small
+      talent for imitation, he derived a quiet sort of pleasure, on the present
+      occasion, from its indulgence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have made a famous parson, and, if all trades fail, may yet.
+      But, now that I am here, what's to come of it? It's not so hard to put on
+      a long face, and prose in scripture dialect; but, cui bono? Let me see&mdash;hem!
+      The girl is pretty, devilish pretty&mdash;with such an eye, and looks so!
+      There's soul in the wench&mdash;life&mdash;and a passion that speaks out
+      in every glance and movement. A very Cressid, with a cross of Corinne!
+      Should she be like her of Troy? At all events, it can do no harm to see
+      what she's made of!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must manage warily. I have something to lose in the business.
+      Frankfort is but fifty miles from Charlemont&mdash;fifty miles&mdash;and
+      there's Ellisland, but fourteen. Fourteen!&mdash;an easy afternoon ride.
+      That way it must be done. Ellisland shall be my post-town. I can gallop
+      there in an afternoon, drop and receive my letters, and be back by a
+      round-about which shall effectually baffle inquiry. A week or two will be
+      enough. I shall see, by that time, what can be done with her; though
+      still, cautiously, Parson Stevens!&mdash;cautiously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The farther cogitations of Stevens were subordinate to these, but of the
+      same family complexion. They were such as to keep him wakeful. The Bible
+      which had been placed upon his table, by the considerate providence of his
+      hostess, lay there unopened; though, more than once, he lifted the cover
+      of the sacred volume, letting it fall again suddenly, as if with a
+      shrinking consciousness that such thoughts as at that moment filled his
+      mind were scarcely consistent with the employment, in any degree, of such
+      a companion. Finally, he undressed and went to bed. The hour had become
+      very late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good young man,&rdquo; muttered worthy Mrs. Hinkley to her drowsy spouse, in
+      the apartment below, as she heard the movements of her guest-&ldquo;good young
+      man, he's just now going to bed. He's been studying all this while. I
+      reckon Brother Cross has been sound this hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The light from Stevens's window glimmered out over the cabbage-garden, and
+      was seen by many an ancient dame as she prepared for her own slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good young man,&rdquo; said they all with one accord. &ldquo;I reckon he's at the
+      Bible now. Oh! he'll be a blessed laborer in the vineyard, I promise you,
+      when Brother Cross is taken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it were not for the cursed bore of keeping up the farce beyond the
+      possibility of keeping up the fun, such a rig as this would be
+      incomparably pleasant; but&rdquo;&mdash;yawning&mdash;&ldquo;that's the devil! I get
+      monstrous tired of a joke that needs dry nursing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the last muttered words of Parson Stevens before he yielded
+      himself up to his slumbers. Good young man&mdash;charitable old ladies&mdash;gullible
+      enough, if not charitable! But the professions need such people, and we
+      must not quarrel with them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; PAROCHIAL PERFORMANCES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The poor, conceited blackguards of this ungracious earth have a fancy that
+      there must be huge confusion and a mighty bobbery in nature, corresponding
+      with that which is for ever going on in their own little spheres. If we
+      have a toothache, we look for a change of weather; our rheumatism is a
+      sure sign that God has made his arrangements to give us a slapping rain;
+      and, should the white bull or the brown heifer die, look out for hail, or
+      thunderstorm, at least, as a forerunner of the event. Nothing less can
+      possibly console or satisfy us for such a most unaccountable, not to say
+      unnatural and unwarrantable, a dispensation. The poets have ministered
+      largely to this vanity on the part of mankind. Shakspere is constantly at
+      it, and Ben Jonson, and all the dramatists. Not a butcher, in the whole
+      long line of the butchering Caesars, from Augustus down, but, according to
+      them, died in a sort of gloom glory, resulting from the explosion of
+      innumerable stars and rockets, and the apparitions of as many comets!
+      &ldquo;Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,&rdquo; invariably announce the coming
+      stroke of fate; and five or seven moons of a night have suddenly arisen to
+      warn some miserable sublunarian that orders had been issued that there
+      should be no moon for him that quarter, or, in military and more precise
+      phrase, that he should have no &ldquo;quarters&rdquo; during that moon. Even our
+      venerable and stern old puritan saint, Milton&mdash;he who was blessed
+      with the blindness of his earthly eye, that he should be more perfectly
+      enabled to contemplate the Deity within&mdash;has given way to this
+      superstition when he subjects universal nature to an earthquake because
+      Adam's wife followed the counsels of the snake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pretty condition of things it would be, if stars, suns, and systems,
+      were to shoot madly from their spheres on such occasions! Well might the
+      devil laugh if such were the case! How he would chuckle to behold globes
+      and seas, and empires, fall into such irreverend antics because some poor
+      earthling, be he kingling or common sodling, goes into desuetude, either
+      by the operation of natural laws, or the sharp application of steel or
+      shot! Verily, it makes precious little difference to the Great Reaper, by
+      what process we finally become harvested. He is sure of us, though no
+      graves gape, no stars fall, no comets rush out, like young colts from
+      their stables, flinging their tails into the faces of the more sober and
+      pacific brotherhood of lights. But, denied the satisfaction of chuckling
+      at such sights as these, his satanic majesty chuckles not the less at the
+      human vanity which looks for them. Nay, he himself is very likely to
+      suggest this vanity. It is one of his forms of temptation&mdash;one of his
+      manoeuvres; and we take leave, by way of warning, to hint to those worthy
+      people, who judge of to-morrow's providence by the corns of their great
+      toe, or their periodical lumbago, or the shooting of their warts, or the
+      pricking of their palms, that it is in truth the devil which is at the
+      bottom of all this, and that the Deity has nothing to do in the business.
+      It is the devil instilling his vanities into the human heart, in that form
+      which he thinks least likely to prove offensive, or rouse suspicion. The
+      devil is most active in your affairs, Mrs. Thompson, the moment you
+      imagine that there must be a revolution on your account in the universal
+      laws of nature. At such a moment your best policy will be to have blood
+      let, take physic, and go with all diligence to your prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no sort of warning on the part of the natural to the moral
+      world, on the day when Alfred Stevens set forth with the worthy John
+      Cross, to visit the flock of the latter. There was not a lovelier morning
+      in the whole calendar. The sun was alone in heaven, without a cloud; and
+      on earth, the people in and about Charlemont, having been to church only
+      the day before, necessarily made their appearance everywhere with
+      petticoats and pantaloons tolerably clean and unrumpled. Cabbages had not
+      yet been frost-bitten. Autumn had dressed up her children in the garments
+      of beauty, preparatory to their funeral. There was a good crop of grain
+      that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all &ldquo;looking-up,&rdquo;
+       in the language of the prices current. This was long before the time when
+      Mr. M&mdash;&mdash; made his famous gammon speeches; but the people had a
+      presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful anticipations
+      of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river. The signs were all
+      and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning to chink his
+      money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were about to be
+      established; old things were about to fleet and disappear; all things were
+      becoming new; and the serpent entered Charlemont, and made his way among
+      the people thereof, without any signs of combustion, or overthrow, or
+      earthquake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a parson is,
+      to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes one day, and the
+      quarterly collector the next. He sits down with the &ldquo;gude wife&rdquo; in a
+      corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in precisely the same low tones
+      which cunning lovers are apt to use. If he knows any one art better than
+      another, it is that of finding his way to the affections of the female
+      part of his flock. A subdued tone of voice betrays a certain deference for
+      the party addressed. The lady is pleased with such a preliminary. She is
+      flattered again by the pains he takes in behalf of her eternal interests;
+      she is pretty sure he takes no such pains with any of her neighbors. It is
+      a sign that he thinks her soul the most becoming little soul in the flock,
+      and when he goes away, she looks after him and sighs, and thinks him the
+      most blessed soul of a parson. The next week she is the first to get up a
+      subscription which she heads with her own name in connection with a sum
+      realized by stinting her son of his gingerbread money, in order to make
+      this excellent parson a life-member of the &ldquo;Zion African Bible and
+      Missionary Society, for disseminating the Word among the Heathen.&rdquo; The
+      same fifty dollars so appropriated, would have provided fuel for a month
+      to the starving poor of her own parish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Brother Cross gets no such windfalls. It is probable that he never
+      heard of such a thing, and that if he did, he would unhesitatingly cry
+      out, &ldquo;Humbug,&rdquo; at the first intimation of it. Besides, his voice was not
+      capable of that modulation which a young lover, or a city parson can give
+      it. Accustomed to cry aloud and spare not, he usually spoke as if there
+      were some marrow in his bones, and some vigor in his wind-bags. When he
+      came to see the good wife of his congregation, he gave her a hearty shake
+      of the hand, congratulated her as he found her at her spinning-wheel;
+      spoke with a hearty approbation, if he saw that her children were civil
+      and cleanly; if otherwise, he blazed out with proper boldness, by telling
+      her that all her praying and groaning, would avail nothing for her soul's
+      safety, so long as Jackey's breeches were unclean; and that the mother of
+      a rude and dirty child, was as sure of damnation, as if she never prayed
+      at all. He had no scruples about speaking the truth. He never looked about
+      him for the gentle, easy phrases, by which to distinguish the conduct
+      which he was compelled to condemn. He knew not only that the truth must be
+      spoken, and be spoken by him, if by anybody, but that there is no language
+      too strong&mdash;perhaps none quite strong enough&mdash;for the utterance
+      of the truth. But it must not be supposed, that John Cross was in any
+      respect an intolerant, or sour man. He was no hypocrite, and did not,
+      therefore, need to clothe his features in the vinegar costume of that
+      numerous class. His limbs were put into no such rigid fetters as too often
+      denote the unnatural restraints which such persons have imposed upon their
+      inner minds. He could laugh and sing with the merriest, and though he did
+      not absolutely shake a leg himself, yet none rejoiced more than he, when
+      Ned Hinkley's fiddle summoned the village to this primitive exercise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Alfred Stevens,&rdquo; said he, the breakfast being over, &ldquo;what say'st
+      thou to a visit with me among my people. Some of them know thee already;
+      they will all be rejoiced to see thee. I will show thee how they live, and
+      if thou shouldst continue to feel within thee, the growing of that good
+      seed whose quickening thou hast declared to me, it will be well that thou
+      shouldst begin early to practise the calling which may so shortly become
+      thine own. Here mightest thou live a space, toiling in thy spiritual
+      studies, until the brethren should deem thee ripe for thy office;
+      meanwhile, thy knowledge of the people with whom thou livest, and their
+      knowledge of thee, would be matter of equal comfort and consolation, I
+      trust, to thee as to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alfred Stevens expressed himself pleased with the arrangement. Indeed, he
+      desired nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But shall we see all of them?&rdquo; he demanded. The arch-hypocrite began to
+      fear that his curiosity would be compelled to pay a heavy penalty to
+      dullness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The flock is small,&rdquo; said John Cross. &ldquo;A day will suffice, but I shall
+      remain three days in Charlemont, and some I will see to-day, and some
+      to-morrow, and some on the day after, which is Wednesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Taken in moderate doses,&rdquo; murmured Stevens to himself, &ldquo;one may stand
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He declared himself in readiness, and the twain set forth. The outward
+      behavior of Stevens was very exemplary. He had that morning contrived to
+      alter his costume in some respects to suit the situation of affairs. For
+      example, he had adopted that slavish affectation which seems to insist
+      that a preacher of God should always wear a white cravat, so constructed
+      and worn as to hide the tips of his shirt collar. If they wore none, they
+      would look infinitely more noble, and we may add, never suffer from
+      bronchitis. In his deportment, Stevens was quite as sanctified as heart
+      could wish. He spoke always deliberately, and with great unction. If he
+      had to say &ldquo;cheese and mousetrap,&rdquo; he would look very solemn, shake his
+      head with great gravity and slowness, and then deliberately and equally
+      emphasizing every syllable, would roll forth the enormous sentence with
+      all the conscious dignity of an ancient oracle. That &ldquo;cheese and
+      mousetrap,&rdquo; so spoken, acquired in the ears of the hearer, a degree of
+      importance and signification, which it confounded them to think they had
+      never perceived before in the same felicitous collocation of syllables.
+      John Cross was not without his vanities. Who is? Vanity is quite as
+      natural as any other of our endowments. It is a guaranty for amiability. A
+      vain man is always a conciliatory one. He is kind to others, because the
+      approbation of others is a strong desire in his mind. Accordingly, even
+      vanity is not wholly evil. It has its uses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Cross had his share, and Alfred Stevens soon discovered that he
+      ministered to it in no small degree. The good old preacher took to himself
+      the credit of having effected his conversion, so far as it had gone. It
+      was his hand that had plucked the brand from the burning. He spoke freely
+      of his protege, as well before his face as behind his back. In his
+      presence he dwelt upon the holy importance of his calling; to others he
+      dilated upon the importance of securing for the church a young man of so
+      much talent, yet of so much devotion: qualities not always united, it
+      would seem, among the churchlings of modern times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alfred Stevens seemed to promise great honor to his teacher. That cunning
+      which is the wisdom of the worldling, and which he possessed in a very
+      surprising degree, enabled him to adopt a course of conduct, look, and
+      remark, which amply satisfied the exactions of the scrupulous, and secured
+      the unhesitating confidence of those who were of a more yielding nature.
+      He soon caught the phraseology of his companion, and avoiding his
+      intensity, was less likely to offend his hearers. His manner was better
+      subdued to the social tone of ordinary life, his voice lacked the sharp
+      twang of the backwoods man; and, unlike John Cross, he was able to
+      modulate it to those undertones, which, as we have before intimated, are
+      so agreeable from the lips of young lovers and fashionable preachers. At
+      all events, John Cross himself, was something more than satisfied with his
+      pupil, and took considerable pains to show him off. He was a sort of
+      living and speaking monument of the good man's religious prowess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does not need that we should follow the two into all the abodes which
+      they were compelled to visit. The reader would scarcely conceal his yawns
+      though Stevens did. Enough, that a very unctuous business was made of it
+      that morning. Many an old lady was refreshed with the spiritual beverage
+      bestowed in sufficient quantity to last for another quarter; while many a
+      young one rejoiced in the countenance of so promising a shepherd as
+      appeared under the name of Alfred Stevens. But the latter thought of the
+      one damsel only. He said many pleasant things to those whom he did see;
+      but his mind ran only upon one. He began to apprehend that she might be
+      among the flock who were destined to wait for the second or last day's
+      visitation; when, to his great relief, John Cross called his attention to
+      the dwelling of the widow Cooper, to whom they were fast approaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens remarked that the dwelling had very much the appearance of poverty&mdash;he
+      did not fail to perceive that it lacked the flower-garden in front which
+      distinguished the greater number of the cottages in Charlemont; and there
+      was an appearance of coldness and loneliness about its externals which
+      impressed itself very strongly upon his thoughts, and seemed to speak
+      unfavorably for the taste of the inmates. One is apt to associate the love
+      of flowers with sweetness and gentleness of disposition, and such a
+      passion would seem as natural, as it certainly would be becoming, to a
+      young lady of taste and sensibility. But the sign is a very doubtful one.
+      Taste and gentleness may satisfy themselves with other objects. A passion
+      for books is very apt to exclude a very active passion for flowers, and it
+      will be found, I suspect, that these persons who are most remarkable for
+      the cultivation of flowers are least sensible to the charms of letters. It
+      seems monstrous, indeed, that a human being should expend hours and days
+      in the nursing and tendance of such stupid beauties as plants and flowers,
+      when earth is filled with so many lovelier objects that come to us
+      commended by the superior sympathies which belong to humanity. Our cities
+      are filled with the sweetest orphans&mdash;flowers destined to be
+      immortal; angels in form, that might be angels in spirit&mdash;that must
+      be, whether for good or evil&mdash;whom we never cultivate&mdash;whom we
+      suffer to escape our tendance, and leave to the most pitiable ignorance,
+      and the most wretched emergencies of want. The life that is wasted upon
+      dahlias, must, prima facie, be the life of one heartless and insensible,
+      and most probably, brutish in a high degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Alfred Stevens had very little time for further reflection. They were
+      at the door of the cottage. Never did the widow Cooper receive her parson
+      in more tidy trim, and with an expression of less qualified delight. She
+      brought forth the best chair, brushed the deerskin-seat with her apron,
+      and having adjusted the old man to her own satisfaction as well as his,
+      she prepared to do a like office for the young one. Having seated them
+      fairly, and smoothed her apron, and gone through the usual preliminaries,
+      and placed herself a little aloof, on a third seat, and rubbed her hands,
+      and struggled into a brief pause in her brisk action, she allowed her
+      tongue to do the office for which her whole soul was impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Brother Cross, what a searching sermon you gave us yesterday. You
+      stirred the hearts of everybody, I warrant you, as you stirred up mine.
+      We've been a needing it for a precious long time, I tell you; and there's
+      no knowing what more's a wanting to make us sensible to the evil that's in
+      us. I know from myself what it is, and I guess from the doings of others.
+      We're none of us perfect, that's certain; but it's no harm to say that
+      some's more and some's not so perfect as others. There's a difference in
+      sin, Brother Cross, I'm a thinking, and I'd like you to explain why, and
+      what's the difference. One won't have so much, and one will have more; one
+      will take a longer spell of preaching, and half the quantity will be a
+      dose to work another out clean, entire. I'm not boastful for myself,
+      Brother Cross, but I do say, I'd give up in despair if I thought it took
+      half so much to do me, as it would take for a person like that Mrs.
+      Thackeray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister Cooper,&rdquo; said brother Cross, rebukingly, &ldquo;beware of the temptation
+      to vain-glory. Be not like the Pharisee, disdainful of the publican. To be
+      too well pleased with one's self is to be displeasing to the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Brother Cross, don't be thinking that I'm over and above satisfied
+      with the goodness that's in me. I know I'm not so good. I have a great
+      deal of evil; but then it seems to me there's a difference in good and a
+      difference in evil. One has most of one and one has most of another. None
+      of us have much good, and all of us have a great deal of sin. God help me,
+      for I need his help&mdash;I have my own share; but as for that Mrs.
+      Thackeray, she's as full of wickedness as an an egg's full of meat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not the part of Christianity, Sister Cooper,&rdquo; said John Cross
+      mildly, &ldquo;to look into our neighbors' accounts and make comparisons between
+      their doings and our own. We can only do so at great risk of making a
+      false reckoning. Besides, Sister Cooper, it is business enough on our
+      hands, if we see to our own short-comings. As for Mrs. Thackeray, I have
+      no doubt she's no better than the rest of us, and we are all, as you said
+      before, children of suffering, and prone to sin as certain as that the
+      sparks fly upward. We must only watch and pray without ceasing,
+      particularly that we may not deceive ourselves with the most dangerous sin
+      of being too sure of our own works. The good deeds that we boast of so
+      much in our earthly day will shrivel and shrink up at the last account to
+      so small a size that the best of us, through shame and confusion, will be
+      only too ready to call upon the rocks and hills to cover us. We are very
+      weak and foolish all, Sister Cooper. We can't believe ourselves too weak,
+      or too mean, or too sinful. To believe this with all our hearts, and to
+      try to be better with all our strength, is the true labor of religion. God
+      send it to us, in all its sweetness and perfection, so that we may fight
+      the good fight without ceasing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you could only hear of the doings of Mrs. Thackeray, Brother
+      Cross, you'd see how needful it would be to put forth all your strength to
+      bring her back to the right path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Lord will know. None of us can hide our evil from the eyes of the
+      Lord. I will strive with our sister, when I seek her, which will be this
+      very noon, but it is of yourself, Sister Cooper, and your daughter
+      Margaret, that I would speak. Where is she that I see her not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the question that made our quasi hierophant look up with a far
+      greater degree of interest than he had felt in the long and random twattle
+      to which he had been compelled to listen. Where was she&mdash;that fair
+      daughter? He was impatient for the answer. But he was not long detained in
+      suspense. Next to her neighbors there was no subject of whom the mother so
+      loved to speak as the daughter, and the daughter's excellences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! she is up-stairs, at her books, as usual. She does so love them
+      books, Brother Cross, I'm afraid it'll do harm to her health. She cares
+      for nothing half so well. Morning, noon, and night, all the same, you find
+      her poring over them; and even when she goes out to ramble, she must have
+      a book, and she wants no other company. For my part I can't see what she
+      finds in them to love so; for except to put a body to sleep I never could
+      see the use they were to any person yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Books are of two kinds,&rdquo; said Brother Cross gravely. &ldquo;They are useful or
+      hurtful. The useful kinds are good, the hurtful kinds are bad. The Holy
+      Bible is the first book, and the only book, as I reckon it will be the
+      book that'll live longest. The 'Life of Whitefield' is a good book, and I
+      can recommend the sermons of that good man, Brother Peter Cummins, that
+      preached when I was a lad, all along through the back parts of North
+      Carolina, into South Carolina and Georgia. I can't say that he came as far
+      back into the west as these parts; but he was a most faithful shepherd.
+      There was a book of his sermons printed for the benefit of his widow and
+      children. He died, like that blessed man, John Rogers, that we see in the
+      primer-books, leaving a wife with eleven children and one at the breast.
+      His sermons are very precious reading. One of them in particular, on the
+      Grace of God, is a very falling of manna in the wilderness. It freshens
+      the soul, and throws light upon the dark places in the wilderness. Ah! if
+      only such books are printed, what a precious world for poor souls it would
+      be. But they print a great many bad books now-a-days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The natural love of mischief which prevailed in the bosom of Alfred
+      Stevens now prompted him to take part in the conversation at this happy
+      moment. The opportunity was a tempting one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The printers,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;are generally very bad men. They call themselves
+      devils, and take young lads and bring them up to their business under that
+      name!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady threw up her hands, and John Cross, to whom this intelligence
+      was wholly new, inquired with a sort of awe-struck gravity&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can this be true, Alfred Stevens? Is this possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact, sir. They go by no other name among themselves; and you may
+      suppose, if they are not ashamed of the name, they are not unwilling to
+      perform the doings of the devil. Indeed, they are busy doing his business
+      from morning to night&mdash;and night to morning. They don't stop for the
+      sabbath. They work on Sunday the same as any other day, and if they take
+      any rest at all it is on Saturday, which would show them to be a kind of
+      Jews.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord deliver us!&rdquo; ejaculated the widow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where, O! where?&rdquo; exclaimed the Brother Cross with similar earnestness.
+      The game was too pleasant for Alfred Stevens. He pursued it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In such cities,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;as New York and Philadelphia, thousands
+      of these persons are kept in constant employ sending forth those books of
+      falsehood and folly which fill the hearts of the young with vain
+      imaginings, and mislead the footsteps of the unwary. In one of these
+      establishments, four persons preside, who are considered brothers; but
+      they are brothers in sin only, and are by some supposed to be no other.
+      They have called themselves after the names of saints and holy men; even
+      the names of the thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in
+      this fashion abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even
+      in our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better
+      enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to believe
+      that these persons were no other than the evil demons who ruled in Ashdod
+      and Assyria. Such is their perseverance in evil&mdash;such their busy
+      industry, which keeps a thousand authors (which is but another name for
+      priests and prophets) constantly at work to frame cunning falsehoods and
+      curious devices, and winning fancies, which when printed and made into
+      books, turn the heads of the young and unwary, and blind the soul to the
+      wrath which is to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The uplifted hands of the widow Cooper still attested her wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord save us!&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;I should not think it strange if Sister
+      Thackeray had some of these very books. Do ask, Brother Cross, when you go
+      to see her. She speaks much of books, and I see her reading them whenever
+      I look in at the back window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Cross did not seem to give any heed to the remark of the old woman.
+      There was a theological point involved in one of the remarks of Alfred
+      Stevens which he evidently regarded as of the first importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you say, Alfred Stevens, is very new and very strange to me, and I
+      should think from what I already know of the evil which is sometimes put
+      in printed books, that there was indeed a spirit of malice at work in this
+      way, to help the progress and the conquests of Satan among our blind and
+      feeble race. But I am not prepared to believe that God has left it to
+      Satan to devise so fearful a scheme for prosecuting his evil designs as
+      that of making the demons of Ashdod and Assyria take the names of mortal
+      men, while teeming to follow mortal occupations. It would be fearful
+      tidings for our poor race were this so. But if so, is it not seen that
+      there is a difference in the shapes of these persons. If either of these
+      brothers who blasphemously call themselves John and James, after the
+      manner of the apostles, shall be in very truth and certainty that Dagon of
+      the Philistines whom Jehovah smote before his altar, will he not be made
+      fishlike from the waist downward, and will this not be seen by his
+      followers and some of the thousands whom he daily perverts to his evil
+      purposes and so leads to eternal destruction?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be that it is permitted to such a demon to put on what shape he
+      thinks proper,&rdquo; replied Stevens; &ldquo;but even if it is not, yet this would
+      not be the subject of any difference&mdash;it would scarcely prevent the
+      prosecution of this evil purpose. You are to remember, Mr. Cross&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Cross&mdash;plain John Cross, Alfred Stevens,&rdquo; was the interruption
+      of the preacher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are to remember,&rdquo; Stevens resumed, &ldquo;that when the heart is full of
+      sin, the eyes are full of blindness. The people who believe in these evil
+      beings are incapable of seeing their deformities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true&mdash;a sad truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, again,&rdquo; continued Stevens, &ldquo;there are devices of mere mortal art, by
+      which the deformities and defects of an individual may be concealed. One
+      of these brothers, I am told, is never to be seen except seated in one
+      position at the same desk, and this desk is so constructed, as to hide his
+      lower limbs in great part, while still enabling him to prosecute his
+      nefarious work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's clear enough, Brother Cross,&rdquo; exclaimed the widow Cooper, now
+      thoroughly convinced&mdash;&ldquo;it's clear enough that there's something that
+      he wants to hide. Lord help us! but these things are terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the weak and the wicked, Sister Cooper, they are, as you say,
+      terrible, and hence the need that we should have our lamps trimmed and
+      lighted, for the same light which brings us to the sight of the Holy of
+      Holies, shows us the shape of hatefuless, the black and crouching form of
+      Satan, with nothing to conceal his deformity. Brother Stevens has well
+      said that when the heart is full of sin, the eyes are full of blindness;
+      and so we may say that when the heart is full of godliness, the eyes are
+      full of seeing. You can not blind them with devilish arts. You can not
+      delude them as to the true forms of Satan, let him take any shape The eye
+      of godliness sees clean through the mask of sin, as the light of the sun
+      pierces the thickest cloud, and brings day after the darkest night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! what a blessed thing to hear you say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More blessed to believe, Sister Cooper, and believing, to pray with all
+      your heart for this same eye of godliness. But we should not only pray but
+      work. Working for God is the best sort of prayer. We must do something in
+      his behalf: and this reminds me, Sister Cooper, that if there is so much
+      evil spread abroad in these books, we should look heedfully into the
+      character of such as fall into the hands of the young and the unmindful of
+      our flock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is very true; that is just what I was thinking of, Brother Cross.
+      You can not look too close, I'm thinking into such books as you'll find at
+      the house of Widow Thackeray. I can give a pretty 'cute guess where she
+      gets all that sort of talk, that seems so natural at the end of her
+      tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Verily, I will speak with Sister Thackeray on this subject,&rdquo; responded
+      the pastor&mdash;&ldquo;but your own books, Sister Cooper, and those of your
+      daughter Margaret&mdash;if it is convenient, I should prefer to examine
+      them now while I am here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Margaret's books! examine Margaret's books!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even so, while I am present and while Brother Stevens is here, also, to
+      give me his helping counsel in the way of judgment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, bless us, Brother Cross, you don't suppose that my daughter Margaret
+      would keep any but the properest books? she's too sensible, I can tell
+      you, for that. She's no books but the best; none, I'll warrant you, like
+      them you'll find at Widow Thackeray's. She's not to be put off with bad
+      books. She goes through 'em with a glance of the eye. Ah! she's too smart
+      to be caught by the contrivances of those devils, though in place of four
+      brothers there was four thousand of 'em. No, no! let her alone for that&mdash;she's
+      a match for the best of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But as Brother Stevens said,&rdquo; continued John Cross, &ldquo;where sin gets into
+      the heart, the eye is blinded to the truth. Now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her eye's not blinded, Brother Cross, I can tell you. They can't cheat
+      her with their books. She has none but the very best. I'll answer for
+      them. None of them ever did me any harm; and I reckon none of them'll ever
+      hurt her. But I'm mistaken, if you don't have a real burning when you get
+      to Mrs. Thackeray's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Sister Cooper&mdash;&rdquo; commenced the preacher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Brother Cross,&rdquo; replied the dame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Books, as I said before, are of two kinds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know&mdash;good and bad&mdash;I only wonder there's no indifferent
+      ones among 'em,&rdquo; replied the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They should be examined for the benefit of the young and ignorant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, and for more besides, for Mrs. Thackeray's not young, that's
+      clear enough; and I know there's a good many things that she's not
+      ignorant of. She's precious knowing about many things that don't do her
+      much good; and if the books could unlearn her, I'd say for one let her
+      keep 'em. But as for looking at Margaret's books&mdash;why, Brother Cross,
+      you surely know Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The preacher answered meekly, but negatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't she about the smartest girl you ever met with?&rdquo; continued the
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God has certainly blessed her with many gifts,&rdquo; was the reply, &ldquo;but where
+      the trust is great, the responsibility is great also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't she know it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust she does, Sister Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may trust every bit of it. She's got the smartness, the same as it is
+      in books&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the gift of talents, Sister Cooper, is a dangerous gift.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see, Brother Cross, how good things that come from God can be
+      dangerous things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could see the books, Sister Cooper;&mdash;I say not that they are
+      evil&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Cross began in tones that denoted something like despair; certainly
+      dissatisfaction was in them, when Alfred Stevens, who had long since tired
+      of what was going on, heard a light footfall behind him. He turned his
+      eyes and beheld the fair maiden, herself, the propriety of whose reading
+      was under discussion, standing in the doorway. It appeared that she had
+      gathered from what had reached her ears, some knowledge of what was going
+      on, for a smile of ineffable scorn curled her classic and nobly-chiselled
+      mouth, while her brow was the index to a very haughty volume. In turning,
+      Alfred Stevens betrayed to her the playful smile upon his own lips&mdash;their
+      eyes met, and that single glance established a certain understanding
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her coming did not avail to stifle the subject of discussion. John Cross
+      was too resolute in the prosecution of his supposed duty, to give up the
+      cause he had once undertaken. He had all the inveteracy of the stout old
+      puritan. The usual introduction over and he resumed, though he now
+      addressed himself to the daughter rather than the mother. She scarcely
+      heard him to the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The books were my father's, Mr. Cross; they are valuable to me on that
+      account. They are dear to me on their own. They are almost my only
+      companions, and though I believe you would find nothing in them which
+      might be held detrimental, yet I must confess, if there were, I should be
+      sorry to be made acquainted with the fact. I have not yet discovered it
+      myself, and should be loath to have it shown by another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will let me see them, Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir, whenever you please. I can have no objection to that, but if by
+      seeing them you only desire an opportunity to say what I shall read and
+      what not, I can only tell you that your labor will be taken in vain.
+      Indeed, the evil is already done. I have not a volume which I have not
+      read repeatedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is needless to add that Brother Cross was compelled to forego his book
+      examination at the widow Cooper's, though strongly recommended there to
+      press it at Widow Thackeray's. Alfred Stevens was a mute observer during
+      the interview, which did not last very long after the appearance of
+      Margaret. He was confirmed in all his previous impressions of her beauty,
+      nor did the brevity of the conference prevent him from perceiving her
+      intense self-esteem, which under certain influences of temperament is only
+      another name for vanity. Besides they had exchanged glances which were
+      volumes, rendering unnecessary much future explanation. She had seen that
+      he was secretly laughing at the simple preacher, and that was a source of
+      sympathy between them. She was very much in the habit of doing the same
+      thing. He, on the other hand, was very well satisfied that the daughter of
+      such a mother must be perverse and vain; and he was moralist enough to
+      know that there is no heart so accessible to the tempter as the proud and
+      wilful heart. But few words had passed between them, but those were
+      expressive, and they both parted, with the firm conviction that they must
+      necessarily meet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. &mdash; HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we look in upon him at Mrs.
+      Thackeray's, while, obeying the suggestion of the widow Cooper, he purges
+      her library of twenty volumes, casting out the devils and setting up the
+      true gods? It is scarcely necessary. Enough to know that, under his
+      expurgatorial finger, our beloved and bosom friend, William Shakspere, was
+      the first to suffer. Plays! The one word was enough. Some lying histories
+      were permitted to escape. The name of history saved them! Robinson Crusoe
+      was preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's Tale of a Tub escaped, as
+      it was assumed (there being no time to read any of the books, and in this
+      respect John Cross showed himself much more of a professional critic than
+      he conjectured) to be a treatise on one branch of the cooperage business,
+      and so, important to domestic mechanics in a new country. The reader will
+      remember the manner in which the library of the knight of La Mancha was
+      disposed of. He would err, however, if he supposed that John Cross
+      dismissed the books from the window, or did anything farther than simply
+      to open the eyes of Mrs. Thackeray to the bad quality of some of the
+      company she kept. That sagacious lady did not think it worth while to
+      dispute the ipse dixit of a teacher so single-minded, if not sagacious.
+      She bowed respectfully to all his suggestions, promised no longer to
+      bestow her smiles on the undeserving&mdash;a promise of no small
+      importance when it is remembered that, at thirty-three, Mrs. Thackeray was
+      for the first time a widow&mdash;and that night she might have been seen
+      laughing heartily with Mesdames Ford and Quickly at the amorous
+      pertinacity of the baffled knight of Eastcheap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens obtained the desired
+      entree into the bosom of the flock. He was everywhere admitted with
+      gladness&mdash;everywhere welcomed as to a home; and the unsophisticated
+      old teacher by whose agency this was effected, congratulated his
+      congregation and himself, on leaving the village, that he had left in it a
+      person so full of grace, and one who, with the blessing of God, was so
+      likely to bring about the birth of grace in others. The good old man
+      bestowed long and repeated counsels upon his neophyte. The course of study
+      which he prescribed was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and the Omega&mdash;it
+      was the essential whole. It would be well to read other books if they
+      could be had&mdash;Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken of&mdash;but
+      they could be done without. The word of God was in the one volume, and it
+      needed no help from commentators to win its way and suffice the hungering
+      and thirsting soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could lay hands upon the book of sermons written by Brother Peter
+      Cummins, which his wife had printed, I'm thinking it would serve, next to
+      God's own blessed word, to put you in the right way. It's been a great
+      helping to me, Alfred Stevens, that same book of sermons; and, I reckon
+      it's because it's so good a book that it's not printed now. I don't see it
+      much about. But I'll get you one if I can, and bring or send it to you,
+      soon enough to help you to the wisdom that you're a seeking after. If it
+      only wakes the spirit in you as it did in me&mdash;if it only stirs you up
+      with the spirit of divine love&mdash;you'll find it easy enough to
+      understand the teachings of the holy volume. All things become clear in
+      that blessed light. By its help you read, and by its working you inwardly
+      digest all the needful learning. The Lord be with you, Alfred Stevens, and
+      bring to perfect ripening your present undertaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; was the solemn response of the hypocrite, but we need not say what
+      an irreverent and unholy thought lay at the bottom of his mind in making
+      this ejaculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the departure of John Cross, the latter had made terms with Squire
+      Hinkley for the board and lodging of Brother Stevens and his horse.
+      Hinkley would have preferred taking nothing, considering the praiseworthy
+      purpose of the supposed theological student; but Stevens shrunk from
+      receiving such an obligation with a feeling of pride, which yet had no
+      scruples at practising so wretched an imposture. He insisted upon making
+      compensation, or upon leaving the house; and, not to incur this risk,
+      Hinkley consented to receive a weekly sum in payment; but the charge was
+      considerably smaller, as we may suppose, than it would have been had the
+      lodger simply appeared as an inoffensive traveller, practising no fraud
+      and making no professions of religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having effected all these arrangements, to his own satisfaction and
+      seemingly that of all others, John Cross departed once more into the
+      wilderness on his single-hearted ministry of love. A sturdy and an honest
+      worker was he in the tabernacle, with a right mind if not a very wise one;
+      and doing more good in his generation, and after the fashion of his
+      strength, than is often permitted to the stall-fed doctors of his
+      vocation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will suppose that the old man has been already gone some seven
+      days. Meanwhile, the young student has fairly made himself at home in
+      Charlemont. He has a snug room, entirely to himself, at Squire Hinkley's,
+      and, by the excellent care of the worthy dame, it is provided with the
+      best bedding and the finest furniture. Her own hands sweep it clean,
+      morning and night, for the incipient parson; she makes up the bed, and, in
+      customary phrase, puts it in all respects to rights. His wants are
+      anticipated, his slightest suggestion met with the most prompt
+      consideration; and John Cross himself, humble and unexacting as he was,
+      might have felt some little twinges of mortal envy could he have known
+      that his protege promised to become a much greater favorite than himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, indeed, seemed very likely to be the case. A good young man in the
+      sight of the ladies is always a more attractive person than a good old
+      man. Dame Hinkley, though no longer young herself, remembered that she had
+      been so, and preserved all her sympathies, in consequence, for young
+      people. She thought Alfred Stevens so handsome, and he smiled so sweetly,
+      and he spoke so genty, and, in short, so great had been his progress in
+      the affections of his hostess in the brief space of a single week, that we
+      are constrained to confess ourselves rejoiced that she herself was an old
+      woman, as well on her own account as on that of her worthy spouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her good man was very well satisfied, whether from confidence or
+      indifference, that such should be the case. Her attentions to the young
+      stranger probably diverted them from himself. But not so with William
+      Hinkley&mdash;the son. We have already had some glimpses of the character
+      of this young man. We may now add that the short week's residence of
+      Stevens in Charlemont had increased the soreness at his heart. In that
+      week he had seen fairly established that intimacy between his rival and
+      the lady of his love which seemed to give the death-blow to any
+      pretensions of his. He had seen them meet; had seen them go forth
+      together; beheld their mutual eyes, and, turning his own inward, saw how
+      deeply his heart was concerned in the probable sympathies of theirs. Then,
+      to turn to his own habitation, and to behold THAT, mother and all, devoted
+      to the same absolute stranger; to pass unheeded in the presence of those
+      whom he best loved&mdash;over whom natural ties gave him inalienable
+      rights; to feel himself put aside for one only known of yesterday; to look
+      with yearning, and meet eyes only of disregard and indifference! Such
+      being the suggestions of his jealous and suffering nature, it is surely no
+      matter of wonder that the youth grew melancholy and abstracted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our adventurer was snugly seated in the little but select chamber which
+      had been given him in the house of Squire Hinkley. A table, neatly spread
+      with a cotton cover, stood before him: a travelling-portfolio was opened
+      beneath his hand, with a broad sheet of paper, already well written over,
+      and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps the postscript. He was
+      absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and nibbled into bits the feathery
+      end of the gray goosequill of which he had been making such excellent use.
+      While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the liberty of an old
+      acquaintance to scan the letter&mdash;for such it is&mdash;which he has
+      been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some matters which it may
+      concern us yet to know:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Barnabas: The strangest adventure&mdash;positively the very
+      strangest&mdash;that ever happened to a son of Murkey's, will keep me from
+      the embraces of the brethren a few weeks longer. I am benighted,
+      bewildered, taken with art-magic, transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, not myself
+      nor yet another, but, as they say in Mississippi, 'a sort of betweenity.'
+      Fancy me suddenly become a convert to the bluest presbyterianism, as our
+      late excellent brother Woodford became, when he found that he could not
+      get Moll Parkinson on any other terms&mdash;and your guess will not be
+      very far from the true one. I am suddenly touched with conviction. I have
+      seen a light on my way from Tarsus. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I
+      have seen the wickedness of my ways, and yours too, you dog; and, having
+      resolved on my own repentance, I am taking lessons which shall enable me
+      to effect yours. Precious deal of salt will it need for that! Salt river
+      will fall, while its value rises. But the glory of the thing&mdash;think
+      of that, my boy! What a triumph it will be to revolutionize Murkey's!&mdash;to
+      turnout the drinkers and smokers, and money-changers; to say, 'Hem! my
+      brethren, let us pay no more taxes to sin in this place!' There shall be
+      no more cakes and ale. Ginger shall have no heat i' the mouth there; and,
+      in place of smoking meats and tobacco, give you nothing but smoking
+      methodism! Won't that be a sight and a triumph which shall stir the dry
+      bones in our valley&mdash;ay, and bones not so dry? There shall be a
+      quaking of the flesh in sundry places. Flam will perish in the first fit
+      of consternation; and if Joe Burke's sides do not run into sop and jelly,
+      through the mere humor of the thing, then prophecy is out of its element
+      quite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student! Don't you see
+      proofs of my progress in my unctuous phraseology. I was taken suddenly
+      upon the highway&mdash;a brand plucked from the burning&mdash;and to be
+      stuck up on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern and
+      lighthouse to other wayfarers&mdash;wandering rogues like yourself, who
+      need some better lights than your own if it only be to show you how to sin
+      decently. I am professedly a convert to the true faith, though which that
+      is, I think, has not well been determined among you at Murkey's, or,
+      indeed, anywhere else. I believe the vox populi, vox Dei, still comprises
+      the only wholesome decision which has yet been made on the subject. The
+      popular vote here declares it to be methodism; with you it is baptism or
+      presbyterianism&mdash;which? I am a flexible student, however, and when I
+      meet you again at Murkey's, shall be prepared to concur with the majority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, in sober fact, I am a professor&mdash;actually recognised by my
+      neighbors as one of the elect&mdash;set apart to be and do mighty things.
+      How I came so, will call for a long story, which I defer to another
+      occasion. Enough to tell you that an accidental rencontre with a silly old
+      preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy, which I recommended to
+      him, under another name, as a sovereign remedy against flatulence, and
+      which nearly strangled him he took such a premeditated swallow), brought
+      me into one of the loveliest little villages in all this western country,
+      and there I saw many things&mdash;among others&mdash;a woman!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman!&mdash;that one word, you dog, will explain the mystery&mdash;will
+      show you why I am thus transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, and in 'a state of
+      betweenity.' Nothing less, I assure you, could make me disguise myself
+      after the present fashion; wear the sanctimonious and sour phiz which the
+      common law of modern religion prescribes, and keep me much longer from the
+      pleasanter communion of such glorious imps, as I suppose, are, even now,
+      beginning to gather in the dingy smoke-room of our sovereign Murkey. But
+      this woman, you will ask. Ay, ay, but you shall have no answer yet. It
+      shall be enough for you that she is a queen of Sheba, after her own
+      fashion. A proud, imperious, passionate creature&mdash;tall, really
+      beautiful&mdash;and so majestic! You should see the flashing of her eyes
+      to know what sort of a thing is moral lightning. Her face kindles up in an
+      instant. She is an intensifier, and like most such, cursedly smart. Young
+      too&mdash;scarce eighteen, I think; queer too&mdash;almost tyrannical at
+      times&mdash;but full of blood, of unregulated passions, moody, capricious,
+      and, of course, easy game, if the sportsman knows anything of the habits
+      of the bird. She is a country-girl, but no hoyden. Her intensity of
+      character, her pride and great self-esteem, have made her a solitary.
+      Unsophisticated in some respects, she is yet not to be surprised. In
+      solitude, and a taste for it, she has acquired a sort of moral composure
+      which makes her secure against surprise. I am really taken with the girl,
+      and COULD love her, I tell you&mdash;nay, do love her&mdash;so long as
+      love can keep himself&mdash;out of a state of bondage! I do not think, at
+      this moment, that I shall violate any of the laws of the conventicle, like
+      small-witted Brother Woodford; though, so far as the woman is concerned, I
+      should leave it without argument to the free vote of all the Lads of Fancy
+      that ever gather round Murkey's round table, if my justification for
+      turning traitor, would not prove immeasurably more complete than his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch, you professional
+      bandog. I had not meant to tell you half so much. There is some danger
+      that one may lose his game altogether, if he suffers his nose to point
+      unnecessarily to the cover where it lies. I know what keen scents are in
+      the club, some of which would be on my track in no time if they knew where
+      to find me; but I shall baffle you, you villains. My post-town is fifty
+      miles from the place where I pursue my theological studies; you are too
+      wise to attempt a wild-goose chase. You may smack your chaps, Barney, with
+      envy; bite them too if you please, and it will only whet my own sense of
+      pleasure to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless denunciations in the
+      club. I shall be back in time for term&mdash;meanwhile get the papers in
+      readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland, and remember to
+      address me as Alfred Stevens&mdash;nay, perhaps, you may even say, 'Rev.
+      Alfred Stevens,' it will grace the externals of the document with a more
+      unctuous aspect, and secure the recipient a more wholesome degree of
+      respect. Send all my letters to this town under envelope with this
+      direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville. Did I tell you that old
+      Hunks has been deused liberal? I can laugh at the small terms, yet go to
+      Murkey's and shine through the smoke with the best of you. I solicit the
+      prayers of the Round Table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faithfully, yours, &amp;c.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate, when a tap
+      was heard at the entrance of his chamber. Thrusting the written papers
+      into his portfolio, he rose, and opening the door discovered his hostess
+      at the entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came, Brother Stevens,&rdquo; said the old lady, &ldquo;if you not too busy in your
+      studies, to have a little talk with you, and to get your counsel upon a
+      subject that a little distresses me. But you look as if you were busy now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in any other
+      respect,&rdquo; replied the guest with suitable suavity of expression&mdash;&ldquo;shall
+      I attend you down stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! no! it won't need,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;I'll take a seat with you awhile. We
+      shall be less liable to interruption here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority of the old lady
+      made her proceedings very innocent, however much they might have been
+      adverse to the rules. He threw wide the door, and without more hesitation
+      she followed him at once into the chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. &mdash; THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her guest was a
+      very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she expressed it in few
+      words. That is scarcely possible at any time with an ancient lady. But the
+      long story which she told, when compressed into intelligible form, related
+      to her son William. She had some maternal fears on his account. The lad
+      was a decided melancholic. His appetite was bad; his looks were thin and
+      unhappy; he lacked the usual spirit of youth; he lacked his own usual
+      spirit. What was the cause of the change which had come over him so
+      suddenly, she could not divine. Her anxiety was for the remedy. She had
+      consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he departed; but that good
+      man, after a brief examination of the patient, had freely admitted his
+      inability to say what was the matter with him, and what was proper for his
+      cure. To the object of this solicitude himself, he had given much good
+      counsel, concluding finally with a recommendation to read devoutly certain
+      chapters in Job and Isaiah. It appears that William Hinkley submitted to
+      all this scrutiny with exemplary fortitude, but gave no satisfactory
+      answers to any of the questions asked him. He had no complaints, he denied
+      any suffering; and expressed himself annoyed at the inquisition into his
+      thoughts and feelings. This annoyance had been expressed, however, with
+      the subdued tones and language of one habitually gentle and modest.
+      Whenever he was approached on the subject, as the good old lady assured
+      her guest, he shook off his questioners with no little haste, and took to
+      the woods for the rest of the day. &ldquo;That day,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;you needn't look
+      for William Hinkley to his dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens had been struck with the deportment of this youth, which had
+      seemed to him haughty and repulsive; and, as he fancied, characterized by
+      some sentiment of hostility for himself. He was surprised therefore to
+      learn from the old lady that the lad was remarkable for his gentleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long has he been in this way, Mrs. Hinkley?&rdquo; he asked with some
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well now, Brother Stevens, I can't tell you. It's been growing on him for
+      some time. I reckon it's a matter of more than four months since I first
+      seen it; but it's only been a few weeks that I have spoken to him. Brother
+      Cross spoke to him only Monday of last week. My old man don't seem to see
+      so much of it; but I know there's a great change in him now from what
+      there used to be. A mother's eye sees a great way farther into the hearts
+      of her children, Brother Stevens, than any other persons; and I can see
+      plainly that William is no more the same boy&mdash;no! nor nothing like it&mdash;that
+      he once was. Why, once, he was all life, and good humor; could dance and
+      sing with the merriest among them; and was always so good and kind, and
+      loved to do whatever would please a body; and was always with somebody, or
+      other, making merry, and planning the prettiest sports. Now, he don't
+      sing, nor dance, nor play; when you see him, you 'most always see him
+      alone. He goes by himself into the woods, and he'll be going over the
+      hills all day, nobody with him, and never seeming to care about his food,
+      and what's more strange, never looking at the books that he used to be so
+      fond of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been fond of books, then&mdash;had he many?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, a whole drawer of them, and he used to get them besides from the
+      schoolmaster, Mr. Calvert, a very good man that lives about half a mile
+      from the village, and has a world of books. But now he neither gets books
+      from other people nor reads what he's got. I'm dubious, Brother Stevens,
+      that he's read too much for his own good. Something's not right here, I'm
+      a thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The good old lady touched her head with her finger and in this manner
+      indicated her conjecture as to the seat of her son's disease. Stevens
+      answered her encouragingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I scarcely think, Mrs. Hinkley, that it can be anything so bad. The young
+      man is at that age when a change naturally takes place in the mind and
+      habits. He wants to go into the world, I suspect. He's probably tired of
+      doing nothing. What is to be his business? It's high time that such a
+      youth should have made a choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's true, Brother Stevens, but he's been the apple to our eyes, and we
+      haven't been willing that he should take up any business that would&mdash;carry
+      him away from us. He's done a little farming about the country, but that
+      took him away, and latterly he's kept pretty much at home, going over his
+      books and studying, now one and now another, just as Mr. Calvert gave them
+      to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What studies did he pursue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can't tell you. He was a good time at Latin, and then he wants to
+      be a lawyer;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lawyer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he had a great notion to be a lawyer and was at his books pretty
+      hard for a good year, constant, day by day, until, as I said before, about
+      four months ago, when I saw that he was growing thin, and that he had put
+      down the books altogether, and had the change come over him just as I told
+      you. You see how thin he is now. You'd scarce believe him to be the same
+      person if you'd seen him then. Why his cheeks were as full and as red as
+      roses, and his eye was always shining and laughing, and he had the
+      liveliest step, and between him and Ned Hinkley, his cousin, what with
+      flute and fiddle, they kept the house in a constant uproar, and we were
+      all so happy. Now, it isn't once a month that we hear the sound of the
+      fiddle in the house. He never sings, and he never dances, and he never
+      plays, and what little he lets us see of him, is always so sad and so
+      spiritless that I feel heartsick whenever I look upon him. Oh! Brother
+      Stevens, if you could only find out what's the matter, and tell us what to
+      do, it would be the most blessed kindness, and I'd never forget it, or
+      forget you, to my dying day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever I can do, Mrs. Hinkley, shall surely be done. I will see and
+      speak with your son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! do&mdash;that's a dear good sir. I'm sure if you only talk to him and
+      advise him it will do him good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without being so sure, ma'am, I will certainly try to please you. Though
+      I think you see the matter with too serious eyes. Such changes are natural
+      enough to young people, and to old ones too. But what may be your son's
+      age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nineteen last April.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite a man for his years, Mrs. Hinkley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will do you credit yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! if I could believe so. But you'll speak to him, Brother Stevens?
+      You'll try and bring all to rights?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rely upon me to do what I can;&mdash;to do my best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's as much as any man can do, and I'm sure I'll be so happy&mdash;we
+      shall all be so much indebted to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not speak of it, my dear madam,&rdquo; said Stevens, bowing with profound
+      deference as the old lady took her departure. She went off with light
+      heart, having great faith in the powers of the holy man, and an equal
+      faith in his sincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a bore!&rdquo; he muttered as he closed the door behind her. &ldquo;This is one
+      of the penalties, I suppose, which I must pay for my privileges. I shall
+      be called upon to reform the morals and manners, and look into the petty
+      cares of every chuckle-headed boor and boor's brat for ten miles round.
+      See why boys reject their mush, and why the girls dislike to listen to the
+      exhortations of a mamma, who requires them to leave undone what she has
+      done herself&mdash;and with sufficient reason too, if her own experience
+      be not wholly profitless. Well, I must submit. There are advantages,
+      however; I shall have other pupils to tutor, and it shall go hard with me
+      if all the grapes prove sour where the vines are so various.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The student of divinity, after these conclusions, prepared to make his
+      toilet. Very few of these students, in their extreme solicitude for the
+      well being of the inner man, show themselves wholly regardless of their
+      externals. Even mourning, it appears, requires to be disposed by a
+      fashionable costumer. Though the garments to which the necessities of
+      travel limited Brother Stevens were not various, they were yet select. The
+      good young man had an affection for his person, which was such certainly
+      as to deserve his care. On this occasion he was more than usually
+      particular. He did not scruple to discard the white cravat. For this he
+      substituted a handkerchief which had the prettiest sprig of lilac, on a
+      ground of the most delicate lemon color. He consulted complexions, and his
+      mirror determined him in favor of this pattern. Brother Stevens would not
+      have worn it had he been summoned, in his new vocation, to preach or pray
+      at the conventicle; nor would he have dreamed of anything but a black
+      stock had his business been to address the democracy from the top of a
+      cider-barrel. His habits, under such necessities, would have been made to
+      correspond with the principles with which such a situation more distinctly
+      called for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the thoughts of our worthy brother ran upon other objects. He was
+      thinking of Margaret Cooper. He was about to pay that damsel a visit. His
+      progress, we may suppose, had not been inconsiderable when we are told
+      that his present visit was one of previous arrangement. They were about to
+      go forth on a ramble together&mdash;the woods were so wild and lovely&mdash;the
+      rocks surrounding Charlemont were so very picturesque;&mdash;there was the
+      quietest tarn, a sort of basin in the bosom of the hills at a little
+      distance, which she was to show him; and there was the sweetest stream in
+      the world, that meandered in the neighborhood; and Brother Stevens so
+      loved the picturesque&mdash;lakes embosomed in hills, and streams stealing
+      through unbroken forests, and all so much the more devotedly, when he had
+      such a companion as Margaret Cooper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Margaret Cooper!&mdash;she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer&mdash;a
+      muse&mdash;filled with ambitious thoughts&mdash;proud, vain, aspiring
+      after the vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could
+      speak her whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding
+      ears! Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her books had been
+      his books. The glowing passages which she loved to repeat, were also the
+      favorite passages in his memory. Over the burning and thrilling strains of
+      Byron, the tender and spiritual of Shelley, the graceful and soft of
+      Campbell, she loved to linger. They filled her thoughts. They made her
+      thoughts. She felt that her true utterance lay in their language; and this
+      language, until now, had fallen dead and without fruit upon the dull ears
+      of her companions in Charlemont. What was their fiddling and festivity to
+      her! What their tedious recreations by hillside or stream, when she had to
+      depress her speech to the base levels of their unimaginative souls! The
+      loveliness of nature itself, unrepresented by the glowing hues of poetry,
+      grew tame, if not offensive; and when challenged to its contemplation by
+      those to whom the muse was nothing, the fancy of the true observer grew
+      chilled and heavy, and the scenes of beauty seemed prostituted in their
+      glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have all felt this. Nothing can more annoy the soul of taste or
+      sensibility than to behold its favorite scene and subject fail in
+      awakening others to that emotion which it has inspired in ourselves. We
+      turn away in haste, lest the object of our worship should become degraded
+      by a longer survey. Enthusiasm recoils at a denial of sympathy; and all
+      the worth of our companion, in a thousand other respects, fails to
+      reconcile us to his coldness and indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Alfred Stevens had taste and talent&mdash;that he was well read in
+      the volumes which had been her favorite study, Margaret Cooper needed no
+      long time to discover. She soon ascribed to him qualities and tastes which
+      were beyond his nature. Deceived by his tact, she believed in his
+      enthusiasm. He soon discovered HER tastes; and she found equally soon that
+      HIS were like her own. After this discovery, she gave him credit for other
+      and more important possessions; and little dreamed that, while he
+      responded to her glowing sentiments with others equally glowing&mdash;avowed
+      the same love for the same authors, and concurred with her in the
+      preference of the same passages&mdash;his feelings were as little
+      susceptible of sympathy with hers as would have been those of the cold
+      demon Mephistopheles! While her eye was flashing, her cheek flushed, her
+      breast heaving with the burning thoughts and strains of the master to whom
+      her beautiful lips were giving utterance, he was simply sensible to HER
+      beauty&mdash;to its strange, wild charms&mdash;and meditating thoughts
+      from which the soul of true poetry recoils with the last feelings of
+      aversion. Even the passion which he felt while he surveyed her, foreign as
+      it was to those legitimate emotions which her ambition and her genius
+      would equally have tended to inspire in any justly-minded nature, might
+      well be considered frigid&mdash;regarded as the result of deliberate
+      artifice&mdash;the true offspring of an habitual and base indulgence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding girl, that
+      Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his costume. He felt its
+      deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity of making the most of it;
+      for, though he perfectly well knew that such a woman as Margaret Cooper
+      would have been the very last to regard the mere garment in which a
+      congenial nature is arrayed, yet he also well knew that the costume is not
+      less indicative of the tastes than the wealth of the wearer. You will see
+      thousands of persons, men and women, richly dressed, and but one will be
+      WELL dressed: that one, most generally, will be the individual who is
+      perhaps of all others possessed of the least resources for dress, other
+      than those which dwell in the well-arranged mind, the well-disposing
+      taste, and the happy, crowning fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing to go
+      forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed his hand upon
+      the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his hostess, on the
+      stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son. He was about to forbear
+      his purpose of departure as the parties had retired, when, remembering the
+      solicitude of the lady, and thinking it would show that zest in her
+      service which he really could not entertain, he determined at once to to
+      join the young man, and begin with him that certain degree of intimacy
+      without which it could scarcely be supposed that he could broach the
+      subject of his personal affairs. He felt somewhat the awkwardness of this
+      assumed duty, but then he recollected his vocation; he knew the paramount
+      influence of the clergy upon all classes of persons in the West, and, with
+      the conscious superiority derived from greater years and better education,
+      he felt himself fortified in undertaking the paternal office which the
+      fond, foolish mother had confided to his hands. Accordingly, descending
+      the stairs briskly, he joined the two at the entrance of the dwelling. The
+      son was already on the outside; the mother stood in the doorway: and, as
+      Stevens appeared and drew nigh, William Hinkley bowed, and turned away as
+      if to withdraw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have no objections, Mr. Hinkley,&rdquo; said Stevens, &ldquo;I will join you.
+      You seem to be about to go my way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man paused with an air of reluctance, muttered something which
+      was not altogether intelligible, but which Stevens construed into assent,
+      and the two set forth together&mdash;the good old matron giving a glance
+      of gratitude to the benevolent young student which her son did not fail to
+      note, while, at the same time, a sentence which evidently conveyed some
+      motherly rebuke, was addressed to his already-irritated ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. &mdash; WRESTLING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Alfred Stevens, as he walked behind his young companion, observed him with
+      a more deliberate survey than he had yet taken. Hitherto, the young man
+      had challenged but little of his scrutiny. He had simply noted him for a
+      tall youth, yet in the green, who appeared of a sulky, retiring nature,
+      and whose looks had seemed to him on one or more occasions to manifest
+      something like distaste for himself. The complacency of Stevens, however,
+      was too well grounded to be much disturbed by such an exhibition. Perhaps,
+      indeed, he would have derived a malicious sort of satisfaction in making a
+      presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He had just that smallness of
+      spirit which would find its triumph in the success of such a performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He now observed that the youth was well formed, tall, not ungraceful&mdash;with
+      features of singular intelligence, though subdued to the verge of sadness.
+      His face was pale and thin, his eyes were a little sunken, and his air,
+      expression, and general outside, denoted a youth of keen sensibilities,
+      who had suffered some disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In making this examination, Alfred Stevens was not awakened to any
+      generous purposes. He designed, in reality, nothing more than to acquit
+      himself of the duty he had undertaken with the smallest possible exertion.
+      His own mind was one of that mediocre character which the heart never
+      informs. His scrutiny, therefore, though it enabled him to perceive that
+      the young man had qualities of worth, was not such as to prompt any real
+      curiosity to examine further. A really superior mind would have been moved
+      to look into these resources; and, without other motive than that of
+      bringing a young, laboring, and ardent soul out of the meshes of a new and
+      bewildering thought or situation, would have addressed himself to the task
+      with that degree of solicitous earnestness which disarms prejudice and
+      invites and wins confidence. But, with his first impression, that the
+      whole business was a &ldquo;bore,&rdquo; our benevolent young teacher determined on
+      getting through with it with the least possible effort. He saw that the
+      youth carried a book under his arm, the externals of which, so uniform and
+      discouraging as they appear in every legal library, could not well be
+      questioned as belonging to some such venerable receptacle of barbarous
+      phrase and rigid authority. The circumstance afforded him an occasion to
+      begin a conversation, the opening of which, with all his coolness, was a
+      subject of some awkwardness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem a student like myself, Mr. Hinkley, and, if I mistake not from
+      the appearance of your book, you are taking up the profession which I am
+      about to lay down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a law-book, sir,&rdquo; said Hinkley, in accents which were rather meek
+      than cold; &ldquo;it is Blackstone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I thought as much. Have you been long a student?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may scarcely consider myself one yet. I have read, sir, rather than
+      studied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good distinction, not often made. But, do you incline to law
+      seriously?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir&mdash;I know no occupation to which I so much incline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The law is a very arduous profession. It requires a rare union of
+      industry, talent, and knowledge of mankind to be a good lawyer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think so, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Few succeed where thousands fail. Young men are very apt to mistake
+      inclination for ability; and to be a poor lawyer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is to be worse than poor&mdash;is to be despicable!&rdquo; replied Hinkley with
+      a half-smile, as he interrupted a speech which might have been construed
+      into a very contemptuous commentary on his own pretensions. It would seem
+      that the young man had so understood it. He continued thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be so with me, sir. It is not improbable that I deceive myself,
+      and confound inclination with ability.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pardon me, my dear young friend,&rdquo; said Stevens patronizingly; &ldquo;but I
+      do not say so. I utter a mere generality. Of course, I can know nothing on
+      the subject of your abilities. I should be glad to know. I should like to
+      converse with you. But the law is very arduous, very exacting. It requires
+      a good mind, and it requires the whole of it. There is no such thing as
+      being a good lawyer from merely reading law. You can't bolt it as we do
+      food in this country. We must chew upon it. It must be well digested. You
+      seem to have the right notion on this subject. I should judge so from two
+      things: the distinction which you made between the reader and the student;
+      and the fact that your appearance is that of the student. I am afraid, my
+      young friend, that you overwork yourself. You look thin, and pale, and
+      unhappy. You should be careful that your passion for study is not indulged
+      in at the peril of your health.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The frame of the young man seemed to be suddenly agitated. His face was
+      flushed, and a keen, quick, flash of anger seemed to lighten in his eyes
+      as he looked up to the paternal counsellor and replied:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you, sir, for your interest, but it is premature. I am not
+      conscious that my health suffers from this or any other cause.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, my young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate your
+      own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much we can do and
+      how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere thinking can
+      determine this matter for us. It can only be decided by being able to see
+      what others do and can endure. In a little country village like this, one
+      can not easily determine; and the difficulty may be increased somewhat by
+      one's own conviction, of the immense deal that one has to learn. If you
+      were to spend a year in some tolerably large community. Perhaps you
+      meditate some such plan?&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not, sir,&rdquo; was the cold reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed; and have you no desire that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very strange! at your time of life the natural desire is to go into the
+      great world. Even the student fancies he can learn better there than he
+      can anywhere else&mdash;and so he can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, sir: if I may be so bold to ask, why, with this opinion, have you
+      left the great city to bury yourself in a miserable village like
+      Charlemont?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was so quickly put, and with so much apparent keenness, that
+      Stevens found the tables suddenly reversed. But he was in nowise
+      discomposed. He answered promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I was speaking of very young men, of an
+      ambitious temper, who were seeking to become lawyers. The student of
+      divinity may very well be supposed to be one who would withdraw himself
+      from the scene of ambition, strifes, vanities, and tumultuous passions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak, sir, as if there were a material difference in our years?&rdquo;
+       said Hinkley inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it is less than in our experience, my young friend,&rdquo; was the
+      answer of the other, betraying that quiet sense of superiority which would
+      have been felt more gallingly by Hinkley had he been of a less modest
+      nature. Still, it had the effect of arousing some of the animal in his
+      blood, and he responded in a sentence which was not entirely without its
+      sneer, though it probably passed without penetrating such a buff of
+      self-esteem as guarded the sensibilities of our adventurer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are fortunate sir, if, at your time of life, you have succeeded in
+      withdrawing your thoughts and feelings, with your person, from such scenes
+      of ambition as you speak of. But I fancy the passions dwell with us in the
+      country as well as with the wiser people in the town; and I am not sure
+      that there is any pursuit much more free from their intrusion than that of
+      the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your remark exhibits penetration, Mr. Hinkley. I should not be surprised
+      if you have chosen your profession properly. Still, I should counsel you
+      not to overwork yourself. Bear with me, sir; I feel an interest in your
+      behalf, and I must think you do so. Allow me to be something of a judge in
+      this matter. You are aware, sir, that I too have been a lawyer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth bowed stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can lend you any assistance in your studies, I will do so. Let me
+      arrange them for you, and portion out your time. I know something about
+      that, and will save you from injuring your health. On this point you
+      evidently need instruction. You are doing yourself hurt. Your appearance
+      is matter of distress and apprehension to your parents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my parents, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother, I mean! She spoke to me about you this very morning. She is
+      distressed at some unaccountable changes which have taken place in your
+      manners, your health, your personal appearance. Of course I can say
+      nothing on the subject of the past, or of these changes; but I may be
+      permitted to say that your present looks do not betoken health, and I have
+      supposed this to be on account of your studies. I promised your good
+      mother to confer with you, and counsel you, and if I can be of any help&mdash;&ldquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very good, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man spoke bitterly. His gorge was rising. It was not easy to
+      suppress his vexation with his mother, and the indignation which he felt
+      at the supercilious approaches of the agent whom she had employed.
+      Besides, his mind, not less than his feelings, was rising in vigor in due
+      degree with the pressure put upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very good, sir, and I am very much obliged to you. I could have
+      wished, however, that my mother had not given you this trouble, sir. She
+      certainly must have been thinking of Mr. John Cross. She could scarcely
+      have hoped that any good could have resulted to me, from the counsel of
+      one who is so little older than myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This speech made our adventurer elevate his eyebrows. He absolutely
+      stopped short to look upon the speaker. William Hinkley stopped short
+      also. His eye encountered that of Stevens with an expression as full of
+      defiance as firmness. His cheeks glowed with the generous indignation
+      which filled his veins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This fellow has something in him after all,&rdquo; was the involuntary
+      reflection that rose to the other's mind. The effect was, however, not
+      very beneficial to his own manner. Instead of having the effect of
+      impressing upon Stevens the necessity of working cautiously, the show of
+      defiance which he saw tended to provoke and annoy him. The youth had
+      displayed so much propriety in his anger, had been so moderate as well as
+      firm, and had uttered his answer with so much dignity and correctness,
+      that he felt himself rebuked. To be encountered by an unsophisticated boy,
+      and foiled, though but for an instant&mdash;slightly estimated, though but
+      by a youth, and him too, a mere rustic&mdash;was mortifying to the
+      self-esteem that rather precipitately hurried to resent it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take it seriously, Mr. Hinkley. But surely an offer of service need
+      not be mistaken. As for the trifling difference which may be in our years,
+      that is perhaps nothing to the difference which may be in our experience,
+      our knowledge of the world, our opportunities and studies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, sir; all these MAY be, but at all events we are not bound to
+      assume their existence until it is shown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you are likely to prove an adept in the law, Mr. Hinkley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust, sir, that your progress may be as great in the church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&mdash;do I understand you? There is war between us then?&rdquo; said
+      Stevens, watching the animated and speaking countenance of William Hinkley
+      with increasing curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, sir&mdash;there is!&rdquo; was the spirited reply of the youth. &ldquo;Let it be
+      war; I am the better pleased, sir, that you are the first to proclaim it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said Stevens, &ldquo;be it so, if you will. At all events you can
+      have no objection to say why it should be so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you ask, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely; for I can not guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are less sagacious, then, than I had fancied you. You, scarce older
+      than myself&mdash;a stranger among us&mdash;come to me in the language of
+      a father, or a master, and without asking what I have of feeling, or what
+      I lack of sense, undertake deliberately to wound the one, while insolently
+      presuming to inform the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the request of your own mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! what man of sense or honesty would urge such a plea. Years, and
+      long intimacy, and wisdom admitted to be superior, could alone justify the
+      presumption.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cheeks of Stevens became scalding hot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young man!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;there is something more than this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! would it need more were our positions reversed?&rdquo; demanded Hinkley
+      with a promptness that surprised himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not! would you provoke me to personal violence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! might I hope for that? surely you forget that you are a churchman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens paused awhile before he answered. His eyes looked vacantly around
+      him. By this time they had left the more thickly-settled parts of the
+      village considerably behind them. But a few more dwellings lay along the
+      path on which they were approaching. On the left, a gorge opened in the
+      hills by which the valley was dotted, which seemed a pathway, and did
+      indeed lead to one or more dwellings which were out of sight in the
+      opposite valley. The region to which this pathway led was very secluded,
+      and the eye of Stevens surveyed it for a few moments in silence. The words
+      of Hinkley unquestionably conveyed a challenge. According to the practice
+      of the country, AS A LAWYER, he would have been bound to have taken it as
+      such. A moment was required for reflection. His former and present
+      position caused a conflict in his mind. The last sentence of Hinkley, and
+      a sudden glimpse which he just then caught of the residence of Margaret
+      Cooper, determined his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you, young man, for reminding me of my duties. You had nearly
+      provoked the old passions and old practices into revival. I forgive you&mdash;you
+      misunderstand me clearly. I know not how I have offended you, for my only
+      purpose was to serve your mother and yourself. I may have done this
+      unwisely. I will not attempt to prove that I have not. At all events,
+      assured of my own motives, I leave you to yourself. You will probably ere
+      long feel the injustice you have done me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued on his way, leaving William Hinkley almost rooted to the
+      spot. The poor youth was actually stunned, not by what was said to him,
+      but by the sudden consciousness of his own vehemence. He had expressed
+      himself with a boldness and an energy of which neither himself nor his
+      friend, until now, would have thought him capable. A moment's pause in the
+      provocation, and the feelings which had goaded him on were taken with a
+      revulsion quite as sudden. As he knew not well what he had said, so he
+      fancied he had said everything precisely as the passionate thought had
+      suggested it in his own mind. Already he began to blame himself&mdash;to
+      feel that he had done wrong&mdash;that there had been nothing in the
+      conduct or manner of Stevens, however unpleasant, to justify his own
+      violence; and that the true secret of his anger was to be found in that
+      instinctive hostility which he had felt for his rival from the first. The
+      more he mused, the more he became humbled by his thoughts; and when he
+      recollected the avowed profession of Stevens his shame increased. He felt
+      how shocking it was to intimate to a sworn non-combatant the idea of a
+      personal conflict. To what point of self-abasement his thoughts would have
+      carried him, may only be conjectured; he might have hurried forward to
+      overtake his antagonist with the distinct purpose of making the most ample
+      apology; nay, more, such was the distinct thought which was now pressing
+      upon his mind, when he was saved from this humiliation by perceiving that
+      Stevens had already reached, and was about to enter the dwelling of
+      Margaret Cooper. With this sight, every thought and feeling gave place to
+      that of baffled love, and disappointed affection. With a bitter groan he
+      turned up the gorge, and soon shut himself from sight of the now hateful
+      habitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. &mdash; THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The course of the young rustic was pursued for half a mile further till he
+      came to a little cottage of which the eye could take no cognizance from
+      any part of the village. It was embowelled in a glen of its own&mdash;a
+      mere cup of the slightly-rising hills, and so encircled by foliage that it
+      needed a very near approach of the stranger before he became aware of its
+      existence. The structure was very small, a sort of square box with a cap
+      upon it, and consisted of two rooms only on a ground floor, with a little
+      lean-to or shed-room in the rear, intended for a kitchen. As you drew nigh
+      and passed through the thick fringe of wood by which its approach was
+      guarded, the space opened before you, and you found yourself in a sort of
+      amphitheatre, of which the cottage was the centre. A few trees dotted this
+      area, large and massive trees, and seemingly preserved for purposes of
+      shade only. It was the quietest spot in the world, and inspired just that
+      sort of feeling in the contemplative stranger which would be awakened by a
+      ramble among the roofless ruins of the ancient abbey. It was a home for
+      contemplation&mdash;in which one might easily forget the busy world
+      without, and deliver himself up, without an effort, to the sweetly sad
+      musings of the anchorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was occupied, however. A human heart beat within the humble
+      shed, and there was a spirit, sheltered by its quiet, that mused many high
+      thoughts, and dreamed in equal congratulation and self-reproach, of that
+      busy world from which it was an exile. The visit of William Hinkley was
+      not paid to the solitude. A venerable man, of large frame, and benignant
+      aspect, sat beneath an aged tree, paternal in its appearance like himself.
+      This person might be between fifty and sixty years of age. His hair,
+      though very thick and vigorous, was as white as driven snow. But there
+      were few wrinkles on his face, and his complexion was the clear red and
+      white of a healthy and sanguine temperament. His brow was large and lofty.
+      It had many more wrinkles than his face. There were two large horizontal
+      seams upon it that denoted the exercise of a very busy thought. But the
+      expression of his eye was that of the most unembarrassed benevolence and
+      peace. It was subdued and sometimes sad, but then it had the sweetest,
+      playfullest twinkle in the world. His mouth, which was small and
+      beautifully formed, wore a similar expression. In short he was what we
+      would call a handsome old gentleman, whose appearance did not offend
+      taste, and whose kind looks invited confidence. Nor would we mistake his
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This person was the Mr. Calvert, the schoolmaster of the village, of whom
+      Mrs. Hinkley spoke to Alfred Stevens in discussing the condition of her
+      son. His tasks were over for the day. The light-hearted rabble whom he
+      taught, released from his dominion which was not severe, were, by this
+      time, scampering over the hills, as far from their usual place of
+      restraint as the moderate strength of their legs could carry them. Though
+      let loose, boys are not apt to feel their liberty in its prime and
+      freshness, immediately in the neighborhood of the schoolhouse. The old
+      gentleman left to himself, sat out in the open air, beneath a massive oak,
+      the paternal stretching of whose venerable arms not unfrequently led to
+      the employment of the shade below for carrying on the operations of the
+      schoolhouse. There, squat on their haunches, the sturdy boys&mdash;germs
+      of the finest peasantry in the world&mdash;surrounded their teacher in a
+      group quite as pleasing as picturesque. The sway of the old man was
+      paternal. His rod was rather a figurative than a real existence; and when
+      driven to the use of the birch, the good man, consulting more tastes than
+      one, employed the switch from the peach or some other odorous tree or
+      shrub, in order to reconcile the lad, as well as he could, to the
+      extraordinary application. He was one of those considerate persons, who
+      disguise pills in gold-leaf, and if compelled, as a judge, to hang a
+      gentleman, would decree that a rope of silk should carry out the painful
+      requisitions of the laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seated beneath his tree, in nearly the same spot and position in which he
+      had dismissed his pupils, William Calvert pored over the pages of a volume
+      as huge of size as it was musty of appearance. It was that pleasant book&mdash;quite
+      as much romance as history&mdash;the &ldquo;Knights of Malta,&rdquo; by our venerable
+      father, Monsieur L'Abbe Vertot. Its dull, dim, yellow-looking pages&mdash;how
+      yellow, dim, and dull-looking in comparison with more youthful works&mdash;had
+      yet a life and soul which it is not easy to find in many of these latter.
+      Its high wrought and elaborate pictures of strife, and toil, and
+      bloodshed, grew vividly before the old man's eyes; and then, to help the
+      illusion, were there not the portraits&mdash;mark me&mdash;the veritable
+      portraits, engraved on copper, with all their titles, badges, and
+      insignia, done to the life, of all those brave, grand, and famous masters
+      of the order, by whom the deeds were enacted which he read, and who stared
+      out upon his eyes, at every epoch, in full confirmation of the veracious
+      narrative? No wonder that the old man became heedless of external objects.
+      No wonder he forgot the noise of the retiring urchins, and the toils of
+      the day, as, for the twentieth time, he glowed in the brave recital of the
+      famous siege&mdash;the baffled fury of the Turk&mdash;the unshaken
+      constancy and unremitted valor of the few but fearless defenders. The
+      blood in his cheek might be seen hastening to and fro in accordance with
+      the events of which he read. His eye was glowing&mdash;his pulse beating,
+      and he half started from his seat, as, hearing a slight footstep, he
+      turned to encounter the respectful homage of his former pupil, still his
+      friend, our young acquaintance, William Hinkley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man laid down his book upon the grass, extended his hand to his
+      visiter, and leaning back against the tree, surrendered himself to a quiet
+      chuckle in which there was the hesitancy of a little shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You surprised me, William,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;when I read old Vertot, and such
+      books, I feel myself a boy again. You must have seen my emotion. I really
+      had got so warm, that I was about to start up and look for the weapons of
+      war; and had you but come a moment later, you might have suffered an
+      assault. As it was, I took you for a Turk&mdash;Solyman himself&mdash;and
+      was beginning to ask myself whether I should attack you tooth and nail,
+      having no other weapons, or propose terms of peace. Considering the severe
+      losses which you&mdash;I mean his Turkish highness&mdash;had sustained, I
+      fancied that you would not be disinclined to an arrangement just at this
+      moment. But this very notion, at the same time, led me to the conclusion
+      that I might end the struggle for ever by another blow. A moment later, my
+      boy, and you might have been compelled to endure it for the Turk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth smiled sadly as he replied: &ldquo;I must borrow that book from you,
+      sir, some of these days. I have often thought to do so, but I am afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of what, William?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it will turn my head, sir, and make me dislike more difficult
+      studies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a reasonable fear, my son; but there is no danger of this sort, if
+      we will only take heed of one rule, and that is, to take such books as we
+      take sweetmeats&mdash;in very small quantities at a time, and never to
+      interfere with the main repast. I suspect that light reading&mdash;or
+      reading which we usually call light, but which, as it concerns the fate of
+      man in his most serious relations, his hopes, his affections, his heart,
+      nay, his very people and nation&mdash;is scarcely less important than any
+      other. I suspect that this sort of reading would be of great service to
+      the student, by relieving the solemnity of more tedious and exacting
+      studies, if taken sparingly and at allotted hours. The student usually
+      finds a recreation of some kind. I would make books of this description
+      his recreation. Many a thick-headed and sour parent has forced his son
+      into a beer-shop, into the tastes for tobacco and consequently brandy,
+      simply from denying him amusements which equally warm the blood and
+      elevate the imagination. Studies which merely inform the head are very apt
+      to endanger the heart. This is the reproach usually urged against the
+      class of persons whom we call thorough lawyers. Their intense devotion to
+      that narrow sphere of law which leaves out jury-pleading, is very apt to
+      endanger the existence of feeling and imagination. The mere analysis of
+      external principles begets a degree of moral indifference to all things
+      else, which really impairs the intellect by depriving it of its highest
+      sources of stimulus. Mathematicians suffer in the same way&mdash;become
+      mere machines, and forfeit, in their concern for figures, all the social
+      and most of the human characteristics. The mind is always enfeebled by any
+      pursuit so single and absorbing in its aims as to leave out of exercise
+      any of the moral faculties. That course of study is the only one to make a
+      truly great man, which compels the mind to do all things of which it is
+      capable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how do you reconcile this, sir, with the opinion, so generally
+      entertained, that no one man can serve two masters? Law, like the muse, is
+      a jealous mistress. She is said to suffer no lachesse to escape with
+      impunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mistake me. While I counsel one to go out of his profession for
+      relief and recreation, I still counsel but the one pursuit. Men fail in
+      their professions, not because they daily assign an hour to amusement, but
+      because they halt in a perpetual struggle between some two leading
+      objects. For example, nothing is more frequent in our country than to
+      combine law and politics. Nothing is more apt to ruin the lawyer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true, sir. I now understand you. But I should think the great
+      difficulty would be, in resorting to such pleasant books as this of Vertot
+      for relief and recreation, that you could not cast him off when you
+      please. The intoxication would continue even after the draught has been
+      swallowed, and would thus interfere with the hours devoted to other
+      employments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is reason in that, William, and that, indeed, is the grand
+      difficulty. But to show that a good scheme has its difficulties is not an
+      argument for abandoning it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By no means, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same individual whom Vertot might intoxicate, would most probably be
+      intoxicated by more dangerous stimulants. Everything, however, depends
+      upon the habits of self-control which a man has acquired in his boyhood.
+      The habit of self-control is the only habit which makes mental power truly
+      effective. The man who can not compel himself to do or to forbear, can
+      never be much of a student. Students, if you observe, are generally dogged
+      men&mdash;inflexible, plodding, persevering&mdash;among lawyers, those men
+      whom you always find at their offices, and seldom see anywhere else. They
+      own that mental habit which we call self-control, which supplies the
+      deficiency in numerous instances of real talent. It is a power, and a
+      mighty power, particularly in this country, where children are seldom
+      taught it, and consequently grow up to be a sort of moral vanes that move
+      with every change of wind, and never fix until they do so with their own
+      rust. He who learns this power in boyhood will be very sure to master all
+      his companions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The darker expression of sadness passed over the countenance of the
+      ingenuous youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that I shall never acquire this habit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so? In your very fear I see a hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! sir, I feel my own instability of character. I feel myself the
+      victim of a thousand plans and purposes, which change as soon and as often
+      as they are made. I am afraid, sir, I shall be nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not despond, my son,&rdquo; said the old man sympathizingly. &ldquo;Your fear is
+      natural to your age and temperament. Most young men at your time of life
+      feel numerous yearnings&mdash;the struggle of various qualities of mind,
+      each striving in newly-born activity, and striving adversely. Your
+      unhappiness arises from the refusal of these qualities to act together.
+      When they learn to co-operate, all will be easy. Your strifes will be
+      subdued; there will be a calm like that upon the sea when the storms
+      subside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but when will that be? A long time yet. It seems to me that the storm
+      rather increases than subsides.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may seem so to you now, and yet, when the strife is greatest, the
+      favorable change is at hand. It needs but one thing to make all the
+      conflicting qualities of one's mind cooperate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that one thing, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An object! As yet, you have none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None&mdash;or rather many&mdash;which is pretty much the same thing as
+      having none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure, sir&mdash;but it seems to me, sir, that I have an object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, William! are you sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, name it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have ambition, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that is a passion, not an object. Does your ambition point in one
+      direction? Unless it does, it is objectless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth was silent. The old man proceeded:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am disposed to be severe with you, my son. There is no surer sign of
+      feebleness than in the constant beginnings and the never performings of a
+      mind. Know thyself, is the first lesson to learn. Is it not very childish
+      to talk of having ambition, without knowing what to do with it? If we have
+      ambition, it is given to us to work with. You come to me, and declare this
+      ambition! We confer together. Your ambition seeks for utterance. You ask,
+      'What sort of utterance will suit an ambition such as mine?' To answer
+      this question, we ask, 'What are your qualities?' Did you think, William,
+      that I disparaged yours when I recommended the law to you as a
+      profession?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir! oh, no! Perhaps you overrated them. I am afraid so&mdash;I think
+      so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, William, unfortunately, you do not think about it. If you would
+      suffer yourself to think, you would speak a different language.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can not think&mdash;I am too miserable to think!&rdquo; exclaimed the youth
+      in a burst of passion. The old man looked surprised. He gazed with a
+      serious anxiety into the youth's face, and then addressed him:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you been, William, for the last three weeks? In all that time
+      I have not seen you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A warm blush suffused the cheeks of the pupil. He did not immediately
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask ME!&rdquo; exclaimed a voice from behind them, which they both instantly
+      recognised as that of Ned Hinkley, the cousin of William. He had
+      approached them, in the earnestness of their interview, without having
+      disturbed them. The bold youth was habited in a rough woodman's dress. He
+      wore a round jacket of homespun, and in his hand he carried a couple of
+      fishing-rods, which, with certain other implements, betrayed sufficiently
+      the object of his present pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask me!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I can tell you what he's been about better than
+      anybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Ned,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;what has it been? I am afraid it is your
+      fiddle that keeps him from his Blackstone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My fiddle, indeed! If he would listen to my fiddle when she speaks out,
+      he'd be wiser and better for it. Look at him, Mr. Calvert, and say whether
+      it's book or fiddle that's likely to make him as lean as a March pickerel
+      in the short space of three months. Only look at him, I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly, William, I had not observed it before, but, as Ned says, you do
+      look thin, and you tell me you are unhappy. Hard study might make you
+      thin, but can not make you unhappy. What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The more volatile and freespoken cousin answered for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's been shot, gran'pa, since you saw him last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, shot!&mdash;He THINKS mortally. I think not. A flesh wound to my
+      thinking, that a few months more will cure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have some joke at bottom, Edward,&rdquo; said the old man gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joke, sir! It's a tough joke that cudgels a plump lad into a lean one in
+      a single season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean to use your own language, gran'pa. Among the lessons I got from
+      you when you undertook to fill our heads with wisdom by applications of
+      smartness to a very different place&mdash;among the books we sometimes
+      read from was one of Master Ovid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha! I see what you're after. I understand the shooting. So you think
+      that the blind boy has hit William, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A flesh wound as I tell you; but he thinks the bolt is in his heart. I'm
+      sure it can and will be plucked out, and no death will follow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! who's the maiden from whose eyes the arrow was barbed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! indeed!&rdquo; said the old man gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not heed him,&rdquo; exclaimed William Hinkley; but the blush upon his
+      cheeks, still increasing, spoke a different language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather not heed him, William. The passions of persons so young as
+      yourself are seldom of a permanent character. The attractions which win
+      the boy seldom compensate the man. There is time enough for this, ten
+      years hence, and love then will be far more rational.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, lud!&mdash;wait ten years at twenty. I can believe a great deal in
+      the doctrine of young men's folly, but I can't go that. I'm in love
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! I!&mdash;I'm hit too&mdash;and if you don't like it, why did you
+      teach us Ovid and the rest? As for rational love, that's a new sort of
+      thing that we never heard about before. Love was never expected to be
+      rational. He's known the contrary. I've heard so ever since I was
+      knee-high to the great picture of your Cupid that you showed us in your
+      famous Dutch edition of Apuleius. The young unmarried men feel that it's
+      irrational; the old married people tell us so in a grunt that proves the
+      truth of what they say. But that don't alter the case. It's a sort of
+      natural madness that makes one attack in every person's lifetime. I don't
+      believe in repeated attacks. Some are bit worse than others; and some
+      think themselves bit, and are mistaken. That's the case with William, and
+      it's that that keeps him from your law-books and my fiddle. That makes him
+      thin. He has a notion of Margaret Cooper, and she has none of him; and
+      love that's all of one side is neither real nor rational. I don't believe
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley muttered something angrily in the ears of the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; said the impetuous cousin, &ldquo;I don't want to make you vexed,
+      and still less do I come here to talk such politics with you. What do you
+      say to tickling a trout this afternoon? That's what I come for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too cool,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit. There's a wind from the south, and a cast of cloud is
+      constantly growing between us and the sun. I think we shall do something&mdash;something
+      better than talking about love, and law, where nobody's agreed. You,
+      gran'pa, won't take the love; Bill Hinkley can't stomach the law, and the
+      trout alone can bring about a reconciliation. Come, gran'pa, I'm resolved
+      on getting your supper to-night, and you must go and see me do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On one condition only, Ned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that, gran'pa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you both sup with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done for myself. What say you, Bill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth gave a sad assent, and the rattling youth proceeded:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best cure of grief is eating. Love is a sort of pleasant grief. Many
+      a case of affliction have I seen mended by a beefsteak. Fish is better.
+      Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appetites, and, to the same extent, you
+      lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the sensibilities; and,
+      gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have the fiddle. If I don't make
+      her speak to you to-night, my name's Brag, and you need never again
+      believe me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the good-humored youth, gathering up his canes, led the way to the
+      hills, slowly followed by his two less elastic companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The route, which conducted them&mdash;over a range of gently-ascending
+      hills, through groves tolerably thick, an uncleared woodland tract
+      comprising every variety of pleasant foliage, at length brought them to a
+      lonely tarn or lake, about a mile in circumference, nestled and crouching
+      in the hollow of the hills, which, in some places sloped gently down to
+      its margin, at others hung abruptly over its deep and pensive waters. A
+      thick fringe of shrubs, water-grasses, and wild flowers, girdled its
+      edges, and gave a dark and mysterious expression to its face. There were
+      many beaten tracks, narrow paths for individual wayfarers on foot, which
+      conducted down to favorite fishing-spots. These were found chiefly on
+      those sides of the lake where the rocks were precipitous. Perched on a
+      jutting eminence, and half shrouded in the bushes which clothed it, the
+      silent fisherman took his place, while his fly was made to kiss the water
+      in capricious evolutions, such as the experienced angler knows how to
+      employ to beguile the wary victim from close cove, or gloomy hollow, or
+      from beneath those decaying trunks of overthrown trees which have given
+      his brood a shelter from immemorial time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To one of these selected spots, Ned Hinkley proceeded, leaving his
+      companions above, where, in shade themselves, and lying at ease upon the
+      smooth turf, they could watch his successes, and at the same time enjoy
+      the coup d'oeil, which was singularly beautiful, afforded by the whole
+      surrounding expanse. The tarn, like the dark mysterious dwelling of an
+      Undine, was spread out before them with the smoothness of glass, though
+      untransparent, and shining beneath their eyes like a vast basin of the
+      richest jet. A thousand pretty changes along the upland slopes, or abrupt
+      hills which hemmed it in, gave it a singular aspect of variety which is
+      seldom afforded by any scene very remarkable for its stillness and
+      seclusion. Opposite to the rock on which Ned Hinkley was already
+      crouching, the hill-slope to the lake was singularly unbroken, and so
+      gradual was the ascent from the margin, that one was scarcely conscious of
+      his upward movement, until looking behind him, he saw how far below lay
+      the waters which he had lately left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pathway, which had been often trodden, was very distinctly marked to
+      the eyes of our two friends on the opposite elevation, and they could also
+      perceive where the same footpath extended on either hand a few yards from
+      the lake, so as to enable the wanderer to prolong his rambles, on either
+      side, until reaching the foot of the abrupt masses of rock which
+      distinguished the opposite margin of the basin. To ascend these, on that
+      side, was a work of toil, which none but the lover of the picturesque is
+      often found willing to encounter. Above, even to the eyes of our friends,
+      though they occupied an eminence, the skies seemed circumscribed to the
+      circumference of the lake and the hills by which it was surrounded; and
+      the appearance of the whole region, therefore, was that of a complete
+      amphitheatre, the lake being the floor, the hills the mighty pillars, and
+      the roof, the blue, bright, fretted canopy of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have missed you, my son, for some time past, and the beauty of the
+      picture reminds me of what your seeming neglect has made me lose. When I
+      was a young man I would have preferred to visit such a spot as this alone.
+      But the sense of desolation presses heavily upon an old man under any
+      circumstances; and he seeks for the company of the young, as if to
+      freshen, with sympathy and memory, the cheerlessness and decay which
+      attends all his own thoughts and fancies. To come alone into the woods,
+      even though the scene I look on be as fair as this, makes me moody and
+      awakens gloomy imaginations; and since you have been so long absent, I
+      have taken to my books again, and given up the woods. Ah! books, alone,
+      never desert us; never prove unfaithful; never chide us; never mock us, as
+      even these woods do, with the memory of baffled hopes, and dreams of
+      youth, gone, never to return again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not wilfully
+      neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but my heart was so
+      full&mdash;I was so very unhappy&mdash;that I had not the spirit for it. I
+      felt that I should not be any company for you, and feared that I would
+      only affect you with some of my own dullness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should know
+      that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies of age,
+      provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune of age that
+      its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the pulse, if not
+      violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man. But these sorrows of
+      yours, my son&mdash;do you not call them by too strong a name? I suspect
+      they are nothing more than the discontents, the vague yearnings of the
+      young and ardent nature, such as prompt enterprise and lead to nobleness.
+      If you had them not, you would think of little else than how to squat with
+      your cousin there, seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not so much&mdash;you
+      would think only of the modes of cooking and the delight of eating the
+      fish, and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive yourself. This
+      sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial sorrow. It is the
+      hope which is in you to be something&mdash;to DO something&mdash;for this
+      DOING is after all, and before all, the great object of living. The hope
+      of the heart is always a discontent&mdash;most generally a wholesome
+      discontent&mdash;sometimes a noble discontent leading to nobleness. It is
+      to be satisfied rather than nursed. You must do what it requires.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not what it requires.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your DOING then must be confined at present to finding out what that is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! sir, it seems to me as if I could no more THINK than I can DO&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely;&mdash;that is the case at present; and there are several
+      reasons for this feebleness. The energies which have not yet been tasked,
+      do not know well how to begin. You have been a favored boy. Your wants
+      have been well provided for. Your parents have loved you only too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much! Why, even now, I am met with cold looks and reproachful words,
+      on account of this stranger, of whom nobody knows anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even so: suppose that to be the case, my son; still it does not alter the
+      truth of what I say. You can not imagine that your parents prefer this
+      stranger to yourself, unless you imagine them to have undergone a very
+      sudden change of character. They have always treated you tenderly&mdash;too
+      tenderly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too tenderly, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, William, too tenderly. Their tenderness has enfeebled you, and that
+      is the reason you know not in what way to begin to dissipate your doubts,
+      and apply your energies. If they reproach you, that is because they have
+      some interest in you, and a right in you, which constitutes their
+      interest. If they treat the stranger civilly, it is because he is a
+      stranger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, sir, but what if they give this stranger authority to question and to
+      counsel me? Is not this a cruel indignity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Softly, William, softly! There is something at the bottom of this which I
+      do not see, and which perhaps you do not see. If your parents employ a
+      stranger to counsel you, it proves that something in your conduct leads
+      them to think that you need counsel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may be, sir; but why not give it themselves? why employ a person of
+      whom nobody knows anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I infer from your tone, my son, rather than your words, that you have
+      some dislike to this stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir&mdash;&rdquo; was the beginning of the young man's reply, but he
+      stopped short with a guilty consciousness. A warm blush overspread his
+      cheek, and he remained silent. The old man, without seeming to perceive
+      the momentary interruption, or the confusion which followed it, proceeded
+      in his commentary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There should be nothing, surely, to anger you in good counsel, spoken
+      even by a stranger, my son; and even where the counsel be not good, if the
+      motive be so, it requires our gratitude though it may not receive our
+      adoption.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, sir, but it seems to me very strange, and is very
+      humiliating, that I should be required to submit to the instructions of
+      one of whom we know nothing, and who is scarcely older than myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be mortifying to your self-esteem, my son, but self-esteem, when
+      too active, is compelled constantly to suffer this sort of mortification.
+      It may be that one man shall not be older in actual years than another,
+      yet be able to teach that other. Merely living, days and weeks and months,
+      constitutes no right to wisdom: it is the crowding events and experience&mdash;the
+      indefatigable industry&mdash;the living actively and well&mdash;that
+      supply us with the materials for knowing and teaching. In comparison with
+      millions of your own age, who have lived among men, and shared in their
+      strifes and troubles, you would find yourself as feeble a child as ever
+      yet needed the helping hand of counsel and guardianship; and this brings
+      me back to what I said before. Your parents have treated you too tenderly.
+      They have done everything for you. You have done nothing for yourself.
+      They provide for your wants, hearken to your complaints, nurture you in
+      sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so render you incapable. Hence it
+      is, that, in the toils of manhood, you do not know how to begin. You lack
+      courage and perseverance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Courage and perseverance!&rdquo; was the surprised exclamation of the youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely, and lest I should offend you, my son, I must acknowledge to
+      you beforehand, that this very deficiency was my own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours, sir? I can not think it. What! lack courage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sir&mdash;did I not see you myself, when everybody else looked on
+      with trembling and with terror, throw yourself in the way of Drummond's
+      horses and save the poor boy from being dashed to pieces? There was surely
+      no lack of courage there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! in that sense, my son, I labor under no deficiency. But this sort of
+      courage is of the meanest kind. It is the courage of impulse, not of
+      steadfastness. Hear me, William. You have more than once allowed the
+      expression of a wonder to escape you, why a man, having such a passion for
+      books and study, and with the appearance of mental resources, such as I am
+      supposed to possess, should be content, retiring from the great city, to
+      set up his habitation in this remote and obscure region. My chosen
+      profession was the law; I was no unfaithful student. True, I had no
+      parents to lament my wanderings and failures; but I did not wander. I
+      studied closely, with a degree of diligence which seemed to surprise all
+      my companions. I was ambitious&mdash;intensely ambitious. My head ran upon
+      the strifes of the forum, its exciting contests of mind and soul&mdash;its
+      troubles, its triumphs. This was my leading thought&mdash;it was my only
+      passion. The boy-frenzies for women, which are prompted less by sentiment
+      or judgment, than by feverish blood, troubled me little. Law was my
+      mistress&mdash;took up all my time&mdash;absorbed all my devotion. I
+      believe that I was a good lawyer&mdash;no pettifogger&mdash;the merely
+      drilled creature who toils for his license, and toils for ever after
+      solely for his petty gains, in the miserably petty arts of making gains
+      for others, and eluding the snares set for his own feet by kindred
+      spirits. As far as the teaching of this country could afford me the means
+      and opportunity, I endeavored to procure a knowledge of universal law&mdash;its
+      sources&mdash;its true objects&mdash;its just principles&mdash;its
+      legitimate dicta. Mere authorities never satisfied me, unless, passing
+      behind the black gowns, I could follow up the reasoning to the first
+      fountains&mdash;the small original truths, the nicely discriminated
+      requisitions of immutable justice&mdash;the clearly-defined and inevitable
+      wants of a superior and prosperous society. Everything that could
+      illustrate law as well as fortify it; every collateral aid, in the shape
+      of history or moral truth, I gathered together, even as the dragoon whose
+      chief agent is his sabre, yet takes care to provide himself with pistols,
+      that may finish what the other weapon has begun. Nor did I content myself
+      with the mere acquisition of the necessary knowledge. Knowing how much
+      depends upon voice, manner and fluency, in obtaining success before a
+      jury, I addressed myself to these particulars with equal industry. My
+      voice, even now, has a compass which your unexercised lungs, though quite
+      as good originally as mine, would fail entirely to contend with. I do not
+      deceive myself, as I certainly do not seek to deceive you, when I say,
+      that I acquired the happiest mastery over my person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! sir&mdash;we see that now&mdash;that must have been the case!&rdquo; said
+      the youth interrupting him. The other continued, sadly smiling as he heard
+      the eulogy which the youth meant to speak, the utterance of which was
+      obviously from the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My voice was taught by various exercises to be slow or rapid, soft or
+      strong, harsh or musical, by the most sudden, yet unnoticeable
+      transitions. I practised all the arts, which are recommended by
+      elocutionists for this purpose, I rumbled my eloquence standing on the
+      seashore, up to my middle in the breakers. I ran, roaring up steep hills&mdash;I
+      stretched myself at length by the side of meandering brooks, or in
+      slumberous forests of pine, and sought, by the merest whispers, to express
+      myself with distinctness and melody. But there was something yet more
+      requisite than these, and this was language. My labors to obtain all the
+      arts of utterance did not seem less successful. I could dilate with
+      singular fluency, with classical propriety, and great natural vigor of
+      expression. I studied directness of expression by a frequent intercourse
+      with men of business, and examined, with the nicest urgency, the
+      particular characteristics of those of my own profession who were most
+      remarkable for their plain, forcible speaking. I say nothing of my studies
+      of such great masters in discourse and philosophy, as Milton, Shakspere,
+      Homer, Lord Bacon, and the great English divines. As a model of pure
+      English the Bible was a daily study of two hours; and from this noble well
+      of vernacular eloquence, I gathered&mdash;so I fancied&mdash;no small
+      portion of its quaint expressive vigor, its stern emphasis, its golden and
+      choice phrases of illustration. Never did a young lawyer go into the forum
+      more thoroughly clad in proof, or with a better armory as well for defence
+      as attack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not fail, sir?&rdquo; exclaimed the youth with a painful expression of
+      eager anxiety upon his countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did fail&mdash;fail altogether! In the first effort to speak, I
+      fainted, and was carried lifeless from the court-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man covered his face with his hands, for a few moments, to conceal
+      the expression of pain and mortification which memory continued to renew
+      in utter despite of time. The young man's hand rested affectionately on
+      his shoulder. A few moments sufficed to enable the former to renew his
+      narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was stunned but not crushed by this event. I knew my own resources. I
+      recollected a similar anecdote of Sheridan; of his first attempt and
+      wretched failure. I, too, felt that 'I had it in me,' and though I did not
+      express, I made the same resolution, that 'I would bring it out.' But
+      Sheridan and myself failed from different causes, though I did not
+      understand this at that time. He had a degree of hardihood which I had
+      not; and he utterly lacked my sensibilities. The very intenseness of my
+      ambition; the extent of my expectation; the elevated estimate which I had
+      made of my own profession; of its exactions; and, again, of what was
+      expected from me; were all so many obstacles to my success. I did not so
+      esteem them, then; and after renewing my studies in private, my exercises
+      of expression and manner, and going through a harder course of drilling, I
+      repeated the attempt to suffer a repetition of the failure. I did not
+      again faint, but I was speechless. I not only lost the power of utterance,
+      but I lost the corresponding faculty of sight. My eyes were completely
+      dazed and confounded. The objects of sight around me were as crowded and
+      confused as the far, dim ranges of figures, tribes upon tribes, and
+      legions upon legions, which struggle in obscurity and distance, in any one
+      of the begrimed and blurred pictures of Martin's Pandemonium. My second
+      failure was a more enfeebling disaster than the first. The first procured
+      me the sympathy of my audience, the last exposed me to its ridicule.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the old man paused. By this time, the youth had got one of his arms
+      about the neck of the speaker, and had taken one of his hands within his
+      grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours is a generous nature, William,&rdquo; said Mr. Calvert, &ldquo;and I have not
+      said to you, until to-day, how grateful your boyish sympathies have been
+      to me from the first day when you became my pupil. It is my knowledge of
+      these sympathies, and a desire to reward them, that prompts me to tell a
+      story which still brings its pains to memory, and which would be given to
+      no other ears than your own. I see that you are eager for the rest&mdash;for
+      the wretched sequel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! sir&mdash;do not tell me any more of it if it brings you pain. I
+      confess I should like to know all, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall have it all, my son. My purpose would not be answered unless I
+      finished the narrative. You will gather from it, very possibly, the moral
+      which I could not. You will comprehend something better, the woful
+      distinction between courage of the blood and courage of the brain; between
+      the mere recklessness of brute impulse, and the steady valor of the soul&mdash;that
+      valor, which, though it trembles, marches forward to the attack&mdash;recovers
+      from its fainting, to retrieve its defeat; and glows with self-indignation
+      because it has suffered the moment of victory to pass, without employing
+      itself to secure the boon!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shame, and a natural desire to retrieve myself, operated to make me renew
+      my efforts. I need not go through the processes by which I endeavored to
+      acquire the necessary degree of hardihood. In vain did I recall the fact
+      that my competitors were notoriously persons far inferior to me in
+      knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the capacity to analyze them;
+      rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar with the language&mdash;mere
+      delvers and diggers in a science in which I secretly felt that I should be
+      a master. In vain did I recall to mind the fact that I knew the community
+      before which I was likely to speak; I knew its deficiencies; knew the
+      inferiority of its idols, and could and should have no sort of fear of its
+      criticism. But it was myself that I feared. I had mistaken the true
+      censor. It was my own standards of judgment that distressed and made me
+      tremble. It was what I expected of myself&mdash;what I thought should be
+      expected of me&mdash;that made my weak soul recoil in terror from the
+      conviction that I must fail in its endeavor to reach the point which my
+      ambitious soul strove to attain. The fear, in such cases, produced the
+      very disaster, from the anticipated dread of which it had arisen. I again
+      failed&mdash;failed egregiously&mdash;failed utterly and for ever! I never
+      again attempted the fearful trial. I gave up the contest, yielded the
+      field to my inferiors, better-nerved, though inferior, and, with all my
+      learning, all my eloquence, my voice, my manner; my resources of study,
+      thought, and utterance, fled from sight&mdash;fled here&mdash;to bury
+      myself in the wilderness, and descend to the less ambitious, but less
+      dangerous vocation of schooling&mdash;I trust, to better uses&mdash;the
+      minds of others. I had done nothing with my own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, do not say so. Though you may have failed in one department of
+      human performance, you have succeeded in others. You have lost none of the
+      knowledge which you then acquired. You possess all the gifts of eloquence,
+      of manner, of voice, of education, of thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But of what use, my son? Remember, we do not toil for these possessions
+      to lock them up&mdash;to content ourselves, as the miserable miser, with
+      the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to ourselves only&mdash;useless
+      to all others as to ourselves! Learning, like love, like money, derives
+      its true value from its circulation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you circulate yours, my dear sir. What do we not owe you in
+      Charlemont? What do I not owe you, over all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love, my son&mdash;love only. Pay me that. Do not desert me in my old
+      age. Do not leave me utterly alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not, sir&mdash;I never thought to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;to resume. Why did I fail is still the question.
+      Because I had not been taught those lessons of steady endurance in my
+      youth which would have strengthened me against failure, and enable me
+      finally to triumph. There is a rich significance in what we hear of the
+      Spartan boy, who never betrayed his uneasiness or agony though the fox was
+      tearing out his bowels. There is a sort of moral roughening which boys
+      should be made to endure from the beginning, if the hope is ever
+      entertained, to mature their minds to intellectual manhood. Our American
+      Indians prescribe the same laws, and in their practice, very much resemble
+      the ancient Spartans. To bear fatigue, and starvation, and injury&mdash;exposure,
+      wet, privation, blows&mdash;but never to complain. Nothing betrays so
+      decidedly the lack of moral courage as the voice of complaint. It is
+      properly the language of woman. It must not be your language. Do you
+      understand me, William?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In part, sir, but I do not see how I could have helped being what I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not, because few have control of their own education. Your
+      parents have been too tender of you. They have not lessoned you in that
+      proper hardihood which leads to performance. That task is before yourself,
+      and you have shrunk from the first lessons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of clinging to your Blackstone, you have allowed yourself to be
+      seduced from its pages, by such attractions as usually delude boys. The
+      eye and lip of a pretty woman&mdash;a bright eye and a rosy cheek, have
+      diverted you from your duties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do our duties deny us the indulgence of proper sensibilities?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not&mdash;PROPER sensibilities, on the contrary, prescribe our
+      duties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But love, sir&mdash;is not love a proper sensibility?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In its place, it is. But you are a boy only. Do you suppose that it was
+      ever intended that you should entertain this passion before you had
+      learned the art of providing your own food? Not so; and the proof of this
+      is to be found in the fact that the loves of boyhood are never of a
+      permanent character. No such passion can promote happiness if it is
+      indulged before the character of the parties is formed. I now tell you
+      that in five years from this time you will probably forget Miss Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never! never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well&mdash;I go farther in my prophecy. Allow me to suppose you
+      successful in your suit, which I fancy can never be the case&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sir, why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she is not the girl for you; or rather, she does not think you
+      the man for her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why do you think so, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I know you both. There are circumstances of discrepancy between
+      you which will prevent it, and even were you to be successful in your
+      suit, which I am very sure will never be the case, you would be the most
+      miserably-matched couple under the sun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, do not say so&mdash;do not. I can not think so, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You WILL not think so, I am certain. I am equally certain from what I
+      know of you both, that you are secure from any such danger. It is not my
+      object to pursue this reference, but let me ask you, William, looking at
+      things in the most favorable light, has Margaret Cooper ever given you any
+      encouragement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can not say that she has, sir, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, has she not positively discouraged you? Does she not avoid you&mdash;treat
+      you coldly when you meet&mdash;say little, and that little of a kind to
+      denote&mdash;I will not say dislike&mdash;but pride, rather than love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man said nothing. The old one proceeded:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are silent, and I am answered. I have long watched your intercourse
+      with this damsel, and loving you as my own son, I have watched it with
+      pain. She is not for you, William. She loves you not. I am sure of it. I
+      can not mistake the signs. She seeks other qualities than such as you
+      possess. She seeks meretricious qualities, and yours are substantial. She
+      seeks the pomps of mind, rather than its subdued performances. She sees
+      not, and can not see, your worth; and whenever you propose to her, your
+      suit will be rejected. You have not done so yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir&mdash;but I had hoped&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no enemy, believe me, William, when I implore you to discard your
+      hope in that quarter. It will do you no hurt. Your heart will suffer no
+      detriment, but be as whole and vigorous a few years hence&mdash;perhaps
+      months&mdash;as if it had never suffered any disappointment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could think so, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you would not wish that you could think so, if you were not already
+      persuaded that your first wish is hopeless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am not hopeless, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your cause is. But, promise me that you will not press your suit at
+      present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hesitate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are a foolish boy. Do you not see the rock on which you are about
+      to split. You have never learned how to submit. This lesson of submission
+      was that which made the Spartan boy famous. Here, you persist in your
+      purpose, though your own secret convictions, as well as your friend's
+      counsel, tell you that you strive against hope. You could not patiently
+      submit to the counsel of this stranger, though he came directly from your
+      parents, armed with authority to examine and to counsel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Submit to him! I would sooner perish!&rdquo; exclaimed the indignant youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will perish unless you learn this one lesson. But where now is your
+      ambition, and what does it aim at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The idea of an ambitious youth, at twenty, giving up book and candle,
+      leaving his studies, and abandoning himself to despair, because his
+      sweetheart won't be his sweetheart any longer, gives us a very queer idea
+      of the sort of ambition which works in his breast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't, sir, don't, I pray you, speak any more in this manner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, but, William, ask yourself. Is it not a queer idea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spare me, sir, if you love me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do love you, and to show you that I do, I now recommend to you to
+      propose to Margaret Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, sir, you do not think it utterly hopeless then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you would have me expose myself to rejection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, sir, I do not understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will explain. Nothing short of rejection will possibly cure you
+      of this malady; and it is of the last importance to your future career,
+      that you should be freed as soon as possible from this sickly condition of
+      thought and feeling&mdash;a condition in which your mind will do nothing,
+      and in which your best days will be wasted. Blackstone can only hope to be
+      taken up when you have done with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay, sir&mdash;that is she below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The stranger&mdash;this man, Stevens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! your counsellor, that would be? Ah! William, you did not tell me
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; THE ENTHUSIAST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The cheeks of the youth glowed. He felt how much he had suppressed in his
+      conference with his venerable counsellor. Mr. Calvert did not press the
+      topic, and the two remained silent, looking down, from the shaded spot
+      where they lay, upon the progress of Margaret Cooper and her present
+      attendant, Stevens. The eminence on which they rested was sufficiently
+      lofty, as we have seen, to enable them, though themselves almost concealed
+      from sight, to take in the entire scene, not only below but around them;
+      and the old man, sharing now in the interest of his young companion,
+      surveyed the progress of the new-comers with a keen sense of curiosity
+      which, for a time, kept him silent. The emotions of William Hinkley were
+      such as to deprive him of all desire for speech; and each, accordingly,
+      found sufficient employment in brooding over his own awakened fancies.
+      Even had they spoken in the ordinary tone of their voices, the sounds
+      could not have reached the persons approaching on the opposite side. They
+      drew nigh, evidently unconscious that the scene was occupied by any other
+      than themselves. Ned Hinkley was half-shrouded in the shrubbery that
+      environed the jutting crag upon which his form was crouched, and they were
+      not yet sufficiently nigh to the tarn to perceive his projecting rod, and
+      the gaudy fly which he kept skipping about upon the surface. The walk
+      which they pursued was an ancient Indian footpath, which had without doubt
+      conducted the red warriors, a thousand times before, to a spot of
+      seclusion and refreshment after their long day's conflict on the &ldquo;DARK AND
+      BLOODY GROUND.&rdquo; It was narrow and very winding, and had been made so in
+      order to lessen the fatigue of an ascent which, though gradual enough, was
+      yet considerable, and would have produced great weariness, finally, had
+      the pathway been more direct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The circuitousness of this route, which lay clear enough before the eyes
+      of our two friends upon the eminence&mdash;crawling, as it did, up the
+      woodland slopes with the sinuous course of a serpent&mdash;was yet visible
+      to Ned Hinkley, on his lowlier perch, only at its starting-point, upon the
+      very margin of the lake. He, accordingly, saw as little of the approaching
+      persons as they had seen of him. They advanced slowly, and seemed to be
+      mutually interested in their subject of conversation. The action of
+      Stevens was animated; The air and attitude of Margaret Cooper was that of
+      interest and attention. It was with something little short of agony that
+      William Hinkley beheld them pause upon occasion, and confront each other
+      as if the topic was of a nature to arrest the feet and demand the whole
+      fixed attention of the hearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be conjectured that Alfred Stevens had pressed his opportunities
+      with no little industry. Enough has been shown to account for the
+      readiness of that reception which Margaret Cooper was prepared to give
+      him. Her intelligence was keen, quick, and penetrating. She discovered at
+      a glance, not his hypocrisy, but that his religious enthusiasm was not of
+      a sort to become very tyrannical. The air of mischief which was expressed
+      upon his face when the venerable John Cross proposed to purge her library
+      of its obnoxious contents, commended him to her as a sort of ally; and the
+      sympathy with herself, which such a conjecture promised, made her
+      forgetful of the disingenuousness of his conduct if her suspicions were
+      true. But there were some other particulars which, in her mind, tended to
+      dissipate the distance between them. She recognised the individual. She
+      remembered the bold, dashing youth, who, a few months before, had
+      encountered her on the edge of the village, and, after they had parted,
+      had ridden back to the spot where she still loitered, for a second look.
+      To that very spot had she conducted him on their ramble that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know this place, Mr. Stevens?&rdquo; she demanded with an arch smile,
+      sufficiently good-humored to convince the adventurer that, if she had any
+      suspicions, they were not of a nature to endanger his hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I not!&rdquo; he said, with an air of EMPRESSMENT which caused her to look
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I recollected you,&rdquo; she said, a moment after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! may I hope that I did not then offend you with my impertinence? But
+      the truth is, I was so struck&mdash;pardon me if I say it&mdash;with the
+      singular and striking difference between the group of damsels I had seen
+      and THE ONE&mdash;the surprise was so great&mdash;the pleasure so unlooked
+      for&mdash;that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eye of Margaret Cooper brightened, her cheek glowed, and her form rose
+      somewhat proudly. The arch-hypocrite paused judiciously, and she spoke:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, nay, Mr. Stevens, these fine speeches do not pass current. You would
+      make the same upon occasion to any one of the said group of damsels, were
+      you to be her escort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I would scarcely ride back for a second look,&rdquo; he responded, in a
+      subdued tone of voice, while looking with sad expressiveness into her
+      eyes. These were cast down upon the instant, and the color upon her cheeks
+      was heightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said she, making an effort, &ldquo;there is nothing here to interest
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except memory,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;I shall never forget the spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hurried forward, and he joined her. She had received the impression
+      which he intended to convey, without declaring as much&mdash;namely, that
+      his return to Charlemont had been prompted by that one glimpse which he
+      had then had of her person. Still, that nothing should be left in doubt,
+      he proceeded to confirm the impression by other suggestions:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promise to show me a scene of strange beauty, but your whole village
+      is beautiful, Miss Cooper. I remember how forcibly it struck me as I
+      gained the ascent of the opposite hills coming in from the east. It was
+      late in the day, the sun was almost setting, and his faintest but
+      loveliest beams fell upon the cottages in the valley, and lay with a
+      strange, quiet beauty among the grass-plats, and the flower-ranges, and
+      upon the neat, white palings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is beautiful,&rdquo; she said with a sigh, &ldquo;but its beauty does not content
+      me. It is too much beauty; it is too soft; for, though it has its rocks
+      and huge trees, yet it lacks wildness and sublimity. The rocks are not
+      sufficiently abrupt, the steeps not sufficiently great; there are no
+      chasms, no waterfalls&mdash;only purling brooks and quiet walks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have felt this already,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;but there is yet a deficiency
+      which you have not expressed, Miss Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the moral want. You have no life here; and that which would least
+      content me would be this very repose&mdash;the absence of provocation&mdash;the
+      strife&mdash;the triumph! These, I take it, are the deficiencies which you
+      really feel when you speak of the want of crag, and chasm, and waterfall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, too, are ambitious, then!&rdquo; she said quickly; &ldquo;but how do you
+      reconcile this feeling with your profession?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up, and caught his eye tenderly fixed upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;Miss Cooper, there are some situations in which we find it
+      easy to reconcile all discrepancies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If the language lacked explicitness, the look did not. He proceeded:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I mistake not, Miss Cooper, you will be the last one to blame me for
+      not having stifled my ambition, even at the calls of duty and profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blame you, sir? Far from it. I should think you very unfortunate indeed,
+      if you could succeed in stifling ambition at any calls, nor do I exactly
+      see how duty should require it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I pursue the profession of the divine?&rdquo; he answered hesitatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;perhaps&mdash;but that is not certain?&rdquo; There was some timidity
+      in the utterance of this inquiry. He evaded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not yet what I shall be,&rdquo; he replied with an air of self-reproach;
+      &ldquo;I fear I have too much of this fiery ardor which we call ambition to
+      settle down into the passive character of the preacher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do not, do not!&rdquo; she exclaimed impetuously; then, as if conscious of
+      the impropriety, she stopped short in the sentence, while increasing her
+      forward pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you think that would effectually stifle it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it not&mdash;does it not in most men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps; but this depends upon the individual. Churchmen have a great
+      power&mdash;the greatest in any country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over babes and sucklings!&rdquo; she said scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, through these; over the hearts of men and women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these, too, are babes and sucklings&mdash;people to be scared by
+      shadows&mdash;the victims of their own miserable fears and superstitions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nevertheless, these confer power. Where there is power, there is room for
+      ambition. You recollect that churchmen have put their feet upon the necks
+      of princes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but that was when there was one church only in Christendom. It was a
+      monopoly, and consequently a tyranny. Now there are a thousand, always in
+      conflict, and serving very happily to keep each other from mischief. They
+      no longer put their feet on princes' necks, though I believe that the
+      princes are no better off for this forbearance&mdash;there are others who
+      do. But only fancy that this time was again, and think of the comical
+      figure our worthy brother John Cross would make, mounting from such a
+      noble horse-block!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea was sufficiently pleasant to make Stevens laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I shall have greater trouble in converting you, Miss Cooper,
+      than any other of the flock in Charlemont. I doubt that your heart is
+      stubborn&mdash;that you are an insensible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I insensible!&rdquo; she exclaimed, and with such a look! The expression of
+      sarcasm had passed, as with the rapidity of a lightning-flash, from her
+      beautiful lips; and a silent tear rose, tremulous and large, with the same
+      instantaneous emotion, beneath her long, dark eyelashes. She said nothing
+      more, but, with eyes cast down, went forward. Stevens was startled with
+      the suddenness of these transitions. They proved, at least, how completely
+      her mind was at the control of her blood. Hitherto, he had never met with
+      a creature so liberally endowed by nature, who was, at the same time, so
+      perfectly unsophisticated. The subject was gratifying as a study alone,
+      even if it conferred no pleasure, and awakened no hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not mistake me,&rdquo; he exclaimed, hurrying after, &ldquo;I had no purpose to
+      impute to you any other insensibility except to that of the holy truths of
+      religion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up and smiled archly. There was another transition from cloud
+      to sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! are you so doubtful of your own ministry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your case, I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will force me to betake myself to studies more severe than any I have
+      yet attempted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was flattered but she uttered a natural disclaimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! I am presumptuous. I trust you will teach me. Begin&mdash;do not
+      hesitate&mdash;I will listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To move you I must not come in the garments of methodism. That faith will
+      never be yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What faith shall it be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That of Catholicism. I must come armed with authority. I must carry the
+      sword and keys of St. Peter. I must be sustained by all the pomps of that
+      church of pomps and triumphs. My divine mission must speak through signs
+      and symbols, through stately stole, pontifical ornaments, the tiara of
+      religious state on the day of its most solemn ceremonial; and with these I
+      must bring the word of power, born equally of intellect and soul, and my
+      utterance must be in the language of divinest poesy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you mistake! That last will be enough. Speak to me in poesy&mdash;let
+      me hear that&mdash;and you will subdue me, I believe, to any faith that
+      you teach. For I can not but believe the faith that is endowed with the
+      faculty of poetic utterance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In truth it is a divine utterance&mdash;perhaps the only divine
+      utterance. Would I had it for your sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you must have it. I fancy I see it in some things that you have said.
+      You read poetry, I am sure&mdash;I am sure you love it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do! I know not anything that I love half so well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you write it?&rdquo; she asked eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! the gift has been denied me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with eyes of regret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How unfortunate,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubly so, as the deficiency seems to disappoint you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not seem to heed the flattery of this remark, nor did she appear
+      to note the expression of face with which it was accompanied. Her feelings
+      took the ascendency. She spoke out her uncommissioned thoughts and fancies
+      musingly, as if without the knowledge of her will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy that I could kneel down and worship the poet, and feel no shame,
+      no humility. It is the only voice that enchants me&mdash;that leads me out
+      from myself; that carries me where it pleases and finds for me companions
+      in the solitude; songs in the storm; affections in the barren desert! Even
+      here, it brings me friends and fellowships. How voiceless would be all
+      these woods to me had it no voice speaking to, and in, my soul. Hoping
+      nothing, and performing nothing here, it is my only consolation. It
+      reconciles me to this wretched spot. It makes endurance tolerable. If it
+      were not for this companionship&mdash;if I heard not this voice in my
+      sorrows, soothing my desolation, I could freely die!&mdash;die here,
+      beside this rock, without making a struggle to go forward, even to reach
+      the stream that flows quietly beyond!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had stopped in her progress while this stream of enthusiasm poured
+      from her lips. Her action was suited to her utterance. Unaccustomed to
+      restraint&mdash;nay, accustomed only to pour herself forth to woods, and
+      trees, and waters, she was scarcely conscious of the presence of any other
+      companion, yet she looked even while she spoke, in the eyes of Stevens. He
+      gazed on her with glances of unconcealed admiration. The unsophisticated
+      nature which led her to express that enthusiasm which a state of
+      conventional existence prompts us, through fear of ridicule, industriously
+      to conceal, struck him with the sense of a new pleasure. The novelty alone
+      had its charm; but there were other sources of delight. The natural grace
+      and dignity of the enthusiastic girl, adapting to such words the
+      appropriate action, gave to her beauty, which was now in its first bloom,
+      all the glow which is derived from intellectual inspiration. Her whole
+      person spoke. All was vital, spiritual, expressive, animated; and when the
+      last word lingered on her lips, Stevens could scarcely repress the impulse
+      which prompted him to clasp her in his embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret!&rdquo; he exclaimed&mdash;&ldquo;Miss Cooper!&mdash;you are yourself a
+      poet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she murmured, rather than spoke;&mdash;&ldquo;would I were!&mdash;a
+      dreamer only&mdash;a self-deluded dreamer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can not deceive me!&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I see it in your eyes, your
+      action; I hear it in your words. I can not be deceived. You are a poet&mdash;you
+      will, and must be one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I were!&rdquo; she said mournfully, &ldquo;of what avail would it be here?
+      What heart in this wilderness would be touched by song of mine? Whose ear
+      could I soothe in this cold and sterile hamlet? Where would be the temple&mdash;who
+      the worshippers&mdash;even were the priestess all that her vanity would
+      believe, or her prayers and toils might make her? No, no! I am no poet;
+      and if I were, better that the flame should go out&mdash;vanish altogether
+      in the smoke of its own delusions&mdash;than burn with a feeble light,
+      unseen, untrimmed, unhonored&mdash;perhaps, beheld with the scornful eye
+      of vulgar and unappreciating ignorance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such is not your destiny, Margaret Cooper,&rdquo; replied Stevens, using the
+      freedom of address, perhaps unconsciously, which the familiarity of
+      country life is sometimes found to tolerate. &ldquo;Such is not your destiny,
+      Margaret. The flame will not go out&mdash;it will be loved and
+      worshipped!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! never! what is here to justify such a hope&mdash;such a dream?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing HERE; but it was not of Charlemont I spoke. The destiny which has
+      endowed you with genius will not leave it to be extinguished here. There
+      will come a worshipper, Margaret. There will come one, equally capable to
+      honor the priestess and to conduct her to befitting altars. This is not
+      your home, though it may have been your place of trial and novitiate.
+      Here, without the restraint of cold, oppressive, social forms, your genius
+      has ripened&mdash;your enthusiasm has been kindled into proper glow&mdash;your
+      heart, and mind, and imagination, have kept equal pace to an equal
+      maturity! Perhaps this was fortunate. Had you grown up in more polished
+      and worldly circles, you would have been compelled to subdue the feelings
+      and fancies which now make your ordinary language the language of a muse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! speak not so, I implore you. I am afraid you mock me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! on my soul, I do not. I think all that I say. More than that, I feel
+      it, Margaret. Trust to me&mdash;confide in me&mdash;make me your friend!
+      Believe me, I am not altogether what I seem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An arch smile once more possessed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I could guess that! But sit you here. Here is a flower&mdash;a
+      beautiful, small flower, with a dark blue eye. See it&mdash;how humbly it
+      hides amid the grass. It is the last flower if the season. I know not its
+      name. I am no botanist; but it is beautiful without a name, and it is the
+      last flower of the season. Sit down on this rock, and I will sing you
+      Moore's beautiful song, ''Tis the last of its kindred.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, sing me something of your own, Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! Don't speak of me, and mine, in the same breath with Moore. You
+      will make me repent of having seen you. Sit down and be content with
+      Moore, or go without your song altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He obeyed her, and the romantic and enthusiastic girl, seating herself
+      upon a fragment of rock beside the path, sang the delicate and sweet
+      verses of the Irish poet, with a natural felicity of execution, which
+      amply compensated for the absence of those Italian arts, which so
+      frequently elevate the music at the expense of the sentiment. Stevens
+      looked and listened, and half forgot himself in the breathlessness of his
+      attention&mdash;his eye fastened with a gaze of absolute devotion on her
+      features, until, having finished her song, she detected the expression of
+      his face, and started, with blushing cheeks, to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! sweet!&rdquo; he murmured as he offered to take her hand, but she darted
+      forward, and following her, he found himself a few moments after, standing
+      by her side, and looking down upon one of the loveliest lakes that ever
+      slept in the embrace of jealous hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. &mdash; A CATASTROPHE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You disparage these scenes,&rdquo; said Stevens, after several moments had been
+      given to the survey of that before him, &ldquo;and yet you have drawn your
+      inspiration from them&mdash;the fresh food which stimulates poetry and
+      strengthens enthusiasm. Here you learned to be contemplative; and here, in
+      solitude, was your genius nursed. Do not be ungrateful, Margaret&mdash;you
+      owe to these very scenes all that you are, and all that you may become.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay! before I answer. Do you see yon bird?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the west&mdash;there!&rdquo; she pointed with her fingers, catching his
+      wrist unconsciously, at the same time, with the other hand, as if more
+      certainly to direct his gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see it&mdash;what bird is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An eagle! See how it soars and swings; effortless, as if supported by
+      some external power!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed&mdash;it seems small for an eagle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is one nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among the
+      hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are the
+      greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from this
+      spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now within
+      his talons, with which to feed his young. He will feed them, and they will
+      grow strong, and will finally use their own wings. Shall he continue to
+      feed them after that? Must they never seek their own food?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely they must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If these solitudes have nursed me, must they continue to nurse me always?
+      Must I never use the wings to which they have given vigor? Must I never
+      employ the sight to which they have imparted vigilance? Must I never go
+      forth, and strive and soar, and make air, and earth, and sea, tributary to
+      my wing and eye? Alas! I am a woman!&mdash;and her name is weakness! You
+      tell me of what I am, and of what I may become. But what am I? I mock
+      myself too often with this question to believe all your fine speeches. And
+      what may I become? Alas! who can tell me that? I know my strength, but I
+      also know my weakness. I feel the burning thoughts of my brain; I feel the
+      yearning impulses in my heart; but they bring nothing&mdash;they promise
+      nothing&mdash;I feel the pang of constant denial. I feel that I can be
+      nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say not so, Margaret&mdash;think not so, I beseech you. With your genius,
+      your enthusiasm&mdash;your powers of expression&mdash;there is nothing,
+      becoming in your sex, and worthy of it, which you may not be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can not deceive me! It might be so, if this were Italy; there, where
+      the very peasant burns with passion, and breathes his feeblest and meanest
+      thoughts and desires in song. But here, they already call me mad! They
+      look on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid me with sentiments and
+      looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when I am looking into the cloud,
+      striving to pierce, with dilating eye its wild yellow flashing centres,
+      they draw their flaxen-headed infants to their breasts, and mutter their
+      thanks to God, that he has not, in a fit of wrath, made them to resemble
+      me! If, forgetful of earth, and trees, and the human stocks around me, I
+      pour forth the language of the great song-masters, they grin at my
+      insanity&mdash;they hold me incapable of reason, and declare their ideas
+      of what that is, by asking who knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch,
+      the spinning-wheel, the darning-needle&mdash;who can best wash Polly's or
+      Patty's face and comb its head&mdash;can chop up sausage-meat the finest&mdash;make
+      the lightest paste, and more economically dispense the sugar in serving up
+      the tea! and these are what is expected of woman! These duties of the
+      meanest slave! From her mind nothing is expected. Her enthusiasm
+      terrifies, her energy offends, and if her taste is ever challenged, it is
+      to the figures upon a quilt or in a flower-garden, where the passion seems
+      to be to make flowers grow in stars, and hearts, and crescents. What has
+      woman to expect where such are the laws; where such are the expectations
+      from her? What am I to hope? I, who seem to be set apart&mdash;to feel
+      nothing like the rest&mdash;to live in a different world&mdash;to dream of
+      foreign things&mdash;to burn with a hope which to them is frenzy, and
+      speak a language which they neither understand nor like! What can I be, in
+      such a world? Nothing, nothing! I do not deceive myself. I can never hope
+      to be anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her enthusiasm hurried her forward. In spite of himself, Stevens was
+      impressed. He ceased to think of his evil purposes in the superior
+      thoughts which her wild, unregulated energy inspired. He scarcely
+      wondered, indeed&mdash;if it were true&mdash;that her neighbors fancied
+      her insane. The indignation of a powerful mind denied&mdash;denied justice&mdash;baffled
+      in its aims&mdash;conscious of the importance of all its struggles against
+      binding and blinding circumstances&mdash;is akin to insanity!&mdash;is apt
+      to express itself in the defiant tones of a fierce and feverish frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret,&rdquo; said he, as she paused and waited for him, &ldquo;you are not right
+      in everything. You forget that your lonely little village of Charlemont,
+      is not only not the world, but that it is not even an American world.
+      America is not Italy, I grant you, nor likely soon to become so; but if
+      you fancy there are not cities even in our country, where genius such as
+      yours would be felt and worshipped, you are mistaken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you believe there are such?&rdquo; she demanded incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I KNOW there are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! I know better. You can not deceive me. It can not be so. I know
+      the sort of genius which is popular in those cities. It is the gentleman
+      and lady genius. Look at their verses for example. I can show you
+      thousands of such things that come to us here, from all quarters of the
+      Union&mdash;verses written by nice people&mdash;people of small tastes and
+      petty invention, who would not venture upon the utterance of a noble
+      feeling, or a bold sentiment of originality, for fear of startling the
+      fashionable nerves with the strong words which such a novelty would
+      require. Consider, in the first place, how conclusive it is of the
+      feeblest sort of genius that these people should employ themselves, from
+      morning to night, in spinning their small strains, scraps of verse, song,
+      and sonnet, and invariably on such subjects of commonplace, as can not
+      admit of originality, and do not therefore task reflection. Not an infant
+      dies or is born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its smiles and
+      tears are put on record; its hobby-horse, and its infant ideas as they
+      begin to bud and breathe aloud. Then comes the eternal strain about summer
+      blooms and spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and winter's storms, until
+      one sickens of the intolerable monotony. Such are the things that your
+      great cities demand. Such things content them. Speak the fearless and
+      always strange language of originality and strength, and you confound and
+      terrify them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Margaret, these things are held at precisely the same value in the
+      big cities as they are held by you here in Charlemont. The intelligent
+      people smile&mdash;they do not applaud. If they encourage at all it is by
+      silence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! that you might say, if, unhappily, public opinion did not express
+      itself. The same magazines which bring us the verses bring us the
+      criticism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is to say, the editor puffs his contributors, and disparages those
+      who are not. Look at the rival journal and you will find these denounced
+      and another set praised and beplastered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! and what would be my hope, my safety, in communities which tolerate
+      these things; in which the number of just and sensible people is so small
+      that they dare not speak, or can not influence those who have better
+      courage? Where would be my triumphs? I, who would no more subscribe to the
+      petty tyranny of conventional law, than to that baser despotism which is
+      wielded by a mercenary editor, in the absence of a stern justice in the
+      popular mind. Here I may pine to death&mdash;there, my heart would burst
+      with its own convulsions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! Margaret, no! It is because they have not the genius, that such small
+      birds are let to sing. Let them but hear the true minstrel&mdash;let them
+      but know that there is a muse, and how soon would the senseless twitter
+      which they now tolerate be hushed in undisturbing silence. In the absence
+      of better birds they bear with what they have. In the absence of the true
+      muse they build no temple&mdash;they throng not to hear. Nay, even now,
+      already, they look to the west for the minstrel and the muse&mdash;to
+      these very woods. There is a tacit and universal feeling in the Atlantic
+      country, that leads them to look with expectation to the Great West, for
+      the genius whose song is to give us fame. 'When?' is the difficult&mdash;the
+      only question. Ah! might I but say to them&mdash;'now'&mdash;the muse is
+      already here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her hand&mdash;she did not withhold it; but her look was subdued&mdash;the
+      fires had left her eyes&mdash;her whole frame trembled with the recoil of
+      those feelings&mdash;the relaxation of those nerves&mdash;the tension of
+      which we have endeavored feebly to display. Her cheek was no longer
+      flushed but pale; her lips trembled&mdash;her voice was low and faint&mdash;only
+      a broken and imperfect murmur; and her glance was cast upon the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I! Have I not said I am not altogether what I seem? Ah! I may not
+      yet say more. But I am not without power, Margaret, in other and more
+      powerful regions. I too have had my triumphs; I too can boast that the
+      minds of other men hang for judgment upon the utterance of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked upward to his glance with a stranger expression of timidity
+      than her features had before exhibited. The form of Stevens had insensibly
+      risen in seeming elevation as he spoke, and the expression of his face was
+      that of a more human pride. He continued:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My voice is one of authority in circles where yours would be one of equal
+      attraction and command. I can not promise you an Italian devotion,
+      Margaret; our people, though sufficiently enthusiastic, are too sensible
+      to ridicule to let the heart and blood speak out with such freedom as they
+      use in the warmer regions of the South: but the homage will be more
+      intellectual, more steady, and the fame more enduring. You must let your
+      song be heard&mdash;you must give me the sweet privilege of making it
+      known to ears whose very listening is fame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what you say makes me feel how foolishly I have spoken.
+      What is my song? what have I done? what am I? what have I to hope? I have
+      done nothing&mdash;I am nothing! I have suffered, like a child, a
+      miserable vanity to delude me, and I have poured into the ears of a
+      stranger those ravings which I have hitherto uttered to the hills and
+      forests. You laugh at me now&mdash;you must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The paleness on her cheek was succeeded by the deepest flush of crimson.
+      She withdrew her hand from his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Laugh at you, Margaret! You have awakened my wonder. Struck with you when
+      we first met&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, no more of that, but let us follow these windings; they lead us to
+      the tarn. It is the prettiest Indian path, and my favorite spot. Here I
+      ramble morning and eve, and try to forget those vain imaginings and
+      foolish strivings of thought which I have just inflicted upon you. The
+      habit proved too much for my prudence, and I spoke as if you were not
+      present. Possibly, had you not spoken in reply, I should have continued
+      until now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did I speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! it is better. I wish you had spoken sooner. But follow me quickly.
+      The sunlight is now falling in a particular line which gives us the
+      loveliest effect, shooting its rays through certain fissures of the rock,
+      and making a perfect arrow-path along the water. You would fancy that
+      Apollo had just dismissed a golden shaft from his quiver, so direct is the
+      levelled light along the surface of the lake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking thus, they came in sight of the party on the opposite hills, as
+      we have already shown&mdash;without, however, perceiving them in turn. It
+      will be conjectured without difficulty that, with a nature so full of
+      impulse, so excitable, as that of Margaret Cooper&mdash;particularly in
+      the company of an adroit man like Stevens, whose purpose was to encourage
+      her in that language and feeling of egotism which, while it was the most
+      grateful exercise to herself, was that which most effectually served to
+      blind her to his designs&mdash;her action was always animated,
+      expressively adapting itself, not only to the words she uttered, but, even
+      when she did not speak, to the feelings by which she was governed. It was
+      the art of Stevens to say little except by suggestives. A single word, or
+      brief sentence, from his lips, judiciously applied to her sentiments or
+      situation, readily excited her to speech; and this utterance necessarily
+      brought with it the secret of her soul, the desire of her heart, nay, the
+      very shape of the delusion which possessed it. The wily libertine,
+      deliberate as the demon to which we have likened him, could provoke the
+      warmth which he did not share&mdash;could stimulate the eloquence which he
+      would not feel&mdash;could coldly, like some Mephistopheles of science,
+      subject the golden-winged bird or butterfly to the torturous process of
+      examination, with a pin thrust through its vitals, and gravely dilate on
+      its properties, its rich plumage, and elaborate finish of detail, without
+      giving heed to those writhings which declared its agonies. It is not meant
+      to be understood that Stevens found no pleasure himself in the display of
+      that wild, unschooled imagination which was the prevailing quality in the
+      mind of Margaret Cooper. He was a man of education and taste. He could be
+      pleased as an amateur; but he wanted the moral to be touched, and to
+      sympathize with a being so gifted and so feeble&mdash;so high aiming, yet
+      so liable to fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ardor of Margaret Cooper, and the profound devotion which it was the
+      policy of Stevens to display, necessarily established their acquaintance,
+      in a very short time, on the closest footing of familiarity. With a nature
+      such as hers, all that is wanted is sympathy&mdash;all that she craves is
+      sympathy&mdash;and, to win this, no toil is too great, no sufferance too
+      severe; alas, how frequently do we see that no penalty is too
+      discouraging! But the confiding spirit never looks for penalties, and
+      seldom dreams of deceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What, then, were the emotions of William Hinkley as he beheld the
+      cordiality which distinguished the manner of Margaret Cooper as she
+      approached the edge of the lake with her companion? In the space of a
+      single week, this stranger had made greater progress in her acquaintance
+      than HE had been able to make in a period of years. The problem which
+      distressed him was beyond his power to solve. His heart was very full; the
+      moisture was already in his eyes; and when he beheld the animated gestures
+      of the maid&mdash;when he saw her turn to her companion, and meet his gaze
+      without shrinking, while her own was fixed in gratified contemplation&mdash;he
+      scarcely restrained himself from jumping to his feet. The old man saw his
+      emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;William,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;did I understand you that this young stranger was a
+      preacher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, but he seeks to be one. He is studying for the ministry, under
+      Brother Cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brother Cross is a good man, and is scarcely likely to have anything to
+      do with any other than good men. I suppose he knows everything about the
+      stranger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley narrated all that was known on the subject in the village.
+      In the innocence of his heart, Brother Cross had described Alfred Stevens
+      as a monument of his own powers of conversion. Under God, he had been a
+      blessed instrument for plucking this brand from the burning. A modified
+      account of the brandy-flask accompanied the narrative. Whether it was that
+      Mr. Calvert, who had been a man of the world, saw something in the story
+      itself, and in the ludicrousness of the event, which awakened his
+      suspicions, or whether the carriage of Alfred Stevens, as he walked with
+      Margaret Cooper, was rather that of a young gallant than a young student
+      in theology, may admit of question; but it was very certain that the
+      suspicions of the old gentleman were somewhat awakened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believing himself to be alone with his fair companion, Alfred Stevens was
+      not as scrupulous of the rigidity of manner which, if not actually
+      prescribed to persons occupying his professional position, is certainly
+      expected from them; and, by a thousand little acts of gallantry, he proved
+      himself much more at home as a courtier and a ladies' man than as one
+      filled with the overflow of divine grace, and thoughtful of nothing less
+      than the serious earnest of his own soul. His hand was promptly extended
+      to assist the progress of his fair companion&mdash;a service which was
+      singularly unnecessary in the case of one to whom daily rambles, over hill
+      and through forest, had imparted a most unfeminine degree of vigor. Now he
+      broke the branch away from before her path; and now, stooping suddenly, he
+      gathered for her the pale flower of autumn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These little acts of courtesy, so natural to the gentleman, were anything
+      but natural to one suddenly impressed with the ascetical temper of
+      methodism. Highly becoming in both instances, they were yet strangely at
+      variance with the straight-laced practices of the thoroughgoing Wesleyan,
+      who sometimes fancies that the condition of souls is so desperate as to
+      leave no time for good manners. Mr. Calvert had no fault to find with
+      Stevens's civility, but there was certainly an inconsistency between his
+      deportment now, and those characteristics which were to be predicated of
+      the manner and mode of his very recent conversion. Besides, there was the
+      story of the brandy-flask, in which Calvert saw much less of honor either
+      to John Cross or his neophyte. But the old man did not express his doubts
+      to his young friend, and they sat together, watching, in a silence only
+      occasionally broken by a monosyllable, the progress of the unconscious
+      couple below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, our fisherman, occupying his lonely perch just above the
+      stream, had been plying his vocation with all the silent diligence of one
+      to the manner born. Once busy with his angle, and his world equally of
+      thought and observation became confined to the stream before his eyes, and
+      the victim before his imagination. Scarcely seen by his companions on the
+      heights above, he had succeeded in taking several very fine fish; and had
+      his liberality been limited to the supper-table of his venerable friend
+      Calvert, he would long before have given himself respite, and temporary
+      immunity to the rest of the finny tribe remaining in the tarn. But Ned
+      Hinkley thought of all his neighbors, not omitting the two rival widows,
+      Mesdames Cooper and Thackeray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something too, there was in the sport, which, on the present occasion,
+      beguiled him rather longer than his wont. More than once had his eye
+      detected, from the advantageous and jutting rock where he lay concealed,
+      just above the water, the dark outlines of a fish, one of the largest he
+      had ever seen in the lake, whose brown sides, and occasionally flashing
+      fins, excited his imagination and offered a challenge to his skill, which
+      provoked him into something like a feeling of personal hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fish moved slowly to and fro, not often in sight, but at such
+      regularly-recurring periods as to keep up the exciting desire which his
+      very first appearance had awakened in the mind of his enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Ned Hinkley he was the beau-ideal of the trout genius. He was certainly
+      the hermit-trout of the tarn. Such coolness, such strength, such size,
+      such an outline, and then such sagacity. That trout was a triton among his
+      brethren. A sort of Dr. Johnson among fishes. Ned Hinkley could imagine&mdash;for
+      on such subjects his imagination kindled&mdash;how like an oracle must be
+      the words of such a trout, to his brethren, gathering in council in their
+      deep-down hole&mdash;or driven by a shower under the cypress log&mdash;or
+      in any other situation in which an oracle would be apt to say, looking
+      around him with fierceness mingled with contempt, &ldquo;Let no dog bark.&rdquo; Ned
+      Hinkley could also fancy the contemplations of such a trout as he
+      witnessed the efforts made to beguile him out of the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to be caught by a fly like that, my lad!&rdquo; and precisely as if the
+      trout had spoken what was certainly whispered in his own mind, the
+      fisherman silently changed his gilded, glittering figure on his hook for
+      one of browner plumage&mdash;one of the autumn tribe of flies which stoop
+      to the water from the overhanging trees, and glide off for twenty paces in
+      the stream, to dart up again to the trees, in as many seconds, if not
+      swallowed by some watchful fisher-trout, like the one then before the eyes
+      of our companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though his fancy had become excited, Ned Hinkley was not impatient. With a
+      cautious hand he conducted the fly down the stream with the flickering,
+      fidgety motion which the real insect would have employed. The keen-nosed
+      trout turned with the movements of the fly, but philosophically kept
+      aloof. Now he might be seen to sink, now to rise, now he glided close
+      under the rock where the angler reclined, and, even in the very deep
+      waters which were there, which were consequently very dark, so great was
+      the size of the animal, that its brown outline was yet to be seen, with
+      its slightly-waving tail, and at moments the flash of its glittering eye,
+      as, inclining on its side, it glanced cunningly upward through the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again did Ned Hinkley consult his resources. Fly after fly was taken from
+      his box, and suffered to glide upon the stream. The wary fish did not fail
+      to bestow some degree of attention upon each, but his regards were too
+      deliberate for the success of the angler, and he had almost began to
+      despair, when he observed a slight quivering movement in the object of
+      pursuit which usually prepares the good sportsman to expect his prey. The
+      fins were laid aback. The motion of the fish became steady; a slight
+      vibration of the tail only was visible; and in another moment he darted,
+      and was hooked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the struggle. Ned Hinkley had never met with a more formidable
+      prey. The reel was freely given, but the strain was great upon shaft and
+      line. There was no such thing as contending. The trout had his way, and
+      went down and off, though it might have been observed that the fisherman
+      took good care to baffle his efforts to retreat in the direction of the
+      old log which had harbored him, and the tangling alders, which might have
+      been his safest places of retreat. The fish carried a long stretch of
+      line, but the hook was still in his jaws, and this little annoyance soon
+      led him upon other courses. The line became relaxed, and with this sign,
+      Ned Hinkley began to amuse himself in tiring his victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This required skill and promptness rather than strength. The hermit-trout
+      was led to and fro by a judicious turn of wrist or elbow. His efforts had
+      subsided to a few spasmodic struggles&mdash;an occasional struggle ending
+      with a shiver, and then he was brought to the surface. This was followed
+      by a last great convulsive effort, when his tail churned the water into a
+      little circle of foam, which disappeared the moment his struggles were
+      over. But a few seconds more were necessary to lift the prey into sight of
+      all the parties near to the lake. They had seen some of the struggle, and
+      had imagined the rest. Neither Margaret Cooper nor Stevens had suspected
+      the presence of the fisherman until drawn to the spot by this trial of
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a prodigious fish!&rdquo; exclaimed Stevens; &ldquo;can we go to the spot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! easily&mdash;up the rocks on the left there is a path. I know it
+      well. I have traversed it often. Will you go? The view is very fine from
+      that quarter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely: but who is the fisherman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ned Hinkley, the nephew of the gentleman with whom you stay. He is a
+      hunter, fisherman, musician&mdash;everything. A lively, simple, but
+      well-meaning young person. It is something strange that his cousin William
+      Hinkley is not with him. They are usually inseparable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with these words she led the way for her companion following the edge
+      of the lake until reaching the point where the rocks seemed to form
+      barriers to their further progress, but which her agility and energy had
+      long since enabled her to overcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bold damsel!&rdquo; said Calvert, as he viewed her progress. &ldquo;She certainly
+      does not intend to clamber over that range of precipices. She will peril
+      her life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said William Hinkley; &ldquo;she has done it often to my great terror. I
+      have been with her more than once over the spot myself. She seems to me to
+      have no fear, and to delight in the most dangerous places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But her companion! If he's not a more active man than he seems he will
+      hardly succeed so well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William was silent, his eye watching with the keenest interest the
+      progress of the two. In a few moments he started to his feet with some
+      appearance of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; demanded Calvert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does not seem as if she wished to ascend the rocks, but she's aiming
+      to keep along the ledges that overhang the stream, so as to get where Ned
+      is. That can hardly be done by the surest-footed, and most active. Many of
+      the rocks are loose. The ledge is very narrow, and even where there is
+      room for the feet there are such projections above as leave no room for
+      the body. I will halloo to her, and tell her of the danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you halloo, you will increase the danger&mdash;you will alarm her,&rdquo;
+       said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be best to stop her now, in season, when she can go back. Stay
+      for me, sir, I can run along on the heights so as to overlook them, and
+      can then warn without alarming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do so, my son, and hasten, for she seems bent on going forward. The
+      preacher follows but slowly, and she stops for him. Away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth darted along the hill, pursuing something of a table-line which
+      belonged to the equal elevation of the range of rock on which he stood.
+      The rock was formed of successive and shelving ledges, at such intervals,
+      however, as to make it no easy task&mdash;certainly no safe one&mdash;to
+      drop from one to the other. The perch of Ned Hinkley, was a projection
+      from the lowest of these ledges, running brokenly along the margin of the
+      basin until lost in the forest slope over which Margaret Cooper had led
+      her companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it was a task to try the best vigor and agility&mdash;to say nothing of
+      courage&mdash;of the ablest mountaineer, to ascend the abrupt ledges from
+      below, aiming at the highest point of elevation. The attempt was still
+      more startling to follow the lower ledges, some of which hung, loosened
+      and tottering, just above the deepest parts of the lake. Yet, with that
+      intrepidity which marked her character, this was the very task which
+      Margaret Cooper had proposed to herself. William Hinkley had justly said
+      that she did not seem to know fear; and when Stevens with the natural
+      sense of caution which belongs to one to whom such performances are
+      unusual, suggested to her that such a pathway seemed very dangerous&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dangerous!&rdquo; she exclaimed, standing upon the merest pinnacle of a
+      loosened fragment which rested on the very margin of the stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you never perceive that there was a loveliness in danger which you
+      scarcely felt to be half so great in any other object or situation. I love
+      the dangerous. It seems to lift my soul, to make my heart bound with joy
+      and the wildest delight. I know nothing so delightful as storm and
+      thunder. I look, and see the tall trees shivering and going down with a
+      roar, and feel that I could sing&mdash;sing aloud&mdash;and believe that
+      there are voices, like mine, then singing through all the tempest. But
+      there is no danger here. I have clambered up these ledges repeatedly&mdash;up
+      to the very top. Here, you see, we have an even pathway along the edge. We
+      have nothing to do but to set the foot down firmly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Stevens was not so sure, and his opinion on the beauties of the
+      dangerous did not chime exactly with hers. Still, he did not lack for
+      courage, and his pride did not suffer him to yield in a contest with a
+      female. He gazed on her with increasing wonder. If he saw no loveliness in
+      danger&mdash;he saw no little loveliness just then in her; and she might
+      be said to personify danger to his eyes. Her tall, symmetrical, and
+      commanding figure, perched on the trembling pinnacle of rock which
+      sustained her, was as firm and erect as if she stood on the securest spot
+      of land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was her position that of simple security and firmness. The grace of
+      her attitude, her extended and gently waving arm as she spoke, denoted a
+      confidence which could only have arisen from a perfect unconsciousness of
+      danger. Her swan-like neck, with the face slightly turned back to him; the
+      bright flashing eyes, and the smile of equal pride and dignity on her
+      exquisitely-chiselled mouth;&mdash;all formed a picture for the artist's
+      study, which almost served to divert the thoughts of Stevens from the
+      feeling of danger which he expressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he gazed, he heard a voice calling in tones of warning from above;
+      and, at the sound, he perceived a change in the expression of Margaret
+      Cooper's face, from confidence and pride, to scorn and contempt. At the
+      same time she darted forward from rock to rock, with a sort of defying
+      haste, which made him tremble for her safety, and left him incapable to
+      follow. The call was repeated; and Stevens looked up, and recognised the
+      person of the youth whom he had counselled that morning with such bad
+      success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the progress of Margaret Cooper appeared dangerous in his sight, that
+      of the young man was evidently more so. He was leaping, with the cool
+      indifference of one who valued his life not a pin's fee, from ledge to
+      ledge, down the long steppes which separated the several reaches of the
+      rock formation. The space between was very considerable, the descent
+      abrupt; the youth had no steadying pole to assist him, but flying rather
+      than leaping, was now beheld in air, and in the next moment stood
+      balancing himself with difficulty, but with success, and without seeming
+      apprehension, on the pinnacle of rock below him. In this way he was
+      approaching the lower ledge along which Margaret Cooper was hurrying as
+      rapidly as fearlessly, and calling to her as he came, implored her to
+      forbear a progress which was so full of danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens fancied he had no reason to love the youth, but he could not help
+      admiring and envying his equal boldness and agility; the muscular ease
+      with which he flung himself from point to point, and his sure-footed
+      descent upon the crags and fragments which trembled and tottered beneath
+      the sudden and unaccustomed burden. Charitably wishing that, amid all his
+      agility he might yet make a false step, and find an unexpected and rather
+      cold bath in the lake below, Stevens now turned his eyes upon Margaret
+      Cooper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not answer the counsels of William Hinkley&mdash;certainly did not
+      heed them: and, but for the increased impatience of her manner might be
+      supposed not to have heard them. The space between herself and Stevens had
+      increased meanwhile, and looking back, she waited for his approach. She
+      stood on a heavy mass which jutted above the lake, and not six feet from
+      the water. Her right foot was upon the stone, sustaining the whole weight
+      of her person. Her left was advanced and lifted to another fragment which
+      lay beyond. As she looked back she met the eyes of Stevens. Just then he
+      saw the large fragment yield beneath her feet. She seemed suddenly
+      conscious of it in the same moment, and sprung rapidly on that to which
+      her left foot was already advanced. The impetus of this movement, sent the
+      rock over which she had left. This disturbed the balance of that to which
+      she had risen, and while the breath of the stranger hung suspended in the
+      utterance of the meditated warning, the catastrophe had taken place. The
+      stone shrank from beneath her, and, sinking with it, in another moment,
+      she was hidden from sight in the still, deep waters of the lake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; SOUSING A GURNET.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The disappearance of Margaret Cooper was succeeded by a shriek from above&mdash;a
+      single shriek&mdash;a cry of terror and despair; and in the same instant
+      the form of William Hinkley might have been seen cleaving the air, with
+      the boldness of a bird, secure always of his wing, and descending into the
+      lake as nearly as it was possible for him to come, to the spot where she
+      had sunk. Our cooler fisherman looked up to the abrupt eminence, just
+      above his own head, from which his devoted cousin had sprung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By gemini!&rdquo; he exclaimed with an air of serious apprehension, &ldquo;if William
+      Hinkley hasn't knocked his life out by that plunge he's more lucky than I
+      think him. It's well the lake's deep enough in this quarter else he'd have
+      tried the strength of hard head against harder rock below. But there's no
+      time for such nice calculations! We can all swim&mdash;that's a comfort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus speaking, he followed the example of his cousin, though more quietly,
+      plunging off from his lowlier perch, and cleaving the water, headforemost,
+      with as little commotion as a sullen stone would make sent directly
+      downward to the deep. By this time, however, our former companion,
+      Stevens, had done the same thing. Stevens was no coward, but he had no
+      enthusiasm. He obeyed few impulses. His proceedings were all the result of
+      calculation. He could swim as well as his neighbors. He had no
+      apprehensions on that score; but he disliked cold water; and there was an
+      involuntary shrug of the shoulder and shiver of the limbs before he
+      committed himself to the water, which he did with all the deliberation of
+      the cat, who, longing for fish, is yet unwilling to wet her own feet. His
+      deliberation, and the nearness of his position to Margaret Cooper, were so
+      far favorable to his design that he succeeded in finding her first. It
+      must be understood that the events, which we have taken so much time to
+      tell, occupied but a few seconds in the performance. Stevens was in the
+      water quite as quickly as Ned Hinkley, and only not so soon as his more
+      devoted and desperate cousin. If it was an advantage to him to come first
+      in contact with the form of Margaret Cooper, it had nearly proved fatal to
+      him also. In the moment when he encountered her, her outstretched and
+      grasping arms, encircled his neck. They rose together, but he was nearly
+      strangled, and but for the timely interposition of the two cousins, they
+      must probably have both perished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the fortune of our fisherman to relieve the maiden, whom he bore to
+      the opposite shore with a coolness, a skill and spirit, which enabled him
+      to save himself from her desperate but unconscious struggles, while
+      supporting her with a degree of ease and strength which had been acquired
+      while teaching some dozen of the village urchins how to practise an art in
+      which he himself was reckoned a great proficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was fortunate for Stevens that the charities of William Hinkley were
+      more active and indulgent than his own, since, without the timely succor
+      and aid which he afforded, that devout young gentleman would have been
+      made to discontinue his studies very suddenly and have furnished a summary
+      conclusion to this veracious narrative&mdash;a consummation which, if it
+      be as devoutly wished by the reader as by the writer, will be a much
+      greater source of annoyance to our publisher than it has proved already.
+      Never had poor mortal been compelled to drink, at one time, a greater
+      quantity of that celestial beverage, which the Reverend Mr. Pierpont
+      insists is the only liquor drunk at the hotels of heaven. We should be
+      sorry to misrepresent that very gentle gentleman, but we believe that this
+      is substantially his idea. It was unfortunate for Stevens that, previously
+      to this, he had never been accustomed to drink much of this beverage in
+      its original strength anywhere. He had been too much in the habit of
+      diluting it; and being very temperate always in his enjoyment of the
+      creature comforts, he had never taken it, even when thus diluted, except
+      in very moderate quantities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In consequence of his former abstemiousness, the quantity which he now
+      swallowed nearly strangled him. He was about to take his last draught with
+      many wry faces, when the timely arms of the two cousins, by no very
+      sparing application of force withdrew him from the grasp of the damsel;
+      and without very well understanding the process, or any particulars of his
+      extrication, he found himself stretched upon the banks over which he had
+      lately wandered, never dreaming of any such catastrophe; discharging from
+      his stomach by no effort of his own, a large quantity of foreign
+      ingredients&mdash;the ordinary effect, we are given to understand, of
+      every inordinate indulgence in strong waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our excellent old friend, Mr. Calvert, was soon upon the spot, and while
+      Ned Hinkley was despatched to the village for assistance, he took himself
+      the charge of recovering the unconscious maiden. Half-forgetting his
+      hostility, William Hinkley undertook the same good service to Stevens, who
+      really seemed to need succor much more than his fair companion. While
+      William Hinkley busied himself by rolling, friction, fanning, and other
+      practices, employed in such cases, to bring his patient back to life, he
+      could not forbear an occasional glance to the spot where, at a little
+      distance, lay the object of his affections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was toward him, as she lay upon her side. Her head was supported
+      on the lap of the old man. Her long hair hung dishevelled, of a more
+      glossy black now when filled with water. Her eyes were shut, and the dark
+      fringes of their lids lay like a pencil-streak across the pale, prominent
+      orbs which they served to bind together. The glow of indignant pride with
+      which she was wont to receive his approaches had all disappeared in the
+      mortal struggle for life through which she had lately gone; and pure, as
+      seemingly free from every passion, her pale beauties appeared to his
+      doating eye the very perfection of human loveliness. Her breast now heaved
+      convulsively&mdash;deep sighs poured their way through her parted lips.
+      Her eyes alternately opened upon but shut against the light, and, finally,
+      the exertions of the old man were rewarded as the golden gleam of
+      expression began to relight and re-illumine those features which seemed
+      never to be without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She recovered her consciousness, started up, made an effort to rise, but,
+      reeling with inability, sunk down again into the paternal grasp of the old
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Calvert!&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are safe, my daughter,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how did it happen?&mdash;where am I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the lake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I remember. I was drowning. I felt it all&mdash;the choking&mdash;the
+      struggle&mdash;the water in my ears and eyes! It was a dreadful feeling.
+      How did I come here? Who saved me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ned Hinkley brought you to land, but he was helped by his cousin William,
+      who assisted the stranger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The stranger? ah! yes, I remember: but where is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked around wildly and anxiously, and beholding William Hinkley at a
+      little distance, busy with the still unconscious form of Stevens, a quick,
+      fearful shudder passed over her frame. She almost crouched into the old
+      man's arms as she asked, in husky accents&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not dead&mdash;he lives?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so. He breathes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for no more, but, starting to her feet, she staggered to the
+      spot where Stevens lay. The old man would have prevented her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are feeble; you will do yourself harm. Better, if you are able to
+      walk, hurry homeward with me, when you can change your clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you have me ungrateful?&rdquo; she exclaimed; &ldquo;shall I neglect him when
+      he risked his life for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a consciousness in her mind that it was not all gratitude which
+      moved her, for the deathly paleness of her cheek was now succeeded by a
+      warm blush which denoted a yet stronger and warmer emotion. The keen eyes
+      of William Hinkley understood the meaning of this significant but
+      unsyllabling mode of utterance, and his eyes spoke the reproach to hers
+      which his lips left unsaid:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! did I not risk my life too, to prevent&mdash;to save? When would she
+      feel such an interest in me? when would she look thus were my life at
+      stake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will not be neglected,&rdquo; said the old man, gently endeavoring to
+      restrain her. Perhaps she would not have given much heed to the
+      interruption, for hers was the strength of an unfettered will, one
+      accustomed to have way, but that, at this moment, the eyes of Stevens
+      unclosed and met her own. His consciousness had returned, and, under the
+      increasing expression in his looks, she sunk back, and permitted the old
+      man to lead her along the homeward path. More than once she looked back,
+      but, with the assurance of Mr. Calvert that there was no more danger to be
+      apprehended, she continued to advance; the worthy old man, as they went,
+      seeking to divert her mind, by pleasant and choice anecdotes of which his
+      memory had abundant stores, from dwelling upon the unpleasant and exciting
+      event which had just taken place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper, whose habits previously had kept her from much intimacy
+      with the village sage, was insensibly taken by his gentleness, the purity
+      of his taste, the choiceness of his expression, the extent of his
+      resources. She wondered how a mind so full should have remained unknown to
+      her so long&mdash;committing the error, very common to persons of strong
+      will and determined self-esteem, of assuming that she should, as a matter
+      of inevitable necessity, have known everything and everybody of which the
+      knowledge is at all desirable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In pleasant discourse he beguiled her progress, until Ned Hinkley was met
+      returning with horses&mdash;the pathway did not admit of a vehicle, and
+      the village had none less cumbrous than cart and wagon&mdash;on one of
+      which she mounted, refusing all support or assistance; and when, Mr.
+      Calvert insisted upon walking beside her, she grasped the bough of a tree,
+      broke off a switch, and, giving an arch but good-natured smile and nod to
+      the old man, laid it smartly over the horse's flank, and in a few moments
+      was out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl is smart,&rdquo; said Calvert, as he followed her retreating form with
+      his eye&mdash;&ldquo;too smart! She speaks well&mdash;has evidently read. No
+      wonder that William loves her; but she will never do for him. She has no
+      humility. Pride is the demon in her heart. Pride will overthrow her. These
+      woods spoil her. Solitude is the natural nurse of self-esteem,
+      particularly where it is strong at first, and is coupled with anything
+      like talent. Better for such a one if sickness, and strife, and suffering,
+      had taken her at the cradle, and nursed her with the milk of self-denial,
+      which is the only humility worth having. And yet, why should I speak of
+      her, when the sting remains in my own soul&mdash;when I yet feel the pang
+      of my feebleness and self-reproach? Alas! I should school none. The voice
+      speaks to me ever, 'Old man, to thy prayers! Thy own knees are yet
+      stubborn as thy neck!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving him to the becoming abasement of that delusive self-comfort which
+      ministers to our vain-glory, and which this good old man had so happily
+      succeeded in rebuking, we will return to the spot where we left our other
+      parties. Ned Hinkley had already joined them. With his horse he had
+      providently brought a suit of his own clothes for the stranger, which,
+      though made of homespun, and not of the most modern fashion, were yet warm
+      and comfortable, and as Stevens was compelled to think, infinitely
+      preferable to the chilly and dripping garments which he wore. A few
+      moments, in the cover of the woods, sufficed the neophyte to make the
+      alteration; while the two cousins, to whom the exigencies of forester and
+      fisherman life were more familiar prepared to walk the water out of their
+      own habits, by giving rapid circulation to their blood and limbs. While
+      their preparations were in progress, however, Ned Hinkley could not deny
+      himself the pleasure of discoursing at length on the subject of the late
+      disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stranger,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I must tell you that you've had a souse in as fine a
+      fishing-pond as you'll meet with from here to Salt river. I reckon, now,
+      that while you were in, you never thought for a moment of the noble trout
+      that inhabit it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly did not,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now! I could have sworn it. That a man should go with his eyes
+      open into a country without ever asking what sort of folks lived there!
+      Isn't it monstrous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly seems like a neglect of the first duty of a traveller,&rdquo; said
+      Stevens good-humoredly; &ldquo;let me not show myself heedless of another. Let
+      me thank you, gentlemen, for saving my life. I believe I owe it to one or
+      both of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To him, not to me,&rdquo; said Ned Hinkley, pointing to his cousin. William was
+      at a little distance, looking sullenly upon the two with eyes which, if
+      dark and moody, seemed to denote a thought which was anywhere else but in
+      the scene around him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He saved you, and I saved the woman. I wouldn't have a woman drowned in
+      this lake for all the houses in Charlemont.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Twould spoil it for fishing for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why would a woman do this more than a man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a very good reason, my friend. Because the ghost of a woman talks,
+      and a man's don't, they say. The ghost of a man says what it wants to say
+      with its eyes; a woman's with her tongue. You know there's nothing scares
+      fish so much as one's talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard so. But is it so clear that there is such a difference
+      between ghosts? How is it known that the female does all the talking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's beyond dispute. There's a case that we all know about&mdash;all
+      here in Charlemont&mdash;the case of Joe Barney's millpond. Barney lost
+      one of his children and one of his negroes in the pond&mdash;drowned as a
+      judgment, they say, for fishing a Sunday. That didn't make any difference
+      with the fish: you could catch them there just the same as before. But
+      when old Mrs. Prey fell in, crossing the dam, the case was altered. You
+      might sit there for hours and days, night and day, and bob till you were
+      weary; devil a bite after that! Now, what could make the difference but
+      the tongue? Mother Frey had a tongue of her own, I tell you. 'Twas going
+      when she fell in, and I reckon's been going ever since. She was a
+      sulphury, spiteful body, to be sure, and some said she poisoned the fish
+      if she didn't scare them. To my thinking, 'twas the tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens had been something seduced from his gravity by the blunt humor and
+      unexpected manner of Ned Hinkley; besides, having been served, if not
+      saved, by his hands, something, perhaps, of attention was due to what he
+      had to say; but he recollected the assumed character which he had to
+      maintain&mdash;something doubtful, too, if he had not already impaired it
+      in the sight and hearing of those who had come so opportunely but so
+      unexpectedly to his relief, He recovered his composure and dignity;
+      forbore to smile at the story which might otherwise have provoked not only
+      smile but corresponding answer; and, by the sudden coolness of his manner,
+      tended to confirm in Ned Hinkley's bosom the half-formed hostility which
+      the cause of his cousin had originally taught him to feel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll lick the conceit out of him yet!&rdquo; he muttered, as Stevens, turning
+      away, ascended to the spot where William Hinkley stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I owe you thanks, Mr. Hinkley,&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You owe me nothing, sir,&rdquo; he answered hastily, and prepared to turn away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have saved my life, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have saved your dog's life, sir, in the same situation. I have
+      done but an act of duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mr. Hinkley&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your horse is ready for you, sir,&rdquo; said the young man, turning off
+      abruptly, and darting up the sides of the hill, remote from the pathway,
+      and burying himself in the contiguous forests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange!&rdquo; exclaimed the neophyte&mdash;&ldquo;this is very strange!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so strange, stranger, as that I should stand your groom, without
+      being brought up to such a business for any man. Here's your nag, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you&mdash;I would not willingly trespass,&rdquo; he replied, as he
+      relieved our angler from his grasp upon the bridle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're welcome without the thanks, stranger. I reckon you know the route
+      you come. Up hill, follow the track to the top, take the left turn to the
+      valley, then you'll see the houses, and can follow your own nose or your
+      nag's. Either's straight enough to carry you to his rack. You'll find your
+      clothes at your boarding-house about the time that you'll get there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, sir, I already owe you much. Let them not trouble you. I will take
+      them myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, stranger!&rdquo; was the reply of our fisherman, as he stooped down and
+      busied himself in making the garments into a compact bundle; &ldquo;I'm not the
+      man to leave off without doing the thing I begin to do. I sometimes do
+      more than I bargain for&mdash;sometimes lick a man soundly when I set out
+      only to tweak his nose; but I make it a sort of Christian law never to do
+      less. You may reckon to find your clothes home by the time you get there.
+      There's your road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A regular pair of cubs!&rdquo; muttered the horseman, as he ascended the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To purse up his mouth as if I was giving him root-drink, when I was
+      telling him about Mother Frey's spoiling the fish! Let him take care&mdash;he
+      may get the vinegar next time, and not the fish!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, with these characteristic commentaries, the parties separated for the
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; PHILOSOPHY OP FIGHTING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not a fighter, Bill Hinkley, and that's about the worst fault that
+      I can find against you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the beginning of a dialogue between the cousins some three days
+      after the affair which was narrated in our last chapter. The two young men
+      were at the house of the speaker, or rather at his mother's house; where,
+      a favorite and only son, he had almost supreme dominion. He was putting
+      his violin in tune, and the sentences were spoken at intervals with the
+      discordant scraps of sound which were necessarily elicited by this
+      unavoidable musical operation. These sounds might be said to form a
+      running accompaniment for the dialogue, and, considering the sombre mood
+      of the person addressed, they were, perhaps, far more congenial than any
+      more euphonious strains would have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a fighter!&rdquo; said the other; &ldquo;why, what do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, just what I say&mdash;you are not a fighter. You love reading, and
+      fiddling, and fishing sometimes, and sometimes dancing, and hunting, and
+      swimming; but I'm pretty certain you don't love fighting. You needn't
+      contradict, Bill&mdash;I've been thinking the matter over; and I'm sure of
+      it. I recollect every battle or scrape you ever were in, from the time we
+      went to old Chandler's, and I tell you, you're not a fighter&mdash;you
+      don't love fighting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was concluded with a tremendous scrape over the strings, which seemed
+      to say as well as scrape could speak&mdash;&ldquo;There can be no mistake on the
+      subject&mdash;I've said it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I knew exactly what you were driving at,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;perhaps I
+      might answer you. I never pretended to be a fighter; and as for loving it,
+      as I love eating, drinking, books, fiddling, and dancing, why that needs
+      no answer. Of course I do not, and I don't know who does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There it is. I told you. I knew it. You'd sooner do almost anything than
+      fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that I would submit to insult,&rdquo; said the more peaceable
+      cousin, with some displeasure in his tones and countenance, &ldquo;sooner than
+      resent it, you are very much mistaken. It wouldn't be advisable even for
+      you to try the experiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poh, poh, Bill, you know for that matter that it wouldn't take much
+      trying. I'd lick you as easily now as I did when we were boys together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are boys no longer,&rdquo; said the other gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm as much a boy as ever, so far as the licking capacity calls for
+      boyhood. I've pretty much the same spirit now that I had then, and ten
+      times the same strength and activity. But don't look so blue. I'm not
+      going to try my strength and spirit and activity on you. And don't
+      suppose, Bill Hinkley, that I mean to say you're anything of a coward, or
+      that you'd submit to any open insult; but still I do say, you're not only
+      not fond of fighting, but you're just not as much inclined that way as you
+      should be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! what more would you have? Do you not say that I would not submit
+      to insult?&mdash;that I show the proper degree of courage in such cases?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the PROPER degree. That's the very question. You're not quick enough.
+      You wait for the first blow. You don't step out to meet the enemy. You
+      look for him to come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely! I look upon fighting as brutal&mdash;to be waited for, not sought&mdash;to
+      be resorted to only in compliance with necessity&mdash;to be avoided to
+      the last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No such thing&mdash;all a mistake. Fighting and the desire to get on the
+      shoulders of our neighbors is a natural passion. We see that every day.
+      The biggest boy licks the one just below him, he whips the next, and so
+      down, and there's not one that don't lick somebody and don't stand licked
+      himself&mdash;for the master licks the biggest. The desire to fight and
+      flog is natural, and this being the case, it stands to reason that we must
+      lick our neighbor or he'll be sure to lick us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! you speak like a boy yet. This is schoolhouse philosophy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And very good philosophy too. I'm thinking the schoolhouse and the
+      play-ground is pretty much a sort of world to itself. It's no bad show of
+      what the world without is; and one of its first lessons and that which I
+      think the truest, is the necessity of having a trial of strength with
+      every new-comer; until we learn where he's to stand in the ranks, number
+      one or number nothing. You see there just the same passions, though,
+      perhaps, on a small scale, that we afterward find to act upon the big
+      world of manhood. There, we fight for gingerbread, for marbles, top and
+      ball; not unfrequently because we venture to look at our neighbor's
+      sweetheart; and sometimes, quite as often, for the love of the thing and
+      to know where the spirit and the sinew are. Well, isn't that just what the
+      big world does after us? As men, we fight for bigger playthings, for
+      pounds, where before we fought for pence&mdash;for gold where before we
+      fought for coppers&mdash;for command of a country instead of a schoolyard;
+      for our wives instead of sweethearts, and through sheer deviltry and the
+      love of the thing, when there's nothing else to fight about, just the same
+      as we did in boyhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even were you to prove, and I to admit, that it is so, just as you
+      say, that would not prove the practice to be a jot more proper, or a jot
+      less brutal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begging your pardon, Bill, it proves it to be right and proper, and
+      accordingly, if brutal, a becoming brutality. If this is the natural
+      disposition of boys and men, don't you see that this schoolboy licking and
+      fighting is a necessary part of one's moral education? It learns one to
+      use his strength, his limbs and sinews, as he may be compelled to use
+      them, in self-defence, in every future day of his life. You know very well
+      what follows a boy at school who doesn't show himself ready to bung up his
+      neighbor's eye the moment he sees it at a cross-twinkle. He gets his own
+      bunged up. Well, it's just the same thing when he gets to be a man. If you
+      have a dispute with your enemy, I don't say that you shouldn't reason with
+      him, but I do say that your reasoning will have very little effect upon
+      him unless he sees that you are able and willing to write it in black and
+      blue upon his sheepskin. And what better way could you find to show him
+      THAT, unless by giving him word and blow, the blow first, as being the
+      most impressive argument?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have been dreaming of these subjects last night.&rdquo; said the grave
+      cousin&mdash;&ldquo;you seem to have them unusually well cut and dried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't been dreaming about it, Bill, but I confess I've been thinking
+      about it very seriously all night, and considering all the arguments that
+      I thought you would make use of against it. I haven't quite done with my
+      discussion, which I took up entirely for your benefit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! you are quite philanthropic before breakfast; but let us hear
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You talk of the brutality of fighting&mdash;now in what does that
+      brutality consist? Is it not in breaking noses, kicking shins, bunging up
+      eyes, and making one's neighbor feel uncomfortable in thigh, and back, and
+      arms, and face, and skin, and indeed, everywhere, where a big fist or a
+      cowhide shoe may plant a buffet or a bruise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite a definition, Ned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad you think so: for if it's brutal in the boy to do so to his
+      schoolmate, is it less so for the schoolmaster to do the same thing to the
+      boy that's under his charge? He bruises my skin, makes my thighs, and
+      arms, and back, and legs, and face, and hands, ache, and if my definition
+      be a correct one, he is quite as brutal as the boys who do the same thing
+      to one another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does it because the boys deserve it, and in order to make them
+      obedient and active.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when did a boy not deserve a flogging when he gets licked by his
+      companion?&rdquo; demanded the other triumphantly&mdash;&ldquo;and don't the licking
+      make him obedient, and don't the kicking make him active? By gemini, I've
+      seen more activity from one chap's legs under the quick application of
+      another's feet, than I think anything else could produce, unless it were
+      feet made expressly for such a purpose and worked by a steam-engine. That
+      might make them move something faster, but I reckon there would be no need
+      in such a case of any such improvement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you driving at, Ned Hinkley? This is by far the longest
+      argument, I think, that you've ever undertaken. You must be moved by some
+      very serious considerations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am, and you'll see what I'm driving at after a little while. I'm not
+      fond of arguing, you know, but I look upon the fighting principle as a
+      matter to be known and believed in, and I wish to make clear to you my
+      reasons for believing in it myself. You don't suppose I'd put down the
+      fiddle for a talk at any time if the subject was not a serious one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give way&mdash;you have the line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the brutality of fighting then, there's another thing to be said.
+      Fighting produces good feeling&mdash;that is to say supposing one party
+      fairly to have licked another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed&mdash;that's new.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And true too, Bill Hinkley. It cures the sulks. It lets off steam. It's
+      like a thunderstorm that comes once in a while, and drives away the
+      clouds, and clears the skies until all's blue again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Black and blue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! what was black becomes blue. Chaps that have been growling at each
+      other for weeks and months lose their bad blood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the nostrils!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, from the nostrils. It's a sort of natural channel, and runs freely
+      from that quarter. The one crows and the other runs and there's an end of
+      the scrape and the sulks. The weaker chap, feeling his weakness, ceases to
+      be impudent; the stronger, having his power acknowledged, becomes the
+      protector of the weak. Each party falls into his place, and so far from
+      the licking producing bad feeling it produces good feeling and good humor;
+      and I conclude that one half of the trouble in the world, the squabbles
+      between man and man, woman and woman, boy and boy&mdash;nay, between rival
+      nations&mdash;is simply because your false and foolish notions of
+      brutality and philanthropy keep them from coming to the scratch as soon as
+      they should. They hang off, growling and grumbling, and blackguarding, and
+      blaspheming, when, if they would only take hold, and come to an earnest
+      grapple, the odds would soon show themselves&mdash;broken heads and noses
+      would follow&mdash;the bad blood would run, and as soon as each party
+      found his level, the one being finally on his back, peace would ensue, and
+      there would be good humor for ever after, or at least until the blood
+      thickened again. I think there's reason in my notion. I was thinking it
+      over half the night. I've thought of it oftentimes before. I've never yet
+      seen the argument that's strong enough to tumble it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your views are certainly novel, Ned, if not sound. You will excuse me if
+      I do not undertake to dispute them this morning. I give in, therefore, and
+      you may congratulate yourself upon having gained a triumph if not a
+      convert?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, stop, William Hinkley: you don't suppose I've done all this talking
+      only to make a convert or to gain a triumph?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's your object in fighting, why not in arguing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's the object of most persons when they dispute, I know; but it
+      is not mine. I wish to make a practical application of my doctrine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! who do you mean to fight now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not for me to fight, it's for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; you have the preference by rights, though if you don't&mdash;and I'm
+      rather sorry to think, as I told you at the start, that the only fault I
+      had to find with you is that you're not a fighter&mdash;I must take your
+      place and settle the difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley turned upon the speaker. The latter had laid down the
+      violin, having, in the course of the argument, broken all its strings; and
+      he stood now, unjacketed, and still in the chamber, where the two young
+      men had been sleeping, almost in the attitude of one about to grapple with
+      an antagonist. The serious face of him whose voice had been for war&mdash;his
+      startling position&mdash;the unwonted eagerness of his eye, and the
+      ludicrous importance which he attached to the strange principle which he
+      had been asserting&mdash;conquered for a moment the graver mood of his
+      love-sick companion, and he laughed outright at his pugnacious cousin. The
+      latter seemed a little offended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's well you can laugh at such things, Bill Hinkley, but I can't. There
+      was a time when every mother's son in Kentucky was a man, and could stand
+      up to his rack with the best. If he couldn't keep the top place, he went a
+      peg lower; but he made out to keep the place for which he was intended.
+      Then, if a man disliked his neighbor he crossed over to him and said so,
+      and they went at it like men, and as soon as the pout was over they shook
+      hands, and stood side by side, and shoulder to shoulder, like true
+      friends, in every danger, and never did fellows fight better against
+      Indians and British than the same two men, that had lapped muscles, and
+      rolled in the grain together till you couldn't say whose was whose, and
+      which was which, till the best man jumped up, and shook himself, and gave
+      the word to crow. After that it was all peace and good humor, and they
+      drank and danced together, and it didn't lessen a man in his sweetheart's
+      eyes, though he was licked, if he could say he had stood up like a man,
+      and was downed after a good hug, because he couldn't help it. Now, there's
+      precious little of that. The chap that dislikes his fellow, hasn't the
+      soul to say it out, but he goes aside and sneers and snickers, and he
+      whispers things that breed slanders, and scandals, and bad blood, until
+      there's no trusting anybody; and everything is full of hate and enmity&mdash;but
+      then it's so peaceful! Peaceful, indeed! as if there was any peace where
+      there is no confidence, and no love, and no good feeling either for one
+      thing or another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, Ned, it seems to me you're indignant without any occasion. I am
+      tempted to laugh at you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, don't. You'd better not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha! ha! I can not help it, Ned; so don't buffet me. You forced me
+      into many a fight when I was a boy, for which I had no stomach; I trust
+      you will not pummel me yourself because the world has grown so hatefully
+      pacific. Tell me, in plain terms, who I am to fight now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who! who but Stevens?&mdash;this fellow Stevens. He's your enemy, you say&mdash;comes
+      between you and your sweetheart&mdash;between you and your own mother&mdash;seems
+      to look down upon you&mdash;speaks to you as if he was wiser, and better,
+      and superior in every way&mdash;makes you sad and sulky to your best
+      friends&mdash;you growl and grumble at him&mdash;you hate him&mdash;you
+      fear him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fear him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, I say fear him, for it's a sort of fear to skulk off from your
+      mother's house to avoid seeing him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, Ned, do you tell me that&mdash;do you begrudge me a place with you
+      here, my bed, my breakfast?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begrudge! dang it, William Hinkley, don't tell me that, unless you want
+      me to lay heavy hand on your shoulder!&rdquo;&mdash;and the tears gushed into
+      the rough fellow's eyes as he spoke these words, and he turned off to
+      conceal them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean to vex you, Ned, but why tell me that I skulk&mdash;that I
+      fear this man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begrudge!&rdquo; muttered the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, forgive me; I didn't mean it. I was hasty when I said so; but you
+      also said things to provoke me. Do you suppose that I fear this man
+      Stevens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you lick him then, or let him lick you, and bring the matter to
+      an ending? Find out who's the best man, and put an end to the growling and
+      the groaning. As it now stands you're not the same person&mdash;you're not
+      fit company for any man. You scarcely talk, you listen to nobody. You
+      won't fish, you won't hunt: you're sulky yourself and you make other
+      people so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid, Ned, it wouldn't much help the matter even if I were to
+      chastise the stranger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would cure him of his impudence. It would make him know how to treat
+      you; and if the rest of your grievance comes from Margaret Cooper, there's
+      a way to end that too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How! you wouldn't have me fight her?&rdquo; said William Hinkley, with an
+      effort to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, we may call it fighting,&rdquo; said the advocate for such wholesale
+      pugnacity, &ldquo;since it calls for quite as much courage sometimes to face one
+      woman as it does to face three men. But what I mean that you should do
+      with her is to up and at her. Put the downright question like a man 'will
+      you?' or 'won't you?' and no more beating about the bush. If she says
+      'no!' there's no more to be said, and if I was you after that, I'd let
+      Stevens have her or the d&mdash;l himself, since I'm of the notion that no
+      woman is fit for me if she thinks me not fit for her. Such a woman can't
+      be worth having, and after that I wouldn't take her as a gracious gift
+      were she to be made twice as beautiful. The track's before you, William
+      Hinkley. Bring the stranger to the hug, and Margaret Cooper too, if she'll
+      let you. But, at all events, get over the grunting and the growling, the
+      sulky looks, and the sour moods. They don't become a man who's got a man's
+      heart, and the sinews of a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley leaned against the fireplace with his head resting upon
+      his hand. The other approached him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean to say anything, Bill, or even to look anything, that'll do
+      you hurt. I'm for bringing your trouble to a short cut. I've told you what
+      I think right and reasonable, and for no other man in Kentucky would I
+      have taken the pains to think out this matter as I have done. But you or I
+      must lick Stevens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget, Ned. Your eagerness carries you astray. Would you beat a man
+      who offers no resistance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stevens is a non-combatant. If you were to slap John Cross on one cheek
+      he'd turn you the other. He'd never strike you back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Cross and Stevens are two persons. I tell you the stranger WILL
+      fight. I'm sure of it. I've seen it in his looks and actions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do; I'm sure of it. But you must recollect besides, that John Cross is
+      a preacher, already sworn in, as I may say. Stevens is only a beginner.
+      Besides, John Cross is an old man; Stevens, a young one. John Cross don't
+      care a straw about all the pretty girls in the country. He works in the
+      business of souls, not beauties, and it's very clear that Stevens not only
+      loves a pretty girl, but that he's over head and heels in love with your
+      Margaret&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say no more. If he will fight, Ned Hinkley, he shall fight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, Bill&mdash;that's all that I was arguing for&mdash;that's all that
+      I want. But you must make at Margaret Cooper also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Ned, there I confess my fears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what are you afraid of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rejection!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that worse than this suspense&mdash;this anxiety&mdash;this looking
+      out from morning till night for the sunshine, and this constant
+      apprehension of the clouds&mdash;this knowing not what to be about&mdash;this
+      sulking&mdash;this sadding&mdash;this growling&mdash;this grunting&mdash;this
+      muling&mdash;this moping&mdash;this eternal vinegar-face and
+      ditchwater-spirit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, Ned, but I confess my weakness&mdash;my want of courage in
+      this respect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Psho! the bark's worse always than the bite. The fear worse than the
+      danger! Suspense is the very d&mdash;l! Did you ever hear of the Scotch
+      parson's charity? He prayed that God might suspend Napoleon over the very
+      jaws of hell&mdash;but 'Oh, Lord!' said he, 'dinna let him fa' in!' To my
+      mind, mortal lips never uttered a more malignant prayer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TRAILING THE FOX. &mdash;
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This dialogue was broken by a summons to the breakfast-table. We have
+      already intimated that while the hateful person of Stevens was an inmate
+      of his own house, William Hinkley remained, the better portion of his
+      time, at that of his cousin. It was not merely that Stevens was hateful to
+      his sight, but such was the devotion of his father and mother to that
+      adventurer, that the young man passed with little notice from either, or
+      if he incurred their attention at all, it was only to receive their
+      rebuke. He had not been able to disguise from them his dislike to Stevens.
+      This dislike showed itself in many ways&mdash;in coldness, distance,
+      silence&mdash;a reluctance to accord the necessary civilities, and in very
+      unequivocal glances of hostility from the eyes of the jealous young
+      villager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such offences against good-breeding were considered by them as so many
+      offences against God himself, shown to one who was about to profess his
+      ministry; and being prepared to see in Brother Stevens an object of worth
+      and veneration only, they lacked necessarily all that keenness of
+      discrimination which might have helped somewhat to qualify the
+      improprieties of which they believed their son to be guilty. Of his causes
+      of jealousy they had no suspicion, and they shared none of his
+      antipathies. He was subject to the daily lecture from the old man, and the
+      nightly exhortation and expostulation of the old woman. The latter did her
+      spiriting gently. The former roared and thundered. The mother implored and
+      kissed&mdash;the father denounced and threatened. The one, amidst the
+      faults of her you which she reproved, could see his virtues; she could
+      also see that he was suffering&mdash;she knew not why&mdash;as well as
+      sinning; the other could only see an insolent, disobedient boy who was
+      taking airs upon himself, flying in the face of his parents, and doomed to
+      perish like the sons of Eli, unless by proving himself a better manager
+      than Eli, he addressed himself in time to the breaking in of the unruly
+      spirit whose offences promised to be so heinous. It was not merely from
+      the hateful sight of his rival, or the monotonous expostulation of his
+      mother, that the poor youth fled; it was sometimes to escape the heavily
+      chastening hand of his bigoted father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things worked keenly and constantly in the mind of William Hinkley.
+      They acquired additional powers of ferment from the coldness of Margaret
+      Cooper, and from the goadings of his cousin. Naturally one of the gentlest
+      of creatures, the young man was not deficient in spirit. What seemed to
+      his more rude and elastic relative a token of imbecility, was nothing more
+      than the softening influence of his reflective and mental over his
+      physical powers. These, under the excitement of his blood were necessarily
+      made subject to his animal impulses, and when he left the house that
+      morning, with his Blackstone under his arm, on his way to the peaceful
+      cottage of old Calvert, where he pursued his studies, his mind was in a
+      perfect state of chaos. Of the chapter which he had striven to compass the
+      previous night, in which the rights of persons are discussed with the
+      usual clearness of style, but the usual one-sidedness of judgment of that
+      smooth old monarchist, William Hinkley scarcely remembered a solitary
+      syllable. He had read only with his eyes. His mind had kept no pace with
+      his proceedings, and though he strove as he went along to recall the heads
+      of topics, the points and principles of what he had been reading, his
+      efforts at reflection, by insensible but sudden transitions, invariably
+      concluded with some image of strife and commotion, in which he was one of
+      the parties and Alfred Stevens another; the beautiful, proud face of
+      Margaret Cooper being always unaccountably present, and seeming to
+      countenance, with its scornful smiles, the spirit of strife which operated
+      upon the combatants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This mood had the most decided effect upon his appearance; and the good
+      old man, Calvert, whose attention had been already drawn to the condition
+      of distress and suffering which he manifested, was now more than ever
+      struck with the seemingly sudden increase of this expression upon his
+      face. It was Saturday&mdash;the saturnalia of schoolboys&mdash;and a day
+      of rest to the venerable teacher. He was seated before his door, under the
+      shadows of his paternal oak, once more forgetting the baffled aims and
+      profitless toils of his own youthful ambition, in the fascinating pages of
+      that historical romancer the stout Abbe Vertot. But a glance at the youth
+      soon withdrew his mind from this contemplation, and the sombre pages of
+      the present opened upon his eye, and the doubtful ones of the future
+      became, on the instant, those which he most desired to peruse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The study of the young is always a study of the past with the old. They
+      seem, in such a contemplation, to live over the records of memory. They
+      feel as one just returning from a long and weary journey, who encounters
+      another, freshly starting to traverse the same weary but inviting track.
+      Something in the character of William Hinkley, which seemed to resemble
+      his own, made this feeling yet more active in the mind of Mr. Calvert; and
+      his earnest desire was to help the youth forward on the path which, he
+      soon perceived, it was destined that the other should finally take. He was
+      not satisfied with the indecision of character which the youth displayed.
+      But how could he blame it harshly? It was in this very respect that his
+      own character had failed, and though he felt that all his counsels were to
+      be addressed to this point, yet he knew not where; or in what manner, to
+      begin. The volume of Blackstone which the youth carried suggested to him a
+      course, however. He bade the young man bring out a chair, and taking the
+      book in his hand, he proceeded to examine him upon parts of the volume
+      which he professed to have been reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This examination, as it had the effect of compelling the mind of the
+      student to contract itself to a single subject of thought, necessarily had
+      the further effect of clearing it somewhat from the chaos of clouds which
+      had been brooding over it, obscuring the light, and defeating the warmth
+      of the intellectual sun behind them; and if the examination proved the
+      youth to have been very little of a student, or one who had been reading
+      with a vacant mind, it also proved that the original powers of his
+      intellect were vigorous and various&mdash;that he had an analytical
+      capacity of considerable compass; was bold in opinion, ingenious in
+      solution, and with a tendency to metaphysical speculation, which, modified
+      by the active wants and duties of a large city-practice, would have made
+      him a subtle lawyer, and a very logical debater. But the blush kept
+      heightening on the youth's cheeks as the examination proceeded. He had
+      answered, but he felt all the while how much his answer had sprung from
+      his own conjectures and how little from his authorities. The examination
+      convinced him that the book had been so much waste-paper under his thumb.
+      When it was ended the old man closed the volume, laid it on the sward
+      beside him, and looked, with a mingled expression of interest and
+      commiseration, on his face. William Hinkley noted this expression, and
+      spoke, with a degree of mortification in look and accent, which he did not
+      attempt to hide:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, sir, you will make nothing of me. I can make nothing of
+      myself. I am almost inclined to give up in despair. I will be nothing&mdash;I
+      can be nothing. I feared as much from the beginning, sir. You only waste
+      your time on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak too fast, William&mdash;you let your blood mingle too much with
+      your thoughts. Let me ask you one question. How long will you be content
+      to live as you do now&mdash;seeking nothing&mdash;performing nothing&mdash;being
+      nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, you see, am nothing,&rdquo; continued the old man&mdash;&ldquo;nay, do not
+      interrupt me. You will tell me, as you have already told me, that I am
+      much, and have done much, here in Charlemont. But, for all that I am, and
+      have done here, I need not have gone beyond my accidence. My time has been
+      wasted; my labors, considered as means to ends, were unnecessary; I have
+      toiled without the expected profits of toil; I have drawn water in a
+      sieve. It is not pleasant for me to recall these things, much less to
+      speak of them; but it is for your good that I told you my story. You have,
+      as I had, certain defects of character&mdash;not the same exactly, but of
+      the same family complexion. To be something, you must be resolved. You
+      must devote yourself, heart and mind, with all your soul and with all your
+      strength, to the business you have undertaken. Shut your windows against
+      the sunshine, your ears to the song of birds, your heart against the
+      fascinations of beauty; and if you never think of the last until you are
+      thirty, you will be then a better judge of beauty, a truer lover, a better
+      husband, a more certain candidate for happiness. Let me assure you that,
+      of the hundred men that take wives before they are thirty, there is
+      scarcely one who, in his secret soul, does not repent it&mdash;scarcely
+      one who does not look back with yearning to the days when he was free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. The young man became very much agitated. He rose from
+      his chair, walked apart for a few moments, and then, returning, resumed
+      his seat by the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you are right, sir&mdash;nay, I know you are; but I can not be
+      at once&mdash;I can not promise&mdash;to be all that you wish. If Margaret
+      Cooper would consent, I would marry her to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man shook his head, but remained silent. The young one proceeded:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing I will say, however: I will take to my studies after this week,
+      whatever befalls, with the hearty resolution which you recommend. I will
+      try to shut out the sunshine and the song. I will endeavor to devote soul
+      and strength, and heart and mind, to the task before me. I KNOW that I can
+      master these studies&mdash;I think I can&rdquo;&mdash;he continued, more
+      modestly, modifying the positive assertion&mdash;&ldquo;and I know that it is
+      equally my interest and duty to do so. I thank you sir, very much for what
+      you have told me. Believe me, it has not fallen upon heedless or
+      disrespectful ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man pressed his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know THAT, my son, and I rejoice to think that, having given me these
+      assurances, you will strive hard to make them good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, sir!&rdquo; replied William, taking up his cap to depart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But whither are you going now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth blushed as he replied frankly:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the widow Cooper's. I'm going to see Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; said the old man, as the youth disappeared, &ldquo;if it must be
+      done, the sooner it's over the better. But there's another moth to the
+      flame. Fortunately, he will be singed only; but she!&mdash;what is left
+      for her&mdash;so proud, yet so confiding&mdash;so confident of strength,
+      yet so artless? But it is useless to look beyond, and very dismal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the speaker once more took up Vertot, and was soon lost amid the
+      glories of the knights of St. John. His studies were interrupted by the
+      sudden and boisterous salutation of Ned Hinkley:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gran'pa, hard at the big book as usual? No end to the fun of
+      fighting, eh? I confess, if ever I get to love reading, it'll be in some
+      such book as that. But reading's not natural to me, though you made me do
+      enough of it while you had me. Bill was the boy for the books, and I for
+      the hooks. By-the-way, talking of hooks, how did those trout eat? Fine,
+      eh? I haven't seen you since the day of our ducking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Ned, and I've been looking for you. Where have you been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Working, working! Everything's been going wrong. Lines snapped,
+      fiddle-strings cracked, hooks missing, gun rusty, and Bill Hinkley so
+      sulky, that his frown made a shadow on the wall as large and ugly as a
+      buffalo's. But where is he? I came to find him here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was speaking, the lively youth squatted down, and deliberately
+      took his seat on the favorite volume which Mr. Calvert had laid upon the
+      sward at his approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take the chair, Ned,&rdquo; said the old man, with a smaller degree of kindness
+      in his tone than was habitual with him. &ldquo;Take the chair. Books are sacred
+      things&mdash;to be worshipped and studied, not employed as footstools.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what's the hurt, gran'pa?&rdquo; demanded the young man, though he rose
+      and did as he was bidden. &ldquo;If 'twas a fiddle, now, there would be some
+      danger of a crash, but a big book like that seems naturally made to sit
+      upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man answered him mildly:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have learned to venerate books, Ned, and can no more bear to see them
+      abused than I could bear to be abused myself. It seems to me like treating
+      their writers and their subjects with scorn. If you were to contemplate
+      the venerable heads of the old knights with my eyes and feelings, you
+      would see why I wish to guard them from everything like disrespect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I beg their pardon&mdash;a thousand pardons! I meant no offence,
+      gran'pa&mdash;and can't help thinking that it's all a notion of yours,
+      your reverencing such old Turks and Spaniards that have been dead a
+      thousand years. They were very good people, no doubt, but I'm thinking
+      they've served their turn; and I see no more harm in squatting upon their
+      histories than in walking over their graves, which, if I were in their
+      country of Jericho&mdash;that was where they lived, gran'pa, wa'n't it?&mdash;I
+      should be very apt to do without asking leave, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ned Hinkley purposely perverted his geography and history. There was a
+      spice of mischief in his composition, and he grinned good-naturedly as he
+      watched the increasing gravity upon the old man's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, gran'pa, don't be angry. You know my fun is a sort of fizz&mdash;there's
+      nothing but a flash&mdash;nothing to hurt&mdash;no shotting. But where's
+      Bill Hinkley, gran'pa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone to the widow Cooper's, to see Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! well, I'm glad he's made a beginning. But I'd much rather he'd have
+      seen the other first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What other do you mean?&rdquo; demanded the old man; but the speaker, though
+      sufficiently random and reckless in what he said, saw the impolicy of
+      allowing the purpose of his cousin in regard to Stevens to be understood.
+      He contrived to throw the inquirer off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran'pa, do you know there's something in this fellow Stevens that don't
+      altogether please me? I'm not satisfied with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, indeed! what do you see to find fault with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, he comes here pretending to study. Now, in the first
+      place, why should he come here to study? why didn't he stay at home with
+      his friends and parents?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he had neither. Perhaps he had no home. You might as well ask me
+      why I came here, and settled down, where I was not born&mdash;where I had
+      neither friends nor parents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, but you told us why,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;You gave us a reason for
+      what you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why may not the stranger give a reason too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He don't, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he will when you get intimate with him. I see nothing in this to
+      be dissatisfied with. I had not thought you so suspicious, Ned Hinkley&mdash;so
+      little charitable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charity begins at home, gran'pa. But there's more in this matter. This
+      man comes here to study to be a parson. How does he study? Can you guess?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really can not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By dressing spruce as a buck&mdash;curling his hair backward over his
+      ears something like a girl's, and going out, morning, noon, and night, to
+      see Margaret Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As there is no good reason to suppose that a student of divinity is
+      entirely without the affections of humanity, I still see nothing
+      inconsistent with his profession in this conduct.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can he study?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! it may be inconsistent with his studies though not with his
+      profession. It is human without being altogether proper. You see that your
+      cousin neglects his studies in the same manner. I presume that the
+      stranger also loves Miss Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he has no such right as Bill Hinkley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? Why, Bill is a native here, has been loving her for the last
+      year or more. His right certainly ought to be much greater than that of a
+      man whom nobody knows&mdash;who may be the man in the moon for anything we
+      know to the contrary&mdash;just dropped in upon us, nobody knows how, to
+      do nobody knows what.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that may be very true, Ned, and yet his right to seek Miss Cooper may
+      be just as good as that of yourself or mine. You forget that it all
+      depends upon the young lady herself whether either of them is to have a
+      right at all in her concerns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's a subject we needn't dispute about, gran'pa, when there's
+      other things. Now, isn't it strange that this stranger should ride off
+      once a week with his valise on his saddle, just as if he was starting on a
+      journey&mdash;should be gone half a day&mdash;then come back with his nag
+      all in a foam, and after that you should see him in some new cravat, or
+      waistcoat, or pantaloons, just as if he had gone home and got a change?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does he do that?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Calvert, with some show of curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he does, and he always takes the same direction; and it seems&mdash;so
+      Aunt Sarah herself says, though she thinks him a small sort of divinity on
+      earth&mdash;that the day before, he's busy writing letters, and, according
+      to her account, pretty long letters too. Well, nobody sees that he ever
+      gets any letters in return. He never asks at the post-office, so Jacob
+      Zandts himself tells me, and that's strange enough, too, if so be he has
+      any friends or relations anywhere else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Calvert listened with interest to these and other particulars which
+      his young companion had gathered respecting the habits of the stranger;
+      and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that there was
+      something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps mysterious.
+      Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the prying and
+      suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this effect in the reply
+      which finally dismissed the subject. Ned Hinkley was silenced not
+      satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's something wrong about it,&rdquo; he muttered to himself on leaving the
+      old man, &ldquo;and, by dickens! I'll get to the bottom of it, or there's no
+      taste in Salt-river. The fellow's a rascal; I feel it if I don't know it,
+      and if Bill Hinkley don't pay him off, I must. One or t'other must do it,
+      that's certain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these reflections, which seemed to him to be no less moral than
+      social, the young man took his way back to the village, laboring with all
+      the incoherence of unaccustomed thought, to strike out some process by
+      which to find a solution for those mysteries which were supposed to
+      characterize the conduct of the stranger. He had just turned out of the
+      gorge leading from Calvert's house into the settlement, when he
+      encountered the person to whom his meditations were given, on horseback;
+      and going at a moderate gallop along the high-road to the country. Stevens
+      bowed to him and drew up for speech as he drew nigh. At first Ned Hinkley
+      appeared disposed to avoid him, but moved by a sudden notion, he stopped
+      and suffered himself to speak with something more of civility than he had
+      hitherto shown to the same suspected personage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you're not going to travel, Parson Stevens,&rdquo; said he&mdash;&ldquo;you're
+      not going to leave us, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir&mdash;I only wish to give myself and horse a stretch of a few
+      miles for the sake of health. Too much stable, they say, makes a saucy
+      nag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it does, and I may say, a saucy man too. But seeing you with your
+      valise, I thought you were off for good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens said something about his being so accustomed to ride with the
+      valise that he carried it without thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I scarcely knew I had it on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a lie all round,&rdquo; said Ned Hinkley to himself as the other rode
+      off. &ldquo;Now, if I was mounted, I'd ride after him and see where he goes and
+      what he's after. What's to hinder? It's but a step to the stable, and but
+      five minutes to the saddle. Dang it, but I'll take trail this time if I
+      never did before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; THE DOOM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      With this determination our suspicious youth made rapid progress in
+      getting out his horse. A few minutes saw him mounted, and putting some of
+      his resolution into his heels, he sent the animal forward at a killing
+      start, under the keen infliction of the spur. He had marked with his eye
+      the general course which Stevens had taken up the hills, and having a nag
+      of equal speed and bottom, did not scruple, in the great desire which he
+      felt, to ascertain the secret of the stranger, to make him display the
+      qualities of both from the very jump. Stevens had been riding with a free
+      rein, but in consequence of these energetic measures on the part of
+      Hinkley, the latter soon succeeded in overhauling him. Still he had
+      already gone a space of five miles, and this, too, in one direction. He
+      looked back when he found himself pursued, and his countenance very
+      clearly expressed the chagrin which he felt. This he strove, but with very
+      indifferent success, to hide from the keen searching eyes of his pursuer.
+      He drew up to wait his coming, and there was a dash of bitterness in his
+      tones as he expressed his &ldquo;gratification at finding a companion where he
+      least expected one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And perhaps, parson, when you didn't altogether wish for one,&rdquo; was the
+      reply of the reckless fellow. &ldquo;The truth is, I know I'm not the sort of
+      company that a wise, sensible, learned, and pious young gentleman would
+      like to keep, out the truth is what you said about taking a stretch, man
+      and beast, seemed to me to be just about as wise a thing for me and my
+      beast also. We've been lying by so long that I was getting a little stiff
+      in my joints, and Flipflap, my nag here, was getting stiff in his neck, as
+      they say was the case with the Jews in old times, so I took your idea and
+      put after you, thinking that you'd agree with me that bad company's far
+      better than none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a mixture of simplicity and archness in the manner of the
+      speaker that put Stevens somewhat at fault; but he saw that it wouldn't do
+      to show the dudgeon which he really felt; and smoothing his quills with as
+      little obvious effort as possible, he expressed his pleasure at the coming
+      of his companion. While doing so, he wheeled his horse about, and
+      signified a determination to return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! so soon? Why, Lord bless you, Flipflap has scarcely got in motion
+      yet. If such a stir will do for your nag 'twont do for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Stevens doggedly kept his horse's head along the back track, though
+      the animal himself exhibited no small restlessness and a disposition to go
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, really, Parson Stevens, I take it as unkind that you turn back
+      almost the very moment I join you. I seem to have scared ride out of you
+      if not out of your creature; but do as you please. I'll ride on, now I'm
+      out. I don't want to force myself on any man for company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens disclaimed any feeling of this sort, but declared he had ridden
+      quite as far as he intended; and while he hesitated, Hinkley cut the
+      matter short by putting spurs to his steed, and going out of sight in a
+      moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can the cur mean?&rdquo; demanded Stevens of himself, the moment after
+      they had separated. &ldquo;Can he have any suspicions? Ha! I must be watchful!
+      At all events, there's no going forward to-day. I must put it off for next
+      week; and meanwhile have all my eyes about me. The fellow seems to have as
+      much cunning as simplicity. He is disposed too, to be insolent I marked
+      his manner at the lake, as well as that of his bull-headed cousin; but
+      that sousing put anger out of me, and then, again, 'twill scarcely do in
+      these good days for such holy men as myself to take up cudgels. I must
+      bear it for awhile as quietly as possible. It will not be long. She at
+      least is suspicionless. Never did creature so happily delude herself. Yet
+      what a judgment in some things! What keen discrimination! What a wild,
+      governless imagination! She would be a prize, if it were only to exhibit.
+      How she would startle the dull, insipid, tea-table simperers on our
+      Helicon&mdash;nay, with what scorn she would traverse the Helicon itself.
+      The devil is that she would have a will in spite of her keeper. Such an
+      animal is never tamed. There could be no prescribing to her the time when
+      she should roar&mdash;no teaching her to fawn and fondle, and not to rend.
+      Soul, and eye, and tongue, would speak under the one impulse, in the
+      exciting moment; and when Mrs. Singalongohnay was squeaking out her
+      eternal requiems&mdash;her new versions of the Psalms and Scriptures&mdash;her
+      blank verse elegiacs&mdash;oh! how blank!&mdash;beginning, 'Night was upon
+      the hills,'&mdash;or 'The evening veil hung low,' or, 'It slept,'&mdash;or
+      after some other equally threatening form and fashion&mdash;I can fancy
+      how the bright eye of Margaret would gleam with scorn; and while the
+      Pollies and Dollies, the Patties and Jennies, the Corydons and Jemmy
+      Jesamies, all round were throwing up hands and eyes in a sort of rapture,
+      how she would look, with what equal surprise and contempt, doubting her
+      own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the strange sycophancy which
+      induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay, with a natural and
+      patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to her about poetry,
+      with that assured smile of self-excellence which such a venerable
+      authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the dame and exclaim&mdash;'What!
+      do you call that poetry?' What a concussion would follow. How the
+      simperers would sheer off; the tea that night might as well be made of
+      aqua-fortis. Ha! ha! I can fancy the scene before me. Nothing could be
+      more rich. I must give her a glimpse of such a scene. It will be a very
+      good mode of operation. Her pride and vanity will do the rest. I have only
+      to intimate the future sway&mdash;the exclusive sovereignty which would
+      follow&mdash;the overthrow of the ancient idols, and the setting up of a
+      true divinity in herself. But shall it be so, Master Stevens? Verily, that
+      will be seen hereafter. Enough, if the delusion takes. If I can delude the
+      woman through the muse, I am satisfied. The muse after that may dispose of
+      the woman as she pleases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was a portion of the soliloquy of the libertine as he rode slowly
+      back to Charlemont. His further musings we need not pursue at present. It
+      is enough to say that they were of the same family character. He returned
+      to his room as soon as he reached his lodging-house, and drawing from his
+      pocket a bundle of letters which he had intended putting in the postoffice
+      at Ellisland, he carefully locked them up in his portable writing-desk
+      which he kept at the bottom of his valise. When the devout Mrs. Hinkley
+      tapped at his door to summon him to dinner, the meritorious young man was
+      to be seen, seated at his table, with the massive Bible of the family
+      conspicuously open before him. Good young man! never did he invoke a
+      blessing on the meats with more holy unction than on that very day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, let us resume our progress with William Hinkley, and inquire in
+      what manner his wooing sped with the woman whom he so unwisely loved. We
+      have seen him leaving the cottage of Mr. Calvert with the avowed purpose
+      of seeking a final answer. A purpose from which the old man did not seek
+      to dissuade him, though he readily conceived its fruitlessness. It was
+      with no composed spirit that the young rustic felt himself approaching the
+      house of Mrs. Cooper. More than once he hesitated and even halted. But a
+      feeling of shame, and the efforts of returning manliness re-resolved him,
+      and he hurried with an unwonted rapidity of movement toward the dwelling,
+      as if he distrusted his own power, unless he did so, to conclude the labor
+      he had begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gathered some courage when he found that Margaret was from home. She
+      had gone on her usual rambles. Mrs. Cooper pointed out the course which
+      she had taken, and the young man set off in pursuit. The walks of the
+      maiden were of course well known to a lover so devoted. He had sought and
+      followed her a thousand times, and the general direction which she had
+      gone, once known, his progress was as direct as his discoveries were
+      certain. The heart of the youth, dilated with better hopes as he felt
+      himself traversing the old familiar paths. It seemed to him that the fates
+      could scarcely be adverse in a region which had always been so friendly.
+      Often had he escorted her along this very route, when their spirits better
+      harmonized&mdash;when, more of the girl struggling into womanhood, the
+      mind of Margaret Cooper, ignorant of its own resources and unconscious of
+      its maturer desires, was more gentle, and could rejoice in that
+      companionship for which she now betrayed so little desire. The sheltered
+      paths and well-known trees, even the little clumps of shrubbery that
+      filled up the intervals, were too pleasant and familiar to his eye not to
+      seem favorable to his progress, and with a hope that had no foundation,
+      save in the warm and descriptive colors of a young heart's fancy, William
+      Hinkley pursued the route which led him to one of the most lovely and
+      love-haunted glades in all Kentucky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So sweet a hush never hallowed the sabbath rest of any forest. The very
+      murmur of a drowsy zephyr among the leaves was of slumberous tendency; and
+      silence prevailed, with the least possible exertion of her authority, over
+      the long narrow dell through which the maiden had gone wandering. At the
+      foot of a long slope, to which his eye was conducted by a natural and
+      lovely vista, the youth beheld the object of his search, sitting,
+      motionless, with her back toward him. The reach of light was bounded by
+      her figure which was seated on the decaying trunk of a fallen tree. She
+      was deeply wrapped in thought, for she did not observe his approach, and
+      when his voice reached her ears, and she started and looked round, her
+      eyes were full of tears. These she hastily brushed away, and met the young
+      man with a degree of composure which well might have put the blush upon
+      his cheek, for the want of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In tears!&mdash;weeping, Margaret?&rdquo; was the first address of the lover
+      who necessarily felt shocked at what he saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were secret tears, sir&mdash;not meant for other eyes,&rdquo; was the
+      reproachful reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Margaret! but why should you have secret tears, when you might have
+      sympathy&mdash;why should you have tears at all? You have no sorrows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sympathy!&rdquo; was the exclamation of the maiden, while a scornful smile
+      gleamed from her eyes; &ldquo;whose sympathy, I pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man hesitated to answer. The expression of her eye discouraged
+      him. He dreaded lest, in offering his sympathies, he should extort from
+      her lips a more direct intimation of that scorn which he feared. He chose
+      a middle course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that you should have sorrows, Margaret, seems very strange to me. You
+      are young and hearty; endowed beyond most of your sex, and with a beauty
+      which can not be too much admired. Your mother is hearty and happy, and
+      for years you have had no loss of relations to deplore. I see not why you
+      should have sorrows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very likely, William Hinkley, that you do not see. The ordinary
+      sorrows of mankind arise from the loss of wives and cattle, children and
+      property. There are sorrows of another kind; sorrows of the soul; the
+      consciousness of denial; of strife&mdash;strife to be continued&mdash;strife
+      without victory&mdash;baffled hopes&mdash;defeated aims and energies.
+      These are sorrows which are not often computed in the general account. It
+      is highly probable that none of them afflict you. You have your parents,
+      and very good people they are. You yourself are no doubt a very good young
+      man&mdash;so everybody says&mdash;and you have health and strength.
+      Besides, you have property, much more, I am told, than falls to the lot
+      ordinarily of young people in this country. These are reasons why you
+      should not feel any sorrow; but were all these mine and a great deal more,
+      I'm afraid it would not make me any more contented. You, perhaps, will not
+      understand this, William Hinkley, but I assure you that such, nevertheless
+      is my perfect conviction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I can, and do understand it, Margaret,&rdquo; said the young man, with
+      flushed cheek and a very tremulous voice, as he listened to language
+      which, though not intended to be contemptuous, was yet distinctly colored
+      by that scornful estimate which the maiden had long since made of the
+      young man's abilities. In this respect she had done injustice to his mind,
+      which had been kept in subjection and deprived of its ordinary strength
+      and courage, by the enfeebling fondness of his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Margaret,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I can and do understand it, and I too have
+      my sorrows of this very sort. Do not smile, Margaret, but hear me
+      patiently, and believe, that, whatever may be the error which I commit, I
+      have no purpose to offend you in what I say or do. Perhaps, we are both of
+      us quite too young to speak of the sorrows which arise from defeated
+      hopes, or baffled energies, or denial of our rights and claims. The
+      yearnings and apprehensions which we are apt to feel of this sort are not
+      to be counted as sorrows, or confounded with them. I had a conversation on
+      this very subject only a few days ago, with old Mr. Calvert, and this was
+      his very opinion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The frankness with which William Hinkley declared the source of his
+      opinions, though creditable to his sincerity, was scarcely politic&mdash;it
+      served to confirm Margaret Cooper in the humble estimate which she had
+      formed of the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Calvert,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;is a very sensible old man, but neither he nor
+      you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall, or what shall
+      not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William Hinkley, that I have
+      my cares&mdash;at least I fancy that I have them&mdash;and though I am
+      very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that they can do me any
+      good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do not say so, Margaret&mdash;dear Margaret&mdash;it is to proffer
+      them that I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved
+      you: you can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary to my
+      happiness! Do not repulse me&mdash;do not speak quickly. What I am, and
+      what I have, is yours. We have grown up together; I have known no other
+      hope, no other love, but that for you. Look not upon me with that scornful
+      glance&mdash;hear me&mdash;I implore you&mdash;on my knee, dear Margaret.
+      I implore you as for life&mdash;for something more dear than life&mdash;that
+      which will make life precious&mdash;which may make it valuable. Be mine,
+      dear Margaret&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!&rdquo; was the stern, almost
+      deliberate answer of the maiden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret&mdash;do
+      not look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that the
+      dearest hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold in
+      yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The meanest creature has it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, but only of creatures like itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret!&rdquo; exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates to a
+      creature like itself&mdash;endowed with its own nature and fed with like
+      sympathies. But you&mdash;what should make you hope of me? Have I not long
+      avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you the pain of this
+      moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps&mdash;you pursue me&mdash;you
+      annoy me with attentions which I dare not receive for fear of encouraging
+      you, and in spite of all this, which everybody in the village must have
+      seen but yourself, you still press yourself upon me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret Cooper, be not so proud!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am what I am! I know that I am proud&mdash;vain, perhaps, and having
+      little to justify either pride or vanity; but to you, William Hinkley, as
+      an act of justice, I must speak what I feel&mdash;what is the truth. I am
+      sorry, from my very soul, that you love me, for I can have no feeling for
+      you in return. I do not dislike you, but you have so oppressed me that I
+      would prefer not to see you. We have no feelings in common. You can give
+      me no sympathies. My soul, my heart, my hope&mdash;every desire of my
+      mind, every impulse of my heart, leads me away from you&mdash;from all
+      that you can give&mdash;from all that you can relish. To you it would
+      suffice, if all your life could be spent here in Charlemont&mdash;to me it
+      would be death to think that any such doom hung over me. From this one
+      sentiment judge of the rest, and know, for good and all, that I can never
+      feel for you other than I feel now. I can not love you, nor can the
+      knowledge that you love me, give me any but a feeling of pain and
+      mortification.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley had risen to his feet. His form had put on an unusual
+      erectness. His eye had gradually become composed; and now it wore an
+      expression of firmness almost amounting to defiance. He heard her with
+      only an occasional quiver of the muscles about his mouth. The flush of
+      shame and pride was still red upon his cheek When she had finished, he
+      spoke to her in tones of more dignity than had hitherto marked his speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret Cooper, you have at least chosen the plainest language to
+      declare a cruel truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cheek of the girl became suddenly flushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that I found pleasure in giving you pain? No!
+      William Hinkley, I am sorry for you! But this truth, which you call cruel,
+      was shown to you repeatedly before. Any man but yourself would have seen
+      it, and saved me the pain of its frequent repetition. You alone refused to
+      understand, until it was rendered cruel. It was only by the plainest
+      language that you could be made to believe a truth that you either would
+      not or could not otherwise be persuaded to hear. If cold looks, reserved
+      answers, and a determined rejection of all familiarity could have availed,
+      you would never have heard from my lips a solitary word which could have
+      brought you mortification. You would have seen my feelings in my conduct,
+      and would have spared your own that pain, which I religiously strove to
+      save them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, indeed, been blind and deaf,&rdquo; said the young man; &ldquo;but you have
+      opened my eyes and ears, Margaret, so that I am fully cured of these
+      infirmities. If your purpose, in this plain mode of speech, be such as you
+      have declared it, then I must thank you; though it is very much as one
+      would thank the dagger that puts him out of his pain by putting him out of
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was so much of subdued feeling in this address&mdash;the more
+      intense in its effect, from the obvious restraint put upon it, that the
+      heart of the maiden was touched. The dignified bearing of the young man,
+      also&mdash;so different from that which marked his deportment hitherto&mdash;was
+      not without its effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you, William Hinkley, that such alone was my motive for what
+      else would seem a most wanton harshness. I would not be harsh to you or to
+      anybody; and with my firm rejection of your proffer, I give you my regrets
+      that you ever made it. It gives me no pleasure that you should make it. If
+      I am vain, my vanity is not flattered or quickened by a tribute which I
+      can not accept; and if you never had my sympathy before, William Hinkley,
+      I freely give it now. Once more I tell you, I am sorry, from the bottom of
+      my heart, that you ever felt for me a passion which I can not requite, and
+      that you did not stifle it from the beginning; as, Heaven knows, my
+      bearing toward you, for a whole year, seemed to me to convey sufficient
+      warning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It should have done so! I can now very easily understand it, Margaret.
+      Indeed, Mr. Calvert and others told me the same thing. But as I have said,
+      I was blind and deaf. Once more, I thank you, Margaret&mdash;it is a
+      bitter medicine which you have given me, but I trust a wholesome one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught her hand and pressed it in his own. She did not resist or
+      withdraw it, and, after the retention of an instant only, he released it,
+      and was about to turn away. A big tear was gathering in his eye, and he
+      strove to conceal it. Margaret averted her head, and was about to move
+      forward in an opposite direction, when the voice of the young man arrested
+      her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay, but a few moments more, Margaret. Perhaps we shall never meet again&mdash;certainly
+      not in a conference like this. I may have no other opportunity to say that
+      which, in justice to you, should be spoken. Will you listen to me,
+      patiently?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak boldly, William Hinkley. It was the subject of which you spoke
+      heretofore which I shrunk from rather than the speaker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;whether the subject of which I propose to speak
+      now will be any more agreeable than that of which we have spoken. At all
+      events, my purpose is your good, and I shall speak unreservedly. You have
+      refused the prayer of one heart, Margaret, which, if unworthy of yours,
+      was yet honestly and fervently devoted to it. Let me warn you to look well
+      when you do choose, lest you fall into the snares of one, who with more
+      talent may be less devoted, and with more claims to admiration, may be far
+      less honest in his purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mean you, sir?&rdquo; she demanded hurriedly, with an increasing glow upon
+      her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This stranger&mdash;this man, Stevens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What of him? What do you know of the stranger that you should give me
+      this warning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does anybody know of him? Whence does he come&mdash;whither would he
+      go? What brings him here to this lonely village?&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A proud smile which curled the lips of Margaret Cooper arrested the speech
+      of the youth. It seemed to say, very distinctly, that she, at least, could
+      very well conjecture what brought the stranger so far from the travelled
+      haunts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! do you then know, Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations against the
+      man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey the worst
+      imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth from its proper
+      balance. Go, sir&mdash;you have your answer. I need not your counsel. I
+      should be sorry to receive it from such a source. Failing in your own
+      attempt, you would seek to fill my mind with calumnious impressions in
+      order to prejudice the prospects of another. For shame! for shame, William
+      Hinkley. I had not thought this of you. But go! go! go, at once, lest I
+      learn to loathe as well as despise you. I thought you simple and foolish,
+      but honorable and generous. I was mistaken even in this. Go, sir, your
+      slanderous insinuations have no effect upon me, and as for Alfred Stevens,
+      you are as far below him in nobleness and honest purpose, as you are in
+      every quality of taste and intellect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was the very breathing image of idealized scorn and beauty as she
+      uttered these stinging words. Her nostrils were dilated, her eyes flashing
+      fire, her lips slightly protruded and parted, her hand waving him off. The
+      young man gazed upon her with wild looks equally expressive of anger and
+      agony. His form fairly writhed beneath his emotions; but he found strength
+      enough gaspingly to exclaim:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And even this I forgive you, Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go! go!&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;you know not what you say, or what you are. Go!
+      go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And turning away, she moved slowly up the long avenue before her, till, by
+      a sudden turn of the path she was hidden from the sight. Then, when his
+      eye could no longer follow her form, the agony of his soul burst forth in
+      a single groan, and staggering, he fell forward upon the sward, hopeless,
+      reckless, in a wretched condition of self-abandonment and despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. &mdash; BLOWS&mdash;A CRISIS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But this mood lasted not long. Youth, pride, anger, asserted themselves
+      before the lapse of many minutes. Darker feelings got possession of his
+      mind. He rose to his feet. If love was baffled, was there not revenge?
+      Then came the recollection of his cousin's counsel. Should this artful
+      stranger triumph in everything? Margaret Cooper had scarcely disguised the
+      interest which she felt in him. Nay, had not that exulting glance of the
+      eye declared that she, at least, knew what was the purpose of Stevens in
+      seeking the secluded village? His own wrongs were also present to his
+      mind. This usurper had possessed himself of the affections of all he loved&mdash;of
+      all of whose love he had till then felt himself secure&mdash;all but the
+      good old schoolmaster, and the sturdy schoolmate and cousin. And how soon
+      might he deprive him even of these? That was a new fear! So rapid had been
+      the stranger's progress&mdash;so adroitly had he insinuated himself into
+      this Eden of the wilderness&mdash;bringing discontent and suffering in his
+      train&mdash;that the now thoroughly-miserable youth began to fancy that
+      nothing could be safe from his influence. In a short time his garden would
+      all be overrun, and his loveliest plants would wither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there no remedy for this? There was! and traversing the solemn
+      recesses of that wood, he meditated the various modes by which the redress
+      of wrong, and slight and indignity, were to be sought. He brooded over
+      images of strife, and dark and savage ideas of power rioting over its
+      victim, with entirely new feelings&mdash;feelings new at least to him. We
+      have not succeeded in doing him justice, nor in our own design, if we have
+      failed to show that he was naturally gentle of heart, rigidly
+      conscientious, a lover of justice for its own sake, and solicitously
+      sensitive on the subject of another's feelings. But the sense of suffering
+      will blind the best judgment, and the feeling of injury will arouse and
+      irritate the gentlest nature. Besides, William Hinkley, though meek and
+      conscientious, had not passed through his youth, in the beautiful but wild
+      border country in which he lived, without having been informed, and
+      somewhat influenced, by those characteristic ideas of the modes and manner
+      in which personal wrongs were to be redressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, had his cousin said nothing to him on this subject, his feelings
+      would have had very much the same tendency and general direction which
+      they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable anxiety to be in
+      conflict with his rival&mdash;a deadly conflict&mdash;a close, hard
+      death-struggle&mdash;was now the predominant feeling in his mind;&mdash;but
+      the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had its pains and
+      humiliations, also. Not that he had any fears&mdash;any dread of the
+      issue. Of the issue he never thought. But it disturbed the long and
+      peaceful order of his life. It conflicted with the subdued tastes of the
+      student. It was at war with that gentle calm of atmosphere, which letters
+      diffuse around the bower of the muse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the conflict of his thoughts and feelings, the judgment of the youth
+      was impaired. He forgot his prudence. In fact, he knew not what he did. He
+      entered the dwelling of his father, and passed into the dining-room, at
+      that solemn moment when the grace before meat was yet in course of
+      utterance by our worthy Brother Stevens. Hitherto, old Mr. Hinkley had
+      religiously exacted that, whenever any of the household failed to be
+      present in season, this ceremony should never be disturbed. They were
+      required, hat in hand, to remain at the entrance, until the benediction
+      had been implored; and, only after the audible utterance of the word
+      &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; to approach the cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have shown little of old Hinkley. It has not been necessary. The reader
+      has seen enough, however, to understand that, in religious matters&mdash;at
+      least in the forms and externals of religion&mdash;he was a rigid
+      disciplinarian. Upon grace before and after meat he always insisted. His
+      own prayers of this sort might have been unctuous, but they were never
+      short; and the meats were very apt to grow cold, while the impatience of
+      his hearers grew warm, before he finished. But through respect to the
+      profession, he waived his own peculiar privilege in behalf of Brother
+      Stevens; and this holy brother was in the middle of his entreaty, when
+      William Hinkley appeared at the door. He paused for an instant without
+      taking off his hat. Perhaps had his father been engaged in his office,
+      William would have forborne, as usual, however long the grace, and have
+      patiently waited without, hat off, until it had reached the legitimate
+      conclusion. But he had no such veneration for Stevens; and without scruple
+      he dashed, rather hastily, into the apartment, and flinging his hat upon a
+      chair, strode at once to the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man did not once raise his eyes until the prayer was over. He
+      would not have done so had the house been on fire. But at the close, he
+      looked up at his son with a brow of thunder. The cloud was of serious and
+      very unusual blackness. He had for some time been dissatisfied with his
+      son. He had seen that the youth entertained some aversion for his guest.
+      Besides, he had learned from his worthy consort, that, in an endeavor of
+      Brother Stevens to bestow good counsel upon the youth, he had been
+      repulsed with as little respect as ceremony. There was one thing that the
+      stern old man had not seen, and could not see; and that was the altered
+      appearance of the lad. As he knew of no reason why he should be unhappy,
+      so he failed to perceive in his appearance any of the signs of
+      unhappiness. He saw nothing but the violation of his laws, and that sort
+      of self-esteem which produces fanaticism, is always the most rigid in the
+      enforcement of its own ordinances. Already he regarded the youth as in a
+      state of rebellion and for such an offence his feeling was very much that
+      of the ancient puritan. No one more insists upon duty, than he who has
+      attained authority by flinging off the fetters of obedience. Your toughest
+      sinner usually makes the sourest saint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is this the way, William Hinkley, that you show respect to God? Do
+      you despise the blessing which Brother Stevens asks upon the food which
+      sustains us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume, sir, that God has already blessed all the food which he
+      bestows upon man. I do not think that any prayer of Brother Stevens can
+      render it more blessed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! you do not, do you? Please to rise from this table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, sir&mdash;&rdquo; began Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rise, sir,&rdquo; continued the old man, laying down knife and fork, and
+      confronting the offender with that dogged look of determination which in a
+      coarse nature is the sure sign of moral inflexibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive him, sir, this time,&rdquo; said Stevens; &ldquo;I entreat you to forgive
+      him. The young man knows not what he does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will make him know,&rdquo; continued the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plead not for me, sir,&rdquo; said William Hinkley, glaring upon Stevens with
+      something of that expression which in western parlance is called wolfish,
+      &ldquo;I scorn and spurn your interference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;William, William, my dear son, do not speak so&mdash;do not make your
+      father angry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you leave the table, sir, or not?&rdquo; demanded the father, his words
+      being spoken very slowly, through his teeth, and with the effort of one
+      who seeks to conceal the growing agitation. The eyes of the mother fell
+      upon the youth full of tears and entreaty. His fine countenance betrayed
+      the conflicting emotions of his soul. There was grief, and anger, despair
+      and defiance; the consciousness of being wrong, and the more painful
+      consciousness of suffering wrong. He half started from his chair, again
+      resumed it, and gazing upon Stevens with the hate and agony which he felt,
+      seemed to be entirely forgetful of the words and presence of the father.
+      The old man deliberately rose from the table and left the room. The mother
+      now started up in an agony of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run, my son&mdash;leave the room before your father comes back. Speak to
+      him, Brother Stevens, and tell him of the danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not call upon him, mother, if you would not have me defy you also. If
+      YOUR words will not avail with me, be sure that his can not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mean you, my son? You surely have no cause to be angry with Brother
+      Stevens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No cause! no cause!&mdash;but it matters not! BROTHER Stevens knows that
+      I have cause. He has heard my defiance&mdash;he knows my scorn and hate,
+      and he shall feel them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;William, my son, how&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The steps of the father, approaching through the passageway, diverted her
+      mind to a new terror. She knew the vindictive and harsh nature of the old
+      man; and apprehensions for her son superseded the feeling of anger which
+      his language had provoked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my son, be submissive, or fly. Jump out of the window, and leave
+      Brother Stevens and me to pacify him. We will do all we can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unlucky allusion to Brother Stevens only increased the young man's
+      obstinacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask you not, mother. I wish you to do nothing, and to say nothing. Here
+      I will remain. I will not fly. It will be for my father and mother to say
+      whether they will expel their only son from their home, to make room for a
+      stranger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shall not be said that I have been the cause of this,&rdquo; said Stevens,
+      rising with dignity from his chair; &ldquo;I will leave your house, Mrs.
+      Hinkley, only regretting that I should be the innocent cause of any
+      misunderstanding or discontent among its members. I know not exactly what
+      can be the meaning of your son's conduct. I have never offended him; but,
+      as my presence does offend him, I will withdraw myself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall not!&rdquo; exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room at this
+      moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. &ldquo;You shall not leave
+      the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to behave in the manner of
+      this viper, they should all leave it before you should stir from the
+      threshold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions of
+      his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were now
+      awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference, if not
+      fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always inspired her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Hinkley, you won't strike William with that whip&mdash;you must not&mdash;you
+      shall not!&rdquo; and, speaking thus, she started up and threw herself in the
+      old man's way. He put her aside with no measured movement of his arm, and
+      approached the side of the table where the young man sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run, William, run, if you love me!&rdquo; cried the terrified mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not run!&rdquo; was the answer of the youth, who rose from his seat,
+      however, at the same moment and confronted his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not strike me, father! I warn you&mdash;do not strike me. I may be
+      wrong, but I have suffered wrong. I did not mean, and do not mean, to
+      offend you. Let that content you, but do not strike me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was a blow. The whip descended once, and but once, upon the
+      shoulders of the young man. His whole frame was in a convulsion. His eyes
+      dilated with the anguish of his soul; his features worked spasmodically.
+      There was a moment's hesitation. The arm that smote him was again uplifted&mdash;the
+      cruel and degrading instrument of punishment a second time about to
+      descend; when, with the strength of youth, and the determination of
+      manhood, the son grasped the arm of the father, and without any more than
+      the degree of violence necessary to effect his object, he tore the weapon
+      from the uplifted hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can not strike YOU.'&rdquo; he exclaimed, addressing the old man. &ldquo;That blow
+      has lost you your son&mdash;for ever! The shame and the dishonor shall
+      rest on other shoulders. They are better deserved here, and here I place
+      them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words, he smote Stevens over the shoulders, once, twice,
+      thrice, before the latter could close with him, or the father interfere to
+      arrest the attempt. Stevens sprang upon him, but the more athletic
+      countryman flung him off, and still maintained his weapon. The father
+      added his efforts to those of Stevens; but he shook himself free from
+      both, and, by this time, the mother had contrived to place herself between
+      the parties. William Hinkley then flung the whip from the window, and
+      moved toward the door. In passing Stevens, he muttered a few words:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there is any skin beneath the cloak of the parson, I trust I have
+      reached it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough!&rdquo; said the other, in the same low tone. &ldquo;You shall have your
+      wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth looked back once, with tearful eyes, upon his mother; and making
+      no other answer but a glance more full of sorrow than anger to the furious
+      flood of denunciation which the old man continued to pour forth, he
+      proceeded slowly from the apartment and the dwelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; CHALLENGE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The whole scene passed in very few minutes. No time was given for
+      reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his natural or habitual
+      impulses. Old Hinkley, except when at prayers, was a man of few words. He
+      was much more prompt at deeds than words&mdash;a proof of which has
+      already been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and made a
+      freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been willing to inflict upon
+      our readers. Though she heartily disapproved of her son's conduct toward
+      Stevens, and regarded it as one of the most unaccountable wonders, the
+      offender was still her son. She never once forgot, or could forget, that.
+      But the rage of the old man was unappeasable. The indignity to his guest,
+      and that guest of a calling so sacred, was past all forgiveness, as it was
+      past all his powers of language fitly to describe. He swore to pursue the
+      offender with his wrath to the end of the world, to cut him off equally
+      from his fortune and forgiveness; and when Brother Stevens, endeavoring to
+      maintain the pacific and forgiving character which his profession
+      required, uttered some commonplace pleading in the youth's behalf, he
+      silenced him by saying that, &ldquo;were he on the bed of death, and were the
+      offender then to present himself, the last prayer that he should make to
+      Heaven would be for sufficient strength to rise up and complete the
+      punishment which he had then begun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable spirit, his feelings
+      were quite as hostile, and much more deadly. He was not without that
+      conventional courage which makes one, in certain states of society, prompt
+      enough to place himself in the fields of the duello. To this condition of
+      preparedness it has hitherto been the training of the West that every man,
+      at all solicitous of public life, must eventually come. As a student of
+      divinity, it was not a necessity with Alfred Stevens. Nay, it was
+      essential to the character which he professed that he should eschew such a
+      mode of arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject, as well with
+      reference to past habits as to future responsibilities. His present
+      profession being simply a ruse d'amour (and, as he already began to
+      perceive, a harmless one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought, and
+      whose intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to perceive
+      the serious defects of a character which should attempt so impious a
+      fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat indifferent to its preservation;
+      and, with the decline of his caution in this respect, arose the natural
+      inquiry as to what would be expected of him in his former relations to
+      society. Should it ever be known hereafter, at a time when he stood before
+      the people as a candidate for some high political trust, that he had
+      tamely submitted to the infliction of a cowskin, the revelation would be
+      fatal to all his hopes of ambition, and conclusive against all his social
+      pretensions. In short, so far as society was concerned, it would be his
+      social death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed, their force
+      can not well be conceived by the citizen of any community where the sense
+      of individual responsibility is less rigid and exacting. They naturally
+      outweighed all others in the mind of Alfred Stevens; and, though no
+      fire-eater, he not only resolved on fighting with Hinkley, but, smarting
+      under the strokes of the cowskin&mdash;heavily laid on as they had been&mdash;his
+      resolution was equally firm that, in the conflict, they should not
+      separate until blood was drawn. Of course, there were some difficulties to
+      be overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where the parties are
+      willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable ease. This being
+      the case at present, it followed that both minds were busy at the same
+      moment in devising the when, the how, and the where, of the encounter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley went from the house of his father to that of his cousin;
+      but the latter had not yet returned from that ride which he had taken in
+      order to discover the course usually pursued by Stevens. Here he sat down
+      to dinner, but the sister of Ned Hinkley observed that he ate little, and
+      fancied he was sick. That he should come to dine with his cousin was too
+      frequent a matter to occasion question or surprise. This lady was older
+      than her brother by some seven years. She was a widow, with an only child,
+      a girl. The child was a prattling, smiling, good-natured thing, about
+      seven years old, who was never so happy as when on Cousin William's knee.
