University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

The morning of the next day, serene and beautiful as a
bride decked in her fresh robes and redolent in her forest perfumery,
came smiling over the wilderness hills of the east, to
greet our little pioneer family on their deliverance from the
perils of yesterday. The war of the elements, that had raged
so fearfully round their seemingly devoted domicile, had all
passed away; and, after sleeping off the fatigue and excitement
of the previous day, they rose to look around them, to
find themselves safe, and call themselves satisfied. Their buildings
had been, after all, but very slightly injured, and their
green crops but little damaged; their fences, indeed, were
mostly consumed; but these could be replaced from the timber
of the burnt slash, with little more labor than would be required
to pile up and burn that timber where it lay. But, whatever
such additional labor might be, it was more than compensated
by the very intensity of the fire which caused it, and which, at
the same time, had so utterly consumed all the underbrush,
limbs of the trees, and even the smaller trees themselves, that
weeks less than with ordinary burns would be required in the
clearing. Elwood, therefore, came in from his morning survey
happily disappointed in the supposed extent of his losses; and,
joining his wife and son in the house, whom he found busily
engaged in cutting up, mealing, and placing in the hissing pan
over the fire the broad, red, and rich-looking pieces of trout,
the fruit of yesterday's excursion on the lake, he told them,
with a gratified air, the result of his observation, which, on a

merchant-like calculation of loss and gain from the conflagration,
he made out to show even a balance in his favor. Mrs.
Elwood rejoiced with her husband on the happy turn of affairs,
and wondered why her son did not manifest the same flow of
spirits. But the latter, for some reason or other, appeared unusually
abstracted during the whole morning; and, when asked
to relate the particulars of his perilous adventure with the
moose, which he had the evening before but briefly mentioned,
he exhibited a hesitation, and a sort of shying of the question,
in that part of the adventure relating to the rescued girl,
which did not escape the quick eye of the mother. It was evident
to her that something was kept back. But what that
something was she was wholly unable to conjecture. It was so
unusual for her son to show any lack of frankness that the
circumstance disturbed her, and, though she knew not exactly
why, sent a boding chill over her heart, which caused her also
to become thoughtful and silent. And Mr. Elwood, who possessed
none of those mental sympathies which, in some, will
often be found unconsciously mingling with the thoughts of
others, so far, at least, as to apprise them of the general character
and drift of those thoughts, now, in his turn, wondered
why his wife, as well as son, should all at once become so unsocial
and taciturn.

It will doubtless be generally said that this mental sympathy,
or the intuitive perception of the main drift of what is passing
in the minds of others, has an existence only in the fancy of
fictionists. We, however, after years of close observation, have
wholly ceased to doubt its reality. Scores of times have we
been affected by thoughts and intentions which we knew must
have a source other than in our own mind. Scores of times
have we, in this manner, been put on our guard against the
selfish designs which others were harboring to our disadvantage,
of which no tongue had informed us, and of which, afterwards,
we had tangible proof. And, on careful inquiry among persons
of thought and sensibility, we have become convinced that

the principle holds good to a very considerable extent among
others; and that attention to the subject is only wanting to
make it a generally received opinion. It was this principle
that now affected Mrs. Elwood: not that she had the most distant
idea that her son harbored aught of wrong intention toward
any of his family, but she felt that his mind was somehow
becoming subservient to schemes which existed somewhere in
the minds of others, which concerned her or her family. But
she felt rather than thought this; and, knowing she could give
no reason for her singular impression, prudently kept it to herself.

“Good-morning, good-morning, gentlefolks,” rang out the
cheery voice of the hunter, who now looked in at the door as
the Elwoods were rising from their breakfast. “Things look
a little altered round here, this morning. I should hardly have
known the place without the king pine, which, in its prime, was
a tree of a thousand.”

“That tree was an old acquaintance of yours, I suppose,”
remarked Elwood.

“Yes, of twenty years' standing; and I shall miss and mourn
it as an old friend. But it died like a monarch, yielding only
under the direct blow of the Almighty.”

“Then you consider the lightning more especially the instrument
of Heaven than the wind, fire, and other elements, do
you?”

