"Perhaps you may meet again by accident," suggested the other, "and then be careful. But now, to more serious things. Perchance your father may have to send you to Albany--perchance, to my castle. You can find your way speedily to either. Is it not so?"
"Farther than either," replied the lad, gaily.
"But you may have a heavy burden to carry," rejoined Sir William; "do you think you can bear it?--I mean the burden of a secret."
"I will not drop it by the way," returned Walter, gravely.
"Not if the Sachem's daughter offers to divide the load?" asked his companion.
"Doubt me not," replied Walter.
"I do not doubt you," said Sir William, "I do not. But I would have you warned. And now farewell. You are very young to meet maidens in the wood. Be careful. Farewell."
He rode on, and the boy tarried by the wayside, and meditated. His were very strange thoughts, and stranger feelings. They were the feelings that only come to any person once in a lifetime--earlier with some, later with others--the ecstatic thrill, the joyous emotion, the dancing of the young bright waters of early life, in the pure morning sunshine of first love--the dream--the vision--the trance of indefinite joy--the never-to-be-forgotten, the never-to-be-renewed, first glance at the world of passion that is within us. Till that moment, he had been as one climbing a mountain with thick boughs shading from his eyes the things before him; but his friend's words had been a hand drawing back the branches on the summit, and showing him a wondrous and lovely sight beyond.
Was he not very young to learn such things? O yes, he was very, very young; but it was natural that in that land he should learn them young. All was young there: all is young: everything is rapid and precocious; the boy has the feelings of the young man; the young man the thoughts of maturity. The air, the climate, the atmosphere of the land and the people, all have their influence. The shrubs grow up in an hour: the flowers succeed each other with hasty profusion, and even the alien and the stranger-born feel the infection, and join unresistingly in the rapid race. Well did the dreamers of the Middle Ages place the fountain of youth on the shores of the new world.
The boy, who stood there meditating, had lived half a lifetime in the few short years he had spent upon that soil; and now, at Sir William's words, as with him of old, the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw into his own heart.