+      Poor William, indeed, was quite a favorite at every house in the village
+      except that of Margaret Cooper, and, as he sometimes used bitterly to add,
+      his own. On this occasion, however, the child was rendered unhappy by the
+      seeming indifference of Cousin William. The heart of the young man was too
+      full of grief, and his mind of anxiety, to suffer him to bestow the usual
+      caresses upon her; and when, putting her down, he passed into the chamber
+      of Ned Hinkley, the little thing went off to her mother, to complain of
+      the neglect she had undergone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cousin William don't love Susan any more, mamma,&rdquo; was the burden of her
+      complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you say so, Susan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He don't kiss me, mamma; he don't keep me in his lap. He don't say good
+      things to me, and call me his little sweetheart. I'm afraid Cousin
+      William's got some other sweetheart. He don't love Susan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was while the little prattler was pouring forth her infantile sorrows
+      in her mother's ear, that the voice of William Hinkley was heard, calling
+      her name from the chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, he's calling you now, Susan. Run to him and kiss him, and see what
+      he wants. I'm sure he loves you just as much as ever. He's got no other
+      sweetheart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll run, mamma&mdash;that I will. I'm so glad! I hope he loves me!&rdquo; and
+      the little innocent scampered away to the chamber. Her artless tongue, as
+      she approached, enabled him to perceive what had been her grievances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call me to love me, and to kiss me, Cousin William, and to make me
+      your sweetheart again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Susan, you shall be my only sweetheart. I will kiss nobody but you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll forget&mdash;you will&mdash;you'll put me out of your lap, and go
+      away shaking your head, and looking so!&mdash;&rdquo; and here the observant
+      little creature attempted a childish imitation of the sad action and the
+      strange, moody gestures with which he had put her down when he was
+      retiring from the room&mdash;gestures and looks which the less quick eyes
+      of her mother had failed utterly to perceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; said he, with a sad smile; &ldquo;no, Susan. I'll keep you in my lap
+      for an hour whenever I come, and you shall be my sweetheart always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your LITTLE sweetheart, your LITTLE Susan, Cousin William.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear little Susan, my dearest little sweetheart Susan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he kissed the child fondly while he spoke, and patted her rosy cheeks
+      with a degree of tenderness which his sad and wandering thoughts did not
+      materially diminish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now, Susan,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if I am to be your sweetheart, and to love you
+      always, you must do all that I bid you. You must go where I send you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I, Cousin William? When you send me to Gran'pa Calvert, don't I go
+      and bring you books, and didn't I always run, and come back soon, and
+      never play by the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a dear Susan,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;and I want you to carry a paper for me
+      now. Do you see this little paper? What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A note&mdash;don't I know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you must carry this note for me to uncle's, but you mustn't give it
+      to uncle, nor to aunty, nor to anybody but the young man that lives there&mdash;young
+      Mr. Stevens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Parson Stevens,&rdquo; said the little thing, correcting him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay, Parson Stevens, if you please. You must give it to him, and him
+      only; and he will give you a paper to bring back to me. Will you go now,
+      Susan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll go: but, Cousin William, are you going to shoot the little
+      guns? Don't shoot them till I come back, will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child pointed to a pair of pistols which lay upon the table where
+      William Hinkley had penned the billet. A flush of consciousness passed
+      over the young man's cheek. It seemed to him as if the little innocent's
+      inquiry had taken the aspect of an accusation. He promised and dismissed
+      her, and, when she had disappeared, proceeded to put the pistols in some
+      condition for use. In that time and region, duels were not often fought
+      with those costly and powerful weapons, the pistols of rifle bore and
+      sight. The rifle, or the ordinary horseman's pistol, answered the purposes
+      of hate. The former instrument, in the hands of the Kentuckian, was a
+      deadly weapon always; and, in the grasp of a firm hand, and under the
+      direction of a practised eye, the latter, at ten paces, was scarcely less
+      so. This being the case, but few refinements were necessary to bring about
+      the most fatal issues of enmity; and the instruments which William Hinkley
+      was preparing for the field were such as would produce a smile on the lips
+      of more civilized combatants. They were of the coarsest kind of
+      holster-pistols, and had probably seen service in the Revolution. The
+      stocks were rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost large enough for
+      grape, and really such as would receive and disgorge a three-ounce bullet
+      with little straining or reluctance. They had been the property of his own
+      grandfather, and their value for use was perhaps rather heightened than
+      diminished by the degree of veneration which, in the family, was attached
+      to their history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley soon put them in the most efficient order. He was not a
+      practised hand, but an American forester is a good shot almost by
+      instinct; he naturally cleaves to a gun, and without instruction learns
+      its use. William, however, did not think much of what he could hit, at
+      what distance, and under what circumstances. Nothing, perhaps, could
+      better show the confidence in himself and weapon than the inattention
+      which the native-born woodman usually exhibits to these points. Let his
+      weapon be such as he can rely upon, and his cause of quarrel such as can
+      justify his anger, and the rest seems easy, and gives him little
+      annoyance. This was now the case with our rustic. He never, for a moment,
+      thought of practising. He had shot repeatedly, and knew what he could do.
+      His simple object was to bring his enemy to the field, and to meet him
+      there. Accordingly, when he had loaded both pistols, which he did with
+      equal care, and with a liberal allowance of lead and powder, he carefully
+      put them away without offering to test his own skill or their capacities.
+      On this subject, his indifference would have appeared, to a regular
+      duellist, the very extreme of obtuseness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His little courier conveyed his billet to Stevens in due season. As she
+      had been instructed, she gave it into the hands of Stevens only; but, when
+      she delivered it, old Hinkley was present, and she named the person by
+      whom it was sent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son! what does he say?&rdquo; demanded the old man, half-suspecting the
+      purport of the billet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; exclaimed Stevens, with the readiness of a practised actor, &ldquo;there
+      is some hope, I am glad to tell you, Mr. Hinkley, of his coming to his
+      senses. He declares his wish to atone, and invites me to see him. I have
+      no doubt that he wishes me to mediate for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will never forgive him while I have breath!&rdquo; cried the old man, leaving
+      the room. &ldquo;Tell him that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment, my pretty one,&rdquo; said Stevens, as he was about retiring to
+      his chamber, &ldquo;till I can write an answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The billet of Hinkley he again read. We may do so likewise. It was to the
+      following effect:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir: If I understood your last assurance on leaving you this day, I am to
+      believe that the stroke of my whip has made its proper impression on your
+      soul&mdash;that you are willing to use the ordinary means of ordinary
+      persons, to avenge an indignity which was not CONFINED TO YOUR CLOTH. If
+      so, meet me at the lake with whatever weapons you choose to bring. I will
+      be there, provided with pistols for both, at any hour from three to six. I
+      shall proceed to the spot as soon as I receive your answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;W. H.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Short and sharp!&rdquo; exclaimed Stevens as he read the billet. &ldquo;'Who would
+      have thought that the YOUNG man had so much blood in him!' Well, we will
+      not balk your desire, Master Hinkley. We will meet you, in verity, though
+      it may compel me to throw up my present hand and call for other cards.
+      N'importe: there is no other course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While soliloquizing, he penned his answer, which was brief and to the
+      purpose:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will meet you as soon as I can steal off without provoking suspicion. I
+      have pistols which I will bring with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A. S.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, my little damsel,&rdquo; said he, re-entering the dining-room, and
+      putting the sealed paper into the hands of the child, &ldquo;carry that to Mr.
+      Hinkley, and tell him I will come and speak with him as he begs me. But
+      the note will tell him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hinkley entered the room at this moment. Her husband had apprized her
+      of the communication which her son had made, and the disposition to
+      atonement and repentance which he had expressed. She was anxious to
+      confirm this good disposition, to have her son brought back within the
+      fold, restored to her own affections and the favor of his father. The
+      latter, it is true, had signified his determined hostility, even while
+      conveying his intelligence; but the mother was sanguine&mdash;when was a
+      mother otherwise?&mdash;that all things would come right which related to
+      her only child. She now came to implore the efforts of Stevens; to
+      entreat, that, like a good Christian, he would not suffer the shocking
+      stripes which her son, in his madness, had inflicted upon him to outweigh
+      his charity, to get the better of his blessed principles, and make him war
+      upon the atoning spirit which had so lately, and so suddenly wakened up in
+      the bosom of the unruly boy. She did not endeavor to qualify the offence
+      of which her son had been guilty. She was far from underrating the
+      indignity to which Stevens had been subjected; but the offender was her
+      son&mdash;her only son&mdash;in spite of all his faults, follies, and
+      imperfections, the apple of her eye&mdash;the only being for whom she
+      cared to live!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! the love of a mother!&mdash;what a holy thing! sadly wanting in
+      judgment&mdash;frequently misleading, perverting, nay, dooming the object
+      which it loves; but, nevertheless, most pure; least selfish; truest; most
+      devoted!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the tears gushed from the old woman's eyes as she caught the hand of
+      Stevens in her own, and kissed it&mdash;kissed HIS hand&mdash;could
+      William Hinkley have seen THAT, how it would have rankled, how he would
+      have writhed! She kissed the hands of that wily hypocrite, bedewing them
+      with her tears, as if he were some benign and blessing saint; and not
+      because he had shown any merits or practised any virtues, but simply
+      because of certain professions which he had made, and in which she had
+      perfect faith because of the professions, and not because of any previous
+      knowledge which she had of the professor. Truly, it behooves a rogue
+      monstrous much to know what garment it is best to wear; the question is
+      equally important to rogue and dandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens made a thousand assurances in the most Christian spirit&mdash;we
+      can not say that he gave her tear for tear&mdash;promised to do his best
+      to bring back the prodigal son to her embrace, and the better to effect
+      this object, put his pistols under his belt! Within the hour he was on his
+      way to the place of meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; FOOT TO FOOT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley was all impatience until, his little messenger returned,
+      which she did with a speed which might deserve commendation in the case of
+      our professional Mercuries&mdash;stage-drivers and mail contractors,
+      hight! He did not withhold it from the little maid, but taking her in his
+      arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched her to her mother, while he
+      wrapped up his pistols and concealing them in the folds of his coat,
+      hurried from the house with the anxious haste of one who is going to seek
+      his prey. He felt somewhat like that broad-winged eagle which broods on
+      the projecting pinnacle of yonder rocky peak in waiting for the sea-hawk
+      who is stooping far below him, watching when the sun's rays shall glisten
+      from the uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was not a selfish
+      desire to secure the prey which the terror of the other might cause him to
+      drop. It was simply to punish the prowler. Poor William could not exactly
+      tell indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred Stevens; but his cause of
+      hostility was not less cogent because it had no name. The thousand little
+      details which induce our prejudices in regard to persons, are, singly,
+      worth no one's thought, and would possibly provoke the contempt of all;
+      but like the myriad threads which secured the huge frame of Gulliver in
+      his descent upon Lilliput, they are, when united, able to bind the biggest
+      giant of us all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prejudices of William Hinkley, though very natural in such a case as
+      his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It seemed to him, if he once
+      reasoned on the matter, that, as he had good cause to hate the intruder,
+      so there must be justification for shooting him. Were this not so, the
+      policy of hating would be very questionable, and surely very unprofitable.
+      It would be a great waste of a very laudable quantity of feeling&mdash;something
+      like omitting one's bullet in discharging one's piece&mdash;a profligacy
+      only justifiable in a feu de joie after victory, where the bullets have
+      already done all necessary mischief, and will warrant a small subsequent
+      waste of the more harmless material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without designing any such child's play, our rustic hero, properly
+      equipped with his antique pistols, well charged, close rammed, three-ounce
+      bullets, or nearabouts, in each, stood, breathing fire but without
+      cooling, on the edge of the lake, perched on an eminence and looking out
+      for the coming enemy. He was playing an unwonted character, but he felt as
+      if it were quite familiar to him. He had none of that nice feeling which,
+      without impugning courage, is natural enough to inexperience in such
+      cases. The muzzles of the pistols did not appear to him particularly
+      large. He never once thought of his own ribs being traversed by his
+      three-ounce messengers. He had no misgivings on the subject of his future
+      digestion. He only thought of that blow from his father's hand&mdash;that
+      keen shaft from the lips of Margaret Cooper&mdash;that desolation which
+      had fallen upon his soul from the scorn of both; and the vengeance which
+      it was in his power to inflict upon the fortunate interloper to whose arts
+      he ascribed all his misfortunes! and with these thoughts his fury and
+      impatience increased, and he ascended the highest hill to look out for his
+      foe; descended, in the next moment, to the edge of the lake, the better to
+      prepare for the meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this state of excitement the meekness had departed from his
+      countenance; an entire change of expression had taken place: he stood up,
+      erect, bold, eagle-eyed, with the look of one newly made a man by the form
+      of indomitable will, and feeling, for the first time, man's terrible
+      commission to destroy. In a moment, with the acquisition of new moods, he
+      had acquired a new aspect. Hitherto, he had been tame, seemingly devoid of
+      spirit&mdash;you have not forgotten the reproaches of his cousin, which
+      actually conveyed an imputation against his manliness?&mdash;shrinking,
+      with a feeling of shyness akin to mauvaise honte, and almost submitting to
+      injustice, to avoid the charge of ill-nature. The change that we have
+      described in his soul, had made itself singularly apparent in his looks.
+      They were full of a grim determination. Had he gazed upon his features, in
+      the glassy surface of the lake beside him, he had probably recoiled from
+      their expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have seen Mrs. Hinkley sending Stevens forth for the purpose of
+      recalling her son to his senses, receiving his repentance, and bringing
+      him once more home into the bosom of his flock. We have not forgotten the
+      brace of arguments with which he provided himself in order to bring about
+      this charitable determination. Stevens was a shot. He could snuff his
+      candle at ten paces, sever his bamboo, divide the fingers of the hand with
+      separate bullets without grazing the skin&mdash;nay, more, as was said in
+      the euphuistic phraseology of his admirers, send his ball between soul and
+      body without impairing the integrity of either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But men may do much shooting at candle or bamboo, who would do precious
+      little while another is about to shoot at them. There is a world of
+      difference between looking in a bull's-eye, and looking in the eye of man.
+      A pistol, too, looks far less innocent, regarded through the medium of a
+      yawning muzzle, than the rounded and neatly-polished butt. The huge mouth
+      seems to dilate as you look upon it. You already begin to fancy you behold
+      the leaden mass&mdash;the three-ounce bullet&mdash;issuing from its
+      stronghold, like a relentless baron of the middle ages, going forth under
+      his grim archway, seeking only whom he may devour. The sight is apt to
+      diminish the influence of skill. Nerves are necessary to such sportsmen,
+      and nerves become singularly untrue when frowned upon through such a
+      medium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under this view of the case, we are not so sure that the excellence of aim
+      for which Alfred Stevens has been so much lauded, will make the difference
+      very material between the parties; and now that he is fairly roused, there
+      is a look of the human devil about William Hinkley, that makes him promise
+      to be dangerous. Nay, the very pistols that he wields, those clumsy,
+      rusty, big-mouthed ante-revolutionary machines, which his stout grandsire
+      carried at Camden and Eutaw, have a look of service about them&mdash;a
+      grim, veteran-like aspect, that makes them quite as perilous to face as to
+      handle. If they burst they will blow on all sides. There will be fragments
+      enough for friend and foe; and even though Stevens may not apprehend so
+      much from the aim of his antagonist, something of deference is due to the
+      possibility of such a concussion, as will make up all his deficiencies of
+      skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they have not yet met, though Stevens, with praiseworthy Christianity,
+      is on his way to keep his engagements, as well to mother as to son. He has
+      his own pistols&mdash;not made for this purpose&mdash;but a substantial
+      pair of traveller's babes&mdash;big of mouth, long of throat, thick of
+      jaw, keen of sight, quick of speech, strong of wind, and weighty of
+      argument. They are rifled bores also, and, in the hands of the owner, have
+      done clever things at bottle and sapling. Stevens would prefer to have the
+      legitimate things, but these babes are trustworthy; and he has no reason
+      to suppose that the young rustic whom he goes to meet can produce anything
+      more efficient. He had no idea of those ancient bull-pups, those solemn
+      ante-revolutionary barkers, which our grandsire used upon harder heads
+      than his, at Camden and the Eutaws. He is scarcely so confident in his own
+      weapons when his eye rests on the rusty tools of his enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not destined that this fight should take place without
+      witnesses. In spite of all the precautions of the parties, and they were
+      honest in taking them, our little village had its inklings of what was
+      going on. There were certain signs of commotion and explosion which made
+      themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan Hinkley, was the first, very
+      innocently, to furnish a clue to the mystery. She had complained to her
+      mother that Cousin William had not shot the little guns for her according
+      to his promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, perhaps, he didn't want to shoot them, Susan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, mamma, he put them in his pockets. He's carried them to shoot; and
+      he promised to shoot them for me as soon as I carried the note.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to whom did you carry the note, Susan?&rdquo; asked the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the young parson, at Uncle William's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother had not been unobservant of the degree of hostility which her
+      brother, as well as cousin, entertained for Stevens. They had both very
+      freely expressed their dislike in her presence. Some of their conferences
+      had been overheard and were now recalled, in which this expression of
+      dislike had taken the form of threats, vague and purposeless, seemingly,
+      at the time; but which now, taken in connection with what she gathered
+      from the lips of the child, seemed of portentous interest. Then, when she
+      understood that Stevens had sent a note in reply&mdash;and that both notes
+      were sealed, the quick, feminine mind instantly jumped to the right
+      conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are surely going to fight. Get my bonnet, Susan, I must run to Uncle
+      William's, and tell him while there's time. Which way did Cousin William
+      go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child could tell her nothing but that he had taken to the hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That brother Ned shouldn't be here now! Though I don't see the good of
+      his being here. He'd only make matters worse. Run, Susan&mdash;run over to
+      Gran'pa Calvert, and tell him to come and stop them from fighting, while I
+      hurry to Uncle William's. Lord save us!&mdash;and let me get there in
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The widow had a great deal more to say, but this was quite enough to
+      bewilder the little girl. Nevertheless, she get forth to convey the
+      mysterious message to Grand'pa Calvert, though the good mother never once
+      reflected that this message was of the sort which assumes the party
+      addressed to be already in possession of the principal facts. While she
+      took one route the mother pursued another, and the two arrived at their
+      respective places at about the same time. Stevens had already left old
+      Hinkley's when the widow got there, and the consternation of Mrs. Hinkley
+      was complete. The old man was sent for to the fields, and came in only to
+      declare that some such persuasion had filled his own mind when first the
+      billet of his son had been received. But the suspicion of the father was
+      of a much harsher sort than that of the widow Hinkley. In her sight it was
+      a duel only&mdash;bad enough as a duel&mdash;but still only a duel, where
+      the parties incurring equal risks, had equal rights. But the conception of
+      the affair, as it occurred to old Hinkley, was very different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Base serpent!&rdquo; he exclaimed&mdash;&ldquo;he has sent for the good young man
+      only to murder him. He implores him to come to him, in an artful writing,
+      pretending to be sorely sorrowful and full of repentance; and he prepares
+      the weapon of murder to slay him when he comes. Was there ever creature so
+      base!&mdash;but I will hunt him out. God give me strength, and grant that
+      I may find him in season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus saying, the old man seized his crab-stick, a knotty club, that had
+      been seasoned in a thousand smokes, and toughened by the use of twenty
+      years. His wife caught up her bonnet and hurried with the widow Hinkley in
+      his train. Meanwhile, by cross-examining the child, Mr. Calvert formed
+      some plausible conjectures of what was on foot, and by the time that the
+      formidable procession had reached his neighborhood he was prepared to join
+      it. Events thickened with the increasing numbers. New facts came in to the
+      aid of old ones partially understood. The widow Thackeray, looking from
+      her window, as young and handsome widows are very much in the habit of
+      doing, had seen William Hinkley going by toward the hill, with a very
+      rapid stride and a countenance very much agitated; and an hour afterward
+      she had seen Brother Stevens following on the same route&mdash;good young
+      man!&mdash;with the most heavenly and benignant smile upon his countenance&mdash;the
+      very personification of the cherub and the seraph, commissioned to subdue
+      the fiend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You have spoiled this boy of
+      mine; turning his head with law studies; and making him disobedient&mdash;giving
+      him counsel and encouragement against his father&mdash;and filling his
+      mind with evil things. It is all your doing, and your books. And now he's
+      turned out a bloody murderer, a papist murderer, with your Roman catholic
+      doctrines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no Roman catholic, Mr. Hinkley,&rdquo; was the mild reply&mdash;&ldquo;and as
+      for William becoming a murderer, I think that improbable. I have a better
+      opinion of your son than you have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's an ungrateful cub&mdash;a varmint of the wilderness&mdash;to strike
+      the good young man in my own presence&mdash;to strike him with a cowskin&mdash;what
+      do you think of that, sir? answer me that, if you please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did William Hinkley do this?&rdquo; demanded the old teacher earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, that he did, did he!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hardly understand it. There must have been some grievous
+      provocation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have to wait for grace
+      before meat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that all? can it be possible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the story&mdash;and
+      Calvert was somewhat relieved. Though he did not pretend to justify the
+      assault of the youth, he readily saw how he had been maddened by the
+      treatment of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high pitch of
+      religious fury&mdash;his prodigious self-esteem taking part with it,
+      naturally enough, against a son, who, until this instance, had never risen
+      in defiance against either. Expostulation and argument were equally vain
+      with him; and ceasing the attempt at persuasion, Calvert hurried on with
+      the rest, being equally anxious to arrest the meditated violence, whether
+      that contemplated the murderous assassination which the father declared,
+      or the less heinous proceeding of the duel which he suspected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one thing which made him tremble for his own confidence in
+      William Hinkley's propriety of course. It was the difficulty which he had
+      with the rest, in believing that the young student of divinity would fight
+      a duel. This doubt, he felt, must be that, of his pupil also: whether the
+      latter had any reason to suppose that Stevens would depart from the
+      principles of his profession, and waive the securities which it afforded,
+      he had of course, no means for conjecturing; but his confidence in William
+      induced him to believe that some such impression upon his mind had led him
+      to the measure of sending a challenge, which, otherwise, addressed to a
+      theologian, would have been a shameless mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long running fire, by way of conversation and commentary,
+      which was of course maintained by these toiling pedestrians, cheering the
+      way as they went; but though it made old Hinkley peccant and wrathy, and
+      exercised the vernacular of the rest to very liberal extent, we do not
+      care to distress the reader with it. It may have been very fine or not. It
+      is enough to say that the general tenor of opinion run heavily against our
+      unhappy rustic, and in favor of the good young man, Stevens. Mrs.
+      Thackeray, the widow, to whom Stevens had paid two visits or more since he
+      had been in the village, and who had her own reasons for doubting that
+      Margaret Cooper had really obtained any advantages in the general struggle
+      to find favor in the sight of this handsome man of God&mdash;was loud in
+      her eulogy upon the latter, and equally unsparing in her denunciations of
+      the village lad who meditated so foul a crime as the extinguishing so
+      blessed a light. Her denunciations at length aroused all the mother in
+      Mrs. Hinkley's breast, and the two dames had it, hot and heavy, until, as
+      the parties approached the lake, old Hinkley, with a manner all his own,
+      enjoined the most profound silence, and hushed, without settling the
+      dispute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, the combatants had met. William Hinkley, having ascended the
+      tallest perch among the hills, beheld his enemy approaching at a natural
+      pace and at a short distance. He descended rapidly to meet him and the
+      parties joined at the foot of the woodland path leading down to the lake,
+      where, but a few days before, we beheld Stevens and Margaret Cooper.
+      Stevens was somewhat surprised to note the singular and imposing change
+      which a day, almost an hour, had wrought in the looks and bearing of the
+      young rustic. His good, and rather elevated command of language, had
+      struck him previously as very remarkable, but this had been explained by
+      his introduction to Mr. Calvert, who, as his teacher, he soon found was
+      very well able to make him what he was. It was the high bearing, the
+      courteous defiance, the superior consciousness of strength and character,
+      which now spoke in the tone and manner of the youth. A choice military
+      school, for years, could scarcely have brought about a more decided
+      expression of that subdued heroism, which makes mere manliness a matter of
+      chivalry, and dignifies brute anger and blind hostility into something
+      like a sentiment. Under the prompting of a good head, a generous temper,
+      and the goodness of a highly-roused, but legitimate state of feeling,
+      William Hinkley wore the very appearance of that nobleness, pride, ease,
+      firmness, and courtesy, which, in the conventional world, it is so
+      difficult, yet held to be so important, to impress upon the champion when
+      ready for the field. A genuine son of thunder would have rejoiced in his
+      deportment, and though a sneering, jealous and disparaging temper, Alfred
+      Stevens could not conceal from himself the conviction that there was stuff
+      in the young man which it needed nothing but trial and rough attrition to
+      bring out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley bowed at his approach, and pointed to a close footpath
+      leading to the rocks on the opposite shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, sir, we shall be more secret. There is a narrow grove above, just
+      suited to our purpose. Will it please you to proceed thither?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As YOU please, Mr. Hinkley,&rdquo; was the reply; &ldquo;I have no disposition to
+      balk your particular desires. But the sight of this lake reminds me that I
+      owe you my life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had thought, sir, that the indignity which I put upon you, would cancel
+      all such memories,&rdquo; was the stern reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cheek of Stevens became crimson&mdash;his eye flashed&mdash;he felt
+      the sarcasm&mdash;but something was due to his position, and he was cool
+      enough to make a concession to circumstances. He answered with tolerable
+      calmness, though not without considerable effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has cancelled the OBLIGATION, sir, if not the memory! I certainly can
+      owe you nothing for a life which you have attempted to disgrace&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which I have disgraced!&rdquo; said the other, interrupting him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, sir. How far, however, you have shown your manhood in
+      putting an indignity upon one whose profession implies peace, and
+      denounces war, you are as well prepared to answer as myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cloth seems to be of precious thickness!&rdquo; was the answer of Hinkley,
+      with a smile of bitter and scornful sarcasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean to convoy the idea that I do not feel the shame of the blow,
+      and am not determined on avenging it, young man, you are in error. You
+      will find that I am not less determined because I am most cool. I have
+      come out deliberately for the purpose of meeting you. My purpose in
+      reminding you of my profession was simply to undeceive you. It appears to
+      me not impossible that the knowledge of it has made you somewhat bolder
+      than you otherwise might have been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mean you?&rdquo; was the stern demand of Hinkley, uttered in very
+      startling accents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To tell you that I have not always been a non-combatant, that I am
+      scarcely one now, and that, in the other schools, in which I have been
+      taught, the use of the pistol was an early lesson. You have probably
+      fancied that such was not the case, and that my profession&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, sir&mdash;will you follow this path?&rdquo; said Hinkley, interrupting
+      him impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in good time, sir, when you have heard me out,&rdquo; was the cool reply.
+      &ldquo;Now, sir,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;were you to have known that it would be no hard
+      task for me to mark any button on your vest, at any distance&mdash;that I
+      have often notched a smaller mark, and that I am prepared to do so again,
+      it might be that your prudence would have tempered your courage&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I regret for your sake,&rdquo; said Hinkley, again interrupting him with a
+      sarcasm, &ldquo;that I have not brought with me the weapon with which MY marks
+      are made. You seem to have forgotten that I too have some skill in my poor
+      way. One would think, sir, that the memory would not fail of retaining
+      what I suspect will be impressed upon the skin for some time longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are evidently bent on fighting, Mr. Hinkley, and I must gratify you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, before doing so, I should like to know in what way I have provoked
+      such a feeling of hostility in your mind? I have not sought to do so. I
+      have on the contrary, striven to show you my friendship, in part requital
+      of the kindness shown me by your parents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not speak of them, if you please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, but I must. It was at the instance of your worthy mother that I
+      sought you and strove to confer with you on, the cause of your evident
+      unhappiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were the cause.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;you! Did I not tell you then that I hated you; and did you not
+      accept my defiance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but when you saved my life!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was to spurn you&mdash;to put stripes upon you. I tell you, Alfred
+      Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one feels for a reptile, whose
+      cunning is as detestable as his sting is deadly. I loathe you from
+      instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from the first moment
+      that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are a
+      villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced of it as thoroughly as
+      if I knew it. You have wormed yourself into the bosom of my family. You
+      have expelled me from the affections of my parents; and not content with
+      this, you have stolen to the heart of the woman to whom my life was
+      devoted, to have me driven thence also. Can I do less than hate you? Can I
+      desire less than your destruction? Say, having heard so much, whether you
+      will make it necessary that I should again lay my whip over your
+      shoulders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of Stevens became livid as he listened to this fierce and bitter
+      speech. His eye watched that of the speaker with the glare of the tiger,
+      as if noteful only of the moment when to spring. His frame trembled. His
+      lip quivered with the struggling rage. All his feeling of self-superiority
+      vanished when he listened to language of so unequivocal a character&mdash;language
+      which so truly denounced, without defining, his villany. He felt, that if
+      the instinct of the other was indeed so keen and quick, then was the
+      combat necessary, and the death of the rustic essential, perhaps, to his
+      own safety. William Hinkley met his glance with a like fire. There was no
+      shrinking of his heart or muscles. Nay, unlike his enemy, he felt a
+      strange thrill of pleasure in his veins as he saw the effect which his
+      language had produced on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lead the way!&rdquo; said Stevens; &ldquo;the sooner you are satisfied the better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very courteous, and I thank you,&rdquo; replied Hinkley, with a subdued
+      but sarcastic smile, &ldquo;you will pardon me for the seeming slight, in taking
+      precedence of one so superior; but the case requires it. You will please
+      to follow. I will show you my back no longer than it seems necessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lead on, sir&mdash;lead on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; UNEXPECTED ISSUES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley ascended the narrow path leading to the hills with an
+      alacrity of heart which somewhat surprised himself. The apprehensions of
+      danger, if he felt any, were not of a kind to distress or annoy him, and
+      were more than balanced by the conviction that he had brought his enemy
+      within his level. That feeling of power is indeed a very consolatory one.
+      It satisfies the ambitious heart, though death preys upon his household,
+      one by one; though suffering fevers his sleep; though the hopes of his
+      affection wither; though the loves and ties of his youth decay and vanish.
+      It makes him careless of the sunshine, and heedless of the storm. It
+      deadens his ear to the song of birds, it blinds his eye to the seduction
+      of flowers. It makes him fly from friendship and rush on hate. It
+      compensates for all sorts of loneliness, and it produces them. It is a
+      princely despotism; which, while it robs its slave of freedom, covers him
+      with other gifts which he learns to value more; which, binding him in
+      fetters, makes him believe that they are sceptres and symbols before which
+      all things become what he desires them. His speech is changed, his very
+      nature perverted, but he acquires an &ldquo;open sesame&rdquo; by their loss, and the
+      loss seems to his imagination an exceeding gain. We will not say that
+      William Hinkley was altogether satisfied with HIS bargain, but in the
+      moment when he stood confronting his enemy on the bald rock, with a deadly
+      weapon in each hand&mdash;when he felt that he stood foot to foot in equal
+      conflict with his foe, one whom he had dragged down from his pride of
+      place, and had compelled to the fearful issue which made his arrogance
+      quail&mdash;in that moment, if he did not forget, he did not so much feel,
+      that he had lost family and friends, parents and love; and if he felt, it
+      was only to induce that keener feeling of revenge in which even the
+      affections are apt to be swallowed up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens looked in the eye of the young man and saw that he was dangerous.
+      He looked upon the ante-revolutionary pistols, and saw that they were
+      dangerous too, in a double sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here are pistols,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;better suited to our purpose. You can sound
+      them and take your choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These,&rdquo; said Hinkley, doggedly, &ldquo;are as well suited as any. If you will,
+      you can take your choice of mine; but if you think yours superior, use
+      them. These are good enough for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is out of all usage,&rdquo; said Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matters it, Mr. Stevens? If you are satisfied that yours are the
+      best, the advantage is with you. If you doubt that mine can kill, try
+      them. I have a faith in these pistols which will content me; but we will
+      take one of each, if that will please you better, and use which we think
+      proper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens expressed himself better pleased to keep his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suit yourself as to distance,&rdquo; said Hinkley, with all the coolness of an
+      unmixed salamander. His opponent stepped off ten paces with great
+      deliberation, and William Hinkley, moving toward a fragment of the rock
+      upon which he had placed his &ldquo;revolutions&rdquo; for the better inspection of
+      his opponent, possessed himself of the veterans and prepared to take the
+      station which had been assigned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who shall give the word?&rdquo; demanded Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may!&rdquo; was the cool rejoinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I do, I kill you,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no fear, Mr. Stevens,&rdquo; answered William Hinkley with a degree of
+      phlegm which almost led Stevens to fancy he had to deal with a regular
+      Trojan&mdash;&ldquo;I have no fear,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;and if you fancy you can
+      frighten me by this sort of bragging you have very much mistaken your man.
+      Shoot when you please, word or no word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley stood with his back to the woods, his face toward the lake
+      which spread itself, smooth and calm at a little distance. He did not
+      perceive that his position was a disadvantageous one. The tree behind, and
+      that beside him, rendered his body a most conspicuous mark; while his
+      opponent, standing with his back to the uncovered rocks ranged with no
+      other objects of any prominence. Had he even been sufficiently practised
+      in the arts of the duello, he would most probably have been utterly
+      regardless of these things. They would not have influenced his firmness in
+      the slightest degree. His course was quite as much the result of
+      desperation as philosophy. He felt himself an outcast as well from home as
+      from love, and it mattered to him very little, in the morbid excitement of
+      his present mind, whether he fell by the hand of his rival, or lived to
+      pine out a wearisome existence, lonely and uninspired, a gloomy exile in
+      the bitter world. He waited, it may be said, with some impatience for the
+      fire of his antagonist. Once he saw the pistol of Stevens uplifted. He had
+      one in each hand. His own hung beside him. He waited for the shot of the
+      enemy as a signal when to lift and use his own weapon. But instead of this
+      he was surprised to see him drop the muzzle of his weapon, and with some
+      celerity and no small degree of slight of hand, thrust the two pistols
+      under his coat-skirts. A buz reached his ears a moment after&mdash;the hum
+      of voices&mdash;some rustling in the bushes, which signified confusion in
+      the approach of strangers. He did not wish to look round as he preferred
+      keeping his eye on his antagonist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shoot!&rdquo; he exclaimed&mdash;&ldquo;quickly, before we are interrupted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he could receive any answer there was a rush behind him&mdash;he
+      heard his father's voice, sudden, and in a high degree of fury, mingled
+      with that of his mother and Mr. Calvert, as if in expostulation. From the
+      latter the words distinctly reached his ears, warning him to beware. Such,
+      also, was the purport of his mother's cry. Before he could turn and guard
+      against the unseen danger, he received a blow upon his head, the only
+      thing of which he was conscious for some time. He staggered and fell
+      forward. He felt himself stunned, fancied he was shot, and sunk to the
+      ground in an utter state of insensibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blow came from his father's crab-stick. It was so utterly unexpected
+      by the parties who had attended old Hinkley to the place of meeting, that
+      no efforts were made to prevent it. But the mother of the victim rushed in
+      in time to defeat the second blow, which the father prepared to inflict,
+      in the moment when his son was falling from the effects of the first.
+      Grasping the coat skirts of her spouse, she pulled him back with no
+      scrupulous hand, and effectually baffled his designs by bringing him down,
+      though in an opposite direction, to the same level with the youth. Old
+      Hinkley did not bite the dust, but the latter part of his skull most
+      effectually butted it; and had not his head been quite as tough as his
+      crab-stick, the hurt might have been quite as severe as that which the
+      latter had inflicted on the son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter lay as perfectly quiet as if all had been over with him. So
+      much so, that the impression became very general that such was the case.
+      Under this impression the heart of the mother spoke out in mingled screams
+      of lamentation and reproach. She threw herself down by the side of the
+      youth and vainly attempted to stop the blood which was streaming from a
+      deep gash on his skull. While engaged in this work, her apron and
+      handkerchief being both employed for this purpose, she poured forth a
+      torrent of wrath and denunciation against her spouse. She now forgot all
+      the offences of the boy, and even Alfred Stevens came in for his share of
+      the anger with which she visited the offence and the offender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shame! shame! you bloody-minded man,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;to slaughter your own
+      son&mdash;your only son&mdash;to come behind him and knock him down with a
+      club as if he had been an inhuman ox! You are no husband of mine. He
+      sha'n't own you for a father. If I had the pick, I'd choose a thousand
+      fathers for him, from here to Massassippi, sooner than you. He's only too
+      good and too handsome to be son of yours. And for what should you strike
+      him? For a stranger&mdash;a man we never saw before. Shame on you! You are
+      a brute, a monster, William Hinkley, and I'm done with you for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor, poor boy! Look up, my son. Look up, William. Open your eyes.
+      It's your own dear mother that speaks to you. O my God! you've killed him&mdash;he
+      will not open his eyes. He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly it seemed so, for the youth gave no sign of consciousness. She
+      threw herself in a screaming agony upon his body, and gave herself up to
+      the unmeasured despair, which, if a weakness, is at least a sacred one in
+      the case of a mother mourning her only son. Old Hinkley was not without
+      his alarms&mdash;nay, not altogether without his compunctions. But he was
+      one of that round head genus whose self-esteem is too much at all times
+      for fear, or shame, or sensibility. Without seeking to assist the lad, and
+      ascertain what was his real condition, he sought only to justify himself
+      for what he had done by repeating the real and supposed offences of the
+      youth. He addressed himself in this labor chiefly to Mr. Calvert, who,
+      with quite as much suffering as any of the rest, had more consideration,
+      and was now busied in the endeavor to stanch the blood and cleanse the
+      wound of the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's only got what he deserved,&rdquo; exclaimed the sullen, stubborn father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not speak so, Mr. Hinkley,&rdquo; replied Calvert, with a sternness which
+      was unusual with him; &ldquo;your son may have got his death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he deserves it!&rdquo; responded the other doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he has,&rdquo; continued Calvert, &ldquo;you are a murderer&mdash;a
+      cold-blooded murderer&mdash;and as such will merit and will meet the
+      halter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of the old man grew livid&mdash;his lips whitened with rage; and
+      he approached Calvert, his whole frame quivering with fury, and, shaking
+      his hand threateningly, exclaimed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you dare to speak to me in this manner, you miserable, white-headed
+      pedagogue&mdash;do you dare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare!&rdquo; retorted Calvert, rising to his feet with a look of majesty which,
+      in an instant, awed the insolence of the offender. Never had he been faced
+      by such defiance, so fearlessly and nobly expressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare!&mdash;Look on me, and ask yourself whether I dare or not. Approach
+      me but a step nigher, and even my love for your unfortunate and
+      much-abused but well-minded son will not protect you. I would chastise
+      you, with all my years upon me, in spite of my white head. Yours, if this
+      boy should die, will never become white, or will become so suddenly, as
+      your soul will wither, with its own self-torture, within you. Begone!&mdash;keep
+      back&mdash;do not approach me, and, above all, do not approach me with
+      uplifted hand, or, by Heaven, I will fell you to the earth as surely as
+      you felled this boy! You have roused a feeling within me, William Hinkley,
+      which has slept for years. Do not provoke it too far. Beware in season.
+      You have acted the brute and the coward to your son&mdash;you could do so
+      with impunity to him&mdash;to me you can not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in this speech, from one whom old Hinkley was
+      accustomed to look upon as a dreaming bookworm, which goaded the
+      tyrannical father into irrepressible fury; and, grinding his teeth,
+      without a moment's hesitation he advanced, and was actually about to lay
+      the crab-stick over the shoulders of the speaker: but the latter was as
+      prompt as he was fearless. Before Hinkley could conceive his intention, he
+      had leaped over the still unconscious person of William, and, flinging the
+      old man round with a sudden jerk, had grasped and wrested the stick from
+      his hands with a degree of activity and strength which confounded all the
+      bystanders, and the subject of his sudden exercise of manhood no less than
+      the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you treated justly,&rdquo; said Calvert, regarding him with a look of the
+      loftiest indignation, &ldquo;you should yourself receive a taste of the cudgel
+      you are so free to use on others. Let your feebleness, old man, be a
+      warning to your arrogance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words, he flung the crab-stick into the lake, old Hinkley
+      regarding him with looks in which it was difficult to say whether
+      mortification or fury had preponderance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go,&rdquo; he continued&mdash;&ldquo;your son lives; but it is God's mercy, and none
+      of yours, which has spared his life. You will live, I hope, to repent of
+      your cruelty and injustice to him; to repent of having shown a preference
+      to a stranger, so blind as that which has moved you to attempt the life of
+      one of the most gentle lads in the whole country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did he not come here to murder the stranger? did we not find him even
+      now with pistol ready to murder Brother Stevens? See the pistols now in
+      his hands&mdash;my father's pistols. We came not a minute too soon. But
+      for my blow, he had been a murderer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the justification which old Hinkley now offered for what he had
+      done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no advocate for duelling,&rdquo; said Calvert, &ldquo;but I believe that your
+      son came with the stranger for this purpose, and not to murder him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! do you not see that Brother Stevens has no pistols? Did we not
+      see him trying to escape&mdash;walking off&mdash;walking almost over the
+      rocks to get out of the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Calvert comprehended the matter much more clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak, sir!&rdquo; he said to Stevens, &ldquo;did you not come prepared to defend
+      yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see me as I am,&rdquo; said Stevens, showing his empty hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calvert looked at him with searching eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand you, sir,&rdquo; he said, with an expression not to be mistaken;
+      &ldquo;I understand you now. THIS LAD I KNOW. HE COULD NOT BE A MURDERER. HE
+      COULD NOT TAKE ANY MAN AT ADVANTAGE. If you do not know the fact, Mr.
+      Stevens, I can assure you that your life was perfectly secure from his
+      weapon, so long as his remained equally unendangered. The sight of that
+      lake, from which he rescued you but a few days ago, should sufficiently
+      have persuaded you of this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stevens muttered something, the purport of which was, that &ldquo;he did not
+      believe the young man intended to murder him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he not send you a challenge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said old Hinkley; &ldquo;he sent him a begging note, promising atonement
+      and repentance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let me see that note?&rdquo; said Calvert, addressing Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have it not&mdash;I destroyed it,&rdquo; said Stevens with some haste.
+      Calvert said no more, but he looked plainly enough his suspicions. He now
+      gave his attention to William Hinkley, whose mother, while this scene was
+      in progress, had been occupied, as Calvert had begun, in stanching the
+      blood, and trimming with her scissors, which were fortunately at her
+      girdle, the hair from the wound. The son, meanwhile, had wakened to
+      consciousness. He had been stunned but not severely injured by the blow,
+      and, with the promptitude of a border-dame, Mrs. Hinkley, hurrying to a
+      pine-tree, had gathered enough of its resin, which, spread upon a fragment
+      of her cotton apron, and applied to the hurt, proved a very fair
+      substitute for adhesive plaster. The youth rose to his feet, still
+      retaining the pistols in his grasp. His looks were heavy from the stupor
+      which still continued, but kindled into instant intelligence when he
+      caught sight of Stevens and his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go home, sir!&rdquo; said the latter, waving his hand in the prescribed
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; was the reply of the young man, firmly expressed; &ldquo;never, sir, if
+      I never have a home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall always have a home, William, while I have one,&rdquo; said Mr.
+      Calvert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you encourage my son in rebellion? you teach him to fly in the face
+      of his father?&rdquo; shouted the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; I only offer him a shelter from tyranny, a place of refuge from
+      persecution. When you learn the duties and the feelings of a father, it
+      will be time enough to assert the rights of one. I do not think him safe
+      in your house against your vindictiveness and brutality. He is, however,
+      of full age, and can determine for himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not of age, and will not be till July.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It matters not. He is more near the years of discretion than his father;
+      and, judging him to be in some danger in your house, as a man and as a
+      magistrate I offer him the protection of mine. Come home with me,
+      William.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him go, if he pleases&mdash;go to the d&mdash;l! He who honors not
+      his father, says the Scriptures&mdash;what says the passage, Brother
+      Stevens&mdash;does it not say that he who honors not his father is in
+      danger of hell-fire?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly, I believe,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Matters not, matters not!&mdash;the meaning is very much the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my son,&rdquo; said the mother, clinging to his neck, &ldquo;will you, indeed,
+      desert me? can you leave me in my old age? I have none, none but you! You
+      know how I have loved&mdash;you know I will always love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I love you, mother&mdash;and love him too, though he treats me as an
+      outcast&mdash;I will always love you, but I will never more enter my
+      father's dwelling. He has degraded me with his whip&mdash;he has attempted
+      my life with his bludgeon. I forgive him, but will never expose myself
+      again to his cruelties or indignities. You will always find me a son, and
+      a dutiful one, in all other respects.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away with Mr. Calvert, and slowly proceeded down the pathway by
+      which he had approached the eminence. He gave Stevens a significant look
+      as he passed him, and lifted one of the pistols which he still carried in
+      his hands, in a manner to make evident his meaning. The other smiled and
+      turned off with the group, who proceeded by the route along the hills, but
+      the last words of the mother, subdued by sobs, still came to the ears of
+      the youth:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my son, come home! come home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! I have no home&mdash;no home, mother!&rdquo; muttered the young man, as
+      if he thought the half-stifled response could reach the ears of the
+      complaining woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No home! no hope!&rdquo; he continued&mdash;&ldquo;I am desolate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so, my son. God is our home; God is our companion; our strength, our
+      preserver! Living and loving, manfully striving and working out our toils
+      for deliverance, we are neither homeless, nor hopeless; neither
+      strengthless, nor fatherless; wanting neither in substance nor companion.
+      This is a sharp lesson, perhaps, but a necessary one. It will give you
+      that courage, of the great value of which I spoke to you but a few days
+      ago. Come with me to my home; it shall be yours until you can find a
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you&mdash;oh! how much I thank you. It may be all as you pay, but
+      I feel very, very miserable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; EXILE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The artist in the moral world must be very careful not to suffer his nice
+      sense of retributive justice, to get so much the better of his judgment,
+      as an artist, as to make him forgetful of human probabilities, and the
+      superior duty of preparing the mind of the young reader by sterling
+      examples of patience and protracted reward, to bear up manfully against
+      injustice, and not to despond because his rewards are slow. It would be
+      very easy for an author to make everybody good, or, if any were bad, to
+      dismiss them, out of hand, to purgatory and places even worse. But it
+      would be a thankless toil to read the writings of such an author. His
+      characters would fail in vraisemblance, and his incidents would lack in
+      interest. The world is a sort of vast moral lazar-house, in which most
+      have sores, either of greater or less degree of virulence. Some are
+      nurses, and doctors, and guardians; and these are necessarily free from
+      the diseases to which they minister. Some, though not many, are entirely
+      incurable; many labor for years in pain, and when dismissed, still hobble
+      along feebly, bearing the proofs of their trials in ugly seams and
+      blotches, contracted limbs, and pale, haggard features. Others get off
+      with a shorter and less severe probation. None are free from taint, and
+      those who are the most free, are not always the greatest favorites with
+      fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are speaking of the moral world, good reader. We simply borrow an
+      illustration from the physical. Our interest in one another is very much
+      derived from our knowledge of each other's infirmities; and it may be
+      remarked, passingly, that this interest is productive of very excellent
+      philosophical temper, since it enables us to bear the worst misfortunes of
+      our best friends with the most amazing fortitude. It is a frequent error
+      with the reader of a book&mdash;losing sight of these facts&mdash;to
+      expect that justice will always be done on the instant. He will suffer no
+      delay in the book, though he sees that this delay of justice is one of the
+      most decided of all the moral certainties whether in life or law. He does
+      not wish to see the person in whom the author makes him interested, perish
+      in youth&mdash;die of broken heart or more rapid disaster; and if he could
+      be permitted to interfere, the bullet or the knife of the assassin would
+      be arrested at the proper moment and always turned against the bosom of
+      the wrong-doer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a very commendable state of feeling, and whenever it occurs, it
+      clearly shows that the author is going right in his vocation. It proves
+      him to be a HUMAN author, which is something better than being a mere,
+      dry, moral one. But he would neither be a human nor a moral author were he
+      to comply with the desires of such gentle readers, and, to satisfy their
+      sympathies, arrest the progress of events. The fates must have their way,
+      in the book as in the lazar-house; and the persons of his drama must
+      endure their sores and sufferings with what philosophy they may, until,
+      under the hands of that great physician, fortune, they receive an
+      honorable discharge or otherwise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Were it with him, our young friend, William Hinkley, who is really a
+      clever fellow, should not only be received to favor with all parties, but
+      such should never have fallen from favor in the minds of any. His father
+      should become soon repentant, and having convicted Stevens of his
+      falsehood and hypocrisy, he should be rewarded with the hand of the woman
+      to whom his young heart is so devoted. Such, perhaps, would be the
+      universal wish with our readers; but would this be fortunate for William
+      Hinkley? Our venerable friend and his, Mr. Calvert, has a very different
+      opinion. He says:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This young man is not only a worthy young man, but he is one, naturally
+      of very vigorous intellect. He is of earnest, impassioned temperament,
+      full of enthusiasm and imagination; fitted for work&mdash;great work&mdash;public
+      work&mdash;head work&mdash;the noblest kind of work. He will be a great
+      lawyer&mdash;perhaps a great statesman&mdash;if he addresses himself at
+      once, manfully, to his tasks; but he will not address himself to these
+      tasks while he pursues the rusting and mind-destroying life of a country
+      village. Give him the object of his present desire and you deprive him of
+      all motive for exertion. Give him the woman he seeks and you probably
+      deprive him even of the degree of quiet which the country village affords.
+      He would forfeit happiness without finding strength. Force him to the use
+      of his tools and he builds himself fame and fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Calvert was really not sorry that William Hinkley's treatment had been so
+      harsh. He sympathized, it is true, in his sufferings, but he was not blind
+      to their probable advantages; and he positively rejoiced in his rejection
+      by Margaret Cooper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some four or five days after the events with which our last chapter
+      was closed, that the old man and his young friend were to be seen sitting
+      together, under the shade of the venerable tree where we have met them
+      before. They had conferred together seriously, and finally with agreeing
+      minds, on the several topics which have been adverted to in the preceding
+      paragraph. William Hinkley had become convinced that it was equally the
+      policy of his mind and heart to leave Charlemont. He was not so well
+      satisfied, however, as was the case with Mr. Calvert, that the loss of
+      Margaret Cooper was his exceeding gain. When did young lover come to such
+      a conclusion? Not, certainly, while he was young. But when was young lover
+      wise? Though a discontent, William Hinkley was not, however, soured nor
+      despairing from the denial of his hopes. He had resources of thought and
+      spirit never tested before, of the possession of which he, himself, knew
+      nothing. They were to be brought into use and made valuable only by these
+      very denials; by the baffling of his hope; by the provocation of his
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His resolution grew rapidly in consequence of his disappointments. He was
+      now prepared to meet the wishes of his venerable and wise preceptor&mdash;to
+      grapple stoutly with the masters of the law; and, keeping his heart in
+      restraint, if not absolute abeyance, to do that justice to his head,
+      which, according to the opinion of Mr. Calvert, it well-deserved if
+      hitherto it had not demanded it. But to pursue his studies as well as his
+      practice, he was to leave Charlemont. How was this to be done&mdash;where
+      was he to go&mdash;by what means? A horse, saddle, and bridle&mdash;a few
+      books and the ante-revolutionary pistols of his grandsire, which recent
+      circumstances seemed to have endeared to him, were all his available
+      property. His poverty was an estoppel, at the outset, to his own
+      reflections; and thinking of this difficulty he turned with a blank visage
+      to his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man seemed to enter into and imagine his thoughts. He did not wait
+      to be reminded, by the halting speech of the youth, of the one subject
+      from which the latter shrunk to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The next thing, my son,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is the necessary means. Happily, in
+      the case of one so prudent and temperate as yourself, you will not need
+      much. Food and clothing, and a small sum, annually, for contingencies,
+      will be your chief expense; and this, I am fortunately able to provide. I
+      am not a rich man, my son; but economy and temperance, with industry, have
+      given me enough, and to spare. It is long since I had resolved that all I
+      have should be yours; and I had laid aside small sums from time to time,
+      intending them for an occasion like the present, which I felt sure would
+      at length arrive. I am rejoiced that my foresight should have begun in
+      time, since it enables me to meet the necessity promptly, and to interpose
+      myself at the moment when you most need counsel and assistance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my friend, my kind generous friend, how it shames me for my own
+      father to hear you speak thus!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth caught the hands of his benefactor, and the hot tears fell from
+      his eyes upon them, while he fervently bent to kiss them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father is a good but rough man, William, who will come to his senses
+      in good time. Men of his education&mdash;governed as he is by the mistake
+      which so commonly confounds God with his self-constituted representative,
+      religion with its professor&mdash;will err, and can not be reasoned out of
+      their errors. It is the unceasing operation of time which can alone teach
+      them a knowledge of the truth. You must not think too hardly of your
+      father, who does not love you the less because he fancies you are his
+      particular property, with whom he may do what he pleases. As for what I
+      have done, and am disposed to do for you, let that not become burdensome
+      to your gratitude. In some respects you have been a son to me, and I send
+      you from me with the same reluctance which a father would feel in the like
+      circumstances. You have been my companion, you have helped to cheer my
+      solitude; and I have learned to look on the progress of your mind with the
+      interest of the philosopher who pursues a favorite experiment. In
+      educating you, I have attempted an experiment which I should be sorry to
+      see fail. I do not think now that it will fail. I think you will do
+      yourself and me ample justice. If I have had my doubts, they were of your
+      courage, not your talent. If you have a weakness, it is because of a
+      deficiency of self-esteem&mdash;a tendency to self-disparagement. A little
+      more actual struggle with the world, and an utter withdrawal from those
+      helps and hands which in a youth's own home are very apt to be constantly
+      employed to keep him from falling, and to save him from the consequences
+      of his fall, and I do not despair of seeing you acquire that necessary
+      moral hardihood which will enable you to think freely, and to make your
+      mind give a fair utterance to the properties which are in it. When this is
+      done, I have every hope of you. You will rise to eminence in your
+      profession. I know, my son, that you will do me honor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, sir, I am afraid you overrate my abilities. I have no consciousness
+      of any such resources as you suppose me to possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is here that your deficiency speaks out. Be bold, my son&mdash;be
+      bold, bolder, boldest. I would not have you presumptuous, but there is a
+      courage, short of presumption, which is only a just confidence in one's
+      energies and moral determination. This you will soon form, if, looking
+      around you and into the performances of others, you see how easy they are,
+      and how far inferior they are to your own ideas of what excellence should
+      be. Do not look into yourself for your standards. I have perhaps erred in
+      making these too high. Look out from yourself&mdash;look into others&mdash;analyze
+      the properties of others; and, in attempting, seek only to meet the
+      exigencies of the occasion, without asking what a great mind might effect
+      beyond it. Your heart will fail you always if your beau ideal is for ever
+      present to your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try, sir. My tasks are before me, and I know it is full time that
+      I should discard my boyhood. I will go to work with industry, and will
+      endeavor not to disappoint your confidence; but I must confess, sir, I
+      have very little in myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will work seriously, William, my faith is in this very humility. A
+      man knowing his own weakness, and working to be strong, can not fail. He
+      must achieve something more than he strives for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make me strong as I hear you, sir. But I have one request to make,
+      sir. I have a favor to ask, sir, which will make me almost happy if you
+      grant it&mdash;which will at least reconcile me to receive your favors,
+      and to feel them less oppressively.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that, William? You know, my son, there are few things which I
+      could refuse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is that <i>I</i> MAY BE YOUR SON; that I may call you father, and bear
+      henceforward your name. If you adopt me, rear me, teach me, provide me
+      with the means of education and life, and do for me what a father should
+      have done, you are substantially more than my father to me. Let me bear,
+      your name. I shall be proud of it, sir. I will not disgrace it&mdash;nay,
+      more, it will strengthen me in my desire to do it and myself honor. When I
+      hear it spoken, it will remind me of my equal obligations to you and to
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this, my son, is a wrong done to your own father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! he will not feel it such.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak now with a feeling of anger, William. The treatment of your
+      father rankles in your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, no! I freely forgive him. I have no reference to him in the
+      prayer I make. My purpose is simply what I declare. Your name will remind
+      me of your counsels, will increase my obligation to pursue them, will
+      strengthen me in my determination, will be to me a fond monitor in your
+      place. Oh, sir, do not deny me! You have shown me the affections of a
+      father&mdash;let me, I entreat you, bear the name of your son!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth flung his arms about the old man's neck, and wept with a gush of
+      fondness which the venerable sire could not withstand. He was deeply
+      touched: his lips quivered; his eyes thrilled and throbbed. In vain did he
+      strive to resist the impulse. He gave him tear for tear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son, you have unmanned me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my father, I can not regret, since, in doing so, I have strengthened
+      my own manhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it have this effect, William, I shall not regret my own weakness.
+      There is a bird, you are aware, of which it is fabled that it nourishes
+      its young by the blood of its own bosom, which it wounds for this purpose.
+      Believe me, my dear boy, I am not unwilling to be this bird for your sake.
+      If to feel for you as the fondest of fathers can give me the rights of
+      one, then are you most certainly my son&mdash;my son!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Long, and fond, and sweet, was their embrace. For a full hour, but few
+      words, and those of a mournful tenderness, were exchanged between the
+      parties. But the scene and the struggle were drawing nigh their close.
+      This was the day when they were to separate. It had been arranged that
+      William Hinkley, or as he now calls himself, William Calvert, was to go
+      into the world. The old man had recalled for his sake, many of the
+      memories and associations of his youth. He had revived that period&mdash;in
+      his case one of equal bitterness and pleasure&mdash;when, a youth like him
+      he was about to send forth, he had been the ardent student in a profession
+      whose honors he had so sadly failed to reap. In this profession he was
+      then fortunate in having many sterling friends. Some of these were still
+      so. In withdrawing from society, he had not withdrawn from all commerce
+      with a select and sacred few; and to the friendly counsel and protection
+      of these he now deputed the paternal trusts which had been just so
+      solemnly surrendered to himself. There were long and earnest appeals
+      written to many noble associates&mdash;men who had won great names by dint
+      of honorable struggle in those fields into which the feebler temper of Mr.
+      Calvert did not permit him to penetrate. Some of these letters bore for
+      their superscriptions such names as the Clays, the Crittendens, and the
+      Metcalfs&mdash;the strong men, not merely of Kentucky, but of the Union.
+      The good old man sighed as he read them over, separately, to his young
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once I stood with them, and like them&mdash;not the meanest among them&mdash;nay,
+      beloved by them as an associate, and recognised as a competitor. But they
+      are here&mdash;strong, high, glorious, in the eye of the nation&mdash;and
+      I am nothing&mdash;a poor white-headed pedagogue in the obscurest regions
+      of Kentucky. Oh, my son, remember this, and be strong! Beware of that
+      weakness, the offspring of a miserable vanity, which, claiming too much
+      for itself, can bestow nothing upon others. Strive only to meet the
+      exigency, and you will do more&mdash;you will pass beyond it. Ask not what
+      your fame requires&mdash;the poor fame of a solitary man struggling like
+      an atom in the bosom of the great struggling world&mdash;ask only what is
+      due to the task which you have assumed, and labor to do that. This is the
+      simple, small secret, but be sure it is the one which is of more
+      importance than all beside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The departure of William Hinkley from his native village was kept a
+      profound secret from all persons except his adopted father and his bosom
+      friend and cousin, Fisherman Ned. We have lost sight of this young man for
+      several pages, and, in justice equally to the reader and himself, it is
+      necessary that we should hurriedly retrace our progress, at least so far
+      as concerns his. We left him, if we remember, having driven Alfred Stevens
+      from his purpose, riding on alone, really with no other aim than to give
+      circulation to his limbs and fancies. His ride, if we are to believe his
+      random but significant words, and his very knowing looks, was not without
+      its results. He had certainly made some discoveries&mdash;at least he
+      thought and said so; but, in truth, we believe these amounted to nothing
+      more than some plausible conjectures as to the route which Alfred Stevens
+      was in the habit of pursuing, on those excursions, in which the neighbors
+      were disposed to think that there was something very mysterious. He
+      certainly had jumped to the conclusion that, on such occasions, the
+      journey of Stevens was prolonged to Ellisland; and, as such a ride was too
+      long for one of mere pleasure and exercise, the next conclusion was, that
+      such a journey had always some business in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, a business that calls for so much secrecy, in a young student of
+      theology, was certainly one that could have very little relation to the
+      church. So far as Ned Hinkley knew anything of the Decalogue it could not
+      well relate to that. There was nothing in St. Paul that required him to
+      travel post to Ellisland; though a voyage to Tarsus might be justified by
+      the authority of that apostle; and the whole proceeding, therefore,
+      appeared to be a mystery in which gospelling had very little to do. Very
+      naturally, having arrived at this conclusion, Ned Hinkley jumped to
+      another. If the saints have nothing to do with this journey of Alfred
+      Stevens, the sinners must have. It meant mischief&mdash;it was a device of
+      Satan; and the matter seemed so clearly made out to his own mind, that he
+      returned home with the further conviction, which was equally natural and
+      far more easily arrived at, that he was now bound by religion, as he had
+      previously been impelled by instinct, to give Stevens &ldquo;a regular licking
+      the very first chance that offered.&rdquo; Still, though determined on this
+      measure, he was not unmindful of the necessity of making other
+      discoveries; and he returned to Charlemont with a countenance big with
+      importance and almost black with mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the events which had taken place in his absence, and which we have
+      already related, almost put his own peculiar purposes out of his mind.
+      That William Hinkley should have cowskinned Stevens would have been much
+      more gratifying to him could he have been present; and he was almost
+      disposed to join with the rest in their outcry against this sacrilegious
+      proceeding, for the simple reason, that it somewhat anticipated his own
+      rigorous intentions to the same effect. He was not less dissatisfied with
+      the next attempt for two reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might have known, Bill, that a parson won't fight with pistols. You
+      might have persuaded him to fist or cudgel, to a fair up and down, hand
+      over, fight! That's not so criminal, they think. I heard once of Brother
+      John Cross, himself trying a cudgel bout with another parson down in
+      Mississippi, because he took the same text out of his mouth, and preached
+      it over the very same day, with contrary reason. Everybody said that John
+      Cross served him right, and nobody blamed either. But they would have done
+      so if pistols had been used. You can't expect parsons or students of
+      religion to fight with firearms. Swords, now, they think justifiable, for
+      St. Peter used them; but we read nowhere in Old or New Testament of their
+      using guns, pistols, or rifles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he consented to fight, and brought his own pistols, Ned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then, didn't you fight? That's the next thing I blame you for&mdash;that,
+      when you were both ready, and had the puppies in your hands, you should
+      have stood looking at each other without taking a crack. By jingo, had
+      there been fifty fathers and mothers in the bush, I'd have had a crack at
+      him. No, I blame you, William&mdash;I can't help it. You didn't do right.
+      Oh! if you had only waited for me, and let me have fixed it, how finely we
+      would have managed. What then, if your father had burst in, it was only
+      shifting the barkers from your hands to mine. I'd have banged at him,
+      though John Cross himself, and all his flock, stood by and kneed it to
+      prevent me. They might have prayed to all eternity without stopping me, I
+      tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William Hinkley muttered something about the more impressive sort of
+      procedure which his father had resorted to, and a little soreness about
+      the parietal bones just at that moment giving a quick impatient air to his
+      manner, had the effect of putting an end to all further discussion of this
+      topic. Fisherman Ned concluded with a brief assurance, meant as
+      consolation, that, when he took up the cudgels, his cousin need make
+      himself perfectly easy with the conviction that he would balance both
+      accounts very effectually. He had previously exhorted William to renew the
+      attempt, though with different weapons, to bring his enemy into the field;
+      but against this attempt Mr. Calvert had already impressively enjoined
+      him; exacting from him a promise that he would not seek Stevens, and would
+      simply abide any call for satisfaction which the latter might make. The
+      worthy old man was well assured that in Stevens's situation there was very
+      little likelihood of a summons to the field from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, William Hinkley did not deem it becoming in him to leave the ground
+      for several days, even after his preparations for departure were complete.
+      He loitered in the neighborhood, showed himself frequently to his enemy,
+      and, on some of these occasions, was subjected to the mortification of
+      beholding the latter on his way to the house of Margaret Cooper, with
+      whom, a few moments after, he might be seen in lonely rambles by the
+      lake-side and in the wood. William had conquered his hopes from this
+      quarter, but he vainly endeavored to suppress his pangs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the morning came for his departure. He had seen his mother for
+      the last time the night before. They had met at the house of the widow
+      Hinkley, between which and that of Calvert, his time had been chiefly
+      spent, since the day of his affair with Stevens. His determination to
+      depart was carefully concealed from his mother. He dreaded to hear her
+      entreaties, and he doubted his own strength to endure them. His
+      deportment, however, was sufficiently fond and tender, full of pain and
+      passion, to have convinced her, had she been at all suspicious of the
+      truth, of the design he meditated. But, as it was, it simply satisfied her
+      affections; and the fond &ldquo;good night&rdquo; with which he addressed her ears at
+      parting, was followed by a gush of tears which shocked the more sturdy
+      courage of his cousin, and aroused the suspicions of the widow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;William Hinkley,&rdquo; she said after the mother had gone home&mdash;&ldquo;you must
+      be thinking to leave Charlemont. I'm sure of it&mdash;I know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do, say nothing, dear cousin; it will do no good&mdash;it can not
+      prevent me now, and will only make our parting more painful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't fear me,&rdquo; said the widow&mdash;&ldquo;I shan't speak of it, till it's
+      known to everybody, for I think you right to go and do just as Gran'pa
+      Calvert tells you; but you needn't have made it such a secret with me.
+      I've always been too much of your friend to say a word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said the youth mournfully, &ldquo;until lately, dear cousin, I fancied
+      that I had no friends&mdash;do not blame me, therefore, if I still
+      sometimes act as if I had none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have many friends, William, already&mdash;I'm sure you will find many
+      more wherever you go; abler friends if not fonder ones, than you leave
+      behind you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth threw his arms round the widow's neck and kissed her tenderly.
+      Her words sounded in his ears like some melodious prophecy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say no more, cousin,&rdquo; he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm; &ldquo;I am so well
+      pleased to believe what you promise me of the future, that I am willing to
+      believe all. God bless you. I will never forget you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The parting with Calvert was more touching in reality, but with fewer of
+      the external signs of feeling. A few words, a single embrace and squeeze
+      of the hand, and they separated; the old man hiding himself and his
+      feelings in the dimness of his secluded abode, while his adopted son, with
+      whom Ned Hinkley rode a brief distance on his way, struck spurs into his
+      steed, as if to lose, in the rapid motion of the animal, the slow, sad
+      feelings which were pressing heavily upon his heart. He had left
+      Charlemont for ever. He had left it under circumstances of doubt, and
+      despondency&mdash;stung by injustice, and baffled in the first ardent
+      hopes of his youthful mind. &ldquo;The world was all before him, where to
+      choose.&rdquo; Let us not doubt that the benignant Providence is still his
+      guide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; CONQUEST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The progress of events and our story necessarily brings as back to
+      Charlemont. We shall lose sight of William Hinkley, henceforth Calvert,
+      for some time; and here, par parenthese, let us say to our readers that
+      this story being drawn from veritable life, will lack some of that
+      compactness and close fitness of parts which make our novels too much
+      resemble the course of a common law case. Instead of having our characters
+      always at hand, at the proper moment, to do the business of the artist,
+      like so many puppets, each working on a convenient wire, and waiting to be
+      whistled in upon the scene, we shall find them sometimes absent, as we do
+      in real life when their presence is most seriously desired, and when the
+      reader would perhaps prefer that they should come in, to meet or make
+      emergencies. Some are gone whom we should rather see; some present, whose
+      absence, in the language of the Irishman, would be the best company they
+      could give us; and some, not forthcoming, like the spirits of Owen
+      Glendower, even when most stoutly called for. The vast deeps of human
+      progress do not release their tenants at the beck and call of ordinary
+      magicians, and we, who endeavor to describe events as we find them, must
+      be content to take them and persons, too, only when they are willing. Were
+      we writing the dramatic romance, we should be required to keep William
+      Hinkley always at hand, as a convenient foil to Alfred Stevens. He should
+      watch his progress; pursue his sinuosities of course; trace him out in all
+      his ill-favored purposes, and be ready, at the first act&mdash;having,
+      like the falcon, by frequent and constantly-ascending gyrations, reached
+      the point of command&mdash;to pounce down upon the fated quarry, and end
+      the story and the strife together. But ours is a social narrative, where
+      people come and go without much regard to the unities, and without asking
+      leave of the manager. William Hinkley, too, is a mere man and no hero. He
+      has no time to spare, and he is conscious that he has already wasted too
+      much. He has work to do and is gone to do it. Let it console the reader,
+      in his absence, to know that he WILL do it&mdash;that his promise is a
+      good one&mdash;and that we have already been shown, in the dim perspective
+      of the future, glimpses of his course which compensate him for his
+      mishaps, and gladden the heart of his adopted father, by confirming its
+      prophecies and hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same fates which deny that he should realize the first fancies of his
+      boyhood, are, in the end, perhaps, not a jot kinder to others whom they
+      now rather seem to favor. His absence did not stop the social machine of
+      Charlemont from travelling on very much as before. There was a shadow over
+      his mother's heart, and his disappearance rather aroused some misgiving
+      and self-reproachful sensations in that of his father. Mr. Calvert, too,
+      had his touch of hypochondria in consequence of his increased loneliness,
+      and Ned Hinkley's fighting monomania underwent startling increase; but,
+      with the rest, the wheel went on without much sensible difference. The
+      truth is, that, however mortifying the truth may be, the best of us makes
+      but a very small sensation in his absence. Death is a longer absence, in
+      which our friends either forget us, or recollect our vices. Our virtues
+      are best acknowledged when we are standing nigh and ready to enforce them.
+      Like the argumentative eloquence of the Eighth Harry, they are never
+      effectual until the halberdiers clinch their rivets forcibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does not necessarily impugn the benevolence or wisdom of Providence to
+      show that crime is successful for a season in its purposes. Vice may
+      prevail, and victims perish, without necessarily disparaging the career,
+      or impeding the progress of virtue. To show that innocence may fall, is
+      sometimes to strengthen innocence, so that it may stand against all
+      assailants. To show vice, even in its moments of success, is not
+      necessarily to show that such success is desirable. Far from it! As none
+      of us can look very deeply into the future, so it happens that the boon
+      for which we pray sometimes turns out to be our bane; while the hardship
+      and suffering, whose approach we deprecate in sackcloth and ashes, may
+      come with healing on their wings, and afford us a dearer blessing than any
+      ever yet depicted in the loom of a sanguine and brilliant imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are, after all, humbling as this fact may be to our clamorous vanity,
+      only so many agents and instruments, blind, and scuffling vainly in our
+      blindness, in the perpetual law of progress. As a soul never dies, so it
+      is never useless or unemployed. The Deity is no more profligate in the
+      matter of souls than he is in that of seeds. They pass, by periodical
+      transitions, from body to body; perhaps from sphere to sphere; and as the
+      performance of their trusts have been praiseworthy or censurable, so will
+      be the character of their trusts in future. He who has shown himself
+      worthy of confidence in one state, will probably acquire a corresponding
+      increase of responsibility in another. He who has betrayed his trusts or
+      impaired them, will share less of the privileges of the great moral credit
+      system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all these transitions, however, work is to be done. The fact that there
+      is a trust, implies duty and performance; and the practice of virtue is
+      nothing more than the performance of this work to the best of our
+      abilities. Well, we do not do our work. We fail in our trusts. We abuse
+      tuem. Such a man as Alfred Stevens abuses them. Such a woman as Margaret
+      Cooper fails in them. What then? Do we destroy the slave who fails in his
+      duty, or chasten him, and give him inferior trusts? Do you suppose that
+      the Deity is more profligate in souls than in seeds&mdash;that he creates
+      and sends forth millions of new souls, annually, in place of those which
+      have gone astray? Hardly so! He is too good an economist for that. We
+      learn this from all the analogies. As a soul can not perish, so it never
+      remains unemployed. It still works, though its labors may be confined to a
+      treadmill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mere novel-reader may regard all this as so much unnecessary
+      digression. But let him not deceive himself. It would be the most
+      humiliating and painful thought, indeed, could we believe that the genius
+      which informs and delights us&mdash;which guides the bark of state through
+      a thousand storms and dangers to its port of safety&mdash;which conquers
+      and commands&mdash;which sings in melodies that make melodies in human
+      hearts for thousands of succeeding years&mdash;is suddenly to be suspended&mdash;to
+      have no more employment&mdash;to do no more work&mdash;guide no more
+      states&mdash;make no more melodies! Nay, the pang would be scarcely less
+      to believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred Stevens, or a wild,
+      irregular genius, like that of Margaret Cooper&mdash;because of its
+      erring, either through perversity or blindness, is wholly to become
+      defunct, so far as employment is concerned&mdash;that they are to be
+      deprived of all privilege of working up to the lost places&mdash;regaining
+      the squandered talents&mdash;atoning, by industry and humble desire, the
+      errors and deficiencies of the past! We rather believe that heaven is a
+      world where the labors are more elevated, the necessities less degrading;
+      that it is no more permanent than what we esteem present life; nay, that
+      it is destined to other transitions; that we may still ascend, on and on,
+      and that each heaven has its higher heaven yet. We believe that our
+      immortality is from the beginning; that time is only a periodical step in
+      eternity&mdash;&mdash;that transition is the true meaning of life&mdash;and
+      death nothing more than a sign of progress. It may be an upward or a
+      downward progress, but it is not a toilsome march to a mere sleep. Lavish
+      as is the bounty of God, and boundless as are his resources, there is
+      nothing of him that we do know which can justify the idea of such utter
+      profligacy of material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We transgress. Our business is with the present doings of our dramatis
+      persons and not with the future employment of their souls. Still, we
+      believe, the doctrine which we teach not only to be more rational, but
+      absolutely more moral than the conjectures on this subject which are in
+      ordinary use. More rational as relates to the characteristics of the
+      Deity, and more moral as it affects the conduct and the purposes of man
+      himself. There is something grand beyond all things else, in the
+      conception of this eternal progress of the individual nature; its passage
+      from condition to condition; sphere to sphere; life to life; always busy,
+      working for the mighty Master; falling and sinking to mere menial toils,
+      or achieving and rising to more noble trusts; but, at all events, still
+      working in some way in the great world-plantation, and under the direct
+      eye of the sovereign World-Planter. The torture of souls on the one hand,
+      and the singing of psalms on the other, may be doctrines infinitely more
+      orthodox; but, to our mind, they seem immeasurably inferior in grandeur,
+      in propriety, in noble conception of the appointments of the creature, and
+      the wondrous and lovely designs of the benignant Father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The defeat of such a soul as that of Margaret Cooper can surely be a
+      temporary defeat only. It will regain strength, it must rise in the
+      future, it must recover the lost ground, and reassert the empire whose
+      sway it has unwillingly abandoned; for it is not through will, wholly, by
+      which we lose the moral eminence. Something is due to human weaknesses; to
+      the blindness in which a noble spirit is sometimes suffered to grow into
+      stature; disproportioned stature&mdash;that, reaching to heaven, is yet
+      shaken down and overthrown by the merest breath of storm that sweeps
+      suddenly beneath its skies. The very hopelessness of Margaret Cooper's
+      ambition, which led her to misanthropy, was the source of an ever-fertile
+      and upspringing confidence. Thus it was that the favoring opinions which
+      Alfred Stevens expressed&mdash;a favoring opinion expressed by one whom
+      she soon discovered was well able to form one&mdash;accompanied by an
+      assurance that the dream of fame which her wild imagination had formed
+      should certainly be realized, gave him a large power over her confidence.
+      Her passion was sway&mdash;the sway of mind over mind&mdash;of genius over
+      sympathy&mdash;of the syren Genius over the subject Love. It was this
+      passion which had made her proud, which had filled her mind with visions,
+      and yielded to her a world by itself, and like no other, filled with all
+      forms of worship and attraction; chivalrous faith, unflagging zeal,
+      generous confidence, pure spirits, and the most unquestioning loyalty!
+      Ignorant of the world which she had not seen, and of those movements of
+      human passion which she had really never felt, she naturally regarded
+      Alfred Stevens as one of the noble representatives of that imaginary
+      empire which her genius continually brought before her eyes. She saw in
+      him the embodiment of that faith in her intellect which it was the first
+      and last hope of her intellect to inspire; and seeing thus, it will be
+      easy to believe that her full heart, which, hitherto, had poured itself
+      forth on rocks, and trees, and solitary places, forgetful of all prudence&mdash;a
+      lesson which she had never learned&mdash;and rejoicing in the sympathy of
+      a being like herself, now gushed forth with all the volume of its
+      impatient fullness. The adroit art of her companion led her for ever into
+      herself; she was continually summoned to pour forth the treasures of her
+      mind and soul; and, toiling in the same sort of egoisme in which her life
+      heretofore had been consumed, she was necessarily diverted from all doubts
+      or apprehensions of the occult purposes of him who had thus beguiled her
+      over the long frequented paths. As the great secret of success with the
+      mere worldling, is to pry into the secret of his neighbor while carefully
+      concealing his own, so it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to be soon
+      blinded to a purpose which its own ardent nature neither allows it to
+      suspect nor penetrate. Enthusiasm is a thing of utter confidence; it has
+      no suspicion; it sets no watch on other hearts; it is too constantly
+      employed in pouring forth the treasures of its own. It is easy, therefore,
+      to deceive and betray it, to beguile it into confidence, and turn all its
+      revelations against itself. How far the frequency of this usage in the
+      world makes it honorable, is a question which we need not discuss on this
+      occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alfred Stevens had now been for some weeks in the village of Charlemont,
+      where, in the meantime, he had become an object of constantly-increasing
+      interest. The men shrank from him with a feeling of inferiority; the women&mdash;the
+      young ones being understood&mdash;shrank from him also, but with that
+      natural art of the sex which invites pursuit, and strives to conquer even
+      in flight. But it was soon evident enough that Stevens bestowed his best
+      regards solely upon Margaret Cooper. If he sought the rest, it was simply
+      in compliance with those seeming duties of his ostensible profession which
+      were necessary to maintain appearances. Whether he loved Margaret Cooper
+      or not, he soon found a pleasure in her society which he sought for in no
+      other quarter of the village. The days, in spite of the strife with
+      William Hinkley, flew by with equal pleasantness and rapidity to both. The
+      unsophisticated mind of Margaret Cooper left her sensible to few
+      restraints upon their ordinary intercourse; and, indeed, if she did know
+      or regard them for an instant, it was only to consider them as necessary
+      restraints for the protection of the ignorant and feeble of her sex&mdash;a
+      class in which she never once thought to include herself. Her attachment
+      to Alfred Stevens, though it first arose from the pleasure which her mind
+      derived from its intercourse with his, and not from any of those nice and
+      curious sympathies of temperament and taste which are supposed to
+      constitute the essence and comprise the secret of love, was yet sufficient
+      to blind her judgment to the risks of feeling, if nothing more, which were
+      likely to arise from their hourly-increasing intimacy; and she wandered
+      with him into the devious woods, and they walked by moonlight among the
+      solemn-shaded hills, and the unconscious girl had no sort of apprehension
+      that the spells of an enslaving passion were rapidly passing over her
+      soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How should she apprehend such spells? how break them? For the first time
+      in her life had she found intellectual sympathy&mdash;the only moral
+      response which her heart longed to hear. For the first time had she
+      encountered a mind which could do justice to, and correspond on anything
+      like equal terms with, her own. How could she think that evil would ensue
+      from an acquisition which yielded her the only communion which she had
+      ever craved Her confidence in herself, in her own strength, and her
+      ignorance of her own passions, were sufficient to render her feelings
+      secure; and then she was too well satisfied of the superiority and
+      nobleness of his. But, in truth, she never thought upon the subject. Her
+      mind dwelt only on the divine forms and images of poetry. The ideal world
+      had superseded, not only the dangers, but the very aspect, of the real.
+      Under the magic action of her fancy, she had come to dwell
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;With those gay creatures of the element
+    That in the colors of the rainbow live,
+    And play i' the plighted clouds&rdquo;&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      she had come to speak only in the one language, and of the one topic; and,
+      believing now that she had an auditor equally able to comprehend and
+      willing to sympathize with her cravings, she gave free scope to the
+      utterance of her fancies, and to the headlong impulse of that imagination
+      which had never felt the curb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young heart, not yet chilled by the world's denials, will readily
+      comprehend the beguiling influence of the dreaming and enthusiastic nature
+      of some dear spirit, in whose faith it has full confidence, and whose
+      tastes are kindred with its own. How sweet the luxury of moonlight in
+      commerce with such a congenial spirit! how heavenly the occasional breath
+      of the sweet southwest! how gentle and soothing fond the whispers of night&mdash;the
+      twirling progress of sad-shining stars&mdash;the gentle sway of winds
+      among the tree-tops&mdash;the plaintive moan of billows, as they gather
+      and disperse themselves along the shores! To speak of these delights; to
+      walk hand-in-hand along the gray sands by the seaside, and whisper in
+      murmuring tones, that seem to gather sympathies from those of ocean; to
+      guide the eye of the beloved associate to the sudden object; to challenge
+      the kindred fancy which comments upon our own; to remember together, and
+      repeat, the happy verse of inspired poets, speaking of the scene, and to
+      the awakened heart which feels it; and, more, to pour forth one's own
+      inspirations in the language of tenderness and song, and awaken in the
+      heart of our companion the rapture to which our own has given speech&mdash;these,
+      which are subjects of mock and scorn to the worldling, are substantial
+      though not enduring joys to the young and ardent nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this communion, with all her pride, strength, and confidence, Margaret
+      Cooper was the merest child. Without a feeling of guile, she was dreaming
+      of the greatness which her ambition craved, and telling her dreams, with
+      all the artless freedom of the child who has some golden fancy of the
+      future, which it seeks to have confirmed by the lips of experience. The
+      wily Stevens led her on, gave stimulus to her enthusiasm, made her dreams
+      become reasonable in her eyes, and laughed at them in his secret heart.
+      She sung at his suggestion, and sang her own verses with all that natural
+      tremor which even the most self-assured poet feels on such an occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beautiful!&rdquo; the arch-hypocrite would exclaim, as if unconscious of
+      utterance; &ldquo;beautiful!&rdquo; and his hand would possess itself of the trembling
+      fingers of hers. &ldquo;But beautiful as it is, Margaret, I am sure that it is
+      nothing to what you could do under more auspicious circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! if there were ears to hear, if there were hearts to feel, and eyes to
+      weep, I feel, I know, what might be done. No, no! this is nothing. This is
+      the work of a child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, Margaret, if the work of a child, it is that of a child of genius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive me. I am too
+      willing to believe you, for it is so dear a feeling to think that I too am
+      a poet. Yet, at the first, I had not the smallest notion of this kind: I
+      neither knew what poetry was, nor felt the desire to be a poet. Yet I
+      yearned with strange feelings, which uttered themselves in that form ere I
+      had seen books or read the verses of others. It was an instinct that led
+      me as it would. I sometimes fear that I have been foolish in obeying it;
+      for oh, what has it brought me? What am I? what are my joys? I am lonely
+      even with my companions. I share not the sports and feel not the things
+      which delight my sex. Their dances and frolics give me no pleasure. I have
+      no sympathy with them or their cares. I go apart&mdash;I am here on the
+      hills, or deep in the forests&mdash;sad, lonely, scarcely knowing what I
+      am, and what I desire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not alone, nor are your pleasures less acute than theirs. If they
+      laugh, their laughter ends in sleep. If you are sad, you lose not the
+      slightest faculty of perception or sensibility, but rather gain them in
+      consequence. Laughter and tears are signs neither of happiness nor grief,
+      and as frequently result from absolute indifference as from any active
+      emotion. If you are absent from them, you have better company. You can
+      summon spirits to your communion, Margaret; noble thoughts attend you;
+      eyes that cheer, lips that assure you, and whispers, from unknown
+      attendants, that bid you be of good heart, for the good time is coming.
+      Ah! Margaret, believe me when I tell you that time is at hand. Such a
+      genius as yours, such a spirit, can not always be buried in these woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in such artful language as this that the arch-hypocrite flattered
+      and beguiled her. They were wandering along the edge of the streamlet to
+      which we have more than once conducted the footsteps of the reader. The
+      sun was about setting. The autumn air was mild with a gentle breathing
+      from the south. The woods were still and meek as the slumbers of an
+      infant. The quiet of the scene harmonized with the temper of their
+      thoughts and feelings. They sat upon a fragment of the rock. Margaret was
+      silent, but her eyes were glistening bright&mdash;not with hope only, but
+      with that first glimmering consciousness of a warmer feeling, which gives
+      a purple light to hope, and makes the heart tremble, for the first time,
+      with its own expectations. It did not escape Alfred Stevens that, for the
+      first time, her eye sank beneath his glance; for the first time there was
+      a slight flush upon her cheek. He was careful not to startle and alarm the
+      consciousness which these signs indicated. The first feeling which the
+      young heart has of its dependence upon another is one little short of
+      terror; it is a feeling which wakens up suspicion, and puts all the senses
+      upon the watch. To appear to perceive this emotion is to make it
+      circumspect; to disarm it, one must wear the aspect of unconsciousness.
+      The wily Stevens, practised in the game, and master of the nature of the
+      unsuspecting girl, betrayed in his looks none of the intelligence which he
+      felt. If he uttered himself in the language of admiration, it was that
+      admiration which would be natural to a profound adorer of literature and
+      all its professors. His words were those of the amateur:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can not understand, Margaret, how you have studied&mdash;how you have
+      learned so much&mdash;your books are few&mdash;you have had no masters. I
+      never met in my life with so remarkable an instance of unassisted
+      endeavor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My books were hero in the woods&mdash;among these old rocks. My teacher
+      was solitude. Ah! there is no teacher like one's own heart. My instinct
+      made me feel my deficiencies&mdash;my deficiencies taught me contemplation&mdash;and
+      from contemplation came thoughts and cravings, and you know, when the
+      consciousness of our lack is greatest, then, even the dumb man finds a
+      voice. I found my voice in consequence of my wants. My language you see is
+      that of complaint only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a sweet and noble language it is, Margaret; but it is not in poetry
+      alone that your utterance is so distinct and beautiful&mdash;you sing too
+      with a taste as well as power which would prove that contemplation was as
+      happy in bringing about perfection in the one as in the other art. Do sing
+      me, Margaret, that little ditty which you sang here the other night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand gently detained and pressed hers as he urged the request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather not sing to-night,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;I do not feel as if I
+      could, and I trust altogether to feeling. I will sing for you some other
+      time when you do not ask, and, perhaps would prefer not to hear me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To hear you at all, Margaret, is music to my ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent, and her fingers made a slight movement to detach
+      themselves from his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Margaret, do not withdraw them! Let me detain them thus&mdash;longer&mdash;for
+      ever! My admiration of you has been too deeply felt not to have been too
+      clearly shown, Your genius is too dear to me now to suffer me to lose it.
+      Margaret&mdash;dear Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke not&mdash;her breathing became quick and hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not speak, let me hope that you are not angry with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she whispered faintly. He continued with more boldness, and
+      while he spoke, his arm encircled her waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A blessed chance brought me to your village. I saw you and returned. I
+      chose a disguise in which I might study you, and see how far the treasures
+      of your mind confirmed the noble promise of your face. They have done
+      more. Like him who finds the precious ore among the mountains, I can not
+      part with you so found. I must tear you from the soil. I must bear you
+      with me. You must be mine, Margaret&mdash;you must go with me where the
+      world will see, and envy me my prize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pressed her to his bosom. She struggled slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not, do not, Alfred Stevens, do not press me&mdash;do not keep me. You
+      think too much of me. I am no treasure&mdash;alas! this is all deception.
+      You can not&mdash;can not desire it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I not! Ah! Margaret, what else do I desire now? Do you think me only
+      what I appear in Charlemont?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the power of a name, Margaret, in my profession&mdash;among a
+      numerous people&mdash;and that power is growing into wealth and sway. I am
+      feared and honored, loved by some, almost worshipped by others; and what
+      has led me from this sway, to linger among these hills&mdash;to waste
+      hours so precious to ambition&mdash;to risk the influence which I had
+      already secured&mdash;what, but a higher impulse&mdash;a dearer prospect&mdash;a
+      treasure, Margaret, of equal beauty and genius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was hidden upon his bosom. He felt the beating of her heart
+      against his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have a genius for song, Margaret Cooper, I, too, am not without my
+      boast. In my profession, men speak of my eloquence as that of a genius
+      which has few equals, and no superior.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it&mdash;it must be so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Move me not to boast, dear Margaret; it is in your ears only that I do so&mdash;and
+      only to assure you that, in listening to my love, you do not yield to one
+      utterly obscure, and wanting in claims, which, as yours must be finally,
+      are already held to be established and worthy of the best admiration of
+      the intelligent and wise. Do you hear me, Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, I do! It must be as you say. But of love I have thought nothing.
+      No, no! I know not, Alfred Stevens, if I love or not&mdash;if I can love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mistake, Margaret. It is in the heart that the head finds its
+      inspiration. Mere intellect makes not genius. All the intellect in the
+      world would fail of this divine consummation. It is from the fountains of
+      feeling that poetry drinks her inspiration. It is at the altars of love
+      that the genius of song first bends in adoration. You have loved,
+      Margaret, from the first moment when you sung. It did not alter the case
+      that there was no object of sight. The image was in your mind&mdash;in
+      your hope. One sometimes goes through life without ever meeting the human
+      counterpart of this ideal; and the language of such a heart will be that
+      of chagrin&mdash;distaste of life&mdash;misanthropy, and a general scorn
+      of his own nature. Such, I trust, is not your destiny. No, Margaret, that
+      is impossible. I take your doubt as my answer, and unless your own lips
+      undeceive me, dearest Margaret, I will believe that your love is willing
+      to requite my own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was actually sobbing on his breast. With an effort she struggled into
+      utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My heart is so full, my feelings are so strange&mdash;oh! Alfred Stevens,
+      I never fancied I could be so weak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So weak&mdash;to love! surely, Margaret, you mistake the word. It is in
+      loving only that the heart finds its strength. Love is the heart's sole
+      business; and not to exercise it in its duties is to impair its faculties,
+      and deprive it equally of its pleasures and its tasks. Oh, I will teach
+      you of the uses of this little heart of yours, dear Margaret&mdash;ay,
+      till it grow big with its own capacity to teach. We will inform each
+      other, every hour, of some new impulses and objects. Our dreams, our
+      hopes, our fears, and our desires, ah! Margaret&mdash;what a study of love
+      will these afford us. Nor to love only. Ah! dearest, when your muse shall
+      have its audience, its numerous watching eyes and eager ears, then shall
+      you discover how much richer will be the strain from your lips once
+      informed by the gushing fullness of this throbbing heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She murmured fondly in his embrace, &ldquo;Ah! I ask no other eyes and ears than
+      yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such indeed was her
+      feeling. He gathered her up closer in his arms. He pressed his lips upon
+      the rich ripe beauties of hers, as some hungering bee, darting upon the
+      yet unrifled flower which it first finds in the shadows of the forest,
+      clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness, as if appetite could
+      only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled and freed herself from his
+      embrace: but, returning home that evening her eye was cast upon the
+      ground; her step was set down hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her
+      heart; a timid expression in her face and manner! These were proofs of the
+      discovery which she then seems to have made for the first time, that there
+      is a power stronger than mere human will&mdash;a power that controls
+      genius; that mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is
+      independent of the loss of friends! She now first knew her weakness. She
+      had felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever his
+      hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes forth to
+      victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and turned
+      her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which, with every
+      movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon her cheek. Yet,
+      while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed and trembled with the
+      birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how sweet is our first secret pleasure&mdash;shared
+      by one other only&mdash;sweet to that other as to ourself&mdash;so
+      precious to him also. To be carried into our chamber&mdash;to be set up
+      ostentatiously&mdash;there, where none but ourselves may see&mdash;to be
+      an object of our constant tendance, careful idolatry, keen suspicion,
+      delighted worship!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! but if the other makes it no idol&mdash;his toy only&mdash;what shall
+      follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse,
+      humiliation, perhaps death!&mdash;alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love
+      which had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was no
+      divinity with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such things, but
+      like the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the good doctrines which
+      he can not feel and is slow to practise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; FALL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We should speak unprofitably and with little prospect of being understood,
+      did our readers require to be told, that there is a certain impatient and
+      gnawing restlessness in the heart of love, which keeps it for ever
+      feverish and anxious. Where this passion is associated with a warm,
+      enthusiastic genius, owning the poetic temperament, the anxiety is
+      proportionatly greater. The ideal of the mind is a sort of classical image
+      of perfect loveliness, chaste, sweet, commanding, but, how cold! But love
+      gives life to this image, even as the warm rays of the sun falling upon
+      the sullen lips of the Memnon, compel its utterance in music. It not only
+      looks beauty&mdash;it breathes it. It is not only the aspect of the
+      Apollo, it is the god himself; his full lyre strung, his golden bow
+      quivering at his back with the majesty of his motion; and his lips parting
+      with the song which shall make the ravished spheres stoop, and gather
+      round to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto Margaret Cooper had been a girl of strong will; will nursed in
+      solitude, and by the wrong-headed indulgence of a vain and foolish mother.
+      She was conscious of that bounding, bursting soul of genius which
+      possessed her bosom; that strange, moody, and capricious god; pent-up,
+      denied, crying evermore for utterance, with a breath more painful to
+      endure, because of the suppression. This consciousness, with the feeling
+      of denial which attended it, had cast a gloomy intensity over her features
+      not less than her mind. The belief that she was possessed of treasures
+      which were unvalued&mdash;that she had powers which were never to be
+      exercised&mdash;that with a song such as might startle an empire, she was
+      yet doomed to a silent and senseless auditory of rocks and trees; this
+      belief had brought with it a moody arrogance of temper which had made
+      itself felt by all around her. In one hour this mood had departed.
+      Ambition and love became united for a common purpose; for the object of
+      the latter, was also the profound admirer of the former.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anxious restlessness which her newly-acquired sensations occasioned in
+      her bosom, was not diminished by a renewal of those tender interviews with
+      her lover, which we have endeavored, though so faultily, already to
+      describe. Evening after evening found them together; the wily hypocrite
+      still stimulating, by his glozing artifices, the ruling passion for fame,
+      which, in her bosom, was only temporarily subservient to love, while he
+      drank his precious reward from her warm, lovely, and still-blushing lips
+      and cheeks. The very isolation in which she had previously dwelt in
+      Charlemont, rendered the society of Stevens still more dear to her heart.
+      She was no longer alone&mdash;no longer unknown&mdash;not now
+      unappreciated in that respect in which hitherto she felt her great denial.
+      &ldquo;Here is one&mdash;himself a genius&mdash;who can do justice to mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young poet who finds an auditor, where he has never had one before,
+      may be likened to a blind man suddenly put in possession of his sight. He
+      sees sun and moon and stars, the forms of beauty, the images of grace; and
+      his soul grows intoxicated with the wonders of its new empire. What does
+      he owe to him who puts him in possession of these treasures? who has given
+      him his sight? Love, devotion, all that his full heart has to pay of
+      homage and affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was very much the relation which Margaret Cooper bore to Alfred
+      Stevens; and when, by his professions of love, he left the shows of his
+      admiration no longer doubtful, she was at once and entirely his. She was
+      no longer the self-willed, imperious damsel, full of defiance, dreaming of
+      admiration only, scornful of the inferior, and challenging the regards of
+      equals. She was now a timid, trembling girl&mdash;a dependant, such as the
+      devoted heart must ever be, waiting for the sign to speak, looking eagerly
+      for the smile to reward her sweetest utterance. If now she walked with
+      Stevens, she no longer led the way; she hung a little backward, though she
+      grasped his arm&mdash;nay, even when her hand was covered with a gentle
+      pressure in the folds of his. If she sung, she did not venture to meet his
+      eyes, which she FELT must be upon hers, and now it was no longer her
+      desire that the village damsels should behold them as they went forth
+      together on their rambles. She no longer met their cunning and significant
+      smiles with confidence and pride, but with faltering looks, and with
+      cheeks covered with blushes. Great, indeed, was the change which had come
+      over that once proud spirit&mdash;change surprising to all, but as natural
+      as any other of the thousand changes which are produced in the progress of
+      moments by the arch-magician, Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the
+      ordinary topics of the youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her
+      apostrophes to the eagle, soaring through the black, billowy masses of the
+      coming thunder-storm; to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its
+      loftiness, which no foot travelled but her own; to the silent glooms of
+      the forest&mdash;to the majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The
+      dove and the zephyr now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly closed
+      it. She was changed from what she was. The affections had suddenly bounded
+      into being, trampling the petty vanities underfoot; and those first
+      lessons of humility which are taught by love, had subdued a spirit which,
+      hitherto, had never known control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alfred Stevens soon perceived how complete was his victory. He soon saw
+      the extent of that sudden change which had come over her character.
+      Hitherto, she had been the orator. When they stood together by the
+      lake-side, or upon the rock, it was her finger which had pointed out the
+      objects for contemplation; it was her voice whose eloquence had charmed
+      the ear, dilating upon the beauties or the wonders which they surveyed.
+      She was now no longer eloquent in words. But she looked a deeper eloquence
+      by far than any words could embody. He was now the speaker; and regarding
+      him through the favoring media of kindled affections, it seemed to her
+      ear, that there was no eloquence so sweet as his. He spoke briefly of the
+      natural beauties by which they were surrounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trees, rocks, the valley and the hill, all realms of solitude and shade,
+      inspire enthusiasm and ardor in the imaginative spirit. They are
+      beneficial for this purpose. For the training of a great poet they are
+      necessary. They have the effect of lifting the mind to the contemplation
+      of vastness, depth, height, profundity. This produces an intensity of mood&mdash;the
+      natural result of any association between our own feelings and such
+      objects as are lofty and noble in the external world. The feelings and
+      passions as they are influenced by the petty play of society, which
+      diffuses their power and breaks their lights into little, become
+      concentrated on the noble and the grand. Serious earnestness of nature
+      becomes habitual&mdash;the heart flings itself into all the subjects of
+      its interest&mdash;it trifles with none&mdash;all its labors become sacred
+      in its eyes, and the latest object of study and analysis is that which is
+      always most important. The effect of this training in youth on the poetic
+      mind, is to the last degree beneficial; since, without a degree of
+      seriousness amounting to intensity&mdash;without a hearty faith in the
+      importance of what is to be done&mdash;without a passionate fullness of
+      soul which drives one to his task&mdash;there will be no truthfulness, no
+      eloquence, no concentrated thought and permanent achievement. With, you,
+      dear Margaret, such has already been the effect. You shrink from the
+      ordinary enjoyments of society. Their bald chat distresses you, as the
+      chatter of so many jays. You prefer the solitude which feeds the serious
+      mood which you love, and enables your imagination, unrepressed by the
+      presence of shallow witlings, to evoke its agents from storm and shadow&mdash;from
+      deep forest and lonesome lake&mdash;to minister to the cravings of an
+      excited heart, and a soaring and ambitious fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how truly, Alfred, do you speak it,&rdquo; she murmured as he closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far, so good; but, dear Margaret&mdash;there are other subjects of
+      study which are equally necessary for the great poet. The wild aspects of
+      nature are such as are of use in the first years of his probation. To grow
+      up in the woods and among the rocks, so that a hearty simplicity, an
+      earnest directness, with a constant habit of contemplation should be
+      permanently formed, is a first and necessary object. But it is in this
+      training as in every other. There are successive steps. There is a law of
+      progressive advance. You must not stop there. The greatest moral study for
+      the poet must follow. This is the study of man in society&mdash;in the
+      great world&mdash;where he puts on a thousand various aspects&mdash;far
+      other than those which are seen in the country&mdash;in correspondence
+      with the thousand shapes of fortune, necessity, or caprice, which attend
+      him there. Indeed, it may safely be said, that he never knows one half of
+      the responsibility of his tasks who toils without the presence of those
+      for whom he toils. It is in the neighborhood of man that we feel his and
+      our importance. It is while we are watching his strifes and struggles that
+      we see the awful importance of his destiny; and the great trusts of self,
+      and truth, and the future, which have been delivered to his hands. Here
+      you do not see man. You see certain shapes, which are employed in raising
+      hay, turnips, and potatoes; which eat and drink very much as man does; but
+      which, as they suffer to sleep and rest most of those latent faculties,
+      the exercise of which can alone establish the superiority of the
+      intellectual over the animal nature, so they have no more right to the
+      name of man than any other of those animals who eat as industriously, and
+      sleep as profoundly, as themselves. The contemplation of the superior
+      being, engaged in superior toils, awakens superior faculties in the
+      observer. He who sees nothing but the gathering of turnips will think of
+      nothing but turnips. As we enlarge the sphere of our observation, the
+      faculty of thought becomes expanded. You will discover this wonderful
+      change when you go into the world. Hitherto, your inspirers have been
+      these groves, these rocks, lakes, trees, and silent places. But, when you
+      sit amid crowds of bright-eyed, full-minded, and admiring people; when you
+      see the eyes of thousands looking for the light to shine from yours;
+      hanging, with a delight that still hungers, on the words of truth and
+      beauty which fall from your lips&mdash;then, then only, dearest Margaret,
+      will you discover the true sources of inspiration and of fame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she murmured despondingly&mdash;&ldquo;you daunt me when you speak of
+      these crowds&mdash;crowds of the intellectual and the wise. What should I
+      be&mdash;how would I appear among them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you appear to me, Margaret&mdash;their queen, their idol, their
+      divinity, not less a beauty than a muse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The raptures which Stevens expressed seemed to justify the embrace which
+      followed it; and it was some moments before she again spoke. When she did
+      the same subject was running in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Alfred, still I fear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fear nothing, Margaret. It will be as I tell you&mdash;as I promise! If I
+      deceive you, I deceive myself. Is it not for the wife of my bosom that I
+      expect this homage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her murmurs were unheard. They strolled on&mdash;still deeper into the
+      mazes of the forest, and the broad disk of the moon, suddenly gleaming,
+      yellow, through the tops of the trees, surprised them in their wanderings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How beautiful!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Let us sit here, dearest Margaret. The
+      rock here is smooth and covered with the softest lichen. A perfect carpet
+      of it is at our feet, and the brooklet makes the sweetest murmuring as it
+      glides onward through the grove, telling all the while, like some silly
+      schoolgirl, where you may look for it. See the little drops of moonlight
+      falling here&mdash;and there in the small openings of the forest, and
+      lying upon the greensward like so many scattered bits of silver. One might
+      take it for fairy coin. And, do you note the soft breeze that seems to
+      rise with the moon as from some Cytherean isle, breathing of love, love
+      only&mdash;love never perishing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! were it so, Alfred!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not, Margaret? If I could fancy that you would cease to love me or
+      I you&mdash;could I think that these dear joys were to end&mdash;but no!
+      no! let us not think of it. It is too sweet to believe, and the distrust
+      seems as unholy as it is unwholesome. That bright soft planet seems to
+      persuade to confidence as it inspires love. Do you not feel your heart
+      soften in the moonlight, Margaret? your eye glistens, dearest&mdash;and
+      your heart, I know, must be touched. It is&mdash;I feel its beating! What
+      a tumult, dear Margaret, is here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not, do not!&rdquo; she murmured, gently striving to disengage herself from
+      his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no!&mdash;move not, dearest,&rdquo; he replied in a subdued tone&mdash;a
+      murmur most like hers. &ldquo;Are we not happy? Is there anything, dear
+      Margaret, which we could wish for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing! nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! what a blessed chance it was that brought me to these hills. I never
+      lived till now. I had my joys, Margaret&mdash;my triumphs! I freely yield
+      them to the past! I care for them no more! They are no longer joys or
+      triumphs! Yes, Margaret you have changed my heart within me. Even fame
+      which I so much worshipped is forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say not that; oh, say not that!&rdquo; she exclaimed, but still in subdued
+      accents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must&mdash;it is too far true. I could give up the shout of applause&mdash;the
+      honor of popular favor&mdash;the voice of a people's approbation&mdash;the
+      shining display and the golden honor&mdash;all, dear Margaret, sooner than
+      part with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you need not give them up, Alfred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, dearest, but I have no soul for them now. You are alone my soul, my
+      saint&mdash;the one dear object, desire, and pride, and conquest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! and have you not conquered, Alfred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sweet! do I not say that I am content to forfeit all honors, triumphs,
+      applauses&mdash;all that was so dear to me before&mdash;and only in the
+      fond faith that I had conquered? You are mine&mdash;you tell me so with
+      your dear lips&mdash;I have you in my fond embrace&mdash;ah! do not talk
+      to me again of fame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I were untrue to you as to myself, dear Alfred, did I not. No! with your
+      talents, to forego their uses&mdash;to deliver yourself up to love wholly,
+      were as criminal as it would be unwise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall be my inspiration then, dear Margaret. These lips shall send me
+      to the forum&mdash;these eyes shall reward me with smiles when I return.
+      Your applause shall be to me a dearer triumph than all the clamors of the
+      populace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us return home&mdash;it is late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so!&mdash;and why should we go? What is sleep to us but loss? What
+      the dull hours, spent after the ordinary fashion, among ordinary people.
+      Could any scene be more beautiful than this&mdash;ah! can any feeling be
+      more sweet? Is it not so to you, dearest? tell me&mdash;nay, do not tell
+      me&mdash;if you love as I do, you can not leave me&mdash;not now&mdash;not
+      thus&mdash;while such is the beauty of earth and heaven&mdash;while such
+      are the rich joys clustering in our hearts. Nay, while, in that hallowing
+      moonlight, I gaze upon thy dark eyes, and streaming hair, thy fair,
+      beautiful cheeks, and those dear rosy lips!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Alfred, do not speak so&mdash;do not clasp me thus. Let us go. It is
+      late&mdash;very late, and what will they say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them say! Are we not blessed? Can all their words take from us these
+      blessings&mdash;these sacred, sweet, moments&mdash;such joys, such
+      delights? Let them dream of such, with their dull souls if they can. No!
+      no! Margaret&mdash;we are one! and thus one, our world is as free from
+      their control as it is superior to their dreams and hopes. Here is our
+      heaven, Margaret&mdash;ah! how long shall it be ours! at what moment may
+      we lose it, by death, by storm, by what various mischance! What profligacy
+      to fly before the time! No! no! but a little while longer&mdash;but a
+      little while!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And there they lingered! He, fond, artful, persuasive; she, trembling with
+      the dangerous sweetness of wild, unbidden emotions. Ah! why did she not
+      go? Why was the strength withheld which would have carried out her safer
+      purpose? The moon rose until she hung in the zenith, seeming to linger
+      there in a sad, sweet watch, like themselves&mdash;the rivulet ran along,
+      still prattling through the groves; the breeze, which had been a soft
+      murmur among the trees at the first rising of the moon, now blew a shrill
+      whistle among the craggy hills; but they no longer heard the prattle of
+      the rivulet&mdash;even the louder strains of the breeze were unnoticed,
+      and it was only when they were about to depart, that poor Margaret
+      discovered that the moon had all the while been looking down upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; THE BIRTH OF THE AGONY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was now generally understood in Charlemont that Margaret Cooper had
+      made a conquest of the handsome stranger. We have omitted&mdash;as a
+      matter not congenial to our taste&mdash;the small by-play which had been
+      carried on by the other damsels of the village to effect the same object.
+      There had been setting of caps, without number, ay, and pulling them too,
+      an the truth were known among the fair Stellas and Clarissas, the Daphnes
+      and Dorises, of Charlemont, but, though Stevens was sufficiently
+      considerate of the claims of each, so far as politeness demanded it, and
+      contrived to say pleasant things, pour passer le temps, with all of them,
+      it was very soon apparent to the most sanguine, that the imperial beauties
+      and imperious mind of Margaret Cooper had secured the conquest for
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of course, the personal and intellectual attractions of
+      Stevens underwent no little disparagement as soon as this fact was known.
+      It was now universally understood that he was no such great things, after
+      all; and our fair friend the widow Thackeray, who was not without her
+      pretensions to wit and beauty, was bold enough to say that Mr. Stevens was
+      certainly too fat in the face, and she rather thought him stupid. Such an
+      opinion gave courage to the rest, and pert Miss Bella Tompkins, a romp of
+      first-rate excellence, had the audacity to say that he squinted!&mdash;and
+      this opinion was very natural, since neither of his eyes had ever rested
+      with satisfaction on her pouting charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be supposed that the discontent of the fair bevy, and its
+      unfavorable judgment of himself, did not reach the ears of Alfred Stevens,
+      and would scarcely have disturbed them if it did. Margaret Cooper was more
+      fortunate than himself in this respect. She could not altogether be
+      insensible to the random remarks which sour envy and dark-eyed jealousy
+      continued to let fall in her hearing; but her scorn for the speakers, and
+      her satisfaction with herself, secured her from all annoyance from this
+      cause. Such, at least, had been the case in the first days of her
+      conquest. Such was not exactly the case now. She had no more scorn of
+      others. She was no longer proud, no longer strong. Her eyes no longer
+      flashed with haughty defiance on the train which, though envious, were yet
+      compelled to follow. She could no longer speak in those superior tones,
+      the language equally of a proud intellect, and a spirit whose
+      sensibilities had neither been touched by love nor enfeebled by anxiety
+      and apprehension. A sad change had come over her heart and all her
+      features in the progress of a few days. Her courage had departed. Her step
+      was no longer firm; her eye no longer uplifted like that of the
+      mountain-eagle, to which, in the first darings of her youthful muse, she
+      had boldly likened herself. Her look was downcast, her voice subdued; she
+      was now not less timid than the feeblest damsel of the village in that
+      doubtful period of life when, passing from childhood to girlhood, the
+      virgin falters, as it were, with bashful thoughts, upon the threshold of a
+      new and perilous condition. The intercourse of Margaret Cooper with her
+      lover had had the most serious effect upon her manners and her looks. But
+      the change upon her spirit was no less striking to all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure if I did love any man,&rdquo; was the opinion of one of the damsels,
+      &ldquo;I'd die sooner than show it to him, as she shows it to Alfred Stevens.
+      It's a guess what he must think of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no hard guess neither,&rdquo; said another; &ldquo;I reckon there's no reason why
+      he should pick out Margaret Cooper except that he saw that it was no such
+      easy matter any where else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! there can be no mistake about it with them; for now they're always
+      together&mdash;and Betty, her own maid, thinks&mdash;but it's better not
+      to say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the prudent antique pursed up her mouth in a language that said
+      everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&mdash;what does she say?&rdquo; demanded a dozen voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! I won't tell you that. I won't tell you all; but she does say,
+      among other things, that the sooner John Cross marries them, the better
+      for all parties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can it be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless me! but I always thought something wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Betty, her own maid, told you? Well, who should know, if she don't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this, too, after all her airs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her great smartness, her learning, and verse-making! I never knew any
+      good come from books yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And never will, Jane,&rdquo; said another, with an equivocal expression, with
+      which Jane was made content; and, after a full half-hour's confabulation,
+      in the primitive style, the parties separated&mdash;each, in her way, to
+      give as much circulation to Betty's inuendoes as the importance of the
+      affair deserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scandal travels along the highways, seen by all but the victim. Days and
+      nights passed; and in the solitude of lonely paths, by the hillside or the
+      rivulet, Margaret Cooper still wandered with her lover. She heard not the
+      poisonous breath which was already busy with her virgin fame. She had no
+      doubts, whatever might be the event, that the heart of Alfred Stevens
+      could leave her without that aliment which, in these blissful moments,
+      seemed to be her very breath of life. But she felt many fears, many
+      misgivings, she knew not why. A doubt, a cloud of anxiety, hung brooding
+      on the atmosphere. In a heart which is unsophisticated, the consciousness,
+      however vague, that all is not right, is enough to produce this cloud;
+      but, with the gradual progress of that heart to the indulgence of the more
+      active passions, this consciousness necessarily increases and the conflict
+      then begins between the invading passion and the guardian principle. We
+      have seen enough to know what must be the result of such a conflict with a
+      nature such as hers, under the education which she had received. It did
+      not end in the expulsion of her lover. It did not end in the
+      discontinuance of those long and frequent rambles amid silence, and
+      solitude, and shadow. She had not courage for this; and the poor, vain
+      mother, flattered with the idea that her son-in-law would be a preacher,
+      beheld nothing wrong in their nightly wanderings, and suffered her
+      daughter, in such saintly society, to go forth without restraint or
+      rebuke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one person in the village who was not satisfied that Margaret
+      Cooper should fall a victim, either to the cunning of another, or to her
+      own passionate vanity. This was our old friend Calvert. He was rather,
+      inclined to be interested in the damsel, in spite of the ill treatment of
+      his protege, if it were only in consequence of the feelings with which she
+      had inspired him. It has been seen that, in the affair of the duel, he was
+      led to regard the stranger with an eye of suspicion. This feeling had been
+      further heightened by the statements of Ned Hinkley, which, however loose
+      and inconclusive, were yet of a kind to show that there was some mystery
+      about Stevens&mdash;that he desired concealment in some respects&mdash;a
+      fact very strongly inferred from his non-employment of the village
+      postoffice, and the supposition&mdash;taken for true&mdash;that he
+      employed that of some distant town. Ned Hinkley had almost arrived at
+      certainty in this respect; and some small particulars which seemed to bear
+      on this conviction, which he had recently gathered, taken in connection
+      with the village scandal in reference to the parties, determined the old
+      man to take some steps in the matter to forewarn the maiden, or at least
+      her mother, of the danger of yielding too much confidence to one of whom
+      so little was or could be known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasant afternoon, and Calvert was sitting beneath his
+      roof-tree, musing over this very matter, when he caught a glimpse of the
+      persons of whom he thought, ascending one of the distant hills, apparently
+      on their way to the lake. He rose up instantly, and, seizing his staff,
+      hurried off to see the mother of the damsel. The matter was one of the
+      nicest delicacy&mdash;not to be undertaken lightly&mdash;not to be urged
+      incautiously. Nothing, indeed, but a strong sense of duty could have
+      determined him upon a proceeding likely to appear invidious, and which
+      might be so readily construed, by a foolish woman, into an impertinence.
+      Though a man naturally of quick, warm feelings, Calvert had been early
+      taught to think cautiously&mdash;indeed, the modern phrenologist would
+      have said that, in the excess of this prudent organ lay the grand weakness
+      of his moral nature. This delayed him in the contemplated performance much
+      longer than his sense of its necessity seemed to justify. Having now
+      resolved, however, and secure in the propriety of his object, he did not
+      scruple any longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes sufficed to bring him to the cottage of the old lady, and
+      her voice in very friendly tenor commanded him to enter. Without useless
+      circumlocution, yet without bluntness, the old man broached the subject;
+      and, without urging any of the isolated facts of which he was possessed,
+      and by which his suspicions were awakened, he dwelt simply upon the
+      dangers which might result from such a degree of confidence as was given
+      to the stranger. The long, lonely rambles in the woods, by night as well
+      as day, were commented on, justly, but in an indulgent spirit; and the
+      risks of a young and unsuspecting maiden, under such circumstances, were
+      shown with sufficient distinctness for the comprehension of the mother,
+      had she been disposed to hear. But never was good old man, engaged in the
+      thankless office of bestowing good advice, so completely confounded as he
+      was by the sort of acknowledgments which his interference obtained. A keen
+      observer might have seen the gathering storm while he was speaking; and,
+      at every sentence, there was a low, running commentary, bubbling up from
+      the throat of the opinionated dame, somewhat like rumbling thunder, which
+      amply denoted the rising tempest. It was a sort of religious effort which
+      kept the old lady quiet till Calvert had fairly reached a conclusion.
+      Then, rising from her seat, she approached him, smoothed back her apron,
+      perked out her chin, and, fixing her keen gray eyes firmly upon his own,
+      with her nose elongated to such a degree as almost to suggest the
+      possibility of a pointed collision between that member and the
+      corresponding one of his own face, she demanded&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you done&mdash;have you got through?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Mrs. Cooper, this is all I came to say. It is the suggestion of
+      prudence&mdash;the caution of a friend&mdash;your daughter is young, very
+      young, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you! I thank you! My daughter is young, very young; but she is no
+      fool, Mr. Calvert&mdash;let me tell you that! Margaret Cooper is no fool.
+      If you don't know that, I do. I know her. She's able to take care of
+      herself as well as the best of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you think so, Mrs. Cooper, but the best of us find it a
+      difficult matter to steer clear of danger, and error and misfortune; and
+      the wisest, my dear madam, are only too apt to fall when they place their
+      chief reliance on their wisdom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! that's a new doctrine to me, and I reckon to everybody else. If
+      it's true, what's the use of all your schooling, I want to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precious little, Mrs. Cooper, if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! precious little; and let me tell you, Mr. Calvert, I think it's
+      mighty strange that you should think Margaret Cooper in more need of your
+      advice, than Jane Colter, or Betsy Barnes, or Susan Mason, or Rebecca
+      Forbes, or even the widow Thackeray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should give the same advice to them under the same circumstances, Mrs.
+      Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you, indeed! Then I beg you will go and give it to them, for if
+      they are not in the same circumstances now, they'd give each of them an
+      eye to be so. Ay, wouldn't they! Yes! don't I know, Mr. Calvert, that it's
+      all owing to envy that you come here talking about Brother Stevens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do not speak of Mr. Stevens, Mrs. Cooper; were it any other young
+      man with whom your daughter had such intimacy I should speak in the same
+      manner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you, indeed? Tell that to the potatoes. Don't I know better. Don't
+      I know that if your favorite, that you made so much of&mdash;your adopted
+      son, Bill Hinkley&mdash;if he could have got her to look at him, they
+      might have walked all night and you'd never have said the first word. He'd
+      have given one eye for her, and so would every girl in the village give an
+      eye for Brother Stevens. I'm not so old but I know something. But it won't
+      do. You can go to the widow Thackeray, Mr. Calvert. It'll do her good to
+      tell her that it's very dangerous for her to be thinking about young men
+      from morning to night. It's true you can't say anything about the danger,
+      for precious little danger she's in; but, lord, wouldn't she jump to it if
+      she had a chance. Let her alone for that. You'd soon have cause enough to
+      give her your good advice about the danger, and much good would come of
+      it. She'd wish, after all was said, that the danger was only twice as big
+      and twice as dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the conclusion of Mr. Calvert's attempt to give good counsel. It
+      resulted as unprofitably in this as in most cases; but it had not utterly
+      fallen, like the wasted seed, in stony places. There was something in it
+      to impress itself upon the memory of Mrs. Cooper; and she resolved that
+      when her daughter came in, it should be the occasion of an examination
+      into her feelings and her relation to the worthy brother, such as she had
+      more than once before meditated to make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Margaret Cooper did not return till a comparatively late hour; and the
+      necessity of sitting up after her usual time of retiring, by making the
+      old lady irritable, had the effect of giving some additional force to the
+      suggestions of Mr. Calvert. When Margaret did return, she came alone.
+      Stevens had attended her only to the wicket. She did not expect to find
+      her mother still sitting up; and started, with an appearance of disquiet,
+      when she met her glance. The young girl was pale and haggard. Her eye had
+      a dilated, wild expression. Her step faltered; her voice was scarcely
+      distinct as she remarked timidly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet abed, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! it's a pretty time for you to keep me up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why did you sit up, mother? It's not usual with you to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! but it's high time for me to sit up, and be on the watch too, when
+      here's the neighbors coming to warn me to do so&mdash;and telling me all
+      about your danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! my danger&mdash;speak&mdash;what danger, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know what danger? Don't you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know!&rdquo; The monosyllable subsided in a gasp. At that moment Margaret
+      Cooper could say no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose you don't know, and so I'll tell you. Here's been that
+      conceited, stupid old man, Calvert, to tell me how wrong it is for you to
+      go out by night walking with Brother Stevens; and hinting to me that you
+      don't know how to take care of yourself with all your learning; and how
+      nobody knows anything about Brother Stevens; as if nobody was wise for
+      anything but himself. But I gave him as good as he brought, I'll warrant
+      you. I sent him off with a flea in his ear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was fortunate for the poor girl that the light, which was that of a
+      dipped candle, was burning in the corner of the chimney, and was too dim
+      to make her features visible. The ghastly tale which they told could not
+      have been utterly unread even by the obtuse and opinionated mind of the
+      vain mother. The hands of Margaret were involuntarily clasped in her
+      agony, and she felt very much like falling upon the floor; but, with a
+      strong effort, her nerves were braced to the right tension, and she
+      continued to endure, in a speechless terror, which was little short of
+      frenzy, the outpourings of her mother's folly which was a frenzy of
+      another sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sent him off,&rdquo; she repeated, &ldquo;with a flea in his ear. I could see what
+      the old fool was driving after, and I as good as told him so. If it had
+      been his favorite, his adopted son, Bill Hinkley, it would have been
+      another guess-story&mdash;I reckon. Then you might have walked out where
+      you pleased together, at all hours, and no harm done, no danger; old
+      Calvert would have thought it the properest thing in the world. But no
+      Bill Hinkley for me. I'm for Brother Stevens, Margaret; only make sure of
+      him, my child&mdash;make sure of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more of this, dear mother, I entreat you. Let us go to bed, and think
+      no more of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why should we not think of it? I tell you, Margaret, YOU MUST THINK
+      OF IT! Brother Stevens soon will be a preacher, and a fine speck he will
+      be. There'll be no parson like him in all west Kentucky. As for John
+      Cross, I reckon he won't be able to hold a candle to him. Brother Stevens
+      is something to try for. You must play your cards nicely, Margaret. Don't
+      let him see too soon that you like him. Beware of that! But don't draw off
+      too suddenly as if you didn't like him&mdash;that's worse still; for very
+      few men like to see that they ain't altogether pleasing even at first
+      sight to the lady that they like. There's a medium in all things, and you
+      must just manage it, as if you wa'n't thinking at all about him, or love,
+      or a husband, or anything; only take care always to turn a quick ear to
+      what he says, and seem to consider it always as if 'twas worth your
+      considering. And look round when he speaks, and smile softly sometimes;
+      and don't be too full of learning and wisdom in what you say, for I've
+      found that men of sense love women best when they seem to talk most like
+      very young children&mdash;maybe because they think it's a sign of
+      innocence. But I reckon, Margaret, you don't want much teaching. Only be
+      sure and fix him; and don't stop to think when he asks. Be sure to have
+      your answer ready, and you can't say 'yes' too quickly now-a-days, when
+      the chances are so very few.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother paused to take breath. Her very moral and maternal counsel had
+      fallen upon unheeding ears. But Margaret was sensible of the pause, and
+      was desirous of taking advantage of it. She rose from her chair, with the
+      view of retiring; but the good old dame, whose imagination had been
+      terribly excited by the delightful idea of having a preacher for her
+      son-in-law who was to take such precedence over all the leaders of the
+      other tribes, was not willing to abridge her eloquence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you're in a great hurry now, Margaret. Where was your hurry when you
+      were with Brother Stevens? Ah! you jade, can't I guess&mdash;don't I know?
+      There you were, you two, under the trees, looking at the moon, and talking
+      such sweet, foolish nonsense. I reckon, Margaret, 'twould puzzle you to
+      tell what HE said, or what YOU said, I can guess he didn't talk much
+      religion to you, heh? Ah! I know it all. It's the old story. It's been so
+      with all young people, and will be so till the end. Love is the strangest
+      thing, and it does listen to the strangest nonsense. Ain't it so,
+      Margaret? I know nothing but love would ever dumbfounder you in this way;
+      why, child, have you lost your tongue? What's the matter with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mother, let me retire now, I have such a headache.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heartache, you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heartache it is,&rdquo; replied the other desperately, with an air of complete
+      abandonment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! well, it's clear that he's got the heartache quite as much as you,
+      for he almost lives with you now. But make him speak out, Margaret&mdash;get
+      him to say the word, and don't let him be too free until he does. No
+      squeezing of hands, no kissing, no&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more, no more, I entreat you, mother, if you would not&mdash;drive me
+      mad! Why do you speak to me thus&mdash;why counsel me in this manner?
+      Leave me alone, I pray you, let me retire&mdash;I must&mdash;I must sleep
+      now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother was not unaccustomed to such passionate bursts of speech from
+      her daughter, and she ascribed the startling energy of her utterance now,
+      to an excited spirit in part, and partly to the headache of which she
+      complained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! do you feel so bad, my child? Well, I won't keep you up any longer.
+      I wouldn't have kept you up so long, if I hadn't been vexed by that old
+      fool, Calvert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Calvert is a good man, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he may be&mdash;I don't say a word against that,&rdquo; replied the
+      mother, somewhat surprised at the mildly reproachful nature of that
+      response which her daughter had made, so different from her usual custom:&mdash;&ldquo;he
+      may be very good, but I think he's very meddlesome to come here talking
+      about Brother Stevens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He meant well, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well or ill, it don't matter. Do you be ready when Brother Stevens says
+      the word. He'll say it before long. He's mighty keen after you, Margaret.
+      I've seen it in his eyes; only you keep a little off, till he begins to
+      press and be anxious; and after that he can't help himself. He'll be ready
+      for any terms; and look you, when a man's ready none of your long
+      bargains. Settle up at once. As for waiting till he gets permission to
+      preach, I wouldn't think of it. A man can be made a preacher or anything,
+      at any time, but 'tain't so easy in these times, for a young woman to be
+      made a wife. It's not every day that one can get a husband, and such a
+      husband! Look at Jane Colter, and Betsy Barnes, and Rebecca Forbes, and
+      Susan Mason; they'll be green again, I reckon, before the chance comes to
+      them; ay, and the widow Thackeray&mdash;though she's had her day already.
+      If 'twas a short one she's got no reason to complain. She'll learn how to
+      value it before it begins again. But, go to bed, my child, you oughtn't to
+      have a headache. No! no! you should leave it to them that's not so
+      fortunate. They'll have headaches and heartaches enough, I warrant you,
+      before they get such a man as Brother Stevens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, Margaret Cooper found herself alone and in her chamber. With
+      unusual vigilance she locked and doublelocked the door. She then flung
+      herself upon the bed. Her face was buried in the clothes. A convulsion of
+      feeling shook her frame. But her eyes remained dry, and her cheeks were
+      burning. She rose at length and began to undress, but for this she found
+      herself unequal. She entered the couch and sat up in it&mdash;her hands
+      crossed upon her lap&mdash;her face wan, wild, the very picture of
+      hopelessness if not desperation! The words of her weak mother had tortured
+      her; but what was this agony to that which was occasioned by her own
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh God!&rdquo; she exclaimed at length, &ldquo;can it be real? Can it be true? Do I
+      wake? Is it no dream? Am I, am I what I dare not name to myself&mdash;and
+      dread to hear from any other? Alas! it is true&mdash;too true. That shade,
+      that wood!&mdash;oh, Alfred Stevens! Alfred Stevens! What have you done!
+      To what have you beguiled me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; STRENGTH AFTER FALL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That weary night no sleep came to the eyelids of the hapless Margaret
+      Cooper. The garrulous language of the mother had awakened far other
+      emotions in her bosom than those which she labored to inspire; and the
+      warning of Mr. Calvert, for the first time impressed upon herself the
+      terrible conviction that she was lost. In the wild intoxicating pleasures
+      of that new strange dream, she had been wofully unconscious of the truth.
+      So gradual had been the progress of passion, that it had never alarmed or
+      startled her. Besides, it had come to her under a disguise afforded by the
+      customary cravings of her soul. Her vanity had been the medium by which
+      her affections had been won, by which her confidence had been beguiled, by
+      which the guardian watchers of her virtue had been laid to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a long and dreadful night was that when Margaret Cooper was first
+      brought to feel the awful truth in its true impressiveness of wo. Alas!
+      how terribly do the pleasures of sin torture us. The worst human foe is
+      guilt. The severest censure the consciousness of wrong doing. Poverty may
+      be endured&mdash;nay is&mdash;and virtue still be secure; since the mind
+      may be made strong to endure the heaviest toil, yet cherish few desires;
+      the loss of kin may call for few regrets, if we feel that we have
+      religiously performed our duties toward them, and requited all their
+      proper claims upon us. Sickness and pain may even prove benefits and
+      blessings, if it shall so happen that we resign ourselves without
+      complaint, to the scourge of the chastener, and grow patient beneath his
+      stripes. But that self-rebuke of one's own spirit from which we may not
+      fly&mdash;that remorseful and ever-vexing presence which haunts us, and
+      pursues with a wing even more fleet than that of fear&mdash;which tells
+      clamorously of what we had, and scornfully of what we have lost&mdash;lost
+      for ever! that is the demon from whom there is no escape, and beyond whom
+      there is no torture. Vainly would we strive with this relentless enemy.
+      Every blow aimed at its shadowy bosom recoils upon our own. In the crowd,
+      it takes the place of other forms and dogs us with suspicious glances; in
+      the solitude, it stalks boldly to our side, confronts us with its
+      audacious truths and terrible denunciations&mdash;leaves no moment secure,
+      waking or sleeping! It is the ghost of murdered virtue, brooding over its
+      grave in that most dark and dismal of all sepulchres, the human heart. And
+      if we cry aloud, as did Margaret Cooper, with vain prayer for the recall
+      of a single day, with what a yell of derisive mockery it answers to our
+      prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night was passed in the delusive effort of the mind to argue itself
+      into a state of fancied security. She endeavored to recall those
+      characteristics in Alfred Stevens, by which her confidence had been
+      beguiled. This task was not a difficult one in that early day of her
+      distress; before experience had yet come to confirm the apprehensions of
+      doubt&mdash;before the intoxicating dream of a first passion had yet begun
+      to stale upon her imagination. Her own elastic mind helped her in this
+      endeavor. Surely, she thought, where the mind is so noble and expansive,
+      where the feelings are so tender and devoted, the features so lofty and
+      impressive, the look so sweet, the language so delicate and refined, there
+      can be no falsehood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devotion of such a man,&rdquo; she erringly thought, &ldquo;might well sanction
+      the weakness of a woman's heart&mdash;might well persuade to the momentary
+      error which none will seek more readily to repair than himself. If he be
+      true to me, what indeed should I care for the scorn of others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! for the credulous victim. This was the soul of her error. This scorn
+      of others&mdash;of the opinions of the world around her, is the saddest
+      error of which woman, who is the most dependant of all beings in the moral
+      world, can ever be guilty. But such philosophy did not now deceive even
+      the poor girl by whom it was uttered. It is a melancholy truth, that,
+      where there is no principle, the passions can not be relied on; and the
+      love of Alfred Stevens had hitherto shown itself in selfishness. Margaret
+      Cooper felt this, but she did not dare to believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no!&rdquo; she muttered&mdash;&ldquo;I will not doubt&mdash;I will not fear! He
+      is too noble, too generous, too fond! I could not be deceived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her reliance was upon her previous judgment, not upon his principles. Her
+      self-esteem assisted to make this reference sufficient for the purposes of
+      consolation, and this was all that she desired in this first moment of her
+      doubt and apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he be true&mdash;if he keep for ever the faith that his lips and
+      looks declare&mdash;then will I heed nothing of the shame and the sin. The
+      love of such a man is sufficient recompense for the loss of all besides.
+      What to me is the loss of society? what should I care for the association
+      and opinions of these in Charlemont? And elsewhere&mdash;he will bear me
+      hence where none can know. Ah! I fear not: he will be true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her self-esteem was recovering considerably from its first overthrow. Her
+      mind was already preparing to do battle with those, the scorn of whom she
+      anticipated, and whose judgments she had always hitherto despised. This
+      was an easy task. She was yet to find that it was not the only task. Her
+      thoughts are those of many, in like situations, and it is for this reason
+      that we dwell upon them. Our purpose is, to show the usual processes of
+      self-deception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper, like a large class of persons of strong natural mind and
+      sanguine temper, was only too apt to confound the cause of virtue with its
+      sometimes uncouth, harsh and self-appointed professors. She overlooked the
+      fact that public opinion, though a moral object against which woman dares
+      not often offend, is yet no standard for her government; that principles
+      are determinable elsewhere; and that, whatever the world may think of
+      them, and whatever may be their seeming unimportance under existing
+      circumstances, are the only real moral securities of earth. She might fly
+      from Charlemont, either into a greater world, or into a more complete
+      solitude, but she would fly to no greater certainties than she now
+      possessed. Her securities were still based upon the principles of Alfred
+      Stevens, and of these she knew nothing. She knew that he was a man of
+      talent&mdash;of eloquence; alas for her! she had felt it; of skill&mdash;she
+      had been its victim; of rare sweetness of utterance, of grace and beauty;
+      and as she enumerated to herself these his mental powers and personal
+      charms, she felt, however numerous the catalogue, that none of these
+      afforded her the guaranty she sought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She arose the next day somewhat more composed, and with a face which
+      betrayed sleeplessness, but nothing worse. This she ascribed to the
+      headache with which she had retired. She had not slept an instant, and she
+      arose entirely unrefreshed. But the stimulating thoughts which had kept
+      her wakeful, furnished her with sufficient strength to appear as usual in
+      the household, and to go through her accustomed duties. But it was with an
+      impatience scarcely restrainable that she waited for the approach of
+      evening which would bring her lover. Him she felt it now absolutely of the
+      last necessity that she should see; that she should once more go with him
+      to those secret places, the very thought of which inspired her with
+      terror, and, laying bare her soul to his eyes, demand of him the only
+      restitution which he could make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came. Once more she descended the steps to meet him&mdash;Her mother
+      arrested her on the stairway. A cunning leer was in her eye, as she looked
+      into the woful, impassive eyes of her daughter. She grinned with a sort of
+      delight expressive of the conviction that the advice she had given the
+      night before was to be put in execution soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fix him, Margaret; he's mighty eager for you. You've cut your eye-tooth&mdash;be
+      quick, and you'll have a famous parson for a husband yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl shrunk from the counsellor as if she had been a serpent. The very
+      counsel was enough to show her the humiliating attitude in which she stood
+      to all parties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; said the old woman, detaining her&mdash;&ldquo;don't be too willing
+      at first. Let him speak fairly out. A young maiden can't be too backward,
+      until the man offers to make her a young wife!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words went to her soul like an arrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young maiden!&rdquo; she almost murmured aloud, as she descended the steps&mdash;&ldquo;O
+      God! how lovely now, to my eyes, appears the loveliness of a young
+      maiden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She joined Stevens in silence, the mother watching them with the eyes of a
+      maternal hawk as they went forth together. They pursued a customary route,
+      and, passing through one of the gorges of the surrounding hills, they soon
+      lost sight of the village. When the forest-shadows had gathered thickly
+      around them, and the silence of the woods became felt, Stevens approached
+      more nearly, and, renewing a former liberty, put his arm about her waist.
+      She gently but firmly removed it, but neither of them spoke a word. A
+      dense copse appeared before them. Toward it he would have led the way. But
+      she resolutely turned aside, and, while a shudder passed over her frame,
+      exclaimed&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not there&mdash;not there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Breathlessly she spoke. He well enough understood her. They pursued an
+      opposite direction, and, in the shade of a wood which before they had
+      never traversed, they at length paused. Stevens, conducting her to the
+      trunk of a fallen tree, seated her, and placed himself beside her. Still
+      they were silent. There was a visible constraint upon both. The thoughts
+      and feelings of both were alike active&mdash;but very unlike in character.
+      With him, passion, reckless passion, was uppermost; selfish in all its
+      phases, and resolute on its own indulgence at every hazard. In her bosom
+      was regret if not remorse, mingled with doubts and hopes in pretty equal
+      proportion. Yet had she, even then, but little doubt of him. She accused
+      him of no practice. She fancied, foolish girl, that his error, like her
+      own, had been that of blind impulse, availing itself of a moment of
+      unguarded reason to take temporary possession of the citadel of prudence.
+      That he was calculating, cunning&mdash;that his snares had been laid
+      beforehand&mdash;she had not the least idea. But she was to grow wiser in
+      this and other respects in due season. How little did she then conjecture
+      the coldness and hardness of that base and selfish heart which had so
+      fanned the consuming flame in hers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her reserve and coolness were unusual. She had been the creature,
+      heretofore, of the most uncalculating impulse. The feeling was spoken, the
+      thought uttered, as soon as conceived. Now she was silent. He expected her
+      to speak&mdash;nay, he expected reproaches, and was prepared to meet them.
+      He had his answer for any reproaches which she might make. But for that
+      stony silence of her lips he was not prepared. The passive grief which her
+      countenance betrayed&mdash;so like despair&mdash;repelled and annoyed him.
+      Yet, wherefore had she come, if not to complain bitterly, and, after
+      exhaustion, be soothed at last? Such had been his usual experience in all
+      such cases. But the unsophisticated woman before him had no language for
+      such a situation as was hers. Her pride, her ambition&mdash;the very
+      intensity of all her moods&mdash;rendered the effort at speech a mockery,
+      and left her dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are sad, Margaret&mdash;silent and very cold to me,&rdquo; he said, at last
+      breaking the silence. His tones were subdued to a whisper, and how full of
+      entreating tenderness! She slowly raised her eyes from the ground, and
+      fixed them upon him. What a speech was in that one look! There was no
+      trace of excitement, scarcely of expression, in her face. There was no
+      flush upon her cheeks. She was pale as death. She was still silent. Her
+      eye alone had spoken; and from its searching but stony glance his own fell
+      in some confusion to the ground. There was a dreary pause, which he at
+      length broke:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are still silent, Margaret&mdash;why do you not speak to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for you to speak, Alfred,&rdquo; was her reply. It was full of
+      significance, understood but not FELT by her companion. What, indeed, had
+      she to say&mdash;what could she say&mdash;while he said nothing? She was
+      the victim. With him lay the means of rescue and preservation. She but
+      waited the decision of one whom, in her momentary madness, she had made
+      the arbiter of her destiny. Her reply confused him. He would have
+      preferred to listen to the ordinary language of reproach. Had she burst
+      forth into tears and lamentations&mdash;had she cried, &ldquo;You have wronged
+      me&mdash;you must do me justice!&rdquo;&mdash;he would have been better pleased
+      than with the stern, unsuggestive character that she assumed. To all this,
+      his old experience would have given him an easy answer. But to be driven
+      to condemn himself&mdash;to define his own doings with the name due to his
+      deserts&mdash;to declare his crime, and proffer the sufficient atonement&mdash;was
+      an unlooked-for necessity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are displeased with me, Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dared not meet her glance while uttering this feeble and purposeless
+      remark. It was so short of all that he should have said&mdash;of all that
+      she expected&mdash;that her eyes glistened with a sudden expression of
+      indignation which was new to them in looking upon him. There was a
+      glittering sarcasm in her glance, which showed the intensity of her
+      feelings in the comment which they involuntarily made on the baldness and
+      poverty of his. Displeasure, indeed! That such an epithet should be
+      employed to describe the withering pang, the vulturous, gnawing torture in
+      her bosom&mdash;and that fiery fang which thought, like some winged
+      serpent, was momentarily darting into her brain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Displeased!&rdquo; she exclaimed, in low, bitter tones, which she seemed rather
+      desirous to suppress&mdash;&ldquo;no, no! sir&mdash;not displeased. I am
+      miserable, most miserable&mdash;anything but displeased. I am too wretched
+      to feel displeasure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to me you owe this wretchedness, dear Margaret&mdash;THAT&mdash;THAT
+      is what you would say. Is it not, Margaret? I have wronged&mdash;I have
+      ruined you! From me comes this misery! You hate, you would denounce me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his arm about her waist&mdash;he sank upon his knee beside her&mdash;his
+      eye, now that he had found words, could once more look courageously into
+      hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wronged&mdash;ruined!&rdquo; she murmured, using a part of his words, and
+      repeating them as if she did not altogether realize their perfect sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, you would accuse me, Margaret,&rdquo; he continued&mdash;&ldquo;you would
+      reproach and denounce me&mdash;you hate me&mdash;I deserve it&mdash;I
+      deserve it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered with some surprise:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Alfred Stevens, I do not accuse&mdash;I do not denounce you. I am
+      wretched&mdash;I am miserable. It is for you to say if I am wronged and
+      ruined. I am not what I was&mdash;I know THAT!&mdash;What I am&mdash;what
+      I will be!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused! Her hands were clasped suddenly and violently&mdash;she looked
+      to heaven, and, for the first time, the tears, streamed from her eyes like
+      rain&mdash;a sudden, heavy shower, which was soon over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Margaret, you would have me accuse myself&mdash;and I do. The crime
+      is mine! I have done you this wrong&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Alfred Stevens, <i>I</i> have done wrong! I FEEL that I have done
+      wrong. That I have been feeble and criminal, <i>I</i> KNOW. I will not be
+      so base as to deny what I can not but feel. As for your crime, you know
+      best what it is. I know mine. I know that my passions are evil and
+      presumptuous; and though I blush to confess their force, it is yet due to
+      the truth that I should do so, though I sink into the earth with my shame.
+      But neither your self-reproaches nor my confession will acquit us. Is
+      there nothing, Alfred Stevens, that can be done? Must I fall before you,
+      here, amidst the woods which have witnessed my shame, and implore you to
+      save me? I do! Behold me! I am at your feet&mdash;my face is in the dust.
+      Oh! Alfred Stevens&mdash;when I called your eyes to watch, in the day of
+      my pride, the strong-winged eagle of our hills, did I look as now? Save me
+      from this shame! save me! For, though I have no reproaches, yet God knows,
+      when we looked on that eagle's flight together, my soul had no such taint
+      as fills it now. Whatever were my faults, my follies, my weaknesses,
+      Heaven knows, I felt not, feared not this! a thought&mdash;a dream of such
+      a passion, then&mdash;never came to my bosom. From you it came! You put it
+      there! You woke up the slumbering emotion&mdash;you&mdash;but no!&mdash;I
+      will not accuse you! I will only implore you to save me! Can it be done?
+      can you do it&mdash;will you&mdash;will you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rise, dearest Margaret&mdash;let me lift you!&rdquo; She had thrown herself
+      upon the earth, and she clung to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! your words may lift me, Alfred Stevens, when your hands can not.
+      If you speak a hope, a promise of safety, it will need no other help to
+      make me rise! If you do not!&mdash;I would not wish to rise again. Speak!
+      let me hear, even as I am, what my doom shall be? The pride which has made
+      me fall shall be reconciled to my abasement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, this despair is idle. There is no need for it. Do I not tell
+      you that there is no danger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you speak of ruin?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not&mdash;the word escaped me. There is no ruin. I will save you.
+      I am yours&mdash;yours only. Believe me, I will do you right. I regard you
+      as sacredly my wife as if the rites of the church had so decreed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not disbelieve you, Alfred! I have no hope else. Your words lift
+      me! Oh! Alfred Stevens, you did not mean the word, but how true it was;
+      what a wreck, what a ruin do I feel myself now&mdash;what a wreck have I
+      become!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A wreck, a ruin! no, Margaret, no! never were you more beautiful than at
+      this very moment. These large, sad eyes&mdash;these long, dark lashes seem
+      intended to bear the weight of tears. These cheeks are something paler
+      than their wont, but not less beautiful, and these lips&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He would have pressed them with his own&mdash;he would have taken her into
+      his arms, but she repulsed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! Alfred&mdash;this must not be. I am yours. Let me prove to you
+      that I am firm enough to protect your rights from invasion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why so coy, dearest? Do you doubt me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but you do. Why do you shrink from me&mdash;why this coldness? If you
+      are mine, if these charms are mine, why not yield them to me? I fear,
+      Margaret, that you doubt me still?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not&mdash;dare not doubt you, Alfred Stevens. My life hangs upon
+      this faith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so cold, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not cold. I love you&mdash;I will be your wife; and never was wife
+      more faithful, more devoted, than I will be to you; but, if you knew the
+      dreadful agony which I have felt, since that sad moment of my weakness,
+      you would forbear and pity me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear me, Margaret; to-morrow is Saturday. John Cross is to be here in the
+      evening. He shall marry us on Sunday. Are you willing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes! thankful, happy! Ah! Alfred, why did I distrust you for an
+      instant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, indeed! But you distrust me no longer&mdash;you have no more
+      misgivings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, none!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be no longer cold, no longer coy, dear Margaret&mdash;here in
+      the sweet evening, among these pleasant shades, love, alone, has
+      supremacy. Here, in the words of one of your favorites:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;'Where transport and security entwine,
+    Here is the empire of thy perfect bliss,
+    And here thou art a god&mdash;'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      concluding this quotation, he would have taken her in his embrace&mdash;he
+      would have renewed those dangerous endearments which had already proved so
+      fatal; but she repulsed the offered tenderness, firmly, but with
+      gentleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, you still doubt me,&rdquo; he exclaimed reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Alfred, I doubt you not. I believe you. I have only been too ready
+      and willing to believe you. Ah! have you not had sufficient proof of this?
+      Leave me the consciousness of virtue&mdash;the feeling of strength still
+      to assert it, now that my eyes are open to my previous weakness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is no reason to be so cold. Remember you are mine by every tie
+      of the heart&mdash;another day will make you wholly mine. Surely, there is
+      no need for this frigid bearing. No, no! you doubt&mdash;you do not
+      believe me, Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not believe you, Alfred Stevens,&rdquo; she answered gravely, &ldquo;my
+      prayer would be for death, and I should find it. These woods which have
+      witnessed my fault should have witnessed my expiation. The homes which
+      have known me should know me no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The solemnity of her manner rather impressed him, but having no real
+      regard for her, he was unwilling to be baffled in his true desires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you doubt me not&mdash;if you have faith in me, Margaret, why this
+      solemnity, this reserve? Prove to me, by your looks, by your actions, by
+      the dear glances, the sweet murmurs, and the fond embrace, what these cold
+      assurances do not say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand rested on her neck. She gently raised and removed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already proved to you my weakness. I will now prove my strength.
+      It is better so, Alfred. If I have won your love, let me now command your
+      esteem, or maintain what is left me of my own. Do not be angry with me if
+      I insist upon it. I am resolute now to be worthy of you and of myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you call this love?&rdquo; said he bitterly. &ldquo;If you ever loved, indeed,
+      Margaret&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I ever loved&mdash;and have I given you no proofs?&rdquo; she exclaimed in a
+      burst of passion; &ldquo;all the proofs that a woman can give, short of her
+      blood; and that, Alfred Stevens&mdash;that too, I was prepared to give,
+      had you not promptly assured me of your faith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew a small dagger from her sleeve, and bared it beneath his glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think you I brought this without an object? No! Alfred Stevens&mdash;know
+      me better! I came here prepared to die, as well as a frail and erring
+      woman could be prepared. You disarmed the dagger. You subdued the
+      determination when you bid me live for you. In your faith, I am willing to
+      live. I believe you, and am resolved to make myself worthy of your belief
+      also. I have promised to be your wife, and here before Heaven, I swear to
+      be your faithful wife; but, until then, you shall presume in no respect.
+      Your lip shall not touch mine; your arms shall not embrace me; you shall
+      see, dear Alfred, that, with my eyes once opened fully upon my own
+      weakness, I have acquired the most certain strength.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the dagger,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You doubt me still?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she exclaimed, handing him the weapon&mdash;&ldquo;no, no! I do not
+      doubt you&mdash;I dare not. Doubt you, Alfred?&mdash;that were death, even
+      without the dagger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; BULL-PUPS IN TRAINING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Alfred Stevens was sufficiently familiar with the sex to perceive that
+      Margaret Cooper was resolved. There was that in her look and manner which
+      convinced him that she was not now to be overcome. There was no effort or
+      constraint in either her looks or language. The composure of assured
+      strength was there. The discovery of her weakness, which he had so
+      unexpectedly made, had rendered her vigilant. Suspecting herself&mdash;which
+      women are not apt to do&mdash;she became watchful, not only of the
+      approach of her lover, but of every emotion of her own soul; and it was
+      with a degree of chagrin which he could scarcely refrain from showing,
+      that he was compelled to forego, at least for the present, all his usual
+      arts of seduction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet he knew not how to refrain. Never had Margaret Cooper seemed so lovely
+      in his eyes, so commanding, so eloquent with beauty, as now, when remorse
+      had touched her eyes with an unwonted shadow, and tears and nightwatching
+      had subdued the richer bloom upon her cheek. Proud still, but pensive in
+      her pride, she walked silently beside him, still brooding over thoughts
+      which she would not willingly admit were doubts, and grasping every word
+      of assurance that fell from his lips as if it had been some additional
+      security.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These assurances he still suffered to escape him, with sufficient
+      frequency and solemnity, to confirm that feeling of confidence which his
+      promise of marriage had inspired in her mind. There was a subdued fondness
+      in his voice, and an EMPRESSMENT in his manner, which was not all
+      practice. The character which Margaret Cooper had displayed in this last
+      interview&mdash;her equal firmness and fear&mdash;the noble elevation of
+      soul which, admitting her own errors, disdained to remind him of his&mdash;a
+      course which would have been the most ready of adoption among the weaker
+      and less generous of the sex&mdash;had touched him with a degree of
+      respect akin to admiration; and so strong was the impression made upon him
+      of her great natural superiority of mind to almost all the women he had
+      ever met, that, but for her one unhappy lapse, he had sought no other
+      wife. Had she been strong at first as she proved herself at last, this had
+      been inevitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When in his own chamber that night, he could not help recalling to his
+      memory the proud elevation of her character as it had appeared in that
+      interview. The recollection really gave him pain, since along with it
+      arose the memory also of that unfortunate frailty, which became more
+      prominent as a crime in connection with that intellectual merit which, it
+      is erroneously assumed, should have made it sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But for that, Margaret Cooper, and this marriage were no vain promise.
+      But that forbids. No, no&mdash;no spousals for me: let John Cross and the
+      bride be ready or not, there shall be a party wanting to that contract!
+      And yet, what a woman to lose! what a woman to win! No tragedy queen ever
+      bore herself like that. Talk of Siddons, indeed! SHE would have brought
+      down the house in that sudden prostration&mdash;that passionate appeal.
+      She made even me tremble. I could have loved her for that, if for that
+      only. To make ME tremble! and with such a look, such an eye, such a stern,
+      sweet, fierce beauty! By Heavens! I know not how to give her up. What a
+      sensation she would make in Frankfort! Were she my wife&mdash;but no, no!
+      bait for gudgeons! I am not so great a fool as that. She who is mine on my
+      terms, is yours, sir, or yours&mdash;is anybody's, when the humor suits
+      and the opportunity. I can not think of that. Yet, to lose her is as
+      little to be thought of. I must manage it. I must get her off from this
+      place. It need not be to Frankfort! Let me see&mdash;there is&mdash;hum!&mdash;hum!&mdash;yes,
+      a ride of a few miles&mdash;an afternoon excursion&mdash;quite convenient,
+      yet not too near. It must be managed; but, at all events, I must evade
+      this marriage&mdash;put it off for the present&mdash;get some decent
+      excuse. That's easy enough, and for the rest, why, time that softens all
+      things, except man and woman, time will make that easy too. To-morrow for
+      Ellisland, and the rest after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, resolving not to keep his vows to his unhappy victim, the criminal
+      was yet devising plans by which to continue his power over her. These
+      plans, yet immature in his own mind, at least unexpressed, need not be
+      analyzed here, and may be conjectured by the reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, Stevens busied himself in preparing letters. Of these he wrote
+      several. It will not further our progress to look over him as he writes;
+      and we prefer rather, in this place, to hurry on events which, it may be
+      the complaint of all parties, reader not omitted, have been too long
+      suffered to stagnate. But we trust not. Let us hurry Stevens through
+      Friday night&mdash;the night of that last interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saturday morning, we observe that his appetite is unimpaired. He discusses
+      the breakfast at Hinkley's as if he had never heard of suffering. He has
+      said an unctuous grace. Biscuits hot, of best Ohio flour, are smoking on
+      his plate. A golden-looking mass of best fresh butter is made to
+      assimilate its luscious qualities with those of the drier and hotter
+      substance. A copious bowl of milk, new from the dugs of old Brindle,
+      stands beside him, patiently waiting to be honored by his unscrupulous but
+      not unfastidious taste. The grace is said, and the gravy follows. He has a
+      religious regard for the goods and gifts of this life. He eats heartily,
+      and the thanks which follow, if not from the bottom of the soul, were
+      sufficiently earnest to have emanated from the bottom of his stomach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This over, he has a chat with his hosts. He discusses with old Hinkley the
+      merits of the new lights. What these new lights were, at that period, we
+      do not pretend to remember. Among sectarians, there are periodical new
+      lights which singularly tend to increase the moral darkness. From these,
+      after a while, they passed to the love festivals or feasts&mdash;a
+      pleasant practice of the methodist church, which is supposed to be very
+      promotive of many other good things besides love; though we are
+      constrained to say that Brother Stevens and Brother Hinkley&mdash;who, it
+      may be remarked, had very long and stubborn arguments, frequently without
+      discovering, till they reached the close, that they were thoroughly agreed
+      in every respect except in words&mdash;concurred in the opinion that there
+      was no portion of the church practice so highly conducive to the
+      amalgamation of soul with soul, and all souls with God, as this very
+      practice of love-feasts!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being agreed on this and other subjects, Mr. Hinkley invited Brother
+      Stevens out to look at his turnips and potatoes; and when this delicate
+      inquiry was over, toward ten o'clock in the day, Brother Stevens concluded
+      that he must take a gallop; he was dyspeptic, felt queerish, his studies
+      were too close, his mind too busy with the great concerns of salvation.
+      These are enough to give one dyspepsia. Of course, the hot rolls and
+      mountains of volcanic butter&mdash;steam-ejecting&mdash;could have
+      produced no such evil effects upon a laborer in the vineyard. At all
+      events, a gallop was necessary, and the horse was brought. Brother Hinkley
+      and our matronly sister of the same name watched the progress of the pious
+      youth, as, spurring up the hills, he pursued the usual route, taking at
+      first the broad highway leading to the eastern country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were other eyes that watched the departure of Brother Stevens with
+      no less interest, but of another kind, than those of the venerable couple.
+      Our excellent friend Calvert started up on hearing the tread of the horse,
+      and, looking out from his porch, ascertained with some eagerness of glance
+      that the rider was Alfred Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, why was the interest of Calvert so much greater on this than on any
+      other previous occasion? We will tell you, gentle reader. He had been
+      roused at an early hour that morning by a visit from Ned Hinkley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran'pa,&rdquo; was the reverent formula of our fisherman at beginning,
+      &ldquo;to-day's the day. I'm pretty certain that Stevens will be riding out
+      to-day, for he missed the last Saturday. I'll take my chance for it,
+      therefore, and brush out ahead of him. I think I've got it pretty straight
+      now, the place that he goes to, and I'll see if I can't get there soon
+      enough to put myself in a comfortable fix, so as to see what's a-going on
+      and what he goes after. Now, gran'pa, I'll tell you what I want from you&mdash;them
+      pocket-pistols of your'n. Bill Hinkley carried off grandad's, and there's
+      none besides that I can lay hold on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Ned, I'm afraid to lend them to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What 'fraid of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you'll use them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure I will, if there's any need, gran'pa. What do I get them for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes! but I fear you'll find a necessity where there is none. You'll
+      be thrusting your head into some fray in which you may lose your ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jupiter, no! No, gran'pa, I'll wait for the necessity. I won't look
+      for it. I'm going straight ahead this time, and to one object only. I
+      think Stevens is a rascal, and I'm bent to find him out. I've had no
+      disposition to lick anybody but him, ever since he drove Bill Hinkley off&mdash;you
+      and him together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll promise me, Ned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure as a snag in the forehead of a Mississippi steamer. Depend upon me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there must be no quarrelling with Stevens either, Ned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look you, gran'pa, if I'm to quarrel with Stevens or anybody else,
+      'twouldn't be your pistols in my pocket that would make me set on, and
+      'twouldn't be the want of 'em that would make me stop. When it's my cue to
+      fight, look you, I won't need any prompter, in the shape of friend or
+      pistol. Now THAT speech is from one of your poets, pretty near, and ought
+      to convince you that you may as well lend the puppies and say no more
+      about it. If you don't you'll only compel me to carry my rifle, and
+      that'll be something worse to an enemy, and something heavier for me.
+      Come, come, gran'pa, don't be too scrupulous in your old age. YOUR HAVING
+      them is a sufficient excuse for MY HAVING them too. It shows that they
+      ought to be had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're logic-chopping this morning, Ned&mdash;see that you don't get to
+      man-chopping in the afternoon. You shall have the pistols, but do not use
+      them rashly. I have kept them simply for defence against invasion; not for
+      the purpose of quarrel, or revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you've kept them mighty well, gran'pa,&rdquo; replied the young man, as he
+      contemplated with an eye of anxious admiration, the polish of the steel
+      barrels, the nice carving of the handles, and the fantastic but graceful
+      inlay of the silver-mounting and setting. The old man regarded him with a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Ned, I've kept them well. They have never taken life, though they
+      have been repeatedly tried upon bull's eye and tree-bark. If you will
+      promise me not to use them to-day, Ned, you shall have them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take 'em back, gran'pa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I'd feel the meanest in the world to have a weapon, and not use it
+      when there's a need to do so; and I'm half afraid that the temptation of
+      having such beautiful puppies for myself&mdash;twin-puppies, I may say&mdash;having
+      just the same look out of the eyes, and just the same spots and marks,
+      and, I reckon, just the same way of giving tongue&mdash;I'm half afraid, I
+      say, that to get to be the owner of them, might tempt me to stand quiet
+      and let a chap wink at me&mdash;maybe laugh outright&mdash;may be suck in
+      his breath, and give a phew-phew-whistle just while I'm passing! No! no!
+      gran'pa, take back your words, or take back your puppies. Won't risk to
+      carry both. I'd sooner take Patsy Rifle, with all her weight, and no terms
+      at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw, Ned, you're a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's no news, gran'pa, to you or me. But it don't alter the case. Put
+      up your puppies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Ned; you shall have them on your own terms. Take 'em as they are. I
+      give them to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I may shoot anybody I please this afternoon, gran'pa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay, Ned&mdash;; anybody&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus far the old man, when he stopped himself, changed his manner, which
+      was that of playful good-humor, to that of gravity, while his tones
+      underwent a corresponding change&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Ned, my son, while I leave it to your discretion, I yet beg you to
+      proceed cautiously&mdash;seek no strife, avoid it&mdash;go not into the
+      crowd&mdash;keep from them where you see them drinking, and do not use
+      these or any weapons for any trifling provocation. Nothing but the last
+      necessity of self-preservation justifies the taking of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran'pa&mdash;thank you&mdash;you've touched me in the very midst of my
+      tender-place, by this handsome present. One of these puppies I'll name
+      after you, and I'll notch it on the butt. The other I'll call Bill
+      Hinkley, and I won't notch that. Yours, I'll call my pacific puppy, and
+      I'll use it only for peace-making purposes. The other I'll call my
+      bull-pup, and him I'll use for baiting and butting, and goring. But, as
+      you beg, I promise you I'll keep 'em both out of mischief as long as I
+      can. Be certain sure that it won't be my having the pups that'll make me
+      get into a skrimmage a bit the sooner; for I never was the man to ask
+      whether my dogs were at hand before I could say the word, 'set-on!' It's a
+      sort of nature in a man that don't stop to look after his weapons, but
+      naturally expects to find 'em any how, when his blood's up, and there's a
+      necessity to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This long speech and strong assurance of his pacific nature and purposes,
+      did not prevent the speaker from making, while he spoke, certain dextrous
+      uses of the instrument's which were given into his hands. Right and left
+      were equally busy; one muzzle was addressed to the candle upon the
+      mantelpiece, the other pursued the ambulatory movements of a great black
+      spider upon the wall. The old man surveyed him with an irrepressible
+      smile. Suddenly interrupting himself the youth exclaimed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they loaded, gran'pa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was answered in the negative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, if they were,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and that great black spider was Brother
+      Stevens, I'd show you in the twinkle of a musquito, how I'd put a finish
+      to his morning's work. But I'd use the bull-pup, gran'pa&mdash;see, this
+      one&mdash;the pacific one I'd empty upon him with powder only, as a sort
+      of feu de joie&mdash;and then I'd set up the song&mdash;what's it? ah! Te
+      Deum. A black spider always puts me in mind of a rascal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; THE FOX IN THE TRAP.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The youth barely stopped to swallow his breakfast, when he set off from
+      the village. He managed his movements with considerable caution; and,
+      fetching a circuit from an opposite quarter, after having ridden some five
+      miles out of his way, passed into the road which he suspected that Stevens
+      would pursue. We do not care to show the detailed processes by which he
+      arrived at this conclusion. The reader may take for granted that he had
+      heard from some way-side farmer, that a stranger rode by his cottage once
+      a week, wearing such and such breeches, and mounted upon a nag of a
+      certain color and with certain qualities. Enough to say, that Ned Hinkley
+      was tolerably certain of his route and man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sped on accordingly&mdash;did not once hesitate at turns, right or
+      left, forks and crossroads, but keeping an inflexible course, he placed
+      himself at such a point on the road as to leave it no longer doubtful,
+      should Stevens pass, of the place which usually brought him up. Here he
+      dismounted, hurried his horse, out of sight and hearing, into the woods,
+      and choosing a position for himself, with some nicety, along the
+      road-side, put himself in close cover, where, stretching his frame at
+      length, he commenced the difficult labor of cooling his impatience with
+      his cogitations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But cogitating, with a fellow of his blood, rather whets impatience. He
+      was monstrous restiff. At his fishing pond, with a trout to hook, he would
+      have lain for hours, as patient as philosophy itself, and as inflexible as
+      the solid rock over which he brooded. But without an angle at his hand,
+      how could he keep quiet? Not by thinking, surely; and, least of all, by
+      thinking about that person for whom his hostility was so active. Thinking
+      of Stevens, by a natural association, reminded him of the pistols which
+      Calvert had given him. Nothing could be more natural than to draw them
+      from his bosom. Again and again he examined them in fascinated
+      contemplation. He had already charged them, and he amused himself by
+      thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single touch upon the trigger,
+      to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice ran along a decaying log
+      some five steps from his feet. But his object being secrecy, the rat
+      brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused himself by aiming at this
+      and other objects, until suddenly reminded of the very important
+      difference which he had promised Calvert to make between the pistols in
+      his future use of them. With this recollection he drew out his knife, and
+      laid the weapons before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said he, after a careful examination, in which he fancied he
+      discovered some slight difference between them in the hang of the trigger&mdash;&ldquo;this
+      shall be my bull-pup&mdash;this my peace-maker!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter was marked accordingly with a &ldquo;P,&rdquo; carved rudely enough by one
+      whose hand was much more practised in slitting the weasand of a buck, than
+      in cutting out, with crayon, or Italian crow-quill, the ungainly forms of
+      the Roman alphabet. Ned Hinkley shook his head with some misgiving when
+      the work was done; as he could not but see that he had somewhat impaired
+      the beauty of the peacemaker's butt by the hang-dog looking initial which
+      he had grafted upon it. But when he recollected the subordinate uses to
+      which this &ldquo;puppy&rdquo; was to be put, and considered how unlikely, in his
+      case, it would be exposed to sight in comparison with its more masculine
+      brother, he grew partially reconciled to an evil which was now, indeed,
+      irreparable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does not require that we should bother the reader with the numberless
+      thoughts and fancies which bothered our spy, in the three mortal hours in
+      which he kept his watch. Nothing but the hope that he should ultimately be
+      compensated to the utmost by a full discovery of all that he sought to
+      know, could possibly have sustained him during the trying ordeal. At every
+      new spasm of impatience which he felt, he drew up his legs, shifted from
+      one side to the other and growled out some small thunder in the shape of a
+      threat that &ldquo;it would be only so much the worse for him when the time
+      came!&rdquo; HIM&mdash;meaning Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Stevens came. He watched the progress of his enemy with keen eyes;
+      and, with his &ldquo;bull-pup&rdquo; in his hand, which a sort of instinct made him
+      keep in the direction of the highway, he followed his form upon the road.
+      When he was out of sight and hearing, the spy jumped to his feet. The
+      game, he felt, was secure now&mdash;in one respect at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's for Ellisland. That was no bad guess then. He might have been for
+      Fergus, or Jonesboro', or Debarre, but there's no turn now in the clear
+      track to Ellisland. He's there for certain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ned Hinkley carefully restored his pistols to his bosom and buttoned up.
+      He was mounted in a few moments, and pressing slowly forward in pursuit.
+      He had his own plans which we will not attempt to fathom; but we fear we
+      shall be compelled to admit that he was not sufficiently a gentleman to
+      scruple at turning scout in a time of peace (though, with him, by the way,
+      and thus he justified, he is in pursuit of an enemy, and consequently is
+      at war), and dodging about, under cover, spying out the secrets of the
+      land, and not very fastidious in listening to conversation that does not
+      exactly concern him. We fear that there is some such flaw in the character
+      of Ned Hinkley, though, otherwise, a good, hardy fellow&mdash;with a rough
+      and tumble sort of good nature, which, having bloodied your nose, would
+      put a knife-handle down your back, and apply a handful of cobwebs to the
+      nasal extremity in order to arrest the haemorrhage. We are sorry that
+      there is such a defect in his character; but we did not put it there. We
+      should prefer that he should be perfect&mdash;the reader will believe us&mdash;but
+      there are grave lamentations enough over the failures of humanity to
+      render our homilies unnecessary. Ned Hinkley was not a gentleman, and the
+      only thing to be said in his behalf, is, that he was modest enough to make
+      pretensions to the character. As he once said in a row the company muster:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm blackguard enough, on this occasion, to whip e'er a gentleman among
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without any dream of such a spectre at his heels to disturb his
+      imagination, Alfred Stevens was pursuing his way toward Ellisland, at that
+      easy travelling gait, which is the best for man and beast, vulgarly called
+      a &ldquo;dog-trot.&rdquo; Some very fine and fanciful people insist upon calling it a
+      &ldquo;jog-trot.&rdquo; We beg leave, in this place, to set them right. Every trot is
+      a jog, and so, for that matter, is every canter. A dog-trot takes its name
+      from the even motion of the smaller quadruped, when it is seized with no
+      particular mania, and is yet disposed to go stubbornly forward. It is in
+      more classical dialect, the festina lente motion. It is regularly forward,
+      and therefore fast&mdash;it never puts the animal out of breath, and is
+      therefore slow. Nobody ever saw a dog practice this gait, with a tin
+      canister at his tail, and a huddle of schoolboys at his heels. No! it is
+      THE travelling motion, considering equally the health of all parties, and
+      the necessity of getting on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this desire, Ned Hinkley pressed too closely on the heels of Stevens.
+      He once nearly overhauled him; and falling back, he subdued his speed, to
+      what, in the same semi-figurative language, he styled &ldquo;the puppy-trot.&rdquo;
+       Observing these respective gaits, Brother Stevens rode into Ellisland at a
+      moderately late dinner-hour, and the pursuer followed at an unspeakable,
+      but not great, distance behind him. We will, henceforward, after a brief
+      glance at Ellisland, confine ourselves more particularly to the progress
+      of Brother Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellisland was one of those little villages to which geographers scarcely
+      accord a place upon the maps. It is not honored with a dot in any map that
+      we have ever seen of Kentucky. But, for all this, it is a place! Some day
+      the name will be changed into Acarnania or Etolia, Epirus or Scandinavia,
+      and then be sure you shall hear of it. Already, the village lawyers&mdash;there
+      are two of them&mdash;have been discussing the propriety of a change to
+      something classical; and we do not doubt that, before long, their
+      stupidity will become infectious. Under these circumstances Ellisland will
+      catch a name that will stick. At present you would probably never hear of
+      the place, were it not necessary to our purposes and those of Brother
+      Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has its tavern and blacksmith shop&mdash;its church&mdash;the meanest
+      fabric in the village&mdash;its postoffice and public well and trough.
+      There is also a rack pro bono publico, but as it is in front of the
+      tavern, the owner of that establishment has not wholly succeeded in
+      convincing the people that it was put there with simple reference to the
+      public convenience. The tavern-keeper is, politically, a quadrupled
+      personage. He combines the four offices of post-master, justice of the
+      peace, town council, and publican; and is considered a monstrous small
+      person with all. The truth is, reader&mdash;this aside&mdash;he has been
+      democrat and whig, alternately, every second year of his political life.
+      His present politics, being loco-foco, are in Ellisland considered contra
+      bonos mores. It is hoped that he will be dismissed from office, and a
+      memorial to that effect is in preparation; but the days of Harrison&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      Tyler too&rdquo;&mdash;have not yet come round, and Jerry Sunderland, who knows
+      what his enemies are driving at, whirls his coat-skirts, and snaps his
+      fingers, in scorn of all their machinations. He has a friend at
+      Washington, who spoons in the back parlor of the white-house&mdash;in
+      other words, is a member o f the kitchen-cabinet, of which, be it said, en
+      passant, there never was a president of the United States yet entirely
+      without one&mdash;and&mdash;there never will be! So much for politics and
+      Ellisland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was some crowd in the village on the day of Brother Stevens's
+      arrival. Saturday is a well known day in the western and southern country
+      for making a village gathering; and when Brother Stevens, having hitched
+      his horse at the public rack, pushed his way to the postoffice, he had no
+      small crowd to set aside. He had just deposited his letters, received
+      others in return, answered some ten or fifteen questions which Jerry
+      Sunderland, P. M., Q. U., N. P., M. C., publican and sinner&mdash;such
+      were all deservedly his titles&mdash;had thought it necessary to address
+      to him, when he was suddenly startled by a familiar tap upon the shoulder;
+      such a tap as leads the recipient to imagine that he is about to be
+      honored with the affectionate salutation of some John Doe or Richard Roe
+      of the law. Stevens turned with some feeling of annoyance, if not
+      misgiving, and met the arch, smiling, and very complacent visage of a
+      tall, slender young gentleman in black bushy whiskers and a green coat,
+      who seized him by the hand and shook it heartily, while a chuckling
+      half-suppressed laughter gurgling in his throat, for a moment, forbade the
+      attempt to speak. Stevens seemed disquieted and looked around him
+      suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you here, Ben?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, you see me! You didn't expect to see me, Warham&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; was the whispered word of Stevens, again looking round him in
+      trepidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! ay!&rdquo; said the other with a sly chuckle, and also in a whisper, &ldquo;Mr.
+      Stevens&mdash;Brother Stevens&mdash;hem! I did not think. How is your
+      holiness to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come aside,&rdquo; muttered Stevens; and, taking the arm of the incautious
+      speaker, he led him away from the crowd and took the way out of the
+      village. Their meeting and departure did not occasion much, if any,
+      sensation. The visitors in the village were all too busy in discussing the
+      drink and doctrines, pretty equally distributed, of Jerry the publican.
+      But there was one eye that noted the meeting of the friends; that beheld
+      the concern and confusion of Stevens: that saw their movements, and
+      followed their departing steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your horse&mdash;where is he?&rdquo; demanded Stevens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, at hand; but what do you mean to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, but get out of hearing and sight; for your long tongue, Ben, and
+      significant face, would blab any secret, however deep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! did I not say that I would find you out? Did you get my last letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, I did: but I'm devilish sorry, Ben, that you've come. You'll do
+      mischief. You have always been a mar-plot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, never! You don't know me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I?&mdash;but get your horse, and let's go into the woods, while we
+      talk over matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not leave the nags here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a very good reason. My course lies in that direction, so that I am in
+      my way; while yours, if your purpose be to go back to Frankfort, will lie
+      on the upper side. Neither of us need come back to the village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think to shuffle me off so soon, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have me do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, give us a peep at this beauty&mdash;this Altamira of yours&mdash;at
+      least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible! Do not think of it, Ben; you'd spoil all. But, get the horse.
+      These billet-heads will suspect mischief if they see us talking together,
+      particularly when they behold your conceited action. This political
+      landlord will surmise that you are a second Aaron Burr, about to beat up
+      recruits to conquer California. Your big whiskers&mdash;what an atrocious
+      pair!&mdash;with your standing collar, will confirm the impression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two were soon mounted, and rode into the adjoining woods. They were
+      only a stone's-throw from the village, when Stevens alighted, followed by
+      his companion. They hitched their horses to some swinging branches of a
+      sheltering tree, and, going aside a few paces beyond, seated themselves
+      upon the grass, as they fancied, in a place of perfect security.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Ben, what in truth brings you here?&rdquo; demanded Stevens, in tones
+      of voice and with a look which betrayed anything but satisfaction with the
+      visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curiosity, I tell you, and the legs of my horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! you have some other motive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, 'pon honor. I resolved to find you out&mdash;to see what you were
+      driving at, and where. I could only guess a part from your letter to
+      Barnabas, and that costive scrawl with which you honored me. Perhaps, too&mdash;and
+      give my friendship credit for the attempt&mdash;I came with some hope to
+      save you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Save me&mdash;from what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, wedlock&mdash;the accursed thing! The club is in terror lest you
+      should forget your vows. So glowing were your descriptions of your
+      Cleopatra, that we knew not what to make. We feared everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Barnabas might have opened your eyes: he knew better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not married, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor engaged?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other laughed as he replied:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, on that head, the least said the better. The roving commission
+      permits you to run up any flag that the occasion requires.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you sly dog!&mdash;and what success?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, Ben, you must not be so inquisitive. The game's my own, you
+      know; and the rules of the club give me immunity from a fellow-member.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Gad, I'll resign! I must see this forest beauty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's she? How will you prevent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By a very easy process. Do you know the bird that shrieks farthest from
+      her young ones when the fowler is at hand? I'll follow her example.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll follow you to the uttermost ends of the earth, Warham!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! you forget! Am I not Brother Stevens? Ha! ha! ha! You are not
+      sufficiently reverent, brother. See you no divinity in my look and
+      bearing? Hark you, Ben, I've been a sort of small divinity in the eyes of
+      a whole flock for a month past!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And preach!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha! ha!&mdash;devilish good; but I must see you in order to believe.
+      I must, indeed, Brother Stevens. Why, man, think of it&mdash;success in
+      this enterprise will make you head of the fraternity&mdash;you will be
+      declared pope: but you must have witnesses!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think; and hark ye, Ben&rdquo;&mdash;laying a finger on the arm of the
+      other&mdash;&ldquo;I am successful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you don't say so! This queen, this princess of Egypt, Cleopatra,
+      Altamira&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is mine&mdash;soul and body&mdash;she is mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is what you say? Come, come, you don't mean that such a splendid
+      woman as you describe&mdash;such a genius, poet, painter, musician&mdash;beauty
+      too!&mdash;you don't mean to say that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, every bit of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Gad! what a fellow!&mdash;what a lucky dog! But you must let me see her,
+      Warham!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! to spoil all&mdash;to blurt out the truth?&mdash;for, with every
+      disposition to fib, you lack the ability. No, no, Ben: when the game's up&mdash;when
+      I'm tired of the sport, and feel the necessity of looking out fresh viands&mdash;you
+      shall then know all; I'll give the clue into your own hands, and you may
+      follow it to your heart's content. But not now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how will you get rid of me, mon ami, if my curiosity is stubborn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as the kill-deer does&mdash;travel from the nest&mdash;go home with
+      you, rather than you should succeed in your impertinence, and have you
+      expelled from the club for thrusting your spoon into the dish of a
+      brother-member.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a Turk, with no bowels of compassion. But, at all events, you
+      promise me the dish when you're done with it? you give me the preference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Swear by Beelzebub and Mohammed; by Jupiter Ammon and Johannes Secundus;
+      by the ghost of Cardinal Bembo, and the gridiron of the fraternity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, and by the virginity of Queen Elizabeth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simulacrum! no! no! no such oath for me! That's swearing by the thing
+      that is not, was not&mdash;could not be! You shall swear by the oaths of
+      the club&mdash;you must be bound on the gridiron of the fraternity, before
+      I believe you. Swear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are as tenacious as the ghost of buried Denmark But you shall be
+      satisfied. I swear by the mystic gridiron of the fraternity, and by the
+      legs thereof, of which the images are Beelzebub, Mohammed, Johannes
+      Secundus, and so forth&mdash;nay, by that memorable volume, so revered in
+      the eyes of the club, the new edition of 'The Basiad,' of which who among
+      us has been the true exponent?&mdash;that profound mystery of sweets,
+      fathomed hourly, yet unfathomable still&mdash;for which the commentators,
+      already legions, are hourly becoming legions more;&mdash;by these, and by
+      the mysteries of the mirror that reflects not our own, but the image we
+      desire;&mdash;by these things&mdash;by all things that among the
+      brotherhood are held potent&mdash;I swear to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the preference in the favor of this princess; the clue to find
+      her when you have left her; and the assurance that you will get a surfeit
+      as soon as possible: swear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, nay! I swear not to that last! I shall hold on while appetite holds,
+      and make all efforts not to grow dyspeptic in a hurry. I'll keep my
+      stomach for a dainty, be sure, as long as I can. I were no brother, worthy
+      of our order, if I did not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well&mdash;to the rest! Swear to the rest, and I am satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go back, then, instanter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! this very day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The d&mdash;-l! you don't mean THAT, Warham?&rdquo; returned the other in some
+      consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, this very hour! You must swear to that. Your oath must precede mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! man, remember I only got here last night&mdash;long ride&mdash;hard-trotting
+      horse. We have not seen each other for months. I have a cursed sight to
+      tell you about the boys&mdash;girls too&mdash;love, law, logic, politics.
+      Do you know they talk of running you for the house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in good season, Ben; not now. No, no! you shall see me when you least
+      look for me, and there will be time enough for all these matters then.
+      They'll keep. For the present, let me say to you that we must part now
+      within the hour. You must swear not to dog my steps, and I will swear to
+      give you carte blanche, and the first privileges at my princess, when I
+      leave her. This is my bargain. I make no other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've a great mind not to leave you,&rdquo; said the other doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what will that resolution bring you, do you fancy? Do you suppose I
+      am to be tracked in such a manner? No, Ben! The effect will be to make me
+      set off for the east instantly, whether you go with me or not; and an
+      equally certain effect will be to make us cut loose for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a d&mdash;-d hard colt to manage,&rdquo; said the other moodily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sha'n't let myself be straddled by every horse-boy, I assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, old fellow, that's too much like horse-play. Don't be angry
+      with me. I'll accept your conditions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said Stevens; &ldquo;if you did not, Ben, it would be no better for
+      you; for, otherwise, you should never even see my beauty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she so very beautiful, old boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A queen, I tell you! a proud, high-spirited, wild beauty of the mountains&mdash;a
+      thing of fire and majesty&mdash;a glorious woman, full of song and
+      sentiment and ambition&mdash;a genius, I tell you&mdash;who can improvise
+      like Corinne, and, by the way, continually reminds one of that glorious
+      creature. In Italy, she would have been greater than Corinne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you've won her&mdash;and she loves you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay&mdash;to doting! I found her a sort of eagle&mdash;soaring, striving&mdash;always
+      with an eye upon the hills, and fighting with the sunbeams. I have subdued
+      her. She is now like a timid fawn that trembles at the very falling of a
+      leaf in the forests. She pants with hope to see me, and pants with
+      tremulous delight when I come. Still, she shows every now and then, a
+      glimmering of that eagle spirit which she had at first. She flashes up
+      suddenly, but soon sinks again. Fancy a creature, an idolater of fame
+      before, suddenly made captive by love, and you have a vain, partial image
+      of my forest-princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a lucky dog! You'll marry her yet, old boy, in spite of all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! You are green to talk so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be devilish loath to give her up; I'm afraid I'll have to wait a
+      cursed long time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not long! Do not despair. Easy won, easy valued.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And was she easily won?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very! the game was a short one. She is a mere country-girl, you know, but
+      eighteen or thereabouts&mdash;suspecting nobody, and never dreaming that
+      she had a heart or passions at all. She thought only of her poetry and her
+      books. It was only necessary to work upon heart and passions while talking
+      of poetry and books, and they carried her out of her depth before she
+      could recover. She's wiser now, Ben, I can assure you, and will require
+      more dexterity to keep than to conquer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she has no brother to worry a body&mdash;no d&mdash;-d ugly Hobnail,
+      who has a fancy for her, and may make a window between the ribs of a
+      gallant, such as nature never intended, with the ounce-bullet of some d&mdash;-d
+      old-fashioned seven-foot rifle&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a silly chap, one Hinkley, who tried it on me&mdash;actually
+      challenged me, though I was playing parson, and there might have been work
+      for me but for his own bull-headed father, who came to my rescue, beat the
+      boy and drove him from the place. There is nobody else to give me any
+      annoyance, unless it be a sort of half-witted chap, a cousin of the former&mdash;a
+      sleepy dog that is never, I believe, entirely awake unless when he's
+      trout-fishing. He has squinted at me, as if he could quarrel if he dared,
+      but the lad is dull&mdash;too dull to be very troublesome. You might kiss
+      his grandmother under his nose, and he would probably regard it only as a
+      compliment to her superior virtues, and would thank you accordingly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice a little to the left interrupted the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he does, my brave parson, for his grandmother's sake and his own,&rdquo;
+       were the words of the speaker. They turned in sudden amaze to the spot
+      whence the sounds issued. The bushes opening in this quarter, presented to
+      the astonished eyes of Brother Stevens, the perfect image of the dull lad
+      of whom he had been speaking. There was Ned Hinkley in proper person&mdash;perfectly
+      awake, yet not trout-fishing! A sarcastic grin was upon his visage, and
+      rolling his eyes with a malicious leer, he repeated the words which had
+      first interrupted the progress of the dialogue between the friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you, Brother Stevens, for the compliment to my grandmother's
+      virtues. I thank you, on her account as well as my own. I'm very grateful,
+      I assure you, very grateful, very!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; &ldquo;ABSQUATULATING.&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p>
+      Had a bolt suddenly flashed and thundered at the feet of the two friends,
+      falling from a clear sky in April, they could not have been more
+      astounded. They started, as with one impulse, in the same moment to their
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep quiet,&rdquo; said the intruder; &ldquo;don't let me interrupt you in so
+      pleasant a conversation. I'd like to hear you out. I'm refreshed by it.
+      What you say is so very holy and sermon-like, that I'm like a new man when
+      I hear it. Sit down, Brother Stevens, and begin again; sit down, Ben, my
+      good fellow, and don't look so scary! You look as if you had a window in
+      your ribs already!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The intruder had not moved, though he had startled the conspirators. He
+      did not seem to share in their excitement. He was very coolly seated, with
+      his legs deliberately crossed, while his two hands parted the bushes
+      before him in order to display his visage&mdash;perhaps with the modest
+      design of showing to the stranger that his friend had grievously
+      misrepresented its expression. Certainly, no one could say that, at this
+      moment, it lacked anything of spirit or intelligence. Never were eyes more
+      keen&mdash;never were lips more emphatically made to denote sarcasm and
+      hostility. The whole face was alive with scorn, and hate, and bitterness;
+      and there was defiance enough in the glance to have put wings to fifty
+      bullets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His coolness, the composure which his position and words manifested,
+      awakened the anger of Brother Stevens as soon as the first feeling of
+      surprise had passed away. He felt, in a moment, that the game was up with
+      him&mdash;that he could no longer play the hypocrite in Charlemont. He
+      must either keep his pledges to Margaret Cooper, without delay or excuse,
+      or he must abandon all other designs which his profligate heart may have
+      suggested in its cruel purposes against her peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scoundrel!&rdquo; he exclaimed; &ldquo;how came you here? What have you heard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good words, Brother Stevens. You forget, you are a parson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brain the rascal!&rdquo; exclaimed the whiskered stranger, looking more fierce
+      than ever. The same idea seemed to prompt the actions of Stevens. Both of
+      them, at the same moment, advanced upon the intruder, with their whips
+      uplifted; but still Ned Hinkley did not rise. With his legs still crossed,
+      he kept his position, simply lifting from the sward beside him, where they
+      had been placed conveniently, his two &ldquo;puppies.&rdquo; One of these he grasped
+      in his right hand and presented as his enemies approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is my peace-maker. It says, 'Keep your
+      distance.' This is my bull-pup, or peace-breaker; it says, 'Come on.'
+      Listen to which you please. It's all the same to me. Both are ready to
+      answer you, and I can hardly keep 'em from giving tongue. The bull-pup
+      longs to say something to you, Brother Stevens&mdash;the pacificator is
+      disposed to trim your whiskers, Brother Ben; and I say, for 'em both, come
+      on, you black-hearted rascals, if you want to know whether a girl of
+      Charlemont can find a man of Charlemont to fight her battles. I'm man
+      enough, by the Eternal, for both of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect of Hinkley's speech was equally great upon himself and the
+      enemy. He sprang to his feet, ere the last sentence was concluded, and
+      they recoiled in something like indecent haste. The language of
+      determination was even more strongly expressed by the looks of the rustic
+      than by his language and action. They backed hurriedly at his approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! won't you stand?&mdash;won't you answer to your villanies?&mdash;won't
+      you fight? Pull out your barkers and blaze away, you small-souled scamps;
+      I long to have a crack at you&mdash;here and there&mdash;both at a time!
+      Aint you willing? I'm the sleepy trout-fisherman! Don't you know me?
+      You've waked me up, my lads, and I sha'n't sleep again in a hurry! As for
+      you, Alfred Stevens&mdash;you were ready to fight Bill Hinkley&mdash;here's
+      another of the breed&mdash;won't you fight him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;give me one of your pistols, if you dare, and take your stand,&rdquo;
+       said Stevens boldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a cunning chap&mdash;give you one of my puppies&mdash;a stick for
+      my own head&mdash;while this bush-whiskered chap cudgels me over from
+      behind. No! no! none of that! Besides, these pistols were a gift from a
+      good man, they sha'n't be disgraced by the handling of a bad one. Get your
+      own weapons, Brother Stevens, and every man to his tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are in Charlemont!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&mdash;you'll meet me there then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; was the somewhat eager answer of Stevens, &ldquo;I will meet you there&mdash;to-morrow
+      morning&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sunday&mdash;no! no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monday, then; this evening, if we get home in season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a bargain then,&rdquo; replied Hinkley, &ldquo;though I can hardly keep from
+      giving you the teeth of the bull! As for big-whiskered Ben, there, I'd
+      like to let him taste my pacificator. I'd just like to brush up his
+      whiskers with gun-powder&mdash;they look to have been done up with bear's
+      grease before, and have a mighty fine curl; but if I wouldn't frizzle them
+      better than ever a speckled hen had her feathers frizzled, then I don't
+      know the virtues of gun-powder. On Monday morning, Brother Stevens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay! on Monday morning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Ned Hinkley been more a man of the world&mdash;had he not been a
+      simple backwoodsman, he would have seen, in the eagerness of Stevens to
+      make this arrangement, something, which would have rendered him suspicious
+      of his truth. The instantaneous thought of the arch-hypocrite, convinced
+      him that he could never return to Charlemont if this discovery was once
+      made there. His first impulse was to put it out of the power of Ned
+      Hinkley to convey the tidings. We do not say that he would have
+      deliberately murdered him; but, under such an impulse of rage and
+      disappointment as governed him in the first moments of detection, murder
+      has been often done. He would probably have beaten him into incapacity
+      with his whip&mdash;which had a heavy handle&mdash;had not the rustic been
+      sufficiently prepared. The pistols of Stevens were in his valise, but he
+      had no purpose of fighting, on equal terms, with a man who spoke with the
+      confidence of one who knew how to use his tools; and when the simple
+      fellow, assuming that he would return to Charlemont for his chattels,
+      offered him the meeting there, he eagerly caught at the suggestion as
+      affording himself and friend the means of final escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not merely the pistols of Hinkley of which he had a fear. But he
+      well knew how extreme would be the danger, should the rustic gather
+      together the people of Ellisland, with the story of his fraud, and the
+      cruel consequences to the beauty of Charlemont, by which the deception had
+      been followed. But the simple youth, ignorant of the language of
+      libertinism, had never once suspected the fatal lapse from virtue of which
+      Margaret Cooper had been guilty. He was too unfamiliar with the annals and
+      practices of such criminals, to gather this fact from the equivocal words,
+      and half-spoken sentences, and sly looks of the confederates. Had he
+      dreamed this&mdash;had it, for a moment, entered into his conjecturings&mdash;that
+      such had been the case, he would probably have shot down the seducer
+      without a word of warning. But that the crime was other than prospective,
+      he had not the smallest fancy; and this may have been another reason why
+      he took the chances of Stevens's return to Charlemont, and let him off at
+      the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even should he not return,&rdquo; such may have been his reflection&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      have prevented mischief at least. He will be able to do no harm. Margaret
+      Cooper shall be warned of her escape, and become humbler at least, if not
+      wiser in consequence. At all events, the eyes of Uncle Hinkley will be
+      opened, and poor Bill be restored to us again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now mount, you scamps,&rdquo; said Hinkley, pressing upon the two with
+      presented pistols. &ldquo;I'm eager to send big-whiskered Ben home to his
+      mother; and to see you, Brother Stevens, on your way back to Charlemont. I
+      can hardly keep hands off you till then; and it's only to do so, that I
+      hurry you. If you stay, looking black, mouthing together, I can't stand
+      it. I will have a crack at you. My peace-maker longs to brush up them
+      whiskers. My bull-pup is eager to take you, Brother Stevens, by the
+      muzzle! Mount you, as quick as you can, before I do mischief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Backing toward their horses, they yielded to the advancing muzzles, which
+      the instinct of fear made them loath to turn their backs upon. Never were
+      two hopeful projectors so suddenly abased&mdash;so completely baffled.
+      Hinkley, advancing with moderate pace, now thrust forward one, and now the
+      other pistol, accompanying the action with a specific sentence
+      corresponding to each, in manner and form as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back, parson&mdash;back, whiskers! Better turn, and look out for the
+      roots, as you go forward. There's no seeing your way along the road by
+      looking down the throats of my puppies. If you want to be sure that
+      they'll follow till you're mounted, you have my word for it. No mistake, I
+      tell you. They're too eager on scent, to lose sight of you in a hurry, and
+      they're ready to give tongue at a moment's warning. Take care not to
+      stumble, whiskers, or the pacificator 'll be into your brush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll pay you for this!&rdquo; exclaimed Stevens, with a rage which was not less
+      really felt than judiciously expressed. &ldquo;Wait till we meet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay! I'll wait; but be in a hurry. Turn now, your nags are at your
+      backs. Turn and mount!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way they reached the tree where their steeds were fastened. Thus,
+      with the muzzle of a pistol bearing close upon the body of each&mdash;the
+      click of the cock they had heard&mdash;the finger close to the trigger
+      they saw&mdash;they were made to mount&mdash;in momentary apprehension
+      that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen in
+      his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle their
+      bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that they
+      drew a breath of partial confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Hinkley, &ldquo;my lads, let there be few last words between you.
+      The sooner you're off the better. As for you, Alfred Stevens, the sooner
+      you're back in Charlemont the more daylight we'll have to go upon. I'll be
+      waiting you, I reckon, when you come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, and you may wait,&rdquo; said Stevens, as the speaker turned off and
+      proceeded to the spot where his own horse was fastened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't return, of course?&rdquo; said his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! I must now return with you, thanks to your interference. By Heavens,
+      Ben, I knew, at your coming, that you would do mischief; you have been a
+      marplot ever; and after this, I am half-resolved to forswear your society
+      for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, nay! do not say so, Warham. It was unfortunate, I grant you; but how
+      the devil should either of us guess that such a Turk as that was in the
+      bush?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough for the present,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;It is not now whether I wish to
+      ride with you or not. There is no choice. There is no return to
+      Charlemont.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that's the name of the place, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! yes! Much good may the knowledge of it do you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How fortunate that this silly fellow concluded to let you off on such a
+      promise. What an ass!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! but he may grow wiser! Put spurs to your jade, and let us see what
+      her heels are good for, for the next three hours. I do not yet feel
+      secure. The simpleton may grow wiser and change his mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can scarcely do us harm now, if he does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; said Stevens&mdash;&ldquo;you know nothing. There's such a thing as
+      hue and cry, and its not unfrequently practised in these regions, when the
+      sheriff is not at hand and constables are scarce. Every man is then a
+      sheriff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;but there's no law-process against us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a born simpleton, I think,&rdquo; said Stevens, with little scruple. He
+      was too much mortified to be very heedful of the feelings of his
+      companion. &ldquo;There needs no law in such a case, at least for the CAPTURE of
+      a supposed criminal; and, for that matter, they do not find it necessary
+      for his punishment either. Hark ye, Ben&mdash;there's a farmhouse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I see it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you smell tar?&mdash;They're running it now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do smell something like it. What of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see that bed hanging from yon window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! of course I see it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a feather-bed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;what of that? Why tell me this stuff? Of course I can guess as
+      well as you that it's a feather-bed, since I see a flock of geese in the
+      yard with their necks all bare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark ye, then! There's something more than this, which you may yet see!
+      Touch up your mare. If this fellow brings the mob at Ellisland upon us,
+      that tar will be run, and that feather-bed gutted, for our benefit. What
+      they took from the geese will be bestowed on us. Do you understand me? Did
+      you ever hear of a man whose coat was made of tar and feathers, and
+      furnished at the expense of the county?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, for God's sake, Warham! you make my blood run cold with your
+      hideous notions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That fellow offered to frizzle your whiskers. These would anoint them
+      with tar, in which your bear's oil would be of little use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! don't you hear a noise?&rdquo; demanded the whiskered companion, looking
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do,&rdquo; replied the other musingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great noise!&rdquo; continued Don Whiskerandos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it seems to me that it is a great noise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like people shouting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Somewhat&mdash;yes, by my soul, that DOES sound something like a shout!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there! Don't stop to look and listen, Warham,&rdquo; cried his companion;
+      &ldquo;it's no time for meditation. They're coming! hark!&mdash;&rdquo; and with a
+      single glance behind him&mdash;with eyes dilating with the novel
+      apprehensions of receiving a garment, unsolicited, bestowed by the bounty
+      of the county&mdash;he drove his spurs into the flanks of his mare, and
+      went ahead like an arrow. Stevens smiled in spite of his vexation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&mdash;n him!&rdquo; he muttered as he rode forward, &ldquo;it's some satisfaction,
+      at least, to scare the soul out of him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE REVELATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Having seen his enemy fairly mounted, and under way, as he thought, for
+      Charlemont, Ned Hinkley returned to Ellisland for his own horse. Here he
+      did not suffer himself to linger, though, before he could succeed in
+      taking his departure, he was subjected to a very keen and searching
+      examination by the village publican and politician. Having undergone this
+      scrutiny with tolerable patience, if not to the entire satisfaction of the
+      examiner, he set forward at a free canter, determined that his adversary
+      should not be compelled to wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only while he rode that he began to fancy the possibility of the
+      other having taken a different course; but as, upon reflection, he saw no
+      other plan which he might have adopted&mdash;for lynching for suspected
+      offences was not yet a popular practice in and about Charlemont&mdash;he
+      contented himself with the reflection that he had done all that could have
+      been done; and if Alfred Stevens failed to keep his appointment, he, at
+      least, was one of the losers. He would necessarily lose the chance of
+      revenging an indignity, not to speak of the equally serious loss of that
+      enjoyment which a manly fight usually gave to Ned Hinkley himself, and
+      which, he accordingly assumed, must be an equal gratification to all other
+      persons. When he arrived at Charlemont, he did not make his arrival known,
+      but, repairing directly to the lake among the hills, he hitched his horse,
+      and prepared, with what patience he could command, to await the coming of
+      the enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader is already prepared to believe that the worthy rustic waited in
+      vain. It was only with the coming on of night that he began to consider
+      himself outwitted. He scratched his head impatiently, not without bringing
+      away some shreds of the hair, jumped on his horse, and, without making
+      many allowances for the rough and hilly character of the road, went off at
+      a driving pace for the house of Uncle Hinkley. Here he drew up only to ask
+      if Brother Stevens had returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, dang it! he never will return. He's a skunk, uncle&mdash;as great a
+      skunk as ever was in all Kentucky!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How! what!&mdash;what of Brother Stevens?&rdquo; demanded the uncle, seconded
+      by John Cross, who had only some two hours arrived at the village, and now
+      appeared at the door. But Ned Hinkley was already off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a skunk!&mdash;that's all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His last words threw very little light over the mystery, and certainly
+      gave very little satisfaction to his hearers. The absence of Alfred
+      Stevens, at a time when John Cross was expected, had necessarily
+      occasioned some surprise; but, of course, no apprehensions were
+      entertained by either the worthy parson or the bigoted host that he could
+      be detained by any cause whatsoever which he could not fully justify.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next course of Ned Hinkley was for the cottage of Mr. Calvert. To the
+      old man he gave a copious detail of all his discoveries&mdash;not only the
+      heads of what he heard from the conspirators in the wood, but something of
+      the terms of the dialogue. The gravity of Calvert increased as the other
+      proceeded. He saw more deeply into the signification of certain portions
+      of this dialogue than did the narrator; and when the latter, after having
+      expressed his disappointment at the non-appearance of Stevens on the field
+      of combat, at least congratulated himself at having driven him fairly from
+      the ground, the other shook his head mournfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid it's too late, my son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late, gran'pa! How? Is it ever too late to send such a rascal
+      a-packing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be for the safety of some, my son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Margaret you mean? You think the poor fool of a girl's too far gone
+      in love of him, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that were all, Ned&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what more, eh? You don't mean!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The apprehensions of the simple, unsuspecting fellow, for the first time
+      began to be awakened to the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, my son, that this wretch has been in Charlemont too long.
+      From certain words that you have dropped, as coming from Stevens, in
+      speaking to his comrade, I should regard him as speaking the language of
+      triumph for successes already gained.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hardly! I didn't think so. If I had only guessed that he meant such a
+      thing&mdash;though I can't believe it&mdash;I'd ha' dropped him without a
+      word. I'd have given him the pacificator as well as the peace-breaker. Oh,
+      no! I can't think it&mdash;I can't&mdash;I won't! Margaret Cooper is not a
+      girl to my liking, but, Lord help us! she's too beautiful and too smart to
+      suffer such a skunk, in so short a time, to get the whip-hand of her. No,
+      gran'pa, I can't and won't believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet, Ned, these words which you have repeated convey some such fear to my
+      mind. It may be that the villain was only boasting to his companion. There
+      are scoundrels in this world who conceive of no higher subject of boast
+      than the successful deception and ruin of the artless and confiding. I
+      sincerely hope that this may be the case now&mdash;that it was the mere
+      brag of a profligate, to excite the admiration of his comrade. But when
+      you speak of the beauty and the smartness of this poor girl, as of
+      securities for virtue, you make a great mistake. Beauty is more apt to be
+      a betrayer than a protector; and as for her talent, that is seldom a
+      protection unless it be associated with humility. Hers was not. She was
+      most ignorant where she was most assured. She knew just enough to
+      congratulate herself that she was unlike her neighbors, and this is the
+      very temper of mind which is likely to cast down its possessor in shame. I
+      trust that she had a better guardian angel than either her beauty or her
+      talents. I sincerely hope that she is safe. At all events, let me caution
+      you not to hint the possibility of its being otherwise. We will take for
+      granted that Stevens is a baffled villain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wish I had dropped him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better as it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! even if the poor girl is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, even then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, gran'pa, can it be possible YOU say so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my son; I say so here, in moments of comparative calmness, and in
+      the absence of the villain. Perhaps, were he present, I should say
+      otherwise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And DO otherwise! You'd shoot him, gran'pa, as soon as I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps! I think it likely. But, put up your pistols, Ned. You have
+      nobody now to shoot. Put them up, and let us walk over to your uncle's at
+      once. It is proper that he and John Cross should know these particulars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ned agreed to go, but not to put up his pistols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For, you see, gran'pa, this rascal may return. His friend may have kept
+      him in long talk. We may meet him coming into the village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not likely; but come along. Give me that staff, my son, and your
+      arm on the other side. I feel that my eyes are no longer young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could shoot still, gran'pa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, couldn't you hit a chap like Stevens between the eyes at ten paces?
+      I'm sure I could do it, blindfolded, by a sort of instinct.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the youth, shutting his eyes, as if to try the experiment, drew forth
+      one of his pistols from his bosom, and began to direct its muzzle around
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a black spider THERE, gran'pa! I'm sure, taking him for
+      Stevens, I could cut his web for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have cut that of Stevens himself, and his comb too, Ned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes&mdash;but what a fool I was not to make it his gills!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the old man had got on his spencer, and, with staff in hand,
+      declared himself in readiness. Ned Hinkley lowered his pistol with
+      reluctance. He was very anxious to try the weapon and his own aim, on
+      somebody or something. That black spider which lived so securely in the
+      domicil of Mr. Calvert would have stood no chance in any apartment of the
+      widow Hinkley. Even the &ldquo;pacificator&rdquo; would have been employed for its
+      extermination, if, for no other reason, because of the fancied resemblance
+      which it had always worn to Brother Stevens&mdash;a resemblance which
+      occurred to him, perhaps, in consequence of the supposed similarity
+      between the arts of the libertine and those for the entrapping of his
+      victims which distinguish the labors of the spider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two were soon arrived at old Hinkley's, and the tale of Ned was told;
+      but, such was the bigotry of the hearers, without securing belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So blessed a young man!&rdquo; said the old lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A brand from the burning!&rdquo; exclaimed Brother Cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all an invention of Satan!&rdquo; cried old Hinkley, &ldquo;to prevent the
+      consummation of a goodly work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should not give our faith too readily to such devices of the enemy,
+      Friend Calvert,&rdquo; said John Cross, paternally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw anything in him that wasn't perfectly saint-like,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+      Hinkley. &ldquo;He made the most heartfelt prayer, and the loveliest blessing
+      before meat! I think I hear him now&mdash;'Lord, make us thankful'&mdash;with
+      his eyes shut up so sweetly, and with such a voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are always some people, Brother Cross, to hate the saints of the
+      Lord and to slander them! They lie in wait like thieves of the night, and
+      roaring lions of the wilderness, seeking what they may devour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; exclaimed Brother Cross, &ldquo;how little do such know that they devour
+      themselves; for whoso destroyeth his best friend is a devourer of
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The blindness of Satan is upon them, and they do his work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And thus&mdash;purr, purr, purr&mdash;they went on, to the end of the
+      chapter. Poor Ned Hinkley found the whole kennel was upon him. Not only
+      did they deny everything that could by possibility affect the fair fame of
+      the absent brother, but, from defending him, they passed, with an easy
+      transition, to the denunciation of those who were supposed to be his
+      defamers. In this the worthy old man Calvert came in for his share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this comes of your supporting that worthless boy of mine in defiance
+      of my will,&rdquo; said old Hinkley. &ldquo;You hate Brother Stevens because that boy
+      hated him, and because I love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken, Mr. Hinkley,&rdquo; said Calvert, mildly. &ldquo;I hate nobody; at
+      the same time I suffer no mere prejudices to delude me against sight and
+      reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Brother Cross, gently, &ldquo;it's that very reason, Brother Calvert,
+      that ruins you worldlings. You must not rely on human reason. Build on
+      faith, and you build on the Rock of Ages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I propose to use reason only in worldly matters, Mr. Cross,&rdquo; said the
+      other; &ldquo;for which use, only, I believe it was given us. I employ it in
+      reference to a case of ordinary evidence, and I beg your regards now,
+      while I draw your attention to the use I make of it in the present
+      instance. Will you hear me without interruption?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, Brother Calvert, but call me not Mr. Cross. I am not a Mister. I
+      am plain John Cross; by virtue of my business, a brother, if it so please
+      you to esteem me. Call me Brother Cross, or Brother John Cross, or plain
+      John Cross, either of these will be acceptable unto me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are all brothers, or should be,&rdquo; said Calvert; &ldquo;and it will not need
+      that there should be any misunderstanding between us on so small a
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter is not small in the eye of the Lord,&rdquo; said the preacher.
+      &ldquo;Titles of vanity become not us, and offend in his hearing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old teacher smiled, but proceeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Brother Cross, if you will hear me, I will proceed, according to my
+      reason, to dwell upon the proofs which are here presented to you, of the
+      worthlessness of this man, Alfred Stevens; and when you consider how much
+      the feelings and the safety of the daughters of your flock depend upon the
+      character of those moral and religious teachers to whom the care of them
+      is intrusted, you will see, I think, the necessity of listening patiently,
+      and determining without religious prejudice, according to the truth and
+      reason of the case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am prepared to listen patiently, Brother Calvert,&rdquo; said John Cross,
+      clasping his hands together, setting his elbows down upon the table,
+      shutting his eyes, and turning his face fervently up to heaven. Old
+      Hinkley imitated this posture quite as nearly as he was able; while Mrs.
+      Hinkley, sitting between the two, maintained a constant to-and-fro motion,
+      first on one side, then on the other, as they severally spoke to the
+      occasion, with her head deferentially bowing, like a pendulum, and with a
+      motion almost as regular and methodical. The movements of her nephew, Ned
+      Hinkley, were also a somewhat pleasant study, after a fashion of his own.
+      Sitting in a corner, he amused himself by drawing forth his &ldquo;puppies,&rdquo; and
+      taking occasional aim at a candle or flowerpot; and sometimes, with some
+      irreverence, at the curved and rather extravagant proboscis of his worthy
+      uncle, which, cocked up in air, was indeed something of a tempting object
+      of sight to a person so satisfied of his skill in shooting as the young
+      rustic. The parties being thus arranged in a fit attitude for listening,
+      Mr. Calvert began somewhat after the following fashion:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our first knowledge of Alfred Stevens was obtained through Brother John
+      Cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what better introduction would you have?&rdquo; demanded old Hinkley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;if Brother Cross knew anything about the party he
+      introduced. But it so happens, as we learn from Brother Cross himself,
+      that the first acquaintance he had with Stevens was made upon the road,
+      where Stevens played a trick upon him by giving him brandy to drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No trick, Brother Calvert; the young man gave it me as a medicine, took
+      it as a medicine himself, and, when I bade him, threw away the accursed
+      beverage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ordinary men, governed by ordinary reason, Brother Cross, would say that
+      Stevens knew very well what he was giving you, and that it was a trick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But only think, Mr. Calvert,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hinkley, lifting her hands and
+      eyes at the same moment, &ldquo;the blessed young man threw away the evil liquor
+      the moment he was told to do so. What a sign of meekness was that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not dwell on this point,&rdquo; was the reply of Calvert. &ldquo;He comes into
+      our village and declares his purpose to adopt the profession of the
+      preacher, and proceeds to his studies under the direction of Brother
+      Cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And didn't he study them?&rdquo; demanded Mrs. Hinkley. &ldquo;Wasn't he, late and
+      early, at the blessed volume? I heard him at all hours above stairs. Oh!
+      how often was he on his bended knees in behalf of our sinful race,
+      ungrateful and misbelieving that we are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, madam,&rdquo; said Calvert, &ldquo;that his studies were scarcely so
+      profound as you think them. Indeed. I am at a loss to conceive how you
+      should blind your eyes to the fact that the greater part of his time was
+      spent among the young girls of the village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is it denied,&rdquo; exclaimed old Hinkley, &ldquo;that the lambs of God
+      should sport together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not speak in that language, I pray you, Mr. Hinkley,&rdquo; said Calvert,
+      with something of pious horror in his look; &ldquo;this young man was no lamb of
+      God, but, I fear, as you will find, a wolf in the fold. It is, I say, very
+      well known that he was constantly wandering, even till a late hour of the
+      night, with one of the village maidens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was that one, Brother Calvert?&rdquo; demanded John Cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; said the preacher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he quarrels with my young friend, the worthy son of Brother Hinkley&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not speak of that ungrateful cub. Brother Stevens did not quarrel with
+      him. He quarrelled with Brother Stevens, and would have murdered him, but
+      that I put in in time to save.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say not so, Mr. Hinkley. I have good reason to believe that Stevens went
+      forth especially to fight with William.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not believe it, if a prophet were to tell me it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nevertheless, I believe it. We found both of them placed at the usual
+      fighting-distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but where were Brother Stevens's pistols?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In his pocket, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had none. He was at a distance from my ungrateful son, and flying that
+      he should not be murdered. The lamb under the hands of the butcher. And
+      would you believe it, Brother Cross, he had gone forth only to counsel the
+      unworthy boy&mdash;only to bring him back into the fold&mdash;gone forth
+      at his own prayer, as Brother Stevens declared to Betsy, just before he
+      went out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am of opinion that he deceived her and yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were his pistols then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must have concealed them. He told Ned Hinkley, this very day, that he
+      had pistols, but that they were here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run up, Betsy, to Brother Stevens's room and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady disappeared. Calvert proceeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can only repeat my opinion, founded upon the known pacific and
+      honorable character of William Hinkley, and certain circumstances in the
+      conduct of Stevens, that the two did go forth, under a previous
+      arrangement, to fight a duel. That they were prevented, and that Stevens
+      had no visible weapon, is unquestionably true. But I do not confine myself
+      to these circumstances. This young man writes a great many letters, it is
+      supposed to his friends, but never puts them in the post here, but every
+      Saturday rides off, as we afterward learn, to the village of Ellisland,
+      where he deposites them and receive others. This is a curious
+      circumstance, which alone should justify suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ways of God are intricate, Brother Calvert,&rdquo; said John Cross, &ldquo;and we
+      are not to suspect the truth which we can not understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these are the ways of man, Brother Cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the man of God is governed by the God which is in him. He obeys a law
+      which, perhaps, is ordered to be hidden from thy sight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This doctrine certainly confers very extraordinary privileges upon the
+      man of God,&rdquo; said Calvert, quietly, &ldquo;and, perhaps, this is one reason why
+      the profession is so prolific of professors now-a-days; but the point does
+      not need discussion. Enough has been shown to awaken suspicion and doubt
+      in the case of any ordinary person; and I now come to that portion of the
+      affair which is sustained by the testimony of Ned Hinkley, our young
+      friend here, who, whatever his faults may be, has been always regarded in
+      Charlemont, as a lover and speaker of the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay, so far as he knows what the truth is,&rdquo; said old Hinkley,
+      scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm just as likely to know what the truth is as you, uncle!','
+      retorted the young man, rising and coming forward from his corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;you're not going to ride rough shod over me
+      as you did over Cousin Bill. I don't care a snap of the finger, I can tell
+      you, for all your puffed cheeks and big bellied speeches. I don't, I tell
+      you!&rdquo; and suiting the action to the word, the sturdy fellow snapped his
+      fingers almost under the nose of his uncle, which was now erected
+      heavenward, with a more scornful pre-eminence than ever. The sudden
+      entrance of Mrs. Hinkley, from her search after Stevens's pistols,
+      prevented any rough issue between these new parties, as it seemed to tell
+      in favor of Stevens. There were no pistols to be found. The old lady did
+      not add, indeed, that there was nothing of any kind to be found belonging
+      to the same worthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! That's enough!&rdquo; said old Hinkley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you find anything of Stevens's, Mrs. Hinkley?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Calvert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, madam,&rdquo; said Calvert, &ldquo;your search, if it proves anything, proves
+      the story of Ned Hinkley conclusively. This man has carried off all his
+      chattels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Cross looked down from heaven, and stared inquiringly at Mrs.
+      Hinkley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this true? Have you found nothing, Sister Betsy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Brother Stevens has not come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And reason for it, enough,&rdquo; said old Hinkley. &ldquo;Didn't you hear that Ned
+      Hinkley threatened to shoot him if he came back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look you, uncle,&rdquo; said the person thus accused, &ldquo;if you was anybody else,
+      and a little younger, I'd thrash you for that speech the same as if it was
+      a lie! I would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace!&rdquo; said Calvert, looking sternly at the youth. Having obtained
+      temporary silence, he was permitted at length to struggle through his
+      narrative, and to place, in their proper lights, all the particulars which
+      Ned Hinkley had obtained at Ellisland. When this was done the discussion
+      was renewed, and raged, with no little violence, for a full hour. At
+      length it ceased through the sheer exhaustion of the parties. Calvert was
+      the first to withdraw from it, as he soon discovered that such was the
+      bigotry of old Hinkley and his wife, and even of John Cross himself, that
+      nothing short of divine revelation could persuade them of the guilt of one
+      who had once made a religious profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother Cross, though struck with some of the details which Calvert had
+      given, was afterward prepared to regard them as rather trivial than
+      otherwise, and poor Ned was doomed to perceive that the conviction was
+      general in this holy family, that he had, by his violence, and the terror
+      which his pistols had inspired, driven away, in desperation, the most meek
+      and saintly of all possible young apostles. The youth was nearly furious
+      ere the evening and the discussion were over. It was very evident to
+      Calvert that nothing was needed, should Stevens come back, but a bold
+      front and a lying tongue, to maintain his position in the estimation of
+      the flock, until such time as the truth WOULD make itself known&mdash;a
+      thing which, eventually, always happens. That night Ned Hinkley dreamed of
+      nothing but of shooting Stevens and his comrade and of thrashing his
+      uncle. What did Margaret Cooper dream of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII. &mdash; STORM AND CONVULSION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What did Margaret Cooper dream of? Disappointment, misery, death. There
+      was a stern presentiment in her waking thoughts, sufficiently keen and
+      agonizing to inspire such dreadful apprehensions in her dreams. The
+      temperament which is sanguine, and which, in a lively mood, inspires hope,
+      is, at the same time, the source of those dark images of thought and
+      feeling, which appal it with the most terrifying forms of fear; and when
+      Saturday and Saturday night came and passed, and Alfred Stevens did not
+      appear, a lurking dread that would not be chidden or kept down, continued
+      to rise within her soul, which, without assuming any real form or decisive
+      speech, was yet suggestive of complete overthrow and ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her dreams were of this complexion. She felt herself abandoned. Nor merely
+      abandoned. She was a victim. In her desolation she had even lost her
+      pride. She could no longer meet the sneer with scorn. She could no longer
+      carry a lofty brow among the little circle, who, once having envied, were
+      now about to despise her. To the impatient spirit, once so strong&mdash;so
+      insolent in its strength&mdash;what a pang&mdash;what a humiliation was
+      here! In her dreams she saw the young maidens of the village stand aloof,
+      as she had once stood aloof from them:&mdash;she heard the senseless
+      titter of their laugh; and she had no courage to resent the impertinence.
+      Her courage was buried in her shame. No heart is so cowardly as that which
+      is conscious of guilt. Picture after picture of this sort did her fancy
+      present to her that night; and when she awoke the next morning, the
+      sadness of her soul had taken the color of a deep and brooding
+      misanthropy. Such had been the effect of her dreams. Her resolution came
+      only from despair; and resolution from such a source, we well know, is
+      usually only powerful against itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is one proof of a religious instinct, and of a universal belief in a
+      controlling and benevolent Deity, that all men however abased, scornful of
+      divine and human law, invariably, in their moments of desperation, call
+      upon God. Their first appeal is, involuntarily, to him. The outlaw, as the
+      fatal bullet pierces his breast&mdash;the infidel, sinking and struggling
+      in the water&mdash;the cold stony heart of the murderer, the miser, the
+      assassin of reputation as of life&mdash;all cry out upon God in the
+      unexpected paroxysms of death. Let us hope that the instinct which prompts
+      this involuntary appeal for mercy, somewhat helps to secure its blessings.
+      It is thus also with one who, in the hey-day of the youthful heart, has
+      lived without thought or prayer&mdash;a tumultuous life of uproar and riot&mdash;a
+      long carnival of the passions&mdash;the warm blood suppressing the cool
+      thought, and making the reckless heart impatient of consideration. Let the
+      sudden emergency arise, with such a heart&mdash;let the blood become
+      stagnant with disease&mdash;and the involuntary appeal is to that God, of
+      whom before there was no thought. We turn to him as to a father who is
+      equally strong to help and glad to preserve us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper, in the ordinary phrase, had lived without God. Her God
+      was in her own heart, beheld by the lurid fires of an intense,
+      unmethodized ambition. Her own strength&mdash;or rather the persuasion of
+      her own strength&mdash;had been so great, that hitherto she had seen no
+      necessity for appealing to any other source of power. She might now well
+      begin to distrust that strength. She did so. Her desperation was not of
+      that sort utterly to shut out hope; and, while there is hope, there is yet
+      a moral assurance that the worst is not yet&mdash;perhaps not to be. But
+      she was humbled&mdash;not enough, perhaps&mdash;but enough to feel the
+      necessity of calling in her allies. She dropped by her bedside, in prayer,
+      when she arose that morning. We do not say that she prayed for
+      forgiveness, without reference to her future earthly desires. Few of us
+      know how to simplify our demands upon the Deity to this one. We pray that
+      he may assist us in this or that grand speculation: the planter for a
+      great crop; the banker for investments that give him fifty per cent.; the
+      lawyer for more copious fees; the parson for an increase of salary. How
+      few pray for mercy&mdash;forgiveness for the past&mdash;strength to
+      sustain the struggling conscience in the future! Poor Margaret was no
+      wiser, no better, than the rest of us. She prayed&mdash;silly woman!&mdash;that
+      Alfred Stevens might keep his engagement!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not! That day she was to be married! She had some reference to this
+      in making her toilet that morning. The garments which she put on were all
+      of white. A white rose gleamed palely from amid the raven hair upon her
+      brow. Beautiful was she, exceedingly. How beautiful! but alas! the garb
+      she wore&mdash;the pale, sweet flower on her forehead&mdash;they were
+      mockeries&mdash;the emblems of that purity of soul, that innocence of
+      heart, which were gone&mdash;gone for ever! She shuddered as she beheld
+      the flower, and meditated this thought. Silently she took the flower from
+      her forehead, and, as if it were precious as that lost jewel of which it
+      reminded her, she carefully placed it away in her toilet-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet her beauty was heightened rather than diminished. Margaret Cooper was
+      beautiful after no ordinary mould. Tall in stature, with a frame rounded
+      by the most natural proportions into symmetry, and so formed for grace;
+      with a power of muscle more than common among women, which, by inducing
+      activity, made her movements as easy as they were graceful; with an eye
+      bright like the morning-star, and with a depth of expression darkly clear,
+      like that of the same golden orb at night; with a face exquisitely oval; a
+      mouth of great sweetness; cheeks on which the slightest dash of hue from
+      the red, red rose in June, might be seen to come and go under the
+      slightest promptings of the active heart within; a brow of great height
+      and corresponding expansion; with a bust that impressed you with a sense
+      of the maternal strength which might be harbored there, even as the
+      swollen bud gives promises of the full-bosomed luxuriance of the flower
+      when it opens: add to these a lofty carriage, a look where the quickened
+      spirit seems ever ready for utterance; a something of eager solemnity in
+      her speech; and a play of expression on her lips which, if the brow were
+      less lofty and the eye less keenly bright, might be a smile&mdash;and you
+      have some idea of that noble and lovely temple on which fires of lava had
+      been raised by an unholy hand; in which a secret worship is carried on
+      which dreads the light, shrinks from exposure, and trembles to be seen by
+      the very Deity whose favor it yet seeks in prayer and apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These beauties of person as we have essayed, though most feebly, to
+      describe them, were enhanced rather than lessened by that air of anxiety
+      by which they were now overcast. Her step was no longer free. It was
+      marked by an unwonted timidity. Her glance was no longer confident; and
+      when she looked round upon the faces of the young village-maidens, it was
+      seen that her lip trembled and moved, but no longer with scorn. If the
+      truth were told, she now envied the meanest of those maidens that security
+      which her lack of beauty had guarantied. She, the scorner of all around
+      her, now envied the innocence of the very meanest of her companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the natural effect of her unhappy experience upon her heart. What
+      would she not have given to be like one of them? She dared not take her
+      place, in the church, among them. It was a dread that kept her back.
+      Strange, wondrous power of innocence! The guilty girl felt that she might
+      be repulsed; that her frailty might make itself known&mdash;MUST make
+      itself known; and she would be driven with shame from that communion with
+      the pure to which she had no longer any claim! She sunk into one of the
+      humblest seats in the church, drawing her reluctant mother into the lowly
+      place beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Cross did not that day address himself to her case: but sin has a
+      family similitude among all its members. There is an unmistakeable
+      likeness, which runs through the connection. If the preacher speaks
+      fervently to one sin, he is very apt to goad, in some degree, all the
+      rest: and though Brother Cross had not the most distant idea of singling
+      out Margaret Cooper for his censure, yet there was a whispering devil at
+      her elbow that kept up a continual commentary upon what he said, filling
+      her ears with a direct application of every syllable to her own peculiar
+      instance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See you not,&rdquo; said the demon, &ldquo;that every eye is turned upon you? He sees
+      into your soul; he knows your secret. He declares it, as you hear, aloud,
+      with a voice of thunder, to all the congregation. Do you not perceive that
+      you sit alone; that everybody shrinks from your side; that your miserable
+      old mother alone sits with you; that the eyes of some watch you with pity,
+      but more with indignation? Look at the young damsels&mdash;late your
+      companions&mdash;they are your companions no longer! They triumph in your
+      shame. Their titter is only suppressed because of the place in which they
+      are. They ask: 'Is this the maiden who was so wise, so strong&mdash;who
+      scorned us&mdash;scorned US, indeed!&mdash;and was not able to baffle the
+      serpent in his very first approaches?' Ha! ha! How they laugh! Well,
+      indeed, they may. It is very laughable, Margaret&mdash;not less laughable
+      and amusing than strange!&mdash;that YOU should have fallen!&mdash;so
+      easily, so blindly&mdash;and not even to suspect what every one else was
+      sure of! O Margaret! Margaret! can it be true? Who will believe in your
+      wit now, your genius, your beauty? Smutched and smutted! Poor, weak,
+      degraded! If there is pity for you, Margaret, it is full of mockery too;
+      it is a pity that is full of bitterness. You should now cast yourself
+      down, and cover yourself with ashes, and cry, 'Wo is me!' and call upon
+      the rocks and the hills to cover you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the voice in her soul, which to HER senses seemed like that of
+      some jibing demon at her elbow. Margaret tried to pray&mdash;to expel him
+      by prayer; but the object of his mockery had not been attained. She could
+      not surrender herself entirely to the chastener. She was scourged, but not
+      humbled; and the language of the demon provoked defiance, not humility.
+      Her proud spirit rose once more against the pressure put upon it. Her
+      bright, dazzling eye flashed in scorn upon the damsels whom she now
+      fancied to be actually tittering&mdash;scarcely able to suppress their
+      laughter&mdash;at her obvious disgrace. On John Cross she fixed her
+      fearless eye, like that of some fallen angel, still braving the chastener,
+      whom he can not contend with. A strange strength&mdash;for even sin has
+      its strength for a season&mdash;came to her relief in that moment of
+      fiendish mockery. The strength of an evil spirit was accorded her. Her
+      heart once more swelled with pride. Her soul once more insisted on its
+      ascendency. She felt, though she did not say:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even as I am, overthrown, robbed of my treasure, I feel that I am
+      superior to these. I feel that I have strength against the future. If they
+      are pure and innocent, it is not because of their greater strength, but
+      their greater obscurity. If I am overthrown by the tempter, it was because
+      I was the more worthy object of overthrow. In their littleness they live:
+      if I am doomed to the shaft, at least it will be as the eagle is doomed;
+      it will be while soaring aloft&mdash;while aiming for the sun&mdash;while
+      grasping at the very bolt by which I am destroyed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the consolation offered by the twin-demons of pride and vanity.
+      The latter finds its aliment in the heart which it too completely
+      occupies, even from those circumstances which, in other eyes, make its
+      disgrace and weakness. The sermon which had touched her sin had not
+      subdued it. Perhaps no sermon, no appeal, however powerful and touching,
+      could at that moment have had power over her. The paroxysm of her first
+      consciousness of ruin had not yet passed off. The condition of mind was
+      not yet reached in which an appeal could be felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As in the case of physical disease, so with that of the mind and heart,
+      there is a period when it is neither useful nor prudent to administer the
+      medicines which are yet most necessary to safety. The judicious physician
+      will wait for the moment when the frame is prepared&mdash;when the pulse
+      is somewhat subdued&mdash;before he tries the most powerful remedy. The
+      excitement of the wrong which she had suffered was still great in her
+      bosom. It was necessary that she should have repose. That excitement was
+      maintained by the expectation that Stevens would yet make his appearance.
+      Her eye, at intervals, wandered over the assembly in search of him. The
+      demon at her elbow understood her quest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will not come,&rdquo; it said; &ldquo;you look in vain. The girls follow your
+      eyes; they behold your disappointment; they laugh at your credulity. If he
+      leads any to the altar, think you it will be one whom he could command at
+      pleasure without any such conditions&mdash;one who, in her wild passions
+      and disordered vanity, could so readily yield to his desires, without
+      demanding any corresponding sacrifices? Margaret, they laugh now at those
+      weaknesses of a mind which they once feared if not honored. They wonder,
+      now, that they could have been so deceived. If they do not laugh aloud,
+      Margaret, it is because they would spare your shame. Indeed, indeed, they
+      pity you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The head of the desperate, but still haughty woman, was now more proudly
+      uplifted, and her eyes shot forth yet fiercer fires of indignation. What a
+      conflict was going on in her bosom. Her cheeks glowed with the strife&mdash;her
+      breast heaved; with difficulty she maintained her seat inflexibly, and
+      continued, without other signs of discomposure, until the service was
+      concluded. Her step was more stately than ever as she walked from church;
+      and while her mother lingered behind to talk with Brother Cross, and to
+      exchange the sweetest speeches with the widow Thackeray and others, she
+      went on alone&mdash;seeing none, heeding none&mdash;dreading to meet any
+      face lest it should wear a smile and look the language in which the demon
+      at her side still dealt. HE still clung to her, with the tenacity of a
+      fiendish purpose. He mocked her with her shame, goading her, with dart
+      upon dart, of every sort of mockery. Truly did he mutter in her ears:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stevens has abandoned you. Never was child, before yourself, so silly as
+      to believe such a promise as he made you. Do you doubt?&mdash;do you still
+      hope? It is madness? Why came he not yesterday&mdash;last night&mdash;to-day?
+      He is gone. He has abandoned you. You are not only alone&mdash;you are
+      lost! lost for ever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tidings of this unsolicited attendant were confirmed the next day, by
+      the unsuspecting John Cross. He came to visit Mrs. Cooper and her daughter
+      among the first of his parishioners. He had gathered from the villagers
+      already that Stevens had certainly favored Miss Cooper beyond all the rest
+      of the village damsels. Indeed, it was now generally bruited that he was
+      engaged to her in marriage. Though the worthy preacher had very stoutly
+      resisted the suggestions of Mr. Calvert, and the story of Ned Hinkley, he
+      was yet a little annoyed by them; and he fancied that, if Stevens were,
+      indeed, engaged to Margaret, she, or perhaps the old lady, might relieve
+      his anxiety by accounting for the absence of his protege. The notion of
+      Brother John was, that, having resolved to marry the maiden, he had
+      naturally gone home to apprize his parents and to make the necessary
+      preparations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this conjecture brought with it a new anxiety. It, now, for the first
+      time, seemed something strange that Stevens had never declared to himself,
+      or to anybody else who his parents were&mdash;what they were&mdash;where
+      they were&mdash;what business they pursued; or anything about them. Of his
+      friends, they knew as little. The simple old man had never thought of
+      these things, until the propriety of such inquiries was forced upon him by
+      the conviction that they would now be made in vain. The inability to
+      answer them, when it was necessary that an answer should be found, was a
+      commentary upon his imprudence which startled the good old man not a
+      little. But, in the confident hope that a solution of the difficulty could
+      be afforded by the sweetheart or the mother, he proceeded to her cottage.
+      Of course, Calvert, in his communication to him, had forborne those darker
+      conjectures which he could not help but entertain; and his simple auditor,
+      unconscious himself of any thought of evil, had never himself formed any
+      such suspicions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper was in her chamber when Brother Cross arrived. She had
+      lost that elasticity of temper which would have carried her out at that
+      period among the hills in long rambles, led by those wild, wooing
+      companions, which gambol along the paths of poetic contemplation. The old
+      man opened his stores of scandal to Mrs. Cooper with little or no
+      hesitation. He told her all that Calvert had said, all that Ned Hinkley
+      had fancied himself to have heard, and all the village tattle touching the
+      engagement supposed to exist between Stevens and her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, Sister Cooper,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I believe nothing of this sort
+      against the youth. I should be sorry to think it of one whom I plucked as
+      a brand from the burning. I hold Brother Stevens to be a wise young man
+      and a pious; and truly I fear, as indeed I learn, that there is in the
+      mind of Ned Hinkley a bitter dislike to the youth, because of some quarrel
+      which Brother Stevens is said to have had with William Hinkley. This
+      dislike hath made him conceive evil things of Brother Stevens and to
+      misunderstand and to pervert some conversation which he hath overheard
+      which Stevens hath had with his companion. Truly, indeed, I think that
+      Alfred Stevens is a worthy youth of whom we shall hear a good account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I think so too, Brother Cross. Brother Stevens will be yet a burning
+      and a shining light in the church. There is a malice against him; and I
+      think I know the cause, Brother Cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! this will be a light unto our footsteps, Sister Cooper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou knowest, Brother Cross,&rdquo; resumed the old lady in a subdued tone but
+      with a loftier elevation of eyebrows and head&mdash;&ldquo;thou knowest the
+      great beauty of my daughter Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The maiden is comely, sister, comely among the maidens; but beauty is
+      grass. It is a flower which blooms at morning and is cut down in the
+      evening. It withereth on the stalk where it bloomed, until men turn from
+      it with sickening and with sorrow, remembering what it hath been. Be not
+      boastful of thy daughter's beauty, Sister Cooper, it is the beauty of
+      goodness alone which dieth not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But said I not, Brother Cross, of her wisdom, and her wit, as well as her
+      beauty?&rdquo; replied the old lady with some little pique. &ldquo;I was forgetful of
+      much, if I spoke only of the beauty of person which Margaret Cooper surely
+      possesseth, and which the eyes of blindness itself might see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dross, dross all, Sister Cooper. The wit of man is a flash which blindeth
+      and maketh dark; and the wisdom of man is a vain thing. The one crackleth
+      like thorns beneath the pot&mdash;the other stifleth the heart and keepeth
+      down the soul from her true flight. I count the wit and wisdom of thy
+      daughter even as I count her beauty. She hath all, I think&mdash;as they
+      are known to and regarded by men. But all is nothing. Beauty hath a day's
+      life like the butterfly; wit shineth like the sudden flash of the
+      lightning, leaving only the cloud behind it; and oh! for the vain wisdom
+      of man which makes him vain and unsteady&mdash;likely to falter&mdash;liable
+      to fall&mdash;rash in his judgment&mdash;erring in his aims&mdash;blind to
+      his duty&mdash;wilful in his weakness&mdash;insolent to his fellow&mdash;presumptuous
+      in the sight of God. Talk not to me of worldly wisdom. It is the foe to
+      prayer and meekness. The very fruit of the tree which brought sin and
+      death into the world. Thy daughter is fair to behold&mdash;very fair among
+      the maidens of our flock&mdash;none fairer, none so fair: God hath
+      otherwise blessed her with a bright mind and a quick intelligence; but I
+      think not that she is wise to salvation. No, no! she hath not yearned to
+      the holy places of the tabernacle, unless it be that Brother Stevens hath
+      been more blessed in his ministry than I!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he hath!&rdquo; exclaimed the mother. &ldquo;I tell you, Brother John, the heart
+      of Margaret Cooper is no longer what it was. It is softened. The toils of
+      Brother Stevens have not been in vain. Blessed young man, no wonder they
+      hate and defame him. He hath had a power over Margaret Cooper such as man
+      never had before; and it is for this reason that Bill Hinkley and Ned
+      conspired against him, first to take his life, and then to speak evil of
+      his deeds. They beheld the beauty of my daughter, and they looked on her
+      with famishing eyes. She sent them a-packing, I tell you. But this youth,
+      Brother Stevens, found favor in her heart. They beheld the two as they
+      went forth together. Ah! Brother John, it is the sweetest sight to behold
+      two young, loving people walk forth in amity&mdash;born, as it would seem,
+      for each other; both so tall, and young, and handsome; walking together
+      with such smiles, as if there was no sorrow in the world; as if there was
+      nothing but flowers and sweetness on the path; as if they could see
+      nothing but one another; and as if there were no enemies looking on. It
+      did my heart good to see them, Brother Cross; they always looked so happy
+      with one another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think, Sister Cooper, that Brother Stevens hath agreed to take
+      Margaret to wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hath not told me this yet, but in truth, I think it hath very nigh
+      come to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In her chamber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call her hither, Sister Cooper; let us ask of her the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper was summoned, and descended with slow steps and an
+      unwilling spirit to meet their visiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter,&rdquo; said the good old man, taking her hand, and leading her to a
+      seat, &ldquo;thou art, even as thy mother sayest, one of exceeding beauty. Few
+      damsels have ever met mine eyes with a beauty like to thine. No wonder the
+      young men look on thee with eyes of love; but let not the love of youth
+      betray thee. The love of God is the only love that is precious to the
+      heart of wisdom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus saying, the old man gazed on her with as much admiration as was
+      consistent with the natural coldness of his temperament, his years, and
+      his profession. His address, so different from usual, had a soothing
+      effect upon her. A sigh escaped her, but she said nothing. He then
+      proceeded to renew the history which had been given to him and which he
+      had already detailed to her mother. She heard him with patience, in spite
+      of all his interpolations from Scripture, his ejaculations, his running
+      commentary upon the narrative, and the numerous suggestive topics which
+      took him from episode to episode, until the story seemed interminably
+      mixed up in the digression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he came to that portion which related to the adventure of Ned
+      Hinkley, to his espionage, the conference of Stevens with his companion&mdash;then
+      she started&mdash;then her breathing became suspended, then quickened&mdash;then
+      again suspended&mdash;and then, so rapid in its rush, that her emotion
+      became almost too much for her powers of suppression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did suppress it, with a power, a resolution, not often paralleled
+      among men&mdash;still more seldom among women. After the first spasmodic
+      acknowledgment given by her surprise, she listened with comparative
+      calmness. She, alone, had the key to that conversation. She, alone, knew
+      its terrible signification. She knew that Ned Hinkley was honest&mdash;was
+      to be believed&mdash;that he was too simple, and too sincere, for any such
+      invention; and, sitting with hands clasped upon that chair&mdash;the only
+      attitude which expressed the intense emotion which she felt&mdash;she
+      gazed with unembarrassed eye upon the face of the speaker, while every
+      word which he spoke went like some keen, death-giving instrument into her
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole dreadful history of the villany of Stevens, her irreparable ruin&mdash;was
+      now clearly intelligible. The mocking devil at her elbow had spoken
+      nothing but the truth. She was indeed the poor victim of a crafty villain.
+      In the day of her strength and glory she had fallen&mdash;fallen, fallen,
+      fallen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why am I called to hear this?&rdquo; she demanded with singular composure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man and the mother explained in the same breath&mdash;that she
+      might reveal the degree of intercourse which had taken place between them,
+      and, if possible, account for the absence of her lover. That, in short,
+      she might refute the malice of enemies and establish the falsehood of
+      their suggestions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wish to know if I believe this story of Ned Hinkley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even so, my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! what is it you say, Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; demanded the preacher, &ldquo;you can not surely mean that Brother
+      Stevens hath been a wolf in sheep's clothing&mdash;that he hath been a
+      hypocrite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; thought Margaret Cooper&mdash;&ldquo;have I not been my own worst enemy&mdash;did
+      I not know him to be this from the first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her secret reflection remained, however, unspoken. She answered the demand
+      of John Cross without a moment's hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe that Alfred Stevens is all that he is charged to be&mdash;a
+      hypocrite&mdash;a wolf in sheep's clothing!&mdash;I see no reason to doubt
+      the story of Ned Hinkley. He is an honest youth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady was in consternation. The preacher aghast and confounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, Margaret,&rdquo; said the former, &ldquo;hath he not engaged himself to you?
+      Did he not promise&mdash;is he not sworn to be your husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already given you my belief. I see no reason to say anything more.
+      What more do you need? Is he not gone&mdash;fled&mdash;has he not failed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused abruptly, while a purple flush went over her face. She rose to
+      retire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret!&rdquo; exclaimed the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter!&rdquo; said John Cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak out what you know&mdash;tell us all&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! I will say no more. You know enough already. I tell you, I believe
+      Alfred Stevens to be a hypocrite and a villain. Is not that enough? What
+      is it to you whether he is so or not? What is it to me, at least? You do
+      not suppose that it is anything to me? Why should you? What should he be?
+      I tell you he is nothing to me&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing!
+      Villain or hypocrite, or what not&mdash;he is no more to me than the earth
+      on which I tread. Let me hear no more about him, I pray you. I would not
+      hear his name! Are there not villains enough in the world, that you should
+      think and speak of one only?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these vehement words she left the room, and hurried to her chamber.
+      She stopped suddenly before the mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is it thus!&rdquo; she exclaimed&mdash;&ldquo;and I am&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother by this time had followed her into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the meaning of this, Margaret?&mdash;tell me!&rdquo; cried the old
+      woman in the wildest agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should it be, mother? Look at me!&mdash;in my eyes&mdash;do they not
+      tell you? Can you not read?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see nothing&mdash;I do not understand you, Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! but you shall understand me! I thought my face would tell you
+      without my words. <i>I</i> see it there, legible enough, to myself. Look
+      again!&mdash;spare me if you can&mdash;spare your own ears the necessity
+      of hearing me speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You terrify me, Margaret&mdash;I fear you are out of your mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! that need not be your fear; nor, were it true, would it be a fear
+      of mine. It might be something to hope&mdash;to pray for. It might bring
+      relief. Hear me, since you will not see. You ask me why I believe Stevens
+      to be a villain. I KNOW it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! how know it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How! How should I know it? Well, I see that I must speak. Listen then.
+      You bade me seek and make a conquest of him, did you not? Do not deny it,
+      mother&mdash;you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if I did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I succeeded! Without trying, I succeeded! He declared to me his love&mdash;he
+      did!&mdash;he promised to marry me. He was to have married me yesterday&mdash;to
+      have met me in church and married me. John Cross was to have performed the
+      ceremony. Well! you saw me there&mdash;you saw me in white&mdash;the dress
+      of a bride!&mdash;Did he come? Did you see him there? Did you see the
+      ceremony performed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, surely not&mdash;you know without asking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know without asking!&mdash;surely I do!&mdash;but look you, mother&mdash;do
+      you think that conquests are to be made, hearts won, loves confessed,
+      pledges given, marriage-day fixed&mdash;do these things take place, as
+      matters of pure form? Is there no sensation&mdash;no agitation&mdash;no
+      beating and violence about the heart&mdash;in the blood&mdash;in the
+      brain! I tell you there is&mdash;a blinding violence, a wild, stormy,
+      sensation&mdash;fondness, forgetfulness, madness! I say, madness! madness!
+      madness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my daughter, what can all this mean? Speak calmly, be deliberate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Calm! deliberate! What a monster if I could be! But I am not mad now. I
+      will tell you what it means. It means that, in taking captive Alfred
+      Stevens&mdash;in winning a lover&mdash;securing that pious young man&mdash;there
+      was some difficulty, some peril. Would you believe it?&mdash;there were
+      some privileges which he claimed. He took me in his arms. Ha! ha! He held
+      me panting to his breast. His mouth filled mine with kisses&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more, do not say more, my child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, more! more! much more! I tell you&mdash;then came blindness and
+      madness, and I was dishonored&mdash;made a woman before I was made a wife!