“To be sure I do. Wind, we know what it is; fire we know;
water we also know; because we can see them, touch them,
measure them. But who can see a piece of lightning when not
in motion? who can find the least fragment of it after it has
struck? It rends a tree, makes a smooth hole through a
board, and ploughs up the ground. But go to the tree, and
there is nothing there; look under the board, it is the same;
and dig along the furrow it has ploughed to where it stopped,
and it is not there, as it would be if it was any material thing,
like a bullet, an axe, knife, or other instrument that produces

such effects, in all other instances. No, 'tis not matter; it is
the power of God; and your philosophers, who pretend to
explain it, don't know what they are talking about. But enough
of that. I came here to rally you out to go up the river with
the rest of us, for the moose. You will both go, won't you?”

“Claud will, doubtless,” replied Mr. Elwood. “Indeed, I
have half a mind to go myself.”

“Perhaps Claud, having had a fatiguing excursion yesterday,
will stay at home, and let his father go, to-day,” suggested
Mrs. Elwood.

“It was not at all fatiguing, mother,” responded Claud.

“The wind blows up the river to-day, ma'am,” said the hunter,
with a knowing look.

Little more was said; but the result was that Claud and the
hunter now soon went off together on the proposed excursion.
On reaching the mouth of the Magalloway, they found four
others waiting for them, with their canoes, when the whole
party commenced their little voyage up the river. After leisurely
rowing against the here slow and gentle current of the
stream for an hour or two, they reached their destination, and
hauled up at a point most convenient for gaining the spot where
the slaughtered moose had been left the evening before. Led
on by the hunter, all now started for the place just named,
except Claud, who, under pretence of taking a short gunning
bout in the woods, and of soon coming round to join his companions,
proceeded, as soon as the latter were out of sight, with
slow and hesitating steps, up the river, for the opening and
supposed residence of the fair unknown who had so long been
the object of his wondering fancies, and who had, notwithstanding
the exciting scenes he had witnessed at home, been the
especial subject of his dreams after he retired to rest the night
before. But what a strange, wayward, timid, doubting, and
inconsistent thing is the tender passion in its incipient stages,
especially when that passion has principally been wrought up
by the imagination! He soon came to the clearing of which

he was in quest, and obtained a clear view of the, to him, charmed
cottage. But, instead of entering the opening directly, he went
nearly round it, frequently pausing and advancing nearly to
the edge of the woods; but as often retreating, being unable
quite to make up his mind to show himself at all to the inmates
of the cottage. Once he gave it up entirely, and started off
for his companions. But, after he had proceeded a dozen rods,
he came again to a stand, hesitated a while, and, as if ashamed
of his irresolution, wheeled rapidly about, proceeded, with a
quick, firm step, to the border of the woods, struck directly for
the house, and, with assumed unconcern, marched up to the
door, — where he was met, not by the young lady he expected
first to see, but by her father. But who was that father? To
his utter surprise, it was his father's old tempter and ruiner,
the dark and inscrutable Gaut Gurley!

With a manner, for him, unusually gracious, Gurley extended
his hand to Claud; ushered him into the house; formally introduced
him to his wife, an ordinary, abject-looking woman; and
then to his daughter, the fair, dark-eyed, tall, shapely, and
every way magnificent Avis Gurley, the girl who had so long,
but unwittingly, been the object of the young man's dreamy
fancies.

“I have but very lately discovered,” remarked Gurley, who
seemed to feel himself called on to lead off in the conversation,
after the usual commonplace remarks had been exchanged,
“I have but lately discovered that I had, by a singular coincidence,
again cast my lot in the same settlement with your
family. Having made up my mind, a few months ago, to try
a new country, and coming across the owner of this place, who
was on a journey in New Hampshire, and who offered to sell
and move off at once, I came on with him, struck a bargain,
returned for my family, and brought them here about a fortnight
ago. But, having been absent most of the time since, I didn't
mistrust who my neighbors were.”

“And you probably perceived, sir,” said Avis, turning to

Claud, with a smile, “you probably perceived, in your yesterday's
adventure up here in the woods, that I have been in as
bad a predicament as my father.”

“How is that, Avis?” asked Gurley.

“Why, father,” responded the other, “Mr. Elwood will
readily suppose that I should not have been straying into the
wood for flowers and berries, had I known we had any such
neighbors as the one from whose pursuit he so kindly rescued
me last evening.”

“I was as much surprised at the ferocity of the animal as you
were, I presume,” said Claud, in reply. “And I was far more
indebted to the hunter, Phillips, for my own rescue, than you
were to me for yours. I merely turned the furious brute aside.
It was he who, coming up in the nick of time, brought him
dead to the earth.”

