age habits had done me no radical mischief;
my physical powers had grown up and flourished under their influence, and
my mind, undergoing the same discipline, was imbued with all the hardy
virtues. But now my boasted independence was daily instigating me to acts
of tyranny, and freedom was becoming licentiousness. I stood on the brink
of manhood; passions, strong as the trees of a forest, had already taken
root within me, and were about to shadow with their noxious overgrowth, my
path of life.

I panted for enterprises beyond my childish exploits, and formed
distempered dreams of future action. I avoided my ancient comrades, and I
soon lost them. They arrived at the age when they were sent to fulfil their
destined situations in life; while I, an outcast, with none to lead or
drive me forward, paused. The old began to point at me as an example, the
young to wonder at me as a being distinct from themselves; I hated them,
and began, last and worst degradation, to hate myself. I clung to my
ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my war against
civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it.

I revolved again and again all that I remembered my mother to have told me
of my father's former life; I contemplated the few relics I possessed
belonging to him, which spoke of greater refinement than could be found
among the mountain cottages; but nothing in all this served as a guide to
lead me to another and pleasanter way of life. My father had been connected
with nobles, but all I knew of such connection was subsequent neglect. The
name of the king,--he to whom my dying father had addressed his latest
prayers, and who had barbarously slighted them, was associated only with
the ideas of unkindness, injustice, and consequent resentment. I was born
for something greater than I was--and greater I would become; but
greatness, at least to my distorted perceptions, was no necessary associate
of goodness, and my wild thoughts were unchecked by moral considerations
when they rioted in dreams of distinction. Thus I stood upon a pinnacle, a
sea of evil rolled at my feet; I was about to precipitate myself into it,
and rush like a torrent over all obstructions to the object of my wishes--
when a stranger influence came over the current of my fortunes, and changed
their boisterous course to what was in comparison like the gentle
meanderings of a meadow-encircling streamlet.

CHAPTER II.

I LIVED far from the