+      Ruined, lost, abused, despised, abandoned! Ha! ha! ha! no marriage
+      ceremony. Though I went to the church. No bridegroom there, though he
+      promised to come. Preacher, church, bride, all present, yet no wedding.
+      Ha! ha! ha! How do I know!&mdash;Good reason for it, good reason&mdash;Ha!
+      ha!&mdash;ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The paroxysm, terminated in a convulsion. The unhappy girl fell to the
+      floor as if stricken in the forehead. The blood gushed from her mouth and
+      nostrils, and she lay insensible in the presence of the terrified and
+      miserable mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV. &mdash; THE FATES FIND THE DAGGER AND THE BOWL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a long time she lay without showing any signs of life. Her passions
+      rebelled against the restraint which her mind had endeavored to put upon
+      them. Their concentrated force breaking all bonds, so suddenly, was like
+      the terrific outburst of the boiling lava from the gorges of the frozen
+      mountain. Believing her dead, the mother rushed headlong into the highway,
+      rending the village with her screams. She was for the time a perfect
+      madwoman. The neighbors gathered to her assistance. That much-abused
+      woman, the widow Thackeray, was the first to come. Never was woman's
+      tenderness more remarkable than hers&mdash;never was woman's watch by the
+      bed of sickness and suffering&mdash;that watch which woman alone knows so
+      well how to keep&mdash;more rigidly maintained than by her! From the first
+      hour of that agony under which Margaret Cooper fell to earth insensible,
+      to the last moment in which her recovery was doubtful, that widow
+      Thackeray&mdash;whose passion for a husband had been described by Mrs.
+      Cooper as so very decided and evident&mdash;maintained her place by the
+      sick bed of the stricken girl with all the affection of a mother. Widow
+      Thackeray was a woman who could laugh merrily, but she could shed tears
+      with equal readiness. These were equally the signs of prompt feeling and
+      nice susceptibility; and the proud Margaret, and her invidious mother,
+      were both humbled by that spontaneous kindness for which, hitherto, they
+      had given the possessor so very little credit, and to which they were now
+      equally so greatly indebted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Medical attendance was promptly secured. Charlemont had a very clever
+      physician of the old school. He combined as was requisite in the forest
+      region of our country, the distinct offices of the surgeon and mediciner.
+      He was tolerably skilful in both departments. He found his patient in a
+      condition of considerable peril. She had broken a blood-vessel; and the
+      nicest care and closest attendance were necessary to her preservation. It
+      will not need that we should go through the long and weary details which
+      followed to her final cure. Enough, that she did recover. But for weeks
+      her chance was doubtful. She lay for that space of time, equally in the
+      arms of life and death. For a long period, she herself was unconscious of
+      her situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she came to know, the skill of her attendants derived very little aid
+      from her consciousness. Her mind was unfavorable to her cure; and this, by
+      the way, is a very important particular in the fortunes of the sick. To
+      despond, to have a weariness of life, to forbear hope as well as exertion,
+      is, a hundred to one, to determine against the skill of the physician.
+      Margaret Cooper felt a willingness to die. She felt her overthrow in the
+      keenest pangs of its shame; and, unhappily, the mother, in her madness,
+      had declared it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of her fall&mdash;of the triumph of the serpent&mdash;was now
+      the village property, and of course put an end to all further doubts on
+      the score of the piety of Brother Stevens; though, by way of qualification
+      of his offence, old Hinkley insisted that it was the fault of the poor
+      damsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;had tempted him&mdash;had thrown herself in his way&mdash;had
+      been brazen,&rdquo; and all that, of which so much is commonly said in all
+      similar cases. We, who know the character of the parties, and have traced
+      events from the beginning, very well know how little of this is true. Poor
+      Margaret was a victim before she was well aware of those passions which
+      made her so. She was the victim not of lust but of ambition. Never was
+      woman more unsophisticated&mdash;less moved by unworthy and sinister
+      design. She had her weaknesses&mdash;her pride, her vanity; and her
+      passions, which were tremendous, worked upon through these, very soon
+      effected her undoing. But, for deliberate purpose of evil&mdash;of any
+      evil of which her own intellect was conscious&mdash;the angels were not
+      more innocent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But mere innocence of evil design, in any one particular condition, is not
+      enough for security. We are not only to forbear evil; virtue requires that
+      we should be exercised for the purposes of good. She lacked the moral
+      strength which such exercises, constantly pursued, would have assured her.
+      She was a creature of impulse only, not of reflection. Besides, she was
+      ignorant of her particular weaknesses. She was weak where she thought
+      herself strong. This is always the error of a person having a very decided
+      will. The will is constantly mistaken for the power. She could not humble
+      herself, and in her own personal capacities&mdash;capacities which had
+      never before been subjected to any ordeal-trial&mdash;she relied for the
+      force which was to sustain her in every situation. Fancy a confident
+      country-girl&mdash;supreme in her own district over the Hobs and Hinnies
+      thereabouts&mdash;in conflict with the adroit man of the world, and you
+      have the whole history of Margaret Cooper, and the secret of her
+      misfortune. Let the girl have what natural talent you please, and the case
+      is by no means altered. She must fall if she seeks or permits the
+      conflict. She can only escape by flight. It is in consideration of this
+      human weakness, that we pray God, nightly, not to suffer us to be exposed
+      to temptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the personal resources of her own experience and mind failed Margaret
+      Cooper, as at some time or other they must fail all who trust only in
+      them, she had no further reliance. She had never learned to draw equal
+      strength and consolation from the sweet counsels of the sacred volume.
+      Regarding the wild raving and the senseless insanity, which are but too
+      frequently the language of the vulgar preacher, as gross ignorance and
+      debasing folly, she committed the unhappy error of confounding the
+      preacher with his cause. She had never been taught to make an habitual
+      reference to religion; and her own experience of life, had never forced
+      upon her those sage reflections which would have shown her that TRUE
+      religion is the very all of life, and without it life has nothing. The
+      humility of the psalmist, which was the real source of all the strength
+      allotted to the monarch minstrel, was an unread lesson with her; and never
+      having been tutored to refer to God, and relying upon her own proud mind
+      and daring imagination, what wonder that these frail reeds should pierce
+      her side while giving way beneath her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was this very confidence in her own strength&mdash;this fearlessness of
+      danger (and we repeat the lesson here, emphatically, by way of warning)&mdash;a
+      confidence which the possession of a quick and powerful mind naturally
+      enough inspires&mdash;that effected her undoing. It was not by the force
+      of her affections that she fell. THE AFFECTIONS ARE NOT APT TO BE STRONG
+      IN A WOMAN WHOSE MIND LEADS HER OUT FROM HER SEX!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seducer triumphed through the medium of her vanity. Her feeling of
+      self-assurance had been thus active from childhood, and conspicuous in all
+      her sports and employments. SHE HAD NEVER BEEN A CHILD HERSELF. SHE LED
+      ALWAYS IN THE PASTIMES OF HER PLAYMATES, MANY OF WHOM WERE OLDER THAN
+      HERSELF.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no fears when others trembled; and, if she did not, at any time,
+      so far transcend the bounds of filial duty as to defy the counsels of her
+      parents, it was certainly no less true that she never sought for, and
+      seldom seemed to need them. IT IS DANGEROUS WHEN THE WOMAN, THROUGH SHEER
+      CONFIDENCE IN HER OWN STRENGTH, VENTURES UPON THE VERGE OF THE MORAL
+      PRECIPICE. THEY VERY EXPERIMENTAL, WHERE THE PASSIONS ARE CONCERNED,
+      PROVES HER TO BE LOST.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper, confident in her own footsteps, soon learned to despise
+      every sort of guardianship. The vanity of her mother had not only
+      counselled and stimulated her own, but was of that gross and silly order,
+      as to make itself offensive to the judgment of the girl herself. This had
+      the effect of losing her all the authority of a parent; and we have
+      already seen, in the few instances where this authority took the shape of
+      counsel, that its tendency was to evil rather than to good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arts of Alfred Stevens had, in reality, been very few. It was only
+      necessary that he should read the character of his victim. This, as an
+      experienced worldling&mdash;experienced in such a volume&mdash;he was soon
+      very able to do. He saw enough to discover, that, while Margaret Cooper
+      was endowed by nature with an extraordinary measure of intellect, she was
+      really weak because of its possession. In due proportion to the degree of
+      exercise to which she subjected her mere mind&mdash;making that busy and
+      restless&mdash;was the neglect of her sensibilities&mdash;those nice
+      ANTENNAE OF THE HEART.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose instant touches, slightest pause,&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      teach the approach of the smallest forms of danger, however inoffensive
+      their shapes, however unobtrusive their advance. When the sensibilities
+      are neglected and suffered to fall into disrepute, they grow idle first,
+      and finally obtuse! even as the limb which you forbear to exercise loses
+      its muscle, and withers into worthlessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Alfred Stevens discovered this condition, his plan was simple enough.
+      He had only to stimulate her mind into bolder exercise&mdash;to conduct it
+      to topics of the utmost hardihood&mdash;to inspire that sort of moral
+      recklessness which some people call courage&mdash;which delights to sport
+      along the edge of the precipice, and to summon audacious spirits from the
+      great yawning gulfs which lie below. This practice is always pursued at
+      the expense of those guardian feelings which keep watch over the virtues
+      of the tender heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The analysis of subjects commonly forbidden to the sex, necessarily tends
+      to make dull those habitual sentinels over the female conduct. These
+      sentinels are instincts rather than principles. Education can take them
+      away, but does not often confer them. When, through the arts of Alfred
+      Stevens, Margaret Cooper was led to discuss, perhaps to despise, those
+      nice and seemingly purposeless barriers which society&mdash;having the
+      experience of ages for its authority&mdash;has wisely set up between the
+      sexes&mdash;she had already taken a large stride toward passing them. But
+      of this, which a judicious education would have taught her, she was wholly
+      ignorant. Her mind was too bold to be scrupulous; too adventurous to be
+      watchful; and if, at any moment, a pause in her progress permitted her to
+      think of the probable danger to her sex of such adventurous freedom, she
+      certainly never apprehended it in her own case. Such restraints she
+      conceived to be essential only for the protection of THE WEAK among her
+      sex. Her vanity led her to believe that she was strong; and the approaches
+      of the sapper were conducted with too much caution, with a progress too
+      stealthy and insensible, to startle the ear or attract the eye of the
+      unobservant, yet keen-eyed guardian of her citadel. An eagle perched upon
+      a rock, with wing outspread for flight, and an eye fixed upon the rolling
+      clouds through which it means to dart, is thus heedless of the coiled
+      serpent which lies beneath its feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bold eye of Margaret Cooper was thus heedless. Gazing upon the sun,
+      she saw not the serpent at her feet. It was not because she slept: never
+      was eye brighter, more far-stretching; never was mind more busy, more
+      active, than that of the victim at the very moment when she fell. It was
+      because she watched the remote, not the near&mdash;the region in which
+      there was no enemy, nothing but glory&mdash;and neglected that post which
+      is always in danger. Her error is that of the general who expends his army
+      upon some distant province, leaving his chief city to the assault and sack
+      of the invader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have dwelt somewhat longer upon the moral causes which, in our story,
+      have produced such cruel results, than the mere story itself demands; but
+      no story is perfectly moral unless the author, with a wholesome
+      commentary, directs the attention of the reader to the true weaknesses of
+      his hero, to the point where his character fails; to the causes of this
+      failure, and the modes in which it may be repaired or prevented. In this
+      way alone may the details of life and society be properly welded together
+      into consistent doctrine, so that instruction may keep pace with delight,
+      and the heart and mind be informed without being conscious of any of those
+      tasks which accompany the lessons of experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return now to our narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper lived! She might as well have died. This was HER thought,
+      at least. She prayed for death. Was it in mercy that her prayer was
+      denied? We shall see! Youth and a vigorous constitution successfully
+      resisted the attacks of the assailant. They finally obtained the victory.
+      After a weary spell of bondage and suffering, she recovered. But she
+      recovered only to the consciousness of a new affliction. All the
+      consequences of her fatal lapse from virtue have not yet been told. She
+      bore within her an indelible witness of her shame. She was destined to be
+      a mother without having been a wife!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, to her mother at least, was a more terrible discovery than the
+      former. She literally cowered and crouched beneath it. It was the WRITTEN
+      shame, rather than the actual, which the old woman dreaded. She had been
+      so vain, so criminally vain, of her daughter&mdash;she had made her so
+      constantly the subject of her brag&mdash;that, unwitting of having
+      declared the whole melancholy truth, in the first moment of her madness,
+      she shrank, with an unspeakable horror, from the idea that the little
+      world in which she lived should become familiar with the whole cruel
+      history of her overthrow. She could scarcely believe it herself though the
+      daughter, with an anguish in her eyes that left little to be told, had
+      herself revealed the truth. Her pride as well as her life, was linked with
+      the pride and the beauty of her child. She had shared in her constant
+      triumphs over all around her; and overlooking, as a fond, foolish mother
+      is apt to do, all her faults of temper or of judgment, she had learned to
+      behold nothing but her superiority. And now to see her fallen! a thing of
+      scorn, which was lately a thing of beauty!&mdash;the despised, which was
+      lately the worshipped and the wondered at! No wonder that her weak, vain
+      heart was crushed and humbled, and her head bowed in sorrow to the earth.
+      She threw herself upon the floor, and wept bitter and scalding tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daughter had none. Without sob or sigh, she stooped down and tenderly
+      assisted the old woman to rise. Why had she no tears? She asked herself
+      this question, but in vain. Her external emotions promised none. Indeed,
+      she seemed to be without emotions. A weariness and general indifference to
+      all things was now the expression of her features. But this was the
+      deceitful aspect of the mountain, on whose breast contemplation sits with
+      silence, unconscious of the tossing flame which within is secretly fusing
+      the stubborn metal and the rock. Anger was in her breast&mdash;feelings of
+      hate mingled up with shame&mdash;scorn of herself, scorn of all&mdash;feelings
+      of defiance and terror, striving at mastery; and, in one corner, a
+      brooding image of despair, kept from the brink of the precipice only by
+      the entreaties of some fiercer principle of hate. She felt life to be
+      insupportable. Why did she live? This question came to her repeatedly. The
+      demon was again at work beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Die!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;It is but a blow&mdash;a moment's pang&mdash;the driving
+      a needle into an artery&mdash;the prick of a pin upon the heart. Die! it
+      will save you from exposure&mdash;the shame of bringing into the world an
+      heir of shame! What would you live for? The doors of love, and fame, even
+      of society, are shut against you for ever. What is life to you now? a long
+      denial&mdash;a protracted draught of bitterness&mdash;the feeling of a
+      death-spasm carried on through sleepless years; perhaps, under a curse of
+      peculiar bitterness, carried on even into age! Die! you can not be so base
+      as to wish for longer life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The arguments of the demon were imposing. His suggestions seemed to
+      promise the relief she sought. Hers seemed the particular case where the
+      prayer is justified which invokes the mountains and the rocks upon the
+      head of the guilty. But the rock refused to fall, the mountain to cover
+      her shame, and its exposure became daily more and more certain. Death was
+      the only mode of escape from the mountain of pain which seemed to rest
+      upon her heart. The means of self-destruction were easy. With a spirit so
+      impetuous as hers, to imagine was to determine. She did determine. Yet,
+      even while making so terrible a resolve, a singular calm seemed to
+      overspread her soul. She complained of nothing&mdash;wished for nothing&mdash;sought
+      for nothing&mdash;trembled at nothing. A dreadful lethargy, which made the
+      old mother declaim as against a singular proof of hardihood, possessed her
+      spirit. Little did the still-idolizing mother conjecture how much that
+      lethargy concealed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment that Margaret Cooper conceived the idea of suicide, it
+      possessed all her mind. It became the one only thought. There were few
+      arguments against it, and these she rapidly dismissed or overcame. To
+      leave her mother in her old age was the first which offered itself; but
+      this became a small consideration when she reflected that the latter could
+      not, under any circumstances, require her assistance very long; and to
+      spare her the shame of public exposure was another consideration. The
+      evils of the act to herself were reduced with equal readiness to the
+      transition from one state to another by a small process, which, whether by
+      the name of stab or shot, was productive only of a momentary spasm; for,
+      though as fully persuaded of the soul's immortality as the best of us, the
+      unhappy girl, like all young free-thinkers, had persuaded herself that, in
+      dying by her own hands, she was simply exercising a discretionary power
+      under the conviction that her act in doing so was rendered by
+      circumstances a judicious one. The arguments by which she deceived herself
+      are sufficiently commonplace, and too easy of refutation, to render
+      necessary any discussion of them here. Enough to state the fact. She
+      deliberately resolved upon the fatal deed which was to end her life and
+      agony together, and save her from that more notorious exposure which must
+      follow the birth of that child of sin whom she deemed it no more than a
+      charity to destroy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an old pair of pistols in the house, which had been the property
+      of her father. She had often, with a boldness not common to the sex,
+      examined these pistols. They were of brass, well made, of English
+      manufacture, with common muzzles, and a groove for a sight instead of the
+      usual drop. They were not large, but, in a practised hand, were good
+      travelling-pistols, being capable of bringing down a man at twelve paces,
+      provided there was anything like deliberation in the holder. Often and
+      again had she handled these weapons, poising them and addressing them at
+      objects as she had seen her father do. On one occasion she had been made
+      to discharge them, under his own instructions; she had done so without
+      terror. She recalled these events. She had seen the pistols loaded. She
+      did not exactly know what quantity of powder was necessary for a charge,
+      but she was in no mood to calculate the value of a thimbleful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Availing herself of the temporary absence of her mother, she possessed
+      herself of these weapons. Along with them, in the same drawer, she found a
+      horn which still contained a certain quantity of powder. There were
+      bullets in the bag with the pistols which precisely fitted them. There,
+      too, was the mould&mdash;there were flints&mdash;the stock was
+      sufficiently ample for all her desires; and she surveyed the prize, in her
+      own room, with the look of one who congratulates himself in the conviction
+      that he holds in his hand the great medicine which is to cure his disease.
+      In her chamber she loaded the weapons, and, with such resignation as
+      belonged to her philosophy, she waited for the propitious moment when she
+      might complete the deed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV. &mdash; FOLDING THE ROBES ABOUT HER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was the sabbath and a very lovely day. The sun never shone more
+      brightly in the heavens; and as Margaret Cooper surveyed its mellow orange
+      light, lying, like some blessed spirit, at sleep upon the hills around
+      her, and reflected that she was about to behold it for the last time, her
+      sense of its exceeding beauty became more strong than ever. Now that she
+      was about to lose it for ever, it seemed more beautiful than it had ever
+      been before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a natural effect, which the affections confer upon the objects
+      which delight and employ them. Even a temporary privation increases the
+      loveliness of the external nature. How we linger and look. That shade
+      seems so inviting; that old oak so venerable! That rock&mdash;how often
+      have we sat upon it, evening and morning, and mused strange, wild, sweet
+      fancies! It is an effort to tear one's self away&mdash;it is almost like
+      tearing away from life itself; so many living affections feel the rending
+      and the straining&mdash;so many fibres that have their roots in the heart,
+      are torn and lacerated by the separation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Margaret! she looked from her window upon the bright and beautiful
+      world around her. Strange that sorrow should dwell in a world so bright
+      and beautiful! Stranger still, that, dwelling in such a world, it should
+      not dwell there by sufferance only and constraint! that it should have
+      such sway&mdash;such privilege. That it should invade every sanctuary and
+      leave no home secure. Ah! but the difference between mere sorrow and
+      guilt! Poor Margaret could not well understand that! If she could&mdash;but
+      no! She was yet to learn that the sorrows of the innocent have a healing
+      effect. That they produce a holy and ennobling strength, and a juster
+      appreciation of those evening shades of life which render the lights
+      valuable and make their uses pure. It is only guilt which finds life
+      loathsome. It is only guilt that sorrow weakens and enslaves. Virtue grows
+      strong beneath the pressure of her enemies, and with such a power as was
+      fabled of the king of Pontus, turns the most poisonous fruits of earth
+      into the most wholesome food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, even in the heart of Margaret Cooper, where the sense of the
+      beautiful was strong, the loveliness of the scene was felt. She drank in,
+      with strange satisfaction&mdash;a satisfaction to which she had long been
+      a stranger&mdash;its soft and inviting beauties. They did not lessen her
+      sense of suffering, perhaps, but they were not without their effect in
+      producing other moods, which, once taken in company with the darker ones
+      of the soul, may, in time, succeed in alleviating them. Never, indeed, had
+      the prospect been more calm and wooing. Silence, bending from the hills,
+      seemed to brood above the valley even as some mighty spirit, at whose
+      bidding strife was hushed, and peace became the acknowledged divinity of
+      all. The humming voices of trade and merriment were all hushed in homage
+      to the holy day; and if the fitful song of a truant bird, that presumed
+      beside the window of Margaret Cooper, did break the silence of the scene,
+      it certainly did not disturb its calm. The forest minstrel sung in a
+      neighboring tree, and she half listened to his lay. The strain seemed to
+      sympathize with her sadness. She thought upon her own songs, which had
+      been of such a proud spirit; and how strange and startling seemed the idea
+      that with her, song would soon cease for ever. The song of the bird would
+      be silent in her ears, and her own song! What song would be hers? What
+      strain would she take up? In what abode&mdash;before what altars?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This train of thought, which was not entirely lost, however, was broken,
+      for the time, by a very natural circumstance. A troop of the village
+      damsels came in sight, on their way to church. She forgot the song of
+      birds, as her morbid spirit suggested to her the probable subject of their
+      meditations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have seen me,&rdquo; she muttered to herself as she hastily darted from
+      the window. &ldquo;Ay, they exult. They point to me&mdash;me, the abandoned&mdash;the
+      desolate&mdash;soon to be the disgraced! But, no! no! that shall never be.
+      They shall never have that triumph, which is always so grateful a subject
+      of regale to the mean and envious!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice of her mother from below disturbed these unhappy meditations.
+      The old lady was prepared for church, and was surprised to find that
+      Margaret had not made her toilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! don't you mean to go, Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to-day, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, and the new preacher too, that takes the place of John Cross! They
+      say he makes a most heavenly prayer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the inducement of the heavenly prayer of the new preacher was not
+      enough for Margaret. The very suggestion of a new preacher would have been
+      conclusive against her compliance. The good old lady was too eager herself
+      to get under way to waste much time in exhortation, and hurrying off, she
+      scarcely gave herself time to answer the inquiry of the widow Thackeray,
+      at her own door, after the daughter's health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go in and see her,&rdquo; said the lighthearted but truehearted woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, do, ma'am&mdash;-if you please! She'll be glad to see you. I'll hurry
+      on, as I see Mrs. Hinkley just ahead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The widow Thackeray looked after her with a smile, which was exchanged for
+      another of different character when she found herself in the chamber of
+      Margaret. She put her arms about the waist of the sufferer; kissed her
+      cheeks, and with the tenderest solicitude spoke of her health and comfort.
+      To her, alone, with the exception of her mother&mdash;according to the
+      belief of Margaret&mdash;her true situation had been made known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;how should I feel&mdash;how should I be! You should
+      know. I am as one cursed&mdash;doomed, hopeless of anything but death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! do not speak of death, Margaret,&rdquo; said the other kindly. &ldquo;We must all
+      die, I know, but that does not reconcile me any more to the thought. It
+      brings always a creeping horror through my veins. Think of life&mdash;talk
+      of life only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say that death is life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it is, I believe, Margaret; and now I think of it, dress yourself and
+      go to church where we may hear something on this subject to make us wiser
+      and better. Come, my dear&mdash;let us go to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can not&mdash;not to-day, dear Mrs. Thackeray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Margaret, why not? It is to the church, of all places, you should now
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! to be stared at? To see the finger of scorn pointing at me wherever
+      I turn? To hear the whispered insinuation? To be conscious only of sneer
+      and sarcasm on every hand? No, no, dear Mrs. Thackeray, I can not go for
+      this. Feeling this, I should neither pray for myself, nor find benefit
+      from the prayers of others. Nay, THEY would not pray. They would only
+      mock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, these thoughts are very sinful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So they are, but I can not think of any better. They can not but be
+      sinful since they are mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are not wedded to sin, dearest. Such thoughts can give you no
+      pleasure. Come with me to church! Come and pray! Prayer will do you good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather pray here. Let me remain. I will try to go out among the
+      hills when you are all engaged in church, and will pray there. Indeed I
+      must. I must pray then and pray there, if prayer is ever to do me good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The church is the better place, Margaret. One prays better where one sees
+      that all are praying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But when I KNOW that they are not praying! When I know that envy is in
+      their hearts, and malice, and jealousy and suspicion&mdash;that God is not
+      in their hearts, but their fellow; and not him with friendly and fond, but
+      with spiteful and deceitful thoughts!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Margaret, how can you know this? Judge not lest ye be judged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It matters not, dear Mrs. Thackeray. God is here, or there. He will be
+      among the hills if anywhere. I will seek him there. If I can command my
+      thoughts anywhere, it will be in the woods alone. In the church I can not.
+      Those who hate me are there&mdash;and their looks of hate would only move
+      my scorn and defiance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, you do our people wrong. You do yourself wrong. None hate you&mdash;none
+      will point to you, or think of your misfortune; and if they did, it is
+      only what you might expect, and what you must learn patiently to bear, as
+      a part of the punishment which God inflicts on sin. You must submit,
+      Margaret, to the shame as you have submitted to the sin. It is by
+      submission only that you can be made strong. The burden which you are
+      prepared to bear meekly, becomes light to the willing spirit. Come, dear
+      Margaret, I will keep with you, sit by you&mdash;show you, and all, that I
+      forget your sin and remember only your suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The good widow spoke with the kindest tones. She threw her arms around the
+      neck of the desolate one, and kissed her with the affection of a sister.
+      But the demon of pride was uppermost. She withstood entreaty and embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can not go with you. I thank you, truly thank you, dear Mrs. Thackeray,
+      but I can not go. I have neither the courage nor the strength.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will come&mdash;the courage and the strength&mdash;only try. God is
+      watchful to give us help the moment he sees that we really seek his
+      assistance. By prayer, Margaret&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will pray, but I must pray alone. Among the hills I will pray. My
+      prayer will not be less acceptable offered among his hills. My voice will
+      not remain unheard, though no chorus swells its appeal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, this is pride.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! go with me, and pray for humility.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My prayer would rather be for death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say not so, Margaret&mdash;this is impiety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, death!&mdash;the peace, the quiet of the grave&mdash;of a long sleep&mdash;an
+      endless sleep&mdash;where the vulture may no longer gnaw the heart, nor
+      the fire burn within the brain! For these I must pray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, thus speaking, the unhappy woman smote her throbbing head with
+      violent hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shocking thought! But you do not believe in such a sleep? Surely,
+      Margaret, you believe in life eternal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would I did not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Margaret!&mdash;but you are sick; you are very feverish. Your eyeballs
+      glare like coals of fire; your face seems charged with blood. I am afraid
+      you are going to have another attack, like the last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be not afraid. I have no such fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will sit with you, at least,&rdquo; said the kind-hearted woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, that I must positively forbid, Mrs. Thackeray; I will not suffer it.
+      I will not sit with YOU. Go you to church. You will be late. Do not waste
+      your time on me. I mean to ramble among the hills this morning. THAT, I
+      think, will do me more good than anything else. There, I am sure&mdash;there
+      only&mdash;I will find peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The worthy widow shook her head doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am sure of it,&rdquo; said Margaret. &ldquo;You will see. Peace, peace&mdash;the
+      repose of the heart&mdash;the slumber of the brain!&mdash;I shall find all
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Thackeray, finding her inflexible, rose to depart, but with some
+      irresoluteness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would let me walk with you, Margaret&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no!&mdash;dear Mrs. Thackeray&mdash;I thank you very much; but, with
+      a mood such as mine, I shall be much better alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you are resolved&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am resolved! never more so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words were spoken in tones which might have startled a suspicious
+      mind. But the widow was none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo; she said, kissing her at parting. &ldquo;I will see you when I
+      come from church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo; said Margaret, with a significant but sad smile. Then,
+      suddenly rising, she exclaimed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me kiss you, dear Mrs. Thackeray, and thank you again, before you go.
+      You have been very kind to me, very kind, and you have my thanks and
+      gratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Thackeray was touched by her manner. This was the first time that the
+      proud spirit of Margaret Cooper had ever offered such an acknowledgment.
+      It was one that the gentle and unremitting kindnesses of the widow amply
+      deserved. After renewing her promise to call on her return from church,
+      Mrs. Thackeray took her departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper was once more alone. When she heard the outer door shut,
+      she then threw herself upon the bed, and gave way to the utterance of
+      those emotions which, long restrained, had rendered her mind a terrible
+      anarchy. A few tears, but very few, were wrung from her eyes; but she
+      groaned audibly, and a rapid succession of shivering-fits passed through
+      her frame, racking the whole nervous system, until she scarcely found
+      herself able to rise from the couch where she had thrown herself. A
+      strong, determined will alone moved her, and she rose, after a lapse of
+      half an hour, to the further prosecution of her purpose. Her temporary
+      weakness and suffering of frame had no effect upon her resolves. She
+      rather seemed to be strengthened in them. This strength enabled her to sit
+      down and dictate a letter to her mother, declaring her intention, and
+      justifying it by such arguments as were presented by the ingenious demon
+      who assists always in the councils of the erring heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She placed this letter in her bosom, that it might be found upon her
+      person. It was curious to observe, next, that she proceeded to tasks which
+      were scarcely in unison with the dreadful deed she meditated. She put her
+      chamber in nice order. Her books, of which she had a tolerably handsome
+      collection for a private library in our forest-country, she arranged and
+      properly classed upon their shelves. Then she made her toilet with unusual
+      care. It was for the last time. She gazed upon the mirror, and beheld her
+      own beauties with a shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she thought, though she gave no expression to the thought, &ldquo;to be so
+      beautiful, yet fail!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a reflection to touch any heart with sorrow. Her dress was of plain
+      white; she wore no ornament&mdash;not even a riband. Her hair, which was
+      beautifully long and thick, was disposed in a clubbed mass upon her head,
+      very simply but with particular neatness; and, when all was done,
+      concealing the weapon of death beneath a shawl which she wrapped around
+      her, she left the house, and stole away unobserved along the hills, in the
+      seclusion and sacred silence of which she sought to avoid the evil
+      consequences of one crime by the commission of another far more heinous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI. &mdash; SUSPENSE AND AGONY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the risk of seeming monotonous, we must repeat the reflection made in
+      our last chapter, that the things we are about to lose for ever seem
+      always more valuable in the moment of their loss. They acquire a newer
+      interest in our eyes at such a time, possibly under the direction of some
+      governing instinct which is intended to render us tenacious of life to the
+      very last. Privation teaches us much more effectually than possession the
+      value of all human enjoyments; and the moralist has more than once drawn
+      his sweetest portraits of liberty from the gloom and the denials of a
+      dungeon. How eloquent of freedom is he who yearns for it in vain! How
+      glowing is that passion which laments the lost!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To one dying, as we suppose few die, in the perfect possession of their
+      senses, how beautiful must seem the fading hues of the sunlight,
+      flickering along the walls of a chamber! how heavenly the brief glimpses
+      of the blue sky through the half-opened window! how charming the green bit
+      of foliage that swings against the pane! how cheering and unwontedly sweet
+      and balmy the soft, sudden gust of the sweet south, breathing up from the
+      flowers, and stirring the loose drapery around the couch! How can we part
+      with these without tears? how reflect, without horror, upon the close
+      coffin, the damp clod, the deep hollows of the earth in which we are to be
+      cabined? Oh, with what earnestness, at such a moment, must the wholly
+      conscious spirit pray for life! now greedily will he drink the nauseous
+      draught in the hope to secure its boon! how fondly will he seize upon
+      every chimera, whether of his own or of another's fancy, in order to gain
+      a little respite&mdash;in order still to keep within the grasp of mind and
+      sight, these lovely agents of earth and its Master, which, in our day of
+      strength and exultation, we do not value at one half their worth! And how
+      full of dread and horror must be that first awful conviction which assures
+      him that the struggle is in vain&mdash;that the last remedy is tried&mdash;that
+      nothing is left him now but despair&mdash;despair and death! Then it is
+      that Christianity comes to his relief. If he believes, he gains by his
+      loss. Its godlike promise assures him then that the things which his
+      desires make dear, his faith has rendered immortal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth of many of these reflections made their way into the mind of
+      Margaret Cooper, as she pursued the well-known path along the hills. She
+      observed the objects along the route more narrowly than ever. She was
+      taking that path for the last time. Her eyes would behold these objects no
+      more. How often had she pursued the same route with Alfred Stevens! But
+      then she had not seen these things; she had not observed these thousand
+      graces and beauties of form and shadow which now seemed to crowd around,
+      challenging her regard and demanding her sympathies. Then she had seen
+      nothing but him. The bitterness which this reflection occasioned made her
+      hurry her footsteps; but there was an involuntary shudder that passed
+      through her frame, when, in noting the strange beauty of the path, she
+      reflected that it would be trodden by her for the last time. Her breathing
+      became quickened by the reflection. She pressed forward up the hills. The
+      forests grew thick around her&mdash;deep, dim, solemn, and inviting. The
+      skies above looked down in little blessed blue tufts, through the crowding
+      tree-tops. The long vista of the woods led her onward in wandering
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To fix these thoughts&mdash;to keep them from wandering! This was a
+      difficulty. Margaret Cooper strove to do so, but she could not. Never did
+      her mind seem such a perfect chaos&mdash;so full of confused and confusing
+      objects and images. Her whole life seemed to pass in review before her.
+      All her dreams of ambition, all the struggles of her genius! Were these to
+      be thrown away? Were these all to be wasted? Was her song to be unheard?
+      Was her passionate and proud soul to have no voice? If death is terrible
+      to man, it is terrible, not as a pang, but as an oblivion; and to the soul
+      of genius, oblivion is a soul-death, and its thought is a source of
+      tenfold terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But of what avail were life to me now? Even should I live,&rdquo; said the
+      wretched woman, &ldquo;would it matter more to the ambition which I have had,
+      and to the soul which flames and fevers within me? Who would hearken to
+      the song of the degraded? Who, that heard the story of my shame, would
+      listen to the strains of my genius? Say that its utterance is even as
+      proud as my own vanity of heart would esteem it&mdash;say that no plaint
+      like mine had ever touched the ear or lifted the heart of humanity! Alas!
+      of what avail! The finger of scorn would be uplifted long before the voice
+      of applause. The sneer and sarcasm of the worldling would anticipate the
+      favoring judgment of the indulgent and the wise. Who would do justice to
+      my cause? Who listen? Alas! the voice of genius would be of little avail
+      speaking from the lips of the dishonored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the talent which I have, and the ambition which still burns within me,
+      life then can bring nothing&mdash;no exercise&mdash;no fruition. Suppose,
+      then, that the talent is left to slumber&mdash;the ambition stifled till
+      it has no further longings! Will life yield anything to the mere creature
+      of society&mdash;to my youth&mdash;to my beauty&mdash;to my sense of
+      delight&mdash;if still there be any such sense left to me? Shall I be less
+      the creature of social scorn, because I have yielded my ambition&mdash;because
+      I have forborne the employment of those glorious gifts which Heaven in its
+      bounty has allotted me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! no! am I not a woman, one of that frail, feeble sex, whose name is
+      weakness?&mdash;of whom, having no strength, man yet expects the proofs of
+      the most unyielding&mdash;of a firmness which he himself can not exercise&mdash;of
+      a power of self-denial and endurance of which he exhibits no example. If I
+      weep, he smiles at my weakness. If I stifle my tears, he denounces my
+      unnatural hardihood. If I am cold and unyielding, I am masculine and
+      neglected&mdash;if I am gentle and pliant, my confidence is abused and my
+      person dishonored. What can society, which is thus exacting, accord to me,
+      then, as a mere woman? What shame will it not thrust upon me&mdash;a woman&mdash;and
+      as I am?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life then promises me nothing. The talent which I have, lies within me
+      idle and without hope of use. The pure name of the woman is lost to me for
+      ever. Shame dogs my footsteps. Scorn points its finger. Life, and all that
+      it brings to others&mdash;love, friends, fame, fortune&mdash;which are the
+      soul of life&mdash;these are lost to me for ever. The moral death is here
+      already. The mere act of dying, is simply the end of a strife, and a
+      breathing and an agony. That is all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The day became overcast. A cloud obscured the sunlight. The blue tufts of
+      sky no longer looked downward through the openings of the trees. The
+      scene, dim and silent before, became unusually dark. The aspect of nature
+      seemed congenial with the meditated deed. She had reasoned herself into
+      its commission, and she reproached herself mentally with her delay. Any
+      self-suggestion of an infirmity of purpose, with a nature such as hers,
+      would have produced precipitation. She turned down a slight gorge among
+      the hills where the forest was more close. She knelt beneath a tree and
+      laid down her pistol at its foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knelt&mdash;strange contradiction!&mdash;she knelt for the purposes of
+      prayer. But she could not pray. It would seem that she attributed this
+      effort to the sight of the pistols, and she put them behind her without
+      changing her position. The prayer, if she made any, was internal; and, at
+      all events it did not seem to be satisfactory. Yet, before it was ended,
+      she started with an expression of painful thought upon her face. The voice
+      of her reason had ceased its utterance. The voice of her conscience,
+      perhaps, had been unheard; but there was yet another voice to be heard
+      which was more potent than all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the mother's voice!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She placed her hand upon her side with a spasmodic effort. The quickening
+      of a new life within her, made that new voice effectual. She threw herself
+      on the ground and wept freely. For the first time she wept freely. The
+      tears were those of the mother. The true fountain of tears had been
+      touched. That first throb of the innocent pledge of guilty passion subdued
+      the fiend. She could have taken her own life, but dared not lift the
+      deadly weapon against that. The arm of the suicide&mdash;was arrested. She
+      groaned, she wept, bitterly and freely. She was at once feebler and more
+      strong. Feebler, as regarded her late resolution; stronger as regarded the
+      force of her affections, the sweet humanities, not altogether subdued
+      within her heart. The slight pulsation of that infant in her womb had been
+      more effectual than the voice of reason, or conscience, or feminine dread.
+      The maternal feeling is, perhaps, the most imperious of all those which
+      gather in the heart of woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper, however, had not altogether resolved against the deed.
+      She only could not do it there and then. Her wretched determination was
+      not wholly surrendered, but it was touched, enfeebled; and with the
+      increasing powers of reflection, the impetuosity of the will became
+      naturally lessened. Those few glimpses along the roadside which had made
+      her sensible to the beauties she was about to lose, had prepared her mind
+      to act in counteraction of her impulse; and the event which had brought
+      into play the maternal instinct, naturally helped the cause of reason in
+      her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, with the erring pride of youth she reproached herself with her
+      infirmity of purpose. She resolved to change her ground, as if the
+      instinct which had been awakened in one spot would not everywhere pursue
+      her. Time was gained, and in such cases, to gain time is everything.
+      Perhaps no suicide would ever take place if the individual would wait ten
+      minutes. The soul takes its color from the cloud, and changes its moods as
+      often. It is one of the best lessons to the young, to wait! wait! wait!
+      One of the surest signs of strength is where the individual waits
+      patiently and makes no complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper changed her ground. The spot was a wild one. A broken
+      ledge of rock was at her feet, and just below it ran a dark, narrow
+      winding footpath half-obscured by the undergrowth. Here she once more
+      proceeded to nerve her mind for the commission of the deed, but she had
+      not been there an instant when she was surprised to hear the sound of
+      voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was unusual. Who could they be? The villagers were not apt to stray
+      from church-service whenever a preacher was to be found, and there was a
+      new one, and consequently a new attraction, that day, for the spiritual
+      hungry of Charlemont. The path below was seldom trodden except by herself
+      and an occasional sportsman. The idea that entered her mind was, that her
+      purpose had been suspected, and that she was pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this idea, she placed the pistol to her breast. She had already
+      cocked the weapon. Her finger was on the trigger. But the tones of another
+      voice reached her ears from below. They were those of a woman&mdash;sweet,
+      musical, and tender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A new light broke in upon her mind. This was the language of love. And who
+      were these new lovers in Charlemont? Could it be that the voice of the
+      male speaker was that of Stevens? Something in the tone sounded like it,
+      Involuntarily, with this impression, the weapon was turned from her own
+      bosom, and addressed in the direction in which the persons below were
+      approaching. A sudden, joyous feeling touched her soul. The thought to
+      destroy the criminal by whom she had been destroyed was a source of
+      exultation. She felt that she could do it. Both pistols were in her hand.
+      The pathway was not more than twenty paces distant; and her nerves, for
+      the first time, braced to an unusual tension, trembled with the new
+      excitement in her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intruders continued to approach. Their voices became more distinct,
+      and Margaret Cooper was soon undeceived as to one of them being that of
+      Alfred Stevens. She was compelled to lie close, that she might not betray
+      her position and purpose. The male speaker was very urgent; the voice
+      seemed that of a stranger. That of the female was not so clearly
+      distinguishable, yet it seemed more familiar to the unintentional
+      listener.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something of feminine curiosity now entered the bosom of Margaret Cooper.
+      Crouching where she was, she deposited the pistols at her feet. She
+      remained breathlessly, for the slightest movement would have revealed her
+      to the persons who were now just below. They passed close beneath the
+      place of her concealment, and she soon discovered that they were lovers;
+      and what their language was, even if she had not heard it, might have been
+      conjectured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was a very pretty brunette of Charlemont&mdash;a sweet, retiring
+      damsel of her own age, named Rivers&mdash;whom she knew only slightly. She
+      was a shy, gentle, unpresuming girl, whom, for this reason, perhaps,
+      Margaret had learned to look upon without dislike or scorn. Her companion
+      was a youth whom Margaret had known when a lad, but who had been absent on
+      the Mississippi for two years. His tall and masculine but well-made and
+      graceful person sufficiently accounted for, while it justified, the taste
+      of the maiden. He was a youth of fine, frank, manly countenance. His garb
+      was picturesque, that of a bold border-hunter, with hunting-frock of
+      yellow buckskin, and Indian leggings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl looked up to him with an expression at once of eagerness and
+      timidity. Confidence and maiden bashfulness spoke equally in the delight
+      which glowed upon her features. The bright eyes and sun-burned features of
+      the youth were flushed with the feeling of happy triumph and assuring
+      love. The relation of the two was sufficiently evident from their looks,
+      even had they no other language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What were the emotions of Margaret Cooper as she looked down upon this
+      pair? At first she thought, as will most persons: &ldquo;Surely there is nothing
+      in nature so lovely as the union of two&mdash;fond, devoted hearts. The
+      picture is one equally of moral and physical beauty. The slight, fragile,
+      depending damsel, hanging in perfect confidence on the arm of the manly,
+      lofty, and exulting youth&mdash;looking up into his eyes in hope, while he
+      returns the gaze with pride and fondness! Unconscious of all things but
+      the love which to them is life and all things besides, they move along the
+      forest way and know not its solitude; they linger and loiter along its
+      protracted paths, and see not their length; they cling together through
+      the lengthened hours, and fancy they have lost no time; they hear each
+      other's voices, and believe that life is all music and delight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While Margaret Cooper looked down and heard the pleadings and promises of
+      the youth, and beheld the sweet emotions of his companion, engaged in a
+      pleasant struggle between her hopes and misgivings, she scarcely
+      restrained herself from rising where she was and crying aloud&mdash;like
+      another Cassandra, not to be believed: &ldquo;Beware! beware!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the warning of Margaret Cooper would have been unnecessary. The girl
+      was not only free from danger, but she was superior to it. She had the
+      wholesome fear of doing wrong too strongly impressed upon her by education&mdash;she
+      had too little confidence in herself&mdash;was too well assured of her own
+      weakness&mdash;to suffer herself, even for a moment, to depart, in either
+      thought or deed, from those quiet but stern proprieties of conduct which
+      are among the best securities of the young. While she looked in her
+      lover's face with confidence, and held his arm with the grasp of one who
+      is sure of a right to do so, there was an air of childish simplicity in
+      her manner which was wholly at variance with wild passions and improper
+      fancies. While the hunter maintained her on his arm, and looked down into
+      her eyes with love, his glance was yet as respectful, as unexpressive of
+      presumption, as her own. Had the eyes of all Charlemont been looking on,
+      they would have beheld nothing in the conduct of either which could have
+      incurred the censure of the most becoming delicacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keen was the emotion and bitter was the thought which worked in the mind
+      of Margaret Cooper. She looked on the deportment of that young maiden,
+      whose intellect at another day she would have despised, with envy and
+      regret. Truer thoughts and feelings came to her as she listened to the
+      innocent but fond dialogue between the unconscious pair. The hunter was
+      pursuing an erratic life of enterprise and industry, then very common
+      among the western youth. He had been down upon the Mississippi, seeking
+      his fortune in such adventures as make border-life in our country
+      something like the more civilized life of the middle ages. He had returned
+      after a long absence, to claim the bride whose affections he had won long
+      before he had departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had knight-errant been more true to his mistress. Her image had been
+      his talisman as well against danger from without, as against the demon
+      within. It had never left his mind, and he now returned for his reward. He
+      had returned to Charlemont just before the church service had begun, and,
+      being unprepared to go thither, had found no difficulty in persuading his
+      sweetheart to give the hour of morning service to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mixed up with his professions of love was the story of his wanderings.
+      Never were adventures more interesting to any auditor. Never was auditor
+      more easily moved by the transitions of the tale from tears to smiles, and
+      from smiles again to tears. His risks and rewards; his defeats and
+      successes; his wild adventures by fell and flood&mdash;not perhaps so
+      perilous as those of Othello, but such as proved he had the soul to
+      encounter the worst in Othello's experience, and maintain himself as well&mdash;drew
+      largely on the maiden's wonder and delight, increased her tenderness and
+      tremors, and made her quite as devoted to her hero as ever was Desdemona
+      to her dusky chief. As they went from hearing below, the manner in which
+      the hunter concluded his narrative provided a sufficient test for the
+      faith of his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Selina, you see all the risks and the dangers. There's work and
+      perhaps trouble for you to go down with me along the Choctaw borders. But
+      if there's work, I am the man to do my own share, and help you out in
+      yours; and, if there's trouble, here's the breast to stand it first, and
+      here's the arm to drive it back, so that it'll never trouble yours. No
+      danger shall come to you, so long as I can stand up between it and you. If
+      so be that you love me as you say, there's one way to show it: you'll soon
+      make up your mind to go with me. If you don't, why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you know I do love you, John&mdash;&rdquo; murmured the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I believe it? Well, if what you say means what it should, you're
+      ready. Here's my hand, and all that it's good for. It can work for you and
+      fight for you, Selina, and it's yours etarnally, with all that I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hand of the girl was silently put into that of the speaker. The tears
+      were in her eyes; but, if she made any other answer, it was unheard by
+      Margaret Cooper. The rustic pair moved from sight even as they spoke, and
+      the desolate woman once more remained alone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII. &mdash; SHAME AND DEATH&mdash;THE OATH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper was at length permitted to emerge from the place of her
+      concealment. The voices of the lovers were lost, as well as their forms,
+      in the wooded distance. Dreaming, like children as they were, of life and
+      happiness, they had wandered off, too happy to fancy for a moment that the
+      world contained, in its wide, vast bosom, one creature half so wretched as
+      she who hung above them, brooding, like some wild bird of the cliff, over
+      the storm which had robbed her of her richest plumage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sank back into the woods. She no longer had the heart to commit the
+      meditated crime. This purpose had left her mind. It had given place to
+      another, however, scarcely less criminal. We have seen her, under the
+      first impression that the stranger whose voice she heard was Alfred
+      Stevens, turning the muzzle of the pistol from her breast to the path on
+      which he was approaching. Though she discovered her error, and laid the
+      weapon down, the sudden suggestion of her mind, at that moment, gave a new
+      direction to her mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should she not seek to avenge her wrong? Was he to escape without
+      penalty? was she to be a quiescent victim? True, she was a woman, destined
+      it would seem to suffer&mdash;perhaps with a more than ordinary share of
+      that suffering which falls to her sex. But she had also a peculiar
+      strength&mdash;the strength of a man in some respects; and in her bosom
+      she now felt the sudden glow of one of his fiercest passions. Revenge
+      might be in her power. She might redress her wrong by her own hand. It was
+      a weapon of death which she grasped. In her grasp it might be made a
+      weapon of power. The suggestion seemed to be that of justice only. It was
+      one that filled her whole soul with a triumphant and a wild enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not be stricken down without danger to mine enemy. For THIS&mdash;this,
+      at least&mdash;strength is allotted me. Let him tremble! In his place of
+      seeming security let him tremble! I shall pursue his steps. I will find
+      him out. There shall be a day of retribution! Alfred Stevens, there is a
+      power within me which tells me you are no longer safe!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why may I not secure this justice&mdash;this vengeance? Why? Because
+      I am a woman. Ha! We shall see. If I am a woman, I can be an enemy&mdash;and
+      such an enemy! An enemy not to be appeased, not to be overcome. War always
+      with my foe&mdash;war to the knife&mdash;war to the last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a nature as that of Margaret Cooper needed some such object to give
+      it the passionate employment without which it must recoil upon itself and
+      end either in suicide or madness. She brooded upon this new thought. She
+      found in it a grateful exercise. From the moment when she conceived the
+      idea of being the avenger of her own wrong, her spirit became more elastic&mdash;she
+      became less sensible to the possible opinions upon her condition which
+      might be entertained by others. She found consolation, in retreating to
+      this one thought, from all the rest. Of the difficulties in the way of her
+      design, it was not in her impetuous character to think. She never once
+      suspected that the name of Alfred Stevens had been an assumed one. She
+      never once asked how she was to pursue and hunt him up. She thought of a
+      male disguise for herself, it is true; but of the means and modes of
+      travel&mdash;in what direction to go, and after what plan to conduct her
+      pursuit, she had not the most distant idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She addressed herself to her new design, however, in one respect, with
+      amazing perseverance. It diverted her from other and more oppressive
+      thoughts. Her pistols she carried secretly to a very distant wood, where
+      she concealed them in the hollow of a tree. To this wood she repaired
+      secretly and daily. Here she selected a tree as a mark. A small section of
+      the bark, which she tore away, at a given height, she learned to regard as
+      the breast of her seducer. This was the object of her aim. Without any
+      woman fears, she began her practice and continued it, day by day, until,
+      as we are told by one of the chroniclers of her melancholy story, &ldquo;she
+      could place a ball with an accuracy, which, were it universally equalled
+      by modern duellists, would render duelling much more fatal than it
+      commonly is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In secret she procured gunpowder and lead, by arts so ingenious as to
+      baffle detection. At midnight when her mother slept she moulded her
+      bullets. Well might the thoughts and feelings which possessed her mind,
+      while engaged in this gloomy labor, have endowed every bullet with a
+      wizard spell to make it do its bidding truly. Bitter, indeed, were the
+      hours so appropriated; but they had their consolations. Dark and terrible
+      were the excited moods in which she retired from her toils to that slumber
+      which she could not always secure. And when it did come, what were its
+      images! The tree, the mark, the weapon, the deep, dim forest, all the
+      scenes and trials of the day, were renewed in her sleep. A gloomy wood
+      filled her eyes&mdash;a victim dabbled in blood lay before her; and, more
+      than once, her own fearful cry of vengeance and exultation awakened her
+      from those dreams of sleep, which strengthened her in the terrible pursuit
+      of the object which occasioned them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such thoughts and practices, continued with religious pertinacity, from
+      day to day, necessarily had their effect upon her appearance as well as
+      her character. Her beauty assumed a wilder aspect. Her eye shot forth a
+      supernatural fire. She never smiled. Her mouth was rigid and compressed as
+      if her heart was busy in an endless conflict. Her gloom, thus nurtured by
+      solitude and the continual presence of a brooding imagination of revenge,
+      darkened into something like ferocity. Her utterance became brief and
+      quick&mdash;her tones sharp, sudden, and piercing. She had but one thought
+      which never seemed to desert her, yet of this thought no ear ever had
+      cognizance. It was of the time when she should exercise the skill which
+      she had now acquired upon that destroyer of herself, whom she now felt
+      herself destined to destroy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course we are describing a madness&mdash;one of those peculiar forms of
+      the disease which seems to have its origin in natural and justifiable
+      suggestions of reason. Not the less a madness for all that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Succeeding in her practice at one distance, Margaret Cooper changed it.
+      From one point to another she constantly varied her practice, until her
+      aim grew certain at almost any distance within the ordinary influence of
+      the weapon. To strike her mark at thirty feet became, in a little while,
+      quite as easy as to do so at five; and, secure now of her weapon, her next
+      object&mdash;though there was no cessation of her practice&mdash;was how
+      to seek and where to find the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this new object she meditated to disguise herself in the apparel of a
+      man. She actually commenced the making up of the several garments of one.
+      This was also the secret labor of the midnight hour, when her
+      feeble-minded mother slept. She began to feel some of the difficulties
+      lying in the way of this pursuit, and her mind grew troubled to consider
+      them, without however, relaxing in its determination. That seemed a
+      settled matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she brooded over this new feature of her purpose&mdash;as if
+      fortunately to arrest the mad design&mdash;her mother fell seriously sick,
+      and was for some time in danger. The duty of attending upon her, put a
+      temporary stop to her thoughts and exercises; though without having the
+      effect of expelling them from her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But another event, upon her mother's recovery, tended to produce a
+      considerable alteration in her thoughts. A new care filled her heart and
+      rendered her a different being, in several respects. She was soon to
+      become a mother. The sickness of soul which oppressed her under this
+      conviction, gave a new direction to her mood without lessening its
+      bitterness; and, in proportion as she found her vengeance delayed, so was
+      the gratification which it promised, a heightened desire in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the humiliating and trying event which was at hand, Margaret Cooper
+      prepared with a degree of silent firmness which denoted quite as strongly
+      the resignation of despair as any other feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child is born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper has at length become a mother. She has suffered the agony,
+      without being able to feel the compensating pride and pleasure of one. It
+      was the witness of her shame&mdash;could she receive it with any
+      assurances of love? It is doubtful if she did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some time after its birth, the hapless woman seemed to be unconscious,
+      or half-conscious only, of her charge. A stupor weighed upon her senses.
+      When she did awaken, and her eyes fell upon the face and form of the
+      infant with looks of recognition, one long, long piercing shriek burst
+      from her lips. She closed her eyes&mdash;she turned away from the little
+      unoffending, yet offensive object with a feeling of horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its features were those of Alfred Stevens. The likeness was indelible; and
+      this identity drew upon the child a share of that loathing hatred with
+      which she now remembered the guilty father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may very well be supposed that the innocent babe suffered under these
+      circumstances. The milk which it drew from the mother's breast, was the
+      milk of bitterness, and it did not thrive. It imbibed gall instead of
+      nutriment. Day after day it pined in hopeless misery; and though the
+      wretched mother strove to supply its wants and soothe its little sorrows,
+      with a gradually increasing interest which overcame her first loathing,
+      there was yet that want of sweetest sympathy which nothing merely physical
+      could well supply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Debility was succeeded by disease&mdash;fever preyed upon its little
+      frame, which was now reduced to a skeleton. One short month only had
+      elapsed from its birth, and it lay, in the silence of exhaustion upon the
+      arm of its mother. Its eyes, whence the flickering light was escaping
+      fast, looked up into hers, as she fancied, with an expression of reproach.
+      She felt, on the instant, the pang of the maternal conscience. She forgot
+      the unworthy father, as she thought of the neglectful mother. She bent
+      down, and, for the first time, imprinted on its little lips the maternal
+      kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile seemed to glimmer on its tiny features; and, from that moment,
+      Margaret Cooper resolved to forget her injuries, for the time, at least,
+      in the consideration of her proper duties. But her resolution came too
+      late. Even while her nipple was within its boneless gums, a change came
+      over the innocent. She did not heed it. Her eyes and thoughts were
+      elsewhere; and thus she mused, gazing vacantly upon the wall of her
+      chamber until her mother entered the room. Mrs. Cooper gave but a single
+      glance at the infant when she saw that its little cares were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Margaret!&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;the child is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother looked down with a start and shudder. A big tear fell from her
+      eyes upon the cold cheek of the innocent. She released it to her mother,
+      turned her face upon the couch, and uttered her thanks to Heaven that had
+      secured it&mdash;that had left her again free for that darker purpose
+      which had so long filled her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better so,&rdquo; she murmured to her mother. &ldquo;It is at peace. It will neither
+      know its own nor its mother's griefs. It is free from that shame for which
+      I must live!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come now, Margaret, no more of that,&rdquo; said the mother sharply. &ldquo;There's
+      no need of shame. There are other things to live for besides shame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are&mdash;there are!&rdquo; exclaimed the daughter, with spasmodic
+      energy. &ldquo;Were there not, I should, indeed, be desperate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure you would, my child. You have a great deal to live for yet;
+      and let a little time blow over, and when everything's forgotten, you will
+      get as good a husband as any girl in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Heaven's sake, mother, none of this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why not! Though you are looking a little bad just now&mdash;quite
+      pale and broken&mdash;yet it's only because you have been so ill; and this
+      nursing of babies, and having 'em too, is a sort of business to make any
+      young woman look bad; but in spite of all, there's not a girl in the
+      village, no matter how fresh she may be looking, that can hold a candle to
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For mercy, mother!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me speak, I tell you! Don't I know? You're young, and you'll get over
+      it. You will get all your beauty and good looks back, now that the baby's
+      out of the way, and there's no more nursing to be done. And what with your
+      beauty and your talents, Margaret&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace! mother! Peace&mdash;peace! You will drive me to madness if you
+      continue to speak thus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm sure there's no knowing what to say to please you. I'm sure, I
+      only want to cheer you up, and to convince you that things are not so bad
+      as you think them now. The cloud will blow over soon, and everything will
+      be forgotten, and then, you see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl waved her hand impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Death&mdash;death!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Oh! child of shame, and bitterness,
+      and wrath!&rdquo; she murmured, kneeling down beside the infant, &ldquo;thou art the
+      witness that I have no future but storm, and cloud, and wrath, and&mdash;Vengeance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last word was inaudible to her mother's ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an oath!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;an oath!&rdquo; And her hands were uplifted in
+      solemn adjuration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come&mdash;come, Margaret! none of this swearing. You frighten me with
+      your swearing. There's nothing that you need to swear about! What's done
+      can't be helped now, by taking it so seriously. You must only be patient,
+      and give yourself time. Time's the word for us now; after a little while
+      you'll see the sky become brighter. It's a bad business, it's true; but it
+      needn't break a body's heart. How many young girls I've known in my time,
+      that's been in the same fix. There was Janet Bonner, and Emma Loring, and
+      Mary Peters&mdash;I knew 'em all, very well. Well, they all made a slip
+      once in their lives, and they never broke their hearts about it, and
+      didn't look very pale and sad in the face either; but they just kept quiet
+      and behaved decent for awhile, and every one of 'em got good husbands.
+      Janet Bonner, she married Dick Pyatt, who came from Massachusetts, and
+      kept the school down by Clayton's Meadow; Emma Loring married a
+      baptist-preacher from Virginia, named Stokes. I never saw him to know him;
+      and as for Mary Peters, there never was a girl that had a slip that was
+      ever so fortunate, for she's been married no less than three times since,
+      and as she's a widow again, there's no telling what may happen to her yet.
+      So don't you be so downcast. You're chance is pretty nigh as good as ever,
+      if you will only hold up your head, and put the best face on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! torture&mdash;torture! Mother, will you not be silent? Let the dead
+      speak to me only. I would hear but the voice of this one witness&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she communed only with the dead infant, sitting or kneeling beside it.
+      But the communion was not one of contrition or tears&mdash;not of humility
+      and repentance&mdash;not of self-reproach and a broken spirit. Pride and
+      other passions had summoned up deities and angels of terror and of crime,
+      before the eyes and thoughts of the wretched mourner, and the demon who
+      had watched with her and waited on her, and had haunted her with taunt and
+      bitter mockeries, night and day, was again busy with terrible suggestions,
+      which gradually grew to be divine laws to her diseased imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; she exclaimed unconsciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear! I obey! Yet speak again. Repeat the lesson. I must learn it every
+      syllable, so that I shall not mistake&mdash;so that I can not fail!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you talking to, Margaret?&rdquo; asked the mother anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not see them, where they go? There&mdash;through the doors; the
+      open windows&mdash;wrapped in shadows, with great wings at their
+      shoulders, each carrying a dart in his bony grasp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord, have mercy! She's losing her senses again!&rdquo; and the mother was
+      about to rush from the apartment to seek assistance; but with the action,
+      the daughter suddenly arose, wearing a look of singular calmness, and
+      motioning to the child, she said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you not dress it for the grave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going about it now. The poor lovely little creature. The innocent
+      little blossom. We must put it in white, Margaret&mdash;virgin white&mdash;and
+      put white flowers in its little hands and on its breast, and under its
+      head. Oh! it will look so sweet in its little coffin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God! I should go mad with all this!&rdquo; exclaimed the daughter, &ldquo;were it not
+      for that work which is before me! I must be calm for that-calm and stern!
+      I must not hear&mdash;I must not think&mdash;not feel&mdash;lest I forget
+      myself, and the deed which I have to do. That oath&mdash;that oath! It is
+      sworn! It is registered in heaven, by the fatal angel of remorse, and
+      wrath, and vengeance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And again, a whisper at her ears repeated:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For this, Margaret, and for this only, must thou live&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must! I will!&rdquo; she muttered, as it were in reply, and her eye glared
+      upon the opened door, as she heard a voice and footsteps without; and the
+      thought smote her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should it be now! Come for the sacrifice! Ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII. &mdash; THE PALL UPON THE COFFIN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The noise which arrested the attention of Margaret Cooper, and kindled her
+      features into an expression of wild and fiery ferocity, was of innocent
+      origin. The widow Thackeray was the intruder. Her kindness, sympathy, and
+      unwearied attentions, so utterly in conflict with the estimates hitherto
+      made of her heart and character, by Mrs Cooper, had, in some degree,
+      disarmed the censures of that excellent mother, if they had not wholly
+      changed her sentiments. She professed to be very grateful to Thackeray's
+      attentions, and, without making any profession, Margaret certainly showed
+      her that she felt them. She now only pointed the widow to the corpse of
+      the child, in that one action telling to the other all that was yet
+      unknown. Then she seated herself composedly, folded her hands, and, beside
+      the corpse, forgot its presence, forgot the presence of all&mdash;heard no
+      voice, save that of the assiduous demon whom nothing could expel from her
+      companionship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little thing!&rdquo; murmured the widow Thackeray, as she proceeded to
+      assist Mrs. Cooper in decking it for the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duty was finally done. Its burial was appointed for the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A village funeral is necessarily an event of some importance. The lack of
+      excitements in small communities, in vests even sorrow and grief and death
+      with a peculiar interest in the eyes of curiosity. On the present
+      occasion, all the villagers attended. The funeral itself might have
+      sufficed to collect them with few exceptions; but now there was a more
+      eager influence still, working upon the gossippy moods of the population.
+      To see Margaret Cooper in her affliction&mdash;to see that haughty spirit
+      humbled and made ashamed&mdash;was, we fear, a motive, in the minds of
+      many, much stronger than the ostensible occasion might have awakened. Had
+      Margaret been a fashionable woman, in a great city, she might have
+      disappointed the vulgar desire, by keeping to her chamber. Nay, even
+      according to the free-and-easy standards prevailing at Charlemont, she
+      might have done the same thing, and incurred no additional scandal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, indeed, to the surprise of a great many, that she made her
+      appearance. It was still more a matter of surprise&mdash;nay, pious and
+      virgin horror&mdash;that she seemed to betray neither grief nor shame,
+      surrounded as she was by all whom she knew, and all, in particular, whom,
+      in the day of her pride, she had kept at a distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a brazen creature!&rdquo; whispered Miss Jemima Parkinson, an interesting
+      spinster of thirty-six, to Miss Ellen Broadhurst, who was only
+      thirty-four; and Miss Ellen whispered back, in reply:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hasn't the slightest bit of shame!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Interesting virgins! they had come to gloat over the spectacle of shame.
+      To behold the agonizing sense of degradation declare itself under the
+      finger-pointing scorn of those who, perhaps, were only innocent from
+      necessity, and virtuous because of the lack of the necessary attractions
+      in the eyes of lust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Margaret Cooper seemed quite as insensible to their presence as to
+      their scorn and her own shame. She, in truth, saw none of them. She heard
+      not their voices. She conjectured non (sic) nts. She had anticipated all
+      of them; and having, in consequence, reached a point of intensity in her
+      agony which could bear no addition, she had been relieved only by a still
+      more intense passion, by which the enfeebling one, of mere society, stood
+      rebuked and almost forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They little dreamed the terrible thoughts which were working, beneath that
+      stolid face, in that always eager-working brain. They never fancied what a
+      terrible demon now occupied that fiery heart which they supposed was
+      wholly surrendered to the consciousness of shame. Could they have heard
+      that voice of the fiend whispering in her ears, while they whispered to
+      one another&mdash;heard his terrible exhortations&mdash;heard her no less
+      terrible replies&mdash;they would have shrunk away in horror, and felt
+      fear rather than exultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret Cooper was insensible to all that they could say or do. She knew
+      them well&mdash;knew what they would say, and feel, and do; but the very
+      extremity of her suffering had placed it out of their power any longer to
+      mortify or shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some few of the villagers remained away. Ned Hinkley and his widowed
+      sister were absent from the house, though they occupied obscure places in
+      the church when the funeral-procession took place. An honorable pity kept
+      them from meeting the eyes of the poor shame-stricken but not
+      shame-showing woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Margaret followed the little corpse to its quiet nook in the village
+      graveyard. In that simple region the procession was wholly on foot; and
+      she walked behind the coffin as firmly as if she knew not what it held.
+      There was a single shiver that passed over her frame, as the heavy clods
+      fell upon the coffin-lid&mdash;but that was all; and when her mother and
+      the widow Thackeray took each of them one of her arms, and led her away
+      from the grave, and home, she went quietly, calmly, it would seem, and
+      with as firm a step as ever!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has not a bit of feeling!&rdquo; said Miss Jemima to Miss Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's always the case with your very smart women,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;It's
+      all head with 'em; there's no heart. They can talk fine things about
+      death, and sorrow, and affliction, but it's talk only. They don't feel
+      what they say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ned Hinkley had a juster notion of the state of the poor victim&mdash;of
+      her failings and her sensibilities, her equal strength and weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said he to his sister, &ldquo;there's a burning volcano in that woman's
+      heart, that will tear her some day to pieces. For all that coldness, and
+      calmness, and stateliness, her brain is on fire, and her heart ready for a
+      convulsion. Her thoughts now, if she thinks at all, are all desperate.
+      She's going through a very hell upon earth! When you think of her pride&mdash;and
+      she's just as proud now as the devil himself&mdash;her misfortune hasn't
+      let her down&mdash;only made her more fierce&mdash;you wonder that she
+      lets herself be seen; you wonder that she lives at all. I only wonder that
+      she hasn't thrown herself from the rocks and into the lake. She'll do it
+      yet, I'm a-thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And just so she always was. I knew her long ago. She once told me she was
+      afraid of nothing&mdash;would do as she pleased&mdash;she could dare
+      anything! From that moment I saw she wasn't the girl for Bill Hinkley. I
+      told him so, but he was so crazy after her, he'd hear to nothing. A woman&mdash;a
+      young woman&mdash;a mere girl of fifteen&mdash;boasting that she can dare
+      and do things that would set any woman in a shiver! I tell you what, sis,
+      the woman that's bolder than her sex is always in danger of falling from
+      the rocks. She gets such a conceit of her mind, that the devil is always
+      welcome. Her heart, after that, stands no sort of chance!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Protect me, say I, from all that class of women that pride themselves on
+      their strongmindedness! They get insolent upon it. They think that mind
+      can do everything. They're so vain, that they never can see the danger,
+      even when it's yawning at their feet. A woman's never safe unless she's
+      scary of herself, and mistrusts herself, and never lets her thoughts and
+      fancies get from under a tight rein of prudence. For, after all, the
+      passions will have their way some day, and then what's the use of the
+      mind? I tell you, sis, that the passions are born deaf&mdash;they never
+      listen to any argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'm sorry for her&mdash;God knows I'm sorry for her! I'd give all I'm
+      worth to have a fair shot or clip at that rascal Stevens. Brother Stevens!
+      Ain't it monstrous, now, that a sheep's cover should be all that's
+      sufficient to give the wolf freedom in the flock?&mdash;that you've only
+      to say, 'This is a brother&mdash;a man of God'&mdash;and no proof is
+      asked! nobody questions! The blind, beastly, bigoted, blathering
+      blockheads! I feel very much like setting off straight, and licking John
+      Hinkley, though he's my own uncle, within an inch of his life! He and John
+      Cross&mdash;the old fools who are so eager to impose their notions of
+      religion upon everybody, that anybody may impose upon them&mdash;they two
+      have destroyed this poor young creature. It's at their door, in part, this
+      crime, and this ruin! I feel it in my heart to lick 'em both out of their
+      breeches!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet, as I'm a living sinner, they'll stand up in the congregation, and
+      exhort about this poor girl's misfortune, just as if they were not to
+      blame at all who brought the wolf into the farmyard! They'll talk about
+      her sins, and not a word, to themselves or anybody else, about their own
+      stupidities! I feel it in my heart to lather both of them right away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sister said little, and sorrowfully walked on in silence homeward,
+      listening to the fierce denunciations of Ned Hinkley. Ned was affected,
+      or, rather, he showed his sympathies, in a manner entirely his own. He was
+      so much for fight, that he totally forgot his fiddle that night, and
+      amused himself by putting his two &ldquo;barking-pups&rdquo; in order&mdash;getting
+      them ready, as he said, &ldquo;in case he ever should get a crack at Brother
+      Stevens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cares of the child's burial over, and the crowd dispersed, the cottage
+      of the widow Cooper was once more abandoned to the cheerlessness and wo
+      (sic) within. Very dismal was the night of that day to the two, the
+      foolish mother and wretched daughter, as they sat brooding together, in
+      deep silence, by the light of a feeble candle. The mother rocked a while
+      in her easy-chair. The daughter, hands clasped in her lap, sat watching
+      the candlelight in almost idiotic vacancy of gaze. At length she stood up
+      and spoke&mdash;slowly, deliberately, and apparently in as calm a mood as
+      she had ever felt in all her life:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must leave this place, mother. We must go hence&mdash;to-morrow if we
+      can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go?&mdash;leave this place? I want to know why! I'm sure we're very
+      comfortable here. I can't be going just when you please, and leaving all
+      my company and friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, friends! There's the widow Thackeray&mdash;and there's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how long is it since Mrs. Thackeray was such a dear friend, mother?&rdquo;
+       asked the daughter, with ill-suppressed scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter how long: she's a good friend now. She's not so foolish as she
+      used to be. She's grown good; she's got religion; and I don't consider
+      what she was. No!&mdash;I'm willing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw, mother! tell me nothing of your friendships. You'll find, wherever
+      you go, as many friends as you please, valued quite as much as Mrs.
+      Thackeray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do say, Margaret, it's very ungrateful of you to speak so
+      disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray, after all her kindness and attention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not speak disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray. I NEVER did speak ill
+      of her, even when it was your favorite practice to do so. I only speak of
+      your newly-acquired appreciation of her. But this is nothing to the
+      purpose. I repeat, mother, we can not remain here. I will depart, whether
+      you resolve to go or not. I can not, I will not, exist another week in
+      Charlemont.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where would you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back&mdash;back to that old farm, from which you brought me in evil hour!
+      It is poor, obscure, profitless, unsought, unseen: it will give me a
+      shelter&mdash;it may bring me peace. I must have solitude for a season; I
+      must sleep for months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep for months! La me, child, what a notion's that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter&mdash;thither let us go. I seem to see it, stretching out its
+      hands, and imploring us to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless me, Margaret! a farm stretching out its hands! Why, you're in a
+      dream!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't wake me, then! Better I should so dream! Thither I go. It is
+      fortunate that you have not been able to sell it. It is a mercy that it
+      still remains to us. It was my childhood's home. Would it could again
+      receive me as a child! It will cover my head for a while, at least, and
+      that is something. We must leave this place. Here every thing offends me&mdash;every
+      spot, every face, every look, every gesture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's impossible, Margaret!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you suppose it an honorable distinction, do you, when the folks
+      here point to your daughter, and say&mdash;ha! ha!&mdash;listen what they
+      say! It is the language of compliment! They are doing me honor, with
+      tongue and finger! Repeat, mother; tell me what they say&mdash;for it
+      evidently gives you great pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Margaret! Margaret!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand, do you? Well, then, we go. We can not depart too soon. If
+      I stay here, I madden! And I must not madden. I have something which needs
+      be done&mdash;which must be done. It is an oath! an oath in heaven! The
+      child was a witness. She heard all&mdash;every syllable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What all? what did you hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter! I'm sworn to be secret. But you shall hear in time. We have no
+      time for it now. It is a very long story. And we must now be packing. Yes,
+      we must go. <i>I</i> must go, at least. Shall I go alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will not leave your mother, Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father and mother&mdash;all will I leave, in obedience to that oath.
+      Believe me or not, mother&mdash;go with me or not&mdash;still I go.
+      Perhaps it is better that I should go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The strong will naturally swayed the feebler, as it had ever done before.
+      The mother submitted to an arrangement which she had not the resolution to
+      oppose. A few days were devoted to necessary arrangements, and then they
+      left Charlemont for ever. Margaret Cooper looked not once behind them as
+      they traversed the lonely hills looking down upon the village&mdash;those
+      very hills from which, at the opening of this story, the treacherous
+      Alfred Stevens and his simple uncle beheld the lovely little settlement.
+      She recognised the very spot, as they drove over it, where Stevens first
+      encountered her, and the busy demon, at her ears whispered:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was here! You remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she clinched her teeth firmly together, even though she shuddered at
+      her memories; and she renewed her oath to the demon, who, thereupon, kept
+      her company the rest of the journey, till she reached the ancient and
+      obscure farmstead in which she was born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She retired,&rdquo; says the rude chronicle from which we have borrowed many of
+      the materials for this sombre history, &ldquo;to a romantic little farm in&mdash;-,
+      there to spend in seclusion, with her aged mother and a few servants, the
+      remainder of her days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our simple chronicler takes too much for granted. Margaret Cooper retired
+      with no such purpose. She had purposes entirely at conflict with any idea
+      of repose or quiet. She thought nothing of the remainder of her days. Her
+      mother was not so aged but that she could still think, six months
+      afterward, of the reported marriage of the widow Thackeray with repining,
+      and with the feeling of one who thinks that she has suffered neglect and
+      injustice at the hands of the world. Touching the romance of the ancient
+      farmstead, we are more modestly content to describe it as sterile, lonely,
+      and unattractive; its obscurity offering, for the present, its chief
+      attractions to our desolate heroine, and the true occasion for that deep
+      disgust with which her amiable mother beheld it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our chronicle of Charlemont is ended. We have no further object or
+      interest within its precincts. William Hinkley is gone, no one knows
+      whither, followed by his adopted father, the retired lawyer, whose
+      sensibilities were fatal to his success. It was not long before Ned
+      Hinkley and his widowed sister found it their policy to depart also,
+      seeking superior objects in another county; and at this moment Charlemont
+      is an abandoned and deserted region. It seemed to decline from the moment
+      when the cruel catastrophe occurred which precipitated Margaret Cooper
+      from her pride of place. Beautiful as the village appeared at the opening
+      of our legend, it was doomed to as rapid a decay as growth. &ldquo;Something
+      ails it now&mdash;the spot is cursed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But OUR history does not finally conclude with the fate of Charlemont.
+      That chronicle is required now to give place to another, in which we
+      propose to take up the sundered clues, and reunite them in a fresh
+      progress. We shall meet some of the old parties once more, in new
+      situations. We shall again meet with Margaret Cooper, in a new guise,
+      under other aspects, but still accompanied by her demon&mdash;still
+      inspired by her secret oath&mdash;still glowing with all the terrible
+      memories of the past&mdash;still laboring with unhallowed pride; and still
+      destined for a lark catastrophe. Our scene, however, lies in another
+      region, to which the reader, who has thus far kept pace with our progress,
+      is entreated still to accompany us. The chronicle of &ldquo;CHARLEMONT&rdquo; will
+      find its fitting sequel in that of &ldquo;BEAUCHAMPE&rdquo;&mdash;known proverbially
+      as &ldquo;THE KENTUCKY TRAGEDY.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF CHARLEMONT.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlemont, by W. Gilmore Simms
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+</pre>
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+  </body>
+</html>
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+++ b/6012.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlemont, by W. Gilmore Simms
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Charlemont
+
+Author: W. Gilmore Simms
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6012]
+This file was first posted on October 16, 2002
+Last Updated: June 20, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLEMONT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHARLEMONT;
+
+OR,
+
+THE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE
+
+A TALE OF KENTUCKY.
+
+BY W. GILMORE SIMMS,
+
+
+[Illustration: no caption, but contains the word Charlemont. Two men are
+riding a horse and a woman stands nearby.]
+
+
+
+
+   "Nor will I be secure.
+    In any confidence of mine own strength,
+    For such security is oft the mother
+    Of negligence, and that, the occasion
+    Of unremedy'd ruin."
+
+            Microcosmus--THO. NABBES.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO THE HON. JAMES HALL, OF CINCINNATI:
+
+AS ONE OF THE ABLEST OF OUR LITERARY PIONEERS A GENUINE REPRESENTATIVE
+OF THE GREAT WEST;
+
+WHOSE WRITINGS EQUALLY ILLUSTRATE HER HISTORY AND GENIUS:
+
+this story of "CHARLEMONT," and its Sequel "BEAUCHAMPE" are respectfully
+inscribed by
+
+THEIR AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+
+
+
+
+The domestic legend which follows, is founded upon actual events of
+comparatively recent occurrence in the state of Kentucky. However
+strange the facts may appear in the sequel--however in conflict with
+what are usually supposed to be the sensibilities and characteristics
+of woman--they are yet unquestionably true; most of them having been
+conclusively established, by the best testimony, before a court
+of justice. Very terrible, indeed, was the tragedy to which they
+conducted--one that startled the whole country when it took place, and
+the mournful interest of which will long be remembered. More on this
+subject need not be mentioned here. The narrative, it is hoped, will
+satisfy all the curiosity of the reader. It has been very carefully
+prepared from and according to the evidence; the art of the romancer
+being held in close subjection to the historical authorities. I have
+furnished only the necessary details which would fill such blanks in
+the story as are of domestic character; taking care that these should
+accord, in all cases, with the despotic facts. In respect to these,
+I have seldom appealed to invention. It is in the delineation and
+development of character, only, that I have made free to furnish scenes,
+such as appeared to me calculated to perfect the portraits, and the
+better to reconcile the reader to real occurrences, which, in their
+original nakedness, however unquestionably true, might incur the risk of
+being thought improbabilities.
+
+The reflections which will be most likely to arise from the perusal of
+such a history, lead us to a consideration of the social characteristics
+of the time and region, and to a consideration of the facility with
+which access to society is afforded by the manners and habits of our
+forest population. It is in all newly-settled countries, as among the
+rustic population of most nations, that the absence of the compensative
+resources of wealth leads to a singular and unreserved freedom among
+the people. In this way, society endeavors to find equivalents for those
+means of enjoyment which a wealthy people may procure from travel, from
+luxury, from the arts, and the thousand comforts of a well-provided
+homestead. The population of a frontier country, lacking such resources,
+scattered over a large territory, and meeting infrequently, feel the
+lack of social intercourse; and this lack tends to break down most
+of the barriers which a strict convention usually establishes for
+the protection, not only of sex and caste, but of its own tastes and
+prejudices. Lacking the resources of superior wealth, population, and
+civilization, the frontier people are naturally required to throw the
+doors open as widely as possible, in order to obtain that intercourse
+with their fellows which is, perhaps, the first great craving of
+humanity. As a matter of necessity, there is little discrimination
+exercised in the admission of their guests. A specious outside,
+agreeable manners, cleverness and good humor, will soon make their way
+into confidence, without requiring other guaranties for the moral of the
+stranger. The people are naturally frank and hospitable; for the simple
+reason that these qualities of character are essential for procuring
+them that intercourse which they crave. The habits are accessible, the
+restraints few, the sympathies are genial, active, easily aroused, and
+very confiding. It follows, naturally, that they are frequently wronged
+and outraged, and just as naturally that their resentments are keen,
+eager, and vindictive. The self-esteem, if not watchful, is revengeful;
+and society sanctions promptly the fierce redress--that wild justice of
+revenge--which punishes without appeal to law, with its own right hand,
+the treacherous guest who has abused the unsuspecting confidence which
+welcomed him to a seat upon the sacred hearth. In this brief portrait
+of the morale of society, upon our frontiers, you will find the materiel
+from which this story has been drawn, and its justification, as a
+correct delineation of border life in one of its more settled phases in
+the new states. The social description of Charlemont exhibits,
+perhaps, a THIRD advance in our forest civilization, from the original
+settlement.
+
+It is not less the characteristic of these regions to exhibit the
+passions and the talents of the people in equal and wonderful saliency.
+We are accordingly struck with two classes of social facts, which do not
+often arrest the attention in old communities. We see, for example, the
+most singular combination of simplicity and sagacity in the same person;
+simplicity in conventional respects, and sagacity in all that affects
+the absolute and real in life, nature and the human sensibilities. The
+rude man, easily imposed upon, in his faith, fierce as an outlaw in
+his conflicts with men, will be yet exquisitely alive to the nicest
+consciousness of woman; will as delicately appreciate her instincts and
+sensibilities, as if love and poetry had been his only tutors from the
+first, and had mainly addressed their labors to this one object of the
+higher heart, education; and in due degree with the tenderness with
+which he will regard the sex, will be the vindictive ferocity with
+which--even though no kinsman--he will pursue the offender who has dared
+to outrage them in the case of any individual. In due degree as his
+faith is easy will his revenges be extreme. In due degree as he is slow
+to suspect the wrong-doer, will be the tenacity of his pursuit when
+the offender requires punishment. He seems to throw wide his heart and
+habitation, but you must beware how you trespass upon the securities of
+either.
+
+The other is a mental characteristic which leads to frequent surprises
+among strangers from the distant cities. It consists in the wonderful
+inequality between his mental and social development. The same person
+who will be regarded as a boor in good society, will yet exhibit
+a rapidity and profundity of thought and intelligence--a depth and
+soundness of judgment--an acuteness in discrimination--a logical
+accuracy, and critical analysis, such as mere good society rarely shows,
+and such as books almost as rarely teach. There will be a deficiency
+of refinement, taste, art--all that the polished world values so
+highly--and which it seems to cherish and encourage to the partial
+repudiation of the more essential properties of intellect. However
+surprising this characteristic may appear, it may yet be easily
+accounted for by the very simplicity of a training which results in
+great directness and force of character--a frank heartiness of aim and
+object--a truthfulness of object which suffers the thoughts to turn
+neither to the right hand nor to the left, but to press forward
+decisively to the one object--a determined will, and a restless
+instinct--which, conscious of the deficiencies of wealth and position,
+is yet perpetually seeking to supply them from the resources within its
+reach. These characteristics will be found illustrated in the present
+legend, an object which it somewhat contemplates, apart from the mere
+story with which they are interwoven.
+
+A few words more in respect to our heroine, Margaret Cooper. It is our
+hope and belief, that she will be found a real character by most of our
+readers. She is drawn from the life, and with a severe regard to the
+absolute features of the original. In these days of "strong-minded
+women," even more certainly than when the portrait was first taken, the
+identity of the sketch with its original will be sure of recognition.
+Her character and career will illustrate most of the mistakes which are
+made by that ambitious class, among the gentler sex, who are now seeking
+so earnestly to pass out from that province of humiliation to which the
+sex has been circumscribed from the first moment of recorded history.
+What she will gain by the motion, if successful, might very well be left
+to time, were it not that the proposed change in her condition threatens
+fatally some of her own and the best securities of humanity. We may
+admit, and cheerfully do so, that she might, with propriety, be allowed
+some additional legal privileges of a domestic sort. But the great
+object of attainment, which is the more serious need of the sex--her
+own more full development as a responsible being--seems mainly to depend
+upon herself, and upon self-education. The great first duty of woman
+is in her becoming the mother of men; and this duty implies her proper
+capacity for the education and training of the young. To fit her
+properly for this duty, her education should become more elevated, and
+more severe in degree with its elevation. But the argument is one of too
+grave, too intricate, and excursive a character, to be attempted here.
+It belongs to a very different connection. It is enough, in this place,
+to say that Margaret Cooper possesses just the sort of endowment to
+make a woman anxious to pass the guardian boundaries which hedge in her
+sex--her danger corresponds with her desires. Her securities, with
+such endowments, and such a nature, can only be found in a strict and
+appropriate education, such as woman seldom receives anywhere, and less,
+perhaps, in this country than in any other. To train fully the
+feminine mind, without in any degree impairing her susceptibilities and
+sensibilities, seems at once the necessity and the difficulty of the
+subject. Her very influence over man lies in her sensibilities. It will
+be to her a perilous fall from pride of place, and power, when, goaded
+by an insane ambition, in the extreme development of her mere intellect,
+she shall forfeit a single one of these securities of her sex.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SCENE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The stormy and rugged winds of March were overblown--the first fresh
+smiling days of April had come at last--the days of sunshine and shower,
+of fitful breezes, the breath of blossoms, and the newly-awakened song
+of birds. Spring was there in all the green and glory of her youth, and
+the bosom of Kentucky heaved with the prolific burden of the season. She
+had come, and her messengers were everywhere, and everywhere busy. The
+birds bore her gladsome tidings to
+
+    "Alley green,
+    Dingle or bushy dell of each wild wood,
+    And every bosky bourn from side to side--"
+
+nor were the lately-trodden and seared grasses of the forests left
+unnoted; and the humbled flower of the wayside sprang up at her summons.
+Like some loyal and devoted people, gathered to hail the approach of a
+long-exiled and well-beloved sovereign, they crowded upon the path over
+which she came, and yielded themselves with gladness at her feet. The
+mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing might be heard, and far-off
+murmurs of gratulation, rising from the distant hollows, or coming
+faintly over the hill-tops, in accents not the lees pleasing because
+they were the less distinct. That lovely presence which makes every land
+blossom, and every living thing rejoice, met, in the happy region in
+which we meet her now, a double tribute of honor and rejoicing.
+
+The "dark and bloody ground," by which mournful epithets Kentucky was
+originally known to the Anglo-American, was dark and bloody no longer.
+The savage had disappeared from its green forests for ever, and no
+longer profaned with slaughter, and his unholy whoop of death, its broad
+and beautiful abodes. A newer race had succeeded; and the wilderness,
+fulfilling the better destinies of earth, had begun to blossom like the
+rose. Conquest had fenced in its sterile borders with a wall of fearless
+men, and peace slept everywhere in security among its green recesses.
+Stirring industry--the perpetual conqueror--made the woods resound with
+the echoes of his biting axe and ringing hammer. Smiling villages rose
+in cheerful white, in place of the crumbling and smoky cabins of
+the hunter. High and becoming purposes of social life and thoughtful
+enterprise superseded that eating and painful decay, which has
+terminated in the annihilation of the red man; and which, among every
+people, must always result from their refusal to exercise, according
+to the decree of experience, no less than Providence, their limbs and
+sinews in tasks of well-directed and continual labor.
+
+A great nation urging on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness,
+is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly
+and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and forest.
+Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence rose where the
+pines had fallen. Long and lovely vistas were opened through the dark
+and hitherto impervious thickets. The city sprang up beside the river,
+while hamlets, filled with active hope and cheerful industry, crowded
+upon the verdant hill-side, and clustered among innumerable valleys
+Grace began to seek out the homes of toil, and taste supplied their
+decorations. A purer form of religion hallowed the forest-homes of the
+red-man, while expelling for ever the rude divinities of his worship;
+and throughout the land, an advent of moral loveliness seemed
+approaching, not less grateful to the affections and the mind, than
+was the beauty of the infant April, to the eye and the heart of the
+wanderer.
+
+But something was still wanting to complete the harmonies of nature, in
+the scene upon which we are about to enter. Though the savage had for
+ever departed from its limits, the blessings of a perfect civilization
+were not yet secured to the new and flourishing regions of Kentucky.
+Its morals were still in that fermenting condition which invariably
+distinguishes the settlement of every new country by a various and
+foreign people. At the distant period of which we write, the population
+of Kentucky had not yet become sufficiently stationary to have made
+their domestic gods secure, or to have fixed the proper lines and limits
+regulating social intercourse and attaching precise standards to human
+conduct. The habits and passions of the first settlers--those fearless
+pioneers who had struggled foot to foot with the Indian, and lived in
+a kindred state of barbarity with him, had not yet ceased to have
+influence over the numerous race which followed them. That moral amalgam
+which we call society, and which recognises a mutual and perfectly equal
+condition of dependence, and a common necessity, as the great cementing
+principles of the human family, had not yet taken place; and it was
+still too much the custom, in that otherwise lovely region, for the wild
+man to revenge his own wrong, and the strong man to commit a greater
+with impunity. The repose of social order was not yet secured to the
+great mass, covering with its wing, as with a sky that never knew a
+cloud, the sweet homes and secure possessions of the unwarlike. The
+fierce robber sometimes smote the peaceful traveler upon the highway,
+and the wily assassin of reputation, within the limits of the city
+barrier, not unfrequently plucked the sweetest rose that ever adorned
+the virgin bosom of innocence, and triumphed, without censure, in the
+unhallowed spoliation.
+
+But sometimes there came an avenger;--and the highway robber fell before
+the unexpected patriot; and the virgin was avenged by the yet beardless
+hero, for the wrong of her cruel seducer. The story which we have to
+tell, is of times and of actions such as these. It is a melancholy
+narrative--the more melancholy as it is most certainly true. It will not
+be told in vain, if the crime which it describes in proper colors, and
+the vengeance by which it was followed, and which it equally records,
+shall secure the innocent from harm, and discourage the incipient
+wrongdoer from his base designs.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE TRAVELLERS.
+
+
+
+
+
+Let the traveller stand with us on the top of this rugged eminence, and
+look down upon the scene below. Around us, the hills gather in groups
+on every side, a family cluster, each of which wears the same general
+likeness to that on which we stand, yet there is no monotony in their
+aspect. The axe has not yet deprived them of a single tree, and they
+rise up, covered with the honored growth of a thousand summers. But they
+seem not half so venerable. They wear, in this invigorating season,
+all the green, fresh features of youth and spring. The leaves cover the
+rugged Limbs which sustain them, with so much ease and grace, as if for
+the first time they were so green and glossy, and as if the impression
+should be made more certain and complete, the gusty wind of March has
+scattered abroad and borne afar, all the yellow garments of the
+vanished winter. The wild flowers begin to flaunt their blue and crimson
+draperies about us, as if conscious that they are borne upon the bosom
+of undecaying beauty; and the spot so marked and hallowed by each
+charming variety of bud and blossom, would seem to have been a selected
+dwelling for the queenly Spring herself.
+
+Man, mindful of those tastes and sensibilities which in great part
+constitute his claim to superiority over the brute, has not been
+indifferent to the beauties of the place. In the winding hollows of
+these hills, beginning at our feet, you see the first signs of as lovely
+a little hamlet as ever promised peace to the weary and the discontent.
+This is the village of Charlemont.
+
+A dozen snug and smiling cottages seem to have been dropped in this
+natural cup, as if by a spell of magic. They appear, each of them, to
+fill a fitted place--not equally distant from, but equally near each
+other. Though distinguished, each by an individual feature, there is
+yet no great dissimilarity among them. All are small, and none of
+them distinguished by architectural pretension. They are now quite as
+flourishing as when first built, and their number has had no increase
+since the village was first settled. Speculation has not made it
+populous and prosperous, by destroying its repose, stifling its
+charities, and abridging the sedate habits and comforts of its people.
+The houses, though constructed after the fashion of the country, of
+heavy and ill-squared logs, roughly hewn, and hastily thrown together,
+perhaps by unpractised hands, are yet made cheerful by that tidy
+industry which is always sure to make them comfortable also. Trim hedges
+that run beside slender white palings, surround and separate them from
+each other. Sometimes, as you see, festoons of graceful flowers, and
+waving blossoms, distinguish one dwelling from the rest, declaring its
+possession of some fair tenant, whose hand and fancy have kept equal
+progress with habitual industry; at the same time, some of them appear
+entirely without the little garden of flowers and vegetables, which
+glimmers and glitters in the rear or front of the greater number.
+
+Such was Charlemont, at the date of our narrative. But the traveller
+would vainly look, now, to find the place as we describe it. The garden
+is no longer green with fruits and flowers--the festoons no longer grace
+the lowly portals--the white palings are down and blackening in the
+gloomy mould--the roofs have fallen, and silence dwells lonely among
+the ruins,--the only inhabitant of the place. It has no longer a human
+occupant.
+
+"Something ails it now--the spot is cursed."
+
+Why this fate has fallen upon so sweet an abiding place--why the
+villagers should have deserted a spot, so quiet and so beautiful--it
+does not fall within our present purpose to inquire. It was most
+probably abandoned--not because of the unfruitfulness of the soil, or
+the unhealthiness of the climate--for but few places on the bosom of
+the earth, may be found either more fertile, more beautiful, or
+more healthful--but in compliance with that feverish restlessness of
+mood--that sleepless discontent of temper, which, perhaps, more than
+any other quality, is the moral failing in the character of the
+Anglo-American. The roving desires of his ancestor, which brought him
+across the waters, have been transmitted without diminution--nay, with
+large increase--to the son. The creatures of a new condition of things,
+and new necessities, our people will follow out their destiny. The
+restless energies which distinguish them, are, perhaps, the contemplated
+characteristics which Providence has assigned them, in order that they
+may the more effectually and soon, bring into the use and occupation of
+a yet mightier people, the wilderness of that new world in which their
+fortunes have been cast. Generation is but the pioneer of generation,
+and the children of millions, more gigantic and powerful than ourselves,
+shall yet smile to behold, how feeble was the stroke made by our axe
+upon the towering trees of their inheritance.
+
+It was probably because of this characteristic of our people, that
+Charlemont came in time to be deserted. The inhabitants were one day
+surprised with tidings of more attractive regions in yet deeper forests,
+and grew dissatisfied with their beautiful and secluded valley. Such
+is the ready access to the American mind, in its excitable state, of
+novelty and sudden impulse, that there needs but few suggestions to
+persuade the forester to draw stakes, and remove his tents, where the
+signs seem to be more numerous of sweeter waters and more prolific
+fields. For a time, change has the power which nature does not often
+exercise; and under its freshness, the waters DO seem sweeter, and the
+stores of the wilderness, the wild-honey and the locust, DO seem more
+abundant to the lip and eye.
+
+Where our cottagers went, and under what delusion, are utterly unknown
+to us; nor is it important to our narrative that we should inquire. Our
+knowledge of them is only desirable, while they were in the flourishing
+condition in which they have been seen. It is our trust that the
+novelty which seduced them from their homes, did not fail them in its
+promises--that they may never have found, in all their wanderings, a
+less lovely abiding-place, than that which they abandoned. But change
+has its bitter, as well as its sweet, and the fear is strong that the
+cottagers of Charlemont, in the weary hours, when life's winter
+is approaching, will still and vainly sigh after the once-despised
+enjoyments of their deserted hamlet.
+
+It was toward the close of one of those bright, tearful days in
+April, of which we have briefly spoken, when a couple of travellers on
+horseback, ascended the last hill looking down upon Charlemont. One of
+these travellers had passed the middle period of life; the other was,
+perhaps, just about to enter upon its heavy responsibilities, and more
+active duties. The first wore the countenance of one who had borne many
+sorrows, and borne them with that resignation, which, while it proves
+the wisdom of the sufferer, is at the same time, calculated to increase
+his benevolence. The expression of his eye, was full of kindness and
+benignity, while that of his mouth, with equal force, was indicative
+of a melancholy, as constant as it was gentle and unobtrusive. A feeble
+smile played over his lips while he spoke, that increased the sadness
+which it softened; as the faint glimmer of the evening sunlight, upon
+the yellow leaves of autumn, heightens the solemn tones in the rich
+coloring of the still decaying forest.
+
+The face of his companion, in many of its features, was in direct
+contrast with his own. It was well formed, and, to the casual glance,
+seemed no less handsome than intellectual. There was much in it to win
+the regard of the young and superficial. An eye that sparkled with fire,
+a mouth that glowed with animation--cheeks warmly colored, and a contour
+full of vivacity, seemed to denote properties of mind and heart equally
+valuable and attractive. Still, a keen observer would have found
+something sinister, in the upward glancing of the eye, at intervals,
+from the half-closed lids; and, at such moments, there was a curling
+contempt upon the lips, which seemed to denote a cynical and sarcastic
+turn of mind. A restless movement of the same features seemed equally
+significant of caprice of character, and a flexibility of moral; while
+the chin narrowed too suddenly and became too sharp at the extremity, to
+persuade a thorough physiognomist, that the owner could be either very
+noble in his aims, or very generous in his sentiments. But as these
+outward tokens can not well be considered authority in the work of
+judgment, let events, which speak for themselves, determine the true
+character of our travellers.
+
+They had reached the table land of the heights which looked down upon
+Charlemont, at a moment when the beauty of the scene could scarcely fail
+to impress itself upon the most indifferent observer. The elder of the
+travellers, who happened to be in advance, was immediately arrested by
+it; and, staying the progress of his horse, with hand lifted above
+his eye, looked around him with a delight which expressed itself in an
+abrupt ejaculation, and brought his companion to his side. The sun had
+just reached that point in his descent, which enabled him to level a
+shaft of rosy light from the pinnacle of the opposite hill, into the
+valley below, where it rested among the roofs of two of the cottages,
+which arose directly in its path. The occupants of these two cottages
+had come forth, as it were, in answer to the summons; and old and young,
+to the number of ten or a dozen persons, had met, in the winding pathway
+between, which led through the valley, and in front of every cottage
+which it contained. The elder of the cottagers sat upon the huge trunk
+of a tree, which had been felled beside the road, for the greater
+convenience of the traveller; and with eyes turned in the direction of
+the hill on which the sunlight had sunk and appeared to slumber, seemed
+to enjoy the vision with no less pleasure than our senior traveller.
+Two tall damsels of sixteen, accompanied by a young man something older,
+were strolling off in the direction of the woods; while five or six
+chubby girls and boys were making the echoes leap and dance along the
+hills, in the clamorous delight which they felt in their innocent but
+stirring exercises. The whole scene was warmed with the equal brightness
+of the natural and the human sun. Beauty was in the sky, and its
+semblance, at least, was on the earth. God was in the heavens, and in
+his presence could there be other than peace and harmony among men!
+
+"How beautiful!" exclaimed the elder of our travellers--"could
+anything be more so! How pure, how peaceful! See, Warham, how soft, how
+spirit-like, that light lies along the hill-side, and how distinct, yet
+how delicate, is the train which glides from it down the valley, even
+to the white dwellings at its bottom, from which it seems to shrink and
+tremble as if half conscious of intrusion. And yet the picture below
+is kindred with it. That, now, is a scene that I delight in--it is a
+constant picture in my mind. There is peace in that valley, if there
+be peace anywhere on earth. The old men sit before the door, and
+contemplate with mingled feelings of pride and pleasure, the vigorous
+growth of their children. They behold in them their own immortality,
+even upon earth. The young will preserve their memories, and transmit
+their names to other children yet unborn; and how must such a reflection
+reconcile them to their own time of departure, not unfitly shown in the
+last smiles of that sunlight, which they are so soon about to lose. Like
+him, they look with benevolence and love upon the world from which they
+will soon depart."
+
+"Take my word for it, uncle, they will postpone their departure to the
+last possible moment, and, so far from looking with smiles upon what
+they are about to leave for ever, they will leave it with very great
+reluctance, and in monstrous bad humor. As for regarding their children
+with any such notions as those you dwell upon with such poetical
+raptures, they will infinitely prefer transmitting for themselves their
+names and qualities to the very end of the chapter. Ask any one of them
+the question now, and he will tell you that an immortality, each, in his
+own wig-wam, and with his weight of years and infirmity upon him, would
+satisfy all his expectations. If they look at the vigor of their young,
+it is to recollect that they themselves once were so, and to repine at
+the recollection. Take my word for it, there is not a dad among them,
+that does not envy his own son the excellence of his limbs, and the long
+time of exercise and enjoyment which they seemingly assure him."
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed the elder of the two travellers. "Impossible! I
+should be sorry to think as you do. But you, Warham, can not understand
+these things. You are an habitual unbeliever--the most unfortunate of
+all mankind."
+
+"The most fortunate, rather. I have but few burdens of credulity to
+carry. The stars be blessed, my articles of faith are neither very many
+nor very cumbrous. I should be sorry if my clients were so few."
+
+"I should be sorry, Warham, if I had so little feeling as yourself."
+
+"And I should be still more sorry, uncle, if I had half so much. Why,
+sir, yours is in such excess, that you continually mistake the joys
+and sorrows of other people for your own. You laugh and weep with them
+alternately; and, until all's done and over, you never seem to discover
+that the business was none of yours;--that you had none of the pleasure
+which made you laugh, and might have been spared all the unnecessary
+suffering which moved your tears. 'Pon my soul, sir, you pass a most
+unprofitable life."
+
+"You mistake, Warham, I have shared both; and my profits have been
+equally great from both sources. My susceptibility has been an exceeding
+great gain to me, and has quickened all my senses. There is a joy of
+grief, you know, according to Ossian."
+
+"Nay, if you quote Ossian, uncle. I give you up. I don't believe in
+Ossian, and his raving stuff always sickens me."
+
+"I sometimes think, Warham," said the uncle, good naturedly, "that
+Providence has denied you some of the more human faculties. Nay, I fear
+that you are partially deficient in some of the senses. Do you see that
+sunlight to which I point--there, on the hill-side, a sort of rosy haze,
+which seems to me eminently beautiful?"
+
+"Yes, sir; and, if you will suffer me, I will get out of its reach as
+quickly as possible. I have been half blinded by it ever since you found
+it so beautiful. Sunlight is, I think, of very little importance to
+professional men, unless as a substitute for candles, and then it should
+come over the left shoulder, if you would not have it endanger the
+sight. Nay, I will go farther, and confess that it is better than
+candlelight, and certainly far less expensive. Shall we go forward,
+sir?"
+
+"Warham," said the uncle, with increasing gravity, "I should be sorry to
+believe that a habit of speech so irreverential, springs from anything
+but an ambition for saying smart things, and strange things, which are
+not always smart. It would give me great pain to think that you were
+devoid of any of those sensibilities which soften the hearts of other
+men, and lead them to generous impulses."
+
+"Nay, be not harsh, uncle. You should know me better. I trust my
+sensibilities, and senses too, may be sufficient for all proper
+purposes, when the proper time comes for their employment; but I can't
+flame up at every sunbeam, and grow enthusiastic in the contemplation of
+Bill Johnson's cottage, and Richard Higgins's hedgerow. A turnip-patch
+never yet could waken my enthusiasm, and I do believe, sir--I confess it
+with some shame and a slight misgiving, lest my admissions should give
+you pain--that my fancy has never been half so greatly enkindled by
+Carthula, of the bending spear, or Morven of the winds, as by the sedate
+and homely aspect of an ordinary dish of eggs and bacon, hot from the
+flaming frying-pan of some worthy housewife."
+
+The uncle simply looked upon the speaker, but without answering. He was
+probably quite too much accustomed to his modes of thought and speech to
+be so much surprised as annoyed by what he said. Perhaps, too, his own
+benevolence of spirit interfered to save the nephew from that harsher
+rebuke which his judgment might yet have very well disposed him to
+bestow.
+
+Following the course of the latter in silence, he descended into the
+valley, and soon made his way among the sweet little cottages at
+its foot. An interchange of courtsies between the travellers and the
+villagers whose presence had given occasion to some portion of the
+previous dialogue, in which the manner of the younger traveller was
+civil, and that of the elder kind; and the two continued on their
+journey, though not without being compelled to refuse sundry
+invitations, given with true patriarchal hospitality, to remain among
+the quiet abodes through which they passed.
+
+As cottage after cottage unfolded itself to their eyes, along the
+winding avenue, the proprietors appeared at door and window, and, with
+the simple freedoms of rural life, welcomed the strangers with a
+smile, a nod, and sometimes, when sufficiently nigh, a friendly word
+of salutation, but without having the effect of arresting their onward
+progress. Yet many a backward glance was sent by the elder of the
+travellers, whose eyes, beaming with satisfaction, sufficiently declared
+the delight which he received from the contemplation of so many of the
+mingled graces of physical and moral nature. His loitering steps drew
+from his young companion an occasional remark, which, to ears less
+benevolent and unsuspecting than than those of the senior, might have
+been deemed a sarcasm; and more than once the lips of the nephew had
+curled with contemptuous smiles, as he watched the yearning glances of
+his uncle on each side of the avenue, as they wended slowly through it.
+
+At the end of the village, and at the foot of the opposite hills, they
+encountered a group of young people of both sexes, whose bursts of
+merriment were suddenly restrained as they emerged unexpectedly into
+sight. The girls had been sitting upon the grassy mead, with the young
+men before them; but they started to their feet at the sound of strange
+steps, and the look of strange faces. Charlemont, it must be remembered,
+was not in the thoroughfare of common travel. If visited at all by
+strangers, it was most usually by those only who came with a single
+purpose. Nothing, therefore could have been more calculated to surprise
+a community so insulated, than that they should attract, but not arrest
+the traveller. The natural surprise which the young people felt, when
+unexpectedly encountered in their rustic sports, was naturally increased
+by this unusual circumstance, and they looked after the departing forms
+of the wayfarers with a wonder and curiosity that kept them for some
+time silent. The elder of the two, meanwhile--one of whose habits of
+mind was always to give instantaneous utterance to the feeling which was
+upper-most--dilated, without heeding the sneers of his nephew, upon the
+apparent happiness which they witnessed.
+
+"Here, you see, Warham, is a pleasure which the great city never
+knows:--the free intercourse of the sexes in all those natural exercises
+which give health to the body, grace to the movement, and vivacity to
+the manners."
+
+"The health will do well enough," replied the skeptic, "but save me from
+the grace of Hob and Hinney; and as for their manners--did I hear you
+correctly, uncle, when you spoke of their manners?"
+
+"Surely, you did. I have always regarded the natural manners which
+belong to the life of the forester, as being infinitely more noble, as
+well as more graceful, than those of the citizen. Where did you ever
+see a tradesman whose bearing was not mean compared with that of the
+hunter?"
+
+"Ay, but these are no hunters, and scarcely foresters. I see not a
+single Nimrod among the lads; and as for the lasses, even your eyes,
+indulgent as they usually are, will scarcely venture to insist that I
+shall behold one nymph among them worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of
+Diana. The manners of the hunter are those of an elastic savage; but
+these lads shear sheep, raise hogs for the slaughter-pen, and seldom
+perform a nobler feat than felling a bullock. They have none of the
+elasticity which, coupled with strength, makes the grace of the man;
+and they walk as if perpetually in the faith that their corn-rows and
+potatoe-hills were between their legs."
+
+"Did you note the young woman in the crimson body Warham? Was she not
+majestically made?"
+
+"It struck me she would weigh against any two of the company."
+
+"She is rather heavy, I grant you, but her carriage, Warham!"
+
+"Would carry weight--nothing more."
+
+"There was one little girl, just rising into womanhood:--you must admit
+that she had a very lovely face, and her form--"
+
+"My dear uncle, what is it that you will not desire me to believe? You
+are sadly given to proselytism, and take infinite pains to compel me
+to see with eyes that never do their owner so much wrong, as when
+they reject the aid of spectacles. How much would Charlemont and its
+inhabitants differ to your sight, were you only to take your green
+spectacles from the shagreen case in which they do no duty. But if you
+are resolved, in order to seem youthful, to let your age go unprovided
+with the means of seeing as youth would see, at least suffer me to enjoy
+the natural privileges of twenty-five. When, like you, my hairs whiten,
+and my eyes grow feeble, ten to one, I shall think with you that every
+third woodman is an Apollo, and every other peasant-girl is a Venus,
+whom--"
+
+The words of the speaker ceased--cut short by the sudden appearance of a
+form and face, the beauty and dignity of which silenced the skeptic, and
+made him doubtful, for the moment, whether he had not in reality reached
+that period of confused and confounding vision, which, as he alleged to
+be the case with his uncle, loses all power of discrimination. A maiden
+stood before him--tall, erect, majestic--beautiful after no ordinary
+standard of beauty. She was a brunette, with large dark eyes, which,
+though bright, seemed dark with excess of bright--and had a depth of
+expression which thrilled instantly through the bosom of the spectator.
+A single glance did she bestow upon the travellers, while she
+acknowledged, by a slight courtesy, the respectful bow which they made
+her. They drew up their horses as with mutual instinct, but she passed
+them quickly, courtesying a second time as she did so, and, in another
+moment a turn of the road concealed her from the eyes of the travellers.
+
+"What say you to that, Warham?" demanded the senior exultingly.
+
+"A Diana, in truth; but, uncle, we find her not among the rest. SHE is
+none of your cottagers. SHE is of another world and element. She is no
+Charlemonter."
+
+And, as he spoke, the younger traveller looked back with straining eyes
+to catch another glance of the vanished object, but in vain.
+
+"You deserve never to see a lovely woman again, Warham, for your
+skepticism."
+
+"But I will have a second look at her, uncle, though the skies fall,"
+answered the young man, as, wheeling his horse round, he deliberately
+galloped back to the bend in the avenue, by which she had been hidden
+from his view.
+
+He had scarcely reached the desired point, when he suddenly recoiled
+to find the object of his pursuit standing motionless just beyond, with
+eyes averted to the backward path--her glance consequently encountering
+his own, the very moment when he discovered her. A deep crimson, visible
+even where he stood, suffused her cheeks when she beheld him; and
+without acknowledging the second bow which the traveller made, she
+somewhat haughtily averted her head with a suddenness which shook her
+long and raven tresses entirely free of the net-work which confined
+them.
+
+"A proud gipsy!" muttered the youth as he rode back to his uncle--"just
+such a spirit as I should like to tame." He took especial care, however,
+that this sentiment did not reach the ears of his senior.
+
+"Well?" said the latter, inquiringly, at his approach.
+
+"I am right after all, uncle:--the wench is no better than the rest. A
+heavy bulk that seemed dignified only because she is too fat for levity.
+She walks like a blind plough-horse in a broken pasture, up and down,
+over and over; with a gait as rigid and deliberate as if she trod
+among the hot cinders, and had corns on all her toes. She took us so by
+surprise that if we had not thought her beautiful we must have thought
+her ugly, and the chances are equal, that, on a second meeting, we shall
+both think her so. I shall, I'm certain, and you must, provided you give
+your eyes the benefit, and your nose the burden of your green specs."
+
+"Impossible! I can scarce believe it, Warham," replied the senior. "I
+thought her very beautiful."
+
+"I shall never rely on your judgment again;--nay, uncle, I am almost
+inclined to suspect your taste."
+
+"Well, let them be beautiful or ugly, still I should think the same of
+the beauty of this village."
+
+"While the sun shines it may be tolerable; but, uncle, in wet bad
+weather--it must become a mere pond, it lies so completely in the hollow
+of the hills."
+
+"There is reason in that, Warham."
+
+"And yet, even as a pond, it would have its advantages--it would be
+famous for duck-raising."
+
+"Pshaw! you are worse than a Mahometan."
+
+"Something of a just comparison, uncle, though scarcely aimed," said
+the other; "like Mahomet, you know, I doubt the possession of souls by
+women."
+
+"Yet if these of Charlemont have not souls, they have no small share of
+happiness on earth. I never heard more happy laughter from human lips
+than from theirs. They must be happy."
+
+"I doubt that also," was the reply. "See you not, uncle, that to nine or
+ten women there are but three lads? Where the disproportion is so great
+among the sexes, and where it is so unfavorable to the weaker, women
+never can be happy. Their whole lives will be lives of turmoil,
+jealousy, and pulling of caps. Nay, eyes shall not be secure under such
+circumstances; and Nan's fingers shall be in Doll's hair, and Doll's
+claws in Nanny's cheeks, whenever it shall so happen, that Tom Jenkins
+shall incline to Nan, or John Dobbins to Doll. Such a disparity between
+the sexes is one of the most fruitful causes of domestic war."
+
+"Warham, where do you think to go when you die?"
+
+"Where there shall be no great inequality in the population. Believe me,
+uncle, though I am sometimes disposed to think with Mahomet, and deny
+the possession of souls to the sex, I also incline to believe, with
+other more charitable teachers--however difficult it may be to reconcile
+the two philosophies--that there will be no lack of them in either
+world."
+
+"Hush, hush, Warham," was the mild rebuke of the senior; "you go too
+far--you are irreverent. As for this maiden, I still think her
+very beautiful--of a high and noble kind of beauty. My eyes may be
+bad;--indeed I am willing to admit they are none of the best; but I feel
+certain that they cannot so far deceive me, when we consider how nigh we
+were to her."
+
+"The matter deserves inquiry, uncle, if it were only to satisfy
+your faith;--suppose we ride back, both of us, and see for
+ourselves--closely, and with the aid of the green spectacles? Not that
+I care to see farther--not that I have any doubts--but I wish you to
+be convinced in this case, if only to make you sensible of the frequent
+injustice to which your indulgence of judgment, subjects the critical
+fastidiousness of mine. What say you; shall we wheel about?"
+
+"Why, you are mad, surely. It is now sunset, and we have a good eight
+miles before we get to Holme's Station."
+
+"But we can sleep in Charlemont to-night. A night in this earthly
+Eden--"
+
+"And run the risk of losing our company? Oh, no, most worthy nephew.
+They will start at dawn to-morrow."
+
+"We can soon come up with 'em."
+
+"Perhaps not, and the risk is considerable. Travelling to the
+Mississippi is no such small matter at any time, and, in these times
+it is only with a multitude, that there is safety. The murder of old
+Whiteford, is a sufficient warning not to go alone with more gold than
+lead in one's pocket. We are two, it is true, but better ten than two.
+You are a brave fellow enough, Warham, I doubt not; but a shot will
+dispose of you, and after that I should be an easy victim. I could wink
+and hold out my iron as well as the best of you, but I prefer to escape
+the necessity. Let us mend our pace. We are burning daylight."
+
+The nephew, with an air of some impatience, which, however, escaped the
+eyes of the senior, sent his horse forward by a sharp application of his
+spur, though looking back the while, with a glance of reluctance, which
+strongly disagreed with the sentiments which he expressed. Indeed,
+with both the travellers, the impression made by the little village
+of Charlemont was such that the subject seemed nowise displeasing to
+either, and furnished the chief staple of conversation between them,
+as they rode the remaining eight miles of their journey. The old man's
+heart had been subdued and won by the sweet air of peace which seemed to
+overspread and hallow the soft landscape, and the smiling cottages which
+made it human. The laughing maidens with their bright eyes and cheering
+accents, gave vivacity to its milder charms. We have heard from the lips
+of the younger traveller, that these attractions had failed to captivate
+his fancy. We may believe of this as we please. It is very probable that
+he had, in considerable part, spoken nothing but the truth. He was too
+much of a mocker;--one of those worldlings who derive their pleasures
+from circumstances of higher conventional attraction. He had no feeling
+for natural romance. His PENCHANT, was decidedly for the artificial
+existence of city life; and the sneers which he had been heard
+to express at the humble joys of rustic life, its tastes, and
+characteristics, were, in truth, only such as he really felt. But, even
+in his case, there was an evident disposition to know something more of
+Charlemont. He was really willing to return. He renewed the same subject
+of conversation, when it happened to flag, with obvious eagerness;
+and, though his language was still studiedly disparaging, a more deeply
+penetrating judgment than that of his uncle, would have seen that the
+little village, slightly as he professed to esteem it, was yet an object
+of thought and interest in his eyes. Of the sources of this new interest
+time must inform us.
+
+"Well, well, Warham," at length exclaimed the uncle, in a tone that
+seemed meant to close the discussion of a topic which his nephew now
+appeared mischievously bent to thrust upon him, "you will return to
+Kentucky in the fall. Take Charlemont in your route. Stop a week there.
+It will do you no harm. Possibly you may procure some clients--may,
+indeed, include it in your tour of practice--at all events, you will not
+be unprofitably employed if you come to see the village and the people
+with MY eyes, which, I doubt not, you will in time."
+
+"In time, perhaps, I may. It is well that you do not insist upon any
+hurried convictions. Were I at your years uncle mine," continued the
+other irreverently, "I should no doubt see with your eyes, and possibly
+feel with your desires. Then, no doubt, I shall acquire a taste for
+warmingpans and nightcaps--shall look for landscapes rather than
+lands--shall see nothing but innocence among the young, and resignation
+and religion among the old; and fancy, in every aged pair of bumpkins
+that I see, a Darby and Joan, with perpetual peace at their fireside,
+though they may both happen to lie there drunk on apple-brandy. Between
+caudle-cups and 'John Anderson, my Jo-John,' it is my hope to pass the
+evening of my days with a tolerable grace, and leave behind me some
+comely representatives, who shall take up the burden of the ditty where
+I leave off. On this head be sure you shall have no cause to complain of
+me. I shall be no Malthusian, as you certainly have shown yourself. It
+is the strangest thing to me, uncle, that, with all your SPOKEN rapture
+for the sex, you should never have thought of securing for yourself at
+least one among the crowd which you so indiscriminately admire. Surely,
+a gentleman of your personal attractions--attractions which seem
+resolute to cling to you to the last--could not have found much
+difficulty in procuring the damsel he desired! And when, too, your
+enthusiasm for the sex is known, one would think it only necessary that
+you should fling your handkerchief, to have it greedily grappled by
+the fairest of the herd. How is it, uncle--how have you escaped from
+them--from yourself?"
+
+"Pshaw, Warham, you are a fool!" exclaimed the senior, riding forward
+with increasing speed. The words were spoken good naturedly, but the
+youth had touched a spot, scarcely yet thoroughly scarred over, in the
+old man's bosom; and memories, not less painful because they had been
+bidden so long, were instantly wakened into fresh and cruel activity.
+
+It will not diminish the offence of the nephew in the mind of the
+reader, when he is told that the youth was not ignorant of the
+particular tenderness of his relative in this respect. The gentle nature
+of the latter, alone, rescued him from the well-merited reproach of
+suffering his habitual levity of mood to prevail in reference to one
+whom even he himself was disposed to honor. But few words passed
+between the two, ere they reached the place of appointment. The careless
+reference of the youth had made the thoughts of the senior active at
+the expense of his observation. His eyes were now turned inward; and the
+landscape, and the evening sun, which streamed over and hallowed it with
+a tender beauty to the last, was as completely hidden from his vision,
+as if a veil had been drawn above his sight. The retrospect, indeed,
+is ever the old man's landscape; and perhaps, even had he not been so
+unkindly driven back to its survey, our aged traveller would have been
+reminded of the past in the momently-deepening shadows which the evening
+gathered around his path. Twilight is the cherished season for sad
+memories, even as the midnight is supposed to be that of guilty ghosts;
+and nothing, surely, can be more fitting than that the shadows of former
+hopes should revisit us in those hours when the face of nature itself
+seems darkening into gloom.
+
+It was night before the wayfarers reached the appointed baiting place.
+There they found their company--a sort of little caravan, such as is
+frequent in the history of western emigration--already assembled, and
+the supper awaiting them. Let us leave them to its enjoyment, and return
+once more to the village of Charlemont.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The young maiden last met by our travellers, and whose appearance had
+so favorably impressed them, had not been altogether uninfluenced by
+the encounter. Her spirit was of a musing and perhaps somewhat moody
+character, and the little adventure related in our last chapter, had
+awakened in her mind a train of vague and purposeless thought, from
+which she did not strive to disengage herself. She ceased to pursue the
+direct path back to Charlemont, the moment she had persuaded herself
+that the strangers had continued on their way; and turning from the
+beaten track, she strolled aside, following the route of a brooklet, the
+windings of which, as it led her forward, were completely hidden from
+the intrusive glance of any casual wayfarer. The prattle of the little
+stream as it wound upon its sleepless journey, contributed still more to
+strengthen the musings of those vagrant fancies that filled the maiden's
+thoughts.
+
+She sat down upon the prostrate trunk of a tree, and surrendered herself
+for a while to their control. Her thoughts were probably of a kind
+which, to a certain extent, are commended to every maiden. Among them,
+perpetually rose an image of the bold and handsome stranger, whose
+impudence, in turning back in pursuit of her, was somewhat qualified by
+the complimentary curiosity which such conduct manifested. Predominant
+even over this image, however, was the conviction of isolation which
+she felt where she was, and the still more painful conviction, that
+the future was without promise. Such thoughts and apprehensions may
+be natural enough to all young persons of active, earnest nature, not
+permitted to perform; but in the bosom of Margaret Cooper they were
+particularly so. Her mind was of a masculine and commanding character,
+and was ill-satisfied with her position and prospect in Charlemont. A
+quiet, obscure village, such as that we have described, held forth no
+promise for a spirit so proud, impatient, and ambitious as hers. She
+knew the whole extent of knowledge which it contained, and all its
+acquisitions and resources--she had sounded its depths, and traced all
+its shallows. The young women kept no pace with her own progress--they
+were good, silly girls enough--a chattering, playful set, whom small
+sports could easily satisfy, and who seemed to have no care, and scarce
+a hope, beyond the hilly limits of their homestead; and as for the young
+men--they were only suited to the girls, such as they were, and could
+never meet the demand of such an intellect as hers.
+
+This lofty self-estimate, which was in some sense just, necessarily gave
+a tone to her language and a coloring to all her thoughts, such as
+good sense and amiability should equally strive to suppress and
+conceal--unless, as in the case of Margaret Cooper, the individual
+herself was without due consciousness of their presence. It had the
+effect of discouraging and driving from her side many a good-natured
+damsel, who would have loved to condole with her, and might have been
+a pleasant companion. The young women regarded her with some dislike in
+consequence of her self-imposed isolation--and the young men with some
+apprehension. Her very knowledge of books, which infinitely surpassed
+that of all her sex within the limits of Charlemont, was also an object
+of some alarm. It had been her fortune, whether well or ill may be a
+question, to inherit from her father a collection, not well chosen,
+upon which her mind had preyed with an appetite as insatiate as it
+was undiscriminating. They had taught her many things, but among these
+neither wisdom nor patience was included;--and one of the worst lessons
+which she had learned, and which they had contributed in some respects
+to teach, was discontent with her condition--a discontent which
+saddened, if it did not embitter, her present life, while it left the
+aspects of the future painfully doubtful, even to her own eye.
+
+She was fatherless, and had been already taught some of those rude
+lessons which painfully teach dependence; but such lessons, which
+to most others would have brought submission, only provoked her to
+resistance. Her natural impetuosity of disposition, strengthened by
+her mother's idolatrous indulgence, increased the haughtiness of her
+character; and when, to these influences, we add that her surviving
+parent was poor, and suffered from privations which were unfelt by many
+of their neighbors, it may be easily conceived that a temper and mind
+such as we have described those of Margaret Cooper--ardent, commanding,
+and impatient, hourly found occasion, even in the secluded village where
+she dwelt, for the exercise of moods equally adverse to propriety and
+happiness. Isolated from the world by circumstances, she doubly exiled
+herself from its social indulgences, by the tyrannical sway of a
+superior will, strengthened and stimulated by an excitable and ever
+feverish blood; and, as we find her now, wandering sad and sternly by
+the brookside, afar from the sports and humbler sources of happiness,
+which gentler moods left open to the rest, so might she customarily be
+found, at all hours, when it was not absolutely due to appearances that
+she should be seen among the crowds.
+
+We will not now seek to pursue her musings and trace them out to their
+conclusions, nor will it be necessary that we should do more
+than indicate their character. That they were sad and solemn as
+usual--perhaps humbling--may be gathered from the fact that a big tear
+might have been seen, long gathering in her eye;--the next moment she
+brushed off the intruder with an impatience of gesture, that plainly
+showed how much her proud spirit resented any such intrusion. The tear
+dispersed the images which had filled her contemplative mood, and rising
+from her sylvan seat, she prepared to move forward, when a voice calling
+at some little distance, drew her attention. Giving a hasty glance
+in the direction of the sound, she beheld a young man making his way
+through the woods, and approaching her with rapid footsteps. His evident
+desire to reach her, did not, however, prompt her to any pause in her
+own progress; but, as if satisfied with the single glance which she gave
+him, and indifferent utterly to his object, she continued on her way,
+nor stopped for an instant, nor again looked back, until his salutation,
+immediately behind her, compelled her attention and answer.
+
+"Margaret--Miss Cooper!" said the speaker, who was a young rustic,
+probably twenty or twenty-one years of age, of tall, good person,
+a handsome face, which was smooth, though of dark complexion, and
+lightened by an eye of more than ordinary size and intelligence. His
+tones were those of one whose sensibilities were fine and active, and
+it would not have called for much keen observation to have seen that his
+manner, in approaching and addressing the maiden, was marked with some
+little trepidation. She, on the contrary, seemed too familiar with
+his homage, or too well satisfied of his inferiority, to deign much
+attention to his advances. She answered his salutation coldly, and was
+preparing to move forward, when his words again called for her reluctant
+notice.
+
+"I have looked for you, Margaret, full an hour. Mother sent me after you
+to beg that you will come there this evening. Old Jenks has come up from
+the river, and brought a store of fine things--there's a fiddle for
+Ned, and Jason Lightner has a flute, and I--I have a small lot of books,
+Margaret, that I think will please you."
+
+"I thank you, William Hinkley, and thank your mother, but I can not come
+this evening."
+
+"But why not, Margaret?--your mother's coming--she promised for you too,
+but I thought you might not get home soon enough to see her, and so I
+came out to seek you."
+
+"I am very sorry you took so much trouble, William, for I cannot come
+this evening."
+
+"But why not, Margaret? You have no other promise to go elsewhere have
+you?"
+
+"None," was the indifferent reply.
+
+"Then--but, perhaps, you are not well, Margaret?"
+
+"I am quite well, I thank you, William Hinkley, but I don't feel like
+going out this evening. I am not in the humor."
+
+Already, in the little village of Charlemont, Margaret Cooper was one
+of the few who were permitted to indulge in humors, and William Hinkley
+learned the reason assigned for her refusal, with an expression of
+regret and disappointment, if not of reproach. An estoppel, which
+would have been so conclusive in the case of a city courtier, was not
+sufficient, however, to satisfy the more frank and direct rustic, and
+he proceeded with some new suggestions, in the hope to change her
+determination.
+
+"But you'll be so lonesome at home, Margaret, when your mother's with
+us. She'll be gone before you can get back, and--"
+
+"I'm never lonesome, William, at least I'm never so well content or so
+happy as when I'm alone," was the self-satisfactory reply.
+
+"But that's so strange, Margaret. It's so strange that you should be
+different from everybody else. I often wonder at it, Margaret; for I
+know none of the other girls but love to be where there's a fiddle, and
+where there's pleasant company. It's so pleasant to be where everybody's
+pleased; and then, Margaret, where one can talk so well as you, and of
+so many subjects, it's a greater wonder still that you should not like
+to be among the rest."
+
+"I do not, however, William," was the answer in more softened tones.
+There was something in this speech of her lover, that found its way
+through the only accessible avenues of her nature. It was a truth, which
+she often repeated to herself with congratulatory pride, that she had
+few feelings or desires in common with the crowd.
+
+"It is my misfortune," she continued, "to care very little for the
+pastimes you speak of; and as for the company, I've no doubt it will
+be very pleasant for those who go, but to me it will afford very little
+pleasure. Your mother must therefore excuse me, William:--I should be a
+very dull person among the rest."
+
+"She will be so very sorry, Margaret--and Ned, whose new fiddle has just
+come, and Jason Lightner, with his flute. They all spoke of you and
+look for you above all, to hear them this evening. They will be so
+disappointed."
+
+William Hinkley spoke nothing of his own disappointment, but it was
+visible enough in his blank countenance, and sufficiently audible in the
+undisguised faltering of his accents.
+
+"I do not think they will be so much disappointed, William Hinkley.
+They have no reason to be, as they have no right to look for me in
+particular. I have very little acquaintance with the young men you speak
+of."
+
+"Why, Margaret, they live alongside of you--and I'm sure you've met them
+a thousand times in company," was the response of the youth, uttered
+in tones more earnest than any he had yet employed in the dialogue, and
+with something of surprise in his accents.
+
+"Perhaps so; but that makes them no intimates of mine, William Hinkley.
+They may be very good young men, and, indeed, so far as I know, they
+really are; but that makes no difference. We find our acquaintances and
+our intimates among those who are congenial, who somewhat resemble us in
+spirit, feeling, and understanding."
+
+"Ah, Margaret!" said her rustic companion with a sigh, which amply
+testified to the humility of his own self-estimate, and of the decline
+of his hope which came with it--"ah, Margaret, if that be the rule,
+where are you going to find friends and intimates in Charlemont?"
+
+"Where!" was the single word spoken by the haughty maiden, as her eye
+wandered off to the cold tops of the distant hills along which the
+latest rays of falling sunlight, faint and failing, as they fell,
+imparted a hue, which though bright, still as it failed to warm, left an
+expression of October sadness to the scene, that fitly harmonized with
+the chilling mood under which she had spoken throughout the interview.
+
+"I don't think, Margaret," continued the lover, finding courage as he
+continued, "that such a rule is a good one. I know it can't be a good
+one for happiness. There's many a person that never will meet his or her
+match in this world, in learning and understanding--and if they won't
+look on other persons with kindness, because they are not altogether
+equal to them, why there's a chance that they'll always be solitary and
+sad. It's a real blessing, I believe, to have great sense, but I don't
+see, that because one has great sense, that one should not think well
+and kindly of those who have little, provided they be good, and are
+willing to be friendly. Now, a good heart seems to be the very best
+thing that nature can give us; and I know, Margaret, that there's no
+two better hearts in all Charlemont--perhaps in all the world, though I
+won't say that--than cousin Ned Hinkley, and Jason Lightner, and--"
+
+"I don't deny their merits and their virtues, and their goodness of
+heart, William Hinkley," was the answer of the maiden--"I only say
+that the possession of these qualities gives them no right to claim my
+sympathies or affection. These claims are only founded upon congeniality
+of character and mind, and without this congeniality, there can be no
+proper, no lasting intimacy between persons. They no doubt, will find
+friends between whom and themselves, this congeniality exists. I, on the
+other hand, must be permitted to find mine, after my own ideas, and as I
+best can. But if I do not--the want of them gives me no great concern. I
+find company enough, and friends enough, even in these woods, to satisfy
+the desires of my heart at present; I am not anxious to extend my
+acquaintance or increase the number of my intimates."
+
+William Hinkley, who had become somewhat warmed by the argument, could
+have pursued the discussion somewhat further; but the tones and manner
+of his companion, to say nothing of her words, counselled him to
+forbear. Still, he was not disposed altogether to give up his attempts
+to secure her presence for the evening party.
+
+"But if you don't come for the company, Margaret, recollect the music.
+Even if Ned Hinkley was a perfect fool, which he is not, and Jason
+Lightner were no better,--nobody can say that they are not good
+musicians. Old Squire Bee says there's not in all Kentucky a better
+violinist than Ned, and Jason's flute is the sweetest sound that ear
+ever listened to along these hills. If you don't care anything for the
+players, Margaret, I'm sure you can't be indifferent to their music; and
+I know they are anything but indifferent to what you may think about
+it. They will play ten times as well if you are there; and I'm sure,
+Margaret, I shall be the last"--here the tone of the speaker's voice
+audibly faltered--"I shall be the very last to think it sweet if you are
+not there."
+
+But the words and faltering accents of the lover equally failed in
+subduing the inflexible, perverse mood of the haughty maiden. Her cold
+denial was repeated; and with looks that did not fail to speak the
+disappointment of William Hinkley, he attended her back to the village.
+Their progress was marked by coldness on the one hand, and decided
+sadness on the other. The conversation was carried on in monosyllables
+only, on the part of Margaret, while timidity and a painful hesitancy
+marked the language of her attendant. But a single passage may be
+remembered of all that was said between the two, ere they separated at
+the door of the widow Cooper.
+
+"Did you see the two strangers, Margaret, that passed through Charlemont
+this afternoon?"
+
+The cheeks of the maiden became instantly flushed, and the rapid
+utterance of her reply in the affirmative, denoted an emotion which the
+jealous instincts of the lover readily perceived. A cold chill, on the
+instant, pervaded the veins of the youth; and that night he did not
+hear, any more than Margaret Cooper, the music of his friends. He was
+present all the time and he answered their inquiries as usual; but his
+thoughts were very far distant, and somehow or other, they perpetually
+mingled up the image of the young traveller, whom he too had seen, with
+that of the proud woman, whom he was not yet sure that he unprofitably
+worshipped.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIMPLICITY AND THE SERPENT.
+
+
+
+
+
+The mirth and music of Charlemont were enjoyed by others, but not by
+Margaret Cooper. The resolution not to share in the pleasures of the
+young around her, which she showed to her rustic lover, was a resolution
+firmly persevered in throughout the long summer which followed. Her
+wayward mood shut out from her contemplation the only sunshine of the
+place; and her heart, brooding over the remote, if not the impossible,
+denied itself those joys which were equally available and nigh. Her
+lonesome walks became longer in the forests, and later each evening grew
+the hour of her return to the village. Her solitude daily increased, as
+the youth, who really loved her with all the ardency of a first passion,
+and who regarded her at the same time with no little veneration for
+those superior gifts of mind and education which, it was the general
+conviction in Charlemont, that she possessed, became, at length,
+discouraged in a pursuit which hitherto had found nothing but coldness
+and repulse. Not that he ceased to love--nay, he did not cease entirely
+to hope. What lover ever did? He fondly ascribed to the object of his
+affections a waywardness of humor, which he fancied would pass away
+after a season, and leave her mind to the influence of a more sober
+and wholesome judgment. Perhaps, too, like many other youth in like
+circumstances, he did not always see or feel the caprice of which he was
+the victim. But for this fortunate blindness, many a fair damsel would
+lose her conquest quite as suddenly as it was made.
+
+But the summer passed away, and the forest put on the sere and sombre
+robes of autumn, and yet no visible change--none at least more favorable
+to the wishes of William Hinkley--took place in the character and
+conduct of the maiden. Her mind, on the contrary, seemed to take
+something of its hue from the cold sad tones of the forest. The serious
+depth of expression in her dark eyes seemed to deepen yet more, and
+become yet more concentrated--their glance acquired a yet keener
+intentness--an inflexibility of direction--which suffered them seldom
+to turn aside from those moody contemplations, which had made her, for
+a long time, infinitely prefer to gaze upon the rocks, and woods, and
+waters, than upon the warm and wooing features of humanity.
+
+At distance the youth watched and sometimes followed her, and when, with
+occasional boldness, he would draw nigh to her secret wanderings, a cold
+fear filled his heart, and he shrunk back with all the doubt and dread
+of some guilty trespasser. But his doubt, and we may add, his dread
+also, was soon to cease entirely, in the complete conviction of his
+hopelessness. The day and the fate were approaching, in the person of
+one, to whom a natural instinct had already taught him to look with
+apprehension, and whose very first appearance had inspired him with
+antipathy.
+
+What a strange prescience, in some respects, has the devoted and
+watchful heart that loves! William Hinkley, had seen but for a single
+instant, the face of that young traveller, who has already been
+introduced to us, and that instant was enough to awaken his
+dislike--nay, more, his hostility. Yet no villager in Charlemont but
+would have told you, that, of all the village, William Hinkley was
+the most gentle, the most generous--the very last to be moved by bad
+passions, by jealousy or hate.
+
+The youth whom we have seen going down with his uncle to the great
+valley of the Mississippi, was now upon his return. He was now
+unaccompanied by the benignant senior with whom we first made his
+acquaintance. He had simply attended the old bachelor, from whom he had
+considerable expectations, to his plantation, in requital of the spring
+visit which the latter had paid to his relatives in Kentucky; and having
+spent the summer in the southwest, was about to resume his residence,
+and the profession of the law, in that state. We have seen that, however
+he might have succeeded in disguising his true feelings from his uncle,
+he was not unmoved by the encounter with Margaret Cooper, on the edge
+of the village. He now remembered the casual suggestion of the senior,
+which concluded their discussion on the subject of her beauty; and he
+resolved to go aside from his direct path, and take Charlemont in the
+route of his return. Not that he himself needed a second glance to
+convince him of that loveliness which, in his wilfulness, he yet denied.
+He was free to acknowledge to himself that Margaret Cooper was one of
+the noblest and most impressive beauties he had ever seen. The very
+scorn that spoke in all her features, the imperious fires that kindled
+in her eyes, were better calculated than any more gentle expressions, to
+impose upon one who was apt to be skeptical on the subject of ordinary
+beauties. The confidence and consciousness of superiority, which too
+plainly spoke out in the features of Margaret, seemed to deny to his
+mind the privilege of doubting or discussing her charms--a privilege
+upon which no one could have been more apt to insist than himself. This
+seeming denial, while it suggested to him ideas of novelty, provoked
+his curiosity and kindled his pride. The haughty glance with which she
+encountered his second approach, aroused his vanity, and a latent desire
+arose in his heart, to overcome one who had shown herself so premature
+in her defiance. We will not venture to assert that the young traveller
+had formed any very deliberate designs of conquest, but, it may be
+said, as well here as elsewhere, that his self-esteem was great; and
+accustomed to easy conquests among the sex, in the region where he
+dwelt, it was only necessary to inflame his vanity, to stimulate him to
+the exercise of all his arts.
+
+It was about noon, on one of those bright, balmy days, early in October,
+when "the bridal of the earth and sky," in the language of the good
+old Herbert, is going on--when, the summer heats subdued, there is
+yet nothing either cold, or repulsive in the atmosphere; and the soft
+breathing from the southwest has just power enough to stir the flowers
+and disperse their scents; that our young traveller was joined in
+his progress towards Charlemont, by a person mounted like himself and
+pursuing a similar direction.
+
+At the first glance the youth distinguished him as one of the homely
+forest preachers of the methodist persuasion, who are the chief agents
+and pioneers of religion in most of the western woods. His plain,
+unstudied garments all of black, rigid and unfashionable; his pale,
+demure features, and the general humility of his air and gesture, left
+our young skeptic little reason to doubt of this; and when the other
+expressed his satisfaction at meeting with a companion at last, after a
+long and weary ride without one, the tone of his expressions, the use of
+biblical phraseology, and the monotonous solemnity of his tones, reduced
+the doubts of the youth to absolute certainty. At first, with the
+habitual levity of the young and skeptical, he congratulated himself
+upon an encounter which promised to afford him a good subject for
+quizzing; but a moment's reflection counselled him to a more worldly
+policy, and he restrained his natural impulse in order that he might
+first sound the depths of the preacher, and learn in what respect he
+might be made subservient to his own purposes. He had already learned
+from the latter that he was on his way to Charlemont, of which place he
+seemed to have some knowledge; and the youth, in an instant, conceived
+the possibility of making him useful in procuring for himself a
+favorable introduction to the place. With this thought, he assumed the
+grave aspect and deliberate enunciation of his companion, expressed
+himself equally gratified to meet with a person who, if he did not much
+mistake, was a divine, and concluded his address by the utterance of one
+of those pious commonplaces which are of sufficiently easy acquisition,
+and which at once secured him the unscrupulous confidence of his
+companion.
+
+"Truly, it gladdens me, sir," said the holy man in reply, "to meet with
+one, as a fellow-traveller in these lonesome ways, who hath a knowledge
+of God's grace and the blessings which he daily sheddeth, even as the
+falling of the dews, upon a benighted land. It is my lot, and I repine
+not that such it is, to be for ever a wayfarer, in the desert where
+there are but few fountains to refresh the spirit. When I say desert,
+young gentleman, I speak not in the literal language of the world,
+for truly it were a most sinful denial of God's bounty were I to say,
+looking round upon the mighty forests through which I pass, and upon the
+rich soil over which I travel, that my way lies not through a country
+covered, thrice covered, with the best worldly bounties of the Lord. But
+it is a moral desert which my speech would signify. The soul of man is
+here lacking the blessed fountains of the truth--the mind of man here
+lacketh the holy and joy-shedding lights of the spirit; and it rejoiceth
+me, therefore, when I meet with one, like thyself, in whose language I
+find a proof that thou hast neither heard the word with idle ears, nor
+treasured it in thy memory with unapplying mind. May I ask of thee, my
+young friend, who thou art, and by what name I shall call thee?--not for
+the satisfaction of an idle curiosity, to know either thy profession
+or thy private concerns, but that I may the better speak to thee in
+our conference hereafter, Thou hast rightly conjectured as to my
+calling--and my own name, which is one unknown to most even in these
+forests, is John Cross--I come of a family in North Carolina, which
+still abide in that state, by the waters of the river Haw. Perhaps, if
+thou hast ever travelled in those parts, thou hast happened upon some of
+my kindred, which are very numerous."
+
+"I have never, reverend sir, travelled in those parts," said the youth,
+with commendable gravity, "but I have heard of the Cross family, which I
+believe, as you say, to be very numerous--both male and female."
+
+"Yea, I have brothers and sisters an equal number; I have aunts and
+uncles a store, and it has been the blessing of God so to multiply and
+increase every member thereof, that each of my brothers, in turn, hath
+a goodly flock, in testimony of his favors. I, alone, of all my kindred,
+have neither wife nor child, and I seem as one set apart for other ties,
+and other purposes."
+
+"Ah, sir," returned the other, quickly, and with a slyness of expression
+which escaped the direct and unsuspecting mind of the preacher, "but if
+you are denied the blessings which are theirs, you have your part in the
+great family of the world. If you have neither wife nor child of your
+own loins, yet, I trust, you have an abiding interest in the wives and
+children of all other men."
+
+"I were but an unworthy teacher of the blessed word, had I not," was the
+simple answer. "Verily, all that I teach are my children; there is not
+one crying to me for help, to whom I do not hasten with the speed of a
+father flying to bring succor to his young. I trust in God, that I have
+not made a difference between them; that I heed not one to the forfeit
+or suffering of the other; and for this impartial spirit toward the
+flock intrusted to my charge, do I pray, as well as for the needful
+strength of body and soul, through which my duties are to be done. But
+thou hast not yet spoken thy name, or my ears have failed to receive
+it."
+
+There was some little hesitation on the part of the youth before he
+answered this second application; and a less unheeding observer than his
+fellow-traveller, might have noticed an increasing warmth of hue upon
+his cheek, while he was uttering his reply:--
+
+"I am called Alfred Stevens," he replied at length, the color increasing
+upon his cheek even after the words were spoken. But they were spoken.
+The falsehood was registered against him beyond recall, though, of
+course, without startling the doubts or suspicions of his companion.
+
+"Alfred Stevens; there are many Stevenses: I have known several and
+sundry. There is a worthy family of that name by the waters of the Dan."
+
+"You will find them, I suspect, from Dan to Beersheba," responded the
+youth with a resumption of his former levity.
+
+"Truly, it may be so. The name is of good repute. But what is thy
+calling, Alfred Stevens? Methinks at thy age thou shouldst have one."
+
+"So I have, reverend sir," replied the other; "my calling heretofore has
+been that of the law. But it likes me not, and I think soon to give it
+up."
+
+"Thou wilt take to some other then. What other hast thou chosen; or art
+thou like those unhappy youths, by far too many in our blessed country,
+whom fortune hath hurt by her gifts, and beguiled into idleness and
+sloth?"
+
+"Nay, not so, reverend sir; the gifts of fortune have been somewhat
+sparing in my case, and I am even now conferring with my own thoughts
+whether or not to take to school-keeping. Nay, perhaps, I should incline
+to something better, if I could succeed in persuading myself of my own
+worthiness in a vocation which, more than all others, demands a pure
+mind with a becoming zeal. The law consorts not with my desires--it
+teaches selfishness, rather than self-denial; and I have already found
+that some of its duties demand the blindness and the silence of that
+best teacher from within, the watchful and unsleeping conscience."
+
+"Thou hast said rightly, Alfred Stevens; I have long thought that the
+profession of the law hardeneth the heart, and blindeth the conscience.
+Thou wilt do well to leave it, as a craft that leads to sin, and makes
+the exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly understand thee, thou
+lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation for which thy spirit
+yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise, and gird up thy loins;
+advance and falter not;--the field is open, and though the victory
+brings thee no worldly profit, and but little worldly honor, yet the
+reward is eternal, and the interest thereof, unlike the money which thou
+puttest out to usury in the hands of men, never fails to be paid, at the
+very hour of its due, from the unfailing treasury of Heaven. Verily, I
+rejoice, Alfred Stevens, that I have met with thee to-day. I had feared
+that the day had been lost to that goodly labor, to which all my days
+have been given for seventeen years, come the first sabbath in the next
+November. But what thou hast said, awakens hope in my soul that such
+will not be the case. Let not my counsels fail thee, Alfred;--let thy
+zeal warm; let thy spirit work within thee, and thy words kindle, in the
+service of the Lord. How it will rejoice me to see thee taking up
+the scrip and the staff and setting forth for the wildernesses of the
+Mississippi, of Arkansas, and Texas, far beyond;--bringing the wild man
+of the frontier, and the red savage, into the blessed fold and constant
+company of the Lord Jesus, to whom all praise!"
+
+"It were indeed a glorious service," responded the young stranger--whom
+we shall proceed, hereafter, to designate by the name by which he
+has called himself. He spoke musingly, and with a gravity that was
+singularly inflexible--"it were indeed a glorious service. Let me see,
+there were thousands of miles to traverse before one might reach the
+lower Arkansas; and I reckon, Mr. Cross, the roads are mighty bad after
+you pass the Mississippi--nay, even in the Mississippi, through a part
+of which territory I have gone only this last summer, there is a sad
+want of causeways, and the bridges are exceedingly out of repair. There
+is one section of near a hundred miles, which lies between the bluffs
+of Ashibiloxi, and the far creek of Catahoula, that was a shame and
+reproach to the country and the people thereof. What, then, must be
+the condition of the Texas territory, beyond? and, if I err not, the
+Cumanchees are a race rather given to destroy than to build up. The
+chance is that the traveller in their country might have to swim his
+horse over most of the watercourses, and where he found a bridge, it
+were perhaps a perilous risk to cross it. Even then he might ride fifty
+miles a day, before he should see the smokes which would be a sign of
+supper that night."
+
+"The greater the glory--the greater the glory, Alfred Stevens. The toil
+and the peril, the pain and the privation, in a good cause, increase
+the merit of the performance in the eyes of the Lord. What matters the
+roads and the bridges, the length of the way, or the sometimes lack of
+those comforts of the flesh, which are craved only at the expense of the
+spirit, and to the great delay of our day of conquest. These wants are
+the infirmities of the human, which dissipate and disappear, the more
+few they become, and the less pressing in their complaint. Shake thyself
+loose from them, Alfred Stevens, and thy way henceforth is perfect
+freedom."
+
+"Alas! this is my very weakness, Mr. Cross:--it was because of these
+very infirmities, that I had doubt of my own worthiness to take up the
+better vocation which is yet my desire. I am sadly given to hunger and
+thirst toward noon and evening; and the travel of a long day makes me so
+weary at night, that I should say but a hurried grace before meal, and
+make an even more hurried supper after it. Nay, I have not yet been able
+to divest myself of a habit which I acquired in my boyhood; and I need
+at times, throughout the day, a mouthful of something stronger than mere
+animal food, to sustain the fainting and feeble flesh and keep my frame
+from utter exhaustion. I dare not go upon the road, even for the brief
+journey of a single day, without providing myself beforehand with a
+supply of a certain beverage, such as is even now contained within this
+vessel, and which is infallible against sinking of the the spirits,
+faintings of the frame, disordered nerves, and even against flatulence
+and indigestion. If, at any time, thou shouldst suffer from one or
+the other of these infirmities, Mr. Cross, be sure there is no better
+medicine for their cure than this."
+
+The speaker drew from his bosom a little flask, such as is sufficiently
+well known to most western travellers, which he held on high, and which,
+to the unsuspecting eyes of the preacher, contained a couple of gills or
+more of a liquid of very innocent complexion.
+
+"Verily, Alfred Stevens, I do myself suffer from some of the weaknesses
+of which thou hast spoken. The sinking of the spirits, and the faintness
+of the frame, are but too often the enemies that keep me back from the
+plough when I would thereto set my hand; and that same flatulence--"
+
+"A most frequent disorder in a region where greens and collards form the
+largest dishes on the tables of the people," interrupted Stevens, but
+without changing a muscle of his countenance.
+
+"I do believe as thou say'st, Alfred Stevens, that the disorder comes in
+great part from that cause, though, still, I have my doubts if it be not
+a sort of wind-melancholy, to which people, who preach aloud are greatly
+subject. It is in my case almost always associated with a sort of
+hoarseness, and the nerves of my frame twitch grievously at the same
+periods. If this medicine of thine be sovereign against so cruel an
+affliction, I would crave of thee such knowledge as would enable me to
+get a large supply of it, that I may overcome a weakness, which, as I
+tell thee, oftentimes impairs my ministry, and sometimes makes me wholly
+incapable of fervent preaching. Let me smell of it, I pray thee."
+
+"Nay, taste of it, sir--it is just about the time when I find it
+beneficial to partake of it, as a medicine for my own weakness, and
+I doubt not, it will have a powerful effect also upon you. A single
+draught has been found to relieve the worst case of flatulence and
+colic."
+
+"From colic too, I am also a great sufferer," said the preacher as he
+took the flask in his hand, and proceeded to draw the stopper.
+
+"That is also the child of collards," said Stevens, as he watched with
+a quiet and unmoved countenance the proceedings of his simple companion,
+who finding some difficulty in drawing the cork, handed it back to the
+youth. The latter, more practised, was more successful, and now returned
+the open bottle to the preacher.
+
+"Take from it first, the dose which relieves thee, Alfred Stevens,
+that I may know how much will avail in my own case;" and he watched
+curiously, while Stevens, applying the flask to his lips, drew from it
+a draught, which, in western experience of benefits, would have been
+accounted a very moderate potion. This done, he handed it back to his
+companion, who, about to follow his example, asked him:--
+
+"And by what name, Alfred Stevens, do they call this medicine, the
+goodly effect of which thou holdst to be so great?"
+
+Stevens did not immediately reply--not until the preacher had applied
+the bottle to his mouth, and he could see by the distension of his
+throat, that he had imbibed a taste, at least, of the highly-lauded
+medicine. The utterance then, of the single word--"Brandy"--was
+productive of an effect no less ludicrous in the sight of the youth,
+than it was distressing to the mind of his worthy companion. The
+descending liquor was ejected with desperate effort from the throat
+which it had fairly entered--the flask flung from his hands--and with
+choking and gurgling accents, startling eyes, and reddening visage, John
+Cross turned full upon his fellow-traveller, vainly trying to repeat,
+with the accompanying horror of expression which he felt, the single
+spellword, which had produced an effect so powerful.
+
+"Bran--bran--brandy!--Alfred Stevens!--thou hast given me poison--the
+soul's poison--the devil's liquor--liquor distilled in the vessels of
+eternal sin. Wherefore hast thou done this? Dost thou not know"--
+
+"Know--know what, Mr. Cross?" replied Stevens, with all the astonishment
+which he could possibly throw into his air, as he descended from his
+horse with all haste to recover his flask, and save its remaining
+contents from loss.
+
+"Call me not mister--call me plain John Cross," replied the preacher--in
+the midst of a second fit of choking, the result of his vain effort to
+disgorge that portion of the pernicious liquid which had irretrievably
+descended into his bowels. With a surprise admirably affected, Stevens
+approached him.
+
+"My dear sir--what troubles you?--what can be the matter? What have I
+done? What is it you fear?"
+
+"That infernal draught--that liquor--I have swallowed of it a mouthful.
+I feel it in me. The sin be upon thy head, Alfred Stevens--why did you
+not tell me, before I drank, that it was the soul's poison?--the poison
+that slays more than the sword or the pestilence;--the liquor of the
+devil, distilled in the vessels of sin--and sent among men for the
+destruction of the soul! I feel it now within me, and it burns--it burns
+like the fires of damnation. Is there no water nigh that I may quench
+my thirst?--Show me, Alfred Stevens, show me where the cool waters lie,
+that I may put out these raging flames."
+
+"There is a branch, if I mistake not, just above us on the road--I think
+I see it glistening among the leaves. Let us ride toward it, sir, and it
+will relieve you."
+
+"Ah, Alfred Stevens, why have you served me thus? Why did you not tell
+me?"
+
+Repeated groans accompanied this apostrophe, and marked every step in
+the progress of the preacher to the little rivulet which trickled across
+the road. John Cross, descended with the rapidity of one whose hope
+hangs upon a minute, and dreads its loss, as equal to the loss of life.
+He straddled the stream and thrust his lips into the water, drawing up
+a quantity sufficient, in the estimation of Stevens, to have effectually
+neutralized the entire contents of his flask.
+
+"Blessed water! Blessed water! Holiest beverage! Thou art the creation
+of the Lord, and, next to the waters of eternal life, his best gift to
+undiscerning man. I drink of thee, and I am faint no longer. I rise up,
+strong and refreshed! Ah, my young friend, Alfred Stevens, I trust thou
+didst not mean me harm in giving me that poisonous liquor?"
+
+"Far from it, sir, I rather thought to do you a great benefit."
+
+"How couldst thou think to do me benefit by proffering such poison to my
+lips? nay, wherefore dost thou thyself carry it with thee, and why dost
+thou drink of it, as if it were something not hurtful as well to the
+body as the soul? Take my counsel, I pray thee, Alfred Stevens, and cast
+it behind thee for ever. Look not after it when thou dost so, with an
+eye of regret lest thou forfeit the merit of thy self-denial. If thou
+wouldst pursue the higher vocation of the brethren, thou must seek for
+the needful strength from a better and purer spirit. But what unhappy
+teacher could have persuaded thee to an indulgence which the good men of
+all the churches agree to regard as so deadly?"
+
+"Nay, Mr. Cross--"
+
+"John Cross, I pray thee; do I not call thee Alfred Stevens?--Mr. is a
+speech of worldly fashion, and becomes not one who should put the world
+and its fashions behind him."
+
+Stevens found it more difficult to comply with this one requisition of
+the preacher, than to pursue a long game of artful and complex scheming.
+He evaded the difficulty by dropping the name entirely.
+
+"You are too severe upon brandy, and upon those who use it. Nay, I am
+not sure, but you do injustice to those who make it. So far from its
+manufacturers being such as you call them, we have unquestionable proof
+that they are very worthy people of a distant but a Christian country;
+and surely you will not deny that we should find a medicine for our
+hurts, and a remedy for our complaints, in a liquor which, perhaps, it
+might be sinful to use as an ordinary beverage. Doctors, who have the
+care of human life, and whose business and desire it is to preserve it,
+nevertheless do sometimes administer poisons to their patients, which
+poisons, though deadly at other times, will, in certain diseases and
+certain conditions of disease, prove of only and great good."
+
+"Impossible! I believe it not! I believe not in the good of brandy. It
+is hurtful--it is deadly. It has slain its thousands and its tens of
+thousands--it is worse than the sword and the summer pestilence. Many a
+man have I known to perish from strong drink. In my own parts, upon the
+river Haw, in North Carolina state, I have known many. Nay, wherefore
+should I spare the truth, Alfred Stevens?--the very father of my own
+life, Ezekiel Cross, perished miserably from this burning water of sin.
+I will not hear thee speak of it again; and if thou wouldst have me
+think of thee with favor, as one hopeful of the service of the brethren,
+cast the accursed beverage of Satan from thy hands."
+
+The youth, without a word, deliberately emptied the contents of his
+vessel upon the sands, and the garrulous lips of the preacher poured
+forth as great a flood of speech in congratulation, as he had hitherto
+bestowed in homily. The good, unsuspecting man, did not perceive that
+the liquor thus thrown away, was very small in quantity, and that his
+companion, when the flask was emptied, quietly restored it to his bosom.
+John Cross had obtained a seeming victory, and did not care to examine
+its details.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The concession made by Stevens, and which had produced an effect so
+gratifying upon his companion, was one that involved no sacrifices.
+The animal appetite of the young lawyer was, in truth, comparatively
+speaking, indifferent to the commodity which he discarded; and even
+had it been otherwise, still he was one of those selfish, cool and
+calculating persons, who seem by nature to be perfectly able to subdue
+the claims of the blood, with great ease, whenever any human or social
+policy would appear to render it advisable. The greatest concession
+which he made in the transaction, was in his so readily subscribing to
+that false logic of the day, which reasons against the use of the gifts
+of Providence, because a diseased moral, and a failing education, among
+men, sometimes result in their abuse.
+
+The imperfections of a mode of reasoning so utterly illogical, were
+as obvious to the mind of the young lawyer as to anybody else; and
+the compliance which he exhibited to a requisition which his own sense
+readily assured him was as foolish as it was presumptuous, was as
+degrading to his moral character from the hypocrisy which it declared,
+as it was happy in reference to the small policy by which he had been
+governed. The unsuspecting preacher did not perceive the scornful sneer
+which curled his lips and flashed his eyes, by which his own vanity
+still asserted itself through the whole proceeding; or he would not have
+been so sure that the mantle of grace which he deemed to have surely
+fallen upon the shoulders of his companion, was sufficiently large and
+sound, to cover the multitude of sins which it yet enabled the wearer,
+so far, to conceal. Regarding him with all the favor which one is apt to
+feel for the person whom he has plucked as a brand from the burning, the
+soul of John Cross warmed to the young sinner; and it required no great
+effort of the wily Stevens to win from him the history, not only of all
+its own secrets and secret hopes--for these were of but small value in
+the eyes of the worldling--but of all those matters which belonged to
+the little village to which they were trending, and the unwritten lives
+of every dweller in that happy community.
+
+With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the
+testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those
+minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to
+the great matter immediately in hand--Stevens now propounded his direct
+inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly unconsidered insinuation, by
+which he drew from the preacher as much as he cared to know of the
+rustic lads and lasses of Charlemont. It does not concern our narrative
+to render the details thus unfolded to the stranger. And we will content
+ourselves, as did the younger of the travellers, who placed himself with
+hearty good will at the disposal of the holy man.
+
+"You shall find for me a place of lodging, Mr. Cross, while it shall
+suit me to stay in Charlemont. You have a knowledge of the people, and
+of the world, which I possess not; and it will be better that I should
+give myself up to your guidance. I know that you will not bring me to
+the dwelling of persons not in good repute; and, perhaps, I need not
+remind you that my worldly means are small--I must be at little charge
+wherever I stop."
+
+"Ah, Brother Stevens, worldly goods and worldly wealth are no more
+needed in Charlemont, than they are necessary to the service of the
+blessed Redeemer. With an empty scrip is thy service blest;--God
+sees the pure heart through the threadbare garment. I have friends in
+Charlemont who will be too happy to receive thee in the name of the
+Lord, without money and without price."
+
+The pride of Stevens, which had not shrunk from hypocrisy and falsehood,
+yet recoiled at a suggestion which involved the idea of his pecuniary
+dependence upon strangers, and he replied accordingly; though he still
+disguised his objections under the precious appearance of a becoming
+moral scruple.
+
+"It will not become me, Mr. Cross, to burden the brethren of the church
+for that hospitality which is only due to brethren."
+
+"But thou art in the way of grace--the light is shining upon thee--the
+door is open, and already the voice of the Bridegroom is calling from
+within. Thou wilt become a burning and a shining light--and the brethren
+of the church will rejoice to hail thee among its chosen. Shall they
+hold back their hand when thou art even on the threshold?"
+
+"But, Mr. Cross--"
+
+"Call me not Mr., I pray thee. Call me plain John Cross, if it please
+thee not yet to apply to me that sweeter term of loving kindness which
+the flock of God are happy to use in speech one to another. If thou wilt
+call me Brother Cross, my heart shall acknowledge the bonds between us,
+and my tongue shall make answer to thine, in like fashion. Oh, Alfred
+Stevens, may the light shine soon upon thine eyes, that thou may'st know
+for a truth how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in the
+peace of of the Lord, and according to his law. I will, with God's
+grace, bring thee to this perfect knowledge, for I see the way clear
+because of the humility which thou hast already shown, and thy yielding
+to the counsels of the teacher. As for what thou sayest about charges to
+the brethren, let that give thee no concern. Thou shalt lodge with old
+Brother Hinkley, who is the pattern of good things and of, holiness
+in Charlemont. His house is more like unto the tent of the patriarch
+pitched upon the plain, than the house of the dweller among the cities.
+No lock fastens its doors against the stranger; and the heart of the
+aged man is even more open than the doorway of his dwelling. He standeth
+in the entrance like one looking out for him that cometh, and his first
+word to the messenger of God, is 'welcome!' Thou shalt soon see the
+truth of what I say to thee, for even now do we look down upon his house
+in the very midst of the village."
+
+If the scruples of Stevens still continued to urge him against
+accepting the hospitality of the old patriarch of whom he had received
+a description at once just and agreeable, the recollection of the
+village-maiden whom he had gone aside from his direct path of travel,
+and made some even greater departures from the truth, to see, determined
+him at length to waive them; particularly when he ascertained from his
+fellow-traveller that he knew of nobody in Charlemont who accommodated
+strangers for money.
+
+Stevens was one of those persons who watch the progress of events, and
+he resolved, with a mental reservation--that seems strange enough in the
+case of one who had shown so little reluctance to say and do the thing
+which he could not maintain or defend--to avail himself of some means
+for requiting, to the uttermost farthing, the landlord, to whose
+hospitality he might be indebted during his stay in Charlemont.
+
+Such are the contradictions of character which hourly detect and
+describe the mere worldling--the man lacking in all principle, but that
+which is subservient to his selfish policy. To accept money or money's
+worth from a stranger, seemed mean and humbling to one, who did not
+hesitate, in the promotion of a scheme, which, had treachery for its
+object, to clothe himself in the garments of deception, and to make
+his appearance with a lie festering upon his lips. That evening, Alfred
+Stevens became, with his worthier companion, an inmate of the happy
+dwelling of William Hinkley, the elder--a venerable, white-headed
+father, whose whole life had made him worthy of a far higher eulogium
+than that which John Cross had pronounced upon him.
+
+The delight of the family to see their reverend teacher was heartfelt
+and unreserved. A vigorous gripe of the hand, by the elder dragged him
+into the house, and a sentence of unusual length, from his better half,
+assured him of that welcome which the blunter action of her venerable
+husband had already sufficiently declared. Nor was the young adventurer
+who accompanied the preacher, suffered to remain long unconsidered. When
+John Cross had told them who he was, or rather when he had declared
+his spiritual hopes in him--which he did with wonderful unction, in a
+breath--the reception of old Hinkley, which had been hospitable enough
+before, became warm and benignant; and Brother Stevens already became
+the word of salutation, whenever the old people desired to distinguish
+their younger guest.
+
+Brother Stevens, it may be said here, found no difficulty in maintaining
+the character he had assumed. He had, in high degree, the great art
+of the selfish man, and could, when his game required it, subdue with
+little effort, those emotions and impulses, which the frank and ardent
+spirit must speak out or die. He went into the house of the hospitable
+old man, and into the village of Charlemont, as if he had gone into the
+camp of an enemy. He was, indeed, a spy, seeking to discover, not the
+poverty, but the richness of the land. His mind, therefore, was like one
+who has clothed himself in armor, placed himself in waiting for the foe,
+and set all his sentinels on the watch. His caution measured every word
+ere it was spoken, every look ere it was shown, every movement ere he
+suffered his limbs to make it. The muscles of his face, were each put
+under curb and chain--the smiles of the lip and the glances of the eyes,
+were all subdued to precision, and permitted to go forth, only under
+special guard and restriction. In tone, look, and manner, he strove as
+nearly as he might to resemble the worthy but simple-minded man, who had
+so readily found a worthy adherent and pupil in him; and his efforts
+at deception might be held to be sufficiently successful, if the frank
+confiding faith of the aged heads of the Hinkley family be the fitting
+test of his experiment.
+
+With them he was soon perfectly at home--his own carriage seemed to them
+wondrously becoming, and the approbation of John Cross was of itself
+conclusive. The preacher was the oracle of the family, all of whom were
+only too happy of his favor not to make large efforts to be pleased
+with those he brought; and in a little while, sitting about the friendly
+fireside, the whole party had become as sociable as if they had been
+"hail fellow! well met," a thousand years. Two young girls, children
+of a relative, and nieces of the venerable elder, had already perched
+themselves upon the knee of the stranger, and strove at moments over his
+neck and shoulder, without heeding the occasional sugary reproof of
+Dame Hinkley, which bade them "let Brother Stevens be;" and, already had
+Brother Stevens himself, ventured upon the use of sundry grave saws
+from the holy volume, the fruit of early reading and a retentive memory,
+which not a little helped to maintain his novel pretensions in the mind
+of the brethren, and the worthy teacher, John Cross himself. All things
+promised a long duration to a friendship suddenly begun; when William
+Hinkley, the younger, a youth already introduced to the reader, made his
+appearance within the happy circle. He wore a different aspect from all
+the rest as he recognised in the person of Brother Stevens, the handsome
+stranger, his antipathy to whom, at a first glance, months before,
+seemed almost to have the character of a warning instinct. A nearer
+glance did not serve to lessen his hostility.
+
+Our traveller was to the eye of a lover, one, indeed, who promised
+dangerous rivalship, and an intrepid air of confidence which, even his
+assumed character could not enable him to disguise from the searching
+eyes of jealousy, contributed to strengthen the dislike of the youth
+for a person who seemed so perfectly sure of his ground. Still, William
+Hinkley behaved as a civil and well-bred youth might be expected
+to behave. He did not suffer his antipathy to put on the aspect of
+rudeness; he was grave and cold, but respectful; and though he did
+not "be-brother" the stranger, he yet studiously subdued his tones to
+mildness, when it became necessary, in the course of the evening meal,
+that he should address him. Few words, however, were exchanged between
+the parties. If Hinkley beheld an enemy to his heart's hopes in Stevens,
+the latter was sufficiently well-read in the human heart to discover
+quite as soon, that the rustic was prepared to see in himself any
+character but that of a friend. The unwillingness with which Hinkley
+heard his suggestions--the absence of all freedom and ease in his
+deportment, toward himself, so different from the manner of the youth
+when speaking or listening to all other persons; the occasional gleam
+of jealous inquiry and doubt within his eye, and the utter lack of all
+enthusiasm and warmth in his tones while he spoke to him, satisfied
+Stevens, that he, of all the household of his hospitable entertainers,
+if not actually suspicious of his true character, was the one whose
+suspicions were those most easily to be awakened, and who of all others,
+needed most to be guarded against. It will not increase our estimate
+of the wisdom of the stranger, to learn that, with this conviction, he
+should yet arrogate to himself a tone of superiority, while speaking in
+hearing of the youth.
+
+This was shown in a manner that was particularly galling to a
+high-spirited youth, and one whose prejudices were already awakened
+against the speaker. It was that of a paternal and patronizing senior,
+whose very gentleness and benignity of look and accent, seem to arise
+from a full conviction of the vast difference which exists between
+himself and his hearer. An indignity like this, which can not be
+resented, is one which the young mind feels always most anxious to
+resent. The very difficulties in the way of doing so, stimulates the
+desire. Such was the feeling of William Hinkley. With such a feeling it
+may be conjectured that opportunity was not long wanting, or might soon
+be made, for giving utterance to the suppressed fires of anger which
+were struggling in his heart. Days and weeks may elapse, but the
+antipathy will declare itself at last. It would be easier to lock up the
+mountain torrent after the breath of the tornado has torn away its rocky
+seals, than to stifle in the heart that hates, because of its love, the
+fierce fury which these united passions enkindle within it.
+
+In the first hour of their first interview, William Hinkley and Alfred
+Stevens felt that they were mutual foes. In that little space of time,
+the former had but one thought, which, though it changed its aspect with
+each progressive moment, never for an instant changed its character. He
+panted with the hope of redressing himself for wrongs which he could not
+name; for injuries and indignities which he knew not how to describe.
+Stevens had neither done nor said anything which might be construed into
+an offence. And yet, nobody knew better than Stevens that he had been
+offensive. The worthy John Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never
+dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated
+in the fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as
+particularly favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of
+such unctuous moral delivery.
+
+"Surely," he mused internally, "this is a becoming instrument which I
+have found, for the prosecution of the good work. He will bear the word
+like one sent forth to conquer. He will bind and loose with a strong
+hand. He will work wondrous things!"
+
+Not unlike these were the calculations of old Hinkley, as he hearkened
+to the reverend reasonings and the solemn commonplaces of the stranger.
+Stevens, like most recent converts, was the most uncompromising enemy of
+those sins from which he professed to have achieved with difficulty his
+own narrow escape; and finding, from the attentive ear of his audience,
+that he had made a favorable impression, he proceeded to manufacture for
+them his religious experience; an art which his general information, and
+knowledge of the world enabled him to perform without much difficulty.
+
+But the puritan declamation which pleased all the rest, disgusted young
+Hinkley, and increased his dislike for the declaimer. There was too much
+of the worldling in the looks, dress, air, and manner of Stevens, to
+satisfy the rustic of his sincerity. Something of his doubts had their
+source, without question, in the antipathy which he had formed against
+him; but William Hinkley was not without keen, quick, observing, and
+justly discriminating faculties, and much of his conclusions were the
+due consequence of a correct estimate of the peculiarities which we have
+named. Stevens, he perceived, declared his experiences of religion,
+with the air of one who expects the congratulations of his audience.
+The humility which thinks only of the acquisition itself, as the very
+perfection of human conquest, was wanting equally to his language and
+deportment. The very details which he gave, were ostentatious; and the
+gracious smiles which covered his lips as he concluded, were those of
+the self-complacent person, who feels that he has just been saying
+those good things, which, of necessity, must command the applause of his
+hearers.
+
+A decent pause of half an hour after the supper was finished, which was
+spent by the jealous youth in utter silence, and he then rose abruptly
+and hurried from the apartment, leaving the field entirely to his
+opponent. He proceeded to the house of his neighbor and cousin, Ned
+Hinkley, but without any hope of receiving comfort from his communion.
+Ned was a lively, thoughtless, light-hearted son of the soil, who was
+very slow to understand sorrows of any kind; and least of all, those
+which lie in the fancy of a dreaming and a doubtful lover. At this
+moment, when the possession of a new violin absorbed all his thoughts,
+his mind was particularly obtuse on the subject of sentimental
+grievances, and the almost voluptuous delight which filled his eyes
+when William entered his chamber, entirely prevented him from seeing the
+heavy shadow which overhung the brows of the latter.
+
+"What, back again, William? Why, you're as changeable as the last
+suit of a green lizard. When I asked you to stop, and hear me play
+'Cross-possum,' and 'Criss-cross,' off you went without giving me a
+civil answer. I've a mind now to put up the fiddle and send your ears
+to bed supperless. How would you like that, old fellow? but I'll be
+good-natured. You shall have it, though you don't deserve it; she's
+in prime tune, and the tones--only hear that, Bill--there. Isn't she
+delicious?"
+
+And as the inconsiderate cousin poured out his warmest eulogy of the
+favorite instrument, his right hand flourished the bow in air, in a
+style that would have cheered the heart of Jean Crapaud himself, and
+then brought it over the cat-gut in a grand crash, that sounded as
+harshly in the ears of his morbid visitor, as if the two worlds had
+suddenly come together with steam-engine velocity. He clapped his hands
+upon the invaded organs, and with something like horror in his voice,
+cried out his expostulations.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Ned, don't stun a body with your noise."
+
+"Noise! Did you say noise, Bill Hinkley--noise?"
+
+"Yes, noise," answered the other with some peevishness in his accents.
+The violinist looked at him incredulously, while he suffered the point
+of the fiddle-bow to sink on a line with the floor; then, after a
+moment's pause, he approached his companion, wearing in his face the
+while, an appearance of the most grave inquiry, and when sufficiently
+nigh, he suddenly brought the bow over the strings of the instrument,
+immediately in William's ears, with a sharp and emphatic movement,
+producing an effect to which the former annoying crash, might well
+have been thought a very gentle effusion. This was followed by an
+uncontrollable burst of laughter from the merry lips of the musician.
+
+"There--that's what I call a noise, Bill. Sweet Sall CAN make a noise
+when I worry her into it; she's just like other women in that respect;
+she'll be sure to squall out if you don't touch her just in the right
+quarter. But the first time she did NOT go amiss, and as for stunning
+you--but what's the matter? Where's the wind now?"
+
+"Nothing--only I don't want to be deafened with such a clatter."
+
+"Something's wrong, Bill, I know it. You look now for all the world like
+a bottle of sour son, with the cork out, and ready to boil over. As
+for Sall making a noise the first time, that's all a notion, and a very
+strange one. She was as sweet-spoken then as she was when you left
+me before supper. The last time, I confess, I made her squall out on
+purpose. But what of that? you are not the man to get angry with a
+little fun!"
+
+"No, I'm not angry with you, Ned--I am not angry with anybody; but just
+now, I would rather not hear the fiddle. Put it up."
+
+"There!" said the other good-naturedly, as he placed the favorite
+instrument in its immemorial case in the corner. "There; and now Bill,
+untie the pack, and let's see the sort of wolf-cubs you've got to carry;
+for there's no two horns to a wild bull, if something hasn't gored you
+to-night."
+
+"You're mistaken, Ned--quite mistaken--quite!"
+
+"Deuse a bit! I know you too well, Bill Hinkley, so it's no use to hush
+up now. Out with it, and don't be sparing, and if there's any harm to
+come, I'm here, just as ready to risk a cracked crown for you, as if the
+trouble was my own. I'd rather fiddle than fight, it's true; but when
+there's any need for it, you know I can do one just as well as the
+other; and can go to it with just as much good humor. So show us the
+quarrel."
+
+"There's no quarrel. Ned," said the other, softened by the frank and
+ready feeling which his companion showed; "but I'm very foolish in some
+things, and don't know how it is. I'm not apt to take dislikes, but
+there's a man come to our house with John Cross, this evening, that I
+somehow dislike very much."
+
+"A man! What's he like? Anything like Joe Richards? That was a fellow
+that I hated mightily. I never longed to lick any man but Joe Richards,
+and him I longed to lick three times, though you know I never got at him
+more than twice. It's a great pity he got drowned, for I owe him a third
+licking, and don't feel altogether right, since I know no sort of way to
+pay it. But if this man's anything like Joe, it may be just the same if
+I give it to HIM. Now--"
+
+"He's nothing like Richards," said the other. "He's a taller and
+better-looking man."
+
+"If he's nothing like Joe, what do you want to lick him for?" said the
+single-minded musician, with a surprise in his manner, which was mingled
+with something like rebuke.
+
+"I have expressed no such wish, Ned; you are too hasty; and if I did
+wish to whip him, I don't think I should trouble you or any man to
+help me. If I could not do it myself, I should give it up as a bad job,
+without calling in assistants."
+
+"Oh, you're a spunky follow--a real colt for hard riding," retorted the
+other with a good-natured mock in his tones and looks; "but if you don't
+want to lick the fellow, how comes it you dislike him? It seems to me
+if a chap behaved so as to make me dislike him, it wouldn't be an easy
+matter to keep my hands off him. I'd teach him how to put me into a bad
+humor, or I'd never touch violin again."
+
+"This man's a parson, I believe."
+
+"A parson--that's a difficulty. It is not altogether right to lick
+parsons, because they're not counted fighting people. But there's a
+mighty many on 'em that licking would help. No wonder you dislike the
+fellow, though if he comes with John Cross, he shouldn't be altogether
+so bad. Now, John Cross IS a good man. He's good, and he's good-humored.
+He don't try to set people's teeth on edge against all the pleasant
+things of this world, and he can laugh, and talk, and sing, like other
+people. Many's the time he's asked me, of his own mouth, to play the
+violin; and I've seen his little eyes caper again, when sweet Sall
+talked out her funniest. If it was not so late, I'd go over now and give
+him a reel or two, and then I could take a look at this strange chap,
+that's set your grinders against each other."
+
+The fiddler looked earnestly at the instrument in the corner, his
+features plainly denoting his anxiety to resume the occupation which his
+friends coming had so inopportunely interrupted. William Hinkley saw the
+looks of his cousin, and divined the cause.
+
+"You shall play for me, Ned," he remarked; "you shall give me that old
+highland-reel that you learned from Scotch Geordie. It will put me out
+of my bad humor, I think, and we can go to bed quietly. I've come to
+sleep with you to-night."
+
+"You're a good fellow, Bill; I knew that you couldn't stand it long, if
+Sweet Sall kept a still tongue in her head. That reel's the very thing
+to drive away bad humors, though there's another that I learnt from John
+Blodget, the boat-man, that sounds to me the merriest and comicalest
+thing in the world. It goes--," and here the fiddle was put in
+requisition to produce the required sounds: and having got carte
+blanche, our enthusiastic performer, without weariness, went through
+his whole collection, without once perceiving that his comical and
+merry tunes had entirely failed to change the grave, and even gloomy
+expression which still mantled the face of his companion. It was only
+when in his exhaustion he set down the instrument, that he became
+conscious of William Hinkley's continued discomposure.
+
+"Why, Bill, the trouble has given you a bigger bite than I thought for.
+What words did you have with the preacher?"
+
+"None: I don't know that he is a preacher. He speaks only as if he was
+trying to become one."
+
+"What, you hadn't any difference--no quarrel?"
+
+"None."
+
+"And it's only to-night that you've seen him for the first time?"
+
+A flush passed over the grave features of William Hinkley as he heard
+this question, and it was with a hesitating manner and faltering
+accents, that he contrived to tell his cousin of the brief glimpse which
+he had of the same stranger several months before, on that occasion,
+when, in the emotion of Margaret Cooper, replying to a similar question,
+he first felt the incipient seed of jealousy planted within his bosom.
+But this latter incident he forbore to reveal to the inquirer; and Ned
+Hinkley, though certainly endowed by nature with sufficient skill
+to draw forth the very soul of music from the instrument on which he
+played, had no similar power upon the secret soul of the person whom he
+partially examined.
+
+"But 'tis very strange how you should take offence at a man you've seen
+so little; though I have heard before this of people taking dislikes
+at other people the first moment they set eyes on 'em. Now, I'm not a
+person of that sort, unless it was in the case of Joe Richards; and him
+I took a sort of grudge at from the first beginning. But even then there
+was a sort of reason for it; for, at the beginning, when Joe came down
+upon us here in Charlemont, he was for riding over people's necks,
+without so much as asking, 'by your leave.' He had a way about him that
+vexed me, though we did not change a word."
+
+"And it's that very way that this person has that I don't like," said
+William Hinkley. "He talks as if he made you, and when you talk, he
+smiles as if he thought you were the very worst work that ever went out
+of his hands. Then, if he has to say anything, be it ever so trifling,
+he says it just as if he was telling you that the world was to come to
+an end the day after to-morrow."
+
+"Just the same with Joe Richards. I never could get at him but twice;
+though I give him then a mighty smart hammering; and if he hadn't got
+under the broadhorn and got drowned;--but this fellow?"
+
+"You'll see him at church to-morrow. I shouldn't wonder if he preaches;
+for John Cross was at him about it before I came away. What's worse, the
+old man's been asking him to live with us."
+
+"What, here in Charlemont?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll be sure to lick him then, if he's anything like Joe Richards. But
+what's to make him live in Charlemont? Is he to be a preacher for us?"
+
+"Perhaps so, but I couldn't understand all, for I came in while they
+were at it, and left home before they were done. I'm sure if he stays
+there I shall not. I shall leave home, for I really dislike to meet
+him."
+
+"You shall stay with me, Bill, and we'll have Sall at all hours," was
+the hearty speech of the cousin, as he threw his arms around the neck
+of his morose companion, and dragged him gently toward the adjoining
+apartment, which formed his chamber. "To-morrow," he continued, "as you
+say, we'll see this chap, and if he's anything like Joe Richards--" The
+doubled fist of the speaker, and his threatening visage, completed the
+sentence with which this present conference and chapter may very well
+conclude.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE TOAD ON THE ALTAR.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day was the sabbath. John Cross had timed his arrival at
+the village with a due reference to his duties, and after a minute
+calculation of days and distances, so that his spiritual manna might be
+distributed in equal proportions among his hungering flock. His arrival
+made itself felt accordingly, not simply in Charlemont, but throughout
+the surrounding country for a circuit of ten miles or more. There was a
+large and hopeful gathering of all sorts and sexes, white and black, old
+and young. Charlemont had a very pretty little church of its own; but
+one, and that, with more true Christianity than is found commonly in
+this world of pretence and little tolerance, was open to preachers of
+all denominations. The word of God, among these simple folks, was quite
+too important to make them scruple at receiving it from the lips of
+either Geneva, Rome, or Canterbury. The church stood out among the hills
+at a little distance from, but in sight of the village; a small, neat
+Grecian-like temple, glimmering white and saintlike through solemn
+visaged groves, and gaudy green foliage. The old trees about it were all
+kept neatly trimmed, the brush pruned away and cleared up, and a smooth
+sweet sward, lawn-like, surrounded it, such as children love to skip and
+scramble over, and older children rest at length upon, in pairs, talking
+over their sweet silly affections.
+
+Surrounded by an admiring crowd, each of whom had his respectful
+salutation, we see our friend John Cross toward noon approaching the
+sacred dwelling. Truly he was the most simple, fraternal of all God's
+creatures. He had a good word for this, an affectionate inquiry for
+that, a benevolent smile, and a kind pressure of the hand for all.
+He was a man to do good, for everybody saw that he thought for others
+before himself, and sincerity and earnestness constitute, with the
+necessary degree of talent, the grand secrets for making successful
+teachers in every department.
+
+Though a simple, unsophisticated, unsuspecting creature, John Cross
+was a man of very excellent natural endowments. He chose for his text
+a passage of the Scriptures which admitted of a direct practical
+application to the concerns of the people, their daily wants, their
+pressing interests, moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled to
+preach a discourse which sent home many of his congregation much wiser
+than they came, if only in reference to their homely duties of farmstead
+and family. John Cross was none of those sorry and self-constituted
+representatives of our eternal interests, who deluge us with a vain,
+worthless declamation, proving that virtue is a very good thing,
+religion a very commendable virtue, and a liberal contribution to the
+church-box at the close of the sermon one of the most decided proofs
+that we have this virtue in perfection. Nay, it is somewhat doubtful,
+indeed, if he ever once alluded to the state of his own scrip and the
+treasury of the church. His faith, sincere, spontaneous, ardent, left
+him in very little doubt that the Lord will provide, for is he not
+called "Jehovah-Jireh?"--and his faith was strengthened and confirmed
+by the experience of his whole life. But then John Cross had few
+wants--few, almost none! In this respect he resembled the first
+apostles. The necessities of life once cared for, never was mortal man
+more thoroughly independent of the world. He was not one of those fine
+preachers who, dealing out counsels of self-denial, in grave saws and
+solemn maxims, with wondrous grim visage and a most slow, lugubrious
+shaking of the head--are yet always religiously careful to secure the
+warmest seat by the fireside, and the best buttered bun on table.
+He taught no doctrine which he did not practise; and as for
+consideration--that test at once of the religionist and the
+gentleman--he was as humbly solicitous of the claims and feelings of
+others, as the lovely and lowly child to whom reverence has been well
+taught as the true beginning, equally of politeness and religion.
+
+Before going into church he urged his protege, Stevens, to consent to
+share in the ceremonies of the service as a layman; but there was still
+some saving virtue in the young man, which made him resolute in refusing
+to do so. Perhaps, his refusal was dictated by a policy like that which
+had governed him so far already; which made him reluctant to commit
+himself to a degree which might increase very much the hazards of
+detection. He feared, indeed, the restraints which the unequivocal
+adoption of the profession would impose upon him, fettering somewhat
+the freedom of his intercourse with the young of both sexes, and,
+consequently, opposing an almost insurmountable barrier to the
+prevailing object which had brought him to the village. Whatever may
+have been the feelings or motives which governed him, they, at least,
+saved him from an act which would have grievously aggravated his already
+large offence against truth and propriety. He declined, in language of
+the old hypocrisy. He did not feel justified in taking up the cross--he
+felt that he was not yet worthy; and, among the members of a church,
+which takes largely into account the momentary impulses and impressions
+of the professor, the plea was considered a sufficiently legitimate one.
+
+But though Stevens forbore to commit himself openly in the cause which
+he professed a desire to espouse, he was yet sufficiently heedful to
+maintain all those externals of devotion which a serious believer would
+be apt to exhibit. He could be a good actor of a part, and in this lay
+his best talent. He had that saving wisdom of the worldling, which is
+too often estimated beyond its worth, called cunning; and the frequent
+successes of which produces that worst of all the diseases that ever
+impaired the value of true greatness--conceit. Alfred Stevens fancied
+that he could do everything, and this fancy produced in him the
+appearance of a courage which his moral nature never possessed. He had
+the audacity which results from presumption, not the wholesome strength
+which comes from the conscious possession of a right purpose. But a
+truce to our metaphysics.
+
+Never did saint wear the aspect of such supernatural devotion. He knelt
+with the first, groaned audibly at intervals, and when his face became
+visible, his eyes were strained in upward glances, so that the spectator
+could behold little more in their orbs than a sea of white.
+
+"Oh! what a blessed young man!" said Mrs. Quackenbosh.
+
+"How I wish it was he that was to preach for us to-day," responded that
+gem from the antique, Miss Polly Entwistle, who had joined every church
+in Kentucky in turn, without having been made a spouse in either.
+
+"How handsome he is!" simpered Miss Julia Evergreen--a damsel of
+seventeen, upon whom the bilious eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast with
+such an expression as the devil is said to put on when suddenly soused
+in holy water.
+
+"Handsome is that handsome does!" was the commentary of a venerable
+cormorant to whom Brother Cross had always appeared the special and
+accepted agent of heaven.
+
+"I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I wonder if he
+believes in the new-light doctrine?" purred one of the ancient tabbies
+of the conventicle.
+
+"The new light is but the old darkness, Sister Widgeon," responded an
+old farmer of sixty four, who had divided his time so equally between
+the plough and the prayer-book, that his body had grown as crooked as
+the one, while his mind was bewildered with as many doctrines as ever
+worried all sense out of the other.
+
+We shall not suffer these to divert us, any more than Stevens permitted
+their speculations upon his person and religion to affect his devotion.
+He looked neither to the right nor to the left while entering the
+church, or engaging in the ceremonies. No errant glances were permitted
+to betray to the audience a mind wandering from the obvious duties
+before it; and yet Alfred Stevens knew just as well that every eye in
+the congregation was fixed upon him, as that he was himself there; and
+among those eyes, his own keen glance had already discovered those of
+that one for whom all these labors of hypocrisy were undertaken.
+
+Margaret Cooper sat on the opposite side of the church, but the line
+of vision was uninterrupted between them, and when--though very
+unfrequently--Stevens suffered his gaze to rest upon her form, it was
+with a sudden look of pleased abstraction, as if, in spite of himself,
+his mind was irresistibly drawn away from all recollection, of its
+immediate duties.
+
+If a word is sufficient for the wise, a look answers an equal purpose
+with the vain. Margaret Cooper left the church that morning with a
+pleased conviction that the handsome stranger had already paid his
+devotion to her charms. There was yet another passion to be gratified.
+The restless ambition of her foolish heart whispered to her momently,
+that if her person had done so much, what might she not hope to achieve
+when the treasures of her mind were known. She had long since made the
+comparison of her own intellect with that of every other maiden in the
+village, and she flattered herself that before many days, the young
+stranger should make it too. Her vain heart was rapidly preparing to
+smooth the path of the enemy and make his conquests easy.
+
+But it was not the women only, by whom the deportment of Alfred Stevens
+was so closely watched. The eyes of suspicion and jealousy were upon
+him. The two young men whose interview formed the conclusion of our last
+chapter, scanned his conduct and carriage with sufficient keenness of
+scrutiny.
+
+"I'll tell you what, Bill Hinkley," said his cousin, "this fellow, to my
+thinking, is a very great rascal."
+
+"What makes you think so?" demanded the former, with slow, dissatisfied
+accents; "he seems to pray very earnestly."
+
+"That's the very reason I think him a rascal. His praying seems to me
+very unnatural. Here, he's a perfect stranger in the place, yet he never
+shows any curiosity to see the people. He never once looks around him.
+He walks to the church with his eye cast upon the ground, and sometimes
+he squints to this side and sometimes to that, but he seems to do it
+slyly, and seems to take pains that nobody should see him doing, it.
+All this might answer for an old man, who--believes that everything is
+vanity--as, indeed, everything must seem to old people; but to a young
+fellow, full of blood, who eats well, drinks well, sleeps well, and
+should naturally have a hankering after a young girl, all this is
+against nature. Now, what's against nature is wrong, and there's wrong
+at the bottom of it. Youth is the time to laugh, dance, sing, play on
+the violin, and always have a sweetheart when it can find one. If you
+can't get a beauty take a brown; and if Mary won't smile, Susan will.
+But always have a sweetheart; always be ready for fun and frolic;
+that's the way for the young, and when they don't take these ways, it's
+unnatural--there's something wrong about it, and I'm suspicious of THAT
+person. Now, I just have this notion of the young stranger. He's after
+no good. I reckon he's like a hundred others; too lazy to go to work,
+he goes to preaching, and learns in the first sermon to beg hard for the
+missionaries. I'll lick him, Bill, to a certainty, if he gives me the
+littlest end of an opportunity."
+
+"Pshaw, Ned, don't think of such a thing. You are quite too fond of
+licking people."
+
+"Deuse a bit. It does 'em good. Look you, this chap is monstrous like
+Joe Richards. I'll have to lick him on that account."
+
+"You're mad, Ned; talk of whipping a preacher."
+
+"He's no preacher yet," said the other, "but if I lick him he may become
+one."
+
+"No matter, he's never offended you."
+
+"Ay, but he will. I see it in the fellow's looks. I never was mistaken
+in a fellow's looks in all my life."
+
+"Wait till he does offend you then."
+
+"Well, I'm willing to do that, for I know the time will come. I'm always
+sure, when I first see a man, to know whether I'll have to flog him or
+not. There's a something that tells me so. Isn't that very singular,
+Bill?"
+
+"No! you form a prejudice against a man, fancy that you ought to whip
+him, and then never rest till you've done so. You'll find your match
+some day."
+
+"What! you think some other chap will fancy he ought to whip me?
+Well--maybe so. But this ain't the fellow to do that."
+
+"He's a stout man, and I reckon strong. Besides, Ned, he's very
+handsome."
+
+"Handsome! Lord, Bill, what a taste you have? How can a man be called
+handsome that never altogether opens his eyes, except when he turns up
+the whites until you'd think he'd never be able to get the balls back to
+their proper place? Then, what a chin he has--as sharp as a pitchfork,
+and who but a girl child would fancy a man with his hair combed sleek
+like a woman's on each side of his ears, with big whiskers at the
+same time that looks for all the world like the brush of a seven years
+running fox, Handsome! If my pup 'Dragon' was only half so much like a
+beast, I'd plump him into the horsepond!"
+
+It is probable that Ned Hinkley did not altogether think of the stranger
+as he expressed himself. But he saw how deep a hold his appearance had
+taken, in an adverse way, upon the mind and feelings of his relative and
+friend, and his rude, but well-meant endeavors were intended to console
+his companion, after his own fashion, by the exhibition of a certain
+degree of sympathy.
+
+His efforts, however well intended, did not produce any serious effect.
+William Hinkley, though he forbore the subject, and every expression
+which might indicate either soreness or apprehension, was still the
+victim of that presentiment which had touched him on the very first
+appearance of the stranger. He felt more than ever apprehensive on the
+score of his misplaced affections. While his cousin had been watching
+the stranger, HIS eyes had been fixed upon those of Margaret Cooper, and
+his fears were increased and strengthened, as he perceived that she was
+quite too much absorbed in other thoughts and objects to behold for an
+instant the close espionage which he maintained upon her person. His
+heart sunk within him, as he beheld how bold was her look, and how
+undisguised the admiration which it expressed for the handsome stranger.
+
+"You will go home with me, William?" said the cousin, The other
+hesitated.
+
+"I think," said he, after a moment's pause, "I should rather go to my
+own home. It is a sort of weakness to let a stranger drive a man off
+from his own family, and though I somehow dislike this person's looks,
+and am very sorry that John Cross brought him to our house, yet I
+shouldn't let a prejudice which seems to have no good foundation take
+such possession of my mind. I will go home, Ned, and see--perhaps I may
+come to like the stranger more when I know him better."
+
+"You'll never like him. I see it in the fellow's eye; but just as you
+please about going nome. You're right in one thing--never to give up
+your own dunghill, so long as you can get room on it for a fair fling
+with your enemy. Besides, you can see better, by going home, what the
+chap's after. I don't see why he should come here to learn to preach. We
+can't support a preacher. We don't want one. He could just as well have
+learned his business, where he came from."
+
+With these words the cousins separated.
+
+"Now," said Ned Hinkley as he took his own way homeward, in a deeper
+fit of abstraction than was altogether usual with him, "now will Bill
+Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's
+too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and
+mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody.--quite
+too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody
+knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll pick up
+his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder
+until there's no use in trying. If I don't push in and help him, he'll
+not help himself. As for Margaret Cooper, dang it, I'll court her for
+him myself. If he's afraid to pop the question, I ain't; though I'll
+have to be mighty careful about the words I use, or she'll be thinking
+I come on my own hook; and that would be a mighty scary sort of business
+all round the house. Then this stranger. If anybody can look through
+a stranger here in Charlemont, I reckon I'm that man. I suspect him
+already. I think he's after no good with his great religioning; and I'll
+tie such a pair of eyes to his heels, that his understanding will never
+be entirely out of my sight. I'll find him out if anybody can. But I
+won't lick him till I do. That wouldn't be altogether right, considering
+he's to be a parson, though I doubt he'll never make one."
+
+And thus, with a head filled with cares of a fashion altogether new, the
+sturdy young Kentuckian moved homeward with a degree of abstraction in
+his countenance which was not among the smallest wonders of the day and
+place in the estimation of his friends and neighbors.
+
+Meanwhile, the work of mischief was in full progress. Everybody
+knows the degree of familiarity which exists among all classes in a
+country-village, particularly when the parties are brought together
+under the social and stimulating influences of religion. It was natural
+that the pastor, long known and well beloved, should be surrounded by
+his flock as he descended from the pulpit. The old ladies always have
+a saving interest in his presence, and they pave the way for the young
+ones. Alfred Stevens, as the protege of John Cross, naturally attended
+his footsteps, and was introduced by him to the little congregation,
+which had mostly remained to do honor to the preacher. Of these, not
+last, nor least, was the widow Cooper; and, unreluctant by her side,
+though in silence, and not without a degree of emotion, which she yet
+was able to conceal, stood her fair but proud-hearted daughter.
+
+Margaret, alas! Margaret stood there with a heart more proud, yet more
+humble, than ever. Proud in the consciousness of a new conquest--humble
+in the feeling that this conquest had not been made, but at the expense
+of some portion of her own independence. Hitherto, her suitors had
+awakened no other feeling in her heart but vanity. Now, she felt no
+longer able to sail on, "imperial arbitress," smiling at woes which she
+could inflict, but never share. That instinct, which, in the heart of
+young Hinkley had produced fear, if not antipathy, had been as active in
+her case, though with a very different result. The first glimpse which
+she had of the handsome stranger, months before, had impressed her with
+a singular emotion; and now that he was returned, she could not divest
+herself of the thought that his return was a consequence of that one
+glimpse.
+
+With a keener judgment than belonged to her neighbors, she too had some
+suspicions that religion was scarcely the prevailing motive which
+had brought the youth back to their little village; for how could she
+reconcile with his present demure gravity and devout profession, the
+daring which he had shown in riding back to behold her a second
+time? That such had been his motive she divined by her own feeling of
+curiosity, and the instincts of vanity were prompt enough to believe
+that this was motive sufficient to bring him back once more, and under
+the guise of a character, which would the readiest secure an easy
+entrance to society. Pleased with the fancy that she herself was
+the object sought, she did not perceive how enormous was the sort of
+deception which the stranger had employed to attain the end desired.
+With all her intellect she had not the wisdom to suspect that he who
+could so readily practise so bold an hypocrisy, was capable of the worst
+performances; and when their names were mentioned, and his eyes were
+permitted to meet and mingle their glances with hers, she was conscious
+of nothing farther than a fluttering sentiment of pleasure, which was
+amply declared to the stranger, in the flash of animation which spoke
+openly in her countenance; eye speaking to lip and cheek, and these, in
+turn, responding with a kindred sentiment to the already tell-tale eye.
+
+William Hinkley, from a little distance, beheld this meeting. He had
+lingered with the curiosity which belongs to the natural apprehension
+of the lover. He saw them approach--nay, fancied he beheld the mutual
+expression of their sympathizing eyes, and he turned away, and hurried
+homeward, with the feeling of a heart already overborne, and defrauded
+in all its hopes and expectations. The flowers were threatened with
+blight in his Eden: but he did not conjecture, poor fellow, that a
+serpent had indeed entered it!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE GOOD YOUNG MAN IN MEDITATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+Perhaps, it may be assumed, with tolerable safety, that no first villany
+is ever entirely deliberate. There is something in events to give
+it direction--something to egg it on--to point out time, place, and
+opportunity. Of course, it is to be understood that the actor is one,
+in the first place, wanting in the moral sense. What we simply mean
+to affirm is, that the particular, single act, is, in few instances,
+deliberately meditated from the beginning. We very much incline to
+think that some one event, which we ordinarily refer to the chapter
+of accidents, has first set the mind to work upon schemes, which would
+otherwise, perhaps, never be thought of at all. Thus, we find persons
+who continue very good people, as the world goes, until middle age, or
+even seniority; then, suddenly breaking out into some enormous
+offence against decency and society, which startles the whole pious
+neighborhood. Folks start up, with outstretched hands and staring eyes,
+and cry aloud:--
+
+"Lord bless us, who would have thought so good a man could be so bad!"
+
+He, poor devil, never fancied it himself, till he became so, and it was
+quite too late to alter his arrangements. Perhaps his neighbors may
+have had some share in making him so. Pious persons are very frequently
+reduced to these straits by having the temptation forced too much
+upon them. Flesh and blood can not always withstand the provocation of
+earthly delicacies, even where the spirit is a tolerably stout one; and
+of the inadequacy of the mind, always to contend with the inclinations
+of the flesh, have we not a caution in that injunction of Holy Book
+which warns us to fly from temptation? But lame people can not fly, and
+he is most certainly lame who halts upon mere feet of circumstances.
+Such people are always in danger.
+
+Now, Alfred Stevens, properly brought up, from the beginning, at some
+theological seminary, would have been--though in moral respects pretty
+much the same person--yet in the eye of the world a far less criminal
+man. Not that his desires would have been a jot more innocent, but they
+would have taken a different direction. Instead of the recklessness of
+course, such as seems to have distinguished the conduct of our present
+subject--instead of his loose indulgences--his smart, licentious
+speeches--the sheep's-eye glances, right and left, which he was but
+too prone to bestow, without prudence or precaution, whenever he walked
+among the fair sisters--he, the said Alfred, would have taken counsel
+of a more worldly policy, which is yet popularly considered a more pious
+one. He would have kept his eyes from wandering to and fro; he would
+have held his blood in subjection. Patient as a fox on a long scent in
+autumn, he would have kept himself lean and circumspect, until, through
+the help of lugubrious prayer and lantern visage, he could have beguiled
+into matrimony some one feminine member of the flock--not always
+fair--whose worldly goods would have sufficed in full atonement for all
+those circumspect, self-imposed restraints, which we find usually so
+well rewarded. But Alfred Stevens was not a man of this pious temper.
+It is evident, from his present course, that he had some inkling of the
+MODUS OPERANDI; but all his knowledge fell short of that saving
+wisdom which would have defrauded the social world of one of its moral
+earthquakes, and possibly deprived the survivors of the present moral
+story--for moral it is, though our hero is not exactly so.
+
+It would be doing our subject and our theory equal injustice if we were
+to suppose that he had any fixed purpose, known to himself, when he
+borrowed the professional garment, and began to talk with the worthy
+John Cross in the language of theology, and with the tongue of a
+hypocrite. He designed to visit Charlemont--that was all--as he had
+really been impressed by the commanding figure and noble expression of
+beauty of that young damsel whom he had encountered by the roadside.
+Even this impression, however, would have been suffered to escape from
+his mind, had it not been so perfectly convenient to revisit the spot,
+on his return to his usual place of residence. During the summer,
+Charlemont and its rustic attractions had been the frequent subject of
+a conversation, running into discussion, between himself and the amiable
+old man, his uncle. The latter repeatedly urged upon his nephew to
+make the visit; fondly conceiving that a nearer acquaintance with
+the pleasant spot which had so won upon his own affections, would be
+productive of a like effect upon his nephew. Alas, how little did he
+know the mischief he was doing!
+
+In the very idleness of mood--with just that degree of curiosity which
+prompts one to turn about and look a second time--Alfred Stevens resumed
+the route which included Charlemont. But the devil had, by this time,
+found his way into the meditations of the youth, and lay lurking,
+unknown to himself, perhaps, at the bottom of this same curiosity. The
+look of pride and defiance which Margaret Cooper had betrayed, when the
+bold youth rode back to steal a second glance at her matchless person,
+was equivalent to an equally bold challenge; and his vanity hastily
+picked up the gauntlet which hers had thrown down. He wished to see
+the damsel again--to see if she WAS so beautiful--if she did, indeed,
+possess that intellectual strength and vivacity which flashed out
+so suddenly and with so much splendor from beneath her long, dark
+eye-lashes!
+
+In this mood he met with John Cross; and the simplicity of that worthy
+creature offered another challenge, not less provoking than the former,
+to the levity and love of mischief which also actively predominated in
+the bosom of the youth. Fond of a malicious sort of fun, and ever on the
+look-out for subjects of quizzing, it was in compliance with a purely
+habitual movement of his mind that he conjured up that false, glozing
+story of his religious inclinations, which had so easily imposed upon
+the unsuspecting preacher. Never was proceeding less premeditated, or
+so completely the result of an after-thought, than this; and now that it
+had proved so perfectly successful--now that he found himself admitted
+into the very heart of the little village, and into the bosoms of the
+people--he began, for the first time, to feel the awkwardness of the
+situation in which he had placed himself, and the responsibilities,
+if not dangers, to which it subjected him. To play the part of a mere
+preacher--to talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype
+phraseology of the profession--was no difficult matter to a clever young
+lawyer of the West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as
+profoundly familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself. But
+there was something awkward in the idea of detection, and he was not
+unaware of those summary dangers which are likely to follow, in those
+wild frontier regions, from the discovery of so doubtful a personage
+as "Bro' Wolf" in the clothing of a more innocent animal. Chief-Justice
+Lynch is a sacred authority in those parts; and, in such a case as his,
+Alfred Stevens did not doubt that the church itself would feel it only
+becoming to provide another sort of garment for the offender, which,
+whether pleasant or not, would at least be likely to stick more closely,
+and prove less comfortably warm.
+
+But, once in, there was no help but to play out the game as it had been
+begun. Villagers are seldom very sagacious people, and elegant strangers
+are quite too much esteemed among them to make them very particular in
+knowing the whys and wherefores about them--whence they come, what they
+do, and whither they propose to go. Stevens had only to preserve his
+countenance and a due degree of caution, and the rest was easy. He had
+no reason to suppose himself an object of suspicion to anybody; and
+should he become so, nothing was more easy than to take his departure
+with sufficient promptness, and without unnecessarily soliciting the
+prayers of the church in behalf of the hurried traveller! At all events,
+he could lose nothing by the visit: perhaps something might be gained.
+
+What was that something? Behold him in his chamber, preparing to ask and
+to answer this question for himself. The sabbath-day is finally over. He
+has been almost the lion of the day. We say almost, for the worthy John
+Cross could not easily be deprived, by any rivalry, of the loyal regards
+of his old parishioners. But, though the latter had most friends, the
+stranger, Alfred Stevens, had had most followers. All were anxious to
+know him--the young, in particular, maidens and men; and the grave old
+dames would have given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to
+have heard him discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in
+his profound, devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has
+shaken hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and
+feeling with but one only--and that one!--
+
+Of her he thinks in his chamber--his quiet, snug, little chamber--a mere
+closet, looking out upon a long garden-slip, in which he sees, without
+much heeding them, long lanes of culinary cabbage, and tracts of other
+growing and decaying vegetation, in which his interest is quite too
+small to make it needful that he should even ask its separate names. His
+chin rests upon his hands with an air of meditation; and gradually his
+thoughts rise up in soliloquy, which is suffered to invade no ear but
+ours:--
+
+"Well! who'd have thought it? a parson!--devilish good indeed! How it
+will tell at Murkey's! What a metamorphose! if it don't stagger 'em,
+nothing will! It's the best thing I've done yet! I shall have to do it
+over a hundred times, and must get up a sermon or two beforehand, and
+swear that I preached them--and, egad! I may have to do it yet before
+I'm done--ha! ha! ha!"
+
+The laughter was a quiet chuckle, not to be heard by vulgar ears; it
+subsided in the gorges of his throat. The idea of really getting up a
+sermon tickled him. He muttered over texts, all that he could remember;
+and proceeded to turn over the phrases for an introduction, such
+as, unctuous with good things in high degree, he fancied would be
+particularly commendable to his unsuspecting hearers. Alfred Stevens had
+no small talent for imitation, he derived a quiet sort of pleasure, on
+the present occasion, from its indulgence.
+
+"I should have made a famous parson, and, if all trades fail, may yet.
+But, now that I am here, what's to come of it? It's not so hard to put
+on a long face, and prose in scripture dialect; but, cui bono? Let me
+see--hem! The girl is pretty, devilish pretty--with such an eye, and
+looks so! There's soul in the wench--life--and a passion that speaks out
+in every glance and movement. A very Cressid, with a cross of Corinne!
+Should she be like her of Troy? At all events, it can do no harm to see
+what she's made of!
+
+"But I must manage warily. I have something to lose in the business.
+Frankfort is but fifty miles from Charlemont--fifty miles--and there's
+Ellisland, but fourteen. Fourteen!--an easy afternoon ride. That way it
+must be done. Ellisland shall be my post-town. I can gallop there in
+an afternoon, drop and receive my letters, and be back by a round-about
+which shall effectually baffle inquiry. A week or two will be enough.
+I shall see, by that time, what can be done with her; though still,
+cautiously, Parson Stevens!--cautiously."
+
+The farther cogitations of Stevens were subordinate to these, but of the
+same family complexion. They were such as to keep him wakeful. The Bible
+which had been placed upon his table, by the considerate providence of
+his hostess, lay there unopened; though, more than once, he lifted the
+cover of the sacred volume, letting it fall again suddenly, as if with a
+shrinking consciousness that such thoughts as at that moment filled his
+mind were scarcely consistent with the employment, in any degree, of
+such a companion. Finally, he undressed and went to bed. The hour had
+become very late.
+
+"Good young man," muttered worthy Mrs. Hinkley to her drowsy spouse, in
+the apartment below, as she heard the movements of her guest-"good young
+man, he's just now going to bed. He's been studying all this while. I
+reckon Brother Cross has been sound this hour."
+
+The light from Stevens's window glimmered out over the cabbage-garden,
+and was seen by many an ancient dame as she prepared for her own
+slumbers.
+
+"Good young man," said they all with one accord. "I reckon he's at the
+Bible now. Oh! he'll be a blessed laborer in the vineyard, I promise
+you, when Brother Cross is taken."
+
+"If it were not for the cursed bore of keeping up the farce beyond
+the possibility of keeping up the fun, such a rig as this would be
+incomparably pleasant; but"--yawning--"that's the devil! I get monstrous
+tired of a joke that needs dry nursing!"
+
+Such were the last muttered words of Parson Stevens before he
+yielded himself up to his slumbers. Good young man--charitable old
+ladies--gullible enough, if not charitable! But the professions need
+such people, and we must not quarrel with them!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PAROCHIAL PERFORMANCES.
+
+
+
+
+
+The poor, conceited blackguards of this ungracious earth have a fancy
+that there must be huge confusion and a mighty bobbery in nature,
+corresponding with that which is for ever going on in their own little
+spheres. If we have a toothache, we look for a change of weather; our
+rheumatism is a sure sign that God has made his arrangements to give
+us a slapping rain; and, should the white bull or the brown heifer die,
+look out for hail, or thunderstorm, at least, as a forerunner of the
+event. Nothing less can possibly console or satisfy us for such a most
+unaccountable, not to say unnatural and unwarrantable, a dispensation.
+The poets have ministered largely to this vanity on the part of mankind.
+Shakspere is constantly at it, and Ben Jonson, and all the dramatists.
+Not a butcher, in the whole long line of the butchering Caesars, from
+Augustus down, but, according to them, died in a sort of gloom glory,
+resulting from the explosion of innumerable stars and rockets, and the
+apparitions of as many comets! "Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,"
+invariably announce the coming stroke of fate; and five or seven moons
+of a night have suddenly arisen to warn some miserable sublunarian
+that orders had been issued that there should be no moon for him that
+quarter, or, in military and more precise phrase, that he should have
+no "quarters" during that moon. Even our venerable and stern old puritan
+saint, Milton--he who was blessed with the blindness of his earthly
+eye, that he should be more perfectly enabled to contemplate the Deity
+within--has given way to this superstition when he subjects universal
+nature to an earthquake because Adam's wife followed the counsels of the
+snake.
+
+A pretty condition of things it would be, if stars, suns, and systems,
+were to shoot madly from their spheres on such occasions! Well might the
+devil laugh if such were the case! How he would chuckle to behold globes
+and seas, and empires, fall into such irreverend antics because some
+poor earthling, be he kingling or common sodling, goes into desuetude,
+either by the operation of natural laws, or the sharp application of
+steel or shot! Verily, it makes precious little difference to the Great
+Reaper, by what process we finally become harvested. He is sure of us,
+though no graves gape, no stars fall, no comets rush out, like young
+colts from their stables, flinging their tails into the faces of
+the more sober and pacific brotherhood of lights. But, denied the
+satisfaction of chuckling at such sights as these, his satanic majesty
+chuckles not the less at the human vanity which looks for them. Nay, he
+himself is very likely to suggest this vanity. It is one of his forms of
+temptation--one of his manoeuvres; and we take leave, by way of warning,
+to hint to those worthy people, who judge of to-morrow's providence
+by the corns of their great toe, or their periodical lumbago, or the
+shooting of their warts, or the pricking of their palms, that it is in
+truth the devil which is at the bottom of all this, and that the Deity
+has nothing to do in the business. It is the devil instilling his
+vanities into the human heart, in that form which he thinks least likely
+to prove offensive, or rouse suspicion. The devil is most active in
+your affairs, Mrs. Thompson, the moment you imagine that there must be
+a revolution on your account in the universal laws of nature. At such a
+moment your best policy will be to have blood let, take physic, and go
+with all diligence to your prayers.
+
+There was no sort of warning on the part of the natural to the moral
+world, on the day when Alfred Stevens set forth with the worthy John
+Cross, to visit the flock of the latter. There was not a lovelier
+morning in the whole calendar. The sun was alone in heaven, without a
+cloud; and on earth, the people in and about Charlemont, having been to
+church only the day before, necessarily made their appearance everywhere
+with petticoats and pantaloons tolerably clean and unrumpled. Cabbages
+had not yet been frost-bitten. Autumn had dressed up her children in the
+garments of beauty, preparatory to their funeral. There was a good crop
+of grain that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all
+"looking-up," in the language of the prices current. This was long
+before the time when Mr. M---- made his famous gammon speeches; but the
+people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful
+anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river.
+The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning
+to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were
+about to be established; old things were about to fleet and disappear;
+all things were becoming new; and the serpent entered Charlemont, and
+made his way among the people thereof, without any signs of combustion,
+or overthrow, or earthquake.
+
+Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a parson is,
+to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes one day, and
+the quarterly collector the next. He sits down with the "gude wife" in
+a corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in precisely the same
+low tones which cunning lovers are apt to use. If he knows any one art
+better than another, it is that of finding his way to the affections of
+the female part of his flock. A subdued tone of voice betrays a certain
+deference for the party addressed. The lady is pleased with such a
+preliminary. She is flattered again by the pains he takes in behalf of
+her eternal interests; she is pretty sure he takes no such pains with
+any of her neighbors. It is a sign that he thinks her soul the most
+becoming little soul in the flock, and when he goes away, she looks
+after him and sighs, and thinks him the most blessed soul of a parson.
+The next week she is the first to get up a subscription which she heads
+with her own name in connection with a sum realized by stinting her
+son of his gingerbread money, in order to make this excellent parson
+a life-member of the "Zion African Bible and Missionary Society, for
+disseminating the Word among the Heathen." The same fifty dollars so
+appropriated, would have provided fuel for a month to the starving poor
+of her own parish.
+
+But Brother Cross gets no such windfalls. It is probable that he never
+heard of such a thing, and that if he did, he would unhesitatingly cry
+out, "Humbug," at the first intimation of it. Besides, his voice was
+not capable of that modulation which a young lover, or a city parson can
+give it. Accustomed to cry aloud and spare not, he usually spoke as if
+there were some marrow in his bones, and some vigor in his wind-bags.
+When he came to see the good wife of his congregation, he gave her
+a hearty shake of the hand, congratulated her as he found her at her
+spinning-wheel; spoke with a hearty approbation, if he saw that her
+children were civil and cleanly; if otherwise, he blazed out with proper
+boldness, by telling her that all her praying and groaning, would
+avail nothing for her soul's safety, so long as Jackey's breeches were
+unclean; and that the mother of a rude and dirty child, was as sure
+of damnation, as if she never prayed at all. He had no scruples about
+speaking the truth. He never looked about him for the gentle, easy
+phrases, by which to distinguish the conduct which he was compelled to
+condemn. He knew not only that the truth must be spoken, and be spoken
+by him, if by anybody, but that there is no language too strong--perhaps
+none quite strong enough--for the utterance of the truth. But it must
+not be supposed, that John Cross was in any respect an intolerant, or
+sour man. He was no hypocrite, and did not, therefore, need to clothe
+his features in the vinegar costume of that numerous class. His limbs
+were put into no such rigid fetters as too often denote the unnatural
+restraints which such persons have imposed upon their inner minds. He
+could laugh and sing with the merriest, and though he did not absolutely
+shake a leg himself, yet none rejoiced more than he, when Ned Hinkley's
+fiddle summoned the village to this primitive exercise.
+
+"Now, Alfred Stevens," said he, the breakfast being over, "what say'st
+thou to a visit with me among my people. Some of them know thee already;
+they will all be rejoiced to see thee. I will show thee how they live,
+and if thou shouldst continue to feel within thee, the growing of that
+good seed whose quickening thou hast declared to me, it will be well
+that thou shouldst begin early to practise the calling which may so
+shortly become thine own. Here mightest thou live a space, toiling in
+thy spiritual studies, until the brethren should deem thee ripe for thy
+office; meanwhile, thy knowledge of the people with whom thou livest,
+and their knowledge of thee, would be matter of equal comfort and
+consolation, I trust, to thee as to them."
+
+Alfred Stevens expressed himself pleased with the arrangement. Indeed,
+he desired nothing else.
+
+"But shall we see all of them?" he demanded. The arch-hypocrite began
+to fear that his curiosity would be compelled to pay a heavy penalty to
+dullness.
+
+"The flock is small," said John Cross. "A day will suffice, but I shall
+remain three days in Charlemont, and some I will see to-day, and some
+to-morrow, and some on the day after, which is Wednesday."
+
+"Taken in moderate doses," murmured Stevens to himself, "one may stand
+it."
+
+He declared himself in readiness, and the twain set forth. The outward
+behavior of Stevens was very exemplary. He had that morning contrived to
+alter his costume in some respects to suit the situation of affairs. For
+example, he had adopted that slavish affectation which seems to insist
+that a preacher of God should always wear a white cravat, so constructed
+and worn as to hide the tips of his shirt collar. If they wore none,
+they would look infinitely more noble, and we may add, never suffer from
+bronchitis. In his deportment, Stevens was quite as sanctified as heart
+could wish. He spoke always deliberately, and with great unction. If he
+had to say "cheese and mousetrap," he would look very solemn, shake his
+head with great gravity and slowness, and then deliberately and equally
+emphasizing every syllable, would roll forth the enormous sentence
+with all the conscious dignity of an ancient oracle. That "cheese and
+mousetrap," so spoken, acquired in the ears of the hearer, a degree of
+importance and signification, which it confounded them to think they had
+never perceived before in the same felicitous collocation of syllables.
+John Cross was not without his vanities. Who is? Vanity is quite as
+natural as any other of our endowments. It is a guaranty for amiability.
+A vain man is always a conciliatory one. He is kind to others, because
+the approbation of others is a strong desire in his mind. Accordingly,
+even vanity is not wholly evil. It has its uses.
+
+John Cross had his share, and Alfred Stevens soon discovered that he
+ministered to it in no small degree. The good old preacher took to
+himself the credit of having effected his conversion, so far as it had
+gone. It was his hand that had plucked the brand from the burning. He
+spoke freely of his protege, as well before his face as behind his back.
+In his presence he dwelt upon the holy importance of his calling; to
+others he dilated upon the importance of securing for the church a young
+man of so much talent, yet of so much devotion: qualities not always
+united, it would seem, among the churchlings of modern times.
+
+Alfred Stevens seemed to promise great honor to his teacher. That
+cunning which is the wisdom of the worldling, and which he possessed
+in a very surprising degree, enabled him to adopt a course of conduct,
+look, and remark, which amply satisfied the exactions of the scrupulous,
+and secured the unhesitating confidence of those who were of a more
+yielding nature. He soon caught the phraseology of his companion, and
+avoiding his intensity, was less likely to offend his hearers. His
+manner was better subdued to the social tone of ordinary life, his voice
+lacked the sharp twang of the backwoods man; and, unlike John Cross, he
+was able to modulate it to those undertones, which, as we have
+before intimated, are so agreeable from the lips of young lovers and
+fashionable preachers. At all events, John Cross himself, was something
+more than satisfied with his pupil, and took considerable pains to show
+him off. He was a sort of living and speaking monument of the good man's
+religious prowess.
+
+It does not need that we should follow the two into all the abodes which
+they were compelled to visit. The reader would scarcely conceal his
+yawns though Stevens did. Enough, that a very unctuous business was made
+of it that morning. Many an old lady was refreshed with the spiritual
+beverage bestowed in sufficient quantity to last for another quarter;
+while many a young one rejoiced in the countenance of so promising a
+shepherd as appeared under the name of Alfred Stevens. But the latter
+thought of the one damsel only. He said many pleasant things to those
+whom he did see; but his mind ran only upon one. He began to apprehend
+that she might be among the flock who were destined to wait for the
+second or last day's visitation; when, to his great relief, John Cross
+called his attention to the dwelling of the widow Cooper, to whom they
+were fast approaching.
+
+Stevens remarked that the dwelling had very much the appearance of
+poverty--he did not fail to perceive that it lacked the flower-garden
+in front which distinguished the greater number of the cottages in
+Charlemont; and there was an appearance of coldness and loneliness about
+its externals which impressed itself very strongly upon his thoughts,
+and seemed to speak unfavorably for the taste of the inmates. One is
+apt to associate the love of flowers with sweetness and gentleness of
+disposition, and such a passion would seem as natural, as it certainly
+would be becoming, to a young lady of taste and sensibility. But the
+sign is a very doubtful one. Taste and gentleness may satisfy themselves
+with other objects. A passion for books is very apt to exclude a very
+active passion for flowers, and it will be found, I suspect, that these
+persons who are most remarkable for the cultivation of flowers are least
+sensible to the charms of letters. It seems monstrous, indeed, that a
+human being should expend hours and days in the nursing and tendance of
+such stupid beauties as plants and flowers, when earth is filled with
+so many lovelier objects that come to us commended by the superior
+sympathies which belong to humanity. Our cities are filled with the
+sweetest orphans--flowers destined to be immortal; angels in form, that
+might be angels in spirit--that must be, whether for good or evil--whom
+we never cultivate--whom we suffer to escape our tendance, and leave to
+the most pitiable ignorance, and the most wretched emergencies of want.
+The life that is wasted upon dahlias, must, prima facie, be the life
+of one heartless and insensible, and most probably, brutish in a high
+degree.
+
+But Alfred Stevens had very little time for further reflection. They
+were at the door of the cottage. Never did the widow Cooper receive
+her parson in more tidy trim, and with an expression of less qualified
+delight. She brought forth the best chair, brushed the deerskin-seat
+with her apron, and having adjusted the old man to her own satisfaction
+as well as his, she prepared to do a like office for the young one.
+Having seated them fairly, and smoothed her apron, and gone through the
+usual preliminaries, and placed herself a little aloof, on a third seat,
+and rubbed her hands, and struggled into a brief pause in her brisk
+action, she allowed her tongue to do the office for which her whole soul
+was impatient.
+
+"Oh, Brother Cross, what a searching sermon you gave us yesterday. You
+stirred the hearts of everybody, I warrant you, as you stirred up
+mine. We've been a needing it for a precious long time, I tell you; and
+there's no knowing what more's a wanting to make us sensible to the evil
+that's in us. I know from myself what it is, and I guess from the doings
+of others. We're none of us perfect, that's certain; but it's no harm
+to say that some's more and some's not so perfect as others. There's a
+difference in sin, Brother Cross, I'm a thinking, and I'd like you to
+explain why, and what's the difference. One won't have so much, and one
+will have more; one will take a longer spell of preaching, and half
+the quantity will be a dose to work another out clean, entire. I'm not
+boastful for myself, Brother Cross, but I do say, I'd give up in despair
+if I thought it took half so much to do me, as it would take for a
+person like that Mrs. Thackeray."
+
+"Sister Cooper," said brother Cross, rebukingly, "beware of the
+temptation to vain-glory. Be not like the Pharisee, disdainful of the
+publican. To be too well pleased with one's self is to be displeasing to
+the Lord."
+
+"Oh, Brother Cross, don't be thinking that I'm over and above satisfied
+with the goodness that's in me. I know I'm not so good. I have a great
+deal of evil; but then it seems to me there's a difference in good and
+a difference in evil. One has most of one and one has most of another.
+None of us have much good, and all of us have a great deal of sin. God
+help me, for I need his help--I have my own share; but as for that Mrs.
+Thackeray, she's as full of wickedness as an an egg's full of meat."
+
+"It is not the part of Christianity, Sister Cooper," said John Cross
+mildly, "to look into our neighbors' accounts and make comparisons
+between their doings and our own. We can only do so at great risk of
+making a false reckoning. Besides, Sister Cooper, it is business enough
+on our hands, if we see to our own short-comings. As for Mrs. Thackeray,
+I have no doubt she's no better than the rest of us, and we are all, as
+you said before, children of suffering, and prone to sin as certain as
+that the sparks fly upward. We must only watch and pray without ceasing,
+particularly that we may not deceive ourselves with the most dangerous
+sin of being too sure of our own works. The good deeds that we boast
+of so much in our earthly day will shrivel and shrink up at the last
+account to so small a size that the best of us, through shame and
+confusion, will be only too ready to call upon the rocks and hills to
+cover us. We are very weak and foolish all, Sister Cooper. We can't
+believe ourselves too weak, or too mean, or too sinful. To believe this
+with all our hearts, and to try to be better with all our strength, is
+the true labor of religion. God send it to us, in all its sweetness and
+perfection, so that we may fight the good fight without ceasing."
+
+"But if you could only hear of the doings of Mrs. Thackeray, Brother
+Cross, you'd see how needful it would be to put forth all your strength
+to bring her back to the right path."
+
+"The Lord will know. None of us can hide our evil from the eyes of the
+Lord. I will strive with our sister, when I seek her, which will be
+this very noon, but it is of yourself, Sister Cooper, and your daughter
+Margaret, that I would speak. Where is she that I see her not?"
+
+This was the question that made our quasi hierophant look up with a
+far greater degree of interest than he had felt in the long and random
+twattle to which he had been compelled to listen. Where was she--that
+fair daughter? He was impatient for the answer. But he was not long
+detained in suspense. Next to her neighbors there was no subject of
+whom the mother so loved to speak as the daughter, and the daughter's
+excellences.
+
+"Ah! she is up-stairs, at her books, as usual. She does so love them
+books, Brother Cross, I'm afraid it'll do harm to her health. She cares
+for nothing half so well. Morning, noon, and night, all the same, you
+find her poring over them; and even when she goes out to ramble, she
+must have a book, and she wants no other company. For my part I can't
+see what she finds in them to love so; for except to put a body to sleep
+I never could see the use they were to any person yet."
+
+"Books are of two kinds," said Brother Cross gravely. "They are useful
+or hurtful. The useful kinds are good, the hurtful kinds are bad. The
+Holy Bible is the first book, and the only book, as I reckon it will be
+the book that'll live longest. The 'Life of Whitefield' is a good book,
+and I can recommend the sermons of that good man, Brother Peter Cummins,
+that preached when I was a lad, all along through the back parts of
+North Carolina, into South Carolina and Georgia. I can't say that
+he came as far back into the west as these parts; but he was a most
+faithful shepherd. There was a book of his sermons printed for the
+benefit of his widow and children. He died, like that blessed man, John
+Rogers, that we see in the primer-books, leaving a wife with eleven
+children and one at the breast. His sermons are very precious reading.
+One of them in particular, on the Grace of God, is a very falling of
+manna in the wilderness. It freshens the soul, and throws light upon the
+dark places in the wilderness. Ah! if only such books are printed, what
+a precious world for poor souls it would be. But they print a great many
+bad books now-a-days."
+
+The natural love of mischief which prevailed in the bosom of Alfred
+Stevens now prompted him to take part in the conversation at this happy
+moment. The opportunity was a tempting one.
+
+"The printers," said he, "are generally very bad men. They call
+themselves devils, and take young lads and bring them up to their
+business under that name!"
+
+The old lady threw up her hands, and John Cross, to whom this
+intelligence was wholly new, inquired with a sort of awe-struck
+gravity--
+
+"Can this be true, Alfred Stevens? Is this possible?"
+
+"The fact, sir. They go by no other name among themselves; and you may
+suppose, if they are not ashamed of the name, they are not unwilling
+to perform the doings of the devil. Indeed, they are busy doing his
+business from morning to night--and night to morning. They don't stop
+for the sabbath. They work on Sunday the same as any other day, and if
+they take any rest at all it is on Saturday, which would show them to be
+a kind of Jews."
+
+"Good Lord deliver us!" ejaculated the widow.
+
+"Where, O! where?" exclaimed the Brother Cross with similar earnestness.
+The game was too pleasant for Alfred Stevens. He pursued it.
+
+"In such cities," he continued, "as New York and Philadelphia, thousands
+of these persons are kept in constant employ sending forth those books
+of falsehood and folly which fill the hearts of the young with vain
+imaginings, and mislead the footsteps of the unwary. In one of these
+establishments, four persons preside, who are considered brothers; but
+they are brothers in sin only, and are by some supposed to be no other.
+They have called themselves after the names of saints and holy men; even
+the names of the thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in
+this fashion abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even
+in our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better
+enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to believe
+that these persons were no other than the evil demons who ruled in
+Ashdod and Assyria. Such is their perseverance in evil--such their busy
+industry, which keeps a thousand authors (which is but another name for
+priests and prophets) constantly at work to frame cunning falsehoods and
+curious devices, and winning fancies, which when printed and made into
+books, turn the heads of the young and unwary, and blind the soul to the
+wrath which is to come."
+
+The uplifted hands of the widow Cooper still attested her wonder.
+
+"Lord save us!" she exclaimed, "I should not think it strange if Sister
+Thackeray had some of these very books. Do ask, Brother Cross, when
+you go to see her. She speaks much of books, and I see her reading them
+whenever I look in at the back window."
+
+John Cross did not seem to give any heed to the remark of the old woman.
+There was a theological point involved in one of the remarks of Alfred
+Stevens which he evidently regarded as of the first importance.
+
+"What you say, Alfred Stevens, is very new and very strange to me, and I
+should think from what I already know of the evil which is sometimes put
+in printed books, that there was indeed a spirit of malice at work in
+this way, to help the progress and the conquests of Satan among our
+blind and feeble race. But I am not prepared to believe that God has
+left it to Satan to devise so fearful a scheme for prosecuting his evil
+designs as that of making the demons of Ashdod and Assyria take the
+names of mortal men, while teeming to follow mortal occupations. It
+would be fearful tidings for our poor race were this so. But if so, is
+it not seen that there is a difference in the shapes of these persons.
+If either of these brothers who blasphemously call themselves John and
+James, after the manner of the apostles, shall be in very truth and
+certainty that Dagon of the Philistines whom Jehovah smote before his
+altar, will he not be made fishlike from the waist downward, and will
+this not be seen by his followers and some of the thousands whom
+he daily perverts to his evil purposes and so leads to eternal
+destruction?"
+
+"It may be that it is permitted to such a demon to put on what shape he
+thinks proper," replied Stevens; "but even if it is not, yet this would
+not be the subject of any difference--it would scarcely prevent the
+prosecution of this evil purpose. You are to remember, Mr. Cross--"
+
+"John Cross--plain John Cross, Alfred Stevens," was the interruption of
+the preacher.
+
+"You are to remember," Stevens resumed, "that when the heart is full
+of sin, the eyes are full of blindness. The people who believe in these
+evil beings are incapable of seeing their deformities."
+
+"That is true--a sad truth."
+
+"And, again," continued Stevens, "there are devices of mere mortal art,
+by which the deformities and defects of an individual may be concealed.
+One of these brothers, I am told, is never to be seen except seated in
+one position at the same desk, and this desk is so constructed, as
+to hide his lower limbs in great part, while still enabling him to
+prosecute his nefarious work."
+
+"It's clear enough, Brother Cross," exclaimed the widow Cooper, now
+thoroughly convinced--"it's clear enough that there's something that he
+wants to hide. Lord help us! but these things are terrible."
+
+"To the weak and the wicked, Sister Cooper, they are, as you say,
+terrible, and hence the need that we should have our lamps trimmed and
+lighted, for the same light which brings us to the sight of the Holy of
+Holies, shows us the shape of hatefuless, the black and crouching form
+of Satan, with nothing to conceal his deformity. Brother Stevens has
+well said that when the heart is full of sin, the eyes are full of
+blindness; and so we may say that when the heart is full of godliness,
+the eyes are full of seeing. You can not blind them with devilish arts.
+You can not delude them as to the true forms of Satan, let him take any
+shape The eye of godliness sees clean through the mask of sin, as the
+light of the sun pierces the thickest cloud, and brings day after the
+darkest night."
+
+"Oh! what a blessed thing to hear you say so."
+
+"More blessed to believe, Sister Cooper, and believing, to pray with all
+your heart for this same eye of godliness. But we should not only
+pray but work. Working for God is the best sort of prayer. We must do
+something in his behalf: and this reminds me, Sister Cooper, that if
+there is so much evil spread abroad in these books, we should look
+heedfully into the character of such as fall into the hands of the young
+and the unmindful of our flock."
+
+"That is very true; that is just what I was thinking of, Brother Cross.
+You can not look too close, I'm thinking into such books as you'll find
+at the house of Widow Thackeray. I can give a pretty 'cute guess where
+she gets all that sort of talk, that seems so natural at the end of her
+tongue."
+
+"Verily, I will speak with Sister Thackeray on this subject," responded
+the pastor--"but your own books, Sister Cooper, and those of your
+daughter Margaret--if it is convenient, I should prefer to examine them
+now while I am here."
+
+"What! Margaret's books! examine Margaret's books!"
+
+"Even so, while I am present and while Brother Stevens is here, also, to
+give me his helping counsel in the way of judgment."
+
+"Why, bless us, Brother Cross, you don't suppose that my daughter
+Margaret would keep any but the properest books? she's too sensible, I
+can tell you, for that. She's no books but the best; none, I'll warrant
+you, like them you'll find at Widow Thackeray's. She's not to be put off
+with bad books. She goes through 'em with a glance of the eye. Ah! she's
+too smart to be caught by the contrivances of those devils, though in
+place of four brothers there was four thousand of 'em. No, no! let her
+alone for that--she's a match for the best of 'em."
+
+"But as Brother Stevens said," continued John Cross, "where sin gets
+into the heart, the eye is blinded to the truth. Now--"
+
+"Her eye's not blinded, Brother Cross, I can tell you. They can't cheat
+her with their books. She has none but the very best. I'll answer for
+them. None of them ever did me any harm; and I reckon none of them'll
+ever hurt her. But I'm mistaken, if you don't have a real burning when
+you get to Mrs. Thackeray's."
+
+"But, Sister Cooper--" commenced the preacher.
+
+"Yes, Brother Cross," replied the dame.
+
+"Books, as I said before, are of two kinds."
+
+"Yes, I know--good and bad--I only wonder there's no indifferent ones
+among 'em," replied the lady.
+
+"They should be examined for the benefit of the young and ignorant."
+
+"Oh, yes, and for more besides, for Mrs. Thackeray's not young, that's
+clear enough; and I know there's a good many things that she's not
+ignorant of. She's precious knowing about many things that don't do her
+much good; and if the books could unlearn her, I'd say for one let her
+keep 'em. But as for looking at Margaret's books--why, Brother Cross,
+you surely know Margaret?"
+
+The preacher answered meekly, but negatively.
+
+"Ain't she about the smartest girl you ever met with?" continued the
+mother.
+
+"God has certainly blessed her with many gifts," was the reply, "but
+where the trust is great, the responsibility is great also."
+
+"Don't she know it?"
+
+"I trust she does, Sister Cooper."
+
+"You may trust every bit of it. She's got the smartness, the same as it
+is in books--"
+
+"But the gift of talents, Sister Cooper, is a dangerous gift."
+
+"I don't see, Brother Cross, how good things that come from God can be
+dangerous things."
+
+"If I could see the books, Sister Cooper;--I say not that they are
+evil--"
+
+John Cross began in tones that denoted something like despair; certainly
+dissatisfaction was in them, when Alfred Stevens, who had long since
+tired of what was going on, heard a light footfall behind him. He turned
+his eyes and beheld the fair maiden, herself, the propriety of whose
+reading was under discussion, standing in the doorway. It appeared that
+she had gathered from what had reached her ears, some knowledge of what
+was going on, for a smile of ineffable scorn curled her classic and
+nobly-chiselled mouth, while her brow was the index to a very haughty
+volume. In turning, Alfred Stevens betrayed to her the playful smile
+upon his own lips--their eyes met, and that single glance established a
+certain understanding between them.
+
+Her coming did not avail to stifle the subject of discussion. John Cross
+was too resolute in the prosecution of his supposed duty, to give up the
+cause he had once undertaken. He had all the inveteracy of the stout
+old puritan. The usual introduction over and he resumed, though he now
+addressed himself to the daughter rather than the mother. She scarcely
+heard him to the end.
+
+"The books were my father's, Mr. Cross; they are valuable to me on
+that account. They are dear to me on their own. They are almost my only
+companions, and though I believe you would find nothing in them which
+might be held detrimental, yet I must confess, if there were, I should
+be sorry to be made acquainted with the fact. I have not yet discovered
+it myself, and should be loath to have it shown by another."
+
+"But you will let me see them, Margaret?"
+
+"Yes, sir, whenever you please. I can have no objection to that, but if
+by seeing them you only desire an opportunity to say what I shall read
+and what not, I can only tell you that your labor will be taken in vain.
+Indeed, the evil is already done. I have not a volume which I have not
+read repeatedly."
+
+It is needless to add that Brother Cross was compelled to forego his
+book examination at the widow Cooper's, though strongly recommended
+there to press it at Widow Thackeray's. Alfred Stevens was a mute
+observer during the interview, which did not last very long after the
+appearance of Margaret. He was confirmed in all his previous impressions
+of her beauty, nor did the brevity of the conference prevent him from
+perceiving her intense self-esteem, which under certain influences of
+temperament is only another name for vanity. Besides they had
+exchanged glances which were volumes, rendering unnecessary much future
+explanation. She had seen that he was secretly laughing at the simple
+preacher, and that was a source of sympathy between them. She was very
+much in the habit of doing the same thing. He, on the other hand, was
+very well satisfied that the daughter of such a mother must be perverse
+and vain; and he was moralist enough to know that there is no heart so
+accessible to the tempter as the proud and wilful heart. But few words
+had passed between them, but those were expressive, and they both
+parted, with the firm conviction that they must necessarily meet again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.
+
+
+
+
+
+Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we look in upon him at
+Mrs. Thackeray's, while, obeying the suggestion of the widow Cooper, he
+purges her library of twenty volumes, casting out the devils and setting
+up the true gods? It is scarcely necessary. Enough to know that,
+under his expurgatorial finger, our beloved and bosom friend, William
+Shakspere, was the first to suffer. Plays! The one word was enough.
+Some lying histories were permitted to escape. The name of history saved
+them! Robinson Crusoe was preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's
+Tale of a Tub escaped, as it was assumed (there being no time to read
+any of the books, and in this respect John Cross showed himself much
+more of a professional critic than he conjectured) to be a treatise
+on one branch of the cooperage business, and so, important to domestic
+mechanics in a new country. The reader will remember the manner in which
+the library of the knight of La Mancha was disposed of. He would err,
+however, if he supposed that John Cross dismissed the books from the
+window, or did anything farther than simply to open the eyes of Mrs.
