“I did not know,” said Mr. Sutherland, “that the wild denizens of the forest ever ventured so near the settlements.”
“No more they don’t,” replied the host; “only this go, I s’pose, the Injuns have been hunting of ’em and druv ’em close on to the village. We’ll git shut of ’em agin after a bit.”
When breakfast was over, “the Colonel” geared up the carryall to take his young guests across the prairie to Wolf’s Grove. It was a fresh, bright, blithe morning, scarcely seven o’clock, when they set out, and the prairie still glistened with dew. There was no road to Wolf’s Grove; but the driver took a beeline over the level ground, and the wheels of the carryall tracked deep through the sedgy grass and gorgeous wild flowers.
“It looks strange to me,” said Rosalie, “to see these glorious flowers—which, if they were in our eastern gardens, we should cherish with so much care—driven down and crushed by thousands under our wheels.”
“It is but the sign of the fall of the forest before the advancing march of immigration,” observed Mark.
“It reminds me, somehow, of the triumphal entries of the sanguinary old conquerors of ancient times, whose chariot wheels passed ruthlessly over the fallen, the dead, and the dying.”
Mark smiled at her fancy, and the driver took his pipe out of his mouth, and turned and looked at her in perplexity.
“But, Rose, when you look around you at the countless millions of flowers left blooming—nay, I mean to say, when you think of the countless millions of trees left standing—does it not give you an exultant sense of the exhaustless wealth, the boundless resources of our prairies and forests?”
“I know something inspires me with unlimited hope just now. There is, certainly, as far as the comforts and elegances of civilized life are concerned, a look of great privation in the village and among the people we have just left. And yet—and yet—whether it is because the inhabitants are mostly young and full of health and hope, or that the houses are all new, or that the primeval wealth and exuberance of nature is not only undiminished, but almost untouched; whether it is any or all of these causes, I do not know, but certainly to me there is about this country an air of youth, vigor, hope, promise, unlimited, indescribable! I feel its influence, without being able to explain it. It seems to me that here, the age, the weariness, and the sorrow of the old world has been left behind. That this is a breaking out in a new place, or rather that this country and people, and we ourselves, are a new creation, fresh from the hand of God, and with a new promise! Let us be faithful to our part of the covenant. Oh, let us be faithful; let no sin, selfishness, injustice of ours cause us to lose the glorious promise!”
A pressure of the hand, at once approving, kind, and warning, from Mark Sutherland, reminded Rosalie that they were not alone.