“I supposed there were two of you,” remarked Gurley. “I
was half a mile up the river, yet I heard the firing plain enough;
and, returning soon after, and hearing my daughter's story, I
went to the place; but, by that time, you had dressed the animal
and were gone. By the voices I heard in the woods, a
short time ago, I concluded you came up, with others, for the
beef.”

“We did. You here should certainly be entitled to a liberal
share. Will you not go up there?”

“Yes; I was thinking about it before you came in. I will
go; but, as I wish to go a short distance into the woods, partly in
another direction, I will now walk on and come round to the
spot; and, if I don't meet you there, you may just tell your
father how surprised I have been to find myself again in the
same neighborhood with himself.”

“Umph!” half audibly exclaimed the hitherto mute wife,
with a look that seemed to say, “What a bouncer he is telling
now!” and she was evidently about to say something, comporting
with the significant exclamation, but a glance from her husband,
as he passed out of the door, quelled her into silence.

On the departure of Gurley, his wife rose and left the room;
when Claud, unexpectedly finding himself alone with his fair
companion, instead of entering into the easy conversation with
her which the dictates of common gallantry would seem to require,
soon began to manifest signs of constraint and embarrassment,
which did not escape the eye of the young lady, and
which caused her no little surprise and perplexity. She knew
nothing of what had been passing in his mind, nor once dreamed
of the circumstance which had first impressed her image there.
She had, indeed, known nothing of the Elwoods, except what
she had heard her father say of them as a family, with whose
head he had in some way been formerly connected in business.
Had she been asked, she would doubtless have recalled the
fact that her father had, the year before, employed an artist to
paint a miniature likeness of her, which he subsequently pretended
to have sent to a relative of his residing in Quebec, and
she never entertained the least suspicion that it was not thus
properly disposed of. She had never seen Claud till yesterday,
when he so opportunely appeared for her rescue; and, even
then, she had no idea who it was to whom she had thus become
indebted. She, however, had been much prepossessed with
his appearance and manly bearing, and felt a lively sense of
gratitude for the voluntary service; and when, by the introduction
of her father, she became apprised of the character of her
deliverer, she felt doubly gratified that he had turned out to be
one who, she believed, would not take any mean advantage of
the obligation. For these reasons, she could not understand
why he should appear so reserved, unless it was that she had
failed to interest him; and, finally concluding that this must be
the case, she did that which, with her maidenly pride and high
spirit, she would otherwise have scorned to do, she exerted herself
to the utmost to interest and please him; and, when he rose
to return to his companions, she followed him into the yard,
and smilingly said:

“You are fond of gunning excursions, are you not, Mr.
Elwood?”

“Yes, O yes, quite so,” replied Claud, with awkward hesitation.

“And would not an occasional excursion in this direction be
as pleasant as any other?” she asked, with playful significance.

But, instead of replying in the same spirit, the bewildered
young man turned, and sent a gaze into the depths of her lustrous
dark eyes, so serious and intense that it brought a blush
to her cheek; when, stammering out his intention of often taking
her house in his way in future, he hurriedly bade her good-by,
and departed, leaving her more perplexed than ever.

As for Claud, it would be difficult to describe his sensations
on leaving the house, or make any thing definite out of the
operations of his mind. Both heart and brain were working
tumultuously, but not in unison. The train which his imagination
had been laying was on the point of being kindled into a
blaze by the reality. He knew it; he felt it; but he knew
also that it was the part of wisdom to smother the flame while
it yet might be controlled. The unexpected and startling discovery
which he had just made, that the girl who had so
wrought upon his fancy, both when seen in the picture and met
in the original, was the daughter of Gaut Gurley, raised difficulties
and dangers in the path he found himself entering, which
his judgment told him could only be avoided by his immediate
desistance. For he was well aware how deeply rooted
was his mother's aversion to this man, and how fatal had
been his influence over his father, who had but a few months
before escaped from his toils, and then only, perhaps, because
there was no more to be gained by keeping him in them any
longer. A connection with the daughter, therefore, however opposite
in character from her father, would not only greatly mar
his mother's happiness, but in all probability lead to a renewal of
the intimacy between his father and Gurley; an event which he
himself felt was to be deprecated. But the Demon of Sophistry,

who first taught self-deceiving man how to make “the wish
father to the thought,” here interposing, whispered to the incipient
lover that his father had reformed, and why not then
Gaut Gurley? This reasoning, however, could not be made to
satisfy his judgment; and again commenced the struggle between
head and heart, one pulling one way and the other in
another way, — too often an unequal struggle, too often like one
of those contests between man and wife, where reason succumbs
and will comes off triumphant.