+Thackeray to the bad quality of some of the company she kept. That
+sagacious lady did not think it worth while to dispute the ipse dixit of
+a teacher so single-minded, if not sagacious. She bowed respectfully
+to all his suggestions, promised no longer to bestow her smiles on the
+undeserving--a promise of no small importance when it is remembered
+that, at thirty-three, Mrs. Thackeray was for the first time a
+widow--and that night she might have been seen laughing heartily with
+Mesdames Ford and Quickly at the amorous pertinacity of the baffled
+knight of Eastcheap.
+
+Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens obtained the
+desired entree into the bosom of the flock. He was everywhere admitted
+with gladness--everywhere welcomed as to a home; and the unsophisticated
+old teacher by whose agency this was effected, congratulated his
+congregation and himself, on leaving the village, that he had left in it
+a person so full of grace, and one who, with the blessing of God, was
+so likely to bring about the birth of grace in others. The good old man
+bestowed long and repeated counsels upon his neophyte. The course of
+study which he prescribed was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and
+the Omega--it was the essential whole. It would be well to read other
+books if they could be had--Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken
+of--but they could be done without. The word of God was in the one
+volume, and it needed no help from commentators to win its way and
+suffice the hungering and thirsting soul.
+
+"If you could lay hands upon the book of sermons written by Brother
+Peter Cummins, which his wife had printed, I'm thinking it would serve,
+next to God's own blessed word, to put you in the right way. It's been
+a great helping to me, Alfred Stevens, that same book of sermons; and,
+I reckon it's because it's so good a book that it's not printed now.
+I don't see it much about. But I'll get you one if I can, and bring
+or send it to you, soon enough to help you to the wisdom that you're a
+seeking after. If it only wakes the spirit in you as it did in me--if
+it only stirs you up with the spirit of divine love--you'll find it easy
+enough to understand the teachings of the holy volume. All things become
+clear in that blessed light. By its help you read, and by its working
+you inwardly digest all the needful learning. The Lord be with you,
+Alfred Stevens, and bring to perfect ripening your present undertaking."
+
+"Amen!" was the solemn response of the hypocrite, but we need not say
+what an irreverent and unholy thought lay at the bottom of his mind in
+making this ejaculation.
+
+Before the departure of John Cross, the latter had made terms with
+Squire Hinkley for the board and lodging of Brother Stevens and his
+horse. Hinkley would have preferred taking nothing, considering the
+praiseworthy purpose of the supposed theological student; but Stevens
+shrunk from receiving such an obligation with a feeling of pride, which
+yet had no scruples at practising so wretched an imposture. He insisted
+upon making compensation, or upon leaving the house; and, not to incur
+this risk, Hinkley consented to receive a weekly sum in payment; but the
+charge was considerably smaller, as we may suppose, than it would
+have been had the lodger simply appeared as an inoffensive traveller,
+practising no fraud and making no professions of religion.
+
+Having effected all these arrangements, to his own satisfaction and
+seemingly that of all others, John Cross departed once more into the
+wilderness on his single-hearted ministry of love. A sturdy and an
+honest worker was he in the tabernacle, with a right mind if not a very
+wise one; and doing more good in his generation, and after the fashion
+of his strength, than is often permitted to the stall-fed doctors of his
+vocation.
+
+The reader will suppose that the old man has been already gone some
+seven days. Meanwhile, the young student has fairly made himself at
+home in Charlemont. He has a snug room, entirely to himself, at Squire
+Hinkley's, and, by the excellent care of the worthy dame, it is provided
+with the best bedding and the finest furniture. Her own hands sweep it
+clean, morning and night, for the incipient parson; she makes up the
+bed, and, in customary phrase, puts it in all respects to rights. His
+wants are anticipated, his slightest suggestion met with the most prompt
+consideration; and John Cross himself, humble and unexacting as he was,
+might have felt some little twinges of mortal envy could he have
+known that his protege promised to become a much greater favorite than
+himself.
+
+This, indeed, seemed very likely to be the case. A good young man in the
+sight of the ladies is always a more attractive person than a good old
+man. Dame Hinkley, though no longer young herself, remembered that she
+had been so, and preserved all her sympathies, in consequence, for
+young people. She thought Alfred Stevens so handsome, and he smiled so
+sweetly, and he spoke so genty, and, in short, so great had been his
+progress in the affections of his hostess in the brief space of a single
+week, that we are constrained to confess ourselves rejoiced that she
+herself was an old woman, as well on her own account as on that of her
+worthy spouse.
+
+Her good man was very well satisfied, whether from confidence or
+indifference, that such should be the case. Her attentions to the young
+stranger probably diverted them from himself. But not so with William
+Hinkley--the son. We have already had some glimpses of the character
+of this young man. We may now add that the short week's residence of
+Stevens in Charlemont had increased the soreness at his heart. In that
+week he had seen fairly established that intimacy between his rival
+and the lady of his love which seemed to give the death-blow to any
+pretensions of his. He had seen them meet; had seen them go forth
+together; beheld their mutual eyes, and, turning his own inward, saw
+how deeply his heart was concerned in the probable sympathies of theirs.
+Then, to turn to his own habitation, and to behold THAT, mother and all,
+devoted to the same absolute stranger; to pass unheeded in the presence
+of those whom he best loved--over whom natural ties gave him inalienable
+rights; to feel himself put aside for one only known of yesterday; to
+look with yearning, and meet eyes only of disregard and indifference!
+Such being the suggestions of his jealous and suffering nature, it
+is surely no matter of wonder that the youth grew melancholy and
+abstracted.
+
+Our adventurer was snugly seated in the little but select chamber which
+had been given him in the house of Squire Hinkley. A table, neatly
+spread with a cotton cover, stood before him: a travelling-portfolio
+was opened beneath his hand, with a broad sheet of paper, already well
+written over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps the
+postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and nibbled
+into bits the feathery end of the gray goosequill of which he had been
+making such excellent use. While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the
+liberty of an old acquaintance to scan the letter--for such it is--which
+he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some matters which
+it may concern us yet to know:--
+
+"Dear Barnabas: The strangest adventure--positively the very
+strangest--that ever happened to a son of Murkey's, will keep me
+from the embraces of the brethren a few weeks longer. I am benighted,
+bewildered, taken with art-magic, transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, not
+myself nor yet another, but, as they say in Mississippi, 'a sort
+of betweenity.' Fancy me suddenly become a convert to the bluest
+presbyterianism, as our late excellent brother Woodford became, when he
+found that he could not get Moll Parkinson on any other terms--and your
+guess will not be very far from the true one. I am suddenly touched with
+conviction. I have seen a light on my way from Tarsus. The scales have
+fallen from my eyes. I have seen the wickedness of my ways, and yours
+too, you dog; and, having resolved on my own repentance, I am taking
+lessons which shall enable me to effect yours. Precious deal of salt
+will it need for that! Salt river will fall, while its value rises. But
+the glory of the thing--think of that, my boy! What a triumph it will
+be to revolutionize Murkey's!--to turnout the drinkers and smokers, and
+money-changers; to say, 'Hem! my brethren, let us pay no more taxes to
+sin in this place!' There shall be no more cakes and ale. Ginger shall
+have no heat i' the mouth there; and, in place of smoking meats and
+tobacco, give you nothing but smoking methodism! Won't that be a sight
+and a triumph which shall stir the dry bones in our valley--ay, and
+bones not so dry? There shall be a quaking of the flesh in sundry
+places. Flam will perish in the first fit of consternation; and if Joe
+Burke's sides do not run into sop and jelly, through the mere humor of
+the thing, then prophecy is out of its element quite.
+
+"Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student! Don't you see
+proofs of my progress in my unctuous phraseology. I was taken suddenly
+upon the highway--a brand plucked from the burning--and to be stuck up
+on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern and lighthouse to
+other wayfarers--wandering rogues like yourself, who need some better
+lights than your own if it only be to show you how to sin decently. I am
+professedly a convert to the true faith, though which that is, I think,
+has not well been determined among you at Murkey's, or, indeed, anywhere
+else. I believe the vox populi, vox Dei, still comprises the only
+wholesome decision which has yet been made on the subject. The popular
+vote here declares it to be methodism; with you it is baptism or
+presbyterianism--which? I am a flexible student, however, and when I meet
+you again at Murkey's, shall be prepared to concur with the majority.
+
+"But, in sober fact, I am a professor--actually recognised by my
+neighbors as one of the elect--set apart to be and do mighty things.
+How I came so, will call for a long story, which I defer to another
+occasion. Enough to tell you that an accidental rencontre with a silly
+old preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy, which I recommended
+to him, under another name, as a sovereign remedy against flatulence,
+and which nearly strangled him he took such a premeditated swallow),
+brought me into one of the loveliest little villages in all this western
+country, and there I saw many things--among others--a woman!--
+
+"A woman!--that one word, you dog, will explain the mystery--will
+show you why I am thus transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, and in 'a state of
+betweenity.' Nothing less, I assure you, could make me disguise myself
+after the present fashion; wear the sanctimonious and sour phiz which
+the common law of modern religion prescribes, and keep me much longer
+from the pleasanter communion of such glorious imps, as I suppose, are,
+even now, beginning to gather in the dingy smoke-room of our sovereign
+Murkey. But this woman, you will ask. Ay, ay, but you shall have no
+answer yet. It shall be enough for you that she is a queen of Sheba,
+after her own fashion. A proud, imperious, passionate creature--tall,
+really beautiful--and so majestic! You should see the flashing of her
+eyes to know what sort of a thing is moral lightning. Her face kindles
+up in an instant. She is an intensifier, and like most such, cursedly
+smart. Young too--scarce eighteen, I think; queer too--almost tyrannical
+at times--but full of blood, of unregulated passions, moody, capricious,
+and, of course, easy game, if the sportsman knows anything of the habits
+of the bird. She is a country-girl, but no hoyden. Her intensity of
+character, her pride and great self-esteem, have made her a solitary.
+Unsophisticated in some respects, she is yet not to be surprised. In
+solitude, and a taste for it, she has acquired a sort of moral composure
+which makes her secure against surprise. I am really taken with the
+girl, and COULD love her, I tell you--nay, do love her--so long as love
+can keep himself--out of a state of bondage! I do not think, at this
+moment, that I shall violate any of the laws of the conventicle, like
+small-witted Brother Woodford; though, so far as the woman is concerned,
+I should leave it without argument to the free vote of all the Lads of
+Fancy that ever gather round Murkey's round table, if my justification
+for turning traitor, would not prove immeasurably more complete than
+his.
+
+"So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch, you professional
+bandog. I had not meant to tell you half so much. There is some danger
+that one may lose his game altogether, if he suffers his nose to point
+unnecessarily to the cover where it lies. I know what keen scents are
+in the club, some of which would be on my track in no time if they knew
+where to find me; but I shall baffle you, you villains. My post-town is
+fifty miles from the place where I pursue my theological studies; you
+are too wise to attempt a wild-goose chase. You may smack your chaps,
+Barney, with envy; bite them too if you please, and it will only whet
+my own sense of pleasure to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless
+denunciations in the club. I shall be back in time for term--meanwhile
+get the papers in readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland,
+and remember to address me as Alfred Stevens--nay, perhaps, you may even
+say, 'Rev. Alfred Stevens,' it will grace the externals of the document
+with a more unctuous aspect, and secure the recipient a more wholesome
+degree of respect. Send all my letters to this town under envelope with
+this direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville. Did I tell you that
+old Hunks has been deused liberal? I can laugh at the small terms,
+yet go to Murkey's and shine through the smoke with the best of you. I
+solicit the prayers of the Round Table.
+
+"Faithfully, yours, &c."
+
+So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate, when a tap
+was heard at the entrance of his chamber. Thrusting the written papers
+into his portfolio, he rose, and opening the door discovered his hostess
+at the entrance.
+
+"I came, Brother Stevens," said the old lady, "if you not too busy in
+your studies, to have a little talk with you, and to get your counsel
+upon a subject that a little distresses me. But you look as if you were
+busy now--"
+
+"Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in any other
+respect," replied the guest with suitable suavity of expression--"shall
+I attend you down stairs."
+
+"Oh! no! it won't need," said she. "I'll take a seat with you awhile. We
+shall be less liable to interruption here."
+
+Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority of the old lady
+made her proceedings very innocent, however much they might have
+been adverse to the rules. He threw wide the door, and without more
+hesitation she followed him at once into the chamber.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her guest was
+a very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she expressed it in
+few words. That is scarcely possible at any time with an ancient lady.
+But the long story which she told, when compressed into intelligible
+form, related to her son William. She had some maternal fears on his
+account. The lad was a decided melancholic. His appetite was bad; his
+looks were thin and unhappy; he lacked the usual spirit of youth; he
+lacked his own usual spirit. What was the cause of the change which had
+come over him so suddenly, she could not divine. Her anxiety was for
+the remedy. She had consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he
+departed; but that good man, after a brief examination of the patient,
+had freely admitted his inability to say what was the matter with him,
+and what was proper for his cure. To the object of this solicitude
+himself, he had given much good counsel, concluding finally with a
+recommendation to read devoutly certain chapters in Job and Isaiah.
+It appears that William Hinkley submitted to all this scrutiny with
+exemplary fortitude, but gave no satisfactory answers to any of the
+questions asked him. He had no complaints, he denied any suffering;
+and expressed himself annoyed at the inquisition into his thoughts and
+feelings. This annoyance had been expressed, however, with the subdued
+tones and language of one habitually gentle and modest. Whenever he was
+approached on the subject, as the good old lady assured her guest, he
+shook off his questioners with no little haste, and took to the woods
+for the rest of the day. "That day," said she, "you needn't look for
+William Hinkley to his dinner."
+
+Stevens had been struck with the deportment of this youth, which had
+seemed to him haughty and repulsive; and, as he fancied, characterized
+by some sentiment of hostility for himself. He was surprised therefore
+to learn from the old lady that the lad was remarkable for his
+gentleness.
+
+"How long has he been in this way, Mrs. Hinkley?" he asked with some
+curiosity.
+
+"Well now, Brother Stevens, I can't tell you. It's been growing on him
+for some time. I reckon it's a matter of more than four months since I
+first seen it; but it's only been a few weeks that I have spoken to him.
+Brother Cross spoke to him only Monday of last week. My old man don't
+seem to see so much of it; but I know there's a great change in him now
+from what there used to be. A mother's eye sees a great way farther into
+the hearts of her children, Brother Stevens, than any other persons; and
+I can see plainly that William is no more the same boy--no! nor nothing
+like it--that he once was. Why, once, he was all life, and good humor;
+could dance and sing with the merriest among them; and was always so
+good and kind, and loved to do whatever would please a body; and was
+always with somebody, or other, making merry, and planning the prettiest
+sports. Now, he don't sing, nor dance, nor play; when you see him, you
+'most always see him alone. He goes by himself into the woods, and he'll
+be going over the hills all day, nobody with him, and never seeming to
+care about his food, and what's more strange, never looking at the books
+that he used to be so fond of."
+
+"He has been fond of books, then--had he many?"
+
+"Oh, yes, a whole drawer of them, and he used to get them besides from
+the schoolmaster, Mr. Calvert, a very good man that lives about half a
+mile from the village, and has a world of books. But now he neither gets
+books from other people nor reads what he's got. I'm dubious, Brother
+Stevens, that he's read too much for his own good. Something's not right
+here, I'm a thinking."
+
+The good old lady touched her head with her finger and in this manner
+indicated her conjecture as to the seat of her son's disease. Stevens
+answered her encouragingly.
+
+"I scarcely think, Mrs. Hinkley, that it can be anything so bad. The
+young man is at that age when a change naturally takes place in the
+mind and habits. He wants to go into the world, I suspect. He's probably
+tired of doing nothing. What is to be his business? It's high time that
+such a youth should have made a choice."
+
+"That's true, Brother Stevens, but he's been the apple to our eyes,
+and we haven't been willing that he should take up any business that
+would--carry him away from us. He's done a little farming about the
+country, but that took him away, and latterly he's kept pretty much at
+home, going over his books and studying, now one and now another, just
+as Mr. Calvert gave them to him."
+
+"What studies did he pursue?"
+
+"Well, I can't tell you. He was a good time at Latin, and then he wants
+to be a lawyer;--"
+
+"A lawyer!"
+
+"Yes, he had a great notion to be a lawyer and was at his books pretty
+hard for a good year, constant, day by day, until, as I said before,
+about four months ago, when I saw that he was growing thin, and that he
+had put down the books altogether, and had the change come over him just
+as I told you. You see how thin he is now. You'd scarce believe him to
+be the same person if you'd seen him then. Why his cheeks were as full
+and as red as roses, and his eye was always shining and laughing, and
+he had the liveliest step, and between him and Ned Hinkley, his cousin,
+what with flute and fiddle, they kept the house in a constant uproar,
+and we were all so happy. Now, it isn't once a month that we hear the
+sound of the fiddle in the house. He never sings, and he never dances,
+and he never plays, and what little he lets us see of him, is always so
+sad and so spiritless that I feel heartsick whenever I look upon him.
+Oh! Brother Stevens, if you could only find out what's the matter, and
+tell us what to do, it would be the most blessed kindness, and I'd never
+forget it, or forget you, to my dying day."
+
+"Whatever I can do, Mrs. Hinkley, shall surely be done. I will see and
+speak with your son."
+
+"Oh! do--that's a dear good sir. I'm sure if you only talk to him and
+advise him it will do him good."
+
+"Without being so sure, ma'am, I will certainly try to please you.
+Though I think you see the matter with too serious eyes. Such changes
+are natural enough to young people, and to old ones too. But what may be
+your son's age."
+
+"Nineteen last April."
+
+"Quite a man for his years, Mrs. Hinkley."
+
+"Isn't he?"
+
+"He will do you credit yet."
+
+"Ah! if I could believe so. But you'll speak to him, Brother Stevens?
+You'll try and bring all to rights?"
+
+"Rely upon me to do what I can;--to do my best."
+
+"Well, that's as much as any man can do, and I'm sure I'll be so
+happy--we shall all be so much indebted to you."
+
+"Do not speak of it, my dear madam," said Stevens, bowing with profound
+deference as the old lady took her departure. She went off with light
+heart, having great faith in the powers of the holy man, and an equal
+faith in his sincerity.
+
+"What a bore!" he muttered as he closed the door behind her. "This is
+one of the penalties, I suppose, which I must pay for my privileges. I
+shall be called upon to reform the morals and manners, and look into the
+petty cares of every chuckle-headed boor and boor's brat for ten miles
+round. See why boys reject their mush, and why the girls dislike to
+listen to the exhortations of a mamma, who requires them to leave undone
+what she has done herself--and with sufficient reason too, if her own
+experience be not wholly profitless. Well, I must submit. There are
+advantages, however; I shall have other pupils to tutor, and it shall
+go hard with me if all the grapes prove sour where the vines are so
+various."
+
+The student of divinity, after these conclusions, prepared to make his
+toilet. Very few of these students, in their extreme solicitude for the
+well being of the inner man, show themselves wholly regardless of their
+externals. Even mourning, it appears, requires to be disposed by a
+fashionable costumer. Though the garments to which the necessities of
+travel limited Brother Stevens were not various, they were yet select.
+The good young man had an affection for his person, which was such
+certainly as to deserve his care. On this occasion he was more than
+usually particular. He did not scruple to discard the white cravat.
+For this he substituted a handkerchief which had the prettiest sprig
+of lilac, on a ground of the most delicate lemon color. He consulted
+complexions, and his mirror determined him in favor of this pattern.
+Brother Stevens would not have worn it had he been summoned, in his
+new vocation, to preach or pray at the conventicle; nor would he have
+dreamed of anything but a black stock had his business been to address
+the democracy from the top of a cider-barrel. His habits, under such
+necessities, would have been made to correspond with the principles
+with which such a situation more distinctly called for.
+
+But the thoughts of our worthy brother ran upon other objects. He was
+thinking of Margaret Cooper. He was about to pay that damsel a visit.
+His progress, we may suppose, had not been inconsiderable when we are
+told that his present visit was one of previous arrangement. They were
+about to go forth on a ramble together--the woods were so wild
+and lovely--the rocks surrounding Charlemont were so very
+picturesque;--there was the quietest tarn, a sort of basin in the bosom
+of the hills at a little distance, which she was to show him; and
+there was the sweetest stream in the world, that meandered in the
+neighborhood; and Brother Stevens so loved the picturesque--lakes
+embosomed in hills, and streams stealing through unbroken forests, and
+all so much the more devotedly, when he had such a companion as Margaret
+Cooper.
+
+And Margaret Cooper!--she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer--a
+muse--filled with ambitious thoughts--proud, vain, aspiring after the
+vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could speak her
+whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding ears!
+Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her books had been his
+books. The glowing passages which she loved to repeat, were also the
+favorite passages in his memory. Over the burning and thrilling strains
+of Byron, the tender and spiritual of Shelley, the graceful and soft of
+Campbell, she loved to linger. They filled her thoughts. They made her
+thoughts. She felt that her true utterance lay in their language; and
+this language, until now, had fallen dead and without fruit upon the
+dull ears of her companions in Charlemont. What was their fiddling and
+festivity to her! What their tedious recreations by hillside or
+stream, when she had to depress her speech to the base levels of their
+unimaginative souls! The loveliness of nature itself, unrepresented
+by the glowing hues of poetry, grew tame, if not offensive; and when
+challenged to its contemplation by those to whom the muse was nothing,
+the fancy of the true observer grew chilled and heavy, and the scenes of
+beauty seemed prostituted in their glance.
+
+We have all felt this. Nothing can more annoy the soul of taste or
+sensibility than to behold its favorite scene and subject fail in
+awakening others to that emotion which it has inspired in ourselves.
+We turn away in haste, lest the object of our worship should become
+degraded by a longer survey. Enthusiasm recoils at a denial of sympathy;
+and all the worth of our companion, in a thousand other respects, fails
+to reconcile us to his coldness and indifference.
+
+That Alfred Stevens had taste and talent--that he was well read in the
+volumes which had been her favorite study, Margaret Cooper needed no
+long time to discover. She soon ascribed to him qualities and tastes
+which were beyond his nature. Deceived by his tact, she believed in his
+enthusiasm. He soon discovered HER tastes; and she found equally soon
+that HIS were like her own. After this discovery, she gave him credit
+for other and more important possessions; and little dreamed that,
+while he responded to her glowing sentiments with others equally
+glowing--avowed the same love for the same authors, and concurred with
+her in the preference of the same passages--his feelings were as little
+susceptible of sympathy with hers as would have been those of the cold
+demon Mephistopheles! While her eye was flashing, her cheek flushed, her
+breast heaving with the burning thoughts and strains of the master to
+whom her beautiful lips were giving utterance, he was simply sensible
+to HER beauty--to its strange, wild charms--and meditating thoughts
+from which the soul of true poetry recoils with the last feelings of
+aversion. Even the passion which he felt while he surveyed her, foreign
+as it was to those legitimate emotions which her ambition and her genius
+would equally have tended to inspire in any justly-minded nature,
+might well be considered frigid--regarded as the result of deliberate
+artifice--the true offspring of an habitual and base indulgence.
+
+It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding girl,
+that Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his costume. He
+felt its deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity of making the
+most of it; for, though he perfectly well knew that such a woman as
+Margaret Cooper would have been the very last to regard the mere garment
+in which a congenial nature is arrayed, yet he also well knew that the
+costume is not less indicative of the tastes than the wealth of the
+wearer. You will see thousands of persons, men and women, richly
+dressed, and but one will be WELL dressed: that one, most generally,
+will be the individual who is perhaps of all others possessed of
+the least resources for dress, other than those which dwell in the
+well-arranged mind, the well-disposing taste, and the happy, crowning
+fancy.
+
+His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing to
+go forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed his hand
+upon the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his hostess, on
+the stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son. He was about to
+forbear his purpose of departure as the parties had retired, when,
+remembering the solicitude of the lady, and thinking it would show that
+zest in her service which he really could not entertain, he determined
+at once to to join the young man, and begin with him that certain degree
+of intimacy without which it could scarcely be supposed that he could
+broach the subject of his personal affairs. He felt somewhat the
+awkwardness of this assumed duty, but then he recollected his vocation;
+he knew the paramount influence of the clergy upon all classes of
+persons in the West, and, with the conscious superiority derived
+from greater years and better education, he felt himself fortified
+in undertaking the paternal office which the fond, foolish mother had
+confided to his hands. Accordingly, descending the stairs briskly, he
+joined the two at the entrance of the dwelling. The son was already on
+the outside; the mother stood in the doorway: and, as Stevens appeared
+and drew nigh, William Hinkley bowed, and turned away as if to withdraw.
+
+"If you have no objections, Mr. Hinkley," said Stevens, "I will join
+you. You seem to be about to go my way."
+
+The young man paused with an air of reluctance, muttered something
+which was not altogether intelligible, but which Stevens construed into
+assent, and the two set forth together--the good old matron giving a
+glance of gratitude to the benevolent young student which her son did
+not fail to note, while, at the same time, a sentence which evidently
+conveyed some motherly rebuke, was addressed to his already-irritated
+ears.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+WRESTLING.
+
+
+
+
+
+Alfred Stevens, as he walked behind his young companion, observed him
+with a more deliberate survey than he had yet taken. Hitherto, the young
+man had challenged but little of his scrutiny. He had simply noted him
+for a tall youth, yet in the green, who appeared of a sulky, retiring
+nature, and whose looks had seemed to him on one or more occasions
+to manifest something like distaste for himself. The complacency of
+Stevens, however, was too well grounded to be much disturbed by such an
+exhibition. Perhaps, indeed, he would have derived a malicious sort of
+satisfaction in making a presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He
+had just that smallness of spirit which would find its triumph in the
+success of such a performance.
+
+He now observed that the youth was well formed, tall, not
+ungraceful--with features of singular intelligence, though subdued to
+the verge of sadness. His face was pale and thin, his eyes were a little
+sunken, and his air, expression, and general outside, denoted a youth of
+keen sensibilities, who had suffered some disappointment.
+
+In making this examination, Alfred Stevens was not awakened to any
+generous purposes. He designed, in reality, nothing more than to
+acquit himself of the duty he had undertaken with the smallest possible
+exertion. His own mind was one of that mediocre character which the
+heart never informs. His scrutiny, therefore, though it enabled him to
+perceive that the young man had qualities of worth, was not such as to
+prompt any real curiosity to examine further. A really superior mind
+would have been moved to look into these resources; and, without other
+motive than that of bringing a young, laboring, and ardent soul out of
+the meshes of a new and bewildering thought or situation, would have
+addressed himself to the task with that degree of solicitous earnestness
+which disarms prejudice and invites and wins confidence. But, with his
+first impression, that the whole business was a "bore," our benevolent
+young teacher determined on getting through with it with the least
+possible effort. He saw that the youth carried a book under his arm, the
+externals of which, so uniform and discouraging as they appear in every
+legal library, could not well be questioned as belonging to some such
+venerable receptacle of barbarous phrase and rigid authority. The
+circumstance afforded him an occasion to begin a conversation,
+the opening of which, with all his coolness, was a subject of some
+awkwardness.
+
+"You seem a student like myself, Mr. Hinkley, and, if I mistake not from
+the appearance of your book, you are taking up the profession which I am
+about to lay down."
+
+"This is a law-book, sir," said Hinkley, in accents which were rather
+meek than cold; "it is Blackstone."
+
+"Ah! I thought as much. Have you been long a student?"
+
+"I may scarcely consider myself one yet. I have read, sir, rather than
+studied."
+
+"A good distinction, not often made. But, do you incline to law
+seriously?"
+
+"Yes, sir--I know no occupation to which I so much incline."
+
+"The law is a very arduous profession. It requires a rare union of
+industry, talent, and knowledge of mankind to be a good lawyer."
+
+"I should think so, sir."
+
+"Few succeed where thousands fail. Young men are very apt to mistake
+inclination for ability; and to be a poor lawyer--"
+
+"Is to be worse than poor--is to be despicable!" replied Hinkley with a
+half-smile, as he interrupted a speech which might have been construed
+into a very contemptuous commentary on his own pretensions. It would
+seem that the young man had so understood it. He continued thus:--
+
+"It may be so with me, sir. It is not improbable that I deceive myself,
+and confound inclination with ability."
+
+"Oh, pardon me, my dear young friend," said Stevens patronizingly;
+"but I do not say so. I utter a mere generality. Of course, I can know
+nothing on the subject of your abilities. I should be glad to know.
+I should like to converse with you. But the law is very arduous, very
+exacting. It requires a good mind, and it requires the whole of it.
+There is no such thing as being a good lawyer from merely reading law.
+You can't bolt it as we do food in this country. We must chew upon it.
+It must be well digested. You seem to have the right notion on this
+subject. I should judge so from two things: the distinction which
+you made between the reader and the student; and the fact that your
+appearance is that of the student. I am afraid, my young friend, that
+you overwork yourself. You look thin, and pale, and unhappy. You should
+be careful that your passion for study is not indulged in at the peril
+of your health."
+
+The frame of the young man seemed to be suddenly agitated. His face was
+flushed, and a keen, quick, flash of anger seemed to lighten in his eyes
+as he looked up to the paternal counsellor and replied:--
+
+"I thank you, sir, for your interest, but it is premature. I am not
+conscious that my health suffers from this or any other cause."
+
+"Nay, my young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate
+your own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much we can
+do and how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere thinking
+can determine this matter for us. It can only be decided by being able
+to see what others do and can endure. In a little country village like
+this, one can not easily determine; and the difficulty may be increased
+somewhat by one's own conviction, of the immense deal that one has to
+learn. If you were to spend a year in some tolerably large community.
+Perhaps you meditate some such plan?".
+
+"I do not, sir," was the cold reply.
+
+"Indeed; and have you no desire that way?"
+
+"None!"
+
+"Very strange! at your time of life the natural desire is to go into the
+great world. Even the student fancies he can learn better there than he
+can anywhere else--and so he can."
+
+"Indeed, sir: if I may be so bold to ask, why, with this opinion, have
+you left the great city to bury yourself in a miserable village like
+Charlemont?"
+
+The question was so quickly put, and with so much apparent keenness,
+that Stevens found the tables suddenly reversed. But he was in nowise
+discomposed. He answered promptly.
+
+"You forget," he said, "that I was speaking of very young men, of an
+ambitious temper, who were seeking to become lawyers. The student of
+divinity may very well be supposed to be one who would withdraw himself
+from the scene of ambition, strifes, vanities, and tumultuous passions."
+
+"You speak, sir, as if there were a material difference in our years?"
+said Hinkley inquiringly.
+
+"Perhaps it is less than in our experience, my young friend," was the
+answer of the other, betraying that quiet sense of superiority which
+would have been felt more gallingly by Hinkley had he been of a less
+modest nature. Still, it had the effect of arousing some of the animal
+in his blood, and he responded in a sentence which was not entirely
+without its sneer, though it probably passed without penetrating such a
+buff of self-esteem as guarded the sensibilities of our adventurer.
+
+"You are fortunate sir, if, at your time of life, you have succeeded
+in withdrawing your thoughts and feelings, with your person, from such
+scenes of ambition as you speak of. But I fancy the passions dwell with
+us in the country as well as with the wiser people in the town; and I am
+not sure that there is any pursuit much more free from their intrusion
+than that of the law."
+
+"Your remark exhibits penetration, Mr. Hinkley. I should not be
+surprised if you have chosen your profession properly. Still, I should
+counsel you not to overwork yourself. Bear with me, sir; I feel an
+interest in your behalf, and I must think you do so. Allow me to be
+something of a judge in this matter. You are aware, sir, that I too have
+been a lawyer."
+
+The youth bowed stiffly.
+
+"If I can lend you any assistance in your studies, I will do so. Let me
+arrange them for you, and portion out your time. I know something about
+that, and will save you from injuring your health. On this point you
+evidently need instruction. You are doing yourself hurt. Your appearance
+is matter of distress and apprehension to your parents."
+
+"To my parents, sir?"
+
+"Your mother, I mean! She spoke to me about you this very morning. She
+is distressed at some unaccountable changes which have taken place in
+your manners, your health, your personal appearance. Of course I can say
+nothing on the subject of the past, or of these changes; but I may be
+permitted to say that your present looks do not betoken health, and I
+have supposed this to be on account of your studies. I promised your
+good mother to confer with you, and counsel you, and if I can be of any
+help--"'
+
+"You are very good, sir!"
+
+The young man spoke bitterly. His gorge was rising. It was not easy to
+suppress his vexation with his mother, and the indignation which he
+felt at the supercilious approaches of the agent whom she had employed.
+Besides, his mind, not less than his feelings, was rising in vigor in
+due degree with the pressure put upon it.
+
+"You are very good, sir, and I am very much obliged to you. I could have
+wished, however, that my mother had not given you this trouble, sir. She
+certainly must have been thinking of Mr. John Cross. She could scarcely
+have hoped that any good could have resulted to me, from the counsel of
+one who is so little older than myself."
+
+This speech made our adventurer elevate his eyebrows. He absolutely
+stopped short to look upon the speaker. William Hinkley stopped short
+also. His eye encountered that of Stevens with an expression as full of
+defiance as firmness. His cheeks glowed with the generous indignation
+which filled his veins.
+
+"This fellow has something in him after all," was the involuntary
+reflection that rose to the other's mind. The effect was, however,
+not very beneficial to his own manner. Instead of having the effect of
+impressing upon Stevens the necessity of working cautiously, the show
+of defiance which he saw tended to provoke and annoy him. The youth had
+displayed so much propriety in his anger, had been so moderate as
+well as firm, and had uttered his answer with so much dignity and
+correctness, that he felt himself rebuked. To be encountered by an
+unsophisticated boy, and foiled, though but for an instant--slightly
+estimated, though but by a youth, and him too, a mere rustic--was
+mortifying to the self-esteem that rather precipitately hurried to
+resent it.
+
+"You take it seriously, Mr. Hinkley. But surely an offer of service
+need not be mistaken. As for the trifling difference which may be in
+our years, that is perhaps nothing to the difference which may be in our
+experience, our knowledge of the world, our opportunities and studies."
+
+"Surely, sir; all these MAY be, but at all events we are not bound to
+assume their existence until it is shown."
+
+"Oh, you are likely to prove an adept in the law, Mr. Hinkley."
+
+"I trust, sir, that your progress may be as great in the church."
+
+"Ha!--do I understand you? There is war between us then?" said Stevens,
+watching the animated and speaking countenance of William Hinkley with
+increasing curiosity.
+
+"Ay, sir--there is!" was the spirited reply of the youth. "Let it be
+war; I am the better pleased, sir, that you are the first to proclaim
+it."
+
+"Very good," said Stevens, "be it so, if you will. At all events you can
+have no objection to say why it should be so."
+
+"Do you ask, sir?"
+
+"Surely; for I can not guess."
+
+"You are less sagacious, then, than I had fancied you. You, scarce
+older than myself--a stranger among us--come to me in the language of a
+father, or a master, and without asking what I have of feeling, or
+what I lack of sense, undertake deliberately to wound the one, while
+insolently presuming to inform the other."
+
+"At the request of your own mother!"
+
+"Pshaw! what man of sense or honesty would urge such a plea. Years, and
+long intimacy, and wisdom admitted to be superior, could alone justify
+the presumption."
+
+The cheeks of Stevens became scalding hot.
+
+"Young man!" he exclaimed, "there is something more than this!"
+
+"What! would it need more were our positions reversed?" demanded Hinkley
+with a promptness that surprised himself.
+
+"Perhaps not! would you provoke me to personal violence?"
+
+"Ha! might I hope for that? surely you forget that you are a churchman?"
+
+Stevens paused awhile before he answered. His eyes looked vacantly
+around him. By this time they had left the more thickly-settled parts of
+the village considerably behind them. But a few more dwellings lay along
+the path on which they were approaching. On the left, a gorge opened in
+the hills by which the valley was dotted, which seemed a pathway, and
+did indeed lead to one or more dwellings which were out of sight in the
+opposite valley. The region to which this pathway led was very secluded,
+and the eye of Stevens surveyed it for a few moments in silence. The
+words of Hinkley unquestionably conveyed a challenge. According to the
+practice of the country, AS A LAWYER, he would have been bound to have
+taken it as such. A moment was required for reflection. His former and
+present position caused a conflict in his mind. The last sentence of
+Hinkley, and a sudden glimpse which he just then caught of the residence
+of Margaret Cooper, determined his answer.
+
+"I thank you, young man, for reminding me of my duties. You had nearly
+provoked the old passions and old practices into revival. I forgive
+you--you misunderstand me clearly. I know not how I have offended you,
+for my only purpose was to serve your mother and yourself. I may have
+done this unwisely. I will not attempt to prove that I have not. At all
+events, assured of my own motives, I leave you to yourself. You will
+probably ere long feel the injustice you have done me!"
+
+He continued on his way, leaving William Hinkley almost rooted to the
+spot. The poor youth was actually stunned, not by what was said to him,
+but by the sudden consciousness of his own vehemence. He had expressed
+himself with a boldness and an energy of which neither himself nor his
+friend, until now, would have thought him capable. A moment's pause in
+the provocation, and the feelings which had goaded him on were taken
+with a revulsion quite as sudden. As he knew not well what he had said,
+so he fancied he had said everything precisely as the passionate thought
+had suggested it in his own mind. Already he began to blame himself--to
+feel that he had done wrong--that there had been nothing in the conduct
+or manner of Stevens, however unpleasant, to justify his own violence;
+and that the true secret of his anger was to be found in that
+instinctive hostility which he had felt for his rival from the first.
+The more he mused, the more he became humbled by his thoughts; and when
+he recollected the avowed profession of Stevens his shame increased. He
+felt how shocking it was to intimate to a sworn non-combatant the idea
+of a personal conflict. To what point of self-abasement his thoughts
+would have carried him, may only be conjectured; he might have hurried
+forward to overtake his antagonist with the distinct purpose of making
+the most ample apology; nay, more, such was the distinct thought which
+was now pressing upon his mind, when he was saved from this humiliation
+by perceiving that Stevens had already reached, and was about to enter
+the dwelling of Margaret Cooper. With this sight, every thought and
+feeling gave place to that of baffled love, and disappointed affection.
+With a bitter groan he turned up the gorge, and soon shut himself from
+sight of the now hateful habitation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The course of the young rustic was pursued for half a mile further till
+he came to a little cottage of which the eye could take no cognizance
+from any part of the village. It was embowelled in a glen of its own--a
+mere cup of the slightly-rising hills, and so encircled by foliage that
+it needed a very near approach of the stranger before he became aware of
+its existence. The structure was very small, a sort of square box with
+a cap upon it, and consisted of two rooms only on a ground floor, with a
+little lean-to or shed-room in the rear, intended for a kitchen. As
+you drew nigh and passed through the thick fringe of wood by which
+its approach was guarded, the space opened before you, and you found
+yourself in a sort of amphitheatre, of which the cottage was the centre.
+A few trees dotted this area, large and massive trees, and seemingly
+preserved for purposes of shade only. It was the quietest spot in the
+world, and inspired just that sort of feeling in the contemplative
+stranger which would be awakened by a ramble among the roofless ruins of
+the ancient abbey. It was a home for contemplation--in which one might
+easily forget the busy world without, and deliver himself up, without an
+effort, to the sweetly sad musings of the anchorite.
+
+The place was occupied, however. A human heart beat within the humble
+shed, and there was a spirit, sheltered by its quiet, that mused many
+high thoughts, and dreamed in equal congratulation and self-reproach, of
+that busy world from which it was an exile. The visit of William Hinkley
+was not paid to the solitude. A venerable man, of large frame, and
+benignant aspect, sat beneath an aged tree, paternal in its appearance
+like himself. This person might be between fifty and sixty years of age.
+His hair, though very thick and vigorous, was as white as driven snow.
+But there were few wrinkles on his face, and his complexion was the
+clear red and white of a healthy and sanguine temperament. His brow was
+large and lofty. It had many more wrinkles than his face. There were two
+large horizontal seams upon it that denoted the exercise of a very
+busy thought. But the expression of his eye was that of the most
+unembarrassed benevolence and peace. It was subdued and sometimes sad,
+but then it had the sweetest, playfullest twinkle in the world.
+His mouth, which was small and beautifully formed, wore a similar
+expression. In short he was what we would call a handsome old gentleman,
+whose appearance did not offend taste, and whose kind looks invited
+confidence. Nor would we mistake his character.
+
+This person was the Mr. Calvert, the schoolmaster of the village, of
+whom Mrs. Hinkley spoke to Alfred Stevens in discussing the condition of
+her son. His tasks were over for the day. The light-hearted rabble whom
+he taught, released from his dominion which was not severe, were, by
+this time, scampering over the hills, as far from their usual place
+of restraint as the moderate strength of their legs could carry them.
+Though let loose, boys are not apt to feel their liberty in its prime
+and freshness, immediately in the neighborhood of the schoolhouse.
+The old gentleman left to himself, sat out in the open air, beneath
+a massive oak, the paternal stretching of whose venerable arms not
+unfrequently led to the employment of the shade below for carrying on
+the operations of the schoolhouse. There, squat on their haunches, the
+sturdy boys--germs of the finest peasantry in the world--surrounded
+their teacher in a group quite as pleasing as picturesque. The sway of
+the old man was paternal. His rod was rather a figurative than a real
+existence; and when driven to the use of the birch, the good man,
+consulting more tastes than one, employed the switch from the peach or
+some other odorous tree or shrub, in order to reconcile the lad, as
+well as he could, to the extraordinary application. He was one of those
+considerate persons, who disguise pills in gold-leaf, and if compelled,
+as a judge, to hang a gentleman, would decree that a rope of silk should
+carry out the painful requisitions of the laws.
+
+Seated beneath his tree, in nearly the same spot and position in which
+he had dismissed his pupils, William Calvert pored over the pages of
+a volume as huge of size as it was musty of appearance. It was that
+pleasant book--quite as much romance as history--the "Knights of
+Malta," by our venerable father, Monsieur L'Abbe Vertot. Its dull, dim,
+yellow-looking pages--how yellow, dim, and dull-looking in comparison
+with more youthful works--had yet a life and soul which it is not easy
+to find in many of these latter. Its high wrought and elaborate pictures
+of strife, and toil, and bloodshed, grew vividly before the old man's
+eyes; and then, to help the illusion, were there not the portraits--mark
+me--the veritable portraits, engraved on copper, with all their titles,
+badges, and insignia, done to the life, of all those brave, grand, and
+famous masters of the order, by whom the deeds were enacted which
+he read, and who stared out upon his eyes, at every epoch, in full
+confirmation of the veracious narrative? No wonder that the old man
+became heedless of external objects. No wonder he forgot the noise of
+the retiring urchins, and the toils of the day, as, for the twentieth
+time, he glowed in the brave recital of the famous siege--the baffled
+fury of the Turk--the unshaken constancy and unremitted valor of the few
+but fearless defenders. The blood in his cheek might be seen hastening
+to and fro in accordance with the events of which he read. His eye
+was glowing--his pulse beating, and he half started from his seat, as,
+hearing a slight footstep, he turned to encounter the respectful homage
+of his former pupil, still his friend, our young acquaintance, William
+Hinkley.
+
+The old man laid down his book upon the grass, extended his hand to his
+visiter, and leaning back against the tree, surrendered himself to a
+quiet chuckle in which there was the hesitancy of a little shame.
+
+"You surprised me, William," he said; "when I read old Vertot, and
+such books, I feel myself a boy again. You must have seen my emotion.
+I really had got so warm, that I was about to start up and look for
+the weapons of war; and had you but come a moment later, you might
+have suffered an assault. As it was, I took you for a Turk--Solyman
+himself--and was beginning to ask myself whether I should attack you
+tooth and nail, having no other weapons, or propose terms of
+peace. Considering the severe losses which you--I mean his Turkish
+highness--had sustained, I fancied that you would not be disinclined to
+an arrangement just at this moment. But this very notion, at the same
+time, led me to the conclusion that I might end the struggle for ever by
+another blow. A moment later, my boy, and you might have been compelled
+to endure it for the Turk."
+
+The youth smiled sadly as he replied: "I must borrow that book from
+you, sir, some of these days. I have often thought to do so, but I am
+afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what, William?"
+
+"That it will turn my head, sir, and make me dislike more difficult
+studies."
+
+"It is a reasonable fear, my son; but there is no danger of this sort,
+if we will only take heed of one rule, and that is, to take such books
+as we take sweetmeats--in very small quantities at a time, and never to
+interfere with the main repast. I suspect that light reading--or reading
+which we usually call light, but which, as it concerns the fate of man
+in his most serious relations, his hopes, his affections, his heart,
+nay, his very people and nation--is scarcely less important than any
+other. I suspect that this sort of reading would be of great service
+to the student, by relieving the solemnity of more tedious and exacting
+studies, if taken sparingly and at allotted hours. The student usually
+finds a recreation of some kind. I would make books of this description
+his recreation. Many a thick-headed and sour parent has forced his son
+into a beer-shop, into the tastes for tobacco and consequently brandy,
+simply from denying him amusements which equally warm the blood and
+elevate the imagination. Studies which merely inform the head are very
+apt to endanger the heart. This is the reproach usually urged against
+the class of persons whom we call thorough lawyers. Their intense
+devotion to that narrow sphere of law which leaves out jury-pleading, is
+very apt to endanger the existence of feeling and imagination. The mere
+analysis of external principles begets a degree of moral indifference to
+all things else, which really impairs the intellect by depriving it
+of its highest sources of stimulus. Mathematicians suffer in the same
+way--become mere machines, and forfeit, in their concern for figures,
+all the social and most of the human characteristics. The mind is always
+enfeebled by any pursuit so single and absorbing in its aims as to leave
+out of exercise any of the moral faculties. That course of study is the
+only one to make a truly great man, which compels the mind to do all
+things of which it is capable."
+
+"But how do you reconcile this, sir, with the opinion, so generally
+entertained, that no one man can serve two masters? Law, like the muse,
+is a jealous mistress. She is said to suffer no lachesse to escape with
+impunity."
+
+"You mistake me. While I counsel one to go out of his profession for
+relief and recreation, I still counsel but the one pursuit. Men fail in
+their professions, not because they daily assign an hour to amusement,
+but because they halt in a perpetual struggle between some two leading
+objects. For example, nothing is more frequent in our country than to
+combine law and politics. Nothing is more apt to ruin the lawyer."
+
+"Very true, sir. I now understand you. But I should think the great
+difficulty would be, in resorting to such pleasant books as this of
+Vertot for relief and recreation, that you could not cast him off when
+you please. The intoxication would continue even after the draught has
+been swallowed, and would thus interfere with the hours devoted to other
+employments."
+
+"There is reason in that, William, and that, indeed, is the grand
+difficulty. But to show that a good scheme has its difficulties is not
+an argument for abandoning it."
+
+"By no means, sir."
+
+"The same individual whom Vertot might intoxicate, would most probably
+be intoxicated by more dangerous stimulants. Everything, however,
+depends upon the habits of self-control which a man has acquired in his
+boyhood. The habit of self-control is the only habit which makes mental
+power truly effective. The man who can not compel himself to do or to
+forbear, can never be much of a student. Students, if you observe, are
+generally dogged men--inflexible, plodding, persevering--among lawyers,
+those men whom you always find at their offices, and seldom see anywhere
+else. They own that mental habit which we call self-control, which
+supplies the deficiency in numerous instances of real talent. It is a
+power, and a mighty power, particularly in this country, where children
+are seldom taught it, and consequently grow up to be a sort of moral
+vanes that move with every change of wind, and never fix until they do
+so with their own rust. He who learns this power in boyhood will be very
+sure to master all his companions."
+
+The darker expression of sadness passed over the countenance of the
+ingenuous youth.
+
+"I am afraid," said he, "that I shall never acquire this habit."
+
+"Why so? In your very fear I see a hope."
+
+"Alas! sir, I feel my own instability of character. I feel myself the
+victim of a thousand plans and purposes, which change as soon and as
+often as they are made. I am afraid, sir, I shall be nothing!"
+
+"Do not despond, my son," said the old man sympathizingly. "Your fear is
+natural to your age and temperament. Most young men at your time of life
+feel numerous yearnings--the struggle of various qualities of mind,
+each striving in newly-born activity, and striving adversely. Your
+unhappiness arises from the refusal of these qualities to act together.
+When they learn to co-operate, all will be easy. Your strifes will be
+subdued; there will be a calm like that upon the sea when the storms
+subside."
+
+"Ah! but when will that be? A long time yet. It seems to me that the
+storm rather increases than subsides."
+
+"It may seem so to you now, and yet, when the strife is greatest, the
+favorable change is at hand. It needs but one thing to make all the
+conflicting qualities of one's mind cooperate."
+
+"What is that one thing, sir?"
+
+"An object! As yet, you have none."
+
+"None, sir!"
+
+"None--or rather many--which is pretty much the same thing as having
+none."
+
+"I am not sure, sir--but it seems to me, sir, that I have an object."
+
+"Indeed, William! are you sure?"
+
+"I think so, sir."
+
+"Well, name it."
+
+"I have ambition, sir."
+
+"Ah! that is a passion, not an object. Does your ambition point in one
+direction? Unless it does, it is objectless."
+
+The youth was silent. The old man proceeded:--
+
+"I am disposed to be severe with you, my son. There is no surer sign of
+feebleness than in the constant beginnings and the never performings
+of a mind. Know thyself, is the first lesson to learn. Is it not very
+childish to talk of having ambition, without knowing what to do with it?
+If we have ambition, it is given to us to work with. You come to me,
+and declare this ambition! We confer together. Your ambition seeks for
+utterance. You ask, 'What sort of utterance will suit an ambition such
+as mine?' To answer this question, we ask, 'What are your qualities?'
+Did you think, William, that I disparaged yours when I recommended the
+law to you as a profession?"
+
+"No, sir! oh, no! Perhaps you overrated them. I am afraid so--I think
+so."
+
+"No, William, unfortunately, you do not think about it. If you would
+suffer yourself to think, you would speak a different language."
+
+"I can not think--I am too miserable to think!" exclaimed the youth in a
+burst of passion. The old man looked surprised. He gazed with a serious
+anxiety into the youth's face, and then addressed him:--
+
+"Where have you been, William, for the last three weeks? In all that
+time I have not seen you."
+
+A warm blush suffused the cheeks of the pupil. He did not immediately
+answer.
+
+"Ask ME!" exclaimed a voice from behind them, which they both instantly
+recognised as that of Ned Hinkley, the cousin of William. He had
+approached them, in the earnestness of their interview, without having
+disturbed them. The bold youth was habited in a rough woodman's dress.
+He wore a round jacket of homespun, and in his hand he carried a
+couple of fishing-rods, which, with certain other implements, betrayed
+sufficiently the object of his present pursuit.
+
+"Ask me!" said he. "I can tell you what he's been about better than
+anybody else."
+
+"Well, Ned," said the old man, "what has it been? I am afraid it is your
+fiddle that keeps him from his Blackstone."
+
+"My fiddle, indeed! If he would listen to my fiddle when she speaks
+out, he'd be wiser and better for it. Look at him, Mr. Calvert, and say
+whether it's book or fiddle that's likely to make him as lean as a March
+pickerel in the short space of three months. Only look at him, I say."
+
+"Truly, William, I had not observed it before, but, as Ned says, you do
+look thin, and you tell me you are unhappy. Hard study might make you
+thin, but can not make you unhappy. What is it?"
+
+The more volatile and freespoken cousin answered for him.
+
+"He's been shot, gran'pa, since you saw him last."
+
+"Shot?"
+
+"Yes, shot!--He THINKS mortally. I think not. A flesh wound to my
+thinking, that a few months more will cure."
+
+"You have some joke at bottom, Edward," said the old man gravely.
+
+"Joke, sir! It's a tough joke that cudgels a plump lad into a lean one
+in a single season."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean to use your own language, gran'pa. Among the lessons I got from
+you when you undertook to fill our heads with wisdom by applications of
+smartness to a very different place--among the books we sometimes read
+from was one of Master Ovid."
+
+"Ha! ha! I see what you're after. I understand the shooting. So you
+think that the blind boy has hit William, eh?"
+
+"A flesh wound as I tell you; but he thinks the bolt is in his heart.
+I'm sure it can and will be plucked out, and no death will follow."
+
+"Well! who's the maiden from whose eyes the arrow was barbed?"
+
+"Margaret Cooper."
+
+"Ah! indeed!" said the old man gravely.
+
+"Do not heed him," exclaimed William Hinkley; but the blush upon his
+cheeks, still increasing, spoke a different language.
+
+"I would rather not heed him, William. The passions of persons so young
+as yourself are seldom of a permanent character. The attractions which
+win the boy seldom compensate the man. There is time enough for this,
+ten years hence, and love then will be far more rational."
+
+"Ah, lud!--wait ten years at twenty. I can believe a great deal in the
+doctrine of young men's folly, but I can't go that. I'm in love myself."
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes! I!--I'm hit too--and if you don't like it, why did you teach us
+Ovid and the rest? As for rational love, that's a new sort of thing that
+we never heard about before. Love was never expected to be rational.
+He's known the contrary. I've heard so ever since I was knee-high to
+the great picture of your Cupid that you showed us in your famous Dutch
+edition of Apuleius. The young unmarried men feel that it's irrational;
+the old married people tell us so in a grunt that proves the truth of
+what they say. But that don't alter the case. It's a sort of natural
+madness that makes one attack in every person's lifetime. I don't
+believe in repeated attacks. Some are bit worse than others; and some
+think themselves bit, and are mistaken. That's the case with William,
+and it's that that keeps him from your law-books and my fiddle. That
+makes him thin. He has a notion of Margaret Cooper, and she has none
+of him; and love that's all of one side is neither real nor rational. I
+don't believe it."
+
+William Hinkley muttered something angrily in the ears of the speaker.
+
+"Well, well!" said the impetuous cousin, "I don't want to make you
+vexed, and still less do I come here to talk such politics with you.
+What do you say to tickling a trout this afternoon? That's what I come
+for."
+
+"It's too cool," said the old man.
+
+"Not a bit. There's a wind from the south, and a cast of cloud
+is constantly growing between us and the sun. I think we shall do
+something--something better than talking about love, and law, where
+nobody's agreed. You, gran'pa, won't take the love; Bill Hinkley can't
+stomach the law, and the trout alone can bring about a reconciliation.
+Come, gran'pa, I'm resolved on getting your supper to-night, and you
+must go and see me do it."
+
+"On one condition only, Ned."
+
+"What's that, gran'pa?"
+
+"That you both sup with me."
+
+"Done for myself. What say you, Bill?"
+
+The youth gave a sad assent, and the rattling youth proceeded:--
+
+"The best cure of grief is eating. Love is a sort of pleasant grief.
+Many a case of affliction have I seen mended by a beefsteak. Fish is
+better. Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appetites, and, to the
+same extent, you lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the
+sensibilities; and, gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have the
+fiddle. If I don't make her speak to you to-night, my name's Brag, and
+you need never again believe me."
+
+And the good-humored youth, gathering up his canes, led the way to the
+hills, slowly followed by his two less elastic companions.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The route, which conducted them--over a range of gently-ascending hills,
+through groves tolerably thick, an uncleared woodland tract comprising
+every variety of pleasant foliage, at length brought them to a lonely
+tarn or lake, about a mile in circumference, nestled and crouching in
+the hollow of the hills, which, in some places sloped gently down to
+its margin, at others hung abruptly over its deep and pensive waters.
+A thick fringe of shrubs, water-grasses, and wild flowers, girdled its
+edges, and gave a dark and mysterious expression to its face. There were
+many beaten tracks, narrow paths for individual wayfarers on foot, which
+conducted down to favorite fishing-spots. These were found chiefly on
+those sides of the lake where the rocks were precipitous. Perched on a
+jutting eminence, and half shrouded in the bushes which clothed it,
+the silent fisherman took his place, while his fly was made to kiss the
+water in capricious evolutions, such as the experienced angler knows how
+to employ to beguile the wary victim from close cove, or gloomy hollow,
+or from beneath those decaying trunks of overthrown trees which have
+given his brood a shelter from immemorial time.
+
+To one of these selected spots, Ned Hinkley proceeded, leaving his
+companions above, where, in shade themselves, and lying at ease upon the
+smooth turf, they could watch his successes, and at the same time enjoy
+the coup d'oeil, which was singularly beautiful, afforded by the whole
+surrounding expanse. The tarn, like the dark mysterious dwelling of an
+Undine, was spread out before them with the smoothness of glass, though
+untransparent, and shining beneath their eyes like a vast basin of
+the richest jet. A thousand pretty changes along the upland slopes, or
+abrupt hills which hemmed it in, gave it a singular aspect of variety
+which is seldom afforded by any scene very remarkable for its stillness
+and seclusion. Opposite to the rock on which Ned Hinkley was already
+crouching, the hill-slope to the lake was singularly unbroken, and so
+gradual was the ascent from the margin, that one was scarcely conscious
+of his upward movement, until looking behind him, he saw how far below
+lay the waters which he had lately left.
+
+The pathway, which had been often trodden, was very distinctly marked
+to the eyes of our two friends on the opposite elevation, and they could
+also perceive where the same footpath extended on either hand a few
+yards from the lake, so as to enable the wanderer to prolong his
+rambles, on either side, until reaching the foot of the abrupt masses
+of rock which distinguished the opposite margin of the basin. To ascend
+these, on that side, was a work of toil, which none but the lover of the
+picturesque is often found willing to encounter. Above, even to the
+eyes of our friends, though they occupied an eminence, the skies seemed
+circumscribed to the circumference of the lake and the hills by which it
+was surrounded; and the appearance of the whole region, therefore, was
+that of a complete amphitheatre, the lake being the floor, the hills
+the mighty pillars, and the roof, the blue, bright, fretted canopy of
+heaven.
+
+"I have missed you, my son, for some time past, and the beauty of the
+picture reminds me of what your seeming neglect has made me lose. When
+I was a young man I would have preferred to visit such a spot as this
+alone. But the sense of desolation presses heavily upon an old man under
+any circumstances; and he seeks for the company of the young, as if to
+freshen, with sympathy and memory, the cheerlessness and decay which
+attends all his own thoughts and fancies. To come alone into the woods,
+even though the scene I look on be as fair as this, makes me moody and
+awakens gloomy imaginations; and since you have been so long absent, I
+have taken to my books again, and given up the woods. Ah! books, alone,
+never desert us; never prove unfaithful; never chide us; never mock us,
+as even these woods do, with the memory of baffled hopes, and dreams of
+youth, gone, never to return again.
+
+"I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not
+wilfully neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but my
+heart was so full--I was so very unhappy--that I had not the spirit for
+it. I felt that I should not be any company for you, and feared that I
+would only affect you with some of my own dullness."
+
+"Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should know
+that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies of age,
+provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune of age
+that its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the pulse, if not
+violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man. But these sorrows
+of yours, my son--do you not call them by too strong a name? I suspect
+they are nothing more than the discontents, the vague yearnings of
+the young and ardent nature, such as prompt enterprise and lead to
+nobleness. If you had them not, you would think of little else than how
+to squat with your cousin there, seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not
+so much--you would think only of the modes of cooking and the delight of
+eating the fish, and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive
+yourself. This sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial
+sorrow. It is the hope which is in you to be something--to DO
+something--for this DOING is after all, and before all, the great object
+of living. The hope of the heart is always a discontent--most generally
+a wholesome discontent--sometimes a noble discontent leading to
+nobleness. It is to be satisfied rather than nursed. You must do what it
+requires."
+
+"I know not what it requires."
+
+"Your DOING then must be confined at present to finding out what that
+is."
+
+"Alas! sir, it seems to me as if I could no more THINK than I can DO"
+
+"Very likely;--that is the case at present; and there are several
+reasons for this feebleness. The energies which have not yet been
+tasked, do not know well how to begin. You have been a favored boy. Your
+wants have been well provided for. Your parents have loved you only too
+much."
+
+"Too much! Why, even now, I am met with cold looks and reproachful
+words, on account of this stranger, of whom nobody knows anything."
+
+"Even so: suppose that to be the case, my son; still it does not alter
+the truth of what I say. You can not imagine that your parents prefer
+this stranger to yourself, unless you imagine them to have undergone
+a very sudden change of character. They have always treated you
+tenderly--too tenderly."
+
+"Too tenderly, sir?"
+
+"Yes, William, too tenderly. Their tenderness has enfeebled you, and
+that is the reason you know not in what way to begin to dissipate your
+doubts, and apply your energies. If they reproach you, that is because
+they have some interest in you, and a right in you, which constitutes
+their interest. If they treat the stranger civilly, it is because he is
+a stranger."
+
+"Ay, sir, but what if they give this stranger authority to question and
+to counsel me? Is not this a cruel indignity?"
+
+"Softly, William, softly! There is something at the bottom of this which
+I do not see, and which perhaps you do not see. If your parents employ a
+stranger to counsel you, it proves that something in your conduct leads
+them to think that you need counsel."
+
+"That may be, sir; but why not give it themselves? why employ a person
+of whom nobody knows anything?"
+
+"I infer from your tone, my son, rather than your words, that you have
+some dislike to this stranger.
+
+"No, sir--" was the beginning of the young man's reply, but he stopped
+short with a guilty consciousness. A warm blush overspread his cheek,
+and he remained silent. The old man, without seeming to perceive the
+momentary interruption, or the confusion which followed it, proceeded in
+his commentary.
+
+"There should be nothing, surely, to anger you in good counsel, spoken
+even by a stranger, my son; and even where the counsel be not good, if
+the motive be so, it requires our gratitude though it may not receive
+our adoption."
+
+"I don't know, sir, but it seems to me very strange, and is very
+humiliating, that I should be required to submit to the instructions of
+one of whom we know nothing, and who is scarcely older than myself."
+
+"It may be mortifying to your self-esteem, my son, but self-esteem,
+when too active, is compelled constantly to suffer this sort of
+mortification. It may be that one man shall not be older in actual years
+than another, yet be able to teach that other. Merely living, days and
+weeks and months, constitutes no right to wisdom: it is the crowding
+events and experience--the indefatigable industry--the living actively
+and well--that supply us with the materials for knowing and teaching. In
+comparison with millions of your own age, who have lived among men, and
+shared in their strifes and troubles, you would find yourself as feeble
+a child as ever yet needed the helping hand of counsel and guardianship;
+and this brings me back to what I said before. Your parents have treated
+you too tenderly. They have done everything for you. You have done
+nothing for yourself. They provide for your wants, hearken to your
+complaints, nurture you in sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so
+render you incapable. Hence it is, that, in the toils of manhood, you do
+not know how to begin. You lack courage and perseverance."
+
+"Courage and perseverance!" was the surprised exclamation of the youth.
+
+"Precisely, and lest I should offend you, my son, I must acknowledge to
+you beforehand, that this very deficiency was my own."
+
+"Yours, sir? I can not think it. What! lack courage?"
+
+"Exactly so!"
+
+"Why, sir--did I not see you myself, when everybody else looked on
+with trembling and with terror, throw yourself in the way of Drummond's
+horses and save the poor boy from being dashed to pieces? There was
+surely no lack of courage there!"
+
+"No! in that sense, my son, I labor under no deficiency. But this sort
+of courage is of the meanest kind. It is the courage of impulse, not
+of steadfastness. Hear me, William. You have more than once allowed the
+expression of a wonder to escape you, why a man, having such a passion
+for books and study, and with the appearance of mental resources, such
+as I am supposed to possess, should be content, retiring from the great
+city, to set up his habitation in this remote and obscure region. My
+chosen profession was the law; I was no unfaithful student. True, I had
+no parents to lament my wanderings and failures; but I did not wander. I
+studied closely, with a degree of diligence which seemed to surprise all
+my companions. I was ambitious--intensely ambitious. My head ran upon
+the strifes of the forum, its exciting contests of mind and soul--its
+troubles, its triumphs. This was my leading thought--it was my only
+passion. The boy-frenzies for women, which are prompted less by
+sentiment or judgment, than by feverish blood, troubled me little.
+Law was my mistress--took up all my time--absorbed all my devotion. I
+believe that I was a good lawyer--no pettifogger--the merely drilled
+creature who toils for his license, and toils for ever after solely for
+his petty gains, in the miserably petty arts of making gains for others,
+and eluding the snares set for his own feet by kindred spirits. As
+far as the teaching of this country could afford me the means and
+opportunity, I endeavored to procure a knowledge of universal law--its
+sources--its true objects--its just principles--its legitimate dicta.
+Mere authorities never satisfied me, unless, passing behind the black
+gowns, I could follow up the reasoning to the first fountains--the small
+original truths, the nicely discriminated requisitions of immutable
+justice--the clearly-defined and inevitable wants of a superior and
+prosperous society. Everything that could illustrate law as well as
+fortify it; every collateral aid, in the shape of history or moral
+truth, I gathered together, even as the dragoon whose chief agent is his
+sabre, yet takes care to provide himself with pistols, that may finish
+what the other weapon has begun. Nor did I content myself with the mere
+acquisition of the necessary knowledge. Knowing how much depends
+upon voice, manner and fluency, in obtaining success before a jury, I
+addressed myself to these particulars with equal industry. My voice,
+even now, has a compass which your unexercised lungs, though quite as
+good originally as mine, would fail entirely to contend with. I do not
+deceive myself, as I certainly do not seek to deceive you, when I say,
+that I acquired the happiest mastery over my person."
+
+"Ah! sir--we see that now--that must have been the case!" said the youth
+interrupting him. The other continued, sadly smiling as he heard the
+eulogy which the youth meant to speak, the utterance of which was
+obviously from the heart.
+
+"My voice was taught by various exercises to be slow or rapid, soft
+or strong, harsh or musical, by the most sudden, yet unnoticeable
+transitions. I practised all the arts, which are recommended by
+elocutionists for this purpose, I rumbled my eloquence standing on
+the seashore, up to my middle in the breakers. I ran, roaring up steep
+hills--I stretched myself at length by the side of meandering brooks,
+or in slumberous forests of pine, and sought, by the merest whispers, to
+express myself with distinctness and melody. But there was something yet
+more requisite than these, and this was language. My labors to obtain
+all the arts of utterance did not seem less successful. I could dilate
+with singular fluency, with classical propriety, and great natural
+vigor of expression. I studied directness of expression by a frequent
+intercourse with men of business, and examined, with the nicest urgency,
+the particular characteristics of those of my own profession who were
+most remarkable for their plain, forcible speaking. I say nothing of my
+studies of such great masters in discourse and philosophy, as Milton,
+Shakspere, Homer, Lord Bacon, and the great English divines. As a model
+of pure English the Bible was a daily study of two hours; and from this
+noble well of vernacular eloquence, I gathered--so I fancied--no small
+portion of its quaint expressive vigor, its stern emphasis, its golden
+and choice phrases of illustration. Never did a young lawyer go into the
+forum more thoroughly clad in proof, or with a better armory as well for
+defence as attack."
+
+"You did not fail, sir?" exclaimed the youth with a painful expression
+of eager anxiety upon his countenance.
+
+"I did fail--fail altogether! In the first effort to speak, I fainted,
+and was carried lifeless from the court-room."
+
+The old man covered his face with his hands, for a few moments, to
+conceal the expression of pain and mortification which memory continued
+to renew in utter despite of time. The young man's hand rested
+affectionately on his shoulder. A few moments sufficed to enable the
+former to renew his narrative.
+
+"I was stunned but not crushed by this event. I knew my own resources.
+I recollected a similar anecdote of Sheridan; of his first attempt and
+wretched failure. I, too, felt that 'I had it in me,' and though I did
+not express, I made the same resolution, that 'I would bring it out.'
+But Sheridan and myself failed from different causes, though I did not
+understand this at that time. He had a degree of hardihood which I had
+not; and he utterly lacked my sensibilities. The very intenseness of my
+ambition; the extent of my expectation; the elevated estimate which I
+had made of my own profession; of its exactions; and, again, of what was
+expected from me; were all so many obstacles to my success. I did not
+so esteem them, then; and after renewing my studies in private, my
+exercises of expression and manner, and going through a harder course of
+drilling, I repeated the attempt to suffer a repetition of the failure.
+I did not again faint, but I was speechless. I not only lost the power
+of utterance, but I lost the corresponding faculty of sight. My eyes
+were completely dazed and confounded. The objects of sight around me
+were as crowded and confused as the far, dim ranges of figures, tribes
+upon tribes, and legions upon legions, which struggle in obscurity and
+distance, in any one of the begrimed and blurred pictures of Martin's
+Pandemonium. My second failure was a more enfeebling disaster than
+the first. The first procured me the sympathy of my audience, the last
+exposed me to its ridicule."
+
+Again the old man paused. By this time, the youth had got one of his
+arms about the neck of the speaker, and had taken one of his hands
+within his grasp.
+
+"Yours is a generous nature, William," said Mr. Calvert, "and I have not
+said to you, until to-day, how grateful your boyish sympathies have been
+to me from the first day when you became my pupil. It is my knowledge of
+these sympathies, and a desire to reward them, that prompts me to tell
+a story which still brings its pains to memory, and which would be
+given to no other ears than your own. I see that you are eager for the
+rest--for the wretched sequel."
+
+"Oh, no! sir--do not tell me any more of it if it brings you pain. I
+confess I should like to know all, but--"
+
+"You shall have it all, my son. My purpose would not be answered unless
+I finished the narrative. You will gather from it, very possibly, the
+moral which I could not. You will comprehend something better, the
+woful distinction between courage of the blood and courage of the brain;
+between the mere recklessness of brute impulse, and the steady valor of
+the soul--that valor, which, though it trembles, marches forward to the
+attack--recovers from its fainting, to retrieve its defeat; and glows
+with self-indignation because it has suffered the moment of victory to
+pass, without employing itself to secure the boon!--
+
+"Shame, and a natural desire to retrieve myself, operated to make
+me renew my efforts. I need not go through the processes by which I
+endeavored to acquire the necessary degree of hardihood. In vain did
+I recall the fact that my competitors were notoriously persons far
+inferior to me in knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the capacity
+to analyze them; rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar with the
+language--mere delvers and diggers in a science in which I secretly felt
+that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to mind the fact that
+I knew the community before which I was likely to speak; I knew its
+deficiencies; knew the inferiority of its idols, and could and should
+have no sort of fear of its criticism. But it was myself that I feared.
+I had mistaken the true censor. It was my own standards of judgment that
+distressed and made me tremble. It was what I expected of myself--what
+I thought should be expected of me--that made my weak soul recoil in
+terror from the conviction that I must fail in its endeavor to reach the
+point which my ambitious soul strove to attain. The fear, in such cases,
+produced the very disaster, from the anticipated dread of which it had
+arisen. I again failed--failed egregiously--failed utterly and for
+ever! I never again attempted the fearful trial. I gave up the contest,
+yielded the field to my inferiors, better-nerved, though inferior,
+and, with all my learning, all my eloquence, my voice, my manner;
+my resources of study, thought, and utterance, fled from sight--fled
+here--to bury myself in the wilderness, and descend to the less
+ambitious, but less dangerous vocation of schooling--I trust, to better
+uses--the minds of others. I had done nothing with my own."
+
+"Oh, sir, do not say so. Though you may have failed in one department of
+human performance, you have succeeded in others. You have lost none
+of the knowledge which you then acquired. You possess all the gifts of
+eloquence, of manner, of voice, of education, of thought."
+
+"But of what use, my son? Remember, we do not toil for these possessions
+to lock them up--to content ourselves, as the miserable miser, with
+the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to ourselves
+only--useless to all others as to ourselves! Learning, like love, like
+money, derives its true value from its circulation."
+
+"And you circulate yours, my dear sir. What do we not owe you in
+Charlemont? What do I not owe you, over all?"
+
+"Love, my son--love only. Pay me that. Do not desert me in my old age.
+Do not leave me utterly alone!"
+
+"I will not, sir--I never thought to do so."
+
+"But," said the old man, "to resume. Why did I fail is still the
+question. Because I had not been taught those lessons of steady
+endurance in my youth which would have strengthened me against failure,
+and enable me finally to triumph. There is a rich significance in what
+we hear of the Spartan boy, who never betrayed his uneasiness or agony
+though the fox was tearing out his bowels. There is a sort of moral
+roughening which boys should be made to endure from the beginning, if
+the hope is ever entertained, to mature their minds to intellectual
+manhood. Our American Indians prescribe the same laws, and in their
+practice, very much resemble the ancient Spartans. To bear fatigue, and
+starvation, and injury--exposure, wet, privation, blows--but never to
+complain. Nothing betrays so decidedly the lack of moral courage as the
+voice of complaint. It is properly the language of woman. It must not be
+your language. Do you understand me, William?"
+
+"In part, sir, but I do not see how I could have helped being what I
+am."
+
+"Perhaps not, because few have control of their own education. Your
+parents have been too tender of you. They have not lessoned you in
+that proper hardihood which leads to performance. That task is before
+yourself, and you have shrunk from the first lessons."
+
+"How, sir?"
+
+"Instead of clinging to your Blackstone, you have allowed yourself to be
+seduced from its pages, by such attractions as usually delude boys.
+The eye and lip of a pretty woman--a bright eye and a rosy cheek, have
+diverted you from your duties."
+
+"But do our duties deny us the indulgence of proper sensibilities?"
+
+"Certainly not--PROPER sensibilities, on the contrary, prescribe our
+duties."
+
+"But love, sir--is not love a proper sensibility?"
+
+"In its place, it is. But you are a boy only. Do you suppose that it
+was ever intended that you should entertain this passion before you had
+learned the art of providing your own food? Not so; and the proof of
+this is to be found in the fact that the loves of boyhood are never of
+a permanent character. No such passion can promote happiness if it is
+indulged before the character of the parties is formed. I now tell you
+that in five years from this time you will probably forget Miss Cooper."
+
+"Never! never!"
+
+"Well, well--I go farther in my prophecy. Allow me to suppose you
+successful in your suit, which I fancy can never be the case--"
+
+"Why, sir, why?"
+
+"Because she is not the girl for you; or rather, she does not think you
+the man for her!"
+
+"But why do you think so, sir?"
+
+"Because I know you both. There are circumstances of discrepancy between
+you which will prevent it, and even were you to be successful in your
+suit, which I am very sure will never be the case, you would be the most
+miserably-matched couple under the sun."
+
+"Oh, sir, do not say so--do not. I can not think so, sir."
+
+"You WILL not think so, I am certain. I am equally certain from what I
+know of you both, that you are secure from any such danger. It is not my
+object to pursue this reference, but let me ask you, William, looking at
+things in the most favorable light, has Margaret Cooper ever given you
+any encouragement?"
+
+"I can not say that she has, sir, but--"
+
+"Nay, has she not positively discouraged you? Does she not avoid
+you--treat you coldly when you meet--say little, and that little of a
+kind to denote--I will not say dislike--but pride, rather than love?"
+
+The young man said nothing. The old one proceeded:--
+
+"You are silent, and I am answered. I have long watched your intercourse
+with this damsel, and loving you as my own son, I have watched it with
+pain. She is not for you, William. She loves you not. I am sure of it.
+I can not mistake the signs. She seeks other qualities than such as you
+possess. She seeks meretricious qualities, and yours are substantial.
+She seeks the pomps of mind, rather than its subdued performances. She
+sees not, and can not see, your worth; and whenever you propose to her,
+your suit will be rejected. You have not done so yet?"
+
+"No, sir--but I had hoped--"
+
+"I am no enemy, believe me, William, when I implore you to discard your
+hope in that quarter. It will do you no hurt. Your heart will suffer
+no detriment, but be as whole and vigorous a few years hence--perhaps
+months--as if it had never suffered any disappointment."
+
+"I wish I could think so, sir."
+
+"And you would not wish that you could think so, if you were not already
+persuaded that your first wish is hopeless."
+
+"But I am not hopeless, sir."
+
+"Your cause is. But, promise me that you will not press your suit at
+present."
+
+The young man was silent.
+
+"You hesitate."
+
+"I dare not promise."
+
+"Ah, you are a foolish boy. Do you not see the rock on which you are
+about to split. You have never learned how to submit. This lesson of
+submission was that which made the Spartan boy famous. Here, you persist
+in your purpose, though your own secret convictions, as well as your
+friend's counsel, tell you that you strive against hope. You could
+not patiently submit to the counsel of this stranger, though he came
+directly from your parents, armed with authority to examine and to
+counsel."
+
+"Submit to him! I would sooner perish!" exclaimed the indignant youth.
+
+"You will perish unless you learn this one lesson. But where now is your
+ambition, and what does it aim at?"
+
+The youth was silent.
+
+"The idea of an ambitious youth, at twenty, giving up book and candle,
+leaving his studies, and abandoning himself to despair, because his
+sweetheart won't be his sweetheart any longer, gives us a very queer
+idea of the sort of ambition which works in his breast."
+
+"Don't, sir, don't, I pray you, speak any more in this manner."
+
+"Nay, but, William, ask yourself. Is it not a queer idea?"
+
+"Spare me, sir, if you love me."
+
+"I do love you, and to show you that I do, I now recommend to you to
+propose to Margaret Cooper."
+
+"What, sir, you do not think it utterly hopeless then?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"And you would have me expose myself to rejection?"
+
+"Exactly so!"
+
+"Really, sir, I do not understand you."
+
+"Well, I will explain. Nothing short of rejection will possibly cure you
+of this malady; and it is of the last importance to your future career,
+that you should be freed as soon as possible from this sickly condition
+of thought and feeling--a condition in which your mind will do nothing,
+and in which your best days will be wasted. Blackstone can only hope to
+be taken up when you have done with her."
+
+"Stay, sir--that is she below."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Margaret----"
+
+"Who is with her?"
+
+"The stranger--this man, Stevens."
+
+"Ha! your counsellor, that would be? Ah! William, you did not tell me
+all."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE ENTHUSIAST.
+
+
+
+
+
+The cheeks of the youth glowed. He felt how much he had suppressed in
+his conference with his venerable counsellor. Mr. Calvert did not press
+the topic, and the two remained silent, looking down, from the shaded
+spot where they lay, upon the progress of Margaret Cooper and her
+present attendant, Stevens. The eminence on which they rested was
+sufficiently lofty, as we have seen, to enable them, though themselves
+almost concealed from sight, to take in the entire scene, not only below
+but around them; and the old man, sharing now in the interest of his
+young companion, surveyed the progress of the new-comers with a keen
+sense of curiosity which, for a time, kept him silent. The emotions of
+William Hinkley were such as to deprive him of all desire for speech;
+and each, accordingly, found sufficient employment in brooding over his
+own awakened fancies. Even had they spoken in the ordinary tone of their
+voices, the sounds could not have reached the persons approaching on the
+opposite side. They drew nigh, evidently unconscious that the scene was
+occupied by any other than themselves. Ned Hinkley was half-shrouded in
+the shrubbery that environed the jutting crag upon which his form
+was crouched, and they were not yet sufficiently nigh to the tarn to
+perceive his projecting rod, and the gaudy fly which he kept skipping
+about upon the surface. The walk which they pursued was an ancient
+Indian footpath, which had without doubt conducted the red warriors,
+a thousand times before, to a spot of seclusion and refreshment after
+their long day's conflict on the "DARK AND BLOODY GROUND." It was narrow
+and very winding, and had been made so in order to lessen the fatigue of
+an ascent which, though gradual enough, was yet considerable, and
+would have produced great weariness, finally, had the pathway been more
+direct.
+
+The circuitousness of this route, which lay clear enough before the
+eyes of our two friends upon the eminence--crawling, as it did, up the
+woodland slopes with the sinuous course of a serpent--was yet visible to
+Ned Hinkley, on his lowlier perch, only at its starting-point, upon
+the very margin of the lake. He, accordingly, saw as little of the
+approaching persons as they had seen of him. They advanced slowly, and
+seemed to be mutually interested in their subject of conversation. The
+action of Stevens was animated; The air and attitude of Margaret Cooper
+was that of interest and attention. It was with something little short
+of agony that William Hinkley beheld them pause upon occasion, and
+confront each other as if the topic was of a nature to arrest the feet
+and demand the whole fixed attention of the hearer.
+
+It will be conjectured that Alfred Stevens had pressed his opportunities
+with no little industry. Enough has been shown to account for the
+readiness of that reception which Margaret Cooper was prepared to give
+him. Her intelligence was keen, quick, and penetrating. She discovered
+at a glance, not his hypocrisy, but that his religious enthusiasm was
+not of a sort to become very tyrannical. The air of mischief which was
+expressed upon his face when the venerable John Cross proposed to purge
+her library of its obnoxious contents, commended him to her as a sort of
+ally; and the sympathy with herself, which such a conjecture promised,
+made her forgetful of the disingenuousness of his conduct if her
+suspicions were true. But there were some other particulars which, in
+her mind, tended to dissipate the distance between them. She recognised
+the individual. She remembered the bold, dashing youth, who, a few
+months before, had encountered her on the edge of the village, and,
+after they had parted, had ridden back to the spot where she still
+loitered, for a second look. To that very spot had she conducted him on
+their ramble that afternoon.
+
+"Do you know this place, Mr. Stevens?" she demanded with an arch smile,
+sufficiently good-humored to convince the adventurer that, if she had
+any suspicions, they were not of a nature to endanger his hopes.
+
+"Do I not!" he said, with an air of EMPRESSMENT which caused her to look
+down.
+
+"I thought I recollected you," she said, a moment after.
+
+"Ah! may I hope that I did not then offend you with my impertinence? But
+the truth is, I was so struck--pardon me if I say it--with the singular
+and striking difference between the group of damsels I had seen and THE
+ONE--the surprise was so great--the pleasure so unlooked for--that--"
+
+The eye of Margaret Cooper brightened, her cheek glowed, and her form
+rose somewhat proudly. The arch-hypocrite paused judiciously, and she
+spoke:--
+
+"Nay, nay, Mr. Stevens, these fine speeches do not pass current. You
+would make the same upon occasion to any one of the said group of
+damsels, were you to be her escort."
+
+"But I would scarcely ride back for a second look," he responded, in a
+subdued tone of voice, while looking with sad expressiveness into her
+eyes. These were cast down upon the instant, and the color upon her
+cheeks was heightened.
+
+"Come," said she, making an effort, "there is nothing here to interest
+us."
+
+"Except memory," he replied; "I shall never forget the spot."
+
+She hurried forward, and he joined her. She had received the impression
+which he intended to convey, without declaring as much--namely, that his
+return to Charlemont had been prompted by that one glimpse which he had
+then had of her person. Still, that nothing should be left in doubt, he
+proceeded to confirm the impression by other suggestions:--
+
+"You promise to show me a scene of strange beauty, but your whole
+village is beautiful, Miss Cooper. I remember how forcibly it struck me
+as I gained the ascent of the opposite hills coming in from the east.
+It was late in the day, the sun was almost setting, and his faintest
+but loveliest beams fell upon the cottages in the valley, and lay with a
+strange, quiet beauty among the grass-plats, and the flower-ranges, and
+upon the neat, white palings."
+
+"It is beautiful," she said with a sigh, "but its beauty does not
+content me. It is too much beauty; it is too soft; for, though it has
+its rocks and huge trees, yet it lacks wildness and sublimity. The rocks
+are not sufficiently abrupt, the steeps not sufficiently great; there
+are no chasms, no waterfalls--only purling brooks and quiet walks."
+
+"I have felt this already," he replied; "but there is yet a deficiency
+which you have not expressed, Miss Cooper."
+
+"What is that?" she demanded.
+
+"It is the moral want. You have no life here; and that which would least
+content me would be this very repose--the absence of provocation--the
+strife--the triumph! These, I take it, are the deficiencies which
+you really feel when you speak of the want of crag, and chasm, and
+waterfall."
+
+"You, too, are ambitious, then!" she said quickly; "but how do you
+reconcile this feeling with your profession?"
+
+She looked up, and caught his eye tenderly fixed upon her.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "Miss Cooper, there are some situations in which we find
+it easy to reconcile all discrepancies."
+
+If the language lacked explicitness, the look did not. He proceeded:--
+
+"If I mistake not, Miss Cooper, you will be the last one to blame me
+for not having stifled my ambition, even at the calls of duty and
+profession."
+
+"Blame you, sir? Far from it. I should think you very unfortunate
+indeed, if you could succeed in stifling ambition at any calls, nor do I
+exactly see how duty should require it."
+
+"If I pursue the profession of the divine?" he answered hesitatingly.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--but that is not certain?" There was some timidity in the
+utterance of this inquiry. He evaded it.
+
+"I know not yet what I shall be," he replied with an air of
+self-reproach; "I fear I have too much of this fiery ardor which we call
+ambition to settle down into the passive character of the preacher."
+
+"Oh, do not, do not!" she exclaimed impetuously; then, as if conscious
+of the impropriety, she stopped short in the sentence, while increasing
+her forward pace.
+
+"What!" said he, "you think that would effectually stifle it?"
+
+"Would it not--does it not in most men?"
+
+"Perhaps; but this depends upon the individual. Churchmen have a great
+power--the greatest in any country."
+
+"Over babes and sucklings!" she said scornfully.
+
+"And, through these; over the hearts of men and women."
+
+"But these, too, are babes and sucklings--people to be scared by
+shadows--the victims of their own miserable fears and superstitions!"
+
+"Nevertheless, these confer power. Where there is power, there is room
+for ambition. You recollect that churchmen have put their feet upon the
+necks of princes."
+
+"Yes, but that was when there was one church only in Christendom. It was
+a monopoly, and consequently a tyranny. Now there are a thousand, always
+in conflict, and serving very happily to keep each other from mischief.
+They no longer put their feet on princes' necks, though I believe that
+the princes are no better off for this forbearance--there are others who
+do. But only fancy that this time was again, and think of the comical
+figure our worthy brother John Cross would make, mounting from such a
+noble horse-block!"
+
+The idea was sufficiently pleasant to make Stevens laugh.
+
+"I am afraid I shall have greater trouble in converting you, Miss
+Cooper, than any other of the flock in Charlemont. I doubt that your
+heart is stubborn--that you are an insensible!"
+
+"I insensible!" she exclaimed, and with such a look! The expression of
+sarcasm had passed, as with the rapidity of a lightning-flash, from her
+beautiful lips; and a silent tear rose, tremulous and large, with the
+same instantaneous emotion, beneath her long, dark eyelashes. She
+said nothing more, but, with eyes cast down, went forward. Stevens
+was startled with the suddenness of these transitions. They proved,
+at least, how completely her mind was at the control of her blood.
+Hitherto, he had never met with a creature so liberally endowed by
+nature, who was, at the same time, so perfectly unsophisticated.
+The subject was gratifying as a study alone, even if it conferred no
+pleasure, and awakened no hopes.
+
+"Do not mistake me," he exclaimed, hurrying after, "I had no purpose to
+impute to you any other insensibility except to that of the holy truths
+of religion."
+
+She looked up and smiled archly. There was another transition from cloud
+to sunlight.
+
+"What! are you so doubtful of your own ministry?"
+
+"In your case, I am."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You will force me to betake myself to studies more severe than any I
+have yet attempted."
+
+She was flattered but she uttered a natural disclaimer.
+
+"No, no! I am presumptuous. I trust you will teach me. Begin--do not
+hesitate--I will listen."
+
+"To move you I must not come in the garments of methodism. That faith
+will never be yours."
+
+"What faith shall it be?"
+
+"That of Catholicism. I must come armed with authority. I must carry
+the sword and keys of St. Peter. I must be sustained by all the pomps of
+that church of pomps and triumphs. My divine mission must speak through
+signs and symbols, through stately stole, pontifical ornaments, the
+tiara of religious state on the day of its most solemn ceremonial; and
+with these I must bring the word of power, born equally of intellect and
+soul, and my utterance must be in the language of divinest poesy!"
+
+"Ah! you mistake! That last will be enough. Speak to me in poesy--let
+me hear that--and you will subdue me, I believe, to any faith that you
+teach. For I can not but believe the faith that is endowed with the
+faculty of poetic utterance."
+
+"In truth it is a divine utterance--perhaps the only divine utterance.
+Would I had it for your sake."
+
+"Oh! you must have it. I fancy I see it in some things that you have
+said. You read poetry, I am sure--I am sure you love it."
+
+"I do! I know not anything that I love half so well."
+
+"Then you write it?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"No! the gift has been denied me."
+
+She looked at him with eyes of regret.
+
+"How unfortunate," she said.
+
+"Doubly so, as the deficiency seems to disappoint you."
+
+She did not seem to heed the flattery of this remark, nor did she
+appear to note the expression of face with which it was accompanied. Her
+feelings took the ascendency. She spoke out her uncommissioned thoughts
+and fancies musingly, as if without the knowledge of her will.
+
+"I fancy that I could kneel down and worship the poet, and feel no
+shame, no humility. It is the only voice that enchants me--that leads
+me out from myself; that carries me where it pleases and finds for me
+companions in the solitude; songs in the storm; affections in the barren
+desert! Even here, it brings me friends and fellowships. How voiceless
+would be all these woods to me had it no voice speaking to, and in,
+my soul. Hoping nothing, and performing nothing here, it is my only
+consolation. It reconciles me to this wretched spot. It makes endurance
+tolerable. If it were not for this companionship--if I heard not this
+voice in my sorrows, soothing my desolation, I could freely die!--die
+here, beside this rock, without making a struggle to go forward, even to
+reach the stream that flows quietly beyond!"
+
+She had stopped in her progress while this stream of enthusiasm poured
+from her lips. Her action was suited to her utterance. Unaccustomed
+to restraint--nay, accustomed only to pour herself forth to woods, and
+trees, and waters, she was scarcely conscious of the presence of any
+other companion, yet she looked even while she spoke, in the eyes of
+Stevens. He gazed on her with glances of unconcealed admiration. The
+unsophisticated nature which led her to express that enthusiasm which
+a state of conventional existence prompts us, through fear of ridicule,
+industriously to conceal, struck him with the sense of a new pleasure.
+The novelty alone had its charm; but there were other sources of
+delight. The natural grace and dignity of the enthusiastic girl,
+adapting to such words the appropriate action, gave to her beauty,
+which was now in its first bloom, all the glow which is derived from
+intellectual inspiration. Her whole person spoke. All was vital,
+spiritual, expressive, animated; and when the last word lingered on her
+lips, Stevens could scarcely repress the impulse which prompted him to
+clasp her in his embrace.
+
+"Margaret!" he exclaimed--"Miss Cooper!--you are yourself a poet!"
+
+"No, no!" she murmured, rather than spoke;--"would I were!--a dreamer
+only--a self-deluded dreamer."
+
+"You can not deceive me!" he continued, "I see it in your eyes, your
+action; I hear it in your words. I can not be deceived. You are a
+poet--you will, and must be one!"
+
+"And if I were!" she said mournfully, "of what avail would it be here?
+What heart in this wilderness would be touched by song of mine? Whose
+ear could I soothe in this cold and sterile hamlet? Where would be the
+temple--who the worshippers--even were the priestess all that her vanity
+would believe, or her prayers and toils might make her? No, no! I am
+no poet; and if I were, better that the flame should go out--vanish
+altogether in the smoke of its own delusions--than burn with a feeble
+light, unseen, untrimmed, unhonored--perhaps, beheld with the scornful
+eye of vulgar and unappreciating ignorance!"
+
+"Such is not your destiny, Margaret Cooper," replied Stevens, using
+the freedom of address, perhaps unconsciously, which the familiarity of
+country life is sometimes found to tolerate. "Such is not your destiny,
+Margaret. The flame will not go out--it will be loved and worshipped!"
+
+"Ah! never! what is here to justify such a hope--such a dream?"
+
+"Nothing HERE; but it was not of Charlemont I spoke. The destiny which
+has endowed you with genius will not leave it to be extinguished here.
+There will come a worshipper, Margaret. There will come one, equally
+capable to honor the priestess and to conduct her to befitting altars.
+This is not your home, though it may have been your place of trial
+and novitiate. Here, without the restraint of cold, oppressive, social
+forms, your genius has ripened--your enthusiasm has been kindled into
+proper glow--your heart, and mind, and imagination, have kept equal pace
+to an equal maturity! Perhaps this was fortunate. Had you grown up in
+more polished and worldly circles, you would have been compelled to
+subdue the feelings and fancies which now make your ordinary language
+the language of a muse."
+
+"Oh! speak not so, I implore you. I am afraid you mock me."
+
+"No! on my soul, I do not. I think all that I say. More than that, I
+feel it, Margaret. Trust to me--confide in me--make me your friend!
+Believe me, I am not altogether what I seem."
+
+An arch smile once more possessed her eyes.
+
+"Ah! I could guess that! But sit you here. Here is a flower--a
+beautiful, small flower, with a dark blue eye. See it--how humbly it
+hides amid the grass. It is the last flower if the season. I know not
+its name. I am no botanist; but it is beautiful without a name, and it
+is the last flower of the season. Sit down on this rock, and I will sing
+you Moore's beautiful song, ''Tis the last of its kindred.'"
+
+"Nay, sing me something of your own, Margaret."
+
+"No, no! Don't speak of me, and mine, in the same breath with Moore.
+You will make me repent of having seen you. Sit down and be content with
+Moore, or go without your song altogether."
+
+He obeyed her, and the romantic and enthusiastic girl, seating herself
+upon a fragment of rock beside the path, sang the delicate and sweet
+verses of the Irish poet, with a natural felicity of execution, which
+amply compensated for the absence of those Italian arts, which so
+frequently elevate the music at the expense of the sentiment. Stevens
+looked and listened, and half forgot himself in the breathlessness of
+his attention--his eye fastened with a gaze of absolute devotion on her
+features, until, having finished her song, she detected the expression
+of his face, and started, with blushing cheeks, to her feet.
+
+"Oh! sweet!" he murmured as he offered to take her hand, but she darted
+forward, and following her, he found himself a few moments after,
+standing by her side, and looking down upon one of the loveliest lakes
+that ever slept in the embrace of jealous hills.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+
+
+
+"You disparage these scenes," said Stevens, after several moments had
+been given to the survey of that before him, "and yet you have drawn
+your inspiration from them--the fresh food which stimulates poetry and
+strengthens enthusiasm. Here you learned to be contemplative; and here,
+in solitude, was your genius nursed. Do not be ungrateful, Margaret--you
+owe to these very scenes all that you are, and all that you may become."
+
+"Stay! before I answer. Do you see yon bird?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the west--there!" she pointed with her fingers, catching his
+wrist unconsciously, at the same time, with the other hand, as if more
+certainly to direct his gaze.
+
+"I see it--what bird is it?"
+
+"An eagle! See how it soars and swings; effortless, as if supported by
+some external power!"
+
+"Indeed--it seems small for an eagle."
+
+"It is one nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among
+the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are
+the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from
+this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now
+within his talons, with which to feed his young. He will feed them, and
+they will grow strong, and will finally use their own wings. Shall he
+continue to feed them after that? Must they never seek their own food?"
+
+"Surely they must."
+
+"If these solitudes have nursed me, must they continue to nurse me
+always? Must I never use the wings to which they have given vigor? Must
+I never employ the sight to which they have imparted vigilance? Must I
+never go forth, and strive and soar, and make air, and earth, and sea,
+tributary to my wing and eye? Alas! I am a woman!--and her name is
+weakness! You tell me of what I am, and of what I may become. But what
+am I? I mock myself too often with this question to believe all your
+fine speeches. And what may I become? Alas! who can tell me that? I know
+my strength, but I also know my weakness. I feel the burning thoughts
+of my brain; I feel the yearning impulses in my heart; but they bring
+nothing--they promise nothing--I feel the pang of constant denial. I
+feel that I can be nothing!"
+
+"Say not so, Margaret--think not so, I beseech you. With your genius,
+your enthusiasm--your powers of expression--there is nothing, becoming
+in your sex, and worthy of it, which you may not be."
+
+"You can not deceive me! It might be so, if this were Italy; there,
+where the very peasant burns with passion, and breathes his feeblest
+and meanest thoughts and desires in song. But here, they already call
+me mad! They look on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid me with
+sentiments and looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when I am looking
+into the cloud, striving to pierce, with dilating eye its wild yellow
+flashing centres, they draw their flaxen-headed infants to their
+breasts, and mutter their thanks to God, that he has not, in a fit of
+wrath, made them to resemble me! If, forgetful of earth, and trees,
+and the human stocks around me, I pour forth the language of the great
+song-masters, they grin at my insanity--they hold me incapable of
+reason, and declare their ideas of what that is, by asking who
+knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch, the spinning-wheel, the
+darning-needle--who can best wash Polly's or Patty's face and comb its
+head--can chop up sausage-meat the finest--make the lightest paste, and
+more economically dispense the sugar in serving up the tea! and these
+are what is expected of woman! These duties of the meanest slave! From
+her mind nothing is expected. Her enthusiasm terrifies, her energy
+offends, and if her taste is ever challenged, it is to the figures upon
+a quilt or in a flower-garden, where the passion seems to be to make
+flowers grow in stars, and hearts, and crescents. What has woman to
+expect where such are the laws; where such are the expectations from
+her? What am I to hope? I, who seem to be set apart--to feel nothing
+like the rest--to live in a different world--to dream of foreign
+things--to burn with a hope which to them is frenzy, and speak a
+language which they neither understand nor like! What can I be, in such
+a world? Nothing, nothing! I do not deceive myself. I can never hope to
+be anything."
+
+Her enthusiasm hurried her forward. In spite of himself, Stevens was
+impressed. He ceased to think of his evil purposes in the superior
+thoughts which her wild, unregulated energy inspired. He scarcely
+wondered, indeed--if it were true--that her neighbors fancied
+her insane. The indignation of a powerful mind denied--denied
+justice--baffled in its aims--conscious of the importance of all
+its struggles against binding and blinding circumstances--is akin to
+insanity!--is apt to express itself in the defiant tones of a fierce and
+feverish frenzy.
+
+"Margaret," said he, as she paused and waited for him, "you are not
+right in everything. You forget that your lonely little village of
+Charlemont, is not only not the world, but that it is not even an
+American world. America is not Italy, I grant you, nor likely soon to
+become so; but if you fancy there are not cities even in our country,
+where genius such as yours would be felt and worshipped, you are
+mistaken."
+
+"Do you believe there are such?" she demanded incredulously.
+
+"I KNOW there are!"
+
+"No! no! I know better. You can not deceive me. It can not be so. I know
+the sort of genius which is popular in those cities. It is the gentleman
+and lady genius. Look at their verses for example. I can show you
+thousands of such things that come to us here, from all quarters of the
+Union--verses written by nice people--people of small tastes and petty
+invention, who would not venture upon the utterance of a noble
+feeling, or a bold sentiment of originality, for fear of startling the
+fashionable nerves with the strong words which such a novelty would
+require. Consider, in the first place, how conclusive it is of the
+feeblest sort of genius that these people should employ themselves,
+from morning to night, in spinning their small strains, scraps of verse,
+song, and sonnet, and invariably on such subjects of commonplace, as can
+not admit of originality, and do not therefore task reflection. Not
+an infant dies or is born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its
+smiles and tears are put on record; its hobby-horse, and its infant
+ideas as they begin to bud and breathe aloud. Then comes the eternal
+strain about summer blooms and spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and
+winter's storms, until one sickens of the intolerable monotony. Such
+are the things that your great cities demand. Such things content
+them. Speak the fearless and always strange language of originality and
+strength, and you confound and terrify them."
+
+"But, Margaret, these things are held at precisely the same value in the
+big cities as they are held by you here in Charlemont. The intelligent
+people smile--they do not applaud. If they encourage at all it is by
+silence."
+
+"No! no! that you might say, if, unhappily, public opinion did not
+express itself. The same magazines which bring us the verses bring us
+the criticism."
+
+"That is to say, the editor puffs his contributors, and disparages those
+who are not. Look at the rival journal and you will find these denounced
+and another set praised and beplastered."
+
+"Ah! and what would be my hope, my safety, in communities which tolerate
+these things; in which the number of just and sensible people is so
+small that they dare not speak, or can not influence those who have
+better courage? Where would be my triumphs? I, who would no more
+subscribe to the petty tyranny of conventional law, than to that baser
+despotism which is wielded by a mercenary editor, in the absence of a
+stern justice in the popular mind. Here I may pine to death--there, my
+heart would burst with its own convulsions."
+
+"No! Margaret, no! It is because they have not the genius, that such
+small birds are let to sing. Let them but hear the true minstrel--let
+them but know that there is a muse, and how soon would the senseless
+twitter which they now tolerate be hushed in undisturbing silence.
+In the absence of better birds they bear with what they have. In the
+absence of the true muse they build no temple--they throng not to hear.
+Nay, even now, already, they look to the west for the minstrel and the
+muse--to these very woods. There is a tacit and universal feeling in the
+Atlantic country, that leads them to look with expectation to the Great
+West, for the genius whose song is to give us fame. 'When?' is the
+difficult--the only question. Ah! might I but say to them--'now'--the
+muse is already here!"
+
+He took her hand--she did not withhold it; but her look was subdued--the
+fires had left her eyes--her whole frame trembled with the recoil of
+those feelings--the relaxation of those nerves--the tension of which we
+have endeavored feebly to display. Her cheek was no longer flushed but
+pale; her lips trembled--her voice was low and faint--only a broken and
+imperfect murmur; and her glance was cast upon the ground.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, I! Have I not said I am not altogether what I seem? Ah! I may not
+yet say more. But I am not without power, Margaret, in other and more
+powerful regions. I too have had my triumphs; I too can boast that the
+minds of other men hang for judgment upon the utterance of mine."
+
+She looked upward to his glance with a stranger expression of timidity
+than her features had before exhibited. The form of Stevens had
+insensibly risen in seeming elevation as he spoke, and the expression of
+his face was that of a more human pride. He continued:--
+
+"My voice is one of authority in circles where yours would be one of
+equal attraction and command. I can not promise you an Italian devotion,
+Margaret; our people, though sufficiently enthusiastic, are too sensible
+to ridicule to let the heart and blood speak out with such freedom as
+they use in the warmer regions of the South: but the homage will be more
+intellectual, more steady, and the fame more enduring. You must let your
+song be heard--you must give me the sweet privilege of making it known
+to ears whose very listening is fame."
+
+"Ah!" she said, "what you say makes me feel how foolishly I have spoken.
+What is my song? what have I done? what am I? what have I to hope?
+I have done nothing--I am nothing! I have suffered, like a child, a
+miserable vanity to delude me, and I have poured into the ears of a
+stranger those ravings which I have hitherto uttered to the hills and
+forests. You laugh at me now--you must."
+
+The paleness on her cheek was succeeded by the deepest flush of crimson.
+She withdrew her hand from his grasp.
+
+"Laugh at you, Margaret! You have awakened my wonder. Struck with you
+when we first met--"
+
+"Nay, no more of that, but let us follow these windings; they lead us to
+the tarn. It is the prettiest Indian path, and my favorite spot. Here
+I ramble morning and eve, and try to forget those vain imaginings and
+foolish strivings of thought which I have just inflicted upon you. The
+habit proved too much for my prudence, and I spoke as if you were not
+present. Possibly, had you not spoken in reply, I should have continued
+until now."
+
+"Why did I speak?"
+
+"Ah! it is better. I wish you had spoken sooner. But follow me quickly.
+The sunlight is now falling in a particular line which gives us the
+loveliest effect, shooting its rays through certain fissures of the
+rock, and making a perfect arrow-path along the water. You would fancy
+that Apollo had just dismissed a golden shaft from his quiver, so direct
+is the levelled light along the surface of the lake."
+
+Speaking thus, they came in sight of the party on the opposite hills,
+as we have already shown--without, however, perceiving them in turn. It
+will be conjectured without difficulty that, with a nature so full of
+impulse, so excitable, as that of Margaret Cooper--particularly in the
+company of an adroit man like Stevens, whose purpose was to encourage
+her in that language and feeling of egotism which, while it was the most
+grateful exercise to herself, was that which most effectually served to
+blind her to his designs--her action was always animated, expressively
+adapting itself, not only to the words she uttered, but, even when she
+did not speak, to the feelings by which she was governed. It was the art
+of Stevens to say little except by suggestives. A single word, or
+brief sentence, from his lips, judiciously applied to her sentiments or
+situation, readily excited her to speech; and this utterance necessarily
+brought with it the secret of her soul, the desire of her heart, nay,
+the very shape of the delusion which possessed it. The wily libertine,
+deliberate as the demon to which we have likened him, could provoke the
+warmth which he did not share--could stimulate the eloquence which
+he would not feel--could coldly, like some Mephistopheles of science,
+subject the golden-winged bird or butterfly to the torturous process of
+examination, with a pin thrust through its vitals, and gravely dilate
+on its properties, its rich plumage, and elaborate finish of detail,
+without giving heed to those writhings which declared its agonies. It is
+not meant to be understood that Stevens found no pleasure himself in the
+display of that wild, unschooled imagination which was the prevailing
+quality in the mind of Margaret Cooper. He was a man of education and
+taste. He could be pleased as an amateur; but he wanted the moral to be
+touched, and to sympathize with a being so gifted and so feeble--so high
+aiming, yet so liable to fall.
+
+The ardor of Margaret Cooper, and the profound devotion which it was
+the policy of Stevens to display, necessarily established their
+acquaintance, in a very short time, on the closest footing of
+familiarity. With a nature such as hers, all that is wanted is
+sympathy--all that she craves is sympathy--and, to win this, no toil is
+too great, no sufferance too severe; alas, how frequently do we see that
+no penalty is too discouraging! But the confiding spirit never looks for
+penalties, and seldom dreams of deceit.
+
+What, then, were the emotions of William Hinkley as he beheld the
+cordiality which distinguished the manner of Margaret Cooper as she
+approached the edge of the lake with her companion? In the space of a
+single week, this stranger had made greater progress in her acquaintance
+than HE had been able to make in a period of years. The problem which
+distressed him was beyond his power to solve. His heart was very full;
+the moisture was already in his eyes; and when he beheld the animated
+gestures of the maid--when he saw her turn to her companion, and
+meet his gaze without shrinking, while her own was fixed in gratified
+contemplation--he scarcely restrained himself from jumping to his feet.
+The old man saw his emotion.
+
+"William," he said, "did I understand you that this young stranger was a
+preacher?"
+
+"No, sir, but he seeks to be one. He is studying for the ministry, under
+Brother Cross."
+
+"Brother Cross is a good man, and is scarcely likely to have anything to
+do with any other than good men. I suppose he knows everything about the
+stranger?"
+
+William Hinkley narrated all that was known on the subject in the
+village. In the innocence of his heart, Brother Cross had described
+Alfred Stevens as a monument of his own powers of conversion. Under
+God, he had been a blessed instrument for plucking this brand from
+the burning. A modified account of the brandy-flask accompanied the
+narrative. Whether it was that Mr. Calvert, who had been a man of the
+world, saw something in the story itself, and in the ludicrousness of
+the event, which awakened his suspicions, or whether the carriage of
+Alfred Stevens, as he walked with Margaret Cooper, was rather that of a
+young gallant than a young student in theology, may admit of question;
+but it was very certain that the suspicions of the old gentleman were
+somewhat awakened.
+
+Believing himself to be alone with his fair companion, Alfred Stevens
+was not as scrupulous of the rigidity of manner which, if not actually
+prescribed to persons occupying his professional position, is certainly
+expected from them; and, by a thousand little acts of gallantry, he
+proved himself much more at home as a courtier and a ladies' man than as
+one filled with the overflow of divine grace, and thoughtful of nothing
+less than the serious earnest of his own soul. His hand was promptly
+extended to assist the progress of his fair companion--a service which
+was singularly unnecessary in the case of one to whom daily rambles,
+over hill and through forest, had imparted a most unfeminine degree
+of vigor. Now he broke the branch away from before her path; and now,
+stooping suddenly, he gathered for her the pale flower of autumn.
+
+These little acts of courtesy, so natural to the gentleman, were
+anything but natural to one suddenly impressed with the ascetical temper
+of methodism. Highly becoming in both instances, they were yet strangely
+at variance with the straight-laced practices of the thoroughgoing
+Wesleyan, who sometimes fancies that the condition of souls is so
+desperate as to leave no time for good manners. Mr. Calvert had no
+fault to find with Stevens's civility, but there was certainly an
+inconsistency between his deportment now, and those characteristics
+which were to be predicated of the manner and mode of his very recent
+conversion. Besides, there was the story of the brandy-flask, in which
+Calvert saw much less of honor either to John Cross or his neophyte. But
+the old man did not express his doubts to his young friend, and they
+sat together, watching, in a silence only occasionally broken by a
+monosyllable, the progress of the unconscious couple below.
+
+Meanwhile, our fisherman, occupying his lonely perch just above the
+stream, had been plying his vocation with all the silent diligence of
+one to the manner born. Once busy with his angle, and his world equally
+of thought and observation became confined to the stream before his
+eyes, and the victim before his imagination. Scarcely seen by his
+companions on the heights above, he had succeeded in taking several very
+fine fish; and had his liberality been limited to the supper-table of
+his venerable friend Calvert, he would long before have given himself
+respite, and temporary immunity to the rest of the finny tribe remaining
+in the tarn. But Ned Hinkley thought of all his neighbors, not omitting
+the two rival widows, Mesdames Cooper and Thackeray.
+
+Something too, there was in the sport, which, on the present occasion,
+beguiled him rather longer than his wont. More than once had his eye
+detected, from the advantageous and jutting rock where he lay concealed,
+just above the water, the dark outlines of a fish, one of the largest he
+had ever seen in the lake, whose brown sides, and occasionally flashing
+fins, excited his imagination and offered a challenge to his skill,
+which provoked him into something like a feeling of personal hostility.
+
+The fish moved slowly to and fro, not often in sight, but at such
+regularly-recurring periods as to keep up the exciting desire which his
+very first appearance had awakened in the mind of his enemy.
+
+To Ned Hinkley he was the beau-ideal of the trout genius. He was
+certainly the hermit-trout of the tarn. Such coolness, such strength,
+such size, such an outline, and then such sagacity. That trout was
+a triton among his brethren. A sort of Dr. Johnson among fishes. Ned
+Hinkley could imagine--for on such subjects his imagination kindled--how
+like an oracle must be the words of such a trout, to his brethren,
+gathering in council in their deep-down hole--or driven by a shower
+under the cypress log--or in any other situation in which an oracle
+would be apt to say, looking around him with fierceness mingled
+with contempt, "Let no dog bark." Ned Hinkley could also fancy the
+contemplations of such a trout as he witnessed the efforts made to
+beguile him out of the water.
+
+"Not to be caught by a fly like that, my lad!" and precisely as if
+the trout had spoken what was certainly whispered in his own mind, the
+fisherman silently changed his gilded, glittering figure on his hook for
+one of browner plumage--one of the autumn tribe of flies which stoop to
+the water from the overhanging trees, and glide off for twenty paces in
+the stream, to dart up again to the trees, in as many seconds, if not
+swallowed by some watchful fisher-trout, like the one then before the
+eyes of our companion.
+
+Though his fancy had become excited, Ned Hinkley was not impatient.
+With a cautious hand he conducted the fly down the stream with the
+flickering, fidgety motion which the real insect would have employed.
+The keen-nosed trout turned with the movements of the fly, but
+philosophically kept aloof. Now he might be seen to sink, now to rise,
+now he glided close under the rock where the angler reclined, and, even
+in the very deep waters which were there, which were consequently very
+dark, so great was the size of the animal, that its brown outline was
+yet to be seen, with its slightly-waving tail, and at moments the flash
+of its glittering eye, as, inclining on its side, it glanced cunningly
+upward through the water.
+
+Again did Ned Hinkley consult his resources. Fly after fly was taken
+from his box, and suffered to glide upon the stream. The wary fish did
+not fail to bestow some degree of attention upon each, but his regards
+were too deliberate for the success of the angler, and he had almost
+began to despair, when he observed a slight quivering movement in the
+object of pursuit which usually prepares the good sportsman to expect
+his prey. The fins were laid aback. The motion of the fish became
+steady; a slight vibration of the tail only was visible; and in another
+moment he darted, and was hooked.
+
+Then came the struggle. Ned Hinkley had never met with a more formidable
+prey. The reel was freely given, but the strain was great upon shaft and
+line. There was no such thing as contending. The trout had his way, and
+went down and off, though it might have been observed that the fisherman
+took good care to baffle his efforts to retreat in the direction of the
+old log which had harbored him, and the tangling alders, which might
+have been his safest places of retreat. The fish carried a long stretch
+of line, but the hook was still in his jaws, and this little annoyance
+soon led him upon other courses. The line became relaxed, and with this
+sign, Ned Hinkley began to amuse himself in tiring his victim.
+
+This required skill and promptness rather than strength. The
+hermit-trout was led to and fro by a judicious turn of wrist or elbow.
+His efforts had subsided to a few spasmodic struggles--an occasional
+struggle ending with a shiver, and then he was brought to the surface.
+This was followed by a last great convulsive effort, when his tail
+churned the water into a little circle of foam, which disappeared the
+moment his struggles were over. But a few seconds more were necessary to
+lift the prey into sight of all the parties near to the lake. They had
+seen some of the struggle, and had imagined the rest. Neither Margaret
+Cooper nor Stevens had suspected the presence of the fisherman until
+drawn to the spot by this trial of strength.
+
+"What a prodigious fish!" exclaimed Stevens; "can we go to the spot?"
+
+"Oh! easily--up the rocks on the left there is a path. I know it well.
+I have traversed it often. Will you go? The view is very fine from that
+quarter."
+
+"Surely: but who is the fisherman?"
+
+"Ned Hinkley, the nephew of the gentleman with whom you stay. He is
+a hunter, fisherman, musician--everything. A lively, simple, but
+well-meaning young person. It is something strange that his cousin
+William Hinkley is not with him. They are usually inseparable."
+
+And with these words she led the way for her companion following the
+edge of the lake until reaching the point where the rocks seemed to form
+barriers to their further progress, but which her agility and energy had
+long since enabled her to overcome.
+
+"A bold damsel!" said Calvert, as he viewed her progress. "She certainly
+does not intend to clamber over that range of precipices. She will peril
+her life."
+
+"No!" said William Hinkley; "she has done it often to my great terror. I
+have been with her more than once over the spot myself. She seems to me
+to have no fear, and to delight in the most dangerous places."
+
+"But her companion! If he's not a more active man than he seems he will
+hardly succeed so well."
+
+William was silent, his eye watching with the keenest interest the
+progress of the two. In a few moments he started to his feet with some
+appearance of surprise.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Calvert.
+
+"She does not seem as if she wished to ascend the rocks, but she's
+aiming to keep along the ledges that overhang the stream, so as to get
+where Ned is. That can hardly be done by the surest-footed, and most
+active. Many of the rocks are loose. The ledge is very narrow, and even
+where there is room for the feet there are such projections above as
+leave no room for the body. I will halloo to her, and tell her of the
+danger."
+
+"If you halloo, you will increase the danger--you will alarm her," said
+the old man.
+
+"It will be best to stop her now, in season, when she can go back. Stay
+for me, sir, I can run along on the heights so as to overlook them, and
+can then warn without alarming."
+
+"Do so, my son, and hasten, for she seems bent on going forward. The
+preacher follows but slowly, and she stops for him. Away!"
+
+The youth darted along the hill, pursuing something of a table-line
+which belonged to the equal elevation of the range of rock on which he
+stood. The rock was formed of successive and shelving ledges, at such
+intervals, however, as to make it no easy task--certainly no safe
+one--to drop from one to the other. The perch of Ned Hinkley, was a
+projection from the lowest of these ledges, running brokenly along the
+margin of the basin until lost in the forest slope over which Margaret
+Cooper had led her companion.
+
+If it was a task to try the best vigor and agility--to say nothing of
+courage--of the ablest mountaineer, to ascend the abrupt ledges from
+below, aiming at the highest point of elevation. The attempt was still
+more startling to follow the lower ledges, some of which hung, loosened
+and tottering, just above the deepest parts of the lake. Yet, with that
+intrepidity which marked her character, this was the very task which
+Margaret Cooper had proposed to herself. William Hinkley had justly said
+that she did not seem to know fear; and when Stevens with the natural
+sense of caution which belongs to one to whom such performances are
+unusual, suggested to her that such a pathway seemed very dangerous--
+
+"Dangerous!" she exclaimed, standing upon the merest pinnacle of a
+loosened fragment which rested on the very margin of the stream.
+
+"Did you never perceive that there was a loveliness in danger which you
+scarcely felt to be half so great in any other object or situation. I
+love the dangerous. It seems to lift my soul, to make my heart bound
+with joy and the wildest delight. I know nothing so delightful as storm
+and thunder. I look, and see the tall trees shivering and going down
+with a roar, and feel that I could sing--sing aloud--and believe that
+there are voices, like mine, then singing through all the tempest. But
+there is no danger here. I have clambered up these ledges repeatedly--up
+to the very top. Here, you see, we have an even pathway along the edge.
+We have nothing to do but to set the foot down firmly."
+
+But Stevens was not so sure, and his opinion on the beauties of the
+dangerous did not chime exactly with hers. Still, he did not lack for
+courage, and his pride did not suffer him to yield in a contest with a
+female. He gazed on her with increasing wonder. If he saw no loveliness
+in danger--he saw no little loveliness just then in her; and she might
+be said to personify danger to his eyes. Her tall, symmetrical, and
+commanding figure, perched on the trembling pinnacle of rock which
+sustained her, was as firm and erect as if she stood on the securest
+spot of land.
+
+Nor was her position that of simple security and firmness. The grace of
+her attitude, her extended and gently waving arm as she spoke, denoted
+a confidence which could only have arisen from a perfect unconsciousness
+of danger. Her swan-like neck, with the face slightly turned back to
+him; the bright flashing eyes, and the smile of equal pride and dignity
+on her exquisitely-chiselled mouth;--all formed a picture for the
+artist's study, which almost served to divert the thoughts of Stevens
+from the feeling of danger which he expressed.
+
+While he gazed, he heard a voice calling in tones of warning from above;
+and, at the sound, he perceived a change in the expression of Margaret
+Cooper's face, from confidence and pride, to scorn and contempt. At the
+same time she darted forward from rock to rock, with a sort of defying
+haste, which made him tremble for her safety, and left him incapable to
+follow. The call was repeated; and Stevens looked up, and recognised the
+person of the youth whom he had counselled that morning with such bad
+success.
+
+If the progress of Margaret Cooper appeared dangerous in his sight, that
+of the young man was evidently more so. He was leaping, with the cool
+indifference of one who valued his life not a pin's fee, from ledge to
+ledge, down the long steppes which separated the several reaches of the
+rock formation. The space between was very considerable, the descent
+abrupt; the youth had no steadying pole to assist him, but flying
+rather than leaping, was now beheld in air, and in the next moment stood
+balancing himself with difficulty, but with success, and without seeming
+apprehension, on the pinnacle of rock below him. In this way he was
+approaching the lower ledge along which Margaret Cooper was hurrying as
+rapidly as fearlessly, and calling to her as he came, implored her to
+forbear a progress which was so full of danger.
+
+Stevens fancied he had no reason to love the youth, but he could not
+help admiring and envying his equal boldness and agility; the
+muscular ease with which he flung himself from point to point, and his
+sure-footed descent upon the crags and fragments which trembled and
+tottered beneath the sudden and unaccustomed burden. Charitably wishing
+that, amid all his agility he might yet make a false step, and find an
+unexpected and rather cold bath in the lake below, Stevens now turned
+his eyes upon Margaret Cooper.
+
+She did not answer the counsels of William Hinkley--certainly did not
+heed them: and, but for the increased impatience of her manner might be
+supposed not to have heard them. The space between herself and Stevens
+had increased meanwhile, and looking back, she waited for his approach.
+She stood on a heavy mass which jutted above the lake, and not six feet
+from the water. Her right foot was upon the stone, sustaining the
+whole weight of her person. Her left was advanced and lifted to another
+fragment which lay beyond. As she looked back she met the eyes of
+Stevens. Just then he saw the large fragment yield beneath her feet. She
+seemed suddenly conscious of it in the same moment, and sprung rapidly
+on that to which her left foot was already advanced. The impetus of
+this movement, sent the rock over which she had left. This disturbed
+the balance of that to which she had risen, and while the breath of the
+stranger hung suspended in the utterance of the meditated warning, the
+catastrophe had taken place. The stone shrank from beneath her, and,
+sinking with it, in another moment, she was hidden from sight in the
+still, deep waters of the lake.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SOUSING A GURNET.
+
+
+
+
+
+The disappearance of Margaret Cooper was succeeded by a shriek from
+above--a single shriek--a cry of terror and despair; and in the same
+instant the form of William Hinkley might have been seen cleaving
+the air, with the boldness of a bird, secure always of his wing, and
+descending into the lake as nearly as it was possible for him to come,
+to the spot where she had sunk. Our cooler fisherman looked up to the
+abrupt eminence, just above his own head, from which his devoted cousin
+had sprung.
+
+"By gemini!" he exclaimed with an air of serious apprehension, "if
+William Hinkley hasn't knocked his life out by that plunge he's more
+lucky than I think him. It's well the lake's deep enough in this quarter
+else he'd have tried the strength of hard head against harder rock
+below. But there's no time for such nice calculations! We can all
+swim--that's a comfort."
+
+Thus speaking, he followed the example of his cousin, though more
+quietly, plunging off from his lowlier perch, and cleaving the water,
+headforemost, with as little commotion as a sullen stone would make
+sent directly downward to the deep. By this time, however, our former
+companion, Stevens, had done the same thing. Stevens was no coward, but
+he had no enthusiasm. He obeyed few impulses. His proceedings were all
+the result of calculation. He could swim as well as his neighbors. He
+had no apprehensions on that score; but he disliked cold water; and
+there was an involuntary shrug of the shoulder and shiver of the limbs
+before he committed himself to the water, which he did with all the
+deliberation of the cat, who, longing for fish, is yet unwilling to
+wet her own feet. His deliberation, and the nearness of his position to
+Margaret Cooper, were so far favorable to his design that he succeeded
+in finding her first. It must be understood that the events, which
+we have taken so much time to tell, occupied but a few seconds in the
+performance. Stevens was in the water quite as quickly as Ned Hinkley,
+and only not so soon as his more devoted and desperate cousin. If it was
+an advantage to him to come first in contact with the form of Margaret
+Cooper, it had nearly proved fatal to him also. In the moment when he
+encountered her, her outstretched and grasping arms, encircled his neck.
+They rose together, but he was nearly strangled, and but for the timely
+interposition of the two cousins, they must probably have both perished.
+
+It was the fortune of our fisherman to relieve the maiden, whom he bore
+to the opposite shore with a coolness, a skill and spirit, which enabled
+him to save himself from her desperate but unconscious struggles,
+while supporting her with a degree of ease and strength which had
+been acquired while teaching some dozen of the village urchins how to
+practise an art in which he himself was reckoned a great proficient.
+
+It was fortunate for Stevens that the charities of William Hinkley were
+more active and indulgent than his own, since, without the timely succor
+and aid which he afforded, that devout young gentleman would have been
+made to discontinue his studies very suddenly and have furnished a
+summary conclusion to this veracious narrative--a consummation which, if
+it be as devoutly wished by the reader as by the writer, will be a much
+greater source of annoyance to our publisher than it has proved already.
+Never had poor mortal been compelled to drink, at one time, a greater
+quantity of that celestial beverage, which the Reverend Mr. Pierpont
+insists is the only liquor drunk at the hotels of heaven. We should be
+sorry to misrepresent that very gentle gentleman, but we believe that
+this is substantially his idea. It was unfortunate for Stevens that,
+previously to this, he had never been accustomed to drink much of this
+beverage in its original strength anywhere. He had been too much in the
+habit of diluting it; and being very temperate always in his enjoyment
+of the creature comforts, he had never taken it, even when thus diluted,
+except in very moderate quantities.
+
+In consequence of his former abstemiousness, the quantity which he now
+swallowed nearly strangled him. He was about to take his last draught
+with many wry faces, when the timely arms of the two cousins, by no very
+sparing application of force withdrew him from the grasp of the damsel;
+and without very well understanding the process, or any particulars of
+his extrication, he found himself stretched upon the banks over which he
+had lately wandered, never dreaming of any such catastrophe; discharging
+from his stomach by no effort of his own, a large quantity of foreign
+ingredients--the ordinary effect, we are given to understand, of every
+inordinate indulgence in strong waters.
+
+Our excellent old friend, Mr. Calvert, was soon upon the spot, and
+while Ned Hinkley was despatched to the village for assistance, he took
+himself the charge of recovering the unconscious maiden. Half-forgetting
+his hostility, William Hinkley undertook the same good service to
+Stevens, who really seemed to need succor much more than his fair
+companion. While William Hinkley busied himself by rolling, friction,
+fanning, and other practices, employed in such cases, to bring his
+patient back to life, he could not forbear an occasional glance to the
+spot where, at a little distance, lay the object of his affections.
+
+Her face was toward him, as she lay upon her side. Her head was
+supported on the lap of the old man. Her long hair hung dishevelled, of
+a more glossy black now when filled with water. Her eyes were shut, and
+the dark fringes of their lids lay like a pencil-streak across the pale,
+prominent orbs which they served to bind together. The glow of indignant
+pride with which she was wont to receive his approaches had all
+disappeared in the mortal struggle for life through which she had lately
+gone; and pure, as seemingly free from every passion, her pale beauties
+appeared to his doating eye the very perfection of human loveliness. Her
+breast now heaved convulsively--deep sighs poured their way through
+her parted lips. Her eyes alternately opened upon but shut against the
+light, and, finally, the exertions of the old man were rewarded as
+the golden gleam of expression began to relight and re-illumine those
+features which seemed never to be without it.
+
+She recovered her consciousness, started up, made an effort to rise,
+but, reeling with inability, sunk down again into the paternal grasp of
+the old man.
+
+"Mr. Calvert!" she murmured.
+
+"You are safe, my daughter," said the old man.
+
+"But how did it happen?--where am I?"
+
+"By the lake."
+
+"Ah! I remember. I was drowning. I felt it all--the choking--the
+struggle--the water in my ears and eyes! It was a dreadful feeling. How
+did I come here? Who saved me?"
+
+"Ned Hinkley brought you to land, but he was helped by his cousin
+William, who assisted the stranger."
+
+"The stranger? ah! yes, I remember: but where is he?"
+
+She looked around wildly and anxiously, and beholding William Hinkley
+at a little distance, busy with the still unconscious form of Stevens,
+a quick, fearful shudder passed over her frame. She almost crouched into
+the old man's arms as she asked, in husky accents--
+
+"He is not dead--he lives?"
+
+"I hope so. He breathes."
+
+She waited for no more, but, starting to her feet, she staggered to the
+spot where Stevens lay. The old man would have prevented her.
+
+"You are feeble; you will do yourself harm. Better, if you are able to
+walk, hurry homeward with me, when you can change your clothes."
+
+"Would you have me ungrateful?" she exclaimed; "shall I neglect him when
+he risked his life for me?"
+
+There was a consciousness in her mind that it was not all gratitude
+which moved her, for the deathly paleness of her cheek was now succeeded
+by a warm blush which denoted a yet stronger and warmer emotion. The
+keen eyes of William Hinkley understood the meaning of this significant
+but unsyllabling mode of utterance, and his eyes spoke the reproach to
+hers which his lips left unsaid:--
+
+"Ah! did I not risk my life too, to prevent--to save? When would she
+feel such an interest in me? when would she look thus were my life at
+stake?"
+
+"He will not be neglected," said the old man, gently endeavoring
+to restrain her. Perhaps she would not have given much heed to the
+interruption, for hers was the strength of an unfettered will, one
+accustomed to have way, but that, at this moment, the eyes of Stevens
+unclosed and met her own. His consciousness had returned, and, under the
+increasing expression in his looks, she sunk back, and permitted the old
+man to lead her along the homeward path. More than once she looked back,
+but, with the assurance of Mr. Calvert that there was no more danger to
+be apprehended, she continued to advance; the worthy old man, as they
+went, seeking to divert her mind, by pleasant and choice anecdotes of
+which his memory had abundant stores, from dwelling upon the unpleasant
+and exciting event which had just taken place.
+
+Margaret Cooper, whose habits previously had kept her from much intimacy
+with the village sage, was insensibly taken by his gentleness, the
+purity of his taste, the choiceness of his expression, the extent of his
+resources. She wondered how a mind so full should have remained unknown
+to her so long--committing the error, very common to persons of strong
+will and determined self-esteem, of assuming that she should, as a
+matter of inevitable necessity, have known everything and everybody of
+which the knowledge is at all desirable.
+
+In pleasant discourse he beguiled her progress, until Ned Hinkley was
+met returning with horses--the pathway did not admit of a vehicle, and
+the village had none less cumbrous than cart and wagon--on one of which
+she mounted, refusing all support or assistance; and when, Mr. Calvert
+insisted upon walking beside her, she grasped the bough of a tree, broke
+off a switch, and, giving an arch but good-natured smile and nod to the
+old man, laid it smartly over the horse's flank, and in a few moments
+was out of sight.
+
+"The girl is smart," said Calvert, as he followed her retreating form
+with his eye--"too smart! She speaks well--has evidently read. No
+wonder that William loves her; but she will never do for him. She has
+no humility. Pride is the demon in her heart. Pride will overthrow her.
+These woods spoil her. Solitude is the natural nurse of self-esteem,
+particularly where it is strong at first, and is coupled with anything
+like talent. Better for such a one if sickness, and strife, and
+suffering, had taken her at the cradle, and nursed her with the milk
+of self-denial, which is the only humility worth having. And yet, why
+should I speak of her, when the sting remains in my own soul--when I yet
+feel the pang of my feebleness and self-reproach? Alas! I should school
+none. The voice speaks to me ever, 'Old man, to thy prayers! Thy own
+knees are yet stubborn as thy neck!'"
+
+Leaving him to the becoming abasement of that delusive self-comfort
+which ministers to our vain-glory, and which this good old man had so
+happily succeeded in rebuking, we will return to the spot where we left
+our other parties. Ned Hinkley had already joined them. With his horse
+he had providently brought a suit of his own clothes for the stranger,
+which, though made of homespun, and not of the most modern fashion,
+were yet warm and comfortable, and as Stevens was compelled to think,
+infinitely preferable to the chilly and dripping garments which he wore.
+A few moments, in the cover of the woods, sufficed the neophyte to
+make the alteration; while the two cousins, to whom the exigencies of
+forester and fisherman life were more familiar prepared to walk the
+water out of their own habits, by giving rapid circulation to their
+blood and limbs. While their preparations were in progress, however, Ned
+Hinkley could not deny himself the pleasure of discoursing at length on
+the subject of the late disaster.
+
+"Stranger," he said, "I must tell you that you've had a souse in as fine
+a fishing-pond as you'll meet with from here to Salt river. I reckon,
+now, that while you were in, you never thought for a moment of the noble
+trout that inhabit it."
+
+"I certainly did not," said the other.
+
+"There, now! I could have sworn it. That a man should go with his eyes
+open into a country without ever asking what sort of folks lived there!
+Isn't it monstrous?"
+
+"It certainly seems like a neglect of the first duty of a traveller,"
+said Stevens good-humoredly; "let me not show myself heedless of
+another. Let me thank you, gentlemen, for saving my life. I believe I
+owe it to one or both of you."
+
+"To him, not to me," said Ned Hinkley, pointing to his cousin. William
+was at a little distance, looking sullenly upon the two with eyes which,
+if dark and moody, seemed to denote a thought which was anywhere else
+but in the scene around him.
+
+"He saved you, and I saved the woman. I wouldn't have a woman drowned in
+this lake for all the houses in Charlemont."
+
+"Ah! why?"
+
+"'Twould spoil it for fishing for ever."
+
+"Why would a woman do this more than a man?"
+
+"For a very good reason, my friend. Because the ghost of a woman talks,
+and a man's don't, they say. The ghost of a man says what it wants to
+say with its eyes; a woman's with her tongue. You know there's nothing
+scares fish so much as one's talking."
+
+"I have heard so. But is it so clear that there is such a difference
+between ghosts? How is it known that the female does all the talking?"
+
+"Oh, that's beyond dispute. There's a case that we all know about--all
+here in Charlemont--the case of Joe Barney's millpond. Barney lost
+one of his children and one of his negroes in the pond--drowned as
+a judgment, they say, for fishing a Sunday. That didn't make any
+difference with the fish: you could catch them there just the same as
+before. But when old Mrs. Prey fell in, crossing the dam, the case was
+altered. You might sit there for hours and days, night and day, and bob
+till you were weary; devil a bite after that! Now, what could make the
+difference but the tongue? Mother Frey had a tongue of her own, I tell
+you. 'Twas going when she fell in, and I reckon's been going ever
+since. She was a sulphury, spiteful body, to be sure, and some said she
+poisoned the fish if she didn't scare them. To my thinking, 'twas the
+tongue."
+
+Stevens had been something seduced from his gravity by the blunt humor
+and unexpected manner of Ned Hinkley; besides, having been served, if
+not saved, by his hands, something, perhaps, of attention was due to
+what he had to say; but he recollected the assumed character which he
+had to maintain--something doubtful, too, if he had not already impaired
+it in the sight and hearing of those who had come so opportunely but
+so unexpectedly to his relief, He recovered his composure and dignity;
+forbore to smile at the story which might otherwise have provoked not
+only smile but corresponding answer; and, by the sudden coolness of
+his manner, tended to confirm in Ned Hinkley's bosom the half-formed
+hostility which the cause of his cousin had originally taught him to
+feel.
+
+"I'll lick the conceit out of him yet!" he muttered, as Stevens, turning
+away, ascended to the spot where William Hinkley stood.
+
+"I owe you thanks, Mr. Hinkley," he began.
+
+The young man interrupted him.
+
+"You owe me nothing, sir," he answered hastily, and prepared to turn
+away.
+
+"You have saved my life, sir."
+
+"I should have saved your dog's life, sir, in the same situation. I have
+done but an act of duty."
+
+"But, Mr. Hinkley--"
+
+"Your horse is ready for you, sir," said the young man, turning off
+abruptly, and darting up the sides of the hill, remote from the pathway,
+and burying himself in the contiguous forests.
+
+"Strange!" exclaimed the neophyte--"this is very strange!"
+
+"Not so strange, stranger, as that I should stand your groom, without
+being brought up to such a business for any man. Here's your nag, sir."
+
+"I thank you--I would not willingly trespass," he replied, as he
+relieved our angler from his grasp upon the bridle.
+
+"You're welcome without the thanks, stranger. I reckon you know the
+route you come. Up hill, follow the track to the top, take the left turn
+to the valley, then you'll see the houses, and can follow your own nose
+or your nag's. Either's straight enough to carry you to his rack. You'll
+find your clothes at your boarding-house about the time that you'll get
+there."
+
+"Nay, sir, I already owe you much. Let them not trouble you. I will take
+them myself."
+
+"No, no, stranger!" was the reply of our fisherman, as he stooped down
+and busied himself in making the garments into a compact bundle; "I'm
+not the man to leave off without doing the thing I begin to do. I
+sometimes do more than I bargain for--sometimes lick a man soundly when
+I set out only to tweak his nose; but I make it a sort of Christian law
+never to do less. You may reckon to find your clothes home by the time
+you get there. There's your road."
+
+"A regular pair of cubs!" muttered the horseman, as he ascended the
+hill.
+
+"To purse up his mouth as if I was giving him root-drink, when I was
+telling him about Mother Frey's spoiling the fish! Let him take care--he
+may get the vinegar next time, and not the fish!"
+
+And, with these characteristic commentaries, the parties separated for
+the time.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+PHILOSOPHY OP FIGHTING.
+
+
+
+
+
+"You're not a fighter, Bill Hinkley, and that's about the worst fault
+that I can find against you."
+
+Such was the beginning of a dialogue between the cousins some three days
+after the affair which was narrated in our last chapter. The two young
+men were at the house of the speaker, or rather at his mother's house;
+where, a favorite and only son, he had almost supreme dominion. He was
+putting his violin in tune, and the sentences were spoken at intervals
+with the discordant scraps of sound which were necessarily elicited by
+this unavoidable musical operation. These sounds might be said to form a
+running accompaniment for the dialogue, and, considering the sombre mood
+of the person addressed, they were, perhaps, far more congenial than any
+more euphonious strains would have been.
+
+"Not a fighter!" said the other; "why, what do you mean?"
+
+"Why, just what I say--you are not a fighter. You love reading, and
+fiddling, and fishing sometimes, and sometimes dancing, and hunting, and
+swimming; but I'm pretty certain you don't love fighting. You needn't
+contradict, Bill--I've been thinking the matter over; and I'm sure of
+it. I recollect every battle or scrape you ever were in, from the time
+we went to old Chandler's, and I tell you, you're not a fighter--you
+don't love fighting!"
+
+This was concluded with a tremendous scrape over the strings, which
+seemed to say as well as scrape could speak--"There can be no mistake on
+the subject--I've said it."
+
+"If I knew exactly what you were driving at," said the other, "perhaps
+I might answer you. I never pretended to be a fighter; and as for loving
+it, as I love eating, drinking, books, fiddling, and dancing, why that
+needs no answer. Of course I do not, and I don't know who does."
+
+"There it is. I told you. I knew it. You'd sooner do almost anything
+than fight."
+
+"If you mean that I would submit to insult," said the more peaceable
+cousin, with some displeasure in his tones and countenance, "sooner than
+resent it, you are very much mistaken. It wouldn't be advisable even for
+you to try the experiment."
+
+"Poh, poh, Bill, you know for that matter that it wouldn't take much
+trying. I'd lick you as easily now as I did when we were boys together."
+
+"We are boys no longer," said the other gravely.
+
+"I'm as much a boy as ever, so far as the licking capacity calls for
+boyhood. I've pretty much the same spirit now that I had then, and ten
+times the same strength and activity. But don't look so blue. I'm not
+going to try my strength and spirit and activity on you. And don't
+suppose, Bill Hinkley, that I mean to say you're anything of a coward,
+or that you'd submit to any open insult; but still I do say, you're not
+only not fond of fighting, but you're just not as much inclined that way
+as you should be."
+
+"Indeed! what more would you have? Do you not say that I would not
+submit to insult?--that I show the proper degree of courage in such
+cases?"
+
+"Not the PROPER degree. That's the very question. You're not quick
+enough. You wait for the first blow. You don't step out to meet the
+enemy. You look for him to come to you."
+
+"Surely! I look upon fighting as brutal--to be waited for, not
+sought--to be resorted to only in compliance with necessity--to be
+avoided to the last!"
+
+"No such thing--all a mistake. Fighting and the desire to get on the
+shoulders of our neighbors is a natural passion. We see that every day.
+The biggest boy licks the one just below him, he whips the next, and
+so down, and there's not one that don't lick somebody and don't stand
+licked himself--for the master licks the biggest. The desire to fight
+and flog is natural, and this being the case, it stands to reason that
+we must lick our neighbor or he'll be sure to lick us."
+
+"Pshaw! you speak like a boy yet. This is schoolhouse philosophy."
+
+"And very good philosophy too. I'm thinking the schoolhouse and the
+play-ground is pretty much a sort of world to itself. It's no bad show
+of what the world without is; and one of its first lessons and that
+which I think the truest, is the necessity of having a trial of strength
+with every new-comer; until we learn where he's to stand in the ranks,
+number one or number nothing. You see there just the same passions,
+though, perhaps, on a small scale, that we afterward find to act upon
+the big world of manhood. There, we fight for gingerbread, for marbles,
+top and ball; not unfrequently because we venture to look at our
+neighbor's sweetheart; and sometimes, quite as often, for the love of
+the thing and to know where the spirit and the sinew are. Well, isn't
+that just what the big world does after us? As men, we fight for bigger
+playthings, for pounds, where before we fought for pence--for gold where
+before we fought for coppers--for command of a country instead of a
+schoolyard; for our wives instead of sweethearts, and through sheer
+deviltry and the love of the thing, when there's nothing else to fight
+about, just the same as we did in boyhood."
+
+"But even were you to prove, and I to admit, that it is so, just as you
+say, that would not prove the practice to be a jot more proper, or a jot
+less brutal."
+
+"Begging your pardon, Bill, it proves it to be right and proper, and
+accordingly, if brutal, a becoming brutality. If this is the natural
+disposition of boys and men, don't you see that this schoolboy licking
+and fighting is a necessary part of one's moral education? It learns one
+to use his strength, his limbs and sinews, as he may be compelled to use
+them, in self-defence, in every future day of his life. You know very
+well what follows a boy at school who doesn't show himself ready to bung
+up his neighbor's eye the moment he sees it at a cross-twinkle. He gets
+his own bunged up. Well, it's just the same thing when he gets to be
+a man. If you have a dispute with your enemy, I don't say that you
+shouldn't reason with him, but I do say that your reasoning will have
+very little effect upon him unless he sees that you are able and willing
+to write it in black and blue upon his sheepskin. And what better way
+could you find to show him THAT, unless by giving him word and blow, the
+blow first, as being the most impressive argument?"
+
+"You must have been dreaming of these subjects last night." said the
+grave cousin--"you seem to have them unusually well cut and dried."
+
+"I haven't been dreaming about it, Bill, but I confess I've been
+thinking about it very seriously all night, and considering all the
+arguments that I thought you would make use of against it. I haven't
+quite done with my discussion, which I took up entirely for your
+benefit."
+
+"Indeed! you are quite philanthropic before breakfast; but let us hear
+you?"
+
+"You talk of the brutality of fighting--now in what does that brutality
+consist? Is it not in breaking noses, kicking shins, bunging up eyes,
+and making one's neighbor feel uncomfortable in thigh, and back, and
+arms, and face, and skin, and indeed, everywhere, where a big fist or a
+cowhide shoe may plant a buffet or a bruise?"
+
+"Quite a definition, Ned."
+
+"I'm glad you think so: for if it's brutal in the boy to do so to his
+schoolmate, is it less so for the schoolmaster to do the same thing to
+the boy that's under his charge? He bruises my skin, makes my thighs,
+and arms, and back, and legs, and face, and hands, ache, and if my
+definition be a correct one, he is quite as brutal as the boys who do
+the same thing to one another."
+
+"He does it because the boys deserve it, and in order to make them
+obedient and active."
+
+"And when did a boy not deserve a flogging when he gets licked by his
+companion?" demanded the other triumphantly--"and don't the licking make
+him obedient, and don't the kicking make him active? By gemini, I've
+seen more activity from one chap's legs under the quick application of
+another's feet, than I think anything else could produce, unless it were
+feet made expressly for such a purpose and worked by a steam-engine.
+That might make them move something faster, but I reckon there would be
+no need in such a case of any such improvement."
+
+"What are you driving at, Ned Hinkley? This is by far the longest
+argument, I think, that you've ever undertaken. You must be moved by
+some very serious considerations."
+
+"I am, and you'll see what I'm driving at after a little while. I'm not
+fond of arguing, you know, but I look upon the fighting principle as a
+matter to be known and believed in, and I wish to make clear to you my
+reasons for believing in it myself. You don't suppose I'd put down the
+fiddle for a talk at any time if the subject was not a serious one?"
+
+"Give way--you have the line."
+
+"About the brutality of fighting then, there's another thing to be
+said. Fighting produces good feeling--that is to say supposing one party
+fairly to have licked another."
+
+"Indeed--that's new."
+
+"And true too, Bill Hinkley. It cures the sulks. It lets off steam.
+It's like a thunderstorm that comes once in a while, and drives away the
+clouds, and clears the skies until all's blue again."
+
+"Black and blue."
+
+"No! what was black becomes blue. Chaps that have been growling at each
+other for weeks and months lose their bad blood--"
+
+"From the nostrils!"
+
+"Yes, from the nostrils. It's a sort of natural channel, and runs freely
+from that quarter. The one crows and the other runs and there's an end
+of the scrape and the sulks. The weaker chap, feeling his weakness,
+ceases to be impudent; the stronger, having his power acknowledged,
+becomes the protector of the weak. Each party falls into his place, and
+so far from the licking producing bad feeling it produces good feeling
+and good humor; and I conclude that one half of the trouble in the
+world, the squabbles between man and man, woman and woman, boy and
+boy--nay, between rival nations--is simply because your false and
+foolish notions of brutality and philanthropy keep them from coming
+to the scratch as soon as they should. They hang off, growling and
+grumbling, and blackguarding, and blaspheming, when, if they would only
+take hold, and come to an earnest grapple, the odds would soon show
+themselves--broken heads and noses would follow--the bad blood would
+run, and as soon as each party found his level, the one being finally
+on his back, peace would ensue, and there would be good humor for ever
+after, or at least until the blood thickened again. I think there's
+reason in my notion. I was thinking it over half the night. I've thought
+of it oftentimes before. I've never yet seen the argument that's strong
+enough to tumble it."
+
+"Your views are certainly novel, Ned, if not sound. You will excuse
+me if I do not undertake to dispute them this morning. I give in,
+therefore, and you may congratulate yourself upon having gained a
+triumph if not a convert?"
+
+"Stop, stop, William Hinkley: you don't suppose I've done all this
+talking only to make a convert or to gain a triumph?"
+
+"Why, that's your object in fighting, why not in arguing?"
+
+"Well, that's the object of most persons when they dispute, I know; but
+it is not mine. I wish to make a practical application of my doctrine."
+
+"Indeed! who do you mean to fight now?"
+
+"It's not for me to fight, it's for you."
+
+"Me!"
+
+"Yes; you have the preference by rights, though if you don't--and I'm
+rather sorry to think, as I told you at the start, that the only fault
+I had to find with you is that you're not a fighter--I must take your
+place and settle the difference."
+
+William Hinkley turned upon the speaker. The latter had laid down the
+violin, having, in the course of the argument, broken all its strings;
+and he stood now, unjacketed, and still in the chamber, where the two
+young men had been sleeping, almost in the attitude of one about to
+grapple with an antagonist. The serious face of him whose voice had been
+for war--his startling position--the unwonted eagerness of his eye,
+and the ludicrous importance which he attached to the strange principle
+which he had been asserting--conquered for a moment the graver mood
+of his love-sick companion, and he laughed outright at his pugnacious
+cousin. The latter seemed a little offended.
+
+"It's well you can laugh at such things, Bill Hinkley, but I can't.
+There was a time when every mother's son in Kentucky was a man, and
+could stand up to his rack with the best. If he couldn't keep the top
+place, he went a peg lower; but he made out to keep the place for which
+he was intended. Then, if a man disliked his neighbor he crossed over to
+him and said so, and they went at it like men, and as soon as the pout
+was over they shook hands, and stood side by side, and shoulder to
+shoulder, like true friends, in every danger, and never did fellows
+fight better against Indians and British than the same two men, that had
+lapped muscles, and rolled in the grain together till you couldn't say
+whose was whose, and which was which, till the best man jumped up, and
+shook himself, and gave the word to crow. After that it was all peace
+and good humor, and they drank and danced together, and it didn't lessen
+a man in his sweetheart's eyes, though he was licked, if he could say
+he had stood up like a man, and was downed after a good hug, because he
+couldn't help it. Now, there's precious little of that. The chap that
+dislikes his fellow, hasn't the soul to say it out, but he goes aside
+and sneers and snickers, and he whispers things that breed slanders,
+and scandals, and bad blood, until there's no trusting anybody; and
+everything is full of hate and enmity--but then it's so peaceful!
+Peaceful, indeed! as if there was any peace where there is no
+confidence, and no love, and no good feeling either for one thing or
+another."
+
+"Really, Ned, it seems to me you're indignant without any occasion. I am
+tempted to laugh at you again."
+
+"No, don't. You'd better not."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! I can not help it, Ned; so don't buffet me. You forced me
+into many a fight when I was a boy, for which I had no stomach; I trust
+you will not pummel me yourself because the world has grown so hatefully
+pacific. Tell me, in plain terms, who I am to fight now."
+
+"Who! who but Stevens?--this fellow Stevens. He's your enemy, you
+say--comes between you and your sweetheart--between you and your own
+mother--seems to look down upon you--speaks to you as if he was wiser,
+and better, and superior in every way--makes you sad and sulky to your
+best friends--you growl and grumble at him--you hate him--you fear
+him--"
+
+"Fear him!"
+
+"Yes, yes, I say fear him, for it's a sort of fear to skulk off from
+your mother's house to avoid seeing him--"
+
+"What, Ned, do you tell me that--do you begrudge me a place with you
+here, my bed, my breakfast?"
+
+"Begrudge! dang it, William Hinkley, don't tell me that, unless you want
+me to lay heavy hand on your shoulder!"--and the tears gushed into
+the rough fellow's eyes as he spoke these words, and he turned off to
+conceal them.
+
+"I don't mean to vex you, Ned, but why tell me that I skulk--that I fear
+this man?"
+
+"Begrudge!" muttered the other.
+
+"Nay, forgive me; I didn't mean it. I was hasty when I said so; but
+you also said things to provoke me. Do you suppose that I fear this man
+Stevens?"
+
+"Why don't you lick him then, or let him lick you, and bring the
+matter to an ending? Find out who's the best man, and put an end to
+the growling and the groaning. As it now stands you're not the same
+person--you're not fit company for any man. You scarcely talk, you
+listen to nobody. You won't fish, you won't hunt: you're sulky yourself
+and you make other people so!"
+
+"I'm afraid, Ned, it wouldn't much help the matter even if I were to
+chastise the stranger."
+
+"It would cure him of his impudence. It would make him know how to
+treat you; and if the rest of your grievance comes from Margaret Cooper,
+there's a way to end that too."
+
+"How! you wouldn't have me fight her?" said William Hinkley, with an
+effort to smile.
+
+"Why, we may call it fighting," said the advocate for such wholesale
+pugnacity, "since it calls for quite as much courage sometimes to face
+one woman as it does to face three men. But what I mean that you should
+do with her is to up and at her. Put the downright question like a man
+'will you?' or 'won't you?' and no more beating about the bush. If she
+says 'no!' there's no more to be said, and if I was you after that, I'd
+let Stevens have her or the d--l himself, since I'm of the notion that
+no woman is fit for me if she thinks me not fit for her. Such a woman
+can't be worth having, and after that I wouldn't take her as a gracious
+gift were she to be made twice as beautiful. The track's before you,
+William Hinkley. Bring the stranger to the hug, and Margaret Cooper too,
+if she'll let you. But, at all events, get over the grunting and the
+growling, the sulky looks, and the sour moods. They don't become a man
+who's got a man's heart, and the sinews of a man."
+
+William Hinkley leaned against the fireplace with his head resting upon
+his hand. The other approached him.
+
+"I don't mean to say anything, Bill, or even to look anything, that'll
+do you hurt. I'm for bringing your trouble to a short cut. I've told
+you what I think right and reasonable, and for no other man in Kentucky
+would I have taken the pains to think out this matter as I have done.
+But you or I must lick Stevens."
+
+"You forget, Ned. Your eagerness carries you astray. Would you beat a
+man who offers no resistance?"
+
+"Surely not."
+
+"Stevens is a non-combatant. If you were to slap John Cross on one cheek
+he'd turn you the other. He'd never strike you back."
+
+"John Cross and Stevens are two persons. I tell you the stranger WILL
+fight. I'm sure of it. I've seen it in his looks and actions."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I do; I'm sure of it. But you must recollect besides, that John
+Cross is a preacher, already sworn in, as I may say. Stevens is only a
+beginner. Besides, John Cross is an old man; Stevens, a young one. John
+Cross don't care a straw about all the pretty girls in the country. He
+works in the business of souls, not beauties, and it's very clear that
+Stevens not only loves a pretty girl, but that he's over head and heels
+in love with your Margaret--"
+
+"Say no more. If he will fight, Ned Hinkley, he shall fight!"
+
+"Bravo, Bill--that's all that I was arguing for--that's all that I want.
+But you must make at Margaret Cooper also."
+
+"Ah! Ned, there I confess my fears."
+
+"Why, what are you afraid of?"
+
+"Rejection!"
+
+"Is that worse than this suspense--this anxiety--this looking out from
+morning till night for the sunshine, and this constant apprehension
+of the clouds--this knowing not what to be about--this sulking--this
+sadding--this growling--this grunting--this muling--this moping--this
+eternal vinegar-face and ditchwater-spirit?"
+
+"I don't know, Ned, but I confess my weakness--my want of courage in
+this respect!"
+
+"Psho! the bark's worse always than the bite. The fear worse than the
+danger! Suspense is the very d--l! Did you ever hear of the Scotch
+parson's charity? He prayed that God might suspend Napoleon over the
+very jaws of hell--but 'Oh, Lord!' said he, 'dinna let him fa' in!' To
+my mind, mortal lips never uttered a more malignant prayer!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+TRAILING THE FOX.
+
+
+
+
+
+This dialogue was broken by a summons to the breakfast-table. We have
+already intimated that while the hateful person of Stevens was an inmate
+of his own house, William Hinkley remained, the better portion of his
+time, at that of his cousin. It was not merely that Stevens was hateful
+to his sight, but such was the devotion of his father and mother to that
+adventurer, that the young man passed with little notice from either,
+or if he incurred their attention at all, it was only to receive their
+rebuke. He had not been able to disguise from them his dislike to
+Stevens. This dislike showed itself in many ways--in coldness, distance,
+silence--a reluctance to accord the necessary civilities, and in very
+unequivocal glances of hostility from the eyes of the jealous young
+villager.
+
+Such offences against good-breeding were considered by them as so many
+offences against God himself, shown to one who was about to profess
+his ministry; and being prepared to see in Brother Stevens an object of
+worth and veneration only, they lacked necessarily all that keenness
+of discrimination which might have helped somewhat to qualify the
+improprieties of which they believed their son to be guilty. Of his
+causes of jealousy they had no suspicion, and they shared none of his
+antipathies. He was subject to the daily lecture from the old man, and
+the nightly exhortation and expostulation of the old woman. The latter
+did her spiriting gently. The former roared and thundered. The mother
+implored and kissed--the father denounced and threatened. The one,
+amidst the faults of her you which she reproved, could see his virtues;
+she could also see that he was suffering--she knew not why--as well as
+sinning; the other could only see an insolent, disobedient boy who was
+taking airs upon himself, flying in the face of his parents, and doomed
+to perish like the sons of Eli, unless by proving himself a better
+manager than Eli, he addressed himself in time to the breaking in of
+the unruly spirit whose offences promised to be so heinous. It was
+not merely from the hateful sight of his rival, or the monotonous
+expostulation of his mother, that the poor youth fled; it was sometimes
+to escape the heavily chastening hand of his bigoted father.
+
+These things worked keenly and constantly in the mind of William
+Hinkley. They acquired additional powers of ferment from the coldness of
+Margaret Cooper, and from the goadings of his cousin. Naturally one of
+the gentlest of creatures, the young man was not deficient in spirit.
+What seemed to his more rude and elastic relative a token of imbecility,
+was nothing more than the softening influence of his reflective and
+mental over his physical powers. These, under the excitement of his
+blood were necessarily made subject to his animal impulses, and when he
+left the house that morning, with his Blackstone under his arm, on
+his way to the peaceful cottage of old Calvert, where he pursued his
+studies, his mind was in a perfect state of chaos. Of the chapter which
+he had striven to compass the previous night, in which the rights of
+persons are discussed with the usual clearness of style, but the usual
+one-sidedness of judgment of that smooth old monarchist, William Hinkley
+scarcely remembered a solitary syllable. He had read only with his eyes.
+His mind had kept no pace with his proceedings, and though he strove as
+he went along to recall the heads of topics, the points and principles
+of what he had been reading, his efforts at reflection, by insensible
+but sudden transitions, invariably concluded with some image of strife
+and commotion, in which he was one of the parties and Alfred Stevens
+another; the beautiful, proud face of Margaret Cooper being always
+unaccountably present, and seeming to countenance, with its scornful
+smiles, the spirit of strife which operated upon the combatants.
+
+This mood had the most decided effect upon his appearance; and the
+good old man, Calvert, whose attention had been already drawn to the
+condition of distress and suffering which he manifested, was now more
+than ever struck with the seemingly sudden increase of this expression
+upon his face. It was Saturday--the saturnalia of schoolboys--and a day
+of rest to the venerable teacher. He was seated before his door, under
+the shadows of his paternal oak, once more forgetting the baffled aims
+and profitless toils of his own youthful ambition, in the fascinating
+pages of that historical romancer the stout Abbe Vertot. But a glance at
+the youth soon withdrew his mind from this contemplation, and the sombre
+pages of the present opened upon his eye, and the doubtful ones of the
+future became, on the instant, those which he most desired to peruse.
+
+The study of the young is always a study of the past with the old. They
+seem, in such a contemplation, to live over the records of memory. They
+feel as one just returning from a long and weary journey, who encounters
+another, freshly starting to traverse the same weary but inviting track.
+Something in the character of William Hinkley, which seemed to resemble
+his own, made this feeling yet more active in the mind of Mr. Calvert;
+and his earnest desire was to help the youth forward on the path which,
+he soon perceived, it was destined that the other should finally take.
+He was not satisfied with the indecision of character which the youth
+displayed. But how could he blame it harshly? It was in this very
+respect that his own character had failed, and though he felt that all
+his counsels were to be addressed to this point, yet he knew not where;
+or in what manner, to begin. The volume of Blackstone which the youth
+carried suggested to him a course, however. He bade the young man bring
+out a chair, and taking the book in his hand, he proceeded to examine
+him upon parts of the volume which he professed to have been reading.
+
+This examination, as it had the effect of compelling the mind of the
+student to contract itself to a single subject of thought, necessarily
+had the further effect of clearing it somewhat from the chaos of clouds
+which had been brooding over it, obscuring the light, and defeating
+the warmth of the intellectual sun behind them; and if the examination
+proved the youth to have been very little of a student, or one who had
+been reading with a vacant mind, it also proved that the original powers
+of his intellect were vigorous and various--that he had an analytical
+capacity of considerable compass; was bold in opinion, ingenious in
+solution, and with a tendency to metaphysical speculation, which,
+modified by the active wants and duties of a large city-practice, would
+have made him a subtle lawyer, and a very logical debater. But the blush
+kept heightening on the youth's cheeks as the examination proceeded. He
+had answered, but he felt all the while how much his answer had sprung
+from his own conjectures and how little from his authorities. The
+examination convinced him that the book had been so much waste-paper
+under his thumb. When it was ended the old man closed the volume, laid
+it on the sward beside him, and looked, with a mingled expression of
+interest and commiseration, on his face. William Hinkley noted this
+expression, and spoke, with a degree of mortification in look and
+accent, which he did not attempt to hide:--
+
+"I am afraid, sir, you will make nothing of me. I can make nothing of
+myself. I am almost inclined to give up in despair. I will be nothing--I
+can be nothing. I feared as much from the beginning, sir. You only waste
+your time on me."
+
+"You speak too fast, William--you let your blood mingle too much with
+your thoughts. Let me ask you one question. How long will you be content
+to live as you do now--seeking nothing--performing nothing--being
+nothing?"
+
+The youth was silent.
+
+"I, you see, am nothing," continued the old man--"nay, do not interrupt
+me. You will tell me, as you have already told me, that I am much, and
+have done much, here in Charlemont. But, for all that I am, and have
+done here, I need not have gone beyond my accidence. My time has been
+wasted; my labors, considered as means to ends, were unnecessary; I have
+toiled without the expected profits of toil; I have drawn water in a
+sieve. It is not pleasant for me to recall these things, much less to
+speak of them; but it is for your good that I told you my story. You
+have, as I had, certain defects of character--not the same exactly, but
+of the same family complexion. To be something, you must be resolved.
+You must devote yourself, heart and mind, with all your soul and with
+all your strength, to the business you have undertaken. Shut your
+windows against the sunshine, your ears to the song of birds, your heart
+against the fascinations of beauty; and if you never think of the last
+until you are thirty, you will be then a better judge of beauty, a truer
+lover, a better husband, a more certain candidate for happiness. Let
+me assure you that, of the hundred men that take wives before they are
+thirty, there is scarcely one who, in his secret soul, does not repent
+it--scarcely one who does not look back with yearning to the days when
+he was free."
+
+There was a pause. The young man became very much agitated. He rose from
+his chair, walked apart for a few moments, and then, returning, resumed
+his seat by the old man.
+
+"I believe you are right, sir--nay, I know you are; but I can not be
+at once--I can not promise--to be all that you wish. If Margaret Cooper
+would consent, I would marry her to-morrow."
+
+The old man shook his head, but remained silent. The young one
+proceeded:--
+
+"One thing I will say, however: I will take to my studies after this
+week, whatever befalls, with the hearty resolution which you recommend.
+I will try to shut out the sunshine and the song. I will endeavor to
+devote soul and strength, and heart and mind, to the task before me. I
+KNOW that I can master these studies--I think I can"--he continued,
+more modestly, modifying the positive assertion--"and I know that it is
+equally my interest and duty to do so. I thank you sir, very much for
+what you have told me. Believe me, it has not fallen upon heedless or
+disrespectful ears."
+
+The old man pressed his hand.
+
+"I know THAT, my son, and I rejoice to think that, having given me these
+assurances, you will strive hard to make them good."
+
+"I will, sir!" replied William, taking up his cap to depart.
+
+"But whither are you going now?"
+
+The youth blushed as he replied frankly:--
+
+"To the widow Cooper's. I'm going to see Margaret."
+
+"Well, well!" said the old man, as the youth disappeared, "if it must be
+done, the sooner it's over the better. But there's another moth to the
+flame. Fortunately, he will be singed only; but she!--what is left
+for her--so proud, yet so confiding--so confident of strength, yet so
+artless? But it is useless to look beyond, and very dismal."
+
+And the speaker once more took up Vertot, and was soon lost amid the
+glories of the knights of St. John. His studies were interrupted by the
+sudden and boisterous salutation of Ned Hinkley:--
+
+"Well, gran'pa, hard at the big book as usual? No end to the fun of
+fighting, eh? I confess, if ever I get to love reading, it'll be in some
+such book as that. But reading's not natural to me, though you made me
+do enough of it while you had me. Bill was the boy for the books, and
+I for the hooks. By-the-way, talking of hooks, how did those trout eat?
+Fine, eh? I haven't seen you since the day of our ducking."
+
+"No, Ned, and I've been looking for you. Where have you been?"
+
+"Working, working! Everything's been going wrong. Lines snapped,
+fiddle-strings cracked, hooks missing, gun rusty, and Bill Hinkley so
+sulky, that his frown made a shadow on the wall as large and ugly as a
+buffalo's. But where is he? I came to find him here."
+
+While he was speaking, the lively youth squatted down, and deliberately
+took his seat on the favorite volume which Mr. Calvert had laid upon the
+sward at his approach.
+
+"Take the chair, Ned," said the old man, with a smaller degree of
+kindness in his tone than was habitual with him. "Take the chair.
+Books are sacred things--to be worshipped and studied, not employed as
+footstools."
+
+"Why, what's the hurt, gran'pa?" demanded the young man, though he rose
+and did as he was bidden. "If 'twas a fiddle, now, there would be some
+danger of a crash, but a big book like that seems naturally made to sit
+upon."
+
+The old man answered him mildly:--
+
+"I have learned to venerate books, Ned, and can no more bear to see
+them abused than I could bear to be abused myself. It seems to me like
+treating their writers and their subjects with scorn. If you were to
+contemplate the venerable heads of the old knights with my eyes and
+feelings, you would see why I wish to guard them from everything like
+disrespect."
+
+"Well, I beg their pardon--a thousand pardons! I meant no offence,
+gran'pa--and can't help thinking that it's all a notion of yours, your
+reverencing such old Turks and Spaniards that have been dead a thousand
+years. They were very good people, no doubt, but I'm thinking they've
+served their turn; and I see no more harm in squatting upon their
+histories than in walking over their graves, which, if I were in their
+country of Jericho--that was where they lived, gran'pa, wa'n't it?--I
+should be very apt to do without asking leave, I tell you."
+
+Ned Hinkley purposely perverted his geography and history. There was a
+spice of mischief in his composition, and he grinned good-naturedly as
+he watched the increasing gravity upon the old man's face.
+
+"Come, come, gran'pa, don't be angry. You know my fun is a sort of
+fizz--there's nothing but a flash--nothing to hurt--no shotting. But
+where's Bill Hinkley, gran'pa?"
+
+"Gone to the widow Cooper's, to see Margaret."
+
+"Ah! well, I'm glad he's made a beginning. But I'd much rather he'd have
+seen the other first."
+
+"What other do you mean?" demanded the old man; but the speaker, though
+sufficiently random and reckless in what he said, saw the impolicy
+of allowing the purpose of his cousin in regard to Stevens to be
+understood. He contrived to throw the inquirer off.
+
+"Gran'pa, do you know there's something in this fellow Stevens that
+don't altogether please me? I'm not satisfied with him."
+
+"Ah, indeed! what do you see to find fault with?"
+
+"Well, you see, he comes here pretending to study. Now, in the first
+place, why should he come here to study? why didn't he stay at home with
+his friends and parents?"
+
+"Perhaps he had neither. Perhaps he had no home. You might as well ask
+me why I came here, and settled down, where I was not born--where I had
+neither friends nor parents."
+
+"Oh, no, but you told us why," said the other. "You gave us a reason for
+what you did."
+
+"And why may not the stranger give a reason too?"
+
+"He don't, though."
+
+"Perhaps he will when you get intimate with him. I see nothing in
+this to be dissatisfied with. I had not thought you so suspicious, Ned
+Hinkley--so little charitable."
+
+"Charity begins at home, gran'pa. But there's more in this matter.
+This man comes here to study to be a parson. How does he study? Can you
+guess?"
+
+"I really can not."
+
+"By dressing spruce as a buck--curling his hair backward over his ears
+something like a girl's, and going out, morning, noon, and night, to see
+Margaret Cooper."
+
+"As there is no good reason to suppose that a student of divinity
+is entirely without the affections of humanity, I still see nothing
+inconsistent with his profession in this conduct."
+
+"But how can he study?"
+
+"Ah! it may be inconsistent with his studies though not with his
+profession. It is human without being altogether proper. You see that
+your cousin neglects his studies in the same manner. I presume that the
+stranger also loves Miss Cooper."
+
+"But he has no such right as Bill Hinkley."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why not? Why, Bill is a native here, has been loving her for the last
+year or more. His right certainly ought to be much greater than that of
+a man whom nobody knows--who may be the man in the moon for anything we
+know to the contrary--just dropped in upon us, nobody knows how, to do
+nobody knows what."
+
+"All that may be very true, Ned, and yet his right to seek Miss Cooper
+may be just as good as that of yourself or mine. You forget that it all
+depends upon the young lady herself whether either of them is to have a
+right at all in her concerns."
+
+"Well, that's a subject we needn't dispute about, gran'pa, when there's
+other things. Now, isn't it strange that this stranger should ride off
+once a week with his valise on his saddle, just as if he was starting on
+a journey--should be gone half a day--then come back with his nag all
+in a foam, and after that you should see him in some new cravat, or
+waistcoat, or pantaloons, just as if he had gone home and got a change?"
+
+"And does he do that?" inquired Mr. Calvert, with some show of
+curiosity.
+
+"That he does, and he always takes the same direction; and it seems--so
+Aunt Sarah herself says, though she thinks him a small sort of divinity
+on earth--that the day before, he's busy writing letters, and, according
+to her account, pretty long letters too. Well, nobody sees that he ever
+gets any letters in return. He never asks at the post-office, so Jacob
+Zandts himself tells me, and that's strange enough, too, if so be he has
+any friends or relations anywhere else."
+
+Mr. Calvert listened with interest to these and other particulars which
+his young companion had gathered respecting the habits of the stranger;
+and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that there was
+something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps mysterious.
+Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the prying and
+suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this effect in the
+reply which finally dismissed the subject. Ned Hinkley was silenced not
+satisfied.
+
+"There's something wrong about it," he muttered to himself on leaving
+the old man, "and, by dickens! I'll get to the bottom of it, or there's
+no taste in Salt-river. The fellow's a rascal; I feel it if I don't know
+it, and if Bill Hinkley don't pay him off, I must. One or t'other must
+do it, that's certain."
+
+With these reflections, which seemed to him to be no less moral than
+social, the young man took his way back to the village, laboring with
+all the incoherence of unaccustomed thought, to strike out some process
+by which to find a solution for those mysteries which were supposed to
+characterize the conduct of the stranger. He had just turned out of
+the gorge leading from Calvert's house into the settlement, when he
+encountered the person to whom his meditations were given, on horseback;
+and going at a moderate gallop along the high-road to the country.
+Stevens bowed to him and drew up for speech as he drew nigh. At first
+Ned Hinkley appeared disposed to avoid him, but moved by a sudden
+notion, he stopped and suffered himself to speak with something more of
+civility than he had hitherto shown to the same suspected personage.
+
+"Why, you're not going to travel, Parson Stevens," said he--"you're not
+going to leave us, are you?"
+
+"No, sir--I only wish to give myself and horse a stretch of a few miles
+for the sake of health. Too much stable, they say, makes a saucy nag."
+
+"So it does, and I may say, a saucy man too. But seeing you with your
+valise, I thought you were off for good."
+
+Stevens said something about his being so accustomed to ride with the
+valise that he carried it without thinking.
+
+"I scarcely knew I had it on!"
+
+"That's a lie all round," said Ned Hinkley to himself as the other rode
+off. "Now, if I was mounted, I'd ride after him and see where he goes
+and what he's after. What's to hinder? It's but a step to the stable,
+and but five minutes to the saddle. Dang it, but I'll take trail this
+time if I never did before."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE DOOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+With this determination our suspicious youth made rapid progress in
+getting out his horse. A few minutes saw him mounted, and putting
+some of his resolution into his heels, he sent the animal forward at a
+killing start, under the keen infliction of the spur. He had marked with
+his eye the general course which Stevens had taken up the hills, and
+having a nag of equal speed and bottom, did not scruple, in the great
+desire which he felt, to ascertain the secret of the stranger, to make
+him display the qualities of both from the very jump. Stevens had been
+riding with a free rein, but in consequence of these energetic measures
+on the part of Hinkley, the latter soon succeeded in overhauling him.
+Still he had already gone a space of five miles, and this, too, in
+one direction. He looked back when he found himself pursued, and his
+countenance very clearly expressed the chagrin which he felt. This
+he strove, but with very indifferent success, to hide from the keen
+searching eyes of his pursuer. He drew up to wait his coming, and there
+was a dash of bitterness in his tones as he expressed his "gratification
+at finding a companion where he least expected one."
+
+"And perhaps, parson, when you didn't altogether wish for one," was the
+reply of the reckless fellow. "The truth is, I know I'm not the sort of
+company that a wise, sensible, learned, and pious young gentleman would
+like to keep, out the truth is what you said about taking a stretch, man
+and beast, seemed to me to be just about as wise a thing for me and
+my beast also. We've been lying by so long that I was getting a little
+stiff in my joints, and Flipflap, my nag here, was getting stiff in his
+neck, as they say was the case with the Jews in old times, so I took
+your idea and put after you, thinking that you'd agree with me that bad
+company's far better than none."
+
+There was a mixture of simplicity and archness in the manner of the
+speaker that put Stevens somewhat at fault; but he saw that it wouldn't
+do to show the dudgeon which he really felt; and smoothing his quills
+with as little obvious effort as possible, he expressed his pleasure at
+the coming of his companion. While doing so, he wheeled his horse about,
+and signified a determination to return.
+
+"What! so soon? Why, Lord bless you, Flipflap has scarcely got in motion
+yet. If such a stir will do for your nag 'twont do for him."
+
+But Stevens doggedly kept his horse's head along the back track, though
+the animal himself exhibited no small restlessness and a disposition to
+go forward.
+
+"Well, really, Parson Stevens, I take it as unkind that you turn back
+almost the very moment I join you. I seem to have scared ride out of you
+if not out of your creature; but do as you please. I'll ride on, now I'm
+out. I don't want to force myself on any man for company."
+
+Stevens disclaimed any feeling of this sort, but declared he had ridden
+quite as far as he intended; and while he hesitated, Hinkley cut the
+matter short by putting spurs to his steed, and going out of sight in a
+moment.
+
+"What can the cur mean?" demanded Stevens of himself, the moment after
+they had separated. "Can he have any suspicions? Ha! I must be watchful!
+At all events, there's no going forward to-day. I must put it off for
+next week; and meanwhile have all my eyes about me. The fellow seems to
+have as much cunning as simplicity. He is disposed too, to be insolent
+I marked his manner at the lake, as well as that of his bull-headed
+cousin; but that sousing put anger out of me, and then, again, 'twill
+scarcely do in these good days for such holy men as myself to take up
+cudgels. I must bear it for awhile as quietly as possible. It will not
+be long. She at least is suspicionless. Never did creature so
+happily delude herself. Yet what a judgment in some things! What keen
+discrimination! What a wild, governless imagination! She would be a
+prize, if it were only to exhibit. How she would startle the dull,
+insipid, tea-table simperers on our Helicon--nay, with what scorn she
+would traverse the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a
+will in spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could
+be no prescribing to her the time when she should roar--no teaching her
+to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue, would
+speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when Mrs.
+Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems--her new versions
+of the Psalms and Scriptures--her blank verse elegiacs--oh! how
+blank!--beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'--or 'The evening veil
+hung low,' or, 'It slept,'--or after some other equally threatening form
+and fashion--I can fancy how the bright eye of Margaret would gleam with
+scorn; and while the Pollies and Dollies, the Patties and Jennies, the
+Corydons and Jemmy Jesamies, all round were throwing up hands and eyes
+in a sort of rapture, how she would look, with what equal surprise and
+contempt, doubting her own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the
+strange sycophancy which induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay,
+with a natural and patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to
+her about poetry, with that assured smile of self-excellence which such
+a venerable authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the
+dame and exclaim--'What! do you call that poetry?' What a concussion
+would follow. How the simperers would sheer off; the tea that night
+might as well be made of aqua-fortis. Ha! ha! I can fancy the scene
+before me. Nothing could be more rich. I must give her a glimpse of such
+a scene. It will be a very good mode of operation. Her pride and vanity
+will do the rest. I have only to intimate the future sway--the exclusive
+sovereignty which would follow--the overthrow of the ancient idols, and
+the setting up of a true divinity in herself. But shall it be so, Master
+Stevens? Verily, that will be seen hereafter. Enough, if the delusion
+takes. If I can delude the woman through the muse, I am satisfied. The
+muse after that may dispose of the woman as she pleases."
+
+Such was a portion of the soliloquy of the libertine as he rode slowly
+back to Charlemont. His further musings we need not pursue at present.
+It is enough to say that they were of the same family character. He
+returned to his room as soon as he reached his lodging-house, and
+drawing from his pocket a bundle of letters which he had intended
+putting in the postoffice at Ellisland, he carefully locked them up in
+his portable writing-desk which he kept at the bottom of his valise.
+When the devout Mrs. Hinkley tapped at his door to summon him to dinner,
+the meritorious young man was to be seen, seated at his table, with the
+massive Bible of the family conspicuously open before him. Good young
+man! never did he invoke a blessing on the meats with more holy unction
+than on that very day.
+
+Meanwhile, let us resume our progress with William Hinkley, and inquire
+in what manner his wooing sped with the woman whom he so unwisely loved.
+We have seen him leaving the cottage of Mr. Calvert with the avowed
+purpose of seeking a final answer. A purpose from which the old man did
+not seek to dissuade him, though he readily conceived its fruitlessness.
+It was with no composed spirit that the young rustic felt himself
+approaching the house of Mrs. Cooper. More than once he hesitated
+and even halted. But a feeling of shame, and the efforts of returning
+manliness re-resolved him, and he hurried with an unwonted rapidity of
+movement toward the dwelling, as if he distrusted his own power, unless
+he did so, to conclude the labor he had begun.
+
+He gathered some courage when he found that Margaret was from home. She
+had gone on her usual rambles. Mrs. Cooper pointed out the course which
+she had taken, and the young man set off in pursuit. The walks of the
+maiden were of course well known to a lover so devoted. He had sought
+and followed her a thousand times, and the general direction which she
+had gone, once known, his progress was as direct as his discoveries were
+certain. The heart of the youth, dilated with better hopes as he felt
+himself traversing the old familiar paths. It seemed to him that the
+fates could scarcely be adverse in a region which had always been so
+friendly. Often had he escorted her along this very route, when their
+spirits better harmonized--when, more of the girl struggling into
+womanhood, the mind of Margaret Cooper, ignorant of its own resources
+and unconscious of its maturer desires, was more gentle, and could
+rejoice in that companionship for which she now betrayed so little
+desire. The sheltered paths and well-known trees, even the little
+clumps of shrubbery that filled up the intervals, were too pleasant and
+familiar to his eye not to seem favorable to his progress, and with a
+hope that had no foundation, save in the warm and descriptive colors of
+a young heart's fancy, William Hinkley pursued the route which led him
+to one of the most lovely and love-haunted glades in all Kentucky.
+
+So sweet a hush never hallowed the sabbath rest of any forest. The very
+murmur of a drowsy zephyr among the leaves was of slumberous tendency;
+and silence prevailed, with the least possible exertion of her
+authority, over the long narrow dell through which the maiden had gone
+wandering. At the foot of a long slope, to which his eye was conducted
+by a natural and lovely vista, the youth beheld the object of his
+search, sitting, motionless, with her back toward him. The reach of
+light was bounded by her figure which was seated on the decaying trunk
+of a fallen tree. She was deeply wrapped in thought, for she did not
+observe his approach, and when his voice reached her ears, and she
+started and looked round, her eyes were full of tears. These she hastily
+brushed away, and met the young man with a degree of composure which
+well might have put the blush upon his cheek, for the want of it.
+
+"In tears!--weeping, Margaret?" was the first address of the lover who
+necessarily felt shocked at what he saw.
+
+"They were secret tears, sir--not meant for other eyes," was the
+reproachful reply.
+
+"Ah, Margaret! but why should you have secret tears, when you might have
+sympathy--why should you have tears at all? You have no sorrows."
+
+"Sympathy!" was the exclamation of the maiden, while a scornful smile
+gleamed from her eyes; "whose sympathy, I pray?"
+
+The young man hesitated to answer. The expression of her eye discouraged
+him. He dreaded lest, in offering his sympathies, he should extort from
+her lips a more direct intimation of that scorn which he feared. He
+chose a middle course.
+
+"But that you should have sorrows, Margaret, seems very strange to me.
+You are young and hearty; endowed beyond most of your sex, and with
+a beauty which can not be too much admired. Your mother is hearty and
+happy, and for years you have had no loss of relations to deplore. I see
+not why you should have sorrows."
+
+"It is very likely, William Hinkley, that you do not see. The ordinary
+sorrows of mankind arise from the loss of wives and cattle, children and
+property. There are sorrows of another kind; sorrows of the soul; the
+consciousness of denial; of strife--strife to be continued--strife
+without victory--baffled hopes--defeated aims and energies. These are
+sorrows which are not often computed in the general account. It is
+highly probable that none of them afflict you. You have your parents,
+and very good people they are. You yourself are no doubt a very good
+young man--so everybody says--and you have health and strength.
+Besides, you have property, much more, I am told, than falls to the lot
+ordinarily of young people in this country. These are reasons why you
+should not feel any sorrow; but were all these mine and a great deal
+more, I'm afraid it would not make me any more contented. You, perhaps,
+will not understand this, William Hinkley, but I assure you that such,
+nevertheless is my perfect conviction."
+
+"Yes, I can, and do understand it, Margaret," said the young man, with
+flushed cheek and a very tremulous voice, as he listened to language
+which, though not intended to be contemptuous, was yet distinctly
+colored by that scornful estimate which the maiden had long since made
+of the young man's abilities. In this respect she had done injustice to
+his mind, which had been kept in subjection and deprived of its ordinary
+strength and courage, by the enfeebling fondness of his heart.
+
+"Yes, Margaret," he continued, "I can and do understand it, and I too
+have my sorrows of this very sort. Do not smile, Margaret, but hear me
+patiently, and believe, that, whatever may be the error which I commit,
+I have no purpose to offend you in what I say or do. Perhaps, we are
+both of us quite too young to speak of the sorrows which arise from
+defeated hopes, or baffled energies, or denial of our rights and claims.
+The yearnings and apprehensions which we are apt to feel of this sort
+are not to be counted as sorrows, or confounded with them. I had a
+conversation on this very subject only a few days ago, with old Mr.
+Calvert, and this was his very opinion."
+
+The frankness with which William Hinkley declared the source of his
+opinions, though creditable to his sincerity, was scarcely politic--it
+served to confirm Margaret Cooper in the humble estimate which she had
+formed of the speaker.
+
+"Mr. Calvert," said she, "is a very sensible old man, but neither he
+nor you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall, or what
+shall not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William Hinkley, that
+I have my cares--at least I fancy that I have them--and though I am
+very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that they can do me any
+good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline them."
+
+"Oh, do not say so, Margaret--dear Margaret--it is to proffer them that
+I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved you: you
+can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary to my happiness!
+Do not repulse me--do not speak quickly. What I am, and what I have, is
+yours. We have grown up together; I have known no other hope, no other
+love, but that for you. Look not upon me with that scornful glance--hear
+me--I implore you--on my knee, dear Margaret. I implore you as for
+life--for something more dear than life--that which will make life
+precious--which may make it valuable. Be mine, dear Margaret--"
+
+"Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!" was the stern,
+almost deliberate answer of the maiden.
+
+"Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret--do not
+look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that the dearest
+hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips."
+
+"And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold in
+yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?"
+
+"The meanest creature has it."
+
+"Aye, but only of creatures like itself."
+
+"Margaret!" exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.
+
+"Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates to
+a creature like itself--endowed with its own nature and fed with like
+sympathies. But you--what should make you hope of me? Have I not long
+avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you the pain of this
+moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps--you pursue me--you
+annoy me with attentions which I dare not receive for fear of
+encouraging you, and in spite of all this, which everybody in the
+village must have seen but yourself, you still press yourself upon me."
+
+"Margaret Cooper, be not so proud!"
+
+"I am what I am! I know that I am proud--vain, perhaps, and having
+little to justify either pride or vanity; but to you, William Hinkley,
+as an act of justice, I must speak what I feel--what is the truth. I am
+sorry, from my very soul, that you love me, for I can have no feeling
+for you in return. I do not dislike you, but you have so oppressed me
+that I would prefer not to see you. We have no feelings in common. You
+can give me no sympathies. My soul, my heart, my hope--every desire of
+my mind, every impulse of my heart, leads me away from you--from
+all that you can give--from all that you can relish. To you it would
+suffice, if all your life could be spent here in Charlemont--to me it
+would be death to think that any such doom hung over me. From this one
+sentiment judge of the rest, and know, for good and all, that I can
+never feel for you other than I feel now. I can not love you, nor can
+the knowledge that you love me, give me any but a feeling of pain and
+mortification."
+
+William Hinkley had risen to his feet. His form had put on an unusual
+erectness. His eye had gradually become composed; and now it wore an
+expression of firmness almost amounting to defiance. He heard her with
+only an occasional quiver of the muscles about his mouth. The flush of
+shame and pride was still red upon his cheek When she had finished,
+he spoke to her in tones of more dignity than had hitherto marked his
+speech.
+
+"Margaret Cooper, you have at least chosen the plainest language to
+declare a cruel truth."
+
+The cheek of the girl became suddenly flushed.
+
+"Do you suppose," she said, "that I found pleasure in giving you pain?
+No! William Hinkley, I am sorry for you! But this truth, which you call
+cruel, was shown to you repeatedly before. Any man but yourself would
+have seen it, and saved me the pain of its frequent repetition. You
+alone refused to understand, until it was rendered cruel. It was only by
+the plainest language that you could be made to believe a truth that you
+either would not or could not otherwise be persuaded to hear. If cold
+looks, reserved answers, and a determined rejection of all familiarity
+could have availed, you would never have heard from my lips a solitary
+word which could have brought you mortification. You would have seen my
+feelings in my conduct, and would have spared your own that pain, which
+I religiously strove to save them."
+
+"I have, indeed, been blind and deaf," said the young man; "but you have
+opened my eyes and ears, Margaret, so that I am fully cured of these
+infirmities. If your purpose, in this plain mode of speech, be such as
+you have declared it, then I must thank you; though it is very much as
+one would thank the dagger that puts him out of his pain by putting him
+out of life."
+
+There was so much of subdued feeling in this address--the more intense
+in its effect, from the obvious restraint put upon it, that the heart of
+the maiden was touched. The dignified bearing of the young man, also--so
+different from that which marked his deportment hitherto--was not
+without its effect.
+
+"I assure you, William Hinkley, that such alone was my motive for what
+else would seem a most wanton harshness. I would not be harsh to you or
+to anybody; and with my firm rejection of your proffer, I give you my
+regrets that you ever made it. It gives me no pleasure that you should
+make it. If I am vain, my vanity is not flattered or quickened by a
+tribute which I can not accept; and if you never had my sympathy before,
+William Hinkley, I freely give it now. Once more I tell you, I am sorry,
+from the bottom of my heart, that you ever felt for me a passion which I
+can not requite, and that you did not stifle it from the beginning; as,
+Heaven knows, my bearing toward you, for a whole year, seemed to me to
+convey sufficient warning."
+
+"It should have done so! I can now very easily understand it, Margaret.
+Indeed, Mr. Calvert and others told me the same thing. But as I have
+said, I was blind and deaf. Once more, I thank you, Margaret--it is a
+bitter medicine which you have given me, but I trust a wholesome one."
+
+He caught her hand and pressed it in his own. She did not resist or
+withdraw it, and, after the retention of an instant only, he released
+it, and was about to turn away. A big tear was gathering in his eye,
+and he strove to conceal it. Margaret averted her head, and was about to
+move forward in an opposite direction, when the voice of the young man
+arrested her:--
+
+"Stay, but a few moments more, Margaret. Perhaps we shall never meet
+again--certainly not in a conference like this. I may have no other
+opportunity to say that which, in justice to you, should be spoken. Will
+you listen to me, patiently?"
+
+"Speak boldly, William Hinkley. It was the subject of which you spoke
+heretofore which I shrunk from rather than the speaker."
+
+"I know not," said he, "whether the subject of which I propose to speak
+now will be any more agreeable than that of which we have spoken. At
+all events, my purpose is your good, and I shall speak unreservedly. You
+have refused the prayer of one heart, Margaret, which, if unworthy of
+yours, was yet honestly and fervently devoted to it. Let me warn you to
+look well when you do choose, lest you fall into the snares of one,
+who with more talent may be less devoted, and with more claims to
+admiration, may be far less honest in his purpose."
+
+"What mean you, sir?" she demanded hurriedly, with an increasing glow
+upon her face.
+
+"This stranger--this man, Stevens!"
+
+"What of him? What do you know of the stranger that you should give me
+this warning?"
+
+"What does anybody know of him? Whence does he come--whither would he
+go? What brings him here to this lonely village?--"
+
+A proud smile which curled the lips of Margaret Cooper arrested the
+speech of the youth. It seemed to say, very distinctly, that she, at
+least, could very well conjecture what brought the stranger so far from
+the travelled haunts.
+
+"Ha! do you then know, Margaret?"
+
+"And if I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations against
+the man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey the worst
+imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth from its proper
+balance. Go, sir--you have your answer. I need not your counsel. I
+should be sorry to receive it from such a source. Failing in your own
+attempt, you would seek to fill my mind with calumnious impressions
+in order to prejudice the prospects of another. For shame! for shame,
+William Hinkley. I had not thought this of you. But go! go! go, at once,
+lest I learn to loathe as well as despise you. I thought you simple and
+foolish, but honorable and generous. I was mistaken even in this. Go,
+sir, your slanderous insinuations have no effect upon me, and as
+for Alfred Stevens, you are as far below him in nobleness and honest
+purpose, as you are in every quality of taste and intellect."
+
+Her face was the very breathing image of idealized scorn and beauty as
+she uttered these stinging words. Her nostrils were dilated, her eyes
+flashing fire, her lips slightly protruded and parted, her hand waving
+him off. The young man gazed upon her with wild looks equally expressive
+of anger and agony. His form fairly writhed beneath his emotions; but he
+found strength enough gaspingly to exclaim:--
+
+"And even this I forgive you, Margaret."
+
+"Go! go!" she answered; "you know not what you say, or what you are. Go!
+go!"
+
+And turning away, she moved slowly up the long avenue before her, till,
+by a sudden turn of the path she was hidden from the sight. Then, when
+his eye could no longer follow her form, the agony of his soul burst
+forth in a single groan, and staggering, he fell forward upon the sward,
+hopeless, reckless, in a wretched condition of self-abandonment and
+despair.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+BLOWS--A CRISIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+But this mood lasted not long. Youth, pride, anger, asserted themselves
+before the lapse of many minutes. Darker feelings got possession of his
+mind. He rose to his feet. If love was baffled, was there not revenge?
+Then came the recollection of his cousin's counsel. Should this artful
+stranger triumph in everything? Margaret Cooper had scarcely disguised
+the interest which she felt in him. Nay, had not that exulting glance
+of the eye declared that she, at least, knew what was the purpose
+of Stevens in seeking the secluded village? His own wrongs were
+also present to his mind. This usurper had possessed himself of the
+affections of all he loved--of all of whose love he had till then
+felt himself secure--all but the good old schoolmaster, and the sturdy
+schoolmate and cousin. And how soon might he deprive him even of these?
+That was a new fear! So rapid had been the stranger's progress--so
+adroitly had he insinuated himself into this Eden of the
+wilderness--bringing discontent and suffering in his train--that the
+now thoroughly-miserable youth began to fancy that nothing could be safe
+from his influence. In a short time his garden would all be overrun, and
+his loveliest plants would wither.
+
+Was there no remedy for this? There was! and traversing the solemn
+recesses of that wood, he meditated the various modes by which the
+redress of wrong, and slight and indignity, were to be sought. He
+brooded over images of strife, and dark and savage ideas of power
+rioting over its victim, with entirely new feelings--feelings new at
+least to him. We have not succeeded in doing him justice, nor in our own
+design, if we have failed to show that he was naturally gentle of
+heart, rigidly conscientious, a lover of justice for its own sake, and
+solicitously sensitive on the subject of another's feelings. But the
+sense of suffering will blind the best judgment, and the feeling of
+injury will arouse and irritate the gentlest nature. Besides, William
+Hinkley, though meek and conscientious, had not passed through his
+youth, in the beautiful but wild border country in which he lived,
+without having been informed, and somewhat influenced, by those
+characteristic ideas of the modes and manner in which personal wrongs
+were to be redressed.
+
+Perhaps, had his cousin said nothing to him on this subject, his
+feelings would have had very much the same tendency and general
+direction which they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable
+anxiety to be in conflict with his rival--a deadly conflict--a close,
+hard death-struggle--was now the predominant feeling in his mind;--but
+the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had its pains and
+humiliations, also. Not that he had any fears--any dread of the issue.
+Of the issue he never thought. But it disturbed the long and peaceful
+order of his life. It conflicted with the subdued tastes of the student.
+It was at war with that gentle calm of atmosphere, which letters diffuse
+around the bower of the muse.
+
+In the conflict of his thoughts and feelings, the judgment of the youth
+was impaired. He forgot his prudence. In fact, he knew not what he did.
+He entered the dwelling of his father, and passed into the dining-room,
+at that solemn moment when the grace before meat was yet in course of
+utterance by our worthy Brother Stevens. Hitherto, old Mr. Hinkley had
+religiously exacted that, whenever any of the household failed to be
+present in season, this ceremony should never be disturbed. They were
+required, hat in hand, to remain at the entrance, until the benediction
+had been implored; and, only after the audible utterance of the word
+"Amen," to approach the cloth.
+
+We have shown little of old Hinkley. It has not been necessary. The
+reader has seen enough, however, to understand that, in religious
+matters--at least in the forms and externals of religion--he was a rigid
+disciplinarian. Upon grace before and after meat he always insisted. His
+own prayers of this sort might have been unctuous, but they were never
+short; and the meats were very apt to grow cold, while the impatience
+of his hearers grew warm, before he finished. But through respect to the
+profession, he waived his own peculiar privilege in behalf of Brother
+Stevens; and this holy brother was in the middle of his entreaty, when
+William Hinkley appeared at the door. He paused for an instant without
+taking off his hat. Perhaps had his father been engaged in his office,
+William would have forborne, as usual, however long the grace, and have
+patiently waited without, hat off, until it had reached the legitimate
+conclusion. But he had no such veneration for Stevens; and without
+scruple he dashed, rather hastily, into the apartment, and flinging his
+hat upon a chair, strode at once to the table.
+
+The old man did not once raise his eyes until the prayer was over. He
+would not have done so had the house been on fire. But at the close, he
+looked up at his son with a brow of thunder. The cloud was of serious
+and very unusual blackness. He had for some time been dissatisfied with
+his son. He had seen that the youth entertained some aversion for his
+guest. Besides, he had learned from his worthy consort, that, in an
+endeavor of Brother Stevens to bestow good counsel upon the youth, he
+had been repulsed with as little respect as ceremony. There was one
+thing that the stern old man had not seen, and could not see; and that
+was the altered appearance of the lad. As he knew of no reason why he
+should be unhappy, so he failed to perceive in his appearance any of the
+signs of unhappiness. He saw nothing but the violation of his laws, and
+that sort of self-esteem which produces fanaticism, is always the most
+rigid in the enforcement of its own ordinances. Already he regarded the
+youth as in a state of rebellion and for such an offence his feeling was
+very much that of the ancient puritan. No one more insists upon duty,
+than he who has attained authority by flinging off the fetters of
+obedience. Your toughest sinner usually makes the sourest saint.
+
+"And is this the way, William Hinkley, that you show respect to God? Do
+you despise the blessing which Brother Stevens asks upon the food which
+sustains us?"
+
+"I presume, sir, that God has already blessed all the food which he
+bestows upon man. I do not think that any prayer of Brother Stevens can
+render it more blessed."
+
+"Ha! you do not, do you? Please to rise from this table."
+
+"Nay, sir--" began Stevens.
+
+"Rise, sir," continued the old man, laying down knife and fork, and
+confronting the offender with that dogged look of determination which in
+a coarse nature is the sure sign of moral inflexibility.
+
+"Forgive him, sir, this time," said Stevens; "I entreat you to forgive
+him. The young man knows not what he does."
+
+"I will make him know," continued the other.
+
+"Plead not for me, sir," said William Hinkley, glaring upon Stevens
+with something of that expression which in western parlance is called
+wolfish, "I scorn and spurn your interference."
+
+"William, William, my dear son, do not speak so--do not make your father
+angry."
+
+"Will you leave the table, sir, or not?" demanded the father, his words
+being spoken very slowly, through his teeth, and with the effort of one
+who seeks to conceal the growing agitation. The eyes of the mother fell
+upon the youth full of tears and entreaty. His fine countenance betrayed
+the conflicting emotions of his soul. There was grief, and anger,
+despair and defiance; the consciousness of being wrong, and the more
+painful consciousness of suffering wrong. He half started from his
+chair, again resumed it, and gazing upon Stevens with the hate and agony
+which he felt, seemed to be entirely forgetful of the words and presence
+of the father. The old man deliberately rose from the table and left the
+room. The mother now started up in an agony of fear.
+
+"Run, my son--leave the room before your father comes back. Speak to
+him, Brother Stevens, and tell him of the danger."
+
+"Do not call upon him, mother, if you would not have me defy you also.
+If YOUR words will not avail with me, be sure that his can not."
+
+"What mean you, my son? You surely have no cause to be angry with
+Brother Stevens."
+
+"No cause! no cause!--but it matters not! BROTHER Stevens knows that I
+have cause. He has heard my defiance--he knows my scorn and hate, and he
+shall feel them!"
+
+"William, my son, how--"
+
+The steps of the father, approaching through the passageway, diverted
+her mind to a new terror. She knew the vindictive and harsh nature of
+the old man; and apprehensions for her son superseded the feeling of
+anger which his language had provoked.
+
+"Oh, my son, be submissive, or fly. Jump out of the window, and leave
+Brother Stevens and me to pacify him. We will do all we can."
+
+The unlucky allusion to Brother Stevens only increased the young man's
+obstinacy.
+
+"I ask you not, mother. I wish you to do nothing, and to say nothing.
+Here I will remain. I will not fly. It will be for my father and mother
+to say whether they will expel their only son from their home, to make
+room for a stranger."
+
+"It shall not be said that I have been the cause of this," said Stevens,
+rising with dignity from his chair; "I will leave your house, Mrs.
+Hinkley, only regretting that I should be the innocent cause of any
+misunderstanding or discontent among its members. I know not exactly
+what can be the meaning of your son's conduct. I have never offended
+him; but, as my presence does offend him, I will withdraw myself--"
+
+"You shall not!" exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room at this
+moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. "You shall not
+leave the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to behave in the
+manner of this viper, they should all leave it before you should stir
+from the threshold."
+
+The old man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions
+of his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were now
+awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference, if
+not fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always inspired
+her.
+
+"Mr. Hinkley, you won't strike William with that whip--you must not--you
+shall not!" and, speaking thus, she started up and threw herself in the
+old man's way. He put her aside with no measured movement of his arm,
+and approached the side of the table where the young man sat.
+
+"Run, William, run, if you love me!" cried the terrified mother.
+
+"I will not run!" was the answer of the youth, who rose from his seat,
+however, at the same moment and confronted his father.
+
+"Do not strike me, father! I warn you--do not strike me. I may be wrong,
+but I have suffered wrong. I did not mean, and do not mean, to offend
+you. Let that content you, but do not strike me."
+
+The answer was a blow. The whip descended once, and but once, upon the
+shoulders of the young man. His whole frame was in a convulsion.
+His eyes dilated with the anguish of his soul; his features worked
+spasmodically. There was a moment's hesitation. The arm that smote him
+was again uplifted--the cruel and degrading instrument of punishment a
+second time about to descend; when, with the strength of youth, and the
+determination of manhood, the son grasped the arm of the father, and
+without any more than the degree of violence necessary to effect his
+object, he tore the weapon from the uplifted hand.
+
+"I can not strike YOU.'" he exclaimed, addressing the old man. "That
+blow has lost you your son--for ever! The shame and the dishonor shall
+rest on other shoulders. They are better deserved here, and here I place
+them!"
+
+With these words, he smote Stevens over the shoulders, once, twice,
+thrice, before the latter could close with him, or the father interfere
+to arrest the attempt. Stevens sprang upon him, but the more athletic
+countryman flung him off, and still maintained his weapon. The father
+added his efforts to those of Stevens; but he shook himself free from
+both, and, by this time, the mother had contrived to place herself
+between the parties. William Hinkley then flung the whip from the
+window, and moved toward the door. In passing Stevens, he muttered a few
+words:--
+
+"If there is any skin beneath the cloak of the parson, I trust I have
+reached it."
+
+"Enough!" said the other, in the same low tone. "You shall have your
+wish."
+
+The youth looked back once, with tearful eyes, upon his mother; and
+making no other answer but a glance more full of sorrow than anger to
+the furious flood of denunciation which the old man continued to pour
+forth, he proceeded slowly from the apartment and the dwelling.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+CHALLENGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The whole scene passed in very few minutes. No time was given for
+reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his natural or habitual
+impulses. Old Hinkley, except when at prayers, was a man of few words.
+He was much more prompt at deeds than words--a proof of which has
+already been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and made a
+freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been willing to inflict
+upon our readers. Though she heartily disapproved of her son's conduct
+toward Stevens, and regarded it as one of the most unaccountable
+wonders, the offender was still her son. She never once forgot, or
+could forget, that. But the rage of the old man was unappeasable. The
+indignity to his guest, and that guest of a calling so sacred, was past
+all forgiveness, as it was past all his powers of language fitly to
+describe. He swore to pursue the offender with his wrath to the end of
+the world, to cut him off equally from his fortune and forgiveness; and
+when Brother Stevens, endeavoring to maintain the pacific and forgiving
+character which his profession required, uttered some commonplace
+pleading in the youth's behalf, he silenced him by saying that, "were he
+on the bed of death, and were the offender then to present himself,
+the last prayer that he should make to Heaven would be for sufficient
+strength to rise up and complete the punishment which he had then
+begun."
+
+As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable spirit, his
+feelings were quite as hostile, and much more deadly. He was not without
+that conventional courage which makes one, in certain states of society,
+prompt enough to place himself in the fields of the duello. To this
+condition of preparedness it has hitherto been the training of the West
+that every man, at all solicitous of public life, must eventually come.
+As a student of divinity, it was not a necessity with Alfred Stevens.
+Nay, it was essential to the character which he professed that he should
+eschew such a mode of arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject, as
+well with reference to past habits as to future responsibilities. His
+present profession being simply a ruse d'amour (and, as he already began
+to perceive, a harmless one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought,
+and whose intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to
+perceive the serious defects of a character which should attempt so
+impious a fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat indifferent to its
+preservation; and, with the decline of his caution in this respect,
+arose the natural inquiry as to what would be expected of him in his
+former relations to society. Should it ever be known hereafter, at
+a time when he stood before the people as a candidate for some high
+political trust, that he had tamely submitted to the infliction of a
+cowskin, the revelation would be fatal to all his hopes of ambition,
+and conclusive against all his social pretensions. In short, so far as
+society was concerned, it would be his social death.
+
+These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed, their
+force can not well be conceived by the citizen of any community where
+the sense of individual responsibility is less rigid and exacting. They
+naturally outweighed all others in the mind of Alfred Stevens; and,
+though no fire-eater, he not only resolved on fighting with Hinkley,
+but, smarting under the strokes of the cowskin--heavily laid on as they
+had been--his resolution was equally firm that, in the conflict, they
+should not separate until blood was drawn. Of course, there were some
+difficulties to be overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where
+the parties are willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable
+ease. This being the case at present, it followed that both minds were
+busy at the same moment in devising the when, the how, and the where, of
+the encounter.
+
+William Hinkley went from the house of his father to that of his cousin;
+but the latter had not yet returned from that ride which he had taken
+in order to discover the course usually pursued by Stevens. Here he
+sat down to dinner, but the sister of Ned Hinkley observed that he ate
+little, and fancied he was sick. That he should come to dine with his
+cousin was too frequent a matter to occasion question or surprise. This
+lady was older than her brother by some seven years. She was a widow,
+with an only child, a girl. The child was a prattling, smiling,
+good-natured thing, about seven years old, who was never so happy
+as when on Cousin William's knee. Poor William, indeed, was quite a
+favorite at every house in the village except that of Margaret Cooper,
+and, as he sometimes used bitterly to add, his own. On this occasion,
+however, the child was rendered unhappy by the seeming indifference of
+Cousin William. The heart of the young man was too full of grief, and
+his mind of anxiety, to suffer him to bestow the usual caresses upon
+her; and when, putting her down, he passed into the chamber of Ned
+Hinkley, the little thing went off to her mother, to complain of the
+neglect she had undergone.
+
+"Cousin William don't love Susan any more, mamma," was the burden of her
+complaint.
+
+"Why do you say so, Susan?"
+
+"He don't kiss me, mamma; he don't keep me in his lap. He don't say
+good things to me, and call me his little sweetheart. I'm afraid Cousin
+William's got some other sweetheart. He don't love Susan."
+
+It was while the little prattler was pouring forth her infantile sorrows
+in her mother's ear, that the voice of William Hinkley was heard,
+calling her name from the chamber.
+
+"There, he's calling you now, Susan. Run to him and kiss him, and see
+what he wants. I'm sure he loves you just as much as ever. He's got no
+other sweetheart."
+
+"I'll run, mamma--that I will. I'm so glad! I hope he loves me!" and the
+little innocent scampered away to the chamber. Her artless tongue, as
+she approached, enabled him to perceive what had been her grievances.
+
+"Do you call me to love me, and to kiss me, Cousin William, and to make
+me your sweetheart again?"
+
+"Yes, Susan, you shall be my only sweetheart. I will kiss nobody but
+you."
+
+"You'll forget--you will--you'll put me out of your lap, and go away
+shaking your head, and looking so!--" and here the observant little
+creature attempted a childish imitation of the sad action and the
+strange, moody gestures with which he had put her down when he was
+retiring from the room--gestures and looks which the less quick eyes of
+her mother had failed utterly to perceive.
+
+"No, no!" said he, with a sad smile; "no, Susan. I'll keep you in my lap
+for an hour whenever I come, and you shall be my sweetheart always."
+
+"Your LITTLE sweetheart, your LITTLE Susan, Cousin William."
+
+"Yes, my dear little Susan, my dearest little sweetheart Susan."
+
+And he kissed the child fondly while he spoke, and patted her rosy
+cheeks with a degree of tenderness which his sad and wandering thoughts
+did not materially diminish.
+
+"But now, Susan," said he, "if I am to be your sweetheart, and to love
+you always, you must do all that I bid you. You must go where I send
+you."
+
+"Don't I, Cousin William? When you send me to Gran'pa Calvert, don't I
+go and bring you books, and didn't I always run, and come back soon, and
+never play by the way?"
+
+"You're a dear Susan," said he; "and I want you to carry a paper for me
+now. Do you see this little paper? What is it?"
+
+"A note--don't I know?"
+
+"Well, you must carry this note for me to uncle's, but you mustn't give
+it to uncle, nor to aunty, nor to anybody but the young man that lives
+there--young Mr. Stevens."
+
+"Parson Stevens," said the little thing, correcting him.
+
+"Ay, ay, Parson Stevens, if you please. You must give it to him, and him
+only; and he will give you a paper to bring back to me. Will you go now,
+Susan?"
+
+"Yes, I'll go: but, Cousin William, are you going to shoot the little
+guns? Don't shoot them till I come back, will you?"
+
+The child pointed to a pair of pistols which lay upon the table where
+William Hinkley had penned the billet. A flush of consciousness passed
+over the young man's cheek. It seemed to him as if the little innocent's
+inquiry had taken the aspect of an accusation. He promised and dismissed
+her, and, when she had disappeared, proceeded to put the pistols in some
+condition for use. In that time and region, duels were not often fought
+with those costly and powerful weapons, the pistols of rifle bore
+and sight. The rifle, or the ordinary horseman's pistol, answered the
+purposes of hate. The former instrument, in the hands of the Kentuckian,
+was a deadly weapon always; and, in the grasp of a firm hand, and under
+the direction of a practised eye, the latter, at ten paces, was scarcely
+less so. This being the case, but few refinements were necessary to
+bring about the most fatal issues of enmity; and the instruments which
+William Hinkley was preparing for the field were such as would produce
+a smile on the lips of more civilized combatants. They were of the
+coarsest kind of holster-pistols, and had probably seen service in the
+Revolution. The stocks were rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost
+large enough for grape, and really such as would receive and disgorge
+a three-ounce bullet with little straining or reluctance. They had been
+the property of his own grandfather, and their value for use was perhaps
+rather heightened than diminished by the degree of veneration which, in
+the family, was attached to their history.
+
+William Hinkley soon put them in the most efficient order. He was not
+a practised hand, but an American forester is a good shot almost by
+instinct; he naturally cleaves to a gun, and without instruction learns
+its use. William, however, did not think much of what he could hit, at
+what distance, and under what circumstances. Nothing, perhaps, could
+better show the confidence in himself and weapon than the inattention
+which the native-born woodman usually exhibits to these points. Let his
+weapon be such as he can rely upon, and his cause of quarrel such as
+can justify his anger, and the rest seems easy, and gives him little
+annoyance. This was now the case with our rustic. He never, for a
+moment, thought of practising. He had shot repeatedly, and knew what he
+could do. His simple object was to bring his enemy to the field, and to
+meet him there. Accordingly, when he had loaded both pistols, which he
+did with equal care, and with a liberal allowance of lead and powder, he
+carefully put them away without offering to test his own skill or their
+capacities. On this subject, his indifference would have appeared, to a
+regular duellist, the very extreme of obtuseness.
+
+His little courier conveyed his billet to Stevens in due season. As she
+had been instructed, she gave it into the hands of Stevens only; but,
+when she delivered it, old Hinkley was present, and she named the person
+by whom it was sent.
+
+"My son! what does he say?" demanded the old man, half-suspecting the
+purport of the billet.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Stevens, with the readiness of a practised actor, "there
+is some hope, I am glad to tell you, Mr. Hinkley, of his coming to his
+senses. He declares his wish to atone, and invites me to see him. I have
+no doubt that he wishes me to mediate for him."
+
+"I will never forgive him while I have breath!" cried the old man,
+leaving the room. "Tell him that!"
+
+"Wait a moment, my pretty one," said Stevens, as he was about retiring
+to his chamber, "till I can write an answer."
+
+The billet of Hinkley he again read. We may do so likewise. It was to
+the following effect:--
+
+"Sir: If I understood your last assurance on leaving you this day, I am
+to believe that the stroke of my whip has made its proper impression on
+your soul--that you are willing to use the ordinary means of ordinary
+persons, to avenge an indignity which was not CONFINED TO YOUR CLOTH.
+If so, meet me at the lake with whatever weapons you choose to bring. I
+will be there, provided with pistols for both, at any hour from three to
+six. I shall proceed to the spot as soon as I receive your answer.
+
+"W. H."
+
+"Short and sharp!" exclaimed Stevens as he read the billet. "'Who would
+have thought that the YOUNG man had so much blood in him!' Well, we
+will not balk your desire, Master Hinkley. We will meet you, in verity,
+though it may compel me to throw up my present hand and call for other
+cards. N'importe: there is no other course."
+
+While soliloquizing, he penned his answer, which was brief and to the
+purpose:--
+
+"I will meet you as soon as I can steal off without provoking suspicion.
+I have pistols which I will bring with me.
+
+"A. S."
+
+"There, my little damsel," said he, re-entering the dining-room, and
+putting the sealed paper into the hands of the child, "carry that to Mr.
+Hinkley, and tell him I will come and speak with him as he begs me. But
+the note will tell him."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"So----"
+
+Mrs. Hinkley entered the room at this moment. Her husband had apprized
+her of the communication which her son had made, and the disposition
+to atonement and repentance which he had expressed. She was anxious to
+confirm this good disposition, to have her son brought back within the
+fold, restored to her own affections and the favor of his father. The
+latter, it is true, had signified his determined hostility, even while
+conveying his intelligence; but the mother was sanguine--when was a
+mother otherwise?--that all things would come right which related to her
+only child. She now came to implore the efforts of Stevens; to entreat,
+that, like a good Christian, he would not suffer the shocking stripes
+which her son, in his madness, had inflicted upon him to outweigh his
+charity, to get the better of his blessed principles, and make him war
+upon the atoning spirit which had so lately, and so suddenly wakened
+up in the bosom of the unruly boy. She did not endeavor to qualify the
+offence of which her son had been guilty. She was far from underrating
+the indignity to which Stevens had been subjected; but the offender
+was her son--her only son--in spite of all his faults, follies, and
+imperfections, the apple of her eye--the only being for whom she cared
+to live!
+
+Ah! the love of a mother!--what a holy thing! sadly wanting in
+judgment--frequently misleading, perverting, nay, dooming the object
+which it loves; but, nevertheless, most pure; least selfish; truest;
+most devoted!
+
+And the tears gushed from the old woman's eyes as she caught the hand
+of Stevens in her own, and kissed it--kissed HIS hand--could William
+Hinkley have seen THAT, how it would have rankled, how he would have
+writhed! She kissed the hands of that wily hypocrite, bedewing them with
+her tears, as if he were some benign and blessing saint; and not because
+he had shown any merits or practised any virtues, but simply because
+of certain professions which he had made, and in which she had perfect
+faith because of the professions, and not because of any previous
+knowledge which she had of the professor. Truly, it behooves a rogue
+monstrous much to know what garment it is best to wear; the question is
+equally important to rogue and dandy.
+
+Stevens made a thousand assurances in the most Christian spirit--we can
+not say that he gave her tear for tear--promised to do his best to bring
+back the prodigal son to her embrace, and the better to effect this
+object, put his pistols under his belt! Within the hour he was on his
+way to the place of meeting.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+FOOT TO FOOT.
+
+
+
+
+
+William Hinkley was all impatience until, his little messenger returned,
+which she did with a speed which might deserve commendation in the
+case of our professional Mercuries--stage-drivers and mail contractors,
+hight! He did not withhold it from the little maid, but taking her in
+his arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched her to her mother, while
+he wrapped up his pistols and concealing them in the folds of his coat,
+hurried from the house with the anxious haste of one who is going to
+seek his prey. He felt somewhat like that broad-winged eagle which
+broods on the projecting pinnacle of yonder rocky peak in waiting for
+the sea-hawk who is stooping far below him, watching when the sun's rays
+shall glisten from the uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was
+not a selfish desire to secure the prey which the terror of the other
+might cause him to drop. It was simply to punish the prowler. Poor
+William could not exactly tell indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred
+Stevens; but his cause of hostility was not less cogent because it had
+no name. The thousand little details which induce our prejudices in
+regard to persons, are, singly, worth no one's thought, and would
+possibly provoke the contempt of all; but like the myriad threads which
+secured the huge frame of Gulliver in his descent upon Lilliput, they
+are, when united, able to bind the biggest giant of us all.
+
+The prejudices of William Hinkley, though very natural in such a case
+as his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It seemed to him, if
+he once reasoned on the matter, that, as he had good cause to hate the
+intruder, so there must be justification for shooting him. Were this
+not so, the policy of hating would be very questionable, and surely very
+unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a very laudable quantity
+of feeling--something like omitting one's bullet in discharging one's
+piece--a profligacy only justifiable in a feu de joie after victory,
+where the bullets have already done all necessary mischief, and will
+warrant a small subsequent waste of the more harmless material.
+
+Without designing any such child's play, our rustic hero, properly
+equipped with his antique pistols, well charged, close rammed,
+three-ounce bullets, or nearabouts, in each, stood, breathing fire but
+without cooling, on the edge of the lake, perched on an eminence and
+looking out for the coming enemy. He was playing an unwonted character,
+but he felt as if it were quite familiar to him. He had none of that
+nice feeling which, without impugning courage, is natural enough to
+inexperience in such cases. The muzzles of the pistols did not appear
+to him particularly large. He never once thought of his own ribs being
+traversed by his three-ounce messengers. He had no misgivings on the
+subject of his future digestion. He only thought of that blow from his
+father's hand--that keen shaft from the lips of Margaret Cooper--that
+desolation which had fallen upon his soul from the scorn of both; and
+the vengeance which it was in his power to inflict upon the fortunate
+interloper to whose arts he ascribed all his misfortunes! and with these
+thoughts his fury and impatience increased, and he ascended the highest
+hill to look out for his foe; descended, in the next moment, to the edge
+of the lake, the better to prepare for the meeting.
+
+In this state of excitement the meekness had departed from his
+countenance; an entire change of expression had taken place: he stood
+up, erect, bold, eagle-eyed, with the look of one newly made a man by
+the form of indomitable will, and feeling, for the first time, man's
+terrible commission to destroy. In a moment, with the acquisition of
+new moods, he had acquired a new aspect. Hitherto, he had been tame,
+seemingly devoid of spirit--you have not forgotten the reproaches of
+his cousin, which actually conveyed an imputation against his
+manliness?--shrinking, with a feeling of shyness akin to mauvaise honte,
+and almost submitting to injustice, to avoid the charge of ill-nature.
+The change that we have described in his soul, had made itself
+singularly apparent in his looks. They were full of a grim
+determination. Had he gazed upon his features, in the glassy surface of
+the lake beside him, he had probably recoiled from their expression.
+
+We have seen Mrs. Hinkley sending Stevens forth for the purpose of
+recalling her son to his senses, receiving his repentance, and bringing
+him once more home into the bosom of his flock. We have not forgotten
+the brace of arguments with which he provided himself in order to bring
+about this charitable determination. Stevens was a shot. He could snuff
+his candle at ten paces, sever his bamboo, divide the fingers of the
+hand with separate bullets without grazing the skin--nay, more, as
+was said in the euphuistic phraseology of his admirers, send his ball
+between soul and body without impairing the integrity of either.
+
+But men may do much shooting at candle or bamboo, who would do precious
+little while another is about to shoot at them. There is a world of
+difference between looking in a bull's-eye, and looking in the eye of
+man. A pistol, too, looks far less innocent, regarded through the medium
+of a yawning muzzle, than the rounded and neatly-polished butt. The huge
+mouth seems to dilate as you look upon it. You already begin to fancy
+you behold the leaden mass--the three-ounce bullet--issuing from its
+stronghold, like a relentless baron of the middle ages, going forth
+under his grim archway, seeking only whom he may devour. The sight is
+apt to diminish the influence of skill. Nerves are necessary to such
+sportsmen, and nerves become singularly untrue when frowned upon through
+such a medium.
+
+Under this view of the case, we are not so sure that the excellence
+of aim for which Alfred Stevens has been so much lauded, will make the
+difference very material between the parties; and now that he is fairly
+roused, there is a look of the human devil about William Hinkley, that
+makes him promise to be dangerous. Nay, the very pistols that he wields,
+those clumsy, rusty, big-mouthed ante-revolutionary machines, which
+his stout grandsire carried at Camden and Eutaw, have a look of service
+about them--a grim, veteran-like aspect, that makes them quite as
+perilous to face as to handle. If they burst they will blow on all
+sides. There will be fragments enough for friend and foe; and even
+though Stevens may not apprehend so much from the aim of his antagonist,
+something of deference is due to the possibility of such a concussion,
+as will make up all his deficiencies of skill.
+
+But they have not yet met, though Stevens, with praiseworthy
+Christianity, is on his way to keep his engagements, as well to mother
+as to son. He has his own pistols--not made for this purpose--but a
+substantial pair of traveller's babes--big of mouth, long of throat,
+thick of jaw, keen of sight, quick of speech, strong of wind, and
+weighty of argument. They are rifled bores also, and, in the hands of
+the owner, have done clever things at bottle and sapling. Stevens would
+prefer to have the legitimate things, but these babes are trustworthy;
+and he has no reason to suppose that the young rustic whom he goes
+to meet can produce anything more efficient. He had no idea of those
+ancient bull-pups, those solemn ante-revolutionary barkers, which our
+grandsire used upon harder heads than his, at Camden and the Eutaws. He
+is scarcely so confident in his own weapons when his eye rests on the
+rusty tools of his enemy.
+
+But it was not destined that this fight should take place without
+witnesses. In spite of all the precautions of the parties, and they were
+honest in taking them, our little village had its inklings of what was
+going on. There were certain signs of commotion and explosion which made
+themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan Hinkley, was the first,
+very innocently, to furnish a clue to the mystery. She had complained
+to her mother that Cousin William had not shot the little guns for her
+according to his promise.
+
+"But, perhaps, he didn't want to shoot them, Susan."
+
+"Yes, mamma, he put them in his pockets. He's carried them to shoot; and
+he promised to shoot them for me as soon as I carried the note."
+
+"And to whom did you carry the note, Susan?" asked the mother.
+
+"To the young parson, at Uncle William's."
+
+The mother had not been unobservant of the degree of hostility which her
+brother, as well as cousin, entertained for Stevens. They had both
+very freely expressed their dislike in her presence. Some of their
+conferences had been overheard and were now recalled, in which
+this expression of dislike had taken the form of threats, vague and
+purposeless, seemingly, at the time; but which now, taken in connection
+with what she gathered from the lips of the child, seemed of portentous
+interest. Then, when she understood that Stevens had sent a note
+in reply--and that both notes were sealed, the quick, feminine mind
+instantly jumped to the right conclusion.
+
+"They are surely going to fight. Get my bonnet, Susan, I must run to
+Uncle William's, and tell him while there's time. Which way did Cousin
+William go?"
+
+The child could tell her nothing but that he had taken to the hills.
+
+"That brother Ned shouldn't be here now! Though I don't see the good of
+his being here. He'd only make matters worse. Run, Susan--run over to
+Gran'pa Calvert, and tell him to come and stop them from fighting,
+while I hurry to Uncle William's. Lord save us!--and let me get there in
+time."
+
+The widow had a great deal more to say, but this was quite enough to
+bewilder the little girl. Nevertheless, she get forth to convey the
+mysterious message to Grand'pa Calvert, though the good mother never
+once reflected that this message was of the sort which assumes the party
+addressed to be already in possession of the principal facts. While she
+took one route the mother pursued another, and the two arrived at their
+respective places at about the same time. Stevens had already left
+old Hinkley's when the widow got there, and the consternation of Mrs.
+Hinkley was complete. The old man was sent for to the fields, and came
+in only to declare that some such persuasion had filled his own mind
+when first the billet of his son had been received. But the suspicion of
+the father was of a much harsher sort than that of the widow Hinkley.
+In her sight it was a duel only--bad enough as a duel--but still only a
+duel, where the parties incurring equal risks, had equal rights. But
+the conception of the affair, as it occurred to old Hinkley, was very
+different.
+
+"Base serpent!" he exclaimed--"he has sent for the good young man only
+to murder him. He implores him to come to him, in an artful writing,
+pretending to be sorely sorrowful and full of repentance; and he
+prepares the weapon of murder to slay him when he comes. Was there ever
+creature so base!--but I will hunt him out. God give me strength, and
+grant that I may find him in season."
+
+Thus saying, the old man seized his crab-stick, a knotty club, that had
+been seasoned in a thousand smokes, and toughened by the use of twenty
+years. His wife caught up her bonnet and hurried with the widow Hinkley
+in his train. Meanwhile, by cross-examining the child, Mr. Calvert
+formed some plausible conjectures of what was on foot, and by the time
+that the formidable procession had reached his neighborhood he was
+prepared to join it. Events thickened with the increasing numbers. New
+facts came in to the aid of old ones partially understood. The widow
+Thackeray, looking from her window, as young and handsome widows are
+very much in the habit of doing, had seen William Hinkley going by
+toward the hill, with a very rapid stride and a countenance very much
+agitated; and an hour afterward she had seen Brother Stevens following
+on the same route--good young man!--with the most heavenly and benignant
+smile upon his countenance--the very personification of the cherub and
+the seraph, commissioned to subdue the fiend.
+
+"Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You have spoiled this
+boy of mine; turning his head with law studies; and making him
+disobedient--giving him counsel and encouragement against his
+father--and filling his mind with evil things. It is all your doing,
+and your books. And now he's turned out a bloody murderer, a papist
+murderer, with your Roman catholic doctrines."
+
+"I am no Roman catholic, Mr. Hinkley," was the mild reply--"and as for
+William becoming a murderer, I think that improbable. I have a better
+opinion of your son than you have."
+
+"He's an ungrateful cub--a varmint of the wilderness--to strike the good
+young man in my own presence--to strike him with a cowskin--what do you
+think of that, sir? answer me that, if you please."
+
+"Did William Hinkley do this?" demanded the old teacher earnestly.
+
+"Ay, that he did, did he!"
+
+"I can hardly understand it. There must have been some grievous
+provocation?"
+
+"Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have to wait for grace
+before meat."
+
+"Was that all? can it be possible!"
+
+The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the story--and Calvert
+was somewhat relieved. Though he did not pretend to justify the assault
+of the youth, he readily saw how he had been maddened by the treatment
+of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high pitch of religious
+fury--his prodigious self-esteem taking part with it, naturally enough,
+against a son, who, until this instance, had never risen in defiance
+against either. Expostulation and argument were equally vain with him;
+and ceasing the attempt at persuasion, Calvert hurried on with the rest,
+being equally anxious to arrest the meditated violence, whether that
+contemplated the murderous assassination which the father declared, or
+the less heinous proceeding of the duel which he suspected.
+
+There was one thing which made him tremble for his own confidence in
+William Hinkley's propriety of course. It was the difficulty which he
+had with the rest, in believing that the young student of divinity would
+fight a duel. This doubt, he felt, must be that, of his pupil also:
+whether the latter had any reason to suppose that Stevens would depart
+from the principles of his profession, and waive the securities which
+it afforded, he had of course, no means for conjecturing; but his
+confidence in William induced him to believe that some such impression
+upon his mind had led him to the measure of sending a challenge, which,
+otherwise, addressed to a theologian, would have been a shameless
+mockery.
+
+There was a long running fire, by way of conversation and commentary,
+which was of course maintained by these toiling pedestrians, cheering
+the way as they went; but though it made old Hinkley peccant and wrathy,
+and exercised the vernacular of the rest to very liberal extent, we do
+not care to distress the reader with it. It may have been very fine or
+not. It is enough to say that the general tenor of opinion run heavily
+against our unhappy rustic, and in favor of the good young man, Stevens.
+Mrs. Thackeray, the widow, to whom Stevens had paid two visits or
+more since he had been in the village, and who had her own reasons for
+doubting that Margaret Cooper had really obtained any advantages in
+the general struggle to find favor in the sight of this handsome man of
+God--was loud in her eulogy upon the latter, and equally unsparing in
+her denunciations of the village lad who meditated so foul a crime
+as the extinguishing so blessed a light. Her denunciations at length
+aroused all the mother in Mrs. Hinkley's breast, and the two dames
+had it, hot and heavy, until, as the parties approached the lake, old
+Hinkley, with a manner all his own, enjoined the most profound silence,
+and hushed, without settling the dispute.
+
+Meanwhile, the combatants had met. William Hinkley, having ascended the
+tallest perch among the hills, beheld his enemy approaching at a natural
+pace and at a short distance. He descended rapidly to meet him and the
+parties joined at the foot of the woodland path leading down to the
+lake, where, but a few days before, we beheld Stevens and Margaret
+Cooper. Stevens was somewhat surprised to note the singular and imposing
+change which a day, almost an hour, had wrought in the looks and bearing
+of the young rustic. His good, and rather elevated command of language,
+had struck him previously as very remarkable, but this had been
+explained by his introduction to Mr. Calvert, who, as his teacher, he
+soon found was very well able to make him what he was. It was the high
+bearing, the courteous defiance, the superior consciousness of strength
+and character, which now spoke in the tone and manner of the youth. A
+choice military school, for years, could scarcely have brought about
+a more decided expression of that subdued heroism, which makes mere
+manliness a matter of chivalry, and dignifies brute anger and blind
+hostility into something like a sentiment. Under the prompting of a
+good head, a generous temper, and the goodness of a highly-roused, but
+legitimate state of feeling, William Hinkley wore the very appearance
+of that nobleness, pride, ease, firmness, and courtesy, which, in the
+conventional world, it is so difficult, yet held to be so important,
+to impress upon the champion when ready for the field. A genuine son of
+thunder would have rejoiced in his deportment, and though a sneering,
+jealous and disparaging temper, Alfred Stevens could not conceal from
+himself the conviction that there was stuff in the young man which it
+needed nothing but trial and rough attrition to bring out.
+
+William Hinkley bowed at his approach, and pointed to a close footpath
+leading to the rocks on the opposite shore.
+
+"There, sir, we shall be more secret. There is a narrow grove above,
+just suited to our purpose. Will it please you to proceed thither?"
+
+"As YOU please, Mr. Hinkley," was the reply; "I have no disposition to
+balk your particular desires. But the sight of this lake reminds me that
+I owe you my life?"
+
+"I had thought, sir, that the indignity which I put upon you, would
+cancel all such memories," was the stern reply.
+
+The cheek of Stevens became crimson--his eye flashed--he felt the
+sarcasm--but something was due to his position, and he was cool enough
+to make a concession to circumstances. He answered with tolerable
+calmness, though not without considerable effort.
+
+"It has cancelled the OBLIGATION, sir, if not the memory! I certainly
+can owe you nothing for a life which you have attempted to disgrace--"
+
+"Which I have disgraced!" said the other, interrupting him.
+
+"You are right, sir. How far, however, you have shown your manhood
+in putting an indignity upon one whose profession implies peace, and
+denounces war, you are as well prepared to answer as myself."
+
+"The cloth seems to be of precious thickness!" was the answer of
+Hinkley, with a smile of bitter and scornful sarcasm.
+
+"If you mean to convoy the idea that I do not feel the shame of the
+blow, and am not determined on avenging it, young man, you are in error.
+You will find that I am not less determined because I am most cool. I
+have come out deliberately for the purpose of meeting you. My purpose in
+reminding you of my profession was simply to undeceive you. It appears
+to me not impossible that the knowledge of it has made you somewhat
+bolder than you otherwise might have been."
+
+"What mean you?" was the stern demand of Hinkley, uttered in very
+startling accents.
+
+"To tell you that I have not always been a non-combatant, that I am
+scarcely one now, and that, in the other schools, in which I have been
+taught, the use of the pistol was an early lesson. You have probably
+fancied that such was not the case, and that my profession--"
+
+"Come, sir--will you follow this path?" said Hinkley, interrupting him
+impatiently.
+
+"All in good time, sir, when you have heard me out," was the cool reply.
+"Now, sir," he continued, "were you to have known that it would be no
+hard task for me to mark any button on your vest, at any distance--that
+I have often notched a smaller mark, and that I am prepared to do
+so again, it might be that your prudence would have tempered your
+courage--"
+
+"I regret for your sake," said Hinkley, again interrupting him with a
+sarcasm, "that I have not brought with me the weapon with which MY marks
+are made. You seem to have forgotten that I too have some skill in
+my poor way. One would think, sir, that the memory would not fail of
+retaining what I suspect will be impressed upon the skin for some time
+longer."
+
+"You are evidently bent on fighting, Mr. Hinkley, and I must gratify
+you!"
+
+"If you please, sir."
+
+"But, before doing so, I should like to know in what way I have provoked
+such a feeling of hostility in your mind? I have not sought to do so.
+I have on the contrary, striven to show you my friendship, in part
+requital of the kindness shown me by your parents."
+
+"Do not speak of them, if you please."
+
+"Ay, but I must. It was at the instance of your worthy mother that I
+sought you and strove to confer with you on, the cause of your evident
+unhappiness."
+
+"You were the cause."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes--you! Did I not tell you then that I hated you; and did you not
+accept my defiance?"
+
+"Yes; but when you saved my life!--"
+
+"It was to spurn you--to put stripes upon you. I tell you, Alfred
+Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one feels for a reptile, whose
+cunning is as detestable as his sting is deadly. I loathe you from
+instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from the first moment
+that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are a
+villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced of it as thoroughly as
+if I knew it. You have wormed yourself into the bosom of my family. You
+have expelled me from the affections of my parents; and not content
+with this, you have stolen to the heart of the woman to whom my life was
+devoted, to have me driven thence also. Can I do less than hate you? Can
+I desire less than your destruction? Say, having heard so much, whether
+you will make it necessary that I should again lay my whip over your
+shoulders."
+
+The face of Stevens became livid as he listened to this fierce and
+bitter speech. His eye watched that of the speaker with the glare of
+the tiger, as if noteful only of the moment when to spring. His frame
+trembled. His lip quivered with the struggling rage. All his feeling of
+self-superiority vanished when he listened to language of so unequivocal
+a character--language which so truly denounced, without defining, his
+villany. He felt, that if the instinct of the other was indeed so keen
+and quick, then was the combat necessary, and the death of the rustic
+essential, perhaps, to his own safety. William Hinkley met his glance
+with a like fire. There was no shrinking of his heart or muscles. Nay,
+unlike his enemy, he felt a strange thrill of pleasure in his veins as
+he saw the effect which his language had produced on the other.
+
+"Lead the way!" said Stevens; "the sooner you are satisfied the better."
+
+"You are very courteous, and I thank you," replied Hinkley, with a
+subdued but sarcastic smile, "you will pardon me for the seeming slight,
+in taking precedence of one so superior; but the case requires it. You
+will please to follow. I will show you my back no longer than it seems
+necessary."
+
+"Lead on, sir--lead on."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+UNEXPECTED ISSUES.
+
+
+
+
+
+William Hinkley ascended the narrow path leading to the hills with an
+alacrity of heart which somewhat surprised himself. The apprehensions of
+danger, if he felt any, were not of a kind to distress or annoy him, and
+were more than balanced by the conviction that he had brought his enemy
+within his level. That feeling of power is indeed a very consolatory
+one. It satisfies the ambitious heart, though death preys upon his
+household, one by one; though suffering fevers his sleep; though the
+hopes of his affection wither; though the loves and ties of his youth
+decay and vanish. It makes him careless of the sunshine, and heedless of
+the storm. It deadens his ear to the song of birds, it blinds his eye to
+the seduction of flowers. It makes him fly from friendship and rush on
+hate. It compensates for all sorts of loneliness, and it produces them.
+It is a princely despotism; which, while it robs its slave of freedom,
+covers him with other gifts which he learns to value more; which,
+binding him in fetters, makes him believe that they are sceptres and
+symbols before which all things become what he desires them. His speech
+is changed, his very nature perverted, but he acquires an "open sesame"
+by their loss, and the loss seems to his imagination an exceeding gain.
+We will not say that William Hinkley was altogether satisfied with HIS
+bargain, but in the moment when he stood confronting his enemy on the
+bald rock, with a deadly weapon in each hand--when he felt that he stood
+foot to foot in equal conflict with his foe, one whom he had dragged
+down from his pride of place, and had compelled to the fearful issue
+which made his arrogance quail--in that moment, if he did not forget, he
+did not so much feel, that he had lost family and friends, parents
+and love; and if he felt, it was only to induce that keener feeling of
+revenge in which even the affections are apt to be swallowed up.
+
+Stevens looked in the eye of the young man and saw that he was
+dangerous. He looked upon the ante-revolutionary pistols, and saw that
+they were dangerous too, in a double sense.
+
+"Here are pistols," he said, "better suited to our purpose. You can
+sound them and take your choice."
+
+"These," said Hinkley, doggedly, "are as well suited as any. If you
+will, you can take your choice of mine; but if you think yours superior,
+use them. These are good enough for me."
+
+"But this is out of all usage," said Stevens.
+
+"What matters it, Mr. Stevens? If you are satisfied that yours are the
+best, the advantage is with you. If you doubt that mine can kill, try
+them. I have a faith in these pistols which will content me; but we will
+take one of each, if that will please you better, and use which we think
+proper."
+
+Stevens expressed himself better pleased to keep his own.
+
+"Suit yourself as to distance," said Hinkley, with all the coolness of
+an unmixed salamander. His opponent stepped off ten paces with great
+deliberation, and William Hinkley, moving toward a fragment of the rock
+upon which he had placed his "revolutions" for the better inspection of
+his opponent, possessed himself of the veterans and prepared to take the
+station which had been assigned him.
+
+"Who shall give the word?" demanded Stevens.
+
+"You may!" was the cool rejoinder.
+
+"If I do, I kill you," said the other.
+
+"I have no fear, Mr. Stevens," answered William Hinkley with a degree of
+phlegm which almost led Stevens to fancy he had to deal with a regular
+Trojan--"I have no fear," he continued, "and if you fancy you can
+frighten me by this sort of bragging you have very much mistaken your
+man. Shoot when you please, word or no word."
+
+William Hinkley stood with his back to the woods, his face toward the
+lake which spread itself, smooth and calm at a little distance. He
+did not perceive that his position was a disadvantageous one. The tree
+behind, and that beside him, rendered his body a most conspicuous mark;
+while his opponent, standing with his back to the uncovered rocks ranged
+with no other objects of any prominence. Had he even been sufficiently
+practised in the arts of the duello, he would most probably have been
+utterly regardless of these things. They would not have influenced
+his firmness in the slightest degree. His course was quite as much the
+result of desperation as philosophy. He felt himself an outcast as
+well from home as from love, and it mattered to him very little, in the
+morbid excitement of his present mind, whether he fell by the hand
+of his rival, or lived to pine out a wearisome existence, lonely and
+uninspired, a gloomy exile in the bitter world. He waited, it may be
+said, with some impatience for the fire of his antagonist. Once he saw
+the pistol of Stevens uplifted. He had one in each hand. His own hung
+beside him. He waited for the shot of the enemy as a signal when to lift
+and use his own weapon. But instead of this he was surprised to see
+him drop the muzzle of his weapon, and with some celerity and no small
+degree of slight of hand, thrust the two pistols under his coat-skirts.
+A buz reached his ears a moment after--the hum of voices--some rustling
+in the bushes, which signified confusion in the approach of strangers.
+He did not wish to look round as he preferred keeping his eye on his
+antagonist.
+
+"Shoot!" he exclaimed--"quickly, before we are interrupted."
+
+Before he could receive any answer there was a rush behind him--he heard
+his father's voice, sudden, and in a high degree of fury, mingled with
+that of his mother and Mr. Calvert, as if in expostulation. From the
+latter the words distinctly reached his ears, warning him to beware.
+Such, also, was the purport of his mother's cry. Before he could turn
+and guard against the unseen danger, he received a blow upon his head,
+the only thing of which he was conscious for some time. He staggered and
+fell forward. He felt himself stunned, fancied he was shot, and sunk to
+the ground in an utter state of insensibility.
+
+The blow came from his father's crab-stick. It was so utterly unexpected
+by the parties who had attended old Hinkley to the place of meeting,
+that no efforts were made to prevent it. But the mother of the victim
+rushed in in time to defeat the second blow, which the father prepared
+to inflict, in the moment when his son was falling from the effects of
+the first. Grasping the coat skirts of her spouse, she pulled him back
+with no scrupulous hand, and effectually baffled his designs by bringing
+him down, though in an opposite direction, to the same level with the
+youth. Old Hinkley did not bite the dust, but the latter part of his
+skull most effectually butted it; and had not his head been quite as
+tough as his crab-stick, the hurt might have been quite as severe as
+that which the latter had inflicted on the son.
+
+The latter lay as perfectly quiet as if all had been over with him. So
+much so, that the impression became very general that such was the
+case. Under this impression the heart of the mother spoke out in mingled
+screams of lamentation and reproach. She threw herself down by the side
+of the youth and vainly attempted to stop the blood which was streaming
+from a deep gash on his skull. While engaged in this work, her apron and
+handkerchief being both employed for this purpose, she poured forth a
+torrent of wrath and denunciation against her spouse. She now forgot all
+the offences of the boy, and even Alfred Stevens came in for his share
+of the anger with which she visited the offence and the offender.
