e wept abundantly over the broken ties
by which her simple and affectionate nature had bound itself to
everything, felt that the inhabitants of her inmost heart moved on with
her, and that all else would be supplied wherever she might go. And the
boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and thought of the adventurous
pleasures of the untrodden forest.

Oh, who, in the enthusiasm of a daydream, has not wished that he were a
wanderer in a world of summer wilderness, with one fair and gentle
being hanging lightly on his arm? In youth his free and exulting step
would know no barrier but the rolling ocean or the snow-topped
mountains; calmer manhood would choose a home where Nature had strewn a
double wealth in the vale of some transparent stream; and when hoary
age, after long, long years of that pure life, stole on and found him
there, it would find him the father of a race, the patriarch of a
people, the founder of a mighty nation yet to be. When death, like the
sweet sleep which we welcome after a day of happiness, came over him,
his far descendants would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped by
tradition in mysterious attributes, the men of future generations would
call him godlike; and remote posterity would see him standing, dimly
glorious, far up the valley of a hundred centuries.

The tangled and gloomy forest through which the personages of my tale
were wandering differed widely from the dreamer's land of fantasy; yet
there was something in their way of life that Nature asserted as her
own, and the gnawing cares which went with them from the world were all
that now obstructed their happiness. One stout and shaggy steed, the
bearer of all their wealth, did not shrink from the added weight of
Dorcas; although her hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter
part of each day's journey, by her husband's side. Reuben and his son,
their muskets on their shoulders and their axes slung behind them, kept
an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's eye for the game that
supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and prepared their
meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest brook, which, as they knelt
down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a
maiden at love's first kiss. They slept beneath a hut of branches, and
awoke at peep of light refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas
and the boy went on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at
intervals with an outward gladness;