Such were the fluctuating thoughts and purposes which
occupied the agitated bosom of Claud Elwood, in his solitary
walk to the place where the boats had been left, and where the
subject was now driven from his mind, for a while, by the appearance
of his companions and the merry jokes of the hunter
They had cut up the moose meat, which they had found in
good condition, and brought all they deemed worth saving down
to the landing. And, being now ready to embark, they apportioned
the meat among the different canoes, and rowed with the
now favoring current rapidly down the river together till they
reached its mouth, when they separated, and bore their allotted
portions of the moose to their respective homes.

For the two succeeding days and nights the hapless Claud
was the prey of conflicting emotions, — the more oppressive
because he carefully kept them pent up in his own bosom. He
dared not make the least allusion before his parents to the lady
whom they knew he had rescued, or his visit to her home, for
he could not do so without revealing the fact that the dreaded
Gaut Gurley, with his family, had found his way into the
vicinity; while, if he did disclose this fact, he felt that he could
not hold up his head before them till he had conquered his
feelings towards the daughter. And sometimes he thought he
had conquered them, and resolved that he would never see her
again. But, brooding over his feelings in the solitudes of the
woods, he only cherished and fanned the flame he was thinking
to extinguish; and he again relapsed, — again paused, — again

“resolved, re-resolved, and did the same;” for, on the third
day, under the excuse of taking another excursion on the lake,
he was drawn, as surely as the vibrating needle to the pole, to
the beautiful load-star of the Magalloway.

Suspecting the state of young Elwood's feelings towards her,
and fearing that she might have been too forward in her advances
at their last interview, Avis Gurley, this time, received
him with a dignity and maidenly reserve, which, when contrasted
with her former sociability and cordiality of manner,
seemed to him like studied coolness. This soon led him, in
turn, to sue for favor. And so earnestly did he pursue his
object, that, before he was aware of what he was saying, he had
revealed the secret of his heart. She received his remarks in
respectful silence, but gave no indication by which he could
judge whether the inadvertent disclosure was pleasing or otherwise,
except what might be gathered from her increased cordiality
on other subjects, to which she now adroitly turned the
conversation. This was just enough to encourage him, and at
the same time leave him in that degree of doubt and suspense
which generally operate as the greatest incentive to persevere
in the pursuit of an object. It proved so in his case; and, to
this natural incentive to persevere, was now added another,
that of respect for her character, — a respect which every
hour's conversation with her enhanced, and which he might
accord to her with entire justice. Gaut Gurley, like many
other bad men, was proud of having a good daughter. He
early perceived that she inherited all that was comely and good
in him, physically and morally, without any of his defects or
faults of character. And, desirous so to rear her as to make
the most of her natural endowments, and so, at the same time,
that her character should not be marred by his example, he had
been at considerable expense with her education, and had even
deported himself with much circumspection in her presence.
This, as will be readily inferred of one of his designing character,
he did from a mixed motive: partly from parental pride

and affection, and partly to make her, through some advantageous
marriage, subservient to his own personal interests.

In this state of affairs between Claud and Avis, closed this,
their second interview. Another, and another, and yet another,
succeeded at brief intervals. And so rapid is the course of
love, when springing up in solitudes like these, where nothing
occurs to divert the gathering current, but every thing conspires
to increase it, — where to our young devotees all around them
seemed to reflect their own feelings, — where the æolian music
of the whispering pines that embowered their solitary walks
seemed but to give voice to the melody that filled their own
hearts, — where to them the birds all sang of love, — where
love smiled upon them in the pensive beams of the moon,
glistened in the stars, and was stamped on all the expanse of
blue sky above, and on all the forms of beauty on the green
earth beneath, — so rapid, we repeat, is the course of love, thus
born and thus fostered, that a fortnight had scarcely elapsed
before they had both yielded up heart and soul to the dominion
of the well-named blind god, and uttered their mutual vows of
love and constancy.

This was the sunshine of their love; but the storms were
already gathering in the distance.