+
+"Shame! shame! you bloody-minded man," she cried, "to slaughter your own
+son--your only son--to come behind him and knock him down with a club as
+if he had been an inhuman ox! You are no husband of mine. He sha'n't own
+you for a father. If I had the pick, I'd choose a thousand fathers for
+him, from here to Massassippi, sooner than you. He's only too good and
+too handsome to be son of yours. And for what should you strike him? For
+a stranger--a man we never saw before. Shame on you! You are a brute, a
+monster, William Hinkley, and I'm done with you for ever.
+
+"My poor, poor boy! Look up, my son. Look up, William. Open your eyes.
+It's your own dear mother that speaks to you. O my God! you've killed
+him--he will not open his eyes. He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!"
+
+And truly it seemed so, for the youth gave no sign of consciousness. She
+threw herself in a screaming agony upon his body, and gave herself up to
+the unmeasured despair, which, if a weakness, is at least a sacred
+one in the case of a mother mourning her only son. Old Hinkley was not
+without his alarms--nay, not altogether without his compunctions. But
+he was one of that round head genus whose self-esteem is too much at all
+times for fear, or shame, or sensibility. Without seeking to assist
+the lad, and ascertain what was his real condition, he sought only to
+justify himself for what he had done by repeating the real and supposed
+offences of the youth. He addressed himself in this labor chiefly to Mr.
+Calvert, who, with quite as much suffering as any of the rest, had more
+consideration, and was now busied in the endeavor to stanch the blood
+and cleanse the wound of the victim.
+
+"He's only got what he deserved," exclaimed the sullen, stubborn father.
+
+"Do not speak so, Mr. Hinkley," replied Calvert, with a sternness which
+was unusual with him; "your son may have got his death."
+
+"And he deserves it!" responded the other doggedly.
+
+"And if he has," continued Calvert, "you are a murderer--a cold-blooded
+murderer--and as such will merit and will meet the halter."
+
+The face of the old man grew livid--his lips whitened with rage; and he
+approached Calvert, his whole frame quivering with fury, and, shaking
+his hand threateningly, exclaimed:--
+
+"Do you dare to speak to me in this manner, you miserable, white-headed
+pedagogue--do you dare?"
+
+"Dare!" retorted Calvert, rising to his feet with a look of majesty
+which, in an instant, awed the insolence of the offender. Never had he
+been faced by such defiance, so fearlessly and nobly expressed.
+
+"Dare!--Look on me, and ask yourself whether I dare or not. Approach me
+but a step nigher, and even my love for your unfortunate and much-abused
+but well-minded son will not protect you. I would chastise you, with all
+my years upon me, in spite of my white head. Yours, if this boy should
+die, will never become white, or will become so suddenly, as your
+soul will wither, with its own self-torture, within you. Begone!--keep
+back--do not approach me, and, above all, do not approach me with
+uplifted hand, or, by Heaven, I will fell you to the earth as surely
+as you felled this boy! You have roused a feeling within me, William
+Hinkley, which has slept for years. Do not provoke it too far. Beware in
+season. You have acted the brute and the coward to your son--you could
+do so with impunity to him--to me you can not."
+
+There was something in this speech, from one whom old Hinkley was
+accustomed to look upon as a dreaming bookworm, which goaded the
+tyrannical father into irrepressible fury; and, grinding his teeth,
+without a moment's hesitation he advanced, and was actually about to lay
+the crab-stick over the shoulders of the speaker: but the latter was as
+prompt as he was fearless. Before Hinkley could conceive his intention,
+he had leaped over the still unconscious person of William, and,
+flinging the old man round with a sudden jerk, had grasped and wrested
+the stick from his hands with a degree of activity and strength which
+confounded all the bystanders, and the subject of his sudden exercise of
+manhood no less than the rest.
+
+"Were you treated justly," said Calvert, regarding him with a look of
+the loftiest indignation, "you should yourself receive a taste of the
+cudgel you are so free to use on others. Let your feebleness, old man,
+be a warning to your arrogance."
+
+With these words, he flung the crab-stick into the lake, old Hinkley
+regarding him with looks in which it was difficult to say whether
+mortification or fury had preponderance.
+
+"Go," he continued--"your son lives; but it is God's mercy, and none of
+yours, which has spared his life. You will live, I hope, to repent
+of your cruelty and injustice to him; to repent of having shown a
+preference to a stranger, so blind as that which has moved you to
+attempt the life of one of the most gentle lads in the whole country."
+
+"And did he not come here to murder the stranger? did we not find him
+even now with pistol ready to murder Brother Stevens? See the pistols
+now in his hands--my father's pistols. We came not a minute too soon.
+But for my blow, he had been a murderer."
+
+Such was the justification which old Hinkley now offered for what he had
+done.
+
+"I am no advocate for duelling," said Calvert, "but I believe that your
+son came with the stranger for this purpose, and not to murder him."
+
+"No, no! do you not see that Brother Stevens has no pistols? Did we not
+see him trying to escape--walking off--walking almost over the rocks to
+get out of the way?"
+
+Calvert comprehended the matter much more clearly.
+
+"Speak, sir!" he said to Stevens, "did you not come prepared to defend
+yourself?"
+
+"You see me as I am," said Stevens, showing his empty hands.
+
+Calvert looked at him with searching eye.
+
+"I understand you, sir," he said, with an expression not to be mistaken;
+"I understand you now. THIS LAD I KNOW. HE COULD NOT BE A MURDERER. HE
+COULD NOT TAKE ANY MAN AT ADVANTAGE. If you do not know the fact, Mr.
+Stevens, I can assure you that your life was perfectly secure from his
+weapon, so long as his remained equally unendangered. The sight of that
+lake, from which he rescued you but a few days ago, should sufficiently
+have persuaded you of this."
+
+Stevens muttered something, the purport of which was, that "he did not
+believe the young man intended to murder him."
+
+"Did he not send you a challenge?"
+
+"No!" said old Hinkley; "he sent him a begging note, promising atonement
+and repentance."
+
+"Will you let me see that note?" said Calvert, addressing Stevens.
+
+"I have it not--I destroyed it," said Stevens with some haste. Calvert
+said no more, but he looked plainly enough his suspicions. He now gave
+his attention to William Hinkley, whose mother, while this scene was
+in progress, had been occupied, as Calvert had begun, in stanching the
+blood, and trimming with her scissors, which were fortunately at her
+girdle, the hair from the wound. The son, meanwhile, had wakened to
+consciousness. He had been stunned but not severely injured by the blow,
+and, with the promptitude of a border-dame, Mrs. Hinkley, hurrying to
+a pine-tree, had gathered enough of its resin, which, spread upon a
+fragment of her cotton apron, and applied to the hurt, proved a very
+fair substitute for adhesive plaster. The youth rose to his feet, still
+retaining the pistols in his grasp. His looks were heavy from the stupor
+which still continued, but kindled into instant intelligence when he
+caught sight of Stevens and his father.
+
+"Go home, sir!" said the latter, waving his hand in the prescribed
+direction.
+
+"Never!" was the reply of the young man, firmly expressed; "never, sir,
+if I never have a home!"
+
+"You shall always have a home, William, while I have one," said Mr.
+Calvert.
+
+"What! you encourage my son in rebellion? you teach him to fly in the
+face of his father?" shouted the old man.
+
+"No, sir; I only offer him a shelter from tyranny, a place of refuge
+from persecution. When you learn the duties and the feelings of a
+father, it will be time enough to assert the rights of one. I do not
+think him safe in your house against your vindictiveness and brutality.
+He is, however, of full age, and can determine for himself."
+
+"He is not of age, and will not be till July."
+
+"It matters not. He is more near the years of discretion than his
+father; and, judging him to be in some danger in your house, as a man
+and as a magistrate I offer him the protection of mine. Come home with
+me, William."
+
+"Let him go, if he pleases--go to the d--l! He who honors not
+his father, says the Scriptures--what says the passage, Brother
+Stevens--does it not say that he who honors not his father is in danger
+of hell-fire?"
+
+"Not exactly, I believe," said the other.
+
+"Matters not, matters not!--the meaning is very much the same."
+
+"Oh, my son," said the mother, clinging to his neck, "will you, indeed,
+desert me? can you leave me in my old age? I have none, none but you!
+You know how I have loved--you know I will always love you."
+
+"And I love you, mother--and love him too, though he treats me as an
+outcast--I will always love you, but I will never more enter my father's
+dwelling. He has degraded me with his whip--he has attempted my life
+with his bludgeon. I forgive him, but will never expose myself again
+to his cruelties or indignities. You will always find me a son, and a
+dutiful one, in all other respects."
+
+He turned away with Mr. Calvert, and slowly proceeded down the pathway
+by which he had approached the eminence. He gave Stevens a significant
+look as he passed him, and lifted one of the pistols which he still
+carried in his hands, in a manner to make evident his meaning. The other
+smiled and turned off with the group, who proceeded by the route along
+the hills, but the last words of the mother, subdued by sobs, still came
+to the ears of the youth:--
+
+"Oh, my son, come home! come home!"
+
+"No! no! I have no home--no home, mother!" muttered the young man, as
+if he thought the half-stifled response could reach the ears of the
+complaining woman.
+
+"No home! no hope!" he continued--"I am desolate."
+
+"Not so, my son. God is our home; God is our companion; our strength,
+our preserver! Living and loving, manfully striving and working out our
+toils for deliverance, we are neither homeless, nor hopeless; neither
+strengthless, nor fatherless; wanting neither in substance nor
+companion. This is a sharp lesson, perhaps, but a necessary one. It will
+give you that courage, of the great value of which I spoke to you but a
+few days ago. Come with me to my home; it shall be yours until you can
+find a better."
+
+"I thank you--oh! how much I thank you. It may be all as you pay, but I
+feel very, very miserable."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+EXILE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The artist in the moral world must be very careful not to suffer his
+nice sense of retributive justice, to get so much the better of his
+judgment, as an artist, as to make him forgetful of human probabilities,
+and the superior duty of preparing the mind of the young reader by
+sterling examples of patience and protracted reward, to bear up manfully
+against injustice, and not to despond because his rewards are slow. It
+would be very easy for an author to make everybody good, or, if any were
+bad, to dismiss them, out of hand, to purgatory and places even worse.
+But it would be a thankless toil to read the writings of such an author.
+His characters would fail in vraisemblance, and his incidents would lack
+in interest. The world is a sort of vast moral lazar-house, in which
+most have sores, either of greater or less degree of virulence. Some are
+nurses, and doctors, and guardians; and these are necessarily free from
+the diseases to which they minister. Some, though not many, are entirely
+incurable; many labor for years in pain, and when dismissed, still
+hobble along feebly, bearing the proofs of their trials in ugly seams
+and blotches, contracted limbs, and pale, haggard features. Others get
+off with a shorter and less severe probation. None are free from taint,
+and those who are the most free, are not always the greatest favorites
+with fortune.
+
+We are speaking of the moral world, good reader. We simply borrow an
+illustration from the physical. Our interest in one another is very much
+derived from our knowledge of each other's infirmities; and it may be
+remarked, passingly, that this interest is productive of very excellent
+philosophical temper, since it enables us to bear the worst misfortunes
+of our best friends with the most amazing fortitude. It is a frequent
+error with the reader of a book--losing sight of these facts--to expect
+that justice will always be done on the instant. He will suffer no delay
+in the book, though he sees that this delay of justice is one of the
+most decided of all the moral certainties whether in life or law. He
+does not wish to see the person in whom the author makes him interested,
+perish in youth--die of broken heart or more rapid disaster; and if he
+could be permitted to interfere, the bullet or the knife of the assassin
+would be arrested at the proper moment and always turned against the
+bosom of the wrong-doer.
+
+This is a very commendable state of feeling, and whenever it occurs, it
+clearly shows that the author is going right in his vocation. It proves
+him to be a HUMAN author, which is something better than being a mere,
+dry, moral one. But he would neither be a human nor a moral author were
+he to comply with the desires of such gentle readers, and, to satisfy
+their sympathies, arrest the progress of events. The fates must have
+their way, in the book as in the lazar-house; and the persons of his
+drama must endure their sores and sufferings with what philosophy they
+may, until, under the hands of that great physician, fortune, they
+receive an honorable discharge or otherwise.
+
+Were it with him, our young friend, William Hinkley, who is really a
+clever fellow, should not only be received to favor with all parties,
+but such should never have fallen from favor in the minds of any. His
+father should become soon repentant, and having convicted Stevens of
+his falsehood and hypocrisy, he should be rewarded with the hand of the
+woman to whom his young heart is so devoted. Such, perhaps, would be the
+universal wish with our readers; but would this be fortunate for William
+Hinkley? Our venerable friend and his, Mr. Calvert, has a very different
+opinion. He says:--
+
+"This young man is not only a worthy young man, but he is one, naturally
+of very vigorous intellect. He is of earnest, impassioned temperament,
+full of enthusiasm and imagination; fitted for work--great work--public
+work--head work--the noblest kind of work. He will be a great
+lawyer--perhaps a great statesman--if he addresses himself at once,
+manfully, to his tasks; but he will not address himself to these tasks
+while he pursues the rusting and mind-destroying life of a country
+village. Give him the object of his present desire and you deprive him
+of all motive for exertion. Give him the woman he seeks and you probably
+deprive him even of the degree of quiet which the country village
+affords. He would forfeit happiness without finding strength. Force him
+to the use of his tools and he builds himself fame and fortune."
+
+Calvert was really not sorry that William Hinkley's treatment had been
+so harsh. He sympathized, it is true, in his sufferings, but he was not
+blind to their probable advantages; and he positively rejoiced in his
+rejection by Margaret Cooper.
+
+It was some four or five days after the events with which our last
+chapter was closed, that the old man and his young friend were to be
+seen sitting together, under the shade of the venerable tree where we
+have met them before. They had conferred together seriously, and finally
+with agreeing minds, on the several topics which have been adverted to
+in the preceding paragraph. William Hinkley had become convinced that it
+was equally the policy of his mind and heart to leave Charlemont. He was
+not so well satisfied, however, as was the case with Mr. Calvert, that
+the loss of Margaret Cooper was his exceeding gain. When did young lover
+come to such a conclusion? Not, certainly, while he was young. But when
+was young lover wise? Though a discontent, William Hinkley was not,
+however, soured nor despairing from the denial of his hopes. He had
+resources of thought and spirit never tested before, of the possession
+of which he, himself, knew nothing. They were to be brought into use and
+made valuable only by these very denials; by the baffling of his hope;
+by the provocation of his strength.
+
+His resolution grew rapidly in consequence of his disappointments.
+He was now prepared to meet the wishes of his venerable and wise
+preceptor--to grapple stoutly with the masters of the law; and, keeping
+his heart in restraint, if not absolute abeyance, to do that justice
+to his head, which, according to the opinion of Mr. Calvert, it
+well-deserved if hitherto it had not demanded it. But to pursue his
+studies as well as his practice, he was to leave Charlemont. How was
+this to be done--where was he to go--by what means? A horse, saddle, and
+bridle--a few books and the ante-revolutionary pistols of his grandsire,
+which recent circumstances seemed to have endeared to him, were all his
+available property. His poverty was an estoppel, at the outset, to his
+own reflections; and thinking of this difficulty he turned with a blank
+visage to his friend.
+
+The old man seemed to enter into and imagine his thoughts. He did not
+wait to be reminded, by the halting speech of the youth, of the one
+subject from which the latter shrunk to speak.
+
+"The next thing, my son," said he, "is the necessary means. Happily, in
+the case of one so prudent and temperate as yourself, you will not need
+much. Food and clothing, and a small sum, annually, for contingencies,
+will be your chief expense; and this, I am fortunately able to provide.
+I am not a rich man, my son; but economy and temperance, with industry,
+have given me enough, and to spare. It is long since I had resolved that
+all I have should be yours; and I had laid aside small sums from time to
+time, intending them for an occasion like the present, which I felt
+sure would at length arrive. I am rejoiced that my foresight should have
+begun in time, since it enables me to meet the necessity promptly,
+and to interpose myself at the moment when you most need counsel and
+assistance."
+
+"Oh, my friend, my kind generous friend, how it shames me for my own
+father to hear you speak thus!"
+
+The youth caught the hands of his benefactor, and the hot tears fell
+from his eyes upon them, while he fervently bent to kiss them.
+
+"Your father is a good but rough man, William, who will come to his
+senses in good time. Men of his education--governed as he is by the
+mistake which so commonly confounds God with his self-constituted
+representative, religion with its professor--will err, and can not be
+reasoned out of their errors. It is the unceasing operation of time
+which can alone teach them a knowledge of the truth. You must not think
+too hardly of your father, who does not love you the less because he
+fancies you are his particular property, with whom he may do what he
+pleases. As for what I have done, and am disposed to do for you, let
+that not become burdensome to your gratitude. In some respects you have
+been a son to me, and I send you from me with the same reluctance
+which a father would feel in the like circumstances. You have been my
+companion, you have helped to cheer my solitude; and I have learned to
+look on the progress of your mind with the interest of the philosopher
+who pursues a favorite experiment. In educating you, I have attempted an
+experiment which I should be sorry to see fail. I do not think now that
+it will fail. I think you will do yourself and me ample justice. If I
+have had my doubts, they were of your courage, not your talent. If
+you have a weakness, it is because of a deficiency of self-esteem--a
+tendency to self-disparagement. A little more actual struggle with the
+world, and an utter withdrawal from those helps and hands which in a
+youth's own home are very apt to be constantly employed to keep him from
+falling, and to save him from the consequences of his fall, and I do not
+despair of seeing you acquire that necessary moral hardihood which will
+enable you to think freely, and to make your mind give a fair utterance
+to the properties which are in it. When this is done, I have every hope
+of you. You will rise to eminence in your profession. I know, my son,
+that you will do me honor."
+
+"Ah, sir, I am afraid you overrate my abilities. I have no consciousness
+of any such resources as you suppose me to possess."
+
+"It is here that your deficiency speaks out. Be bold, my son--be bold,
+bolder, boldest. I would not have you presumptuous, but there is a
+courage, short of presumption, which is only a just confidence in one's
+energies and moral determination. This you will soon form, if, looking
+around you and into the performances of others, you see how easy they
+are, and how far inferior they are to your own ideas of what excellence
+should be. Do not look into yourself for your standards. I have perhaps
+erred in making these too high. Look out from yourself--look into
+others--analyze the properties of others; and, in attempting, seek only
+to meet the exigencies of the occasion, without asking what a great mind
+might effect beyond it. Your heart will fail you always if your beau
+ideal is for ever present to your mind."
+
+"I will try, sir. My tasks are before me, and I know it is full time
+that I should discard my boyhood. I will go to work with industry, and
+will endeavor not to disappoint your confidence; but I must confess,
+sir, I have very little in myself."
+
+"If you will work seriously, William, my faith is in this very humility.
+A man knowing his own weakness, and working to be strong, can not fail.
+He must achieve something more than he strives for."
+
+"You make me strong as I hear you, sir. But I have one request to make,
+sir. I have a favor to ask, sir, which will make me almost happy if you
+grant it--which will at least reconcile me to receive your favors, and
+to feel them less oppressively."
+
+"What is that, William? You know, my son, there are few things which I
+could refuse you."
+
+"It is that _I_ MAY BE YOUR SON; that I may call you father, and bear
+henceforward your name. If you adopt me, rear me, teach me, provide me
+with the means of education and life, and do for me what a father should
+have done, you are substantially more than my father to me. Let me bear,
+your name. I shall be proud of it, sir. I will not disgrace it--nay,
+more, it will strengthen me in my desire to do it and myself honor. When
+I hear it spoken, it will remind me of my equal obligations to you and
+to myself."
+
+"But this, my son, is a wrong done to your own father."
+
+"Alas! he will not feel it such."
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"You speak now with a feeling of anger, William. The treatment of your
+father rankles in your mind."
+
+"No, sir, no! I freely forgive him. I have no reference to him in the
+prayer I make. My purpose is simply what I declare. Your name will
+remind me of your counsels, will increase my obligation to pursue them,
+will strengthen me in my determination, will be to me a fond monitor in
+your place. Oh, sir, do not deny me! You have shown me the affections of
+a father--let me, I entreat you, bear the name of your son!"
+
+The youth flung his arms about the old man's neck, and wept with a gush
+of fondness which the venerable sire could not withstand. He was deeply
+touched: his lips quivered; his eyes thrilled and throbbed. In vain did
+he strive to resist the impulse. He gave him tear for tear.
+
+"My son, you have unmanned me."
+
+"Ah, my father, I can not regret, since, in doing so, I have
+strengthened my own manhood."
+
+"If it have this effect, William, I shall not regret my own weakness.
+There is a bird, you are aware, of which it is fabled that it nourishes
+its young by the blood of its own bosom, which it wounds for this
+purpose. Believe me, my dear boy, I am not unwilling to be this bird for
+your sake. If to feel for you as the fondest of fathers can give me the
+rights of one, then are you most certainly my son--my son!"
+
+Long, and fond, and sweet, was their embrace. For a full hour, but few
+words, and those of a mournful tenderness, were exchanged between the
+parties. But the scene and the struggle were drawing nigh their close.
+This was the day when they were to separate. It had been arranged that
+William Hinkley, or as he now calls himself, William Calvert, was to
+go into the world. The old man had recalled for his sake, many of the
+memories and associations of his youth. He had revived that period--in
+his case one of equal bitterness and pleasure--when, a youth like him he
+was about to send forth, he had been the ardent student in a profession
+whose honors he had so sadly failed to reap. In this profession he was
+then fortunate in having many sterling friends. Some of these were still
+so. In withdrawing from society, he had not withdrawn from all commerce
+with a select and sacred few; and to the friendly counsel and protection
+of these he now deputed the paternal trusts which had been just so
+solemnly surrendered to himself. There were long and earnest appeals
+written to many noble associates--men who had won great names by dint of
+honorable struggle in those fields into which the feebler temper of Mr.
+Calvert did not permit him to penetrate. Some of these letters bore for
+their superscriptions such names as the Clays, the Crittendens, and the
+Metcalfs--the strong men, not merely of Kentucky, but of the Union.
+The good old man sighed as he read them over, separately, to his young
+companion.
+
+"Once I stood with them, and like them--not the meanest among them--nay,
+beloved by them as an associate, and recognised as a competitor. But
+they are here--strong, high, glorious, in the eye of the nation--and I
+am nothing--a poor white-headed pedagogue in the obscurest regions
+of Kentucky. Oh, my son, remember this, and be strong! Beware of that
+weakness, the offspring of a miserable vanity, which, claiming too much
+for itself, can bestow nothing upon others. Strive only to meet the
+exigency, and you will do more--you will pass beyond it. Ask not what
+your fame requires--the poor fame of a solitary man struggling like an
+atom in the bosom of the great struggling world--ask only what is due
+to the task which you have assumed, and labor to do that. This is
+the simple, small secret, but be sure it is the one which is of more
+importance than all beside."
+
+The departure of William Hinkley from his native village was kept a
+profound secret from all persons except his adopted father and his bosom
+friend and cousin, Fisherman Ned. We have lost sight of this young man
+for several pages, and, in justice equally to the reader and himself, it
+is necessary that we should hurriedly retrace our progress, at least so
+far as concerns his. We left him, if we remember, having driven Alfred
+Stevens from his purpose, riding on alone, really with no other aim than
+to give circulation to his limbs and fancies. His ride, if we are to
+believe his random but significant words, and his very knowing looks,
+was not without its results. He had certainly made some discoveries--at
+least he thought and said so; but, in truth, we believe these amounted
+to nothing more than some plausible conjectures as to the route which
+Alfred Stevens was in the habit of pursuing, on those excursions, in
+which the neighbors were disposed to think that there was something
+very mysterious. He certainly had jumped to the conclusion that, on such
+occasions, the journey of Stevens was prolonged to Ellisland; and, as
+such a ride was too long for one of mere pleasure and exercise, the next
+conclusion was, that such a journey had always some business in it.
+
+Now, a business that calls for so much secrecy, in a young student of
+theology, was certainly one that could have very little relation to the
+church. So far as Ned Hinkley knew anything of the Decalogue it could
+not well relate to that. There was nothing in St. Paul that required
+him to travel post to Ellisland; though a voyage to Tarsus might be
+justified by the authority of that apostle; and the whole proceeding,
+therefore, appeared to be a mystery in which gospelling had very little
+to do. Very naturally, having arrived at this conclusion, Ned Hinkley
+jumped to another. If the saints have nothing to do with this journey
+of Alfred Stevens, the sinners must have. It meant mischief--it was a
+device of Satan; and the matter seemed so clearly made out to his own
+mind, that he returned home with the further conviction, which was
+equally natural and far more easily arrived at, that he was now bound
+by religion, as he had previously been impelled by instinct, to give
+Stevens "a regular licking the very first chance that offered." Still,
+though determined on this measure, he was not unmindful of the necessity
+of making other discoveries; and he returned to Charlemont with a
+countenance big with importance and almost black with mystery.
+
+But the events which had taken place in his absence, and which we have
+already related, almost put his own peculiar purposes out of his mind.
+That William Hinkley should have cowskinned Stevens would have been much
+more gratifying to him could he have been present; and he was almost
+disposed to join with the rest in their outcry against this sacrilegious
+proceeding, for the simple reason, that it somewhat anticipated his own
+rigorous intentions to the same effect. He was not less dissatisfied
+with the next attempt for two reasons.
+
+"You might have known, Bill, that a parson won't fight with pistols. You
+might have persuaded him to fist or cudgel, to a fair up and down, hand
+over, fight! That's not so criminal, they think. I heard once of Brother
+John Cross, himself trying a cudgel bout with another parson down
+in Mississippi, because he took the same text out of his mouth, and
+preached it over the very same day, with contrary reason. Everybody said
+that John Cross served him right, and nobody blamed either. But they
+would have done so if pistols had been used. You can't expect parsons
+or students of religion to fight with firearms. Swords, now, they think
+justifiable, for St. Peter used them; but we read nowhere in Old or New
+Testament of their using guns, pistols, or rifles."
+
+"But he consented to fight, and brought his own pistols, Ned?"
+
+"Why, then, didn't you fight? That's the next thing I blame you
+for--that, when you were both ready, and had the puppies in your hands,
+you should have stood looking at each other without taking a crack. By
+jingo, had there been fifty fathers and mothers in the bush, I'd have
+had a crack at him. No, I blame you, William--I can't help it. You
+didn't do right. Oh! if you had only waited for me, and let me have
+fixed it, how finely we would have managed. What then, if your father
+had burst in, it was only shifting the barkers from your hands to mine.
+I'd have banged at him, though John Cross himself, and all his flock,
+stood by and kneed it to prevent me. They might have prayed to all
+eternity without stopping me, I tell you."
+
+William Hinkley muttered something about the more impressive sort of
+procedure which his father had resorted to, and a little soreness about
+the parietal bones just at that moment giving a quick impatient air to
+his manner, had the effect of putting an end to all further discussion
+of this topic. Fisherman Ned concluded with a brief assurance, meant
+as consolation, that, when he took up the cudgels, his cousin need make
+himself perfectly easy with the conviction that he would balance both
+accounts very effectually. He had previously exhorted William to renew
+the attempt, though with different weapons, to bring his enemy into the
+field; but against this attempt Mr. Calvert had already impressively
+enjoined him; exacting from him a promise that he would not seek
+Stevens, and would simply abide any call for satisfaction which the
+latter might make. The worthy old man was well assured that in Stevens's
+situation there was very little likelihood of a summons to the field
+from him.
+
+Still, William Hinkley did not deem it becoming in him to leave the
+ground for several days, even after his preparations for departure were
+complete. He loitered in the neighborhood, showed himself frequently
+to his enemy, and, on some of these occasions, was subjected to the
+mortification of beholding the latter on his way to the house of
+Margaret Cooper, with whom, a few moments after, he might be seen in
+lonely rambles by the lake-side and in the wood. William had conquered
+his hopes from this quarter, but he vainly endeavored to suppress his
+pangs.
+
+At length the morning came for his departure. He had seen his mother for
+the last time the night before. They had met at the house of the widow
+Hinkley, between which and that of Calvert, his time had been chiefly
+spent, since the day of his affair with Stevens. His determination to
+depart was carefully concealed from his mother. He dreaded to hear
+her entreaties, and he doubted his own strength to endure them. His
+deportment, however, was sufficiently fond and tender, full of pain and
+passion, to have convinced her, had she been at all suspicious of the
+truth, of the design he meditated. But, as it was, it simply satisfied
+her affections; and the fond "good night" with which he addressed her
+ears at parting, was followed by a gush of tears which shocked the more
+sturdy courage of his cousin, and aroused the suspicions of the widow.
+
+"William Hinkley," she said after the mother had gone home--"you must be
+thinking to leave Charlemont. I'm sure of it--I know it."
+
+"If you do, say nothing, dear cousin; it will do no good--it can not
+prevent me now, and will only make our parting more painful."
+
+"Oh, don't fear me," said the widow--"I shan't speak of it, till it's
+known to everybody, for I think you right to go and do just as Gran'pa
+Calvert tells you; but you needn't have made it such a secret with me.
+I've always been too much of your friend to say a word."
+
+"Alas!" said the youth mournfully, "until lately, dear cousin, I fancied
+that I had no friends--do not blame me, therefore, if I still sometimes
+act as if I had none."
+
+"You have many friends, William, already--I'm sure you will find many
+more wherever you go; abler friends if not fonder ones, than you leave
+behind you."
+
+The youth threw his arms round the widow's neck and kissed her tenderly.
+Her words sounded in his ears like some melodious prophecy.
+
+"Say no more, cousin," he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm; "I am so
+well pleased to believe what you promise me of the future, that I am
+willing to believe all. God bless you. I will never forget you."
+
+The parting with Calvert was more touching in reality, but with fewer of
+the external signs of feeling. A few words, a single embrace and squeeze
+of the hand, and they separated; the old man hiding himself and his
+feelings in the dimness of his secluded abode, while his adopted son,
+with whom Ned Hinkley rode a brief distance on his way, struck spurs
+into his steed, as if to lose, in the rapid motion of the animal, the
+slow, sad feelings which were pressing heavily upon his heart. He had
+left Charlemont for ever. He had left it under circumstances of doubt,
+and despondency--stung by injustice, and baffled in the first ardent
+hopes of his youthful mind. "The world was all before him, where to
+choose." Let us not doubt that the benignant Providence is still his
+guide.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CONQUEST.
+
+
+
+
+
+The progress of events and our story necessarily brings as back to
+Charlemont. We shall lose sight of William Hinkley, henceforth Calvert,
+for some time; and here, par parenthese, let us say to our readers
+that this story being drawn from veritable life, will lack some of that
+compactness and close fitness of parts which make our novels too
+much resemble the course of a common law case. Instead of having our
+characters always at hand, at the proper moment, to do the business of
+the artist, like so many puppets, each working on a convenient wire, and
+waiting to be whistled in upon the scene, we shall find them sometimes
+absent, as we do in real life when their presence is most seriously
+desired, and when the reader would perhaps prefer that they should come
+in, to meet or make emergencies. Some are gone whom we should rather
+see; some present, whose absence, in the language of the Irishman, would
+be the best company they could give us; and some, not forthcoming, like
+the spirits of Owen Glendower, even when most stoutly called for. The
+vast deeps of human progress do not release their tenants at the beck
+and call of ordinary magicians, and we, who endeavor to describe events
+as we find them, must be content to take them and persons, too, only
+when they are willing. Were we writing the dramatic romance, we should
+be required to keep William Hinkley always at hand, as a convenient foil
+to Alfred Stevens. He should watch his progress; pursue his sinuosities
+of course; trace him out in all his ill-favored purposes, and be
+ready, at the first act--having, like the falcon, by frequent and
+constantly-ascending gyrations, reached the point of command--to pounce
+down upon the fated quarry, and end the story and the strife together.
+But ours is a social narrative, where people come and go without much
+regard to the unities, and without asking leave of the manager. William
+Hinkley, too, is a mere man and no hero. He has no time to spare, and he
+is conscious that he has already wasted too much. He has work to do and
+is gone to do it. Let it console the reader, in his absence, to know
+that he WILL do it--that his promise is a good one--and that we have
+already been shown, in the dim perspective of the future, glimpses of
+his course which compensate him for his mishaps, and gladden the heart
+of his adopted father, by confirming its prophecies and hopes.
+
+The same fates which deny that he should realize the first fancies of
+his boyhood, are, in the end, perhaps, not a jot kinder to others whom
+they now rather seem to favor. His absence did not stop the social
+machine of Charlemont from travelling on very much as before. There was
+a shadow over his mother's heart, and his disappearance rather aroused
+some misgiving and self-reproachful sensations in that of his father.
+Mr. Calvert, too, had his touch of hypochondria in consequence of his
+increased loneliness, and Ned Hinkley's fighting monomania underwent
+startling increase; but, with the rest, the wheel went on without much
+sensible difference. The truth is, that, however mortifying the truth
+may be, the best of us makes but a very small sensation in his absence.
+Death is a longer absence, in which our friends either forget us, or
+recollect our vices. Our virtues are best acknowledged when we are
+standing nigh and ready to enforce them. Like the argumentative
+eloquence of the Eighth Harry, they are never effectual until the
+halberdiers clinch their rivets forcibly.
+
+It does not necessarily impugn the benevolence or wisdom of Providence
+to show that crime is successful for a season in its purposes. Vice may
+prevail, and victims perish, without necessarily disparaging the career,
+or impeding the progress of virtue. To show that innocence may fall,
+is sometimes to strengthen innocence, so that it may stand against
+all assailants. To show vice, even in its moments of success, is not
+necessarily to show that such success is desirable. Far from it! As none
+of us can look very deeply into the future, so it happens that the boon
+for which we pray sometimes turns out to be our bane; while the hardship
+and suffering, whose approach we deprecate in sackcloth and ashes, may
+come with healing on their wings, and afford us a dearer blessing
+than any ever yet depicted in the loom of a sanguine and brilliant
+imagination.
+
+We are, after all, humbling as this fact may be to our clamorous vanity,
+only so many agents and instruments, blind, and scuffling vainly in our
+blindness, in the perpetual law of progress. As a soul never dies, so it
+is never useless or unemployed. The Deity is no more profligate in the
+matter of souls than he is in that of seeds. They pass, by periodical
+transitions, from body to body; perhaps from sphere to sphere; and as
+the performance of their trusts have been praiseworthy or censurable,
+so will be the character of their trusts in future. He who has shown
+himself worthy of confidence in one state, will probably acquire a
+corresponding increase of responsibility in another. He who has betrayed
+his trusts or impaired them, will share less of the privileges of the
+great moral credit system.
+
+In all these transitions, however, work is to be done. The fact that
+there is a trust, implies duty and performance; and the practice of
+virtue is nothing more than the performance of this work to the best of
+our abilities. Well, we do not do our work. We fail in our trusts. We
+abuse tuem. Such a man as Alfred Stevens abuses them. Such a woman as
+Margaret Cooper fails in them. What then? Do we destroy the slave who
+fails in his duty, or chasten him, and give him inferior trusts? Do you
+suppose that the Deity is more profligate in souls than in seeds--that
+he creates and sends forth millions of new souls, annually, in place of
+those which have gone astray? Hardly so! He is too good an economist for
+that. We learn this from all the analogies. As a soul can not perish,
+so it never remains unemployed. It still works, though its labors may be
+confined to a treadmill.
+
+The mere novel-reader may regard all this as so much unnecessary
+digression. But let him not deceive himself. It would be the most
+humiliating and painful thought, indeed, could we believe that the
+genius which informs and delights us--which guides the bark of state
+through a thousand storms and dangers to its port of safety--which
+conquers and commands--which sings in melodies that make melodies
+in human hearts for thousands of succeeding years--is suddenly to be
+suspended--to have no more employment--to do no more work--guide no more
+states--make no more melodies! Nay, the pang would be scarcely less to
+believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred Stevens, or a wild,
+irregular genius, like that of Margaret Cooper--because of its erring,
+either through perversity or blindness, is wholly to become defunct,
+so far as employment is concerned--that they are to be deprived of all
+privilege of working up to the lost places--regaining the squandered
+talents--atoning, by industry and humble desire, the errors and
+deficiencies of the past! We rather believe that heaven is a world where
+the labors are more elevated, the necessities less degrading; that it
+is no more permanent than what we esteem present life; nay, that it is
+destined to other transitions; that we may still ascend, on and on,
+and that each heaven has its higher heaven yet. We believe that our
+immortality is from the beginning; that time is only a periodical step
+in eternity----that transition is the true meaning of life--and death
+nothing more than a sign of progress. It may be an upward or a downward
+progress, but it is not a toilsome march to a mere sleep. Lavish as is
+the bounty of God, and boundless as are his resources, there is
+nothing of him that we do know which can justify the idea of such utter
+profligacy of material.
+
+We transgress. Our business is with the present doings of our dramatis
+persons and not with the future employment of their souls. Still, we
+believe, the doctrine which we teach not only to be more rational, but
+absolutely more moral than the conjectures on this subject which are
+in ordinary use. More rational as relates to the characteristics of the
+Deity, and more moral as it affects the conduct and the purposes of
+man himself. There is something grand beyond all things else, in the
+conception of this eternal progress of the individual nature; its
+passage from condition to condition; sphere to sphere; life to life;
+always busy, working for the mighty Master; falling and sinking to mere
+menial toils, or achieving and rising to more noble trusts; but, at all
+events, still working in some way in the great world-plantation, and
+under the direct eye of the sovereign World-Planter. The torture of
+souls on the one hand, and the singing of psalms on the other, may
+be doctrines infinitely more orthodox; but, to our mind, they seem
+immeasurably inferior in grandeur, in propriety, in noble conception of
+the appointments of the creature, and the wondrous and lovely designs of
+the benignant Father.
+
+The defeat of such a soul as that of Margaret Cooper can surely be a
+temporary defeat only. It will regain strength, it must rise in the
+future, it must recover the lost ground, and reassert the empire whose
+sway it has unwillingly abandoned; for it is not through will,
+wholly, by which we lose the moral eminence. Something is due to human
+weaknesses; to the blindness in which a noble spirit is sometimes
+suffered to grow into stature; disproportioned stature--that, reaching
+to heaven, is yet shaken down and overthrown by the merest breath of
+storm that sweeps suddenly beneath its skies. The very hopelessness of
+Margaret Cooper's ambition, which led her to misanthropy, was the source
+of an ever-fertile and upspringing confidence. Thus it was that the
+favoring opinions which Alfred Stevens expressed--a favoring opinion
+expressed by one whom she soon discovered was well able to form
+one--accompanied by an assurance that the dream of fame which her wild
+imagination had formed should certainly be realized, gave him a large
+power over her confidence. Her passion was sway--the sway of mind over
+mind--of genius over sympathy--of the syren Genius over the subject
+Love. It was this passion which had made her proud, which had filled
+her mind with visions, and yielded to her a world by itself, and like
+no other, filled with all forms of worship and attraction; chivalrous
+faith, unflagging zeal, generous confidence, pure spirits, and the most
+unquestioning loyalty! Ignorant of the world which she had not seen, and
+of those movements of human passion which she had really never felt, she
+naturally regarded Alfred Stevens as one of the noble representatives
+of that imaginary empire which her genius continually brought before her
+eyes. She saw in him the embodiment of that faith in her intellect which
+it was the first and last hope of her intellect to inspire; and seeing
+thus, it will be easy to believe that her full heart, which, hitherto,
+had poured itself forth on rocks, and trees, and solitary places,
+forgetful of all prudence--a lesson which she had never learned--and
+rejoicing in the sympathy of a being like herself, now gushed forth
+with all the volume of its impatient fullness. The adroit art of her
+companion led her for ever into herself; she was continually summoned to
+pour forth the treasures of her mind and soul; and, toiling in the same
+sort of egoisme in which her life heretofore had been consumed, she
+was necessarily diverted from all doubts or apprehensions of the occult
+purposes of him who had thus beguiled her over the long frequented
+paths. As the great secret of success with the mere worldling, is to pry
+into the secret of his neighbor while carefully concealing his own, so
+it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to be soon blinded to a purpose
+which its own ardent nature neither allows it to suspect nor penetrate.
+Enthusiasm is a thing of utter confidence; it has no suspicion; it sets
+no watch on other hearts; it is too constantly employed in pouring forth
+the treasures of its own. It is easy, therefore, to deceive and betray
+it, to beguile it into confidence, and turn all its revelations against
+itself. How far the frequency of this usage in the world makes it
+honorable, is a question which we need not discuss on this occasion.
+
+Alfred Stevens had now been for some weeks in the village of Charlemont,
+where, in the meantime, he had become an object of constantly-increasing
+interest. The men shrank from him with a feeling of inferiority; the
+women--the young ones being understood--shrank from him also, but
+with that natural art of the sex which invites pursuit, and strives
+to conquer even in flight. But it was soon evident enough that Stevens
+bestowed his best regards solely upon Margaret Cooper. If he sought
+the rest, it was simply in compliance with those seeming duties of his
+ostensible profession which were necessary to maintain appearances.
+Whether he loved Margaret Cooper or not, he soon found a pleasure in
+her society which he sought for in no other quarter of the village. The
+days, in spite of the strife with William Hinkley, flew by with equal
+pleasantness and rapidity to both. The unsophisticated mind of
+Margaret Cooper left her sensible to few restraints upon their ordinary
+intercourse; and, indeed, if she did know or regard them for an instant,
+it was only to consider them as necessary restraints for the protection
+of the ignorant and feeble of her sex--a class in which she never once
+thought to include herself. Her attachment to Alfred Stevens, though
+it first arose from the pleasure which her mind derived from its
+intercourse with his, and not from any of those nice and curious
+sympathies of temperament and taste which are supposed to constitute the
+essence and comprise the secret of love, was yet sufficient to blind her
+judgment to the risks of feeling, if nothing more, which were likely to
+arise from their hourly-increasing intimacy; and she wandered with
+him into the devious woods, and they walked by moonlight among
+the solemn-shaded hills, and the unconscious girl had no sort of
+apprehension that the spells of an enslaving passion were rapidly
+passing over her soul.
+
+How should she apprehend such spells? how break them? For the first time
+in her life had she found intellectual sympathy--the only moral response
+which her heart longed to hear. For the first time had she encountered
+a mind which could do justice to, and correspond on anything like equal
+terms with, her own. How could she think that evil would ensue from
+an acquisition which yielded her the only communion which she had ever
+craved Her confidence in herself, in her own strength, and her ignorance
+of her own passions, were sufficient to render her feelings secure; and
+then she was too well satisfied of the superiority and nobleness of his.
+But, in truth, she never thought upon the subject. Her mind dwelt
+only on the divine forms and images of poetry. The ideal world had
+superseded, not only the dangers, but the very aspect, of the real.
+Under the magic action of her fancy, she had come to dwell
+
+   "With those gay creatures of the element
+    That in the colors of the rainbow live,
+    And play i' the plighted clouds"--
+
+she had come to speak only in the one language, and of the one topic;
+and, believing now that she had an auditor equally able to comprehend
+and willing to sympathize with her cravings, she gave free scope to
+the utterance of her fancies, and to the headlong impulse of that
+imagination which had never felt the curb.
+
+The young heart, not yet chilled by the world's denials, will readily
+comprehend the beguiling influence of the dreaming and enthusiastic
+nature of some dear spirit, in whose faith it has full confidence, and
+whose tastes are kindred with its own. How sweet the luxury of moonlight
+in commerce with such a congenial spirit! how heavenly the occasional
+breath of the sweet southwest! how gentle and soothing fond the whispers
+of night--the twirling progress of sad-shining stars--the gentle sway of
+winds among the tree-tops--the plaintive moan of billows, as they gather
+and disperse themselves along the shores! To speak of these delights;
+to walk hand-in-hand along the gray sands by the seaside, and whisper in
+murmuring tones, that seem to gather sympathies from those of ocean;
+to guide the eye of the beloved associate to the sudden object; to
+challenge the kindred fancy which comments upon our own; to remember
+together, and repeat, the happy verse of inspired poets, speaking of
+the scene, and to the awakened heart which feels it; and, more, to pour
+forth one's own inspirations in the language of tenderness and song, and
+awaken in the heart of our companion the rapture to which our own
+has given speech--these, which are subjects of mock and scorn to the
+worldling, are substantial though not enduring joys to the young and
+ardent nature.
+
+In this communion, with all her pride, strength, and confidence,
+Margaret Cooper was the merest child. Without a feeling of guile, she
+was dreaming of the greatness which her ambition craved, and telling her
+dreams, with all the artless freedom of the child who has some golden
+fancy of the future, which it seeks to have confirmed by the lips
+of experience. The wily Stevens led her on, gave stimulus to her
+enthusiasm, made her dreams become reasonable in her eyes, and laughed
+at them in his secret heart. She sung at his suggestion, and sang her
+own verses with all that natural tremor which even the most self-assured
+poet feels on such an occasion.
+
+"Beautiful!" the arch-hypocrite would exclaim, as if unconscious
+of utterance; "beautiful!" and his hand would possess itself of the
+trembling fingers of hers. "But beautiful as it is, Margaret, I am
+sure that it is nothing to what you could do under more auspicious
+circumstances."
+
+"Ah! if there were ears to hear, if there were hearts to feel, and eyes
+to weep, I feel, I know, what might be done. No, no! this is nothing.
+This is the work of a child."
+
+"Nay, Margaret, if the work of a child, it is that of a child of
+genius."
+
+"Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive me. I am too
+willing to believe you, for it is so dear a feeling to think that I
+too am a poet. Yet, at the first, I had not the smallest notion of this
+kind: I neither knew what poetry was, nor felt the desire to be a poet.
+Yet I yearned with strange feelings, which uttered themselves in that
+form ere I had seen books or read the verses of others. It was an
+instinct that led me as it would. I sometimes fear that I have been
+foolish in obeying it; for oh, what has it brought me? What am I? what
+are my joys? I am lonely even with my companions. I share not the sports
+and feel not the things which delight my sex. Their dances and frolics
+give me no pleasure. I have no sympathy with them or their cares. I
+go apart--I am here on the hills, or deep in the forests--sad, lonely,
+scarcely knowing what I am, and what I desire."
+
+"You are not alone, nor are your pleasures less acute than theirs. If
+they laugh, their laughter ends in sleep. If you are sad, you lose not
+the slightest faculty of perception or sensibility, but rather gain them
+in consequence. Laughter and tears are signs neither of happiness nor
+grief, and as frequently result from absolute indifference as from any
+active emotion. If you are absent from them, you have better company.
+You can summon spirits to your communion, Margaret; noble thoughts
+attend you; eyes that cheer, lips that assure you, and whispers, from
+unknown attendants, that bid you be of good heart, for the good time is
+coming. Ah! Margaret, believe me when I tell you that time is at hand.
+Such a genius as yours, such a spirit, can not always be buried in these
+woods."
+
+It was in such artful language as this that the arch-hypocrite flattered
+and beguiled her. They were wandering along the edge of the streamlet to
+which we have more than once conducted the footsteps of the reader. The
+sun was about setting. The autumn air was mild with a gentle breathing
+from the south. The woods were still and meek as the slumbers of an
+infant. The quiet of the scene harmonized with the temper of their
+thoughts and feelings. They sat upon a fragment of the rock. Margaret
+was silent, but her eyes were glistening bright--not with hope only,
+but with that first glimmering consciousness of a warmer feeling, which
+gives a purple light to hope, and makes the heart tremble, for the first
+time, with its own expectations. It did not escape Alfred Stevens that,
+for the first time, her eye sank beneath his glance; for the first time
+there was a slight flush upon her cheek. He was careful not to startle
+and alarm the consciousness which these signs indicated. The first
+feeling which the young heart has of its dependence upon another is one
+little short of terror; it is a feeling which wakens up suspicion, and
+puts all the senses upon the watch. To appear to perceive this emotion
+is to make it circumspect; to disarm it, one must wear the aspect of
+unconsciousness. The wily Stevens, practised in the game, and master of
+the nature of the unsuspecting girl, betrayed in his looks none of the
+intelligence which he felt. If he uttered himself in the language of
+admiration, it was that admiration which would be natural to a profound
+adorer of literature and all its professors. His words were those of the
+amateur:--
+
+"I can not understand, Margaret, how you have studied--how you have
+learned so much--your books are few--you have had no masters. I never
+met in my life with so remarkable an instance of unassisted endeavor."
+
+"My books were hero in the woods--among these old rocks. My teacher was
+solitude. Ah! there is no teacher like one's own heart. My instinct made
+me feel my deficiencies--my deficiencies taught me contemplation--and
+from contemplation came thoughts and cravings, and you know, when the
+consciousness of our lack is greatest, then, even the dumb man finds a
+voice. I found my voice in consequence of my wants. My language you see
+is that of complaint only."
+
+"And a sweet and noble language it is, Margaret; but it is not in poetry
+alone that your utterance is so distinct and beautiful--you sing too
+with a taste as well as power which would prove that contemplation was
+as happy in bringing about perfection in the one as in the other art.
+Do sing me, Margaret, that little ditty which you sang here the other
+night?"
+
+His hand gently detained and pressed hers as he urged the request.
+
+"I would rather not sing to-night," she replied, "I do not feel as if I
+could, and I trust altogether to feeling. I will sing for you some other
+time when you do not ask, and, perhaps would prefer not to hear me."
+
+"To hear you at all, Margaret, is music to my ears."
+
+She was silent, and her fingers made a slight movement to detach
+themselves from his.
+
+"No, Margaret, do not withdraw them! Let me detain them
+thus--longer--for ever! My admiration of you has been too deeply felt
+not to have been too clearly shown, Your genius is too dear to me now to
+suffer me to lose it. Margaret--dear Margaret!"
+
+She spoke not--her breathing became quick and hard.
+
+"You do not speak, let me hope that you are not angry with me?"
+
+"No, no!" she whispered faintly. He continued with more boldness, and
+while he spoke, his arm encircled her waist.
+
+"A blessed chance brought me to your village. I saw you and returned.
+I chose a disguise in which I might study you, and see how far the
+treasures of your mind confirmed the noble promise of your face. They
+have done more. Like him who finds the precious ore among the mountains,
+I can not part with you so found. I must tear you from the soil. I must
+bear you with me. You must be mine, Margaret--you must go with me where
+the world will see, and envy me my prize."
+
+He pressed her to his bosom. She struggled slightly.
+
+"Do not, do not, Alfred Stevens, do not press me--do not keep me. You
+think too much of me. I am no treasure--alas! this is all deception. You
+can not--can not desire it?"
+
+"Do I not! Ah! Margaret, what else do I desire now? Do you think me only
+what I appear in Charlemont?"
+
+"No! no!"
+
+"I have the power of a name, Margaret, in my profession--among a
+numerous people--and that power is growing into wealth and sway. I am
+feared and honored, loved by some, almost worshipped by others; and what
+has led me from this sway, to linger among these hills--to waste hours
+so precious to ambition--to risk the influence which I had already
+secured--what, but a higher impulse--a dearer prospect--a treasure,
+Margaret, of equal beauty and genius."
+
+Her face was hidden upon his bosom. He felt the beating of her heart
+against his hand.
+
+"If you have a genius for song, Margaret Cooper, I, too, am not without
+my boast. In my profession, men speak of my eloquence as that of a
+genius which has few equals, and no superior."
+
+"I know it--it must be so!"
+
+"Move me not to boast, dear Margaret; it is in your ears only that I
+do so--and only to assure you that, in listening to my love, you do not
+yield to one utterly obscure, and wanting in claims, which, as yours
+must be finally, are already held to be established and worthy of the
+best admiration of the intelligent and wise. Do you hear me, Margaret?"
+
+"I do, I do! It must be as you say. But of love I have thought nothing.
+No, no! I know not, Alfred Stevens, if I love or not--if I can love."
+
+"You mistake, Margaret. It is in the heart that the head finds its
+inspiration. Mere intellect makes not genius. All the intellect in the
+world would fail of this divine consummation. It is from the fountains
+of feeling that poetry drinks her inspiration. It is at the altars of
+love that the genius of song first bends in adoration. You have loved,
+Margaret, from the first moment when you sung. It did not alter the case
+that there was no object of sight. The image was in your mind--in your
+hope. One sometimes goes through life without ever meeting the human
+counterpart of this ideal; and the language of such a heart will be that
+of chagrin--distaste of life--misanthropy, and a general scorn of his
+own nature. Such, I trust, is not your destiny. No, Margaret, that is
+impossible. I take your doubt as my answer, and unless your own lips
+undeceive me, dearest Margaret, I will believe that your love is willing
+to requite my own."
+
+She was actually sobbing on his breast. With an effort she struggled
+into utterance.
+
+"My heart is so full, my feelings are so strange--oh! Alfred Stevens, I
+never fancied I could be so weak."
+
+"So weak--to love! surely, Margaret, you mistake the word. It is in
+loving only that the heart finds its strength. Love is the heart's
+sole business; and not to exercise it in its duties is to impair its
+faculties, and deprive it equally of its pleasures and its tasks. Oh,
+I will teach you of the uses of this little heart of yours, dear
+Margaret--ay, till it grow big with its own capacity to teach. We will
+inform each other, every hour, of some new impulses and objects. Our
+dreams, our hopes, our fears, and our desires, ah! Margaret--what a
+study of love will these afford us. Nor to love only. Ah! dearest, when
+your muse shall have its audience, its numerous watching eyes and eager
+ears, then shall you discover how much richer will be the strain from
+your lips once informed by the gushing fullness of this throbbing
+heart."
+
+She murmured fondly in his embrace, "Ah! I ask no other eyes and ears
+than yours."
+
+In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such indeed was her
+feeling. He gathered her up closer in his arms. He pressed his lips upon
+the rich ripe beauties of hers, as some hungering bee, darting upon the
+yet unrifled flower which it first finds in the shadows of the forest,
+clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness, as if appetite could
+only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled and freed herself from
+his embrace: but, returning home that evening her eye was cast upon the
+ground; her step was set down hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her
+heart; a timid expression in her face and manner! These were proofs of
+the discovery which she then seems to have made for the first time, that
+there is a power stronger than mere human will--a power that controls
+genius; that mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is
+independent of the loss of friends! She now first knew her weakness. She
+had felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever
+his hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes forth
+to victory.
+
+Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and turned
+her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which, with every
+movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon her cheek. Yet,
+while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed and trembled with
+the birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how sweet is our first
+secret pleasure--shared by one other only--sweet to that other as to
+ourself--so precious to him also. To be carried into our chamber--to be
+set up ostentatiously--there, where none but ourselves may see--to be
+an object of our constant tendance, careful idolatry, keen suspicion,
+delighted worship!
+
+Ah! but if the other makes it no idol--his toy only--what shall
+follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse,
+humiliation, perhaps death!--alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love which
+had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was no divinity
+with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such things, but like
+the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the good doctrines which he
+can not feel and is slow to practise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+FALL.
+
+
+
+
+
+We should speak unprofitably and with little prospect of being
+understood, did our readers require to be told, that there is a certain
+impatient and gnawing restlessness in the heart of love, which keeps it
+for ever feverish and anxious. Where this passion is associated with a
+warm, enthusiastic genius, owning the poetic temperament, the anxiety
+is proportionatly greater. The ideal of the mind is a sort of classical
+image of perfect loveliness, chaste, sweet, commanding, but, how cold!
+But love gives life to this image, even as the warm rays of the sun
+falling upon the sullen lips of the Memnon, compel its utterance in
+music. It not only looks beauty--it breathes it. It is not only the
+aspect of the Apollo, it is the god himself; his full lyre strung, his
+golden bow quivering at his back with the majesty of his motion; and his
+lips parting with the song which shall make the ravished spheres stoop,
+and gather round to listen.
+
+Hitherto Margaret Cooper had been a girl of strong will; will nursed
+in solitude, and by the wrong-headed indulgence of a vain and foolish
+mother. She was conscious of that bounding, bursting soul of genius
+which possessed her bosom; that strange, moody, and capricious god;
+pent-up, denied, crying evermore for utterance, with a breath more
+painful to endure, because of the suppression. This consciousness, with
+the feeling of denial which attended it, had cast a gloomy intensity
+over her features not less than her mind. The belief that she was
+possessed of treasures which were unvalued--that she had powers which
+were never to be exercised--that with a song such as might startle an
+empire, she was yet doomed to a silent and senseless auditory of rocks
+and trees; this belief had brought with it a moody arrogance of temper
+which had made itself felt by all around her. In one hour this mood had
+departed. Ambition and love became united for a common purpose; for the
+object of the latter, was also the profound admirer of the former.
+
+The anxious restlessness which her newly-acquired sensations occasioned
+in her bosom, was not diminished by a renewal of those tender interviews
+with her lover, which we have endeavored, though so faultily, already to
+describe. Evening after evening found them together; the wily hypocrite
+still stimulating, by his glozing artifices, the ruling passion for
+fame, which, in her bosom, was only temporarily subservient to
+love, while he drank his precious reward from her warm, lovely, and
+still-blushing lips and cheeks. The very isolation in which she had
+previously dwelt in Charlemont, rendered the society of Stevens still
+more dear to her heart. She was no longer alone--no longer unknown--not
+now unappreciated in that respect in which hitherto she felt her great
+denial. "Here is one--himself a genius--who can do justice to mine."
+
+The young poet who finds an auditor, where he has never had one before,
+may be likened to a blind man suddenly put in possession of his sight.
+He sees sun and moon and stars, the forms of beauty, the images of
+grace; and his soul grows intoxicated with the wonders of its new
+empire. What does he owe to him who puts him in possession of these
+treasures? who has given him his sight? Love, devotion, all that his
+full heart has to pay of homage and affection.
+
+Such was very much the relation which Margaret Cooper bore to Alfred
+Stevens; and when, by his professions of love, he left the shows of his
+admiration no longer doubtful, she was at once and entirely his. She was
+no longer the self-willed, imperious damsel, full of defiance, dreaming
+of admiration only, scornful of the inferior, and challenging the
+regards of equals. She was now a timid, trembling girl--a dependant,
+such as the devoted heart must ever be, waiting for the sign to speak,
+looking eagerly for the smile to reward her sweetest utterance. If now
+she walked with Stevens, she no longer led the way; she hung a little
+backward, though she grasped his arm--nay, even when her hand was
+covered with a gentle pressure in the folds of his. If she sung, she did
+not venture to meet his eyes, which she FELT must be upon hers, and now
+it was no longer her desire that the village damsels should behold them
+as they went forth together on their rambles. She no longer met their
+cunning and significant smiles with confidence and pride, but with
+faltering looks, and with cheeks covered with blushes. Great, indeed,
+was the change which had come over that once proud spirit--change
+surprising to all, but as natural as any other of the thousand changes
+which are produced in the progress of moments by the arch-magician,
+Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the ordinary topics of the
+youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to the eagle,
+soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming thunder-storm;
+to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness, which no foot
+travelled but her own; to the silent glooms of the forest--to the
+majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The dove and the zephyr
+now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly closed it. She was changed
+from what she was. The affections had suddenly bounded into being,
+trampling the petty vanities underfoot; and those first lessons of
+humility which are taught by love, had subdued a spirit which, hitherto,
+had never known control.
+
+Alfred Stevens soon perceived how complete was his victory. He soon
+saw the extent of that sudden change which had come over her character.
+Hitherto, she had been the orator. When they stood together by the
+lake-side, or upon the rock, it was her finger which had pointed out the
+objects for contemplation; it was her voice whose eloquence had charmed
+the ear, dilating upon the beauties or the wonders which they surveyed.
+She was now no longer eloquent in words. But she looked a deeper
+eloquence by far than any words could embody. He was now the speaker;
+and regarding him through the favoring media of kindled affections, it
+seemed to her ear, that there was no eloquence so sweet as his. He spoke
+briefly of the natural beauties by which they were surrounded.
+
+"Trees, rocks, the valley and the hill, all realms of solitude and
+shade, inspire enthusiasm and ardor in the imaginative spirit. They are
+beneficial for this purpose. For the training of a great poet they are
+necessary. They have the effect of lifting the mind to the contemplation
+of vastness, depth, height, profundity. This produces an intensity of
+mood--the natural result of any association between our own feelings and
+such objects as are lofty and noble in the external world. The feelings
+and passions as they are influenced by the petty play of society,
+which diffuses their power and breaks their lights into little, become
+concentrated on the noble and the grand. Serious earnestness of nature
+becomes habitual--the heart flings itself into all the subjects of its
+interest--it trifles with none--all its labors become sacred in its
+eyes, and the latest object of study and analysis is that which is
+always most important. The effect of this training in youth on the
+poetic mind, is to the last degree beneficial; since, without a degree
+of seriousness amounting to intensity--without a hearty faith in the
+importance of what is to be done--without a passionate fullness of
+soul which drives one to his task--there will be no truthfulness, no
+eloquence, no concentrated thought and permanent achievement. With, you,
+dear Margaret, such has already been the effect. You shrink from the
+ordinary enjoyments of society. Their bald chat distresses you, as the
+chatter of so many jays. You prefer the solitude which feeds the serious
+mood which you love, and enables your imagination, unrepressed by
+the presence of shallow witlings, to evoke its agents from storm and
+shadow--from deep forest and lonesome lake--to minister to the cravings
+of an excited heart, and a soaring and ambitious fancy."
+
+"Oh, how truly, Alfred, do you speak it," she murmured as he closed.
+
+"So far, so good; but, dear Margaret--there are other subjects of study
+which are equally necessary for the great poet. The wild aspects of
+nature are such as are of use in the first years of his probation. To
+grow up in the woods and among the rocks, so that a hearty simplicity,
+an earnest directness, with a constant habit of contemplation should be
+permanently formed, is a first and necessary object. But it is in this
+training as in every other. There are successive steps. There is a law
+of progressive advance. You must not stop there. The greatest moral
+study for the poet must follow. This is the study of man in society--in
+the great world--where he puts on a thousand various aspects--far other
+than those which are seen in the country--in correspondence with the
+thousand shapes of fortune, necessity, or caprice, which attend him
+there. Indeed, it may safely be said, that he never knows one half of
+the responsibility of his tasks who toils without the presence of those
+for whom he toils. It is in the neighborhood of man that we feel his and
+our importance. It is while we are watching his strifes and struggles
+that we see the awful importance of his destiny; and the great trusts of
+self, and truth, and the future, which have been delivered to his hands.
+Here you do not see man. You see certain shapes, which are employed in
+raising hay, turnips, and potatoes; which eat and drink very much as man
+does; but which, as they suffer to sleep and rest most of those latent
+faculties, the exercise of which can alone establish the superiority of
+the intellectual over the animal nature, so they have no more right
+to the name of man than any other of those animals who eat as
+industriously, and sleep as profoundly, as themselves. The contemplation
+of the superior being, engaged in superior toils, awakens superior
+faculties in the observer. He who sees nothing but the gathering of
+turnips will think of nothing but turnips. As we enlarge the sphere
+of our observation, the faculty of thought becomes expanded. You will
+discover this wonderful change when you go into the world. Hitherto,
+your inspirers have been these groves, these rocks, lakes, trees,
+and silent places. But, when you sit amid crowds of bright-eyed,
+full-minded, and admiring people; when you see the eyes of thousands
+looking for the light to shine from yours; hanging, with a delight that
+still hungers, on the words of truth and beauty which fall from your
+lips--then, then only, dearest Margaret, will you discover the true
+sources of inspiration and of fame."
+
+"Ah!" she murmured despondingly--"you daunt me when you speak of these
+crowds--crowds of the intellectual and the wise. What should I be--how
+would I appear among them?"
+
+"As you appear to me, Margaret--their queen, their idol, their divinity,
+not less a beauty than a muse?"
+
+The raptures which Stevens expressed seemed to justify the embrace which
+followed it; and it was some moments before she again spoke. When she
+did the same subject was running in her mind.
+
+"Ah! Alfred, still I fear!"
+
+"Fear nothing, Margaret. It will be as I tell you--as I promise! If I
+deceive you, I deceive myself. Is it not for the wife of my bosom that I
+expect this homage?"
+
+Her murmurs were unheard. They strolled on--still deeper into the
+mazes of the forest, and the broad disk of the moon, suddenly gleaming,
+yellow, through the tops of the trees, surprised them in their
+wanderings.
+
+"How beautiful!" he exclaimed. "Let us sit here, dearest Margaret.
+The rock here is smooth and covered with the softest lichen. A perfect
+carpet of it is at our feet, and the brooklet makes the sweetest
+murmuring as it glides onward through the grove, telling all the while,
+like some silly schoolgirl, where you may look for it. See the little
+drops of moonlight falling here--and there in the small openings of the
+forest, and lying upon the greensward like so many scattered bits of
+silver. One might take it for fairy coin. And, do you note the soft
+breeze that seems to rise with the moon as from some Cytherean isle,
+breathing of love, love only--love never perishing!"
+
+"Ah! were it so, Alfred!"
+
+"Is it not, Margaret? If I could fancy that you would cease to love me
+or I you--could I think that these dear joys were to end--but no! no!
+let us not think of it. It is too sweet to believe, and the distrust
+seems as unholy as it is unwholesome. That bright soft planet seems to
+persuade to confidence as it inspires love. Do you not feel your heart
+soften in the moonlight, Margaret? your eye glistens, dearest--and
+your heart, I know, must be touched. It is--I feel its beating! What a
+tumult, dear Margaret, is here!"
+
+"Do not, do not!" she murmured, gently striving to disengage herself
+from his grasp.
+
+"No! no!--move not, dearest," he replied in a subdued tone--a murmur
+most like hers. "Are we not happy? Is there anything, dear Margaret,
+which we could wish for?"
+
+"Nothing! nothing!"
+
+"Ah! what a blessed chance it was that brought me to these hills. I
+never lived till now. I had my joys, Margaret--my triumphs! I freely
+yield them to the past! I care for them no more! They are no longer joys
+or triumphs! Yes, Margaret you have changed my heart within me. Even
+fame which I so much worshipped is forgotten."
+
+"Say not that; oh, say not that!" she exclaimed, but still in subdued
+accents.
+
+"I must--it is too far true. I could give up the shout of applause--the
+honor of popular favor--the voice of a people's approbation--the shining
+display and the golden honor--all, dear Margaret, sooner than part with
+you."
+
+"But you need not give them up, Alfred."
+
+"Ah, dearest, but I have no soul for them now. You are alone my soul, my
+saint--the one dear object, desire, and pride, and conquest."
+
+"Alas! and have you not conquered, Alfred?"
+
+"Sweet! do I not say that I am content to forfeit all honors, triumphs,
+applauses--all that was so dear to me before--and only in the fond
+faith that I had conquered? You are mine--you tell me so with your dear
+lips--I have you in my fond embrace--ah! do not talk to me again of
+fame."
+
+"I were untrue to you as to myself, dear Alfred, did I not. No! with
+your talents, to forego their uses--to deliver yourself up to love
+wholly, were as criminal as it would be unwise."
+
+"You shall be my inspiration then, dear Margaret. These lips shall send
+me to the forum--these eyes shall reward me with smiles when I return.
+Your applause shall be to me a dearer triumph than all the clamors of
+the populace."
+
+"Let us return home--it is late."
+
+"Not so!--and why should we go? What is sleep to us but loss? What the
+dull hours, spent after the ordinary fashion, among ordinary people.
+Could any scene be more beautiful than this--ah! can any feeling be more
+sweet? Is it not so to you, dearest? tell me--nay, do not tell me--if
+you love as I do, you can not leave me--not now--not thus--while such is
+the beauty of earth and heaven--while such are the rich joys clustering
+in our hearts. Nay, while, in that hallowing moonlight, I gaze upon thy
+dark eyes, and streaming hair, thy fair, beautiful cheeks, and those
+dear rosy lips!"
+
+"Oh! Alfred, do not speak so--do not clasp me thus. Let us go. It is
+late--very late, and what will they say?"
+
+"Let them say! Are we not blessed? Can all their words take from us
+these blessings--these sacred, sweet, moments--such joys, such delights?
+Let them dream of such, with their dull souls if they can. No! no!
+Margaret--we are one! and thus one, our world is as free from their
+control as it is superior to their dreams and hopes. Here is our heaven,
+Margaret--ah! how long shall it be ours! at what moment may we lose it,
+by death, by storm, by what various mischance! What profligacy to fly
+before the time! No! no! but a little while longer--but a little while!"
+
+And there they lingered! He, fond, artful, persuasive; she, trembling
+with the dangerous sweetness of wild, unbidden emotions. Ah! why did she
+not go? Why was the strength withheld which would have carried out her
+safer purpose? The moon rose until she hung in the zenith, seeming to
+linger there in a sad, sweet watch, like themselves--the rivulet ran
+along, still prattling through the groves; the breeze, which had been a
+soft murmur among the trees at the first rising of the moon, now blew
+a shrill whistle among the craggy hills; but they no longer heard the
+prattle of the rivulet--even the louder strains of the breeze were
+unnoticed, and it was only when they were about to depart, that poor
+Margaret discovered that the moon had all the while been looking down
+upon them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE BIRTH OF THE AGONY.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was now generally understood in Charlemont that Margaret Cooper had
+made a conquest of the handsome stranger. We have omitted--as a matter
+not congenial to our taste--the small by-play which had been carried on
+by the other damsels of the village to effect the same object. There had
+been setting of caps, without number, ay, and pulling them too, an the
+truth were known among the fair Stellas and Clarissas, the Daphnes and
+Dorises, of Charlemont, but, though Stevens was sufficiently considerate
+of the claims of each, so far as politeness demanded it, and contrived
+to say pleasant things, pour passer le temps, with all of them, it was
+very soon apparent to the most sanguine, that the imperial beauties and
+imperious mind of Margaret Cooper had secured the conquest for herself.
+
+As a matter of course, the personal and intellectual attractions of
+Stevens underwent no little disparagement as soon as this fact was
+known. It was now universally understood that he was no such great
+things, after all; and our fair friend the widow Thackeray, who was not
+without her pretensions to wit and beauty, was bold enough to say that
+Mr. Stevens was certainly too fat in the face, and she rather thought
+him stupid. Such an opinion gave courage to the rest, and pert Miss
+Bella Tompkins, a romp of first-rate excellence, had the audacity to say
+that he squinted!--and this opinion was very natural, since neither of
+his eyes had ever rested with satisfaction on her pouting charms.
+
+It may be supposed that the discontent of the fair bevy, and its
+unfavorable judgment of himself, did not reach the ears of Alfred
+Stevens, and would scarcely have disturbed them if it did. Margaret
+Cooper was more fortunate than himself in this respect. She could not
+altogether be insensible to the random remarks which sour envy and
+dark-eyed jealousy continued to let fall in her hearing; but her scorn
+for the speakers, and her satisfaction with herself, secured her from
+all annoyance from this cause. Such, at least, had been the case in the
+first days of her conquest. Such was not exactly the case now. She had
+no more scorn of others. She was no longer proud, no longer strong. Her
+eyes no longer flashed with haughty defiance on the train which, though
+envious, were yet compelled to follow. She could no longer speak in
+those superior tones, the language equally of a proud intellect, and
+a spirit whose sensibilities had neither been touched by love nor
+enfeebled by anxiety and apprehension. A sad change had come over her
+heart and all her features in the progress of a few days. Her courage
+had departed. Her step was no longer firm; her eye no longer uplifted
+like that of the mountain-eagle, to which, in the first darings of her
+youthful muse, she had boldly likened herself. Her look was downcast,
+her voice subdued; she was now not less timid than the feeblest damsel
+of the village in that doubtful period of life when, passing from
+childhood to girlhood, the virgin falters, as it were, with bashful
+thoughts, upon the threshold of a new and perilous condition. The
+intercourse of Margaret Cooper with her lover had had the most serious
+effect upon her manners and her looks. But the change upon her spirit
+was no less striking to all.
+
+"I'm sure if I did love any man," was the opinion of one of the damsels,
+"I'd die sooner than show it to him, as she shows it to Alfred Stevens.
+It's a guess what he must think of it."
+
+"And no hard guess neither," said another; "I reckon there's no reason
+why he should pick out Margaret Cooper except that he saw that it was no
+such easy matter any where else."
+
+"Well! there can be no mistake about it with them; for now they're
+always together--and Betty, her own maid, thinks--but it's better not to
+say!"
+
+And the prudent antique pursed up her mouth in a language that said
+everything.
+
+"What!--what does she say?" demanded a dozen voices.
+
+"Well! I won't tell you that. I won't tell you all; but she does say,
+among other things, that the sooner John Cross marries them, the better
+for all parties."
+
+"Is it possible!"
+
+"Can it be!"
+
+"Bless me! but I always thought something wrong."
+
+"And Betty, her own maid, told you? Well, who should know, if she
+don't?"
+
+"And this, too, after all her airs!"
+
+"Her great smartness, her learning, and verse-making! I never knew any
+good come from books yet."
+
+"And never will, Jane," said another, with an equivocal expression,
+with which Jane was made content; and, after a full half-hour's
+confabulation, in the primitive style, the parties separated--each,
+in her way, to give as much circulation to Betty's inuendoes as the
+importance of the affair deserved.
+
+Scandal travels along the highways, seen by all but the victim. Days and
+nights passed; and in the solitude of lonely paths, by the hillside or
+the rivulet, Margaret Cooper still wandered with her lover. She heard
+not the poisonous breath which was already busy with her virgin fame.
+She had no doubts, whatever might be the event, that the heart of Alfred
+Stevens could leave her without that aliment which, in these blissful
+moments, seemed to be her very breath of life. But she felt many fears,
+many misgivings, she knew not why. A doubt, a cloud of anxiety, hung
+brooding on the atmosphere. In a heart which is unsophisticated, the
+consciousness, however vague, that all is not right, is enough to
+produce this cloud; but, with the gradual progress of that heart to the
+indulgence of the more active passions, this consciousness necessarily
+increases and the conflict then begins between the invading passion and
+the guardian principle. We have seen enough to know what must be
+the result of such a conflict with a nature such as hers, under the
+education which she had received. It did not end in the expulsion of her
+lover. It did not end in the discontinuance of those long and frequent
+rambles amid silence, and solitude, and shadow. She had not courage
+for this; and the poor, vain mother, flattered with the idea that her
+son-in-law would be a preacher, beheld nothing wrong in their nightly
+wanderings, and suffered her daughter, in such saintly society, to go
+forth without restraint or rebuke.
+
+There was one person in the village who was not satisfied that Margaret
+Cooper should fall a victim, either to the cunning of another, or to her
+own passionate vanity. This was our old friend Calvert. He was rather,
+inclined to be interested in the damsel, in spite of the ill treatment
+of his protege, if it were only in consequence of the feelings with
+which she had inspired him. It has been seen that, in the affair of the
+duel, he was led to regard the stranger with an eye of suspicion. This
+feeling had been further heightened by the statements of Ned Hinkley,
+which, however loose and inconclusive, were yet of a kind to show that
+there was some mystery about Stevens--that he desired concealment in
+some respects--a fact very strongly inferred from his non-employment
+of the village postoffice, and the supposition--taken for true--that he
+employed that of some distant town. Ned Hinkley had almost arrived at
+certainty in this respect; and some small particulars which seemed
+to bear on this conviction, which he had recently gathered, taken
+in connection with the village scandal in reference to the parties,
+determined the old man to take some steps in the matter to forewarn
+the maiden, or at least her mother, of the danger of yielding too much
+confidence to one of whom so little was or could be known.
+
+It was a pleasant afternoon, and Calvert was sitting beneath his
+roof-tree, musing over this very matter, when he caught a glimpse of
+the persons of whom he thought, ascending one of the distant hills,
+apparently on their way to the lake. He rose up instantly, and, seizing
+his staff, hurried off to see the mother of the damsel. The matter was
+one of the nicest delicacy--not to be undertaken lightly--not to be
+urged incautiously. Nothing, indeed, but a strong sense of duty could
+have determined him upon a proceeding likely to appear invidious,
+and which might be so readily construed, by a foolish woman, into an
+impertinence. Though a man naturally of quick, warm feelings,
+Calvert had been early taught to think cautiously--indeed, the modern
+phrenologist would have said that, in the excess of this prudent organ
+lay the grand weakness of his moral nature. This delayed him in the
+contemplated performance much longer than his sense of its necessity
+seemed to justify. Having now resolved, however, and secure in the
+propriety of his object, he did not scruple any longer.
+
+A few minutes sufficed to bring him to the cottage of the old lady, and
+her voice in very friendly tenor commanded him to enter. Without useless
+circumlocution, yet without bluntness, the old man broached the subject;
+and, without urging any of the isolated facts of which he was possessed,
+and by which his suspicions were awakened, he dwelt simply upon the
+dangers which might result from such a degree of confidence as was given
+to the stranger. The long, lonely rambles in the woods, by night as well
+as day, were commented on, justly, but in an indulgent spirit; and the
+risks of a young and unsuspecting maiden, under such circumstances, were
+shown with sufficient distinctness for the comprehension of the mother,
+had she been disposed to hear. But never was good old man, engaged in
+the thankless office of bestowing good advice, so completely confounded
+as he was by the sort of acknowledgments which his interference
+obtained. A keen observer might have seen the gathering storm while
+he was speaking; and, at every sentence, there was a low, running
+commentary, bubbling up from the throat of the opinionated dame,
+somewhat like rumbling thunder, which amply denoted the rising tempest.
+It was a sort of religious effort which kept the old lady quiet till
+Calvert had fairly reached a conclusion. Then, rising from her seat,
+she approached him, smoothed back her apron, perked out her chin, and,
+fixing her keen gray eyes firmly upon his own, with her nose elongated
+to such a degree as almost to suggest the possibility of a pointed
+collision between that member and the corresponding one of his own face,
+she demanded--
+
+"Have you done--have you got through?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Cooper, this is all I came to say. It is the suggestion of
+prudence--the caution of a friend--your daughter is young, very young,
+and--"
+
+"I thank you! I thank you! My daughter is young, very young; but she is
+no fool, Mr. Calvert--let me tell you that! Margaret Cooper is no fool.
+If you don't know that, I do. I know her. She's able to take care of
+herself as well as the best of us."
+
+"I am glad you think so, Mrs. Cooper, but the best of us find it a
+difficult matter to steer clear of danger, and error and misfortune;
+and the wisest, my dear madam, are only too apt to fall when they place
+their chief reliance on their wisdom."
+
+"Indeed! that's a new doctrine to me, and I reckon to everybody else. If
+it's true, what's the use of all your schooling, I want to know?"
+
+"Precious little, Mrs. Cooper, if--"
+
+"Ah! precious little; and let me tell you, Mr. Calvert, I think it's
+mighty strange that you should think Margaret Cooper in more need of
+your advice, than Jane Colter, or Betsy Barnes, or Susan Mason, or
+Rebecca Forbes, or even the widow Thackeray."
+
+"I should give the same advice to them under the same circumstances,
+Mrs. Cooper."
+
+"Should you, indeed! Then I beg you will go and give it to them, for if
+they are not in the same circumstances now, they'd give each of them an
+eye to be so. Ay, wouldn't they! Yes! don't I know, Mr. Calvert,
+that it's all owing to envy that you come here talking about Brother
+Stevens."
+
+"But I do not speak of Mr. Stevens, Mrs. Cooper; were it any other young
+man with whom your daughter had such intimacy I should speak in the same
+manner."
+
+"Would you, indeed? Tell that to the potatoes. Don't I know better.
+Don't I know that if your favorite, that you made so much of--your
+adopted son, Bill Hinkley--if he could have got her to look at him, they
+might have walked all night and you'd never have said the first word.
+He'd have given one eye for her, and so would every girl in the village
+give an eye for Brother Stevens. I'm not so old but I know something.
+But it won't do. You can go to the widow Thackeray, Mr. Calvert. It'll
+do her good to tell her that it's very dangerous for her to be thinking
+about young men from morning to night. It's true you can't say anything
+about the danger, for precious little danger she's in; but, lord,
+wouldn't she jump to it if she had a chance. Let her alone for that.
+You'd soon have cause enough to give her your good advice about the
+danger, and much good would come of it. She'd wish, after all was said,
+that the danger was only twice as big and twice as dangerous."
+
+Such was the conclusion of Mr. Calvert's attempt to give good counsel.
+It resulted as unprofitably in this as in most cases; but it had
+not utterly fallen, like the wasted seed, in stony places. There was
+something in it to impress itself upon the memory of Mrs. Cooper; and
+she resolved that when her daughter came in, it should be the occasion
+of an examination into her feelings and her relation to the worthy
+brother, such as she had more than once before meditated to make.
+
+But Margaret Cooper did not return till a comparatively late hour; and
+the necessity of sitting up after her usual time of retiring, by making
+the old lady irritable, had the effect of giving some additional force
+to the suggestions of Mr. Calvert. When Margaret did return, she came
+alone. Stevens had attended her only to the wicket. She did not expect
+to find her mother still sitting up; and started, with an appearance of
+disquiet, when she met her glance. The young girl was pale and haggard.
+Her eye had a dilated, wild expression. Her step faltered; her voice was
+scarcely distinct as she remarked timidly--
+
+"Not yet abed, mother?"
+
+"No! it's a pretty time for you to keep me up."
+
+"But why did you sit up, mother? It's not usual with you to do so."
+
+"No! but it's high time for me to sit up, and be on the watch too, when
+here's the neighbors coming to warn me to do so--and telling me all
+about your danger."
+
+"Ha! my danger--speak--what danger, mother?"
+
+"Don't you know what danger? Don't you know?"
+
+"Know!" The monosyllable subsided in a gasp. At that moment Margaret
+Cooper could say no more.
+
+"Well, I suppose you don't know, and so I'll tell you. Here's been that
+conceited, stupid old man, Calvert, to tell me how wrong it is for you
+to go out by night walking with Brother Stevens; and hinting to me that
+you don't know how to take care of yourself with all your learning; and
+how nobody knows anything about Brother Stevens; as if nobody was wise
+for anything but himself. But I gave him as good as he brought, I'll
+warrant you. I sent him off with a flea in his ear!"
+
+It was fortunate for the poor girl that the light, which was that of a
+dipped candle, was burning in the corner of the chimney, and was too dim
+to make her features visible. The ghastly tale which they told could not
+have been utterly unread even by the obtuse and opinionated mind of the
+vain mother. The hands of Margaret were involuntarily clasped in her
+agony, and she felt very much like falling upon the floor; but, with
+a strong effort, her nerves were braced to the right tension, and she
+continued to endure, in a speechless terror, which was little short
+of frenzy, the outpourings of her mother's folly which was a frenzy of
+another sort.
+
+"I sent him off," she repeated, "with a flea in his ear. I could see
+what the old fool was driving after, and I as good as told him so. If it
+had been his favorite, his adopted son, Bill Hinkley, it would have been
+another guess-story--I reckon. Then you might have walked out where you
+pleased together, at all hours, and no harm done, no danger; old Calvert
+would have thought it the properest thing in the world. But no Bill
+Hinkley for me. I'm for Brother Stevens, Margaret; only make sure of
+him, my child--make sure of him."
+
+"No more of this, dear mother, I entreat you. Let us go to bed, and
+think no more of it."
+
+"And why should we not think of it? I tell you, Margaret, YOU MUST THINK
+OF IT! Brother Stevens soon will be a preacher, and a fine speck he will
+be. There'll be no parson like him in all west Kentucky. As for John
+Cross, I reckon he won't be able to hold a candle to him. Brother
+Stevens is something to try for. You must play your cards nicely,
+Margaret. Don't let him see too soon that you like him. Beware of that!
+But don't draw off too suddenly as if you didn't like him--that's worse
+still; for very few men like to see that they ain't altogether pleasing
+even at first sight to the lady that they like. There's a medium in all
+things, and you must just manage it, as if you wa'n't thinking at all
+about him, or love, or a husband, or anything; only take care always to
+turn a quick ear to what he says, and seem to consider it always as if
+'twas worth your considering. And look round when he speaks, and smile
+softly sometimes; and don't be too full of learning and wisdom in what
+you say, for I've found that men of sense love women best when they seem
+to talk most like very young children--maybe because they think it's a
+sign of innocence. But I reckon, Margaret, you don't want much teaching.
+Only be sure and fix him; and don't stop to think when he asks. Be
+sure to have your answer ready, and you can't say 'yes' too quickly
+now-a-days, when the chances are so very few."
+
+The mother paused to take breath. Her very moral and maternal counsel
+had fallen upon unheeding ears. But Margaret was sensible of the pause,
+and was desirous of taking advantage of it. She rose from her chair,
+with the view of retiring; but the good old dame, whose imagination had
+been terribly excited by the delightful idea of having a preacher for
+her son-in-law who was to take such precedence over all the leaders of
+the other tribes, was not willing to abridge her eloquence.
+
+"Why, you're in a great hurry now, Margaret. Where was your hurry when
+you were with Brother Stevens? Ah! you jade, can't I guess--don't I
+know? There you were, you two, under the trees, looking at the moon, and
+talking such sweet, foolish nonsense. I reckon, Margaret, 'twould puzzle
+you to tell what HE said, or what YOU said, I can guess he didn't talk
+much religion to you, heh? Ah! I know it all. It's the old story. It's
+been so with all young people, and will be so till the end. Love is the
+strangest thing, and it does listen to the strangest nonsense. Ain't it
+so, Margaret? I know nothing but love would ever dumbfounder you in this
+way; why, child, have you lost your tongue? What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Oh, mother, let me retire now, I have such a headache."
+
+"Heartache, you mean."
+
+"Heartache it is," replied the other desperately, with an air of
+complete abandonment.
+
+"Ah! well, it's clear that he's got the heartache quite as much as you,
+for he almost lives with you now. But make him speak out, Margaret--get
+him to say the word, and don't let him be too free until he does. No
+squeezing of hands, no kissing, no--"
+
+"No more, no more, I entreat you, mother, if you would not--drive me
+mad! Why do you speak to me thus--why counsel me in this manner? Leave
+me alone, I pray you, let me retire--I must--I must sleep now!"
+
+The mother was not unaccustomed to such passionate bursts of speech from
+her daughter, and she ascribed the startling energy of her utterance
+now, to an excited spirit in part, and partly to the headache of which
+she complained.
+
+"What! do you feel so bad, my child? Well, I won't keep you up any
+longer. I wouldn't have kept you up so long, if I hadn't been vexed by
+that old fool, Calvert."
+
+"Mr. Calvert is a good man, mother."
+
+"Well, he may be--I don't say a word against that," replied the mother,
+somewhat surprised at the mildly reproachful nature of that response
+which her daughter had made, so different from her usual custom:--"he
+may be very good, but I think he's very meddlesome to come here talking
+about Brother Stevens."
+
+"He meant well, mother."
+
+"Well or ill, it don't matter. Do you be ready when Brother Stevens
+says the word. He'll say it before long. He's mighty keen after you,
+Margaret. I've seen it in his eyes; only you keep a little off, till he
+begins to press and be anxious; and after that he can't help himself.
+He'll be ready for any terms; and look you, when a man's ready none
+of your long bargains. Settle up at once. As for waiting till he gets
+permission to preach, I wouldn't think of it. A man can be made a
+preacher or anything, at any time, but 'tain't so easy in these times,
+for a young woman to be made a wife. It's not every day that one can get
+a husband, and such a husband! Look at Jane Colter, and Betsy Barnes,
+and Rebecca Forbes, and Susan Mason; they'll be green again, I reckon,
+before the chance comes to them; ay, and the widow Thackeray--though
+she's had her day already. If 'twas a short one she's got no reason to
+complain. She'll learn how to value it before it begins again. But, go
+to bed, my child, you oughtn't to have a headache. No! no! you should
+leave it to them that's not so fortunate. They'll have headaches and
+heartaches enough, I warrant you, before they get such a man as Brother
+Stevens."
+
+At last, Margaret Cooper found herself alone and in her chamber. With
+unusual vigilance she locked and doublelocked the door. She then flung
+herself upon the bed. Her face was buried in the clothes. A convulsion
+of feeling shook her frame. But her eyes remained dry, and her cheeks
+were burning. She rose at length and began to undress, but for this she
+found herself unequal. She entered the couch and sat up in it--her
+hands crossed upon her lap--her face wan, wild, the very picture of
+hopelessness if not desperation! The words of her weak mother had
+tortured her; but what was this agony to that which was occasioned by
+her own thoughts.
+
+"Oh God!" she exclaimed at length, "can it be real? Can it be true? Do
+I wake? Is it no dream? Am I, am I what I dare not name to myself--and
+dread to hear from any other? Alas! it is true--too true. That shade,
+that wood!--oh, Alfred Stevens! Alfred Stevens! What have you done! To
+what have you beguiled me!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+STRENGTH AFTER FALL.
+
+
+
+
+
+That weary night no sleep came to the eyelids of the hapless Margaret
+Cooper. The garrulous language of the mother had awakened far other
+emotions in her bosom than those which she labored to inspire; and the
+warning of Mr. Calvert, for the first time impressed upon herself
+the terrible conviction that she was lost. In the wild intoxicating
+pleasures of that new strange dream, she had been wofully unconscious
+of the truth. So gradual had been the progress of passion, that it
+had never alarmed or startled her. Besides, it had come to her under a
+disguise afforded by the customary cravings of her soul. Her vanity
+had been the medium by which her affections had been won, by which her
+confidence had been beguiled, by which the guardian watchers of her
+virtue had been laid to sleep.
+
+What a long and dreadful night was that when Margaret Cooper was first
+brought to feel the awful truth in its true impressiveness of wo. Alas!
+how terribly do the pleasures of sin torture us. The worst human foe is
+guilt. The severest censure the consciousness of wrong doing. Poverty
+may be endured--nay is--and virtue still be secure; since the mind may
+be made strong to endure the heaviest toil, yet cherish few desires;
+the loss of kin may call for few regrets, if we feel that we have
+religiously performed our duties toward them, and requited all their
+proper claims upon us. Sickness and pain may even prove benefits and
+blessings, if it shall so happen that we resign ourselves without
+complaint, to the scourge of the chastener, and grow patient beneath his
+stripes. But that self-rebuke of one's own spirit from which we may
+not fly--that remorseful and ever-vexing presence which haunts us,
+and pursues with a wing even more fleet than that of fear--which tells
+clamorously of what we had, and scornfully of what we have lost--lost
+for ever! that is the demon from whom there is no escape, and beyond
+whom there is no torture. Vainly would we strive with this relentless
+enemy. Every blow aimed at its shadowy bosom recoils upon our own. In
+the crowd, it takes the place of other forms and dogs us with suspicious
+glances; in the solitude, it stalks boldly to our side, confronts us
+with its audacious truths and terrible denunciations--leaves no moment
+secure, waking or sleeping! It is the ghost of murdered virtue, brooding
+over its grave in that most dark and dismal of all sepulchres, the human
+heart. And if we cry aloud, as did Margaret Cooper, with vain prayer
+for the recall of a single day, with what a yell of derisive mockery it
+answers to our prayer.
+
+The night was passed in the delusive effort of the mind to argue
+itself into a state of fancied security. She endeavored to recall those
+characteristics in Alfred Stevens, by which her confidence had been
+beguiled. This task was not a difficult one in that early day of her
+distress; before experience had yet come to confirm the apprehensions of
+doubt--before the intoxicating dream of a first passion had yet begun
+to stale upon her imagination. Her own elastic mind helped her in this
+endeavor. Surely, she thought, where the mind is so noble and expansive,
+where the feelings are so tender and devoted, the features so lofty and
+impressive, the look so sweet, the language so delicate and refined,
+there can be no falsehood.
+
+"The devotion of such a man," she erringly thought, "might well sanction
+the weakness of a woman's heart--might well persuade to the momentary
+error which none will seek more readily to repair than himself. If he be
+true to me, what indeed should I care for the scorn of others."
+
+Alas! for the credulous victim. This was the soul of her error. This
+scorn of others--of the opinions of the world around her, is the saddest
+error of which woman, who is the most dependant of all beings in the
+moral world, can ever be guilty. But such philosophy did not now deceive
+even the poor girl by whom it was uttered. It is a melancholy truth,
+that, where there is no principle, the passions can not be relied on;
+and the love of Alfred Stevens had hitherto shown itself in selfishness.
+Margaret Cooper felt this, but she did not dare to believe it.
+
+"No! no!" she muttered--"I will not doubt--I will not fear! He is too
+noble, too generous, too fond! I could not be deceived."
+
+Her reliance was upon her previous judgment, not upon his principles.
+Her self-esteem assisted to make this reference sufficient for the
+purposes of consolation, and this was all that she desired in this first
+moment of her doubt and apprehension.
+
+"And if he be true--if he keep for ever the faith that his lips and
+looks declare--then will I heed nothing of the shame and the sin. The
+love of such a man is sufficient recompense for the loss of all
+besides. What to me is the loss of society? what should I care for the
+association and opinions of these in Charlemont? And elsewhere--he will
+bear me hence where none can know. Ah! I fear not: he will be true."
+
+Her self-esteem was recovering considerably from its first overthrow.
+Her mind was already preparing to do battle with those, the scorn
+of whom she anticipated, and whose judgments she had always hitherto
+despised. This was an easy task. She was yet to find that it was not the
+only task. Her thoughts are those of many, in like situations, and it
+is for this reason that we dwell upon them. Our purpose is, to show the
+usual processes of self-deception.
+
+Margaret Cooper, like a large class of persons of strong natural mind
+and sanguine temper, was only too apt to confound the cause of virtue
+with its sometimes uncouth, harsh and self-appointed professors. She
+overlooked the fact that public opinion, though a moral object
+against which woman dares not often offend, is yet no standard for
+her government; that principles are determinable elsewhere; and that,
+whatever the world may think of them, and whatever may be their seeming
+unimportance under existing circumstances, are the only real moral
+securities of earth. She might fly from Charlemont, either into a
+greater world, or into a more complete solitude, but she would fly to
+no greater certainties than she now possessed. Her securities were
+still based upon the principles of Alfred Stevens, and of these she knew
+nothing. She knew that he was a man of talent--of eloquence; alas
+for her! she had felt it; of skill--she had been its victim; of rare
+sweetness of utterance, of grace and beauty; and as she enumerated to
+herself these his mental powers and personal charms, she felt, however
+numerous the catalogue, that none of these afforded her the guaranty she
+sought.
+
+She arose the next day somewhat more composed, and with a face which
+betrayed sleeplessness, but nothing worse. This she ascribed to the
+headache with which she had retired. She had not slept an instant, and
+she arose entirely unrefreshed. But the stimulating thoughts which had
+kept her wakeful, furnished her with sufficient strength to appear as
+usual in the household, and to go through her accustomed duties. But
+it was with an impatience scarcely restrainable that she waited for the
+approach of evening which would bring her lover. Him she felt it now
+absolutely of the last necessity that she should see; that she should
+once more go with him to those secret places, the very thought of which
+inspired her with terror, and, laying bare her soul to his eyes, demand
+of him the only restitution which he could make.
+
+He came. Once more she descended the steps to meet him--Her mother
+arrested her on the stairway. A cunning leer was in her eye, as she
+looked into the woful, impassive eyes of her daughter. She grinned with
+a sort of delight expressive of the conviction that the advice she had
+given the night before was to be put in execution soon.
+
+"Fix him, Margaret; he's mighty eager for you. You've cut your
+eye-tooth--be quick, and you'll have a famous parson for a husband yet."
+
+The girl shrunk from the counsellor as if she had been a serpent. The
+very counsel was enough to show her the humiliating attitude in which
+she stood to all parties.
+
+"Remember," said the old woman, detaining her--"don't be too willing at
+first. Let him speak fairly out. A young maiden can't be too backward,
+until the man offers to make her a young wife!"
+
+The last words went to her soul like an arrow.
+
+"A young maiden!" she almost murmured aloud, as she descended the
+steps--"O God! how lovely now, to my eyes, appears the loveliness of a
+young maiden!"
+
+She joined Stevens in silence, the mother watching them with the eyes
+of a maternal hawk as they went forth together. They pursued a customary
+route, and, passing through one of the gorges of the surrounding
+hills, they soon lost sight of the village. When the forest-shadows had
+gathered thickly around them, and the silence of the woods became felt,
+Stevens approached more nearly, and, renewing a former liberty, put his
+arm about her waist. She gently but firmly removed it, but neither of
+them spoke a word. A dense copse appeared before them. Toward it he
+would have led the way. But she resolutely turned aside, and, while a
+shudder passed over her frame, exclaimed--
+
+"Not there--not there!"
+
+Breathlessly she spoke. He well enough understood her. They pursued an
+opposite direction, and, in the shade of a wood which before they had
+never traversed, they at length paused. Stevens, conducting her to the
+trunk of a fallen tree, seated her, and placed himself beside her. Still
+they were silent. There was a visible constraint upon both. The thoughts
+and feelings of both were alike active--but very unlike in character.
+With him, passion, reckless passion, was uppermost; selfish in all its
+phases, and resolute on its own indulgence at every hazard. In her bosom
+was regret if not remorse, mingled with doubts and hopes in pretty equal
+proportion. Yet had she, even then, but little doubt of him. She accused
+him of no practice. She fancied, foolish girl, that his error, like
+her own, had been that of blind impulse, availing itself of a moment
+of unguarded reason to take temporary possession of the citadel of
+prudence. That he was calculating, cunning--that his snares had been
+laid beforehand--she had not the least idea. But she was to grow wiser
+in this and other respects in due season. How little did she then
+conjecture the coldness and hardness of that base and selfish heart
+which had so fanned the consuming flame in hers!
+
+Her reserve and coolness were unusual. She had been the creature,
+heretofore, of the most uncalculating impulse. The feeling was spoken,
+the thought uttered, as soon as conceived. Now she was silent. He
+expected her to speak--nay, he expected reproaches, and was prepared to
+meet them. He had his answer for any reproaches which she might make.
+But for that stony silence of her lips he was not prepared. The passive
+grief which her countenance betrayed--so like despair--repelled and
+annoyed him. Yet, wherefore had she come, if not to complain bitterly,
+and, after exhaustion, be soothed at last? Such had been his usual
+experience in all such cases. But the unsophisticated woman before
+him had no language for such a situation as was hers. Her pride, her
+ambition--the very intensity of all her moods--rendered the effort at
+speech a mockery, and left her dumb.
+
+"You are sad, Margaret--silent and very cold to me," he said, at last
+breaking the silence. His tones were subdued to a whisper, and how full
+of entreating tenderness! She slowly raised her eyes from the ground,
+and fixed them upon him. What a speech was in that one look! There was
+no trace of excitement, scarcely of expression, in her face. There was
+no flush upon her cheeks. She was pale as death. She was still silent.
+Her eye alone had spoken; and from its searching but stony glance his
+own fell in some confusion to the ground. There was a dreary pause,
+which he at length broke:--
+
+"You are still silent, Margaret--why do you not speak to me?"
+
+"It is for you to speak, Alfred," was her reply. It was full of
+significance, understood but not FELT by her companion. What, indeed,
+had she to say--what could she say--while he said nothing? She was
+the victim. With him lay the means of rescue and preservation. She but
+waited the decision of one whom, in her momentary madness, she had
+made the arbiter of her destiny. Her reply confused him. He would have
+preferred to listen to the ordinary language of reproach. Had she burst
+forth into tears and lamentations--had she cried, "You have wronged
+me--you must do me justice!"--he would have been better pleased than
+with the stern, unsuggestive character that she assumed. To all this,
+his old experience would have given him an easy answer. But to be driven
+to condemn himself--to define his own doings with the name due to his
+deserts--to declare his crime, and proffer the sufficient atonement--was
+an unlooked-for necessity.
+
+"You are displeased with me, Margaret."
+
+He dared not meet her glance while uttering this feeble and purposeless
+remark. It was so short of all that he should have said--of all that
+she expected--that her eyes glistened with a sudden expression of
+indignation which was new to them in looking upon him. There was a
+glittering sarcasm in her glance, which showed the intensity of her
+feelings in the comment which they involuntarily made on the baldness
+and poverty of his. Displeasure, indeed! That such an epithet should be
+employed to describe the withering pang, the vulturous, gnawing torture
+in her bosom--and that fiery fang which thought, like some winged
+serpent, was momentarily darting into her brain!
+
+"Displeased!" she exclaimed, in low, bitter tones, which she seemed
+rather desirous to suppress--"no, no! sir--not displeased. I am
+miserable, most miserable--anything but displeased. I am too wretched to
+feel displeasure!"
+
+"And to me you owe this wretchedness, dear Margaret--THAT--THAT is what
+you would say. Is it not, Margaret? I have wronged--I have ruined you!
+From me comes this misery! You hate, you would denounce me."
+
+He put his arm about her waist--he sank upon his knee beside her--his
+eye, now that he had found words, could once more look courageously into
+hers.
+
+"Wronged--ruined!" she murmured, using a part of his words, and
+repeating them as if she did not altogether realize their perfect sense.
+
+"Ay, you would accuse me, Margaret," he continued--"you would reproach
+and denounce me--you hate me--I deserve it--I deserve it."
+
+She answered with some surprise:--
+
+"No, Alfred Stevens, I do not accuse--I do not denounce you. I am
+wretched--I am miserable. It is for you to say if I am wronged and
+ruined. I am not what I was--I know THAT!--What I am--what I will be!--"
+
+She paused! Her hands were clasped suddenly and violently--she looked to
+heaven, and, for the first time, the tears, streamed from her eyes like
+rain--a sudden, heavy shower, which was soon over.
+
+"Ah, Margaret, you would have me accuse myself--and I do. The crime is
+mine! I have done you this wrong---"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"No, Alfred Stevens, _I_ have done wrong! I FEEL that I have done wrong.
+That I have been feeble and criminal, _I_ KNOW. I will not be so base as
+to deny what I can not but feel. As for your crime, you know best what
+it is. I know mine. I know that my passions are evil and presumptuous;
+and though I blush to confess their force, it is yet due to the truth
+that I should do so, though I sink into the earth with my shame. But
+neither your self-reproaches nor my confession will acquit us. Is there
+nothing, Alfred Stevens, that can be done? Must I fall before you, here,
+amidst the woods which have witnessed my shame, and implore you to save
+me? I do! Behold me! I am at your feet--my face is in the dust. Oh!
+Alfred Stevens--when I called your eyes to watch, in the day of my
+pride, the strong-winged eagle of our hills, did I look as now? Save
+me from this shame! save me! For, though I have no reproaches, yet God
+knows, when we looked on that eagle's flight together, my soul had no
+such taint as fills it now. Whatever were my faults, my follies, my
+weaknesses, Heaven knows, I felt not, feared not this! a thought--a
+dream of such a passion, then--never came to my bosom. From you it came!
+You put it there! You woke up the slumbering emotion--you--but no!--I
+will not accuse you! I will only implore you to save me! Can it be done?
+can you do it--will you--will you not?"
+
+"Rise, dearest Margaret--let me lift you!" She had thrown herself upon
+the earth, and she clung to it.
+
+"No, no! your words may lift me, Alfred Stevens, when your hands can
+not. If you speak a hope, a promise of safety, it will need no other
+help to make me rise! If you do not!--I would not wish to rise again.
+Speak! let me hear, even as I am, what my doom shall be? The pride which
+has made me fall shall be reconciled to my abasement."
+
+"Margaret, this despair is idle. There is no need for it. Do I not tell
+you that there is no danger?"
+
+"Why did you speak of ruin?" she demanded.
+
+"I know not--the word escaped me. There is no ruin. I will save you. I
+am yours--yours only. Believe me, I will do you right. I regard you as
+sacredly my wife as if the rites of the church had so decreed it."
+
+"I dare not disbelieve you, Alfred! I have no hope else. Your words lift
+me! Oh! Alfred Stevens, you did not mean the word, but how true it was;
+what a wreck, what a ruin do I feel myself now--what a wreck have I
+become!"
+
+"A wreck, a ruin! no, Margaret, no! never were you more beautiful than
+at this very moment. These large, sad eyes--these long, dark lashes seem
+intended to bear the weight of tears. These cheeks are something paler
+than their wont, but not less beautiful, and these lips--"
+
+He would have pressed them with his own--he would have taken her into
+his arms, but she repulsed him.
+
+"No, no! Alfred--this must not be. I am yours. Let me prove to you that
+I am firm enough to protect your rights from invasion."
+
+"But why so coy, dearest? Do you doubt me?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"Ah! but you do. Why do you shrink from me--why this coldness? If you
+are mine, if these charms are mine, why not yield them to me? I fear,
+Margaret, that you doubt me still?"
+
+"I do not--dare not doubt you, Alfred Stevens. My life hangs upon this
+faith."
+
+"Why so cold, then?"
+
+"I am not cold. I love you--I will be your wife; and never was wife
+more faithful, more devoted, than I will be to you; but, if you knew the
+dreadful agony which I have felt, since that sad moment of my weakness,
+you would forbear and pity me."
+
+"Hear me, Margaret; to-morrow is Saturday. John Cross is to be here in
+the evening. He shall marry us on Sunday. Are you willing?"
+
+"Oh, yes! thankful, happy! Ah! Alfred, why did I distrust you for an
+instant?"
+
+"Why, indeed! But you distrust me no longer--you have no more
+misgivings?"
+
+"No, none!"
+
+"You will be no longer cold, no longer coy, dear Margaret--here in the
+sweet evening, among these pleasant shades, love, alone, has supremacy.
+Here, in the words of one of your favorites:--
+
+   "'Where transport and security entwine,
+    Here is the empire of thy perfect bliss,
+    And here thou art a god--'"
+
+concluding this quotation, he would have taken her in his embrace--he
+would have renewed those dangerous endearments which had already proved
+so fatal; but she repulsed the offered tenderness, firmly, but with
+gentleness.
+
+"Margaret, you still doubt me," he exclaimed reproachfully.
+
+"No, Alfred, I doubt you not. I believe you. I have only been too ready
+and willing to believe you. Ah! have you not had sufficient proof of
+this? Leave me the consciousness of virtue--the feeling of strength
+still to assert it, now that my eyes are open to my previous weakness."
+
+"But there is no reason to be so cold. Remember you are mine by every
+tie of the heart--another day will make you wholly mine. Surely, there
+is no need for this frigid bearing. No, no! you doubt--you do not
+believe me, Margaret!"
+
+"If I did not believe you, Alfred Stevens," she answered gravely, "my
+prayer would be for death, and I should find it. These woods which have
+witnessed my fault should have witnessed my expiation. The homes which
+have known me should know me no more."
+
+The solemnity of her manner rather impressed him, but having no real
+regard for her, he was unwilling to be baffled in his true desires.
+
+"If you doubt me not--if you have faith in me, Margaret, why this
+solemnity, this reserve? Prove to me, by your looks, by your actions,
+by the dear glances, the sweet murmurs, and the fond embrace, what these
+cold assurances do not say."
+
+His hand rested on her neck. She gently raised and removed it.
+
+"I have already proved to you my weakness. I will now prove my strength.
+It is better so, Alfred. If I have won your love, let me now command
+your esteem, or maintain what is left me of my own. Do not be angry with
+me if I insist upon it. I am resolute now to be worthy of you and of
+myself."
+
+"Ah! you call this love?" said he bitterly. "If you ever loved, indeed,
+Margaret--"
+
+"If I ever loved--and have I given you no proofs?" she exclaimed in a
+burst of passion; "all the proofs that a woman can give, short of her
+blood; and that, Alfred Stevens--that too, I was prepared to give, had
+you not promptly assured me of your faith."
+
+She drew a small dagger from her sleeve, and bared it beneath his
+glance.
+
+"Think you I brought this without an object? No! Alfred Stevens--know me
+better! I came here prepared to die, as well as a frail and erring
+woman could be prepared. You disarmed the dagger. You subdued the
+determination when you bid me live for you. In your faith, I am willing
+to live. I believe you, and am resolved to make myself worthy of your
+belief also. I have promised to be your wife, and here before Heaven, I
+swear to be your faithful wife; but, until then, you shall presume in no
+respect. Your lip shall not touch mine; your arms shall not embrace me;
+you shall see, dear Alfred, that, with my eyes once opened fully upon my
+own weakness, I have acquired the most certain strength."
+
+"Give me the dagger," he said.
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"You doubt me still?"
+
+"No, no!" she exclaimed, handing him the weapon--"no, no! I do not doubt
+you--I dare not. Doubt you, Alfred?--that were death, even without the
+dagger!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+BULL-PUPS IN TRAINING.
+
+
+
+
+
+Alfred Stevens was sufficiently familiar with the sex to perceive that
+Margaret Cooper was resolved. There was that in her look and manner
+which convinced him that she was not now to be overcome. There was no
+effort or constraint in either her looks or language. The composure of
+assured strength was there. The discovery of her weakness, which he
+had so unexpectedly made, had rendered her vigilant. Suspecting
+herself--which women are not apt to do--she became watchful, not only of
+the approach of her lover, but of every emotion of her own soul; and
+it was with a degree of chagrin which he could scarcely refrain from
+showing, that he was compelled to forego, at least for the present, all
+his usual arts of seduction.
+
+Yet he knew not how to refrain. Never had Margaret Cooper seemed so
+lovely in his eyes, so commanding, so eloquent with beauty, as now,
+when remorse had touched her eyes with an unwonted shadow, and tears and
+nightwatching had subdued the richer bloom upon her cheek. Proud still,
+but pensive in her pride, she walked silently beside him, still brooding
+over thoughts which she would not willingly admit were doubts, and
+grasping every word of assurance that fell from his lips as if it had
+been some additional security.
+
+These assurances he still suffered to escape him, with sufficient
+frequency and solemnity, to confirm that feeling of confidence which
+his promise of marriage had inspired in her mind. There was a subdued
+fondness in his voice, and an EMPRESSMENT in his manner, which was not
+all practice. The character which Margaret Cooper had displayed in this
+last interview--her equal firmness and fear--the noble elevation of
+soul which, admitting her own errors, disdained to remind him of his--a
+course which would have been the most ready of adoption among the weaker
+and less generous of the sex--had touched him with a degree of respect
+akin to admiration; and so strong was the impression made upon him of
+her great natural superiority of mind to almost all the women he had
+ever met, that, but for her one unhappy lapse, he had sought no other
+wife. Had she been strong at first as she proved herself at last, this
+had been inevitable.
+
+When in his own chamber that night, he could not help recalling to his
+memory the proud elevation of her character as it had appeared in that
+interview. The recollection really gave him pain, since along with it
+arose the memory also of that unfortunate frailty, which became more
+prominent as a crime in connection with that intellectual merit which,
+it is erroneously assumed, should have made it sure.
+
+"But for that, Margaret Cooper, and this marriage were no vain promise.
+But that forbids. No, no--no spousals for me: let John Cross and the
+bride be ready or not, there shall be a party wanting to that contract!
+And yet, what a woman to lose! what a woman to win! No tragedy queen
+ever bore herself like that. Talk of Siddons, indeed! SHE would have
+brought down the house in that sudden prostration--that passionate
+appeal. She made even me tremble. I could have loved her for that, if
+for that only. To make ME tremble! and with such a look, such an eye,
+such a stern, sweet, fierce beauty! By Heavens! I know not how to
+give her up. What a sensation she would make in Frankfort! Were she my
+wife--but no, no! bait for gudgeons! I am not so great a fool as that.
+She who is mine on my terms, is yours, sir, or yours--is anybody's, when
+the humor suits and the opportunity. I can not think of that. Yet, to
+lose her is as little to be thought of. I must manage it. I must get
+her off from this place. It need not be to Frankfort! Let me
+see--there is--hum!--hum!--yes, a ride of a few miles--an afternoon
+excursion--quite convenient, yet not too near. It must be managed;
+but, at all events, I must evade this marriage--put it off for the
+present--get some decent excuse. That's easy enough, and for the rest,
+why, time that softens all things, except man and woman, time will make
+that easy too. To-morrow for Ellisland, and the rest after."
+
+Thus, resolving not to keep his vows to his unhappy victim, the criminal
+was yet devising plans by which to continue his power over her. These
+plans, yet immature in his own mind, at least unexpressed, need not be
+analyzed here, and may be conjectured by the reader.
+
+That night, Stevens busied himself in preparing letters. Of these he
+wrote several. It will not further our progress to look over him as he
+writes; and we prefer rather, in this place, to hurry on events which,
+it may be the complaint of all parties, reader not omitted, have been
+too long suffered to stagnate. But we trust not. Let us hurry Stevens
+through Friday night--the night of that last interview.
+
+Saturday morning, we observe that his appetite is unimpaired. He
+discusses the breakfast at Hinkley's as if he had never heard of
+suffering. He has said an unctuous grace. Biscuits hot, of best Ohio
+flour, are smoking on his plate. A golden-looking mass of best fresh
+butter is made to assimilate its luscious qualities with those of the
+drier and hotter substance. A copious bowl of milk, new from the dugs of
+old Brindle, stands beside him, patiently waiting to be honored by his
+unscrupulous but not unfastidious taste. The grace is said, and the
+gravy follows. He has a religious regard for the goods and gifts of this
+life. He eats heartily, and the thanks which follow, if not from the
+bottom of the soul, were sufficiently earnest to have emanated from the
+bottom of his stomach.
+
+This over, he has a chat with his hosts. He discusses with old Hinkley
+the merits of the new lights. What these new lights were, at that
+period, we do not pretend to remember. Among sectarians, there are
+periodical new lights which singularly tend to increase the moral
+darkness. From these, after a while, they passed to the love festivals
+or feasts--a pleasant practice of the methodist church, which is
+supposed to be very promotive of many other good things besides love;
+though we are constrained to say that Brother Stevens and Brother
+Hinkley--who, it may be remarked, had very long and stubborn arguments,
+frequently without discovering, till they reached the close, that they
+were thoroughly agreed in every respect except in words--concurred in
+the opinion that there was no portion of the church practice so highly
+conducive to the amalgamation of soul with soul, and all souls with God,
+as this very practice of love-feasts!
+
+Being agreed on this and other subjects, Mr. Hinkley invited Brother
+Stevens out to look at his turnips and potatoes; and when this delicate
+inquiry was over, toward ten o'clock in the day, Brother Stevens
+concluded that he must take a gallop; he was dyspeptic, felt queerish,
+his studies were too close, his mind too busy with the great concerns
+of salvation. These are enough to give one dyspepsia. Of course, the
+hot rolls and mountains of volcanic butter--steam-ejecting--could have
+produced no such evil effects upon a laborer in the vineyard. At all
+events, a gallop was necessary, and the horse was brought. Brother
+Hinkley and our matronly sister of the same name watched the progress of
+the pious youth, as, spurring up the hills, he pursued the usual route,
+taking at first the broad highway leading to the eastern country.
+
+There were other eyes that watched the departure of Brother Stevens
+with no less interest, but of another kind, than those of the venerable
+couple. Our excellent friend Calvert started up on hearing the tread
+of the horse, and, looking out from his porch, ascertained with some
+eagerness of glance that the rider was Alfred Stevens.
+
+Now, why was the interest of Calvert so much greater on this than on any
+other previous occasion? We will tell you, gentle reader. He had been
+roused at an early hour that morning by a visit from Ned Hinkley.
+
+"Gran'pa," was the reverent formula of our fisherman at beginning,
+"to-day's the day. I'm pretty certain that Stevens will be riding out
+to-day, for he missed the last Saturday. I'll take my chance for it,
+therefore, and brush out ahead of him. I think I've got it pretty
+straight now, the place that he goes to, and I'll see if I can't get
+there soon enough to put myself in a comfortable fix, so as to see
+what's a-going on and what he goes after. Now, gran'pa, I'll tell
+you what I want from you--them pocket-pistols of your'n. Bill Hinkley
+carried off grandad's, and there's none besides that I can lay hold on."
+
+"But, Ned, I'm afraid to lend them to you."
+
+"What 'fraid of?"
+
+"That you'll use them."
+
+"To be sure I will, if there's any need, gran'pa. What do I get them
+for?"
+
+"Ah, yes! but I fear you'll find a necessity where there is none. You'll
+be thrusting your head into some fray in which you may lose your ears."
+
+"By Jupiter, no! No, gran'pa, I'll wait for the necessity. I won't look
+for it. I'm going straight ahead this time, and to one object only. I
+think Stevens is a rascal, and I'm bent to find him out. I've had no
+disposition to lick anybody but him, ever since he drove Bill Hinkley
+off--you and him together."
+
+"You'll promise me, Ned?"
+
+"Sure as a snag in the forehead of a Mississippi steamer. Depend upon
+me."
+
+"But there must be no quarrelling with Stevens either, Ned."
+
+"Look you, gran'pa, if I'm to quarrel with Stevens or anybody else,
+'twouldn't be your pistols in my pocket that would make me set on, and
+'twouldn't be the want of 'em that would make me stop. When it's my cue
+to fight, look you, I won't need any prompter, in the shape of friend
+or pistol. Now THAT speech is from one of your poets, pretty near, and
+ought to convince you that you may as well lend the puppies and say no
+more about it. If you don't you'll only compel me to carry my rifle, and
+that'll be something worse to an enemy, and something heavier for me.
+Come, come, gran'pa, don't be too scrupulous in your old age. YOUR
+HAVING them is a sufficient excuse for MY HAVING them too. It shows that
+they ought to be had."
+
+"You're logic-chopping this morning, Ned--see that you don't get to
+man-chopping in the afternoon. You shall have the pistols, but do not
+use them rashly. I have kept them simply for defence against invasion;
+not for the purpose of quarrel, or revenge."
+
+"And you've kept them mighty well, gran'pa," replied the young man, as
+he contemplated with an eye of anxious admiration, the polish of the
+steel barrels, the nice carving of the handles, and the fantastic but
+graceful inlay of the silver-mounting and setting. The old man regarded
+him with a smile.
+
+"Yes, Ned, I've kept them well. They have never taken life, though they
+have been repeatedly tried upon bull's eye and tree-bark. If you will
+promise me not to use them to-day, Ned, you shall have them."
+
+"Take 'em back, gran'pa."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, I'd feel the meanest in the world to have a weapon, and not use it
+when there's a need to do so; and I'm half afraid that the temptation
+of having such beautiful puppies for myself--twin-puppies, I may
+say--having just the same look out of the eyes, and just the same spots
+and marks, and, I reckon, just the same way of giving tongue--I'm half
+afraid, I say, that to get to be the owner of them, might tempt me to
+stand quiet and let a chap wink at me--maybe laugh outright--may be suck
+in his breath, and give a phew-phew-whistle just while I'm passing! No!
+no! gran'pa, take back your words, or take back your puppies. Won't risk
+to carry both. I'd sooner take Patsy Rifle, with all her weight, and no
+terms at all."
+
+"Pshaw, Ned, you're a fool."
+
+"That's no news, gran'pa, to you or me. But it don't alter the case. Put
+up your puppies."
+
+"No, Ned; you shall have them on your own terms. Take 'em as they are. I
+give them to you."
+
+"And I may shoot anybody I please this afternoon, gran'pa?"
+
+"Ay, ay, Ned--; anybody--"
+
+Thus far the old man, when he stopped himself, changed his manner, which
+was that of playful good-humor, to that of gravity, while his tones
+underwent a corresponding change--
+
+"But, Ned, my son, while I leave it to your discretion, I yet beg you
+to proceed cautiously--seek no strife, avoid it--go not into the
+crowd--keep from them where you see them drinking, and do not use
+these or any weapons for any trifling provocation. Nothing but the last
+necessity of self-preservation justifies the taking of life."
+
+"Gran'pa--thank you--you've touched me in the very midst of my
+tender-place, by this handsome present. One of these puppies I'll name
+after you, and I'll notch it on the butt. The other I'll call Bill
+Hinkley, and I won't notch that. Yours, I'll call my pacific puppy,
+and I'll use it only for peace-making purposes. The other I'll call my
+bull-pup, and him I'll use for baiting and butting, and goring. But, as
+you beg, I promise you I'll keep 'em both out of mischief as long as I
+can. Be certain sure that it won't be my having the pups that'll make
+me get into a skrimmage a bit the sooner; for I never was the man to ask
+whether my dogs were at hand before I could say the word, 'set-on!' It's
+a sort of nature in a man that don't stop to look after his weapons, but
+naturally expects to find 'em any how, when his blood's up, and there's
+a necessity to do."
+
+This long speech and strong assurance of his pacific nature and
+purposes, did not prevent the speaker from making, while he spoke,
+certain dextrous uses of the instrument's which were given into his
+hands. Right and left were equally busy; one muzzle was addressed to the
+candle upon the mantelpiece, the other pursued the ambulatory movements
+of a great black spider upon the wall. The old man surveyed him with
+an irrepressible smile. Suddenly interrupting himself the youth
+exclaimed:--
+
+"Are they loaded, gran'pa?"
+
+He was answered in the negative.
+
+"Because, if they were," said he, "and that great black spider was
+Brother Stevens, I'd show you in the twinkle of a musquito, how I'd put
+a finish to his morning's work. But I'd use the bull-pup, gran'pa--see,
+this one--the pacific one I'd empty upon him with powder only, as a sort
+of feu de joie--and then I'd set up the song--what's it? ah! Te Deum. A
+black spider always puts me in mind of a rascal."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE FOX IN THE TRAP.
+
+
+
+
+
+The youth barely stopped to swallow his breakfast, when he set off from
+the village. He managed his movements with considerable caution; and,
+fetching a circuit from an opposite quarter, after having ridden some
+five miles out of his way, passed into the road which he suspected that
+Stevens would pursue. We do not care to show the detailed processes by
+which he arrived at this conclusion. The reader may take for granted
+that he had heard from some way-side farmer, that a stranger rode by his
+cottage once a week, wearing such and such breeches, and mounted upon a
+nag of a certain color and with certain qualities. Enough to say, that
+Ned Hinkley was tolerably certain of his route and man.
+
+He sped on accordingly--did not once hesitate at turns, right or left,
+forks and crossroads, but keeping an inflexible course, he placed
+himself at such a point on the road as to leave it no longer doubtful,
+should Stevens pass, of the place which usually brought him up. Here he
+dismounted, hurried his horse, out of sight and hearing, into the
+woods, and choosing a position for himself, with some nicety, along the
+road-side, put himself in close cover, where, stretching his frame at
+length, he commenced the difficult labor of cooling his impatience with
+his cogitations.
+
+But cogitating, with a fellow of his blood, rather whets impatience.
+He was monstrous restiff. At his fishing pond, with a trout to hook,
+he would have lain for hours, as patient as philosophy itself, and as
+inflexible as the solid rock over which he brooded. But without an angle
+at his hand, how could he keep quiet? Not by thinking, surely; and,
+least of all, by thinking about that person for whom his hostility was
+so active. Thinking of Stevens, by a natural association, reminded
+him of the pistols which Calvert had given him. Nothing could be more
+natural than to draw them from his bosom. Again and again he examined
+them in fascinated contemplation. He had already charged them, and he
+amused himself by thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single
+touch upon the trigger, to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice
+ran along a decaying log some five steps from his feet. But his object
+being secrecy, the rat brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused
+himself by aiming at this and other objects, until suddenly reminded
+of the very important difference which he had promised Calvert to make
+between the pistols in his future use of them. With this recollection he
+drew out his knife, and laid the weapons before him.
+
+"This," said he, after a careful examination, in which he fancied
+he discovered some slight difference between them in the hang of the
+trigger--"this shall be my bull-pup--this my peace-maker!"
+
+The latter was marked accordingly with a "P," carved rudely enough by
+one whose hand was much more practised in slitting the weasand of a
+buck, than in cutting out, with crayon, or Italian crow-quill, the
+ungainly forms of the Roman alphabet. Ned Hinkley shook his head with
+some misgiving when the work was done; as he could not but see that
+he had somewhat impaired the beauty of the peacemaker's butt by the
+hang-dog looking initial which he had grafted upon it. But when he
+recollected the subordinate uses to which this "puppy" was to be put,
+and considered how unlikely, in his case, it would be exposed to
+sight in comparison with its more masculine brother, he grew partially
+reconciled to an evil which was now, indeed, irreparable.
+
+It does not require that we should bother the reader with the numberless
+thoughts and fancies which bothered our spy, in the three mortal
+hours in which he kept his watch. Nothing but the hope that he should
+ultimately be compensated to the utmost by a full discovery of all that
+he sought to know, could possibly have sustained him during the trying
+ordeal. At every new spasm of impatience which he felt, he drew up his
+legs, shifted from one side to the other and growled out some small
+thunder in the shape of a threat that "it would be only so much the
+worse for him when the time came!" HIM--meaning Stevens.
+
+At last Stevens came. He watched the progress of his enemy with keen
+eyes; and, with his "bull-pup" in his hand, which a sort of instinct
+made him keep in the direction of the highway, he followed his form upon
+the road. When he was out of sight and hearing, the spy jumped to his
+feet. The game, he felt, was secure now--in one respect at least.
+
+"He's for Ellisland. That was no bad guess then. He might have been for
+Fergus, or Jonesboro', or Debarre, but there's no turn now in the clear
+track to Ellisland. He's there for certain."
+
+Ned Hinkley carefully restored his pistols to his bosom and buttoned up.
+He was mounted in a few moments, and pressing slowly forward in pursuit.
+He had his own plans which we will not attempt to fathom; but we fear we
+shall be compelled to admit that he was not sufficiently a gentleman to
+scruple at turning scout in a time of peace (though, with him, by
+the way, and thus he justified, he is in pursuit of an enemy, and
+consequently is at war), and dodging about, under cover, spying out
+the secrets of the land, and not very fastidious in listening to
+conversation that does not exactly concern him. We fear that there is
+some such flaw in the character of Ned Hinkley, though, otherwise, a
+good, hardy fellow--with a rough and tumble sort of good nature, which,
+having bloodied your nose, would put a knife-handle down your back, and
+apply a handful of cobwebs to the nasal extremity in order to arrest the
+haemorrhage. We are sorry that there is such a defect in his character;
+but we did not put it there. We should prefer that he should be
+perfect--the reader will believe us--but there are grave lamentations
+enough over the failures of humanity to render our homilies unnecessary.
+Ned Hinkley was not a gentleman, and the only thing to be said in
+his behalf, is, that he was modest enough to make pretensions to the
+character. As he once said in a row the company muster:--
+
+"I'm blackguard enough, on this occasion, to whip e'er a gentleman among
+you!"
+
+Without any dream of such a spectre at his heels to disturb his
+imagination, Alfred Stevens was pursuing his way toward Ellisland, at
+that easy travelling gait, which is the best for man and beast, vulgarly
+called a "dog-trot." Some very fine and fanciful people insist upon
+calling it a "jog-trot." We beg leave, in this place, to set them
+right. Every trot is a jog, and so, for that matter, is every canter. A
+dog-trot takes its name from the even motion of the smaller quadruped,
+when it is seized with no particular mania, and is yet disposed to go
+stubbornly forward. It is in more classical dialect, the festina lente
+motion. It is regularly forward, and therefore fast--it never puts
+the animal out of breath, and is therefore slow. Nobody ever saw a dog
+practice this gait, with a tin canister at his tail, and a huddle of
+schoolboys at his heels. No! it is THE travelling motion, considering
+equally the health of all parties, and the necessity of getting on.
+
+In this desire, Ned Hinkley pressed too closely on the heels of Stevens.
+He once nearly overhauled him; and falling back, he subdued his
+speed, to what, in the same semi-figurative language, he styled "the
+puppy-trot." Observing these respective gaits, Brother Stevens rode into
+Ellisland at a moderately late dinner-hour, and the pursuer followed
+at an unspeakable, but not great, distance behind him. We will,
+henceforward, after a brief glance at Ellisland, confine ourselves more
+particularly to the progress of Brother Stevens.
+
+Ellisland was one of those little villages to which geographers scarcely
+accord a place upon the maps. It is not honored with a dot in any map
+that we have ever seen of Kentucky. But, for all this, it is a place!
+Some day the name will be changed into Acarnania or Etolia, Epirus or
+Scandinavia, and then be sure you shall hear of it. Already, the village
+lawyers--there are two of them--have been discussing the propriety of
+a change to something classical; and we do not doubt that, before
+long, their stupidity will become infectious. Under these circumstances
+Ellisland will catch a name that will stick. At present you would
+probably never hear of the place, were it not necessary to our purposes
+and those of Brother Stevens.
+
+It has its tavern and blacksmith shop--its church--the meanest fabric in
+the village--its postoffice and public well and trough. There is also a
+rack pro bono publico, but as it is in front of the tavern, the owner
+of that establishment has not wholly succeeded in convincing the people
+that it was put there with simple reference to the public convenience.
+The tavern-keeper is, politically, a quadrupled personage. He combines
+the four offices of post-master, justice of the peace, town council, and
+publican; and is considered a monstrous small person with all. The truth
+is, reader--this aside--he has been democrat and whig, alternately,
+every second year of his political life. His present politics, being
+loco-foco, are in Ellisland considered contra bonos mores. It is hoped
+that he will be dismissed from office, and a memorial to that effect is
+in preparation; but the days of Harrison--"and Tyler too"--have not yet
+come round, and Jerry Sunderland, who knows what his enemies are driving
+at, whirls his coat-skirts, and snaps his fingers, in scorn of all their
+machinations. He has a friend at Washington, who spoons in the
+back parlor of the white-house--in other words, is a member o f the
+kitchen-cabinet, of which, be it said, en passant, there never was a
+president of the United States yet entirely without one--and--there
+never will be! So much for politics and Ellisland.
+
+There was some crowd in the village on the day of Brother Stevens's
+arrival. Saturday is a well known day in the western and southern
+country for making a village gathering; and when Brother Stevens, having
+hitched his horse at the public rack, pushed his way to the postoffice,
+he had no small crowd to set aside. He had just deposited his letters,
+received others in return, answered some ten or fifteen questions which
+Jerry Sunderland, P. M., Q. U., N. P., M. C., publican and sinner--such
+were all deservedly his titles--had thought it necessary to address to
+him, when he was suddenly startled by a familiar tap upon the shoulder;
+such a tap as leads the recipient to imagine that he is about to be
+honored with the affectionate salutation of some John Doe or Richard
+Roe of the law. Stevens turned with some feeling of annoyance, if not
+misgiving, and met the arch, smiling, and very complacent visage of a
+tall, slender young gentleman in black bushy whiskers and a green coat,
+who seized him by the hand and shook it heartily, while a chuckling
+half-suppressed laughter gurgling in his throat, for a moment, forbade
+the attempt to speak. Stevens seemed disquieted and looked around him
+suspiciously.
+
+"What! you here, Ben?"
+
+"Ay, you see me! You didn't expect to see me, Warham---"
+
+"Hush!" was the whispered word of Stevens, again looking round him in
+trepidation.
+
+"Oh! ay!" said the other with a sly chuckle, and also in a whisper, "Mr.
+Stevens--Brother Stevens--hem! I did not think. How is your holiness
+to-day?"
+
+"Come aside," muttered Stevens; and, taking the arm of the incautious
+speaker, he led him away from the crowd and took the way out of the
+village. Their meeting and departure did not occasion much, if any,
+sensation. The visitors in the village were all too busy in discussing
+the drink and doctrines, pretty equally distributed, of Jerry the
+publican. But there was one eye that noted the meeting of the friends;
+that beheld the concern and confusion of Stevens: that saw their
+movements, and followed their departing steps.
+
+"Take your horse--where is he?" demanded Stevens.
+
+"Here, at hand; but what do you mean to do?"
+
+"Nothing, but get out of hearing and sight; for your long tongue, Ben,
+and significant face, would blab any secret, however deep."
+
+"Ah! did I not say that I would find you out? Did you get my last
+letter?"
+
+"Ay, I did: but I'm devilish sorry, Ben, that you've come. You'll do
+mischief. You have always been a mar-plot."
+
+"Never, never! You don't know me."
+
+"Don't I?--but get your horse, and let's go into the woods, while we
+talk over matters."
+
+"Why not leave the nags here?"
+
+"For a very good reason. My course lies in that direction, so that I am
+in my way; while yours, if your purpose be to go back to Frankfort, will
+lie on the upper side. Neither of us need come back to the village."
+
+"And you think to shuffle me off so soon, do you?"
+
+"What would you have me do?"
+
+"Why, give us a peep at this beauty--this Altamira of yours--at least."
+
+"Impossible! Do not think of it, Ben; you'd spoil all. But, get the
+horse. These billet-heads will suspect mischief if they see us talking
+together, particularly when they behold your conceited action. This
+political landlord will surmise that you are a second Aaron Burr, about
+to beat up recruits to conquer California. Your big whiskers--what
+an atrocious pair!--with your standing collar, will confirm the
+impression."
+
+The two were soon mounted, and rode into the adjoining woods. They were
+only a stone's-throw from the village, when Stevens alighted, followed
+by his companion. They hitched their horses to some swinging branches
+of a sheltering tree, and, going aside a few paces beyond, seated
+themselves upon the grass, as they fancied, in a place of perfect
+security.
+
+"And now, Ben, what in truth brings you here?" demanded Stevens, in
+tones of voice and with a look which betrayed anything but satisfaction
+with the visit.
+
+"Curiosity, I tell you, and the legs of my horse."
+
+"Pshaw! you have some other motive."
+
+"No, 'pon honor. I resolved to find you out--to see what you were
+driving at, and where. I could only guess a part from your letter to
+Barnabas, and that costive scrawl with which you honored me. Perhaps,
+too--and give my friendship credit for the attempt--I came with some
+hope to save you."
+
+"Save me--from what?"
+
+"Why, wedlock--the accursed thing! The club is in terror lest you should
+forget your vows. So glowing were your descriptions of your Cleopatra,
+that we knew not what to make. We feared everything."
+
+"Why, Barnabas might have opened your eyes: he knew better."
+
+"You're not married, then?"
+
+"Pshaw! no."
+
+"Nor engaged?"
+
+The other laughed as he replied:--
+
+"Why, on that head, the least said the better. The roving commission
+permits you to run up any flag that the occasion requires."
+
+"Ah, you sly dog!--and what success?"
+
+"Come, come, Ben, you must not be so inquisitive. The game's my own, you
+know; and the rules of the club give me immunity from a fellow-member."
+
+"By Gad, I'll resign! I must see this forest beauty."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Where's she? How will you prevent?"
+
+"By a very easy process. Do you know the bird that shrieks farthest from
+her young ones when the fowler is at hand? I'll follow her example."
+
+"I'll follow you to the uttermost ends of the earth, Warham!"
+
+"Hush! you forget! Am I not Brother Stevens? Ha! ha! ha! You are not
+sufficiently reverent, brother. See you no divinity in my look and
+bearing? Hark you, Ben, I've been a sort of small divinity in the eyes
+of a whole flock for a month past!"
+
+"You pray?"
+
+"And preach!"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!--devilish good; but I must see you in order to believe. I
+must, indeed, Brother Stevens. Why, man, think of it--success in this
+enterprise will make you head of the fraternity--you will be declared
+pope: but you must have witnesses!"
+
+"So I think; and hark ye, Ben"--laying a finger on the arm of the
+other--"I am successful!"
+
+"What! you don't say so! This queen, this princess of Egypt, Cleopatra,
+Altamira--eh?"
+
+"Is mine--soul and body--she is mine!"
+
+"And is what you say? Come, come, you don't mean that such a splendid
+woman as you describe--such a genius, poet, painter, musician--beauty
+too!--you don't mean to say that--"
+
+"I do, every bit of it."
+
+"'Gad! what a fellow!--what a lucky dog! But you must let me see her,
+Warham!"
+
+"What! to spoil all--to blurt out the truth?--for, with every
+disposition to fib, you lack the ability. No, no, Ben: when the game's
+up--when I'm tired of the sport, and feel the necessity of looking out
+fresh viands--you shall then know all; I'll give the clue into your own
+hands, and you may follow it to your heart's content. But not now!"
+
+"But how will you get rid of me, mon ami, if my curiosity is stubborn?"
+
+"Do as the kill-deer does--travel from the nest--go home with you,
+rather than you should succeed in your impertinence, and have you
+expelled from the club for thrusting your spoon into the dish of a
+brother-member."
+
+"You're a Turk, with no bowels of compassion. But, at all events,
+you promise me the dish when you're done with it? you give me the
+preference?"
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Swear by Beelzebub and Mohammed; by Jupiter Ammon and Johannes
+Secundus; by the ghost of Cardinal Bembo, and the gridiron of the
+fraternity!"
+
+"Ay, and by the virginity of Queen Elizabeth!"
+
+"Simulacrum! no! no! no such oath for me! That's swearing by the thing
+that is not, was not--could not be! You shall swear by the oaths of
+the club--you must be bound on the gridiron of the fraternity, before I
+believe you. Swear!"
+
+"You are as tenacious as the ghost of buried Denmark But you shall be
+satisfied. I swear by the mystic gridiron of the fraternity, and by
+the legs thereof, of which the images are Beelzebub, Mohammed, Johannes
+Secundus, and so forth--nay, by that memorable volume, so revered in the
+eyes of the club, the new edition of 'The Basiad,' of which who among us
+has been the true exponent?--that profound mystery of sweets, fathomed
+hourly, yet unfathomable still--for which the commentators, already
+legions, are hourly becoming legions more;--by these, and by the
+mysteries of the mirror that reflects not our own, but the image we
+desire;--by these things--by all things that among the brotherhood are
+held potent--I swear to--"
+
+"Give me the preference in the favor of this princess; the clue to
+find her when you have left her; and the assurance that you will get a
+surfeit as soon as possible: swear!"
+
+"Nay, nay! I swear not to that last! I shall hold on while appetite
+holds, and make all efforts not to grow dyspeptic in a hurry. I'll keep
+my stomach for a dainty, be sure, as long as I can. I were no brother,
+worthy of our order, if I did not."
+
+"Well, well--to the rest! Swear to the rest, and I am satisfied."
+
+"You go back, then, instanter?"
+
+"What! this very day?"
+
+"This hour!"
+
+"The d---l! you don't mean THAT, Warham?" returned the other in some
+consternation.
+
+"Ay, this very hour! You must swear to that. Your oath must precede
+mine."
+
+"Ah! man, remember I only got here last night--long ride--hard-trotting
+horse. We have not seen each other for months. I have a cursed sight to
+tell you about the boys--girls too--love, law, logic, politics. Do you
+know they talk of running you for the house?"
+
+"All in good season, Ben; not now. No, no! you shall see me when you
+least look for me, and there will be time enough for all these matters
+then. They'll keep. For the present, let me say to you that we must
+part now within the hour. You must swear not to dog my steps, and I
+will swear to give you carte blanche, and the first privileges at my
+princess, when I leave her. This is my bargain. I make no other."
+
+"I've a great mind not to leave you," said the other doggedly.
+
+"And what will that resolution bring you, do you fancy? Do you suppose
+I am to be tracked in such a manner? No, Ben! The effect will be to make
+me set off for the east instantly, whether you go with me or not; and an
+equally certain effect will be to make us cut loose for ever."
+
+"You're a d---d hard colt to manage," said the other moodily.
+
+"I sha'n't let myself be straddled by every horse-boy, I assure you."
+
+"Come, come, old fellow, that's too much like horse-play. Don't be angry
+with me. I'll accept your conditions."
+
+"Very good," said Stevens; "if you did not, Ben, it would be no better
+for you; for, otherwise, you should never even see my beauty!"
+
+"Is she so very beautiful, old boy?"
+
+"A queen, I tell you! a proud, high-spirited, wild beauty of the
+mountains--a thing of fire and majesty--a glorious woman, full of song
+and sentiment and ambition--a genius, I tell you--who can improvise
+like Corinne, and, by the way, continually reminds one of that glorious
+creature. In Italy, she would have been greater than Corinne."
+
+"And you've won her--and she loves you?"
+
+"Ay--to doting! I found her a sort of eagle--soaring, striving--always
+with an eye upon the hills, and fighting with the sunbeams. I have
+subdued her. She is now like a timid fawn that trembles at the very
+falling of a leaf in the forests. She pants with hope to see me, and
+pants with tremulous delight when I come. Still, she shows every now
+and then, a glimmering of that eagle spirit which she had at first. She
+flashes up suddenly, but soon sinks again. Fancy a creature, an idolater
+of fame before, suddenly made captive by love, and you have a vain,
+partial image of my forest-princess."
+
+"What a lucky dog! You'll marry her yet, old boy, in spite of all!"
+
+"Pshaw! You are green to talk so."
+
+"You'll be devilish loath to give her up; I'm afraid I'll have to wait a
+cursed long time."
+
+"No, not long! Do not despair. Easy won, easy valued."
+
+"And was she easily won?"
+
+"Very! the game was a short one. She is a mere country-girl, you know,
+but eighteen or thereabouts--suspecting nobody, and never dreaming that
+she had a heart or passions at all. She thought only of her poetry and
+her books. It was only necessary to work upon heart and passions while
+talking of poetry and books, and they carried her out of her depth
+before she could recover. She's wiser now, Ben, I can assure you, and
+will require more dexterity to keep than to conquer."
+
+"And she has no brother to worry a body--no d---d ugly Hobnail, who has
+a fancy for her, and may make a window between the ribs of a gallant,
+such as nature never intended, with the ounce-bullet of some d---d
+old-fashioned seven-foot rifle--eh?"
+
+"There was a silly chap, one Hinkley, who tried it on me--actually
+challenged me, though I was playing parson, and there might have been
+work for me but for his own bull-headed father, who came to my rescue,
+beat the boy and drove him from the place. There is nobody else to give
+me any annoyance, unless it be a sort of half-witted chap, a cousin of
+the former--a sleepy dog that is never, I believe, entirely awake unless
+when he's trout-fishing. He has squinted at me, as if he could quarrel
+if he dared, but the lad is dull--too dull to be very troublesome. You
+might kiss his grandmother under his nose, and he would probably regard
+it only as a compliment to her superior virtues, and would thank you
+accordingly--"
+
+A voice a little to the left interrupted the speaker.
+
+"So he does, my brave parson, for his grandmother's sake and his own,"
+were the words of the speaker. They turned in sudden amaze to the spot
+whence the sounds issued. The bushes opening in this quarter, presented
+to the astonished eyes of Brother Stevens, the perfect image of the
+dull lad of whom he had been speaking. There was Ned Hinkley in proper
+person--perfectly awake, yet not trout-fishing! A sarcastic grin was
+upon his visage, and rolling his eyes with a malicious leer, he repeated
+the words which had first interrupted the progress of the dialogue
+between the friends.
+
+"I thank you, Brother Stevens, for the compliment to my grandmother's
+virtues. I thank you, on her account as well as my own. I'm very
+grateful, I assure you, very grateful, very!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+"ABSQUATULATING."
+
+
+
+
+
+Had a bolt suddenly flashed and thundered at the feet of the two
+friends, falling from a clear sky in April, they could not have been
+more astounded. They started, as with one impulse, in the same moment to
+their feet.
+
+"Keep quiet," said the intruder; "don't let me interrupt you in so
+pleasant a conversation. I'd like to hear you out. I'm refreshed by it.
+What you say is so very holy and sermon-like, that I'm like a new man
+when I hear it. Sit down, Brother Stevens, and begin again; sit down,
+Ben, my good fellow, and don't look so scary! You look as if you had a
+window in your ribs already!"
+
+The intruder had not moved, though he had startled the conspirators. He
+did not seem to share in their excitement. He was very coolly seated,
+with his legs deliberately crossed, while his two hands parted the
+bushes before him in order to display his visage--perhaps with the
+modest design of showing to the stranger that his friend had grievously
+misrepresented its expression. Certainly, no one could say that, at this
+moment, it lacked anything of spirit or intelligence. Never were eyes
+more keen--never were lips more emphatically made to denote sarcasm
+and hostility. The whole face was alive with scorn, and hate, and
+bitterness; and there was defiance enough in the glance to have put
+wings to fifty bullets.
+
+His coolness, the composure which his position and words manifested,
+awakened the anger of Brother Stevens as soon as the first feeling of
+surprise had passed away. He felt, in a moment, that the game was up
+with him--that he could no longer play the hypocrite in Charlemont.
+He must either keep his pledges to Margaret Cooper, without delay or
+excuse, or he must abandon all other designs which his profligate heart
+may have suggested in its cruel purposes against her peace.
+
+"Scoundrel!" he exclaimed; "how came you here? What have you heard?"
+
+"Good words, Brother Stevens. You forget, you are a parson."
+
+"Brain the rascal!" exclaimed the whiskered stranger, looking more
+fierce than ever. The same idea seemed to prompt the actions of Stevens.
+Both of them, at the same moment, advanced upon the intruder, with their
+whips uplifted; but still Ned Hinkley did not rise. With his legs still
+crossed, he kept his position, simply lifting from the sward beside him,
+where they had been placed conveniently, his two "puppies." One of these
+he grasped in his right hand and presented as his enemies approached.
+
+"This, gentlemen," said he, "is my peace-maker. It says, 'Keep your
+distance.' This is my bull-pup, or peace-breaker; it says, 'Come on.'
+Listen to which you please. It's all the same to me. Both are ready to
+answer you, and I can hardly keep 'em from giving tongue. The bull-pup
+longs to say something to you, Brother Stevens--the pacificator is
+disposed to trim your whiskers, Brother Ben; and I say, for 'em both,
+come on, you black-hearted rascals, if you want to know whether a girl
+of Charlemont can find a man of Charlemont to fight her battles. I'm man
+enough, by the Eternal, for both of you!"
+
+The effect of Hinkley's speech was equally great upon himself and the
+enemy. He sprang to his feet, ere the last sentence was concluded,
+and they recoiled in something like indecent haste. The language of
+determination was even more strongly expressed by the looks of the
+rustic than by his language and action. They backed hurriedly at his
+approach.
+
+"What! won't you stand?--won't you answer to your villanies?--won't you
+fight? Pull out your barkers and blaze away, you small-souled scamps;
+I long to have a crack at you--here and there--both at a time! Aint you
+willing? I'm the sleepy trout-fisherman! Don't you know me? You've waked
+me up, my lads, and I sha'n't sleep again in a hurry! As for you, Alfred
+Stevens--you were ready to fight Bill Hinkley--here's another of the
+breed--won't you fight him?"
+
+"Yes--give me one of your pistols, if you dare, and take your stand,"
+said Stevens boldly.
+
+"You're a cunning chap--give you one of my puppies--a stick for my own
+head--while this bush-whiskered chap cudgels me over from behind. No!
+no! none of that! Besides, these pistols were a gift from a good man,
+they sha'n't be disgraced by the handling of a bad one. Get your own
+weapons, Brother Stevens, and every man to his tree."
+
+"They are in Charlemont!"
+
+"Well!--you'll meet me there then?"
+
+"Yes!" was the somewhat eager answer of Stevens, "I will meet you
+there--to-morrow morning--"
+
+"Sunday--no! no!"
+
+"Monday, then; this evening, if we get home in season."
+
+"It's a bargain then," replied Hinkley, "though I can hardly keep from
+giving you the teeth of the bull! As for big-whiskered Ben, there, I'd
+like to let him taste my pacificator. I'd just like to brush up his
+whiskers with gun-powder--they look to have been done up with bear's
+grease before, and have a mighty fine curl; but if I wouldn't frizzle
+them better than ever a speckled hen had her feathers frizzled, then
+I don't know the virtues of gun-powder. On Monday morning, Brother
+Stevens!"
+
+"Ay, ay! on Monday morning!"
+
+Had Ned Hinkley been more a man of the world--had he not been a simple
+backwoodsman, he would have seen, in the eagerness of Stevens to make
+this arrangement, something, which would have rendered him suspicious
+of his truth. The instantaneous thought of the arch-hypocrite, convinced
+him that he could never return to Charlemont if this discovery was once
+made there. His first impulse was to put it out of the power of
+Ned Hinkley to convey the tidings. We do not say that he would have
+deliberately murdered him; but, under such an impulse of rage and
+disappointment as governed him in the first moments of detection, murder
+has been often done. He would probably have beaten him into incapacity
+with his whip--which had a heavy handle--had not the rustic been
+sufficiently prepared. The pistols of Stevens were in his valise, but
+he had no purpose of fighting, on equal terms, with a man who spoke with
+the confidence of one who knew how to use his tools; and when the simple
+fellow, assuming that he would return to Charlemont for his chattels,
+offered him the meeting there, he eagerly caught at the suggestion as
+affording himself and friend the means of final escape.
+
+It was not merely the pistols of Hinkley of which he had a fear. But
+he well knew how extreme would be the danger, should the rustic gather
+together the people of Ellisland, with the story of his fraud, and the
+cruel consequences to the beauty of Charlemont, by which the deception
+had been followed. But the simple youth, ignorant of the language of
+libertinism, had never once suspected the fatal lapse from virtue of
+which Margaret Cooper had been guilty. He was too unfamiliar with the
+annals and practices of such criminals, to gather this fact from
+the equivocal words, and half-spoken sentences, and sly looks of the
+confederates. Had he dreamed this--had it, for a moment, entered into
+his conjecturings--that such had been the case, he would probably have
+shot down the seducer without a word of warning. But that the crime was
+other than prospective, he had not the smallest fancy; and this may
+have been another reason why he took the chances of Stevens's return to
+Charlemont, and let him off at the moment.
+
+"Even should he not return," such may have been his reflection--"I have
+prevented mischief at least. He will be able to do no harm. Margaret
+Cooper shall be warned of her escape, and become humbler at least, if
+not wiser in consequence. At all events, the eyes of Uncle Hinkley will
+be opened, and poor Bill be restored to us again!"
+
+"And now mount, you scamps," said Hinkley, pressing upon the two with
+presented pistols. "I'm eager to send big-whiskered Ben home to his
+mother; and to see you, Brother Stevens, on your way back to Charlemont.
+I can hardly keep hands off you till then; and it's only to do so, that
+I hurry you. If you stay, looking black, mouthing together, I can't
+stand it. I will have a crack at you. My peace-maker longs to brush up
+them whiskers. My bull-pup is eager to take you, Brother Stevens, by the
+muzzle! Mount you, as quick as you can, before I do mischief."
+
+Backing toward their horses, they yielded to the advancing muzzles,
+which the instinct of fear made them loath to turn their backs upon.
+Never were two hopeful projectors so suddenly abased--so completely
+baffled. Hinkley, advancing with moderate pace, now thrust forward
+one, and now the other pistol, accompanying the action with a specific
+sentence corresponding to each, in manner and form as follows:--
+
+"Back, parson--back, whiskers! Better turn, and look out for the roots,
+as you go forward. There's no seeing your way along the road by looking
+down the throats of my puppies. If you want to be sure that they'll
+follow till you're mounted, you have my word for it. No mistake, I tell
+you. They're too eager on scent, to lose sight of you in a hurry, and
+they're ready to give tongue at a moment's warning. Take care not to
+stumble, whiskers, or the pacificator 'll be into your brush."
+
+"I'll pay you for this!" exclaimed Stevens, with a rage which was not
+less really felt than judiciously expressed. "Wait till we meet!"
+
+"Ay, ay! I'll wait; but be in a hurry. Turn now, your nags are at your
+backs. Turn and mount!"
+
+In this way they reached the tree where their steeds were fastened.
+Thus, with the muzzle of a pistol bearing close upon the body of
+each--the click of the cock they had heard--the finger close to the
+trigger they saw--they were made to mount--in momentary apprehension
+that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen
+in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle
+their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that
+they drew a breath of partial confidence.
+
+"Now," said Hinkley, "my lads, let there be few last words between you.
+The sooner you're off the better. As for you, Alfred Stevens, the sooner
+you're back in Charlemont the more daylight we'll have to go upon. I'll
+be waiting you, I reckon, when you come."
+
+"Ay, and you may wait," said Stevens, as the speaker turned off and
+proceeded to the spot where his own horse was fastened.
+
+"You won't return, of course?" said his companion.
+
+"No! I must now return with you, thanks to your interference. By
+Heavens, Ben, I knew, at your coming, that you would do mischief; you
+have been a marplot ever; and after this, I am half-resolved to forswear
+your society for ever."
+
+"Nay, nay! do not say so, Warham. It was unfortunate, I grant you; but
+how the devil should either of us guess that such a Turk as that was in
+the bush?"
+
+"Enough for the present," said the other. "It is not now whether I
+wish to ride with you or not. There is no choice. There is no return to
+Charlemont."
+
+"And that's the name of the place, is it?"
+
+"Yes! yes! Much good may the knowledge of it do you."
+
+"How fortunate that this silly fellow concluded to let you off on such a
+promise. What an ass!"
+
+"Yes! but he may grow wiser! Put spurs to your jade, and let us see
+what her heels are good for, for the next three hours. I do not yet feel
+secure. The simpleton may grow wiser and change his mind."
+
+"He can scarcely do us harm now, if he does."
+
+"Indeed!" said Stevens--"you know nothing. There's such a thing as hue
+and cry, and its not unfrequently practised in these regions, when the
+sheriff is not at hand and constables are scarce. Every man is then a
+sheriff."
+
+"Well--but there's no law-process against us!"
+
+"You are a born simpleton, I think," said Stevens, with little scruple.
+He was too much mortified to be very heedful of the feelings of his
+companion. "There needs no law in such a case, at least for the CAPTURE
+of a supposed criminal; and, for that matter, they do not find it
+necessary for his punishment either. Hark ye, Ben--there's a farmhouse?"
+
+"Yes, I see it!"
+
+"Don't you smell tar?--They're running it now!"
+
+"I think I do smell something like it. What of it?"
+
+"Do you see that bed hanging from yon window?"
+
+"Yes! of course I see it!"
+
+"It is a feather-bed!"
+
+"Well--what of that? Why tell me this stuff? Of course I can guess as
+well as you that it's a feather-bed, since I see a flock of geese in the
+yard with their necks all bare."
+
+"Hark ye, then! There's something more than this, which you may yet see!
+Touch up your mare. If this fellow brings the mob at Ellisland upon us,
+that tar will be run, and that feather-bed gutted, for our benefit. What
+they took from the geese will be bestowed on us. Do you understand me?
+Did you ever hear of a man whose coat was made of tar and feathers, and
+furnished at the expense of the county?"
+
+"Hush, for God's sake, Warham! you make my blood run cold with your
+hideous notions!"
+
+"That fellow offered to frizzle your whiskers. These would anoint them
+with tar, in which your bear's oil would be of little use."
+
+"Ha! don't you hear a noise?" demanded the whiskered companion, looking
+behind him.
+
+"I think I do," replied the other musingly.
+
+"A great noise!" continued Don Whiskerandos.
+
+"Yes, it seems to me that it is a great noise."
+
+"Like people shouting?"
+
+"Somewhat--yes, by my soul, that DOES sound something like a shout!"
+
+"And there! Don't stop to look and listen, Warham," cried his companion;
+"it's no time for meditation. They're coming! hark!--" and with a single
+glance behind him--with eyes dilating with the novel apprehensions
+of receiving a garment, unsolicited, bestowed by the bounty of the
+county--he drove his spurs into the flanks of his mare, and went ahead
+like an arrow. Stevens smiled in spite of his vexation.
+
+"D--n him!" he muttered as he rode forward, "it's some satisfaction, at
+least, to scare the soul out of him!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE REVELATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+Having seen his enemy fairly mounted, and under way, as he thought, for
+Charlemont, Ned Hinkley returned to Ellisland for his own horse. Here
+he did not suffer himself to linger, though, before he could succeed
+in taking his departure, he was subjected to a very keen and searching
+examination by the village publican and politician. Having undergone
+this scrutiny with tolerable patience, if not to the entire satisfaction
+of the examiner, he set forward at a free canter, determined that his
+adversary should not be compelled to wait.
+
+It was only while he rode that he began to fancy the possibility of the
+other having taken a different course; but as, upon reflection, he saw
+no other plan which he might have adopted--for lynching for suspected
+offences was not yet a popular practice in and about Charlemont--he
+contented himself with the reflection that he had done all that could
+have been done; and if Alfred Stevens failed to keep his appointment,
+he, at least, was one of the losers. He would necessarily lose the
+chance of revenging an indignity, not to speak of the equally serious
+loss of that enjoyment which a manly fight usually gave to Ned
+Hinkley himself, and which, he accordingly assumed, must be an equal
+gratification to all other persons. When he arrived at Charlemont, he
+did not make his arrival known, but, repairing directly to the lake
+among the hills, he hitched his horse, and prepared, with what patience
+he could command, to await the coming of the enemy.
+
+The reader is already prepared to believe that the worthy rustic waited
+in vain. It was only with the coming on of night that he began to
+consider himself outwitted. He scratched his head impatiently, not
+without bringing away some shreds of the hair, jumped on his horse, and,
+without making many allowances for the rough and hilly character of the
+road, went off at a driving pace for the house of Uncle Hinkley. Here he
+drew up only to ask if Brother Stevens had returned.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then, dang it! he never will return. He's a skunk, uncle--as great a
+skunk as ever was in all Kentucky!"
+
+"How! what!--what of Brother Stevens?" demanded the uncle, seconded by
+John Cross, who had only some two hours arrived at the village, and now
+appeared at the door. But Ned Hinkley was already off.
+
+"He's a skunk!--that's all!"
+
+His last words threw very little light over the mystery, and certainly
+gave very little satisfaction to his hearers. The absence of Alfred
+Stevens, at a time when John Cross was expected, had necessarily
+occasioned some surprise; but, of course, no apprehensions were
+entertained by either the worthy parson or the bigoted host that he
+could be detained by any cause whatsoever which he could not fully
+justify.
+
+The next course of Ned Hinkley was for the cottage of Mr. Calvert. To
+the old man he gave a copious detail of all his discoveries--not only
+the heads of what he heard from the conspirators in the wood, but
+something of the terms of the dialogue. The gravity of Calvert increased
+as the other proceeded. He saw more deeply into the signification of
+certain portions of this dialogue than did the narrator; and when the
+latter, after having expressed his disappointment at the non-appearance
+of Stevens on the field of combat, at least congratulated himself at
+having driven him fairly from the ground, the other shook his head
+mournfully.
+
+"I am afraid it's too late, my son."
+
+"Too late, gran'pa! How? Is it ever too late to send such a rascal
+a-packing?"
+
+"It may be for the safety of some, my son."
+
+"What! Margaret you mean? You think the poor fool of a girl's too far
+gone in love of him, do you?"
+
+"If that were all, Ned--"
+
+"Why, what more, eh? You don't mean!--"
+
+The apprehensions of the simple, unsuspecting fellow, for the first time
+began to be awakened to the truth.
+
+"I am afraid, my son, that this wretch has been in Charlemont too long.
+From certain words that you have dropped, as coming from Stevens, in
+speaking to his comrade, I should regard him as speaking the language of
+triumph for successes already gained."
+
+"Oh, hardly! I didn't think so. If I had only guessed that he meant such
+a thing--though I can't believe it--I'd ha' dropped him without a word.
+I'd have given him the pacificator as well as the peace-breaker. Oh, no!
+I can't think it--I can't--I won't! Margaret Cooper is not a girl to my
+liking, but, Lord help us! she's too beautiful and too smart to suffer
+such a skunk, in so short a time, to get the whip-hand of her. No,
+gran'pa, I can't and won't believe it!"
+
+"Yet, Ned, these words which you have repeated convey some such fear to
+my mind. It may be that the villain was only boasting to his companion.
+There are scoundrels in this world who conceive of no higher subject
+of boast than the successful deception and ruin of the artless and
+confiding. I sincerely hope that this may be the case now--that it was
+the mere brag of a profligate, to excite the admiration of his comrade.
+But when you speak of the beauty and the smartness of this poor girl, as
+of securities for virtue, you make a great mistake. Beauty is more apt
+to be a betrayer than a protector; and as for her talent, that is seldom
+a protection unless it be associated with humility. Hers was not. She
+was most ignorant where she was most assured. She knew just enough to
+congratulate herself that she was unlike her neighbors, and this is the
+very temper of mind which is likely to cast down its possessor in shame.
+I trust that she had a better guardian angel than either her beauty or
+her talents. I sincerely hope that she is safe. At all events, let me
+caution you not to hint the possibility of its being otherwise. We will
+take for granted that Stevens is a baffled villain."
+
+"I only wish I had dropped him!"
+
+"Better as it is."
+
+"What! even if the poor girl is--"
+
+"Ay, even then!"
+
+"Why, gran'pa, can it be possible YOU say so?"
+
+"Yes, my son; I say so here, in moments of comparative calmness, and
+in the absence of the villain. Perhaps, were he present, I should say
+otherwise."
+
+"And DO otherwise! You'd shoot him, gran'pa, as soon as I."
+
+"Perhaps! I think it likely. But, put up your pistols, Ned. You have
+nobody now to shoot. Put them up, and let us walk over to your
+uncle's at once. It is proper that he and John Cross should know these
+particulars."
+
+Ned agreed to go, but not to put up his pistols.
+
+"For, you see, gran'pa, this rascal may return. His friend may have kept
+him in long talk. We may meet him coming into the village."
+
+"It is not likely; but come along. Give me that staff, my son, and your
+arm on the other side. I feel that my eyes are no longer young."
+
+"You could shoot still, gran'pa?"
+
+"Not well."
+
+"What, couldn't you hit a chap like Stevens between the eyes at ten
+paces? I'm sure I could do it, blindfolded, by a sort of instinct."
+
+And the youth, shutting his eyes, as if to try the experiment, drew
+forth one of his pistols from his bosom, and began to direct its muzzle
+around the room.
+
+"There was a black spider THERE, gran'pa! I'm sure, taking him for
+Stevens, I could cut his web for him."
+
+"You have cut that of Stevens himself, and his comb too, Ned."
+
+"Yes, yes--but what a fool I was not to make it his gills!"
+
+By this time the old man had got on his spencer, and, with staff in
+hand, declared himself in readiness. Ned Hinkley lowered his pistol with
+reluctance. He was very anxious to try the weapon and his own aim, on
+somebody or something. That black spider which lived so securely in the
+domicil of Mr. Calvert would have stood no chance in any apartment of
+the widow Hinkley. Even the "pacificator" would have been employed
+for its extermination, if, for no other reason, because of the fancied
+resemblance which it had always worn to Brother Stevens--a resemblance
+which occurred to him, perhaps, in consequence of the supposed
+similarity between the arts of the libertine and those for the
+entrapping of his victims which distinguish the labors of the spider.
+
+The two were soon arrived at old Hinkley's, and the tale of Ned was
+told; but, such was the bigotry of the hearers, without securing belief.
+
+"So blessed a young man!" said the old lady.
+
+"A brand from the burning!" exclaimed Brother Cross.
+
+"It's all an invention of Satan!" cried old Hinkley, "to prevent the
+consummation of a goodly work."
+
+"We should not give our faith too readily to such devices of the enemy,
+Friend Calvert," said John Cross, paternally.
+
+"I never saw anything in him that wasn't perfectly saint-like," said
+Mrs. Hinkley. "He made the most heartfelt prayer, and the loveliest
+blessing before meat! I think I hear him now--'Lord, make us
+thankful'--with his eyes shut up so sweetly, and with such a voice."
+
+"There are always some people, Brother Cross, to hate the saints of the
+Lord and to slander them! They lie in wait like thieves of the night,
+and roaring lions of the wilderness, seeking what they may devour."
+
+"Ah," exclaimed Brother Cross, "how little do such know that they
+devour themselves; for whoso destroyeth his best friend is a devourer of
+himself."
+
+"The blindness of Satan is upon them, and they do his work."
+
+And thus--purr, purr, purr--they went on, to the end of the chapter.
+Poor Ned Hinkley found the whole kennel was upon him. Not only did they
+deny everything that could by possibility affect the fair fame of the
+absent brother, but, from defending him, they passed, with an easy
+transition, to the denunciation of those who were supposed to be his
+defamers. In this the worthy old man Calvert came in for his share.
+
+"All this comes of your supporting that worthless boy of mine in
+defiance of my will," said old Hinkley. "You hate Brother Stevens
+because that boy hated him, and because I love him."
+
+"You are mistaken, Mr. Hinkley," said Calvert, mildly. "I hate nobody;
+at the same time I suffer no mere prejudices to delude me against sight
+and reason."
+
+"Ah!" said Brother Cross, gently, "it's that very reason, Brother
+Calvert, that ruins you worldlings. You must not rely on human reason.
+Build on faith, and you build on the Rock of Ages."
+
+"I propose to use reason only in worldly matters, Mr. Cross," said the
+other; "for which use, only, I believe it was given us. I employ it in
+reference to a case of ordinary evidence, and I beg your regards now,
+while I draw your attention to the use I make of it in the present
+instance. Will you hear me without interruption?"
+
+"Surely, Brother Calvert, but call me not Mr. Cross. I am not a Mister.
+I am plain John Cross; by virtue of my business, a brother, if it so
+please you to esteem me. Call me Brother Cross, or Brother John Cross,
+or plain John Cross, either of these will be acceptable unto me."
+
+"We are all brothers, or should be," said Calvert; "and it will not
+need that there should be any misunderstanding between us on so small a
+matter."
+
+"The matter is not small in the eye of the Lord," said the preacher.
+"Titles of vanity become not us, and offend in his hearing."
+
+The old teacher smiled, but proceeded.
+
+"Now, Brother Cross, if you will hear me, I will proceed, according to
+my reason, to dwell upon the proofs which are here presented to you, of
+the worthlessness of this man, Alfred Stevens; and when you consider how
+much the feelings and the safety of the daughters of your flock depend
+upon the character of those moral and religious teachers to whom the
+care of them is intrusted, you will see, I think, the necessity of
+listening patiently, and determining without religious prejudice,
+according to the truth and reason of the case."
+
+"I am prepared to listen patiently, Brother Calvert," said John Cross,
+clasping his hands together, setting his elbows down upon the table,
+shutting his eyes, and turning his face fervently up to heaven. Old
+Hinkley imitated this posture quite as nearly as he was able; while
+Mrs. Hinkley, sitting between the two, maintained a constant to-and-fro
+motion, first on one side, then on the other, as they severally spoke to
+the occasion, with her head deferentially bowing, like a pendulum, and
+with a motion almost as regular and methodical. The movements of her
+nephew, Ned Hinkley, were also a somewhat pleasant study, after a
+fashion of his own. Sitting in a corner, he amused himself by drawing
+forth his "puppies," and taking occasional aim at a candle or flowerpot;
+and sometimes, with some irreverence, at the curved and rather
+extravagant proboscis of his worthy uncle, which, cocked up in air, was
+indeed something of a tempting object of sight to a person so satisfied
+of his skill in shooting as the young rustic. The parties being thus
+arranged in a fit attitude for listening, Mr. Calvert began somewhat
+after the following fashion:--
+
+"Our first knowledge of Alfred Stevens was obtained through Brother John
+Cross."
+
+"And what better introduction would you have?" demanded old Hinkley.
+
+"None," said the other, "if Brother Cross knew anything about the
+party he introduced. But it so happens, as we learn from Brother Cross
+himself, that the first acquaintance he had with Stevens was made upon
+the road, where Stevens played a trick upon him by giving him brandy to
+drink."
+
+"No trick, Brother Calvert; the young man gave it me as a medicine, took
+it as a medicine himself, and, when I bade him, threw away the accursed
+beverage."
+
+"Ordinary men, governed by ordinary reason, Brother Cross, would say
+that Stevens knew very well what he was giving you, and that it was a
+trick."
+
+"But only think, Mr. Calvert," said Mrs. Hinkley, lifting her hands
+and eyes at the same moment, "the blessed young man threw away the evil
+liquor the moment he was told to do so. What a sign of meekness was
+that!"
+
+"I will not dwell on this point," was the reply of Calvert. "He comes
+into our village and declares his purpose to adopt the profession of
+the preacher, and proceeds to his studies under the direction of Brother
+Cross."
+
+"And didn't he study them?" demanded Mrs. Hinkley. "Wasn't he, late and
+early, at the blessed volume? I heard him at all hours above stairs.
+Oh! how often was he on his bended knees in behalf of our sinful race,
+ungrateful and misbelieving that we are!"
+
+"I am afraid, madam," said Calvert, "that his studies were scarcely so
+profound as you think them. Indeed. I am at a loss to conceive how you
+should blind your eyes to the fact that the greater part of his time was
+spent among the young girls of the village."
+
+"And where is it denied," exclaimed old Hinkley, "that the lambs of God
+should sport together?"
+
+"Do not speak in that language, I pray you, Mr. Hinkley," said Calvert,
+with something of pious horror in his look; "this young man was no lamb
+of God, but, I fear, as you will find, a wolf in the fold. It is, I say,
+very well known that he was constantly wandering, even till a late hour
+of the night, with one of the village maidens."
+
+"Who was that one, Brother Calvert?" demanded John Cross.
+
+"Margaret Cooper."
+
+"Hem!" said the preacher.
+
+"Well, he quarrels with my young friend, the worthy son of Brother
+Hinkley--"
+
+"Do not speak of that ungrateful cub. Brother Stevens did not quarrel
+with him. He quarrelled with Brother Stevens, and would have murdered
+him, but that I put in in time to save."
+
+"Say not so, Mr. Hinkley. I have good reason to believe that Stevens
+went forth especially to fight with William."
+
+"I would not believe it, if a prophet were to tell me it."
+
+"Nevertheless, I believe it. We found both of them placed at the usual
+fighting-distance."
+
+"Ah! but where were Brother Stevens's pistols?"
+
+"In his pocket, I suppose."
+
+"He had none. He was at a distance from my ungrateful son, and flying
+that he should not be murdered. The lamb under the hands of the butcher.
+And would you believe it, Brother Cross, he had gone forth only to
+counsel the unworthy boy--only to bring him back into the fold--gone
+forth at his own prayer, as Brother Stevens declared to Betsy, just
+before he went out."
+
+"I am of opinion that he deceived her and yourself."
+
+"Where were his pistols then?"
+
+"He must have concealed them. He told Ned Hinkley, this very day, that
+he had pistols, but that they were here."
+
+"Run up, Betsy, to Brother Stevens's room and see."
+
+The old lady disappeared. Calvert proceeded.
+
+"I can only repeat my opinion, founded upon the known pacific and
+honorable character of William Hinkley, and certain circumstances in
+the conduct of Stevens, that the two did go forth, under a previous
+arrangement, to fight a duel. That they were prevented, and that Stevens
+had no visible weapon, is unquestionably true. But I do not confine
+myself to these circumstances. This young man writes a great many
+letters, it is supposed to his friends, but never puts them in the
+post here, but every Saturday rides off, as we afterward learn, to the
+village of Ellisland, where he deposites them and receive others. This
+is a curious circumstance, which alone should justify suspicion.
+
+"The ways of God are intricate, Brother Calvert," said John Cross, "and
+we are not to suspect the truth which we can not understand."
+
+"But these are the ways of man, Brother Cross."
+
+"And the man of God is governed by the God which is in him. He obeys a
+law which, perhaps, is ordered to be hidden from thy sight."
+
+"This doctrine certainly confers very extraordinary privileges upon the
+man of God," said Calvert, quietly, "and, perhaps, this is one reason
+why the profession is so prolific of professors now-a-days; but
+the point does not need discussion. Enough has been shown to awaken
+suspicion and doubt in the case of any ordinary person; and I now come
+to that portion of the affair which is sustained by the testimony of
+Ned Hinkley, our young friend here, who, whatever his faults may be,
+has been always regarded in Charlemont, as a lover and speaker of the
+truth."
+
+"Ay, ay, so far as he knows what the truth is," said old Hinkley,
+scornfully.
+
+"And I'm just as likely to know what the truth is as you, uncle!','
+retorted the young man, rising and coming forward from his corner.
+
+"Come, come," he continued, "you're not going to ride rough shod over
+me as you did over Cousin Bill. I don't care a snap of the finger, I can
+tell you, for all your puffed cheeks and big bellied speeches. I don't,
+I tell you!" and suiting the action to the word, the sturdy fellow
+snapped his fingers almost under the nose of his uncle, which was now
+erected heavenward, with a more scornful pre-eminence than ever.
+The sudden entrance of Mrs. Hinkley, from her search after Stevens's
+pistols, prevented any rough issue between these new parties, as it
+seemed to tell in favor of Stevens. There were no pistols to be found.
+The old lady did not add, indeed, that there was nothing of any kind to
+be found belonging to the same worthy.
+
+"There! That's enough!" said old Hinkley.
+
+"Did you find anything of Stevens's, Mrs. Hinkley?" inquired Mr.
+Calvert.
+
+"Nothing, whatever."
+
+"Well, madam," said Calvert, "your search, if it proves anything, proves
+the story of Ned Hinkley conclusively. This man has carried off all his
+chattels."
+
+John Cross looked down from heaven, and stared inquiringly at Mrs.
+Hinkley.
+
+"Is this true? Have you found nothing, Sister Betsy?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And Brother Stevens has not come back?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"And reason for it, enough," said old Hinkley. "Didn't you hear that Ned
+Hinkley threatened to shoot him if he came back?"
+
+"Look you, uncle," said the person thus accused, "if you was anybody
+else, and a little younger, I'd thrash you for that speech the same as
+if it was a lie! I would."
+
+"Peace!" said Calvert, looking sternly at the youth. Having obtained
+temporary silence, he was permitted at length to struggle through his
+narrative, and to place, in their proper lights, all the particulars
+which Ned Hinkley had obtained at Ellisland. When this was done the
+discussion was renewed, and raged, with no little violence, for a full
+hour. At length it ceased through the sheer exhaustion of the parties.
+Calvert was the first to withdraw from it, as he soon discovered that
+such was the bigotry of old Hinkley and his wife, and even of John Cross
+himself, that nothing short of divine revelation could persuade them of
+the guilt of one who had once made a religious profession.
+
+Brother Cross, though struck with some of the details which Calvert
+had given, was afterward prepared to regard them as rather trivial than
+otherwise, and poor Ned was doomed to perceive that the conviction
+was general in this holy family, that he had, by his violence, and the
+terror which his pistols had inspired, driven away, in desperation,
+the most meek and saintly of all possible young apostles. The youth was
+nearly furious ere the evening and the discussion were over. It was very
+evident to Calvert that nothing was needed, should Stevens come back,
+but a bold front and a lying tongue, to maintain his position in the
+estimation of the flock, until such time as the truth WOULD make itself
+known--a thing which, eventually, always happens. That night Ned Hinkley
+dreamed of nothing but of shooting Stevens and his comrade and of
+thrashing his uncle. What did Margaret Cooper dream of?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+STORM AND CONVULSION.
+
+
+
+
+
+What did Margaret Cooper dream of? Disappointment, misery, death. There
+was a stern presentiment in her waking thoughts, sufficiently keen and
+agonizing to inspire such dreadful apprehensions in her dreams. The
+temperament which is sanguine, and which, in a lively mood, inspires
+hope, is, at the same time, the source of those dark images of thought
+and feeling, which appal it with the most terrifying forms of fear; and
+when Saturday and Saturday night came and passed, and Alfred Stevens
+did not appear, a lurking dread that would not be chidden or kept down,
+continued to rise within her soul, which, without assuming any real form
+or decisive speech, was yet suggestive of complete overthrow and ruin.
+
+Her dreams were of this complexion. She felt herself abandoned. Nor
+merely abandoned. She was a victim. In her desolation she had even lost
+her pride. She could no longer meet the sneer with scorn. She could
+no longer carry a lofty brow among the little circle, who, once having
+envied, were now about to despise her. To the impatient spirit, once so
+strong--so insolent in its strength--what a pang--what a humiliation
+was here! In her dreams she saw the young maidens of the village stand
+aloof, as she had once stood aloof from them:--she heard the
+senseless titter of their laugh; and she had no courage to resent
+the impertinence. Her courage was buried in her shame. No heart is so
+cowardly as that which is conscious of guilt. Picture after picture of
+this sort did her fancy present to her that night; and when she awoke
+the next morning, the sadness of her soul had taken the color of a deep
+and brooding misanthropy. Such had been the effect of her dreams. Her
+resolution came only from despair; and resolution from such a source, we
+well know, is usually only powerful against itself.
+
+It is one proof of a religious instinct, and of a universal belief in a
+controlling and benevolent Deity, that all men however abased, scornful
+of divine and human law, invariably, in their moments of desperation,
+call upon God. Their first appeal is, involuntarily, to him. The
+outlaw, as the fatal bullet pierces his breast--the infidel, sinking
+and struggling in the water--the cold stony heart of the murderer, the
+miser, the assassin of reputation as of life--all cry out upon God in
+the unexpected paroxysms of death. Let us hope that the instinct which
+prompts this involuntary appeal for mercy, somewhat helps to secure its
+blessings. It is thus also with one who, in the hey-day of the youthful
+heart, has lived without thought or prayer--a tumultuous life of uproar
+and riot--a long carnival of the passions--the warm blood suppressing
+the cool thought, and making the reckless heart impatient of
+consideration. Let the sudden emergency arise, with such a heart--let
+the blood become stagnant with disease--and the involuntary appeal is
+to that God, of whom before there was no thought. We turn to him as to a
+father who is equally strong to help and glad to preserve us.
+
+Margaret Cooper, in the ordinary phrase, had lived without God. Her
+God was in her own heart, beheld by the lurid fires of an intense,
+unmethodized ambition. Her own strength--or rather the persuasion of her
+own strength--had been so great, that hitherto she had seen no necessity
+for appealing to any other source of power. She might now well begin to
+distrust that strength. She did so. Her desperation was not of that sort
+utterly to shut out hope; and, while there is hope, there is yet a moral
+assurance that the worst is not yet--perhaps not to be. But she was
+humbled--not enough, perhaps--but enough to feel the necessity of
+calling in her allies. She dropped by her bedside, in prayer, when
+she arose that morning. We do not say that she prayed for forgiveness,
+without reference to her future earthly desires. Few of us know how to
+simplify our demands upon the Deity to this one. We pray that he may
+assist us in this or that grand speculation: the planter for a great
+crop; the banker for investments that give him fifty per cent.; the
+lawyer for more copious fees; the parson for an increase of salary. How
+few pray for mercy--forgiveness for the past--strength to sustain the
+struggling conscience in the future! Poor Margaret was no wiser, no
+better, than the rest of us. She prayed--silly woman!--that Alfred
+Stevens might keep his engagement!
+
+He did not! That day she was to be married! She had some reference to
+this in making her toilet that morning. The garments which she put on
+were all of white. A white rose gleamed palely from amid the raven hair
+upon her brow. Beautiful was she, exceedingly. How beautiful! but alas!
+the garb she wore--the pale, sweet flower on her forehead--they were
+mockeries--the emblems of that purity of soul, that innocence of heart,
+which were gone--gone for ever! She shuddered as she beheld the flower,
+and meditated this thought. Silently she took the flower from her
+forehead, and, as if it were precious as that lost jewel of which it
+reminded her, she carefully placed it away in her toilet-case.
+
+Yet her beauty was heightened rather than diminished. Margaret Cooper
+was beautiful after no ordinary mould. Tall in stature, with a frame
+rounded by the most natural proportions into symmetry, and so formed for
+grace; with a power of muscle more than common among women, which, by
+inducing activity, made her movements as easy as they were graceful;
+with an eye bright like the morning-star, and with a depth of expression
+darkly clear, like that of the same golden orb at night; with a face
+exquisitely oval; a mouth of great sweetness; cheeks on which the
+slightest dash of hue from the red, red rose in June, might be seen to
+come and go under the slightest promptings of the active heart within;
+a brow of great height and corresponding expansion; with a bust that
+impressed you with a sense of the maternal strength which might
+be harbored there, even as the swollen bud gives promises of the
+full-bosomed luxuriance of the flower when it opens: add to these a
+lofty carriage, a look where the quickened spirit seems ever ready for
+utterance; a something of eager solemnity in her speech; and a play of
+expression on her lips which, if the brow were less lofty and the eye
+less keenly bright, might be a smile--and you have some idea of that
+noble and lovely temple on which fires of lava had been raised by an
+unholy hand; in which a secret worship is carried on which dreads the
+light, shrinks from exposure, and trembles to be seen by the very Deity
+whose favor it yet seeks in prayer and apprehension.
+
+These beauties of person as we have essayed, though most feebly, to
+describe them, were enhanced rather than lessened by that air of anxiety
+by which they were now overcast. Her step was no longer free. It was
+marked by an unwonted timidity. Her glance was no longer confident; and
+when she looked round upon the faces of the young village-maidens, it
+was seen that her lip trembled and moved, but no longer with scorn. If
+the truth were told, she now envied the meanest of those maidens that
+security which her lack of beauty had guarantied. She, the scorner of
+all around her, now envied the innocence of the very meanest of her
+companions.
+
+Such was the natural effect of her unhappy experience upon her heart.
+What would she not have given to be like one of them? She dared not take
+her place, in the church, among them. It was a dread that kept her back.
+Strange, wondrous power of innocence! The guilty girl felt that she
+might be repulsed; that her frailty might make itself known--MUST make
+itself known; and she would be driven with shame from that communion
+with the pure to which she had no longer any claim! She sunk into one of
+the humblest seats in the church, drawing her reluctant mother into the
+lowly place beside her.
+
+John Cross did not that day address himself to her case: but sin has
+a family similitude among all its members. There is an unmistakeable
+likeness, which runs through the connection. If the preacher speaks
+fervently to one sin, he is very apt to goad, in some degree, all the
+rest: and though Brother Cross had not the most distant idea of singling
+out Margaret Cooper for his censure, yet there was a whispering devil at
+her elbow that kept up a continual commentary upon what he said, filling
+her ears with a direct application of every syllable to her own peculiar
+instance.
+
+"See you not," said the demon, "that every eye is turned upon you? He
+sees into your soul; he knows your secret. He declares it, as you hear,
+aloud, with a voice of thunder, to all the congregation. Do you not
+perceive that you sit alone; that everybody shrinks from your side; that
+your miserable old mother alone sits with you; that the eyes of some
+watch you with pity, but more with indignation? Look at the young
+damsels--late your companions--they are your companions no longer! They
+triumph in your shame. Their titter is only suppressed because of the
+place in which they are. They ask: 'Is this the maiden who was so wise,
+so strong--who scorned us--scorned US, indeed!--and was not able to
+baffle the serpent in his very first approaches?' Ha! ha! How they
+laugh! Well, indeed, they may. It is very laughable, Margaret--not less
+laughable and amusing than strange!--that YOU should have fallen!--so
+easily, so blindly--and not even to suspect what every one else was sure
+of! O Margaret! Margaret! can it be true? Who will believe in your
+wit now, your genius, your beauty? Smutched and smutted! Poor, weak,
+degraded! If there is pity for you, Margaret, it is full of mockery too;
+it is a pity that is full of bitterness. You should now cast yourself
+down, and cover yourself with ashes, and cry, 'Wo is me!' and call upon
+the rocks and the hills to cover you!"
+
+Such was the voice in her soul, which to HER senses seemed like that of
+some jibing demon at her elbow. Margaret tried to pray--to expel him by
+prayer; but the object of his mockery had not been attained. She could
+not surrender herself entirely to the chastener. She was scourged,
+but not humbled; and the language of the demon provoked defiance, not
+humility. Her proud spirit rose once more against the pressure put upon
+it. Her bright, dazzling eye flashed in scorn upon the damsels whom she
+now fancied to be actually tittering--scarcely able to suppress their
+laughter--at her obvious disgrace. On John Cross she fixed her fearless
+eye, like that of some fallen angel, still braving the chastener,
+whom he can not contend with. A strange strength--for even sin has its
+strength for a season--came to her relief in that moment of fiendish
+mockery. The strength of an evil spirit was accorded her. Her heart once
+more swelled with pride. Her soul once more insisted on its ascendency.
+She felt, though she did not say:--
+
+"Even as I am, overthrown, robbed of my treasure, I feel that I am
+superior to these. I feel that I have strength against the future. If
+they are pure and innocent, it is not because of their greater strength,
+but their greater obscurity. If I am overthrown by the tempter, it was
+because I was the more worthy object of overthrow. In their littleness
+they live: if I am doomed to the shaft, at least it will be as the
+eagle is doomed; it will be while soaring aloft--while aiming for the
+sun--while grasping at the very bolt by which I am destroyed!"
+
+Such was the consolation offered by the twin-demons of pride and vanity.
+The latter finds its aliment in the heart which it too completely
+occupies, even from those circumstances which, in other eyes, make its
+disgrace and weakness. The sermon which had touched her sin had not
+subdued it. Perhaps no sermon, no appeal, however powerful and touching,
+could at that moment have had power over her. The paroxysm of her first
+consciousness of ruin had not yet passed off. The condition of mind was
+not yet reached in which an appeal could be felt.
+
+As in the case of physical disease, so with that of the mind and heart,
+there is a period when it is neither useful nor prudent to administer
+the medicines which are yet most necessary to safety. The judicious
+physician will wait for the moment when the frame is prepared--when the
+pulse is somewhat subdued--before he tries the most powerful remedy. The
+excitement of the wrong which she had suffered was still great in her
+bosom. It was necessary that she should have repose. That excitement
+was maintained by the expectation that Stevens would yet make his
+appearance. Her eye, at intervals, wandered over the assembly in search
+of him. The demon at her elbow understood her quest.
+
+"He will not come," it said; "you look in vain. The girls follow your
+eyes; they behold your disappointment; they laugh at your credulity.
+If he leads any to the altar, think you it will be one whom he could
+command at pleasure without any such conditions--one who, in her wild
+passions and disordered vanity, could so readily yield to his desires,
+without demanding any corresponding sacrifices? Margaret, they laugh
+now at those weaknesses of a mind which they once feared if not honored.
+They wonder, now, that they could have been so deceived. If they do
+not laugh aloud, Margaret, it is because they would spare your shame.
+Indeed, indeed, they pity you!"
+
+The head of the desperate, but still haughty woman, was now more proudly
+uplifted, and her eyes shot forth yet fiercer fires of indignation.
+What a conflict was going on in her bosom. Her cheeks glowed with the
+strife--her breast heaved; with difficulty she maintained her seat
+inflexibly, and continued, without other signs of discomposure, until
+the service was concluded. Her step was more stately than ever as she
+walked from church; and while her mother lingered behind to talk with
+Brother Cross, and to exchange the sweetest speeches with the
+widow Thackeray and others, she went on alone--seeing none, heeding
+none--dreading to meet any face lest it should wear a smile and look the
+language in which the demon at her side still dealt. HE still clung to
+her, with the tenacity of a fiendish purpose. He mocked her with her
+shame, goading her, with dart upon dart, of every sort of mockery. Truly
+did he mutter in her ears:--
+
+"Stevens has abandoned you. Never was child, before yourself, so silly
+as to believe such a promise as he made you. Do you doubt?--do you still
+hope? It is madness? Why came he not yesterday--last night--to-day? He
+is gone. He has abandoned you. You are not only alone--you are lost!
+lost for ever!"
+
+The tidings of this unsolicited attendant were confirmed the next day,
+by the unsuspecting John Cross. He came to visit Mrs. Cooper and her
+daughter among the first of his parishioners. He had gathered from the
+villagers already that Stevens had certainly favored Miss Cooper beyond
+all the rest of the village damsels. Indeed, it was now generally
+bruited that he was engaged to her in marriage. Though the worthy
+preacher had very stoutly resisted the suggestions of Mr. Calvert, and
+the story of Ned Hinkley, he was yet a little annoyed by them; and he
+fancied that, if Stevens were, indeed, engaged to Margaret, she, or
+perhaps the old lady, might relieve his anxiety by accounting for the
+absence of his protege. The notion of Brother John was, that, having
+resolved to marry the maiden, he had naturally gone home to apprize his
+parents and to make the necessary preparations.
+
+But this conjecture brought with it a new anxiety. It, now, for the
+first time, seemed something strange that Stevens had never declared to
+himself, or to anybody else who his parents were--what they were--where
+they were--what business they pursued; or anything about them. Of his
+friends, they knew as little. The simple old man had never thought of
+these things, until the propriety of such inquiries was forced upon him
+by the conviction that they would now be made in vain. The inability to
+answer them, when it was necessary that an answer should be found, was
+a commentary upon his imprudence which startled the good old man not
+a little. But, in the confident hope that a solution of the difficulty
+could be afforded by the sweetheart or the mother, he proceeded to her
+cottage. Of course, Calvert, in his communication to him, had forborne
+those darker conjectures which he could not help but entertain; and his
+simple auditor, unconscious himself of any thought of evil, had never
+himself formed any such suspicions.
+
+Margaret Cooper was in her chamber when Brother Cross arrived. She had
+lost that elasticity of temper which would have carried her out at
+that period among the hills in long rambles, led by those wild, wooing
+companions, which gambol along the paths of poetic contemplation. The
+old man opened his stores of scandal to Mrs. Cooper with little or no
+hesitation. He told her all that Calvert had said, all that Ned Hinkley
+had fancied himself to have heard, and all the village tattle touching
+the engagement supposed to exist between Stevens and her daughter.
+
+"Of course, Sister Cooper," said he, "I believe nothing of this sort
+against the youth. I should be sorry to think it of one whom I plucked
+as a brand from the burning. I hold Brother Stevens to be a wise young
+man and a pious; and truly I fear, as indeed I learn, that there is in
+the mind of Ned Hinkley a bitter dislike to the youth, because of some
+quarrel which Brother Stevens is said to have had with William Hinkley.
+This dislike hath made him conceive evil things of Brother Stevens
+and to misunderstand and to pervert some conversation which he hath
+overheard which Stevens hath had with his companion. Truly, indeed, I
+think that Alfred Stevens is a worthy youth of whom we shall hear a good
+account."
+
+"And I think so too, Brother Cross. Brother Stevens will be yet a
+burning and a shining light in the church. There is a malice against
+him; and I think I know the cause, Brother Cross."
+
+"Ah! this will be a light unto our footsteps, Sister Cooper."
+
+"Thou knowest, Brother Cross," resumed the old lady in a subdued tone
+but with a loftier elevation of eyebrows and head--"thou knowest the
+great beauty of my daughter Margaret?"
+
+"The maiden is comely, sister, comely among the maidens; but beauty is
+grass. It is a flower which blooms at morning and is cut down in the
+evening. It withereth on the stalk where it bloomed, until men turn from
+it with sickening and with sorrow, remembering what it hath been. Be not
+boastful of thy daughter's beauty, Sister Cooper, it is the beauty of
+goodness alone which dieth not."
+
+"But said I not, Brother Cross, of her wisdom, and her wit, as well
+as her beauty?" replied the old lady with some little pique. "I was
+forgetful of much, if I spoke only of the beauty of person which
+Margaret Cooper surely possesseth, and which the eyes of blindness
+itself might see."
+
+"Dross, dross all, Sister Cooper. The wit of man is a flash which
+blindeth and maketh dark; and the wisdom of man is a vain thing. The one
+crackleth like thorns beneath the pot--the other stifleth the heart and
+keepeth down the soul from her true flight. I count the wit and wisdom
+of thy daughter even as I count her beauty. She hath all, I think--as
+they are known to and regarded by men. But all is nothing. Beauty hath a
+day's life like the butterfly; wit shineth like the sudden flash of the
+lightning, leaving only the cloud behind it; and oh! for the vain wisdom
+of man which makes him vain and unsteady--likely to falter--liable
+to fall--rash in his judgment--erring in his aims--blind to his
+duty--wilful in his weakness--insolent to his fellow--presumptuous in
+the sight of God. Talk not to me of worldly wisdom. It is the foe to
+prayer and meekness. The very fruit of the tree which brought sin and
+death into the world. Thy daughter is fair to behold--very fair among
+the maidens of our flock--none fairer, none so fair: God hath otherwise
+blessed her with a bright mind and a quick intelligence; but I think not
+that she is wise to salvation. No, no! she hath not yearned to the holy
+places of the tabernacle, unless it be that Brother Stevens hath been
+more blessed in his ministry than I!"
+
+"And he hath!" exclaimed the mother. "I tell you, Brother John, the
+heart of Margaret Cooper is no longer what it was. It is softened. The
+toils of Brother Stevens have not been in vain. Blessed young man,
+no wonder they hate and defame him. He hath had a power over Margaret
+Cooper such as man never had before; and it is for this reason that Bill
+Hinkley and Ned conspired against him, first to take his life, and then
+to speak evil of his deeds. They beheld the beauty of my daughter, and
+they looked on her with famishing eyes. She sent them a-packing, I tell
+you. But this youth, Brother Stevens, found favor in her heart. They
+beheld the two as they went forth together. Ah! Brother John, it is
+the sweetest sight to behold two young, loving people walk forth in
+amity--born, as it would seem, for each other; both so tall, and young,
+and handsome; walking together with such smiles, as if there was no
+sorrow in the world; as if there was nothing but flowers and sweetness
+on the path; as if they could see nothing but one another; and as if
+there were no enemies looking on. It did my heart good to see them,
+Brother Cross; they always looked so happy with one another."
+
+"And you think, Sister Cooper, that Brother Stevens hath agreed to take
+Margaret to wife?"
+
+"She hath not told me this yet, but in truth, I think it hath very nigh
+come to that."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In her chamber."
+
+"Call her hither, Sister Cooper; let us ask of her the truth."
+
+Margaret Cooper was summoned, and descended with slow steps and an
+unwilling spirit to meet their visiter.
+
+"Daughter," said the good old man, taking her hand, and leading her to a
+seat, "thou art, even as thy mother sayest, one of exceeding beauty. Few
+damsels have ever met mine eyes with a beauty like to thine. No wonder
+the young men look on thee with eyes of love; but let not the love of
+youth betray thee. The love of God is the only love that is precious to
+the heart of wisdom."
+
+Thus saying, the old man gazed on her with as much admiration as was
+consistent with the natural coldness of his temperament, his years, and
+his profession. His address, so different from usual, had a soothing
+effect upon her. A sigh escaped her, but she said nothing. He then
+proceeded to renew the history which had been given to him and which
+he had already detailed to her mother. She heard him with patience, in
+spite of all his interpolations from Scripture, his ejaculations, his
+running commentary upon the narrative, and the numerous suggestive
+topics which took him from episode to episode, until the story seemed
+interminably mixed up in the digression.
+
+But when he came to that portion which related to the adventure of
+Ned Hinkley, to his espionage, the conference of Stevens with his
+companion--then she started--then her breathing became suspended, then
+quickened--then again suspended--and then, so rapid in its rush, that
+her emotion became almost too much for her powers of suppression.
+
+But she did suppress it, with a power, a resolution, not often
+paralleled among men--still more seldom among women. After the first
+spasmodic acknowledgment given by her surprise, she listened with
+comparative calmness. She, alone, had the key to that conversation. She,
+alone, knew its terrible signification. She knew that Ned Hinkley was
+honest--was to be believed--that he was too simple, and too sincere, for
+any such invention; and, sitting with hands clasped upon that chair--the
+only attitude which expressed the intense emotion which she felt--she
+gazed with unembarrassed eye upon the face of the speaker, while every
+word which he spoke went like some keen, death-giving instrument into
+her heart.
+
+The whole dreadful history of the villany of Stevens, her irreparable
+ruin--was now clearly intelligible. The mocking devil at her elbow had
+spoken nothing but the truth. She was indeed the poor victim of a crafty
+villain. In the day of her strength and glory she had fallen--fallen,
+fallen, fallen!
+
+"Why am I called to hear this?" she demanded with singular composure.
+
+The old man and the mother explained in the same breath--that she might
+reveal the degree of intercourse which had taken place between them,
+and, if possible, account for the absence of her lover. That, in short,
+she might refute the malice of enemies and establish the falsehood of
+their suggestions.
+
+"You wish to know if I believe this story of Ned Hinkley?"
+
+"Even so, my daughter."
+
+"Then, I do!"
+
+"Ha! what is it you say, Margaret?"
+
+"The truth."
+
+"What?" demanded the preacher, "you can not surely mean that Brother
+Stevens hath been a wolf in sheep's clothing--that he hath been a
+hypocrite."
+
+"Alas!" thought Margaret Cooper--"have I not been my own worst
+enemy--did I not know him to be this from the first?"
+
+Her secret reflection remained, however, unspoken. She answered the
+demand of John Cross without a moment's hesitation.
+
+"I believe that Alfred Stevens is all that he is charged to be--a
+hypocrite--a wolf in sheep's clothing!--I see no reason to doubt the
+story of Ned Hinkley. He is an honest youth."
+
+The old lady was in consternation. The preacher aghast and confounded.
+
+"Tell me, Margaret," said the former, "hath he not engaged himself to
+you? Did he not promise--is he not sworn to be your husband?"
+
+"I have already given you my belief. I see no reason to say anything
+more. What more do you need? Is he not gone--fled--has he not failed--"
+
+She paused abruptly, while a purple flush went over her face. She rose
+to retire.
+
+"Margaret!" exclaimed the mother.
+
+"My daughter!" said John Cross.
+
+"Speak out what you know--tell us all--"
+
+"No! I will say no more. You know enough already. I tell you, I believe
+Alfred Stevens to be a hypocrite and a villain. Is not that enough? What
+is it to you whether he is so or not? What is it to me, at least? You
+do not suppose that it is anything to me? Why should you? What should he
+be? I tell you he is nothing to me--nothing--nothing--nothing! Villain
+or hypocrite, or what not--he is no more to me than the earth on which
+I tread. Let me hear no more about him, I pray you. I would not hear his
+name! Are there not villains enough in the world, that you should think
+and speak of one only?"
+
+With these vehement words she left the room, and hurried to her chamber.
+She stopped suddenly before the mirror.
+
+"And is it thus!" she exclaimed--"and I am--"
+
+The mother by this time had followed her into the room.
+
+"What is the meaning of this, Margaret?--tell me!" cried the old woman
+in the wildest agitation.
+
+"What should it be, mother? Look at me!--in my eyes--do they not tell
+you? Can you not read?"
+
+"I see nothing--I do not understand you, Margaret."
+
+"Indeed! but you shall understand me! I thought my face would tell you
+without my words. _I_ see it there, legible enough, to myself. Look
+again!--spare me if you can--spare your own ears the necessity of
+hearing me speak!"
+
+"You terrify me, Margaret--I fear you are out of your mind.
+
+"No! no! that need not be your fear; nor, were it true, would it be a
+fear of mine. It might be something to hope--to pray for. It might
+bring relief. Hear me, since you will not see. You ask me why I believe
+Stevens to be a villain. I KNOW it."
+
+"Ha! how know it!"
+
+"How! How should I know it? Well, I see that I must speak. Listen then.
+You bade me seek and make a conquest of him, did you not? Do not deny
+it, mother--you did."
+
+"Well, if I did?"
+
+"I succeeded! Without trying, I succeeded! He declared to me his
+love--he did!--he promised to marry me. He was to have married me
+yesterday--to have met me in church and married me. John Cross was
+to have performed the ceremony. Well! you saw me there--you saw me in
+white--the dress of a bride!--Did he come? Did you see him there? Did
+you see the ceremony performed?"
+
+"No, surely not--you know without asking."
+
+"I know without asking!--surely I do!--but look you, mother--do you
+think that conquests are to be made, hearts won, loves confessed,
+pledges given, marriage-day fixed--do these things take place, as
+matters of pure form? Is there no sensation--no agitation--no beating
+and violence about the heart--in the blood--in the brain! I tell you
+there is--a blinding violence, a wild, stormy, sensation--fondness,
+forgetfulness, madness! I say, madness! madness! madness!"
+
+"Oh, my daughter, what can all this mean? Speak calmly, be deliberate!"
+
+"Calm! deliberate! What a monster if I could be! But I am not mad now.
+I will tell you what it means. It means that, in taking captive Alfred
+Stevens--in winning a lover--securing that pious young man--there was
+some difficulty, some peril. Would you believe it?--there were some
+privileges which he claimed. He took me in his arms. Ha! ha! He held me
+panting to his breast. His mouth filled mine with kisses--"
+
+"No more, do not say more, my child!"
+
+"Ay, more! more! much more! I tell you--then came blindness and madness,
+and I was dishonored--made a woman before I was made a wife! Ruined,
+lost, abused, despised, abandoned! Ha! ha! ha! no marriage ceremony.
+Though I went to the church. No bridegroom there, though he promised to
+come. Preacher, church, bride, all present, yet no wedding. Ha! ha! ha!
+How do I know!--Good reason for it, good reason--Ha! ha!--ah!"
+
+The paroxysm, terminated in a convulsion. The unhappy girl fell to the
+floor as if stricken in the forehead. The blood gushed from her mouth
+and nostrils, and she lay insensible in the presence of the terrified
+and miserable mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE FATES FIND THE DAGGER AND THE BOWL.
+
+
+
+
+
+For a long time she lay without showing any signs of life. Her passions
+rebelled against the restraint which her mind had endeavored to put upon
+them. Their concentrated force breaking all bonds, so suddenly, was like
+the terrific outburst of the boiling lava from the gorges of the frozen
+mountain. Believing her dead, the mother rushed headlong into the
+highway, rending the village with her screams. She was for the time
+a perfect madwoman. The neighbors gathered to her assistance. That
+much-abused woman, the widow Thackeray, was the first to come. Never was
+woman's tenderness more remarkable than hers--never was woman's watch by
+the bed of sickness and suffering--that watch which woman alone knows
+so well how to keep--more rigidly maintained than by her! From the first
+hour of that agony under which Margaret Cooper fell to earth insensible,
+to the last moment in which her recovery was doubtful, that widow
+Thackeray--whose passion for a husband had been described by Mrs. Cooper
+as so very decided and evident--maintained her place by the sick bed of
+the stricken girl with all the affection of a mother. Widow Thackeray
+was a woman who could laugh merrily, but she could shed tears with
+equal readiness. These were equally the signs of prompt feeling and nice
+susceptibility; and the proud Margaret, and her invidious mother, were
+both humbled by that spontaneous kindness for which, hitherto, they had
+given the possessor so very little credit, and to which they were now
+equally so greatly indebted.
+
+Medical attendance was promptly secured. Charlemont had a very clever
+physician of the old school. He combined as was requisite in the
+forest region of our country, the distinct offices of the surgeon and
+mediciner. He was tolerably skilful in both departments. He found
+his patient in a condition of considerable peril. She had broken a
+blood-vessel; and the nicest care and closest attendance were necessary
+to her preservation. It will not need that we should go through the long
+and weary details which followed to her final cure. Enough, that she did
+recover. But for weeks her chance was doubtful. She lay for that space
+of time, equally in the arms of life and death. For a long period, she
+herself was unconscious of her situation.
+
+When she came to know, the skill of her attendants derived very little
+aid from her consciousness. Her mind was unfavorable to her cure; and
+this, by the way, is a very important particular in the fortunes of the
+sick. To despond, to have a weariness of life, to forbear hope as well
+as exertion, is, a hundred to one, to determine against the skill of
+the physician. Margaret Cooper felt a willingness to die. She felt her
+overthrow in the keenest pangs of its shame; and, unhappily, the mother,
+in her madness, had declared it.
+
+The story of her fall--of the triumph of the serpent--was now the
+village property, and of course put an end to all further doubts on the
+score of the piety of Brother Stevens; though, by way of qualification
+of his offence, old Hinkley insisted that it was the fault of the poor
+damsel.
+
+"She," he said, "had tempted him--had thrown herself in his way--had
+been brazen," and all that, of which so much is commonly said in all
+similar cases. We, who know the character of the parties, and have
+traced events from the beginning, very well know how little of this
+is true. Poor Margaret was a victim before she was well aware of those
+passions which made her so. She was the victim not of lust but of
+ambition. Never was woman more unsophisticated--less moved by unworthy
+and sinister design. She had her weaknesses--her pride, her vanity; and
+her passions, which were tremendous, worked upon through these, very
+soon effected her undoing. But, for deliberate purpose of evil--of any
+evil of which her own intellect was conscious--the angels were not more
+innocent.
+
+But mere innocence of evil design, in any one particular condition,
+is not enough for security. We are not only to forbear evil; virtue
+requires that we should be exercised for the purposes of good. She
+lacked the moral strength which such exercises, constantly pursued,
+would have assured her. She was a creature of impulse only, not of
+reflection. Besides, she was ignorant of her particular weaknesses. She
+was weak where she thought herself strong. This is always the error of
+a person having a very decided will. The will is constantly mistaken
+for the power. She could not humble herself, and in her own personal
+capacities--capacities which had never before been subjected to any
+ordeal-trial--she relied for the force which was to sustain her in every
+situation. Fancy a confident country-girl--supreme in her own district
+over the Hobs and Hinnies thereabouts--in conflict with the adroit man
+of the world, and you have the whole history of Margaret Cooper, and
+the secret of her misfortune. Let the girl have what natural talent you
+please, and the case is by no means altered. She must fall if she
+seeks or permits the conflict. She can only escape by flight. It is in
+consideration of this human weakness, that we pray God, nightly, not to
+suffer us to be exposed to temptation.
+
+When the personal resources of her own experience and mind failed
+Margaret Cooper, as at some time or other they must fail all who trust
+only in them, she had no further reliance. She had never learned to draw
+equal strength and consolation from the sweet counsels of the sacred
+volume. Regarding the wild raving and the senseless insanity, which
+are but too frequently the language of the vulgar preacher, as gross
+ignorance and debasing folly, she committed the unhappy error of
+confounding the preacher with his cause. She had never been taught to
+make an habitual reference to religion; and her own experience of life,
+had never forced upon her those sage reflections which would have shown
+her that TRUE religion is the very all of life, and without it life has
+nothing. The humility of the psalmist, which was the real source of all
+the strength allotted to the monarch minstrel, was an unread lesson with
+her; and never having been tutored to refer to God, and relying upon
+her own proud mind and daring imagination, what wonder that these frail
+reeds should pierce her side while giving way beneath her.
+
+It was this very confidence in her own strength--this fearlessness
+of danger (and we repeat the lesson here, emphatically, by way of
+warning)--a confidence which the possession of a quick and powerful mind
+naturally enough inspires--that effected her undoing. It was not by the
+force of her affections that she fell. THE AFFECTIONS ARE NOT APT TO BE
+STRONG IN A WOMAN WHOSE MIND LEADS HER OUT FROM HER SEX!
+
+The seducer triumphed through the medium of her vanity. Her feeling of
+self-assurance had been thus active from childhood, and conspicuous in
+all her sports and employments. SHE HAD NEVER BEEN A CHILD HERSELF. SHE
+LED ALWAYS IN THE PASTIMES OF HER PLAYMATES, MANY OF WHOM WERE OLDER
+THAN HERSELF.
+
+She had no fears when others trembled; and, if she did not, at any time,
+so far transcend the bounds of filial duty as to defy the counsels of
+her parents, it was certainly no less true that she never sought for,
+and seldom seemed to need them. IT IS DANGEROUS WHEN THE WOMAN, THROUGH
+SHEER CONFIDENCE IN HER OWN STRENGTH, VENTURES UPON THE VERGE OF
+THE MORAL PRECIPICE. THEY VERY EXPERIMENTAL, WHERE THE PASSIONS ARE
+CONCERNED, PROVES HER TO BE LOST.
+
+Margaret Cooper, confident in her own footsteps, soon learned to despise
+every sort of guardianship. The vanity of her mother had not only
+counselled and stimulated her own, but was of that gross and silly
+order, as to make itself offensive to the judgment of the girl herself.
+This had the effect of losing her all the authority of a parent; and we
+have already seen, in the few instances where this authority took the
+shape of counsel, that its tendency was to evil rather than to good.
+
+The arts of Alfred Stevens had, in reality, been very few. It was only
+necessary that he should read the character of his victim. This, as an
+experienced worldling--experienced in such a volume--he was soon very
+able to do. He saw enough to discover, that, while Margaret Cooper was
+endowed by nature with an extraordinary measure of intellect, she was
+really weak because of its possession. In due proportion to the degree
+of exercise to which she subjected her mere mind--making that busy and
+restless--was the neglect of her sensibilities--those nice ANTENNAE OF
+THE HEART.
+
+"Whose instant touches, slightest pause,"
+
+teach the approach of the smallest forms of danger, however inoffensive
+their shapes, however unobtrusive their advance. When the sensibilities
+are neglected and suffered to fall into disrepute, they grow idle first,
+and finally obtuse! even as the limb which you forbear to exercise loses
+its muscle, and withers into worthlessness.
+
+When Alfred Stevens discovered this condition, his plan was simple
+enough. He had only to stimulate her mind into bolder exercise--to
+conduct it to topics of the utmost hardihood--to inspire that sort of
+moral recklessness which some people call courage--which delights to
+sport along the edge of the precipice, and to summon audacious spirits
+from the great yawning gulfs which lie below. This practice is always
+pursued at the expense of those guardian feelings which keep watch over
+the virtues of the tender heart.
+
+The analysis of subjects commonly forbidden to the sex, necessarily
+tends to make dull those habitual sentinels over the female conduct.
+These sentinels are instincts rather than principles. Education can take
+them away, but does not often confer them. When, through the arts of
+Alfred Stevens, Margaret Cooper was led to discuss, perhaps to despise,
+those nice and seemingly purposeless barriers which society--having
+the experience of ages for its authority--has wisely set up between the
+sexes--she had already taken a large stride toward passing them. But of
+this, which a judicious education would have taught her, she was wholly
+ignorant. Her mind was too bold to be scrupulous; too adventurous to be
+watchful; and if, at any moment, a pause in her progress permitted her
+to think of the probable danger to her sex of such adventurous freedom,
+she certainly never apprehended it in her own case. Such restraints she
+conceived to be essential only for the protection of THE WEAK among
+her sex. Her vanity led her to believe that she was strong; and the
+approaches of the sapper were conducted with too much caution, with a
+progress too stealthy and insensible, to startle the ear or attract the
+eye of the unobservant, yet keen-eyed guardian of her citadel. An eagle
+perched upon a rock, with wing outspread for flight, and an eye fixed
+upon the rolling clouds through which it means to dart, is thus heedless
+of the coiled serpent which lies beneath its feet.
+
+The bold eye of Margaret Cooper was thus heedless. Gazing upon the sun,
+she saw not the serpent at her feet. It was not because she slept: never
+was eye brighter, more far-stretching; never was mind more busy, more
+active, than that of the victim at the very moment when she fell. It was
+because she watched the remote, not the near--the region in which there
+was no enemy, nothing but glory--and neglected that post which is always
+in danger. Her error is that of the general who expends his army upon
+some distant province, leaving his chief city to the assault and sack of
+the invader.
+
+We have dwelt somewhat longer upon the moral causes which, in our story,
+have produced such cruel results, than the mere story itself demands;
+but no story is perfectly moral unless the author, with a wholesome
+commentary, directs the attention of the reader to the true weaknesses
+of his hero, to the point where his character fails; to the causes of
+this failure, and the modes in which it may be repaired or prevented.
+In this way alone may the details of life and society be properly welded
+together into consistent doctrine, so that instruction may keep pace
+with delight, and the heart and mind be informed without being conscious
+of any of those tasks which accompany the lessons of experience.
+
+To return now to our narrative.
+
+Margaret Cooper lived! She might as well have died. This was HER
+thought, at least. She prayed for death. Was it in mercy that her prayer
+was denied? We shall see! Youth and a vigorous constitution successfully
+resisted the attacks of the assailant. They finally obtained the
+victory. After a weary spell of bondage and suffering, she recovered.
+But she recovered only to the consciousness of a new affliction. All the
+consequences of her fatal lapse from virtue have not yet been told. She
+bore within her an indelible witness of her shame. She was destined to
+be a mother without having been a wife!
+
+This, to her mother at least, was a more terrible discovery than the
+former. She literally cowered and crouched beneath it. It was the
+WRITTEN shame, rather than the actual, which the old woman dreaded. She
+had been so vain, so criminally vain, of her daughter--she had made
+her so constantly the subject of her brag--that, unwitting of having
+declared the whole melancholy truth, in the first moment of her madness,
+she shrank, with an unspeakable horror, from the idea that the little
+world in which she lived should become familiar with the whole cruel
+history of her overthrow. She could scarcely believe it herself though
+the daughter, with an anguish in her eyes that left little to be told,
+had herself revealed the truth. Her pride as well as her life, was
+linked with the pride and the beauty of her child. She had shared in
+her constant triumphs over all around her; and overlooking, as a fond,
+foolish mother is apt to do, all her faults of temper or of judgment,
+she had learned to behold nothing but her superiority. And now to see
+her fallen! a thing of scorn, which was lately a thing of beauty!--the
+despised, which was lately the worshipped and the wondered at! No wonder
+that her weak, vain heart was crushed and humbled, and her head bowed in
+sorrow to the earth. She threw herself upon the floor, and wept bitter
+and scalding tears.
+
+The daughter had none. Without sob or sigh, she stooped down and
+tenderly assisted the old woman to rise. Why had she no tears? She asked
+herself this question, but in vain. Her external emotions promised
+none. Indeed, she seemed to be without emotions. A weariness and general
+indifference to all things was now the expression of her features.
+But this was the deceitful aspect of the mountain, on whose breast
+contemplation sits with silence, unconscious of the tossing flame which
+within is secretly fusing the stubborn metal and the rock. Anger was in
+her breast--feelings of hate mingled up with shame--scorn of herself,
+scorn of all--feelings of defiance and terror, striving at mastery; and,
+in one corner, a brooding image of despair, kept from the brink of the
+precipice only by the entreaties of some fiercer principle of hate. She
+felt life to be insupportable. Why did she live? This question came to
+her repeatedly. The demon was again at work beside her.
+
+"Die!" said he. "It is but a blow--a moment's pang--the driving a needle
+into an artery--the prick of a pin upon the heart. Die! it will save you
+from exposure--the shame of bringing into the world an heir of shame!
+What would you live for? The doors of love, and fame, even of society,
+are shut against you for ever. What is life to you now? a long denial--a
+protracted draught of bitterness--the feeling of a death-spasm
+carried on through sleepless years; perhaps, under a curse of peculiar
+bitterness, carried on even into age! Die! you can not be so base as to
+wish for longer life!"
+
+The arguments of the demon were imposing. His suggestions seemed to
+promise the relief she sought. Hers seemed the particular case where the
+prayer is justified which invokes the mountains and the rocks upon the
+head of the guilty. But the rock refused to fall, the mountain to cover
+her shame, and its exposure became daily more and more certain. Death
+was the only mode of escape from the mountain of pain which seemed to
+rest upon her heart. The means of self-destruction were easy. With
+a spirit so impetuous as hers, to imagine was to determine. She did
+determine. Yet, even while making so terrible a resolve, a singular calm
+seemed to overspread her soul. She complained of nothing--wished for
+nothing--sought for nothing--trembled at nothing. A dreadful lethargy,
+which made the old mother declaim as against a singular proof of
+hardihood, possessed her spirit. Little did the still-idolizing mother
+conjecture how much that lethargy concealed!
+
+The moment that Margaret Cooper conceived the idea of suicide, it
+possessed all her mind. It became the one only thought. There were few
+arguments against it, and these she rapidly dismissed or overcame. To
+leave her mother in her old age was the first which offered itself; but
+this became a small consideration when she reflected that the latter
+could not, under any circumstances, require her assistance very long;
+and to spare her the shame of public exposure was another consideration.
+The evils of the act to herself were reduced with equal readiness to the
+transition from one state to another by a small process, which, whether
+by the name of stab or shot, was productive only of a momentary spasm;
+for, though as fully persuaded of the soul's immortality as the best
+of us, the unhappy girl, like all young free-thinkers, had persuaded
+herself that, in dying by her own hands, she was simply exercising a
+discretionary power under the conviction that her act in doing so was
+rendered by circumstances a judicious one. The arguments by which
+she deceived herself are sufficiently commonplace, and too easy of
+refutation, to render necessary any discussion of them here. Enough to
+state the fact. She deliberately resolved upon the fatal deed which
+was to end her life and agony together, and save her from that more
+notorious exposure which must follow the birth of that child of sin whom
+she deemed it no more than a charity to destroy.
+
+There was an old pair of pistols in the house, which had been the
+property of her father. She had often, with a boldness not common to the
+sex, examined these pistols. They were of brass, well made, of English
+manufacture, with common muzzles, and a groove for a sight instead of
+the usual drop. They were not large, but, in a practised hand, were
+good travelling-pistols, being capable of bringing down a man at twelve
+paces, provided there was anything like deliberation in the holder.
+Often and again had she handled these weapons, poising them and
+addressing them at objects as she had seen her father do. On
+one occasion she had been made to discharge them, under his own
+instructions; she had done so without terror. She recalled these events.
+She had seen the pistols loaded. She did not exactly know what quantity
+of powder was necessary for a charge, but she was in no mood to
+calculate the value of a thimbleful.
+
+Availing herself of the temporary absence of her mother, she possessed
+herself of these weapons. Along with them, in the same drawer, she found
+a horn which still contained a certain quantity of powder. There were
+bullets in the bag with the pistols which precisely fitted them. There,
+too, was the mould--there were flints--the stock was sufficiently ample
+for all her desires; and she surveyed the prize, in her own room, with
+the look of one who congratulates himself in the conviction that he
+holds in his hand the great medicine which is to cure his disease.
+In her chamber she loaded the weapons, and, with such resignation as
+belonged to her philosophy, she waited for the propitious moment when
+she might complete the deed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+FOLDING THE ROBES ABOUT HER.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was the sabbath and a very lovely day. The sun never shone more
+brightly in the heavens; and as Margaret Cooper surveyed its mellow
+orange light, lying, like some blessed spirit, at sleep upon the hills
+around her, and reflected that she was about to behold it for the last
+time, her sense of its exceeding beauty became more strong than ever.
+Now that she was about to lose it for ever, it seemed more beautiful
+than it had ever been before.
+
+This is a natural effect, which the affections confer upon the objects
+which delight and employ them. Even a temporary privation increases the
+loveliness of the external nature. How we linger and look. That shade
+seems so inviting; that old oak so venerable! That rock--how often have
+we sat upon it, evening and morning, and mused strange, wild, sweet
+fancies! It is an effort to tear one's self away--it is almost like
+tearing away from life itself; so many living affections feel the
+rending and the straining--so many fibres that have their roots in the
+heart, are torn and lacerated by the separation.
+
+Poor Margaret! she looked from her window upon the bright and beautiful
+world around her. Strange that sorrow should dwell in a world so bright
+and beautiful! Stranger still, that, dwelling in such a world, it should
+not dwell there by sufferance only and constraint! that it should have
+such sway--such privilege. That it should invade every sanctuary and
+leave no home secure. Ah! but the difference between mere sorrow and
+guilt! Poor Margaret could not well understand that! If she could--but
+no! She was yet to learn that the sorrows of the innocent have a healing
+effect. That they produce a holy and ennobling strength, and a juster
+appreciation of those evening shades of life which render the lights
+valuable and make their uses pure. It is only guilt which finds life
+loathsome. It is only guilt that sorrow weakens and enslaves. Virtue
+grows strong beneath the pressure of her enemies, and with such a power
+as was fabled of the king of Pontus, turns the most poisonous fruits of
+earth into the most wholesome food.
+
+But, even in the heart of Margaret Cooper, where the sense of the
+beautiful was strong, the loveliness of the scene was felt. She drank
+in, with strange satisfaction--a satisfaction to which she had long
+been a stranger--its soft and inviting beauties. They did not lessen her
+sense of suffering, perhaps, but they were not without their effect in
+producing other moods, which, once taken in company with the darker ones
+of the soul, may, in time, succeed in alleviating them. Never, indeed,
+had the prospect been more calm and wooing. Silence, bending from the
+hills, seemed to brood above the valley even as some mighty spirit,
+at whose bidding strife was hushed, and peace became the acknowledged
+divinity of all. The humming voices of trade and merriment were all
+hushed in homage to the holy day; and if the fitful song of a truant
+bird, that presumed beside the window of Margaret Cooper, did break the
+silence of the scene, it certainly did not disturb its calm. The forest
+minstrel sung in a neighboring tree, and she half listened to his lay.
+The strain seemed to sympathize with her sadness. She thought upon her
+own songs, which had been of such a proud spirit; and how strange and
+startling seemed the idea that with her, song would soon cease for ever.
+The song of the bird would be silent in her ears, and her own song! What
+song would be hers? What strain would she take up? In what abode--before
+what altars?
+
+This train of thought, which was not entirely lost, however, was broken,
+for the time, by a very natural circumstance. A troop of the village
+damsels came in sight, on their way to church. She forgot the song of
+birds, as her morbid spirit suggested to her the probable subject of
+their meditations.
+
+"They have seen me," she muttered to herself as she hastily darted from
+the window. "Ay, they exult. They point to me--me, the abandoned--the
+desolate--soon to be the disgraced! But, no! no! that shall never
+be. They shall never have that triumph, which is always so grateful a
+subject of regale to the mean and envious!"
+
+The voice of her mother from below disturbed these unhappy meditations.
+The old lady was prepared for church, and was surprised to find that
+Margaret had not made her toilet.
+
+"What! don't you mean to go, Margaret?"
+
+"Not to-day, mother."
+
+"What, and the new preacher too, that takes the place of John Cross!
+They say he makes a most heavenly prayer."
+
+But the inducement of the heavenly prayer of the new preacher was not
+enough for Margaret. The very suggestion of a new preacher would have
+been conclusive against her compliance. The good old lady was too eager
+herself to get under way to waste much time in exhortation, and hurrying
+off, she scarcely gave herself time to answer the inquiry of the widow
+Thackeray, at her own door, after the daughter's health.
+
+"I will go in and see her," said the lighthearted but truehearted woman.
+
+"Do, do, ma'am---if you please! She'll be glad to see you. I'll hurry
+on, as I see Mrs. Hinkley just ahead."
+
+The widow Thackeray looked after her with a smile, which was exchanged
+for another of different character when she found herself in the chamber
+of Margaret. She put her arms about the waist of the sufferer; kissed
+her cheeks, and with the tenderest solicitude spoke of her health and
+comfort. To her, alone, with the exception of her mother--according to
+the belief of Margaret--her true situation had been made known.
+
+"Alas!" said she, "how should I feel--how should I be! You should know.
+I am as one cursed--doomed, hopeless of anything but death."
+
+"Ah! do not speak of death, Margaret," said the other kindly. "We must
+all die, I know, but that does not reconcile me any more to the thought.
+It brings always a creeping horror through my veins. Think of life--talk
+of life only."
+
+"They say that death is life."
+
+"So it is, I believe, Margaret; and now I think of it, dress yourself
+and go to church where we may hear something on this subject to make us
+wiser and better. Come, my dear--let us go to God."
+
+"I can not--not to-day, dear Mrs. Thackeray."
+
+"Ah, Margaret, why not? It is to the church, of all places, you should
+now go."
+
+"What! to be stared at? To see the finger of scorn pointing at me
+wherever I turn? To hear the whispered insinuation? To be conscious only
+of sneer and sarcasm on every hand? No, no, dear Mrs. Thackeray, I can
+not go for this. Feeling this, I should neither pray for myself, nor
+find benefit from the prayers of others. Nay, THEY would not pray. They
+would only mock."
+
+"Margaret, these thoughts are very sinful."
+
+"So they are, but I can not think of any better. They can not but be
+sinful since they are mine."
+
+"But you are not wedded to sin, dearest. Such thoughts can give you no
+pleasure. Come with me to church! Come and pray! Prayer will do you
+good."
+
+"I would rather pray here. Let me remain. I will try to go out among the
+hills when you are all engaged in church, and will pray there. Indeed I
+must. I must pray then and pray there, if prayer is ever to do me good."
+
+"The church is the better place, Margaret. One prays better where one
+sees that all are praying."
+
+"But when I KNOW that they are not praying! When I know that envy is in
+their hearts, and malice, and jealousy and suspicion--that God is not in
+their hearts, but their fellow; and not him with friendly and fond, but
+with spiteful and deceitful thoughts!"
+
+"Ah! Margaret, how can you know this? Judge not lest ye be judged."
+
+"It matters not, dear Mrs. Thackeray. God is here, or there. He will be
+among the hills if anywhere. I will seek him there. If I can command my
+thoughts anywhere, it will be in the woods alone. In the church I can
+not. Those who hate me are there--and their looks of hate would only
+move my scorn and defiance."
+
+"Margaret, you do our people wrong. You do yourself wrong. None hate
+you--none will point to you, or think of your misfortune; and if they
+did, it is only what you might expect, and what you must learn patiently
+to bear, as a part of the punishment which God inflicts on sin. You must
+submit, Margaret, to the shame as you have submitted to the sin. It is
+by submission only that you can be made strong. The burden which you are
+prepared to bear meekly, becomes light to the willing spirit. Come, dear
+Margaret, I will keep with you, sit by you--show you, and all, that I
+forget your sin and remember only your suffering."
+
+The good widow spoke with the kindest tones. She threw her arms around
+the neck of the desolate one, and kissed her with the affection of a
+sister. But the demon of pride was uppermost. She withstood entreaty and
+embrace.
+
+"I can not go with you. I thank you, truly thank you, dear Mrs.
+Thackeray, but I can not go. I have neither the courage nor the
+strength."
+
+"They will come--the courage and the strength--only try. God is watchful
+to give us help the moment he sees that we really seek his assistance.
+By prayer, Margaret--"
+
+"I will pray, but I must pray alone. Among the hills I will pray. My
+prayer will not be less acceptable offered among his hills. My voice
+will not remain unheard, though no chorus swells its appeal."
+
+"Margaret, this is pride."
+
+"Perhaps!"
+
+"Ah! go with me, and pray for humility."
+
+"My prayer would rather be for death."
+
+"Say not so, Margaret--this is impiety."
+
+"Ay, death!--the peace, the quiet of the grave--of a long sleep--an
+endless sleep--where the vulture may no longer gnaw the heart, nor the
+fire burn within the brain! For these I must pray."
+
+And, thus speaking, the unhappy woman smote her throbbing head with
+violent hand.
+
+"Shocking thought! But you do not believe in such a sleep? Surely,
+Margaret, you believe in life eternal?"
+
+"Would I did not!"
+
+"O Margaret!--but you are sick; you are very feverish. Your eyeballs
+glare like coals of fire; your face seems charged with blood. I am
+afraid you are going to have another attack, like the last."
+
+"Be not afraid. I have no such fear."
+
+"I will sit with you, at least," said the kind-hearted woman.
+
+"Nay, that I must positively forbid, Mrs. Thackeray; I will not suffer
+it. I will not sit with YOU. Go you to church. You will be late. Do not
+waste your time on me. I mean to ramble among the hills this morning.
+THAT, I think, will do me more good than anything else. There, I am
+sure--there only--I will find peace."
+
+The worthy widow shook her head doubtfully.
+
+"But I am sure of it," said Margaret. "You will see. Peace, peace--the
+repose of the heart--the slumber of the brain!--I shall find all there!"
+
+Mrs. Thackeray, finding her inflexible, rose to depart, but with some
+irresoluteness.
+
+"If you would let me walk with you, Margaret--"
+
+"No! no!--dear Mrs. Thackeray--I thank you very much; but, with a mood
+such as mine, I shall be much better alone."
+
+"Well, if you are resolved--"
+
+"I am resolved! never more so."
+
+These words were spoken in tones which might have startled a suspicious
+mind. But the widow was none.
+
+"God bless you!" she said, kissing her at parting. "I will see you when
+I come from church."
+
+"Will you?" said Margaret, with a significant but sad smile. Then,
+suddenly rising, she exclaimed:--
+
+"Let me kiss you, dear Mrs. Thackeray, and thank you again, before you
+go. You have been very kind to me, very kind, and you have my thanks and
+gratitude."
+
+Mrs. Thackeray was touched by her manner. This was the first time
+that the proud spirit of Margaret Cooper had ever offered such an
+acknowledgment. It was one that the gentle and unremitting kindnesses
+of the widow amply deserved. After renewing her promise to call on her
+return from church, Mrs. Thackeray took her departure.
+
+Margaret Cooper was once more alone. When she heard the outer door shut,
+she then threw herself upon the bed, and gave way to the utterance of
+those emotions which, long restrained, had rendered her mind a terrible
+anarchy. A few tears, but very few, were wrung from her eyes; but she
+groaned audibly, and a rapid succession of shivering-fits passed through
+her frame, racking the whole nervous system, until she scarcely found
+herself able to rise from the couch where she had thrown herself. A
+strong, determined will alone moved her, and she rose, after a lapse of
+half an hour, to the further prosecution of her purpose. Her temporary
+weakness and suffering of frame had no effect upon her resolves. She
+rather seemed to be strengthened in them. This strength enabled her to
+sit down and dictate a letter to her mother, declaring her intention,
+and justifying it by such arguments as were presented by the ingenious
+demon who assists always in the councils of the erring heart.
+
+She placed this letter in her bosom, that it might be found upon her
+person. It was curious to observe, next, that she proceeded to tasks
+which were scarcely in unison with the dreadful deed she meditated. She
+put her chamber in nice order. Her books, of which she had a tolerably
+handsome collection for a private library in our forest-country, she
+arranged and properly classed upon their shelves. Then she made her
+toilet with unusual care. It was for the last time. She gazed upon the
+mirror, and beheld her own beauties with a shudder.
+
+"Ah!" she thought, though she gave no expression to the thought, "to be
+so beautiful, yet fail!"
+
+It was a reflection to touch any heart with sorrow. Her dress was of
+plain white; she wore no ornament--not even a riband. Her hair, which
+was beautifully long and thick, was disposed in a clubbed mass upon her
+head, very simply but with particular neatness; and, when all was done,
+concealing the weapon of death beneath a shawl which she wrapped around
+her, she left the house, and stole away unobserved along the hills, in
+the seclusion and sacred silence of which she sought to avoid the evil
+consequences of one crime by the commission of another far more heinous.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+SUSPENSE AND AGONY.
+
+
+
+
+
+At the risk of seeming monotonous, we must repeat the reflection made
+in our last chapter, that the things we are about to lose for ever seem
+always more valuable in the moment of their loss. They acquire a newer
+interest in our eyes at such a time, possibly under the direction of
+some governing instinct which is intended to render us tenacious of
+life to the very last. Privation teaches us much more effectually than
+possession the value of all human enjoyments; and the moralist has more
+than once drawn his sweetest portraits of liberty from the gloom and the
+denials of a dungeon. How eloquent of freedom is he who yearns for it in
+vain! How glowing is that passion which laments the lost!
+
+To one dying, as we suppose few die, in the perfect possession of
+their senses, how beautiful must seem the fading hues of the sunlight,
+flickering along the walls of a chamber! how heavenly the brief glimpses
+of the blue sky through the half-opened window! how charming the green
+bit of foliage that swings against the pane! how cheering and unwontedly
+sweet and balmy the soft, sudden gust of the sweet south, breathing up
+from the flowers, and stirring the loose drapery around the couch! How
+can we part with these without tears? how reflect, without horror, upon
+the close coffin, the damp clod, the deep hollows of the earth in which
+we are to be cabined? Oh, with what earnestness, at such a moment, must
+the wholly conscious spirit pray for life! now greedily will he drink
+the nauseous draught in the hope to secure its boon! how fondly will he
+seize upon every chimera, whether of his own or of another's fancy, in
+order to gain a little respite--in order still to keep within the grasp
+of mind and sight, these lovely agents of earth and its Master, which,
+in our day of strength and exultation, we do not value at one half
+their worth! And how full of dread and horror must be that first awful
+conviction which assures him that the struggle is in vain--that the last
+remedy is tried--that nothing is left him now but despair--despair and
+death! Then it is that Christianity comes to his relief. If he believes,
+he gains by his loss. Its godlike promise assures him then that the
+things which his desires make dear, his faith has rendered immortal.
+
+The truth of many of these reflections made their way into the mind of
+Margaret Cooper, as she pursued the well-known path along the hills. She
+observed the objects along the route more narrowly than ever. She was
+taking that path for the last time. Her eyes would behold these objects
+no more. How often had she pursued the same route with Alfred Stevens!
+But then she had not seen these things; she had not observed these
+thousand graces and beauties of form and shadow which now seemed to
+crowd around, challenging her regard and demanding her sympathies.
+Then she had seen nothing but him. The bitterness which this reflection
+occasioned made her hurry her footsteps; but there was an involuntary
+shudder that passed through her frame, when, in noting the strange
+beauty of the path, she reflected that it would be trodden by her for
+the last time. Her breathing became quickened by the reflection. She
+pressed forward up the hills. The forests grew thick around her--deep,
+dim, solemn, and inviting. The skies above looked down in little blessed
+blue tufts, through the crowding tree-tops. The long vista of the woods
+led her onward in wandering thoughts.
+
+To fix these thoughts--to keep them from wandering! This was a
+difficulty. Margaret Cooper strove to do so, but she could not.
+Never did her mind seem such a perfect chaos--so full of confused and
+confusing objects and images. Her whole life seemed to pass in review
+before her. All her dreams of ambition, all the struggles of her genius!
+Were these to be thrown away? Were these all to be wasted? Was her song
+to be unheard? Was her passionate and proud soul to have no voice?
+If death is terrible to man, it is terrible, not as a pang, but as an
+oblivion; and to the soul of genius, oblivion is a soul-death, and its
+thought is a source of tenfold terror.
+
+"But of what avail were life to me now? Even should I live," said the
+wretched woman, "would it matter more to the ambition which I have had,
+and to the soul which flames and fevers within me? Who would hearken to
+the song of the degraded? Who, that heard the story of my shame, would
+listen to the strains of my genius? Say that its utterance is even as
+proud as my own vanity of heart would esteem it--say that no plaint like
+mine had ever touched the ear or lifted the heart of humanity! Alas! of
+what avail! The finger of scorn would be uplifted long before the voice
+of applause. The sneer and sarcasm of the worldling would anticipate the
+favoring judgment of the indulgent and the wise. Who would do justice to
+my cause? Who listen? Alas! the voice of genius would be of little avail
+speaking from the lips of the dishonored.
+
+"To the talent which I have, and the ambition which still burns within
+me, life then can bring nothing--no exercise--no fruition. Suppose,
+then, that the talent is left to slumber--the ambition stifled till it
+has no further longings! Will life yield anything to the mere creature
+of society--to my youth--to my beauty--to my sense of delight--if still
+there be any such sense left to me? Shall I be less the creature
+of social scorn, because I have yielded my ambition--because I have
+forborne the employment of those glorious gifts which Heaven in its
+bounty has allotted me?
+
+"Alas! no! am I not a woman, one of that frail, feeble sex, whose name
+is weakness?--of whom, having no strength, man yet expects the proofs of
+the most unyielding--of a firmness which he himself can not exercise--of
+a power of self-denial and endurance of which he exhibits no example. If
+I weep, he smiles at my weakness. If I stifle my tears, he denounces
+my unnatural hardihood. If I am cold and unyielding, I am masculine and
+neglected--if I am gentle and pliant, my confidence is abused and my
+person dishonored. What can society, which is thus exacting, accord
+to me, then, as a mere woman? What shame will it not thrust upon me--a
+woman--and as I am?
+
+"Life then promises me nothing. The talent which I have, lies within me
+idle and without hope of use. The pure name of the woman is lost to me
+for ever. Shame dogs my footsteps. Scorn points its finger. Life, and
+all that it brings to others--love, friends, fame, fortune--which are
+the soul of life--these are lost to me for ever. The moral death is here
+already. The mere act of dying, is simply the end of a strife, and a
+breathing and an agony. That is all!"
+
+The day became overcast. A cloud obscured the sunlight. The blue tufts
+of sky no longer looked downward through the openings of the trees.
+The scene, dim and silent before, became unusually dark. The aspect
+of nature seemed congenial with the meditated deed. She had reasoned
+herself into its commission, and she reproached herself mentally with
+her delay. Any self-suggestion of an infirmity of purpose, with a nature
+such as hers, would have produced precipitation. She turned down a
+slight gorge among the hills where the forest was more close. She knelt
+beneath a tree and laid down her pistol at its foot.
+
+She knelt--strange contradiction!--she knelt for the purposes of prayer.
+But she could not pray. It would seem that she attributed this effort to
+the sight of the pistols, and she put them behind her without changing
+her position. The prayer, if she made any, was internal; and, at all
+events it did not seem to be satisfactory. Yet, before it was ended, she
+started with an expression of painful thought upon her face. The voice
+of her reason had ceased its utterance. The voice of her conscience,
+perhaps, had been unheard; but there was yet another voice to be heard
+which was more potent than all.
+
+It was the mother's voice!
+
+She placed her hand upon her side with a spasmodic effort. The
+quickening of a new life within her, made that new voice effectual. She
+threw herself on the ground and wept freely. For the first time she wept
+freely. The tears were those of the mother. The true fountain of tears
+had been touched. That first throb of the innocent pledge of guilty
+passion subdued the fiend. She could have taken her own life, but dared
+not lift the deadly weapon against that. The arm of the suicide--was
+arrested. She groaned, she wept, bitterly and freely. She was at once
+feebler and more strong. Feebler, as regarded her late resolution;
+stronger as regarded the force of her affections, the sweet humanities,
+not altogether subdued within her heart. The slight pulsation of that
+infant in her womb had been more effectual than the voice of reason,
+or conscience, or feminine dread. The maternal feeling is, perhaps, the
+most imperious of all those which gather in the heart of woman.
+
+Margaret Cooper, however, had not altogether resolved against the deed.
+She only could not do it there and then. Her wretched determination
+was not wholly surrendered, but it was touched, enfeebled; and with
+the increasing powers of reflection, the impetuosity of the will became
+naturally lessened. Those few glimpses along the roadside which had made
+her sensible to the beauties she was about to lose, had prepared her
+mind to act in counteraction of her impulse; and the event which had
+brought into play the maternal instinct, naturally helped the cause of
+reason in her soul.
+
+Still, with the erring pride of youth she reproached herself with her
+infirmity of purpose. She resolved to change her ground, as if the
+instinct which had been awakened in one spot would not everywhere pursue
+her. Time was gained, and in such cases, to gain time is everything.
+Perhaps no suicide would ever take place if the individual would wait
+ten minutes. The soul takes its color from the cloud, and changes its
+moods as often. It is one of the best lessons to the young, to wait!
+wait! wait! One of the surest signs of strength is where the individual
+waits patiently and makes no complaint.
+
+Margaret Cooper changed her ground. The spot was a wild one. A broken
+ledge of rock was at her feet, and just below it ran a dark, narrow
+winding footpath half-obscured by the undergrowth. Here she once more
+proceeded to nerve her mind for the commission of the deed, but she had
+not been there an instant when she was surprised to hear the sound of
+voices.
