vow unredeemed, and that an unburied corpse was calling to him out
of the wilderness. Yet such was the consequence of his prevarication
that he could not obey the call. It was now too late to require the
assistance of Roger Malvin's friends in performing his long-deferred
sepulture; and superstitious fears, of which none were more susceptible
than the people of the outward settlements, forbade Reuben to go alone.
Neither did he know where in the pathless and illimitable forest to
seek that smooth and lettered rock at the base of which the body lay:
his remembrance of every portion of his travel thence was indistinct,
and the latter part had left no impression upon his mind. There was,
however, a continual impulse, a voice audible only to himself,
commanding him to go forth and redeem his vow; and he had a strange
impression that, were he to make the trial, he would be led straight to
Malvin's bones. But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was
disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his
spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was
transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable man.

In the course of a few years after their marriage changes began to be
visible in the external prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas. The only
riches of the former had been his stout heart and strong arm; but the
latter, her father's sole heiress, had made her husband master of a
farm, under older cultivation, larger, and better stocked than most of
the frontier establishments. Reuben Bourne, however, was a neglectful
husbandman; and, while the lands of the other settlers became annually
more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same proportion. The
discouragements to agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation
of Indian war, during which men held the plough in one hand and the
musket in the other, and were fortunate if the products of their
dangerous labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn,
by the savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered condition
of the country; nor can it be denied that his intervals of industrious
attention to his affairs were but scantily rewarded with success. The
irritability by which he had recently become distinguished was another
cause of his declining prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels
in his unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring settlers. The
results of these were innumerable lawsuits; for the people of New