+
+This was unusual. Who could they be? The villagers were not apt to stray
+from church-service whenever a preacher was to be found, and there was a
+new one, and consequently a new attraction, that day, for the spiritual
+hungry of Charlemont. The path below was seldom trodden except by
+herself and an occasional sportsman. The idea that entered her mind was,
+that her purpose had been suspected, and that she was pursued.
+
+With this idea, she placed the pistol to her breast. She had already
+cocked the weapon. Her finger was on the trigger. But the tones
+of another voice reached her ears from below. They were those of a
+woman--sweet, musical, and tender.
+
+A new light broke in upon her mind. This was the language of love. And
+who were these new lovers in Charlemont? Could it be that the voice of
+the male speaker was that of Stevens? Something in the tone sounded like
+it, Involuntarily, with this impression, the weapon was turned from her
+own bosom, and addressed in the direction in which the persons below
+were approaching. A sudden, joyous feeling touched her soul. The thought
+to destroy the criminal by whom she had been destroyed was a source
+of exultation. She felt that she could do it. Both pistols were in
+her hand. The pathway was not more than twenty paces distant; and her
+nerves, for the first time, braced to an unusual tension, trembled with
+the new excitement in her soul.
+
+The intruders continued to approach. Their voices became more distinct,
+and Margaret Cooper was soon undeceived as to one of them being that
+of Alfred Stevens. She was compelled to lie close, that she might not
+betray her position and purpose. The male speaker was very urgent; the
+voice seemed that of a stranger. That of the female was not so clearly
+distinguishable, yet it seemed more familiar to the unintentional
+listener.
+
+Something of feminine curiosity now entered the bosom of Margaret
+Cooper. Crouching where she was, she deposited the pistols at her
+feet. She remained breathlessly, for the slightest movement would have
+revealed her to the persons who were now just below. They passed close
+beneath the place of her concealment, and she soon discovered that they
+were lovers; and what their language was, even if she had not heard it,
+might have been conjectured.
+
+The girl was a very pretty brunette of Charlemont--a sweet, retiring
+damsel of her own age, named Rivers--whom she knew only slightly. She
+was a shy, gentle, unpresuming girl, whom, for this reason, perhaps,
+Margaret had learned to look upon without dislike or scorn. Her
+companion was a youth whom Margaret had known when a lad, but who had
+been absent on the Mississippi for two years. His tall and masculine
+but well-made and graceful person sufficiently accounted for, while it
+justified, the taste of the maiden. He was a youth of fine, frank, manly
+countenance. His garb was picturesque, that of a bold border-hunter,
+with hunting-frock of yellow buckskin, and Indian leggings.
+
+The girl looked up to him with an expression at once of eagerness and
+timidity. Confidence and maiden bashfulness spoke equally in the delight
+which glowed upon her features. The bright eyes and sun-burned features
+of the youth were flushed with the feeling of happy triumph and assuring
+love. The relation of the two was sufficiently evident from their looks,
+even had they no other language.
+
+What were the emotions of Margaret Cooper as she looked down upon this
+pair? At first she thought, as will most persons: "Surely there is
+nothing in nature so lovely as the union of two--fond, devoted hearts.
+The picture is one equally of moral and physical beauty. The slight,
+fragile, depending damsel, hanging in perfect confidence on the arm of
+the manly, lofty, and exulting youth--looking up into his eyes in hope,
+while he returns the gaze with pride and fondness! Unconscious of all
+things but the love which to them is life and all things besides, they
+move along the forest way and know not its solitude; they linger and
+loiter along its protracted paths, and see not their length; they cling
+together through the lengthened hours, and fancy they have lost no time;
+they hear each other's voices, and believe that life is all music and
+delight."
+
+While Margaret Cooper looked down and heard the pleadings and promises
+of the youth, and beheld the sweet emotions of his companion, engaged
+in a pleasant struggle between her hopes and misgivings, she scarcely
+restrained herself from rising where she was and crying aloud--like
+another Cassandra, not to be believed: "Beware! beware!"
+
+But the warning of Margaret Cooper would have been unnecessary. The girl
+was not only free from danger, but she was superior to it. She had
+the wholesome fear of doing wrong too strongly impressed upon her
+by education--she had too little confidence in herself--was too well
+assured of her own weakness--to suffer herself, even for a moment,
+to depart, in either thought or deed, from those quiet but stern
+proprieties of conduct which are among the best securities of the young.
+While she looked in her lover's face with confidence, and held his arm
+with the grasp of one who is sure of a right to do so, there was an air
+of childish simplicity in her manner which was wholly at variance with
+wild passions and improper fancies. While the hunter maintained her on
+his arm, and looked down into her eyes with love, his glance was yet as
+respectful, as unexpressive of presumption, as her own. Had the eyes of
+all Charlemont been looking on, they would have beheld nothing in the
+conduct of either which could have incurred the censure of the most
+becoming delicacy.
+
+Keen was the emotion and bitter was the thought which worked in the mind
+of Margaret Cooper. She looked on the deportment of that young maiden,
+whose intellect at another day she would have despised, with envy and
+regret. Truer thoughts and feelings came to her as she listened to the
+innocent but fond dialogue between the unconscious pair. The hunter was
+pursuing an erratic life of enterprise and industry, then very common
+among the western youth. He had been down upon the Mississippi, seeking
+his fortune in such adventures as make border-life in our country
+something like the more civilized life of the middle ages. He had
+returned after a long absence, to claim the bride whose affections he
+had won long before he had departed.
+
+Never had knight-errant been more true to his mistress. Her image had
+been his talisman as well against danger from without, as against the
+demon within. It had never left his mind, and he now returned for his
+reward. He had returned to Charlemont just before the church service had
+begun, and, being unprepared to go thither, had found no difficulty
+in persuading his sweetheart to give the hour of morning service to
+himself.
+
+Mixed up with his professions of love was the story of his wanderings.
+Never were adventures more interesting to any auditor. Never was auditor
+more easily moved by the transitions of the tale from tears to smiles,
+and from smiles again to tears. His risks and rewards; his defeats
+and successes; his wild adventures by fell and flood--not perhaps so
+perilous as those of Othello, but such as proved he had the soul to
+encounter the worst in Othello's experience, and maintain himself as
+well--drew largely on the maiden's wonder and delight, increased her
+tenderness and tremors, and made her quite as devoted to her hero as
+ever was Desdemona to her dusky chief. As they went from hearing below,
+the manner in which the hunter concluded his narrative provided a
+sufficient test for the faith of his companion.
+
+"And now, Selina, you see all the risks and the dangers. There's
+work and perhaps trouble for you to go down with me along the Choctaw
+borders. But if there's work, I am the man to do my own share, and help
+you out in yours; and, if there's trouble, here's the breast to stand it
+first, and here's the arm to drive it back, so that it'll never trouble
+yours. No danger shall come to you, so long as I can stand up between it
+and you. If so be that you love me as you say, there's one way to show
+it: you'll soon make up your mind to go with me. If you don't, why--"
+
+"But you know I do love you, John--" murmured the girl.
+
+"Don't I believe it? Well, if what you say means what it should, you're
+ready. Here's my hand, and all that it's good for. It can work for you
+and fight for you, Selina, and it's yours etarnally, with all that I
+have."
+
+The hand of the girl was silently put into that of the speaker. The
+tears were in her eyes; but, if she made any other answer, it was
+unheard by Margaret Cooper. The rustic pair moved from sight even as
+they spoke, and the desolate woman once more remained alone!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+SHAME AND DEATH--THE OATH.
+
+
+
+
+
+Margaret Cooper was at length permitted to emerge from the place of her
+concealment. The voices of the lovers were lost, as well as their forms,
+in the wooded distance. Dreaming, like children as they were, of life
+and happiness, they had wandered off, too happy to fancy for a moment
+that the world contained, in its wide, vast bosom, one creature half so
+wretched as she who hung above them, brooding, like some wild bird of
+the cliff, over the storm which had robbed her of her richest plumage.
+
+She sank back into the woods. She no longer had the heart to commit the
+meditated crime. This purpose had left her mind. It had given place to
+another, however, scarcely less criminal. We have seen her, under the
+first impression that the stranger whose voice she heard was Alfred
+Stevens, turning the muzzle of the pistol from her breast to the path on
+which he was approaching. Though she discovered her error, and laid the
+weapon down, the sudden suggestion of her mind, at that moment, gave a
+new direction to her mood.
+
+Why should she not seek to avenge her wrong? Was he to escape without
+penalty? was she to be a quiescent victim? True, she was a woman,
+destined it would seem to suffer--perhaps with a more than ordinary
+share of that suffering which falls to her sex. But she had also a
+peculiar strength--the strength of a man in some respects; and in her
+bosom she now felt the sudden glow of one of his fiercest passions.
+Revenge might be in her power. She might redress her wrong by her own
+hand. It was a weapon of death which she grasped. In her grasp it might
+be made a weapon of power. The suggestion seemed to be that of justice
+only. It was one that filled her whole soul with a triumphant and a wild
+enthusiasm.
+
+"I shall not be stricken down without danger to mine enemy. For
+THIS--this, at least--strength is allotted me. Let him tremble! In his
+place of seeming security let him tremble! I shall pursue his steps. I
+will find him out. There shall be a day of retribution! Alfred Stevens,
+there is a power within me which tells me you are no longer safe!
+
+"And why may I not secure this justice--this vengeance? Why? Because I
+am a woman. Ha! We shall see. If I am a woman, I can be an enemy--and
+such an enemy! An enemy not to be appeased, not to be overcome. War
+always with my foe--war to the knife--war to the last!"
+
+Such a nature as that of Margaret Cooper needed some such object to give
+it the passionate employment without which it must recoil upon itself
+and end either in suicide or madness. She brooded upon this new thought.
+She found in it a grateful exercise. From the moment when she conceived
+the idea of being the avenger of her own wrong, her spirit became more
+elastic--she became less sensible to the possible opinions upon her
+condition which might be entertained by others. She found consolation,
+in retreating to this one thought, from all the rest. Of the
+difficulties in the way of her design, it was not in her impetuous
+character to think. She never once suspected that the name of Alfred
+Stevens had been an assumed one. She never once asked how she was to
+pursue and hunt him up. She thought of a male disguise for herself, it
+is true; but of the means and modes of travel--in what direction to go,
+and after what plan to conduct her pursuit, she had not the most distant
+idea.
+
+She addressed herself to her new design, however, in one respect, with
+amazing perseverance. It diverted her from other and more oppressive
+thoughts. Her pistols she carried secretly to a very distant wood, where
+she concealed them in the hollow of a tree. To this wood she repaired
+secretly and daily. Here she selected a tree as a mark. A small section
+of the bark, which she tore away, at a given height, she learned to
+regard as the breast of her seducer. This was the object of her aim.
+Without any woman fears, she began her practice and continued it, day by
+day, until, as we are told by one of the chroniclers of her melancholy
+story, "she could place a ball with an accuracy, which, were it
+universally equalled by modern duellists, would render duelling much
+more fatal than it commonly is."
+
+In secret she procured gunpowder and lead, by arts so ingenious as to
+baffle detection. At midnight when her mother slept she moulded her
+bullets. Well might the thoughts and feelings which possessed her mind,
+while engaged in this gloomy labor, have endowed every bullet with a
+wizard spell to make it do its bidding truly. Bitter, indeed, were
+the hours so appropriated; but they had their consolations. Dark and
+terrible were the excited moods in which she retired from her toils to
+that slumber which she could not always secure. And when it did come,
+what were its images! The tree, the mark, the weapon, the deep, dim
+forest, all the scenes and trials of the day, were renewed in her sleep.
+A gloomy wood filled her eyes--a victim dabbled in blood lay before her;
+and, more than once, her own fearful cry of vengeance and exultation
+awakened her from those dreams of sleep, which strengthened her in the
+terrible pursuit of the object which occasioned them.
+
+Such thoughts and practices, continued with religious pertinacity, from
+day to day, necessarily had their effect upon her appearance as well as
+her character. Her beauty assumed a wilder aspect. Her eye shot forth a
+supernatural fire. She never smiled. Her mouth was rigid and compressed
+as if her heart was busy in an endless conflict. Her gloom, thus
+nurtured by solitude and the continual presence of a brooding
+imagination of revenge, darkened into something like ferocity. Her
+utterance became brief and quick--her tones sharp, sudden, and piercing.
+She had but one thought which never seemed to desert her, yet of this
+thought no ear ever had cognizance. It was of the time when she should
+exercise the skill which she had now acquired upon that destroyer of
+herself, whom she now felt herself destined to destroy.
+
+Of course we are describing a madness--one of those peculiar forms of
+the disease which seems to have its origin in natural and justifiable
+suggestions of reason. Not the less a madness for all that.
+
+Succeeding in her practice at one distance, Margaret Cooper changed it.
+From one point to another she constantly varied her practice, until her
+aim grew certain at almost any distance within the ordinary influence of
+the weapon. To strike her mark at thirty feet became, in a little while,
+quite as easy as to do so at five; and, secure now of her weapon, her
+next object--though there was no cessation of her practice--was how to
+seek and where to find the victim.
+
+In this new object she meditated to disguise herself in the apparel of
+a man. She actually commenced the making up of the several garments
+of one. This was also the secret labor of the midnight hour, when her
+feeble-minded mother slept. She began to feel some of the difficulties
+lying in the way of this pursuit, and her mind grew troubled to consider
+them, without however, relaxing in its determination. That seemed a
+settled matter.
+
+While she brooded over this new feature of her purpose--as if
+fortunately to arrest the mad design--her mother fell seriously sick,
+and was for some time in danger. The duty of attending upon her, put a
+temporary stop to her thoughts and exercises; though without having the
+effect of expelling them from her mind.
+
+But another event, upon her mother's recovery, tended to produce a
+considerable alteration in her thoughts. A new care filled her heart
+and rendered her a different being, in several respects. She was soon
+to become a mother. The sickness of soul which oppressed her under
+this conviction, gave a new direction to her mood without lessening its
+bitterness; and, in proportion as she found her vengeance delayed, so
+was the gratification which it promised, a heightened desire in her
+mind.
+
+For the humiliating and trying event which was at hand, Margaret
+Cooper prepared with a degree of silent firmness which denoted quite as
+strongly the resignation of despair as any other feeling.
+
+The child is born.
+
+Margaret Cooper has at length become a mother. She has suffered the
+agony, without being able to feel the compensating pride and pleasure
+of one. It was the witness of her shame--could she receive it with any
+assurances of love? It is doubtful if she did.
+
+For some time after its birth, the hapless woman seemed to be
+unconscious, or half-conscious only, of her charge. A stupor weighed
+upon her senses. When she did awaken, and her eyes fell upon the
+face and form of the infant with looks of recognition, one long, long
+piercing shriek burst from her lips. She closed her eyes--she turned
+away from the little unoffending, yet offensive object with a feeling of
+horror.
+
+Its features were those of Alfred Stevens. The likeness was indelible;
+and this identity drew upon the child a share of that loathing hatred
+with which she now remembered the guilty father.
+
+It may very well be supposed that the innocent babe suffered under these
+circumstances. The milk which it drew from the mother's breast, was the
+milk of bitterness, and it did not thrive. It imbibed gall instead of
+nutriment. Day after day it pined in hopeless misery; and though
+the wretched mother strove to supply its wants and soothe its little
+sorrows, with a gradually increasing interest which overcame her first
+loathing, there was yet that want of sweetest sympathy which nothing
+merely physical could well supply.
+
+Debility was succeeded by disease--fever preyed upon its little frame,
+which was now reduced to a skeleton. One short month only had elapsed
+from its birth, and it lay, in the silence of exhaustion upon the arm
+of its mother. Its eyes, whence the flickering light was escaping fast,
+looked up into hers, as she fancied, with an expression of reproach. She
+felt, on the instant, the pang of the maternal conscience. She forgot
+the unworthy father, as she thought of the neglectful mother. She bent
+down, and, for the first time, imprinted on its little lips the maternal
+kiss.
+
+A smile seemed to glimmer on its tiny features; and, from that moment,
+Margaret Cooper resolved to forget her injuries, for the time, at least,
+in the consideration of her proper duties. But her resolution came too
+late. Even while her nipple was within its boneless gums, a change
+came over the innocent. She did not heed it. Her eyes and thoughts were
+elsewhere; and thus she mused, gazing vacantly upon the wall of her
+chamber until her mother entered the room. Mrs. Cooper gave but a single
+glance at the infant when she saw that its little cares were over.
+
+"Oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, "the child is dead."
+
+The mother looked down with a start and shudder. A big tear fell from
+her eyes upon the cold cheek of the innocent. She released it to her
+mother, turned her face upon the couch, and uttered her thanks to Heaven
+that had secured it--that had left her again free for that darker
+purpose which had so long filled her mind.
+
+"Better so," she murmured to her mother. "It is at peace. It will
+neither know its own nor its mother's griefs. It is free from that shame
+for which I must live!"
+
+"Come now, Margaret, no more of that," said the mother sharply. "There's
+no need of shame. There are other things to live for besides shame."
+
+"There are--there are!" exclaimed the daughter, with spasmodic energy.
+"Were there not, I should, indeed, be desperate."
+
+"To be sure you would, my child. You have a great deal to live for yet;
+and let a little time blow over, and when everything's forgotten, you
+will get as good a husband as any girl in the country."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, mother, none of this?"
+
+"But why not! Though you are looking a little bad just now--quite pale
+and broken--yet it's only because you have been so ill; and this nursing
+of babies, and having 'em too, is a sort of business to make any young
+woman look bad; but in spite of all, there's not a girl in the village,
+no matter how fresh she may be looking, that can hold a candle to you."
+
+"For mercy, mother!--"
+
+"Let me speak, I tell you! Don't I know? You're young, and you'll get
+over it. You will get all your beauty and good looks back, now that the
+baby's out of the way, and there's no more nursing to be done. And what
+with your beauty and your talents, Margaret--"
+
+"Peace! mother! Peace--peace! You will drive me to madness if you
+continue to speak thus."
+
+"Well, I'm sure there's no knowing what to say to please you. I'm sure,
+I only want to cheer you up, and to convince you that things are not so
+bad as you think them now. The cloud will blow over soon, and everything
+will be forgotten, and then, you see--"
+
+The girl waved her hand impatiently.
+
+"Death--death!" she exclaimed. "Oh! child of shame, and bitterness, and
+wrath!" she murmured, kneeling down beside the infant, "thou art
+the witness that I have no future but storm, and cloud, and wrath,
+and--Vengeance!"
+
+The last word was inaudible to her mother's ears.
+
+"It is an oath!" she cried; "an oath!" And her hands were uplifted in
+solemn adjuration.
+
+"Come--come, Margaret! none of this swearing. You frighten me with your
+swearing. There's nothing that you need to swear about! What's done
+can't be helped now, by taking it so seriously. You must only be
+patient, and give yourself time. Time's the word for us now; after a
+little while you'll see the sky become brighter. It's a bad business,
+it's true; but it needn't break a body's heart. How many young girls
+I've known in my time, that's been in the same fix. There was Janet
+Bonner, and Emma Loring, and Mary Peters--I knew 'em all, very well.
+Well, they all made a slip once in their lives, and they never broke
+their hearts about it, and didn't look very pale and sad in the face
+either; but they just kept quiet and behaved decent for awhile, and
+every one of 'em got good husbands. Janet Bonner, she married Dick
+Pyatt, who came from Massachusetts, and kept the school down by
+Clayton's Meadow; Emma Loring married a baptist-preacher from Virginia,
+named Stokes. I never saw him to know him; and as for Mary Peters, there
+never was a girl that had a slip that was ever so fortunate, for she's
+been married no less than three times since, and as she's a widow
+again, there's no telling what may happen to her yet. So don't you be so
+downcast. You're chance is pretty nigh as good as ever, if you will only
+hold up your head, and put the best face on it."
+
+"Oh! torture--torture! Mother, will you not be silent? Let the dead
+speak to me only. I would hear but the voice of this one witness--"
+
+And she communed only with the dead infant, sitting or kneeling beside
+it. But the communion was not one of contrition or tears--not of
+humility and repentance--not of self-reproach and a broken spirit. Pride
+and other passions had summoned up deities and angels of terror and of
+crime, before the eyes and thoughts of the wretched mourner, and the
+demon who had watched with her and waited on her, and had haunted her
+with taunt and bitter mockeries, night and day, was again busy with
+terrible suggestions, which gradually grew to be divine laws to her
+diseased imagination.
+
+"Yes!" she exclaimed unconsciously.
+
+"I hear! I obey! Yet speak again. Repeat the lesson. I must learn it
+every syllable, so that I shall not mistake--so that I can not fail!"
+
+"Who are you talking to, Margaret?" asked the mother anxiously.
+
+"Do you not see them, where they go? There--through the doors; the open
+windows--wrapped in shadows, with great wings at their shoulders, each
+carrying a dart in his bony grasp."
+
+"Lord, have mercy! She's losing her senses again!" and the mother
+was about to rush from the apartment to seek assistance; but with
+the action, the daughter suddenly arose, wearing a look of singular
+calmness, and motioning to the child, she said:--
+
+"Will you not dress it for the grave?"
+
+"I'm going about it now. The poor lovely little creature. The innocent
+little blossom. We must put it in white, Margaret--virgin white--and put
+white flowers in its little hands and on its breast, and under its head.
+Oh! it will look so sweet in its little coffin!"
+
+"God! I should go mad with all this!" exclaimed the daughter, "were it
+not for that work which is before me! I must be calm for that-calm
+and stern! I must not hear--I must not think--not feel--lest I forget
+myself, and the deed which I have to do. That oath--that oath! It is
+sworn! It is registered in heaven, by the fatal angel of remorse, and
+wrath, and vengeance!"
+
+And again, a whisper at her ears repeated:--
+
+"For this, Margaret, and for this only, must thou live".
+
+"I must! I will!" she muttered, as it were in reply, and her eye glared
+upon the opened door, as she heard a voice and footsteps without; and
+the thought smote her:--
+
+"Should it be now! Come for the sacrifice! Ha!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE PALL UPON THE COFFIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The noise which arrested the attention of Margaret Cooper, and kindled
+her features into an expression of wild and fiery ferocity, was of
+innocent origin. The widow Thackeray was the intruder. Her kindness,
+sympathy, and unwearied attentions, so utterly in conflict with the
+estimates hitherto made of her heart and character, by Mrs Cooper, had,
+in some degree, disarmed the censures of that excellent mother, if they
+had not wholly changed her sentiments. She professed to be very grateful
+to Thackeray's attentions, and, without making any profession, Margaret
+certainly showed her that she felt them. She now only pointed the widow
+to the corpse of the child, in that one action telling to the other all
+that was yet unknown. Then she seated herself composedly, folded her
+hands, and, beside the corpse, forgot its presence, forgot the presence
+of all--heard no voice, save that of the assiduous demon whom nothing
+could expel from her companionship.
+
+"Poor little thing!" murmured the widow Thackeray, as she proceeded to
+assist Mrs. Cooper in decking it for the grave.
+
+The duty was finally done. Its burial was appointed for the morrow.
+
+A village funeral is necessarily an event of some importance. The lack
+of excitements in small communities, in vests even sorrow and grief and
+death with a peculiar interest in the eyes of curiosity. On the present
+occasion, all the villagers attended. The funeral itself might have
+sufficed to collect them with few exceptions; but now there was a
+more eager influence still, working upon the gossippy moods of the
+population. To see Margaret Cooper in her affliction--to see that
+haughty spirit humbled and made ashamed--was, we fear, a motive, in the
+minds of many, much stronger than the ostensible occasion might have
+awakened. Had Margaret been a fashionable woman, in a great city, she
+might have disappointed the vulgar desire, by keeping to her chamber.
+Nay, even according to the free-and-easy standards prevailing at
+Charlemont, she might have done the same thing, and incurred no
+additional scandal.
+
+It was, indeed, to the surprise of a great many, that she made her
+appearance. It was still more a matter of surprise--nay, pious and
+virgin horror--that she seemed to betray neither grief nor shame,
+surrounded as she was by all whom she knew, and all, in particular,
+whom, in the day of her pride, she had kept at a distance.
+
+"What a brazen creature!" whispered Miss Jemima Parkinson, an
+interesting spinster of thirty-six, to Miss Ellen Broadhurst, who was
+only thirty-four; and Miss Ellen whispered back, in reply:--
+
+"She hasn't the slightest bit of shame!"
+
+Interesting virgins! they had come to gloat over the spectacle of shame.
+To behold the agonizing sense of degradation declare itself under the
+finger-pointing scorn of those who, perhaps, were only innocent from
+necessity, and virtuous because of the lack of the necessary attractions
+in the eyes of lust.
+
+But Margaret Cooper seemed quite as insensible to their presence as
+to their scorn and her own shame. She, in truth, saw none of them.
+She heard not their voices. She conjectured non (sic) nts. She had
+anticipated all of them; and having, in consequence, reached a point
+of intensity in her agony which could bear no addition, she had been
+relieved only by a still more intense passion, by which the enfeebling
+one, of mere society, stood rebuked and almost forgotten.
+
+They little dreamed the terrible thoughts which were working, beneath
+that stolid face, in that always eager-working brain. They never fancied
+what a terrible demon now occupied that fiery heart which they supposed
+was wholly surrendered to the consciousness of shame. Could they
+have heard that voice of the fiend whispering in her ears, while they
+whispered to one another--heard his terrible exhortations--heard her no
+less terrible replies--they would have shrunk away in horror, and felt
+fear rather than exultation.
+
+Margaret Cooper was insensible to all that they could say or do. She
+knew them well--knew what they would say, and feel, and do; but the very
+extremity of her suffering had placed it out of their power any longer
+to mortify or shame.
+
+Some few of the villagers remained away. Ned Hinkley and his widowed
+sister were absent from the house, though they occupied obscure places
+in the church when the funeral-procession took place. An honorable
+pity kept them from meeting the eyes of the poor shame-stricken but not
+shame-showing woman.
+
+And Margaret followed the little corpse to its quiet nook in the village
+graveyard. In that simple region the procession was wholly on foot; and
+she walked behind the coffin as firmly as if she knew not what it held.
+There was a single shiver that passed over her frame, as the heavy clods
+fell upon the coffin-lid--but that was all; and when her mother and the
+widow Thackeray took each of them one of her arms, and led her away from
+the grave, and home, she went quietly, calmly, it would seem, and with
+as firm a step as ever!
+
+"She has not a bit of feeling!" said Miss Jemima to Miss Ellen.
+
+"That's always the case with your very smart women," was the reply.
+"It's all head with 'em; there's no heart. They can talk fine things
+about death, and sorrow, and affliction, but it's talk only. They don't
+feel what they say."
+
+Ned Hinkley had a juster notion of the state of the poor victim--of her
+failings and her sensibilities, her equal strength and weakness.
+
+"Now," said he to his sister, "there's a burning volcano in that woman's
+heart, that will tear her some day to pieces. For all that coldness, and
+calmness, and stateliness, her brain is on fire, and her heart ready for
+a convulsion. Her thoughts now, if she thinks at all, are all desperate.
+She's going through a very hell upon earth! When you think of her
+pride--and she's just as proud now as the devil himself--her misfortune
+hasn't let her down--only made her more fierce--you wonder that she lets
+herself be seen; you wonder that she lives at all. I only wonder that
+she hasn't thrown herself from the rocks and into the lake. She'll do it
+yet, I'm a-thinking.
+
+"And just so she always was. I knew her long ago. She once told me she
+was afraid of nothing--would do as she pleased--she could dare anything!
+From that moment I saw she wasn't the girl for Bill Hinkley. I told
+him so, but he was so crazy after her, he'd hear to nothing. A woman--a
+young woman--a mere girl of fifteen--boasting that she can dare and do
+things that would set any woman in a shiver! I tell you what, sis, the
+woman that's bolder than her sex is always in danger of falling from
+the rocks. She gets such a conceit of her mind, that the devil is always
+welcome. Her heart, after that, stands no sort of chance!
+
+"Protect me, say I, from all that class of women that pride themselves
+on their strongmindedness! They get insolent upon it. They think that
+mind can do everything. They're so vain, that they never can see the
+danger, even when it's yawning at their feet. A woman's never safe
+unless she's scary of herself, and mistrusts herself, and never lets her
+thoughts and fancies get from under a tight rein of prudence. For, after
+all, the passions will have their way some day, and then what's the
+use of the mind? I tell you, sis, that the passions are born deaf--they
+never listen to any argument.
+
+"But I'm sorry for her--God knows I'm sorry for her! I'd give all
+I'm worth to have a fair shot or clip at that rascal Stevens. Brother
+Stevens! Ain't it monstrous, now, that a sheep's cover should be all
+that's sufficient to give the wolf freedom in the flock?--that you've
+only to say, 'This is a brother--a man of God'--and no proof is asked!
+nobody questions! The blind, beastly, bigoted, blathering blockheads!
+I feel very much like setting off straight, and licking John Hinkley,
+though he's my own uncle, within an inch of his life! He and John
+Cross--the old fools who are so eager to impose their notions of
+religion upon everybody, that anybody may impose upon them--they two
+have destroyed this poor young creature. It's at their door, in part,
+this crime, and this ruin! I feel it in my heart to lick 'em both out of
+their breeches!
+
+"Yet, as I'm a living sinner, they'll stand up in the congregation, and
+exhort about this poor girl's misfortune, just as if they were not to
+blame at all who brought the wolf into the farmyard! They'll talk about
+her sins, and not a word, to themselves or anybody else, about their own
+stupidities! I feel it in my heart to lather both of them right away!"
+
+The sister said little, and sorrowfully walked on in silence homeward,
+listening to the fierce denunciations of Ned Hinkley. Ned was affected,
+or, rather, he showed his sympathies, in a manner entirely his own. He
+was so much for fight, that he totally forgot his fiddle that night, and
+amused himself by putting his two "barking-pups" in order--getting
+them ready, as he said, "in case he ever should get a crack at Brother
+Stevens!"
+
+The cares of the child's burial over, and the crowd dispersed, the
+cottage of the widow Cooper was once more abandoned to the cheerlessness
+and wo (sic) within. Very dismal was the night of that day to the two,
+the foolish mother and wretched daughter, as they sat brooding together,
+in deep silence, by the light of a feeble candle. The mother rocked a
+while in her easy-chair. The daughter, hands clasped in her lap, sat
+watching the candlelight in almost idiotic vacancy of gaze. At length
+she stood up and spoke--slowly, deliberately, and apparently in as calm
+a mood as she had ever felt in all her life:--
+
+"We must leave this place, mother. We must go hence--to-morrow if we
+can."
+
+"Go?--leave this place? I want to know why! I'm sure we're very
+comfortable here. I can't be going just when you please, and leaving all
+my company and friends."
+
+"Friends!"
+
+"Yes, friends! There's the widow Thackeray--and there's--"
+
+"And how long is it since Mrs. Thackeray was such a dear friend,
+mother?" asked the daughter, with ill-suppressed scorn.
+
+"No matter how long: she's a good friend now. She's not so foolish
+as she used to be. She's grown good; she's got religion; and I don't
+consider what she was. No!--I'm willing--"
+
+"Pshaw, mother! tell me nothing of your friendships. You'll find,
+wherever you go, as many friends as you please, valued quite as much as
+Mrs. Thackeray."
+
+"Well, I do say, Margaret, it's very ungrateful of you to speak
+so disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray, after all her kindness and
+attention."
+
+"I do not speak disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray. I NEVER did speak ill
+of her, even when it was your favorite practice to do so. I only speak
+of your newly-acquired appreciation of her. But this is nothing to
+the purpose. I repeat, mother, we can not remain here. I will depart,
+whether you resolve to go or not. I can not, I will not, exist another
+week in Charlemont."
+
+"And where would you go?"
+
+"Back--back to that old farm, from which you brought me in evil hour!
+It is poor, obscure, profitless, unsought, unseen: it will give me a
+shelter--it may bring me peace. I must have solitude for a season; I
+must sleep for months."
+
+"Sleep for months! La me, child, what a notion's that!"
+
+"No matter--thither let us go. I seem to see it, stretching out its
+hands, and imploring us to come."
+
+"Bless me, Margaret! a farm stretching out its hands! Why, you're in a
+dream!"
+
+"Don't wake me, then! Better I should so dream! Thither I go. It is
+fortunate that you have not been able to sell it. It is a mercy that it
+still remains to us. It was my childhood's home. Would it could again
+receive me as a child! It will cover my head for a while, at least, and
+that is something. We must leave this place. Here every thing offends
+me--every spot, every face, every look, every gesture."
+
+"It's impossible, Margaret!--"
+
+"What! you suppose it an honorable distinction, do you, when the folks
+here point to your daughter, and say--ha! ha!--listen what they say! It
+is the language of compliment! They are doing me honor, with tongue and
+finger! Repeat, mother; tell me what they say--for it evidently gives
+you great pleasure."
+
+"O Margaret! Margaret!--"
+
+"You understand, do you? Well, then, we go. We can not depart too soon.
+If I stay here, I madden! And I must not madden. I have something which
+needs be done--which must be done. It is an oath! an oath in heaven! The
+child was a witness. She heard all--every syllable!"
+
+"What all? what did you hear?"
+
+"No matter! I'm sworn to be secret. But you shall hear in time. We have
+no time for it now. It is a very long story. And we must now be packing.
+Yes, we must go. _I_ must go, at least. Shall I go alone?"
+
+"But you will not leave your mother, Margaret!"
+
+"Father and mother--all will I leave, in obedience to that oath. Believe
+me or not, mother--go with me or not--still I go. Perhaps it is better
+that I should go alone."
+
+The strong will naturally swayed the feebler, as it had ever done
+before. The mother submitted to an arrangement which she had not the
+resolution to oppose. A few days were devoted to necessary arrangements,
+and then they left Charlemont for ever. Margaret Cooper looked not once
+behind them as they traversed the lonely hills looking down upon the
+village--those very hills from which, at the opening of this story, the
+treacherous Alfred Stevens and his simple uncle beheld the lovely little
+settlement. She recognised the very spot, as they drove over it,
+where Stevens first encountered her, and the busy demon, at her ears
+whispered:--
+
+"It was here! You remember!"
+
+And she clinched her teeth firmly together, even though she shuddered
+at her memories; and she renewed her oath to the demon, who, thereupon,
+kept her company the rest of the journey, till she reached the ancient
+and obscure farmstead in which she was born.
+
+"She retired," says the rude chronicle from which we have borrowed many
+of the materials for this sombre history, "to a romantic little farm
+in---, there to spend in seclusion, with her aged mother and a few
+servants, the remainder of her days."
+
+Our simple chronicler takes too much for granted. Margaret Cooper
+retired with no such purpose. She had purposes entirely at conflict with
+any idea of repose or quiet. She thought nothing of the remainder of
+her days. Her mother was not so aged but that she could still think, six
+months afterward, of the reported marriage of the widow Thackeray with
+repining, and with the feeling of one who thinks that she has suffered
+neglect and injustice at the hands of the world. Touching the romance
+of the ancient farmstead, we are more modestly content to describe it
+as sterile, lonely, and unattractive; its obscurity offering, for the
+present, its chief attractions to our desolate heroine, and the true
+occasion for that deep disgust with which her amiable mother beheld it.
+
+Our chronicle of Charlemont is ended. We have no further object or
+interest within its precincts. William Hinkley is gone, no one knows
+whither, followed by his adopted father, the retired lawyer, whose
+sensibilities were fatal to his success. It was not long before Ned
+Hinkley and his widowed sister found it their policy to depart
+also, seeking superior objects in another county; and at this moment
+Charlemont is an abandoned and deserted region. It seemed to decline
+from the moment when the cruel catastrophe occurred which precipitated
+Margaret Cooper from her pride of place. Beautiful as the village
+appeared at the opening of our legend, it was doomed to as rapid a decay
+as growth. "Something ails it now--the spot is cursed!"
+
+But OUR history does not finally conclude with the fate of Charlemont.
+That chronicle is required now to give place to another, in which we
+propose to take up the sundered clues, and reunite them in a fresh
+progress. We shall meet some of the old parties once more, in new
+situations. We shall again meet with Margaret Cooper, in a new guise,
+under other aspects, but still accompanied by her demon--still inspired
+by her secret oath--still glowing with all the terrible memories of the
+past--still laboring with unhallowed pride; and still destined for a
+lark catastrophe. Our scene, however, lies in another region, to which
+the reader, who has thus far kept pace with our progress, is entreated
+still to accompany us. The chronicle of "CHARLEMONT" will find its
+fitting sequel in that of "BEAUCHAMPE"--known proverbially as "THE
+KENTUCKY TRAGEDY."
+
+END OF CHARLEMONT.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlemont, by W. Gilmore Simms
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlemont, by W. Gilmore Simms
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+
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+Title: Charlemont
+
+Author: W. Gilmore Simms
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6012]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 16, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CHARLEMONT ***
+
+
+
+
+Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: no caption, but contains the word Charlemont.  Two
+men are riding a horse and a woman stands nearby.]
+
+CHARLEMONT;
+
+OR,
+
+THE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE
+
+A TALE OF KENTUCKY.
+
+BY W. GILMORE SIMMS,
+
+
+
+
+
+   "Nor will I be secure.
+    In any confidence of mine own strength,
+    For such security is oft the mother
+    Of negligence, and that, the occasion
+    Of unremedy'd ruin."
+
+            Microcosmus--THO. NABBES.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO THE HON. JAMES HALL, OF CINCINNATI:
+
+AS ONE OF THE ABLEST OF OUR LITERARY PIONEEERS A GENUINE REPRESENTATIVE
+OF THE GREAT WEST;
+
+WHOSE WRITINGS EQUALLY ILLUSTRATE HER HISTORY AND GENIUS:
+
+this story of "CHARLEMONT," and its Sequel "BEAUCHAMPE" are
+respectfully inscribed by
+
+THEIR AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+
+
+
+
+The domestic legend which follows, is founded upon actual events of
+comparatively recent occurrence in the state of Kentucky. However
+strange the facts may appear in the sequel--however in conflict with
+what are usually supposed to be the sensibilities and characteristics
+of woman--they are yet unquestionably true; most of them having
+been conclusively established, by the best testimony, before a
+court of justice. Very terrible, indeed, was the tragedy to which
+they conducted--one that startled the whole country when it took
+place, and the mournful interest of which will long be remembered.
+More on this subject need not be mentioned here. The narrative,
+it is hoped, will satisfy all the curiosity of the reader. It has
+been very carefully prepared from and according to the evidence;
+the art of the romancer being held in close subjection to the
+historical authorities. I have furnished only the necessary details
+which would fill such blanks in the story as are of domestic
+character; taking care that these should accord, in all cases, with
+the despotic facts. In respect to these, I have seldom appealed to
+invention.  It is in the delineation and development of character,
+only, that I have made free to furnish scenes, such as appeared to
+me calculated to perfect the portraits, and the better to reconcile
+the reader to real occurrences, which, in their original nakedness,
+however unquestionably true, might incur the risk of being thought
+improbabilities.
+
+The reflections which will be most likely to arise from the
+perusal of such a history, lead us to a consideration of the social
+characteristics of the time and region, and to a consideration of
+the facility with which access to society is afforded by the manners
+and habits of our forest population. It is in all newly-settled
+countries, as among the rustic population of most nations, that the
+absence of the compensative resources of wealth leads to a singular
+and unreserved freedom among the people. In this way, society
+endeavors to find equivalents for those means of enjoyment which
+a wealthy people may procure from travel, from luxury, from the
+arts, and the thousand comforts of a well-provided homestead. The
+population of a frontier country, lacking such resources, scattered
+over a large territory, and meeting infrequently, feel the lack of
+social intercourse; and this lack tends to break down most of the
+barriers which a strict convention usually establishes for the
+protection, not only of sex and caste, but of its own tastes and
+prejudices. Lacking the resources of superior wealth, population,
+and civilization, the frontier people are naturally required to
+throw the doors open as widely as possible, in order to obtain that
+intercourse with their fellows which is, perhaps, the first great
+craving of humanity. As a matter of necessity, there is little
+discrimination exercised in the admission of their guests. A specious
+outside, agreeable manners, cleverness and good humor, will soon
+make their way into confidence, without requiring other guaranties
+for the moral of the stranger. The people are naturally frank and
+hospitable; for the simple reason that these qualities of character
+are essential for procuring them that intercourse which they crave.
+The habits are accessible, the restraints few, the sympathies are
+genial, active, easily aroused, and very confiding. It follows,
+naturally, that they are frequently wronged and outraged, and just
+as naturally that their resentments are keen, eager, and vindictive.
+The self-esteem, if not watchful, is revengeful; and society sanctions
+promptly the fierce redress--that wild justice of revenge--which
+punishes without appeal to law, with its own right hand, the
+treacherous guest who has abused the unsuspecting confidence which
+welcomed him to a seat upon the sacred hearth. In this brief portrait
+of the morale of society, upon our frontiers, you will find the
+materiel from which this story has been drawn, and its justification,
+as a correct delineation of border life in one of its more settled
+phases in the new states. The social description of Charlemont
+exhibits, perhaps, a THIRD advance in our forest civilization, from
+the original settlement.
+
+It is not less the characteristic of these regions to exhibit
+the passions and the talents of the people in equal and wonderful
+saliency. We are accordingly struck with two classes of social
+facts, which do not often arrest the attention in old communities.
+We see, for example, the most singular combination of simplicity and
+sagacity in the same person; simplicity in conventional respects,
+and sagacity in all that affects the absolute and real in life,
+nature and the human sensibilities. The rude man, easily imposed
+upon, in his faith, fierce as an outlaw in his conflicts with men,
+will be yet exquisitely alive to the nicest consciousness of woman;
+will as delicately appreciate her instincts and sensibilities, as
+if love and poetry had been his only tutors from the first, and
+had mainly addressed their labors to this one object of the higher
+heart, education; and in due degree with the tenderness with
+which he will regard the sex, will be the vindictive ferocity with
+which--even though no kinsman--he will pursue the offender who has
+dared to outrage them in the case of any individual. In due degree
+as his faith is easy will his revenges be extreme. In due degree as
+he is slow to suspect the wrong-doer, will be the tenacity of his
+pursuit when the offender requires punishment. He seems to throw
+wide his heart and habitation, but you must beware how you trespass
+upon the securities of either.
+
+The other is a mental characteristic which leads to frequent
+surprises among strangers from the distant cities. It consists in
+the wonderful inequality between his mental and social development.
+The same person who will be regarded as a boor in good society, will
+yet exhibit a rapidity and profundity of thought and intelligence--a
+depth and soundness of judgment--an acuteness in discrimination--a
+logical accuracy, and critical analysis, such as mere good society
+rarely shows, and such as books almost as rarely teach. There will
+be a deficiency of refinement, taste, art--all that the polished
+world values so highly--and which it seems to cherish and encourage
+to the partial repudiation of the more essential properties of
+intellect. However surprising this characteristic may appear, it
+may yet be easily accounted for by the very simplicity of a training
+which results in great directness and force of character--a frank
+heartiness of aim and object--a truthfulness of object which
+suffers the thoughts to turn neither to the right hand nor to the
+left, but to press forward decisively to the one object--a determined
+will, and a restless instinct--which, conscious of the deficiencies
+of wealth and position, is yet perpetually seeking to supply them
+from the resources within its reach. These characteristics will
+be found illustrated in the present legend, an object which it
+somewhat contemplates, apart from the mere story with which they
+are interwoven.
+
+A few words more in respect to our heroine, Margaret Cooper. It
+is our hope and belief, that she will be found a real character by
+most of our readers. She is drawn from the life, and with a severe
+regard to the absolute features of the original. In these days of
+"strong-minded women," even more certainly than when the portrait
+was first taken, the identity of the sketch with its original will
+be sure of recognition. Her character and career will illustrate
+most of the mistakes which are made by that ambitious class, among
+the gentler sex, who are now seeking so earnestly to pass out from
+that province of humiliation to which the sex has been circumscribed
+from the first moment of recorded history. What she will gain by
+the motion, if successful, might very well be left to time, were
+it not that the proposed change in her condition threatens fatally
+some of her own and the best securities of humanity. We may admit,
+and cheerfully do so, that she might, with propriety, be allowed
+some additional legal privileges of a domestic sort. But the great
+object of attainment, which is the more serious need of the sex--her
+own more full development as a responsible being--seems mainly
+to depend upon herself, and upon self-education. The great first
+duty of woman is in her becoming the mother of men; and this duty
+implies her proper capacity for the education and training of the
+young. To fit her properly for this duty, her education should become
+more elevated, and more severe in degree with its elevation.  But
+the argument is one of too grave, too intricate, and excursive
+a character, to be attempted here. It belongs to a very different
+connection. It is enough, in this place, to say that Margaret Cooper
+possesses just the sort of endowment to make a woman anxious to
+pass the guardian boundaries which hedge in her sex--her danger
+corresponds with her desires. Her securities, with such endowments,
+and such a nature, can only be found in a strict and appropriate
+education, such as woman seldom receives anywhere, and less, perhaps,
+in this country than in any other. To train fully the feminine
+mind, without in any degree impairing her susceptibilities and
+sensibilities, seems at once the necessity and the difficulty of
+the subject. Her very influence over man lies in her sensibilities.
+It will be to her a perilous fall from pride of place, and power,
+when, goaded by an insane ambition, in the extreme development of
+her mere intellect, she shall forfeit a single one of these securities
+of her sex.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SCENE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The stormy and rugged winds of March were overblown--the first
+fresh smiling days of April had come at last--the days of sunshine
+and shower, of fitful breezes, the breath of blossoms, and the
+newly-awakened song of birds. Spring was there in all the green
+and glory of her youth, and the bosom of Kentucky heaved with the
+prolific burden of the season. She had come, and her messengers
+were everywhere, and everywhere busy. The birds bore her gladsome
+tidings to
+
+    "Alley green,
+    Dingle or bushy dell of each wild wood,
+    And every bosky bourn from side to side--"
+
+nor were the lately-trodden and seared grasses of the forests left
+unnoted; and the humbled flower of the wayside sprang up at her
+summons. Like some loyal and devoted people, gathered to hail the
+approach of a long-exiled and well-beloved sovereign, they crowded
+upon the path over which she came, and yielded themselves with
+gladness at her feet. The mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing
+might be heard, and far-off murmurs of gratulation, rising from the
+distant hollows, or coming faintly over the hill-tops, in accents
+not the lees pleasing because they were the less distinct.  That
+lovely presence which makes every land blossom, and every living
+thing rejoice, met, in the happy region in which we meet her now,
+a double tribute of honor and rejoicing.
+
+The "dark and bloody ground," by which mournful epithets Kentucky
+was originally known to the Anglo-American, was dark and bloody
+no longer. The savage had disappeared from its green forests for
+ever, and no longer profaned with slaughter, and his unholy whoop
+of death, its broad and beautiful abodes. A newer race had succeeded;
+and the wilderness, fulfilling the better destinies of earth, had
+begun to blossom like the rose. Conquest had fenced in its sterile
+borders with a wall of fearless men, and peace slept everywhere in
+security among its green recesses. Stirring industry--the perpetual
+conqueror--made the woods resound with the echoes of his biting
+axe and ringing hammer. Smiling villages rose in cheerful white,
+in place of the crumbling and smoky cabins of the hunter. High
+and becoming purposes of social life and thoughtful enterprise
+superseded that eating and painful decay, which has terminated in
+the annihilation of the red man; and which, among every people,
+must always result from their refusal to exercise, according to
+the decree of experience, no less than Providence, their limbs and
+sinews in tasks of well-directed and continual labor.
+
+A great nation urging on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness,
+is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly
+and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and
+forest. Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence
+rose where the pines had fallen. Long and lovely vistas were opened
+through the dark and hitherto impervious thickets. The city sprang
+up beside the river, while hamlets, filled with active hope and
+cheerful industry, crowded upon the verdant hill-side, and clustered
+among innumerable valleys Grace began to seek out the homes of
+toil, and taste supplied their decorations. A purer form of religion
+hallowed the forest-homes of the red-man, while expelling for ever
+the rude divinities of his worship; and throughout the land, an
+advent of moral loveliness seemed approaching, not less grateful
+to the affections and the mind, than was the beauty of the infant
+April, to the eye and the heart of the wanderer.
+
+But something was still wanting to complete the harmonies of nature,
+in the scene upon which we are about to enter. Though the savage
+had for ever departed from its limits, the blessings of a perfect
+civilization were not yet secured to the new and flourishing regions
+of Kentucky. Its morals were still in that fermenting condition
+which invariably distinguishes the settlement of every new country
+by a various and foreign people. At the distant period of which we
+write, the population of Kentucky had not yet become sufficiently
+stationary to have made their domestic gods secure, or to have
+fixed the proper lines and limits regulating social intercourse
+and attaching precise standards to human conduct. The habits and
+passions of the first settlers--those fearless pioneers who had
+struggled foot to foot with the Indian, and lived in a kindred
+state of barbarity with him, had not yet ceased to have influence
+over the numerous race which followed them. That moral amalgam
+which we call society, and which recognises a mutual and perfectly
+equal condition of dependence, and a common necessity, as the great
+cementing principles of the human family, had not yet taken place;
+and it was still too much the custom, in that otherwise lovely
+region, for the wild man to revenge his own wrong, and the strong
+man to commit a greater with impunity. The repose of social order
+was not yet secured to the great mass, covering with its wing,
+as with a sky that never knew a cloud, the sweet homes and secure
+possessions of the unwarlike. The fierce robber sometimes smote
+the peaceful traveler upon the highway, and the wily assassin of
+reputation, within the limits of the city barrier, not unfrequently
+plucked the sweetest rose that ever adorned the virgin bosom
+of innocence, and triumphed, without censure, in the unhallowed
+spoliation.
+
+But sometimes there came an avenger;--and the highway robber fell
+before the unexpected patriot; and the virgin was avenged by the
+yet beardless hero, for the wrong of her cruel seducer. The story
+which we have to tell, is of times and of actions such as these.
+It is a melancholy narrative--the more melancholy as it is most
+certainly true. It will not be told in vain, if the crime which
+it describes in proper colors, and the vengeance by which it was
+followed, and which it equally records, shall secure the innocent
+from harm, and discourage the incipient wrongdoer from his base
+designs.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE TRAVELLERS.
+
+
+
+
+
+Let the traveller stand with us on the top of this rugged eminence,
+and look down upon the scene below. Around us, the hills gather
+in groups on every side, a family cluster, each of which wears the
+same general likeness to that on which we stand, yet there is no
+monotony in their aspect. The axe has not yet deprived them of a
+single tree, and they rise up, covered with the honored growth of
+a thousand summers. But they seem not half so venerable. They wear,
+in this invigorating season, all the green, fresh features of youth
+and spring. The leaves cover the rugged Limbs which sustain them,
+with so much ease and grace, as if for the first time they were
+so green and glossy, and as if the impression should be made more
+certain and complete, the gusty wind of March has scattered abroad
+and borne afar, all the yellow garments of the vanished winter.
+The wild flowers begin to flaunt their blue and crimson draperies
+about us, as if conscious that they are borne upon the bosom
+of undecaying beauty; and the spot so marked and hallowed by each
+charming variety of bud and blossom, would seem to have been a
+selected dwelling for the queenly Spring herself.
+
+Man, mindful of those tastes and sensibilities which in great part
+constitute his claim to superiority over the brute, has not been
+indifferent to the beauties of the place. In the winding hollows
+of these hills, beginning at our feet, you see the first signs of
+as lovely a little hamlet as ever promised peace to the weary and
+the discontent. This is the village of Charlemont.
+
+A dozen snug and smiling cottages seem to have been dropped in
+this natural cup, as if by a spell of magic. They appear, each of
+them, to fill a fitted place--not equally distant from, but equally
+near each other. Though distinguished, each by an individual feature,
+there is yet no great dissimilarity among them. All are small, and
+none of them distinguished by architectural pretension. They are
+now quite as flourishing as when first built, and their number has
+had no increase since the village was first settled. Speculation
+has not made it populous and prosperous, by destroying its repose,
+stifling its charities, and abridging the sedate habits and comforts
+of its people. The houses, though constructed after the fashion
+of the country, of heavy and ill-squared logs, roughly hewn, and
+hastily thrown together, perhaps by unpractised hands, are yet made
+cheerful by that tidy industry which is always sure to make them
+comfortable also. Trim hedges that run beside slender white palings,
+surround and separate them from each other. Sometimes, as you see,
+festoons of graceful flowers, and waving blossoms, distinguish
+one dwelling from the rest, declaring its possession of some fair
+tenant, whose hand and fancy have kept equal progress with habitual
+industry; at the same time, some of them appear entirely without
+the little garden of flowers and vegetables, which glimmers and
+glitters in the rear or front of the greater number.
+
+Such was Charlemont, at the date of our narrative. But the traveller
+would vainly look, now, to find the place as we describe it. The
+garden is no longer green with fruits and flowers--the festoons
+no longer grace the lowly portals--the white palings are down and
+blackening in the gloomy mould--the roofs have fallen, and silence
+dwells lonely among the ruins,--the only inhabitant of the place.
+It has no longer a human occupant.
+
+"Something ails it now--the spot is cursed."
+
+Why this fate has fallen upon so sweet an abiding place--why the
+villagers should have deserted a spot, so quiet and so beautiful--it
+does not fall within our present purpose to inquire. It was most
+probably abandoned--not because of the unfruitfulness of the soil,
+or the unhealthiness of the climate--for but few places on the bosom
+of the earth, may be found either more fertile, more beautiful, or
+more healthful--but in compliance with that feverish restlessness
+of mood--that sleepless discontent of temper, which, perhaps, more
+than any other quality, is the moral failing in the character of the
+Anglo-American. The roving desires of his ancestor, which brought
+him across the waters, have been transmitted without diminution--nay,
+with large increase--to the son. The creatures of a new condition
+of things, and new necessities, our people will follow out their
+destiny. The restless energies which distinguish them, are, perhaps,
+the contemplated characteristics which Providence has assigned
+them, in order that they may the more effectually and soon, bring
+into the use and occupation of a yet mightier people, the wilderness
+of that new world in which their fortunes have been cast. Generation
+is but the pioneer of generation, and the children of millions, more
+gigantic and powerful than ourselves, shall yet smile to behold,
+how feeble was the stroke made by our axe upon the towering trees
+of their inheritance.
+
+It was probably because of this characteristic of our people, that
+Charlemont came in time to be deserted. The inhabitants were one
+day surprised with tidings of more attractive regions in yet deeper
+forests, and grew dissatisfied with their beautiful and secluded
+valley. Such is the ready access to the American mind, in its
+excitable state, of novelty and sudden impulse, that there needs but
+few suggestions to persuade the forester to draw stakes, and remove
+his tents, where the signs seem to be more numerous of sweeter
+waters and more prolific fields. For a time, change has the power
+which nature does not often exercise; and under its freshness,
+the waters DO seem sweeter, and the stores of the wilderness, the
+wild-honey and the locust, DO seem more abundant to the lip and
+eye.
+
+Where our cottagers went, and under what delusion, are utterly
+unknown to us; nor is it important to our narrative that we should
+inquire. Our knowledge of them is only desirable, while they were
+in the flourishing condition in which they have been seen. It is
+our trust that the novelty which seduced them from their homes, did
+not fail them in its promises--that they may never have found, in
+all their wanderings, a less lovely abiding-place, than that which
+they abandoned. But change has its bitter, as well as its sweet,
+and the fear is strong that the cottagers of Charlemont, in the
+weary hours, when life's winter is approaching, will still and
+vainly sigh after the once-despised enjoyments of their deserted
+hamlet.
+
+It was toward the close of one of those bright, tearful days in
+April, of which we have briefly spoken, when a couple of travellers
+on horseback, ascended the last hill looking down upon Charlemont.
+One of these travellers had passed the middle period of life; the
+other was, perhaps, just about to enter upon its heavy responsibilities,
+and more active duties. The first wore the countenance of one
+who had borne many sorrows, and borne them with that resignation,
+which, while it proves the wisdom of the sufferer, is at the same
+time, calculated to increase his benevolence. The expression of his
+eye, was full of kindness and benignity, while that of his mouth,
+with equal force, was indicative of a melancholy, as constant as
+it was gentle and unobtrusive. A feeble smile played over his lips
+while he spoke, that increased the sadness which it softened; as
+the faint glimmer of the evening sunlight, upon the yellow leaves
+of autumn, heightens the solemn tones in the rich coloring of the
+still decaying forest.
+
+The face of his companion, in many of its features, was in direct
+contrast with his own. It was well formed, and, to the casual
+glance, seemed no less handsome than intellectual. There was much
+in it to win the regard of the young and superficial. An eye that
+sparkled with fire, a mouth that glowed with animation--cheeks
+warmly colored, and a contour full of vivacity, seemed to denote
+properties of mind and heart equally valuable and attractive. Still,
+a keen observer would have found something sinister, in the upward
+glancing of the eye, at intervals, from the half-closed lids; and,
+at such moments, there was a curling contempt upon the lips, which
+seemed to denote a cynical and sarcastic turn of mind. A restless
+movement of the same features seemed equally significant of caprice
+of character, and a flexibility of moral; while the chin narrowed
+too suddenly and became too sharp at the extremity, to persuade a
+thorough physiognomist, that the owner could be either very noble
+in his aims, or very generous in his sentiments. But as these
+outward tokens can not well be considered authority in the work
+of judgment, let events, which speak for themselves, determine the
+true character of our travellers.
+
+They had reached the table land of the heights which looked down
+upon Charlemont, at a moment when the beauty of the scene could
+scarcely fail to impress itself upon the most indifferent observer.
+The elder of the travellers, who happened to be in advance, was
+immediately arrested by it; and, staying the progress of his horse,
+with hand lifted above his eye, looked around him with a delight
+which expressed itself in an abrupt ejaculation, and brought his
+companion to his side. The sun had just reached that point in his
+descent, which enabled him to level a shaft of rosy light from
+the pinnacle of the opposite hill, into the valley below, where it
+rested among the roofs of two of the cottages, which arose directly
+in its path. The occupants of these two cottages had come forth,
+as it were, in answer to the summons; and old and young, to the
+number of ten or a dozen persons, had met, in the winding pathway
+between, which led through the valley, and in front of every cottage
+which it contained. The elder of the cottagers sat upon the huge
+trunk of a tree, which had been felled beside the road, for the
+greater convenience of the traveller; and with eyes turned in the
+direction of the hill on which the sunlight had sunk and appeared
+to slumber, seemed to enjoy the vision with no less pleasure than
+our senior traveller. Two tall damsels of sixteen, accompanied by
+a young man something older, were strolling off in the direction
+of the woods; while five or six chubby girls and boys were making
+the echoes leap and dance along the hills, in the clamorous delight
+which they felt in their innocent but stirring exercises. The whole
+scene was warmed with the equal brightness of the natural and the
+human sun. Beauty was in the sky, and its semblance, at least, was
+on the earth. God was in the heavens, and in his presence could
+there be other than peace and harmony among men!
+
+"How beautiful!" exclaimed the elder of our travellers--"could
+anything be more so! How pure, how peaceful! See, Warham, how
+soft, how spirit-like, that light lies along the hill-side, and
+how distinct, yet how delicate, is the train which glides from it
+down the valley, even to the white dwellings at its bottom, from which
+it seems to shrink and tremble as if half conscious of intrusion.
+And yet the picture below is kindred with it. That, now, is a scene
+that I delight in--it is a constant picture in my mind. There is
+peace in that valley, if there be peace anywhere on earth. The old
+men sit before the door, and contemplate with mingled feelings of
+pride and pleasure, the vigorous growth of their children. They
+behold in them their own immortality, even upon earth. The young
+will preserve their memories, and transmit their names to other
+children yet unborn; and how must such a reflection reconcile them
+to their own time of departure, not unfitly shown in the last smiles
+of that sunlight, which they are so soon about to lose.  Like him,
+they look with benevolence and love upon the world from which they
+will soon depart."
+
+"Take my word for it, uncle, they will postpone their departure
+to the last possible moment, and, so far from looking with smiles
+upon what they are about to leave for ever, they will leave it with
+very great reluctance, and in monstrous bad humor. As for regarding
+their children with any such notions as those you dwell upon with
+such poetical raptures, they will infinitely prefer transmitting
+for themselves their names and qualities to the very end of the
+chapter. Ask any one of them the question now, and he will tell you
+that an immortality, each, in his own wig-wam, and with his weight
+of years and infirmity upon him, would satisfy all his expectations.
+If they look at the vigor of their young, it is to recollect that
+they themselves once were so, and to repine at the recollection.
+Take my word for it, there is not a dad among them, that does not
+envy his own son the excellence of his limbs, and the long time of
+exercise and enjoyment which they seemingly assure him."
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed the elder of the two travellers. "Impossible!
+I should be sorry to think as you do. But you, Warham, can not
+understand these things. You are an habitual unbeliever--the most
+unfortunate of all mankind."
+
+"The most fortunate, rather. I have but few burdens of credulity
+to carry. The stars be blessed, my articles of faith are neither
+very many nor very cumbrous. I should be sorry if my clients were
+so few."
+
+"I should be sorry, Warham, if I had so little feeling as yourself."
+
+"And I should be still more sorry, uncle, if I had half so much.
+Why, sir, yours is in such excess, that you continually mistake the
+joys and sorrows of other people for your own. You laugh and weep
+with them alternately; and, until all's done and over, you never
+seem to discover that the business was none of yours;--that you
+had none of the pleasure which made you laugh, and might have been
+spared all the unnecessary suffering which moved your tears.  'Pon
+my soul, sir, you pass a most unprofitable life."
+
+"You mistake, Warham, I have shared both; and my profits have been
+equally great from both sources. My susceptibility has been an
+exceeding great gain to me, and has quickened all my senses. There
+is a joy of grief, you know, according to Ossian."
+
+"Nay, if you quote Ossian, uncle. I give you up. I don't believe
+in Ossian, and his raving stuff always sickens me."
+
+"I sometimes think, Warham," said the uncle, good naturedly, "that
+Providence has denied you some of the more human faculties. Nay,
+I fear that you are partially deficient in some of the senses. Do
+you see that sunlight to which I point--there, on the hill-side,
+a sort of rosy haze, which seems to me eminently beautiful?"
+
+"Yes, sir; and, if you will suffer me, I will get out of its reach
+as quickly as possible. I have been half blinded by it ever since
+you found it so beautiful. Sunlight is, I think, of very little
+importance to professional men, unless as a substitute for candles,
+and then it should come over the left shoulder, if you would not
+have it endanger the sight. Nay, I will go farther, and confess that
+it is better than candlelight, and certainly far less expensive.
+Shall we go forward, sir?"
+
+"Warham," said the uncle, with increasing gravity, "I should be
+sorry to believe that a habit of speech so irreverential, springs
+from anything but an ambition for saying smart things, and strange
+things, which are not always smart. It would give me great pain
+to think that you were devoid of any of those sensibilities which
+soften the hearts of other men, and lead them to generous impulses."
+
+"Nay, be not harsh, uncle. You should know me better. I trust my
+sensibilities, and senses too, may be sufficient for all proper
+purposes, when the proper time comes for their employment; but
+I can't flame up at every sunbeam, and grow enthusiastic in the
+contemplation of Bill Johnson's cottage, and Richard Higgins's
+hedgerow. A turnip-patch never yet could waken my enthusiasm,
+and I do believe, sir--I confess it with some shame and a slight
+misgiving, lest my admissions should give you pain--that my fancy
+has never been half so greatly enkindled by Carthula, of the bending
+spear, or Morven of the winds, as by the sedate and homely aspect
+of an ordinary dish of eggs and bacon, hot from the flaming frying-pan
+of some worthy housewife."
+
+The uncle simply looked upon the speaker, but without answering.
+He was probably quite too much accustomed to his modes of thought
+and speech to be so much surprised as annoyed by what he said.
+Perhaps, too, his own benevolence of spirit interfered to save the
+nephew from that harsher rebuke which his judgment might yet have
+very well disposed him to bestow.
+
+Following the course of the latter in silence, he descended into
+the valley, and soon made his way among the sweet little cottages
+at its foot. An interchange of courtsies between the travellers and
+the villagers whose presence had given occasion to some portion of
+the previous dialogue, in which the manner of the younger traveller
+was civil, and that of the elder kind; and the two continued on
+their journey, though not without being compelled to refuse sundry
+invitations, given with true patriarchal hospitality, to remain
+among the quiet abodes through which they passed.
+
+As cottage after cottage unfolded itself to their eyes, along the
+winding avenue, the proprietors appeared at door and window, and,
+with the simple freedoms of rural life, welcomed the strangers with
+a smile, a nod, and sometimes, when sufficiently nigh, a friendly
+word of salutation, but without having the effect of arresting
+their onward progress. Yet many a backward glance was sent by the
+elder of the travellers, whose eyes, beaming with satisfaction,
+sufficiently declared the delight which he received from the
+contemplation of so many of the mingled graces of physical and
+moral nature. His loitering steps drew from his young companion an
+occasional remark, which, to ears less benevolent and unsuspecting
+than than those of the senior, might have been deemed a sarcasm; and
+more than once the lips of the nephew had curled with contemptuous
+smiles, as he watched the yearning glances of his uncle on each
+side of the avenue, as they wended slowly through it.
+
+At the end of the village, and at the foot of the opposite hills,
+they encountered a group of young people of both sexes, whose bursts
+of merriment were suddenly restrained as they emerged unexpectedly
+into sight. The girls had been sitting upon the grassy mead, with
+the young men before them; but they started to their feet at the
+sound of strange steps, and the look of strange faces. Charlemont,
+it must be remembered, was not in the thoroughfare of common travel.
+If visited at all by strangers, it was most usually by those only
+who came with a single purpose. Nothing, therefore could have been
+more calculated to surprise a community so insulated, than that they
+should attract, but not arrest the traveller. The natural surprise
+which the young people felt, when unexpectedly encountered in their
+rustic sports, was naturally increased by this unusual circumstance,
+and they looked after the departing forms of the wayfarers with a
+wonder and curiosity that kept them for some time silent. The elder
+of the two, meanwhile--one of whose habits of mind was always to give
+instantaneous utterance to the feeling which was upper-most--dilated,
+without heeding the sneers of his nephew, upon the apparent happiness
+which they witnessed.
+
+"Here, you see, Warham, is a pleasure which the great city never
+knows:--the free intercourse of the sexes in all those natural
+exercises which give health to the body, grace to the movement,
+and vivacity to the manners."
+
+"The health will do well enough," replied the skeptic, "but save
+me from the grace of Hob and Hinney; and as for their manners--did
+I hear you correctly, uncle, when you spoke of their manners?"
+
+"Surely, you did. I have always regarded the natural manners which
+belong to the life of the forester, as being infinitely more noble,
+as well as more graceful, than those of the citizen. Where did you
+ever see a tradesman whose bearing was not mean compared with that
+of the hunter?"
+
+"Ay, but these are no hunters, and scarcely foresters. I see not a
+single Nimrod among the lads; and as for the lasses, even your eyes,
+indulgent as they usually are, will scarcely venture to insist that
+I shall behold one nymph among them worthy to tie the shoe-latchets
+of Diana. The manners of the hunter are those of an elastic savage;
+but these lads shear sheep, raise hogs for the slaughter-pen, and
+seldom perform a nobler feat than felling a bullock. They have none
+of the elasticity which, coupled with strength, makes the grace of
+the man; and they walk as if perpetually in the faith that their
+corn-rows and potatoe-hills were between their legs."
+
+"Did you note the young woman in the crimson body Warham? Was she
+not majestically made?"
+
+"It struck me she would weigh against any two of the company."
+
+"She is rather heavy, I grant you, but her carriage, Warham!"
+
+"Would carry weight--nothing more."
+
+"There was one little girl, just rising into womanhood:--you must
+admit that she had a very lovely face, and her form--"
+
+"My dear uncle, what is it that you will not desire me to believe?
+You are sadly given to proselytism, and take infinite pains to
+compel me to see with eyes that never do their owner so much wrong,
+as when they reject the aid of spectacles. How much would Charlemont
+and its inhabitants differ to your sight, were you only to take
+your green spectacles from the shagreen case in which they do no
+duty. But if you are resolved, in order to seem youthful, to let
+your age go unprovided with the means of seeing as youth would see,
+at least suffer me to enjoy the natural privileges of twenty-five.
+When, like you, my hairs whiten, and my eyes grow feeble, ten to
+one, I shall think with you that every third woodman is an Apollo,
+and every other peasant-girl is a Venus, whom--"
+
+The words of the speaker ceased--cut short by the sudden appearance
+of a form and face, the beauty and dignity of which silenced the
+skeptic, and made him doubtful, for the moment, whether he had not
+in reality reached that period of confused and confounding vision,
+which, as he alleged to be the case with his uncle, loses all
+power of discrimination. A maiden stood before him--tall, erect,
+majestic--beautiful after no ordinary standard of beauty. She was
+a brunette, with large dark eyes, which, though bright, seemed dark
+with excess of bright--and had a depth of expression which thrilled
+instantly through the bosom of the spectator. A single glance did
+she bestow upon the travellers, while she acknowledged, by a slight
+courtesy, the respectful bow which they made her. They drew up
+their horses as with mutual instinct, but she passed them quickly,
+courtesying a second time as she did so, and, in another moment a
+turn of the road concealed her from the eyes of the travellers.
+
+"What say you to that, Warham?" demanded the senior exultingly.
+
+"A Diana, in truth; but, uncle, we find her not among the rest.
+SHE is none of your cottagers. SHE is of another world and element.
+She is no Charlemonter."
+
+And, as he spoke, the younger traveller looked back with straining
+eyes to catch another glanco of the vanished object, but in vain.
+
+"You deserve never to see a lovely woman again, Warham, for your
+skepticism."
+
+"But I will have a second look at her, uncle, though the skies
+fall," answered the young man, as, wheeling his horse round, he
+deliberately galloped back to the bend in the avenue, by which she
+had been hidden from his view.
+
+He had scarcely reached the desired point, when he suddenly recoiled
+to find the object of his pursuit standing motionless just beyond,
+with eyes averted to the backward path--her glance consequently
+encountering his own, the very moment when he discovered her. A deep
+crimson, visible even where he stood, suffused her cheeks when she
+beheld him; and without acknowledging the second bow which the
+traveller made, she somewhat haughtily averted her head with a
+suddenness which shook her long and raven tresses entirely free of
+the net-work which confined them.
+
+"A proud gipsy!" muttered the youth as he rode back to his uncle--"just
+such a spirit as I should like to tame." He took especial care,
+however, that this sentiment did not reach the ears of his senior.
+
+"Well?" said the latter, inquiringly, at his approach.
+
+"I am right after all, uncle:--the wench is no better than the
+rest. A heavy bulk that seemed dignified only because she is too
+fat for levity. She walks like a blind plough-horse in a broken
+pasture, up and down, over and over; with a gait as rigid and
+deliberate as if she trod among the hot cinders, and had corns on
+all her toes. She took us so by surprise that if we had not thought
+her beautiful we must have thought her ugly, and the chances are
+equal, that, on a second meeting, we shall both think her so. I
+shall, I'm certain, and you must, provided you give your eyes the
+benefit, and your nose the burden of your green specs."
+
+"Impossible! I can scarce believe it, Warham," replied the senior.
+"I thought her very beautiful."
+
+"I shall never rely on your judgment again;--nay, uncle, I am almost
+inclined to suspect your taste."
+
+"Well, let them be beautiful or ugly, still I should think the same
+of the beauty of this village."
+
+"While the sun shines it may be tolerable; but, uncle, in wet bad
+weather--it must become a mere pond, it lies so completely in the
+hollow of the hills."
+
+"There is reason in that, Warham."
+
+"And yet, even as a pond, it would have its advantages--it would
+be famous for duck-raising."
+
+"Pshaw! you are worse than a Mahometan."
+
+"Something of a just comparison, uncle, though scarcely aimed,"
+said the other; "like Mahomet, you know, I doubt the possession of
+souls by women."
+
+"Yet if these of Charlemont have not souls, they have no small
+share of happiness on earth. I never heard more happy laughter from
+human lips than from theirs. They must be happy."
+
+"I doubt that also," was the reply. "See you not, uncle, that to
+nine or ten women there are but three lads? Where the disproportion
+is so great among the sexes, and where it is so unfavorable to the
+weaker, women never can be happy. Their whole lives will be lives
+of turmoil, jealousy, and pulling of caps. Nay, eyes shall not
+be secure under such circumstances; and Nan's fingers shall be in
+Doll's hair, and Doll's claws in Nanny's cheeks, whenever it shall
+so happen, that Tom Jenkins shall incline to Nan, or John Dobbins
+to Doll. Such a disparity between the sexes is one of the most
+fruitful causes of domestic war."
+
+"Warham, where do you think to go when you die?"
+
+"Where there shall be no great inequality in the population. Believe
+me, uncle, though I am sometimes disposed to think with Mahomet,
+and deny the possession of souls to the sex, I also incline to
+believe, with other more charitable teachers--however difficult
+it may be to reconcile the two philosophies--that there will be no
+lack of them in either world."
+
+"Hush, hush, Warham," was the mild rebuke of the senior; "you go
+too far--you are irreverent. As for this maiden, I still think her
+very beautiful--of a high and noble kind of beauty. My eyes may be
+bad;--indeed I am willing to admit they are none of the best; but
+I feel certain that they cannot so far deceive me, when we consider
+how nigh we were to her."
+
+"The matter deserves inquiry, uncle, if it were only to satisfy
+your faith;--suppose we ride back, both of us, and see for
+ourselves--closely, and with the aid of the green spectacles? Not
+that I care to see farther--not that I have any doubts--but I wish
+you to be convinced in this case, if only to make you sensible of
+the frequent injustice to which your indulgence of judgment, subjects
+the critical fastidiousness of mine. What say you; shall we wheel
+about?"
+
+"Why, you are mad, surely. It is now sunset, and we have a good
+eight miles before we get to Holme's Station."
+
+"But we can sleep in Charlemont to-night. A night in this earthly
+Eden--"
+
+"And run the risk of losing our company? Oh, no, most worthy nephew.
+They will start at dawn to-morrow."
+
+"We can soon come up with 'em."
+
+"Perhaps not, and the risk is considerable. Travelling to the
+Mississippi is no such small matter at any time, and, in these times
+it is only with a multitude, that there is safety. The murder of
+old Whiteford, is a sufficient warning not to go alone with more
+gold than lead in one's pocket. We are two, it is true, but better
+ten than two. You are a brave fellow enough, Warham, I doubt not;
+but a shot will dispose of you, and after that I should be an easy
+victim. I could wink and hold out my iron as well as the best of
+you, but I prefer to escape the necessity. Let us mend our pace.
+We are burning daylight."
+
+The nephew, with an air of some impatience, which, however,
+escaped the eyes of the senior, sent his horse forward by a sharp
+application of his spur, though looking back the while, with a
+glance of reluctance, which strongly disagreed with the sentiments
+which he expressed. Indeed, with both the travellers, the impression
+made by the little village of Charlemont was such that the subject
+seemed nowise displeasing to either, and furnished the chief staple
+of conversation between them, as they rode the remaining eight miles
+of their journey. The old man's heart had been subdued and won by
+the sweet air of peace which seemed to overspread and hallow the
+soft landscape, and the smiling cottages which made it human. The
+laughing maidens with their bright eyes and cheering accents, gave
+vivacity to its milder charms. We have heard from the lips of the
+younger traveller, that these attractions had failed to captivate
+his fancy. We may believe of this as we please. It is very probable
+that he had, in considerable part, spoken nothing but the truth.
+He was too much of a mocker;--one of those worldlings who derive
+their pleasures from circumstances of higher conventional attraction.
+He had no feeling for natural romance. His PENCHANT, was decidedly
+for the artificial existence of city life; and the sneers which he
+had been heard to express at the humble joys of rustic life, its
+tastes, and characteristics, were, in truth, only such as he really
+felt. But, even in his case, there was an evident disposition to
+know something more of Charlemont. He was really willing to return.
+He renewed the same subject of conversation, when it happened to
+flag, with obvious eagerness; and, though his language was still
+studiedly disparaging, a more deeply penetrating judgment than that
+of his uncle, would have seen that the little village, slightly as
+he professed to esteem it, was yet an object of thought and interest
+in his eyes. Of the sources of this new interest time must inform
+us.
+
+"Well, well, Warham," at length exclaimed the uncle, in a tone that
+seemed meant to close the discussion of a topic which his nephew now
+appeared mischievously bent to thrust upon him, "you will return
+to Kentucky in the fall. Take Charlemont in your route. Stop a
+week there. It will do you no harm. Possibly you may procure some
+clients--may, indeed, include it in your tour of practice--at all
+events, you will not be unprofitably employed if you come to see
+the village and the people with MY eyes, which, I doubt not, you
+will in time."
+
+"In time, perhaps, I may. It is well that you do not insist upon
+any hurried convictions. Were I at your years uncle mine," continued
+the other irreverently, "I should no doubt see with your eyes, and
+possibly feel with your desires. Then, no doubt, I shall acquire
+a taste for warmingpans and nightcaps--shall look for landscapes
+rather than lands--shall see nothing but innocence among the young,
+and resignation and religion among the old; and fancy, in every
+aged pair of bumpkins that I see, a Darby and Joan, with perpetual
+peace at their fireside, though they may both happen to lie there
+drunk on apple-brandy. Between caudle-cups and 'John Anderson,
+my Jo-John,' it is my hope to pass the evening of my days with a
+tolerable grace, and leave behind me some comely representatives,
+who shall take up the burden of the ditty where I leave off.
+On this head be sure you shall have no cause to complain of me. I
+shall be no Malthusian, as you certainly have shown yourself. It
+is the strangest thing to me, uncle, that, with all your SPOKEN
+rapture for the sex, you should never have thought of securing for
+yourself at least one among the crowd which you so indiscriminately
+admire.  Surely, a gentleman of your personal attractions--attractions
+which seem resolute to cling to you to the last--could not have found
+much difficulty in procuring the damsel he desired! And when, too,
+your enthusiasm for the sex is known, one would think it only
+necessary that you should fling your handkerchief, to have it
+greedily grappled by the fairest of the herd. How is it, uncle--how
+have you escaped from them--from yourself?"
+
+"Pshaw, Warham, you are a fool!" exclaimed the senior, riding forward
+with increasing speed. The words were spoken good naturedly, but
+the youth had touched a spot, scarcely yet thoroughly scarred over,
+in the old man's bosom; and memories, not less painful because
+they had been bidden so long, were instantly wakened into fresh
+and cruel activity.
+
+It will not diminish the offence of the nephew in the mind of the
+reader, when he is told that the youth was not ignorant of the
+particular tenderness of his relative in this respect. The gentle
+nature of the latter, alone, rescued him from the well-merited reproach
+of suffering his habitual levity of mood to prevail in reference
+to one whom even he himself was disposed to honor. But few words
+passed between the two, ere they reached the place of appointment.
+The careless reference of the youth had made the thoughts of the
+senior active at the expense of his observation. His eyes were
+now turned inward; and the landscape, and the evening sun, which
+streamed over and hallowed it with a tender beauty to the last, was
+as completely hidden from his vision, as if a veil had been drawn
+above his sight. The retrospect, indeed, is ever the old man's
+landscape; and perhaps, even had he not been so unkindly driven back
+to its survey, our aged traveller would have been reminded of the
+past in the momently-deepening shadows which the evening gathered
+around his path. Twilight is the cherished season for sad memories,
+even as the midnight is supposed to be that of guilty ghosts; and
+nothing, surely, can be more fitting than that the shadows of former
+hopes should revisit us in those hours when the face of nature
+itself seems darkening into gloom.
+
+It was night before the wayfarers reached the appointed baiting
+place. There they found their company--a sort of little caravan,
+such as is frequent in the history of western emigration--already
+assembled, and the supper awaiting them. Let us leave them to its
+enjoyment, and return once more to the village of Charlemont.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The young maiden last met by our travellers, and whose appearance
+had so favorably impressed them, had not been altogether uninfluenced
+by the encounter. Her spirit was of a musing and perhaps somewhat
+moody character, and the little adventure related in our last
+chapter, had awakened in her mind a train of vague and purposeless
+thought, from which she did not strive to disengage herself. She
+ceased to pursue the direct path back to Charlemont, the moment she
+had persuaded herself that the strangers had continued on their way;
+and turning from the beaten track, she strolled aside, following the
+route of a brooklet, the windings of which, as it led her forward,
+were completely hidden from the intrusive glance of any casual
+wayfarer. The prattle of the little stream as it wound upon its
+sleepless journey, contributed still more to strengthen the musings
+of those vagrant fancies that filled the maiden's thoughts.
+
+She sat down upon the prostrate trunk of a tree, and surrendered
+herself for a while to their control. Her thoughts were probably of
+a kind which, to a certain extent, are commended to every maiden.
+Among them, perpetually rose an image of the bold and handsome
+stranger, whose impudence, in turning back in pursuit of her,
+was somewhat qualified by the complimentary curiosity which such
+conduct manifested. Predominant even over this image, however, was
+the conviction of isolation which she felt where she was, and the
+still more painful conviction, that the future was without promise.
+Such thoughts and apprehensions may be natural enough to all young
+persons of active, earnest nature, not permitted to perform; but
+in the bosom of Margaret Cooper they were particularly so. Her mind
+was of a masculine and commanding character, and was ill-satisfied
+with her position and prospect in Charlemont. A quiet, obscure
+village, such as that we have described, held forth no promise for
+a spirit so proud, impatient, and ambitious as hers. She knew the
+whole extent of knowledge which it contained, and all its acquisitions
+and resources--she had sounded its depths, and traced all its
+shallows. The young women kept no pace with her own progress--they
+were good, silly girls enough--a chattering, playful set, whom
+small sports could easily satisfy, and who seemed to have no care,
+and scarce a hope, beyond the hilly limits of their homestead; and
+as for the young men--they were only suited to the girls, such as
+they were, and could never meet the demand of such an intellect as
+hers.
+
+This lofty self-estimate, which was in some sense just, necessarily
+gave a tone to her language and a coloring to all her thoughts,
+such as good sense and amiability should equally strive to suppress
+and conceal--unless, as in the case of Margaret Cooper, the individual
+herself was without due consciousness of their presence. It had the
+effect of discouraging and driving from her side many a good-natured
+damsel, who would have loved to condole with her, and might have
+been a pleasant companion. The young women regarded her with some
+dislike in consequence of her self-imposed isolation--and the
+young men with some apprehension. Her very knowledge of books,
+which infinitely surpassed that of all her sex within the limits
+of Charlemont, was also an object of some alarm. It had been her
+fortune, whether well or ill may be a question, to inherit from
+her father a collection, not well chosen, upon which her mind had
+preyed with an appetite as insatiate as it was undiscriminating.
+They had taught her many things, but among these neither wisdom nor
+patience was included;--and one of the worst lessons which she had
+learned, and which they had contributed in some respects to teach,
+was discontent with her condition--a discontent which saddened, if
+it did not embitter, her present life, while it left the aspects
+of the future painfully doubtful, even to her own eye.
+
+She was fatherless, and had been already taught some of those rude
+lessons which painfully teach dependence; but such lessons, which
+to most others would have brought submission, only provoked her to
+resistance. Her natural impetuosity of disposition, strengthened
+by her mother's idolatrous indulgence, increased the haughtiness
+of her character; and when, to these influences, we add that
+her surviving parent was poor, and suffered from privations which
+were unfelt by many of their neighbors, it may be easily conceived
+that a temper and mind such as we have described those of Margaret
+Cooper--ardent, commanding, and impatient, hourly found occasion,
+even in the secluded village where she dwelt, for the exercise of
+moods equally adverse to propriety and happiness. Isolated from the
+world by circumstances, she doubly exiled herself from its social
+indulgences, by the tyrannical sway of a superior will, strengthened
+and stimulated by an excitable and ever feverish blood; and, as
+we find her now, wandering sad and sternly by the brookside, afar
+from the sports and humbler sources of happiness, which gentler
+moods left open to the rest, so might she customarily be found, at
+all hours, when it was not absolutely due to appearances that she
+should be seen among the crowds.
+
+We will not now seek to pursue her musings and trace them out to
+their conclusions, nor will it be necessary that we should do more
+than indicate their character. That they were sad and solemn as
+usual--perhaps humbling--may be gathered from the fact that a big
+tear might have been seen, long gathering in her eye;--the next
+moment she brushed off the intruder with an impatience of gesture,
+that plainly showed how much her proud spirit resented any such
+intrusion. The tear dispersed the images which had filled her
+contemplative mood, and rising from her sylvan seat, she prepared
+to move forward, when a voice calling at some little distance,
+drew her attention. Giving a hasty glance in the direction of the
+sound, she beheld a young man making his way through the woods, and
+approaching her with rapid footsteps. His evident desire to reach
+her, did not, however, prompt her to any pause in her own progress;
+but, as if satisfied with the single glance which she gave him, and
+indifferent utterly to his object, she continued on her way, nor
+stopped for an instant, nor again looked back, until his salutation,
+immediately behind her, compelled her attention and answer.
+
+"Margaret--Miss Cooper!" said the speaker, who was a young rustic,
+probably twenty or twenty-one years of age, of tall, good person,
+a handsome face, which was smooth, though of dark complexion, and
+lightened by an eye of more than ordinary size and intelligence. His
+tones were those of one whose sensibilities were fine and active,
+and it would not have called for much keen observation to have
+seen that his manner, in approaching and addressing the maiden,
+was marked with some little trepidation. She, on the contrary,
+seemed too familiar with his homage, or too well satisfied of his
+inferiority, to deign much attention to his advances. She answered
+his salutation coldly, and was preparing to move forward, when his
+words again called for her reluctant notice.
+
+"I have looked for you, Margaret, full an hour. Mother sent me
+after you to beg that you will come there this evening. Old Jenks
+has come up from the river, and brought a store of fine things--there's
+a fiddle for Ned, and Jason Lightner has a flute, and I--I have a
+small lot of books, Margaret, that I think will please you."
+
+"I thank you, William Hinkley, and thank your mother, but I can
+not come this evening."
+
+"But why not, Margaret?--your mother's coming--she promised for you
+too, but I thought you might not get home soon enough to see her,
+and so I came out to seek you."
+
+"I am very sorry you took so much trouble, William, for I cannot
+come this evening."
+
+"But why not, Margaret? You have no other promise to go elsewhere
+have you?"
+
+"None," was the indifferent reply.
+
+"Then--but, perhaps, you are not well, Margaret?"
+
+"I am quite well, I thank you, William Hinkley, but I don't feel
+like going out this evening. I am not in the humor."
+
+Already, in the little village of Charlemont, Margaret Cooper
+was one of the few who were permitted to indulge in humors, and
+William Hinkley learned the reason assigned for her refusal, with
+an expression of regret and disappointment, if not of reproach.
+An estoppel, which would have been so conclusive in the case of
+a city courtier, was not sufficient, however, to satisfy the more
+frank and direct rustic, and he proceeded with some new suggestions,
+in the hope to change her determination.
+
+"But you'll be so lonesome at home, Margaret, when your mother's
+with us. She'll be gone before you can get back, and--"
+
+"I'm never lonesome, William, at least I'm never so well content
+or so happy as when I'm alone," was the self-satisfactory reply.
+
+"But that's so strange, Margaret. It's so strange that you should
+be different from everybody else. I often wonder at it, Margaret;
+for I know none of the other girls but love to be where there's a
+fiddle, and where there's pleasant company. It's so pleasant to be
+where everybody's pleased; and then, Margaret, where one can talk
+so well as you, and of so many subjects, it's a greater wonder
+still that you should not like to be among the rest."
+
+"I do not, however, William," was the answer in more softened
+tones. There was something in this speech of her lover, that found
+its way through the only accessible avenues of her nature. It was
+a truth, which she often repeated to herself with congratulatory
+pride, that she had few feelings or desires in common with the
+crowd.
+
+"It is my misfortune," she continued, "to care very little for
+the pastimes you speak of; and as for the company, I've no doubt
+it will be very pleasant for those who go, but to me it will
+afford very little pleasure. Your mother must therefore excuse me,
+William:--I should be a very dull person among the rest."
+
+"She will be so very sorry, Margaret--and Ned, whose new fiddle
+has just come, and Jason Lightner, with his flute. They all spoke
+of you and look for you above all, to hear them this evening. They
+will be so disappointed."
+
+William Hinkley spoke nothing of his own disappointment, but it was
+visible enough in his blank countenance, and sufficiently audible
+in the undisguised faltering of his accents.
+
+"I do not think they will be so much disappointed, William Hinkley.
+They have no reason to be, as they have no right to look for me
+in particular. I have very little acquaintance with the young men
+you speak of."
+
+"Why, Margaret, they live alongside of you--and I'm sure you've met
+them a thousand times in company," was the response of the youth,
+uttered in tones more earnest than any he had yet employed in the
+dialogue, and with something of surprise in his accents.
+
+"Perhaps so; but that makes them no intimates of mine, William
+Hinkley. They may be very good young men, and, indeed, so far as
+I know, they really are; but that makes no difference. We find our
+acquaintances and our intimates among those who are congenial, who
+somewhat resemble us in spirit, feeling, and understanding."
+
+"Ah, Margaret!" said her rustic companion with a sigh, which amply
+testified to the humility of his own self-estimate, and of the
+decline of his hope which came with it--"ah, Margaret, if that
+be the rule, where are you going to find friends and intimates in
+Charlemont?"
+
+"Where!" was the single word spoken by the haughty maiden, as her
+eye wandered off to the cold tops of the distant hills along which
+the latest rays of falling sunlight, faint and failing, as they fell,
+imparted a hue, which though bright, still as it failed to warm,
+left an expression of October sadness to the scene, that fitly
+harmonized with the chilling mood under which she had spoken
+throughout the interview.
+
+"I don't think, Margaret," continued the lover, finding courage as
+he continued, "that such a rule is a good one. I know it can't be
+a good one for happiness. There's many a person that never will meet
+his or her match in this world, in learning and understanding--and
+if they won't look on other persons with kindness, because they
+are not altogether equal to them, why there's a chance that they'll
+always be solitary and sad. It's a real blessing, I believe, to have
+great sense, but I don't see, that because one has great sense,
+that one should not think well and kindly of those who have little,
+provided they be good, and are willing to be friendly. Now, a good
+heart seems to be the very best thing that nature can give us;
+and I know, Margaret, that there's no two better hearts in all
+Charlemont--perhaps in all the world, though I won't say that--than
+cousin Ned Hinkley, and Jason Lightner, and--"
+
+"I don't deny their merits and their virtues, and their goodness
+of heart, William Hinkley," was the answer of the maiden--"I only
+say that the possession of these qualities gives them no right to
+claim my sympathies or affection. These claims are only founded upon
+congeniality of character and mind, and without this congeniality,
+there can be no proper, no lasting intimacy between persons. They
+no doubt, will find friends between whom and themselves, this
+congeniality exists. I, on the other hand, must be permitted to find
+mine, after my own ideas, and as I best can. But if I do not--the
+want of them gives me no great concern. I find company enough, and
+friends enough, even in these woods, to satisfy the desires of my
+heart at present; I am not anxious to extend my acquaintance or
+increase the number of my intimates."
+
+William Hinkley, who had become somewhat warmed by the argument,
+could have pursued the discussion somewhat further; but the tones
+and manner of his companion, to say nothing of her words, counselled
+him to forbear. Still, he was not disposed altogether to give up
+his attempts to secure her presence for the evening party.
+
+"But if you don't come for the company, Margaret, recollect the
+music. Even if Ned Hinkley was a perfect fool, which he is not,
+and Jason Lightner were no better,--nobody can say that they are
+not good musicians. Old Squire Bee says there's not in all Kentucky
+a better violinist than Ned, and Jason's flute is the sweetest
+sound that ear ever listened to along these hills. If you don't care
+anything for the players, Margaret, I'm sure you can't be indifferent
+to their music; and I know they are anything but indifferent to
+what you may think about it. They will play ten times as well if
+you are there; and I'm sure, Margaret, I shall be the last"--here
+the tone of the speaker's voice audibly faltered--"I shall be the
+very last to think it sweet if you are not there."
+
+But the words and faltering accents of the lover equally failed in
+subduing the inflexible, perverse mood of the haughty maiden. Her
+cold denial was repeated; and with looks that did not fail to speak
+the disappointment of William Hinkley, he attended her back to the
+village. Their progress was marked by coldness on the one hand, and
+decided sadness on the other. The conversation was carried on in
+monosyllables only, on the part of Margaret, while timidity and
+a painful hesitancy marked the language of her attendant. But a
+single passage may be remembered of all that was said between the
+two, ere they separated at the door of the widow Cooper.
+
+"Did you see the two strangers, Margaret, that passed through
+Charlemont this afternoon?"
+
+The cheeks of the maiden became instantly flushed, and the rapid
+utterance of her reply in the affirmative, denoted an emotion which
+the jealous instincts of the lover readily perceived. A cold chill,
+on the instant, pervaded the veins of the youth; and that night
+he did not hear, any more than Margaret Cooper, the music of his
+friends. He was present all the time and he answered their inquiries
+as usual; but his thoughts were very far distant, and somehow or
+other, they perpetually mingled up the image of the young traveller,
+whom he too had seen, with that of the proud woman, whom he was
+not yet sure that he unprofitably worshipped.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIMPLICITY AND THE SERPENT.
+
+
+
+
+
+The mirth and music of Charlemont were enjoyed by others, but not
+by Margaret Cooper. The resolution not to share in the pleasures
+of the young around her, which she showed to her rustic lover, was
+a resolution firmly persevered in throughout the long summer which
+followed. Her wayward mood shut out from her contemplation the only
+sunshine of the place; and her heart, brooding over the remote,
+if not the impossible, denied itself those joys which were equally
+available and nigh. Her lonesome walks became longer in the forests,
+and later each evening grew the hour of her return to the village.
+Her solitude daily increased, as the youth, who really loved her
+with all the ardency of a first passion, and who regarded her at
+the same time with no little veneration for those superior gifts
+of mind and education which, it was the general conviction in
+Charlemont, that she possessed, became, at length, discouraged in a
+pursuit which hitherto had found nothing but coldness and repulse.
+Not that he ceased to love--nay, he did not cease entirely
+to hope. What lover ever did? He fondly ascribed to the object of
+his affections a waywardness of humor, which he fancied would pass
+away after a season, and leave her mind to the influence of a more
+sober and wholesome judgment. Perhaps, too, like many other youth
+in like circumstances, he did not always see or feel the caprice
+of which he was the victim. But for this fortunate blindness, many
+a fair damsel would lose her conquest quite as suddenly as it was
+made.
+
+But the summer passed away, and the forest put on the sere and
+sombre robes of autumn, and yet no visible change--none at least
+more favorable to the wishes of William Hinkley--took place in the
+character and conduct of the maiden. Her mind, on the contrary,
+seemed to take something of its hue from the cold sad tones of the
+forest. The serious depth of expression in her dark eyes seemed
+to deepen yet more, and become yet more concentrated--their glance
+acquired a yet keener intentness--an inflexibility of direction--which
+suffered them seldom to turn aside from those moody contemplations,
+which had made her, for a long time, infinitely prefer to gaze upon
+the rocks, and woods, and waters, than upon the warm and wooing
+features of humanity.
+
+At distance the youth watched and sometimes followed her, and
+when, with occasional boldness, he would draw nigh to her secret
+wanderings, a cold fear filled his heart, and he shrunk back with
+all the doubt and dread of some guilty trespasser. But his doubt,
+and we may add, his dread also, was soon to cease entirely, in the
+complete conviction of his hopelessness. The day and the fate were
+approaching, in the person of one, to whom a natural instinct had
+already taught him to look with apprehension, and whose very first
+appearance had inspired him with antipathy.
+
+What a strange prescience, in some respects, has the devoted and
+watchful heart that loves! William Hinkley, had seen but for a
+single instant, the face of that young traveller, who has already
+been introduced to us, and that instant was enough to awaken his
+dislike--nay, more, his hostility. Yet no villager in Charlemont
+but would have told you, that, of all the village, William Hinkley
+was the most gentle, the most generous--the very last to be moved
+by bad passions, by jealousy or hate.
+
+The youth whom we have seen going down with his uncle to the great
+valley of the Mississippi, was now upon his return. He was now
+unaccompanied by the benignant senior with whom we first made his
+acquaintance. He had simply attended the old bachelor, from whom
+he had considerable expectations, to his plantation, in requital
+of the spring visit which the latter had paid to his relatives in
+Kentucky; and having spent the summer in the southwest, was about
+to resume his residence, and the profession of the law, in that
+state.  We have seen that, however he might have succeeded in
+disguising his true feelings from his uncle, he was not unmoved by
+the encounter with Margaret Cooper, on the edge of the village. He
+now remembered the casual suggestion of the senior, which concluded
+their discussion on the subject of her beauty; and he resolved to
+go aside from his direct path, and take Charlemont in the route of
+his return.  Not that he himself needed a second glance to convince
+him of that loveliness which, in his wilfulness, he yet denied.
+He was free to acknowledge to himself that Margaret Cooper was one
+of the noblest and most impressive beauties he had ever seen. The
+very scorn that spoke in all her features, the imperious fires that
+kindled in her eyes, were better calculated than any more gentle
+expressions, to impose upon one who was apt to be skeptical on the
+subject of ordinary beauties. The confidence and consciousness of
+superiority, which too plainly spoke out in the features of Margaret,
+seemed to deny to his mind the privilege of doubting or discussing
+her charms--a privilege upon which no one could have been more apt
+to insist than himself. This seeming denial, while it suggested to
+him ideas of novelty, provoked his curiosity and kindled his pride.
+The haughty glance with which she encountered his second approach,
+aroused his vanity, and a latent desire arose in his heart, to
+overcome one who had shown herself so premature in her defiance.
+We will not venture to assert that the young traveller had formed
+any very deliberate designs of conquest, but, it may be said, as well
+here as elsewhere, that his self-esteem was great; and accustomed
+to easy conquests among the sex, in the region where he dwelt, it
+was only necessary to inflame his vanity, to stimulate him to the
+exercise of all his arts.
+
+It was about noon, on one of those bright, balmy days, early in
+October, when "the bridal of the earth and sky," in the language of
+the good old Herbert, is going on--when, the summer heats subdued,
+there is yet nothing either cold, or repulsive in the atmosphere;
+and the soft breathing from the southwest has just power enough to
+stir the flowers and disperse their scents; that our young traveller
+was joined in his progress towards Charlemont, by a person mounted
+like himself and pursuing a similar direction.
+
+At the first glance the youth distinguished him as one of the
+homely forest preachers of the methodist persuasion, who are the
+chief agents and pioneers of religion in most of the western woods.
+His plain, unstudied garments all of black, rigid and unfashionable;
+his pale, demure features, and the general humility of his air and
+gesture, left our young skeptic little reason to doubt of this;
+and when the other expressed his satisfaction at meeting with
+a companion at last, after a long and weary ride without one, the
+tone of his expressions, the use of biblical phraseology, and the
+monotonous solemnity of his tones, reduced the doubts of the youth
+to absolute certainty. At first, with the habitual levity of the
+young and skeptical, he congratulated himself upon an encounter
+which promised to afford him a good subject for quizzing; but a
+moment's reflection counselled him to a more worldly policy, and he
+restrained his natural impulse in order that he might first sound
+the depths of the preacher, and learn in what respect he might be
+made subservient to his own purposes. He had already learned from
+the latter that he was on his way to Charlemont, of which place
+he seemed to have some knowledge; and the youth, in an instant,
+conceived the possibility of making him useful in procuring for
+himself a favorable introduction to the place. With this thought,
+he assumed the grave aspect and deliberate enunciation of his
+companion, expressed himself equally gratified to meet with a person
+who, if he did not much mistake, was a divine, and concluded his
+address by the utterance of one of those pious commonplaces which
+are of sufficiently easy acquisition, and which at once secured
+him the unscrupulous confidence of his companion.
+
+"Truly, it gladdens me, sir," said the holy man in reply, "to meet
+with one, as a fellow-traveller in these lonesome ways, who hath a
+knowledge of God's grace and the blessings which he daily sheddeth,
+even as the falling of the dews, upon a benighted land. It is my
+lot, and I repine not that such it is, to be for ever a wayfarer,
+in the desert where there are but few fountains to refresh the
+spirit. When I say desert, young gentleman, I speak not in the
+literal language of the world, for truly it were a most sinful
+denial of God's bounty were I to say, looking round upon the mighty
+forests through which I pass, and upon the rich soil over which
+I travel, that my way lies not through a country covered, thrice
+covered, with the best worldly bounties of the Lord. But it is
+a moral desert which my speech would signify. The soul of man is
+here lacking the blessed fountains of the truth--the mind of man
+here lacketh the holy and joy-shedding lights of the spirit; and
+it rejoiceth me, therefore, when I meet with one, like thyself,
+in whose language I find a proof that thou hast neither heard the
+word with idle ears, nor treasured it in thy memory with unapplying
+mind. May I ask of thee, my young friend, who thou art, and by
+what name I shall call thee?--not for the satisfaction of an idle
+curiosity, to know either thy profession or thy private concerns,
+but that I may the better speak to thee in our conference
+hereafter, Thou hast rightly conjectured as to my calling--and my
+own name, which is one unknown to most even in these forests, is
+John Cross--I come of a family in North Carolina, which still abide
+in that state, by the waters of the river Haw. Perhaps, if thou
+hast ever travelled in those parts, thou hast happened upon some
+of my kindred, which are very numerous."
+
+"I have never, reverend sir, travelled in those parts," said the
+youth, with commendable gravity, "but I have heard of the Cross
+family, which I believe, as you say, to be very numerous--both male
+and female."
+
+"Yea, I have brothers and sisters an equal number; I have aunts and
+uncles a store, and it has been the blessing of God so to multiply
+and increase every member thereof, that each of my brothers, in
+turn, hath a goodly flock, in testimony of his favors. I, alone,
+of all my kindred, have neither wife nor child, and I seem as one
+set apart for other ties, and other purposes."
+
+"Ah, sir," returned the other, quickly, and with a slyness of
+expression which escaped the direct and unsuspecting mind of the
+preacher, "but if you are denied the blessings which are theirs,
+you have your part in the great family of the world. If you have
+neither wife nor child of your own loins, yet, I trust, you have
+an abiding interest in the wives and children of all other men."
+
+"I were but an unworthy teacher of the blessed word, had I not,"
+was the simple answer. "Verily, all that I teach are my children;
+there is not one crying to me for help, to whom I do not hasten
+with the speed of a father flying to bring succor to his young. I
+trust in God, that I have not made a difference between them; that
+I heed not one to the forfeit or suffering of the other; and for
+this impartial spirit toward the flock intrusted to my charge,
+do I pray, as well as for the needful strength of body and soul,
+through which my duties are to be done. But thou hast not yet spoken
+thy name, or my ears have failed to receive it."
+
+There was some little hesitation on the part of the youth before
+he answered this second application; and a less unheeding observer
+than his fellow-traveller, might have noticed an increasing warmth
+of hue upon his cheek, while he was uttering his reply:--
+
+"I am called Alfred Stevens," he replied at length, the color
+increasing upon his cheek even after the words were spoken. But
+they were spoken. The falsehood was registered against him beyond
+recall, though, of course, without startling the doubts or suspicions
+of his companion.
+
+"Alfred Stevens; there are many Stevenses: I have known several
+and sundry. There is a worthy family of that name by the waters of
+the Dan."
+
+"You will find them, I suspect, from Dan to Beersheba," responded
+the youth with a resumption of his former levity.
+
+"Truly, it may be so. The name is of good repute. But what is thy
+calling, Alfred Stevens? Methinks at thy age thou shouldst have
+one."
+
+"So I have, reverend sir," replied the other; "my calling heretofore
+has been that of the law. But it likes me not, and I think soon to
+give it up."
+
+"Thou wilt take to some other then. What other hast thou chosen; or
+art thou like those unhappy youths, by far too many in our blessed
+country, whom fortune hath hurt by her gifts, and beguiled into
+idleness and sloth?"
+
+"Nay, not so, reverend sir; the gifts of fortune have been somewhat
+sparing in my case, and I am even now conferring with my own thoughts
+whether or not to take to school-keeping. Nay, perhaps, I should
+incline to something better, if I could succeed in persuading myself
+of my own worthiness in a vocation which, more than all others,
+demands a pure mind with a becoming zeal. The law consorts not
+with my desires--it teaches selfishness, rather than self-denial;
+and I have already found that some of its duties demand the blindness
+and the silence of that best teacher from within, the watchful and
+unsleeping conscience."
+
+"Thou hast said rightly, Alfred Stevens; I have long thought that
+the profession of the law hardeneth the heart, and blindeth the
+conscience. Thou wilt do well to leave it, as a craft that leads
+to sin, and makes the exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly
+understand thee, thou lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation
+for which thy spirit yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise,
+and gird up thy loins; advance and falter not;--the field is open,
+and though the victory brings thee no worldly profit, and but
+little worldly honor, yet the reward is eternal, and the interest
+thereof, unlike the money which thou puttest out to usury in the
+hands of men, never fails to be paid, at the very hour of its due,
+from the unfailing treasury of Heaven. Verily, I rejoice, Alfred
+Stevens, that I have met with thee to-day. I had feared that the
+day had been lost to that goodly labor, to which all my days have
+been given for seventeen years, come the first sabbath in the next
+November. But what thou hast said, awakens hope in my soul that such
+will not be the case. Let not my counsels fail thee, Alfred;--let
+thy zeal warm; let thy spirit work within thee, and thy words
+kindle, in the service of the Lord. How it will rejoice me to
+see thee taking up the scrip and the staff and setting forth for
+the wildernesses of the Mississippi, of Arkansas, and Texas, far
+beyond;--bringing the wild man of the frontier, and the red savage,
+into the blessed fold and constant company of the Lord Jesus, to
+whom all praise!"
+
+"It were indeed a glorious service," responded the young stranger--whom
+we shall proceed, hereafter, to designate by the name by which he
+has called himself. He spoke musingly, and with a gravity that was
+singularly inflexible--"it were indeed a glorious service. Let me
+see, there were thousands of miles to traverse before one might reach
+the lower Arkansas; and I reckon, Mr. Cross, the roads are mighty
+bad after you pass the Mississippi--nay, even in the Mississippi,
+through a part of which territory I have gone only this last summer,
+there is a sad want of causeways, and the bridges are exceedingly
+out of repair. There is one section of near a hundred miles,
+which lies between the bluffs of Ashibiloxi, and the far creek of
+Catahoula, that was a shame and reproach to the country and the
+people thereof. What, then, must be the condition of the Texas
+territory, beyond? and, if I err not, the Cumanchees are a race
+rather given to destroy than to build up. The chance is that the
+traveller in their country might have to swim his horse over most
+of the watercourses, and where he found a bridge, it were perhaps
+a perilous risk to cross it. Even then he might ride fifty miles
+a day, before he should see the smokes which would be a sign of
+supper that night."
+
+"The greater the glory--the greater the glory, Alfred Stevens. The
+toil and the peril, the pain and the privation, in a, good cause,
+increase the merit of the performance in the eyes of the Lord.
+What matters the roads and the bridges, the length of the way, or
+the sometimes lack of those comforts of the flesh, which are craved
+only at the expense of the spirit, and to the great delay of our
+day of conquest. These wants are the infirmities of the human,
+which dissipate and disappear, the more few they become, and the
+less pressing in their complaint. Shake thyself loose from them,
+Alfred Stevens, and thy way henceforth is perfect freedom."
+
+"Alas! this is my very weakness, Mr. Cross:--it was because of these
+very infirmities, that I had doubt of my own worthiness to take up
+the better vocation which is yet my desire. I am sadly given to
+hunger and thirst toward noon and evening; and the travel of a long
+day makes me so weary at night, that I should say but a hurried
+grace before meal, and make an even more hurried supper after it.
+Nay, I have not yet been able to divest myself of a habit which I
+acquired in my boyhood; and I need at times, throughout the day,
+a mouthful of something stronger than mere animal food, to sustain
+the fainting and feeble flesh and keep my frame from utter exhaustion.
+I dare not go upon the road, even for the brief journey of a single
+day, without providing myself beforehand with a supply of a certain
+beverage, such as is even now contained within this vessel, and
+which is infallible against sinking of the the spirits, faintings
+of the frame, disordered nerves, and even against flatulence and
+indigestion. If, at any time, thou shouldst suffer from one or the
+other of these infirmities, Mr. Cross, be sure there is no better
+medicine for their cure than this."
+
+The speaker drew from his bosom a little flask, such as is sufficiently
+well known to most western travellers, which he held on high, and
+which, to the unsuspecting eyes of the preacher, contained a couple
+of gills or more of a liquid of very innocent complexion.
+
+"Verily, Alfred Stevens, I do myself suffer from some of the
+weaknesses of which thou hast spoken. The sinking of the spirits,
+and the faintness of the frame, are but too often the enemies that
+keep me back from the plough when I would thereto set my hand; and
+that same flatulence--"
+
+"A most frequent disorder in a region where greens and collards
+form the largest dishes on the tables of the people," interrupted
+Stevens, but without changing a muscle of his countenance.
+
+"I do believe as thou say'st, Alfred Stevens, that the disorder comes
+in great part from that cause, though, still, I have my doubts if
+it be not a sort of wind-melancholy, to which people, who preach aloud
+are greatly subject. It is in my case almost always associated with
+a sort of hoarseness, and the nerves of my frame twitch grievously
+at the same periods. If this medicine of thine be sovereign against
+so cruel an affliction, I would crave of thee such knowledge as
+would enable me to get a large supply of it, that I may overcome
+a weakness, which, as I tell thee, oftentimes impairs my ministry,
+and sometimes makes me wholly incapable of fervent preaching. Let
+me smell of it, I pray thee."
+
+"Nay, taste of it, sir--it is just about the time when I find it
+beneficial to partake of it, as a medicine for my own weakness,
+and I doubt not, it will have a powerful effect also upon you. A
+single draught has been found to relieve the worst case of flatulence
+and colic."
+
+"From colic too, I am also a great sufferer," said the preacher as
+he took the flask in his hand, and proceeded to draw the stopper.
+
+"That is also the child of collards," said Stevens, as he watched
+with a quiet and unmoved countenance the proceedings of his
+simple companion, who finding some difficulty in drawing the cork,
+handed it back to the youth. The latter, more practised, was more
+successful, and now returned the open bottle to the preacher.
+
+"Take from it first, the dose which relieves thee, Alfred Stevens,
+that I may know how much will avail in my own case;" and he watched
+curiously, while Stevens, applying the flask to his lips, drew from
+it a draught, which, in western experience of benefits, would have
+been accounted a very moderate potion. This done, he handed it back
+to his companion, who, about to follow his example, asked him:--
+
+"And by what name, Alfred Stevens, do they call this medicine, the
+goodly effect of which thou holdst to be so great?"
+
+Stevens did not immediately reply--not until the preacher had applied
+the bottle to his mouth, and he could see by the distension of his
+throat, that he had imbibed a taste, at least, of the highly-lauded
+medicine. The utterance then, of the single word--"Brandy"--was
+productive of an effect no less ludicrous in the sight of the youth,
+than it was distressing to the mind of his worthy companion. The
+descending liquor was ejected with desperate effort from the throat
+which it had fairly entered--the flask flung from his hands--and
+with choking and gurgling accents, startling eyes, and reddening
+visage, John Cross turned full upon his fellow-traveller, vainly
+trying to repeat, with the accompanying horror of expression which
+he felt, the single spellword, which had produced an effect so
+powerful.
+
+"Bran--bran--brandy!--Alfred Stevens!--thou hast given me poison--the
+soul's poison--the devil's liquor--liquor distilled in the vessels
+of eternal sin. Wherefore hast thou done this? Dost thou not know"--
+
+"Know--know what, Mr. Cross?" replied Stevens, with all the
+astonishment which he could possibly throw into his air, as he
+descended from his horse with all haste to recover his flask, and
+save its remaining contents from loss.
+
+"Call me not mister--call me plain John Cross," replied the
+preacher--in the midst of a second fit of choking, the result of
+his vain effort to disgorge that portion of the pernicious liquid
+which had irretrievably descended into his bowels. With a surprise
+admirably affected, Stevens approached him.
+
+"My dear sir--what troubles you?--what can be the matter? What have
+I done? What is it you fear?"
+
+"That infernal draught--that liquor--I have swallowed of it a mouthful.
+I feel it in me. The sin be upon thy head, Alfred Stevens--why did
+you not tell me, before I drank, that it was the soul's poison?--the
+poison that slays more than the sword or the pestilence;--the
+liquor of the devil, distilled in the vessels of sin--and sent among
+men for the destruction of the soul! I feel it now within me, and
+it burns--it burns like the fires of damnation. Is there no water
+nigh that I may quench my thirst?--Show me, Alfred Stevens, show me
+where the cool waters lie, that I may put out these raging flames."
+
+"There is a branch, if I mistake not, just above us on the road--I
+think I see it glistening among the leaves. Let us ride toward it,
+sir, and it will relieve you."
+
+"Ah, Alfred Stevens, why have you served me thus? Why did you not
+tell me?"
+
+Repeated groans accompanied this apostrophe, and marked every step
+in the progress of the preacher to the little rivulet which trickled
+across the road. John Cross, descended with the rapidity of one
+whose hope hangs upon a minute, and dreads its loss, as equal to
+the loss of life. He straddled the stream and thrust his lips into
+the water, drawing up a quantity sufficient, in the estimation of
+Stevens, to have effectually neutralized the entire contents of
+his flask.
+
+"Blessed water! Blessed water! Holiest beverage! Thou art the
+creation of the Lord, and, next to the waters of eternal life,
+his best gift to undiscerning man. I drink of thee, and I am faint
+no longer. I rise up, strong and refreshed! Ah, my young friend,
+Alfred Stevens, I trust thou didst not mean me harm in giving me
+that poisonous liquor?"
+
+"Far from it, sir, I rather thought to do you a great benefit."
+
+"How couldst thou think to do me benefit by proffering such poison
+to my lips? nay, wherefore dost thou thyself carry it with thee,
+and why dost thou drink of it, as if it were something not hurtful
+as well to the body as the soul? Take my counsel, I pray thee,
+Alfred Stevens, and cast it behind thee for ever. Look not after
+it when thou dost so, with an eye of regret lest thou forfeit
+the merit of thy self-denial. If thou wouldst pursue the higher
+vocation of the brethren, thou must seek for the needful strength
+from a better and purer spirit. But what unhappy teacher could
+have persuaded thee to an indulgence which the good men of all the
+churches agree to regard as so deadly?"
+
+"Nay, Mr. Cross--"
+
+"John Cross, I pray thee; do I not call thee Alfred Stevens?--Mr.
+is a speech of worldly fashion, and becomes not one who should put
+the world and its fashions behind him."
+
+Stevens found it more difficult to comply with this one requisition
+of the preacher, than to pursue a long game of artful and complex
+scheming. He evaded the difficulty by dropping the name entirely.
+
+"You are too severe upon brandy, and upon those who use it. Nay, I
+am not sure, but you do injustice to those who make it. So far from
+its manufacturers being such as you call them, we have unquestionable
+proof that they are very worthy people of a distant but a Christian
+country; and surely you will not deny that we should find a medicine
+for our hurts, and a remedy for our complaints, in a liquor which,
+perhaps, it might be sinful to use as an ordinary beverage. Doctors,
+who have the care of human life, and whose business and desire it
+is to preserve it, nevertheless do sometimes administer poisons to
+their patients, which poisons, though deadly at other times, will,
+in certain diseases and certain conditions of disease, prove of
+only and great good."
+
+"Impossible! I believe it not! I believe not in the good of brandy.
+It is hurtful--it is deadly. It has slain its thousands and its tens
+of thousands--it is worse than the sword and the summer pestilence.
+Many a man have I known to perish from strong drink. In my own
+parts, upon the river Haw, in North Carolina state, I have known
+many. Nay, wherefore should I spare the truth, Alfred Stevens?
+--the very father of my own life, Ezekiel Cross, perished miserably
+from this burning water of sin. I will not hear thee speak of it
+again; and if thou wouldst have me think of thee with favor, as one
+hopeful of the service of the brethren, cast the accursed beverage
+of Satan from thy hands."
+
+The youth, without a word, deliberately emptied tho contents of
+his vessel upon the sands, and the garrulous lips of the preacher
+poured forth as great a flood of speech in congratulation, as he had
+hitherto bestowed in homily. The good, unsuspecting man, did not
+perceive that the liquor thus thrown away, was very small in quantity,
+and that his companion, when the flask was emptied, quietly restored
+it to his bosom. John Cross had obtained a seeming victory, and
+did not care to examine its details.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The concession made by Stevens, and which had produced an effect so
+gratifying upon his companion, was one that involved no sacrifices.
+The animal appetite of the young lawyer was, in truth, comparatively
+speaking, indifferent to the commodity which he discarded; and even
+had it been otherwise, still he was one of those selfish, cool and
+calculating persons, who seem by nature to be perfectly able to
+subdue the claims of the blood, with great ease, whenever any human
+or social policy would appear to render it advisable. The greatest
+concession which he made in the transaction, was in his so readily
+subscribing to that false logic of the day, which reasons against
+the use of the gifts of Providence, because a diseased moral, and
+a failing education, among men, sometimes result in their abuse.
+
+The imperfections of a mode of reasoning so utterly illogical, were
+as obvious to the mind of the young lawyer as to anybody else; and
+the compliance which he exhibited to a requisition which his own
+sense readily assured him was as foolish as it was presumptuous,
+was as degrading to his moral character from the hypocrisy which it
+declared, as it was happy in reference to the small policy by which
+he had been governed. The unsuspecting preacher did not perceive
+the scornful sneer which curled his lips and flashed his eyes,
+by which his own vanity still asserted itself through the whole
+proceeding; or he would not have been so sure that the mantle
+of grace which he deemed to have surely fallen upon the shoulders
+of his companion, was sufficiently large and sound, to cover
+the multitude of sins which it yet enabled the wearer, so far, to
+conceal. Regarding him with all the favor which one is apt to feel
+for the person whom he has plucked as a brand from the burning, the
+soul of John Cross warmed to the young sinner; and it required no
+great effort of the wily Stevens to win from him the history, not
+only of all its own secrets and secret hopes--for these were of but
+small value in the eyes of the worldling--but of all those matters
+which belonged to the little village to which they were trending,
+and the unwritten lives of every dweller in that happy community.
+
+With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the
+testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody
+those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly
+unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand--Stevens
+now propounded his direct inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly
+unconsidered insinuation, by which he drew from the preacher as
+much as he cared to know of the rustic lads and lasses of Charlemont.
+It does not concern our narrative to render the details thus unfolded
+to the stranger. And we will content ourselves, as did the younger
+of the travellers, who placed himself with hearty good will at the
+disposal of the holy man.
+
+"You shall find for me a place of lodging, Mr. Cross, while it
+shall suit me to stay in Charlemont. You have a knowledge of the
+people, and of the world, which I possess not; and it will be better
+that I should give myself up to your guidance. I know that you will
+not bring me to the dwelling of persons not in good repute; and,
+perhaps, I need not remind you that my worldly means are small--I
+must be at little charge wherever I stop."
+
+"Ah, Brother Stevens, worldly goods and worldly wealth are no more
+needed in Charlemont, than they are necessary to the service of the
+blessed Redeemer. With an empty scrip is thy service blest;--God
+sees the pure heart through the threadbare garment. I have friends
+in Charlemont who will be too happy to receive thee in the name of
+the Lord, without money and without price."
+
+The pride of Stevens, which had not shrunk from hypocrisy and
+falsehood, yet recoiled at a suggestion which involved the idea of
+his pecuniary dependence upon strangers, and he replied accordingly;
+though he still disguised his objections under the precious appearance
+of a becoming moral scruple.
+
+"It will not become me, Mr. Cross, to burden the brethren of the
+church for that hospitality which is only due to brethren."
+
+"But thou art in the way of grace--the light is shining upon thee--the
+door is open, and already the voice of the Bridegroom is calling
+from within. Thou wilt become a burning and a shining light--and
+the brethren of the church will rejoice to hail thee among its
+chosen. Shall they hold back their hand when thou art even on the
+threshold?"
+
+"But, Mr. Cross--"
+
+"Call me not Mr., I pray thee. Call me plain John Cross, if it please
+thee not yet to apply to me that sweeter term of loving kindness
+which the flock of God are happy to use in speech one to another.
+If thou wilt call me Brother Cross, my heart shall acknowledge the
+bonds between us, and my tongue shall make answer to thine, in like
+fashion. Oh, Alfred Stevens, may the light shine soon upon thine
+eyes, that thou may'st know for a truth how pleasant it is for
+brethren to dwell together in the peace of of the Lord, and according
+to his law. I will, with God's grace, bring thee to this perfect
+knowledge, for I see the way clear because of the humility which
+thou hast already shown, and thy yielding to the counsels of the
+teacher. As for what thou sayest about charges to the brethren,
+let that give thee no concern. Thou shalt lodge with old Brother
+Hinkley, who is the pattern of good things and of, holiness in
+Charlemont. His house is more like unto the tent of the patriarch
+pitched upon the plain, than the house of the dweller among the
+cities. No lock fastens its doors against the stranger; and the
+heart of the aged man is even more open than the doorway of his
+dwelling. He standeth in the entrance like one looking out for
+him that cometh, and his first word to the messenger of God, is
+'welcome!' Thou shalt soon see the truth of what I say to thee,
+for even now do we look down upon his house in the very midst of
+the village."
+
+If the scruples of Stevens still continued to urge him against
+accepting the hospitality of the old patriarch of whom he had
+received a description at once just and agreeable, the recollection
+of the village-maiden whom he had gone aside from his direct path
+of travel, and made some even greater departures from the truth,
+to see, determined him at length to waive them; particularly when
+he ascertained from his fellow-traveller that he knew of nobody in
+Charlemont who accommodated strangers for money.
+
+Stevens was one of those persons who watch the progress of events,
+and he resolved, with a mental reservation--that seems strange
+enough in the case of one who had shown so little reluctance to say
+and do the thing which he could not maintain or defend--to avail
+himself of some means for requiting, to the uttermost farthing,
+the landlord, to whose hospitality he might be indebted during his
+stay in Charlemont.
+
+Such are the contradictions of character which hourly detect and
+describe the mere worldling--the man lacking in all principle, but
+that which is subservient to his selfish policy. To accept money
+or money's worth from a stranger, seemed mean and humbling to one,
+who did not hesitate, in the promotion of a scheme, which, had
+treachery for its object, to clothe himself in the garments of
+deception, and to make his appearance with a lie festering upon
+his lips. That evening, Alfred Stevens became, with his worthier
+companion, an inmate of the happy dwelling of William Hinkley, the
+elder--a venerable, white-headed father, whose whole life had made
+him worthy of a far higher eulogium than that which John Cross had
+pronounced upon him.
+
+The delight of the family to see their reverend teacher was heartfelt
+and unreserved. A vigorous gripe of the hand, by the elder dragged
+him into the house, and a sentence of unusual length, from his
+better half, assured him of that welcome which the blunter action
+of her venerable husband had already sufficiently declared. Nor
+was the young adventurer who accompanied the preacher, suffered
+to remain long unconsidered. When John Cross had told them who he
+was, or rather when he had declared his spiritual hopes in him--which
+he did with wonderful unction, in a breath--the reception of old
+Hinkley, which had been hospitable enough before, became warm and
+benignant; and Brother Stevens already became the word of salutation,
+whenever the old people desired to distinguish their younger guest.
+
+Brother Stevens, it may be said here, found no difficulty in
+maintaining the character he had assumed. He had, in high degree,
+the great art of the selfish man, and could, when his game required
+it, subdue with little effort, those emotions and impulses, which
+the frank and ardent spirit must speak out or die. He went into the
+house of the hospitable old man, and into the village of Charlemont,
+as if he had gone into the camp of an enemy. He was, indeed, a
+spy, seeking to discover, not the poverty, but the richness of the
+land. His mind, therefore, was like one who has clothed himself
+in armor, placed himself in waiting for the foe, and set all his
+sentinels on the watch. His caution measured every word ere it was
+spoken, every look ere it was shown, every movement ere he suffered
+his limbs to make it. The muscles of his face, were each put under
+curb and chain--the smiles of the lip and the glances of the eyes,
+were all subdued to precision, and permitted to go forth, only
+under special guard and restriction. In tone, look, and manner, he
+strove as nearly as he might to resemble the worthy but simple-minded
+man, who had so readily found a worthy adherent and pupil in him;
+and his efforts at deception might be held to be sufficiently
+successful, if the frank confiding faith of the aged heads of the
+Hinkley family be the fitting test of his experiment.
+
+With them he was soon perfectly at home--his own carriage seemed
+to them wondrously becoming, and the approbation of John Cross was
+of itself conclusive. The preacher was the oracle of the family,
+all of whom were only too happy of his favor not to make large
+efforts to be pleased with those he brought; and in a little while,
+sitting about the friendly fireside, the whole party had become as
+sociable as if they had been "hail fellow! well met," a thousand
+years. Two young girls, children of a relative, and nieces of the
+venerable elder, had already perched themselves upon the knee of
+the stranger, and strove at moments over his neck and shoulder,
+without heeding the occasional sugary reproof of Dame Hinkley,
+which bade them "let Brother Stevens be;" and, already had Brother
+Stevens himself, ventured upon the use of sundry grave saws from
+the holy volume, the fruit of early reading and a retentive memory,
+which not a little helped to maintain his novel pretensions in the
+mind of the brethren, and the worthy teacher, John Cross himself.
+All things promised a long duration to a friendship suddenly begun;
+when William Hinkley, the younger, a youth already introduced to
+the reader, made his appearance within the happy circle. He wore a
+different aspect from all the rest as he recognised in the person
+of Brother Stevens, the handsome stranger, his antipathy to whom,
+at a first glance, months before, seemed almost to have the character
+of a warning instinct. A nearer glance did not serve to lessen his
+hostility.
+
+Our traveller was to the eye of a lover, one, indeed, who promised
+dangerous rivalship, and an intrepid air of confidence which, even
+his assumed character could not enable him to disguise from the
+searching eyes of jealousy, contributed to strengthen the dislike
+of the youth for a person who seemed so perfectly sure of his
+ground. Still, William Hinkley behaved as a civil and well-bred
+youth might be expected to behave. He did not suffer his antipathy
+to put on the aspect of rudeness; he was grave and cold, but
+respectful; and though he did not "be-brother" the stranger, he yet
+studiously subdued his tones to mildness, when it became necessary,
+in the course of the evening meal, that he should address him.
+Few words, however, were exchanged between the parties. If Hinkley
+beheld an enemy to his heart's hopes in Stevens, the latter was
+sufficiently well-read in the human heart to discover quite as
+soon, that the rustic was prepared to see in himself any character
+but that of a friend. The unwillingness with which Hinkley heard his
+suggestions--the absence of all freedom and ease in his deportment,
+toward himself, so different from the manner of the youth when
+speaking or listening to all other persons; the occasional gleam
+of jealous inquiry and doubt within his eye, and the utter lack
+of all enthusiasm and warmth in his tones while he spoke to him,
+satisfied Stevens, that he, of all the household of his hospitable
+entertainers, if not actually suspicious of his true character,
+was the one whose suspicions were those most easily to be awakened,
+and who of all others, needed most to be guarded against. It will
+not increase our estimate of the wisdom of the stranger, to learn
+that, with this conviction, he should yet arrogate to himself a
+tone of superiority, while speaking in hearing of the youth.
+
+This was shown in a manner that was particularly galling to a
+high-spirited youth, and one whose prejudices were already awakened
+against the speaker. It was that of a paternal and patronizing
+senior, whose very gentleness and benignity of look and accent,
+seem to arise from a full conviction of the vast difference which
+exists between himself and his hearer. An indignity like this, which
+can not be resented, is one which the young mind feels always most
+anxious to resent. The very difficulties in the way of doing so,
+stimulates the desire. Such was the feeling of William Hinkley.
+With such a feeling it may be conjectured that opportunity was
+not long wanting, or might soon be made, for giving utterance to
+the suppressed fires of anger which were struggling in his heart.
+Days and weeks may elapse, but the antipathy will declare itself
+at last. It would be easier to lock up the mountain torrent after
+the breath of the tornado has torn away its rocky seals, than to
+stifle in the heart that hates, because of its love, the fierce
+fury which these united passions enkindle within it.
+
+In the first hour of their first interview, William Hinkley and
+Alfred Stevens felt that they were mutual foes. In that little space
+of time, the former had but one thought, which, though it changed
+its aspect with each progressive moment, never for an instant changed
+its character. He panted with the hope of redressing himself for
+wrongs which he could not name; for injuries and indignities which
+he knew not how to describe. Stevens had neither done nor said
+anything which might be construed into an offence. And yet, nobody
+knew better than Stevens that he had been offensive. The worthy
+John Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never dreamed of this,
+but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated in the fatherly
+manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as particularly
+favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of such
+unctuous moral delivery.
+
+"Surely," he mused internally, "this is a becoming instrument which
+I have found, for the prosecution of the good work. He will bear
+the word like one sent forth to conquer. He will bind and loose
+with a strong hand. He will work wondrous things!"
+
+Not unlike these were the calculations of old Hinkley, as he
+hearkened to the reverend reasonings and the solemn commonplaces
+of the stranger. Stevens, like most recent converts, was the most
+uncompromising enemy of those sins from which he professed to have
+achieved with difficulty his own narrow escape; and finding, from
+the attentive ear of his audience, that he had made a favorable
+impression, he proceeded to manufacture for them his religious
+experience; an art which his general information, and knowledge of
+the world enabled him to perform without much difficulty.
+
+But the puritan declamation which pleased all the rest, disgusted
+young Hinkley, and increased his dislike for the declaimer. There
+was too much of the worldling in the looks, dress, air, and manner
+of Stevens, to satisfy the rustic of his sincerity. Something of
+his doubts had their source, without question, in the antipathy
+which he had formed against him; but William Hinkley was not without
+keen, quick, observing, and justly discriminating faculties, and much
+of his conclusions were the due consequence of a correct estimate
+of the peculiarities which we have named. Stevens, he perceived,
+declared his experiences of religion, with the air of one who
+expects the congratulations of his audience. The humility which
+thinks only of the acquisition itself, as the very perfection of
+human conquest, was wanting equally to his language and deportment.
+The very details which he gave, were ostentatious; and the gracious
+smiles which covered his lips as he concluded, were those of the
+self-complacent person, who feels that he has just been saying
+those good things, which, of necessity, must command the applause
+of his hearers.
+
+A decent pause of half an hour after the supper was finished, which
+was spent by the jealous youth in utter silence, and he then rose
+abruptly and hurried from the apartment, leaving the field entirely
+to his opponent. He proceeded to the house of his neighbor and
+cousin, Ned Hinkley, but without any hope of receiving comfort
+from his communion. Ned was a lively, thoughtless, light-hearted
+son of the soil, who was very slow to understand sorrows of any
+kind; and least of all, those which lie in the fancy of a dreaming
+and a doubtful lover. At this moment, when the possession of a new
+violin absorbed all his thoughts, his mind was particularly obtuse
+on the subject of sentimental grievances, and the almost voluptuous
+delight which filled his eyes when William entered his chamber,
+entirely prevented him from seeing the heavy shadow which overhung
+the brows of the latter.
+
+"What, back again, William? Why, you're as changeable as the last
+suit of a green lizard. When I asked you to stop, and hear me play
+'Cross-possum,' and 'Criss-cross,' off you went without giving me
+a civil answer. I've a mind now to put up the fiddle and send your
+ears to bed supperless. How would you like that, old fellow? but
+I'll be good-natured. You shall have it, though you don't deserve
+it; she's in prime tune, and the tones--only hear that, Bill--there.
+Isn't she delicious?"
+
+And as the inconsiderate cousin poured out his warmest eulogy of the
+favorite instrument, his right hand flourished the bow in air, in
+a style that would have cheered the heart of Jean Crapaud himself,
+and then brought it over the cat-gut in a grand crash, that sounded
+as harshly in the ears of his morbid visitor, as if the two worlds
+had suddenly come together with steam-engine velocity. He clapped
+his hands upon the invaded organs, and with something like horror
+in his voice, cried out his expostulations.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Ned, don't stun a body with your noise."
+
+"Noise! Did you say noise, Bill Hinkley--noise?"
+
+"Yes. noise," answered the other with some peevishness in his accents.
+The violinist looked at him incredulously, while he suffered the
+point of the fiddle-bow to sink on a line with the floor; then,
+after a moment's pause, he approached his companion, wearing in his
+face the while, an appearance of the most grave inquiry, and when
+sufficiently nigh, he suddenly brought the bow over the strings
+of the instrument, immediately in William's ears, with a sharp and
+emphatic movement, producing an effect to which the former annoying
+crash, might well have been thought a very gentle effusion. This
+was followed by an uncontrollable burst of laughter from the merry
+lips of the musician.
+
+"There--that's what I call a noise, Bill. Sweet Sall CAN make a
+noise when I worry her into it; she's just like other women in that
+respect; she'll be sure to squall out if you don't touch her just
+in the right quarter. But the first time she did NOT go amiss, and
+as for stunning you--but what's the matter? Where's the wind now?"
+
+"Nothing--only I don't want to be deafened with such a clatter."
+
+"Something's wrong, Bill, I know it. You look now for all the
+world like a bottle of sour son, with the cork out, and ready to
+boil over. As for Sall making a noise the first time, that's all
+a notion, and a very strange one. She was as sweet-spoken then as
+she was when you left me before supper. The last time, I confess,
+I made her squall out on purpose. But what of that? you are not
+the man to get angry with a little fun!"
+
+"No, I'm not angry with you, Ned--I am not angry with anybody; but
+just now, I would rather not hear the fiddle. Put it up."
+
+"There!" said the other good-naturedly, as he placed the favorite
+instrument in its immemorial case in the corner. "There; and now
+Bill, untie the pack, and let's see the sort of wolf-cubs you've
+got to carry; for there's no two horns to a wild bull, if something
+hasn't gored you to-night."
+
+"You're mistaken, Ned--quite mistaken--quite!"
+
+"Deuse a bit! I know you too well, Bill Hinkley, so it's no use
+to hush up now. Out with it, and don't be sparing, and if there's
+any harm to come, I'm here, just as ready to risk a cracked crown
+for you, as if the trouble was my own. I'd rather fiddle than fight,
+it's true; but when there's any need for it, you know I can do one
+just as well as the other; and can go to it with just as much good
+humor. So show us the quarrel."
+
+"There's no quarrel. Ned," said the other, softened by the frank
+and ready feeling which his companion showed; "but I'm very foolish
+in some things, and don't know how it is. I'm not apt to take
+dislikes, but there's a man come to our house with John Cross, this
+evening, that I somehow dislike very much."
+
+"A man! What's he like? Anything like Joe Richards? That was a
+fellow that I hated mightily. I never longed to lick any man but Joe
+Richards, and him I longed to lick three times, though you know I
+never got at him more than twice. It's a great pity he got drowned,
+for I owe him a third licking, and don't feel altogether right,
+since I know no sort of way to pay it. But if this man's anything
+like Joe, it may be just the same if I give it to HIM. Now--"
+
+"He's nothing like Richards," said the other. "He's a taller and
+better-looking man."
+
+"If he's nothing like Joe, what do you want to lick him for?" said
+the single-minded musician, with a surprise in his manner, which
+was mingled with something like rebuke.
+
+"I have expressed no such wish, Ned; you are too hasty; and if
+I did wish to whip him, I don't think I should trouble you or any
+man to help me. If I could not do it myself, I should give it up
+as a bad job, without calling in assistants."
+
+"Oh, you're a spunky follow--a real colt for hard riding," retorted
+the other with a good-natured mock in his tones and looks; "but if
+you don't want to lick the fellow, how comes it you dislike him?
+It seems to me if a chap behaved so as to make me dislike him, it
+wouldn't be an easy matter to keep my hands off him. I'd teach him
+how to put me into a bad humor, or I'd never touch violin again."
+
+"This man's a parson, I believe."
+
+"A parson--that's a difficulty. It is not altogether right to lick
+parsons, because they're not counted fighting people. But there's
+a mighty many on 'em that licking would help. No wonder you dislike
+the fellow, though if he comes with John Cross, he shouldn't
+be altogether so bad. Now, John Cross IS a good man. He's good,
+and he's good-humored. He don't try to set people's teeth on edge
+against all the pleasant things of this world, and he can laugh,
+and talk, and sing, like other people. Many's the time he's asked
+me, of his own mouth, to play the violin; and I've seen his little
+eyes caper again, when sweet Sall talked out her funniest. If it
+was not so late, I'd go over now and give him a reel or two, and
+then I could take a look at this strange chap, that's set your
+grinders against each other."
+
+The fiddler looked earnestly at the instrument in the corner, his
+features plainly denoting his anxiety to resume the occupation
+which his friends coming had so inopportunely interrupted. William
+Hinkley saw the looks of his cousin, and divined the cause.
+
+"You shall play for me, Ned," he remarked; "you shall give me that
+old highland-reel that you learned from Scotch Geordie. It will
+put me out of my bad humor, I think, and we can go to bed quietly.
+I've come to sleep with you to-night."
+
+"You're a good fellow, Bill; I knew that you couldn't stand it
+long, if Sweet Sall kept a still tongue in her head. That reel's
+the very thing to drive away bad humors, though there's another
+that I learnt from John Blodget, the boat-man, that sounds to me
+the merriest and comicalest thing in the world. It goes--," and here
+the fiddle was put in requisition to produce the required sounds:
+and having got carte blanche, our enthusiastic performer, without
+weariness, went through his whole collection, without once perceiving
+that his comical and merry tunes had entirely failed to change the
+grave, and even gloomy expression which still mantled the face of
+his companion. It was only when in his exhaustion he set down the
+instrument, that he became conscious of William Hinkley's continued
+discomposure.
+
+"Why, Bill, the trouble has given you a bigger bite than I thought
+for. What words did you have with the preacher?"
+
+"None: I don't know that he is a preacher. He speaks only as if he
+was trying to become one."
+
+"What, you hadn't any difference--no quarrel?"
+
+"None."
+
+"And it's only to-night that you've seen him for the first time?"
+
+A flush passed over the grave features of William Hinkley as he heard
+this question, and it was with a hesitating manner and faltering
+accents, that he contrived to tell his cousin of the brief glimpse
+which he had of the same stranger several months before, on that
+occasion, when, in the emotion of Margaret Cooper, replying to
+a similar question, he first felt the incipient seed of jealousy
+planted within his bosom. But this latter incident he forbore to
+reveal to the inquirer; and Ned Hinkley, though certainly endowed
+by nature with sufficient skill to draw forth the very soul of music
+from the instrument on which he played, had no similar power upon
+the secret soul of the person whom he partially examined.
+
+"But 'tis very strange how you should take offence at a man you've
+seen so little; though I have heard before this of people taking
+dislikes at other people the first moment they set eyes on 'em.
+Now, I'm not a person of that sort, unless it was in the case of
+Joe Richards; and him I took a sort of grudge at from the first
+beginning. But even then there was a sort of reason for it; for,
+at the beginning, when Joe came down upon us here in Charlemont,
+he was for riding over people's necks, without so much as asking,
+'by your leave.' He had a way about him that vexed me, though we
+did not change a word."
+
+"And it's that very way that this person has that I don't like,"
+said William Hinkley. "He talks as if he made you, and when you
+talk, he smiles as if he thought you were the very worst work that
+ever went out of his hands. Then, if he has to say anything, be
+it ever so trifling, he says it just as if he was telling you that
+the world was to come to an end the day after to-morrow."
+
+"Just the same with Joe Richards. I never could get at him but
+twice; though I give him then a mighty smart hammering; and if he
+hadn't got under the broadhorn and got drowned;--but this fellow?"
+
+"You'll see him at church to-morrow. I shouldn't wonder if he
+preaches; for John Cross was at him about it before I came away.
+What's worse, the old man's been asking him to live with us."
+
+"What, here in Charlemont?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll be sure to lick him then, if he's anything like Joe Richards.
+But what's to make him live in Charlemont? Is he to be a preacher
+for us?"
+
+"Perhaps so, but I couldn't understand all, for I came in while
+they were at it, and left home before they were done. I'm sure if
+he stays there I shall not. I shall leave home, for I really dislike
+to meet him."
+
+"You shall stay with me, Bill, and we'll have Sall at all hours,"
+was the hearty speech of the cousin, as he threw his arms around
+the neck of his morose companion, and dragged him gently toward
+the adjoining apartment, which formed his chamber. "To-morrow," he
+continued, "as you say, we'll see this chap, and if he's anything
+like Joe Richards--" The doubled fist of the speaker, and his
+threatening visage, completed the sentence with which this present
+conference and chapter may very well conclude.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE TOAD ON THE ALTAR.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day was the sabbath. John Cross had timed his arrival at
+the village with a due reference to his duties, and after a minute
+calculation of days and distances, so that his spiritual manna might
+be distributed in equal proportions among his hungering flock.  His
+arrival made itself felt accordingly, not simply in Charlemont,
+but throughout the surrounding country for a circuit of ten miles
+or more. There was a large and hopeful gathering of all sorts
+and sexes, white and black, old and young. Charlemont had a very
+pretty little church of its own; but one, and that, with more true
+Christianity than is found commonly in this world of pretence and
+little tolerance, was open to preachers of all denominations. The
+word of God, among these simple folks, was quite too important to
+make them scruple at receiving it from the lips of either Geneva,
+Rome, or Canterbury. The church stood out among the hills at a
+little distance from, but in sight of the village; a small, neat
+Grecian-like temple, glimmering white and saintlike through solemn
+visaged groves, and gaudy green foliage. The old trees about it
+were all kept neatly trimmed, the brush pruned away and cleared up,
+and a smooth sweet sward, lawnlike, surrounded it, such as children
+love to skip and scramble over, and older children rest at length
+upon, in pairs, talking over their sweet silly affections.
+
+Surrounded by an admiring crowd, each of whom had his respectful
+salutation, we see our friend John Cross toward noon approaching
+the sacred dwelling. Truly he was the most simple, fraternal of
+all God's creatures. He had a good word for this, an affectionate
+inquiry for that, a benevolent smile, and a kind pressure of the
+hand for all. He was a man to do good, for everybody saw that he
+thought for others before himself, and sincerity and earnestness
+constitute, with the necessary degree of talent, the grand secrets
+for making successful teachers in every department.
+
+Though a simple, unsophisticated, unsuspecting creature, John Cross
+was a man of very excellent natural endowments. He chose for his
+text a passage of the Scriptures which admitted of a direct practical
+application to the concerns of the people, their daily wants, their
+pressing interests, moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled
+to preach a discourse which sent home many of his congregation much
+wiser than they came, if only in reference to their homely duties
+of farmstead and family. John Cross was none of those sorry and
+self-constituted representatives of our eternal interests, who
+deluge us with a vain, worthless declamation, proving that virtue
+is a very good thing, religion a very commendable virtue, and a
+liberal contribution to the church-box at the close of the sermon one
+of the most decided proofs that we have this virtue in perfection.
+Nay, it is somewhat doubtful, indeed, if he ever once alluded to the
+state of his own scrip and the treasury of the church. His faith,
+sincere, spontaneous, ardent, left him in very little doubt that
+the Lord will provide, for is he not called "Jehovah-Jireh?"--and
+his faith was strengthened and confirmed by the experience of his
+whole life. But then John Cross had few wants--few, almost none!
+In this respect he resembled the first apostles. The necessities
+of life once cared for, never was mortal man more thoroughly
+independent of the world. He was not one of those fine preachers
+who, dealing out counsels of self-denial, in grave saws and solemn
+maxims, with wondrous grim visage and a most slow, lugubrious
+shaking of the head--are yet always religiously careful to secure
+the warmest seat by the fireside, and the best buttered bun
+on table. He taught no doctrine which he did not practise; and as
+for consideration--that test at once of the religionist and the
+gentleman--he was as humbly solicitous of the claims and feelings
+of others, as the lovely and lowly child to whom reverence has
+been well taught as the true beginning, equally of politeness and
+religion.
+
+Before going into church he urged his protege, Stevens, to consent
+to share in the ceremonies of the service as a layman; but there was
+still some saving virtue in the young man, which made him resolute
+in refusing to do so. Perhaps, his refusal was dictated by a policy
+like that which had governed him so far already; which made him
+reluctant to commit himself to a degree which might increase very
+much the hazards of detection. He feared, indeed, the restraints
+which the unequivocal adoption of the profession would impose
+upon him, fettering somewhat the freedom of his intercourse with
+the young of both sexes, and, consequently, opposing an almost
+insurmountable barrier to the prevailing object which had brought
+him to the village. Whatever may have been the feelings or motives
+which governed him, they, at least, saved him from an act which
+would have grievously aggravated his already large offence against
+truth and propriety. He declined, in language of the old hypocrisy.
+He did not feel justified in taking up the cross--he felt that he
+was not yet worthy; and, among the members of a church, which takes
+largely into account the momentary impulses and impressions of the
+professor, the plea was considered a sufficiently legitimate one.
+
+But though Stevens forbore to commit himself openly in the cause
+which he professed a desire to espouse, he was yet sufficiently
+heedful to maintain all those externals of devotion which a serious
+believer would be apt to exhibit. He could be a good actor of a
+part, and in this lay his best talent. He had that saving wisdom
+of the worldling, which is too often estimated beyond its worth,
+called cunning; and the frequent successes of which produces that
+worst of all the diseases that ever impaired the value of true
+greatness--conceit. Alfred Stevens fancied that he could do everything,
+and this fancy produced in him the appearance of a courage which
+his moral nature never possessed. He had the audacity which results
+from presumption, not the wholesome strength which comes from
+the conscious possession of a right purpose. But a truce to our
+metaphysics.
+
+Never did saint wear the aspect of such supernatural devotion. He
+knelt with the first, groaned audibly at intervals, and when his
+face became visible, his eyes were strained in upward glances, so
+that the spectator could behold little more in their orbs than a
+sea of white.
+
+"Oh! what a blessed young man!" said Mrs. Quackenbosh.
+
+"How I wish it was he that was to preach for us to-day," responded
+that gem from the antique, Miss Polly Entwistle, who had joined
+every church in Kentucky in turn, without having been made a spouse
+in either.
+
+"How handsome he is!" simpered Miss Julia Evergreen--a damsel of
+seventeen, upon whom the bilious eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast
+with such an expression as the devil is said to put on when suddenly
+soused in holy water.
+
+"Handsome is that handsome does!" was the commentary of a venerable
+cormorant to whom Brother Cross had always appeared the special
+and accepted agent of heaven.
+
+"I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I wonder if
+he believes in the new-light doctrine?" purred one of the ancient
+tabbies of the conventicle.
+
+"The new light is but the old darkness, Sister Widgeon," responded
+an old farmer of sixty four, who had divided his time so equally
+between the plough and the prayer-book, that his body had grown
+as crooked as the one, while his mind was bewildered with as many
+doctrines as ever worried all sense out of the other.
+
+We shall not suffer these to divert us, any more than Stevens
+permitted their speculations upon his person and religion to affect
+his devotion. He looked neither to the right nor to the left while
+entering the church, or engaging in the ceremonies. No errant
+glances were permitted to betray to the audience a mind wandering
+from the obvious duties before it; and yet Alfred Stevens knew just
+as well that every eye in the congregation was fixed upon him, as
+that he was himself there; and among those eyes, his own keen glance
+had already discovered those of that one for whorn all these labors
+of hypocrisy were undertaken.
+
+Margaret Cooper sat on the opposite side of the church, but the
+line of vision was uninterrupted between them, and when--though very
+unfrequently--Stevens suffered his gaze to rest upon her form, it
+was with a sudden look of pleased abstraction, as if, in spite of
+himself, his mind was irresistibly drawn away from all recollection,
+of its immediate duties.
+
+If a word is sufficient for the wise, a look answers an equal purpose
+with the vain. Margaret Cooper left the church that morning with
+a pleased conviction that the handsome stranger had already paid
+his devotion to her charms. There was yet another passion to be
+gratified. The restless ambition of her foolish heart whispered to
+her momently, that if her person had done so much, what might she
+not hope to achieve when the treasures of her mind were known.  She
+had long since made the comparison of her own intellect with that
+of every other maiden in the village, and she flattered herself
+that before many days, the young stranger should make it too. Her
+vain heart was rapidly preparing to smooth the path of the enemy
+and make his conquests easy.
+
+But it was not the women only, by whom the deportment of Alfred
+Stevens was so closely watched. The eyes of suspicion and jealousy were
+upon him. The two young men whose interview formed the conclusion
+of our last chapter, scanned his conduct and carriage with sufficient
+keenness of scrutiny.
+
+"I'll tell you what, Bill Hinkley," said his cousin, "this fellow,
+to my thinking, is a very great rascal."
+
+"What makes you think so?" demanded the former, with slow, dissatisfied
+accents; "he seems to pray very earnestly."
+
+"That's the very reason I think him a rascal. His praying seems
+to me very unnatural. Here, he's a perfect stranger in the place,
+yet he never shows any curiosity to see the people. He never once
+looks around him. He walks to the church with his eye cast upon
+the ground, and sometimes he squints to this side and sometimes
+to that, but he seems to do it slyly, and seems to take pains that
+nobody should see him doing, it. All this might answer for an old
+man, who--believes that everything is vanity--as, indeed, everything
+must seem to old people; but to a young fellow, full of blood,
+who eats well, drinks well, sleeps well, and should naturally have
+a hankering after a young girl, all this is against nature. Now,
+what's against nature is wrong, and there's wrong at the bottom of
+it. Youth is the time to laugh, dance, sing, play on the violin,
+and always have a sweetheart when it can find one. If you can't get
+a beauty take a brown; and if Mary won't smile, Susan will.  But
+always have a sweetheart; always be ready for fun and frolic; that's
+the way for the young, and when they don't take these ways, it's
+unnatural--there's something wrong about it, and I'm suspicious of
+THAT person. Now, I just have this notion of the young stranger.
+He's after no good. I reckon he's like a hundred others; too
+lazy to go to work, he goes to preaching, and learns in the first
+sermon to beg hard for the missionaries. I'll lick him, Bill, to
+a certainty, if he gives me the littlest end of an opportunity."
+
+"Pshaw, Ned, don't think of such a thing. You are quite too fond
+of licking people."
+
+"Deuse a bit. It does 'em good. Look you, this chap is monstrous
+like Joe Richards. I'll have to lick him on that account."
+
+"You're mad, Ned; talk of whipping a preacher."
+
+"He's no preacher yet," said the other, "but if I lick him he may
+become one."
+
+"No matter, he's never offended you."
+
+"Ay, but he will. I see it in the fellow's looks. I never was
+mistaken in a fellow's looks in all my life."
+
+"Wait till he does offend you then."
+
+"Well, I'm willing to do that, for I know the time will come. I'm
+always sure, when I first see a man, to know whether I'll have to
+flog him or not. There's a something that tells me so. Isn't that
+very singular, Bill?"
+
+"No! you form a prejudice against a man, fancy that you ought to
+whip him, and then never rest till you've done so. You'll find your
+match some day."
+
+"What! you think some other chap will fancy he ought to whip me?
+Well--maybe so. But this ain't the fellow to do that."
+
+"He's a stout man, and I reckon strong. Besides, Ned, he's very
+handsome."
+
+"Handsome! Lord, Bill, what a taste you have? How can a man be
+called handsome that never altogether opens his eyes, except when
+he turns up the whites until you'd think he'd never be able to get
+the balls back to their proper place? Then, what a chin he has--as
+sharp as a pitchfork, and who but a girl child would fancy a man
+with his hair combed sleek like a woman's on each side of his ears,
+with big whiskers at the same time that looks for all the world
+like the brush of a seven years running fox, Handsome! If my pup
+'Dragon' was only half so much like a beast, I'd plump him into
+the horsepond!"
+
+It is probable that Ned Hinkley did not altogether think of the
+stranger as he expressed himself. But he saw how deep a hold his
+appearance had taken, in an adverse way, upon the mind and feelings
+of his relative and friend, and his rude, but well-meant endeavors
+were intended to console his companion, after his own fashion, by
+the exhibition of a certain degree of sympathy.
+
+His efforts, however well intended, did not produce any serious
+effect. William Hinkley, though he forbore the subject, and every
+expression which might indicate either soreness or apprehension,
+was still the victim of that presentiment which had touched him on
+the very first appearance of the stranger. He felt more than ever
+apprehensive on the score of his misplaced affections. While his
+cousin had been watching the stranger, HIS eyes had been fixed
+upon those of Margaret Cooper, and his fears were increased and
+strengthened, as he perceived that she was quite too much absorbed
+in other thoughts and objects to behold for an instant the close
+espionage which he maintained upon her person. His heart sunk within
+him, as he beheld how bold was her look, and how undisguised the
+admiration which it expressed for the handsome stranger.
+
+"You will go home with me, William?" said the cousin, The other
+hesitated.
+
+"I think," said he, after a moment's pause, "I should rather go
+to my own home. It is a sort of weakness to let a stranger drive
+a man off from his own family, and though I somehow dislike this
+person's looks, and am very sorry that John Cross brought him to
+our house, yet I shouldn't let a prejudice which seems to have no
+good foundation take such possession of my mind. I will go home,
+Ned, and see--perhaps I may come to like the stranger more when I
+know him better."
+
+"You'll never like him. I see it in the fellow's eye; but just as
+you please about going nome. You're right in one thing--never to
+give up your own dunghill, so long as you can get room on it for a
+fair fling with your enemy. Besides, you can see better, by going
+home, what the chap's after. I don't see why he should come here
+to learn to preach. We can't support a preacher. We don't want
+one. He could just as well have learned his business, where he came
+from."
+
+With these words the cousins separated.
+
+"Now," said Ned Hinkley as he took his own way homeward, in a deeper
+fit of abstraction than was altogether usual with him, "now will
+Bill Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until
+it's too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman,
+and mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody.
+--quite too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger
+nobody knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll
+pick up his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing
+nothing to hinder until there's no use in trying. If I don't push
+in and help him, he'll not help himself. As for Margaret Cooper,
+dang it, I'll court her for him myself. If he's afraid to pop the
+question, I ain't; though I'll have to be mighty careful about
+the words I use, or she'll be thinking I come on my own hook; and
+that would be a mighty scary sort of business all round the house.
+Then this stranger. If anybody can look through a stranger here in
+Charlemont, I reckon I'm that man. I suspect him already. I think
+he's after no good with his great religioning; and I'll tie such
+a pair of eyes to his heels, that his understanding will never be
+entirely out of my sight. I'll find him out if anybody can. But
+I won't lick him till I do. That wouldn't be altogether right,
+considering he's to be a parson, though I doubt he'll never make
+one."
+
+And thus, with a head filled with cares of a fashion altogether
+new, the sturdy young Kentuckian moved homeward with a degree of
+abstraction in his countenance which was not among the smallest
+wonders of the day and place in the estimation of his friends and
+neighbors.
+
+Meanwhile, the work of mischief was in full progress. Everybody
+knows the degree of familiarity which exists among all classes in a
+country-village, particularly when the parties are brought together
+under the social and stimulating influences of religion. It was
+natural that the pastor, long known and well beloved, should be
+surrounded by his flock as he descended from the pulpit. The old
+ladies always have a saving interest in his presence, and they pave
+the way for the young ones. Alfred Stevens, as the protege of John
+Cross, naturally attended his footsteps, and was introduced by him
+to the little congregation, which had mostly remained to do honor
+to the preacher. Of these, not last, nor least, was the widow
+Cooper; and, unreluctant by her side, though in silence, and not
+without a degree of emotion, which she yet was able to conceal,
+stood her fair but proud-hearted daughter.
+
+Margaret, alas! Margaret stood there with a heart more proud,
+yet more humble, than ever. Proud in the consciousness of a new
+conquest--humble in the feeling that this conquest had not been
+made, but at the expense of some portion of her own independence.
+Hitherto, her suitors had awakened no other feeling in her heart
+but vanity. Now, she felt no longer able to sail on, "imperial
+arbitress," smiling at woes which she could inflict, but never share.
+That instinct, which, in the heart of young Hinkley had produced
+fear, if not antipathy, had been as active in her case, though with
+a very different result. The first glimpse which she had of the
+handsome stranger, months before, had impressed her with a singular
+emotion; and now that he was returned, she could not divest herself
+of the thought that his return was a consequence of that one glimpse.
+
+With a keener judgment than belonged to her neighbors, she too had
+some suspicions that religion was scarcely the prevailing motive
+which had brought the youth back to their little village; for how
+could she reconcile with his present demure gravity and devout
+profession, the daring which he had shown in riding back to behold
+her a second time? That such had been his motive she divined by her
+own feeling of curiosity, and the instincts of vanity were prompt
+enough to believe that this was motive sufficient to bring him
+back once more, and under the guise of a character, which would
+the readiest secure an easy entrance to society. Pleased with the
+fancy that she herself was the object sought, she did not perceive
+how enormous was the sort of deception which the stranger had
+employed to attain the end desired. With all her intellect she had
+not the wisdom to suspect that he who could so readily practise so
+bold an hypocrisy, was capable of the worst performances; and when
+their names were mentioned, and his eyes were permitted to meet
+and mingle their glances with hers, she was conscious of nothing
+farther than a fluttering sentiment of pleasure, which was amply
+declared to the stranger, in the flash of animation which spoke
+openly in her countenance; eye speaking to lip and cheek, and
+these, in turn, responding with a kindred sentiment to the already
+tell-tale eye.
+
+William Hinkley, from a little distance, beheld this meeting.  He
+had lingered with the curiosity which belongs to the natural
+apprehension of the lover. He saw them approach--nay, fancied
+he beheld the mutual expression of their sympathizing eyes, and
+he turned away, and hurried homeward, with the feeling of a heart
+already overborne, and defrauded in all its hopes and expectations.
+The flowers were threatened with blight in his Eden: but he did
+not conjecture, poor fellow, that a serpent had indeed entered it!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE GOOD YOUNG MAN IN MEDITATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+Perhaps, it may be assumed, with tolerable safety, that no first
+villany is ever entirely deliberate. There is something in events
+to give it direction--something to egg it on--to point out time,
+place, and opportunity. Of course, it is to be understood that the
+actor is one, in the first place, wanting in the moral sense. What
+we simply mean to affirm is, that the particular, single act, is,
+in few instances, deliberately meditated from the beginning. We
+very much incline to think that some one event, which we ordinarily
+refer to the chapter of accidents, has first set the mind to work
+upon schemes, which would otherwise, perhaps, never be thought of
+at all. Thus, we find persons who continue very good people, as
+the world goes, until middle age, or even seniority; then, suddenly
+breaking out into some enormous offence against decency and society,
+which startles the whole pious neighborhood. Folks start up, with
+outstretched hands and staring eyes, and cry aloud:--
+
+"Lord bless us, who would have thought so good a man could be so
+bad!"
+
+He, poor devil, never fancied it himself, till he became so,
+and it was quite too late to alter his arrangements. Perhaps his
+neighbors may have had some share in making him so. Pious persons
+are very frequently reduced to these straits by having the temptation
+forced too much upon them. Flesh and blood can not always withstand
+the provocation of earthly delicacies, even where the spirit is a
+tolerably stout one; and of the inadequacy of the mind, always to
+contend with the inclinations of the flesh, have we not a caution in
+that injunction of Holy Book which warns us to fly from temptation?
+But lame people can not fly, and he is most certainly lame who halts
+upon mere feet of circumstances. Such people are always in danger.
+
+Now, Alfred Stevens, properly brought up, from the beginning, at some
+theological seminary, would have been--though in moral respects
+pretty much the same person--yet in the eye of the world a far
+less criminal man. Not that his desires would have been a jot more
+innocent, but they would have taken a different direction. Instead
+of the recklessness of course, such as seems to have distinguished
+the conduct of our present subject--instead of his loose indulgences--his
+smart, licentious speeches--the sheep's-eye glances, right and
+left, which he was but too prone to bestow, without prudence or
+precaution, whenever he walked among the fair sisters--he, the said
+Alfred, would have taken counsel of a more worldly policy, which
+is yet popularly considered a more pious one. He would have kept
+his eyes from wandering to and fro; he would have held his blood
+in subjection. Patient as a fox on a long scent in autumn, he would
+have kept himself lean and circumspect, until, through the help
+of lugubrious prayer and lantern visage, he could have beguiled
+into matrimony some one feminine member of the flock--not always
+fair--whose worldly goods would have sufficed in full atonement
+for all those circumspect, self-imposed restraints, which we find
+asually so well rewarded. But Alfred Stevens was not a man of this
+pious temper. It is evident, from his present course, that he had
+some inkling of the MODUS OPERANDI; but all his knowledge fell
+short of that saving wisdom which would have defrauded the social
+world of one of its moral earthquakes, and possibly deprived the
+survivors of the present moral story--for moral it is, though our
+hero is not exactly so.
+
+It would be doing our subject and our theory equal injustice if we
+were to suppose that he had any fixed purpose, known to himself,
+when he borrowed the professional garment, and began to talk with
+the worthy John Cross in the language of theology, and with the
+tongue of a hypocrite. He designed to visit Charlemont--that was
+all--as he had really been impressed by the commanding figure and
+noble expression of beauty of that young damsel whom he had encountered
+by the roadside. Even this impression, however, would have been
+suffered to escape from his mind, had it not been so perfectly
+convenient to revisit the spot, on his return to his usual place of
+residence. During the summer, Charlemont and its rustic attractions
+had been the frequent subject of a conversation, running into
+discussion, between himself and the amiable old man, his uncle. The
+latter repeatedly urged upon his nephew to make the visit; fondly
+conceiving that a nearer acquaintance with the pleasant spot which
+had so won upon his own affections, would be productive of a like
+effect upon his nephew. Alas, how little did he know the mischief
+he was doing!
+
+In the very idleness of mood--with just that degree of curiosity
+which prompts one to turn about and look a second time--Alfred
+Stevens resumed the route which included Charlemont. But the devil
+had, by this time, found his way into the meditations of the youth,
+and lay lurking, unknown to himself, perhaps, at the bottom of
+this same curiosity. The look of pride and defiance which Margaret
+Cooper had betrayed, when the bold youth rode back to steal a second
+glance at her matchless person, was equivalent to an equally bold
+challenge; and his vanity hastily picked up the gauntlet which hers
+had thrown down. He wished to see the damsel again--to see if she
+WAS so beautiful--if she did, indeed, possess that intellectual
+strength and vivacity which flashed out so suddenly and with so
+much splendor from beneath her long, dark eye-lashes!
+
+In this mood he met with John Cross; and the simplicity of that
+worthy creature offered another challenge, not less provoking than
+the former, to the levity and love of mischief which also actively
+predominated in the bosom of the youth. Fond of a malicious sort
+of fun, and ever on the look-out for subjects of quizzing, it was
+in compliance with a purely habitual movement of his mind that he
+conjured up that false, glozing story of his religious inclinations,
+which had so easily imposed upon the unsuspecting preacher. Never
+was proceeding less premeditated, or so completely the result of an
+after-thought, than this; and now that it had proved so perfectly
+successful--now that he found himself admitted into the very heart
+of the little village, and into the bosoms of the people--he began,
+for the first time, to feel the awkwardness of the situation in which
+he had placed himself, and the responsibilities, if not dangers,
+to which it subjected him. To play the part of a mere preacher--to
+talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype phraseology
+of the profession--was no difficult matter to a clever young lawyer
+of the West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as
+profoundly familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself.
+But there was something awkward in the idea of detection, and he
+was not unaware of those summary dangers which are likely to follow,
+in those wild frontier regions, from the discovery of so doubtful
+a personage as "Bro' Wolf" in the clothing of a more innocent
+animal. Chief-Justice Lynch is a sacred authority in those parts;
+and, in such a case as his, Alfred Stevsns did not doubt that the
+church itself would feel it only becoming to provide another sort
+of garment for the offender, which, whether pleasant or not, would
+at least be likely to stick more closely, and prove less comfortably
+warm.
+
+But, once in, there was no help but to play out the game as it had
+been begun. Villagers are seldom very sagacious people, and elegant
+strangers are quite too much esteemed among them to make them very
+particular in knowing tho whys and wherefores about them--whence
+they come, what they do, and whither they propose to go. Stevens
+had only to preserve his countenance and a due degree of caution,
+and the rest was easy. He had no reason to suppose himself an object
+of suspicion to anybody; and should he become so, nothing was more
+easy than to take his departure with sufficient promptness, and
+without unnecessarily soliciting the prayers of the church in behalf
+of the hurried traveller! At all events, he could lose nothing by
+the visit: perhaps something might be gained.
+
+What was that something? Behold him in his chamber, preparing to
+ask and to answer this question for himself. The sabbath-day is
+finally over. He has been almost the lion of the day. We say almost,
+for the worthy John Cross could not easily be deprived, by any
+rivalry, of the loyal regards of his old parishioners. But, though
+the latter had most friends, the stranger, Alfred Stevens, had
+had most followers. All were anxious to know him--the young, in
+particular, maidens and men; and the grave old dames would have
+given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to have heard him
+discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in his profound,
+devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has shaken
+hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and
+feeling with but one only--and that one!--
+
+Of her he thinks in his chamber--his quiet, snug, little chamber--a
+mere closet, looking out upon a long garden-slip, in which he
+sees, without much heeding them, long lanes of culinary cabbage,
+and tracts of other growing and decaying vegetation, in which his
+interest is quite too small to make it needful that he should even
+ask its separate names. His chin rests upon his hands with an air
+of meditation; and gradually his thoughts rise up in soliloquy,
+which is suffered to invade no ear but ours:--
+
+"Well! who'd have thought it? a parson!--devilish good indeed! How
+it will tell at Murkey's! What a metamorphose! if it don't stagger
+'em, nothing will! It's the best thing I've done yet! I shall have
+to do it over a hundred times, and must get up a sermon or two
+beforehand, and swear that I preached them--and, egad! I may have
+to do it yet before I'm done--ha! ha! ha!"
+
+The laughter was a quiet chuckle, not to be heard by vulgar ears;
+it subsided in the gorges of his throat. The idea of really getting
+up a sermon tickled him. He muttered over texts, all that he could
+remember; and proceeded to turn over the phrases for an introduction,
+such as, unctuous with good things in high degree, he fancied would
+be particularly commendable to his unsuspecting hearers. Alfred
+Stevens had no small talent for imitation, he derived a quiet sort
+of pleasure, on the present occasion, from its indulgence.
+
+"I should have made a famous parson, and, if all trades fail, may
+yet. But, now that I am here, what's to come of it? It's not so
+hard to put on a long face, and prose in scripture dialect; but,
+cui bono? Let me see--hem! The girl is pretty, devilish pretty--with
+such an eye, and looks so! There's soul in the wench--life--and
+a passion that speaks out in every glance and movement. A very
+Cressid, with a cross of Corinne! Should she be like her of Troy?
+At all events, it can do no harm to see what she's made of!
+
+"But I must manage warily. I have something to lose in the business.
+Frankfort is but fifty miles from Charlemont--fifty miles--and
+there's Ellisland, but fourteen. Fourteen!--an easy afternoon ride.
+That way it must be done. Ellisland shall be my post-town. I can
+gallop there in an afternoon, drop and receive my letters, and be
+back by a round-about which shall effectually baffle inquiry. A
+week or two will be enough. I shall see, by that time, what can be
+done with her; though still, cautiously, Parson Stevens!--cautiously."
+
+The farther cogitations of Stevens were subordinate to these, but
+of the same family complexion. They were such as to keep him wakeful.
+The Bible which had been placed upon his table, by the considerate
+providence of his hostess, lay there unopened; though, more than
+once, he lifted the cover of the sacred volume, letting it fall again
+suddenly, as if with a shrinking consciousness that such thoughts
+as at that moment filled his mind were scarcely consistent with
+the employment, in any degree, of such a companion. Finally, he
+undressed and went to bed. The hour had become very late.
+
+"Good young man," muttered worthy Mrs. Hinkley to her drowsy
+spouse, in the apartment below, as she heard the movements of her
+guest-"good young man, he's just now going to bed. He's been studying
+all this while. I reckon Brother Cross has been sound this hour."
+
+The light from Stevens's window glimmered out over the cabbage-garden,
+and was seen by many an ancient dame as she prepared for her own
+slumbers.
+
+"Good young man," said they all with one accord. "I reckon he's
+at the Bible now. Oh! he'll be a blessed laborer in the vineyard,
+I promise you, when Brother Cross is taken."
+
+"If it were not for the cursed bore of keeping up the farce beyond
+the possibility of keeping up the fun, such a rig as this would
+be incomparably pleasant; but"--yawning--"that's the devil! I get
+monstrous tired of a joke that needs dry nursing!"
+
+Such were the last muttered words of Parson Stevens before he
+yielded himself up to his slumbers. Good young man--charitable old
+ladies--gullible enough, if not charitable! But the professions
+need such people, and we must not quarrel with them!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PAROCHIAL PERFORMANCES.
+
+
+
+
+
+The poor, conceited blackguards of this ungracious earth have
+a fancy that there must be huge confusion and a mighty bobbery in
+nature, corresponding with that which is for ever going on in their
+own little spheres. If we have a toothache, we look for a change
+of weather; our rheumatism is a sure sign that God has made his
+arrangements to give us a slapping rain; and, should the white
+bull or the brown heifer die, look out for hail, or thunderstorm,
+at least, as a forerunner of the event. Nothing less can possibly
+console or satisfy us for such a most unaccountable, not to
+say unnatural and unwarrantable, a dispensation. The poets have
+ministered largely to this vanity on the part of mankind. Shakspere
+is constantly at it, and Ben Jonson, and all the dramatists. Not
+a butcher, in the whole long line of the butchering Caesars, from
+Augustus down, but, according to them, died in a sort of gloom
+glory, resulting from the explosion of innumerable stars and rockets,
+and the apparitions of as many comets! "Gorgons, and hydras, and
+chimeras dire," invariably announce the coming stroke of fate; and
+five or seven moons of a night have suddenly arisen to warn some
+miserable sublunarian that orders had been issued that there should
+be no moon for him that quarter, or, in military and more precise
+phrase, that he should have no "quarters" during that moon. Even our
+venerable and stern old puritan saint, Milton--he who was blessed
+with the blindness of his earthly eye, that he should be more
+perfectly enabled to contemplate the Deity within--has given way to
+this superstition when he subjects universal nature to an earthquake
+because Adam's wife followed the counsels of the snake.
+
+A pretty condition of things it would be, if stars, suns, and
+systems, were to shoot madly from their spheres on such occasions!
+Well might the devil laugh if such were the case! How he would chuckle
+to behold globes and seas, and empires, fall into such irreverend
+antics because some poor earthling, be he kingling or common sodling,
+goes into desuetude, either by the operation of natural laws, or
+the sharp application of steel or shot! Verily, it makes precious
+little difference to the Great Reaper, by what process we finally
+become harvested. He is sure of us, though no graves gape, no stars
+fall, no comets rush out, like young colts from their stables,
+flinging their tails into the faces of the more sober and pacific
+brotherhood of lights. But, denied the satisfaction of chuckling
+at such sights as these, his satanic majesty chuckles not the less
+at the human vanity which looks for them. Nay, he himself is very
+likely to suggest this vanity. It is one of his forms of temptation
+--one of his manoeuvres; and we take leave, by way of warning, to
+hint to those worthy people, who judge of to-morrow's providence
+by the corns of their great toe, or their periodical lumbago, or
+the shooting of their warts, or the pricking of their palms, that
+it is in truth the devil which is at the bottom of all this, and
+that the Deity has nothing to do in the business. It is the devil
+instilling his vanities into the human heart, in that form which
+he thinks least likely to prove offensive, or rouse suspicion. The
+devil is most active in your affairs, Mrs. Thompson, the moment
+you imagine that there must be a revolution on your account in the
+universal laws of nature. At such a moment your best policy will be
+to have blood let, take physic, and go with all diligence to your
+prayers.
+
+There was no sort of warning on the part of the natural to the
+moral world, on the day when Alfred Stevens set forth with the
+worthy John Cross, to visit the flock of the latter. There was
+not a lovelier morning in the whole calendar. The sun was alone
+in heaven, without a cloud; and on earth, the people in and about
+Charlemont, having been to church only the day before, necessarily
+made their appearance everywhere with petticoats and pantaloons
+tolerably clean and unrumpled. Cabbages had not yet been
+frost-bitten.  Autumn had dressed up her children in the garments
+of beauty, preparatory to their funeral. There was a good crop of
+grain that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all
+"looking-up," in the language of the prices current. This was long
+before the time when Mr. M---- made his famous gammon speeches; but
+the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the
+eventful anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in
+Salt river. The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation
+was beginning to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as
+many railways, were about to be established; old things were about
+to fleet and disappear; all things were becoming new; and the serpent
+entered Charlemont, and made his way among the people thereof,
+without any signs of combustion, or overthrow, or earthquake.
+
+Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a
+parson is, to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes
+one day, and the quarterly collector the next. He sits down with
+the "gude wife" in a corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in
+precisely the same low tones which cunning lovers are apt to use.
+If he knows any one art better than another, it is that of finding
+his way to the affections of the female part of his flock. A subdued
+tone of voice betrays a certain deference for the party addressed.
+The lady is pleased with such a preliminary. She is flattered again
+by the pains he takes in behalf of her eternal interests; she is
+pretty sure he takes no such pains with any of her neighbors. It
+is a sign that he thinks her soul the most becoming little soul in
+the flock, and when he goes away, she looks after him and sighs,
+and thinks him the most blessed soul of a parson. The next week
+she is the first to get up a subscription which she heads with her
+own name in connection with a sum realized by stinting her son of
+his gingerbread money, in order to make this excellent parson a
+life-member of the "Zion African Bible and Missionary Society, for
+disseminating the Word among the Heathen." The same fifty dollars
+so appropriated, would have provided fuel for a month to the starving
+poor of her own parish.
+
+But Brother Cross gets no such windfalls. It is probable that he never
+heard of such a thing, and that if he did, he would unhesitatingly
+cry out, "Humbug," at the first intimation of it. Besides, his voice
+was not capable of that modulation which a young lover, or a city
+parson can give it. Accustomed to cry aloud and spare not, he
+usually spoke as if there were some marrow in his bones, and some
+vigor in his wind-bags. When he came to see the good wife of his
+congregation, he gave her a hearty shake of the hand, congratulated
+her as he found her at her spinning-wheel; spoke with a hearty
+approbation, if he saw that her children were civil and cleanly;
+if otherwise, he blazed out with proper boldness, by telling her
+that all her praying and groaning, would avail nothing for her
+soul's safety, so long as Jackey's breeches were unclean; and that
+the mother of a rude and dirty child, was as sure of damnation, as
+if she never prayed at all. He had no scruples about speaking the
+truth. He never looked about him for the gentle, easy phrases, by
+which to distinguish the conduct which he was compelled to condemn.
+He knew not only that the truth must be spoken, and be spoken by
+him, if by anybody, but that there is no language too strong--perhaps
+none quite strong enough--for the utterance of the truth. But it must
+not be supposed, that John Cross was in any respect an intolerant,
+or sour man. He was no hypocrite, and did not, therefore, need to
+clothe his features in the vinegar costume of that numerous class.
+His limbs were put into no such rigid fetters as too often denote
+the unnatural restraints which such persons have imposed upon their
+inner minds. He could laugh and sing with the merriest, and though
+he did not absolutely shake a leg himself, yet none rejoiced more
+than he, when Ned Hinkley's fiddle summoned the village to this
+primitive exercise.
+
+"Now, Alfred Stevens," said he, the breakfast being over, "what
+say'st thou to a visit with me among my people. Some of them know
+thee already; they will all be rejoiced to see thee. I will show
+thee how they live, and if thou shouldst continue to feel within
+thee, the growing of that good seed whose quickening thou hast
+declared to me, it will be well that thou shouldst begin early to
+practise the calling which may so shortly become thine own. Here
+mightest thou live a space, toiling in thy spiritual studies, until
+the brethren should deem thee ripe for thy office; meanwhile, thy
+knowledge of the people with whom thou livest, and their knowledge
+of thee, would be matter of equal comfort and consolation, I trust,
+to thee as to them."
+
+Alfred Stevens expressed himself pleased with the arrangement.
+Indeed, he desired nothing else.
+
+"But shall we see all of them?" he demanded. The arch-hypocrite
+began to fear that his curiosity would be compelled to pay a heavy
+penalty to dullness.
+
+"The flock is small," said John Cross. "A day will suffice, but I
+shall remain three days in Charlemont, and some I will see to-day,
+and some to-morrow, and some on the day after, which is Wednesday."
+
+"Taken in moderate doses," murmured Stevens to himself, "one may
+stand it."
+
+He declared himself in readiness, and the twain set forth.  The
+outward behavior of Stevens was very exemplary. He had that morning
+contrived to alter his costume in some respects to suit the situation
+of affairs. For example, he had adopted that slavish affectation
+which seems to insist that a preacher of God should always wear
+a white cravat, so constructed and worn as to hide the tips of
+his shirt collar. If they wore none, they would look infinitely
+more noble, and we may add, never suffer from bronchitis.  In his
+deportment, Stevens was quite as sanctified as heart could wish.
+He spoke always deliberately, and with great unction. If he had to
+say "cheese and mousetrap," he would look very solemn, shake his
+head with great gravity and slowness, and then deliberately and
+equally emphasizing every syllable, would roll forth the enormous
+sentence with all the conscious dignity of an ancient oracle. That
+"cheese and mousetrap," so spoken, acquired in the ears of the hearer,
+a degree of importance and signification, which it confounded them
+to think they had never perceived before in the same felicitous
+collocation of syllables. John Cross was not without his vanities.
+Who is? Vanity is quite as natural as any other of our endowments.
+It is a guaranty for amiability. A vain man is always a conciliatory
+one. He is kind to others, because the approbation of others is a
+strong desire in his mind. Accordingly, even vanity is not wholly
+evil. It has its uses.
+
+John Cross had his share, and Alfred Stevens soon discovered that
+he ministered to it in no small degree. The good old preacher took
+to himself the credit of having effected his conversion, so far as
+it had gone. It was his hand that had plucked the brand from the
+burning. He spoke freely of his protege, as well before his face as
+behind his back. In his presence he dwelt upon the holy importance of
+his calling; to others he dilated upon the importance of securing
+for the church a young man of so much talent, yet of so much devotion:
+qualities not always united, it would seem, among the churchlings
+of modern times.
+
+Alfred Stevens seemed to promise great honor to his teacher. That
+cunning which is the wisdom of the worldling, and which he possessed
+in a very surprising degree, enabled him to adopt a course of
+conduct, look, and remark, which amply satisfied the exactions of
+the scrupulous, and secured the unhesitating confidence of those
+who were of a more yielding nature. He soon caught the phraseology
+of his companion, and avoiding his intensity, was less likely to
+offend his hearers. His manner was better subdued to the social
+tone of ordinary life, his voice lacked the sharp twang of the
+backwoods man; and, unlike John Cross, he was able to modulate it
+to those undertones, which, as we have before intimated, are so
+agreeable from the lips of young lovers and fashionable preachers.
+At all events, John Cross himself, was something more than satisfied
+with his pupil, and took considerable pains to show him off. He was
+a sort of living and speaking monument of the good man's religious
+prowess.
+
+It does not need that we should follow the two into all the abodes
+which they were compelled to visit. The reader would scarcely
+conceal his yawns though Stevens did. Enough, that a very unctuous
+business was made of it that morning. Many an old lady was refreshed
+with the spiritual beverage bestowed in sufficient quantity to
+last for another quarter; while many a young one rejoiced in the
+countenance of so promising a shepherd as appeared under the name
+of Alfred Stevens. But the latter thought of the one damsel only.
+He said many pleasant things to those whom he did see; but his mind
+ran only upon one. He began to apprehend that she might be among
+the flock who were destined to wait for the second or last day's
+visitation; when, to his great relief, John Cross called his
+attention to the dwelling of the widow Cooper, to whom they were
+fast approaching.
+
+Stevens remarked that the dwelling had very much the appearance of
+poverty--he did not fail to perceive that it lacked the flower-garden
+in front which distinguished the greater number of the cottages in
+Charlemont; and there was an appearance of coldness and loneliness
+about its externals which impressed itself very strongly upon his
+thoughts, and seemed to speak unfavorably for the taste of the
+inmates. One is apt to associate the love of flowers with sweetness
+and gentleness of disposition, and such a passion would seem
+as natural, as it certainly would be becoming, to a young lady of
+taste and sensibility. But the sign is a very doubtful one. Taste
+and gentleness may satisfy themselves with other objects. A passion
+for books is very apt to exclude a very active passion for flowers,
+and it will be found, I suspect, that these persons who are most
+remarkable for the cultivation of flowers are least sensible to the
+charms of letters. It seems monstrous, indeed, that a human being
+should expend hours and days in the nursing and tendance of such
+stupid beauties as plants and flowers, when earth is filled with
+so many lovelier objects that come to us commended by the superior
+sympathies which belong to humanity. Our cities are filled with
+the sweetest orphans--flowers destined to be immortal; angels in
+form, that might be angels in spirit--that must be, whether for
+good or evil--whom we never cultivate--whom we suffer to escape our
+tendance, and leave to the most pitiable ignorance, and the most
+wretched emergencies of want. The life that is wasted upon dahlias,
+must, prima facie, be the life of one heartless and insensible,
+and most probably, brutish in a high degree.
+
+But Alfred Stevens had very little time for further reflection.
+They were at the door of the cottage. Never did the widow Cooper
+receive her parson in more tidy trim, and with an expression of
+less qualified delight. She brought forth the best chair, brushed
+the deerskin-seat with her apron, and having adjusted the old man
+to her own satisfaction as well as his, she prepared to do a like
+office for the young one. Having seated them fairly, and smoothed
+her apron, and gone through the usual preliminaries, and placed
+herself a little aloof, on a third seat, and rubbed her hands, and
+struggled into a brief pause in her brisk action, she allowed her
+tongue to do the office for which her whole soul was impatient.
+
+"Oh, Brother Cross, what a searching sermon you gave us yesterday.
+You stirred the hearts of everybody, I warrant you, as you stirred
+up mine. We've been a needing it for a precious long time, I
+tell you; and there's no knowing what more's a wanting to make us
+sensible to the evil that's in us. I know from myself what it is,
+and I guess from the doings of others. We're none of us perfect,
+that's certain; but it's no harm to say that some's more and some's
+not so perfect as others. There's a difference in sin, Brother
+Cross, I'm a thinking, and I'd like you to explain why, and what's
+the difference. One won't have so much, and one will have more; one
+will take a longer spell of preaching, and half the quantity will
+be a dose to work another out clean, entire. I'm not boastful for
+myself, Brother Cross, but I do say, I'd give up in despair if I
+thought it took half so much to do me, as it would take for a person
+like that Mrs.  Thackeray."
+
+"Sister Cooper," said brother Cross, rebukingly, "beware of the
+temptation to vain-glory. Be not like the Pharisee, disdainful
+of the publican. To be too well pleased with one's self is to be
+displeasing to the Lord."
+
+"Oh, Brother Cross, don't be thinking that I'm over and above
+satisfied with the goodness that's in me. I know I'm not so good.
+I have a great deal of evil; but then it seems to me there's a
+difference in good and a difference in evil. One has most of one
+and one has most of another. None of us have much good, and all of
+us have a great deal of sin. God help me, for I need his help--I
+have my own share; but as for that Mrs. Thackeray, she's as full
+of wickedness as an an egg's full of meat."
+
+"It is not the part of Christianity, Sister Cooper," said John Cross
+mildly, "to look into our neighbors' accounts and make comparisons
+between their doings and our own. We can only do so at great risk
+of making a false reckoning. Besides, Sister Cooper, it is business
+enough on our hands, if we see to our own short-comings. As for Mrs.
+Thackeray, I have no doubt she's no better than the rest of us, and
+we are all, as you said before, children of suffering, and prone
+to sin as certain as that the sparks fly upward. We must only watch
+and pray without ceasing, particularly that we may not deceive
+ourselves with the most dangerous sin of being too sure of our own
+works. The good deeds that we boast of so much in our earthly day
+will shrivel and shrink up at the last account to so small a size
+that the best of us, through shame and confusion, will be only too
+ready to call upon the rocks and hills to cover us. We are very
+weak and foolish all, Sister Cooper. We can't believe ourselves
+too weak, or too mean, or too sinful. To believe this with all our
+hearts, and to try to be better with all our strength, is the true
+labor of religion. God send it to us, in all its sweetness and
+perfection, so that we may fight the good fight without ceasing."
+
+"But if you could only hear of the doings of Mrs. Thackeray,
+Brother Cross, you'd see how needful it would be to put forth all
+your strength to bring her back to the right path."
+
+"The Lord will know. None of us can hide our evil from the eyes
+of the Lord. I will strive with our sister, when I seek her, which
+will be this very noon, but it is of yourself, Sister Cooper, and
+your daughter Margaret, that I would speak. Where is she that I
+see her not?"
+
+This was the question that made our quasi hierophant look up with
+a far greater degree of interest than he had felt in the long and
+random twattle to which he had been compelled to listen. Where was
+she--that fair daughter? He was impatient for the answer. But he
+was not long detained in suspense. Next to her neighbors there was
+no subject of whom the mother so loved to speak as the daughter,
+and the daughter's excellences.
+
+"Ah! she is up-stairs, at her books, as usual. She does so love
+them books, Brother Cross, I'm afraid it'll do harm to her health.
+She cares for nothing half so well. Morning, noon, and night, all
+the same, you find her poring over them; and even when she goes out
+to ramble, she must have a book, and she wants no other company.
+For my part I can't see what she finds in them to love so; for
+except to put a body to sleep I never could see the use they were
+to any person yet."
+
+"Books are of two kinds," said Brother Cross gravely. "They are
+useful or hurtful. The useful kinds are good, the hurtful kinds
+are bad. The Holy Bible is the first book, and the only book, as
+I reckon it will be the book that'll live longest. The 'Life of
+Whitefield' is a good book, and I can recommend the sermons of that
+good man, Brother Peter Cummins, that preached when I was a lad,
+all along through the back parts of North Carolina, into South
+Carolina and Georgia. I can't say that he came as far back into
+the west as these parts; but he was a most faithful shepherd. There
+was a book of his sermons printed for the benefit of his widow and
+children. He died, like that blessed man, John Rogers, that we see
+in the primer-books, leaving a wife with eleven children and one
+at the breast. His sermons are very precious reading. One of them
+in particular, on the Grace of God, is a very falling of manna in
+the wilderness. It freshens the soul, and throws light upon the
+dark places in the wilderness. Ah! if only such books are printed,
+what a precious world for poor souls it would be. But they print
+a great many bad books now-a-days."
+
+The natural love of mischief which prevailed in the bosom of Alfred
+Stevens now prompted him to take part in the conversation at this
+happy moment. The opportunity was a tempting one.
+
+"The printers," said he, "are generally very bad men. They call
+themselves devils, and take young lads and bring them up to their
+business under that name!"
+
+The old lady threw up her hands, and John Cross, to whom this
+intelligence was wholly new, inquired with a sort of awe-struck
+gravity--
+
+"Can this be true, Alfred Stevens? Is this possible?"
+
+"The fact, sir. They go by no other name among themselves; and
+you may suppose, if they are not ashamed of the name, they are not
+unwilling to perform the doings of the devil. Indeed, they are busy
+doing his business from morning to night--and night to morning.
+They don't stop for the sabbath. They work on Sunday the same as
+any other day, and if they take any rest at all it is on Saturday,
+which would show them to be a kind of Jews."
+
+"Good Lord deliver us!" ejaculated the widow.
+
+"Where, O! where?" exclaimed the Brother Cross with similar earnestness.
+The game was too pleasant for Alfred Stevens. He pursued it.
+
+"In such cities," he continued, "as New York and Philadelphia,
+thousands of these persons are kept in constant employ sending
+forth those books of falsehood and folly which fill the hearts of
+the young with vain imaginings, and mislead the footsteps of the
+unwary. In one of these establishments, four persons preside, who
+are considered brothers; but they are brothers in sin only, and
+are by some supposed to be no other. They have called themselves
+after the names of saints and holy men; even the names of the
+thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in this fashion
+abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even in
+our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better
+enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to
+believe that these persons were no other than the evil demons who
+ruled in Ashdod and Assyria. Such is their perseverance in evil--such
+their busy industry, which keeps a thousand authors (which is but
+another name for priests and prophets) constantly at work to frame
+cunning falsehoods and curious devices, and winning fancies, which
+when printed and made into books, turn the heads of the young and
+unwary, and blind the soul to the wrath which is to come."
+
+The uplifted hands of the widow Cooper still attested her wonder.
+
+"Lord save us!" she exclaimed, "I should not think it strange
+if Sister Thackeray had some of these very books. Do ask, Brother
+Cross, when you go to see her. She speaks much of books, and I see
+her reading them whenever I look in at the back window."
+
+John Cross did not seem to give any heed to the remark of the old
+woman. There was a theological point involved in one of the remarks of
+Alfred Stevens which he evidently regarded as of the first importance.
+
+"What you say, Alfred Stevens, is very new and very strange to me,
+and I should think from what I already know of the evil which is
+sometimes put in printed books, that there was indeed a spirit of
+malice at work in this way, to help the progress and the conquests
+of Satan among our blind and feeble race. But I am not prepared to
+believe that God has left it to Satan to devise so fearful a scheme
+for prosecuting his evil designs as that of making the demons
+of Ashdod and Assyria take the names of mortal men, while teeming
+to follow mortal occupations. It would be fearful tidings for our
+poor race were this so. But if so, is it not seen that there is
+a difference in the shapes of these persons. If either of these
+brothers who blasphemously call themselves John and James, after
+the manner of the apostles, shall be in very truth and certainty
+that Dagon of the Philistines whom Jehovah smote before his altar,
+will he not be made fishlike from the waist downward, and will
+this not be seen by his followers and some of the thousands whom
+he daily perverts to his evil purposes and so leads to eternal
+destruction?"
+
+"It may be that it is permitted to such a demon to put on what
+shape he thinks proper," replied Stevens; "but even if it is not,
+yet this would not be the subject of any difference--it would
+scarcely prevent the prosecution of this evil purpose. You are to
+remember, Mr. Cross--"
+
+"John Cross--plain John Cross, Alfred Stevens," was the interruption
+of the preacher.
+
+"You are to remember," Stevens resumed, "that when the heart is full
+of sin, the eyes are full of blindness. The people who believe in
+these evil beings are incapable of seeing their deformities."
+
+"That is true--a sad truth."
+
+"And, again," continued Stevens, "there are devices of mere mortal
+art, by which the deformities and defects of an individual may be
+concealed. One of these brothers, I am told, is never to be seen
+except seated in one position at the same desk, and this desk is
+so constructed, as to hide his lower limbs in great part, while
+still enabling him to prosecute his nefarious work."
+
+"It's clear enough, Brother Cross," exclaimed the widow Cooper,
+now thoroughly convinced--"it's clear enough that there's something
+that he wants to hide. Lord help us! but these things are terrible."
+
+"To the weak and the wicked, Sister Cooper, they are, as you say,
+terrible, and hence the need that we should have our lamps trimmed
+and lighted, for the same light which brings us to the sight of
+the Holy of Holies, shows us the shape of hatefuless, the black
+and crouching form of Satan, with nothing to conceal his deformity.
+Brother Stevens has well said that when the heart is full of sin,
+the eyes are full of blindness; and so we may say that when the
+heart is full of godliness, the eyes are full of seeing. You can
+not blind them with devilish arts. You can not delude them as to
+the true forms of Satan, let him take any shape The eye of godliness
+sees clean through the mask of sin, as the light of the sun pierces
+the thickest cloud, and brings day after the darkest night."
+
+"Oh! what a blessed thing to hear you say so."
+
+"More blessed to believe, Sister Cooper, and believing, to pray
+with all your heart for this same eye of godliness. But we should
+not only pray but work. Working for God is the best sort of prayer.
+We must do something in his behalf: and this reminds me, Sister
+Cooper, that if there is so much evil spread abroad in these books,
+we should look heedfully into the character of such as fall into
+the hands of the young and the unmindful of our flock."
+
+"That is very true; that is just what I was thinking of, Brother
+Cross. You can not look too close, I'm thinking into such books as
+you'll find at the house of Widow Thackeray. I can give a pretty
+'cute guess where she gets all that sort of talk, that seems so
+natural at the end of her tongue."
+
+"Verily, I will speak with Sister Thackeray on this subject,"
+responded the pastor--"but your own books, Sister Cooper, and those
+of your daughter Margaret--if it is convenient, I should prefer to
+examine them now while I am here."
+
+"What! Margaret's books! examine Margaret's books!"
+
+"Even so, while I am present and while Brother Stevens is here,
+also, to give me his helping counsel in the way of judgment."
+
+"Why, bless us, Brother Cross, you don't suppose that my daughter
+Margaret would keep any but the properest books? she's too sensible,
+I can tell you, for that. She's no books but the best; none, I'll
+warrant you, like them you'll find at Widow Thackeray's. She's not
+to be put off with bad books. She goes through 'em with a glance
+of the eye. Ah! she's too smart to be caught by the contrivances
+of those devils, though in place of four brothers there was four
+thousand of 'em. No, no! let her alone for that--she's a match for
+the best of 'em."
+
+"But as Brother Stevens said," continued John Cross, "where sin
+gets into the heart, the eye is blinded to the truth. Now--"
+
+"Her eye's not blinded, Brother Cross, I can tell you. They can't
+cheat her with their books. She has none but the very best. I'll
+answer for them. None of them ever did me any harm; and I reckon
+none of them'll ever hurt her. But I'm mistaken, if you don't have
+a real burning when you get to Mrs. Thackeray's."
+
+"But, Sister Cooper--" commenced the preacher.
+
+"Yes, Brother Cross," replied the dame.
+
+"Books, as I said before, are of two kinds."
+
+"Yes, I know--good and bad--I only wonder there's no indifferent
+ones among 'em," replied the lady.
+
+"They should be examined for the benefit of the young and ignorant."
+
+"Oh, yes, and for more besides, for Mrs. Thackeray's not young,
+that's clear enough; and I know there's a good many things that
+she's not ignorant of. She's precious knowing about many things
+that don't do her much good; and if the books could unlearn her,
+I'd say for one let her keep 'em. But as for looking at Margaret's
+books--why, Brother Cross, you surely know Margaret?"
+
+The preacher answered meekly, but negatively.
+
+"Ain't she about the smartest girl you ever met with?" continued
+the mother.
+
+"God has certainly blessed her with many gifts," was the reply,
+"but where the trust is great, the responsibility is great also."
+
+"Don't she know it?"
+
+"I trust she does, Sister Cooper."
+
+"You may trust every bit of it. She's got the smartness, the same
+as it is in books--"
+
+"But the gift of talents, Sister Cooper, is a dangerous gift."
+
+"I don't see, Brother Cross, how good things that come from God
+can be dangerous things."
+
+"If I could see the books, Sister Cooper;--I say not that they are
+evil--"
+
+John Cross began in tones that denoted something like despair;
+certainly dissatisfaction was in them, when Alfred Stevens, who
+had long since tired of what was going on, heard a light footfall
+behind him. He turned his eyes and beheld the fair maiden, herself,
+the propriety of whose reading was under discussion, standing in the
+doorway. It appeared that she had gathered from what had reached
+her ears, some knowledge of what was going on, for a smile of
+ineffable scorn curled her classic and nobly-chiselled mouth, while
+her brow was the index to a very haughty volume. In turning, Alfred
+Stevens betrayed to her the playful smile upon his own lips--their
+eyes met, and that single glance established a certain understanding
+between them.
+
+Her coming did not avail to stifle the subject of discussion. John
+Cross was too resolute in the prosecution of his supposed duty, to
+give up the cause he had once undertaken. He had all the inveteracy
+of the stout old puritan. The usual introduction over and he resumed,
+though he now addressed himself to the daughter rather than the
+mother. She scarcely heard him to the end.
+
+"The books were my father's, Mr. Cross; they are valuable to me
+on that account. They are dear to me on their own. They are almost
+my only companions, and though I believe you would find nothing in
+them which might be held detrimental, yet I must confess, if there
+were, I should be sorry to be made acquainted with the fact. I
+have not yet discovered it myself, and should be loath to have it
+shown by another."
+
+"But you will let me see them, Margaret?"
+
+"Yes, sir, whenever you please. I can have no objection to that,
+but if by seeing them you only desire an opportunity to say what I
+shall read and what not, I can only tell you that your labor will
+be taken in vain. Indeed, the evil is already done. I have not a
+volume which I have not read repeatedly."
+
+It is needless to add that Brother Cross was compelled to forego his
+book examination at the widow Cooper's, though strongly recommended
+there to press it at Widow Thackeray's. Alfred Stevens was a mute
+observer during the interview, which did not last very long after
+the appearance of Margaret. He was confirmed in all his previous
+impressions of her beauty, nor did the brevity of the conference
+prevent him from perceiving her intense self-esteem, which under
+certain influences of temperament is only another name for vanity.
+Besides they had exchanged glances which were volumes, rendering
+unnecessary much future explanation. She had seen that he was
+secretly laughing at the simple preacher, and that was a source
+of sympathy between them. She was very much in the habit of doing
+the same thing. He, on the other hand, was very well satisfied
+that the daughter of such a mother must be perverse and vain; and
+he was moralist enough to know that there is no heart so accessible to
+the tempter as the proud and wilful heart. But few words had passed
+between them, but those were expressive, and they both parted, with
+the firm conviction that they must necessarily meet again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.
+
+
+
+
+
+Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we look in upon him
+at Mrs. Thackeray's, while, obeying the suggestion of the widow
+Cooper, he purges her library of twenty volumes, casting out the
+devils and setting up the true gods? It is scarcely necessary.
+Enough to know that, under his expurgatorial finger, our beloved
+and bosom friend, William Shakspere, was the first to suffer.
+Plays!  The one word was enough. Some lying histories were permitted
+to escape. The name of history saved them! Robinson Crusoe was
+preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's Tale of a Tub escaped,
+as it was assumed (there being no time to read any of the books,
+and in this respect John Cross showed himself much more of a
+professional critic than he conjectured) to be a treatise on one
+branch of the cooperage business, and so, important to domestic
+mechanics in a new country. The reader will remember the manner in
+which the library of the knight of La Mancha was disposed of.  He
+would err, however, if he supposed that John Cross dismissed
+the books from the window, or did anything farther than simply to
+open the eyes of Mrs. Thackeray to the bad quality of some of the
+company she kept. That sagacious lady did not think it worth while
+to dispute the ipse dixit of a teacher so single-minded, if not
+sagacious. She bowed respectfully to all his suggestions, promised
+no longer to bestow her smiles on the undeserving--a promise of no
+small importance when it is remembered that, at thirty-three, Mrs.
+Thackeray was for the first time a widow--and that night she might
+have been seen laughing heartily with Mesdames Ford and Quickly at
+the amorous pertinacity of the baffled knight of Eastcheap.
+
+Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens obtained
+the desired entree into the bosom of the flock. He was everywhere
+admitted with gladness--everywhere welcomed as to a home; and the
+unsophisticated old teacher by whose agency this was effected,
+congratulated his congregation and himself, on leaving the village,
+that he had left in it a person so full of grace, and one who,
+with the blessing of God, was so likely to bring about the birth
+of grace in others. The good old man bestowed long and repeated
+counsels upon his neophyte. The course of study which he prescribed
+was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and the Omega--it was
+the essential whole. It would be well to read other books if they
+could be had--Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken of--but
+they could be done without. The word of God was in the one volume,
+and it needed no help from commentators to win its way and suffice
+the hungering and thirsting soul.
+
+"If you could lay hands upon the book of sermons written by Brother
+Peter Cummins, which his wife had printed, I'm thinking it would
+serve, next to God's own blessed word, to put you in the right way.
+It's been a great helping to me, Alfred Stevens, that same book of
+sermons; and, I reckon it's because it's so good a book that it's
+not printed now. I don't see it much about. But I'll get you one
+if I can, and bring or send it to you, soon enough to help you to
+the wisdom that you're a seeking after. If it only wakes the spirit
+in you as it did in me--if it only stirs you up with the spirit of
+divine love--you'll find it easy enough to understand the teachings
+of the holy volume. All things become clear in that blessed light.
+By its help you read, and by its working you inwardly digest all
+the needful learning. The Lord be with you, Alfred Stevens, and
+bring to perfect ripening your present undertaking."
+
+"Amen!" was the solemn response of the hypocrite, but we need not
+say what an irreverent and unholy thought lay at the bottom of his
+mind in making this ejaculation.
+
+Before the departure of John Cross, the latter had made terms with
+Squire Hinkley for the board and lodging of Brother Stevens and
+his horse. Hinkley would have preferred taking nothing, considering
+the praiseworthy purpose of the supposed theological student; but
+Stevens shrunk from receiving such an obligation with a feeling
+of pride, which yet had no scruples at practising so wretched an
+imposture. He insisted upon making compensation, or upon leaving
+the house; and, not to incur this risk, Hinkley consented to receive
+a weekly sum in payment; but the charge was considerably smaller,
+as we may suppose, than it would have been had the lodger simply
+appeared as an inoffensive traveller, practising no fraud and making
+no professions of religion.
+
+Having effected all these arrangements, to his own satisfaction and
+seemingly that of all others, John Cross departed once more into
+the wilderness on his single-hearted ministry of love. A sturdy
+and an honest worker was he in the tabernacle, with a right mind
+if not a very wise one; and doing more good in his generation, and
+after the fashion of his strength, than is often permitted to the
+stall-fed doctors of his vocation.
+
+The reader will suppose that the old man has been already gone some
+seven days. Meanwhile, the young student has fairly made himself
+at home in Charlemont. He has a snug room, entirely to himself, at
+Squire Hinkley's, and, by the excellent care of the worthy dame, it
+is provided with the best bedding and the finest furniture.  Her
+own hands sweep it clean, morning and night, for the incipient
+parson; she makes up the bed, and, in customary phrase, puts it in
+all respects to rights. His wants are anticipated, his slightest
+suggestion met with the most prompt consideration; and John Cross
+himself, humble and unexacting as he was, might have felt some
+little twinges of mortal envy could he have known that his protege
+promised to become a much greater favorite than himself.
+
+This, indeed, seemed very likely to be the case. A good young
+man in the sight of the ladies is always a more attractive person
+than a good old man. Dame Hinkley, though no longer young herself,
+remembered that she had been so, and preserved all her sympathies,
+in consequence, for young people. She thought Alfred Stevens so
+handsome, and he smiled so sweetly, and he spoke so genty, and,
+in short, so great had been his progress in the affections of his
+hostess in the brief space of a single week, that we are constrained
+to confess ourselves rejoiced that she herself was an old woman,
+as well on her own account as on that of her worthy spouse.
+
+Her good man was very well satisfied, whether from confidence or
+indifference, that such should be the case. Her attentions to the
+young stranger probably diverted them from himself. But not so with
+William Hinkley--the son. We have already had some glimpses of the
+character of this young man. We may now add that the short week's
+residence of Stevens in Charlemont had increased the soreness at
+his heart. In that week he had seen fairly established that intimacy
+between his rival and the lady of his love which seemed to give
+the death-blow to any pretensions of his. He had seen them meet;
+had seen them go forth together; beheld their mutual eyes, and,
+turning his own inward, saw how deeply his heart was concerned
+in the probable sympathies of theirs. Then, to turn to his own
+habitation, and to behold THAT, mother and all, devoted to the same
+absolute stranger; to pass unheeded in the presence of those whom
+he best loved--over whom natural ties gave him inalienable rights;
+to feel himself put aside for one only known of yesterday; to look
+with yearning, and meet eyes only of disregard and indifference!
+Such being the suggestions of his jealous and suffering nature, it
+is surely no matter of wonder that the youth grew melancholy and
+abstracted.
+
+Our adventurer was snugly seated in the little but select chamber
+which had been given him in the house of Squire Hinkley. A table,
+neatly spread with a cotton cover, stood before him: a travelling-portfolio
+was opened beneath his hand, with a broad sheet of paper, already
+well written over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps
+the postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and
+nibbled into bits the feathery end of the gray goosequill of which he
+had been making such excellent use. While he meditates, unseeing,
+we will use the liberty of an old acquaintance to scan the letter--for
+such it is--which he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from
+it some matters which it may concern us yet to know:--
+
+"Dear Barnabas: The strangest adventure--positively the very
+strangest--that ever happened to a son of Murkey's, will keep me
+from the embraces of the brethren a few weeks longer. I am benighted,
+bewildered, taken with art-magic, transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, not
+myself nor yet another, but, as they say in Mississippi, 'a sort
+of betweenity.' Fancy me suddenly become a convert to the bluest
+presbyterianism, as our late excellent brother Woodford became,
+when he found that he could not get Moll Parkinson on any other
+terms--and your guess will not be very far from the true one. I
+am suddenly touched with conviction. I have seen a light on my way
+from Tarsus. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I have seen the
+wickedness of my ways, and yours too, you dog; and, having resolved
+on my own repentance, I am taking lessons which shall enable me to
+effect yours. Precious deal of salt will it need for that! Salt river
+will fall, while its value rises. But the glory of the thing--think
+of that, my boy! What a triumph it will be to revolutionize
+Murkey's!--to turnout the drinkers and smokers, and money-changers;
+to say, 'Hem! my brethren, let us pay no more taxes to sin in this
+place!' There shall be no more cakes and ale. Ginger shall have no
+heat i' the mouth there; and, in place of smoking meats and tobacco,
+give you nothing but smoking methodism! Won't that be a sight and
+a triumph which shall stir the dry bones in our valley--ay, and
+bones not so dry? There shall be a quaking of the flesh in sundry
+places. Flam will perish in the first fit of consternation; and if
+Joe Burke's sides do not run into sop and jelly, through the mere
+humor of the thing, then prophecy is out of its element quite.
+
+"Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student! Don't you
+see proofs of my progress in my unctuous phraseology. I was taken
+suddenly upon the highway--a brand plucked from the burning--and to
+be stuck up on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern
+and lighthouse to other wayfarers--wandering rogues like yourself,
+who need some better lights than your own if it only be to show you
+how to sin decently. I am professedly a convert to the true faith,
+though which that is, I think, has not well been determined among
+you at Murkey's, or, indeed, anywhere else. I believe the vox
+populi, vox Dei, still comprises the only wholesome decision which
+has yet been made on the subject. The popular vote here declares it
+to be methodism; with you it is baptism or presbytenanism--which?
+I am a flexible student, however, and when I meet you again at
+Murkey's, shall be prepared to concur with the majority.
+
+"But, in sober fact, I am a professor--actually recognised by
+my neighbors as one of the elect--set apart to be and do mighty
+things.  How I came so, will call for a long story, which I defer
+to another occasion. Enough to tell you that an accidental rencontre
+with a silly old preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy,
+which I recommended to him, under another name, as a sovereign
+remedy against flatulence, and which nearly strangled him he took
+such a premeditated swallow), brought me into one of the loveliest
+little villages in all this western country, and there I saw many
+things--among others--a woman!--
+
+"A woman!--that one word, you dog, will explain the mystery--will
+show you why I am thus transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, and in 'a state
+of betweenity.' Nothing less, I assure you, could make me disguise
+myself after the present fashion; wear the sanctimonious and sour
+phiz which the common law of modern religion prescribes, and keep
+me much longer from the pleasanter communion of such glorious
+imps, as I suppose, are, even now, beginning to gather in the dingy
+smoke-room of our sovereign Murkey. But this woman, you will ask.
+Ay, ay, but you shall have no answer yet. It shall be enough for
+you that she is a queen of Sheba, after her own fashion. A proud,
+imperious, passionate creature--tall, really beautiful--and so
+majestic! You should see the flashing of her eyes to know what sort
+of a thing is moral lightning. Her face kindles up in an instant.
+She is an intensifier, and like most such, cursedly smart. Young
+too--scarce eighteen, I think; queer too--almost tyrannical at
+times--but full of blood, of unregulated passions, moody, capricious,
+and, of course, easy game, if the sportsman knows anything of
+the habits of the bird. She is a country-girl, but no hoyden. Her
+intensity of character, her pride and great self-esteem, have made
+her a solitary. Unsophisticated in some respects, she is yet not
+to be surprised. In solitude, and a taste for it, she has acquired
+a sort of moral composure which makes her secure against surprise.
+I am really taken with the girl, and COULD love her, I tell you--nay,
+do love her--so long as love can keep himself--out of a state of
+bondage! I do not think, at this moment, that I shall violate any
+of the laws of the conventicle, like small-witted Brother Woodford;
+though, so far as the woman is concerned, I should leave it without
+argument to the free vote of all the Lads of Fancy that ever gather
+round Murkey's round table, if my justification for turning traitor,
+would not prove immeasurably more complete than his.
+
+"So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch, you professional
+bandog. I had not meant to tell you half so much. There is some
+danger that one may lose his game altogether, if he suffers his
+nose to point unnecessarily to the cover where it lies. I know what
+keen scents are in the club, some of which would be on my track
+in no time if they knew where to find me; but I shall baffle you,
+you villains. My post-town is fifty miles from the place where I pursue
+my theological studies; you are too wise to attempt a wild-goose
+chase. You may smack your chaps, Barney, with envy; bite them
+too if you please, and it will only whet my own sense of pleasure
+to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless denunciations in the
+club.  I shall be back in time for term--meanwhile get the papers
+in readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland, and remember
+to address me as Alfred Stevens--nay, perhaps, you may even say,
+'Rev. Alfred Stevens,' it will grace the externals of the document
+with a more unctuous aspect, and secure the recipient a more wholesome
+degree of respect. Send all my letters to this town under envelope
+with this direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville. Did I tell
+you that old Hunks has been deused liberal? I can laugh at the
+small terms, yet go to Murkey's and shine through the smoke with
+the best of you. I solicit the prayers of the Round Table.
+
+"Faithfully, yours, &c."
+
+So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate, when
+a tap was heard at the entrance of his chamber. Thrusting the
+written papers into his portfolio, he rose, and opening the door
+discovered his hostess at the entrance.
+
+"I came, Brother Stevens," said the old lady, "if you not too busy
+in your studies, to have a little talk with you, and to get your
+counsel upon a subject that a little distresses me. But you look
+as if you were busy now--"
+
+"Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in any other
+respect," replied the guest with suitable suavity of expression--"shall
+I attend you down stairs."
+
+"Oh! no! it won't need," said she. "I'll take a seat with you
+awhile. We shall be less liable to interruption here."
+
+Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority of the old
+lady made her proceedings very innocent, however much they might
+have been adverse to the rules. He threw wide the door, and without
+more hesitation she followed him at once into the chamber.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her
+guest was a very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she
+expressed it in few words. That is scarcely possible at any time
+with an ancient lady. But the long story which she told, when
+compressed into intelligible form, related to her son William.
+She had some maternal fears on his account. The lad was a decided
+melancholic. His appetite was bad; his looks were thin and unhappy; he
+lacked the usual spirit of youth; he lacked his own usual spirit.
+What was the cause of the change which had come over him so suddenly,
+she could not divine. Her anxiety was for the remedy.  She had
+consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he departed; but
+that good man, after a brief examination of the patient, had freely
+admitted his inability to say what was the matter with him, and what
+was proper for his cure. To the object of this solicitude himself,
+he had given much good counsel, concluding finally with a recommendation
+to read devoutly certain chapters in Job and Isaiah.  It appears
+that William Hinkley submitted to all this scrutiny with exemplary
+fortitude, but gave no satisfactory answers to any of the questions
+asked him. He had no complaints, he denied any suffering; and
+expressed himself annoyed at the inquisition into his thoughts
+and feelings. This annoyance had been expressed, however, with the
+subdued tones and language of one habitually gentle and modest.
+Whenever he was approached on the subject, as the good old lady
+assured her guest, he shook off his questioners with no little
+haste, and took to the woods for the rest of the day. "That day,"
+said she, "you needn't look for William Hinkley to his dinner."
+
+Stevens had been struck with the deportment of this youth, which
+had seemed to him haughty and repulsive; and, as he fancied,
+characterized by some sentiment of hostility for himself. He was
+surprised therefore to learn from the old lady that the lad was
+remarkable for his gentleness.
+
+"How long has he been in this way, Mrs. Hinkley?" he asked with
+some curiosity.
+
+"Well now, Brother Stevens, I can't tell you. It's been growing on
+him for some time. I reckon it's a matter of more than four months
+since I first seen it; but it's only been a few weeks that I have
+spoken to him. Brother Cross spoke to him only Monday of last week.
+My old man don't seem to see so much of it; but I know there's a
+great change in him now from what there used to be. A mother's eye
+sees a great way farther into the hearts of her children, Brother
+Stevens, than any other persons; and I can see plainly that William
+is no more the same boy--no! nor nothing like it--that he once was.
+Why, once, he was all life, and good humor; could dance and sing
+with the merriest among them; and was always so good and kind, and
+loved to do whatever would please a body; and was always with somebody,
+or other, making merry, and planning the prettiest sports. Now, he
+don't sing, nor dance, nor play; when you see him, you 'most always
+see him alone. He goes by himself into the woods, and he'll be
+going over the hills all day, nobody with him, and never seeming
+to care about his food, and what's more strange, never looking at
+the books that he used to be so fond of."
+
+"He has been fond of books, then--had he many?"
+
+"Oh, yes, a whole drawer of them, and he used to get them besides
+from the schoolmaster, Mr. Calvert, a very good man that lives
+about half a mile from the village, and has a world of books. But
+now he neither gets books from other people nor reads what he's
+got. I'm dubious, Brother Stevens, that he's read too much for his
+own good. Something's not right here, I'm a thinking."
+
+The good old lady touched her head with her finger and in this
+manner indicated her conjecture as to the seat of her son's disease.
+Stevens answered her encouragingly.
+
+"I scarcely think, Mrs. Hinkley, that it can be anything so bad.
+The young man is at that age when a change naturally takes place
+in the mind and habits. He wants to go into the world, I suspect.
+He's probably tired of doing nothing. What is to be his business?
+It's high time that such a youth should have made a choice."
+
+"That's true, Brother Stevens, but he's been the apple to our eyes,
+and we haven't been willing that he should take up any business
+that would--carry him away from us. He's done a little farming
+about the country, but that took him away, and latterly he's kept
+pretty much at home, going over his books and studying, now one
+and now another, just as Mr. Calvert gave them to him."
+
+"What studies did he pursue?"
+
+"Well, I can't tell you. He was a good time at Latin, and then he
+wants to be a lawyer;--"
+
+"A lawyer!"
+
+"Yes, he had a great notion to be a lawyer and was at his books
+pretty hard for a good year, constant, day by day, until, as I
+said before, about four months ago, when I saw that he was growing
+thin, and that he had put down the books altogether, and had the
+change come over him just as I told you. You see how thin he is
+now. You'd scarce believe him to be the same person if you'd seen
+him then. Why his cheeks were as full and as red as roses, and
+his eye was always shining and laughing, and he had the liveliest
+step, and between him and Ned Hinkley, his cousin, what with flute
+and fiddle, they kept the house in a constant uproar, and we were
+all so happy. Now, it isn't once a month that we hear the sound of
+the fiddle in the house. He never sings, and he never dances, and
+he never plays, and what little he lets us see of him, is always
+so sad and so spiritless that I feel heartsick whenever I look
+upon him. Oh! Brother Stevens, if you could only find out what's
+the matter, and tell us what to do, it would be the most blessed
+kindness, and I'd never forget it, or forget you, to my dying day."
+
+"Whatever I can do, Mrs. Hinkley, shall surely be done. I will see
+and speak with your son."
+
+"Oh! do--that's a dear good sir. I'm sure if you only talk to him
+and advise him it will do him good."
+
+"Without being so sure, ma'am, I will certainly try to please
+you. Though I think you see the matter with too serious eyes. Such
+changes are natural enough to young people, and to old ones too.
+But what may be your son's age."
+
+"Nineteen last April."
+
+"Quite a man for his years, Mrs. Hinkley."
+
+"Isn't he?"
+
+"He will do you credit yet."
+
+"Ah! if I could believe so. But you'll speak to him, Brother Stevens?
+You'll try and bring all to rights?"
+
+"Rely upon me to do what I can;--to do my best."
+
+"Well, that's as much as any man can do, and I'm sure I'll be so
+happy--we shall all be so much indebted to you."
+
+"Do not speak of it, my dear madam," said Stevens, bowing with
+profound deference as the old lady took her departure. She went
+off with light heart, having great faith in the powers of the holy
+man, and an equal faith in his sincerity.
+
+"What a bore!" he muttered as he closed the door behind her.
+"This is one of the penalties, I suppose, which I must pay for my
+privileges. I shall be called upon to reform the morals and manners,
+and look into the petty cares of every chuckle-headed boor and
+boor's brat for ten miles round. See why boys reject their mush,
+and why the girls dislike to listen to the exhortations of a mamma,
+who requires them to leave undone what she has done herself--and
+with sufficient reason too, if her own experience be not wholly
+profitless. Well, I must submit. There are advantages, however; I
+shall have other pupils to tutor, and it shall go hard with me if
+all the grapes prove sour where the vines are so various."
+
+The student of divinity, after these conclusions, prepared to make
+his toilet. Very few of these students, in their extreme solicitude for
+the well being of the inner man, show themselves wholly regardless
+of their externals. Even mourning, it appears, requires to be
+disposed by a fashionable costumer. Though the garments to which
+the necessities of travel limited Brother Stevens were not various,
+they were yet select. The good young man had an affection for his
+person, which was such certainly as to deserve his care. On this
+occasion he was more than usually particular. He did not scruple
+to discard the white cravat. For this he substituted a handkerchief
+which had the prettiest sprig of lilac, on a ground of the most
+delicato lemon color. He consulted complexions, and his mirror
+determined him in favor of this pattern. Brother Stevens would not
+have worn it had he been summoned, in his new vocation, to preach
+or pray at the conventicle; nor would he have dreamed of anything
+but a black stock had his business been to address the democracy
+from the top of a cider-barrel. His habits, under such necessities,
+would have been made to correspond with the principles (Qu?) which
+such a situation more distinctly called for.
+
+But the thoughts of our worthy brother ran upon other objects. He
+was thinking of Margaret Cooper. He was about to pay that damsel
+a visit. His progress, we may suppose, had not been inconsiderable
+when we are told that his present visit was one of previous
+arrangement. They were about to go forth on a ramble together--the
+woods were so wild and lovely--the rocks surrounding Charlemont
+were so very picturesque;--there was the quietest tarn, a sort of
+basin in the bosom of the hills at a little distance, which she was
+to show him; and there was the sweetest stream in the world, that
+meandered in the neighborhood; and Brother Stevens so loved the
+picturesque--lakes embosomed in hills, and streams stealing through
+unbroken forests, and all so much the more devotedly, when he had
+such a companion as Margaret Cooper.
+
+And Margaret Cooper!--she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer--a
+muse--filled with ambitious thoughts--proud, vain, aspiring
+after the vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she
+could speak her whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to
+understanding ears! Stevens and herself had already spoken together.
+Her books had been his books. The glowing passages which she loved
+to repeat, were also the favorite passages in his memory. Over the
+burning and thrilling strains of Byron, the tender and spiritual
+of Shelley, the graceful and soft of Campbell, she loved to linger.
+They filled her thoughts. They made her thoughts. She felt that
+her true utterance lay in their language; and this language, until
+now, had fallen dead and without fruit upon the dull ears of her
+companions in Charlemont. What was their fiddling and festivity to
+her! What their tedious recreations by hillside or stream, when she
+had to depress her speech to the base levels of their unimaginative
+souls! The loveliness of nature itself, unrepresented by the glowing
+hues of poetry, grew tame, if not offensive; and when challenged
+to its contemplation by those to whom the muse was nothing, the
+fancy of the true observer grew chilled and heavy, and the scenes
+of beauty seemed prostituted in their glance.
+
+We have all felt this. Nothing can more annoy the soul of taste or
+sensibility than to behold its favorite scene and subject fail in
+awakening others to that emotion which it has inspired in ourselves.
+We turn away in haste, lest the object of our worship should become
+degraded by a longer survey. Enthusiasm recoils at a denial of
+sympathy; and all the worth of our companion, in a thousand other
+respects, fails to reconcile us to his coldness and indifference.
+
+That Alfred Stevens had taste and talent--that he was well read
+in the volumes which had been her favorite study, Margaret Cooper
+needed no long time to discover. She soon ascribed to him qualities
+and tastes which were beyond his nature. Deceived by his tact, she
+believed in his enthusiasm. He soon discovered HER tastes; and she
+found equally soon that HIS were like her own. After this discovery,
+she gave him credit for other and more important possessions; and
+little dreamed that, while he responded to her glowing sentiments
+with others equally glowing--avowed the same love for the same
+authors, and concurred with her in the preference of the same
+passages--his feelings were as little susceptible of sympathy with
+hers as would have been those of the cold demon Mephistopheles!
+While her eye was flashing, her cheek flushed, her breast heaving
+with the burning thoughts and strains of the master to whom her
+beautiful lips were giving utterance, he was simply sensible to HER
+beauty--to its strange, wild charms--and meditating thoughts from
+which the soul of true poetry recoils with the last feelings of
+aversion. Even the passion which he felt while he surveyed her,
+foreign as it was to those legitimate emotions which her ambition
+and her genius would equally have tended to inspire in any
+justly-minded nature, might well be considered frigid--regarded as
+the result of deliberate artifice--the true offspring of an habitual
+and base indulgence.
+
+It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding
+girl, that Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his
+costume. He felt its deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity
+of making the most of it; for, though he perfectly well knew that
+such a woman as Margaret Cooper would have been the very last to
+regard the mere garment in which a congenial nature is arrayed,
+yet he also well knew that the costume is not less indicative of
+the tastes than the wealth of the wearer. You will see thousands
+of persons, men and women, richly dressed, and but one will be WELL
+dressed: that one, most generally, will be the individual who is
+perhaps of all others possessed of the least resources for dress,
+other than those which dwell in the well-arranged mind, the
+well-disposing taste, and the happy, crowning fancy.
+
+His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing
+to go forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed
+his hand upon the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his
+hostess, on the stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son.
+He was about to forbear his purpose of departure as the parties had
+retired, when, remembering the solicitude of the lady, and thinking
+it would show that zest in her service which he really could not
+entertain, he determined at once to to join the young man, and
+begin with him that certain degree of intimacy without which it
+could scarcely be supposed that he could broach the subject of his
+personal affairs. He felt somewhat the awkwardness of this assumed
+duty, but then he recollected his vocation; he knew the paramount
+influence of the clergy upon all classes of persons in the West,
+and, with the conscious superiority derived from greater years
+and better education, he felt himself fortified in undertaking the
+paternal office which the fond, foolish mother had confided to his
+hands. Accordingly, descending the stairs briskly, he joined the
+two at the entrance of the dwelling. The son was already on the
+outside; the mother stood in the doorway: and, as Stevens appeared
+and drew nigh, William Hinkley bowed, and turned away as if to
+withdraw.
+
+"If you have no objections, Mr. Hinkley," said Stevens, "I will
+join you. You seem to be about to go my way."
+
+The young man paused with an air of reluctance, muttered something
+which was not altogether intelligible, but which Stevens construed
+into assent, and the two set forth together--the good old matron
+giving a glance of gratitude to the benevolent young student which
+her son did not fail to note, while, at the same time, a sentence
+which evidently conveyed some motherly rebuke, was addressed to
+his already-irritated ears.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+WRESTLING.
+
+
+
+
+
+Alfred Stevens, as he walked behind his young companion, observed
+him with a more deliberate survey than he had yet taken. Hitherto,
+the young man had challenged but little of his scrutiny. He had
+simply noted him for a tall youth, yet in the green, who appeared
+of a sulky, retiring nature, and whose looks had seemed to him
+on one or more occasions to manifest something like distaste for
+himself. The complacency of Stevens, however, was too well grounded
+to be much disturbed by such an exhibition. Perhaps, indeed, he
+would have derived a malicious sort of satisfaction in making a
+presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He had just that smallness
+of spirit which would find its triumph in the success of such a
+performance.
+
+He now observed that the youth was well formed, tall, not ungraceful--with
+features of singular intelligence, though subdued to the verge of
+sadness. His face was pale and thin, his eyes were a little sunken,
+and his air, expression, and general outside, denoted a youth of
+keen sensibilities, who had suffered some disappointment.
+
+In making this examination, Alfred Stevens was not awakened to
+any generous purposes. He designed, in reality, nothing more than
+to acquit himself of the duty he had undertaken with the smallest
+possible exertion. His own mind was one of that mediocre character
+which the heart never informs. His scrutiny, therefore, though it
+enabled him to perceive that the young man had qualities of worth,
+was not such as to prompt any real curiosity to examine further.
+A really superior mind would have been moved to look into these
+resources; and, without other motive than that of bringing a young,
+laboring, and ardent soul out of the meshes of a new and bewildering
+thought or situation, would have addressed himself to the task with
+that degree of solicitous earnestness which disarms prejudice and
+invites and wins confidence. But, with his first impression, that
+the whole business was a "bore," our benevolent young teacher
+determined on getting through with it with the least possible effort.
+He saw that the youth carried a book under his arm, the externals
+of which, so uniform and discouraging as they appear in every legal
+library, could not well be questioned as belonging to some such
+venerable receptacle of barbarous phrase and rigid authority. The
+circumstance afforded him an occasion to begin a conversation,
+the opening of which, with all his coolness, was a subject of some
+awkwardness.
+
+"You seem a student like myself, Mr. Hinkley, and, if I mistake not
+from the appearance of your book, you are taking up the profession
+which I am about to lay down."
+
+"This is a law-book, sir," said Hinkley, in accents which were
+rather meek than cold; "it is Blackstone."
+
+"Ah! I thought as much. Have you been long a student?"
+
+"I may scarcely consider myself one yet. I have read, sir, rather
+than studied."
+
+"A good distinction, not often made. But, do you incline to law
+seriously?"
+
+"Yes, sir--I know no occupation to which I so much incline."
+
+"The law is a very arduous profession. It requires a rare union of
+industry, talent, and knowledge of mankind to be a good lawyer."
+
+"I should think so, sir."
+
+"Few succeed where thousands fail. Young men are very apt to mistake
+inclination for ability; and to be a poor lawyer--"
+
+"Is to be worse than poor--is to be despicable!" replied Hinkley
+with a half-sfnile, as he interrupted a speech which might have
+been construed into a very contemptuous commentary on his own
+pretensions. It would seem that the young man had so understood
+it. He continued thus:--
+
+"It may be so with me, sir. It is not improbable that I deceive
+myself, and confound inclination with ability."
+
+"Oh, pardon me, my dear young friend," said Stevens patronizingly;
+"but I do not say so. I utter a mere generality. Of course, I can
+know nothing on the subject of your abilities. I should be glad
+to know. I should like to converse with you. But the law is very
+arduous, very exacting. It requires a good mind, and it requires
+the whole of it. There is no such thing as being a good lawyer
+from merely reading law. You can't bolt it as we do food in this
+country. We must chew upon it. It must be well digested. You seem
+to have the right notion on this subject. I should judge so from two
+things: the distinction which you made between the reader and the
+student; and the fact that your appearance is that of the student. I
+am afraid, my young friend, that you overwork yourself. You look
+thin, and pale, and unhappy. You should be careful that your passion
+for study is not indulged in at the peril of your health."
+
+The frame of the young man seemed to be suddenly agitated. His face
+was flushed, and a keen, quick, flash of anger seemed to lighten
+in his eyes as he looked up to the paternal counsellor and replied:--
+
+"I thank you, sir, for your interest, but it is premature. I am
+not conscious that my health suffers from this or any other cause."
+
+"Nay, my young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate
+your own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much
+we can do and how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere
+thinking can determine this matter for us. It can only be decided
+by being able to see what others do and can endure. In a little
+country village like this, one can not easily determine; and the
+difficulty may be increased somewhat by one's own conviction, of
+the immense deal that one has to learn. If you were to spend a year
+in some tolerably large community. Perhaps you meditate some such
+plan?".
+
+"I do not, sir," was the cold reply.
+
+"Indeed; and have you no desire that way?"
+
+"None!"
+
+"Very strange! at your time of life the natural desire is to go
+into the great world. Even the student fancies he can learn better
+there than he can anywhere else--and so he can."
+
+"Indeed, sir: if I may be so bold to ask, why, with this opinion,
+have you left the great city to bury yourself in a miserable village
+like Charlemont?"
+
+The question was so quickly put, and with so much apparent keenness,
+that Stevens found the tables suddenly reversed. But he was in
+nowise discomposed. He answered promptly.
+
+"You forget," he said, "that I was speaking of very young men, of
+an ambitious temper, who were seeking to become lawyers. The student
+of divinity may very well be supposed to be one who would withdraw
+himself from the scene of ambition, strifes, vanities, and tumultuous
+passions."
+
+"You speak, sir, as if there were a material difference in our
+years?" said Hinkley inquiringly.
+
+"Perhaps it is less than in our experience, my young friend," was
+the answer of the other, betraying that quiet sense of superiority
+which would have been felt more gallingly by Hinkley had he been
+of a less modest nature. Still, it had the effect of arousing some
+of the animal in his blood, and he responded in a sentence which was
+not entirely without its sneer, though it probably passed without
+penetrating such a buff of self-esteem as guarded the sensibilities
+of our adventurer.
+
+"You are fortunate sir, if, at your time of life, you have succeeded
+in withdrawing your thoughts and feelings, with your person, from
+such scenes of ambition as you speak of. But I fancy the passions
+dwell with us in the country as well as with the wiser people in
+the town; and I am not sure that there is any pursuit much more
+free from their intrusion than that of the law."
+
+"Your remark exhibits penetration, Mr. Hinkley. I should not be
+surprised if you have chosen your profession properly. Still, I
+should counsel you not to overwork yourself. Bear with me, sir; I
+feel an interest in your behalf, and I must think you do so. Allow
+me to be something of a judge in this matter. You are aware, sir,
+that I too have been a lawyer."
+
+The youth bowed stiffly.
+
+"If I can lend you any assistance in your studies, I will do so.
+Let me arrange them for you, and portion out your time. I know
+something about that, and will save you from injuring your health.
+On this point you evidently need instruction. You are doing yourself
+hurt. Your appearance is matter of distress and apprehension to
+your parents."
+
+"To my parents, sir?"
+
+"Your mother, I mean! She spoke to me about you this very morning.
+She is distressed at some unaccountable changes which have taken
+place in your manners, your health, your personal appearance. Of
+course I can say nothing on the subject of the past, or of these
+changes; but I may be permitted to say that your present looks do
+not betoken health, and I have supposed this to be on account of
+your studies. I promised your good mother to confer with you. and
+counsel you, and if I can be of any help--"'
+
+"You are very good, sir!"
+
+The young man spoke bitterly. His gorge was rising. It was not
+easy to suppress his vexation with his mother, and the indignation
+which he felt at the supercilious approaches of the agent whom she
+had employed. Besides, his mind, not less than his feelings, was
+rising in vigor in due degree with the pressure put upon it.
+
+"You are very good, sir, and I am very much obliged to you. I
+could have wished, however, that my mother had not given you this
+trouble, sir. She certainly must have been thinking of Mr. John
+Cross.  She could scarcely have hoped that any good could have
+resulted to me, from the counsel of one who is so little older than
+myself."
+
+This speech made our adventurer elevate his eyebrows. He absolutely
+stopped short to look upon the speaker. William Hinkley stopped
+short also. His eye encountered that of Stevens with an expression
+as full of defiance as firmness. His cheeks glowed with the generous
+indignation which filled his veins.
+
+"This fellow has something in him after all," was the involuntary
+reflection that rose to the other's mind. The effect was, however,
+not very beneficial to his own manner. Instead of having the effect
+of impressing upon Stevens the necessity of working cautiously,
+the show of defiance which he saw tended to provoke and annoy him.
+The youth had displayed so much propriety in his anger, had been
+so moderate as well as firm, and had uttered his answer with so
+much dignity and correctness, that he felt himself rebuked. To be
+encountered by an unsophisticated boy, and foiled, though but for
+an instant--slightly estimated, though but by a youth, and him
+too, a mere rustic--was mortifying to the self-esteem that rather
+precipitately hurried to resent it."
+
+"You take it seriously, Mr. Hinkley. But surely an offer of service
+need not be mistaken. As for the trifling difference which may be
+in our years, that is perhaps nothing to the difference which may
+be in our experience, our knowledge of the world, our opportunities
+and studies."
+
+"Surely, sir; all thece MAY be, but at all events we are not bound
+to assume their existence until it is shown."
+
+"Oh, you are likely to prove an adept in the law, Mr. Hinkley."
+
+"I trust, sir, that your progress may be as great in the church."
+
+"Ha!--do I understand you? There is war between us then?" said
+Stevens, watching the animated and speaking countenance of William
+Hinkley with increasing curiosity.
+
+"Ay, sir--there is!" was the spirited reply of the youth. "Let it
+be war; I am the better pleased, sir, that you are the first to
+proclaim it."
+
+"Very good," said Stevens, "be it so, if you will. At all events
+you can have no objection to say why it should be so."
+
+"Do you ask, sir?"
+
+"Surely; for I can not guess."
+
+"You are less sagacious, then, than I had fancied you. You, scarce
+older than myself--a stranger among us--come to me in the language
+of a father, or a master, and without asking what I have of feeling,
+or what I lack of sense, undertake deliberately to wound the one,
+while insolently presuming to inform the other."
+
+"At the request of your own mother!"
+
+"Pshaw! what man of sense or honesty would urge such a plea. Years,
+and long intimacy, and wisdom admitted to be superior, could alone
+justify the presumption."
+
+The cheeks of Stevens became scalding hot.
+
+"Young man!" he exclaimed, "there is something more than this!"
+
+"What! would it need more were our positions reversed?" demanded
+Hinkley with a promptness that surprised himself.
+
+"Perhaps not! would you provoke me to personal violence?"
+
+"Ha! might I hope for that? surely you forget that you are a
+churchman?"
+
+Stevens paused awhile before he answered. His eyes looked vacantly
+around him. By this time they had left the more thickly-settled parts
+of the village considerably behind them. But a few more dwellings
+lay along the path on which they were approaching. On the left,
+a gorge opened in the hills by which the valley was dotted, which
+seemed a pathway, and did indeed lead to one or more dwellings which
+were out of sight in the opposite valley. The region to which this
+pathway led was very secluded, and the eye of Stevens surveyed it
+for a few moments in silence. The words of Hinkley unquestionably
+conveyed a challenge. According to the practice of the country,
+AS A LAWYER, he would have been bound to have taken it as such. A
+moment was required for reflection. His former and present position
+caused a conflict in his mind. The last sentence of Hinkley, and
+a sudden glimpse which he just then caught of the residence of
+Margaret Cooper, determined his answer.
+
+"I thank you, young man, for reminding me of my duties. You had
+nearly provoked the old passions and old practices into revival.
+I forgive you--you misunderstand me clearly. I know not how I have
+offended you, for my, only purpose was to serve your mother and
+yourself. I may have done this unwisely. I will not attempt to
+prove that I have not. At all events, assured of my own motives, I
+leave you to yourself. You will probably ere long feel the injustice
+you have done me!"
+
+He continued on his way, leaving William Hinkley almost rooted to
+the spot. The poor youth was actually stunned, not by what was said
+to him, but by the sudden consciousness of his own vehemence. He
+had expressed himself with a boldness and an energy of which neither
+himself nor his friend, until now, would have thought him capable.
+A moment's pause in the provocation, and the feelings which had
+goaded him on were taken with a revulsion quite as sudden. As he
+knew not well what he had said, so he fancied he had said everything
+precisely as the passionate thought had suggested it in his own
+mind. Already he began to blame himself--to feel that he had done
+wrong--that there had been nothing in the conduct or manner of
+Stevens, however unpleasant, to justify his own violence; and that
+the true secret of his anger was to be found in that instinctive
+hostility which he had felt for his rival from the first. The more
+he mused, the more he became humbled by his thoughts; and when he
+recollected the avowed profession of Stevens his shame increased.
+He felt how shocking it was to intimate to a sworn non-combatant
+the idea of a personal conflict. To what point of self-abasement his
+thoughts would have carried him, may only be conjectured; he might
+have hurried forward to overtake his antagonist with the distinct
+purpose of making the most ample apology; nay, more, such was the
+distinct thought which was now pressing upon his mind, when he was
+saved from this humiliation by perceiving that Stevens had already
+reached, and was about to enter the dwelling of Margaret Cooper.
+With this sight, every thought and feeling gave place to that of
+baffled love, and disappointed affection. With a bitter groan he
+turned up the gorge, and soon shut himself from sight of the now
+hateful habitation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The course of the young rustic was pursued for half a mile further
+till he came to a little cottage of which the eye could take no
+cognizance from any part of the village. It was embowelled in a
+glen of its own--a mere cup of the slightly-rising hills, and so
+encircled by foliage that it needed a very near approach of the
+stranger before he became aware of its existence. The structure was
+very small, a sort of square box with a cap upon it, and consisted
+of two rooms only on a ground floor, with a little lean-to or
+shed-room in the rear, intended for a kitchen. As you drew nigh
+and passed through the thick fringe of wood by which its approach
+was guarded, the space opened before you, and you found yourself
+in a sort of amphitheatre, of which the cottage was the centre. A
+few trees dotted this area, large and massive trees, and seemingly
+preserved for purposes of shade only. It was the quietest spot in
+the world, and inspired just that sort of feeling in the contemplative
+stranger which would be awakened by a ramble among the roofless
+ruins of the ancient abbey. It was a home for contemplation--in
+which one might easily forget the busy world without, and deliver
+himself up, without an effort, to the sweetly sad musings of the
+anchorite.
+
+The place was occupied, however. A human heart beat within the
+humble shed, and there was a spirit, sheltered by its quiet, that
+mused many high thoughts, and dreamed in equal congratulation and
+self-reproach, of that busy world from which it was an exile. The
+visit of William Hinkley was not paid to the solitude. A venerable
+man, of large frame, and benignant aspect, sat beneath an aged
+tree, paternal in its appearance like himself. This person might be
+between fifty and sixty years of age. His hair, though very thick
+and vigorous, was as white as driven snow. But there were few wrinkles
+on his face, and his complexion was the clear red and white of a
+healthy and sanguine temperament. His brow was large and lofty. It
+had many more wrinkles than his face. There were two large horizontal
+seams upon it that denoted the exercise of a very busy thought.
+But the expression of his eye was that of the most unembarrassed
+benevolence and peace. It was subdued and sometimes sad, but then
+it had the sweetest, playfullest twinkle in the world.  His mouth,
+which was small and beautifully formed, wore a similar expression.
+In short he was what we would call a handsome old gentleman, whose
+appearance did not offend taste, and whose kind looks invited
+confidence. Nor would we mistake his character.
+
+This person was the Mr. Calvert, the schoolmaster of the village,
+of whom Mrs. Hinkley spoke to Alfred Stevens in discussing
+the condition of her son. His tasks were over for the day. The
+light-hearted rabble whom he taught, released from his dominion which
+was not severe, were, by this time, scampering over the hills, as
+far from their usual place of restraint as the moderate strength of
+their legs could carry them. Though let loose, boys are not apt to
+feel their liberty in its prime and freshness, immediately in the
+neighborhood of the schoolhouse. The old gentleman left to himself,
+sat out in the open air, beneath a massive oak, the paternal stretching
+of whose venerable arms not unfrequently led to the employment of
+the shade below for carrying on the operations of the schoolhouse.
+There, squat on their haunches, the sturdy boys--germs of the finest
+peasantry in the world--surrounded their teacher in a group quite
+as pleasing as picturesque. The sway of the old man was paternal.
+His rod was rather a figurative than a real existence; and when
+driven to the use of the birch, the good man, consulting more
+tastes than one, employed the switch from the peach or some other
+odorous tree or shrub, in order to reconcile the lad, as well as
+he could, to the extraordinary application. He was one of those
+considerate persons, who disguise pills in gold-leaf, and if compelled,
+as a judge, to hang a gentleman, would decree that a rope of silk
+should carry out the painful requisitions of the laws.
+
+Seated beneath his tree, in nearly the same spot and position in
+which he had dismissed his pupils, William Calvert pored over the
+pages of a volume as huge of size as it was musty of appearance.
+It was that pleasant book--quite as much romance as history--the
+"Knights of Malta," by our venerable father, Monsieur L'Abbe
+Vertot. Its dull, dim, yellow-looking pages--how yellow, dim, and
+dull-looking in comparison with more youthful works--had yet a
+life and soul which it is not easy to find in many of these latter.
+Its high wrought and elaborate pictures of strife, and toil, and
+bloodshed, grew vividly before the old man's eyes; and then, to help
+the illusion, were there not the portraits--mark me--the veritable
+portraits, engraved on copper, with all their titles, badges, and
+insignia, done to the life, of all those brave, grand, and famous
+masters of the order, by whom the deeds were enacted which he
+read, and who stared out upon his eyes, at every epoch, in full
+confirmation of the veracious narrative? No wonder that the old
+man became heedless of external objects. No wonder he forgot the
+noise of the retiring urchins, and the toils of the day, as, for
+the twentieth time, he glowed in the brave recital of the famous
+siege--the baffled fury of the Turk--the unshaken constancy and
+unremitted valor of the few but fearless defenders. The blood in
+his cheek might be seen hastening to and fro in accordance with the
+events of which he read. His eye was glowing--his pulse beating,
+and he half started from his seat, as, hearing a slight footstep,
+he turned to encounter the respectful homage of his former pupil,
+still his friend, our young acquaintance, William Hinkley.
+
+The old man laid down his book upon the grass, extended his hand
+to his visiter, and leaning back against the tree, surrendered
+himself to a quiet chuckle in which there was the hesitancy of a
+little shame.
+
+"You surprised me, William," he said; "when I read old Vertot,
+and such books, I feel myself a boy again. You must have seen my
+emotion. I really had got so warm, that I was about to start up and
+look for the weapons of war; and had you but come a moment later,
+you might have suffered an assault. As it was, I took you for
+a Turk--Solyman himself--and was beginning to ask myself whether
+I should attack you tooth and nail, having no other weapons, or
+propose terms of peace. Considering the severe losses which you--I
+mean his Turkish highness--had sustained, I fancied that you would
+not be disinclined to an arrangement just at this moment.  But
+this very notion, at the same time, led me to the conclusion that
+I might end the struggle for ever by another blow. A moment later,
+my boy, and you might have been compelled to endure it for the
+Turk."
+
+The youth smiled sadly as he replied: "I must borrow that book
+from you, sir, some of these days. I have often thought to do so,
+but I am afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what, William?"
+
+"That it will turn my head, sir, and make me dislike more difficult
+studies."
+
+"It is a reasonable fear, my son; but there is no danger of this
+sort, if we will only take heed of one rule, and that is, to take
+such books as we take sweetmeats--in very small quantities at a
+time, and never to interfere with the main repast. I suspect that
+light reading--or reading which we usually call light, but which,
+as it concerns the fate of man in his most serious relations, his
+hopes, his affections, his heart, nay, his very people and nation--is
+scarcely less important than any other. I suspect that this sort
+of reading would be of great service to the student, by relieving
+the solemnity of more tedious and exacting studies, if taken sparingly
+and at allotted hours. The student usually finds a recreation of
+some kind. I would make books of this description his recreation.
+Many a thick-headed and sour parent has forced his son into
+a beer-shop, into the tastes for tobacco and consequently brandy,
+simply from denying him amusements which equally warm the blood
+and elevate the imagination. Studies which merely inform the head
+are very apt to endanger the heart. This is the reproach usually
+urged against the class of persons whom we call thorough lawyers.
+Their intense devotion to that narrow sphere of law which leaves
+out jury-pleading, is very apt to endanger the existence of feeling
+and imagination. The mere analysis of external principles begets a
+degree of moral indifference to all things else, which really impairs
+the intellect by depriving it of its highest sources of stimulus.
+Mathematicians suffer in the same way--become mere machines, and
+forfeit, in their concern for figures, all the social and most
+of the human characteristics. The mind is always enfeebled by any
+pursuit so single and absorbing in its aims as to leave out of
+exercise any of the moral faculties. That course of study is the
+only one to make a truly great man, which compels the mind to do
+all things of which it is capable."
+
+"But how do you reconcile this, sir, with the opinion, so generally
+entertained, that no one man can serve two masters? Law, like the
+muse, is a jealous mistress. She is said to suffer no lachesse to
+escape with impunity."
+
+"You mistake me. While I counsel one to go out of his profession
+for relief and recreation, I still counsel but the one pursuit. Men
+fail in their professions, not because they daily assign an hour
+to amusement, but because they halt in a perpetual struggle between
+some two leading objects. For example, nothing is more frequent in
+our country than to combine law and politics. Nothing is more apt
+to ruin the lawyer."
+
+"Very true, sir. I now understand you. But I should think the great
+difficulty would be, in resorting to such pleasant books as this
+of Vertot for relief and recreation, that you could not cast him
+off when you please. The intoxication would continue even after
+the draught has been swallowed, and would thus interfere with the
+hours devoted to other employments."
+
+"There is reason in that, William, and that, indeed, is the grand
+difficulty. But to show that a good scheme has its difficulties is
+not an argument for abandoning it."
+
+"By no means, sir."
+
+"The same individual whom Vertot might intoxicate, would most
+probably be intoxicated by more dangerous stimulants. Everything,
+however, depends upon the habits of self-control which a man has
+acquired in his boyhood. The habit of self-control is the only
+habit which makes mental power truly effective. The man who can not
+compel himself to do or to forbear, can never be much of a student.
+Students, if you observe, are generally dogged men--inflexible,
+plodding, persevering--among lawyers, those men whom you always
+find at their offices, and seldom see anywhere else. They own
+that mental habit which we call self-control, which supplies the
+deficiency in numerous instances of real talent. It is a power,
+and a mighty power, particularly in this country, where children
+are seldom taught it, and consequently grow up to be a sort of moral
+vanes that move with every change of wind, and never fix until they
+do so with their own rust. He who learns this power in boyhood will
+be very sure to master all his companions."
+
+The darker expression of sadness passed over the countenance of
+the ingenuous youth.
+
+"I am afraid," said he, "that I shall never acquire this habit."
+
+"Why so? In your very fear I see a hope."
+
+"Alas! sir, I feel my own instability of character. I feel myself
+the victim of a thousand plans and purposes, which change as soon
+and as often as they are made. I am afraid, sir, I shall be nothing!"
+
+"Do not despond, my son," said the old man sympathizingly. "Your
+fear is natural to your age and temperament. Most young men at
+your time of life feel numerous yearnings--the struggle of various
+qualities of mind, each striving in newly-born activity, and
+striving adversely. Your unhappiness arises from the refusal of
+these qualities to act together. When they learn to co-operate, all
+will be easy. Your strifes will be subdued; there will be a calm
+like that upon the sea when the storms subside."
+
+"Ah! but when will that be? A long time yet. It seems to me that
+the storm rather increases than subsides."
+
+"It may seem so to you now, and yet, when the strife is greatest,
+the favorable change is at hand. It needs but one thing to make
+all the conflicting qualities of one's mind cooperate."
+
+"What is that one thing, sir?"
+
+"An object! As yet, you have none."
+
+"None, sir!"
+
+"None--or rather many--which is pretty much the same thing as having
+none."
+
+"I am not sure, sir--but it seems to me, sir, that I have an object."
+
+"Indeed, William! are you sure?"
+
+"I think so, sir."
+
+"Well, name it,"
+
+"I have ambition, sir."
+
+"Ah! that is a passion, not an object. Does your ambition point in
+one direction? Unless it does, it is objectless."
+
+The youth was silent. The old man proceeded:--
+
+"I am disposed to be severe with you, my son. There is no surer
+sign of feebleness than in the constant beginnings and the never
+performings of a mind. Know thyself, is the first lesson to learn.
+Is it not very childish to talk of having ambition, without knowing
+what to do with it? If we have ambition, it is given to us to work
+with. You come to me, and declare this ambition! We confer together.
+Your ambition seeks for utterance. You ask, 'What sort of utterance
+will suit an ambition such as mine?' To answer this question,
+we ask, 'What are your qualities?' Did you think, William, that I
+disparaged yours when I recommended the law to you as a profession?"
+
+"No, sir! oh, no! Perhaps you overrated them. I am afraid so--I
+think so."
+
+"No, William, unfortunately, you do not think about it. If you
+would suffer yourself to think, you would speak a different language."
+
+"I can not think--I am too miserable to think!" exclaimed the youth
+in a burst of passion. The old man looked surprised. He gazed with
+a serious anxiety into the youth's face, and then addressed him:--
+
+"Where have you been, William, for the last three weeks? In all
+that time I have not seen you."
+
+A warm blush suffused the cheeks of the pupil. He did not immediately
+answer.
+
+"Ask ME!" exclaimed a voice from behind them, which they both
+instantly recognised as that of Ned Hinkley, the cousin of William.
+He had approached them, in the earnestness of their interview,
+without having disturbed them. The bold youth was habited in a
+rough woodman's dress. He wore a round jacket of homespun, and in
+his hand he carried a couple of fishing-rods, which, with certain
+other implements, betiayed sufficiently the object of his present
+pursuit.
+
+"Ask me!" said he. "I can tell you what he's been about better than
+anybody else."
+
+"Well, Ned," said the old man, "what has it been? I am afraid it
+is your fiddle that keeps him from his Blackstone."
+
+"My fiddle, indeed! If he would listen to my fiddle when she speaks
+out, he'd be wiser and better for it. Look at him, Mr. Calvert, and
+say whether it's book or fiddle that's likely to make him as lean
+as a March pickerel in the short space of three months. Only look
+at him, I say."
+
+"Truly, William, I had not observed it before, but, as Ned says,
+you do look thin, and you tell me you are unhappy. Hard study might
+make you thin, but can not make you unhappy. What is it?"
+
+The more volatile and freespoken cousin answered for him.
+
+"He's been shot, gran'pa, since you saw him last."
+
+"Shot?"
+
+"Yes, shot!--He THINKS mortally. I think not. A flesh wound to my
+thinking, that a few months more will cure."
+
+"You have some joke at bottom, Edward," said the old man gravely.
+
+"Joke, sir! It's a tough joke that cudgels a plump lad into a lean
+one in a single season."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean to use your own language, gran'pa. Among the lessons
+I got from you when you undertook to fill our heads with wisdom
+by applications of smartness to a very different place--among the
+books we sometimes read from was one of Master Ovid."
+
+"Ha! ha! I see what you're after. I understand the shooting. So
+you think that the blind boy has hit William, eh?"
+
+"A flesh wound as I tell you; but he thinks the bolt is in his
+heart. I'm sure it can and will be plucked out, and no death will
+follow."
+
+"Well! who's the maiden from whose eyes the arrow was barbed?"
+
+"Margaret Cooper."
+
+"Ah! indeed!" said the old man gravely.
+
+"Do not heed him," exclaimed William Hinkley; but the blush upon
+his cheeks, still increasing, spoke a different language.
+
+"I would rather not heed him, William. The passions of persons so
+young as yourself are seldom of a permanent character. The attractions
+which win the boy seldom compensate the man. There is time enough
+for this, ten years hence, and love then will be far more rational."
+
+"Ah, lud!--wait ten years at twenty. I can believe a great deal
+in the doctrine of young men's folly, but I can't go that. I'm in
+love myself."
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes! I!--I'm hit too--and if you don't like it, why did you teach
+us Ovid and the rest? As for rational love, that's a new sort of
+thing that we never heard about before. Love was never expected
+to be rational. He's known the contrary. I've heard so ever since
+I was knee-high to the great picture of your Cupid that you showed
+us in your famous Dutch edition of Apuleius. The young unmarried
+men feel that it's irrational; the old married people tell us so
+in a grunt that proves the truth of what they say. But that don't
+alter the case. It's a sort of natural madness that makes one attack
+in every person's lifetime. I don't believe in repeated attacks.
+Some are bit worse than others; and some think themselves bit,
+and are mistaken. That's the case with William, and it's that that
+keeps him from your law-books and my fiddle. That makes him thin.
+He has a notion of Margaret Cooper, and she has none of him; and
+love that's all of one side is neither real nor rational. I don't
+believe it."
+
+William Hinkley muttered something angrily in the ears of the
+speaker.
+
+"Well, well!" said the impetuous cousin, "I don't want to make you
+vexed, and still less do I come here to talk such politics with
+you.  What do you say to tickling a trout this afternoon? That's
+what I come for."
+
+"It's too cool," said the old man.
+
+"Not a bit. There's a wind from the south, and a cast of cloud
+is constantly growing between us and the sun. I think we shall do
+something--something better than talking about love, and law, where
+nobody's agreed. You, gran'pa, won't take the love; Bill Hinkley
+can't stomach the law, and the trout alone can bring about a
+reconciliation. Come, gran'pa, I'm resolved on getting your supper
+to-night, and you must go and see me do it."
+
+"On one condition only, Ned."
+
+"What's that, gran'pa?"
+
+"That you both sup with me."
+
+"Done for myself. What say you, Bill?"
+
+The youth gave a sad assent, and the rattling youth proceeded:--
+
+"The best cure of grief is eating. Love is a sort of pleasant grief.
+Many a case of affliction have I seen mended by a beefsteak. Fish
+is better. Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appetites, and, to the
+same extent, you lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the
+sensibilities; and, gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have
+the fiddle. If I don't make her speak to you to-night, my name's
+Brag, and you need never again believe me."
+
+And the good-humored youth, gathering up his canes, led the way to
+the hills, slowly followed by his two less elastic companions.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The route, which conducted them--over a range of gently-ascending
+hills, through groves tolerably thick, an uncleared woodland tract
+comprising every variety of pleasant foliage, at length brought them
+to a lonely tarn or lake, about a mile in circumference, nestled
+and crouching in the hollow of the hills, which, in some places
+sloped gently down to its margin, at others hung abruptly over its
+deep and pensive waters. A thick fringe of shrubs, water-grasses,
+and wild flowers, girdled its edges, and gave a dark and mysterious
+expression to its face. There were many beaten tracks, narrow paths
+for individual wayfarers on foot, which conducted down to favorite
+fishing-spots. These were found chiefly on those sides of the lake
+where the rocks were precipitous. Perched on a jutting eminence, and
+half shrouded in the bushes which clothed it, the silent fisherman
+took his place, while his fly was made to kiss the water in capricious
+evolutions, such as the experienced angler knows how to employ to
+beguile the wary victim from close cove, or gloomy hollow, or from
+beneath those decaying trunks of overthrown trees which have given
+his brood a shelter from immemorial time.
+
+To one of these selected spots, Ned Hinkley proceeded, leaving his
+companions above, where, in shade themselves, and lying at ease
+upon the smooth turf, they could watch his successes, and at the
+same time enjoy the coup d'oeil, which was singularly beautiful,
+afforded by the whole surrounding expanse. The tarn, like the dark
+mysterious dwelling of an Undine, was spread out before them with
+the smoothness of glass, though untransparent, and shining beneath
+their eyes like a vast basin of the richest jet. A thousand pretty
+changes along the upland slopes, or abrupt hills which hemmed it
+in, gave it a singular aspect of variety which is seldom afforded
+by any scene very remarkable for its stillness and seclusion.
+Opposite to the rock on which Ned Hinkley was already crouching,
+the hill-slope to the lake was singularly unbroken, and so gradual
+was the ascent from the margin, that one was scarcely conscious
+of his upward movement, until looking behind him, he saw how far
+below lay the waters which he had lately left.
+
+The pathway, which had been often trodden, was very distinctly
+marked to the eyes of our two friends on the opposite elevation,
+and they could also perceive where the same footpath extended on
+either hand a few yards from the lake, so as to enable the wanderer
+to prolong his rambles, on either side, until reaching the foot of
+the abrupt masses of rock which distinguished the opposite margin
+of the basin. To ascend these, on that side, was a work of toil,
+which none but the lover of the picturesque is often found willing
+to encounter. Above, even to the eyes of our friends, though
+they occupied an eminence, the skies seemed circumscribed to the
+circumference of the lake and the hills by which it was surrounded;
+and the appearance of the whole region, therefore, was that of
+a complete amphitheatre, the lake being the floor, the hills the
+mighty pillars, and the roof, the blue, bright, fretted canopy of
+heaven.
+
+"I have missed you, my son, for some time past, and the beauty of
+the picture reminds me of what your seeming neglect has made me
+lose. When I was a young man I would have preferred to visit such
+a spot as this alone. But the sense of desolation presses heavily
+upon an old man under any circumstances; and he seeks for the
+company of the young, as if to freshen, with sympathy and memory,
+the cheerlessness and decay which attends all his own thoughts
+and fancies. To come alone into the woods, even though the scene
+I look on be as fair as this, makes me moody and awakens gloomy
+imaginations; and since you have been so long absent, I have taken
+to my books again, and given up the woods. Ah! books, alone, never
+desert us; never prove unfaithful; never chide us; never mock us,
+as even these woods do, with the memory of baffled hopes, and dreams
+of youth, gone, never to return again.
+
+"I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not
+wilfully neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but
+my heart was so full--I was so very unhappy--that I had not the
+spirit for it. I felt that I should not be any company for you,
+and feared that I would only affect you with some of my own dullness."
+
+"Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should
+know that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies
+of age, provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune
+of age that its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the
+pulse, if not violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man.
+But these sorrows of yours, my son--do you not call them by too
+strong a name? I suspect they are nothing more than the discontents,
+the vague yearnings of the young and ardent nature, such as prompt
+enterprise and lead to nobleness. If you had them not, you would
+think of little else than how to squat with your cousin there,
+seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not so much--you would think
+only of the modes of cooking and the delight of eating the fish,
+and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive yourself.
+This sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial sorrow.
+It is the hope which is in you to be something--to DO something--for
+this DOING is after all, and before all, the great object of
+living. The hope of the heart is always a discontent--most generally
+a wholesome discontent--sometimes a noble discontent leading to
+nobleness. It is to be satisfied rather than nursed. You must do
+what it requires."
+
+"I know not what it requires."
+
+"Your DOING then must be confined at present to finding out what
+that is."
+
+"Alas! sir, it seems to me as if I could no more THINK than I can
+DO"
+
+"Very likely;--that is the case at present; and there are several
+reasons for this feebleness. The energies which have not yet been
+tasked, do not know well how to begin. You have been a favored boy.
+Your wants have been well provided for. Your parents have loved
+you only too much."
+
+"Too much! Why, even now, I am met with cold looks and reproachful
+words, on account of this stranger, of whom nobody knows anything."
+
+"Even so: suppose that to be the case, my son; still it does not
+alter the truth of what I say. You can not imagine that your parents
+prefer this stranger to yourself, unless you imagine them to have
+undergone a very sudden change of character. They have always
+treated you tenderly--too tenderly."
+
+"Too tenderly, sir?"
+
+"Yes, William, too tenderly. Their tenderness has enfeebled you, and
+that is the reason you know not in what way to begin to dissipate
+your doubts, and apply your energies. If they reproach you, that is
+because they have some interest in you, and a right in you, which
+constitutes their interest. If they treat the stranger civilly, it
+is because he is a stranger."
+
+"Ay, sir, but what if they give this stranger authority to question
+and to counsel me? Is not this a cruel indignity?"
+
+"Softly, William, softly! There is something at the bottom of
+this which I do not see, and which perhaps you do not see. If your
+parents employ a stranger to counsel you, it proves that something
+in your conduct leads them to think that you need counsel."
+
+"That may be, sir; but why not give it themselves? why employ a
+person of whom nobody knows anything?"
+
+"I infer from your tone, my son, rather than your words, that you
+have some dislike to this stranger.
+
+"No, sir--"was the beginning of the young man's reply, but he
+stopped short with a guilty consciousness. A warm blush overspread
+his cheek, and he remained silent. The old man, without seeming to
+perceive the momentary interruption, or the confusion which followed
+it, proceeded in his commentary.
+
+"There should be nothing, surely, to anger you in good counsel,
+spoken even by a stranger, my son; and even where the counsel be
+not good, if the motive be so, it requires our gratitude though it
+may not receive our adoption."
+
+"I don't know, sir, but it seems to me very strange, and is very
+humiliating, that I should be required to submit to the instructions
+of one of whom we know nothing, and who is scarcely older than
+myself."
+
+"It may be mortifying to your self-esteem, my son, but self-esteem,
+when too active, is compelled constantly to suffer this sort of
+mortification. It may be that one man shall not be older in actual
+years than another, yet be able to teach that other. Merely living,
+days and weeks and months, constitutes no right to wisdom: it is
+the crowding events and experience--the indefatigable industry--the
+living actively and well--that supply us with the materials for
+knowing and teaching. In comparison with millions of your own age,
+who have lived among men, and shared in their strifes and troubles,
+you would find yourself as feeble a child as ever yet needed the
+helping hand of counsel and guardianship; and this brings me back
+to what I said before. Your parents have treated you too tenderly.
+They have done everything for you. You have done nothing for
+yourself. They provide for your wants, hearken to your complaints,
+nurture you in sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so render
+you incapable. Hence it is, that, in the toils of manhood, you do
+not know how to begin. You lack courage and perseverance."
+
+"Courage and perseverance!" was the surprised exclamation of the
+youth.
+
+"Precisely, and lest I should offend you, my son, I must acknowledge
+to you beforehand, that this very deficiency was my own."
+
+"Yours, sir? I can not think it. What! lack courage?"
+
+"Exactly so!"
+
+"Why, sir--did I not see you myself, when everybody else looked
+on with trembling and with terror, throw yourself in the way of
+Drummond's horses and save the poor boy from being dashed to pieces?
+There was surely no lack of courage there!"
+
+"No! in that sense, my son, I labor under no deficiency. But
+this sort of courage is of the meanest kind. It is the courage of
+impulse, not of steadfastness. Hear me, William. You have more than
+once allowed the expression of a wonder to escape you, why a man,
+having such a passion for books and study, and with the appearance
+of mental resources, such as I am supposed to possess, should be
+content, retiring from the great city, to set up his habitation in
+this remote and obscure region. My chosen profession was the law;
+I was no unfaithful student. True, I had no parents to lament my
+wanderings and failures; but I did not wander. I studied closely,
+with a degree of diligence which seemed to surprise all my companions.
+I was ambitious--intensely ambitious. My head ran upon the strifes
+of the forum, its exciting contests of mind and soul--its troubles,
+its triumphs. This was my leading thought--it was my only passion.
+The boy-frenzies for women, which are prompted less by sentiment
+or judgment, than by feverish blood, troubled me little. Law was my
+mistress--took up all my time--absorbed all my devotion. I believe
+that I was a good lawyer--no pettifogger--the merely drilled
+creature who toils for his license, and toils for ever after solely
+for his petty gains, in the miserably petty arts of making gains
+for others, and eluding the snares set for his own feet by kindred
+spirits. As far as the teaching of this country could afford me
+the means and opportunity, I endeavored to procure a knowledge of
+universal law--its sources--its true objects--its just principles--its
+legitimate dicta. Mere authorities never satisfied me, unless,
+passing behind the black gowns, I could follow up the reasoning
+to the first fountains--the small original truths, the nicely
+discriminated requisitions of immutable justice--the clearly-defined
+and inevitable wants of a superior and prosperous society. Everything
+that could illustrate law as well as fortify it; every collateral
+aid, in the shape of history or moral truth, I gathered together,
+even as the dragoon whose chief agent is his sabre, yet takes care
+to provide himself with pistols, that may finish what the other
+weapon has begun. Nor did I content myself with the mere acquisition
+of the necessary knowledge. Knowing how much depends upon voice,
+manner and fluency, in obtaining success before a jury, I addressed
+myself to these particulars with equal industry. My voice, even
+now, has a compass which your unexercised lungs, though quite as
+good originally as mine, would fail entirely to contend with. I
+do not deceive myself, as I certainly do not seek to deceive you,
+when I say, that I acquired the happiest mastery over my person."
+
+"Ah! sir--we see that now--that must have been the case!" said the
+youth interrupting him. The other continued, sadly smiling as he
+heard the eulogy which the youth meant to speak, the utterance of
+which was obviously from the heart.
+
+"My voice was taught by various exercises to be slow or rapid, soft
+or strong, harsh or musical, by the most sudden, yet unnoticeable
+transitions. I practised all the arts, which are recommended by
+elocutionists for this purpose, I rumbled my eloquence standing on
+the seashore, up to my middle in the breakers. I ran, roaring up
+steep hills--I stretched myself at length by the side of meandering
+brooks, or in slumberous forests of pine, and sought, by the merest
+whispers, to express myself with distinctness and melody. But there
+was something yet more requisite than these, and this was language.
+My labors to obtain all the arts of utterance did not seem less
+successful. I could dilate with singular fluency, with classical
+propriety, and great natural vigor of expression. I studied directness
+of expression by a frequent intercourse with men of business, and
+examined, with the nicest urgency, the particular characteristics
+of those of my own profession who were most remarkable for their
+plain, forcible speaking. I say nothing of my studies of such great
+masters in discourse and philosophy, as Milton, Sliakspere, Homer,
+Lord Bacon, and the great English divines. As a model of pure English
+the Bible was a daily study of two hours; and from this noble well
+of vernacular eloquence, I gathered--so I fancied--no small portion
+of its quaint expressive vigor, its stern emphasis, its golden and
+choice phrases of illustration. Never did a young lawyer go into
+the forum more thoroughly clad in proof, or with a better armory
+as well for defence as attack."
+
+"You did not fail, sir?" exclaimed the youth with a painful expression
+of eager anxiety upon his countenance.
+
+"I did fail--fail altogether! In the first effort to speak, I
+fainted, and was carried lifeless from the court-room."
+
+The old man covered his face with his hands, for a few moments,
+to conceal the expression of pain and mortification which memory
+continued to renew in utter despite of time. The young man's hand
+rested affectionately on his shoulder. A few moments sufficed to
+enable the former to renew his narrative.
+
+"I was stunned but not crushed by this event. I knew my own resources.
+I recollected a similar anecdote of Sheridan; of his first attempt
+and wretched failure. I, too, felt that 'I had it in me,' and though
+I did not express, I made the same resolution, that 'I would bring
+it out.' But Sheridan and myself failed from different causes,
+though I did not understand this at that time. He had a degree of
+hardihood which I had not; and he utterly lacked my sensibilities.
+The very intenseness of my ambition; the extent of my expectation;
+the elevated estimate which I had made of my own profession; of
+its exactions; and, again, of what was expected from me; were all
+so many obstacles to my success. I did not so esteem them, then; and
+after renewing my studies in private, my exercises of expression and
+manner, and going through a harder course of drilling, I repeated
+the attempt to suffer a repetition of the failure. I did not
+again faint, but I was speechless. I not only lost the power of
+utterance, but I lost the corresponding faculty of sight. My eyes
+were completely dazed and confounded. The objects of sight around
+me were as crowded and confused as the far, dim ranges of figures,
+tribes upon tribes, and legions upon legions, which struggle
+in obscurity and distance, in any one of the begrimed and blurred
+pictures of Martin's Pandemonium. My second failure was a more
+enfeebling disaster than the first. The first procured me the
+sympathy of my audience, the last exposed me to its ridicule."
+
+Again the old man paused. By this time, the youth had got one of
+his arms about the neck of the speaker, and had taken one of his
+hands within his grasp.
+
+"Yours is a generous nature, William," said Mr. Calvert, "and I have
+not said to you, until to-day, how grateful your boyish sympathies
+have been to me from the first day when you became my pupil. It
+is my knowledge of these sympathies, and a desire to reward them,
+that prompts me to tell a story which still brings its pains to
+memory, and which would be given to no other ears than your own.
+I see that you are eager for the rest--for the wretched sequel."
+
+"Oh, no! sir--do not tell me any more of it if it brings you pain.
+I confess I should like to know all, but--"
+
+"You shall have it all, my son. My purpose would not be answered
+unless I finished the narrative. You will gather from it, very
+possibly, the moral which I could not. You will comprehend something
+better, the woful distinction between courage of the blood and courage
+of the brain; between the mere recklessness of brute impulse, and
+the steady valor of the soul--that valor, which, though it trembles,
+marches forward to the attack--recovers from its fainting, to
+retrieve its defeat; and glows with self-indignation because it has
+suffered the moment of victory to pass, without employing itself
+to secure the boon!--
+
+"Shame, and a natural desire to retrieve myself, operated to make
+me renew my efforts. I need not go through the processes by which
+I endeavored to acquire the necessary degree of hardihood. In vain
+did I recall the fact that my competitors were notoriously persons
+far inferior to me in knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the
+capacity to analyze them; rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar
+with the language--mere delvers and diggers in a science in which
+I secretly felt that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to
+mind the fact that I knew the community before which I was likely
+to speak; I knew its deficiencies; knew the inferiority of its
+idols, and could and should have no sort of fear of its criticism.
+But it was myself that I feared. I had mistaken the true censor.
+It was my own standards of judgment that distressed and made me
+tremble. It was what I expected of myself--what I thought should
+be expected of me--that made my weak soul recoil in terror from
+the conviction that I must fail in its endeavor to reach the point
+which my ambitious soul strove to attain. The fear, in such cases,
+produced the very disaster, from the anticipated dread of which
+it had arisen. I again failed--failed egregiously--failed utterly
+and for ever! I never again attempted the fearful trial. I gave
+up the contest, yielded the field to my inferiors, better-nerved,
+though inferior, and, with all my learning, all my eloquence, my
+voice, my manner; my resources of study, thought, and utterance,
+fled from sight--fled here--to bury myself in the wilderness,
+and descend to the less ambitious, but less dangerous vocation of
+schooling--I trust, to better uses--the minds of others. I had done
+nothing with my own."
+
+"Oh, sir, do not say so. Though you may have failed in one department
+of human performance, you have succeeded in others. You have lost
+none of the knowledge which you then acquired. You possess all the
+gifts of eloquence, of manner, of voice, of education, of thought."
+
+"But of what use, my son? Remember, we do not toil for these
+possessions to lock them up--to content ourselves, as the miserable
+miser, with the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to
+ourselves only--useless to all others as to ourselves! Learning,
+like love, like money, derives its true value from its circulation."
+
+"And you circulate yours, my dear sir. What do we not owe you in
+Charlemont? What do I not owe you, over all?"
+
+"Love, my son--love only. Pay me that. Do not desert me in my old
+age. Do not leave me utterly alone!"
+
+"I will not, sir--I never thought to do so."
+
+"But," said the old man, "to resume. Why did I fail is still the
+question. Because I had not been taught those lessons of steady
+endurance in my youth which would have strengthened me against failure,
+and enable me finally to triumph. There is a rich significance in
+what we hear of the Spartan boy, who never betrayed his uneasiness
+or agony though the fox was tearing out his bowels. There is a
+sort of moral roughening which boys should be made to endure from
+the beginning, if the hope is ever entertained, to mature their
+minds to intellectual manhood. Our American Indians prescribe the
+same laws, and in their practice, very much resemble the ancient
+Spartans. To bear fatigue, and starvation, and injury--exposure,
+wet, privation, blows--but never to complain. Nothing betrays so
+decidedly the lack of moral courage as the voice of complaint. It
+is properly the language of woman. It must not be your language.
+Do you understand me, William?"
+
+"In part, sir, but I do not see how I could have helped being what
+I am."
+
+"Perhaps not, because few have control of their own education.
+Your parents have been too tender of you. They have not lessoned
+you in that proper hardihood which leads to performance. That task
+is before yourself, and you have shrunk from the first lessons."
+
+"How, sir?"
+
+"Instead of clinging to your Blackstone, you have allowed yourself
+to be seduced from its pages, by such attractions as usually delude
+boys. The eye and lip of a pretty woman--a bright eye and a rosy
+cheek, have diverted you from your duties."
+
+"But do our duties deny us the indulgence of proper sensibilities?"
+
+"Certainly not--PROPER sensibilities, on the contrary, prescribe
+our duties."
+
+"But love, sir--is not love a proper sensibility?"
+
+"In its place, it is. But you are a boy only. Do you suppose that
+it was ever intended that you should entertain this passion before
+you had learned the art of providing your own food? Not so; and the
+proof of this is to be found in the fact that the loves of boyhood
+are never of a permanent character. No such passion can promote
+happiness if it is indulged before the character of the parties is
+formed. I now tell you that in five years from this time you will
+probably forget Miss Cooper."
+
+"Never! never!"
+
+"Well, well--I go farther in my prophecy. Allow me to suppose you
+successful in your suit, which I fancy can never be the case--"
+
+"Why, sir, why?"
+
+"Because she is not the girl for you; or rather, she does not think
+you the man for her!"
+
+"But why do you think so, sir?"
+
+"Because I know you both. There are circumstances of discrepancy
+between you which will prevent it, and even were you to be successful
+in your suit, which I am very sure will never be the case, you
+would be the most miserably-matched couple under the sun."
+
+"Oh, sir, do not say so--do not. I can not think so, sir."
+
+"You WILL not think so, I am certain. I am equally certain from
+what I know of you both, that you are secure from any such danger.
+It is not my object to pursue this reference, but let me ask you,
+William, looking at things in the most favorable light, has Margaret
+Cooper ever given you any encouragement?"
+
+"I can not say that she has, sir, but--"
+
+"Nay, has she not positively discouraged you? Does she not avoid
+you--treat you coldly when you meet--say little, and that little
+of a kind to denote--I will not say dislike--but pride, rather than
+love?"
+
+The young man said nothing. The old one proceeded:--
+
+"You are silent, and I am answered. I have long watched your
+intercourse with this damsel, and loving you as my own son, I have
+watched it with pain. She is not for you, William. She loves you
+not. I am sure of it. I can not mistake the signs. She seeks other
+qualities than such as you possess. She seeks meretricious qualities,
+and yours are substantial. She seeks the pomps of mind, rather
+than its subdued performances. She sees not, and can not see, your
+worth; and whenever you propose to her, your suit will be rejected.
+You have not done so yet?"
+
+"No, sir--but I had hoped--"
+
+"I am no enemy, believe me, William, when I implore you to discard
+your hope in that quarter. It will do you no hurt. Your heart
+will suffer no detriment, but be as whole and vigorous a few years
+hence--perhaps months--as if it had never suffered any disappointment."
+
+"I wish I could think so, sir."
+
+"And you would not wish that you could think so, if you were not
+already persuaded that your first wish is hopeless."
+
+"But I am not hopeless, sir."
+
+"Your cause is. But, promise me that you will not press your suit
+at present."
+
+The young man was silent.
+
+"You hesitate."
+
+"I dare not promise."
+
+"Ah, you are a foolish boy. Do you not see the rock on which you are
+about to split. You have never learned how to submit. This lesson
+of submission was that which made the Spartan boy famous. Here,
+you persist in your purpose, though your own secret convictions,
+as well as your friend's counsel, tell you that you strive against
+hope. You could not patiently submit to the counsel of this stranger,
+though he came directly from your parents, armed with authority to
+examine and to counsel."
+
+"Submit to him! I would sooner perish!" exclaimed the indignant
+youth.
+
+"You will perish unless you learn this one lesson. But where now
+is your ambition, and what does it aim at?"
+
+The youth was silent.
+
+"The idea of an ambitious youth, at twenty, giving up book and
+candle, leaving his studies, and abandoning himself to despair,
+because his sweetheart won't be his sweetheart any longer, gives us
+a very queer idea of the sort of ambition which works in his breast."
+
+"Don't, sir, don't, I pray you, speak any more in this manner."
+
+"Nay, but, William, ask yourself. Is it not a queer idea?"
+
+"Spare me, sir, if you love me."
+
+"I do love you, and to show you that I do, I now recommend to you
+to propose to Margaret Cooper."
+
+"What, sir, you do not think it utterly hopeless then?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"And you would have me expose myself to rejection?"
+
+"Exactly so!"
+
+"Really, sir, I do not understand you."
+
+"Well, I will explain. Nothing short of rejection will possibly
+cure you of this malady; and it is of the last importance to your
+future career, that you should be freed as soon as possible from
+this sickly condition of thought and feeling--a condition in which
+your mind will do nothing, and in which your best days will be
+wasted. Blackstone can only hope to be taken up when you have done
+with her."
+
+"Stay, sir--that is she below."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Margaret----"
+
+"Who is with her?"
+
+"The stranger--this man, Stevens."
+
+"Ha! your counsellor, that would be? Ah! William, you did not tell
+me all."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE ENTHUSIAST.
+
+
+
+
+
+The cheeks of the youth glowed. He felt how much he had suppressed
+in his conference with his venerable counsellor. Mr. Calvert did
+not press the topic, and the two remained silent, looking down,
+from the shaded spot where they lay, upon the progress of Margaret
+Cooper and her present attendant, Stevens. The eminence on which
+they rested was sufficiently lofty, as we have seen, to enable
+them, though themselves almost concealed from sight, to take in
+the entire scene, not only below but around them; and the old man,
+sharing now in the interest of his young companion, surveyed the
+progress of the new-comers with a keen sense of curiosity which, for
+a time, kept him silent. The emotions of William Hinkley were such
+as to deprive him of all desire for speech; and each, accordingly,
+found sufficient employment in brooding over his own awakened fancies.
+Even had they spoken in the ordinary tone of their voices, the
+sounds could not have reached the persons approaching on the opposite
+side. They drew nigh, evidently unconscious that the scene was
+occupied by any other than themselves. Ned Hinkley was half-shrouded
+in the shrubbery that environed the jutting crag upon which his
+form was crouched, and they were not yet sufficiently nigh to the
+tarn to perceive his projecting rod, and the gaudy fly which he
+kept skipping about upon the surface. The walk which they pursued
+was an ancient Indian footpath, which had without doubt conducted
+the red warriors, a thousand times before, to a spot of seclusion
+and refreshment after their long day's conflict on the "DARK AND
+BLOODY GROUND." It was narrow and very winding, and had been made so
+in order to lessen the fatigue of an ascent which, though gradual
+enough, was yet considerable, and would have produced great weariness,
+finally, had the pathway been more direct.
+
+The circuitousness of this route, which lay clear enough before
+the eyes of our two friends upon the eminence--crawling, as it did,
+up the woodland slopes with the sinuous course of a serpent--was
+yet visible to Ned Hinkley, on his lowlier perch, only at its
+starting-point, upon the very margin of the lake. He, accordingly,
+saw as little of the approaching persons as they had seen of him.
+They advanced slowly, and seemed to be mutually interested in
+their subject of conversation. The action of Stevens was animated;
+The air and attitude of Margaret Cooper was that of interest and
+attention. It was with something little short of agony that William
+Hinkley beheld them pause upon occasion, and confront each other
+as if the topic was of a nature to arrest the feet and demand the
+whole fixed attention of the hearer.
+
+It will be conjectured that Alfred Stevens had pressed his opportunities
+with no little industry. Enough has been shown to account for the
+readiness of that reception which Margaret Cooper was prepared to
+give him. Her intelligence was keen, quick, and penetrating. She
+discovered at a glance, not his hypocrisy, but that his religious
+enthusiasm was not of a sort to become very tyrannical. The air of
+mischief which was expressed upon his face when the venerable John
+Cross proposed to purge her library of its obnoxious contents,
+commended him to her as a sort of ally; and the sympathy with
+herself, which such a conjecture promised, made her forgetful of
+the disingenuousness of his conduct if her suspicions were true.
+But there were some other particulars which, in her mind, tended to
+dissipate the distance between them. She recognised the individual.
+She remembered the bold, dashing youth, who, a few months before,
+had encountered her on the edge of the village, and, after they
+had parted, had ridden back to the spot where she still loitered,
+for a second look. To that very spot had she conducted him on their
+ramble that afternoon.
+
+"Do you know this place, Mr. Stevens?" she demanded with an arch
+smile, sufficiently good-humored to convince the adventurer that,
+if she had any suspicions, they were not of a nature to endanger
+his hopes.
+
+"Do I not!" he said, with an air of EMPRESSMENT which caused her
+to look down.
+
+"I thought I recollected you," she said, a moment after.
+
+"Ah! may I hope that I did not then offend you with my impertinence?
+But the truth is, I was so struck--pardon me if I say it--with
+the singular and striking difference between the group of damsels
+I had seen and THE ONE--the surprise was so great--the pleasure so
+unlooked for--that--"
+
+The eye of Margaret Cooper brightened, her cheek glowed, and her
+form rose somewhat proudly. The arch-hypocrite paused judiciously,
+and she spoke:--
+
+"Nay, nay, Mr. Stevens, these fine speeches do not pass current.
+You would make the same upon occasion to any one of the said group
+of damsels, were you to be her escort."
+
+"But I would scarcely ride back for a second look," he responded,
+in a subdued tone of voice, while looking with sad expressiveness
+into her eyes. These were cast down upon the instant, and the color
+upon her cheeks was heightened.
+
+"Come," said she, making an effort, "there is nothing here to
+interest us."
+
+"Except memory," he replied; "I shall never forget the spot."
+
+She hurried forward, and he joined her. She had received the impression
+which he intended to convey, without declaring as much--namely,
+that his return to Charlemont had been prompted by that one glimpse
+which he had then had of her person. Still, that nothing should
+be left in doubt, he proceeded to confirm the impression by other
+suggestions:--
+
+"You promise to show me a scene of strange beauty, but your whole
+village is beautiful, Miss Cooper. I remember how forcibly it struck
+me as I gained the ascent of the opposite hills coming in from the
+east. It was late in the day, the sun was almost setting, and his
+faintest but loveliest beams fell upon the cottages in the valley,
+and lay with a strange, quiet beauty among the grass-plats, and
+the flower-ranges, and upon the neat, white palings."
+
+"It is beautiful," she said with a sigh, "but its beauty does not
+content me. It is too much beauty; it is too soft; for, though it
+has its rocks and huge trees, yet it lacks wildness and sublimity.
+The rocks are not sufficiently abrupt, the steeps not sufficiently
+great; there are no chasms, no waterfalls--only purling brooks and
+quiet walks."
+
+"I have felt this already," he replied; "but there is yet a deficiency
+which you have not expressed, Miss Cooper."
+
+"What is that?" she demanded.
+
+"It is the moral want. You have no life here; and that which
+would least content me would be this very repose--the absence of
+provocation--the strife--the triumph! These, I take it, are the
+deficiencies which you really feel when you speak of the want of
+crag, and chasm, and waterfall."
+
+"You, too, are ambitious, then!" she said quickly; "but how do you
+reconcile this feeling with your profession?"
+
+She looked up, and caught his eye tenderly fixed upon her.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "Miss Cooper, there are some situations in which we
+find it easy to reconcile all discrepancies."
+
+If the language lacked explicitness, the look did not. He proceeded:--
+
+"If I mistake not, Miss Cooper, you will be the last one to blame
+me for not having stifled my ambition, even at the calls of duty
+and profession."
+
+"Blame you, sir? Far from it. I should think you very unfortunate
+indeed, if you could succeed in stifling ambition at any calls,
+nor do I exactly see how duty should require it."
+
+"If I pursue the profession of the divine?" he answered hesitatingly.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--but that is not certain?" There was some timidity
+in the utterance of this inquiry. He evaded it.
+
+"I know not yet what I shall be," he replied with an air of
+self-reproach; "I fear I have too much of this fiery ardor which
+we call ambition to settle down into the passive character of the
+preacher."
+
+"Oh, do not, do not!" she exclaimed impetuously; then, as if
+conscious of the impropriety, she stopped short in the sentence,
+while increasing her forward pace.
+
+"What!" said he, "you think that would effectually stifle it?"
+
+"Would it not--does it not in most men?"
+
+"Perhaps; but this depends upon the individual. Churchmen have a
+great power--the greatest in any country."
+
+"Over babes and sucklings!" she said scornfully.
+
+"And, through these; over the hearts of men and women."
+
+"But these, too, are babes and sucklings--people to be scared by
+shadows--the victims of their own miserable fears and superstitions!"
+
+"Nevertheless, these confer power. Where there is power, there is
+room for ambition. You recollect that churchmen have put their feet
+upon the necks of princes."
+
+"Yes, but that was when there was one church only in Christendom.
+It was a monopoly, and consequently a tyranny. Now there are
+a thousand, always in conflict, and serving very happily to keep
+each other from mischief. They no longer put their feet on princes'
+necks, though I believe that the princes are no better off for this
+forbearance--there are others who do. But only fancy that this time
+was again, and think of the comical figure our worthy brother John
+Cross would make, mounting from such a noble horse-block!"
+
+The idea was sufficiently pleasant to make Stevens laugh.
+
+"I am afraid I shall have greater trouble in converting you, Miss
+Cooper, than any other of the flock in Charlemont. I doubt that
+your heart is stubborn--that you are an insensible!"
+
+"I insensible!" she exclaimed, and with such a look! The expression
+of sarcasm had passed, as with the rapidity of a lightning-flash,
+from her beautiful lips; and a silent tear rose, tremulous
+and large, with the same instantaneous emotion, beneath her long,
+dark eyelashes. She said nothing more, but, with eyes cast down,
+went forward. Stevens was startled with the suddenness of these
+transitions. They proved, at least, how completely her mind was at
+the control of her blood. Hitherto, he had never met with a creature
+so liberally endowed by nature, who was, at the same time, so
+perfectly unsophisticated. The subject was gratifying as a study
+alone, even if it conferred no pleasure, and awakened no hopes.
+
+"Do not mistake me," he exclaimed, hurrying after, "I had no purpose
+to impute to you any other insensibility except to that of the holy
+truths of religion."
+
+She looked up and smiled archly. There was another transition from
+cloud to sunlight.
+
+"What! are you so doubtful of your own ministry?"
+
+"In your case, I am."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You will force me to betake myself to studies more severe than
+any I have yet attempted."
+
+She was flattered but she uttered a natural disclaimer.
+
+"No, no! I am presumptuous. I trust you will teach me. Begin--do
+not hesitate--I will listen."
+
+"To move you I must not come in the garments of methodism. That
+faith will never be yours."
+
+"What faith shall it be?"
+
+"That of Catholicism. I must come armed with authority. I must
+carry the sword and keys of St. Peter. I must be sustained by all
+the pomps of that church of pomps and triumphs. My divine mission
+must speak through signs and symbols, through stately stole,
+pontifical ornaments, the tiara of religious state on the day of
+its most solemn ceremonial; and with these I must bring the word
+of power, born equally of intellect and soul, and my utterance must
+be in the language of divinest poesy!"
+
+"Ah! you mistake! That last will be enough. Speak to me in poesy--let
+me hear that--and you will subdue me, I believe, to any faith that
+you teach. For I can not but believe the faith that is endowed with
+the faculty of poetic utterance."
+
+"In truth it is a divine utterance--perhaps the only divine utterance.
+Would I had it for your sake."
+
+"Oh! you must have it. I fancy I see it in some things that you
+have said. You read poetry, I am sure--I am sure you love it."
+
+"I do! I know not anything that I love half so well."
+
+"Then you write it?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"No! the gift has been denied me."
+
+She looked at him with eyes of regret.
+
+"How unfortunate," she said.
+
+"Doubly so, as the deficiency seems to disappoint you."
+
+She did not seem to heed the flattery of this remark, nor did she
+appear to note the expression of face with which it was accompanied.
+Her feelings took the ascendency. She spoke out her uncommissioned
+thoughts and fancies musingly, as if without the knowledge of her
+will.
+
+"I fancy that I could kneel down and worship the poet, and feel
+no shame, no humility. It is the only voice that enchants me--that
+leads me out from myself; that carries me where it pleases and finds
+for me companions in the solitude; songs in the storm; affections in
+the barren desert! Even here, it brings me friends and fellowships.
+How voiceless would be all these woods to me had it no voice speaking
+to, and in, my soul. Hoping nothing, and performing nothing here,
+it is my only consolation. It reconciles me to this wretched spot.
+It makes endurance tolerable. If it were not for this companionship--if
+I heard not this voice in my sorrows, soothing my desolation,
+I could freely die!--die here, beside this rock, without making a
+struggle to go forward, even to reach the stream that flows quietly
+beyond!"
+
+She had stopped in her progress while this stream of enthusiasm
+poured from her lips. Her action was suited to her utterance.
+Unaccustomed to restraint--nay, accustomed only to pour herself
+forth to woods, and trees, and waters, she was scarcely conscious
+of the presence of any other companion, yet she looked even while
+she spoke, in the eyes of Stevens. He gazed on her with glances of
+unconcealed admiration. The unsophisticated nature which led her
+to express that enthusiasm which a state of conventional existence
+prompts us, through fear of ridicule, industriously to conceal,
+struck him with the sense of a new pleasure. The novelty alone
+had its charm; but there were other sources of delight. The natural
+grace and dignity of the enthusiastic girl, adapting to such
+words the appropriate action, gave to her beauty, which was now in
+its first bloom, all the glow which is derived from intellectual
+inspiration. Her whole person spoke. All was vital, spiritual,
+expressive, animated; and when the last word lingered on her lips,
+Stevens could scarcely repress the impulse which prompted him to
+clasp her in his embrace.
+
+"Margaret!" he exclaimed--"Miss Cooper!--you are yourself a poet!"
+
+"No, no!" she murmured, rather than spoke;--"would I were!--a
+dreamer only--a self-deluded dreamer."
+
+"You can not deceive me!" he continued, "I see it in your eyes,
+your action; I hear it in your words. I can not be deceived. You
+are a poet--you will, and must be one!"
+
+"And if I were!" she said mournfully, "of what avail would it be
+here? What heart in this wilderness would be touched by song of
+mine? Whose ear could I soothe in this cold and sterile hamlet?
+Where would be the temple--who the worshippers--even were the
+priestess all that her vanity would believe, or her prayers and
+toils might make her? No, no! I am no poet; and if I were, better
+that the flame should go out--vanish altogether in the smoke of its
+own delusions--than burn with a feeble light, unseen, untrimmed,
+unhonored--perhaps, beheld with the scornful eye of vulgar and
+unappreciating ignorance!"
+
+"Such is not your destiny, Margaret Cooper," replied Stevens, using
+the freedom of address, perhaps unconsciously, which the familiarity
+of country life is sometimes found to tolerate. "Such is not your
+destiny, Margaret. The flame will not go out--it will be loved and
+worshipped!"
+
+"Ah! never! what is here to justify such a hope--such a dream?"
+
+"Nothing HERE; but it was not of Charlemont I spoke. The destiny which
+has endowed you with genius will not leave it to be extinguished
+here. There will come a worshipper, Margaret. There will come
+one, equally capable to honor the priestess and to conduct her to
+befitting altars. This is not your home, though it may have been
+your place of trial and novitiate. Here, without the restraint
+of cold, oppressive, social forms, your genius has ripened--your
+enthusiasm has been kindled into proper glow--your heart, and
+mind, and imagination, have kept equal pace to an equal maturity!
+Perhaps this was fortunate. Had you grown up in more polished and
+worldly circles, you would have been compelled to subdue the feelings
+and fancies which now make your ordinary language the language of
+a muse."
+
+"Oh! speak not so, I implore you. I am afraid you mock me."
+
+"No! on my soul, I do not. I think all that I say. More than that,
+I feel it, Margaret. Trust to me--confide in me--make me your
+friend! Believe me, I am not altogether what I seem."
+
+An arch smile once more possessed her eyes.
+
+"Ah!" I could guess that! But sit you here. Here is a flower--a
+beautiful, small flower, with a dark blue eye. See it--how humbly
+it hides amid the grass. It is the last flower if the season. I
+know not its name. I am no botanist; but it is beautiful without
+a name, and it is the last flower of the season. Sit down on this
+rock, and I will sing you Moore's beautiful song, ''Tis the last
+of its kindred.'"
+
+"Nay, sing me something of your own, Margaret."
+
+"No, no! Don't speak of me, and mine, in the same breath with
+Moore. You will make me repent of having seen you. Sit down and be
+content with Moore, or go without your song altogether."
+
+He obeyed her, and the romantic and enthusiastic girl, seating
+herself upon a fragment of rock beside the path, sang the delicate
+and sweet verses of the Irish poet, with a natural felicity of
+execution, which amply compensated for the absence of those Italian
+arts, which so frequently elevate the music at the expense of the
+sentiment. Stevens looked and listened, and half forgot himself in
+the breathlessness of his attention--his eye fastened with a gaze
+of absolute devotion on her features, until, having finished her
+song, she detected the expression of his face, and started, with
+blushing cheeks, to her feet.
+
+"Oh! sweet!" he murmured as he offered to take her hand, but she
+darted forward, and following her, he found himself a few moments
+after, standing by her side, and looking down upon one of the
+loveliest lakes that ever slept in the embrace of jealous hills.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+
+
+
+"You disparage these scenes," said Stevens, after several moments
+had been given to the survey of that before him, "and yet you have
+drawn your inspiration from them--the fresh food which stimulates poetry
+and strengthens enthusiasm. Here you learned to be contemplative;
+and here, in solitude, was your genius nursed.  Do not be ungrateful,
+Margaret--you owe to these very scenes all that you are, and all
+that you may become."
+
+"Stay! before I answer. Do you see yon bird?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the west--there!" she pointed with her fingers, catching his
+wrist unconsciously, at the same time, with the other hand, as if
+more certainly to direct his gaze.
+
+"I see it--what bird is it?"
+
+"An eagle! See how it soars and swings; effortless, as if supported
+by some external power!"
+
+"Indeed--it seems small for an eagle."
+
+"It is one nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost
+among the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The
+heights are the greatest that we have in the surrounding country.
+The distance from this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt,
+has some fish, or bird now within his talons, with which to feed
+his young. He will feed them, and they will grow strong, and will
+finally use their own wings. Shall he continue to feed them after
+that? Must they never seek their own food?"
+
+"Surely they must."
+
+"If these solitudes have nursed me, must they continue to nurse me
+always? Must I never use the wings to which they have given vigor?
+Must I never employ the sight to which they have imparted vigilance?
+Must I never go forth, and strive and soar, and make air, and earth,
+and sea, tributary to my wing and eye? Alas! I am a woman!--and
+her name is weakness! You tell me of what I am, and of what I may
+become. But what am I? I mock myself too often with this question
+to believe all your fine speeches. And what may I become? Alas! who
+can tell me that? I know my strength, but I also know my weakness.
+I feel the burning thoughts of my brain; I feel the yearning impulses
+in my heart; but they bring nothing--they promise nothing--I feel
+the pang of constant denial. I feel that I can be nothing!"
+
+"Say not so, Margaret--think not so, I beseech you. With your
+genius, your enthusiasm--your powers of expression--there is nothing,
+becoming in your sex, and worthy of it, which you may not be."
+
+"You can not deceive me! It might be so, if this were Italy; there,
+where the very peasant burns with passion, and breathes his feeblest
+and meanest thoughts and desires in song. But here, they already
+call me mad! They look on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid
+me with sentiments and looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when
+I am looking into the cloud, striving to pierce, with dilating eye
+its wild yellow flashing centres, they draw their flaxen-headed
+infants to their breasts, and mutter their thanks to God, that he
+has not, in a fit of wrath, made them to resemble me! If, forgetful
+of earth, and trees, and the human stocks around me, I pour forth
+the language of the great song-masters, they grin at my insanity--they
+hold me incapable of reason, and declare their ideas of what that
+is, by asking who knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch,
+the spinning-wheel, the darning-needle--who can best wash Polly's
+or Patty's face and comb its head--can chop up sausage-meat the
+finest--make the lightest paste, and more economically dispense
+the sugar in serving up the tea! and these are what is expected
+of woman! These duties of the meanest slave! From her mind nothing
+is expected. Her enthusiasm terrifies, her energy offends, and if
+her taste is ever challenged, it is to the figures upon a quilt or
+in a flower-garden, where the passion seems to be to make flowers
+grow in stars, and hearts, and crescents. What has woman to expect
+where such are the laws; where such are the expectations from her?
+What am I to hope? I, who seem to be set apart--to feel nothing
+like the rest--to live in a different world--to dream of foreign
+things--to burn with a hope which to them is frenzy, and speak
+a language which they neither understand nor like! What can I be,
+in such a world? Nothing, nothing! I do not deceive myself. I can
+never hope to be anything."
+
+Her enthusiasm hurried her forward. In spite of himself, Stevens was
+impressed. He ceased to think of his evil purposes in the superior
+thoughts which her wild, unregulated energy inspired.  He scarcely
+wondered, indeed--if it were true--that her neighbors fancied
+her insane. The indignation of a powerful mind denied--denied
+justice--baffled in its aims--conscious of the importance of all
+its struggles against binding and blinding circumstances--is akin
+to insanity!--is apt to express itself in the defiant tones of a
+fierce and feverish frenzy.
+
+"Margaret," said he, as she paused and waited for him, "you are not
+right in everything. You forget that your lonely little village of
+Charlemont, is not only not the world, but that it is not even an
+American world. America is not Italy, I grant you, nor likely soon
+to become so; but if you fancy there are not cities even in our
+country, where genius such as yours would be felt and worshipped,
+you are mistaken."
+
+"Do you believe there are such?" she demanded incredulously.
+
+"I KNOW there are!"
+
+"No! no! I know better. You can not deceive me. It can not be so.
+I know the sort of genius which is popular in those cities. It is
+the gentleman and lady genius. Look at their verses for example.
+I can show you thousands of such things that come to us here, from
+all quarters of the Union--verses written by nice people--people
+of small tastes and petty invention, who would not venture upon the
+utterance of a noble feeling, or a bold sentiment of originality,
+for fear of startling the fashionable nerves with the strong words
+which such a novelty would require. Consider, in the first place,
+how conclusive it is of the feeblest sort of genius that these
+people should employ themselves, from morning to night, in spinning
+their small strains, scraps of verse, song, and sonnet, and invariably
+on such subjects of commonplace, as can not admit of originality,
+and do not therefore task reflection. Not an infant dies or is
+born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its smiles and tears
+are put on record; its hobby-horse, and its infant ideas as they
+begin to bud and breathe aloud. Then comes the eternal strain about
+summer blooms and spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and winter's
+storms, until one sickens of the intolerable monotony. Such are
+the things that your great cities demand. Such things content them.
+Speak the fearless and always strange language of originality and
+strength, and you confound and terrify them."
+
+"But, Margaret, these things are held at precisely the same value
+in the big cities as they are held by you here in Charlemont. The
+intelligent people smile--they do not applaud. If they encourage
+at all it is by silence."
+
+"No! no! that you might say, if, unhappily, public opinion did not
+express itself. The same magazines which bring us the verses bring
+us the criticism."
+
+"That is to say, the editor puffs his contributors, and disparages
+those who are not. Look at the rival journal and you will find
+these denounced and another set praised and beplastered."
+
+"Ah! and what would be my hope, my safety, in communities which
+tolerate these things; in which the number of just and sensible
+people is so small that they dare not speak, or can not influence
+those who have better courage? Where would be my triumphs? I, who
+would no more subscribe to the petty tyranny of conventional law,
+than to that baser despotism which is wielded by a mercenary editor,
+in the absence of a stern justice in the popular mind. Here I may
+pine to death--there, my heart would burst with its own convulsions."
+
+"No! Margaret, no! It is because they have not the genius,
+that such small birds are let to sing. Let them but hear the true
+minstrel--let them but know that there is a muse, and how soon
+would the senseless twitter which they now tolerate be hushed
+in undisturbing silence. In the absence of better birds they bear
+with what they have. In the absence of the true muse they build no
+temple--they throng not to hear. Nay, even now, already, they look
+to the west for the minstrel and the muse--to these very woods.
+There is a tacit and universal feeling in the Atlantic country,
+that leads them to look with expectation to the Great West, for the
+genius whose song is to give us fame. 'When?' is the difficult--the
+only question. Ah! might I but say to them--'now'--the muse is
+already here!"
+
+He took her hand--she did not withhold it; but her look was subdued--the
+fires had left her eyes--her whole frame trembled with the recoil
+of those feelings--the relaxation of those nerves--the tension
+of which we have endeavored feebly to display. Her cheek was no
+longer flushed but pale; her lips trembled--her voice was low and
+faint--only a broken and imperfect murmur; and her glance was cast
+upon the ground.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, I! Have I not said I am not altogether what I seem? Ah!
+I may not yet say more. But I am not without power, Margaret, in
+other and more powerful regions. I too have had my triumphs; I too
+can boast that the minds of other men hang for judgment upon the
+utterance of mine."
+
+She looked upward to his glance with a stranger expression of
+timidity than her features had before exhibited. The form of Stevens
+had insensibly risen in seeming elevation as he spoke, and the
+expression of his face was that of a more human pride. He continued:--
+
+"My voice is one of authority in circles where yours would be one
+of equal attraction and command. I can not promise you an Italian
+devotion, Margaret; our people, though sufficiently enthusiastic,
+are too sensible to ridicule to let the heart and blood speak out
+with such freedom as they use in the warmer regions of the South:
+but the homage will be more intellectual, more steady, and the fame
+more enduring. You must let your song be heard--you must give me
+the sweet privilege of making it known to ears whose very listening
+is fame."
+
+"Ah!" she said, "what you say makes me feel how foolishly I have
+spoken. What is my song? what have I done? what am I? what have I
+to hope? I have done nothing--I am nothing! I have suffered, like
+a child, a miserable vanity to delude me, and I have poured into
+the ears of a stranger those ravings which I have hitherto uttered
+to the hills and forests. You laugh at me now--you must."
+
+The paleness on her cheek was succeeded by the deepest flush of
+crimson. She withdrew her hand from his grasp.
+
+"Laugh at you, Margaret! You have awakened my wonder. Struck with
+you when we first met--"
+
+"Nay, no more of that, but let us follow these windings; they lead
+us to the tarn. It is the prettiest Indian path, and my favorite
+spot. Here I ramble morning and eve, and try to forget those vain
+imaginings and foolish strivings of thought which I have just
+inflicted upon you. The habit proved too much for my prudence, and
+I spoke as if you were not present. Possibly, had you not spoken
+in reply, I should have continued until now."
+
+"Why did I speak?"
+
+"Ah! it is better. I wish you had spoken sooner. But follow me
+quickly. The sunlight is now falling in a particular line which
+gives us the loveliest effect, shooting its rays through certain
+fissures of the rock, and making a perfect arrow-path along the
+water. You would fancy that Apollo had just dismissed a golden
+shaft from his quiver, so direct is the levelled light along the
+surface of the lake."
+
+Speaking thus, they came in sight of the party on the opposite
+hills, as we have already shown--without, however, perceiving
+them in turn. It will be conjectured without difficulty that, with
+a nature so full of impulse, so excitable, as that of Margaret
+Cooper--particularly in the company of an adroit man like Stevens,
+whose purpose was to encourage her in that language and feeling of
+egotism which, while it was the most grateful exercise to herself,
+was that which most effectually served to blind her to his designs--her
+action was always animated, expressively adapting itself, not only
+to the words she uttered, but, even when she did not speak, to the
+feelings by which she was governed. It was the art of Stevens to
+say little except by suggestives. A single word, or brief sentence,
+from his lips, judiciously applied to her sentiments or situation,
+readily excited her to speech; and this utterance necessarily brought
+with it the secret of her soul, the desire of her heart, nay, the
+very shape of the delusion which possessed it. The wily libertine,
+deliberate as the demon to which we have likened him, could provoke
+the warmth which he did not share--could stimulate the eloquence
+which he would not feel--could coldly, like some Mephistopheles
+of science, subject the golden-winged bird or butterfly to the
+torturous process of examination, with a pin thrust through its
+vitals, and gravely dilate on its properties, its rich plumage, and
+elaborate finish of detail, without giving heed to those writhings
+which declared its agonies. It is not meant to be understood that
+Stevens found no pleasure himself in the display of that wild,
+unschooled imagination which was the prevailing quality in the mind
+of Margaret Cooper. He was a man of education and taste. He could
+be pleased as an amateur; but he wanted the moral to be touched,
+and to sympathize with a being so gifted and so feeble--so high
+aiming, yet so liable to fall.
+
+The ardor of Margaret Cooper, and the profound devotion which
+it was the policy of Stevens to display, necessarily established
+their acquaintance, in a very short time, on the closest footing
+of familiarity. With a nature such as hers, all that is wanted is
+sympathy--all that she craves is sympathy--and, to win this, no
+toil is too great, no sufferance too severe; alas, how frequently
+do we see that no penalty is too discouraging! But the confiding
+spirit never looks for penalties, and seldom dreams of deceit.
+
+What, then, were the emotions of William Hinkley as he beheld the
+cordiality which distinguished the manner of Margaret Cooper as she
+approached the edge of the lake with her companion? In the space
+of a single week, this stranger had made greater progress in her
+acquaintance than HE had been able to make in a period of years.
+The problem which distressed him was beyond his power to solve.
+His heart was very full; the moisture was already in his eyes; and
+when he beheld the animated gestures of the maid--when he saw her
+turn to her companion, and meet his gaze without shrinking, while
+her own was fixed in gratified contemplation--he scarcely restrained
+himself from jumping to his feet. The old man saw his emotion.
+
+"William," he said, "did I understand you that this young stranger
+was a preacher?"
+
+"No, sir, but he seeks to be one. He is studying for the ministry,
+under Brother Cross."
+
+"Brother Cross is a good man, and is scarcely likely to have anything
+to do with any other than good men. I suppose he knows everything
+about the stranger?"
+
+William Hinkley narrated all that was known on the subject in the
+village. In the innocence of his heart, Brother Cross had described
+Alfred Stevens as a monument of his own powers of conversion. Under
+God, he had been a blessed instrument for plucking this brand from
+the burning. A modified account of the brandy-flask accompanied the
+narrative. Whether it was that Mr. Calvert, who had been a man of
+the world, saw something in the story itself, and in the ludicrousness of
+the event, which awakened his suspicions, or whether the carriage
+of Alfred Stevens, as he walked with Margaret Cooper, was rather that
+of a young gallant than a young student in theology, may admit of
+question; but it was very certain that the suspicions of the old
+gentleman were somewhat awakened.
+
+Believing himself to be alone with his fair companion, Alfred
+Stevens was not as scrupulous of the rigidity of manner which,
+if not actually prescribed to persons occupying his professional
+position, is certainly expected from them; and, by a thousand
+little acts of gallantry, he proved himself much more at home as
+a courtier and a ladies' man than as one filled with the overflow
+of divine grace, and thoughtful of nothing less than the serious
+earnest of his own soul. His hand was promptly extended to assist
+the progress of his fair companion--a service which was singularly
+unnecessary in the case of one to whom daily rambles, over hill
+and through forest, had imparted a most unfeminine degree of vigor.
+Now he broke the branch away from before her path; and now, stooping
+suddenly, he gathered for her the pale flower of autumn.
+
+These little acts of courtesy, so natural to the gentleman, were
+anything but natural to one suddenly impressed with the ascetical
+temper of methodism. Highly becoming in both instances, they were
+yet strangely at variance with the straight-laced practices of the
+thoroughgoing Wesleyan, who sometimes fancies that the condition
+of souls is so desperate as to leave no time for good manners.  Mr.
+Calvert had no fault to find with Stevens's civility, but there was
+certainly an inconsistency between his deportment now, and those
+characteristics which were to be predicated of the manner and mode
+of his very recent conversion. Besides, there was the story of
+the brandy-flask, in which Calvert saw much less of honor either
+to John Cross or his neophyte. But the old man did not express his
+doubts to his young friend, and they sat together, watching, in a
+silence only occasionalry broken by a monosyllable, the progress
+of the unconscious couple below.
+
+Meanwhile, our fisherman, occupying his lonely perch just above the
+stream, had been plying his vocation with all the silent diligence
+of one to the manner born. Once busy with his angle, and his world
+equally of thought and observation became confined to the stream
+before his eyes, and the victim before his imagination. Scarcely
+seen by his companions on the heights above, he had succeeded in
+taking several very fine fish; and had his liberality been limited
+to the supper-table of his venerable friend Calvert, he would long
+before have given himself respite, and temporary immunity to the
+rest of the finny tribe remaining in the tarn. But Ned Hinkley
+thought of all his neighbors, not omitting the two rival widows,
+Mesdames Cooper and Thackeray.
+
+Something too, there was in the sport, which, on the present
+occasion, beguiled him rather longer than his wont. More than once
+had his eye detected, from the advantageous and jutting rock where
+he lay concealed, just above the water, the dark outlines of a
+fish, one of the largest he had ever seen in the lake, whose brown
+sides, and occasionally flashing fins, excited his imagination and
+offered a challenge to his skill, which provoked him into something
+like a feeling of personal hostility.
+
+The fish moved slowly to and fro, not often in sight, but at such
+regularly-recurring periods as to keep up the exciting desire which
+his very first appearance had awakened in the mind of his enemy.
+
+To Ned Hinkley he was the beau-ideal of the trout genius. He was
+certainly the hermit-trout of the tarn. Such coolness, such strength,
+such size, such an outline, and then such sagacity.  That trout was
+a triton among his brethren. A sort of Dr. Johnson among fishes.
+Ned Hinkley could imagine--for on such subjects his imagination
+kindled--how like an oracle must be the words of such a trout,
+to his brethren, gathering in council in their deep-down hole--or
+driven by a shower under the cypress log--or in any other situation
+in which an oracle would be apt to say, looking around him with
+fierceness mingled with contempt, "Let no dog bark." Ned Hinkley
+could also fancy the contemplations of such a trout as he witnessed
+the efforts made to beguile him out of the water.
+
+"Not to be caught by a fly like that, my lad!" and precisely as if
+the trout had spoken what was certainly whispered in his own mind,
+the fisherman silently changed his gilded, glittering figure on his
+hook for one of browner plumage--one of the autumn tribe of flies
+which stoop to the water from the overhanging trees, and glide off
+for twenty paces in the stream, to dart up again to the trees, in
+as many seconds, if not swallowed by some watchful fisher-trout,
+like the one then before the eyes of our companion.
+
+Though his fancy had become excited, Ned Hinkley was not impatient.
+With a cautious hand he conducted the fly down the stream with
+the flickering, fidgety motion which the real insect would have
+employed. The keen-nosed trout turned with the movements of the
+fly, but philosophically kept aloof. Now he might be seen to sink,
+now to rise, now he glided close under the rock where the angler
+reclined, and, even in the very deep waters which were there, which
+were consequently very dark, so great was the size of the animal,
+that its brown outline was yet to be seen, with its slightly-waving
+tail, and at moments the flash of its glittering eye, as, inclining
+on its side, it glanced cunningly upward through the water.
+
+Again did Ned Hinldey consult his resources. Fly after fly was taken
+from his box, and suffered to glide upon the stream. The wary fish
+did not fail to bestow some degree of attention upon each, but his
+regards were too deliberate for the success of the angler, and he
+had almost began to despair, when he observed a slight quivering
+movement in the object of pursuit which usually prepares the good
+sportsman to expect his prey. The fins were laid aback. The motion
+of the fish became steady; a slight vibration of the tail only was
+visible; and in another moment he darted, and was hooked.
+
+Then came the struggle. Ned Hinkley had never met with a more
+formidable prey. The reel was freely given, but the strain was
+great upon shaft and line. There was no such thing as contending.
+The trout had his way, and went down and off, though it might have
+been observed that the fisherman took good care to baffle his efforts
+to retreat in the direction of the old log which had harbored him,
+and the tangling alders, which might have been his safest places
+of retreat. The fish carried a long stretch of line, but the hook
+was still in his jaws, and this little annoyance soon led him upon
+other courses. The line became relaxed, and with this sign, Ned
+Hinkley began to amuse himself in tiring his victim.
+
+This required skill and promptness rather than strength. The
+hermit-trout was led to and fro by a judicious turn of wrist or
+elbow. His efforts had subsided to a few spasmodic struggles--an
+occasional struggle ending with a shiver, and then he was brought
+to the surface. This was followed by a last great convulsive effort,
+when his tail churned the water into a little circle of foam, which
+disappeared the moment his struggles were over. But a few seconds
+more were necessary to lift the prey into sight of all the parties
+near to the lake. They had seen some of the struggle, and had
+imagined the rest. Neither Margaret Cooper nor Stevens had suspected
+the presence of the fisherman until drawn to the spot by this trial
+of strength.
+
+"What a prodigious fish!" exclaimed Stevens; "can we go to the
+spot?"
+
+"Oh! easily--up the rocks on the left there is a path. I know it
+well. I have traversed it often. Will you go? The view is very fine
+from that quarter."
+
+"Surely: but who is the fisherman?"
+
+"Ned Hinkley, the nephew of the gentleman with whom you stay. He
+is a hunter, fisherman, musician--everything. A lively, simple, but
+well-meaning young person. It is something strange that his cousin
+William Hinkley is not with him. They are usually inseparable."
+
+And with these words she led the way for her companion following
+the edge of the lake until reaching the point where the rocks seemed
+to form barriers to their further progress, but which her agility
+and energy had long since enabled her to overcome.
+
+"A bold damsel!" said Calvert, as he viewed her progress. "She
+certainly does not intend to clamber over that range of precipices.
+She will peril her life."
+
+"No!" said William Hinkley; "she has done it often to my great
+terror. I have been with her more than once over the spot myself.
+She seems to me to have no fear, and to delight in the most dangerous
+places."
+
+"But her companion! If he's not a more active man than he seems he
+will hardly succeed so well."
+
+William was silent, his eye watching with the keenest interest the
+progress of the two. In a few moments he started to his feet with
+some appearance of surprise.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Calvert.
+
+"She does not seem as if she wished to ascend the rocks, but she's
+aiming to keep along the ledges that overhang the stream, so as
+to get where Ned is. That can hardly be done by the surest-footed,
+and most active. Many of the rocks are loose. The ledge is very
+narrow, and even where there is room for the feet there are such
+projections above as leave no room for the body. I will halloo to
+her, and tell her of the danger."
+
+"If you halloo, you will increase the danger--you will alarm her,"
+said the old man.
+
+"It will be best to stop her now, in season, when she can go back.
+Stay for me, sir, I can run along on the heights so as to overlook
+them, and can then warn without alarming."
+
+"Do so, my son, and hasten, for she seems bent on going forward.
+The preacher follows but slowly, and she stops for him. Away!"
+
+The youth darted along the hill, pursuing something of a table-line
+which belonged to the equal elevation of the range of rock on which
+he stood. The rock was formed of successive and shelving ledges,
+at such intervals, however, as to make it no easy task--certainly
+no safe one--to drop from one to the other. The perch of Ned Hinkley,
+was a projection from the lowest of these ledges, running brokenly
+along the margin of the basin until lost in the forest slope over
+which Margaret Cooper had led her companion.
+
+If it was a task to try the best vigor and agility--to say nothing
+of courage--of the ablest mountaineer, to ascend the abrupt ledges
+from below, aiming at the highest point of elevation. The attempt
+was still more startling to follow the lower ledges, some of which
+hung, loosened and tottering, just above the deepest parts of the
+lake. Yet, with that intrepidity which marked her character, this
+was the very task which Margaret Cooper had proposed to herself.
+William Hinkley had justly said that she did not seem to know fear;
+and when Stevens with the natural sense of caution which belongs
+to one to whom such performances are unusual, suggested to her that
+such a pathway seemed very dangerous--
+
+"Dangerous!" she exclaimed, standing upon the merest pinnacle of
+a loosened fragment which rested on the very margin of the stream.
+
+"Did you never perceive that there was a loveliness in danger
+which you scarcely felt to be half so great in any other object or
+situation. I love the dangerous. It seems to lift my soul, to make
+my heart bound with joy and the wildest delight. I know nothing so
+delightful as storm and thunder. I look, and see the tall trees
+shivering and going down with a roar, and feel that I could sing--sing
+aloud--and believe that there are voices, like mine, then singing
+through all the tempest. But there is no danger here. I have clambered
+up these ledges repeatedly--up to the very top. Here, you see, we
+have an even pathway along the edge. We have nothing to do but to
+set the foot down firmly."
+
+But Stevens was not so sure, and his opinion on the beauties of the
+dangerous did not chime exactly with hers. Still, he did not lack
+for courage, and his pride did not suffer him to yield in a contest
+with a female. He gazed on her with increasing wonder. If he saw
+no loveliness in danger--he saw no little loveliness just then in
+her; and she might be said to personify danger to his eyes. Her
+tall, symmetrical, and commanding figure, perched on the trembling
+pinnacle of rock which sustained her, was as firm and erect as if
+she stood on the securest spot of land.
+
+Nor was her position that of simple security and firmness. The grace
+of her attitude, her extended and gently waving arm as she spoke,
+denoted a confidence which could only have arisen from a perfect
+unconsciousness of danger. Her swan-like neck, with the face slightly
+turned back to him; the bright flashing eyes, and the smile of equal
+pride and dignity on her exquisitely-chiselled mouth;--all formed
+a picture for the artist's study, which almost served to divert
+the thoughts of Stevens from the feeling of danger which he expressed.
+
+While he gazed, he heard a voice calling in tones of warning from
+above; and, at the sound, he perceived a change in the expression
+of Margaret Cooper's face, from confidence and pride, to scorn and
+contempt. At the same time she darted forward from rock to rock,
+with a sort of defying haste, which made him tremble for her
+safety, and left him incapable to follow. The call was repeated;
+and Stevens looked up, and recognised the person of the youth whom
+he had counselled that morning with such bad success.
+
+If the progress of Margaret Cooper appeared dangerous in his sight,
+that of the young man was evidently more so. He was leaping, with
+the cool indifference of one who valued his life not a pin's fee,
+from ledge to ledge, down the long steppes which separated the
+several reaches of the rock formation. The space between was very
+considerable, the descent abrupt; the youth had no steadying pole
+to assist him, but flying rather than leaping, was now beheld in
+air, and in the next moment stood balancing himself with difficulty,
+but with success, and without seeming apprehension, on the pinnacle
+of rock below him. In this way he was approaching the lower ledge
+along which Margaret Cooper was hurrying as rapidly as fearlessly,
+and calling to her as he came, implored her to forbear a progress
+which was so full of danger.
+
+Stevens fancied he had no reason to love the youth, but he could
+not help admiring and envying his equal boldness and agility; the
+muscular ease with which he flung himself from point to point, and
+his sure-footed descent upon the crags and fragments which trembled
+and tottered beneath the sudden and unaccustomed burden. Charitably
+wishing that, amid all his agility he might yet make a false step,
+and find an unexpected and rather cold bath in the lake below,
+Stevens now turned his eyes upon Margaret Cooper.
+
+She did not answer the counsels of William Hinkley--certainly did
+not heed them: and, but for the increased impatience of her manner
+might be supposed not to have heard them. The space between herself
+and Stevens had increased meanwhile, and looking back, she waited
+for his approach. She stood on a heavy mass which jutted above
+the lake, and not six feet from the water. Her right foot was upon
+the stone, sustaining the whole weight of her person. Her left was
+advanced and lifted to another fragment which lay beyond. As she
+looked back she met the eyes of Stevens. Just then he saw the large
+fragment yield beneath her feet. She seemed suddenly conscious of
+it in the same moment, and sprung rapidly on that to which her left
+foot was already advanced. The impetus of this movement, sent the
+rock over which she had left. This disturbed the balance of that
+to which she had risen, and while the breath of the stranger hung
+suspended in the utterance of the meditated warning, the catastrophe
+had taken place. The stone shrank from beneath her, and, sinking
+with it, in another moment, she was hidden from sight in the still,
+deep waters of the lake.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SOUSING A GURNET.
+
+
+
+
+
+The disappearance of Margaret Cooper was succeeded by a shriek
+from above--a single shriek--a cry of terror and despair; and in
+the same instant the form of William Hinkley might have been seen
+cleaving the air, with the boldness of a bird, secure always of
+his wing, and descending into the lake as nearly as it was possible
+for him to come, to the spot where she had sunk. Our cooler fisherman
+looked up to the abrupt eminence, just above his own head, from
+which his devoted cousin had sprung.
+
+"By gemini!" he exclaimed with an air of serious apprehension, "if
+William Hinkley hasn't knocked his life out by that plunge he's
+more lucky than I think him. It's well the lake's deep enough in
+this quarter else he'd have tried the strength of hard head against
+harder rock below. But there's no time for such nice calculations!
+We can all swim--that's a comfort."
+
+Thus speaking, he followed the example of his cousin, though more
+quietly, plunging off from his lowlier perch, and cleaving the
+water, headforemost, with as little commotion as a sullen stone would
+make sent directly downward to the deep. By this time, however,
+our former companion, Stevens, had done the same thing. Stevens
+was no coward, but he had no enthusiasm. He obeyed few impulses.
+His proceedings were all the result of calculation. He could swim
+as well as his neighbors. He had no apprehensions on that score;
+but he disliked cold water; and there was an involuntary shrug of
+the shoulder and shiver of the limbs before he committed himself
+to the water, which he did with all the deliberation of the cat,
+who, longing for fish, is yet unwilling to wet her own feet. His
+deliberation, and the nearness of his position to Margaret Cooper,
+were so far favorable to his design that he succeeded in finding
+her first. It must be understood that the events, which we have
+taken so much time to tell, occupied but a few seconds in the
+performance.  Stevens was in the water quite as quickly as Ned
+Hinkley, and only not so soon as his more devoted and desperate
+cousin. If it was an advantage to him to come first in contact
+with the form of Margaret Cooper, it had nearly proved fatal to
+him also. In the moment when he encountered her, her outstretched
+and grasping arms, encircled his neck. They rose together, but he
+was nearly strangled, and but for the timely interposition of the
+two cousins, they must probably have both perished.
+
+It was the fortune of our fisherman to relieve the maiden, whom
+he bore to the opposite shore with a coolness, a skill and spirit,
+which enabled him to save himself from her desperate but unconscious
+struggles, while supporting her with a degree of ease and strength
+which had been acquired while teaching some dozen of the village
+urchins how to practise an art in which he himself was reckoned a
+great proficient.
+
+It was fortunate for Stevens that the charities of William Hinkley
+were more active and indulgent than his own, since, without the
+timely succor and aid which he afforded, that devout young gentleman
+would have been made to discontinue his studies very suddenly and
+have furnished a summary conclusion to this veracious narrative--a
+consummation which, if it be as devoutly wished by the reader
+as by the writer, will be a much greater source of annoyance to
+our publisher than it has proved already. Never had poor mortal
+been compelled to drink, at one time, a greater quantity of that
+celestial beverage, which the Reverend Mr. Pierpont insists is the
+only liquor drunk at the hotels of heaven. We should be sorry to
+misrepresent that very gentle gentleman, but we believe that this
+is substantially his idea. It was unfortunate for Stevens that,
+previously to this, he had never been accustomed to drink much of
+this beverage in its original strength anywhere. He had been too
+much in the habit of diluting it; and being very temperate always
+in his enjoyment of the creature comforts, he had never taken it,
+even when thus diluted, except in very moderate quantities.
+
+In consequence of his former abstemiousness, the quantity which
+he now swallowed nearly strangled him. He was about to take his
+last draught with many wry faces, when the timely arms of the two
+cousins, by no very sparing application of force withdrew him from
+the grasp of the damsel; and without very well understanding the
+process, or any particulars of his extrication, he found himself
+stretched upon the banks over which he had lately wandered, never
+dreaming of any such catastrophe; discharging from his stomach by
+no effort of his own, a large quantity of foreign ingredients--the
+ordinary effect, we are given to understand, of every inordinate
+indulgence in strong waters.
+
+Our excellent old friend, Mr. Calvert, was soon upon the spot, and
+while Ned Hinkley was despatched to the village for assistance,
+he took himself the charge of recovering the unconscious maiden.
+Half-forgetting his hostility, William Hinkley undertook the same
+good service to Stevens, who really seemed to need succor much more
+than his fair companion. While William Hinkley busied himself by
+rolling, friction, fanning, and other practices, employed in such
+cases, to bring his patient back to life, he could not forbear an
+occasional glance to the spot where, at a little distance, lay the
+object of his affections.
+
+Her face was toward him, as she lay upon her side. Her head was
+supported on the lap of the old man. Her long hair hung dishevelled,
+of a more glossy black now when filled with water. Her eyes were
+shut, and the dark fringes of their lids lay like a pencil-streak
+across the pale, prominent orbs which they served to bind together.
+The glow of indignant pride with which she was wont to receive
+his approaches had all disappeared in the mortal struggle for life
+through which she had lately gone; and pure, as seemingly free
+from every passion, her pale beauties appeared to his doating eye
+the very perfection of human loveliness. Her breast now heaved
+convulsively--deep sighs poured their way through her parted lips.
+Her eyes alternately opened upon but shut against the light, and,
+finally, the exertions of the old man were rewarded as the golden
+gleam of expression began to relight and reillumine those features
+which seemed never to be without it.
+
+She recovered her consciousness, started up, made an effort to
+rise, but, reeling with inability, sunk down again into the paternal
+grasp of the old man.
+
+"Mr. Calvert!" she murmured.
+
+"You are safe, my daughter," said the old man.
+
+"But how did it happen?--where am I?"
+
+"By the lake."
+
+"Ah! I remember. I was drowning. I felt it all--the choking--the
+struggle--the water in my ears and eyes! It was a dreadful feeling.
+How did I come here? Who saved me?"
+
+"Ned Hinkley brought you to land, but he was helped by his cousin
+William, who assisted the stranger."
+
+"The stranger? ah! yes, I remember: but where is he?"
+
+She looked around wildly and anxiously, and beholding William
+Hinkley at a little distance, busy with the still unconscious form
+of Stevens, a quick, fearful shudder passed over her frame.  She
+almost crouched into the old man's arms as she asked, in husky
+accents--
+
+"He is not dead--he lives?"
+
+"I hope so. He breathes."
+
+She waited for no more, but, starting to her feet, she staggered to
+the spot where Stevens lay. The old man would have prevented her.
+
+"You are feeble; you will do yourself harm. Better, if you are able
+to walk, hurry homeward with me, when you can change your clothes."
+
+"Would you have me ungrateful?" she exclaimed; "shall I neglect
+him when he risked his life for me?"
+
+There was a consciousness in her mind that it was not all gratitude
+which moved her, for the deathly paleness of her cheek was now
+succeeded by a warm blush which denoted a yet stronger and warmer
+emotion. The keen eyes of William Hinkley understood the meaning of
+this significant but unsyllabling mode of utterance, and his eyes
+spoke the reproach to hers which his lips left unsaid:--
+
+"Ah! did I not risk my life too, to prevent--to save? When would
+she feel such an interest in me? when would she look thus were my
+life at stake?"
+
+"He will not be neglected," said the old man, gently endeavoring
+to restrain her. Perhaps she would not have given much heed to
+the interruption, for hers was the strength of an unfettered will,
+one accustomed to have way, but that, at this moment, the eyes of
+Stevens unclosed and met her own. His consciousness had returned,
+and, under the increasing expression in his looks, she sunk back,
+and permitted the old man to lead her along the homeward path. More
+than once she looked back, but, with the assurance of Mr. Calvert
+that there was no more danger to be apprehended, she continued to
+advance; the worthy old man, as they went, seeking to divert her
+mind, by pleasant and choice anecdotes of which his memory had
+abundant stores, from dwelling upon the unpleasant and exciting
+event which had just taken place.
+
+Margaret Cooper, whose habits previously had kept her from much
+intimacy with the village sage, was insensibly taken by his gentleness,
+the purity of his taste, the choiceness of his expression, the
+extent of his resources. She wondered how a mind so full should have
+remained unknown to her so long--committing the error, very common
+to persons of strong will and determined self-esteem, of assuming
+that she should, as a matter of inevitable necessity, have known
+everything and everybody of which the knowledge is at all desirable.
+
+In pleasant discourse he beguiled her progress, until Ned Hinkley
+was met returning with horses--the pathway did not admit of a vehicle,
+and the village had none less cumbrous than cart and wagon--on
+one of which she mounted, refusing all support or assistance; and
+when, Mr. Calvert insisted upon walking beside her, she grasped
+the bough of a tree, broke off a switch, and, giving an arch but
+good-natured smile and nod to the old man, laid it smartly over
+the horse's flank, and in a few moments was out of sight.
+
+"The girl is smart," said Calvert, as he followed her retreating
+form with his eye--"too smart! She speaks well--has evidently read.
+No wonder that William loves her; but she will never do for him.
+She has no humility. Pride is the demon in her heart. Pride will
+overthrow her. These woods spoil her. Solitude is the natural nurse
+of self-esteem, particularly where it is strong at first, and is
+coupled with anything like talent. Better for such a one if sickness,
+and strife, and suffering, had taken her at the cradle, and nursed
+her with the milk of self-denial, which is the only humility worth
+having. And yet, why should I speak of her, when the sting remains
+in my own soul--when I yet feel the pang of my feebleness and
+self-reproach? Alas! I should school none. The voice speaks to me
+ever, 'Old man, to thy prayers! Thy own knees are yet stubborn as
+thy neck!'"
+
+Leaving him to the becoming abasement of that delusive self-comfort
+which ministers to our vain-glory, and which this good old man had
+so happily succeeded in rebuking, we will return to the spot where
+we left our other parties. Ned Hinkley had already joined them.
+With his horse he had providently brought a suit of his own clothes
+for the stranger, which, though made of homespun, and not of the
+most modern fashion, were yet warm and comfortable, and as Stevens
+was compelled to think, infinitely preferable to the chilly and
+dripping garments which he wore. A few moments, in the cover of
+the woods, sufficed the neophyte to make the alteration; while the
+two cousins, to whom the exigencies of forester and fisherman life
+were more familiar prepared to walk the water out of their own
+habits, by giving rapid circulation to their blood and limbs.  While
+their preparations were in progress, however, Ned Hinkley could not
+deny himself the pleasure of discoursing at length on the subject
+of the late disaster.
+
+"Stranger," he said, "I must tell you that you've had a souse in
+as fine a fishing-pond as you'll meet with from here to Salt river.
+I reckon, now, that while you were in, you never thought for a
+moment of the noble trout that inhabit it."
+
+"I certainly did not," said the other.
+
+"There, now! I could have sworn it. That a man should go with his
+eyes open into a country without ever asking what sort of folks
+lived there! Isn't it monstrous?"
+
+"It certainly seems like a neglect of the first duty of a traveller,"
+said Stevens good-humoredly; "let me not show myself heedless of
+another. Let me thank you, gentlemen, for saving my life. I believe
+I owe it to one or both of you."
+
+"To him, not to me," said Ned Hinkley, pointing to his cousin.
+William was at a little distance, looking sullenly upon the two
+with eyes which, if dark and moody, seemed to denote a thought
+which was anywhere else but in the scene around him.
+
+"He saved you, and I saved the woman. I wouldn't have a woman
+drowned in this lake for all the houses in Charlemont."
+
+"Ah! why?"
+
+"'Twould spoil it for fishing for ever."
+
+"Why would a woman do this more than a man?"
+
+"For a very good reason, my friend. Because the ghost of a woman
+talks, and a man's don't, they say. The ghost of a man says what
+it wants to say with its eyes; a woman's with her tongue. You know
+there's nothing scares fish so much as one's talking."
+
+"I have heard so. But is it so clear that there is such a difference
+between ghosts? How is it known that the female does all the
+talking?"
+
+"Oh, that's beyond dispute. There's a case that we all know
+about--all here in Charlemont--the case of Joe Barney's millpond.
+Barney lost one of his children and one of his negroes in the
+pond--drowned as a judgment, they say, for fishing a Sunday. That
+didn't make any difference with the fish: you could catch them there
+just the same as before. But when old Mrs. Prey fell in, crossing
+the dam, the case was altered. You might sit there for hours and
+days, night and day, and bob till you were weary; devil a bite after
+that! Now, what could make the difference but the tongue? Mother
+Frey had a tongue of her own, I tell you. 'Twas going when she
+fell in, and I reckon's been going ever since. She was a sulphury,
+spiteful body, to be sure, and some said she poisoned the fish if
+she didn't scare them. To my thinking, 'twas the tongue."
+
+Stevens had been something seduced from his gravity by the blunt
+humor and unexpected manner of Ned Hinkley; besides, having been
+served, if not saved, by his hands, something, perhaps, of attention
+was due to what he had to say; but he recollected the assumed
+character which he had to maintain--something doubtful, too, if
+he had not already impaired it in the sight and hearing of those
+who had come so opportunely but so unexpectedly to his relief, He
+recovered his composure and dignity; forbore to smile at the story
+which might otherwise have provoked not only smile but corresponding
+answer; and, by the sudden coolness of his manner, tended to confirm
+in Ned Hinkley's bosom the half-formed hostility which the cause
+of his cousin had originally taught him to feel.
+
+"I'll lick the conceit out of him yet!" he muttered, as Stevens,
+turning away, ascended to the spot where William Hinkley stood.
+
+"I owe you thanks, Mr. Hinkley," he began.
+
+The young man interrupted him.
+
+"You owe me nothing, sir," he answered hastily, and prepared to
+turn away.
+
+"You have saved my life, sir."
+
+"I should have saved your dog's life, sir, in the same situation.
+I have done but an act of duty."
+
+"But, Mr. Hinkley--"
+
+"Your horse is ready for you, sir," said the young man, turning
+off abruptly, and darting up the sides of the hill, remote from
+the pathway, and burying himself in the contiguous forests.
+
+"Strange!" exclaimed the neophyte--"this is very strange!"
+
+"Not so strange, stranger, as that I should stand your groom, without
+being brought up to such a business for any man. Here's your nag,
+sir."
+
+"I thank you--I would not willingly trespass," he replied, as he
+relieved our angler from his grasp upon the bridle.
+
+"You're welcome without the thanks, stranger. I reckon you know
+the route you come. Up hill, follow the track to the top, take the
+left turn to the valley, then you'll see the houses, and can follow
+your own nose or your nag's. Either's straight enough to carry you
+to his rack. You'll find your clothes at your boarding-house about
+the time that you'll get there."
+
+"Nay, sir, I already owe you much. Let them not trouble you. I will
+take them myself."
+
+"No, no, stranger!" was the reply of our fisherman, as he stooped
+down and busied himself in making the garments into a compact bundle;
+"I'm not the man to leave off without doing the thing I begin to
+do. I sometimes do more than I bargain for--sometimes lick a man
+soundly when I set out only to tweak his nose; but I make it a
+sort of Christian law never to do less. You may reckon to find your
+clothes home by the time you get there. There's your road."
+
+"A regular pair of cubs!" muttered the horseman, as he ascended
+the hill.
+
+"To purse up his mouth as if I was giving him root-drink, when I
+was telling him about Mother Frey's spoiling the fish! Let him take
+care--he may get the vinegar next time, and not the fish!"
+
+And, with these characteristic commentaries, the parties separated
+for the time.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+PHILOSOPHY OP FIGHTING.
+
+
+
+
+
+"You're not a fighter, Bill Hinkley, and that's about the worst
+fault that I can find against you."
+
+Such was the beginning of a dialogue between the cousins some
+three days after the affair which was narrated in our last chapter.
+The two young men were at the house of the speaker, or rather at
+his mother's house; where, a favorite and only son, he had almost
+supreme dominion. He was putting his violin in tune, and the
+sentences were spoken at intervals with the discordant scraps of
+sound which were necessarily elicited by this unavoidable musical
+operation. These sounds might be said to form a running accompaniment
+for the dialogue, and, considering the sombre mood of the person
+addressed, they were, perhaps, far more congenial than any more
+euphonious strains would have been.
+
+"Not a fighter!" said the other; "why, what do you mean?"
+
+"Why, just what I say--you are not a fighter. You love reading, and
+fiddling, and fishing sometimes, and sometimes dancing, and hunting,
+and swimming; but I'm pretty certain you don't love fighting. You
+needn't contradict, Bill--I've been thinking the matter over; and
+I'm sure of it. I recollect every battle or scrape you ever were
+in, from the time we went to old Chandler's, and I tell you, you're
+not a fighter--you don't love fighting!"
+
+This was concluded with a tremendous scrape over the strings,
+which seemed to say as well as scrape could speak--"There can be
+no mistake on the subject--I've said it."
+
+"If I knew exactly what you were driving at," said the other, "perhaps
+I might answer you. I never pretended to be a fighter; and as for
+loving it, as I love eating, drinking, books, fiddling, and dancing,
+why that needs no answer. Of course I do not, and I don't know who
+does."
+
+"There it is. I told you. I knew it. You'd sooner do almost anything
+than fight."
+
+"If you mean that I would submit to insult," said the more peaceable
+cousin, with some displeasure in his tones and countenance, "sooner
+than resent it, you are very much mistaken. It wouldn't be advisable
+even for you to try the experiment."
+
+"Poh, poh, Bill, you know for that matter that it wouldn't take
+much trying. I'd lick you as easily now as I did when we were boys
+together."
+
+"We are boys no longer," said the other gravely.
+
+"I'm as much a boy as ever, so far as the licking capacity calls
+for boyhood. I've pretty much the same spirit now that I had then,
+and ten times the same strength and activity. But don't look so
+blue. I'm not going to try my strength and spirit and activity on
+you. And don't suppose, Bill Hinkley, that I mean to say you're
+anything of a coward, or that you'd submit to any open insult; but
+still I do say, you're not only not fond of fighting, but you're
+just not as much inclined that way as you should be."
+
+"Indeed! what more would you have? Do you not say that I would not
+submit to insult?--that I show the proper degree of courage in such
+cases?"
+
+"Not the PROPER degree. That's the very question. You're not quick
+enough. You wait for the first blow. You don't step out to meet
+the enemy. You look for him to come to you."
+
+"Surely! I look upon fighting as brutal--to be waited for, not
+sought--to be resorted to only in compliance with necessity--to be
+avoided to the last!"
+
+"No such thing--all a mistake. Fighting and the desire to get on
+the shoulders of our neighbors is a natural passion. We see that
+every day. The biggest boy licks the one just below him, he whips
+the next, and so down, and there's not one that don't lick somebody
+and don't stand licked himself--for the master licks the biggest.
+The desire to fight and flog is natural, and this being the case,
+it stands to reason that we must lick our neighbor or he'll be sure
+to lick us."
+
+"Pshaw! you speak like a boy yet. This is schoolhouse philosophy."
+
+"And very good philosophy too. I'm thinking the schoolhouse and
+the play-ground is pretty much a sort of world to itself. It's no
+bad show of what the world without is; and one of its first lessons
+and that which I think the truest, is the necessity of having a
+trial of strength with every new-comer; until we learn where he's
+to stand in the ranks, number one or number nothing. You see there
+just the same passions, though, perhaps, on a small scale, that
+we afterward find to act upon the big world of manhood. There, we
+fight for gingerbread, for marbles, top and ball; not unfrequently
+because we venture to look at our neighbor's sweetheart; and
+sometimes, quite as often, for the love of the thing and to know
+where the spirit and the sinew are. Well, isn't that just what the
+big world does after us? As men, we fight for bigger playthings, for
+pounds, where before we fought for pence--for gold where before we
+fought for coppers--for command of a country instead of a schoolyard;
+for our wives instead of sweethearts, and through sheer deviltry
+and the love of the thing, when there's nothing else to fight about,
+just the same as we did in boyhood."
+
+"But even were you to prove, and I to admit, that it is so, just
+as you say, that would not prove the practice to be a jot more
+proper, or a jot less brutal."
+
+"Begging your pardon, Bill, it proves it to be right and proper,
+and accordingly, if brutal, a becoming brutality. If this is
+the natural disposition of boys and men, don't you see that this
+schoolboy licking and fighting is a necessary part of one's moral
+education? It learns one to use his strength, his limbs and sinews,
+as he may be compelled to use them, in self-defence, in every future
+day of his life. You know very well what follows a boy at school
+who doesn't show himself ready to bung up his neighbor's eye the
+moment he sees it at a cross-twinkle. He gets his own bunged up.
+Well, it's just the same thing when he gets to be a man. If you have
+a dispute with your enemy, I don't say that you shouldn't reason
+with him, but I do say that your reasoning will have very little
+effect upon him unless he sees that you are able and willing
+to write it in black and blue upon his sheepskin. And what better
+way could you find to show him THAT, unless by giving him word and
+blow, the blow first, as being the most impressive argument?"
+
+"You must have been dreaming of these subjects last night." said
+the grave cousin--"you seem to have them unusually well cut and
+dried."
+
+"I haven't been dreaming about it, Bill, but I confess I've been
+thinking about it very seriously all night, and considering all
+the arguments that I thought you would make use of against it.
+I haven't quite done with my discussion, which I took up entirely
+for your benefit."
+
+"Indeed! you are quite philanthropic before breakfast; but let us
+hear you?"
+
+"You talk of the brutality of fighting--now in what does that
+brutality consist? Is it not in breaking noses, kicking shins,
+bunging up eyes, and making one's neighbor feel uncomfortable in
+thigh, and back, and arms, and face, and skin, and indeed, everywhere,
+where a big fist or a cowhide shoe may plant a buffet or a bruise?"
+
+"Quite a definition, Ned."
+
+"I'm glad you think so: for if it's brutal in the boy to do so to
+his schoolmate, is it less so for the schoolmaster to do the same
+thing to the boy that's under his charge? He bruises my skin, makes
+my thighs, and arms, and back, and legs, and face, and hands, ache,
+and if my definition be a correct one, he is quite as brutal as
+the boys who do the same thing to one another."
+
+"He does it because the boys deserve it, and in order to make them
+obedient and active."
+
+"And when did a boy not deserve a flogging when he gets licked by
+his companion?" demanded the other triumphantly--"and don't the
+licking make him obedient, and don't the kicking make him active?
+By gemini, I've seen more activity from one chap's legs under the
+quick application of another's feet, than I think anything else
+could produce, unless it were feet made expressly for such a purpose
+and worked by a steam-engine. That might make them move something
+faster, but I reckon there would be no need in such a case of any
+such improvement."
+
+"What are you driving at, Ned Hinkley? This is by far the longest
+argument, I think, that you've ever undertaken. You must be moved
+by some very serious considerations."
+
+"I am, and you'll see what I'm driving at after a little while.
+I'm not fond of arguing, you know, but I look upon the fighting
+principle as a matter to be known and believed in, and I wish to
+make clear to you my reasons for believing in it myself. You don't
+suppose I'd put down the fiddle for a talk at any time if the
+subject was not a serious one?"
+
+"Give way--you have the line."
+
+"About the brutality of fighting then, there's another thing to
+be said. Fighting produces good feeling--that is to say supposing
+one party fairly to have licked another."
+
+"Indeed--that's new."
+
+"And true too, Bill Hinkley. It cures the sulks. It lets off steam.
+It's like a thunderstorm that comes once in a while, and drives
+away the clouds, and clears the skies until all's blue again."
+
+"Black and blue."
+
+"No! what was black becomes blue. Chaps that have been growling at
+each other for weeks and months lose their bad blood--"
+
+"From the nostrils!"
+
+"Yes, from the nostrils. It's a sort of natural channel, and runs
+freely from that quarter. The one crows and the other runs and there's
+an end of the scrape and the sulks. The weaker chap, feeling his
+weakness, ceases to be impudent; the stronger, having his power
+acknowledged, becomes the protector of the weak. Each party falls
+into his place, and so far from the licking producing bad feeling
+it produces good feeling and good humor; and I conclude that one
+half of the trouble in the world, the squabbles between man and
+man, woman and woman, boy and boy--nay, between rival nations--is
+simply because your false and foolish notions of brutality and
+philanthropy keep them from coming to the scratch as soon as they
+should. They hang off, growling and grumbling, and blackguarding,
+and blaspheming, when, if they would only take hold, and come to
+an earnest grapple, the odds would soon show themselves--broken
+heads and noses would follow--the bad blood would run, and as soon
+as each party found his level, the one being finally on his back,
+peace would ensue, and there would be good humor for ever after,
+or at least until the blood thickened again. I think there's reason
+in my notion. I was thinking it over half the night. I've thought
+of it oftentimes before. I've never yet seen the argument that's
+strong enough to tumble it."
+
+"Your views are certainly novel, Ned, if not sound. You will excuse
+me if I do not undertake to dispute them this morning. I give in,
+therefore, and you may congratulate yourself upon having gained a
+triumph if not a convert?"
+
+"Stop, stop, William Hinkley: you don't suppose I've done all this
+talking only to make a convert or to gain a triumph?"
+
+"Why, that's your object in fighting, why not in arguing?"
+
+"Well, that's the object of most persons when they dispute, I know;
+but it is not mine. I wish to make a practical application of my
+doctrine."
+
+"Indeed! who do you mean to fight now?"
+
+"It's not for me to fight, it's for you."
+
+"Me!"
+
+"Yes; you have the preference by rights, though if you don't--and
+I'm rather sorry to think, as I told you at the start, that the
+only fault I had to find with you is that you're not a fighter--I
+must take your place and settle the difference."
+
+William Hinkley turned upon the speaker. The latter had laid down
+the violin, having, in the course of the argument, broken all its
+strings; and he stood now, unjacketed, and still in the chamber,
+where the two young men had been sleeping, almost in the attitude
+of one about to grapple with an antagonist. The serious face of him
+whose voice had been for war--his startling position--the unwonted
+eagerness of his eye, and the ludicrous importance which he attached
+to the strange principle which he had been asserting--conquered for
+a moment the graver mood of his love-sick companion, and he laughed
+outright at his pugnacious cousin. The latter seemed a little
+offended.
+
+"It's well you can laugh at such things, Bill Hinkley, but I can't.
+There was a time when every mother's son in Kentucky was a man,
+and could stand up to his rack with the best. If he couldn't keep
+the top place, he went a peg lower; but he made out to keep the
+place for which he was intended. Then, if a man disliked his neighbor
+he crossed over to him and said so, and they went at it like men,
+and as soon as the pout was over they shook hands, and stood side
+by side, and shoulder to shoulder, like true friends, in every
+danger, and never did fellows fight better against Indians and
+British than the same two men, that had lapped muscles, and rolled
+in the grain together till you couldn't say whose was whose, and
+which was which, till the best man jumped up, and shook himself,
+and gave the word to crow. After that it was all peace and good
+humor, and they drank and danced together, and it didn't lessen
+a man in his sweetheart's eyes, though he was licked, if he could
+say he had stood up like a man, and was downed after a good hug,
+because he couldn't help it. Now, there's precious little of that.
+The chap that dislikes his fellow, hasn't the soul to say it out,
+but he goes aside and sneers and snickers, and he whispers things
+that breed slanders, and scandals, and bad blood, until there's no
+trusting anybody; and everything is full of hate and enmity--but
+then it's so peaceful! Peaceful, indeed! as if there was any peace
+where there is no confidence, and no love, and no good feeling
+either for one thing or another."
+
+"Really, Ned, it seems to me you're indignant without any occasion.
+I am tempted to laugh at you again."
+
+"No, don't. You'd better not."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! I can not help it, Ned; so don't buffet me. You forced
+me into many a fight when I was a boy, for which I had no stomach;
+I trust you will not pummel me yourself because the world has grown
+so hatefully pacific. Tell me, in plain terms, who I am to fight
+now."
+
+"Who! who but Stevens?--this fellow Stevens. He's your enemy, you
+say--comes between you and your sweetheart--between you and your
+own mother--seems to look down upon you--speaks to you as if he
+was wiser, and better, and superior in every way--makes you sad
+and sulky to your best friends--you growl and grumble at him--you
+hate him--you fear him--"
+
+"Fear him!"
+
+"Yes, yes, I say fear him, for it's a sort of fear to skulk off
+from your mother's house to avoid seeing him--"
+
+"What, Ned, do you tell me that--do you begrudge me a place with
+you here, my bed, my breakfast?"
+
+"Begrudge! dang it, William Hinkley, don't tell me that, unless you
+want me to lay heavy hand on your shoulder!"--and the tears gushed
+into the rough fellow's eyes as he spoke these words, and he turned
+off to conceal them.
+
+"I don't mean to vex you, Ned, but why tell me that I skulk--that
+I fear this man?"
+
+"Begrudge!" muttered the other.
+
+"Nay, forgive me; I didn't mean it. I was hasty when I said so;
+but you also said things to provoke me. Do you suppose that I fear
+this man Stevens?"
+
+"Why don't you lick him then, or let him lick you, and bring the
+matter to an ending? Find out who's the best man, and put an end
+to the growling and the groaning. As it now stands you're not the
+same person--you're not fit company for any man. You scarcely talk,
+you listen to nobody. You won't fish, you won't hunt: you're sulky
+yourself and you make other people so!"
+
+"I'm afraid, Ned, it wouldn't much help the matter even if I were
+to chastise the stranger."
+
+"It would cure him of his impudence. It would make him know how to
+treat you; and if the rest of your grievance comes from Margaret
+Cooper, there's a way to end that too."
+
+"How! you wouldn't have me fight her?" said William Hinkley, with
+an effort to smile.
+
+"Why, we may call it fighting," said the advocate for such wholesale
+pugnacity, "since it calls for quite as much courage sometimes to
+face one woman as it does to face three men. But what I mean that
+you should do with her is to up and at her. Put the downright
+question like a man 'will you?' or 'won't you?' and no more beating
+about the bush. If she says 'no!' there's no more to be said,
+and if I was you after that, I'd let Stevens have her or the d--l
+himself, since I'm of the notion that no woman is fit for me if
+she thinks me not fit for her. Such a woman can't be worth having,
+and after that I wouldn't take her as a gracious gift were she to
+be made twice as beautiful. The track's before you, William Hinkley.
+Bring the stranger to the hug, and Margaret Cooper too, if she'll
+let you. But, at all events, get over the grunting and the growling,
+the sulky looks, and the sour moods. They don't become a man who's
+got a man's heart, and the sinews of a man."
+
+William Hinkley leaned against the fireplace with his head resting
+upon his hand. The other approached him.
+
+"I don't mean to say anything, Bill, or even to look anything,
+that'll do you hurt. I'm for bringing your trouble to a short cut.
+I've told you what I think right and reasonable, and for no other
+man in Kentucky would I have taken the pains to think out this
+matter as I have done. But you or I must lick Stevens."
+
+"You forget, Ned. Your eagerness carries you astray. Would you beat
+a man who offers no resistance?"
+
+"Surely not."
+
+"Stevens is a non-combatant. If you were to slap John Cross on one
+cheek he'd turn you the other. He'd never strike you back."
+
+"John Cross and Stevens are two persons. I tell you the stranger
+WILL fight. I'm sure of it. I've seen it in his looks and actions."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I do; I'm sure of it. But you must recollect besides, that
+John Cross is a preacher, already sworn in, as I may say. Stevens
+is only a beginner. Besides, John Cross is an old man; Stevens, a
+young one. John Cross don't care a straw about all the pretty girls
+in the country. He works in the business of souls, not beauties,
+and it's very clear that Stevens not only loves a pretty girl, but
+that he's over head and heels in love with your Margaret--"
+
+"Say no more. If he will fight, Ned Hinkley, he shall fight!"
+
+"Bravo, Bill--that's all that I was arguing for--that's all that
+I want. But you must make at Margaret Cooper also."
+
+"Ah! Ned, there I confess my fears."
+
+"Why, what are you afraid of?"
+
+"Rejection!"
+
+"Is that worse than this suspense--this anxiety--this looking
+out from morning till night for the sunshine, and this constant
+apprehension of the clouds--this knowing not what to be about--this
+sulking--this sadding--this growling--this grunting--this muling--this
+moping--this eternal vinegar-face and ditchwater-spirit?"
+
+"I don't know, Ned, but I confess my weakness--my want of courage
+in this respect!"
+
+"Psho! the bark's worse always than the bite. The fear worse than
+the danger! Suspense is the very d--l! Did you ever hear of the
+Scotch parson's charity? He prayed that God might suspend Napoleon
+over the very jaws of hell--but 'Oh, Lord!' said he, 'dinna let
+him fa' in!' To my mind, mortal lips never uttered a more malignant
+prayer!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+TRAILING THE FOX.
+
+
+
+
+
+This dialogue was broken by a summons to the breakfast-table. We
+have already intimated that while the hateful person of Stevens was
+an inmate of his own house, William Hinkley remained, the better
+portion of his time, at that of his cousin. It was not merely that
+Stevens was hateful to his sight, but such was the devotion of his
+father and mother to that adventurer, that the young man passed
+with little notice from either, or if he incurred their attention
+at all, it was only to receive their rebuke. He had not been able
+to disguise from them his dislike to Stevens. This dislike showed
+itself in many ways--in coldness, distance, silence--a reluctance
+to accord the necessary civilities, and in very unequivocal glances
+of hostility from the eyes of the jealous young villager.
+
+Such offences against good-breeding were considered by them as so
+many offences against God himself, shown to one who was about to
+profess his ministry; and being prepared to see in Brother Stevens
+an object of worth and veneration only, they lacked necessarily all
+that keenness of discrimination which might have helped somewhat
+to qualify the improprieties of which they believed their son to be
+guilty. Of his causes of jealousy they had no suspicion, and they
+shared none of his antipathies. He was subject to the daily lecture
+from the old man, and the nightly exhortation and expostulation
+of the old woman Tho latter did her spiriting gently. The former
+roared and thundered. The mother implored and kissed--the father
+denounced and threatened. The one, amidst the faults of her you
+which she reproved, could see his virtues; she could also see that
+he was suffering--she knew not why--as well as sinning; the other
+could only see an insolent, disobedient boy who was taking airs upon
+himself, flying in the face of his parents, and doomed to perish
+like the sons of Eli, unless by proving himself a better manager
+than Eli, he addressed himself in time to the breaking in of the
+unruly spirit whose offences promised to be so heinous.  It was
+not merely from the hateful sight of his rival, or the monotonous
+expostulation of his mother, that the poor youth fled; it was sometimes
+to escape the heavily chastening hand of his bigoted father.
+
+These things worked keenly and constantly in the mind of William
+Hinkley. They acquired additional powers of ferment from the
+coldness of Margaret Cooper, and from the goadings of his cousin.
+Naturally one of the gentlest of creatures, the young man was
+not deficient in spirit. What seemed to his more rude and elastic
+relative a token of imbecility, was nothing more than the softening
+influence of his reflective and mental over his physical powers.
+These, under the excitement of his blood were necessarily made
+subject to his animal impulses, and when he left the house that
+morning, with his Blackstone under his arm, on his way to the
+peaceful cottage of old Calvert, where he pursued his studies, his
+mind was in a perfect state of chaos. Of the chapter which he had
+striven to compass the previous night, in which the rights of persons
+are discussed with the usual clearness of style, but the usual
+one-sidedness of judgment of that smooth old monarchist, William
+Hinkley scarcely remembered a solitary syllable. He had read only
+with his eyes. His mind had kept no pace with his proceedings, and
+though he strove as he went along to recall the heads of topics,
+the points and principles of what he had been reading, his efforts
+at reflection, by insensible but sudden transitions, invariably
+concluded with some image of strife and commotion, in which he
+was one of the parties and Alfred Stevens another; the beautiful,
+proud face of Margaret Cooper being always unaccountably present,
+and seeming to countenance, with its scornful smiles, the spirit
+of strife which operated upon the combatants.
+
+This mood had the most decided effect upon his appearance; and
+the good old man, Calvert, whose attention had been already drawn
+to the condition of distress and suffering which he manifested,
+was now more than ever struck with the seemingly sudden increase
+of this expression upon his face. It was Saturday--the saturnalia
+of schoolboys--and a day of rest to the venerable teacher. He was
+seated before his door, under the shadows of his paternal oak,
+once more forgetting the baffled aims and profitless toils of his
+own youthful ambition, in the fascinating pages of that historical
+romancer the stout Abbe Vertot. But a glance at the youth soon
+withdrew his mind from this contemplation, and the sombre pages of
+the present opened upon his eye, and the doubtful ones of the future
+became, on the instant, those which he most desired to peruse.
+
+The study of the young is always a study of the past with the
+old. They seem, in such a contemplation, to live over the records
+of memory. They feel as one just returning from a long and weary
+journey, who encounters another, freshly starting to traverse the
+same weary but inviting track. Something in the character of William
+Hinkley, which seemed to resemble his own, made this feeling yet
+more active in the mind of Mr. Calvert; and his earnest desire was
+to help the youth forward on the path which, he soon perceived, it
+was destined that the other should finally take. He was not satisfied
+with the indecision of character which the youth displayed. But
+how could he blame it harshly? It was in this very respect that his
+own character had failed, and though he felt that all his counsels
+were to be addressed to this point, yet he knew not where; or in
+what manner, to begin. The volume of Blackstone which the youth
+carried suggested to him a course, however. He bade the young man
+bring out a chair, and taking the book in his hand, he proceeded
+to examine him upon parts of the volume which he professed to have
+been reading.
+
+This examination, as it had the effect of compelling the mind
+of the student to contract itself to a single subject of thought,
+necessarily had the further effect of clearing it somewhat from
+the chaos of clouds which had been brooding over it, obscuring
+the light, and defeating the warmth of the intellectual sun behind
+them; and if the examination proved the youth to have been very
+little of a student, or one who had been reading with a vacant
+mind, it also proved that the original powers of his intellect
+were vigorous and various--that he had an analytical capacity of
+considerable compass; was bold in opinion, ingenious in solution,
+and with a tendency to metaphysical speculation, which, modified by
+the active wants and duties of a large city-practice, would have
+made him a subtle lawyer, and a very logical debater. But the blush
+kept heightening on the youth's cheeks as the examination proceeded.
+He had answered, but he felt all the while how much his answer had
+sprung from his own conjectures and how little from his authorities.
+The examination convinced him that the book had been so much
+waste-paper under his thumb. When it was ended the old man closed
+the volume, laid it on the sward beside him, and looked, with
+a mingled expression of interest and commiseration, on his face.
+William Hinkley noted this expression, and spoke, with a degree
+of mortification in look and accent, which he did not attempt to
+hide:--
+
+"I am afraid, sir, you will make nothing of me. I can make nothing
+of myself. I am almost inclined to give up in despair. I will be
+nothing--I can be nothing. I feared as much from the beginning,
+sir. You only waste your time on me."
+
+"You speak too fast, William--you let your blood mingle too much
+with your thoughts. Let me ask you one question. How long will
+you be content to live as you do now--seeking nothing--performing
+nothing--being nothing?"
+
+The youth was silent.
+
+"I, you see, am nothing," continued the old man--"nay, do not
+interrupt me. You will tell me, as you have already told me, that
+I am much, and have done much, here in Charlemont. But, for all that
+I am, and have done here, I need not have gone beyond my accidence.
+My time has been wasted; my labors, considered as means to ends,
+were unnecessary; I have toiled without the expected profits of
+toil; I have drawn water in a sieve. It is not pleasant for me to
+recall these things, much less to speak of them; but it is for your
+good that I told you my story. You have, as I had, certain defects
+of character--not the same exactly, but of the same family complexion.
+To be something, you must be resolved. You must devote yourself,
+heart and mind, with all your soul and with all your strength, to
+the business you have undertaken. Shut your windows against the
+sunshine, your ears to the song of birds, your heart against the
+fascinations of beauty; and if you never think of the last until
+you are thirty, you will be then a better judge of beauty, a truer
+lover, a better husband, a more certain candidate for happiness.
+Let me assure you that, of the hundred men that take wives before
+they are thirty, there is scarcely one who, in his secret soul, does
+not repent it--scarcely one who does not look back with yearning
+to the days when he was free."
+
+There was a pause. The young man became very much agitated. He rose
+from his chair, walked apart for a few moments, and then, returning,
+resumed his seat by the old man.
+
+"I believe you are right, sir--nay, I know you are; but I can not
+be at once--I can not promise--to be all that you wish. If Margaret
+Cooper would consent, I would marry her to-morrow."
+
+The old man shook his head, but remained silent. The young one
+proceeded:--
+
+"One thing I will say, however: I will take to my studies after
+this week, whatever befalls, with the hearty resolution which you
+recommend. I will try to shut out the sunshine and the song.  I
+will endeavor to devote soul and strength, and heart and mind,
+to the task before me. I KNOW that I can master these studies--I
+think I can"--he continued, more modestly, modifying the positive
+assertion--"and I know that it is equally my interest and duty to
+do so. I thank you sir, very much for what you have told me. Believe
+me, it has not fallen upon heedless or disrespectful ears."
+
+The old man pressed his hand.
+
+"I know THAT, my son, and I rejoice to think that, having given me
+these assurances, you will strive hard to make them good."
+
+"I will, sir!" replied William, taking up his cap to depart.
+
+"But whither are you going now?"
+
+The youth blushed as he replied frankly:--
+
+"To the widow Cooper's. I'm going to see Margaret."
+
+"Well, well!" said the old man, as the youth disappeared, "if it must
+be done, the sooner it's over the better. But there's another moth
+to the flame. Fortunately, he will be singed only; but she!--what
+is left for her--so proud, yet so confiding--so confident of strength,
+yet so artless? But it is useless to look beyond, and very dismal."
+
+And the speaker once more took up Vertot, and was soon lost amid
+the glories of the knights of St. John. His studies were interrupted
+by the sudden and boisterous salutation of Ned Hinkley:--
+
+"Well, gran'pa, hard at the big book as usual? No end to the fun
+of fighting, eh? I confess, if ever I get to love reading, it'll be
+in some such book as that. But reading's not natural to me, though
+you made me do enough of it while you had me. Bill was the boy for
+the books, and I for the hooks. By-the-way, talking of hooks, how
+did those trout eat? Fine, eh? I haven't seen you since the day of
+our ducking."
+
+"No, Ned, and I've been looking for you. Where have you been?"
+
+"Working, working! Everything's been going wrong. Lines snapped,
+fiddle-strings cracked, hooks missing, gun rusty, and Bill Hinkley
+so sulky, that his frown made a shadow on the wall as large and
+ugly as a buffalo's. But where is he? I carne to find him here."
+
+While he was speaking, the lively youth squatted down, and deliberately
+took his seat on the favorite volume which Mr. Calvert had laid
+upon the sward at his approach.
+
+"Take the chair, Ned," said the old man, with a smaller degree of
+kindness in his tone than was habitual with him. "Take the chair.
+Books are sacred things--to be worshipped and studied, not employed
+as footstools."
+
+"Why, what's the hurt, gran'pa?" demanded the young man, though
+he rose and did as he was bidden. "If 'twas a fiddle, now, there
+would be some danger of a crash, but a big book like that seems
+naturally made to sit upon."
+
+The old man answered him mildly:--
+
+"I have learned to venerate books, Ned, and can no more bear to see
+them abused than I could bear to be abused myself. It seems to me
+like treating their writers and their subjects with scorn. If you
+were to contemplate the venerable heads of the old knights with
+my eyes and feelings, you would see why I wish to guard them from
+everything like disrespect."
+
+"Well, I beg their pardon--a thousand pardons! I meant no offence,
+gran'pa--and can't help thinking that it's all a notion of yours,
+your reverencing such old Turks and Spaniards that have been
+dead a thousand years. They were very good people, no doubt, but
+I'm thinking they've served their turn; and I see no more harm in
+squatting upon their histories than in walking over their graves,
+which, if I were in their country of Jericho--that was where they
+lived, gran'pa, wa'n't it?--I should be very apt to do without
+asking leave, I tell you."
+
+Ned Hinkley purposely perverted his geography and history. There was
+a spice of mischief in his composition, and he grinned good-naturedly
+as he watched the increasing gravity upon the old man's face.
+
+"Come, come, gran'pa, don't be angry. You know my fun is a sort of
+fizz--there's nothing but a flash--nothing to hurt--no shotting.
+But where's Bill Hinkley, gran'pa?"
+
+"Gone to the widow Cooper's, to see Margaret."
+
+"Ah! well, I'm glad he's made a beginning. But I'd much rather he'd
+have seen the other first."
+
+"What other do you mean?" demanded the old man; but the speaker,
+though sufficiently random and reckless in what he said, saw the
+impolicy of allowing the purpose of his cousin in regard to Stevens
+to be understood. He contrived to throw the inquirer off.
+
+"Gran'pa, do you know there's something in this fellow Stevens that
+don't altogether please me? I'm not satisfied with him."
+
+"Ah, indeed! what do you see to find fault with?"
+
+"Well, you see, he comes here pretending to study. Now, in the
+first place, why should he come here to study? why didn't he stay
+at home with his friends and parents?"
+
+"Perhaps he had neither. Perhaps he had no home. You might as well
+ask me why I came here, and settled down, where I was not born--where
+I had neither friends nor parents."
+
+"Oh, no, but you told us why," said the other. "You gave us a reason
+for what you did."
+
+"And why may not the stranger give a reason too?"
+
+"He don't, though."
+
+"Perhaps he will when you get intimate with him. I see nothing in
+this to be dissatisfied with. I had not thought you so suspicious,
+Ned Hinkley--so little charitable."
+
+"Charity begins at home, gran'pa. But there's more in this matter.
+This man comes here to study to be a parson. How does he study?
+Can you guess?"
+
+"I really can not."
+
+"By dressing spruce as a buck--curling his hair backward over his
+ears something like a girl's, and going out, morning, noon, and
+night, to see Margaret Cooper."
+
+"As there is no good reason to suppose that a student of divinity
+is entirely without the affections of humanity, I still see nothing
+inconsistent with his profession in this conduct."
+
+"But how can he study?"
+
+"Ah! it may be inconsistent with his studies though not with his
+profession. It is human without being altogether proper. You see
+that your cousin neglects his studies in the same manner. I presume
+that the stranger also loves Miss Cooper."
+
+"But he has no such right as Bill Hinkley."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why not? Why, Bill is a native here, has been loving her for the
+last year or more. His right certainly ought to be much greater
+than that of a man whom nobody knows--who may be the man in the
+moon for anything we know to the contrary--just dropped in upon
+us, nobody knows how, to do nobody knows what."
+
+"All that may be very true, Ned, and yet his right to seek Miss
+Cooper may be just as good as that of yourself or mine. You forget
+that it all depends upon the young lady herself whether either of
+them is to have a right at all in her concerns."
+
+"Well, that's a subject we needn't dispute about, gran'pa, when
+there's other things. Now, isn't it strange that this stranger
+should ride off once a week with his valise on his saddle, just as
+if he was starting on a journey--should be gone half a day--then
+come back with his nag all in a foam, and after that you should
+see him in some new cravat, or waistcoat, or pantaloons, just as
+if he had gone home and got a change?"
+
+"And does he do that?" inquired Mr. Calvert, with some show of
+curiosity.
+
+"That he does, and he always takes the same direction; and it
+seems--so Aunt Sarah herself says, though she thinks him a small
+sort of divinity on earth--that the day before, he's busy writing
+letters, and, according to her account, pretty long letters too.
+Well, nobody sees that he ever gets any letters in return. He
+never asks at the post-office, so Jacob Zandts himself tells me,
+and that's strange enough, too, if so be he has any friends or
+relations anywhere else."
+
+Mr. Calvert listened with interest to these and other particulars
+which his young companion had gathered respecting the habits of the
+stranger; and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that
+there was something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps
+mysterious. Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the
+prying and suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this
+effect in the reply which finally dismissed the subject. Ned Hinkley
+was silenced not satisfied.
+
+"There's something wrong about it," he muttered to himself on
+leaving the old man, "and, by dickens! I'll get to the bottom of
+it, or there's no taste in Salt-river. The fellow's a rascal; I
+feel it if I don't know it, and if Bill Hinkley don't pay him off,
+I must. One or t'other must do it, that's certain."
+
+With these reflections, which seemed to him to be no less moral than
+social, the young man took his way back to the village, laboring
+with all the incoherence of unaccustomed thought, to strike out
+some process by which to find a solution for those mysteries which
+were supposed to characterize the conduct of the stranger. He had
+just turned out of the gorge leading from Calvert's house into the
+settlement, when he encountered the person to whom his meditations
+were given, on horseback; and going at a moderate gallop along
+the high-road to the country. Stevens bowed to him and drew up for
+speech as he drew nigh. At first Ned Hinkley appeared disposed to
+avoid him, but moved by a sudden notion, he stopped and suffered
+himself to speak with something more of civility than he had hitherto
+shown to the same suspected personage.
+
+"Why, you're not going to travel, Parson Stevens," said he--"you're
+not going to leave us, are you?"
+
+"No, sir--I only wish to give myself and horse a stretch of a few
+miles for the sake of health. Too much stable, they say, makes a
+saucy nag."
+
+"So it does, and I may say, a saucy man too. But seeing you with
+your valise, I thought you were off for good."
+
+Stevens said something about his being so accustomed to ride with
+the valise that he carried it without thinking.
+
+"I scarcely knew I had it on!"
+
+"That's a lie all round," said Ned Hinkley to himself as the other
+rode off. "Now, if I was mounted, I'd ride after him and see where
+he goes and what he's after. What's to hinder? It's but a step to
+the stable, and but five minutes to the saddle. Dang it, but I'll
+take trail this time if I never did before."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE DOOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+With this determination our suspicious youth made rapid progress in
+getting out his horse. A few minutes saw him mounted, and putting
+some of his resolution into his heels, he sent the animal forward
+at a killing start, under the keen infliction of the spur. He had
+marked with his eye the general course which Stevens had taken
+up the hills, and having a nag of equal speed and bottom, did not
+scruple, in the great desire which he felt, to ascertain the secret
+of the stranger, to make him display the qualities of both from
+the very jump. Stevens had been riding with a free rein, but in
+consequence of these energetic measures on the part of Hinkley,
+the latter soon succeeded in overhauling him. Still he had already
+gone a space of five miles, and this, too, in one direction.
+He looked back when he found himself pursued, and his countenance
+very clearly expressed the chagrin which he felt. This he strove,
+but with very indifferent success, to hide from the keen searching
+eyes of his pursuer. He drew up to wait his coming, and there was
+a dash of bitterness in his tones as he expressed his "gratification
+at finding a companion where he least expected one."
+
+"And perhaps, parson, when you didn't altogether wish for one,"
+was the reply of the reckless fellow. "The truth is, I know I'm
+not the sort of company that a wise, sensible, learned, and pious
+young gentleman would like to keep, out the truth is what you said
+about taking a stretch, man and beast, seemed to me to be just
+about as wise a thing for me and my beast also. We've been lying
+by so long that I was getting a little stiff in my joints, and
+Flipflap, my nag here, was getting stiff in his neck, as they say
+was the case with the Jews in old times, so I took your idea and
+put after you, thinking that you'd agree with me that bad company's
+far better than none."
+
+There was a mixture of simplicity and archness in the manner of
+the speaker that put Stevens somewhat at fault; but he saw that it
+wouldn't do to show the dudgeon which he really felt; and smoothing
+his quills with as little obvious effort as possible, he expressed
+his pleasure at the coming of his companion. While doing so, he
+wheeled his horse about, and signified a determination to return.
+
+"What! so soon? Why, Lord bless you, Flipflap has scarcely got in
+motion yet. If such a stir will do for your nag 'twont do for him."
+
+But Stevens doggedly kept his horse's head along the back track,
+though the animal himself exhibited no small restiffness and a
+disposition to go forward.
+
+"Well, really, Parson Stevens, I take it as unkind that you turn
+back almost the very moment I join you. I seem to have scared ride
+out of you if not out of your creature; but do as you please. I'll
+ride on, now I'm out. I don't want to force myself on any man for
+company."
+
+Stevens disclaimed any feeling of this sort, but declared he had
+ridden quite as far as he intended; and while he hesitated, Hinkley
+cut the matter short by putting spurs to his steed, and going out
+of sight in a moment.
+
+"What can the cur mean?" demanded Stevens of himself, the moment
+after they had separated. "Can he have any suspicions? Ha! I must
+be watchful! At all events, there's no going forward to-day. I
+must put it off for next week; and meanwhile have all my eyes about
+me. The fellow seems to have as much cunning as simplicity. He is
+disposed too, to be insolent I marked his manner at the lake, as
+well as that of his bull-headed cousin; but that sousing put anger
+out of me, and then, again, 'twill scarcely do in these good days
+for such holy men as myself to take up cudgels. I must bear it for
+awhile as quietly as possible. It will not be long. She at least is
+suspicionless. Never did creature so happily delude herself.  Yet
+what a judgment in some things! What keen discrimination! What
+a wild, governless imagination! She would be a prize, if it were
+only to exhibit. How she would startle the dull, insipid, tea-table
+simperers on our Helicon--nay, with what scorn she would traverse
+the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a will in
+spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could be
+no prescribing to her the time when she should roar--no teaching
+her to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue,
+would speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when
+Mrs. Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems--her new
+versions of the Psalms and Scriptures--her blank verse elegiacs--oh!
+how blank!--beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'--or 'The evening
+veil hung low,' or, 'It slept,'--or after some other equally
+threatening form and fashion--I can fancy how the bright eye of
+Margaret would gleam with scorn; and while the Pollies and Dollies,
+the Patties and Jennies, the Corydons and Jemmy Jesamies, all
+round were throwing up hands and eyes in a sort of rapture, how
+she would look, with what equal surprise and contempt, doubting
+her own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the strange sycophancy
+which induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay, with a natural
+and patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to her about
+poetry, with that assured smile of self-excellence which such a
+venerable authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the
+dame and exclaim--'What! do you call that poetry?' What a concussion
+would follow. How the simperers would sheer off; the tea that night
+might as well be made of aqua-fortis. Ha! ha! I can fancy the scene
+before me. Nothing could be more rich. I must give her a glimpse of
+such a scene. It will be a very good mode of operation. Her pride
+and vanity will do the rest. I have only to intimate the future
+sway--the exclusive sovereignty which would follow--the overthrow
+of the ancient idols, and the setting up of a true divinity in
+herself. But shall it be so, Master Stevens?  Verily, that will
+be seen hereafter. Enough, if the delusion takes.  If I can delude
+the woman through the muse, I am satisfied. The muse after that
+may dispose of the woman as she pleases."
+
+Such was a portion of the soliloquy of the libertine as he rode
+slowly back to Charlemont. His further musings we need not pursue
+at present. It is enough to say that they were of the same family
+character. He returned to his room as soon as he reached his
+lodging-house, and drawing from his pocket a bundle of letters
+which he had intended putting in the postoffice at Ellisland, he
+carefully locked them up in his portable writing-desk which he kept
+at the bottom of his valise. When the devout Mrs. Hinkley tapped at
+his door to summon him to dinner, the meritorious young man was to
+be seen, seated at his table, with the massive Bible of the family
+conspicuously open before him. Good young man! never did he invoke
+a blessing on the meats with more holy unction than on that very
+day.
+
+Meanwhile, let us resume our progress with William Hinkley, and
+inquire in what manner his wooing sped with the woman whom he so
+unwisely loved. We have seen him leaving the cottage of Mr. Calvert
+with the avowed purpose of seeking a final answer. A purpose from
+which the old man did not seek to dissuade him, though he readily
+conceived its fruitlessness. It was with no composed spirit that
+the young rustic felt himself approaching the house of Mrs. Cooper.
+More than once he hesitated and even halted. But a feeling of shame,
+and the efforts of returning manliness re-resolved him, and he
+hurried with an unwonted rapidity of movement toward the dwelling,
+as if he distrusted his own power, unless he did so, to conclude
+the labor he had begun.
+
+He gathered some courage when he found that Margaret was from home.
+She had gone on her usual rambles. Mrs. Cooper pointed out the
+course which she had taken, and the young man set off in pursuit.
+The walks of the maiden were of course well known to a lover so
+devoted. He had sought and followed her a thousand times, and the
+general direction which she had gone, once known, his progress was
+as direct as his discoveries were certain. The heart of the youth,
+dilated with better hopes as he felt himself traversing the old
+familiar paths. It seemed to him that the fates could scarcely be
+adverse in a region which had always been so friendly. Often had
+he escorted her along this very route, when their spirits better
+harmonized--when, more of the girl struggling into womanhood, the
+mind of Margaret Cooper, ignorant of its own resources and unconscious
+of its maturer desires, was more gentle, and could rejoice in that
+companionship for which she now betrayed so little desire.  The
+sheltered paths and well-known trees, even the little clumps
+of shrubbery that filled up the intervals, were too pleasant and
+familiar to his eye not to seem favorable to his progress, and with
+a hope that had no foundation, save in the warm and descriptive
+colors of a young heart's fancy, William Hinkley pursued the route
+which led him to one of the most lovely and love-haunted glades in
+all Kentucky.
+
+So sweet a hush never hallowed the sabbath rest of any forest. The
+very murmur of a drowsy zephyr among the leaves was of slumberous
+tendency; and silence prevailed, with the least possible exertion
+of her authority, over the long narrow dell through which the maiden
+had gone wandering. At the foot of a long slope, to which his eye
+was conducted by a natural and lovely vista, the youth beheld the
+object of his search, sitting, motionless, with her back toward
+him. The reach of light was bounded by her figure which was seated
+on the decaying trunk of a fallen tree. She was deeply wrapped in
+thought, for she did not observe his approach, and when his voice
+reached her ears, and she started and looked round, her eyes were
+full of tears. These she hastily brushed away, and met the young
+man with a degree of composure which well might have put the blush
+upon his cheek, for the want of it.
+
+"In tears!--weeping, Margaret?" was the first address of the lover
+who necessarily felt shocked at what he saw.
+
+"They were secret tears, sir--not meant for other eyes," was the
+reproachful reply.
+
+"Ah, Margaret! but why should you have secret tears, when you
+might have sympathy--why should you have tears at all? You have no
+sorrows."
+
+"Sympathy!" was the exclamation of the maiden, while a scornful
+smile gleamed from her eyes; "whose sympathy, I pray?"
+
+The young man hesitated to answer. The expression of her eye
+discouraged him. He dreaded lest, in offering his sympathies, he
+should extort from her lips a more direct intimation of that scorn
+which he feared. He chose a middle course.
+
+"But that you should have sorrows, Margaret, seems very strange
+to me. You are young and hearty; endowed beyond most of your sex,
+and with a beauty which can not be too much admired. Your mother is
+hearty and happy, and for years you have had no loss of relations
+to deplore. I see not why you should have sorrows."
+
+"It is very likely, William Hinkley, that you do not see. The
+ordinary sorrows of mankind arise from the loss of wives and cattle,
+children and property. There are sorrows of another kind; sorrows
+of the soul; the consciousness of denial; of strife--strife to be
+continued--strife without victory--baffled hopes--defeated aims
+and energies. These are sorrows which are not often computed in the
+general account. It is highly probable that none of them afflict
+you. You have your parents, and very good people they are. You
+yourself are no doubt a very good young man--so everybody says--and
+you have health and strength. Besides, you have property, much
+more, I am told, than falls to the lot ordinarily of young people
+in this country. These are reasons why you should not feel any
+sorrow; but were all these mine and a great deal more, I'm afraid
+it would not make me any more contented. You, perhaps, will
+not understand this, William Hinkley, but I assure you that such,
+nevertheless is my perfect conviction."
+
+"Yes, I can, and do understand it, Margaret," said the young man,
+with flushed cheek and a very tremulous voice, as he listened to
+language which, though not intended to be contemptuous, was yet
+distinctly colored by that scornful estimate which the maiden had
+long since made of the young man's abilities. In this respect she
+had done injustice to his mind, which had been kept in subjection
+and deprived of its ordinary strength and courage, by the enfeebling
+fondness of his heart.
+
+"Yes, Margaret," he continued, "I can and do understand it, and I
+too have my sorrows of this very sort. Do not smile, Margaret, but
+hear me patiently, and believe, that, whatever may be the error
+which I commit, I have no purpose to offend you in what I say or do.
+Perhaps, we are both of us quite too young to speak of the sorrows
+which arise from defeated hopes, or baffled energies, or denial
+of our rights and claims. The yearnings and apprehensions which we
+are apt to feel of this sort are not to be counted as sorrows, or
+confounded with them. I had a conversation on this very subject
+only a few days ago, with old Mr. Calvert, and this was his very
+opinion."
+
+The frankness with which William Hinkley declared the source
+of his opinions, though creditable to his sincerity, was scarcely
+politic--it served to confirm Margaret Cooper in the humble estimate
+which she had formed of the speaker.
+
+"Mr. Calvert," said she, "is a very sensible old man, but neither
+he nor you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall,
+or what shall not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William
+Hinkley, that I have my cares--at least I fancy that I have them--and
+though I am very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that
+they can do me any good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline
+them."
+
+"Oh, do not say so, Margaret--dear Margaret--it is to proffer them
+that I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved
+you: you can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary
+to my happiness! Do not repulse me--do not speak quickly. What I
+am, and what I have, is yours. We have grown up together; I have
+known no other hope, no other love, but that for you. Look not upon
+me with that scornful glance--hear me--I implore you--on my knee,
+dear Margaret. I implore you as for life--for something more dear
+than life--that which will make life precious--which may make it
+valuable. Be mine, dear Margaret--"
+
+"Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!" was the stern,
+almost deliberate answer of the maiden.
+
+"Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret--do
+not look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that
+the dearest hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips."
+
+"And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold
+in yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?"
+
+"The meanest creature has it."
+
+"Aye, but only of creatures like itself."
+
+"Margaret!" exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.
+
+"Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates
+to a creature like itself--endowed with its own nature and fed with
+like sympathies. But you--what should make you hope of me? Have
+I not long avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you
+the pain of this moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps
+--you pursue me--you annoy me with attentions which I dare not
+receive for fear of encouraging you, and in spite of all this,
+which everybody in the village must have seen but yourself, you
+still press yourself upon me."
+
+"Margaret Cooper, be not so proud!"
+
+"I am what I am! I know that I am proud--vain, perhaps, and having
+little to justify either pride or vanity; but to you, William
+Hinkley, as an act of justice, I must speak what I feel--what is
+the truth. I am sorry, from my very soul, that you love me, for I
+can have no feeling for you in return. I do not dislike you, but
+you have so oppressed me that I would prefer not to see you. We have
+no feelings in common. You can give me no sympathies. My soul, my
+heart, my hope--every desire of my mind, every impulse of my heart,
+leads me away from you--from all that you can give--from all that
+you can relish. To you it would suffice, if all your life could
+be spent here in Charlemont--to me it would be death to think that
+any such doom hung over me. From this one sentiment judge of the
+rest, and know, for good and all, that I can never feel for you
+other than I feel now. I can not love you, nor can the knowledge
+that you love me, give me any but a feeling of pain and mortification."
+
+William Hinkley had risen to his feet. His form had put on an
+unusual erectness. His eye had gradually become composed; and now
+it wore an expression of firmness almost amounting to defiance.  He
+heard her with only an occasional quiver of the muscles about his
+mouth. The flush of shame and pride was still red upon his cheek
+When she had finisned, he spoke to her in tones of more dignity
+than had hitherto marked his speech.
+
+"Margaret Cooper, you have at least chosen the plainest language
+to declare a cruel truth."
+
+The cheek of the girl became suddenly flushed.
+
+"Do you suppose," she said, "that I found pleasure in giving you
+pain? No! William Hinkley, I am sorry for you! But this truth, which
+you call cruel, was shown to you repeatedly before. Any man but
+yourself would have seen it, and saved me the pain of its frequent
+repetition. You alone refused to understand, until it was rendered
+cruel. It was only by the plainest language that you could be made
+to believe a truth that you either would not or could not otherwise be
+persuaded to hear. If cold looks, reserved answers, and a determined
+rejection of all familiarity could have availed, you would never
+have heard from my lips a solitary word which could have brought
+you mortification. You would have seen my feelings in my conduct,
+and would have spared your own that pain, which I religiously strove
+to save them."
+
+"I have, indeed, been blind and deaf," said the young man; "but you
+have opened my eyes and ears, Margaret, so that I am fully cured of
+these infirmities. If your purpose, in this plain mode of speech,
+be such as you have declared it, then I must thank you; though it
+is very much as one would thank the dagger that puts him out of
+his pain by putting him out of life."
+
+There was so much of subdued feeling in this address--the more
+intense in its effect, from the obvious restraint put upon it, that
+the heart of the maiden was touched. The dignified bearing of the
+young man, also--so different from that which marked his deportment
+hitherto--was not without its effect.
+
+"I assure you, William Hinkley, that such alone was my motive for
+what else would seem a most wanton harshness. I would not be harsh
+to you or to anybody; and with my firm rejection of your proffer,
+I give you my regrets that you ever made it. It gives me no pleasure
+that you should make it. If I am vain, my vanity is not flattered
+or quickened by a tribute which I can not accept; and if you never
+had my sympathy before, William Hinkley, I freely give it now. Once
+more I tell you, I am sorry, from the bottom of my heart, that you
+ever felt for me a passion which I can not requite, and that you
+did not stifle it from the beginning; as, Heaven knows, my bearing
+toward you, for a whole year, seemed to me to convey sufficient
+warning."
+
+"It should have done so! I can now very easily understand it,
+Margaret. Indeed, Mr. Calvert and others told me the same thing.
+But as I have said, I was blind and deaf. Once more, I thank you,
+Margaret--it is a bitter medicine which you have given me, but I
+trust a wholesome one."
+
+He caught her hand and pressed it in his own. She did not resist
+or withdraw it, and, after the retention of an instant only, he
+released it, and was about to turn away. A big tear was gathering
+in his eye, and he strove to conceal it. Margaret averted her head,
+and was about to move forward in an opposite direction, when the
+voice of the young man arrested her:--
+
+"Stay, but a few moments more, Margaret. Perhaps we shall never
+meet again--certainly not in a conference like this. I may have no
+other opportunity to say that which, in justice to you, should be
+spoken. Will you listen to me, patiently?"
+
+"Speak boldly, William Hinkley. It was the subject of which you
+spoke heretofore which I shrunk from rather than the speaker."
+
+"I know not," said he, "whether the subject of which I propose to
+speak now will be any more agreeable than that of which we have
+spoken. At all events, my purpose is your good, and I shall speak
+unreservedly. You have refused the prayer of one heart, Margaret,
+which, if unworthy of yours, was yet honestly and fervently devoted
+to it. Let me warn you to look well when you do choose, lest you fall
+into the snares of one, who with more talent may be less devoted,
+and with more claims to admiration, may be far less honest in his
+purpose."
+
+"What mean you, sir?" she demanded hurriedly, with an increasing
+glow upon her face.
+
+"This stranger--this man, Stevens!"
+
+"What of him? What do you know of the stranger that you should give
+me this warning?"
+
+"What does anybody know of him? Whence does he come--whither would
+he go? What brings him here to this lonely village?--"
+
+A proud smile which curled the lips of Margaret Cooper arrested the
+speech of the youth. It seemed to say, very distinctly, that she,
+at least, could very well conjecture what brought the stranger so
+far from the travelled haunts.
+
+"Ha! do you then know, Margaret?"
+
+"And if I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations
+against the man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey
+the worst imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth
+from its proper balance. Go, sir--you have your answer. I need not
+your counsel. I should be sorry to receive it from such a source.
+Failing in your own attempt, you would seek to fill my mind with
+calumnious impressions in order to prejudice the prospects of
+another. For shame! for shame, William Hinkley. I had not thought
+this of you. But go! go! go, at once, lest I learn to loathe as
+well as despise you. I thought you simple and foolish, but honorable
+and generous. I was mistaken even in this. Go, sir, your slanderous
+insinuations have no effect upon me, and as for Alfred Stevens,
+you are as far below him in nobleness and honest purpose, as you
+are in every quality of taste and intellect."
+
+Her face was the very breathing image of idealized scorn and beauty
+as she uttered these stinging words. Her nostrils were dilated,
+her eyes flashing fire, her lips slightly protruded and parted, her
+hand waving him off. The young man gazed upon her with wild looks
+equally expressive of anger and agony. His form fairly writhed
+beneath his emotions; but he found strength enough gaspingly to
+exclaim:--
+
+"And even this I forgive you, Margaret."
+
+"Go! go!" she answered; "you know not what you say, or what you
+are. Go! go!"
+
+And turning away, she moved slowly up the long avenue before her,
+till, by a sudden turn of the path she was hidden from the sight.
+Then, when his eye could no longer follow her form, the agony of
+his soul burst forth in a single groan, and staggering, he fell
+forward upon the sward, hopeless, reckless, in a wretched condition
+of self-abandonment and despair.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+BLOWS--A CRISIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+But this mood lasted not long. Youth, pride, anger, asserted
+themselves before the lapse of many minutes. Darker feelings got
+possession of his mind. He rose to his feet. If love was baffled,
+was there not revenge? Then came the recollection of his cousin's
+counsel. Should this artful stranger triumph in everything? Margaret
+Cooper had scarcely disguised the interest which she felt in him.
+Nay, had not that exulting glance of the eye declared that she, at
+least, knew what was the purpose of Stevens in seeking the secluded
+village? His own wrongs were also present to his mind. This usurper
+had possessed himself of the affections of all he loved--of all of
+whose love he had till then felt himself secure--all but the good
+old schoolmaster, and the sturdy schoolmate and cousin. And how
+soon might he deprive him even of these? That was a new fear! So
+rapid had been the stranger's progress--so adroitly had he insinuated
+himself into this Eden of the wilderness--bringing discontent and
+suffering in his train--that the now thoroughly-miserable youth
+began to fancy that nothing could be safe from his influence. In
+a short time his garden would all be overrun, and his loveliest
+plants would wither.
+
+Was there no remedy for this? There was! and traversing the solemn
+recesses of that wood, he meditated the various modes by which the
+redress of wrong, and slight and indignity, were to be sought. He
+brooded over images of strife, and dark and savage ideas of power
+rioting over its victim, with entirely new feelings--feelings new
+at least to him. We have not succeeded in doing him justice, nor
+in our own design, if we have failed to show that he was naturally
+gentle of heart, rigidly conscientious, a lover of justice for its
+own sake, and solicitously sensitive on the subject of another's
+feelings. But the sense of suffering will blind the best judgment,
+and the feeling of injury will arouse and irritate the gentlest
+nature. Besides, William Hinkley, though meek and conscientious,
+had not passed through his youth, in the beautiful but wild border
+country in which he lived, without having been informed, and somewhat
+influenced, by those characteristic ideas of the modes and manner
+in which personal wrongs were to be redressed.
+
+Perhaps, had his cousin said nothing to him on this subject, his
+feelings would have had very much the same tendency and general
+direction which they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable
+anxiety to be in conflict with his rival--a deadly conflict--a
+close, hard death-struggle--was now the predominant feeling in his
+mind;--but the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had
+its pains and humiliations, also. Not that he had any fears--any
+dread of the issue. Of the issue he never thought. But it disturbed
+the long and peaceful order of his life. It conflicted with the
+subdued tastes of the student. It was at war with that gentle calm
+of atmosphere, which letters diffuse around the bower of the muse.
+
+In the conflict of his thoughts and feelings, the judgment of the
+youth was impaired. He forgot his prudence. In fact, he knew not
+what he did. He entered the dwelling of his father, and passed into
+the dining-room, at that solemn moment when the grace before meat
+was yet in course of utterance by our worthy Brother Stevens.
+Hitherto, old Mr. Hinkley had religiously exacted that, whenever
+any of the household failed to be present in season, this ceremony
+should never be disturbed. They were required, hat in hand, to
+remain at the entrance, until the benediction had been implored;
+and, only after the audible utterance of the word "Amen," to approach
+the cloth.
+
+We have shown little of old Hinkley. It has not been necessary. The
+reader has seen enough, however, to understand that, in religious
+matters--at least in the forms and externals of religion--he was
+a rigid disciplinarian. Upon grace before and after meat he always
+insisted. His own prayers of this sort might have been unctuous,
+but they were never short; and the meats were very apt to grow cold,
+while the impatience of his hearers grew warm, before he finished.
+But through respect to the profession, he waived his own peculiar
+privilege in behalf of Brother Stevens; and this holy brother was
+in the middle of his entreaty, when William Hinkley appeared at the
+door. He paused for an instant without taking off his hat. Perhaps
+had his father been engaged in his office, William would have
+forborne, as usual, however long the grace, and have patiently waited
+without, hat off, until it had reached the legitimate conclusion.
+But he had no such veneration for Stevens; and without scruple he
+dashed, rather hastily, into the apartment, and flinging his hat
+upon a chair, strode at once to the table.
+
+The old man did not once raise his eyes until the prayer was over.
+He would not have done so had the house been on fire. But at the
+close, he looked up at his son with a brow of thunder. The cloud
+was of serious and very unusual blackness. He had for some time been
+dissatisfied with his son. He had seen that the youth entertained
+some aversion for his guest. Besides, he had learned from his
+worthy consort, that, in an endeavor of Brother Stevens to bestow
+good counsel upon the youth, he had been repulsed with as little
+respect as ceremony. There was one thing that the stern old man had
+not seen, and could not see; and that was the altered appearance
+of the lad. As he knew of no reason why he should be unhappy, so he
+failed to perceive in his appearance any of the signs of unhappiness.
+He saw nothing but the violation of his laws, and that sort of
+self-esteem which produces fanaticism, is always the most rigid
+in the enforcement of its own ordinances. Already he regarded the
+youth as in a state of rebellion and for such an offence his feeling
+was very much that of the ancient puritan. No one more insists
+upon duty, than he who has attained authority by flinging off the
+fetters of obedience. Your toughest sinner usually makes the sourest
+saint.
+
+"And is this the way, William Hinkley, that you show respect to
+God? Do you despise the blessing which Brother Stevens asks upon
+the food which sustains us?"
+
+"I presume, sir, that God has already blessed all the food which
+he bestows upon man. I do not think that any prayer of Brother
+Stevens can render it more blessed."
+
+"Ha! you do not, do you? Please to rise from this table."
+
+"Nay, sir--" began Stevens.
+
+"Rise, sir," continued the old man, laying down knife and fork,
+and confronting the offender with that dogged look of determination
+which in a coarse nature is the sure sign of moral inflexibility.
+
+"Forgive him, sir, this time," said Stevens; "I entreat you to
+forgive him. The young man knows not what he does."
+
+"I will make him know," continued the other.
+
+"Plead not for me, sir," said William Hinkley, glaring upon Stevens
+with something of that expression which in western parlance is
+called wolfish, "I scorn and spurn your interference."
+
+"William, William, my dear son, do not speak so--do not make your
+father angry."
+
+"Will you leave the table, sir, or not?" demanded the father, his
+words being spoken very slowly, through his teeth, and with the
+effort of one who seeks to conceal the growing agitation. The eyes
+of the mother fell upon the youth full of tears and entreaty. His
+fine countenance betrayed the conflicting emotions of his soul.
+There was grief, and anger, despair and defiance; the consciousness
+of being wrong, and the more painful consciousness of suffering
+wrong. He half started from his chair, again resumed it, and gazing
+upon Stevens with the hate and agony which he felt, seemed to be
+entirely forgetful of the words and presence of the father.  The
+old man deliberately rose from the table and left the room.  The
+mother now started up in an agony of fear.
+
+"Run, my son--leave the room before your father comes back. Speak
+to him, Brother Stevens, and tell him of the danger."
+
+"Do not call upon him, mother, if you would not have me defy you
+also. If YOUR words will not avail with me, be sure that his can
+not."
+
+"What mean you, my son? You surely have no cause to be angry with
+Brother Stevens."
+
+"No cause! no cause!--but it matters not! BROTHER Stevens knows
+that I have cause. He has heard my defiance--he knows my scorn and
+hate, and he shall feel them!"
+
+"William, my son, how--"
+
+The steps of the father, approaching through the passageway, diverted
+her mind to a new terror. She knew the vindictive and harsh nature
+of the old man; and apprehensions for her son superseded the feeling
+of anger which his language had provoked.
+
+"Oh, my son, be submissive, or fly. Jump out of the window, and
+leave Brother Stevens and me to pacify him. We will do all we can."
+
+The unlucky allusion to Brother Stevens only increased the young
+man's obstinacy.
+
+"I ask you not, mother. I wish you to do nothing, and to say nothing.
+Here I will remain. I will not fly. It will be for my father and
+mother to say whether they will expel their only son from their
+home, to make room for a stranger."
+
+"It shall not be said that I have been the cause of this," said
+Stevens, rising with dignity from his chair; "I will leave your
+house, Mrs. Hinkley, only regretting that I should be the innocent
+cause of any misunderstanding or discontent among its members.  I
+know not exactly what can be the meaning of your son's conduct.
+I have never offended him; but, as my presence does offend him, I
+will withdraw myself--"
+
+"You shall not!" exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room
+at this moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. "You
+shall not leave the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to
+behave in the manner of this viper, they should all leave it before
+you should stir from the threshold."
+
+The old man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions
+of his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were
+now awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference,
+if not fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always
+inspired her.
+
+"Mr. Hinkley, you won't strike William with that whip--you must
+not--you shall not!" and, speaking thus, she started up and threw
+herself in the old man's way. He put her aside with no measured
+movement of his arm, and approached the side of the table where
+the young man sat.
+
+"Run, William, run, if you love me!" cried the terrified mother.
+
+"I will not run!" was the answer of the youth, who rose from his
+seat, however, at the same moment and confronted his father.
+
+"Do not strike me, father! I warn you--do not strike me. I may be
+wrong, but I have suffered wrong. I did not mean, and do not mean,
+to offend you. Let that content you, but do not strike me."
+
+The answer was a blow. The whip descended once, and but once, upon
+the shoulders of the young man. His whole frame was in a convulsion.
+His eyes dilated with the anguish of his soul; his features worked
+spasmodically. There was a moment's hesitation. The arm that smote
+him was again uplifted--the cruel and degrading instrument of
+punishment a second time about to descend; when, with the strength
+of youth, and the determination of manhood, the son grasped the
+arm of the father, and without any more than the degree of violence
+necessary to effect his object, he tore the weapon from the uplifted
+hand.
+
+"I can not strike YOU.'" he exclaimed, addressing the old man. "That
+blow has lost you your son--for ever! The shame and the dishonor
+shall rest on other shoulders. They are better deserved here, and
+here I place them!"
+
+With these words, he smote Stevens over the shoulders, once, twice,
+thrice, before the latter could close with him, or the father
+interfere to arrest the attempt. Stevens sprang upon him, but the
+more athletic countryman flung him off, and still maintained his
+weapon. The father added his efforts to those of Stevens; but he
+shook himself free from both, and, by this time, the mother had
+contrived to place herself between the parties. William Hinkley
+then flung the whip from the window, and moved toward the door.
+In passing Stevens, he muttered a few words:--
+
+"If there is any skin beneath the cloak of the parson, I trust I
+have reached it."
+
+"Enough!" said the other, in the same low tone. "You shall have
+your wish."
+
+The youth looked back once, with tearful eyes, upon his mother; and
+making no other answer but a glance more full of sorrow than anger
+to the furious flood of denunciation which the old man continued to
+pour forth, he proceeded slowly from the apartment and the dwelling.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+CHALLENGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The whole scene passed in very few minutes. No time was given for
+reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his natural or habitual
+impulses. Old Hinkley, except when at prayers, was a man of few
+words. He was much more prompt at deeds than words--a proof of which
+has already been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and
+made a freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been willing
+to inflict upon our readers. Though she heartily disapproved of her
+son's conduct toward Stevens, and regarded it as one of the most
+unaccountable wonders, the offender was still her son. She never
+once forgot, or could forget, that. But the rage of the old man
+was unappeasable. The indignity to his guest, and that guest of
+a calling so sacred, was past all forgiveness, as it was past all
+his powers of language fitly to describe. He swore to pursue the
+offender with his wrath to the end of the world, to cut him off
+equally from his fortune and forgiveness; and when Brother Stevens,
+endeavoring to maintain the pacific and forgiving character which
+his profession required, uttered some commonplace pleading in the
+youth's behalf, he silenced him by saying that, "were he on the bed
+of death, and were the offender then to present himself, the last
+prayer that he should make to Heaven would be for sufficient strength
+to rise up and complete the punishment which he had then begun."
+
+As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable spirit, his
+feelings were quite as hostile, and much more deadly. He was not
+without that conventional courage which makes one, in certain states
+of society, prompt enough to place himself in the fields of the
+duello. To this condition of preparedness it has hitherto been the
+training of the West that every man, at all solicitous of public
+life, must eventually come. As a student of divinity, it was
+not a necessity with Alfred Stevens. Nay, it was essential to the
+character which he professed that he should eschew such a mode of
+arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject, as well with reference
+to past habits as to future responsibilities. His present profession
+being simply a ruse d'amour (and, as he already began to perceive,
+a harmless one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought, and whose
+intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to perceive
+the serious defects of a character which should attempt so impious
+a fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat indifferent to its
+preservation; and, with the decline of his caution in this respect,
+arose the natural inquiry as to what would be expected of him in
+his former relations to society. Should it ever be known hereafter,
+at a time when he stood before the people as a candidate for some
+high political trust, that he had tamely submitted to the infliction
+of a cowskin, the revelation would be fatal to all his hopes of
+ambition, and conclusive against all his social pretensions.  In
+short, so far as society was concerned, it would be his social
+death.
+
+These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed, their
+force can not well be conceived by the citizen of any community
+where the sense of individual responsibility is less rigid and
+exacting.  They naturally outweighed all others in the mind of
+Alfred Stevens; and, though no fire-eater, he not only resolved
+on fighting with Hinkley, but, smarting under the strokes of
+the cowskin--heavily laid on as they had been--his resolution was
+equally firm that, in the conflict, they should not separate until
+blood was drawn.  Of course, there were some difficulties to be
+overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where the parties are
+willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable ease. This
+being the case at present, it followed that both minds were busy
+at the same moment in devising the when, the how, and the where,
+of the encounter.
+
+William Hinkley went from the house of his father to that of his
+cousin; but the latter had not yet returned from that ride which
+he had taken in order to discover the course usually pursued by
+Stevens. Here he sat down to dinner, but the sister of Ned Hinkley
+observed that he ate little, and fancied he was sick. That he should
+come to dine with his cousin was too frequent a matter to occasion
+question or surprise. This lady was older than her brother by some
+seven years. She was a widow, with an only child, a girl. The child
+was a prattling, smiling, good-natured thing, about seven years
+old, who was never so happy as when on Cousin William's knee.  Poor
+William, indeed, was quite a favorite at every house in the village
+except that of Margaret Cooper, and, as he sometimes used bitterly
+to add, his own. On this occasion, however, the child was rendered
+unhappy by the seeming indifference of Cousin William.  The heart
+of the young man was too full of grief, and his mind of anxiety,
+to suffer him to bestow the usual caresses upon her; and when,
+putting her down, he passed into the chamber of Ned Hinkley, the
+little thing went off to her mother, to complain of the neglect
+she had undergone.
+
+"Cousin William don't love Susan any more, mamma," was the burden
+of her complaint.
+
+"Why do you say so, Susan?"
+
+"He don't kiss me, mamma; he don't keep me in his lap. He don't say
+good things to me, and call me his little sweetheart. I'm afraid
+Cousin William's got some other sweetheart. He don't love Susan."
+
+It was while the little prattler was pouring forth her infantile
+sorrows in her mother's ear, that the voice of William Hinkley was
+heard, calling her name from the chamber.
+
+"There, he's calling you now, Susan. Run to him and kiss him, and
+see what he wants. I'm sure he loves you just as much as ever. He's
+got no other sweetheart."
+
+"I'll run, mamma--that I will. I'm so glad! I hope he loves me!"
+and the little innocent scampered away to the chamber. Her artless
+tongue, as she approached, enabled him to perceive what had been
+her grievances.
+
+"Do you call me to love me, and to kiss me, Cousin William, and to
+make me your sweetheart again?"
+
+"Yes, Susan, you shall be my only sweetheart. I will kiss nobody
+but you."
+
+"You'll forget--you will--you'll put me out of your lap, and go
+away shaking your head, and looking so!--" and here the observant
+little creature attempted a childish imitation of the sad action
+and the strange, moody gestures with which he had put her down when
+he was retiring from the room--gestures and looks which the less
+quick eyes of her mother had failed utterly to perceive.
+
+"No, no!" said he, with a sad smile; "no, Susan. I'll keep you in
+my lap for an hour whenever I come, and you shall be my sweetheart
+always."
+
+"Your LITTLE sweetheart, your LITTLE Susan, Cousin William."
+
+"Yes, my dear little Susan, my dearest little sweetheart Susan."
+
+And he kissed the child fondly while he spoke, and patted her rosy
+cheeks with a degree of tenderness which his sad and wandering
+thoughts did not materially diminish.
+
+"But now, Susan," said he, "if I am to be your sweetheart, and to
+love you always, you must do all that I bid you. You must go where
+I send you."
+
+"Don't I, Cousin William? When you send me to Gran'pa Calvert,
+don't I go and bring you books, and didn't I always run, and come
+back soon, and never play by the way?"
+
+"You're a dear Susan," said he; "and I want you to carry a paper
+for me now. Do you see this little paper? What is it?"
+
+"A note--don't I know?"
+
+"Well, you must carry this note for me to uncle's, but you mustn't
+give it to uncle, nor to aunty, nor to anybody but the young man
+that lives there--young Mr. Stevens."
+
+"Parson Stevens," said the little thing, correcting him.
+
+"Ay, ay, Parson Stevens, if you please. You must give it to him,
+and him only; and he will give you a paper to bring back to me.
+Will you go now, Susan?"
+
+"Yes, I'll go: but, Cousin William, are you going to shoot the
+little guns? Don't shoot them till I come back, will you?"
+
+The child pointed to a pair of pistols which lay upon the table
+where William Hinkley had penned the billet. A flush of consciousness
+passed over the young man's cheek. It seemed to him as if the
+little innocent's inquiry had taken the aspect of an accusation.
+He promised and dismissed her, and, when she had disappeared,
+proceeded to put the pistols in some condition for use. In that
+time and region, duels were not often fought with those costly and
+powerful weapons, the pistols of rifle bore and sight. The rifle,
+or the ordinary horseman's pistol, answered the purposes of hate.
+The former instrument, in the hands of the Kentuckian, was a
+deadly weapon always; and, in the grasp of a firm hand, and under
+the direction of a practised eye, the latter, at ten paces, was
+scarcely less so. This being the case, but few refinements were
+necessary to bring about the most fatal issues of enmity; and
+the instruments which William Hinkley was preparing for the field
+were such as would produce a smile on the lips of more civilized
+combatants. They were of the coarsest kind of holster-piotols,
+and had probably seen service in the Revolution. The stocks were
+rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost large enough for grape,
+and really such as would receive and disgorge a three-ounce bullet
+with little straining or reluctance. They had been the property
+of his own grandfather, and their value for use was perhaps rather
+heightened than diminished by the degree of veneration which, in
+the family, was attached to their history.
+
+William Hinkley soon put them in the most efficient order. He was
+not a practised hand, but an American forester is a good shot almost
+by instinct; he naturally cleaves to a gun, and without instruction
+learns its use. William, however, did not think much of what he
+could hit, at what distance, and under what circumstances.  Nothing,
+perhaps, could better show the confidence in himself and weapon than
+the inattention which the native-born woodman usually exhibits to
+these points. Let his weapon be such as he can rely upon, and his
+cause of quarrel such as can justify his anger, and the rest seems
+easy, and gives him little annoyance. This was now the case with
+our rustic. He never, for a moment, thought of practising. He had
+shot repeatedly, and knew what he could do.  His simple object was
+to bring his enemy to the field, and to meet him there. Accordingly,
+when he had loaded both pistols, which he did with equal care, and
+with a liberal allowance of lead and powder, he carefully put them
+away without offering to test his own skill or their capacities.
+On this subject, his indifference would have appeared, to a regular
+duellist, the very extreme of obtuseness.
+
+His little courier conveyed his billet to Stevens in due season.
+As she had been instructed, she gave it into the hands of Stevens
+only; but, when she delivered it, old Hinkley was present, and she
+named the person by whom it was sent.
+
+"My son! what does he say?" demanded the old man, half-suspecting
+the purport of the billet.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Stevens, with the readiness of a practised actor,
+"there is some hope, I am glad to tell you, Mr. Hinkley, of his
+coming to his senses. He declares his wish to atone, and invites me
+to see him. I have no doubt that he wishes me to mediate for him."
+
+"I will never forgive him while I have breath!" cried the old man,
+leaving the room. "Tell him that!"
+
+"Wait a moment, my pretty one," said Stevens, as he was about
+retiring to his chamber, "till I can write an answer."
+
+The billet of Hinkley he again read. We may do so likewise. It was
+to the following effect:--
+
+"Sir: If I understood your last assurance on leaving you this day,
+I am to believe that the stroke of my whip has made its proper
+impression on your soul--that you are willing to use the ordinary
+means of ordinary persons, to avenge an indignity which was not
+CONFINED TO YOUR CLOTH. If so, meet me at the lake with whatever
+weapons you choose to bring. I will be there, provided with pistols
+for both, at any hour from three to six. I shall proceed to the
+spot as soon as I receive your answer. "W. H."
+
+"Short and sharp!" exclaimed Stevens as he read the billet. "'Who
+would have thought that the YOUNG man had so much blood in him!'
+Well, we will not balk your desire, Master Hinkley. We will meet
+you, in verity, though it may compel me to throw up my present hand
+and call for other cards. N'importe: there is no other course."
+
+While soliloquizing, he penned his answer, which was brief and to
+the purpose:--
+
+"I will meet you as soon as I can steal off without provoking
+suspicion. I have pistols which I will bring with me. "A. S."
+
+"There, my little damsel," said he, re-entering the dining-room,
+and putting the sealed paper into the hands of the child, "carry
+that to Mr. Hinkley, and tell him I will come and speak with him
+as he begs me. But the note will tell him."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"So----"
+
+Mrs. Hinkley entered tho room at this moment. Her husband had
+apprized her of the communication which her son had made, and the
+disposition to atonement and repentance which he had expressed.
+She was anxious to confirm this good disposition, to have her son
+brought back within the fold, restored to her own affections and
+the favor of his father. The latter, it is true, had signified his
+determined hostility, even while conveying his intelligence; but
+the mother was sanguine--when was a mother otherwise?--that all
+things would come right which related to her only child. She now
+came to implore the efforts of Stevens; to entreat, that, like a
+good Christian, he would not suffer the shocking stripes which her
+son, in his madness, had inflicted upon him to outweigh his charity,
+to get the better of his blessed principles, and make him war upon
+the atoning spirit which had so lately, and so suddenly wakened
+up in the bosom of the unruly boy. She did not endeavor to qualify
+the offence of which her son had been guilty. She was far from
+underrating the indignity to which Stevens had been subjected; but
+the offender was her son--her only son--in spite of all his faults,
+follies, and imperfections, the apple of her eye--the only being
+for whom she cared to live!
+
+Ah! the love of a mother!--what a holy thing! sadly wanting
+in judgment--frequently misleading, perverting, nay, dooming the
+object which it loves; but, nevertheless, most pure; least selfish;
+truest; most devoted!
+
+And the tears gushed from the old woman's eyes as she caught the
+hand of Stevens in her own, and kissed it--kissed HIS hand--could
+William Hinkley have seen THAT, how it would have rankled, how he
+would have writhed! She kissed the hands of that wily hypocrite,
+bedewing them with her tears, as if he were some benign and blessing
+saint; and not because he had shown any merits or practised any
+virtues, but simply because of certain professions which he had
+made, and in which she had perfect faith because of the professions,
+and not because of any previous knowledge which she had of the
+professor. Truly, it behooves a rogue monstrous much to know what
+garment it is best to wear; the question is equally important to
+rogue and dandy.
+
+Stevens made a thousand assurances in the most Christian spirit--we
+can not say that he gave her tear for tear--promised to do his best
+to bring back the prodigal son to her embrace, and the better to
+effect this object, put his pistols under his belt! Within the hour
+he was on his way to the place of meeting.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+FOOT TO FOOT.
+
+
+
+
+
+William Hinkley was all impatience until, his little messenger
+returned, which she did with a speed which might deserve commendation
+in the case of our professional Mercuries--stage-drivers and mail
+contractors, hight! He did not withhold it from the little maid,
+but taking her in his arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched
+her to her mother, while he wrapped up his pistols and concealing
+them in the folds of his coat, hurried from the house with the anxious
+haste of one who is going to seek his prey. He felt somewhat like
+that broad-winged eagle which broods on the projecting pinnacle of
+yonder rocky peak in waiting for the sea-hawk who is stooping far
+below him, watching when the sun's rays shall glisten from the
+uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was not a selfish desire
+to secure the prey which the terror of the other might cause him
+to drop. It was simply to punish the prowler. Poor William could
+not exactly tell indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred Stevens; but
+his cause of hostility was not less cogent because it had no name.
+The thousand little details which induce our prejudices in regard
+to persons, are, singly, worth no one's thought, and would possibly
+provoke the contempt of all; but like the myriad threads which
+secured the huge frame of Gulliver in his descent upon Lilliput,
+they are, when united, able to bind the biggest giant of us all.
+
+The prejudices of William Hinkley, though very natural in such a
+case as his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It seemed to
+him, if he once reasoned on the matter, that, as he had good cause
+to hate the intruder, so there must be justification for shooting
+him. Were this not so, the policy of hating would be very questionable,
+and surely very unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a very
+laudable quantity of feeling--something like omitting one's bullet
+in discharging one's piece--a profligacy only justifiable in a
+feu de joie after victory, where the bullets have already done all
+necessary mischief, and will warrant a small subsequent waste of
+the more harmless material.
+
+Without designing any such child's play, our rustic hero, properly
+equipped with his antique pistols, well charged, close rammed,
+three-ounce bullets, or nearabouts, in each, stood, breathing fire
+but without cooling, on the edge of the lake, perched on an eminence
+and looking out for the coming enemy. He was playing an unwonted
+character, but he felt as if it were quite familiar to him. He
+had none of that nice feeling which, without impugning courage, is
+natural enough to inexperience in such cases. The muzzles of the
+pistols did not appear to him particularly large. He never once thought
+of his own ribs being traversed by his three-ounce messengers. He
+had no misgivings on the subject of his future digestion. He only
+thought of that blow from his father's hand--that keen shaft from
+the lips of Margaret Cooper--that desolation which had fallen upon
+his soul from the scorn of both; and the vengeance which it was in
+his power to inflict upon the fortunate interloper to whose arts
+he ascribed all his misfortunes! and with these thoughts his fury
+and impatience increased, and he ascended the highest hill to look
+out for his foe; descended, in the next moment, to the edge of the
+lake, the better to prepare for the meeting.
+
+In this state of excitement the meekness had departed from his
+countenance; an entire change of expression had taken place: he
+stood up, erect, bold, eagle-eyed, with the look of one newly made
+a man by the form of indomitable will, and feeling, for the first
+time, man's terrible commission to destroy. In a moment, with the
+acquisition of new moods, he had acquired a new aspect. Hitherto,
+he had been tame, seemingly devoid of spirit--you have not forgotten
+the reproaches of his cousin, which actually conveyed an imputation
+against his manliness?--shrinking, with a feeling of shyness akin
+to mauvaise honte, and almost submitting to injustice, to avoid
+the charge of ill-nature. The change that we have described in his
+soul, had made itself singularly apparent in his looks. They were
+full of a grim determination. Had he gazed upon his features, in
+the glassy surface of the lake beside him, he had probably recoiled
+from their expression.
+
+We have seen Mrs. Hinkley sending Stevens forth for the purpose
+of recalling her son to his senses, receiving his repentance, and
+bringing him once more home into the bosom of his flock. We have
+not forgotten the brace of arguments with which he provided himself
+in order to bring about this charitable determination. Stevens was
+a shot. He could snuff his candle at ten paces, sever his bamboo,
+divide the fingers of the hand with separate bullets without grazing
+the skin--nay, more, as was said in the euphuistic phraseology of
+his admirers, send his ball between soul and body without impairing
+the integrity of either.
+
+But men may do much shooting at candle or bamboo, who would do
+precious little while another is about to shoot at them. There is
+a world of difference between looking in a bull's-eye, and looking in
+the eye of man. A pistol, too, looks far less innocent, regarded
+through the medium of a yawning muzzle, than the rounded and
+neatly-polished butt. The huge mouth seems to dilate as you look
+upon it. You already begin to fancy you behold the leaden mass--the
+three-ounce bullet--issuing from its stronghold, like a relentless
+baron of the middle ages, going forth under his grim archway,
+seeking only whom he may devour. The sight is apt to diminish the
+influence of skill. Nerves are necessary to such sportsmen, and
+nerves become singularly untrue when frowned upon through such a
+medium.
+
+Under this view of the case, we are not so sure that the excellence
+of aim for which Alfred Stevens has been so much lauded, will make
+the difference very material between the parties; and now that he
+is fairly roused, there is a look of the human devil about William
+Hinkley, that makes him promise to be dangerous. Nay, the very pistols
+that he wields, those clumsy, rusty, big-mouthed ante-revolutionary
+machines, which his stout grandsire carried at Camden and Eutaw,
+have a look of service about them--a grim, veteran-like aspect,
+that makes them quite as perilous to face as to handle. If they
+burst they will blow on all sides. There will be fragments enough
+for friend and foe; and even though Stevens may not apprehend so
+much from the aim of his antagonist, something of deference is due
+to the possibility of such a concussion, as will make up all his
+deficiencies of skill.
+
+But they have not yet met, though Stevens, with praiseworthy
+Christianity, is on his way to keep his engagements, as well to mother
+as to son. He has his own pistols--not made for this purpose--but
+a substantial pair of traveller's babes--big of mouth, long of
+throat, thick of jaw, keen of sight, quick of speech, strong of
+wind, and weighty of argument. They are rifled bores also, and,
+in the hands of the owner, have done clever things at bottle and
+sapling. Stevens would prefer to have the legitimate things, but
+these babes are trustworthy; and he has no reason to suppose that
+the young rustic whom he goes to meet can produce anything more
+efficient. He had no idea of those ancient bull-pups, those solemn
+ante-revolutionary barkers, which our grandsire used upon harder
+heads than his, at Camden and the Eutaws. He is scarcely so confident
+in his own weapons when his eye rests on the rusty tools of his
+enemy.
+
+But it was not destined that this fight should take place without
+witnesses. In spite of all the precautions of the parties, and they
+were honest in taking them, our little village had its inklings
+of what was going on. There were certain signs of commotion and
+explosion which made themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan
+Hinkley, was the first, very innocently, to furnish a clue to the
+mystery. She had complained to her mother that Cousin William had
+not shot the little guns for her according to his promise.
+
+"But, perhaps, he didn't want to shoot them, Susan."
+
+"Yes, mamma, he put them in his pockets. He's carried them to shoot;
+and he promised to shoot them for me as soon as I carried the note."
+
+"And to whom did you carry the note, Susan?" asked the mother.
+
+"To the young parson, at Uncle William's."
+
+The mother had not been unobservant of the degree of hostility which
+her brother, as well as cousin, entertained for Stevens. They had
+both very freely expressed their dislike in her presence. Some
+of their conferences had been overheard and were now recalled, in
+which this expression of dislike had taken the form of threats,
+vague and purposeless, seemingly, at the time; but which now, taken
+in connection with what she gathered from the lips of the child,
+seemed of portentous interest. Then, when she understood that
+Stevens had sent a note in reply--and that both notes were sealed,
+the quick, feminine mind instantly jumped to the right conclusion.
+
+"They are surely going to fight. Get my bonnet, Susan, I must run
+to Uncle William's, and tell him while there's time. Which way did
+Cousin William go?"
+
+The child could tell her nothing but that he had taken to the hills.
+
+"That brother Ned shouldn't be here now! Though I don't see the good
+of his being here. He'd only make matters worse. Run, Susan--run
+over to Gran'pa Calvert, and tell him to come and stop them from
+fighting, while I hurry to Uncle William's. Lord save us!--and let
+me get there in time."
+
+The widow had a great deal more to say, but this was quite enough
+to bewilder the little girl. Nevertheless, she get forth to convey
+the mysterious message to Grand'pa Calvert, though the good mother
+never once reflected that this message was of the sort which assumes
+the party addressed to be already in possession of the principal
+facts. While she took one route the mother pursued another, and
+the two arrived at their respective places at about the same time.
+Stevens had already left old Hinkley's when the widow got there,
+and the consternation of Mrs. Hinkley was complete. The old man
+was sent for to the fields, and came in only to declare that some
+such persuasion had filled his own mind when first the billet of
+his son had been received. But the suspicion of the father was of
+a much harsher sort than that of the widow Hinkley. In her sight
+it was a duel only--bad enough as a duel--but still only a duel,
+where the parties incurring equal risks, had equal rights. But the
+conception of the affair, as it occurred to old Hinkley, was very
+different.
+
+"Base serpent!" he exclaimed--"he has sent for the good young man
+only to murder him. He implores him to come to him, in an artful
+writing, pretending to be sorely sorrowful and full of repentance;
+and he prepares the weapon of murder to slay him when he comes. Was
+there ever creature so base!--but I will hunt him out. God give me
+strength, and grant that I may find him in season."
+
+Thus saying, the old man seized his crab-stick, a knotty club,
+that had been seasoned in a thousand smokes, and toughened by the
+use of twenty years. His wife caught up her bonnet and hurried with
+the widow Hinkley in his train. Meanwhile, by cross-examining the
+child, Mr. Calvert formed some plausible conjectures of what was
+on foot, and by the time that the formidable procession had reached
+his neighborhood he was prepared to join it. Events thickened with
+the increasing numbers. New facts came in to the aid of old ones
+partially understood. The widow Thackeray, looking from her window,
+as young and handsome widows are very much in the habit of doing,
+had seen William Hinkley going by toward the hill, with a very rapid
+stride and a countenance very much agitated; and an hour afterward
+she had seen Brother Stevens following on the same route--good
+young man!--with the most heavenly and benignant smile upon his
+countenance--the very personification of the cherub and the seraph,
+commissioned to subdue the fiend.
+
+"Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You have spoiled
+this boy of mine; turning his head with law studies; and making
+him disobedient--giving him counsel and encouragement against
+his father--and filling his mind with evil things. It is all your
+doing, and your books. And now he's turned out a bloody murderer,
+a papist murderer, with your Roman catholic doctrines."
+
+"I am no Roman catholic, Mr. Hinkley," was the mild reply--"and as
+for William becoming a murderer, I think that improbable. I have
+a better opinion of your son than you have."
+
+"He's an ungrateful cub--a varmint of the wilderness--to strike the
+good young man in my own presence--to strike him with a cowskin--what
+do you think of that, sir? answer me that, if you please."
+
+"Did William Hinkley do this?" demanded the old teacher earnestly.
+
+"Ay, that he did, did he!"
+
+"I can hardly understand it. There must have been some grievous
+provocation?"
+
+"Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have to wait for
+grace before meat."
+
+"Was that all? can it be possible!"
+
+The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the story--and
+Calvert was somewhat relieved. Though he did not pretend to justify
+the assault of the youth, he readily saw how he had been maddened by
+the treatment of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high
+pitch of religious fury--his prodigious self-esteem taking part
+with it, naturally enough, against a son, who, until this instance,
+had never risen in defiance against either. Expostulation and
+argument were equally vain with him; and ceasing the attempt at
+persuasion, Calvert hurried on with the rest, being equally anxious
+to arrest the meditated violence, whether that contemplated the
+murderous assassination which the father declared, or the less
+heinous proceeding of the duel which he suspected.
+
+There was one thing which made him tremble for his own confidence
+in William Hinkley's propriety of course. It was the difficulty
+which he had with the rest, in believing that the young student of
+divinity would fight a duel. This doubt, he felt, must be that, of
+his pupil also: whether the latter had any reason to suppose that
+Stevens would depart from the principles of his profession, and
+waive the securities which it afforded, he had of course, no means
+for conjecturing; but his confidence in William induced him to
+believe that some such impression upon his mind had led him to the
+measure of sending a challenge, which, otherwise, addressed to a
+theologian, would have been a shameless mockery.
+
+There was a long running fire, by way of conversation and commentary,
+which was of course maintained by these toiling pedestrians, cheering
+the way as they went; but though it made old Hinkley peccant and
+wrathy, and exercised the vernacular of the rest to very liberal
+extent, we do not care to distress the reader with it. It may have
+been very fine or not. It is enough to say that the general tenor
+of opinion run heavily against our unhappy rustic, and in favor of
+the good young man, Stevens. Mrs. Thackeray, the widow, to whom
+Stevens had paid two visits or more since he had been in the village,
+and who had her own reasons for doubting that Margaret Cooper had
+really obtained any advantages in the general struggle to find favor
+in the sight of this handsome man of God--was loud in her eulogy
+upon the latter, and equally unsparing in her denunciations of the
+village lad who meditated so foul a crime as the extinguishing so
+blessed a light. Her denunciations at length aroused all the mother
+in Mrs. Hinkley's breast, and the two dames had it, hot and heavy,
+until, as the parties approached the lake, old Hinkley, with a
+manner all his own, enjoined the most profound silence, and hushed,
+without settling the dispute.
+
+Meanwhile, the combatants had met. William Hinkley, haviug ascended
+the tallest perch among the hills, beheld his enemy approaching
+at a natural pace and at a short distance. He descended rapidly to
+meet him and the parties joined at the foot of the woodland path
+leading down to the lake, where, but a few days before, we beheld
+Stevens and Margaret Cooper. Stevens was somewhat surprised to note
+the singular and imposing change which a day, almost an hour, had
+wrought in the looks and bearing of the young rustic. His good, and
+rather elevated command of language, had struck him previously as
+very remarkable, but this had been explained by his introduction
+to Mr. Calvert, who, as his teacher, he soon found was very well
+able to make him what he was. It was the high bearing, the courteous
+defiance, the superior consciousness of strength and character, which
+now spoke in the tone and manner of the youth. A choice military
+school, for years, could scarcely have brought about a more decided
+expression of that subdued heroism, which makes mere manliness a
+matter of chivalry, and dignifies brute anger and blind hostility
+into something like a sentiment. Under the prompting of a good
+head, a generous temper, and the goodness of a highly-roused, but
+legitimate state of feeling, William Hinkley wore the very appearance
+of that nobleness, pride, ease, firmness, and courtesy, which,
+in the conventional world, it is so difficult, yet held to be so
+important, to impress upon the champion when ready for the field.
+A genuine son of thunder would have rejoiced in his deportment, and
+though a sneering, jealous and disparaging temper, Alfred Stevens
+could not conceal from himself the conviction that there was
+stuff in the young man which it needed nothing but trial and rough
+attrition to bring out.
+
+William Hinkley bowed at his approach, and pointed to a close
+footpath leading to the rocks on the opposite shore.
+
+"There, sir, we shall be more secret. There is a narrow grove above,
+just suited to our purpose. Will it please you to proceed thither?"
+
+"As YOU please, Mr. Hinkley," was the reply; "I have no disposition
+to balk your particular desires. But the sight of this lake reminds
+me that I owe you my life?"
+
+"I had thought, sir, that the indignity which I put upon you, would
+cancel all such memories," was the stern reply.
+
+The cheek of Stevens became crimson--his eye flashed--he felt the
+sarcasm--but something was due to his position, and he was cool
+enough to make a concession to circumstances. He answered with
+tolerable calmness, though not without considerable effort.
+
+"It has cancelled the OBLIGATION, sir, if not the memory! I certainly
+can owe you nothing for a life which you have attempted to disgrace--"
+
+"Which I have disgraced!" said the other, interrupting him.
+
+"You are right, sir. How far, however, you have shown your manhood
+in putting an indignity upon one whose profession implies peace,
+and denounces war, you are as well prepared to answer as myself."
+
+"The cloth seems to be of precious thickness!" was the answer of
+Hinkley, with a smile of bitter and scornful sarcasm.
+
+"If you mean to convoy the idea that I do not feel the shame of the
+blow, and am not determined on avenging it, young man, you are in
+error. You will find that I am not less determined because I am
+most cool. I have come out deliberately for the purpose of meeting
+you. My purpose in reminding you of my profession was simply to
+undeceive you. It appears to me not impossible that the knowledge
+of it has made you somewhat bolder than you otherwise might have
+been."
+
+"What mean you?" was the stern demand of Hinkley, uttered in very
+startling accents.
+
+"To tell you that I have not always been a non-combatant, that I am
+scarcely one now, and that, in the other schools, in which I have
+been taught, the use of the pistol was an early lesson. You have
+probably fancied that such was not the case, and that my profession--"
+
+"Come, sir--will you follow this path?" said Hinkley, interrupting
+him impatiently.
+
+"All in good time, sir, when you have heard me out," was the cool
+reply. "Now, sir," he continued, "were you to have known that it
+would be no hard task for me to mark any button on your vest, at
+any distance--that I have often notched a smaller mark, and that
+I am prepared to do so again, it might be that your prudence would
+have tempered your courage--"
+
+"I regret for your sake," said Hinkley, again interrupting him with
+a sarcasm, "that I have not brought with me the weapon with which
+MY marks are made. You seem to have forgotten that I too have some
+skill in my poor way. One would think, sir, that the memory would
+not fail of retaining what I suspect will be impressed upon the
+skin for some time longer."
+
+"You are evidently bent on fighting, Mr. Hinkley, and I must gratify
+you!"
+
+"If you please, sir."
+
+"But, before doing so, I should like to know in what way I have
+provoked such a feeling of hostility in your mind? I have not sought
+to do so. I have on the contrary, striven to show you my friendship,
+in part requital of the kindness shown me by your parents."
+
+"Do not speak of them, if you please."
+
+"Ay, but I must. It was at the instance of your worthy mother that
+I sought you and strove to confer with you on, the cause of your
+evident unhappiness."
+
+"You were the cause."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes--you! Did I not tell you then that I hated you; and did you
+not accept my defiance?"
+
+"Yes; but when you saved my life!--"
+
+"It was to spurn you--to put stripes upon you. I tell you, Alfred
+Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one feels for a reptile,
+whose cunning is as detestable as his sting is deadly. I loathe
+you from instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from
+the first moment that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what
+manner, you are a villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced
+of it as thoroughly as if I knew it. You have wormed yourself into
+the bosom of my family. You have expelled me from the affections
+of my parents; and not content with this, you have stolen to the
+heart of the woman to whom my life was devoted, to have me driven
+thence also. Can I do less than hate you? Can I desire less than
+your destruction? Say, having heard so much, whether you will make
+it necessary that I should again lay my whip over your shoulders."
+
+The face of Stevens became livid as he listened to this fierce and
+bitter speech. His eye watched that of the speaker with the glare
+of the tiger, as if noteful only of the moment when to spring. His
+frame trembled. His lip quivered with the struggling rage. All his
+feeling of self-superiority vanished when he listened to language
+of so unequivocal a character--language which so truly denounced,
+without defining, his villany. He felt, that if the instinct of the
+other was indeed so keen and quick, then was the combat necessary,
+and the death of the rustic essential, perhaps, to his own safety.
+William Hinkley met his glance with a like fire. There was no
+shrinking of his heart or muscles. Nay, unlike his enemy, he felt
+a strange thrill of pleasure in his veins as he saw the effect
+which his language had produced on the other.
+
+"Lead the way!" said Stevens; "the sooner you are satisfied the
+better."
+
+"You are very courteous, and I thank you," replied Hinkley, with
+a subdued but sarcastic smile, "you will pardon me for the seeming
+slight, in taking precedence of one so superior; but the case
+requires it. You will please to follow. I will show you my back no
+longer than it seems necessary."
+
+"Lead on, sir--lead on."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+UNEXPECTED ISSUES.
+
+
+
+
+
+William Hinkley ascended the narrow path leading to the hills
+with an alacrity of heart which somewhat surprised himself. The
+apprehensions of danger, if he felt any, were not of a kind to
+distress or annoy him, and were more than balanced by the conviction
+that he had brought his enemy within his level. That feeling of
+power is indeed a very consolatory one. It satisfies the ambitious
+heart, though death preys upon his household, one by one; though
+suffering fevers his sleep; though the hopes of his affection wither;
+though the loves and ties of his youth decay and vanish. It makes
+him careless of the sunshine, and heedless of the storm. It deadens
+his ear to the song of birds, it blinds his eye to the seduction
+of flowers. It makes him fly from friendship and rush on hate. It
+compensates for all sorts of loneliness, and it produces them. It
+is a princely despotism; which, while it robs its slave of freedom,
+covers him with other gifts which he learns to value more; which,
+binding him in fetters, makes him believe that they are sceptres
+and symbols before which all things become what he desires them.
+His speech is changed, his very nature perverted, but he acquires
+an "open sesame" by their loss, and the loss seems to his imagination an
+exceeding gain. We will not say that William Hinkley was altogether
+satisfied with HIS bargain, but in the moment when he stood
+confronting his enemy on the bald rock, with a deadly weapon in
+each hand--when he felt that he stood foot to foot in equal conflict
+with his foe, one whom he had dragged down from his pride of place,
+and had compelled to the fearful issue which made his arrogance
+quail--in that moment, if he did not forget, he did not so much
+feel, that he had lost family and friends, parents and love; and
+if he felt, it was only to induce that keener feeling of revenge
+in which even the affections are apt to be swallowed up.
+
+Stevens looked in the eye of the young man and saw that he was
+dangerous. He looked upon the ante-revolutionary pistols, and saw
+that they were dangerous too, in a double sense.
+
+"Here are pistols," he said, "better suited to our purpose. You
+can sound them and take your choice."
+
+"These," said Hinkley, doggedly, "are as well suited as any. If
+you will, you can take your choice of mine; but if you think yours
+superior, use them. These are good enough for me."
+
+"But this is out of all usage," said Stevens.
+
+"What matters it, Mr. Stevens? If you are satisfied that yours are
+the best, the advantage is with you. If you doubt that mine can
+kill, try them. I have a faith in these pistols which will content
+me; but we will take one of each, if that will please you better,
+and use which we think proper."
+
+Stevens expressed himself better pleased to keep his own.
+
+"Suit yourself as to distance," said Hinkley, with all the coolness
+of an unmixed salamander. His opponent stepped off ten paces with
+great deliberation, and William Hinkley, moving toward a fragment
+of the rock upon which he had placed his "revolutions" for the better
+inspection of his opponent, possessed himself of the veterans and
+prepared to take the station which had been assigned him.
+
+"Who shall give the word?" demanded Stevens.
+
+"You may!" was the cool rejoinder.
+
+"If I do, I kill you," said the other.
+
+"I have no fear, Mr. Stevens," answered William Hinkley with a
+degree of phlegm which almost led Stevens to fancy he had to deal
+with a regular Trojan--"I have no fear," he continued, "and if you
+fancy you can frighten me by this sort of bragging you have very
+much mistaken your man. Shoot when you please, word or no word."
+
+William Hinkley stood with his back to the woods, his face toward
+the lake which spread itself, smooth and calm at a little distance.
+He did not perceive that his position was a disadvantageous one.
+The tree behind, and that beside him, rendered his body a most
+conspicuous mark; while his opponent, standing with his back to
+the uncovered rocks ranged with no other objects of any prominence.
+Had he even been sufficiently practised in the arts of the duello, he
+would most probably have been utterly regardless of these things.
+They would not have influenced his firmness in the slightest
+degree. His course was quite as much the result of desperation as
+philosophy. He felt himself an outcast as well from home as from
+love, and it mattered to him very little, in the morbid excitement
+of his present mind, whether he fell by the hand of his rival, or
+lived to pine out a wearisome existence, lonely and uninspired, a
+gloomy exile in the bitter world. He waited, it may be said, with
+some impatience for the fire of his antagonist. Once he saw the
+pistol of Stevens uplifted. He had one in each hand. His own hung
+beside him. He waited for the shot of the enemy as a signal when to
+lift and use his own weapon. But instead of this he was surprised
+to see him drop the muzzle of his weapon, and with some celerity
+and no small degree of slight of hand, thrust the two pistols
+under his coat-skirts. A buz reached his ears a moment after--the
+hum of voices--some rustling in the bushes, which signified confusion
+in the approach of strangers. He did not wish to look round as he
+preferred keeping his eye on his antagonist.
+
+"Shoot!" he exclaimed--"quickly, before we are interrupted."
+
+Before he could receive any answer there was a rush behind
+him--he heard his father's voice, sudden, and in a high degree of
+fury, mingled with that of his mother and Mr. Calvert, as if in
+expostulation. From the latter the words distinctly reached his
+ears, warning him to beware. Such, also, was the purport of his
+mother's cry. Before he could turn and guard against the unseen
+danger, he received a blow upon his head, the only thing of which
+he was conscious for some time. He staggered and fell forward. He
+felt himself stunned, fancied he was shot, and sunk to the ground
+in an utter state of insensibility.
+
+The blow came from his father's crab-stick. It was so utterly
+unexpected by the parties who had attended old Hinkley to the place
+of meeting, that no efforts were made to prevent it. But the mother
+of the victim rushed in in time to defeat the second blow, which
+the father prepared to inflict, in the moment when his son was
+falling from the effects of the first. Grasping the coat skirts
+of her spouse, she pulled him back with no scrupulous hand, and
+effectually baffled his designs by bringing him down, though in an
+opposite direction, to the same level with the youth. Old Hinkley
+did not bite the dust, but the latter part of his skull most
+effectually butted it; and had not his head been quite as tough as
+his crab-stick, the hurt might have been quite as severe as that
+which the latter had inflicted on the son.
+
+The latter lay as perfectly quiet as if all had been over with him.
+So much so, that the impression became very general that such was
+the case. Under this impression the heart of the mother spoke out
+in mingled screams of lamentation and reproach. She threw herself
+down by the side of the youth and vainly attempted to stop the blood
+which was streaming from a deep gash on his skull. While engaged
+in this work, her apron and handkerchief being both employed for
+this purpose, she poured forth a torrent of wrath and denunciation
+against her spouse. She now forgot all the offences of the boy, and
+even Alfred Stevens came in for his share of the anger with which
+she visited the offence and the offender.
+
+"Shame! shame! you bloody-minded man," she cried, "to slaughter
+your own son--your only son--to come behind him and knock him down
+with a club as if he had been an inhuman ox! You are no husband
+of mine. He sha'n't own you for a father. If I had the pick, I'd
+choose a thousand fathers for him, from here to Massassippi, sooner
+than you. He's only too good and too handsome to be son of yours.
+And for what should you strike him? For a stranger--a man we never
+saw before. Shame on you! You are a brute, a monster, William
+Hinkley, and I'm done with you for ever.
+
+"My poor, poor boy! Look up, my son. Look up, William. Open your
+eyes. It's your own dear mother that speaks to you. O my God! you've
+killed him--he will not open his eyes. He's dead, he's dead, he's
+dead!"
+
+And truly it seemed so, for the youth gave no sign of consciousness.
+She threw herself in a screaming agony upon his body, and gave
+herself up to the unmeasured despair, which, if a weakness, is
+at least a sacred one in the case of a mother mourning her only
+son. Old Hinkley was not without his alarms--nay, not altogether
+without his compunctions. But he was one of that round head genus
+whose self-esteem is too much at all times for fear, or shame, or
+sensibility. Without seeking to assist the lad, and ascertain what
+was his real condition, he sought only to justify himself for what
+he had done by repeating the real and supposed offences of the
+youth. He addressed himself in this labor chiefly to Mr. Calvert,
+who, with quite as much suffering as any of the rest, had more
+consideration, and was now busied in the endeavor to stanch the
+blood and cleanse the wound of the victim.
+
+"He's only got what he deserved," exclaimed the sullen, stubborn
+father.
+
+"Do not speak so, Mr. Hinkley," replied Calvert, with a sternness
+which was unusual with him; "your son may have got his death."
+
+"And he deserves it!" responded the other doggedly.
+
+"And if he has," continued Calvert, "you are a murderer--a cold-blooded
+murderer--and as such will merit and will meet the halter."
+
+The face of the old man grew livid--his lips whitened with rage;
+and he approached Calvert, his whole frame quivering with fury,
+and, shaking his hand threateningly, exclaimed:--
+
+"Do you dare to speak to me in this manner, you miserable, white-headed
+pedagogue--do you dare?"
+
+"Dare!" retorted Calvert, rising to his feet with a look of majesty
+which, in an instant, awed the insolence of the offender. Never
+had he been faced by such defiance, so fearlessly and nobly expressed.
+
+"Dare!--Look on me, and ask yourself whether I dare or not.
+Approach me but a step nigher, and even my love for your unfortunate
+and much-abused but well-minded son will not protect you. I would
+chastise you, with all my years upon me, in spite of my white
+head.  Yours, if this boy should die, will never become white,
+or will become so suddenly, as your soul will wither, with its
+own self-torture, within you. Begone!--keep back--do not approach
+me, and, above all, do not approach me with uplifted hand, or, by
+Heaven, I will fell you to the earth as surely as you felled this
+boy! You have roused a feeling within me, William Hinkley, which
+has slept for years.  Do not provoke it too far. Beware in season.
+You have acted the brute and the coward to your son--you could do
+so with impunity to him--to me you can not."
+
+There was something in this speech, from one whom old Hinkley was
+accustomed to look upon as a dreaming bookworm, which goaded the
+tyrannical father into irrepressible fury; and, grinding his teeth,
+without a moment's hesitation he advanced, and was actually about
+to lay the crab-stick over the shoulders of the speaker: but
+the latter was as prompt as he was fearless. Before Hinkley could
+conceive his intention, he had leaped over the still unconscious
+person of William, and, flinging the old man round with a sudden
+jerk, had grasped and wrested the stick from his hands with a degree
+of activity and strength which confounded all the bystanders, and
+the subject of his sudden exercise of manhood no less than the
+rest.
+
+"Were you treated justly," said Calvert, regarding him with a look
+of the loftiest indignation, "you should yourself receive a taste
+of the cudgel you are so free to use on others. Let your feebleness,
+old man, be a warning to your arrogance."
+
+With these words, he flung the crab-stick into the lake, old Hinkley
+regarding him with looks in which it was difficult to say whether
+mortification or fury had preponderance.
+
+"Go," he continued--"your son lives; but it is God's mercy, and
+none of yours, which has spared his life. You will live, I hope,
+to repent of your cruelty and injustice to him; to repent of having
+shown a preference to a stranger, so blind as that which has moved
+you to attempt the life of one of the most gentle lads in the whole
+country."
+
+"And did he not come here to murder the stranger? did we not find
+him even now with pistol ready to murder Brother Stevens? See the
+pistols now in his hands--my father's pistols. We came not a minute
+too soon. But for my blow, he had been a murderer."
+
+Such was the justification which old Hinkley now offered for what
+he had done.
+
+"I am no advocate for duelling," said Calvert, "but I believe that
+your son came with the stranger for this purpose, and not to murder
+him."
+
+"No, no! do you not see that Brother Stevens has no pistols? Did
+we not see him trying to escape--walking off--walking almost over
+the rocks to get out of the way?"
+
+Calvert comprehended the matter much more clearly.
+
+"Speak, sir!" he said to Stevens, "did you not come prepared to
+defend yourself?"
+
+"You see me as I am," said Stevens, showing his empty hands.
+
+Calvert looked at him with searching eye.
+
+"I understand you, sir," he said, with an expression not to be
+mistaken; "I'understand you now. THIS LAD I KNOW. HE COULD NOT BE
+A MURDERER. HE COULD NOT TAKE ANY MAN AT ADVANTAGE. If you do not
+know the fact, Mr. Stevens, I can assure you that your life was
+perfectly secure from his weapon, so long as his remained equally
+unendangered. The sight of that lake, from which he rescued you
+but a few days ago, should sufficiently have persuaded you of this."
+
+Stevens muttered something, the purport of which was, that "he did
+not believe the young man intended to murder him."
+
+"Did he not send you a challenge?"
+
+"No!" said old Hinkley; "he sent him a begging note, promising
+atonement and repentance."
+
+"Will you let me see that note?" said Calvert, addressing Stevens.
+
+"I have it not--I destroyed it," said Stevens with some haste.
+Calvert said no more, but he looked plainly enough his suspicions.
+He now gave his attention to William Hinkley, whose mother, while
+this scene was in progress, had been occupied, as Calvert had
+begun, in stanching the blood, and trimming with her scissors, which
+were fortunately at her girdle, the hair from the wound. The son,
+meanwhile, had wakened to consciousness. He had been stunned but
+not severely injured by the blow, and, with the promptitude of a
+border-dame, Mrs. Hinkley, hurrying to a pine-tree, had gathered
+enough of its resin, which, spread upon a fragment of her cotton
+apron, and applied to the hurt, proved a very fair substitute for
+adhesive plaster. The youth rose to his feet, still retaining the
+pistols in his grasp. His looks were heavy from the stupor which
+still continued, but kindled into instant intelligence when he
+caught sight of Stevens and his father.
+
+"Go home, sir!" said the latter, waving his hand in the prescribed
+direction.
+
+"Never!" was the reply of the young man, firmly expressed; "never,
+sir, if I never have a home!"
+
+"You shall always have a home, William, while I have one," said
+Mr. Calvert.
+
+"What! you encourage my son in rebellion? you teach him to fly in
+the face of his father?" shouted the old man.
+
+"No, sir; I only offer him a shelter from tyranny, a place of refuge
+from persecution. When you learn the duties and the feelings of
+a father, it will be time enough to assert the rights of one.  I
+do not think him safe in your house against your vindictiveness
+and brutality. He is, however, of full age, and can determine for
+himself."
+
+"He is not of age, and will not be till July."
+
+"It matters not. He is more near the years of discretion than his
+father; and, judging him to be in some danger in your house, as a
+man and as a magistrate I offer him the protection of mine. Come
+home with me, William."
+
+"Let him go, if he pleases--go to the d--l! He who honors not
+his father, says the Scriptures--what says the passage, Brother
+Stevens--does it not say that he who honors not his father is in
+danger of hell-fire?"
+
+"Not exactly, I believe," said the other.
+
+"Matters not, matters not!--the meaning is very much the same."
+
+"Oh, my son," said the mother, clinging to his neck, "will you,
+indeed, desert me? can you leave me in my old age? I have none,
+none but you! You know how I have loved--you know I will always
+love you."
+
+"And I love you, mother--and love him too, though he treats me as
+an outcast--I will always love you, but I will never more enter
+my father's dwelling. He has degraded me with his whip--he has
+attempted my life with his bludgeon. I forgive him, but will never
+expose myself again to his cruelties or indignities. You will always
+find me a son, and a dutiful one, in all other respects."
+
+He turned away with Mr. Calvert, and slowly proceeded down the
+pathway by which he had approached the eminence. He gave Stevens
+a significant look as he passed him, and lifted one of the pistols
+which he still carried in his hands, in a manner to make evident
+his meaning. The other smiled and turned off with the group, who
+proceeded by the route along the hills, but the last words of the
+mother, subdued by sobs, still came to the ears of the youth:--
+
+"Oh, my son, come home! come home!"
+
+"No! no! I have no home--no home, mother!" muttered the young man,
+as if he thought the half-stifled response could reach the ears of
+the complaining woman.
+
+"No home! no hope!" he continued--"I am desolate."
+
+"Not so, my son. God is our home; God is our companion; our
+strength, our preserver! Living and loving, manfully striving and
+working out our toils for deliverance, we are neither homeless,
+nor hopeless; neither strengthless, nor fatherless; wanting neither
+in substance nor companion. This is a sharp lesson, perhaps, but
+a necessary one. It will give you that courage, of the great value
+of which I spoke to you but a few days ago. Come with me to my
+home; it shall be yours until you can find a better."
+
+"I thank you--oh! how much I thank you. It may be all as you pay,
+but I feel very, very miserable."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+EXILE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The artist in the moral world must be very careful not to suffer
+his nice sense of retributive justice, to get so much the better
+of his judgment, as an artist, as to make him forgetful of human
+probabilities, and the superior duty of preparing the mind of the
+young reader by sterling examples of patience and protracted reward,
+to bear up manfully against injustice, and not to despond because
+his rewards are slow. It would be very easy for an author to make
+everybody good, or, if any were bad, to dismiss them, out of hand,
+to purgatory and places even worse. But it would be a thankless
+toil to read the writings of such an author. His characters would
+fail in vraisemblance, and his incidents would lack in interest.
+The world is a sort of vast moral lazar-house, in which most have
+sores, either of greater or less degree of virulence. Some are
+nurses, and doctors, and guardians; and these are necessarily free
+from the diseases to which they minister. Some, though not many,
+are entirely incurable; many labor for years in pain, and when
+dismissed, still hobble along feebly, bearing the proofs of their
+trials in ugly seams and blotches, contracted limbs, and pale,
+haggard features. Others get off with a shorter and less severe
+probation. None are free from taint, and those who are the most
+free, are not always the greatest favorites with fortune.
+
+We are speaking of the moral world, good reader. We simply borrow
+an illustration from the physical. Our interest in one another is
+very much derived from our knowledge of each other's infirmities;
+and it may be remarked, passingly, that this interest is productive
+of very excellent philosophical temper, since it enables us to bear
+the worst misfortunes of our best friends with the most amazing
+fortitude. It is a frequent error with the reader of a book--losing
+sight of these facts--to expect that justice will always be done
+on the instant. He will suffer no delay in the book, though he
+sees that this delay of justice is one of the most decided of all
+the moral certainties whether in life or law. He does not wish to
+see the person in whom the author makes him interested, perish in
+youth--die of broken heart or more rapid disaster; and if he could
+be permitted to interfere, the bullet or the knife of the assassin
+would be arrested at the proper moment and always turned against
+the bosom of the wrong-doer.
+
+This is a very commendable state of feeling, and whenever it occurs,
+it clearly shows that the author is going right in his vocation.
+It proves him to be a HUMAN author, which is something better than
+being a mere, dry, moral one. But he would neither be a human nor
+a moral author were he to comply with the desires of such gentle
+readers, and, to satisfy their sympathies, arrest the progress
+of events. The fates must have their way, in the book as in the
+lazar-house; and the persons of his drama must endure their sores
+and sufferings with what philosophy they may, until, under the
+hands of that great physician, fortune, they receive an honorable
+discharge or otherwise.
+
+Were it with him, our young friend, William Hinkley, who is
+really a clever fellow, should not only be received to favor with
+all parties, but such should never have fallen from favor in the
+minds of any. His father should become soon repentant, and having
+convicted Stevens of his falsehood and hypocrisy, he should be rewarded
+with the hand of the woman to whom his young heart is so devoted.
+Such, perhaps, would be the universal wish with our readers; but
+would this be fortunate for William Hinkley? Our venerable friend
+and his, Mr. Calvert, has a very different opinion. He says:--
+
+"This young man is not only a worthy young man, but he is one,
+naturally of very vigorous intellect. He is of earnest, impassioned
+temperament, full of enthusiasm and imagination; fitted for work--great
+work--public work--head work--the noblest kind of work. He will be
+a great lawyer--perhaps a great statesman--if he addresses himself
+at once, manfully, to his tasks; but he will not address himself to
+these tasks while he pursues the rusting and mind-destroying life
+of a country village. Give him the object of his present desire
+and you deprive him of all motive for exertion. Give him the woman
+he seeks and you probably deprive him even of the degree of quiet
+which the country village affords. He would forfeit happiness without
+finding strength. Force him to the use of his tools and he builds
+himself fame and fortune."
+
+Calvert was really not sorry that William Hinkley's treatment had
+been so harsh. He sympathized, it is true, in his sufferings, but
+he was not blind to their probable advantages; and he positively
+rejoiced in his rejection by Margaret Cooper.
+
+It was some four or five days after the events with which our last
+chapter was closed, that the old man and his young friend were to
+be seen sitting together, under the shade of the venerable tree
+where we have met them before. They had conferred together seriously,
+and finally with agreeing minds, on the several topics which have
+been adverted to in the preceding paragraph. William Hinkley had
+become convinced that it was equally the policy of his mind and
+heart to leave Charlemont. He was not so well satisfied, however, as
+was the case with Mr. Calvert, that the loss of Margaret Cooper was
+his exceeding gain. When did young lover come to such a conclusion?
+Not, certainly, while he was young. But when was young lover wise?
+Though a discontent, William Hinkley was not, however, soured
+nor despairing from the denial of his hopes. He had resources of
+thought and spirit never tested before, of the possession of which
+he, himself, knew nothing. They were to be brought into use and
+made valuable only by these very denials; by the baffling of his
+hope; by the provocation of his strength.
+
+His resolution grew rapidly in consequence of his disappointments.
+He was now prepared to meet the wishes of his venerable and wise
+preceptor--to grapple stoutly with the masters of the law; and,
+keeping his heart in restraint, if not absolute abeyance, to do that
+justice to his head, which, according to the opinion of Mr.  Calvert,
+it well-deserved if hitherto it had not demanded it. But to pursue
+his studies as well as his practice, he was to leave Charlemont. How
+was this to be done--where was he to go--by what means? A horse,
+saddle, and bridle--a few books and the ante-revolutionary pistols of
+his grandsire, which recent circumstances seemed to have endeared
+to him, were all his available property.  His poverty was an
+estoppel, at the outset, to his own reflections; and thinking of
+this difficulty he turned with a blank visage to his friend.
+
+The old man seemed to enter into and imagine his thoughts. He did
+not wait to be reminded, by the halting speech of the youth, of
+the one subject from which the latter shrunk to speak.
+
+"The next thing, my son," said he, "is the necessary means. Happily,
+in the case of one so prudent and temperate as yourself, you will
+not need much. Food and clothing, and a small sum, annually, for
+contingencies, will be your chief expense; and this, I am fortunately
+able to provide. I am not a rich man, my son; but economy and
+temperance, with industry, have given me enough, and to spare. It
+is long since I had resolved that all I have should be yours; and
+I had laid aside small sums from time to time, intending them for
+an occasion like the present, which I felt sure would at length
+arrive. I am rejoiced that my foresight should have begun in time,
+since it enables me to meet the necessity promptly, and to interpose
+myself at the moment when you most need counsel and assistance."
+
+"Oh, my friend, my kind generous friend, how it shames me for my
+own father to hear you speak thus!"
+
+The youth caught the hands of his benefactor, and the hot tears
+fell from his eyes upon them, while he fervently bent to kiss them.
+
+"Your father is a good but rough man, William, who will come to
+his senses in good time. Men of his education--governed as he is by
+the mistake which so commonly confounds God with his self-constituted
+representative, religion with its professor--will err, and can not
+be reasoned out of their errors. It is the unceasing operation of
+time which can alone teach them a knowledge of the truth. You must
+not think too hardly of your father, who does not love you the less
+because he fancies you are his particular property, with whom he
+may do what he pleases. As for what I have done, and am disposed
+to do for you, let that not become burdensome to your gratitude.
+In some respects you have been a son to me, and I send you from
+me with the same reluctance which a father would feel in the like
+circumstances. You have been my companion, you have helped to cheer
+my solitude; and I have learned to look on the progress of your
+mind with the interest of the philosopher who pursues a favorite
+experiment. In educating you, I have attempted an experiment which
+I should be sorry to see fail. I do not think now that it will
+fail.  I think you will do yourself and me ample justice. If I have
+had my doubts, they were of your courage, not your talent. If you
+have a weakness, it is because of a deficiency of self-esteem--a
+tendency to self-disparagement. A little more actual struggle with
+the world, and an utter withdrawal from those helps and hands which
+in a youth's own home are very apt to be constantly employed to
+keep him from falling, and to save him from the consequences of
+his fall, and I do not despair of seeing you acquire that necessary
+moral hardihood which will enable you to think freely, and to make
+your mind give a fair utterance to the properties which are in
+it. When this is done, I have every hope of you. You will rise to
+eminence in your profession. I know, my son, that you will do me
+honor."
+
+"Ah, sir, I am afraid you overrate my abilities. I have no
+consciousness of any such resources as you suppose me to possess."
+
+"It is here that your deficiency speaks out. Be bold, my son--be
+bold, bolder, boldest. I would not have you presumptuous, but there
+is a courage, short of presumption, which is only a just confidence
+in one's energies and moral determination. This you will soon
+form, if, looking around you and into the performances of others,
+you see how easy they are, and how far inferior they are to your
+own ideas of what excellence should be. Do not look into yourself
+for your standards. I have perhaps erred in making these too high.
+Look out from yourself--look into others--analyze the properties
+of others; and, in attempting, seek only to meet the exigencies of
+the occasion, without asking what a great mind might effect beyond
+it. Your heart will fail you always if your beau ideal is for ever
+present to your mind."
+
+"I will try, sir. My tasks are before me, and I know it is full time
+that I should discard my boyhood. I will go to work with industry,
+and will endeavor not to disappoint your confidence; but I must
+confess, sir, I have very little in myself."
+
+"If you will work seriously, William, my faith is in this very
+humility. A man knowing his own weakness, and working to be strong,
+can not fail. He must achieve something more than he strives for."
+
+"You make me strong as I hear you, sir. But I have one request to
+make, sir. I have a favor to ask, sir, which will make me almost
+happy if you grant it--which will at least reconcile me to receive
+your favors, and to feel them less oppressively."
+
+"What is that, William? You know, my son, there are few things
+which I could refuse you."
+
+"It is that _I_ MAY BE YOUR SON; that I may call you father, and
+bear henceforward your name. If you adopt me, rear me, teach me,
+provide me with the means of education and life, and do for me
+what a father should have done, you are substantially more than
+my father to me. Let me bear, your name. I shall be proud of it,
+sir.  I will not disgrace it--nay, more, it will strengthen me in
+my desire to do it and myself honor. When I hear it spoken, it will
+remind me of my equal obligations to you and to myself."
+
+"But this, my son, is a wrong done to your own father."
+
+"Alas! he will not feel it such."
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"You speak now with a feeling of anger, William. The treatment of
+your fether rankles in your mind."
+
+"No, sir, no! I freely forgive him. I have no reference to him in
+the prayer I make. My purpose is simply what I declare. Your name
+will remind me of your counsels, will increase my obligation to
+pursue them, will strengthen me in my determination, will be to
+me a fond monitor in your place. Oh, sir, do not deny me! You have
+shown me the affections of a father--let me, I entreat you, bear
+the name of your son!"
+
+The youth flung his arms about the old man's neck, and wept with
+a gush of fondness which the venerable sire could not withstand.
+He was deeply touched: his lips quivered; his eyes thrilled and
+throbbed. In vain did he strive to resist the impulse. He gave him
+tear for tear.
+
+"My son, you have unmanned me."
+
+"Ah, my father, I can not regret, since, in doing so, I have
+strengthened my own manhood."
+
+"If it have this effect, William, I shall not regret my own
+weakness. There is a bird, you are aware, of which it is fabled
+that it nourishes its young by the blood of its own bosom, which
+it wounds for this purpose. Believe me, my dear boy, I am not
+unwilling to be this bird for your sake. If to feel for you as the
+fondest of fathers can give me the rights of one, then are you most
+certainly my son--my son!"
+
+Long, and fond, and sweet, was their embrace. For a full hour,
+but few words, and those of a mournful tenderness, were exchanged
+between the parties. But the scene and the struggle were drawing
+nigh their close. This was the day when they were to separate. It
+had been arranged that William Hinkley, or as he now calls himself,
+William Calvert, was to go into the world. The old man had recalled
+for his sake, many of the memories and associations of his youth.
+He had revived that period--in his case one of equal bitterness
+and pleasure--when, a youth like him he was about to send forth,
+he had been the ardent student in a profession whose honors he had
+so sadly failed to reap. In this profession he was then fortunate
+in having many sterling friends. Some of these were still so. In
+withdrawing from society, he had not withdrawn from all commerce
+with a select and sacred few; and to the friendly counsel and
+protection of these he now deputed the paternal trusts which had
+been just so solemnly surrendered to himself. There were long and
+earnest appeals written to many noble associates--men who had won
+great names by dint of honorable struggle in those fields into which
+the feebler temper of Mr. Calvert did not permit him to penetrate.
+Some of these letters bore for their superscriptions such names as
+the Clays, the Crittendens, and the Metcalfs--the strong men, not
+merely of Kentucky, but of the Union. The good old man sighed as
+he read them over, separately, to his young companion.
+
+"Once I stood with them, and like them--not the meanest among
+them--nay, beloved by them as an associate, and recognised as a
+competitor. But they are here--strong, high, glorious, in the eye
+of the nation--and I am nothing--a poor white-headed pedagogue in
+the obscurest regions of Kentucky. Oh, my son, remember this, and
+be strong! Beware of that weakness, the offspring of a miserable
+vanity, which, claiming too much for itself, can bestow nothing
+upon others. Strive only to meet the exigency, and you will do
+more--you will pass beyond it. Ask not what your fame requires--the
+poor fame of a solitary man struggling like an atom in the bosom
+of the great struggling world--ask only what is due to the task
+which you have assumed, and labor to do that. This is the simple,
+small secret, but be sure it is the one which is of more importance
+than all beside."
+
+The departure of William Hinkley from his native village was kept
+a profound secret from all persons except his adopted father and
+his bosom friend and cousin, Fisherman Ned. We have lost sight of
+this young man for several pages, and, in justice equally to the
+reader and himself, it is necessary that we should hurriedly retrace
+our progress, at least so far as concerns his. We left him, if we
+rememoer, having driven Alfred Stevens from his purpose, riding
+on alone, really with no other aim than to give circulation to his
+limbs and fancies. His ride, if we are to believe his random but
+significant words, and his very knowing looks, was not without
+its results. He had certainly made some discoveries--at least he
+thought and said so; but, in truth, we believe these amounted to
+nothing more than some plausible conjectures as to the route which
+Alfred Stevens was in the habit of pursuing, on those excursions,
+in which the neighbors were disposed to think that there was something
+very mysterious. He certainly had jumped to the conclusion that, on
+such occasions, the journey of Stevens was prolonged to Ellisland;
+and, as such a ride was too long for one of mere pleasure and
+exercise, the next conclusion was, that such a journey had always
+some business in it.
+
+Now, a business that calls for so much secrecy, in a young student
+of theology, was certainly one that could have very little relation
+to the church. So far as Ned Hinkley knew anything of the Decalogue
+it could not well relate to that. There was nothing in St. Paul
+that required him to travel post to Ellisland; though a voyage to
+Tarsus might be justified by the authority of that apostle; and
+the whole proceeding, therefore, appeared to be a mystery in which
+gospelling had very little to do. Very naturally, having arrived
+at this conclusion, Ned Hinkley jumped to another. If the saints
+have nothing to do with this journey of Alfred Stevens, the sinners
+must have. It meant mischief--it was a device of Satan; and the
+matter seemed so clearly made out to his own mind, that he returned
+home with the further conviction, which was equally natural and
+far more easily arrived at, that he was now bound by religion, as
+he had previously been impelled by instinct, to give Stevens "a
+regular licking the very first chance that offered." Still, though
+determined on this measure, he was not unmindful of the necessity
+of making other discoveries; and he returned to Charlemont with a
+countenance big with importance and almost black with mystery.
+
+But the events which had taken place in his absence, and which we
+have already related, almost put his own peculiar purposes out of
+his mind. That William Hinkley should have cowskinned Stevens would
+have been much more gratifying to him could he have been present;
+and he was almost disposed to join with the rest in their outcry
+against this sacrilegious proceeding, for the simple reason, that
+it somewhat anticipated his own rigorous intentions to the same
+effect. He was not less dissatisfied with the next attempt for two
+reasons.
+
+"You might have known, Bill, that a parson won't fight with pistols.
+You might have persuaded him to fist or cudgel, to a fair up and
+down, hand over, fight! That's not so criminal, they think.  I
+heard once of Brother John Cross, himself trying a cudgel bout with
+another parson down in Mississippi, because he took the same text
+out of his mouth, and preached it over the very same day, with
+contrary reason. Everybody said that John Cross served him right,
+and nobody blamed either. But they would have done so if pistols
+had been used. You can't expect parsons or students of religion to
+fight with firearms. Swords, now, they think justifiable, for St.
+Peter used them; but we read nowhere in Old or New Testament of
+their using guns, pistols, or rifles."
+
+"But he consented to fight, and brought his own pistols, Ned?"
+
+"Why, then, didn't you fight? That's the next thing I blame you
+for--that, when you were both ready, and had the puppies in your
+hands, you should have stood looking at each other without taking
+a crack. By jingo, had there been fifty fathers and mothers in
+the bush, I'd have had a crack at him. No, I blame you, William--I
+can't help it. You didn't do right. Oh! if you had only waited for
+me, and let me have fixed it, how finely we would have managed.
+What then, if your father had burst in, it was only shifting the
+barkers from your hands to mine. I'd have banged at him, though
+John Cross himself, and all his flock, stood by and kneed it to
+prevent me. They might have prayed to all eternity without stopping
+me, I tell you."
+
+William Hinkley muttered something about the more impressive sort
+of procedure which his father had resorted to, and a little soreness
+about the parietal bones just at that moment giving a quick impatient
+air to his manner, had the effect of putting an end to all further
+discussion of this topic. Fisherman Ned concluded with a brief
+assurance, meant as consolation, that, when he took up the cudgels,
+his cousin need make himself perfectly easy with the conviction that
+he would balance both accounts very effectually. He had previously
+exhorted William to renew the attempt, though with different weapons,
+to bring his enemy into the field; but against this attempt Mr.
+Calvert had already impressively enjoined him; exacting from him
+a promise that he would not seek Stevens, and would simply abide
+any call for satisfaction which the latter might make. The worthy
+old man was well assured that in Stevens's situation there was very
+little likelihood of a summons to the field from him.
+
+Still, William Hinkley did not deem it becoming in him to leave the
+ground for several days, even after his preparations for departure
+were complete. He loitered in the neighborhood, showed himself
+frequently to his enemy, and, on some of these occasions, was
+subjected to the mortification of beholding the latter on his way
+to the house of Margaret Cooper, with whom, a few moments after, he
+might be seen in lonely rambles by the lake-side and in the wood.
+William had conquered his hopes from this quarter, but he vainly
+endeavored to suppress his pangs.
+
+At length the morning came for his departure. He had seen his mother
+for the last time the night before. They had met at the house of
+the widow Hinkley, between which and that of Calvert, his time had
+been chiefly spent, since the day of his affair with Stevens. His
+determination to depart was carefully concealed from his mother.
+He dreaded to hear her entreaties, and he doubted his own strength
+to endure them. His deportment, however, was sufficiently fond and
+tender, full of pain and passion, to have convinced her, had she
+been at all suspicious of the truth, of the design he meditated.
+But, as it was, it simply satisfied her affections; and the fond
+"good night" with which he addressed her ears at parting, was
+followed by a gush of tears which shocked the more sturdy courage
+of his cousin, and aroused the suspicions of the widow.
+
+"William Hinkley," she said after the mother had gone home--"you
+must be thinking to leave Charlemont. I'm sure of it--I know it."
+
+"If you do, say nothing, dear cousin; it will do no good--it can
+not prevent me now, and will only make our parting more painful."
+
+"Oh, don't fear me," said the widow--"I shan't speak of it, till
+it's known to everybody, for I think you right to go and do just
+as Gran'pa Calvert tells you; but you needn't have made it such a
+secret with me. I've always been too much of your friend to say a
+word."
+
+"Alas!" said the youth mournfully, "until lately, dear cousin,
+I fancied that I had no friends--do not blame me, therefore, if I
+still sometimes act as if I had none."
+
+"You have many friends, William, already--I'm sure you will find
+many more wherever you go; abler friends if not fonder ones, than
+you leave behind you."
+
+The youth threw his arms round the widow's neck and kissed her
+tenderly. Her words sounded in his ears like some melodious prophecy.
+
+"Say no more, cousin," he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm; "I am
+so well pleased to believe what you promise me of the future, that
+I am willing to believe all. God bless you. I will never forget
+you."
+
+The parting with Calvert was more touching in reality, but with
+fewer of the external signs of feeling. A few words, a single
+embrace and squeeze of the hand, and they separated; the old man
+hiding himself and his feelings in the dimness of his secluded
+abode, while his adopted son, with whom Ned Hinkley rode a brief
+distance on his way, struck spurs into his steed, as if to lose, in
+the rapid motion of the animal, the slow, sad feelings which were
+pressing heavily upon his heart. He had left Charlemont for ever.
+He had left it under circumstances of doubt, and despondency--stung
+by injustice, and baffled in the first ardent hopes of his youthful
+mind. "The world was all before him, where to choose." Let us not
+doubt that the benignant Providence is still his guide.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CONQUEST.
+
+
+
+
+
+The progress of events and our story necessarily brings as back
+to Charlemont. We shall lose sight of William Hinkley, henceforth
+Calvert, for some time; and here, par parenthese, let us say to
+our readers that this story being drawn from veritable life, will
+lack some of that compactness and close fitness of parts which
+make our novels too much resemble the course of a common law case.
+Instead of having our characters always at hand, at the proper
+moment, to do the business of the artist, like so many puppets,
+each working on a convenient wire, and waiting to be whistled in
+upon the scene, we shall find them sometimes absent, as we do in
+real life when their presence is most seriously desired, and when
+the reader would perhaps prefer that they should come in, to meet
+or make emergencies. Some are gone whom we should rather see; some
+present, whose absence, in the language of the Irishman, would be
+the best company they could give us; and some, not forthcoming,
+like the spirits of Owen Glendower, even when most stoutly called
+for. The vast deeps of human progress do not release their tenants
+at the beck and call of ordinary magicians, and we, who endeavor
+to describe events as we find them, must be content to take them
+and persons, too, only when they are willing. Were we writing the
+dramatic romance, we should be required to keep William Hinkley
+always at hand, as a convenient foil to Alfred Stevens. He should
+watch his progress; pursue his sinuosities of course; trace him
+out in all his ill-favored purposes, and be ready, at the first
+act--having, like the falcon, by frequent and constantly-ascending
+gyrations, reached the point of command--to pounce down upon the
+fated quarry, and end the story and the strife together. But ours
+is a social narrative, where people come and go without much regard
+to the unities, and without asking leave of the manager. William
+Hinkley, too, is a mere man and no hero. He has no time to spare,
+and he is conscious that he has already wasted too much. He has
+work to do and is gone to do it. Let it console the reader, in his
+absence, to know that he WILL do it--that his promise is a good
+one--and that we have already been shown, in the dim perspective
+of the future, glimpses of his course which compensate him for his
+mishaps, and gladden the heart of his adopted father, by confirming
+its prophecies and hopes.
+
+The same fates which deny that he should realize the first fancies
+of his boyhood, are, in the end, perhaps, not a jot kinder to others
+whom they now rather seem to favor. His absence did not stop the
+social machine of Charlemont from travelling on very much as before.
+There was a shadow over his mother's heart, and his disappearance
+rather aroused some misgiving and self-reproachful sensations in
+that of his father. Mr. Calvert, too, had his touch of hypochondria
+in consequence of his increased loneliness, and Ned Hinkley's
+fighting monomania underwent startling increase; but, with the rest,
+the wheel went on without much sensible difference. The truth is,
+that, however mortifying the truth may be, the best of us makes but
+a very small sensation in his absence. Death is a longer absence,
+in which our friends either forget us, or recollect our vices. Our
+virtues are best acknowledged when we are standing nigh and ready
+to enforce them. Like the argumentative eloquence of the Eighth
+Harry, they are never effectual until the halberdiers clinch their
+rivets forcibly.
+
+It does not necessarily impugn the benevolence or wisdom of Providence
+to show that crime is successful for a season in its purposes. Vice
+may prevail, and victims perish, without necessarily disparaging the
+career, or impeding the progress of virtue. To show that innocence
+may fall, is sometimes to strengthen innocence, so that it may
+stand against all assailants. To show vice, even in its moments of
+success, is not necessarily to show that such success is desirable.
+Far from it! As none of us can look very deeply into the future,
+so it happens that the boon for which we pray sometimes turns out
+to be our bane; while the hardship and suffering, whose approach
+we deprecate in sackcloth and ashes, may come with healing on their
+wings, and afford us a dearer blessing than any ever yet depicted
+in the loom of a sanguine and brilliant imagination.
+
+We are, after all, humbling as this fact may be to our clamorous
+vanity, only so many agents and instruments, blind, and scuffling
+vainly in our blindness, in the perpetual law of progress. As a
+soul never dies, so it is never useless or unemployed. The Deity
+is no more profligate in the matter of souls than he is in that
+of seeds. They pass, by periodical transitions, from body to body;
+perhaps from sphere to sphere; and as the performance of their trusts
+have been praiseworthy or censurable, so will be the character of
+their trusts in future. He who has shown himself worthy of confidence
+in one state, will probably acquire a corresponding increase of
+responsibility in another. He who has betrayed his trusts or impaired
+them, will share less of the privileges of the great moral credit
+system.
+
+In all these transitions, however, work is to be done. The fact that
+there is a trust, implies duty and performance; and the practice
+of virtue is nothing more than the performance of this work to the
+best of our abilities. Well, we do not do our work. We fail in our
+trusts. We abuse tuem. Such a man as Alfred Stevens abuses them.
+Such a woman as Margaret Cooper fails in them. What then? Do we
+destroy the slave who fails in his duty, or chasten him, and give
+him inferior trusts? Do you suppose that the Deity is more profligate
+in souls than in seeds--that he creates and sends forth millions
+of new souls, annually, in place of those which have gone astray?
+Hardly so! He is too good an economist for that. We learn this from
+all the analogies. As a soul can not perish, so it never remains
+unemployed. It still works, though its labors may be confined to
+a treadmill.
+
+The mere novel-reader may regard all this as so much unnecessary
+digression. But let him not deceive himself. It would be the most
+humiliating and painful thought, indeed, could we believe that the
+genius which informs and delights us--which guides the bark of state
+through a thousand storms and dangers to its port of safety--which
+conquers and commands--which sings in melodies that make melodies
+in human hearts for thousands of succeeding years--is suddenly to
+be suspended--to have no more employment--to do no more work--guide
+no more states--make no more melodies! Nay, the pang would be scarcely
+less to believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred Stevens,
+or a wild, irregular genius, like that of Margaret Cooper--because
+of its erring, either through perversity or blindness, is wholly
+to become defunct, so far as employment is concerned--that they
+are to be deprived of all privilege of working up to the lost
+places--regaining the squandered talents--atoning, by industry and
+humble desire, the errors and deficiencies of the past! We rather
+believe that heaven is a world where the labors are more elevated,
+the necessities less degrading; that it is no more permanent than
+what we esteem present life; nay, that it is destined to other
+transitions; that we may still ascend, on and on, and that each
+heaven has its higher heaven yet. We believe that our immortality
+is from the beginning; that time is only a periodical step in
+eternity----that transition is the true meaning of life--and death
+nothing more than a sign of progress. It may be an upward or a
+downward progress, but it is not a toilsome march to a mere sleep.
+Lavish as is the bounty of God, and boundless as are his resources,
+there is nothing of him that we do know which can justify the idea
+of such utter profligacy of material.
+
+We transgress. Our business is with the present doings of our
+dramatis persons and not with the future employment of their souls.
+Still, we believe, the doctrine which we teach not only to be more
+rational, but absolutely more moral than the conjectures on this
+subject which are in ordinary use. More rational as relates to
+the characteristics of the Deity, and more moral as it affects the
+conduct and the purposes of man himself. There is something grand
+beyond all things else, in the conception of this eternal progress
+of the individual nature; its passage from condition to condition;
+sphere to sphere; life to life; always busy, working for the mighty
+Master; falling and sinking to mere menial toils, or achieving and
+rising to more noble trusts; but, at all events, still working in
+some way in the great world-plantation, and under the direct eye
+of the sovereign World-Planter. The torture of souls on the one
+hand, and the singing of psalms on the other, may be doctrines
+infinitely more orthodox; but, to our mind, they seem immeasurably
+inferior in grandeur, in propriety, in noble conception of the
+appointments of the creature, and the wondrous and lovely designs
+of the benignant Father.
+
+The defeat of such a soul as that of Margaret Cooper can surely be
+a temporary defeat only. It will regain strength, it must rise in
+the future, it must recover the lost ground, and reassert the empire
+whose sway it has unwillingly abandoned; for it is not through
+will, wholly, by which we lose the moral eminence. Something is
+due to human weaknesses; to the blindness in which a noble spirit
+is sometimes suffered to grow into stature; disproportioned
+stature--that, reaching to heaven, is yet shaken down and overthrown
+by the merest breath of storm that sweeps suddenly beneath its
+skies. The very hopelessness of Margaret Cooper's ambition, which
+led her to misanthropy, was the source of an ever-fertile and
+upspringing confidence. Thus it was that the favoring opinions which
+Alfred Stevens expressed--a favoring opinion expressed by one whom
+she soon discovered was well able to form one--accompanied by an
+assurance that the dream of fame which her wild imagination had
+formed should certainly be realized, gave him a large power over
+her confidence. Her passion was sway--the sway of mind over mind--of
+genius over sympathy--of the syren Genius over the subject Love.
+It was this passion which had made her proud, which had filled her
+mind with visions, and yielded to her a world by itself, and like
+no other, filled with all forms of worship and attraction; chivalrous
+faith, unflagging zeal, generous confidence, pure spirits, and the
+most unquestioning loyalty! Ignorant of the world which she had not
+seen, and of those movements of human passion which she had really
+never felt, she naturally regarded Alfred Stevens as one of the
+noble representatives of that imaginary empire which her genius
+continually brought before her eyes. She saw in him the embodiment
+of that faith in her intellect which it was the first and last hope
+of her intellect to inspire; and seeing thus, it will be easy to
+believe that her full heart, which, hitherto, had poured itself
+forth on rocks, and trees, and solitary places, forgetful of all
+prudence--a lesson which she had never learned--and rejoicing in
+the sympathy of a being like herself, now gushed forth with all the
+volume of its impatient fullness.  The adroit art of her companion
+led her for ever into herself; she was continually summoned to pour
+forth the treasures of her mind and soul; and, toiling in the same
+sort of egoisme in which her life heretofore had been consumed,
+she was necessarily diverted from all doubts or apprehensions of
+the occult purposes of him who had thus beguiled her over the long
+frequented paths. As the great secret of success with the mere
+worldling, is to pry into the secret of his neighbor while carefully
+concealing his own, so it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to
+be soon blinded to a purpose which its own ardent nature neither
+allows it to suspect nor penetrate.  Enthusiasm is a thing of utter
+confidence; it has no suspicion; it sets no watch on other hearts;
+it is too constantly employed in pouring forth the treasures of its
+own. It is easy, therefore, to deceive and betray it, to beguile
+it into confidence, and turn all its revelations against itself.
+How far the frequency of this usage in the world makes it honorable,
+is a question which we need not discuss on this occasion.
+
+Alfred Stevens had now been for some weeks in the village
+of Charlemont, where, in the meantime, he had become an object
+of constantly-increasing interest. The men shrank from him with a
+feeling of inferiority; the women--the young ones being understood--shrank
+from him also, but with that natural art of the sex which invites
+pursuit, and strives to conquer even in flight. But it was soon
+evident enough that Stevens bestowed his best regards solely upon
+Margaret Cooper. If he sought the rest, it was simply in compliance
+with those seeming duties of his ostensible profession which were
+necessary to maintain appearances. Whether he loved Margaret Cooper
+or not, he soon found a pleasure in her society which he sought
+for in no other quarter of the village. The days, in spite of the
+strife with William Hinkley, flew by with equal pleasantness and
+rapidity to both. The unsophisticated mind of Margaret Cooper left
+her sensible to few restraints upon their ordinary intercourse;
+and, indeed, if she did know or regard them for an instant, it was
+only to consider them as necessary restraints for the protection
+of the ignorant and feeble of her sex--a class in which she never
+once thought to include herself. Her attachment to Alfred Stevens,
+though it first arose from the pleasure which her mind derived
+from its intercourse with his, and not from any of those nice and
+curious sympathies of temperament and taste which are supposed to
+constitute the essence and comprise the secret of love, was yet
+sufficient to blind her judgment to the risks of feeling, if nothing
+more, which were likely to arise from their hourly-increasing
+intimacy; and she wandered with him into the devious woods, and
+they walked by moonlight among the solemn-shaded hills, and the
+unconscious girl had no sort of apprehension that the spells of an
+enslaving passion were rapidly passing over her soul.
+
+How should she apprehend such spells? how break them? For the first
+time in her life had she found intellectual sympathy--the only
+moral response which her heart longed to hear. For the first time
+had she encountered a mind which could do justice to, and correspond
+on anything like equal terms with, her own. How could she think
+that evil would ensue from an acquisition which yielded her the
+only communion which she had ever craved Her confidence in herself,
+in her own strength, and her ignorance of her own passions, were
+sufficient to render her feelings secure; and then she was too well
+satisfied of the superiority and nobleness of his. But, in truth,
+she never thought upon the subject. Her mind dwelt only on the
+divine forms and images of poetry. The ideal world had superseded,
+not only the dangers, but the very aspect, of the real. Under the
+magic action of her fancy, she had come to dwell
+
+   "With those gay creatures of the element
+    That in the colors of the rainbow live,
+    And play i' the plighted clouds"--
+
+she had come to speak only in the one language, and of the one
+topic; and, believing now that she had an auditor equally able to
+comprehend and willing to sympathize with her cravings, she gave
+free scope to the utterance of her fancies, and to the headlong
+impulse of that imagination which had never felt the curb.
+
+The young heart, not yet chilled by the world's denials, will readily
+comprehend the beguiling influence of the dreaming and enthusiastic
+nature of some dear spirit, in whose faith it has full confidence,
+and whose tastes are kindred with its own. How sweet the luxury
+of moonlight in commerce with such a congenial spirit! how heavenly
+the occasional breath of the sweet southwest! how gentle and soothing
+fond the whispers of night--the twiring progress of sad-shining
+stars--the gentle sway of winds among the tree-tops--the plaintive
+moan of billows, as they gather and disperse themselves along the
+shores! To speak of these delights; to walk hand-in-hand along the
+gray sands by the seaside, and whisper in murmuring tones, that seem
+to gather sympathies from those of ocean; to guide the eye of the
+beloved associate to the sudden object; to challenge the kindred
+fancy which comments upon our own; to remember together, and repeat,
+the happy verse of inspired poets, speaking of the scene, and to
+the awakened heart which feels it; and, more, to pour forth one's
+own inspirations in the language of tenderness and song, and awaken
+in the heart of our companion the rapture to which our own has
+given speech--these, which are subjects of mock and scorn to the
+worldling, are substantial though not enduring joys to the young
+and ardent nature.
+
+In this communion, with all her pride, strength, and confidence,
+Margaret Cooper was the merest child. Without a feeling of guile,
+she was dreaming of the greatness which her ambition craved,
+and telling her dreams, with all the artless freedom of the child
+who has some golden fancy of the future, which it seeks to have
+confirmed by the lips of experience. The wily Stevens led her on,
+gave stimulus to her enthusiasm, made her dreams become reasonable
+in her eyes, and laughed at them in his secret heart. She sung at
+his suggestion, and sang her own verses with all that natural tremor
+which even the most self-assured poet feels on such an occasion.
+
+"Beautiful!" the arch-hypocrite would exclaim, as if unconscious
+of utterance; "beautiful!" and his hand would possess itself of
+the trembling fingers of hers. "But beautiful as it is, Margaret,
+I am sure that it is nothing to what you could do under more
+auspicious circumstances."
+
+"Ah! if there were ears to hear, if there were hearts to feel, and
+eyes to weep, I feel, I know, what might be done. No, no! this is
+nothing. This is the work of a child."
+
+"Nay, Margaret, if the work of a child, it is that of a child of
+genius."
+
+"Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive me. I am too
+willing to believe you, for it is so dear a feeling to think that
+I too am a poet. Yet, at the first, I had not the smallest notion
+of this kind: I neither knew what poetry was, nor felt the desire
+to be a poet. Yet I yearned with strange feelings, which uttered
+themselves in that form ere I had seen books or read the verses
+of others. It was an instinct that led me as it would. I sometimes
+fear that I have been foolish in obeying it; for oh, what has it
+brought me? What am I? what are my joys? I am lonely even with my
+companions. I share not the sports and feel not the things which
+delight my sex. Their dances and frolics give me no pleasure. I
+have no sympathy with them or their cares. I go apart--I am here
+on the hills, or deep in the forests--sad, lonely, scarcely knowing
+what I am, and what I desire."
+
+"You are not alone, nor are your pleasures less acute than theirs.
+If they laugh, their laughter ends in sleep. If you are sad, you lose
+not the slightest faculty of perception or sensibility, but rather
+gain them in consequence. Laughter and tears are signs neither
+of happiness nor grief, and as frequently result from absolute
+indifference as from any active emotion. If you are absent from them,
+you have better company. You can summon spirits to your communion,
+Margaret; noble thoughts attend you; eyes that cheer, lips that
+assure you, and whispers, from unknown attendants, that bid you be
+of good heart, for the good time is coming. Ah! Margaret, believe
+me when I tell you that time is at hand. Such a genius as yours,
+such a spirit, can not always be buried in these woods."
+
+It was in such artful language as this that the arch-hypocrite
+flattered and beguiled her. They were wandering along the edge of
+the streamlet to which we have more than once conducted the footsteps
+of the reader. The sun was about setting. The autumn air was mild
+with a gentle breathing from the south. The woods were still and
+meek as the slumbers of an infant. The quiet of the scene harmonized
+with the temper of their thoughts and feelings. They sat upon
+a fragment of the rock. Margaret was silent, but her eyes were
+glistening bright--not with hope only, but with that first glimmering
+consciousness of a warmer feeling, which gives a purple light to
+hope, and makes the heart tremble, for the first time, with its
+own expectations. It did not escape Alfred Stevens that, for the
+first time, her eye sank beneath his glance; for the first time
+there was a slight flush upon her cheek. He was careful not to
+startle and alarm the consciousness which these signs indicated.
+The first feeling which the young heart has of its dependence upon
+another is one little short of terror; it is a feeling which wakens
+up suspicion, and puts all the senses upon the watch. To appear
+to perceive this emotion is to make it circumspect; to disarm it,
+one must wear the aspect of unconsciousness. The wily Stevens,
+practised in the game, and master of the nature of the unsuspecting
+girl, betrayed in his looks none of the intelligence which he felt.
+If he uttered himself in the language of admiration, it was that
+admiration which would be natural to a profound adorer of literature
+and all its professors. His words were those of the amateur:--
+
+"I can not understand, Margaret, how you have studied--how you have
+learned so much--your books are few--you have had no masters.  I
+never met in my life with so remarkable an instance of unassisted
+endeavor."
+
+"My books were hero in the woods--among these old rocks. My teacher
+was solitude. Ah! there is no teacher like one's own heart. My
+instinct made me feel my deficiencies--my deficiencies taught me
+contemplation--and from contemplation came thoughts and cravings,
+and you know, when the consciousness of our lack is greatest, then,
+even the dumb man finds a voice. I found my voice in consequence
+of my wants. My language you see is that of complaint only."
+
+"And a sweet and noble language it is, Margaret; but it is not in
+poetry alone that your utterance is so distinct and beautiful--you
+sing too with a taste as well as power which would prove that
+contemplation was as happy in bringing about perfection in the one
+as in the other art. Do sing me, Margaret, that little ditty which
+you sang here the other night?"
+
+His hand gently detained and pressed hers as he urged the request.
+
+"I would rather not sing to-night," she replied, "I do not feel
+as if I could, and I trust altogether to feeling. I will sing for
+you some other time when you do not ask, and, perhaps would prefer
+not to hear me."
+
+"To hear you at all, Margaret, is music to my ears."
+
+She was silent, and her fingers made a slight movement to detach
+themselves from his.
+
+"No, Margaret, do not withdraw them! Let me detain them
+thus--longer--for ever! My admiration of you has been too deeply
+felt not to have been too clearly shown, Your genius is too dear
+to me now to suffer me to lose it. Margaret--dear Margaret!"
+
+She spoke not--her breathing became quick and hard.
+
+"You do not speak, let me hope that you are not angry with me?"
+
+"No, no!" she whispered faintly. He continued with more boldness,
+and while he spoke, his arm encircled her waist.
+
+"A blessed chance brought me to your village. I saw you and returned.
+I chose a disguise in which I might study you, and see how far the
+treasures of your mind confirmed the noble promise of your face.
+They have done more. Like him who finds the precious ore among the
+mountains, I can not part with you so found. I must tear you from
+the soil. I must bear you with me. You must be mine, Margaret--you
+must go with me where the world will see, and envy me my prize."
+
+He pressed her to his bosom. She struggled slightly.
+
+"Do not, do not, Alfred Stevens, do not press me--do not keep
+me. You think too much of me. I am no treasure--alas! this is all
+deception. You can not--can not desire it?"
+
+"Do I not! Ah! Margaret, what else do I desire now? Do you think
+me only what I appear in Charlemont?"
+
+"No! no!"
+
+"I have the power of a name, Margaret, in my profession--among a
+numerous people--and that power is growing into wealth and sway. I
+am feared and honored, loved by some, almost worshipped by others;
+and what has led me from this sway, to linger among these hills--to
+waste hours so precious to ambition--to risk the influence which I
+had already secured--what, but a higher impulse--a dearer prospect--a
+treasure, Margaret, of equal beauty and genius."
+
+Her face was hidden upon his bosom. He felt the beating of her
+heart against his hand.
+
+"If you have a genius for song, Margaret Cooper, I, too, am not
+without my boast. In my profession, men speak of my eloquence as
+that of a genius which has few equals, and no superior."
+
+"I know it--it must be so!"
+
+"Move me not to boast, dear Margaret; it is in your ears only that
+I do so--and only to assure you that, in listening to my love, you
+do not yield to one utterly obscure, and wanting in claims, which,
+as yours must be finally, are already held to be established and
+worthy of the best admiration of the intelligent and wise. Do you
+hear me, Margaret?"
+
+"I do, I do! It must be as you say. But of love I have thought
+nothing. No, no! I know not, Alfred Stevens, if I love or not--if
+I can love."
+
+"You mistake, Margaret. It is in the heart that the head finds its
+inspiration. Mere intellect makes not genius. All the intellect in
+the world would fail of this divine consummation. It is from the
+fountains of feeling that poetry drinks her inspiration. It is at
+the altars of love that the genius of song first bends in adoration.
+You have loved, Margaret, from the first moment when you sung.
+It did not alter the case that there was no object of sight.  The
+image was in your mind--in your hope. One sometimes goes through
+life without ever meeting the human counterpart of this ideal; and
+the language of such a heart will be that of chagrin--distaste of
+life--misanthropy, and a general scorn of his own nature. Such,
+I trust, is not your destiny. No, Margaret, that is impossible. I
+take your doubt as my answer, and unless your own lips undeceive
+me, dearest Margaret, I will believe that your love is willing to
+requite my own."
+
+She was actually sobbing on his breast. With an effort she struggled
+into utterance.
+
+"My heart is so full, my feelings are so strange--oh! Alfred Stevens,
+I never fancied I could be so weak."
+
+"So weak--to love! surely, Margaret, you mistake the word. It is in
+loving only that the heart finds its strength. Love is the heart's
+sole business; and not to exercise it in its duties is to impair its
+faculties, and deprive it equally of its pleasures and its tasks.
+Oh, I will teach you of the uses of this little heart of yours,
+dear Margaret--ay, till it grow big with its own capacity to teach.
+We will inform each other, every hour, of some new impulses and
+objects. Our dreams, our hopes, our fears, and our desires, ah!
+Margaret--what a study of love will these afford us. Nor to love
+only. Ah! dearest, when your muse shall have its audience, its
+numerous watching eyes and eager ears, then shall you discover how
+much richer will be the strain from your lips once informed by the
+gushing fullness of this throbbing heart."
+
+She murmured fondly in his embrace, "Ah! I ask no other eyes and
+ears than yours."
+
+In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such indeed was her
+feeling. He gathered her up closer in his arms. He pressed his lips
+upon the rich ripe beauties of hers, as some hungering bee, darting
+upon the yet unrifled flower which it first finds in the shadows
+of the forest, clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness,
+as if appetite could only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled
+and freed herself from his embrace: but, returning home that
+evening her eye was cast upon the ground; her step was set down
+hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her heart; a timid expression
+in her face and manner! These were proofs of the discovery which
+she then seems to have made for the first time, that there is a
+power stronger than mere human will--a power that controls genius;
+that mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is independent
+of the loss of friends! She now first knew her weakness. She had
+felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever
+his hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes
+forth to victory.
+
+Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and
+turned her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which,
+with every movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon
+her cheek. Yet, while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed
+and trembled with the birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how sweet
+is our first secret pleasure--shared by one other only--sweet to
+that other as to ourself--so precious to him also. To be carried
+into our chamber--to be set up ostentatiously--there, where none
+but ourselves may see--to be an object of our constant tendance,
+careful idolatry, keen suspicion, delighted worship!
+
+Ah! but if the other makes it no idol--his toy only--what shall
+follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse,
+humiliation, perhaps death!--alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love
+which had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was
+no divinity with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such
+things, but like the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the
+good doctrines which he can not feel and is slow to practise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+FALL.
+
+
+
+
+
+We should speak unprofitably and with little prospect of being
+understood, did our readers require to be told, that there is a
+certain impatient and gnawing restlessness in the heart of love,
+which keeps it for ever feverish and anxious. Where this passion
+is associated with a warm, enthusiastic genius, owning the poetic
+temperament, the anxiety is proportionatly greater. The ideal of
+the mind is a sort of classical image of perfect loveliness, chaste,
+sweet, commanding, but, how cold! But love gives life to this
+image, even as the warm rays of the sun falling upon the sullen
+lips of the Memnon, compel its utterance in music. It not only looks
+beauty--it breathes it. It is not only the aspect of the Apollo, it
+is the god himself; his full lyre strung, his golden bow quivering
+at his back with the majesty of his motion; and his lips parting
+with the song which shall make the ravished spheres stoop, and
+gather round to listen.
+
+Hitherto Margaret Cooper had been a girl of strong will; will
+nursed in solitude, and by the wrong-headed indulgence of a vain
+and foolish mother. She was conscious of that bounding, bursting
+soul of genius which possessed her bosom; that strange, moody, and
+capricious god; pent-up, denied, crying evermore for utterance,
+with a breath more painful to endure, because of the suppression.
+This consciousness, with the feeling of denial which attended it,
+had cast a gloomy intensity over her features not less than her
+mind. The belief that she was possessed of treasures which were
+unvalued--that she had powers which were never to be exercised--that
+with a song such as might startle an empire, she was yet doomed
+to a silent and senseless auditory of rocks and trees; this belief
+had brought with it a moody arrogance of temper which had made
+itself felt by all around her. In one hour this mood had departed.
+Ambition and love became united for a common purpose; for the object
+of the latter, was also the profound admirer of the former.
+
+The anxious restlessness which her newly-acquired sensations
+occasioned in her bosom, was not diminished by a renewal of those
+tender interviews with her lover, which we have endeavored, though
+so faultily, already to describe. Evening after evening found them
+together; the wily hypocrite still stimulating, by his glozing
+artifices, the ruling passion for fame, which, in her bosom, was
+only temporarily subservient to love, while he drank his precious
+reward from her warm, lovely, and still-blushing lips and cheeks.
+The very isolation in which she had previously dwelt in Charlemont,
+rendered the society of Stevens still more dear to her heart. She
+was no longer alone--no longer unknown--not now unappreciated in
+that respect in which hitherto she felt her great denial. "Here is
+one--himself a genius--who can do justice to mine."
+
+The young poet who finds an auditor, where he has never had one
+before, may be likened to a blind man suddenly put in possession
+of his sight. He sees sun and moon and stars, the forms of beauty,
+the images of grace; and his soul grows intoxicated with the
+wonders of its new empire. What does he owe to him who puts him in
+possession of these treasures? who has given him his sight? Love,
+devotion, all that his full heart has to pay of homage and affection.
+
+Such was very much the relation which Margaret Cooper bore to
+Alfred Stevens; and when, by his professions of love, he left the
+shows of his admiration no longer doubtful, she was at once and
+entirely his. She was no longer the self-willed, imperious damsel,
+full of defiance, dreaming of admiration only, scornful of the
+inferior, and challenging the regards of equals. She was now a timid,
+trembling girl--a dependant, such as the devoted heart must ever
+be, waiting for the sign to speak, looking eagerly for the smile
+to reward her sweetest utterance. If now she walked with Stevens,
+she no longer led the way; she hung a little backward, though she
+grasped his arm--nay, even when her hand was covered with a gentle
+pressure in the folds of his. If she sung, she did not venture to
+meet his eyes, which she FELT must be upon hers, and now it was no
+longer her desire that the village damsels should behold them as
+they went forth together on their rambles. She no longer met their
+cunning and significant smiles with confidence and pride, but with
+faltering looks, and with cheeks covered with blushes. Great, indeed,
+was the change which had come over that once proud spirit--change
+surprising to all, but as natural as any other of the thousand changes
+which are produced in the progress of moments by the arch-magician,
+Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the ordinary topics
+of the youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to
+the eagle, soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming
+thunder-storm; to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness,
+which no foot travelled but her own; to the silent glooms of the
+forest--to the majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The
+dove and the zephyr now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly
+closed it. She was changed from what she was. The affections had
+suddenly bounded into being, trampling the petty vanities underfoot;
+and those first lessons of humility which are taught by love, had
+subdued a spirit which, hitherto, had never known control.
+
+Alfred Stevens soon perceived how complete was his victory.  He
+soon saw the extent of that sudden change which had come over
+her character. Hitherto, she had been the orator. When they stood
+together by the lake-side, or upon the rock, it was her finger
+which had pointed out the objects for contemplation; it was her
+voice whose eloquence had charmed the ear, dilating upon the beauties
+or the wonders which they surveyed. She was now no longer eloquent
+in words. But she looked a deeper eloquence by far than any words
+could embody. He was now the speaker; and regarding him through the
+favoring media of kindled affections, it seemed to her ear, that
+there was no eloquence so sweet as his. He spoke briefly of the
+natural beauties by which they were surrounded.
+
+"Trees, rocks, the valley and the hill, all realms of solitude
+and shade, inspire enthusiasm and ardor in the imaginative spirit.
+They are beneficial for this purpose. For the training of a great
+poet they are necessary. They have the effect of lifting the mind
+to the contemplation of vastness, depth, height, profundity. This
+produces an intensity of mood--the natural result of any association
+between our own feelings and such objects as are lofty and noble in
+the external world. The feelings and passions as they are influenced
+by the petty play of society, which diffuses their power and breaks
+their lights into little, become concentrated on the noble and the
+grand. Serious earnestness of nature becomes habitual--the heart
+flings itself into all the subjects of its interest--it trifles
+with none--all its labors become sacred in its eyes, and the latest
+object of study and analysis is that which is always most important.
+The effect of this training in youth on the poetic mind, is to
+the last degree beneficial; since, without a degree of seriousness
+amounting to intensity--without a hearty faith in the importance
+of what is to be done--without a passionate fullness of soul which
+drives one to his task--there will be no truthfulness, no eloquence,
+no concentrated thought and permanent achievement. With, you, dear
+Margaret, such has already been the effect. You shrink from the
+ordinary enjoyments of society. Their bald chat distresses you, as
+the chatter of so many jays. You prefer the solitude which feeds
+the serious mood which you love, and enables your imagination,
+unrepressed by the presence of shallow witlings, to evoke its
+agents from storm and shadow--from deep forest and lonesome lake--to
+minister to the cravings of an excited heart, and a soaring and
+ambitious fancy."
+
+"Oh, how truly, Alfred, do you speak it," she murmured as he closed.
+
+"So far, so good; but, dear Margaret--there are other subjects
+of study which are equally necessary for the great poet. The wild
+aspects of nature are such as are of use in the first years of his
+probation. To grow up in the woods and among the rocks, so that a
+hearty simplicity, an earnest directness, with a constant habit of
+contemplation should be permanently formed, is a first and necessary
+object. But it is in this training as in every other. There are
+successive steps. There is a law of progressive advance. You must
+not stop there. The greatest moral study for the poet must follow.
+This is the study of man in society--in the great world--where he
+puts on a thousand various aspects--far other than those which are
+seen in the country--in correspondence with the thousand shapes of
+fortune, necessity, or caprice, which attend him there. Indeed, it
+may safely be said, that he never knows one half of the responsibility
+of his tasks who toils without the presence of those for whom he
+toils. It is in the neighborhood of man that we feel his and our
+importance. It is while we are watching his strifes and struggles
+that we see the awful importance of his destiny; and the great trusts
+of self, and truth, and the future, which have been delivered to
+his hands. Here you do not see man. You see certain shapes, which
+are employed in raising hay, turnips, and potatoes; which eat and
+drink very much as man does; but which, as they suffer to sleep
+and rest most of those latent faculties, the exercise of which
+can alone establish the superiority of the intellectual over the
+animal nature, so they have no more right to the name of man than
+any other of those animals who eat as industriously, and sleep
+as profoundly, as themselves. The contemplation of the superior
+being, engaged in superior toils, awakens superior faculties in the
+observer. He who sees nothing but the gathering of turnips will
+think of nothing but turnips. As we enlarge the sphere of our
+observation, the faculty of thought becomes expanded. You will
+discover this wonderful change when you go into the world. Hitherto,
+your inspirers have been these groves, these rocks, lakes, trees,
+and silent places. But, when you sit amid crowds of bright-eyed,
+full-minded, and admiring people; when you see the eyes of thousands
+looking for the light to shine from yours; hanging, with a delight
+that still hungers, on the words of truth and beauty which fall
+from your lips--then, then only, dearest Margaret, will you discover
+the true sources of inspiration and of fame."
+
+"Ah!" she murmured despondingly--"you daunt me when you speak of
+these crowds--crowds of the intellectual and the wise. What should
+I be--how would I appear among them?"
+
+"As you appear to me, Margaret--their queen, their idol, their
+divinity, not less a beauty than a muse?"
+
+The raptures which Stevens expressed seemed to justify the embrace
+which followed it; and it was some moments before she again spoke.
+When she did the same subject was running in her mind.
+
+"Ah! Alfred, still I fear!"
+
+"Fear nothing, Margaret. It will be as I tell you--as I promise!
+If I deceive you, I deceive myself. Is it not for the wife of my
+bosom that I expect this homage?"
+
+Her murmurs were unheard. They strolled on--still deeper into
+the mazes of the forest, and the broad disk of the moon, suddenly
+gleaming, yellow, through the tops of the trees, sirprised them in
+their wanderings.
+
+"How beautiful!" he exclaimed. "Let us sit here, dearest Margaret.
+The rock here is smooth and covered with the softest lichen.  A
+perfect carpet of it is at our feet, and the brooklet makes the
+sweetest murmuring as it glides onward through the grove, telling
+all the while, like some silly schoolgirl, where you may look for
+it. See the little drops of moonlight falling here--and there in
+the small openings of the forest, and lying upon the greensward
+like so many scattered bits of silver. One might take it for fairy
+coin. And, do you note the soft breeze that seems to rise with the
+moon as from some Cytherean isle, breathing of love, love only--love
+never perishing!"
+
+"Ah! were it so, Alfred!"
+
+"Is it not, Margaret? If I could fancy that you would cease to love
+me or I you--could I think that these dear joys were to end--but
+no! no! let us not think of it. It is too sweet to believe, and
+the distrust seems as unholy as it is unwholesome. That bright soft
+planet seems to persuade to confidence as it inspires love. Do you
+not feel your heart soften in the moonlight, Margaret? your eye
+glistens, dearest--and your heart, I know, must be touched. It
+is--I feel its beating! What a tumult, dear Margaret, is here!"
+
+"Do not, do not!" she murmured, gently striving to disengage herself
+from his grasp.
+
+"No! no!--move not, dearest," he replied in a subdued tone--a
+murmur most like hers. "Are we not happy? Is there anything, dear
+Margaret, which we could wish for?"
+
+"Nothing! nothing!"
+
+"Ah! what a blessed chance it was that brought me to these hills.
+I never lived till now. I had my joys, Margaret--my triumphs! I
+freely yield them to the past! I care for them no more! They are
+no longer joys or triumphs! Yes, Margaret you have changed my heart
+within me. Even fame which I so much worshipped is forgotten."
+
+"Say not that; oh, say not that!" she exclaimed, but still in
+subdued accents.
+
+"I must--it is too far true. I could give up the shout of applause--the
+honor of popular favor--the voice of a people's approbation--the
+shining display and the golden honor--all, dear Margaret, sooner
+than part with you."
+
+"But you need not give them up, Alfred."
+
+"Ah, dearest, but I have no soul for them now. You are alone my
+soul, my saint--the one dear object, desire, and pride, and conquest."
+
+"Alas! and have you not conquered, Alfred?"
+
+"Sweet! do I not say that I am content to forfeit all honors,
+triumphs, applauses--all that was so dear to me before--and only
+in the fond faith that I had conquered? You are mine--you tell me
+so with your dear lips--I have you in my fond embrace--ah! do not
+talk to me again of fame."
+
+"I were untrue to you as to myself, dear Alfred, did I not. No!
+with your talents, to forego their uses--to deliver yourself up to
+love wholly, were as criminal as it would be unwise."
+
+"You shall be my inspiration then, dear Margaret. These lips shall
+send me to the forum--these eyes shall reward me with smiles when
+I return. Your applause shall be to me a dearer triumph than all
+the clamors of the populace."
+
+"Let us return home--it is late."
+
+"Not so!--and why should we go? What is sleep to us but loss? What
+the dull hours, spent after the ordinary fashion, among ordinary
+people. Could any scene be more beautiful than this--ah! can any
+feeling be more sweet? Is it not so to you, dearest? tell me--nay,
+do not tell me--if you love as I do, you can not leave me--not
+now--not thus--while such is the beauty of earth and heaven--while
+such are the rich joys clustering in our hearts. Nay, while, in
+that hallowing moonlight, I gaze upon thy dark eyes, and streaming
+hair, thy fair, beautiful cheeks, and those dear rosy lips!"
+
+"Oh! Alfred, do not speak so--do not clasp me thus. Let us go. It
+is late--very late, and what will they say?"
+
+"Let them say! Are we not blessed? Can all their words take from
+us these blessings--these sacred, sweet, moments--such joys, such
+delights? Let them dream of such, with their dull souls if they
+can. No! no! Margaret--we are one! and thus one, our world is as
+free from their control as it is superior to their dreams and hopes.
+Here is our heaven, Margaret--ah! how long shall it be ours! at
+what moment may we lose it, by death, by storm, by what various
+mischance! What profligacy to fly before the time! No! no! but a
+little while longer--but a little while!"
+
+And there they lingered! He, fond, artful, persuasive; she, trembling
+with the dangerous sweetness of wild, unbidden emotions. Ah! why
+did she not go? Why was the strength withheld which would have
+carried out her safer purpose? The moon rose until she hung in
+the zenith, seeming to linger there in a sad, sweet watch, like
+themselves--the rivulet ran along, still prattling through the
+groves; the breeze, which had been a soft murmur among the trees
+at the first rising of the moon, now blew a shrill whistle among
+the craggy hills; but they no longer heard the prattle of the
+rivulet--even the louder strains of the breeze were unnoticed,
+and it was only when they were about to depart, that poor Margaret
+discovered that the moon had all the while been looking down upon
+them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE BIRTH OF THE AGONY.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was now generally understood in Charlemont that Margaret Cooper
+had made a conquest of the handsome stranger. We have omitted--as
+a matter not congenial to our taste--the small by-play which had
+been carried on by the other damsels of the village to effect the
+same object. There had been setting of caps, without number, ay,
+and pulling them too, an the truth were known among the fair Stellas
+and Clarissas, the Daphnes and Dorises, of Charlemont, but, though
+Stevens was sufficiently considerate of the claims of each, so far
+as politeness demanded it, and contrived to say pleasant things,
+pour passer le temps, with all of them, it was very soon apparent
+to the most sanguine, that the imperial beauties and imperious mind
+of Margaret Cooper had secured the conquest for herself.
+
+As a matter of course, the personal and intellectual attractions
+of Stevens underwent no little disparagement as soon as this fact
+was known. It was now universally understood that he was no such
+great things, after all; and our fair friend the widow Thackeray,
+who was not without her pretensions to wit and beauty, was bold
+enough to say that Mr. Stevens was certainly too fat in the face,
+and she rather thought him stupid. Such an opinion gave courage
+to the rest, and pert Miss Bella Tompkins, a romp of first-rate
+excellence, had the audacity to say that he squinted!--and this
+opinion was very natural, since neither of his eyes had ever rested
+with satisfaction on her pouting charms.
+
+It may be supposed that the discontent of the fair bevy, and its
+unfavorable judgment of himself, did not reach the ears of Alfred
+Stevens, and would scarcely have disturbed them if it did. Margaret
+Cooper was more fortunate than himself in this respect. She could
+not altogether be insensible to the random remarks which sour envy
+and dark-eyed jealousy continued to let fall in her hearing; but
+her scorn for the speakers, and her satisfaction with herself,
+secured her from all annoyance from this cause. Such, at least,
+had been the case in the first days of her conquest. Such was not
+exactly the case now. She had no more scorn of others. She was no
+longer proud, no longer strong. Her eyes no longer flashed with
+haughty defiance on the train which, though envious, were yet
+compelled to follow. She could no longer speak in those superior
+tones, the language equally of a proud intellect, and a spirit
+whose sensibilities had neither been touched by love nor enfeebled
+by anxiety and apprehension. A sad change had come over her heart
+and all her features in the progress of a few days. Her courage had
+departed. Her step was no longer firm; her eye no longer uplifted
+like that of the mountain-eagle, to which, in the first darings
+of her youthful muse, she had boldly likened herself. Her look was
+downcast, her voice subdued; she was now not less timid than the
+feeblest damsel of the village in that doubtful period of life
+when, passing from childhood to girlhood, the virgin falters, as
+it were, with bashful thoughts, upon the threshold of a new and
+perilous condition. The intercourse of Margaret Cooper with her
+lover had had the most serious effect upon her manners and her
+looks. But the change upon her spirit was no less striking to all.
+
+"I'm sure if I did love any man," was the opinion of one of the
+damsels, "I'd die sooner than show it to him, as she shows it to
+Alfred Stevens. It's a guess what he must think of it."
+
+"And no hard guess neither," said another; "I reckon there's no
+reason why he should pick out Margaret Cooper except that he saw
+that it was no such easy matter any where else."
+
+"Well! there can be no mistake about it with them; for now they're
+always together--and Betty, her own maid, thinks--but it's better
+not to say!"
+
+And the prudent antique pursed up her mouth in a language that said
+everything.
+
+"What!--what does she say?" demanded a dozen voices.
+
+"Well! I won't tell you that. I won't tell you all; but she does
+say, among other things, that the sooner John Cross marries them,
+the better for all parties."
+
+"Is it possible!"
+
+"Can it be!"
+
+"Bless me! but I always thought something wrong."
+
+"And Betty, her own maid, told you? Well, who should know, if she
+don't?"
+
+"And this, too, after all her airs!"
+
+"Her great smartness, her learning, and verse-making! I never knew
+any good come from books yet."
+
+"And never will, Jane," said another, with an equivocal expression,
+with which Jane was made content; and, after a full half-hour's
+confabulation, in the primitive style, the parties separated--each,
+in her way, to give as much circulation to Betty's inuendoes as
+the importance of the affair deserved.
+
+Scandal travels along the highways, seen by all but the victim.
+Days and nights passed; and in the solitude of lonely paths, by
+the hillside or the rivulet, Margaret Cooper still wandered with
+her lover. She heard not the poisonous breath which was already
+busy with her virgin fame. She had no doubts, whatever might be
+the event, that the heart of Alfred Stevens could leave her without
+that aliment which, in these blissful moments, seemed to be her
+very breath of life. But she felt many fears, many misgivings, she
+knew not why. A doubt, a cloud of anxiety, hung brooding on the
+atmosphere. In a heart which is unsophisticated, the consciousness,
+however vague, that all is not right, is enough to produce this cloud;
+but, with the gradual progress of that heart to the indulgence of
+the more active passions, this consciousness necessarily increases
+and the conflict then begins between the invading passion and the
+guardian principle. We have seen enough to know what must be the
+result of such a conflict with a nature such as hers, under the
+education which she had received. It did not end in the expulsion
+of her lover. It did not end in the discontinuance of those long
+and frequent rambles amid silence, and solitude, and shadow. She
+had not courage for this; and the poor, vain mother, flattered with
+the idea that her son-in-law would be a preacher, beheld nothing
+wrong in their nightly wanderings, and suffered her daughter, in
+such saintly society, to go forth without restraint or rebuke.
+
+There was one person in the village who was not satisfied that
+Margaret Cooper should fall a victim, either to the cunning of
+another, or to her own passionate vanity. This was our old friend
+Calvert. He was rather, inclined to be interested in the damsel,
+in spite of the ill treatment of his protege, if it were only in
+consequence of the feelings with which she had inspired him. It
+has been seen that, in the affair of the duel, he was led to regard
+the stranger with an eye of suspicion. This feeling had been further
+heightened by the statements of Ned Hinkley, which, however loose
+and inconclusive, were yet of a kind to show that there was some
+mystery about Stevens--that he desired concealment in some respects--a
+fact very strongly inferred from his non-employment of the village
+postoffice, and the supposition--taken for true--that he employed
+that of some distant town. Ned Hinkley had almost arrived at
+certainty in this respect; and some small particulars which seemed
+to bear on this conviction, which he had recently gathered, taken
+in connection with the village scandal in reference to the parties,
+determined the old man to take some steps in the matter to forewarn
+the maiden, or at least her mother, of the danger of yielding too
+much confidence to one of whom so little was or could be known.
+
+It was a pleasant afternoon, and Calvert was sitting beneath his
+roof-tree, musing over this very matter, when he caught a glimpse
+of the persons of whom he thought, ascending one of the distant
+hills, apparently on their way to the lake. He rose up instantly,
+and, seizing his staff, hurried off to see the mother of the damsel.
+The matter was one of the nicest delicacy--not to be undertaken
+lightly--not to be urged incautiously. Nothing, indeed, but a strong
+sense of duty could have determined him upon a proceeding likely
+to appear invidious, and which might be so readily construed,
+by a foolish woman, into an impertinence. Though a man naturally
+of quick, warm feelings, Calvert had been early taught to think
+cautiously--indeed, the modern phrenologist would have said that,
+in the excess of this prudent organ lay the grand weakness of his
+moral nature. This delayed him in the contemplated performance much
+longer than his sense of its necessity seemed to justify. Having
+now resolved, however, and secure in the propriety of his object,
+he did not scruple any longer.
+
+A few minutes sufficed to bring him to the cottage of the old
+lady, and her voice in very friendly tenor commanded him to enter.
+Without useless circumlocution, yet without bluntness, the old
+man broached the subject; and, without urging any of the isolated
+facts of which he was possessed, and by which his suspicions were
+awakened, he dwelt simply upon the dangers which might result
+from such a degree of confidence as was given to the stranger. The
+long, lonely rambles in the woods, by night as well as day, were
+commented on, justly, but in an indulgent spirit; and the risks of
+a young and unsuspecting maiden, under such circumstances, were shown
+with sufficient distinctness for the comprehension of the mother,
+had she been disposed to hear. But never was good old man, engaged
+in the thankless office of bestowing good advice, so completely
+confounded as he was by the sort of acknowledgments which his
+interference obtained. A keen observer might have seen the gathering
+storm while he was speaking; and, at every sentence, there was a low,
+running commentary, bubbling up from the throat of the opinionated
+dame, somewhat like rumbling thunder, which amply denoted the rising
+tempest. It was a sort of religious effort which kept the old lady
+quiet till Calvert had fairly reached a conclusion. Then, rising
+from her seat, she approached him, smoothed back her apron, perked
+out her chin, and, fixing her keen gray eyes firmly upon his own,
+with her nose elongated to such a degree as almost to suggest the
+possibility of a pointed collision between that member and the
+corresponding one of his own face, she demanded--
+
+"Have you done--have you got through?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Cooper, this is all I came to say. It is the suggestion
+of prudence--the caution of a friend--your daughter is young, very
+young, and--"
+
+"I thank you! I thank you! My daughter is young, very young; but
+she is no fool, Mr. Calvert--let me tell you that! Margaret Cooper
+is no fool. If you don't know that, I do. I know her. She's able
+to take care of herself as well as the best of us."
+
+"I am glad you think so, Mrs. Cooper, but the best of us find it a
+difficult matter to steer clear of danger, and error and misfortune;
+and the wisest, my dear madam, are only too apt to fall when they
+place their chief reliance on their wisdom."
+
+"Indeed! that's a new doctrine to me, and I reckon to everybody
+else. If it's true, what's the use of all your schooling, I want
+to know?"
+
+"Precious little, Mrs. Cooper, if--"
+
+"Ah! precious little; and let me tell you, Mr. Calvert, I think
+it's mighty strange that you should think Margaret Cooper in more
+need of your advice, than Jane Colter, or Betsy Barnes, or Susan
+Mason, or Rebecca Forbes, or even the widow Thackeray."
+
+"I should give the same advice to them under the same circumstances,
+Mrs. Cooper."
+
+"Should you, indeed! Then I beg you will go and give it to them,
+for if they are not in the same circumstances now, they'd give each
+of them an eye to be so. Ay, wouldn't they! Yes! don't I know, Mr.
+Calvert, that it's all owing to envy that you come here talking
+about Brother Stevens."
+
+"But I do not speak of Mr. Stevens, Mrs. Cooper; were it any other
+young man with whom your daughter had such intimacy I should speak
+in the same manner."
+
+"Would you, indeed? Tell that to the potatoes. Don't I know better.
+Don't I know that if your favorite, that you made so much of--your
+adopted son, Bill Hinkley--if he could have got her to look at
+him, they might have walked all night and you'd never have said
+the first word. He'd have given one eye for her, and so would every
+girl in the village give an eye for Brother Stevens. I'm not so
+old but I know something. But it won't do. You can go to the widow
+Thackeray, Mr. Calvert. It'll do her good to tell her that it's
+very dangerous for her to be thinking about young men from morning
+to night. It's true you can't say anything about the danger, for
+precious little danger she's in; but, lord, wouldn't she jump to
+it if she had a chance. Let her alone for that. You'd soon have
+cause enough to give her your good advice about the danger, and
+much good would come of it. She'd wish, after all was said, that
+the danger was only twice as big and twice as dangerous."
+
+Such was the conclusion of Mr. Calvert's attempt to give good
+counsel. It resulted as unprofitably in this as in most cases; but
+it had not utterly fallen, like the wasted seed, in stony places.
+There was something in it to impress itself upon the memory of Mrs.
+Cooper; and she resolved that when her daughter came in, it should
+be the occasion of an examination into her feelings and her relation
+to the worthy brother, such as she had more than once before
+meditated to make.
+
+But Margaret Cooper did not return till a comparatively late hour;
+and the necessity of sitting up after her usual time of retiring,
+by making the old lady irritable, had the effect of giving some
+additional force to the suggestions of Mr. Calvert. When Margaret
+did return, she came alone. Stevens had attended her only to the
+wicket. She did not expect to find her mother still sitting up; and
+started, with an appearance of disquiet, when she met her glance.
+The young girl was pale and haggard. Her eye had a dilated, wild
+expression. Her step faltered; her voice was scarcely distinct as
+she remarked timidly--
+
+"Not yet abed, mother?"
+
+"No! it's a pretty time for you to keep me up."
+
+"But why did you sit up, mother? It's not usual with you to do so."
+
+"No! but it's high time for me to sit up, and be on the watch too,
+when here's the neighbors coming to warn me to do so--and telling
+me all about your danger."
+
+"Ha! my danger--speak--what danger, mother?"
+
+"Don't you know what danger? Don't you know?"
+
+"Know!" The monosyllable subsided in a gasp. At that moment Margaret
+Cooper could say no more.
+
+"Well, I suppose you don't know, and so I'll tell you. Here's been
+that conceited, stupid old man, Calvert, to tell me how wrong it
+is for you to go out by night walking with Brother Stevens; and
+hinting to me that you don't know how to take care of yourself
+with all your learning; and how nobody knows anything about Brother
+Stevens; as if nobody was wise for anything but himself. But I gave
+him as good as he brought, I'll warrant you. I sent him off with
+a flea in his ear!"
+
+It was fortunate for the poor girl that the light, which was that
+of a dipped candle, was burning in the corner of the chimney, and
+was too dim to make her features visible. The ghastly tale which
+they told could not have been utterly unread even by the obtuse
+and opinionated mind of the vain mother. The hands of Margaret were
+involuntarily clasped in her agony, and she felt very much like
+falling upon the floor; but, with a strong effort, her nerves
+were braced to the right tension, and she continued to endure, in
+a speechless terror, which was little short of frenzy, the outpourings
+of her mother's folly which was a frenzy of another sort.
+
+"I sent him off," she repeated, "with a flea in his ear. I could
+see what the old fool was driving after, and I as good as told him
+so. If it had been his favorite, his adopted son, Bill Hinkley, it
+would have been another guess-story--I reckon. Then you might have
+walked out where you pleased together, at all hours, and no harm
+done, no danger; old Calvert would have thought it the properest
+thing in the world. But no Bill Hinkley for me. I'm for Brother
+Stevens, Margaret; only make sure of him, my child--make sure of
+him."
+
+"No more of this, dear mother, I entreat you. Let us go to bed,
+and think no more of it."
+
+"And why should we not think of it? I tell you, Margaret, YOU
+MUST THINK OF IT! Brother Stevens soon will be a preacher, and a
+fine speck he will be. There'll be no parson like him in all west
+Kentucky. As for John Cross, I reckon he won't be able to hold a
+candle to him. Brother Stevens is something to try for. You must
+play your cards nicely, Margaret. Don't let him see too soon that
+you like him. Beware of that! But don't draw off too suddenly as
+if you didn't like him--that's worse still; for very few men like
+to see that they ain't altogether pleasing even at first sight to
+the lady that they like. There's a medium in all things, and you
+must just manage it, as if you wa'n't thinking at all about him,
+or love, or a husband, or anything; only take care always to turn
+a quick ear to what he says, and seem to consider it always as if
+'twas worth your considering. And look round when he speaks, and
+smile softly sometimes; and don't be too full of learning and wisdom
+in what you say, for I've found that men of sense love women best
+when they seem to talk most like very young children--maybe because
+they think it's a sign of innocence. But I reckon, Margaret, you
+don't want much teaching. Only be sure and fix him; and don't stop
+to think when he asks. Be sure to have your answer ready, and you
+can't say 'yes' too quickly now-a-days, when the chances are so
+very few."
+
+The mother paused to take breath. Her very moral and maternal
+counsel had fallen upon unheeding ears. But Margaret was sensible
+of the pause, and was desirous of taking advantage of it. She rose
+from her chair, with the view of retiring; but the good old dame,
+whose imagination had been terribly excited by the delightful
+idea of having a preacher for her son-in-law who was to take such
+precedence over all the leaders of the other tribes, was not willing
+to abridge her eloquence.
+
+"Why, you're in a great hurry now, Margaret. Where was your hurry
+when you were with Brother Stevens? Ah! you jade, can't I guess--don't
+I know? There you were, you two, under the trees, looking at the
+moon, and talking such sweet, foolish nonsense. I reckon, Margaret,
+'twould puzzle you to tell what HE said, or what YOU said, I can
+guess he didn't talk much religion to you, heh? Ah! I know it all.
+It's the old story. It's been so with all young people, and will
+bo so till the end. Love is the strangest thing, and it does listen
+to the strangest nonsense. Ain't it so, Margaret? I know nothing
+but love would ever dumbfounder you in this way; why, child, have
+you lost your tongue? What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Oh, mother, let me retire now, I have such a headache."
+
+"Heartache, you mean."
+
+"Heartache it is," replied the other desperately, with an air of
+complete abandonment.
+
+"Ah! well, it's clear that he's got the heartache quite as much
+as you, for he almost lives with you now. But make him speak out,
+Margaret--get him to say the word, and don't let him be too free
+until he does. No squeezing of hands, no kissing, no--"
+
+"No more, no more, I entreat you, mother, if you would not--drive
+me mad! Why do you speak to me thus--why counsel me in this manner?
+Leave me alone, I pray you, let me retire--I must--I must sleep
+now!"
+
+The mother was not unaccustomed to such passionate bursts of speech
+from her daughter, and she ascribed the startling energy of her
+utterance now, to an excited spirit in part, and partly to the
+headache of which she complained.
+
+"What! do you feel so bad, my child? Well, I won't keep you up
+any longer. I wouldn't have kept you up so long, if I hadn't been
+vexed by that old fool, Calvert."
+
+"Mr. Calvert is a good man, mother."
+
+"Well, he may be--I don't say a word against that," replied the
+mother, somewhat surprised at the mildly reproachful nature of that
+response which her daughter had made, so different from her usual
+custom:--"he may be very good, but I think he's very meddlesome to
+come here talking about Brother Stevens."
+
+"He meant well, mother."
+
+"Well or ill, it don't matter. Do you be ready when Brother Stevens
+says the word. He'll say it before long. He's mighty keen after
+you, Margaret. I've seen it in his eyes; only you keep a little
+off, till he begins to press and be anxious; and after that he can't
+help himself. He'll be ready for any terms; and look you, when a
+man's ready none of your long bargains. Settle up at once. As for
+waiting till he gets permission to preach, I wouldn't think of it.
+A man can be made a preacher or anything, at any time, but 'tain't
+so easy in these times, for a young woman to be made a wife. It's
+not every day that one can get a husband, and such a husband! Look
+at Jane Colter, and Betsy Barnes, and Rebecca Forbes, and Susan
+Mason; they'll be green again, I reckon, before the chance comes
+to them; ay, and the widow Thackeray--though she's had her day
+already. If 'twas a short one she's got no reason to complain.
+She'll learn how to value it before it begins again. But, go to
+bed, my child, you oughtn't to have a headache. No! no! you should
+leave it to them that's not so fortunate. They'll have headaches
+and heartaches enough, I warrant you, before they get such a man
+as Brother Stevens."
+
+At last, Margaret Cooper found herself alone and in her chamber.
+With unusual vigilance she locked and doublelocked the door. She
+then flung herself upon the bed. Her face was buried in the clothes.
+A convulsion of feeling shook her frame. But her eyes remained
+dry, and her cheeks were burning. She rose at length and began to
+undress, but for this she found herself unequal. She entered the
+couch and sat up in it--her hands crossed upon her lap--her face
+wan, wild, the very picture of hopelessness if not desperation!
+The words of her weak mother had tortured her; but what was this
+agony to that which was occasioned by her own thoughts.
+
+"Oh God!" she exclaimed at length, "can it be real? Can it be
+true? Do I wake? Is it no dream? Am I, am I what I dare not name
+to myself--and dread to hear from any other? Alas! it is true--too
+true. That shade, that wood!--oh, Alfred Stevens! Alfred Stevens!
+What have you done! To what have you beguiled me!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+STRENGTH AFTER FALL.
+
+
+
+
+
+That weary night no sleep came to the eyelids of the hapless
+Margaret Cooper. The garrulous language of the mother had awakened
+far other emotions in her bosom than those which she labored to inspire;
+and the warning of Mr. Calvert, for the first time impressed upon
+herself the terrible conviction that she was lost. In the wild
+intoxicating pleasures of that new strange dream, she had been
+wofully unconscious of the truth. So gradual had been the progress
+of passion, that it had never alarmed or startled her. Besides, it
+had come to her under a disguise afforded by the customary cravings
+of her soul. Her vanity had been the medium by which her affections
+had been won, by which her confidence had been beguiled, by which
+the guardian watchers of her virtue had been laid to sleep.
+
+What a long and dreadful night was that when Margaret Cooper was
+first brought to feel the awful truth in its true impressiveness
+of wo. Alas! how terribly do the pleasures of sin torture us. The
+worst human foe is guilt. The severest censure the consciousness
+of wrong doing. Poverty may be endured--nay is--and virtue still
+be secure; since the mind may be made strong to endure the heaviest
+toil, yet cherish few desires; the loss of kin may call for few
+regrets, if we feel that we have religiously performed our duties
+toward them, and requited all their proper claims upon us. Sickness
+and pain may even prove benefits and blessings, if it shall so
+happen that we resign ourselves without complaint, to the scourge
+of the chastener, and grow patient beneath his stripes. But that
+self-rebuke of one's own spirit from which we may not fly--that
+remorseful and ever-vexing presence which haunts us, and pursues with
+a wing even more fleet than that of fear--which tells clamorously
+of what we had, and scornfully of what we have lost--lost for
+ever!  that is the demon from whom there is no escape, and beyond
+whom there is no torture. Vainly would we strive with this relentless
+enemy. Every blow aimed at its shadowy bosom recoils upon our own.
+In the crowd, it takes the place of other forms and dogs us with
+suspicious glances; in the solitude, it stalks boldly to our side,
+confronts us with its audacious truths and terrible denunciations--leaves
+no moment secure, waking or sleeping! It is the ghost of murdered
+virtue, brooding over its grave in that most dark and dismal of all
+sepulchres, the human heart. And if we cry aloud, as did Margaret
+Cooper, with vain prayer for the recall of a single day, with what
+a yell of derisive mockery it answers to our prayer.
+
+The night was passed in the delusive effort of the mind to argue
+itself into a state of fancied security. She endeavored to recall
+those characteristics in Alfred Stevens, by which her confidence
+had been beguiled. This task was not a difficult one in that early
+day of her distress; before experience had yet come to confirm the
+apprehensions of doubt--before the intoxicating dream of a first
+passion had yet begun to stale upon her imagination. Her own elastic
+mind helped her in this endeavor. Surely, she thought, where the
+mind is so noble and expansive, where the feelings are so tender and
+devoted, the features so lofty and impressive, the look so sweet,
+the language so delicate and refined, there can be no falsehood.
+
+"The devotion of such a man," she erringly thought, "might well
+sanction the weakness of a woman's heart--might well persuade to
+the momentary error which none will seek more readily to repair
+than himself. If he be true to me, what indeed should I care for
+the scorn of others."
+
+Alas! for the credulous victim. This was the soul of her error.
+This scorn of others--of the opinions of the world around her, is
+the saddest error of which woman, who is the most dependant of all
+beings in the moral world, can ever be guilty. But such philosophy
+did not now deceive even the poor girl by whom it was uttered.
+It is a melancholy truth, that, where there is no principle, the
+passions can not be relied on; and the love of Alfred Stevens had
+hitherto shown itself in selfishness. Margaret Cooper felt this,
+but she did not dare to believe it.
+
+"No! no!" she muttered--"I will not doubt--I will not fear! He is
+too noble, too generous, too fond! I could not be deceived."
+
+Her reliance was upon her previous judgment, not upon his principles.
+Her self-esteem assisted to make this reference sufficient for the
+purposes of consolation, and this was all that she desired in this
+first moment of her doubt and apprehension.
+
+"And if he be true--if he keep for ever the faith that his lips and
+looks declare--then will I heed nothing of the shame and the sin.
+The love of such a man is sufficient recompense for the loss of all
+besides. What to me is the loss of society? what should I care for
+the association and opinions of these in Charlemont? And elsewhere--he
+will bear me hence where none can know. Ah! I fear not: he will be
+true."
+
+Her self-esteem was recovering considerably from its first overthrow.
+Her mind was already preparing to do battle with those, the scorn
+of whom she anticipated, and whose judgments she had always hitherto
+despised. This was an easy task. She was yet to find that it was not
+the only task. Her thoughts are those of many, in like situations,
+and it is for this reason that we dwell upon them. Our purpose is,
+to show the usual processes of self-deception.
+
+Margaret Cooper, like a large class of persons of strong natural
+mind and sanguine temper, was only too apt to confound the cause
+of virtue with its sometimes uncouth, harsh and self-appointed
+professors. She overlooked the fact that public opinion, though
+a moral object against which woman dares not often offend, is yet
+no standard for her government; that principles are determinable
+elsewhere; and that, whatever the world may think of them, and whatever
+may be their seeming unimportance under existing circumstances,
+are the only real moral securities of earth. She might fly from
+Charlemont, either into a greater world, or into a more complete
+solitude, but she would fly to no greater certainties than she now
+possessed. Her securities were still based upon the principles of
+Alfred Stevens, and of these she knew nothing. She knew that he
+was a man of talent--of eloquence; alas for her! she had felt it;
+of skill--she had been its victim; of rare sweetness of utterance,
+of grace and beauty; and as she enumerated to herself these his
+mental powers and personal charms, she felt, however numerous the
+catalogue, that none of these afforded her the guaranty she sought.
+
+She arose the next day somewhat more composed, and with a face
+which betrayed sleeplessness, but nothing worse. This she ascribed
+to the headache with which she had retired. She had not slept an
+instant, and she arose entirely unrefreshed. But the stimulating
+thoughts which had kept her wakeful, furnished her with sufficient
+strength to appear as usual in the household, and to go through
+her accustomed duties. But it was with an impatience scarcely
+restrainable that she waited for the approach of evening which
+would bring her lover. Him she felt it now absolutely of the last
+necessity that she should see; that she should once more go with
+him to those secret places, the very thougnt of which inspired her
+with terror, and, laying bare her soul to his eyes, demand of him
+the only restitution which he could make.
+
+He came. Once more she descended the steps to meet him--Her mother
+arrested her on the stairway. A cunning leer was in her eye, as she
+looked into the woful, impassive eyes of her daughter. She grinned
+with a sort of delight expressive of the conviction that the advice
+she had given the night before was to be put in execution soon.
+
+"Fix him, Margaret; he's mighty eager for you. You've cut your
+eye-tooth--be quick, and you'll have a famous parson for a husband
+yet."
+
+The girl shrunk from the counsellor as if she had been a serpent.
+The very counsel was enough to show her the humiliating attitude
+in which she stood to all parties.
+
+"Remember," said the old woman, detaining her--"don't be too willing
+at first. Let him speak fairly out. A young maiden can't be too
+backward, until the man offers to make her a young wife!"
+
+The last words went to her soul like an arrow.
+
+"A young maiden!" she almost murmured aloud, as she descended the
+steps--"O God! how lovely now, to my eyes, appears the loveliness
+of a young maiden!"
+
+She joined Stevens in silence, the mother watching them with the
+eyes of a maternal hawk as they went forth together. They pursued
+a customary route, and, passing through one of the gorges of the
+surrounding hills, they soon lost sight of the village. When the
+forest-shadows had gathered thickly around them, and the silence
+of the woods became felt, Stevens approached more nearly, and,
+renewing a former liberty, put his arm about her waist. She gently
+but firmly removed it, but neither of them spoke a word. A dense
+copse appeared before them. Toward it he would have led the way.
+But she resolutely turned aside, and, while a shudder passed over
+her frame, exclaimed--
+
+"Not there--not there!"
+
+Breathlessly she spoke. He well enough understood her. They pursued
+an opposite direction, and, in the shade of a wood which before
+they had never traversed, they at length paused. Stevens, conducting
+her to the trunk of a fallen tree, seated her, and placed himself
+beside her. Still they were silent. There was a visible constraint
+upon both. The thoughts and feelings of both were alike active--but
+very unlike in character. With him, passion, reckless passion,
+was uppermost; selfish in all its phases, and resolute on its own
+indulgence at every hazard. In her bosom was regret if not remorse,
+mingled with doubts and hopes in pretty equal proportion. Yet had
+she, even then, but little doubt of him. She accused him of no
+practice. She fancied, foolish girl, that his error, like her own,
+had been that of blind impulse, availing itself of a moment of
+unguarded reason to take temporary possession of the citadel of
+prudence. That he was calculating, cunning--that his snares had
+been laid beforehand--she had not the least idea. But she was to
+grow wiser in this and other respects in due season. How little
+did she then conjecture the coldness and hardness of that base and
+selfish heart which had so fanned the consuming flame in hers!
+
+Her reserve and coolness were unusual. She had been the creature,
+heretofore, of the most uncalculating impulse. The feeling was spoken,
+the thought uttered, as soon as conceived. Now she was silent. He
+expected her to speak--nay, he expected reproaches, and was prepared
+to meet them. He had his answer for any reproaches which she might
+make. But for that stony silence of her lips he was not prepared.
+The passive grief which her countenance betrayed--so like
+despair--repelled and annoyed him. Yet, wherefore had she come,
+if not to complain bitterly, and, after exhaustion, be soothed at
+last? Such had been his usual experience in all such cases. But
+the unsophisticated woman before him had no language for such a
+situation as was hers. Her pride, her ambition--the very intensity
+of all her moods--rendered the effort at speech a mockery, and left
+her dumb.
+
+"You are sad, Margaret--silent and very cold to me," he said, at
+last breaking the silence. His tones were subdued to a whisper,
+and how full of entreating tenderness! She slowly raised her eyes
+from the ground, and fixed them upon him. What a speech was in that
+one look! There was no trace of excitement, scarcely of expression,
+in her face. There was no flush upon her cheeks. She was pale as
+death. She was still silent. Her eye alone had spoken; and from
+its searching but stony glance his own fell in some confusion to
+the ground. There was a dreary pause, which he at length broke:--
+
+"You are still silent, Margaret--why do you not speak to me?"
+
+"It is for you to speak, Alfred," was her reply. It was full
+of significance, understood but not FELT by her companion. What,
+indeed, had she to say--what could she say--while he said nothing?
+She was the victim. With him lay the means of rescue and preservation.
+She but waited the decision of one whom, in her momentary madness,
+she had made the arbiter of her destiny. Her reply confused him.
+He would have preferred to listen to the ordinary language of
+reproach. Had she burst forth into tears and lamentations--had she
+cried, "You have wronged me--you must do me justice!"--he would
+have been better pleased than with the stern, unsuggestive character
+that she assumed. To all this, his old experience would have given
+him an easy answer. But to be driven to condemn himself--to define
+his own doings with the name due to his deserts--to declare his
+crime, and proffer the sufficient atonement--was an unlooked-for
+necessity.
+
+"You are displeased with me, Margaret."
+
+He dared not meet her glance while uttering this feeble and
+purposeless remark. It was so short of all that he should have
+said--of all that she expected--that her eyes glistened with a
+sudden expression of indignation which was new to them in looking
+upon him. There was a glittering sarcasm in her glance, which
+showed the intensity of her feelings in the comment which they
+involuntarily made on the baldness and poverty of his. Displeasure,
+indeed! That such an epithet should be employed to describe the
+withering pang, the vulturous, gnawing torture in her bosom--and
+that fiery fang which thought, like some winged serpent, was
+momentarily darting into her brain!
+
+"Displeased!" she exclaimed, in low, bitter tones, which she seemed
+rather desirous to suppress--"no, no! sir--not displeased. I am
+miserable, most miserable--anything but displeased. I am too wretched
+to feel displeasure!"
+
+"And to me you owe this wretchedness, dear Margaret--THAT--THAT
+is what you would say. Is it not, Margaret? I have wronged--I have
+ruined you! From me comes this misery! You hate, you would denounce
+me."
+
+He put his arm about her waist--he sank upon his knee beside her--his
+eye, now that he had found words, could once more look courageously
+into hers.
+
+"Wronged--ruined!" she murmured, using a part of his words, and
+repeating them as if she did not altogether realize their perfect
+sense.
+
+"Ay, you would accuse me, Margaret," he continued--"you would
+reproach and denounce me--you hate me--I deserve it--I deserve it."
+
+She answered with some surprise:--
+
+"No, Alfred Stevens, I do not accuse--I do not denounce you. I am
+wretched--I am miserable. It is for you to say if I am wronged and
+ruined. I am not what I was--I know THAT!--What I am--what I will
+be!--"
+
+She paused! Her hands were clasped suddenly and violently--she
+looked to heaven, and, for the first time, the tears, streamed from
+her eyes like rain--a sudden, heavy shower, which was soon over.
+
+"Ah, Margaret, you would have me accuse myself--and I do. The crime
+is mine! I have done you this wrong---"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"No, Alfred Stevens, _I_ have done wrong! I FEEL that I have done
+wrong. That I have been feeble and criminal, _I_ KNOW. I will not
+be so base as to deny what I can not but feel. As for your crime,
+you know best what it is. I know mine. I know that my passions are
+evil and presumptuous; and though I blush to confess their force,
+it is yet due to the truth that I should do so, though I sink into
+the earth with my shame. But neither your self-reproaches nor my
+confession will acquit us. Is there nothing, Alfred Stevens, that
+can be done? Must I fall before you, here, amidst the woods which
+have witnessed my shame, and implore you to save me? I do! Behold me!
+I am at your feet--my face is in fhe dust. Oh! Alfred Stevens--when
+I called your eyes to watch, in the day of my pride, the strong-winged
+eagle of our hills, did I look as now? Save me from this shame!
+save me! For, though I have no reproaches, yet God knows, when we
+looked on that eagle's flight together, my soul had no such taint
+as fills it now. Whatever were my faults, my follies, my weaknesses,
+Heaven knows, I felt not, feared not this! a thought--a dream of
+such a passion, then--never came to my bosom. From you it came! You
+put it there! You woke up the slumbering emotion--you--but no!--I
+will not accuse you! I will only implore you to save me! Can it be
+done? can you do it--will you--will you not?"
+
+"Rise, dearest Margaret--let me lift you!" She had thrown herself
+upon the earth, and she clung to it.
+
+"No, no! your words may lift me, Alfred Stevens, when your hands
+can not. If you speak a hope, a promise of safety, it will need
+no other help to make me rise! If you do not!--I would not wish to
+rise again. Speak! let me hear, even as I am, what my doom shall
+be?  The pride which has made me fall shall be reconciled to my
+abasement."
+
+"Margaret, this despair is idle. There is no need for it. Do I not
+tell you that there is no danger?"
+
+"Why did you speak of ruin?" she demanded.
+
+"I know not--the word escaped me. There is no ruin. I will save you.
+I am yours--yours only. Believe me, I will do you right. I regard
+you as sacredly my wife as if the rites of the church had so decreed
+it."
+
+"I dare not disbelieve you, Alfred! I have no hope else. Your
+words lift me! Oh! Alfred Stevens, you did not mean the word, but
+how true it was; what a wreck, what a ruin do I feel myself now--what
+a wreck have I become!"
+
+"A wreck, a ruin! no, Margaret, no! never were you more beautiful
+than at this very moment. These large, sad eyes--these long, dark
+lashes seem intended to bear the weight of tears. These cheeks are
+something paler than their wont, but not less beautiful, and these
+lips--"
+
+He would have pressed them with his own--he would have taken her
+into his arms, but she repulsed him.
+
+"No, no! Alfred--this must not be. I am yours. Let me prove to you
+that I am firm enough to protect your rights from invasion."
+
+"But why so coy, dearest? Do you doubt me?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"Ah! but you do. Why do you shrink from me--why this coldness? If
+you are mine, if these charms are mine, why not yield them to me?
+I fear, Margaret, that you doubt me still?"
+
+"I do not--dare not doubt you, Alfred Stevens. My life hangs upon
+this faith."
+
+"Why so cold, then?"
+
+"I am not cold. I love you--I will be your wife; and never was
+wife more faithful, more devoted, than I will be to you; but, if
+you knew the dreadful agony which I have felt, since that sad moment
+of my weakness, you would forbear and pity me."
+
+"Hear me, Margaret; to-morrow is Saturday. John Cross is to be here
+in the evening. He shall marry us on Sunday. Are you willing?"
+
+"Oh, yes! thankful, happy! Ah! Alfred, why did I distrust you for
+an instant?"
+
+"Why, indeed! But you distrust me no longer--you have no more
+misgivings?"
+
+"No, none!"
+
+"You will be no longer cold, no longer coy, dear Margaret--here in
+the sweet evening, among these pleasant shades, love, alone, has
+supremacy. Here, in the words of one of your favorites:--
+
+   "'Where transport and security entwine,
+    Here is the empire of thy perfect bliss,
+    And here thou art a god--'"
+
+concluding this quotation, he would have taken her in his embrace--he
+would have renewed those dangerous endearments which had already
+proved so fatal; but she repulsed the offered tenderness, firmly,
+but with gentleness.
+
+"Margaret, you still doubt me," he exclaimed reproachfully.
+
+"No, Alfred, I doubt you not. I believe you. I have only been too
+ready and willing to believe you. Ah! have you not had sufficient
+proof of this? Leave me the consciousness of virtue--the feeling
+of strength still to assert it, now that my eyes are open to my
+previous weakness."
+
+"But there is no reason to be so cold. Remember you are mine by every
+tie of the heart--another day will make you wholly mine.  Surely,
+there is no need for this frigid bearing. No, no! you doubt--you
+do not believe me, Margaret!"
+
+"If I did not believe you, Alfred Stevens," she answered gravely,
+"my prayer would be for death, and I should find it. These woods
+which have witnessed my fault should have witnessed my expiation.
+The homes which have known me should know me no more."
+
+The solemnity of her manner rather impressed him, but having no real
+regard for her, he was unwilling to be baffled in his true desires.
+
+"If you doubt me not--if you have faith in me, Margaret, why this
+solemnity, this reserve? Prove to me, by your looks, by your actions,
+by the dear glances, the sweet murmurs, and the fond embrace, what
+these cold assurances do not say."
+
+His hand rested on her neck. She gently raised and removed it.
+
+"I have already proved to you my weakness. I will now prove my
+strength. It is better so, Alfred. If I have won your love, let me
+now command your esteem, or maintain what is left me of my own. Do
+not be angry with me if I insist upon it. I am resolute now to be
+worthy of you and of myself."
+
+"Ah! you call this love?" said he bitterly. "If you ever loved,
+indeed, Margaret--"
+
+"If I ever loved--and have I given you no proofs?" she exclaimed
+in a burst of passion; "all the proofs that a woman can give, short
+of her blood; and that, Alfred Stevens--that too, I was prepared
+to give, had you not promptly assured me of your faith."
+
+She drew a small dagger from her sleeve, and bared it beneath his
+glance.
+
+"Think you I brought this without an object? No! Alfred Stevens--know
+me better! I came here prepared to die, as well as a frail and
+erring woman could be prepared. You disarmed the dagger. You subdued
+the determination when you bid me live for you. In your faith, I
+am willing to live. I believe you, and am resolved to make myself
+worthy of your belief also. I have promised to be your wife, and
+here before Heaven, I swear to be your faithful wife; but, until
+then, you shall presume in no respect. Your lip shall not touch
+mine; your arms shall not embrace me; you shall see, dear Alfred,
+that, with my eyes once opened fully upon my own weakness, I have
+acquired the most certain strength."
+
+"Give me the dagger," he said.
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"You doubt me still?"
+
+"No, no!" she exclaimed, handing him the weapon--"no, no! I do not
+doubt you--I dare not. Doubt you, Alfred?--that were death, even
+without the dagger!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+BULL-PUPS IN TRAINING.
+
+
+
+
+
+Alfred Stevens was sufficiently familiar with the sex to perceive
+that Margaret Cooper was resolved. There was that in her look and
+manner which convinced him that she was not now to be overcome.
+There was no effort or constraint in either her looks or language.
+The composure of assured strength was there. The discovery of
+her weakness, which he had so unexpectedly made, had rendered her
+vigilant. Suspecting herself--which women are not apt to do--she
+became watchful, not only of the approach of her lover, but of
+every emotion of her own soul; and it was with a degree of chagrin
+which he could scarcely refrain from showing, that he was compelled
+to forego, at least for the present, all his usual arts of seduction.
+
+Yet he knew not how to refrain. Never had Margaret Cooper seemed
+so lovely in his eyes, so commanding, so eloquent with beauty, as
+now, when remorse had touched her eyes with an unwonted shadow,
+and tears and nightwatching had subdued the richer bloom upon her
+cheek. Proud still, but pensive in her pride, she walked silently
+beside him, still brooding over thoughts which she would not
+willingly admit were doubts, and grasping every word of assurance
+that fell from his lips as if it had been some additional security.
+
+These assurances he still suffered to escape him, with sufficient
+frequency and solemnity, to confirm that feeling of confidence
+which his promise of marriage had inspired in her mind. There was
+a subdued fondness in his voice, and an EMPRESSMENT in his manner,
+which was not all practice. The character which Margaret Cooper had
+displayed in this last interview--her equal firmness and fear--the
+noble elevation of soul which, admitting her own errors, disdained
+to remind him of his--a course which would have been the most ready
+of adoption among the weaker and less generous of the sex--had touched
+him with a degree of respect akin to admiration; and so strong was
+the impression made upon him of her great natural superiority of
+mind to almost all the women he had ever met, that, but for her one
+unhappy lapse, he had sought no other wife. Had she been strong at
+first as she proved herself at last, this had been inevitable.
+
+When in his own chamber that night, he could not help recalling to
+his memory the proud elevation of her character as it had appeared
+in that interview. The recollection really gave him pain, since
+along with it arose the memory also of that unfortunate frailty,
+which became more prominent as a crime in connection with that
+intellectual merit which, it is erroneously assumed, should have
+made it sure.
+
+"But for that, Margaret Cooper, and this marriage were no vain
+promise. But that forbids. No, no--no spousals for me: let John
+Cross and the bride be ready or not, there shall be a party wanting
+to that contract! And yet, what a woman to lose! what a woman to
+win! No tragedy queen ever bore herself like that. Talk of Siddons,
+indeed! SHE would have brought down the house in that sudden
+prostration--that passionate appeal. She made even me tremble.  I
+could have loved her for that, if for that only. To make ME tremble!
+and with such a look, such an eye, such a stern, sweet, fierce
+beauty! By Heavens! I know not how to give her up. What a sensation
+she would make in Frankfort! Were she my wife--but no, no! bait for
+gudgeons! I am not so great a fool as that. She who is mine on my
+terms, is yours, sir, or yours--is anybody's, when the humor suits
+and the opportunity. I can not think of that. Yet, to lose her is
+as little to be thought of. I must manage it. I must get her off
+from this place. It need not be to Frankfort! Let me see--there
+is--hum!--hum!--yes, a ride of a few miles--an afternoon
+excursion--quite convenient, yet not too near. It must be managed;
+but, at all events, I must evade this marriage--put it off for the
+present--get some decent excuse. That's easy enough, and for the
+rest, why, time that softens all things, except man and woman,
+time will make that easy too. To-morrow for Ellisland, and the rest
+after."
+
+Thus, resolving not to keep his vows to his unhappy victim, the
+criminal was yet devising plans by which to continue his power over
+her. These plans, yet immature in his own mind, at least unexpressed,
+need not be analyzed here, and may be conjectured by the reader.
+
+That night, Stevens busied himself in preparing letters. Of these
+he wrote several. It will not further our progress to look over
+him as he writes; and we prefer rather, in this place, to hurry on
+events which, it may be the complaint of all parties, reader not
+omitted, have been too long suffered to stagnate. But we trust not.
+Let us hurry Stevens through Friday night--the night of that last
+interview.
+
+Saturday morning, we observe that his appetite is unimpaired. He
+discusses the breakfast at Hinkley's as if he had never heard of
+suffering. He has said an unctuous grace. Biscuits hot, of best
+Ohio flour, are smoking on his plate. A golden-looking mass of best
+fresh butter is made to assimilate its luscious qualities with
+those of the drier and hotter substance. A copious bowl of milk, new
+from the dugs of old Brindle, stands beside him, patiently waiting
+to be honored by his unscrupulous but not unfastidious taste. The
+grace is said, and the gravy follows. He has a religious regard for
+the goods and gifts of this life. He eats heartily, and the thanks
+which follow, if not from the bottom of the soul, were sufficiently
+earnest to have emanated from the bottom of his stomach.
+
+This over, he has a chat with his hosts. He discusses with old
+Hinkley the merits of the new lights. What these new lights were,
+at that period, we do not pretend to remember. Among sectarians,
+there are periodical new lights which singularly tend to increase
+the moral darkness. From these, after a while, they passed to the
+love festivals or feasts--a pleasant practice of the methodist
+church, which is supposed to be very promotive of many other good
+things besides love; though we are constrained to say that Brother
+Stevens and Brother Hinkley--who, it may be remarked, had very long
+and stubborn arguments, frequently without discovering, till they
+reached the close, that they were thoroughly agreed in every respect
+except in words--concurred in the opinion that there was no portion
+of the church practice so highly conducive to the amalgamation of
+soul with soul, and all souls with God, as this very practice of
+love-feasts!
+
+Being agreed on this and other subjects, Mr. Hinkley invited Brother
+Stevens out to look at his turnips and potatoes; and when this
+delicate inquiry was over, toward ten o'clock in the day, Brother
+Stevens concluded that he must take a gallop; he was dyspeptic, felt
+queerish, his studies were too close, his mind too busy with the
+great concerns of salvation. These are enough to give one
+dyspepsia. Of course, the hot rolls and mountains of volcanic
+butter--steam-ejecting--could have produced no such evil effects upon
+a laborer in the vineyard. At all events, a gallop was necessary,
+and the horse was brought. Brother Hinkley and our matronly sister
+of the same name watched the progress of the pious youth, as,
+spurring up the hills, he pursued the usual route, taking at first
+the broad highway leading to the eastern country.
+
+There were other eyes that watched the departure of Brother
+Stevens with no less interest, but of another kind, than those of
+the venerable couple. Our excellent friend Calvert started up on
+hearing the tread of the horse, and, looking out from his porch,
+ascertained with some eagerness of glance that the rider was Alfred
+Stevens.
+
+Now, why was the interest of Calvert so much greater on this than
+on any other previous occasion? We will tell you, gentle reader.
+He had been roused at an early hour that morning by a visit from
+Ned Hinkley.
+
+"Gran'pa," was the reverent formula of our fisherman at beginning,
+"to-day's the day. I'm pretty certain that Stevens will be riding
+out to-day, for he missed the last Saturday. I'll take my chance
+for it, therefore, and brush out ahead of him. I think I've got it
+pretty straight now, the place that he goes to, and I'll see if I
+can't get there soon enough to put myself in a comfortable fix, so
+as to see what's a-going on and what he goes after. Now, gran'pa,
+I'll tell you what I want from you--them pocket-pistols of your'n.
+Bill Hinkley carried off grandad's, and there's none besides that
+I can lay hold on."
+
+"But, Ned, I'm afraid to lend them to you."
+
+"What 'fraid of?"
+
+"That you'll use them."
+
+"To be sure I will, if there's any need, gran'pa. What do I get
+them for?"
+
+"Ah, yes! but I fear you'll find a necessity where there is none.
+You'll be thrusting your head into some fray in which you may lose
+your ears."
+
+"By Jupiter, no! No, gran'pa, I'll wait for the necessity. I won't
+look for it. I'm going straight ahead this time, and to one object
+only. I think Stevens is a rascal, and I'm bent to find him out.
+I've had no disposition to lick anybody but him, ever since he
+drove Bill Hinkley off--you and him together."
+
+"You'll promise me, Ned?"
+
+"Sure as a snag in the forehead of a Mississippi steamer. Depend
+upon me."
+
+"But there must be no quarrelling with Stevens either, Ned."
+
+"Look you, gran'pa, if I'm to quarrel with Stevens or anybody else,
+'twouldn't be your pistols in my pocket that would make me set on,
+and 'twouldn't be the want of 'em that would make me stop. When
+it's my cue to fight, look you, I won't need any prompter, in the
+shape of friend or pistol. Now THAT speech is from one of your
+poets, pretty near, and ought to convince you that you may as well
+lend the puppies and say no more about it. If you don't you'll only
+compel me to carry my rifle, and that'll be something worse to an
+enemy, and something heavier for me. Come, come, gran'pa, don't be
+too scrupulous in your old age. YOUR HAVING them is a sufficient
+excuse for MY HAVING them too. It shows that they ought to be had."
+
+"You're logic-chopping this morning, Ned--see that you don't get
+to man-chopping in the afternoon. You shall have the pistols, but
+do not use them rashly. I have kept them simply for defence against
+invasion; not for the purpose of quarrel, or revenge."
+
+"And you've kept them mighty well, gran'pa," replied the young man,
+as he contemplated with an eye of anxious admiration, the polish
+of the steel barrels, the nice carving of the handles, and the
+fantastic but graceful inlay of the silver-mounting and setting.
+The old man regarded him with a smile.
+
+"Yes, Ned, I've kept them well. They have never taken life, though
+they have been repeatedly tried upon bull's eye and tree-bark. If
+you will promise me not to use them to-day, Ned, you shall have
+them."
+
+"Take 'em back, gran'pa."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, I'd feel the meanest in the world to have a we'pon, and not
+use it when there's a need to do so; and I'm half afraid that the
+temptation of having such beautiful puppies for myself--twin-puppies,
+I may say--having just the same look out of the eyes, and just the
+same spots and marks, and, I reckon, just the same way of giving
+tongue--I'm half afraid, I say, that to get to be the owner of
+them, might tempt me to stand quiet and let a chap wink at me--maybe
+laugh outright--may be suck in his breath, and give a phew-phew-whistle
+just while I'm passing! No! no! gran'pa, take back your words, or
+take back your puppies. Won't risk to carry both. I'd sooner take
+Patsy Rifle, with all her weight, and no terms at all."
+
+"Pshaw, Ned, you're a fool."
+
+"That's no news, gran'pa, to you or me. But it don't alter the
+case. Put up your puppies."
+
+"No, Ned; you shall have them on your own terms. Take 'em as they
+are. I give them to you."
+
+"And I may shoot anybody I please this afternoon, gran'pa?"
+
+"Ay, ay, Ned--; anybody--"
+
+Thus far the old man, when he stopped himself, changed his manner,
+which was that of playful good-humor, to that of gravity, while
+his tones underwent a corresponding change--
+
+"But, Ned, my son, while I leave it to your discretion, I yet beg
+you to proceed cautiously--seek no strife, avoid it--go not into
+the crowd--keep from them where you see them drinking, and do not
+use these or any weapons for any trifling provocation. Nothing but
+the last necessity of self-preservation justifies the taking of
+life."
+
+"Gran'pa--thank you--you've touched me in the very midst of my
+tender-place, by this handsome present. One of these puppies I'll
+name after you, and I'll notch it on the butt. The other I'll call
+Bill Hinkley, and I won't notch that. Yours, I'll call my pacific
+puppy, and I'll use it only for peace-making purposes. The other
+I'll call my bull-pup, and him I'll use for baiting and butting,
+and goring. But, as you beg, I promise you I'll keep 'em both out
+of mischief as long as I can. Be certain sure that it won't be
+my having the pups that'll make me get into a skrimmage a bit the
+sooner; for I never was the man to ask whether my dogs were at hand
+before I could say the word, 'set-on!' It's a sort of nature in a
+man that don't stop to look after his weapons, but naturally expects
+to find 'em any how, when his blood's up, and there's a necessity
+to do."
+
+This long speech and strong assurance of his pacific nature and
+purposes, did not prevent the speaker from making, while he spoke,
+certain dextrous uses of the instrument's which were given into his
+hands. Right and left were equally busy; one muzzle was addressed
+to the candle upon the mantelpiece, the other pursued the ambulatory
+movements of a great black spider upon the wall. The old man surveyed
+him with an irrepressible smile. Suddenly interrupting himself the
+youth exclaimed:--
+
+"Are they loaded, gran'pa?"
+
+He was answered in the negative.
+
+"Because, if they were," said he, "and that great black spider was
+Brother Stevens, I'd show you in the twinkle of a musquito, how
+I'd put a finish to his morning's work. But I'd use the bull-pup,
+gran'pa--see, this one--the pacific one I'd empty upon him with
+powder only, as a sort of feu de joie--and then I'd set up the
+song--what's it? ah! Te Deum. A black spider always puts me in mind
+of a rascal."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE FOX IN THE TRAP.
+
+
+
+
+
+The youth barely stopped to swallow his breakfast, when be set
+off from the village. He managed his movements with considerable
+caution; and, fetching a circuit from an opposite quarter, after
+having ridden some five miles out of his way, passed into the road
+which he suspected that Stevens would pursue. We do not care to
+show the detailed processes by which he arrived at this conclusion.
+The reader may take for granted that he had heard from some way-side
+farmer, that a stranger rode by his cottage once a week, wearing
+such and such breeches, and mounted upon a nag of a certain color
+and with certain qualities. Enough to say, that Ned Hinkley was
+tolerably certain of his route and man.
+
+He sped on accordingly--did not once hesitate at turns, right or
+left, forks and crossroads, but keeping an inflexible course, he
+placed himself at such a point on the road as to leave it no longer
+doubtful, should Stevens pass, of the place which usually brought
+him up. Here he dismounted, hurried his horse, out of sight
+and hearing, into the woods, and choosing a position for himself,
+with some nicety, along the road-side, put himself in close cover,
+where, stretching his frame at length, he commenced the difficult
+labor of cooling his impatience with his cogitations.
+
+But cogitating, with a fellow of his blood, rather whets impatience.
+He was monstrous restiff. At his fishing pond, with a trout to hook,
+he would have lain for hours, as patient as philosophy itself, and
+as inflexible as the solid rock over which he brooded. But without
+an angle at his hand, how could he keep quiet? Not by thinking,
+surely; and, least of all, by thinking about that person for whom
+his hostility was so active. Thinking of Stevens, by a natural
+association, reminded him of the pistols which Calvert had given
+him. Nothing could be more natural than to draw them from his bosom.
+Again and again he examined them in fascinated contemplation. He
+had already charged them, and he amused himself by thinking of the
+mischief he could do, by a single touch upon the trigger, to a poor
+little wood-rat, that once or twice ran along a decaying log some
+five steps from his feet. But his object being secrecy, the rat
+brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused himself by aiming
+at this and other objects, until suddenly reminded of the very
+important difference which he had promised Calvert to make between
+the pistols in his future use of them. With this recollection he
+drew out his knife, and laid the weapons before him.
+
+"This," said he, after a careful examination, in which he fancied
+he discovered some slight difference between them in the hang of
+the trigger--"this shall be my bull-pup--this my peace-maker!"
+
+The latter was marked accordingly with a "P," carved rudely enough
+by one whose hand was much more practised in slitting the weasand
+of a buck, than in cutting out, with crayon, or Italian crow-quill,
+the ungainly forms of the Roman alphabet. Ned Hinkley shook his
+head with some misgiving when the work was done; as he could not
+but see that he had somewhat impaired the beauty of the peacemaker's
+butt by the hang-dog looking initial which he had grafted upon it.
+But when he recollected the subordinate uses to which this "puppy"
+was to be put, and considered how unlikely, in his case, it would
+be exposed to sight in comparison with its more masculine brother,
+he grew partially reconciled to an evil which was now, indeed,
+irreparable.
+
+It does not require that we should bother the reader with the
+numberless thoughts and fancies which bothered our spy, in the three
+mortal hours in which he kept his watch. Nothing but the hope that
+he should ultimately be compensated to the utmost by a full discovery
+of all that he sought to know, could possibly have sustained him
+during the trying ordeal. At every new spasm of impatience which
+he felt, he drew up his legs, shifted from one side to the other
+and growled out some small thunder in the shape of a threat that
+"it would be only so much the worse for him when the time came!"
+HIM--meaning Stevens.
+
+At last Stevens came. He watched the progress of his enemy with
+keen eyes; and, with his "bull-pup" in his hand, which a sort of
+instinct made him keep in the direction of the highway, he followed
+his form upon the road. When he was out of sight and hearing, the
+spy jumped to his feet. The game, he felt, was secure now--in one
+respect at least.
+
+"He's for Ellisland. That was no bad guess then. He might have been
+for Fergus, or Jonesboro', or Debarre, but there's no turn now in
+the clear track to Ellisland. He's there for certain."
+
+Ned Hinkley carefully restored his pistols to his bosom and buttoned
+up. He was mounted in a few moments, and pressing slowly forward
+in pursuit. He had his own plans which we will not attempt to
+fathom; but we fear we shall be compelled to admit that he was not
+sufficiently a gentleman to scruple at turning scout in a time of
+peace (though, with him, by the way, and thus he justified, he is
+in pursuit of an enemy, and consequently is at war), and dodging
+about, under cover, spying out the secrets of the land, and not
+very fastidious in listening to conversation that does not exactly
+concern him. We fear that there is some such flaw in the character
+of Ned Hinkley, though, otherwise, a good, hardy fellow--with a
+rough and tumble sort of good nature, which, having bloodied your
+nose, would put a knife-handle down your back, and apply a handful
+of cobwebs to the nasal extremity in order to arrest the haemorrhage.
+We are sorry that there is such a defect in his character; but we
+did not put it there. We should prefer that he should be perfect--the
+reader will believe us--but there are grave lamentations enough
+over the failures of humanity to render our homilies unnecessary.
+Ned Hinkley was not a gentleman, and the only thing to be said in
+his behalf, is, that he was modest enough to make pretensions to
+the character. As he once said in a row the company muster:--
+
+"I'm blackguard enough, on this occasion, to whip e'er a gentleman
+among you!"
+
+Without any dream of such a spectre at his heels to disturb his
+imagination, Alfred Stevens was pursuing his way toward Ellisland,
+at that easy travelling gait, which is the best for man and beast,
+vulgarly called a "dog-trot." Some very fine and fanciful people
+insist upon calling it a "jog-trot." We beg leave, in this place,
+to set them right. Every trot is a jog, and so, for that matter,
+is every canter. A dog-trot takes its name from the even motion of
+the smaller quadruped, when it is seized with no particular mania,
+and is yet disposed to go stubbornly forward. It is in more classical
+dialect, the festina lente motion. It is regularly forward, and
+therefore fast--it never puts the animal out of breath, and is
+therefore slow. Nobody ever saw a dog practice this gait, with a
+tin canister at his tail, and a huddle of schoolboys at his heels.
+No! it is THE travelling motion, considering equally the health of
+all parties, and the necessity of getting on.
+
+In this desire, Ned Hinkley pressed too closely on the heels
+of Stevens. He once nearly overhauled him; and falling back, he
+subdued his speed, to what, in the same semi-figurative language,
+he styled "the puppy-trot." Observing these respective gaits, Brother
+Stevens rode into Ellisland at a moderately late dinner-hour, and
+the pursuer followed at an unspeakable, but not great, distance
+behind him. We will, henceforward, after a brief glance at
+Ellisland, confine ourselves more particularly to the progress of
+Brother Stevens.
+
+Ellisland was one of those little villages to which geographers
+scarcely accord a place upon the maps. It is not honored with a dot
+in any map that we have ever seen of Kentucky. But, for all this,
+it is a place! Some day the name will be changed into Acarnania or
+Etolia, Epirus or Scandinavia, and then be sure you shall hear of
+it. Already, the village lawyers--there are two of them--have been
+discussing the propriety of a change to something classical; and
+we do not doubt that, before long, their stupidity will become
+infectious. Under these circumstances Ellisland will catch a name
+that will stick. At present you would probably never hear of the
+place, were it not necessary to our purposes and those of Brother
+Stevens.
+
+It has its tavern and blacksmith shop--its church--the meanest
+fabric in the village--its postoffice and public well and trough.
+There is also a rack pro bono publico, but as it is in front of the
+tavern, the owner of that establishment has not wholly succeeded in
+convincing the people that it was put there with simple reference
+to the public convenience. The tavern-keeper is, politically, a
+quadrupled personage. He combines the four offices of post-master,
+justice of the peace, town council, and publican; and is considered
+a monstrous small person with all. The truth is, reader--this
+aside--he has been democrat and whig, alternately, every second
+year of his political life. His present politics, being loco-foco,
+are in Ellisland considered contra bonos mores. It is hoped that
+he will be dismissed from office, and a memorial to that effect
+is in preparation; but the days of Harrison--"and Tyler too"--have
+not yet come round, and Jerry Sunderland, who knows what his enemies
+arc driving at, whirls his coat-skirts, and snaps his fingers, in
+scorn of all their machinations. He has a friend at Washington, who
+spoons in the back parlor of the white-house--in other words, is a
+member o f the kitchen-cabinet, of which, be it said, en passant,
+there never was a president of the United States yet entirely without
+one--and--there never will be! So much for politics and Ellisland.
+
+There was some crowd in the village on the day of Brother Stevens's
+arrival. Saturday is a well known day in the western and southern
+country for making a village gathering; and when Brother Stevens,
+having hitched his horse at the public rack, pushed his way to
+the postoffice, he had no small crowd to set aside. He had just
+deposited his letters, received others in return, answered some ten
+or fifteen questions which Jerry Sunderland, P. M., Q. U., N. P.,
+M. C., publican and sinner--such were all deservedly his titles--had
+thought it necessary to address to him, when he was suddenly
+startled by a familiar tap upon the shoulder; such a tap as leads
+the recipient to imagine that he is about to be honored with the
+affectionate salutation of some John Doe or Richard Roe of the law.
+Stevens turned with some feeling of annoyance, if not misgiving,
+and met the arch, smiling, and very complacent visage of a tall,
+slender young gentleman in black bushy whiskers and a green coat,
+who seized him by the hand and shook it heartily, while a chuckling
+half-suppressed laughter gurgling in his throat, for a moment,
+forbade the attempt to speak. Stevens seemed disquieted and looked
+around him suspiciously.
+
+"What! you here, Ben?"
+
+"Ay, you see me! You didn't expect to see me, Warham---"
+
+"Hush!" was the whispered word of Stevens, again looking round him
+in trepidation.
+
+"Oh! ay!" said the other with a sly chuckle, and also in a whisper,
+"Mr. Stevens--Brother Stevens--hem! I did not think. How is your
+holiness to-day?"
+
+"Come aside," muttered Stevens; and, taking the arm of the incautious
+speaker, he led him away from the crowd and took the way out of
+the village. Their meeting and departure did not occasion much, if
+any, sensation. The visitors in the village were all too busy in
+discussing the drink and doctrines, pretty equally distributed, of
+Jerry the publican. But there was one eye that noted the meeting
+of the friends; that beheld the concern and confusion of Stevens:
+that saw their movements, and followed their departing steps.
+
+"Take your horse--where is he?" demanded Stevens.
+
+"Here, at hand; but what do you mean to do?"
+
+"Nothing, but get out of hearing and sight; for your long tongue,
+Ben, and significant face, would blab any secret, however deep."
+
+"Ah! did I not say that I would find you out? Did you get my last
+letter?"
+
+"Ay, I did: but I'm devilish sorry, Ben, that you've come. You'll
+do mischief. You have always been a mar-plot."
+
+"Never, never! You don't know me."
+
+"Don't I?--but get your horse, and let's go into the woods, while
+we talk over matters."
+
+"Why not leave the nags here?"
+
+"For a very good reason. My course lies in that direction, so that
+I am in my way; while yours, if your purpose be to go back to
+Frankfort, will lie on the upper side. Neither of us need come back
+to the village."
+
+"And you think to shuffle me off so soon, do you?"
+
+"What would you have me do?"
+
+"Why, give us a peep at this beauty--this Altamira of yours--at
+least."
+
+"Impossible! Do not think of it, Ben; you'd spoil all. But, get
+the horse. These billet-heads will suspect mischief if they see
+us talking together, particularly whon they behold your conceited
+action. This political landlord will surmise that you are a second
+Aaron Burr, about to beat up recruits to conquer California. Your
+big whiskers--what an atrocious pair!--with your standing collar,
+will confirm the impression."
+
+The two were soon mounted, and rode into the adjoining woods. They
+were only a stone's-throw from the village, when Stevens alighted,
+followed by his companion. They hitched their horses to some swinging
+branches of a sheltering tree, and, going aside a few paces beyond,
+seated themselves upon the grass, as they fancied, in a place of
+perfect security.
+
+"And now, Ben, what in truth brings you here?" demanded Stevens,
+in tones of voice and with a look which betrayed anything but
+satisfaction with the visit.
+
+"Curiosity, I tell you, and the legs of my horse."
+
+"Pshaw! you have some other motive."
+
+"No, 'pon honor. I resolved to find you out--to see what you were
+driving at, and where. I could only guess a part from your letter
+to Barnabas, and that costive scrawl with which you honored me.
+Perhaps, too--and give my friendship credit for the attempt--I came
+with some hope to save you."
+
+"Save me--from what?"
+
+"Why, wedlock--the accursed thing! The club is in terror lest you
+should forget your vows. So glowing were your descriptions of your
+Cleopatra, that we knew not what to make. We feared everything."
+
+"Why, Barnabas might have opened your eyes: he knew better."
+
+"You're not married, then?"
+
+"Pshaw! no."
+
+"Nor engaged?"
+
+The other laughed as he replied:--
+
+"Why, on that head, the least said the better. The roving commission
+permits you to run up any flag that the occasion requires."
+
+"Ah, you sly dog!--and what success?"
+
+"Come, come, Ben, you must not be so inquisitive. The game's my
+own, you know; and the rules of the club give me immunity from a
+fellow-member."
+
+"By Gad, I'll resign! I must see this forest beauty."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Where's she? How will you prevent?"
+
+"By a very easy process. Do you know the bird that shrieks farthest
+from her young ones when the fowler is at hand? I'll follow her
+example."
+
+"I'll follow you to the uttermost ends of the earth, Warham!"
+
+"Hush! you forget! Am I not Brother Stevens? Ha! ha! ha! You are
+not sufficiently reverent, brother. See you no divinity in my look
+and bearing? Hark you, Ben, I've been a sort of small divinity in
+the eyes of a whole flock for a month past!"
+
+"You pray?"
+
+"And preach!"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!--devilish good; but I must see you in order to believe.
+I must, indeed, Brother Stevens. Why, man, think of it--success in
+this enterprise will make you head of the fraternity--you will be
+declared pope: but you must have witnesses!"
+
+"So I think; and hark ye, Ben"--laying a finger on the arm of the
+other--"I am successful!"
+
+"What! you don't say so! This queen, this princess of Egypt,
+Cleopatra, Altamira--eh?"
+
+"Is mine--soul and body--she is mine!"
+
+"And is what you say? Come, come, you don't mean that such a splendid
+woman as you describe--such a genius, poet, painter, musician--beauty
+too!--you don't mean to say that--"
+
+"I do, every bit of it."
+
+"'Gad! what a fellow!--what a lucky dog! But you must let me see
+her, Warham!"
+
+"What! to spoil all--to blurt out the truth?--for, with every
+disposition to fib, you lack the ability. No, no, Ben: when the
+game's up--when I'm tired of the sport, and feel the necessity of
+looking out fresh viands--you shall then know all; I'll give the
+clue into your own hands, and you may follow it to your heart's
+content. But not now!"
+
+"But how will you get rid of me, mon ami, if my curiosity is
+stubborn?"
+
+"Do as the kill-deer does--travel from the nest--go home with you,
+rather than you should succeed in your impertinence, and have you
+expelled from the club for thrusting your spoon into the dish of
+a brother-member."
+
+"You're a Turk, with no bowels of compassion. But, at all events,
+you promise me the dish when you're done with it? you give me the
+preference?"
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Swear by Beelzebub and Mohammed; by Jupiter Ammon and Johannes
+Secundus; by the ghost of Cardinal Bembo, and the gridiron of the
+fraternity!"
+
+"Ay, and by the virginity of Queen Elizabeth!"
+
+"Simulacrum! no! no! no such oath for me! That's swearing by
+the thing that is not, was not--could not be! You shall swear by
+the oaths of the club--you must be bound on the gridiron of the
+fraternity, before I believe you. Swear!"
+
+"You are as tenacious as the ghost of buried Denmark But you shall
+be satisfied. I swear by the mystic gridiron of the fraternity, and
+by the legs thereof, of which the images are Beelzebub, Mohammed,
+Johannes Secundus, and so forth--nay, by that memorable volume, so
+revered in the eyes of the club, the new edition of 'The Basiad,'
+of which who among us has been the true exponent?--that profound
+mystery of sweets, fathomed hourly, yet unfathomable still--for
+which the commentators, already legions, are hourly becoming legions
+more;--by these, and by the mysteries of the mirror that reflects
+not our own, but the image we desire;--by these things--by all
+things that among the brotherhood are held potent--I swear to--"
+
+"Give me the preference in the favor of this princess; the clue to
+find her when you have left her; and the assurance that you will
+get a surfeit as soon as possible: swear!"
+
+"Nay, nay! I swear not to that last! I shall hold on while appetite
+holds, and make all efforts not to grow dyspeptic in a hurry. I'll
+keep my stomach for a dainty, be sure, as long as I can. I were no
+brother, worthy of our order, if I did not."
+
+"Well, well--to the rest! Swear to the rest, and I am satisfied."
+
+"You go back, then, instanter?"
+
+"What! this very day?"
+
+"This hour!"
+
+"The d---l! you don't mean THAT, Warham?" returned the other in
+some consternation.
+
+"Ay, this very hour! You must swear to that. Your oath must precede
+mine."
+
+"Ah! man, remember I only got here last night--long ride--hard-trotting
+horse. We have not seen each other for months. I have a cursed sight
+to tell you about the boys--girls too--love, law, logic, politics.
+Do you know they talk of running you for the house?"
+
+"All in good season, Ben; not now. No, no! you shall see me when
+you least look for me, and there will be time enough for all these
+matters then. They'll keep. For the present, let me say to you
+that we must part now within the hour. You must swear not to dog
+my steps, and I will swear to give you carte blanche, and the first
+privileges at my princess, when I leave her. This is my bargain.
+I make no other."
+
+"I've a great mind not to leave you," said the other doggedly.
+
+"And what will that resolution bring you, do you fancy? Do you
+suppose I am to be tracked in such a manner? No, Ben! The effect
+will be to make me set off for the east instantly, whether you go
+with me or not; and an equally certain effect will be to make us
+cut loose for ever."
+
+"You're a d---d hard colt to manage," said the other moodily.
+
+"I sha'n't let myself be straddled by every horse-boy, I assure
+you."
+
+"Come, come, old fellow, that's too much like horse-play. Don't be
+angry with me. I'll accept your conditions."
+
+"Very good," said Stevens; "if you did not, Ben, it would be no
+better for you; for, otherwise, you should never even see my beauty!"
+
+"Is she so very beautiful, old boy?"
+
+"A queen, I tell you! a proud, high-spirited, wild beauty of the
+mountains--a thing of fire and majesty--a glorious woman, full
+of song and sentiment and ambition--a genius, I tell you--who can
+improvise like Corinne, and, by the way, continually reminds one
+of that glorious creature. In Italy, she would have been greater
+than Corinne."
+
+"And you've won her--and she loves you?"
+
+"Ay--to doting! I found her a sort of eagle--soaring, striving--always
+with an eye upon the hills, and fighting with the sunbeams. I have
+subdued her. She is now like a timid fawn that trembles at the
+very falling of a leaf in the forests. She pants with hope to see
+me, and pants with tremulous delight when I come. Still, she shows
+every now and then, a glimmering of that eagle spirit which she
+had at first. She flashes up suddenly, but soon sinks again. Fancy
+a creature, an idolater of fame before, suddenly made captive by
+love, and you have a vain, partial image of my forest-princess."
+
+"What a lucky dog! You'll marry her yet, old boy, in spite of all!"
+
+"Pshaw! You are green to talk so."
+
+"You'll be devilish loath to give her up; I'm afraid I'll have to
+wait a cursed long time."
+
+"No, not long! Do not despair. Easy won, easy valued."
+
+"And was she easily won?"
+
+"Very! the game was a short one. She is a mere country-girl, you
+know, but eighteen or thereabouts--suspecting nobody, and never
+dreaming that she had a heart or passions at all. She thought only
+of her poetry and her books. It was only necessary to work upon
+heart and passions while talking of poetry and books, and they
+carried her out of her depth before she could recover. She's wiser
+now, Ben, I can assure you, and will require more dexterity to keep
+than to conquer."
+
+"And she has no brother to worry a body--no d---d ugly Hobnail,
+who has a fancy for her, and may make a window between the ribs of
+a gallant, such as nature never intended, with the ounce-bullet of
+some d---d old-fashioned seven-foot rifle--eh?"
+
+"There was a silly chap, one Hinkley, who tried it on me--actually
+challenged me, though I was playing parson, and there might have
+been work for me but for his own bull-headed father, who came to my
+rescue, beat the boy and drove him from the place. There is nobody
+else to give me any annoyance, unless it be a sort of half-witted
+chap, a cousin of the former--a sleepy dog that is never, I believe,
+entirely awake unless when he's trout-fishing. He has squinted at
+me, as if he could quarrel if he dared, but the lad is dull--too
+dull to be very troublesome. You might kiss his grandmother under
+his nose, and he would probably regard it only as a compliment to
+her superior virtues, and would thank you accordingly--"
+
+A voice a little to the left interrupted the speaker.
+
+"So he does, my brave parson, for his grandmother's sake and his
+own," were the words of the speaker. They turned in sudden amaze
+to the spot whence the sounds issued. The bushes opening in this
+quarter, presented to the astonished eyes of Brother Stevens,
+the perfect image of the dull lad of whom he had been speaking.
+There was Ned Hinkley in proper person--perfectly awake, yet not
+trout-fishing! A sarcastic grin was upon his visage, and rolling
+his eyes with a malicious leer, he repeated the words which had
+first interrupted the progress of the dialogue between the friends.
+
+"I thank you, Brother Stevens, for the compliment to my grandmother's
+virtues. I thank you, on her account as well as my own. I'm very
+grateful, I assure you, very grateful, very!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+"ABSQUATULATING."
+
+
+
+
+
+Had a bolt suddenly flashed and thundered at the feet of the two
+friends, falling from a clear sky in April, they could not have
+been more astounded. They started, as with one impulse, in the same
+moment to their feet.
+
+"Keep quiet," said the intruder; "don't let me interrupt you in so
+pleasant a conversation. I'd like to hear you out. I'm refreshed
+by it. What you say is so very holy and sermon-like, that I'm like
+a new man when I hear it. Sit down, Brother Stevens, and begin
+again; sit down, Ben, my good fellow, and don't look so scary! You
+look as if you had a window in your ribs already!"
+
+The intruder had not moved, though he had startled the conspirators.
+He did not seem to share in their excitement. He was very coolly
+seated, with his legs deliberately crossed, while his two hands
+parted the bushes before him in order to display his visage--perhaps
+with the modest design of showing to the stranger that his friend had
+grievously misrepresented its expression. Certainly, no one could
+say that, at this moment, it lacked anything of spirit or intelligence.
+Never were eyes more keen--never were lips more emphatically made
+to denote sarcasm and hostility. The whole face was alive with
+scorn, and hate, and bitterness; and there was defiance enough in
+the glance to have put wings to fifty bullets.
+
+His coolness, the composure which his position and words manifested,
+awakened the anger of Brother Stevens as soon as the first feeling
+of surprise had passed away. He felt, in a moment, that the game
+was up with him--that he could no longer play the hypocrite in
+Charlemont. He must either keep his pledges to Margaret Cooper,
+without delay or excuse, or he must abandon all other designs
+which his profligate heart may have suggested in its cruel purposes
+against her peace.
+
+"Scoundrel!" he exclaimed; "how came you here? What have you heard?"
+
+"Good words, Brother Stevens. You forget, you are a parson."
+
+"Brain the rascal!" exclaimed the whiskered stranger, looking
+more fierce than ever. The same idea seemed to prompt the actions
+of Stevens. Both of them, at the same moment, advanced upon the
+intruder, with their whips uplifted; but still Ned Hinkley did not
+rise. With his legs still crossed, he kept his position, simply
+lifting from the sward beside him, where they had been placed
+conveniently, his two "puppies." One of these he grasped in his
+right hand and presented as his enemies approached.
+
+"This, gentlemen," said he, "is my peace-maker. It says, 'Keep your
+distance.' This is my bull-pup, or peace-breaker; it says, 'Come
+on.' Listen to which you please. It's all the same to me. Both are
+ready to answer you, and I can hardly keep 'em from giving tongue.
+The bull-pup longs to say something to you, Brother Stevens--the
+pacificator is disposed to trim your whiskers, Brother Ben; and I
+say, for 'em both, come on, you black-hearted rascals, if you want
+to know whether a girl of Charlemont can find a man of Charlemont
+to fight her battles. I'm man enough, by the Eternal, for both of
+you!"
+
+The effect of Hinkley's speech was equally great upon himself and
+the enemy. He sprang to his feet, ere the last sentence was concluded,
+and they recoiled in something like indecent haste. The language
+of determination was even more strongly expressed by the looks of
+the rustic than by his language and action. They backed hurriedly
+at his approach.
+
+"What! won't you stand?--won't you answer to your villanies?--won't
+you fight? Pull out your barkers and blaze away, you small-souled
+scamps; I long to have a crack at you--here and there--both at a
+time! Aint you willing? I'm the sleepy trout-fisherman! Don't you
+know me? You've waked me up, my lads, and I sha'n't sleep again in
+a hurry! As for you, Alfred Stevens--you were ready to fight Bill
+Ilinkley--here's another of the breed--won't you fight him?"
+
+"Yes--give me one of your pistols, if you dare, and take your
+stand," said Stevens boldly.
+
+"You're a cunning chap--give you one of my puppies--a stick for
+my own head--while this bush-whiskered chap cudgels me over from
+behind. No! no! none of that! Besides, these pistols were a gift
+from a good man, they sha'n't be disgraced by the handling of a
+bad one. Get your own weapons, Brother Stevens, and every man to
+his tree."
+
+"They are in Charlemont!"
+
+"Well!--you'll meet me there then?"
+
+"Yes!" was the somewhat eager answer of Stevens, "I will meet you
+there--to-morrow morning--"
+
+"Sunday--no! no!"
+
+"Monday, then; this evening, if we get home in season."
+
+"It's a bargain then," replied Hinkley, "though I can hardly keep
+from giving you the teeth of the bull! As for big-whiskered Ben,
+there, I'd like to let him taste my pacificator. I'd just like to
+brush up his whiskers with gun-powder--they look to have been done
+up with bear's grease before, and have a mighty fine curl; but if
+I wouldn't frizzle them better than ever a speckled hen had her
+feathers frizzled, then I don't know the virtues of gun-powder.
+On Monday morning, Brother Stevens!"
+
+"Ay, ay! on Monday morning!"
+
+Had Ned Hinkley been more a man of the world--had he not been a
+simple backwoodsman, he would have seen, in the eagerness of Stevens
+to make this arrangement, something, which would have rendered
+him suspicious of his truth. The instantaneous thought of the
+arch-hypocrite, convinced him that he could never return to Charlemont
+if this discovery was once made there. His first impulse was to
+put it out of the power of Ned Hinkley to convey the tidings. We
+do not say that he would have deliberately murdered him; but, under
+such an impulse of rage and disappointment as governed him in the
+first moments of detection, murder has been often done. He would
+probably have beaten him into incapacity with his whip--which had
+a heavy handle--had not the rustic been sufficiently prepared. The
+pistols of Stevens were in his valise, but he had no purpose of
+fighting, on equal terms, with a man who spoke with the confidence
+of one who knew how to use his tools; and when the simple fellow,
+assuming that he would return to Charlemont for his chattels,
+offered him the meeting there, he eagerly caught at the suggestion
+as affording himself and friend the means of final escape.
+
+It was not merely the pistols of Hinkley of which he had a fear. But
+he well knew how extreme would be the danger, should the rustic
+gather together the people of Ellisland, with the story of his fraud,
+and the cruel consequences to the beauty of Charlemont, by which
+the deception had been followed. But the simple youth, ignorant
+of the language of libertinism, had never once suspected the fatal
+lapse from virtue of which Margaret Cooper had been guilty. He was
+too unfamiliar with the annals and practices of such criminals, to
+gather this fact from the equivocal words, and half-spoken sentences,
+and sly looks of the confederates. Had he dreamed this--had it,
+for a moment, entered into his conjecturings--that such had been
+the case, he would probably have shot down the seducer without a
+word of warning. But that the crime was other than prospective, he
+had not the smallest fancy; and this may have been another reason
+why he took the chances of Stevens's return to Charlemont, and let
+him off at the moment.
+
+"Even should he not return," such may have been his reflection--"I
+have prevented mischief at least. He will be able to do no harm.
+Margaret Cooper shall be warned of her escape, and become humbler
+at least, if not wiser in consequence. At all events, the eyes
+of Uncle Hinkley will be opened, and poor Bill be restored to us
+again!"
+
+"And now mount, you scamps," said Hinkley, pressing upon the two
+with presented pistols. "I'm eager to send big-whiskered Ben home
+to his mother; and to see you, Brother Stevens, on your way back
+to Charlemont. I can hardly keep hands off you till then; and
+it's only to do so, that I hurry you. If you stay, looking black,
+mouthing together, I can't stand it. I will have a crack at you. My
+peace-maker longs to brush up them whiskers. My bull-pup is eager
+to take you, Brother Stevens, by the muzzle! Mount you, as quick
+as you can, before I do mischief."
+
+Backing toward their horses, they yielded to the advancing muzzles,
+which the instinct of fear made them loath to turn their backs
+upon.  Never were two hopeful projectors so suddenly abased--so
+completely baffled. Hinkley, advancing with moderate pace, now
+thrust forward one, and now the other pistol, accompanying the
+action with a specific sentence corresponding to each, in manner
+and form as follows:--
+
+"Back, parson--back, whiskers! Better turn, and look out for the
+roots, as you go forward. There's no seeing your way along the road
+by looking down the throats of my puppies. If you want to be sure
+that they'll follow till you're mounted, you have my word for it.
+No mistake, I tell you. They're too eager on scent, to lose sight
+of you in a hurry, and they're ready to give tongue at a moment's
+warning. Take care not to stumble, whiskers, or the pacificator
+'ll be into your brush."
+
+"I'll pay you for this!" exclaimed Stevens, with a rage which was
+not less really felt than judiciously expressed. "Wait till we
+meet!"
+
+"Ay, ay! I'll wait; but be in a hurry. Turn now, your nags are at
+your backs. Turn and mount!"
+
+In this way they reached the tree where their steeds were fastened.
+Thus, with the muzzle of a pistol bearing close upon the body of
+each--the click of the cock they had heard--the finger close to the
+trigger they saw--they were made to mount--in momentary apprehension
+that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently
+seen in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton
+hand, riddle their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they
+were mounted, that they drew a breath of partial confidence.
+
+"Now," said Hinkley, "my lads, let there be few last words between
+you. The sooner you're off the better. As for you, Alfred Stevens,
+the sooner you're back in Charlemont the more daylight we'll have
+to go upon. I'll be waiting you, I reckon, when you come."
+
+"Ay, and you may wait," said Stsvens, as the speaker turned off
+and proceeded to the spot where his own horse was fastened.
+
+"You won't return, of course?" said his companion.
+
+"No! I must now return with you, thanks to your interference. By
+Heavens, Ben, I knew, at your coming, that you would do mischief;
+you have been a marplot ever; and after this, I am half-resolved
+to forswear your society for ever."
+
+"Nay, nay! do not say so, Warham. It was unfortunate, I grant you;
+but how the devil should either of us guess that such a Turk as
+that was in the bush?"
+
+"Enough for the present," said the other. 'It is not now whether
+I wish to ride with you or not. There is no choice. There is no
+return to Charlemont."
+
+"And that's the name of the place, is it?"
+
+"Yes! yes! Much good may the knowledge of it do you."
+
+"How fortunate that this silly fellow concluded to let you off on
+such a promise. What an ass!"
+
+"Yes! but he may grow wiser! Put spurs to your jade, and let us
+see what her heels are good for, for the next three hours. I do not
+yet feel secure. The simpleton may grow wiser and change his mind."
+
+"He can scarcely do us harm now, if he does."
+
+"Indeed!" said Stevens--"you know nothing. There's such a thing as
+hue and cry, and its not unfrequently practised in these regions,
+when the sheriff is not at hand and constables are scarce. Every
+man is then a sheriff."
+
+"Well--but there's no law-process against us!"
+
+"You are a born simpleton, I think," said Stevens, with little
+scruple. He was too much mortified to be very heedful of the
+feelings of his companion. "There needs no law in such a case, at
+least for the CAPTURE of a supposed criminal; and, for that matter,
+they do not find it necessary for his punishment either. Hark ye,
+Ben--there's a farmhouse?"
+
+"Yes, I see it!"
+
+"Don't you smell tar?--They're running it now!"
+
+"I think I do smell something like it. What of it?"
+
+"Do you see that bed hanging from yon window?"
+
+"Yes! of course I see it!"
+
+"It is a feather-bed!"
+
+"Well--what of that? Why tell me this stuff? Of course I can guess
+as well as you that it's a feather-bed, since I see a flock of
+geese in the yard with their necks all bare."
+
+"Hark ye, then! There's something more than this, which you may yet
+see! Touch up your mare. If this fellow brings the mob at Ellisland
+upon us, that tar will be run, and that feather-bed gutted, for our
+benefit. What they took from the geese will be bestowed on us. Do
+you understand me? Did you ever hear of a man whose coat was made
+of tar and feathers, and furnished at the expense of the county?"
+
+"Hush, for God's sake, Warham! you make my blood run cold with your
+hideous notions!"
+
+"That fellow offered to frizzle your whiskers. These would anoint
+them with tar, in which your bear's oil would be of little use."
+
+"Ha! don't you hear a noise?" demanded the whiskered companion,
+looking behind him.
+
+"I think I do," replied the other musingly.
+
+"A great noise!" continued Don Whiskerandos.
+
+"Yes, it seems to me that it is a great noise."
+
+"Like people shouting?"
+
+"Somewhat--yes, by my soul, that DOES sound something like a shout!"
+
+"And there! Don't stop to look and listen, Warham," cried his
+companion; "it's no time for meditation. They're coming! hark!--"
+and with a single glance behind him--with eyes dilating with the
+novel apprehensions of receiving a garment, unsolicited, bestowed
+by the bounty of the county--he drove his spurs into the flanks of
+his mare, and went ahead like an arrow. Stevens smiled in spite of
+his vexation.
+
+"D--n him!" he muttered as he rode forward, "it's some satisfaction,
+at least, to scare the soul out of him!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE REVELATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+Having seen his enemy fairly mounted, and under way, as he thought,
+for Charlemont, Ned Hinkley returned to Ellisland for his own horse.
+Here he did not suffer himself to linger, though, before he could
+succeed in taking his departure, he was subjected to a very keen
+and searching examination by the village publican and politician.
+Having undergone this scrutiny with tolerable patience, if not to
+the entire satisfaction of the examiner, he set forward at a free
+canter, determined that his adversary should not be compelled to
+wait.
+
+It was only while he rode that he began to fancy the possibility of
+the other having taken a different course; but as, upon reflection,
+he saw no other plan which he might have adopted--for lynching
+for suspected offences was not yet a popular practice in and about
+Charlemont--he contented himself with the reflection that he had
+done all that could have been done; and if Alfred Stevens failed
+to keep his appointment, he, at least, was one of the losers. He
+would necessarily lose the chance of revenging an indignity, not to
+speak of the equally serious loss of that enjoyment which a manly
+fight usually gave to Ned Hinkley himself, and which, he accordingly
+assumed, must be an equal gratification to all other persons. When
+he arrived at Charlemont, he did not make his arrival known, but,
+repairing directly to the lake among the hills, he hitched his
+horse, and prepared, with what patience he could command, to await
+the coming of the enemy.
+
+The reader is already prepared to believe that the worthy rustic
+waited in vain. It was only with the coming on of night that he began
+to consider himself outwitted. He scratched his head impatiently,
+not without bringing away some shreds of the hair, jumped on his
+horse, and, without making many allowances for the rough and hilly
+character of the road, went off at a driving pace for the house of
+Uncle Hinkley. Here he drew up only to ask if Brother Stevens had
+returned.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then, dang it! he never will return. He's a skunk, uncle--as great
+a skunk as ever was in all Kentucky!"
+
+"How! what!--what of Brother Stevens?" demanded the uncle, seconded
+by John Cross, who had only some two hours arrived at the village,
+and now appeared at the door. But Ned Hinkley was already off.
+
+"He's a skunk!--that's all!"
+
+His last words threw very little light over the mystery, and
+certainly gave very little satisfaction to his hearers. The absence
+of Alfred Stevens, at a time when John Cross was expected, had
+necessarily occasioned some surprise; but, of course, no apprehensions
+were entertained by either the worthy parson or the bigoted host
+that he could be detained by any cause whatsoever which he could
+not fully justify.
+
+The next course of Ned Hinkley was for the cottage of Mr. Calvert.
+To the old man he gave a copious detail of all his discoveries--not
+only the heads of what he heard from the conspirators in the wood,
+but something of the terms of the dialogue. The gravity of Calvert
+increased as the other proceeded. He saw more deeply into the
+signification of certain portions of this dialogue than did the
+narrator; and when the latter, after having expressed his disappointment
+at the non-appearance of Stevens on the field of combat, at least
+congratulated himself at having driven him fairly from the ground,
+the other shook his head mournfully.
+
+"I am afraid it's too late, my son."
+
+"Too late, gran'pa! How? Is it ever too late to send such a rascal
+a-packing?"
+
+"It may be for the safety of some, my son."
+
+"What! Margaret you mean? You think the poor fool of a girl's too
+far gone in love of him, do you?"
+
+"If that were all, Ned--"
+
+"Why, what more, eh? You don't mean!--"
+
+The apprehensions of the simple, unsuspecting fellow, for the first
+time began to be awakened to the truth.
+
+"I am afraid, my son, that this wretch has been in Charlemont too
+long. From certain words that you have dropped, as coming from
+Stevens, in speaking to his comrade, I should regard him as speaking
+the language of triumph for successes already gained."
+
+"Oh, hardly! I didn't think so. If I had only guessed that he
+meant such a thing--though I can't believe it--I'd ha' dropped him
+without a word. I'd have given him the pacificator as well as the
+peace-breaker. Oh, no! I can't think it--I can't--I won't! Margaret
+Cooper is not a girl to my liking, but, Lord help us! she's
+too beautiful and too smart to suffer such a skunk, in so short a
+time, to get the whip-hand of her. No, gran'pa, I can't and won't
+believe it!"
+
+"Yet, Ned, these words which you have repeated convey some such
+fear to my mind. It may be that the villain was only boasting to
+his companion. There are scoundrels in this world who conceive of
+no higher subject of boast than the successful deception and ruin
+of the artless and confiding. I sincerely hope that this may be
+the case now--that it was the mere brag of a profligate, to excite
+the admiration of his comrade. But when you speak of the beauty
+and the smartness of this poor girl, as of securities for virtue,
+you make a great mistake. Beauty is more apt to be a betrayer than
+a protector; and as for her talent, that is seldom a protection
+unless it be associated with humility. Hers was not. She was
+most ignorant where she was most assured. She knew just enough to
+congratulate herself that she was unlike her neighbors, and this is
+the very temper of mind which is likely to cast down its possessor
+in shame. I trust that she had a better guardian angel than either
+her beauty or her talents. I sincerely hope that she is safe. At
+all events, let me caution you not to hint the possibility of its
+being otherwise. We will take for granted that Stevens is a baffled
+villain."
+
+"I only wish I had dropped him!"
+
+"Better as it is."
+
+"What! even if the poor girl is--"
+
+"Ay, even then!"
+
+"Why, gran'pa, can it be possible YOU say so?"
+
+"Yes, my son; I say so here, in moments of comparative calmness, and
+in the absence of the villain. Perhaps, were he present, I should
+say otherwise."
+
+"And DO otherwise! You'd shoot him, gran'pa, as soon as I."
+
+"Perhaps! I think it likely. But, put up your pistols, Ned. You
+have nobody now to shoot. Put them up, and let us walk over to your
+uncle's at once. It is proper that he and John Cross should know
+these particulars."
+
+Ned agreed to go, but not to put up his pistols.
+
+"For, you see, gran'pa, this rascal may return. His friend may have
+kept him in long talk. We may meet him coming into the village."
+
+"It is not likely; but come along. Give me that staff, my son,
+and your arm on the other side. I feel that my eyes are no longer
+young."
+
+"You could shoot still, gran'pa?"
+
+"Not well."
+
+"What, couldn't you hit a chap like Stevens between the eyes at ten
+paces? I'm sure I could do it, blindfolded, by a sort of instinct."
+
+And the youth, shutting his eyes, as if to try the experiment,
+drew forth one of his pistols from his bosom, and began to direct
+its muzzle around the room.
+
+"There was a black spider THERE, gran'pa! I'm sure, taking him for
+Stevens, I could cut his web for him."
+
+"You have cut that of Stevens himself, and his comb too, Ned."
+
+"Yes, yes--but what a fool I was not to make it his gills!"
+
+By this time the old man had got on his spencer, and, with staff
+in hand, declared himself in readiness. Ned Hinkley lowered his
+pistol with reluctance. He was very anxious to try the weapon and
+his own aim, on somebody or something. That black spider which
+lived so securely in the domicil of Mr. Calvert would have stood no
+chance in any apartment of the widow Hinkley. Even the "pacificator"
+would have been employed for its extermination, if, for no other
+reason, because of the fancied resemblance which it had always worn
+to Brother Stevens--a resemblance which occurred to him, perhaps,
+in consequence of the supposed similarity between the arts of
+the libertine and those for the entrapping of his victims which
+distinguish the labors of the spider.
+
+The two were soon arrived at old Hinkley's, and the tale of Ned was
+told; but, such was the bigotry of the hearers, without securing
+belief.
+
+"So blessed a young man!" said the old lady.
+
+"A brand from the burning!" exclaimed Brother Cross.
+
+"It's all an invention of Satan!" cried old Hinkley, "to prevent
+the consummation of a goodly work."
+
+"We should not give our faith too readily to such devices of the
+enemy, Friend Calvert," said John Cross, paternally.
+
+"I never saw anything in him that wasn't perfectly saint-like,"
+said Mrs. Hinkley." He made the most heartfelt prayer, and the
+loveliest blessing before meat! I think I hear him now--'Lord,
+make us thankful'--with his eyes shut up so sweetly, and with such
+a voice."
+
+"There are always some people, Brother Cross, to hate the saints
+of the Lord and to slander them! They lie in wait like thieves of
+the night, and roaring lions of the wilderness, seeking what they
+may devour."
+
+"Ah," exclaimed Brother Cross, "how little do such know that they
+devour themselves; for whoso destroyeth his best friend is a devourer
+of himself."
+
+"The blindness of Satan is upon them, and they do his work."
+
+And thus--purr, purr, purr--they went on, to the end of the chapter.
+Poor Ned Hinkley found the whole kennel was upon him. Not only did
+they deny everything that could by possibility affect the fair fame
+of the absent brother, but, from defending him, they passed, with
+an easy transition, to the denunciation of those who were supposed
+to be his defamers. In this the worthy old man Calvert came in for
+his share.
+
+"All this comes of your supporting that worthless boy of mine in
+defiance of my will," said old Hinkley. "You hate Brother Stevens
+because that boy hated him, and because I love him."
+
+"You are mistaken, Mr. Hinkley," said Calvert, mildly. "I hate
+nobody; at the same time I suffer no mere prejudices to delude me
+against sight and reason."
+
+"Ah!" said Brother Cross, gently, "it's that very reason, Brother
+Calvert, that ruins you worldlings. You must not rely on human
+reason. Build on faith, and you build on the Rock of Ages."
+
+"I propose to use reason only in worldly matters, Mr. Cross," said
+the other; "for which use, only, I believe it was given us.  I
+employ it in reference to a case of ordinary evidence, and I beg
+your regards now, while I draw your attention to the use I make of
+it in the present instance. Will you hear me without interruption?"
+
+"Surely, Brother Calvert, but call me not Mr. Cross. I am not a
+Mister. I am plain John Cross; by virtue of my business, a brother,
+if it so please you to esteem me. Call me Brother Cross, or Brother
+John Cross, or plain John Cross, either of these will be acceptable
+unto me."
+
+"We are all brothers, or should be," said Calvert; "and it will
+not need that there should be any misunderstanding between us on
+so small a matter."
+
+"The matter is not small in the eye of the Lord," said the preacher.
+"Titles of vanity become not us, and offend in his hearing."
+
+The old teacher smiled, but proceeded.
+
+"Now, Brother Cross, if you will hear me, I will proceed, according
+to my reason, to dwell upon the proofs which are here presented
+to you, of the worthlessness of this man, Alfred Stevens; and when
+you consider how much the feelings and the safety of the daughters
+of your flock depend upon the character of those moral and religious
+teachers to whom the care of them is intrusted, you will see, I
+think, the necessity of listening patiently, and determining without
+religious prejudice, according to the truth and reason of the case."
+
+"I am prepared to listen patiently, Brother Calvert," said John
+Cross, clasping his hands together, setting his elbows down upon
+the table, shutting his eyes, and turning his face fervently up
+to heaven. Old Hinkley imitated this posture quite as nearly as he
+was able; while Mrs. Hinkley, sitting between the two, maintained
+a constant to-and-fro motion, first on one side, then on the other,
+as they severally spoke to the occasion, with her head deferentially
+bowing, like a pendulum, and with a motion almost as regular and
+methodical. The movements of her nephew, Ned Hinkley, were also a
+somewhat pleasant study, after a fashion of his own. Sitting in a
+corner, he amused himself by drawing forth his "puppies," and taking
+occasional aim at a candle or flowerpot; and sometimes, with some
+irreverence, at the curved and rather extravagant proboscis of his
+worthy uncle, which, cocked up in air, was indeed something of a
+tempting object of sight to a person so satisfied of his skill in
+shooting as the young rustic. The parties being thus arranged in
+a fit attitude for listening, Mr. Calvert began somewhat after the
+following fashion:--
+
+"Our first knowledge of Alfred Stevens was obtained through Brother
+John Cross."
+
+"And what better introduction would you have?" demanded old Hinkley.
+
+"None," said the other, "if Brother Cross knew anything about the
+party he introduced. But it so happens, as we learn from Brother
+Cross himself, that the first acquaintance he had with Stevens was
+made upon the road, where Stevens played a trick upon him by giving
+him brandy to drink."
+
+"No trick, Brother Calvert; the young man gave it me as a medicine,
+took it as a medicine himself, and, when I bade him, threw away
+the accursed beverage."
+
+"Ordinary men, governed by ordinary reason, Brother Cross, would
+say that Stevens knew very well what he was giving you, and that
+it was a trick."
+
+"But only think, Mr. Calvert," said Mrs. Hinkley, lifting her hands
+and eyes at the same moment, "the blessed young man threw away the
+evil liquor the moment he was told to do so. What a sign of meekness
+was that!"
+
+"I will not dwell on this point," was the reply of Calvert. "He comes
+into our village and declares his purpose to adopt the profession
+of the preacher, and proceeds to his studies under the direction
+of Brother Cross."
+
+"And didn't he study them?" demanded Mrs. Hinkley. "Wasn't he, late
+and early, at the blessed volume? I heard him at all hours above
+stairs. Oh! how often was he on his bended knees in behalf of our
+sinful race, ungrateful and misbelieving that we are!"
+
+"I am afraid, madam," said Calvert, "that his studies were scarcely
+so profound as you think them. Indeed. I am at a loss to conceive
+how you should blind your eyes to the fact that the greater part
+of his time was spent among the young girls of the village."
+
+"And where is it denied," exclaimed old Hinkley, "that the lambs
+of God should sport together?"
+
+"Do not speak in that language, I pray you, Mr. Hinkley," said
+Calvert, with something of pious horror in his look; "this young man
+was no lamb of God, but, I fear, as you will find, a wolf in the
+fold. It is, I say, very well known that he was constantly wandering,
+even till a late hour of the night, with one of the village maidens."
+
+"Who was that one, Brother Calvert?" demanded John Cross.
+
+"Margaret Cooper."
+
+"Hem!" said the preacher.
+
+"Well, he quarrels with my young friend, the worthy son of Brother
+Hinkley--"
+
+"Do not speak of that ungrateful cub. Brother Stevens did not
+quarrel with him. He quarrelled with Brother Stevens, and would
+have murdered him, but that I put in in time to save."
+
+"Say not so, Mr. Hinkley. I have good reason to believe that Stevens
+went forth especially to fight with William."
+
+"I would not believe it, if a prophet were to tell me it."
+
+"Nevertheless, I believe it. We found both of them placed at the
+usual fighting-distance."
+
+"Ah! but where were Brother Stevens's pistols?"
+
+"In his pocket, I suppose."
+
+"He had none. He was at a distance from my ungrateful son, and
+flying that he should not be murdered. The lamb under the hands of
+the butcher. And would you believe it, Brother Cross, he had gone
+forth only to counsel the unworthy boy--only to bring him back into
+the fold--gone forth at his own prayer, as Brother Stevens declared
+to Betsy, just before he went out."
+
+"I am of opinion that he deceived her and yourself."
+
+"Where were his pistols then?"
+
+"He must have concealed them. He told Ned Hinkley, this very day,
+that he had pistols, but that they were here."
+
+"Run up, Betsy, to Brother Stevens's room and see."
+
+The old lady disappeared. Calvert proceeded.
+
+"I can only repeat my opinion, founded upon the known pacific and
+honorable character of William Hinkley, and certain circumstances
+in the conduct of Stevens, that the two did go forth, under a
+previous arrangement, to fight a duel. That they were prevented,
+and that Stevens had no visible weapon, is unquestionably true.
+But I do not confine myself to these circumstances. This young man
+writes a great many letters, it is supposed to his friends, but
+never puts them in the post here, but every Saturday rides off, as
+we afterward learn, to the village of Ellisland, where he deposites
+them and receive others. This is a curious circumstance, which
+alone should justify suspicion.
+
+"The ways of God are intricate, Brother Calvert," said John Cross,
+"and we are not to suspect the truth which we can not understand."
+
+"But these are the ways of man, Brother Cross."
+
+"And the man of God is governed by the God which is in him. He
+obeys a law which, perhaps, is ordered to be hidden from thy sight."
+
+"This doctrine certainly confers very extraordinary privileges upon
+the man of God," said Calvert, quietly, "and, perhaps, this is one
+reason why the profession is so prolific of professors now-a-days;
+but the point does not need discussion. Enough has been shown to
+awaken suspicion and doubt in the case of any ordinary person; and
+I now come to that portion of the affair which is sustained by the
+testimony of Ned Hinkley, our young friend here, who, whatever his
+faults may be, has been always regarded in Charlemont, as a lover
+and speaker of the truth."
+
+"Ay, ay, so far as he knows what the truth is," said old Hinkley,
+scornfully.
+
+"And I'm just as likely to know what the truth is as you, uncle!','
+retorted the young man, rising and coming forward from his corner.
+
+"Come, come," he continued, "you're not going to ride rough shod
+over me as you did over Cousin Bill. I don't care a snap of the
+finger, I can tell you, for all your puffed cheeks and big bellied
+speeches. I don't, I tell you!" and suiting the action to the
+word, the sturdy fellow snapped his fingers almost under the nose
+of his uncle, which was now erected heavenward, with a more scornful
+pre-eminence than ever. The sudden entrance of Mrs. Hinkley, from
+her search after Stevens's pistols, prevented any rough issue between
+these new parties, as it seemed to tell in favor of Stevens. There
+were no pistols to be found. The old lady did not add, indeed, that
+thers was nothing of any kind to be found belonging to the same
+worthy.
+
+"There! That's enough!" said old Hinkley.
+
+"Did you find anything of Stevens's, Mrs. Hinkley?" inquired Mr.
+Calvert.
+
+"Nothing, whatever."
+
+"Well, madam," said Calvert, "your search, if it proves anything,
+proves the story of Ned Hinkley conclusively. This man has carried
+off all his chattels."
+
+John Cross looked down from heaven, and stared inquiringly at Mrs.
+Hinkley.
+
+"Is this true? Have you found nothing, Sister Betsy?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And Brother Stevens has not come back?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"And reason for it, enough," said old Hinkley. "Didn't you hear
+that Ned Hinkley threatened to shoot him if he came back?"
+
+"Look you, uncle," said the person thus accused, "if you was anybody
+else, and a little younger, I'd thrash you for that speech the same
+as if it was a lie! I would."
+
+"Peace!" said Calvert, looking sternly at the youth. Having obtained
+temporary silence, he was permitted at length to struggle through
+his narrative, and to place, in their proper lights, all the
+particulars which Ned Hinkley had obtained at Ellisland. When this
+was done the discussion was renewed, and raged, with no little
+violence, for a full hour. At length it ceased through the sheer
+exhaustion of the parties. Calvert was the first to withdraw from
+it, as he soon discovered that such was the bigotry of old Hinkley
+and his wife, and even of John Cross himself, that nothing short
+of divine revelation could persuade them of the guilt of one who
+had once made a religious profession.
+
+Brother Cross, though struck with some of the details which Calvert
+had given, was afterward prepared to regard them as rather trivial
+than otherwise, and poor Ned was doomed to perceive that the
+conviction was general in this holy family, that he had, by his
+violence, and the terror which his pistols had inspired, driven
+away, in desperation, the most meek and saintly of all possible
+young apostles. The youth was nearly furious ere the evening and the
+discussion were over. It was very evident to Calvert that nothing
+was needed, should Stevens come back, but a bold front and a lying
+tongue, to maintain his position in the estimation of the flock,
+until such time as the truth WOULD make itself known--a thing
+which, eventually, always happens. That night Ned Hinkley dreamed
+of nothing but of shooting Stevens and his comrade and of thrashing
+his uncle. What did Margaret Cooper dream of?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+STORM AND CONVULSION.
+
+
+
+
+
+What did Margaret Cooper dream of? Disappointment, misery, death.
+There was a stern presentiment in her waking thoughts, sufficiently
+keen and agonizing to inspire such dreadful apprehensions in her
+dreams. The temperament which is sanguine, and which, in a lively
+mood, inspires hope, is, at the same time, the source of those
+dark images of thought and feeling, which appal it with the most
+terrifying forms of fear; and when Saturday and Saturday night
+came and passed, and Alfred Stevens did not appear, a lurking dread
+that would not be chidden or kept down, continued to rise within
+her soul, which, without assuming any real form or decisive speech,
+was yet suggestive of complete overthrow and ruin.
+
+Her dreams were of this complexion. She felt herself abandoned.
+Nor merely abandoned. She was a victim. In her desolation she had
+even lost her pride. She could no longer meet the sneer with scorn.
+She could no longer carry a lofty brow among the little circle,
+who, once having envied, were now about to despise her. To the
+impatient spirit, once so strong--so insolent in its strength--what
+a pang--what a humiliation was here! In her dreams she saw the
+young maidens of the village stand aloof, as she had once stood
+aloof from them:--she heard the senseless titter of their laugh;
+and she had no courage to resent the impertinence. Her courage
+was buried in her shame. No heart is so cowardly as that which
+is conscious of guilt. Picture after picture of this sort did her
+fancy present to her that night; and when she awoke the next morning,
+the sadness of her soul had taken the color of a deep and brooding
+misanthropy. Such had been the effect of her dreams. Her resolution
+came only from despair; and resolution from such a source, we well
+know, is usually only powerful against itself.
+
+It is one proof of a religious instinct, and of a universal belief
+in a controlling and benevolent Deity, that all men however abased,
+scornful of divine and human law, invariably, in their moments of
+desperation, call upon God. Their first appeal is, involuntarily,
+to him. The outlaw, as the fatal bullet pierces his breast--the
+infidel, sinking and struggling in the water--the cold stony
+heart of the murderer, the miser, the assassin of reputation as of
+life--all cry out upon God in the unexpected paroxysms of death.
+Let us hope that the instinct waich prompts this involuntary appeal
+for mercy, somewhat helps to secure its blessings. It is thus
+also with one who, in the hey-day of the youthful heart, has lived
+without thought or prayer--a tumultuous life of uproar and riot--a
+long carnival of the passions--the warm blood suppressing the cool
+thought, and making the reckless heart impatient of consideration.
+Let the sudden emergency arise, with such a heart--let the blood
+become stagnant with disease--and the involuntary appeal is to that
+God, of whom before there was no thought. We turn to him as to a
+father who is equally strong to help and glad to preserve us.
+
+Margaret Cooper, in the ordinary phrase, had lived without God. Her
+God was in her own heart, beheld by the lurid fires of an intense,
+unmethodized ambition. Her own strength--or rather the persuasion
+of her own strength--had been so great, that hitherto she had seen
+no necessity for appealing to any other source of power. She might
+now well begin to distrust that strength. She did so. Her desperation
+was not of that sort utterly to shut out hope; and, while there
+is hope, there is yet a moral assurance that the worst is not
+yet--perhaps not to be. But she was humbled--not enough, perhaps--but
+enough to feel the necessity of calling in her allies. She dropped
+by her bedside, in prayer, when she arose that morning. We do not
+say that she prayed for forgiveness, without reference to her future
+earthly desires. Few of us know how to simplify our demands upon
+the Deity to this one. We pray that he may assist us in this or
+that grand speculation: the planter for a great crop; the banker
+for investments that give him fifty per cent.; the lawyer for more
+copious fees; the parson for an increase of salary. How few pray for
+mercy--forgiveness for the past--strength to sustain the struggling
+conscience in the future! Poor Margaret was no wiser, no better,
+than the rest of us. She prayed--silly woman!--that Alfred Stevens
+might keep his engagament!
+
+He did not! That day she was to be married! She had some reference
+to this in making her toilet that morning. The garments which she
+put on were all of white. A white rose gleamed palely from amid
+the raven hair upon her brow. Beautiful was she, exceedingly. How
+beautiful! but alas! the garb she wore--the pale, sweet flower on
+her forehead--they were mockeries--the emblems of that purity of
+soul, that innocence of heart, which were gone--gone for ever! She
+shuddered as she beheld the flower, and meditated this thought.
+Silently she took the flower from her forehead, and, as if it were
+precious as that lost jewel of which it reminded her, she carefully
+placed it away in her toilet-case.
+
+Yet her beauty was heightened rather than diminished. Margaret
+Cooper was beautiful after no ordinary mould. Tall in stature, with
+a frame rounded by the most natural proportions into symmetry, and
+so formed for grace; with a power of muscle more than common among
+women, which, by inducing activity, made her movements as easy as
+they were graceful; with an eye bright like the morning-star, and
+with a depth of expression darkly clear, like that of the same
+golden orb at night; with a face exquisitely oval; a mouth of great
+sweetness; cheeks on which the slightest dash of hue from the red,
+red rose in June, might be seen to come and go under the slightest
+promptings of the active heart within; a brow of great height and
+corresponding expansion; with a bust that impressed you with a
+sense of the maternal strength which might be harbored there, even
+as the swollen bud gives promises of the full-bosomed luxuriance
+of the flower when it opens: add to these a lofty carriage, a
+look where the quickened spirit seems ever ready for utterance; a
+something of eager solemnity in her speech; and a play of expression
+on her lips which, if the brow were less lofty and the eye less
+keenly bright, might be a smile--and you have some idea of that
+noble and lovely temple on which fires of lava had been raised by
+an unholy hand; in which a secret worship is carried on which dreads
+the light, shrinks from exposure, and trembles to be seen by the
+very Deity whose favor it yet seeks in prayer and apprehension.
+
+These beauties of person as we have essayed, though most feebly,
+to describe them, were enhanced rather than lessened by that air
+of anxiety by which they were now overcast. Her step was no longer
+free. It was marked by an unwonted timidity. Her glance was no
+longer confident; and when she looked round upon the faces of the
+young village-maidens, it was seen that her lip trembled and moved,
+but no longer with scorn. If the truth were told, she now envied
+the meanest of those maidens that security which her lack of beauty
+had guarantied. She, the scorner of all around her, now envied the
+innocence of the very meanest of her companions.
+
+Such was the natural effect of her unhappy experience upon her
+heart. What would she not have given to be like one of them? She
+dared not take her place, in the church, among them. It was a dread
+that kept her back. Strange, wondrous power of innocence! The guilty
+girl felt that she might be repulsed; that her frailty might make
+itself known--MUST make itself known; and she would be driven with
+shame from that communion with the pure to which she had no longer
+any claim! She sunk into one of the humblest seats in the church,
+drawing her reluctant mother into the lowly place beside her.
+
+John Cross did not that day address himself to her case: but sin has
+a family similitude among all its members. There is an unmistakeable
+likeness, which runs through the connection. If the preacher speaks
+fervently to one sin, he is very apt to goad, in some degree, all
+the rest: and though Brother Cross had not the most distant idea
+of singling out Margaret Cooper for his censure, yet there was a
+whispering devil at her elbow that kept up a continual commentary
+upon what he said, filling her ears with a direct application of
+every syllable to her own peculiar instance.
+
+"See you not," said the demon, "that every eye is turned upon you?
+He sees into your soul; he knows your secret. He declares it, as
+you hear, aloud, with a voice of thunder, to all the congregation.
+Do you not perceive that you sit alone; that everybody shrinks from
+your side; that your miserable old mother alone sits with you; that
+the eyes of some watch you with pity, but more with indignation?
+Look at the young damsels--late your companions--they are your
+companions no longer! They triumph in your shame. Their titter
+is only suppressed because of the place in which they are. They
+ask: 'Is this the maiden who was so wise, so strong--who scorned
+us--scorned US, indeed!--and was not able to baffle the serpent in
+his very first approaches?' Ha! ha! How they laugh! Well, indeed,
+they may. It is very laughable, Margaret--not less laughable and
+amusing than strange!--that YOU should have fallen!--so easily, so
+blindly--and not even to suspect what every one else was sure of!
+O Margaret! Margaret! can it be true? Who will believe in your wit
+now, your genius, your beauty? Smutched and smutted! Poor, weak,
+degraded! If there is pity for you, Margaret, it is full of mockery
+too; it is a pity that is full of bitterness. You should now cast
+yourself down, and cover yourself with ashes, and cry, 'Wo is me!'
+and call upon the rocks and the hills to cover you!"
+
+Such was the voice in her soul, which to HER senses seemed like
+that of some jibing demon at her elbow. Margaret tried to pray--to
+expel him by prayer; but the object of his mockery had not been
+attained. She could not surrender herself entirely to the chastener.
+She was scourged, but not humbled; and the language of the demon
+provoked defiance, not humility. Her proud spirit rose once more
+against the pressure put upon it. Her bright, dazzling eye flashed
+in scorn upon the damsels whom she now fancied to be actually
+tittering--scarcely able to suppress their laughter--at her obvious
+disgrace. On John Cross she fixed her fearless eye, like that of
+some fallen angel, still braving the chastener, whom he can not
+contend with. A strange strength--for even sin has its strength for
+a season--came to her relief in that moment of fiendish mockery.
+The strength of an evil spirit was accorded her. Her heart once more
+swelled with pride. Her soul once more insisted on its ascendency.
+She felt, though she did not say:--
+
+"Even as I am, overthrown, robbed of my treasure, I feel that I am
+superior to these. I feel that I have strength against the future.
+If they are pure and innocent, it is not because of their greater
+strength, but their greater obscurity. If I am overthrown by the
+tempter, it was because I was the more worthy object of overthrow.
+In their littleness they live: if I am doomed to the shaft, at
+least it will be as the eagle is doomed; it will be while soaring
+aloft--while aiming for the sun--while grasping at the very bolt
+by which I am destroyed!"
+
+Such was the consolation offered by the twin-demons of pride and
+vanity. The latter finds its aliment in the heart which it too
+completely occupies, even from those circumstances which, in other
+eyes, make its disgrace and weakness. The sermon which had touched
+her sin had not subdued it. Perhaps no sermon, no appeal, however
+powerful and touching, could at that moment have had power over
+her. The paroxysm of her first consciousness of ruin had not yet
+passed off. The condition of mind was not yet reached in which an
+appeal could be felt.
+
+As in the case of physical disease, so with that of the mind and
+heart, there is a period when it is neither useful nor prudent to
+administer the medicines which are yet most necessary to safety.
+The judicious physician will wait for the moment when the frame is
+prepared--when the pulse is somewhat subdued--before he tries the
+most powerful remedy. The excitement of the wrong which she had
+suffered was still great in her bosom. It was necessary that she
+should have repose. That excitement was maintained by the expectation
+that Stevens would yet make his appearance. Her eye, at intervals,
+wandered over the assembly in search of him. The demon at her elbow
+understood her quest.
+
+"He will not come," it said; "you look in vain. The girls follow
+your eyes; they behold your disappointment; they laugh at your
+credulity. If he leads any to the altar, think you it will be one
+whom he could command at pleasure without any such conditions--one
+who, in her wild passions and disordered vanity, could so readily
+yield to his desires, without demanding any corresponding sacrifices?
+Margaret, they laugh now at those weaknesses of a mind which they
+once feared if not honored. They wonder, now, that they could have
+been so deceived. If they do not laugh aloud, Margaret, it is because
+they would spare your shame. Indeed, indeed, they pity you!"
+
+The head of the desperate, but still haughty woman, was now more
+proudly uplifted, and her eyes shot forth yet fiercer fires of
+indignation. What a conflict was going on in her bosom. Her cheeks
+glowed with the strife--her breast heaved; with difficulty she
+maintained her seat inflexibly, and continued, without other signs
+of discomposure, until the service was concluded. Her step was more
+stately than ever as she walked from church; and while her mother
+lingered behind to talk with Brother Cross, and to exchange the
+sweetest speeches with the widow Thackeray and others, she went on
+alone--seeing none, heeding none--dreading to meet any face lest
+it should wear a smile and look the language in which the demon at
+her side still dealt. HE still clung to her, with the tenacity of
+a fiendish purpose. He mocked her with her shame, goading her, with
+dart upon dart, of every sort of mockery. Truly did he mutter in
+her ears:--
+
+"Stevens has abandoned you. Never was child, before yourself, so
+silly as to believe such a promise as he made you. Do you doubt?--do
+you still hope? It is madness? Why came he not yesterday--last
+night--to-day? He is gone. He has abandoned you. You are not only
+alone--you are lost! lost for ever!"
+
+The tidings of this unsolicited attendant were confirmed the next
+day, by the unsuspecting John Cross. He came to visit Mrs. Cooper and
+her daughter among the first of his parishioners. He had gathered
+from the villagers already that Stevens had certainly favored
+Miss Cooper beyond all the rest of the village damsels. Indeed, it
+was now generally bruited that he was engaged to her in marriage.
+Though the worthy preacher had very stoutly resisted the suggestions
+of Mr. Calvert, and the story of Ned Hinkley, he was yet a little
+annoyed by them; and he fancied that, if Stevens were, indeed,
+engaged to Margaret, she, or perhaps the old lady, might relieve
+his anxiety by accounting for the absence of his protege. The notion
+of Brother John was, that, having resolved to marry the maiden,
+he had naturally gone home to apprize his parents and to make the
+necessary preparations.
+
+But this conjecture brought with it a new anxiety. It, now, for
+the first time, seemed something strange that Stevens had never
+declared to himself, or to anybody else who his parents were--what
+they were--where they were--what business they pursued; or anything
+about them. Of his friends, they knew as little. The simple old
+man had never thought of these things, until the propriety of such
+inquiries was forced upon him by the conviction that they would
+now be made in vain. The inability to answer them, when it was
+necessary that an answer should be found, was a commentary upon
+his imprudence which startled the good old man not a little. But,
+in the confident hope that a solution of the difficulty could
+be afforded by the sweetheart or the mother, he proceeded to her
+cottage. Of course, Calvert, in his communication to him, had forborne
+those darker conjectures which he could not help but entertain;
+and his simple auditor, unconscious himself of any thought of evil,
+had never himself formed any such suspicions.
+
+Margaret Cooper was in her chamber when Brother Cross arrived. She
+had lost that elasticity of temper which would have carried her
+out at that period among the hills in long rambles, led by those
+wild, wooing companions, which gambol along the paths of poetic
+contemplation. The old man opened his stores of scandal to Mrs.
+Cooper with little or no hesitation. He told her all that Calvert
+had said, all that Ned Hinkley had fancied himself to have heard,
+and all the village tattle touching the engagement supposed to
+exist between Stevens and her daughter.
+
+"Of course, Sister Cooper," said he, "I believe nothing of this
+sort against the youth. I should be sorry to think it of one whom
+I plucked as a brand from the burning. I hold Brother Stevens to be
+a wise young man and a pious; and truly I fear, as indeed I learn,
+that there is in the mind of Ned Hinkley a bitter dislike to the
+youth, because of some quarrel which Brother Stevens is said to
+have had with William Hinkley. This dislike hath made him conceive
+evil things of Brother Stevens and to misunderstand and to pervert
+some conversation which he hath overheard which Stevens hath had
+with his companion. Truly, indeed, I think that Alfred Stevens is
+a worthy youth of whom we shall hear a good account."
+
+"And I think so too, Brother Cross. Brother Stevens will be yet a
+burning and a shining light in the church. There is a malice against
+him; and I think I know the cause, Brother Cross."
+
+"Ah! this will be a light unto our footsteps, Sister Cooper."
+
+"Thou knowest, Brother Cross," resumed the old lady in a subdued
+tone but with a loftier elevation of eyebrows and head--"thou
+knowest the great beauty of my daughter Margaret?"
+
+"The maiden is comely, sister, comely among the maidens; but beauty
+is grass. It is a flower which blooms at morning and is cut down
+in the evening. It withereth on the stalk where it bloomed, until
+men turn from it with sickening and with sorrow, remembering what
+it hath been. Be not boastful of thy daughter's beauty, Sister
+Cooper, it is the beauty of goodness alone which dieth not."
+
+"But said I not, Brother Cross, of her wisdom, and her wit, as
+well as her beauty?" replied the old lady with some little pique.
+"I was forgetful of much, if I spoke only of the beauty of person
+which Margaret Cooper surely possesseth, and which the eyes of
+blindness itself might see."
+
+"Dross, dross all, Sister Cooper. The wit of man is a flash which
+blindeth and maketh dark; and the wisdom of man is a vain thing.
+The one crackleth like thorns beneath the pot--the other stifleth
+the heart and keepeth down the soul from her true flight. I count
+the wit and wisdom of thy daughter even as I count her beauty. She
+hath all, I think--as they are known to and regarded by men. But
+all is nothing. Beauty hath a day's life like the butterfly; wit
+shineth like the sudden flash of the lightning, leaving only the
+cloud behind it; and oh! for the vain wisdom of man which makes
+him vain and unsteady--likely to falter--liable to fall--rash in
+his judgment--erring in his aims--blind to his duty--wilful in his
+weakness--insolent to his fellow--presumptuous in the sight of
+God. Talk not to me of worldly wisdom. It is the foe to prayer and
+meekness. The very fruit of the tree which brought sin and death
+into the world. Thy daughter is fair to behold--very fair among the
+maidens of our flock--none fairer, none so fair: God hath otherwise
+blessed her with a bright mind and a quick intelligence; but I think
+not that she is wise to salvation. No, no! she hath not yearned
+to the holy places of the tabernacle, unless it be that Brother
+Stevens hath been more blessed in his ministry than I!"
+
+"And he hath!" exclaimed the mother. "I tell you, Brother John, the
+heart of Margaret Cooper is no longer what it was. It is softened.
+The toils of Brother Stevens have not been in vain. Blessed young
+man, no wonder they hate and defame him. He hath had a power over
+Margaret Cooper such as man never had before; and it is for this
+reason that Bill Hinkley and Ned conspired against him, first to
+take his life, and then to speak evil of his deeds. They beheld
+the beauty of my daughter, and they looked on her with famishing
+eyes. She sent them a-packing, I tell you. But this youth, Brother
+Stevens, found favor in her heart. They beheld the two as they
+went forth together. Ah! Brother John, it is the sweetest sight to
+behold two young, loving people walk forth in amity--born, as it
+would seem, for each other; both so tall, and young, and handsome;
+walking together with such smiles, as if there was no sorrow in
+the world; as if there was nothing but flowers and sweetness on
+the path; as if they could see nothing but one another; and as if
+there were no enemies looking on. It did my heart good to see them,
+Brother Cross; they always looked so happy with one another."
+
+"And you think, Sister Cooper, that Brother Stevens hath agreed to
+take Margaret to wife?"
+
+"She hath not told me this yet, but in truth, I think it hath very
+nigh come to that."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In her chamber."
+
+"Call her hither, Sister Cooper; let us ask of her the truth."
+
+Margaret Cooper was summoned, and descended with slow steps and an
+unwilling spirit to meet their visiter.
+
+"Daughter," said the good old man, taking her hand, and leading her
+to a seat, "thou art, even as thy mother sayest, one of exceeding
+beauty. Few damsels have ever met mine eyes with a beauty like to
+thine. No wonder the young men look on thee with eyes of love; but
+let not the love of youth betray thee. The love of God is the only
+love that is precious to the heart of wisdom."
+
+Thus saying, the old man gazed on her with as much admiration as
+was consistent with the natural coldness of his temperament, his
+years, and his profession. His address, so different from usual,
+had a soothing effect upon her. A sigh escaped her, but she said
+nothing. He then proceeded to renew the history which had been given
+to him and which he had already detailed to her mother. She heard
+him with patience, in spite of all his interpolations from Scripture,
+his ejaculations, his running commentary upon the narrative, and the
+numerous suggestive topics which took him from episode to episode,
+until the story seemed interminably mixed up in the digression.
+
+But when he came to that portion which related to the adventure of
+Ned Hinkley, to his espionage, the conference of Stevens with his
+companion--then she started--then her breathing became suspended,
+then quickened--then again suspended--and then, so rapid in its
+rush, that her emotion became almost too much for her powers of
+suppression.
+
+But she did suppress it, with a power, a resolution, not often
+paralleled among men--still more seldom among women. After the first
+spasmodic acknowledgment given by her surprise, she listened with
+comparative calmness. She, alone, had the key to that conversation.
+She, alone, knew its terrible signification. She knew that Ned
+Hinkley was honest--was to be believed--that he was too simple,
+and too sincere, for any such invention; and, sitting with hands
+clasped upon that chair--the only attitude which expressed the
+intense emotion which she felt--she gazed with unembarrassed eye
+upon the face of the speaker, while every word which he spoke went
+like some keen, death-giving instrument into her heart.
+
+The whole dreadful history of the villany of Stevens, her irreparable
+ruin--was now clearly intelligible. The mocking devil at her elbow
+had spoken nothing but the truth. She was indeed the poor victim
+of a crafty villain. In the day of her strength and glory she had
+fallen--fallen, fallen, fallen!
+
+"Why am I called to hear this?" she demanded with singular composure.
+
+The old man and the mother explained in the same breath--that she
+might reveal the degree of intercourse which had taken place between
+them, and, if possible, account for the absence of her lover. That,
+in short, she might refute the malice of enemies and establish the
+falsehood of their suggestions.
+
+"You wish to know if I believe this story of Ned Hinkley?"
+
+"Even so, my daughter."
+
+"Then, I do!"
+
+"Ha! what is it you say, Margaret?"
+
+"The truth."
+
+"What?" demanded the preacher, "you can not surely mean that Brother
+Stevens hath been a wolf in sheep's clothing--that he hath been a
+hypocrite."
+
+"Alas!" thought Margaret Cooper--"have I not been my own worst
+enemy--did I not know him to be this from the first?"
+
+Her secret reflection remained, however, unspoken. She answered
+the demand of John Cross without a moment's hesitation.
+
+"I believe that Alfred Stevens is all that he is charged to be--a
+hypocrite--a wolf in sheep's clothing!--I see no reason to doubt
+the story of Ned Hinkley. He is an honest youth."
+
+The old lady was in consternation. The preacher aghast and confounded.
+
+"Tell me, Margaret," said the former, "hath he not engaged himself
+to you? Did he not promise--is he not sworn to be your husband?"
+
+"I have already given you my belief. I see no reason to say
+anything more. What more do you need? Is he not gone--fled--has he
+not failed--"
+
+She paused abruptly, while a purple flush went over her face. She
+rose to retire.
+
+"Margaret!" exclaimed the mother.
+
+"My daughter!" said John Cross.
+
+"Speak out what you know--tell us all--"
+
+"No! I will say no more. You know enough already. I tell you, I
+believe Alfred Stevens to be a hypocrite and a villain. Is not that
+enough? What is it to you whether he is so or not? What is it to
+me, at least? You do not suppose that it is anything to me?  Why
+should you? What should he be? I tell you he is nothing to
+me--nothing--nothing--nothing! Villain or hypocrite, or what not--he
+is no more to me than the earth on which I tread. Let me hear no
+more about him, I pray you. I would not hear his name! Are there
+not villains enough in the world, that you should think and speak
+of one only?"
+
+With these vehement words she left the room, and hurried to her
+chamber. She stopped suddenly before the mirror.
+
+"And is it thus!" she exclaimed--"and I am--"
+
+The mother by this time had followed her into the room.
+
+"What is the meaning of this, Margaret?--tell me!" cried the old
+woman in the wildest agitation.
+
+"What should it be, mother? Look at me!--in my eyes--do they not
+tell you? Can you not read?"
+
+"I see nothing--I do not understand you, Margaret."
+
+"Indeed! but you shall understand me! I thought my face would tell
+you without my words. _I_ see it there, legible enough, to myself.
+Look again!--spare me if you can--spare your own ears the necessity
+of hearing me speak!"
+
+"You terrify me, Margaret--I fear you are out of your mind.
+
+"No! no! that need not be your fear; nor, were it true, would it
+be a fear of mine. It might be something to hope--to pray for.  It
+might bring relief. Hear me, since you will not see. You ask me
+why I believe Stevens to be a villain. I KNOW it."
+
+"Ha! how know it!"
+
+"How! How should I know it? Well, I see that I must speak. Listen
+then. You bade me seek and make a conquest of him, did you not? Do
+not deny it, mother--you did."
+
+"Well, if I did?"
+
+"I succeeded! Without trying, I succeeded! He declared to me his
+love--he did!--he promised to marry me. He was to have married me
+yesterday--to have met me in church and married me. John Cross was
+to have performed the ceremony. Well! you saw me there--you saw
+me in white--the dress of a bride!--Did he come? Did you see him
+there? Did you see the ceremony performed?"
+
+"No, surely not--you know without asking."
+
+"I know without asking!--surely I do!--but look you, mother--do you
+think that conquests are to be made, hearts won, loves confessed,
+pledges given, marriage-day fixed--do these things take place,
+as matters of pure form? Is there no sensation--no agitation--no
+beating and violence about the heart--in the blood--in the brain!
+I tell you there is--a blinding violence, a wild, stormy, sensation
+--fondness, forgetfulness, madness! I say, madness! madness!
+madness!"
+
+"Oh, my daughter, what can all this mean? Speak calmly, be deliberate!"
+
+"Calm! deliberate! What a monster if I could be! But I am not
+mad now. I will tell you what it means. It means that, in taking
+captive Alfred Stevens--in winning a lover--securing that pious
+young man--there was some difficulty, some peril. Would you believe
+it?--there were some privileges which he claimed. He took me in his
+arms. Ha! ha! He held me panting to his breast. His mouth filled
+mine with kisses--"
+
+"No more, do not say more, my child!"
+
+"Ay, more! more! much more! I tell you--then came blindness and
+madness, and I was dishonored--made a woman before I was made a
+wife! Ruined, lost, abused, despised, abandoned! Ha! ha! ha!  no
+marriage ceremony. Though I went to the church. No bridegroom there,
+though he promised to come. Preacher, church, bride, all present,
+yet no wedding. Ha! ha! ha! How do I know!--Good reason for it,
+good reason--Ha! ha!--ah!"
+
+The paroxysm, terminated in a convulsion. The unhappy girl fell
+to the floor as if stricken in the forehead. The blood gushed from
+her mouth and nostrils, and she lay insensible in the presence of
+the terrified and miserable mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE FATES FIND THE DAGGER AND THE BOWL.
+
+
+
+
+
+For a long time she lay without showing any signs of life. Her
+passions rebelled against the restraint which her mind had endeavored
+to put upon them. Their concentrated force breaking all bonds, so
+suddenly, was like the terrific outburst of the boiling lava from
+the gorges of the frozen mountain. Believing her dead, the mother
+rushed headlong into the highway, rending the village with her
+screams. She was for the time a perfect madwoman. The neighbors
+gathered to her assistance. That much-abused woman, the widow
+Thackeray, was the first to come. Never was woman's tenderness
+more remarkable than hers--never was woman's watch by the bed of
+sickness and suffering--that watch which woman alone knows so well
+how to keep--more rigidly maintained than by her! From the first
+hour of that agony under which Margaret Cooper fell to earth
+insensible, to the last moment in which her recovery was doubtful,
+that widow Thackeray--whose passion for a husband had been described
+by Mrs. Cooper as so very decided and evident--maintained her place
+by the sick bed of the stricken girl with all the affection of a
+mother. Widow Thackeray was a woman who could laugh merrily, but
+she could shed tears with equal readiness. These were equally the
+signs of prompt feeling and nice susceptibility; and the proud Margaret,
+and her invidious mother, were both humbled by that spontaneous
+kindness for which, hitherto, they had given the possessor so
+very little credit, and to which they were now equally so greatly
+indebted.
+
+Medical attendance was promptly secured. Charlemont had a very
+clever physician of the old school. He combined as was requisite
+in the forest region of our country, the distinct offices of the
+surgeon and mediciner. He was tolerably skilful in both departments.
+He found his patient in a condition of considerable peril. She had
+broken a blood-vessel; and the nicest care and closest attendance
+were necessary to her preservation. It will not need that we should
+go through the long and weary details which followed to her final
+cure. Enough, that she did recover. But for weeks her chance was
+doubtful. She lay for that space of time, equally in the arms of
+life and death. For a long period, she herself was unconscious of
+her situation.
+
+When she came to know, the skill of her attendants derived very
+little aid from her consciousness. Her mind was unfavorable to her
+cure; and this, by the way, is a very important particular in the
+fortunes of the sick. To despond, to have a weariness of life,
+to forbear hope as well as exertion, is, a hundred to one, to
+determine against the skill of the physician. Margaret Cooper felt
+a willingness to die. She felt her overthrow in the keenest pangs
+of its shame; and, unhappily, the mother, in her madness, had
+declared it.
+
+The story of her fall--of the triumph of the serpent--was now the
+village property, and of course put an end to all further doubts
+on the score of the piety of Brother Stevens; though, by way of
+qualification of his offence, old Hinkley insisted that it was the
+fault of the poor damsel.
+
+"She," he said, "had tempted him--had thrown herself in his way--had
+been brazen," and all that, of which so much is commonly said in
+all similar cases. We, who know the character of the parties, and
+have traced events from the beginning, very well know how little
+of this is true. Poor Margaret was a victim before she was well
+aware of those passions which made her so. She was the victim not
+of lust but of ambition. Never was woman more unsophisticated--less
+moved by unworthy and sinister design. She had her weaknesses--her
+pride, her vanity; and her passions, which were tremendous, worked
+upon through these, very soon effected her undoing. But, for
+deliberate purpose of evil--of any evil of which her own intellect
+was conscious--the angels were not more innocent.
+
+But mere innocence of evil design, in any one particular condition,
+is not enough for security. We are not only to forbear evil; virtue
+requires that we should be exercised for the purposes of good. She
+lacked the moral strength which such exercises, constantly pursued,
+would have assured her. She was a creature of impulse only, not of
+reflection. Besides, she was ignorant of her particular weaknesses.
+She was weak where she thought herself strong. This is always the
+error of a person having a very decided will. The will is constantly
+mistaken for the power. She could not humble herself, and in her
+own personal capacities--capacities which had never before been
+subjected to any ordeal-trial--she relied for the force which was
+to sustain her in every situation. Fancy a confident country-girl--supreme
+in her own district over the Hobs and Hinnies thereabouts--in
+conflict with the adroit man of the world, and you have the whole
+history of Margaret Cooper, and the secret of her misfortune. Let
+the girl have what natural talent you please, and the case is by no
+means altered. She must fall if she seeks or permits the conflict.
+She can only escape by flight. It is in consideration of this
+human weakness, that we pray God, nightly, not to suffer us to be
+exposed to temptation.
+
+When the personal resources of her own experience and mind failed
+Margaret Cooper, as at some time or other they must fail all who
+trust only in them, she had no further reliance. She had never
+learned to draw equal strength and consolation from the sweet
+counsels of the sacred volume. Regarding the wild raving and the
+senseless insanity, which are but too frequently the language of
+the vulgar preacher, as gross ignorance and debasing folly, she
+committed the unhappy error of confounding the preacher with his
+cause. She had never been taught to make an habitual reference to
+religion; and her own experience of life, had never forced upon
+her those sage reflections which would have shown her that TRUE
+religion is the very all of life, and without it life has nothing.
+The humility of the psalmist, which was the real source of all the
+strength allotted to the monarch minstrel, was an unread lesson
+with her; and never having been tutored to refer to God, and relying
+upon her own proud mind and daring imagination, what wonder that
+these frail reeds should pierce her side while giving way beneath
+her.
+
+It was this very confidence in her own strength--this fearlessness
+of danger (and we repeat the lesson here, emphatically, by way of
+warning)--a confidence which the possession of a quick and powerful
+mind naturally enough inspires--that effected her undoing. It was
+not by the force of her affections that she fell. THE AFFECTIONS
+ARE NOT APT TO BE STRONG IN A WOMAN WHOSE MIND LEADS HER OUT FROM
+HER SEX!
+
+The seducer triumphed through the medium of her vanity. Her
+feeling of self-assurance had been thus active from childhood, and
+conspicuous in all her sports and employments. SHE HAD NEVER BEEN
+A CHILD HERSELF. SHE LED ALWAYS IN THE PASTIMES OF HER PLAYMATES,
+MANY OF WHOM WERE OLDER THAN HERSELF.
+
+She had no fears when others trembled; and, if she did not, at any
+time, so far transcend the bounds of filial duty as to defy the
+counsels of her parents, it was certainly no less true that she
+never sought for, and seldom seemed to need them. IT IS DANGEROUS
+WHEN THE WOMAN, THROUGH SHEER CONFIDENCE IN HER OWN STRENGTH, VENTURES
+UPON THE VERGE OF THE MORAL PRECIPICE. THEY VERY EXPERIMENTAL,
+WHERE THE PASSIONS ARE CONCERNED, PROVES HER TO BE LOST.
+
+Margaret Cooper, confident in her own footsteps, soon learned to
+despise every sort of guardianship. The vanity of her mother had
+not only counselled and stimulated her own, but was of that gross
+and silly order, as to make itself offensive to the judgment of the
+girl herself. This had the effect of losing her all the authority
+of a parent; and we have already seen, in the few instances where
+this authority took the shape of counsel, that its tendency was to
+evil rather than to good.
+
+The arts of Alfred Stevens had, in reality, been very few. It was
+only necessary that he should read the character of his victim.
+This, as an experienced worldling--experienced in such a volume--he
+was soon very able to do. He saw enough to discover, that, while
+Margaret Cooper was endowed by nature with an extraordinary measure
+of intellect, she was really weak because of its possession. In
+due proportion to the degree of exercise to which she subjected
+her mere mind--making that busy and restless--was the neglect of
+her sensibilities--those nice ANTENNAE OF THE HEART.
+
+"Whose instant touches, slightest pause,"
+
+teach the approach of the smallest forms of danger, however
+inoffensive their shapes, however unobtrusive their advance. When
+the sensibilities are neglected and suffered to fall into disrepute,
+they grow idle first, and finally obtuse! even as the limb which you
+forbear to exercise loses its muscle, and withers into worthlessness.
+
+When Alfred Stevens discovered this condition, his plan was simple
+enough. He had only to stimulate her mind into bolder exercise--to
+conduct it to topics of the utmost hardihood--to inspire that sort
+of moral recklessness which some people call courage--which delights
+to sport along the edge of the precipice, and to summon audacious
+spirits from the great yawning gulfs which lie below. This practice
+is always pursued at the expense of those guardian feelings which
+keep watch over the virtues of the tender heart.
+
+The analysis of subjects commonly forbidden to the sex, necessarily
+tends to make dull those habitual sentinels over the female conduct.
+These sentinels are instincts rather than principles. Education
+can take them away, but does not often confer them. When, through
+the arts of Alfred Stevens, Margaret Cooper was led to discuss,
+perhaps to despise, those nice and seemingly purposeless barriers
+which society--having the experience of ages for its authority--has
+wisely set up between the sexes--she had already taken a large
+stride toward passing them. But of this, which a judicious education
+would have taught her, she was wholly ignorant. Her mind was too
+bold to be scrupulous; too adventurous to be watchful; and if, at
+any moment, a pause in her progress permitted her to think of the
+probable danger to her sex of such adventurous freedom, she certainly
+never apprehended it in her own case. Such restraints she conceived
+to be essential only for the protection of THE WEAK among her sex.
+Her vanity led her to believe that she was strong; and the approaches
+of the sapper were conducted with too much caution, with a progress
+too stealthy and insensible, to startle the ear or attract the
+eye of the unobservant, yet keen-eyed guardian of her citadel. An
+eagle perched upon a rock, with wing outspread for flight, and an
+eye fixed upon the rolling clouds through which it means to dart,
+is thus heedless of the coiled serpent which lies beneath its feet.
+
+The bold eye of Margaret Cooper was thus heedless. Gazing upon the
+sun, she saw not the serpent at her feet. It was not because she
+slept: never was eye brighter, more far-stretching; never was mind
+more busy, more active, than that of the victim at the very moment
+when she fell. It was because she watched the remote, not the
+near--the region in which there was no enemy, nothing but glory--and
+neglected that post which is always in danger. Her error is that
+of the general who expends his army upon some distant province,
+leaving his chief city to the assault and sack of the invader.
+
+We have dwelt somewhat longer upon the moral causes which, in our
+story, have produced such cruel results, than the mere story itself
+demands; but no story is perfectly moral unless the author, with a
+wholesome commentary, directs the attention of the reader to the
+true weaknesses of his hero, to the point where his character fails;
+to the causes of this failure, and the modes in which it may be
+repaired or prevented. In this way alone may the details of life
+and society be properly welded together into consistent doctrine,
+so that instruction may keep pace with delight, and the heart and
+mind be informed without being conscious of any of those tasks
+which accompany the lessons of experience.
+
+To return now to our narrative.
+
+Margaret Cooper lived! She might as well have died. This was HER
+thought, at least. She prayed for death. Was it in mercy that her
+prayer was denied? We shall see! Youth and a vigorous constitution
+successfully resisted the attacks of the assailant. They finally
+obtained the victory. After a weary spell of bondage and suffering,
+she recovered. But she recovered only to the consciousness of a
+new affliction. All the consequences of her fatal lapse from virtue
+have not yet been told. She bore within her an indelible witness
+of her shame. She was destined to be a mother without having been
+a wife!
+
+This, to her mother at least, was a more terrible discovery than the
+former. She literally cowered and crouched beneath it. It was the
+WRITTEN shame, rather than the actual, which the old woman dreaded.
+She had been so vain, so criminally vain, of her daughter--she had
+made her so constantly the subject of her brag--that, unwitting of
+having declared the whole melancholy truth, in the first moment of
+her madness, she shrank, with an unspeakable horror, from the idea
+that the little world in which she lived should become familiar
+with the whole cruel history of her overthrow. She could scarcely
+believe it herself though the daughter, with an anguish in her eyes
+that left little to be told, had herself revealed the truth.  Her
+pride as well as her life, was linked with the pride and the
+beauty of her child. She had shared in her constant triumphs over
+all around her; and overlooking, as a fond, foolish mother is apt
+to do, all her faults of temper or of judgment, she had learned to
+behold nothing but her superiority. And now to see her fallen!  a
+thing of scorn, which was lately a thing of beauty!--the despised,
+which was lately the worshipped and the wondered at! No wonder that
+her weak, vain heart was crushed and humbled, and her head bowed
+in sorrow to the earth. She threw herself upon the floor, and wept
+bitter and scalding tears.
+
+The daughter had none. Without sob or sigh, she stooped down and
+tenderly assisted the old woman to rise. Why had she no tears? She
+asked herself this question, but in vain. Her external emotions
+promised none. Indeed, she seemed to be without emotions. A weariness
+and general indifference to all things was now the expression of
+her features. But this was the deceitful aspect of the mountain,
+on whose breast contemplation sits with silence, unconscious of the
+tossing flame which within is secretly fusing the stubborn metal
+and the rock. Anger was in her breast--feelings of hate mingled up
+with shame--scorn of herself, scorn of all--feelings of defiance
+and terror, striving at mastery; and, in one corner, a brooding
+image of despair, kept from the brink of the precipice only by the
+entreaties of some fiercer principle of hate. She felt life to be
+insupportable. Why did she live? This question came to her repeatedly.
+The demon was again at work beside her.
+
+"Die!" said he. "It is but a blow--a moment's pang--the driving a
+needle into an artery--the prick of a pin upon the heart. Die! it
+will save you from exposure--the shame of bringing into the world
+an heir of shame! What would you live for? The doors of love, and
+fame, even of society, are shut against you for ever. What is life
+to you now? a long denial--a protracted draught of bitterness--the
+feeling of a death-spasm carried on through sleepless years; perhaps,
+under a curse of peculiar bitterness, carried on even into age!
+Die! you can not be so base as to wish for longer life!"
+
+The arguments of the demon were imposing. His suggestions seemed
+to promise the relief she sought. Hers seemed the particular case
+where the prayer is justified which invokes the mountains and the
+rocks upon the head of the guilty. But the rock refused to fall,
+the mountain to cover her shame, and its exposure became daily
+more and more certain. Death was the only mode of escape from the
+mountain of pain which seemed to rest upon her heart. The means
+of self-destruction were easy. With a spirit so impetuous as hers,
+to imagine was to determine. She did determine. Yet, even while
+making so terrible a resolve, a singular calm seemed to overspread
+her soul. She complained of nothing--wished for nothing--sought
+for nothing--trembled at nothing. A dreadful lethargy, which made
+the old mother declaim as against a singular proof of hardihood,
+possessed her spirit. Little did the still-idolizing mother conjecture
+how much that lethargy concealed!
+
+The moment that Margaret Cooper conceived the idea of suicide, it
+possessed all her mind. It became the one only thought. There were
+few arguments against it, and these she rapidly dismissed or overcame.
+To leave her mother in her old age was the first which offered
+itself; but this became a small consideration when she reflected
+that the latter could not, under any circumstances, require her
+assistance very long; and to spare her the shame of public exposure
+was another consideration. The evils of the act to herself were
+reduced with equal readiness to the transition from one state
+to another by a small process, which, whether by the name of stab
+or shot, was productive only of a momentary spasm; for, though as
+fully persuaded of the soul's immortality as the best of us, the
+unhappy girl, like all young free-thinkers, had persuaded herself
+that, in dying by her own hands, she was simply exercising a
+discretionary power under the conviction that her act in doing so
+was rendered by circumstances a judicious one. The arguments by
+which she deceived herself are sufficiently commonplace, and too
+easy of refutation, to render necessary any discussion of them
+here. Enough to state the fact. She deliberately resolved upon the
+fatal deed which was to end her life and agony together, and save
+her from that more notorious exposure which must follow the birth
+of that child of sin whom she deemed it no more than a charity to
+destroy.
+
+There was an old pair of pistols in the house, which had been the
+property of her father. She had often, with a boldness not common
+to the sex, examined these pistols. They were of brass, well made,
+of English manufacture, with common muzzles, and a groove for
+a sight instead of the usual drop. They were not large, but, in
+a practised hand, were good travelling-pistols, being capable of
+bringing down a man at twelve paces, provided there was anything
+like deliberation in the holder. Often and again had she handled
+these weapons, poising them and addressing them at objects as
+she had seen her father do. On one occasion she had been made to
+discharge them, under his own instructions; she had done so without
+terror. She recalled these events. She had seen the pistols loaded.
+She did not exactly know what quantity of powder was necessary for a
+charge, but she was in no mood to calculate the value of a thimbleful.
+
+Availing herself of the temporary absence of her mother, she
+possessed herself of these weapons. Along with them, in the same
+drawer, she found a horn which still contained a certain quantity
+of powder. There were bullets in the bag with the pistols which
+precisely fitted them. There, too, was the mould--there were
+flints--the stock was sufficiently ample for all her desires; and
+she surveyed the prize, in her own room, with the look of one who
+congratulates himself in the conviction that he holds in his hand
+the great medicine which is to cure his disease. In her chamber
+she loaded the weapons, and, with such resignation as belonged to
+her philosophy, she waited for the propitious moment when she might
+complete the deed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+FOLDING THE ROBES ABOUT HER.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was the sabbath and a very lovely day. The sun never shone more
+brightly in the heavens; and as Margaret Cooper surveyed its mellow
+orange light, lying, like some blessed spirit, at sleep upon the
+hills around her, and reflected that she was about to behold it
+for the last time, her sense of its exceeding beauty became more
+strong than ever. Now that she was about to lose it for ever, it
+seemed more beautiful than it had ever been before.
+
+This is a natural effect, which the affections confer upon the
+objects which delight and employ them. Even a temporary privation
+increases the loveliness of the external nature. How we linger
+and look. That shade seems so inviting; that old oak so venerable!
+That rock--how often have we sat upon it, evening and morning, and
+mused strange, wild, sweet fancies! It is an effort to tear one's
+self away--it is almost like tearing away from life itself; so
+many living affections feel the rending and the straining--so many
+fibres that have their roots in the heart, are torn and lacerated
+by the separation.
+
+Poor Margaret! she looked from her window upon the bright and
+beautiful world around her. Strange that sorrow should dwell in
+a world so bright and beautiful! Stranger still, that, dwelling
+in such a world, it should not dwell there by sufferance only and
+constraint! that it should have such sway--such privilege. That
+it should invade every sanctuary and leave no home secure. Ah! but
+the difference between mere sorrow and guilt! Poor Margaret could
+not well understand that! If she could--but no! She was yet to learn
+that the sorrows of the innocent have a healing effect. That they
+produce a holy and ennobling strength, and a juster appreciation of
+those evening shades of life which render the lights valuable and
+make their uses pure. It is only guilt which finds life loathsome.
+It is only guilt that sorrow weakens and enslaves. Virtue grows
+strong beneath the pressure of her enemies, and with such a power
+as was fabled of the king of Pontus, turns the most poisonous fruits
+of earth into the most wholesome food.
+
+But, even in the heart of Margaret Cooper, where the sense of the
+beautiful was strong, the loveliness of the scene was felt. She
+drank in, with strange satisfaction--a satisfaction to which she
+had long been a stranger--its soft and inviting beauties. They
+did not lessen her sense of suffering, perhaps, but they were not
+without their effect in producing other moods, which, once taken
+in company with the darker ones of the soul, may, in time, succeed
+in alleviating them. Never, indeed, had the prospect been more
+calm and wooing. Silence, bending from the hills, seemed to brood
+above the valley even as some mighty spirit, at whose bidding strife
+was hushed, and peace became the acknowledged divinity of all. The
+humming voices of trade and merriment were all hushed in homage to
+the holy day; and if the fitful song of a truant bird, that presumed
+beside the window of Margaret Cooper, did break the silence of the
+scene, it certainly did not disturb its calm. The forest minstrel
+sung in a neighboring tree, and she half listened to his lay. The
+strain seemed to sympathize with her sadness. She thought upon her
+own songs, which had been of such a proud spirit; and how strange
+and startling seemed the idea that with her, song would soon cease
+for ever. The song of the bird would be silent in her ears, and
+her own song! What song would be hers? What strain would she take
+up? In what abode--before what altars?
+
+This train of thought, which was not entirely lost, however, was
+broken, for the time, by a very natural circumstance. A troop of the
+village damsels came in sight, on their way to church. She forgot
+the song of birds, as her morbid spirit suggested to her the probable
+subject of their meditations.
+
+"They have seen me," she muttered to herself as she hastily
+darted from the window. "Ay, they exult. They point to me--me, the
+abandoned--the desolate--soon to be the disgraced! But, no! no!
+that shall never be. They shall never have that triumph, which is
+always so grateful a subject of regale to the mean and envious!"
+
+The voice of her mother from below disturbed these unhappy meditations.
+The old lady was prepared for church, and was surprised to find
+that Margaret had not made her toilet.
+
+"What! don't you mean to go, Margaret?"
+
+"Not to-day, mother."
+
+"What, and the new preacher too, that takes the place of John Cross!
+They say he makes a most heavenly prayer."
+
+But the inducement of the heavenly prayer of the new preacher was
+not enough for Margaret. The very suggestion of a new preacher would
+have been conclusive against her compliance. The good old lady was
+too eager herself to get under way to waste much time in exhortation,
+and hurrying off, she scarcely gave herself time to answer the
+inquiry of the widow Thackeray, at her own door, after the daughter's
+health.
+
+"I will go in and see her," said the lighthearted but truehearted
+woman.
+
+"Do, do, ma'am---if you please! She'll be glad to see you. I'll
+hurry on, as I see Mrs. Hinkley just ahead."
+
+The widow Thackeray looked after her with a smile, which was
+exchanged for another of different character when she found herself
+in the chamber of Margaret. She put her arms about the waist of
+the sufferer; kissed her cheeks, and with the tenderest solicitude
+spoke of her health and comfort. To her, alone, with the exception
+of her mother--according to the belief of Margaret--her true
+situation had been made known.
+
+"Alas!" said she, "how should I feel--how should I be! You should
+know. I am as one cursed--doomed, hopeless of anything but death."
+
+"Ah! do not speak of death, Margaret," said the other kindly. "We
+must all die, I know, but that does not reconcile me any more to
+the thought. It brings always a creeping horror through my veins.
+Think of life--talk of life only."
+
+"They say that death is life."
+
+"So it is, I believe, Margaret; and now I think of it, dress yourself
+and go to church where we may hear something on this subject to
+make us wiser and better. Come, my dear--let us go to God."
+
+"I can not--not to-day, dear Mrs. Thackeray."
+
+"Ah, Margaret, why not? It is to the church, of all places, you
+should now go."
+
+"What! to be stared at? To see the finger of scorn pointing at me
+wherever I turn? To hear the whispered insinuation? To be conscious
+only of sneer and sarcasm on every hand? No, no, dear Mrs. Thackeray,
+I can not go for this. Feeling this, I should neither pray for
+myself, nor find benefit from the prayers of others. Nay, THEY
+would not pray. They would only mock."
+
+"Margaret, these thoughts are very sinful."
+
+"So they are, but I can not think of any better. They can not but
+be sinful since they are mine."
+
+But you are not wedded to sin, dearest. Such thoughts can give you
+no pleasure. Come with me to church! Come and pray! Prayer will do
+you good."
+
+"I would rather pray here. Let me remain. I will try to go out
+among the hills when you are all engaged in church, and will pray
+there. Indeed I must. I must pray then and pray there, if prayer
+is ever to do me good."
+
+"The church is the better place, Margaret. One prays better where
+one sees that all are praying."
+
+"But when I KNOW that they are not praying! When I know that envy
+is in their hearts, and malice, and jealousy and suspicion--that
+God is not in their hearts, but their fellow; and not him with
+friendly and fond, but with spiteful and deceitful thoughts!"
+
+"Ah! Margaret, how can you know this? Judge not lest ye be judged."
+
+"It matters not, dear Mrs. Thackeray. God is here, or there. He
+will be among the hills if anywhere. I will seek him there. If I
+can command my thoughts anywhere, it will be in the woods alone.
+In the church I can not. Those who hate me are there--and their
+looks of hate would only move my scorn and defiance."
+
+"Margaret, you do our people wrong. You do yourself wrong. None
+hate you--none will point to you, or think of your misfortune; and
+if they did, it is only what you might expect, and what you must
+learn patiently to bear, as a part of the punishment which God
+inflicts on sin. You must submit, Margaret, to the shame as you
+have submitted to the sin. It is by submission only that you can
+be made strong. The burden which you are prepared to bear meekly,
+becomes light to the willing spirit. Come, dear Margaret, I will
+keep with you, sit by you--show you, and all, that I forget your
+sin and remember only your suffering."
+
+The good widow spoke with the kindest tones. She threw her
+arms around the neck of the desolate one, and kissed her with the
+affection of a sister. But the demon of pride was uppermost. She
+withstood entreaty and embrace.
+
+"I can not go with you. I thank you, truly thank you, dear Mrs.
+Thackeray, but I can not go. I have neither the courage nor the
+strength."
+
+"They will come--the courage and the strength--only try. God is
+watchful to give us help the moment he sees that we really seek
+his assistance. By prayer, Margaret--"
+
+"I will pray, but I must pray alone. Among the hills I will pray.
+My prayer will not be less acceptable offered among his hills. My
+voice will not remain unheard, though no chorus swells its appeal."
+
+"Margaret, this is pride."
+
+"Perhaps!"
+
+"Ah! go with me, and pray for humility."
+
+"My prayer would rather be for death."
+
+"Say not so, Margaret--this is impiety."
+
+"Ay, death!--the peace, the quiet of the grave--of a long sleep--an
+endless sleep--where the vulture may no longer gnaw the heart, nor
+the fire burn within the brain! For these I must pray."
+
+And, thus speaking, the unhappy woman smote her throbbing head with
+violent hand.
+
+"Shocking thought! But you do not believe in such a sleep? Surely,
+Margaret, you believe in life eternal?"
+
+"Would I did not!"
+
+"O Margaret!--but you are sick; you are very feverish. Your eyeballs
+glare like coals of fire; your face seems charged with blood. I am
+afraid you are going to have another attack, like the last."
+
+"Be not afraid. I have no such fear."
+
+"I will sit with you, at least," said the kind-hearted woman.
+
+"Nay, that I must positively forbid, Mrs. Thackeray; I will not
+suffer it. I will not sit with YOU. Go you to church. You will
+be late. Do not waste your time on me. I mean to ramble among the
+hills this morning. THAT, I think, will do me more good than anything
+else. There, I am sure--there only--I will find peace."
+
+The worthy widow shook her head doubtfully.
+
+"But I am sure of it," said Margaret. "You will see. Peace, peace--the
+repose of the heart--the slumber of the brain!--I shall find all
+there!"
+
+Mrs. Thackeray, finding her inflexible, rose to depart, but with
+some irresoluteness.
+
+"If you would let me walk with you, Margaret--"
+
+"No! no!--dear Mrs. Thackeray--I thank you very much; but, with a
+mood such as mine, I shall be much better alone."
+
+"Well, if you are resolved--"
+
+"I am resolved! never more so."
+
+These words were spoken in tones which might have startled a
+suspicious mind. But the widow was none.
+
+"God bless you!" she said, kissing her at parting." I will see you
+when I come from church."
+
+"Will you?" said Margaret, with a significant but sad smile. Then,
+suddenly rising, she exclaimed:--
+
+"Let me kiss you, dear Mrs. Thackeray, and thank you again, before
+you go. You have been very kind to me, very kind, and you have my
+thanks and gratitude."
+
+Mrs. Thackeray was touched by her manner. This was the first time
+that the proud spirit of Margaret Cooper had ever offered such an
+acknowledgment. It was one that the gentle and unremitting kindnesses
+of the widow amply deserved. After renewing her promise to call on
+her return from church, Mrs. Thackeray took her departure.
+
+Margaret Cooper was once more alone. When she heard the outer door
+shut, she then threw herself upon the bed, and gave way to the
+utterance of those emotions which, long restrained, had rendered
+her mind a terrible anarchy. A few tears, but very few, were wrung
+from her eyes; but she groaned audibly, and a rapid succession of
+shivering-fits passed through her frame, racking the whole nervous
+system, until she scarcely found herself able to rise from the
+couch where she had thrown herself. A strong, determined will alone
+moved her, and she rose, after a lapse of half an hour, to the
+further prosecution of her purpose. Her temporary weakness and
+suffering of frame had no effect upon her resolves. She rather seemed
+to be strengthened in them. This strength enabled her to sit down
+and dictate a letter to her mother, declaring her intention, and
+justifying it by such arguments as were presented by the ingenious
+demon who assists always in the councils of the erring heart.
+
+She placed this letter in her bosom, that it might be found upon
+her person. It was curious to observe, next, that she proceeded
+to tasks which were scarcely in unison with the dreadful deed she
+meditated. She put her chamber in nice order. Her books, of which
+she had a tolerably handsome collection for a private library in
+our forest-country, she arranged and properly classed upon their
+shelves. Then she made her toilet with unusual care. It was for the
+last time. She gazed upon the mirror, and beheld her own beauties
+with a shudder.
+
+"Ah!" she thought, though she gave no expression to the thought,
+"to be so beautiful, yet fail!"
+
+It was a reflection to touch any heart with sorrow. Her dress was
+of plain white; she wore no ornament--not even a riband. Her hair,
+which was beautifully long and thick, was disposed in a clubbed
+mass upon her head, very simply but with particular neatness; and,
+when all was done, concealing the weapon of death beneath a shawl
+which she wrapped around her, she left the house, and stole away
+unobserved along the hills, in the seclusion and sacred silence
+of which she sought to avoid the evil consequences of one crime by
+the commission of another far more heinous.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+SUSPENSE AND AGONY.
+
+
+
+
+
+At the risk of seeming monotonous, we must repeat the reflection
+made in our last chapter, that the things we are about to lose for
+ever seem always more valuable in the moment of their loss. They
+acquire a newer interest in our eyes at such a time, possibly
+under the direction of some governing instinct which is intended
+to render us tenacious of life to the very last. Privation teaches
+us much more effectually than possession the value of all human
+enjoyments; and the moralist has more than once drawn his sweetest
+portraits of liberty from the gloom and the denials of a dungeon.
+How eloquent of freedom is he who yearns for it in vain! How glowing
+is that passion which laments the lost!
+
+To one dying, as we suppose few die, in the perfect possession
+of their senses, how beautiful must seem the fading hues of the
+sunlight, flickering along the walls of a chamber! how heavenly
+the brief glimpses of the blue sky through the half-opened window!
+how charming the green bit of foliage that swings against the pane!
+how cheering and unwontedly sweet and balmy the soft, sudden gust
+of the sweet south, breathing up from the flowers, and stirring the
+loose drapery around the couch! How can we part with these without
+tears? how reflect, without horror, upon the close coffin, the damp
+clod, the deep hollows of the earth in which we are to be cabined?
+Oh, with what earnestness, at such a moment, must the wholly
+conscious spirit pray for life! now greedily will he drink the
+nauseous draught in the hope to secure its boon! how fondly will
+he seize upon every chimera, whether of his own or of another's
+fancy, in order to gain a little respite--in order still to keep
+within the grasp of mind and sight, these lovely agents of earth
+and its Master, which, in our day of strength and exultation, we
+do not value at one half their worth! And how full of dread and
+horror must be that first awful conviction which assures him that
+the struggle is in vain--that the last remedy is tried--that nothing
+is left him now but despair--despair and death! Then it is that
+Christianity comes to his relief. If he believes, he gains by his
+loss. Its godlike promise assures him then that the things which
+his desires make dear, his faith has rendered immortal.
+
+The truth of many of these reflections made their way into the
+mind of Margaret Cooper, as she pursued the well-known path along
+the hills. She observed the objects along the route more narrowly
+than ever. She was taking that path for the last time. Her eyes
+would behold these objects no more. How often had she pursued the
+same route with Alfred Stevens! But then she had not seen these
+things; she had not observed these thousand graces and beauties of
+form and shadow which now seemed to crowd around, challenging her
+regard and demanding her sympathies. Then she had seen nothing
+but him. The bitterness which this reflection occasioned made her
+hurry her footsteps; but there was an involuntary shudder that
+passed through her frame, when, in noting the strange beauty of the
+path, she reflected that it would be trodden by her for the last
+time. Her breathing became quickened by the reflection. She pressed
+forward up the hills. The forests grew thick around her--deep,
+dim, solemn, and inviting. The skies above looked down in little
+blessed blue tufts, through the crowding tree-tops. The long vista
+of the woods led her onward in wandering thoughts.
+
+To fix these thoughts--to keep them from wandering! This was
+a difficulty. Margaret Cooper strove to do so, but she could not.
+Never did her mind seem such a perfect chaos--so full of confused
+and confusing objects and images. Her whole life seemed to pass in
+review before her. All her dreams of ambition, all the struggles
+of her genius! Were these to be thrown away? Were these all to be
+wasted? Was her song to be unheard? Was her passionate and proud
+soul to have no voice? If death is terrible to man, it is terrible,
+not as a pang, but as an oblivion; and to the soul of genius,
+oblivion is a soul-death, and its thought is a source of tenfold
+terror.
+
+"But of what avail were life to me now? Even should I live," said
+the wretched woman, "would it matter more to the ambition which I
+have had, and to the soul which flames and fevers within me? Who
+would hearken to the song of the degraded? Who, that heard the
+story of my shame, would listen to the strains of my genius? Say
+that its utterance is even as proud as my own vanity of heart would
+esteem it--say that no plaint like mine had ever touched the ear
+or lifted the heart of humanity! Alas! of what avail! The finger
+of scorn would be uplifted long before the voice of applause. The
+sneer and sarcasm of the worldling would anticipate the favoring
+judgment of the indulgent and the wise. Who would do justice to
+my cause? Who listen? Alas! the voice of genius would be of little
+avail speaking from the lips of the dishonored.
+
+"To the talent which I have, and the ambition which still burns
+within me, life then can bring nothing--no exercise--no fruition.
+Suppose, then, that the talent is left to slumber--the ambition
+stifled till it has no further longings! Will life yield anything
+to the mere creature of society--to my youth--to my beauty--to
+my sense of delight--if still there be any such sense left to me?
+Shall I be less the creature of social scorn, because I have yielded
+my ambition--because I have forborne the employment of those glorious
+gifts which Heaven in its bounty has allotted me?
+
+"Alas! no! am I not a woman, one of that frail, feeble sex, whose
+name is weakness?--of whom, having no strength, man yet expects
+the proofs of the most unyielding--of a firmness which he himself
+can not exercise--of a power of self-denial and endurance of which
+he exhibits no example. If I weep, he smiles at my weakness. If I
+stifle my tears, he denounces my unnatural hardihood. If I am cold
+and unyielding, I am masculine and neglected--if I am gentle and
+pliant, my confidence is abused and my person dishonored. What
+can society, which is thus exacting, accord to me, then, as a mere
+woman? What shame will it not thrust upon me--a woman--and as I
+am?
+
+"Life then promises me nothing. The talent which I have, lies
+within me idle and without hope of use. The pure name of the woman
+is lost to me for ever. Shame dogs my footsteps. Scorn points its
+finger. Life, and all that it brings to others--love, friends,
+fame, fortune--which are the soul of life--these are lost to me
+for ever. The moral death is here already. The mere act of dying,
+is simply the end of a strife, and a breathing and an agony. That
+is all!"
+
+The day became overcast. A cloud obscured the sunlight. The blue
+tufts of sky no longer looked downward through the openings of the
+trees. The scene, dim and silent before, became unusually dark. The
+aspect of nature seemed congenial with the meditated deed. She had
+reasoned herself into its commission, and she reproached herself
+mentally with her delay. Any self-suggestion of an infirmity of
+purpose, with a nature such as hers, would have produced precipitation.
+She turned down a slight gorge among the hills where the forest
+was more close. She knelt beneath a tree and laid down her pistol
+at its foot.
+
+She knelt--strange contradiction!--she knelt for the purposes of
+prayer. But she could not pray. It would seem that she attributed
+this effort to the sight of the pistols, and she put them behind
+her without changing her position. The prayer, if she made any, was
+internal; and, at all events it did not seem to be satisfactory.
+Yet, before it was ended, she started with an expression of
+painful thought upon her face. The voice of her reason had ceased
+its utterance. The voice of her conscience, perhaps, had been unheard;
+but there was yet another voice to be heard which was more potent
+than all.
+
+It was the mother's voice!
+
+She placed her hand upon her side with a spasmodic effort. The
+quickening of a new life within her, made that new voice effectual.
+She threw herself on the ground and wept freely. For the first
+time she wept freely. The tears were those of the mother. The true
+fountain of tears had been touched. That first throb of the innocent
+pledge of guilty passion subdued the fiend. She could have taken
+her own life, but dared not lift the deadly weapon against that. The
+arm of the suicide--was arrested. She groaned, she wept, bitterly
+and freely. She was at once feebler and more strong. Feebler, as
+regarded her late resolution; stronger as regarded the force of
+her affections, the sweet humanities, not altogether subdued within
+her heart. The slight pulsation of that infant in her womb had been
+more effectual than the voice of reason, or conscience, or feminine
+dread. The maternal feeling is, perhaps, the most imperious of all
+those which gather in the heart of woman.
+
+Margaret Cooper, however, had not altogether resolved against
+the deed. She only could not do it there and then. Her wretched
+determination was not wholly surrendered, but it was touched, enfeebled;
+and with the increasing powers of reflection, the impetuosity of
+the will became naturally lessened. Those few glimpses along the
+roadside which had made her sensible to the beauties she was about
+to lose, had prepared her mind to act in counteraction of her
+impulse; and the event which had brought into play the maternal
+instinct, naturally helped the cause of roason in her soul.
+
+Still, with the erring pride of youth she reproached herself with
+her infirmity of purpose. She resolved to change her ground, as if
+the instinct which had been awakened in one spot would not everywhere
+pursue her. Time was gained, and in such cases, to gain time is
+everything. Perhaps no suicide would ever take place if the individual
+would wait ten minutes. The soul takes its color from the cloud,
+and changes its moods as often. It is one of the best lessons to
+the young, to wait! wait! wait! One of the surest signs of strength
+is where the individual waits patiently and makes no complaint.
+
+Margaret Cooper changed her ground. The spot was a wild one. A
+broken ledge of rock was at her feet, and just below it ran a dark,
+narrow winding footpath half-obscured by the undergrowth. Here she
+once more proceeded to nerve her mind for the commission of the
+deed, but she had not been there an instant when she was surprised
+to hear the sound of voices.
+
+This was unusual. Who could they be? The villagers were not apt
+to stray from church-service whenever a preacher was to be found,
+and there was a new one, and consequently a new attraction, that
+day, for the spiritual hungry of Charlemont. The path below was
+seldom trodden except by herself and an occasional sportsman. The
+idea that entered her mind was, that her purpose had been suspected,
+and that she was pursued.
+
+With this idea, she placed the pistol to her breast. She had
+already cocked the weapon. Her finger was on the trigger. But the
+tones of another voice reached her ears from below. They were those
+of a woman--sweet, musical, and tender.
+
+A new light broke in upon her mind. This was the language of love.
+And who were these new lovers in Charlemont? Could it be that the
+voice of the male speaker was that of Stevens? Something in the tone
+sounded like it, Involuntarily, with this impression, the weapon
+was turned from her own bosom, and addressed in the direction in
+which the persons below were approaching. A sudden, joyous feeling
+touched her soul. The thought to destroy the criminal by whom she
+had been destroyed was a source of exultation. She felt that she
+could do it. Both pistols were in her hand. The pathway was not
+more than twenty paces distant; and her nerves, for the first time,
+braced to an unusual tension, trembled with the new excitement in
+her soul.
+
+The intruders continued to approach. Their voices became more
+distinct, and Margaret Cooper was soon undeceived as to one of them
+being that of Alfred Stevens. She was compelled to lie close, that
+she might not betray her position and purpose. The male speaker was
+very urgent; the voice seemed that of a stranger. That of the female
+was not so clearly distinguishable, yet it seemed more familiar to
+the unintentional listener.
+
+Something of feminine curiosity now entered the bosom of Margaret
+Cooper. Crouching where she was, she deposited the pistols at her
+feet. She remained breathlessly, for the slightest movement would
+have revealed her to the persons who were now just below. They
+passed close beneath the place of her concealment, and she soon
+discovered that they were lovers; and what their language was, even
+if she had not heard it, might have been conjectured.
+
+The girl was a very pretty brunette of Charlemont--a sweet, retiring
+damsel of her own age, named Rivers--whom she knew only slightly.
+She was a shy, gentle, unpresuming girl, whom, for this reason,
+perhaps, Margaret had learned to look upon without dislike or scorn.
+Her companion was a youth whom Margaret had known when a lad, but
+who had been absent on the Mississippi for two years. His tall and
+masculine but well-made and graceful person sufficiently accounted
+for, while it justified, the taste of the maiden. He was a youth
+of fine, frank, manly countenance. His garb was picturesque, that
+of a bold border-hunter, with hunting-frock of yellow buckskin,
+and Indian leggings.
+
+The girl looked up to him with an expression at once of eagerness
+and timidity. Confidence and maiden bashfulness spoke equally in
+the delight which glowed upon her features. The bright eyes and
+sun-burned features of the youth were flushed with the feeling of
+happy triumph and assuring love. The relation of the two was sufficiently
+evident from their looks, even had they no other language.
+
+What were the emotions of Margaret Cooper as she looked down upon
+this pair? At first she thought, as will most persons: "Surely there
+is nothing in nature so lovely as the union of two--fond, devoted
+hearts. The picture is one equally of moral and physical beauty.
+The slight, fragile, depending damsel, hanging in perfect confidence
+on the arm of the manly, lofty, and exulting youth--looking up
+into his eyes in hope, while he returns the gaze with pride and
+fondness! Unconscious of all things but the love which to them is
+life and all things besides, they move along the forest way and
+know not its solitude; they linger and loiter along its protracted
+paths, and see not their length; they cling together through the
+lengthened hours, and fancy they have lost no time; they hear each
+other's voices, and believe that life is all music and delight."
+
+While Margaret Cooper looked down and heard the pleadings and
+promises of the youth, and beheld the sweet emotions of his companion,
+engaged in a pleasant struggle between her hopes and misgivings,
+she scarcely restrained herself from rising where she was and crying
+aloud--like another Cassandra, not to be believed: "Beware! beware!"
+
+But the warning of Margaret Cooper would have been unnecessary.
+The girl was not only free from danger, but she was superior to it.
+She had the wholesome fear of doing wrong too strongly impressed
+upon her by education--she had too little confidence in herself--was
+too well assured of her own weakness--to suffer herself, even for
+a moment, to depart, in either thought or deed, from those quiet
+but stern proprieties of conduct which are among the best securities
+of the young. While she looked in her lover's face with confidence,
+and held his arm with the grasp of one who is sure of a right to
+do so, there was an air of childish simplicity in her manner which
+was wholly at variance with wild passions and improper fancies.
+While the hunter maintained her on his arm, and looked down into her
+eyes with love, his glance was yet as respectful, as unexpressive
+of presumption, as her own. Had the eyes of all Charlemont been
+looking on, they would have beheld nothing in the conduct of either
+which could have incurred the censure of the most becoming delicacy.
+
+Keen was the emotion and bitter was the thought which worked in the
+mind of Margaret Cooper. She looked on the deportment of that young
+maiden, whose intellect at another day she would have despised,
+with envy and regret. Truer thoughts and feelings came to her as she
+listened to the innocent but fond dialogue between the unconscious
+pair. The hunter was pursuing an erratic life of enterprise and
+industry, then very common among the western youth. He had been
+down upon the Mississippi, seeking his fortune in such adventures
+as make border-life in our country something like the more civilized
+life of the middle ages. He had returned after a long absence,
+to claim the bride whose affections he had won long before he had
+departed.
+
+Never had knight-errant been more true to his mistress. Her image
+had been his talisman as well against danger from without, as against
+the demon within. It had never left his mind, and he now returned
+for his reward. He had returned to Charlemont just before the church
+service had begun, and, being unprepared to go thither, had found
+no difficulty in persuading his sweetheart to give the hour of
+morning service to himself.
+
+Mixed up with his professions of love was the story of his wanderings.
+Never were adventures more interesting to any auditor. Never was
+auditor more easily moved by the transitions of the tale from tears
+to smiles, and from smiles again to tears. His risks and rewards;
+his defeats and successes; his wild adventures by fell and flood--not
+perhaps so perilous as those of Othello, but such as proved he
+had the soul to encounter the worst in Othello's experience, and
+maintain himself as well--drew largely on the maiden's wonder and
+delight, increased her tenderness and tremors, and made her quite
+as devoted to her hero as ever was Desdemona to her dusky chief.
+As they went from hearing below, the manner in which the hunter
+concluded his narrative provided a sufficient test for the faith
+of his companion.
+
+"And now, Selina, you see all the risks and the dangers. There's
+work and perhaps trouble for you to go down with me along the Choctaw
+borders. But if there's work, I am the man to do my own share, and
+help you out in yours; and, if there's trouble, here's the breast
+to stand it first, and here's the arm to drive it back, so that
+it'll never trouble yours. No danger shall come to you, so long
+as I can stand up between it and you. If so be that you love me as
+you say, there's one way to show it: you'll soon make up your mind
+to go with me. If yon don't, why--"
+
+"But you know I do love you, John--" murmured the girl.
+
+"Don't I believe it? Well, if what you say means what it should,
+you're ready. Here's my hand, and all that it's good for. It can
+work for you and fight for you, Selina, and it's yours etarnally,
+with all that I have."
+
+The hand of the girl was silently put into that of the speaker.
+The tears were in her eyes; but, if she made any other answer, it
+was unheard by Margaret Cooper. The rustic pair moved from sight
+even as they spoke, and the desolate woman once more remained alone!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+SHAME AND DEATH--THE OATH.
+
+
+
+
+
+Margaret Cooper was at length permitted to emerge from the place
+of her concealment. The voices of the lovers were lost, as well
+as their forms, in the wooded distance. Dreaming, like children as
+they were, of life and happiness, they had wandered off, too happy
+to fancy for a moment that the world contained, in its wide, vast
+bosom, one creature half so wretched as she who hung above them,
+brooding, like some wild bird of the cliff, over the storm which
+had robbed her of her richest plumage.
+
+She sank back into the woods. She no longer had the heart to commit
+the meditated crime. This purpose had left her mind. It had given
+place to another, however, scarcely less criminal. We have seen
+her, under the first impression that the stranger whose voice she
+heard was Alfred Stevens, turning the muzzle of the pistol from
+her breast to the path on which he was approaching. Though she
+discovered her error, and laid the weapon down, the sudden suggestion
+of her mind, at that moment, gave a new direction to her mood.
+
+Why should she not seek to avenge her wrong? Was he to escape without
+penalty? was she to be a quiescent victim? True, she was a woman,
+destined it would seem to suffer--perhaps with a more than ordinary
+share of that suffering which falls to her sex. But she had also
+a peculiar strength--the strength of a man in some respects; and
+in her bosom she now felt the sudden glow of one of his fiercest
+passions. Revenge might be in her power. She might redress her
+wrong by her own hand. It was a weapon of death which she grasped.
+In her grasp it might be made a weapon of power. The suggestion
+seemed to be that of justice only. It was one that filled her whole
+soul with a triumphant and a wild enthusiasm.
+
+"I shall not be stricken down without danger to mine enemy. For
+THIS--this, at least--strength is allotted me. Let him tremble! In
+his place of seeming security let him tremble! I shall pursue his
+steps. I will find him out. There shall be a day of retribution!
+Alfred Stevens, there is a power within me which tells me you are
+no longer safe!
+
+"And why may I not secure this justice--this vengeance? Why?
+Because I am a woman. Ha! We shall see. If I am a woman, I can be
+an enemy--and such an enemy! An enemy not to be appeased, not to
+be overcome. War always with my foe--war to the knife--war to the
+last!"
+
+Such a nature as that of Margaret Cooper needed some such object
+to give it the passionate employment without which it must recoil
+upon itself and end either in suicide or madness. She brooded upon
+this new thought. She found in it a grateful exercise. From the
+moment when she conceived the idea of being the avenger of her own
+wrong, her spirit became more elastic--she became less sensible to
+the possible opinions upon her condition which might be entertained
+by others. She found consolation, in retreating to this one thought,
+from all the rest. Of the difficulties in the way of her design,
+it was not in her impetuous character to think. She never once
+suspected that the name of Alfred Stevens had been an assumed one.
+She never once asked how she was to pursue and hunt him up. She
+thought of a male disguise for herself, it is true; but of the means
+and modes of travel--in what direction to go. and after what plan
+to conduct her pursuit, she had not the most distant idea.
+
+She addressed herself to her new design, however, in one respect,
+with amazing perseverance. It diverted her from other and more
+oppressive thoughts. Her pistols she carried secretly to a very
+distant wood, where she concealed them in the hollow of a tree.
+To this wood she repaired secretly and daily. Here she selected a
+tree as a mark. A small section of the bark, which she tore away,
+at a given height, she learned to regard as the breast of her
+seducer. This was the object of her aim. Without any woman fears,
+she began her practice and continued it, day by day, until, as we
+are told by one of the chroniclers of her melancholy story, "she
+could place a ball with an accuracy, which, were it universally
+equalled by modern duellists, would render duelling much more fatal
+than it commonly is."
+
+In secret she procured gunpowder and lead, by arts so ingenious as
+to baffle detection. At midnight when her mother slept she moulded
+her bullets. Well might the thoughts and feelings which possessed her
+mind, while engaged in this gloomy labor, have endowed every bullet
+with a wizard spell to make it do its bidding truly.  Bitter, indeed,
+were the hours so appropriated; but they had their consolations.
+Dark and terrible were the excited moods in which she retired from
+her toils to that slumber which she could not always secure. And
+when it did come, what were its images! The tree, the mark, the
+weapon, the deep, dim forest, all the scenes and trials of the day,
+were renewed in her sleep. A gloomy wood filled her eyes--a victim
+dabbled in blood lay before her; and, more than once, her own fearful
+cry of vengeance and exultation awakened her from those dreams of
+sleep, which strengthened her in the terrible pursuit of the object
+which occasioned them.
+
+Such thoughts and practices, continued with religious pertinacity,
+from day to day, necessarily had their effect upon her appearance
+as well as her character. Her beauty assumed a wilder aspect. Her
+eye shot forth a supernatural fire. She never smiled. Her mouth
+was rigid and compressed as if her heart was busy in an endless
+conflict. Her gloom, thus nurtured by solitude and the continual
+presence of a brooding imagination of revenge, darkened into
+something like ferocity. Her utterance became brief and quick--her
+tones sharp, sudden, and piercing. She had but one thought which
+never seemed to desert her, yet of this thought no ear ever had
+cognizance. It was of the time when she should exercise the skill
+which she had now acquired upon that destroyer of herself, whom
+she now felt herself destined to destroy.
+
+Of course we are describing a madness--one of those peculiar
+forms of the disease which seems to have its origin in natural and
+justifiable suggestions of reason. Not the less a madness for all
+that.
+
+Succeeding in her practice at one distance, Margaret Cooper changed
+it. From one point to another she constantly varied her practice,
+until her aim grew certain at almost any distance within the ordinary
+influence of the weapon. To strike her mark at thirty feet became,
+in a little while, quite as easy as to do so at five; and, secure
+now of her weapon, her next object--though there was no cessation
+of her practice--was how to seek and where to find the victim.
+
+In this new object she meditated to disguise herself in the apparel
+of a man. She actually commenced the making up of the several
+garments of one. This was also the secret labor of the midnight
+hour, when her feeble-minded mother slept. She began to feel some
+of the difficulties lying in the way of this pursuit, and her mind
+grew troubled to consider them, without however, relaxing in its
+determination. That seemed a settled matter.
+
+While she brooded over this new feature of her purpose--as if
+fortunately to arrest the mad design--her mother fell seriously
+sick, and was for some time in danger. The duty of attending upon
+her, put a temporary stop to her thoughts and exercises; though
+without having the effect of expelling them from her mind.
+
+But another event, upon her mother's recovery, tended to produce
+a considerable alteration in her thoughts. A new care filled her
+heart and rendered her a different being, in several respects. She
+was soon to become a mother. The sickness of soul which oppressed
+her under this conviction, gave a new direction to her mood
+without lessening its bitterness; and, in proportion as she found
+her vengeance delayed, so was the gratification which it promised,
+a heightened desire in her mind.
+
+For the humiliating and trying event which was at hand, Margaret
+Cooper prepared with a degree of silent firmness which denoted
+quite as strongly the resignation of despair as any other feeling.
+
+The child is born.
+
+Margaret Cooper has at length become a mother. She has suffered
+the agony, without being able to feel the compensating pride and
+pleasure of one. It was the witness of her shame--could she receive
+it with any assurances of love? It is doubtful if she did.
+
+For some time after its birth, the hapless woman seemed to be
+unconscious, or half-conscious only, of her charge. A stupor weighed
+upon her senses. When she did awaken, and her eyes fell upon the
+face and form of the infant with looks of recognition, one long,
+long piercing shriek burst from her lips. She closed her eyes--she
+turned away from the little unoffending, yet offensive object with
+a feeling of horror.
+
+Its features were those of Alfred Stevens. The likeness was
+indelible; and this identity drew upon the child a share of that
+loathing hatred with which she now remembered the guilty father.
+
+It may very well be supposed that the innocent babe suffered under
+these circumstances. The milk which it drew from the mother's breast,
+was the milk of bitterness, and it did not thrive. It imbibed gall
+instead of nutriment. Day after day it pined in hopeless misery;
+and though the wretched mother strove to supply its wants and soothe
+its little sorrows, with a gradually increasing interest which
+overcame her first loathing, there was yet that want of sweetest
+sympathy which nothing merely physical could well supply.
+
+Debility was succeeded by disease--fever preyed upon its little
+frame, which was now reduced to a skeleton. One short month only
+had elapsed from its birth, and it lay, in the silence of exhaustion
+upon the arm of its mother. Its eyes, whence the flickering light
+was escaping fast, looked up into hers, as she fancied, with an
+expression of reproach. She felt, on the instant, the pang of the
+maternal conscience. She forgot the unworthy father, as she thought
+of the neglectful mother. She bent down, and, for the first time,
+imprinted on its little lips the maternal kiss.
+
+A smile seemed to glimmer on its tiny features; and, from that
+moment, Margaret Cooper resolved to forget her injuries, for the
+time, at least, in the consideration of her proper duties. But
+her resolution came too late. Even while her nipple was within its
+boneless gums, a change came over the innocent. She did not heed
+it. Her eyes and thoughts were elsewhere; and thus she mused, gazing
+vacantly upon the wall of her chamber until her mother entered the
+room. Mrs. Cooper gave but a single glance at the infant when she
+saw that its little cares were over.
+
+"Oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, "the child is dead."
+
+The mother looked down with a start and shudder. A big tear fell
+from her eyes upon the cold cheek of the innocent. She released
+it to her mother, turned her face upon the couch, and uttered her
+thanks to Heaven that had sedecreed it--that had left her again
+free for that darker purpose which had so long filled her mind.
+
+"Better so," she murmured to her mother. "It is at peace. It will
+neither know its own nor its mother's griefs. It is free from that
+shame for which I must live!"
+
+"Come now, Margaret, no more of that," said the mother sharply.
+"There's no need of shame. There are other things to live for
+besides shame."
+
+"There are--there are!" exclaimed the daughter, with spasmodic
+energy. "Were there not, I should, indeed, be desperate."
+
+"To be sure you would, my child. You have a great deal to live
+for yet; and let a little time blow over, and when everything's
+forgotten, you will get as good a husband as any girl in the
+country."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, mother, none of this?"
+
+"But why not! Though you are looking a little bad just now--quite
+pale and broken--yet it's only because you have been so ill; and
+this nursing of babies, and having 'em too, is a sort of business
+to make any young woman look bad; but in spite of all, there's not
+a girl in the village, no matter how fresh she may be looking, that
+can hold a candle to you."
+
+"For mercy, mother!--"
+
+"Let me speak, I tell you! Don't I know? You're young, and you'll
+get over it. You will get all your beauty and good looks back, now
+that the baby's out of the way, and there's no more nursing to be
+done. And what with your beauty and your talents, Margaret--"
+
+"Peace! mother! Peace--peace! You will drive me to madness if you
+continue to speak thus."
+
+"Well, I'm sure there's no knowing what to say to please you. I'm
+sure, I only want to cheer you up, and to convince you that things
+are not so bad as you think them now. The cloud will blow over
+soon, and everything will be forgotten, and then, you see--"
+
+The girl waved her hand impatiently.
+
+"Death--death!" she exclaimed. "Oh! child of shame, and bitterness,
+and wrath!" she murmured, kneeling down beside the infant, "thou
+art the witness that I have no future but storm, and cloud, and
+wrath, and--Vengeance!"
+
+The last word was inaudible to her mother's ears.
+
+"It is an oath!" she cried; "an oath!" And her hands were uplifted
+in solemn adjuration.
+
+"Come--come, Margaret! none of this swearing. You frighten me with
+your swearing. There's nothing that you need to swear about! What's
+done can't be helped now, by taking it so seriously. You must only
+be patient, and give yourself time. Time's the word for us now;
+after a little while you'll see the sky become brighter. It's a
+bad business, it's true; but it needn't break a body's heart. How
+many young girls I've known in my time, that's been in the same
+fix. There was Janet Bonner, and Emma Loring, and Mary Peters--I
+knew 'em all, very well. Well, they all made a slip once in their
+lives, and they never broke their hearts about it, and didn't look
+very pale and sad in the face either; but they just kept quiet and
+behaved decent for awhile, and every one of 'em got good husbands.
+Janet Bonner, she married Dick Pyatt, who came from Massachusetts,
+and kept the school down by Clayton's Meadow; Emma Loring married
+a baptist-preacher from Virginia, named Stokes. I never saw him to
+know him; and as for Mary Peters, there never was a girl that had
+a slip that was ever so fortunate, for she's been married no less
+than three times since, and as she's a widow again, there's no
+telling what may happen to her yet. So don't you be so downcast.
+You're chance is pretty nigh as good as ever, if you will only hold
+up your head, and put the best face on it."
+
+"Oh! torture--torture! Mother, will you not be silent? Let the dead
+speak to me only. I would hear but the voice of this one witness--"
+
+And she communed only with the dead infant, sitting or kneeling
+beside it. But the communion was not one of contrition or tears--not
+of humility and repentance--not of self-reproach and a broken
+spirit. Pride and other passions had summoned up deities and angels
+of terror and of crime, before the eyes and thoughts of the wretched
+mourner, and the demon who had watched with her and waited on her,
+and had haunted her with taunt and bitter mockeries, night and day,
+was again busy with terrible suggestions, which gradually grew to
+be divine laws to her diseased imagination.
+
+"Yes!" she exclaimed unconsciously.
+
+"I hear! I obey! Yet speak again. Repeat the lesson. I must learn
+it every syllable, so that I shall not mistake--so that I can not
+fail!"
+
+"Who are you talking to, Margaret?" asked the mother anxiously.
+
+"Do you not see them, where they go? There--through the doors;
+the open windows--wrapped in shadows, with great wings at their
+shoulders, each carrying a dart in his bony grasp."
+
+"Lord, have mercy! She's losing her senses again!" and the mother
+was about to rush from the apartment to seek assistance; but with
+the action, the daughter suddenly arose, wearing a look of singular
+calmness, and motioning to the child, she said:--
+
+"Will you not dress it for the grave?"
+
+"I'm going about it now. The poor lovely little creature. The
+innocent little blossom. We must put it in white, Margaret--virgin
+white--and put white flowers in its little hands and on its breast,
+and under its head. Oh! it will look so sweet in its little coffin!"
+
+"God! I should go mad with all this!" exclaimed the daughter.
+"were it not for that work which is before me! I must be calm for
+that-calm and stern! I must not hear--I must not think--not feel--lest
+I forget myself, and the deed which I have to do. That oath--that
+oath! It is sworn! It is registered in heaven, by the fatal angel
+of remorse, and wrath, and vengeance!"
+
+And again, a whisper at her ears repeated:--
+
+"For this, Margaret, and for this only, must thou live".
+
+"I must! I will!" she muttered, as it were in reply, and her eye
+glared upon the opened door, as she heard a voice and footsteps
+without; and the thought smote her:--
+
+"Should it be now! Come for the sacrifice! Ha!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE PALL UPON THE COFFIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+The noise which arrested the attention of Margaret Cooper, and
+kindled her features into an expression of wild and fiery ferocity,
+was of innocent origin. The widow Thackeray was the intruder. Her
+kindness, sympathy, and unweared attentions, so utterly in conflict
+with the estimates hitherto made of her heart and character,
+by Mrs Cooper, had, in some degree, disarmed the censures of that
+excellent mother, if they had not wholly changed her sentiments.
+She professed to be very grateful to Thackeray's attentions, and,
+without making any profession, Margaret certainly showed her that
+she felt them. She now only pointed the widow to the corpse of the
+child, in that one action telling to the other all that was yet
+unknown. Then she seated herself composedly, folded her hands,
+and, beside the corpse, forgot its presence, forgot the presence of
+all--heard no voice, save that of the assiduous demon whom nothing
+could expel from her companionship.
+
+"Poor little thing!" murmured the widow Thackeray, as she proceeded
+to assist Mrs. Cooper in decking it for the grave.
+
+The duty was finally done. Its burial was appointed for the morrow.
+
+A village funeral is necessarily an event of some importance. The
+lack of excitements in small communities, in vests even sorrow and
+grief and death with a peculiar interest in the eyes of curiosity.
+On the present occasion, all the villagers attended. The funeral
+itself might have sufficed to collect them with few exceptions;
+but now there was a more eager influence still, working upon the
+gossippy moods of the population. To see Margaret Cooper in her
+affliction--to see that haughty spirit humbled and made ashamed--was,
+we fear, a motive, in the minds of many, much stronger than
+the ostensible occasion might have awakened. Had Margaret been
+a fashionable woman, in a great city, she might have disappointed
+the vulgar desire, by keeping to her chamber. Nay, even according
+to the free-and-easy standards prevailing at Charlemont, she might
+have done the same thing, and incurred no additional scandal.
+
+It was, indeed, to the surprise of a great many, that she made her
+appearance. It was still more a matter of surprise--nay, pious and
+virgin horror--that she seemed to betray neither grief nor shame,
+surrounded as she was by all whom she knew, and all, in particular,
+whom, in the day of her pride, she had kept at a distance.
+
+"What a brazen creature!" whispered Miss Jemima Parkinson, an
+interesting spinster of thirty-six, to Miss Ellen Broadhurst, who
+was only thirty-four; and Miss Ellen whispered back, in reply:--
+
+"She hasn't the slightest bit of shame!"
+
+Interesting virgins! they had come to gloat over the spectacle of
+shame. To behold the agonizing sense of degradation declare itself
+under the finger-pointing scorn of those who, perhaps, were only
+innocent from necessity, and virtuous because of the lack of the
+necessary attractions in the eyes of lust.
+
+But Margaret Cooper seemed quite as insensible to their presence
+as to their scorn and her own shame. She, in truth, saw none of
+them. She heard not their voices. She conjectured non (sic) nts.
+She had anticipated all of them; and having, in consequence, reached
+a point of intensity in her agony which could bear no addition,
+she had been relieved only by a still more intense passion, by
+which the enfeebling one, of mere society, stood rebuked and almost
+forgotten.
+
+They little dreamed the terrible thoughts which were working,
+beneath that stolid face, in that always eager-working brain. They
+never fancied what a terrible demon now occupied that fiery heart
+which they supposed was wholly surrendered to the consciousness of
+shame. Could they have heard that voice of the fiend whispering in
+her ears, while they whispered to one another--heard his terrible
+exhortations--heard her no less terrible replies--they would have
+shrunk away in horror, and felt fear rather than exultation.
+
+Margaret Cooper was insensible to all that they could say or do.
+She knew them well--knew what they would say, and feel, and do;
+but the very extremity of her suffering had placed it out of their
+power any longer to mortify or shame.
+
+Some few of the villagers remained away. Ned Hinkley and his widowed
+sister were absent from the house, though they occupied obscure
+places in the church when the funeral-procession took place.  An
+honorable pity kept them from meeting the eyes of the poor
+shame-stricken but not shame-showing woman.
+
+And Margaret followed the little corpse to its quiet nook in the
+village graveyard. In that simple region the procession was wholly
+on foot; and she walked behind the coffin as firmly as if she knew
+not what it held. There was a single shiver that passed over her
+frame, as the heavy clods fell upon the coffin-lid--but that was
+all; and when her mother and the widow Thackeray took each of them
+one of her arms, and led her away from the grave, and home, she went
+quietly, calmly, it would seem, and with as firm a step as ever!
+
+"She has not a bit of feeling!" said Miss Jemima to Miss Ellen.
+
+"That's always the case with your very smart women," was the reply.
+"It's all head with 'em; there's no heart. They can talk fine things
+about death, and sorrow, and affliction, but it's talk only. They
+don't feel what they say."
+
+Ned Hinkley had a juster notion of the state of the poor victim--of
+her failings and her sensibilities, her equal strength and weakness.
+
+"Now," said he to his sister, "there's a burning volcano in that
+woman's heart, that will tear her some day to pieces. For all that
+coldness, and calmness, and stateliness, her brain is on fire, and
+her heart ready for a convulsion. Her thoughts now, if she thinks
+at all, are all desperate. She's going through a very hell upon
+earth! When you think of her pride--and she's just as proud now as
+the devil himself--her misfortune hasn't let her down--only made her
+more fierce--you wonder that she lets herself be seen; you wonder
+that she lives at all. I only wonder that she hasn't thrown herself
+from the rocks and into the lake. She'll do it yet, I'm a-thinking.
+
+"And just so she always was. I knew her long ago. She once told
+me she was afraid of nothing--would do as she pleased--she could
+dare anything! From that moment I saw she wasn't the girl for Bill
+Hinkley. I told him so, but he was so crazy after her, he'd hear to
+nothing. A woman--a young woman--a mere girl of fifteen--boasting
+that she can dare and do things that would set any woman in
+a shiver! I tell you what, sis, the woman that's bolder than her
+sex is always in danger of falling from the rocks. She gets such a
+conceit of her mind, that the devil is always welcome. Her heart,
+after that, stands no sort of chance!
+
+"Protect me, say I, from all that class of women that pride themselves
+on their strongmindedness! They get insolent upon it. They think
+that mind can do everything. They're so vain, that they never can
+see the danger, even when it's yawning at their feet. A woman's
+never safe unless she's scary of herself, and mistrusts herself,
+and never lets her thoughts and fancies get from under a tight rein
+of prudence. For, after all, the passions will have their way some
+day, and then what's the use of the mind? I tell you, sis, that
+the passions are born deaf--they never listen to any argument.
+
+"But I'm sorry for her--God knows I'm sorry for her! I'd give
+all I'm worth to have a fair shot or clip at that rascal Stevens.
+Brother Stevens! Ain't it monstrous, now, that a sheep's cover should
+be all that's sufficient to give the wolf freedom in the flock?--that
+you've only to say, 'This is a brother--a man of God'--and no proof
+is asked! nobody questions! The blind, beastly, bigoted, blathering
+blockheads! I feel very much like setting off straight, and licking
+John Hinkley, though he's my own uncle, within an inch of his life!
+He and John Cross--the old fools who are so eager to impose their
+notions of religion upon everybody, that anybody may impose upon
+them--they two have destroyed this poor young creature. It's at
+their door, in part, this crime, and this ruin! I feel it in my
+heart to lick 'em both out of their breeches!
+
+"Yet, as I'm a living sinner, they'll stand up in the congregation,
+and exhort about this poor girl's misfortune, just as if they were
+not to blame at all who brought the wolf into the farmyard! They'll
+talk about her sins, and not a word, to themselves or anybody else,
+about their own stupidities! I feel it in my heart to lather both
+of them right away!"
+
+The sister said little, and sorrowfully walked on in silence
+homeward, listening to the fierce denunciations of Ned Hinkley.
+Ned was affected, or, rather, he showed his sympathies, in a manner
+entirely his own. He was so much for fight, that he totally forgot
+his fiddle that night, and amused himself by putting his two
+"barking-pups" in order--getting them ready, as he said, "in case
+he ever should get a crack at Brother Stevens!"
+
+The cares of the child's burial over, and the crowd dispersed,
+the cottage of the widow Cooper was once more abandoned to the
+cheerlessness and wo (sic) within. Very dismal was the night of that
+day to the two, the foolish mother and wretched daughter, as they
+sat brooding together, in deep silence, by the light of a feeble
+candle. The mother rocked a while in her easy-chair. The daughter,
+hands clasped in her lap, sat watching the candlelight in almost
+idiotic vacancy of gaze. At length she stood up and spoke--slowly,
+deliberately, and apparently in as calm a mood as she had ever felt
+in all her life:--
+
+"We must leave this place, mother. We must go hence--to-morrow if
+we can."
+
+"Go?--leave this place? I want to know why! I'm sure we're very
+comfortable here. I can't be going just when you please, and leaving
+all my company and friends."
+
+"Friends!"
+
+"Yes, friends! There's the widow Thackeray--and there's--"
+
+"And how long is it since Mrs. Thackeray was such a dear friend,
+mother?" asked the daughter, with ill-suppressed scorn.
+
+"No matter how long: she's a good friend now. She's not so foolish
+as she used to be. She's grown good; she's got religion; and I
+don't consider what she was. No!--I'm willing--"
+
+"Pshaw, mother! tell me nothing of your friendships. You'll find,
+wherever you go, as many friends as you please, valued quite as
+much as Mrs. Thackeray."
+
+"Well, I do say, Margaret, it's very ungrateful of you to speak
+so disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray, after all her kindness and
+attention."
+
+"I do not speak disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray. I NEVER did speak
+ill of her, even when it was your favorite practice to do so.  I
+only speak of your newly-acquired appreciation of her. But this is
+nothing to the purpose. I repeat, mother, we can not remain here.
+I will depart, whether you resolve to go or not. I can not, I will
+not, exist another week in Charlemont."
+
+"And where would you go?"
+
+"Back--back to that old farm, from which you brought me in evil
+hour! It is poor, obscure, profitless, unsought, unseen: it will
+give me a shelter--it may bring me peace. I must have solitude for
+a season; I must sleep for months."
+
+"Sleep for months! La me, child, what a notion's that!"
+
+"No matter--thither let us go. I seem to see it, stretching out
+its hands, and imploring us to come."
+
+"Bless me, Margaret! a farm stretching out its hands! Why, you're
+in a dream!"
+
+"Don't wake me, then! Better I should so dream! Thither I go. It
+is fortunate that you have not been able to sell it. It is a mercy
+that it still remains to us. It was my childhood's home. Would
+it could again receive me as a child! It will cover my head for a
+while, at least, and that is something. We must leave this place.
+Here every thing offends me--every spot, every face, every look,
+every gesture."
+
+"It's impossible, Margaret!--"
+
+"What! you suppose it an honorable distinction, do you, when the
+folks here point to your daughter, and say--ha! ha!--listen what
+they say! It is the language of compliment! They are doing me honor,
+with tongue and finger! Repeat, mother; tell me what they say--for
+it evidently gives you great pleasure."
+
+"O Margaret! Margaret!--"
+
+"You understand, do you? Well, then, we go. We can not depart
+too soon. If I stay here, I madden! And I must not madden. I have
+something which needs be done--which must be done. It is an oath!
+an oath in heaven! The child was a witness. She heard all--every
+syllable!"
+
+"What all? what did you hear?"
+
+"No matter! I'm sworn to be secret. But you shall hear in time. We
+have no time for it now. It is a very long story. And we must now
+be packing. Yes, we must go. _I_ must go, at least. Shall I go
+alone?"
+
+"But you will not leave your mother, Margaret!"
+
+"Father and mother--all will I leave, in obedience to that oath.
+Believe me or not, mother--go with me or not--still I go. Perhaps
+it is better that I should go alone."
+
+The strong will naturally swayed the feebler, as it had ever done
+before. The mother submitted to an arrangement which she had not
+the resolution to oppose. A few days were devoted to necessary
+arrangements, and then they left Charlemont for ever. Margaret
+Cooper looked not once behind them as they traversed the lonely
+hills looking down upon the village--those very hills from which,
+at the opening of this story, the treacherous Alfred Stevens and
+his simple uncle beheld the lovely little settlement. She recognised
+the very spot, as they drove over it, where Stevens first encountered
+her, and the busy demon, at her ears whispered:--
+
+"It was here! You remember!"
+
+And she clinched her teeth firmly together, even though she
+shuddered at her memories; and she renewed her oath to the demon,
+who, thereupon, kept her company the rest of the journey, till she
+reached the ancient and obscure farmstead in which she was born.
+
+"She retired," says the rude chronicle from which we have borrowed
+many of the materials for this sombre history, "to a romantic little
+farm in---, there to spend in seclusion, with her aged mother and
+a few servants, the remainder of her days."
+
+Our simple chronicler takes too much for granted. Margaret
+Cooper retired with no such purpose. She had purposes entirely at
+conflict with any idea of repose or quiet. She thought nothing of
+the remainder of her days. Her mother was not so aged but that she
+could still think, six months afterward, of the reported marriage
+of the widow Thackeray with repining, and with the feeling of one
+who thinks that she has suffered neglect and injustice at the hands
+of the world. Touching the romance of the ancient farmstead, we
+are more modestly content to describe it as sterile, lonely, and
+unattractive; its obscurity offering, for the present, its chief
+attractions to our desolate heroine, and the true occasion for that
+deep disgust with which her amiable mother beheld it.
+
+Our chronicle of Charlemont is ended. We have no further object
+or interest within its precincts. William Hinkley is gone, no one
+knows whither, followed by his adopted father, the retired lawyer,
+whose sensibilities were fatal to his success. It was not long
+before Ned Hinkley and his widowed sister found it their policy
+to depart also, seeking superior objects in another county; and
+at this moment Charlemont is an abandoned and deserted region.
+It seemed to decline from the moment when the cruel catastrophe
+occurred which precipitated Margaret Cooper from her pride of place.
+Beautiful as the village appeared at the opening of our legend,
+it was doomed to as rapid a decay as growth. "Something ails it
+now--the spot is cursed!"
+
+But OUR history does not finally conclude with the fate of Charlemont.
+That chronicle is required now to give place to another, in which
+we propose to take up the sundered clues, and reunite them in a
+fresh progress. We shall meet some of the old parties once more, in
+new situations. We shall again meet with Margaret Cooper, in a new
+guise, under other aspects, but still accompanied by her demon--still
+inspired by her secret oath--still glowing with all the terrible
+memories of the past--still laboring with unhallowed pride; and
+still destined for a lark catastrophe. Our scene, however, lies in
+another region, to which the reader, who has thus far kept pace with
+our progress, is entreated still to accompany us. The chronicle of
+"CHARLEMONT" will find its fitting sequel in that of "BEAUCHAMPE"--known
+proverbially as "THE KENTUCKY TRAGEDY."
+
+END OF CHARLEMONT.
+
+
+
+
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