Edith took Otaitsa by the hand, saying--"Come, Blossom: you shall be my companion as before." Walter, retiring the moment after, left Lord H---- and his host to consult together with Mr. Gore.
[CHAPTER IX.]
Were any one inclined to doubt the wonderful harmony which pervades all the works of God, from the very greatest to the very least, he might find a collateral, if not a direct, proof of its existence in the instinctive inclination of the mind of man to discern, in the external world of Nature, figurative resemblances and illustrations of the facts, the events, and the objects of man's moral being and spiritual existence. Not an hour of the day--not a season of the year--not a change in the sky, or on the prospect--not a shade falling over the light, nor a beam penetrating the darkness--but man's imagination seizes upon it to figure some one or other of the moral phenomena of his nature, and at once perceives and proclaims a harmony between material and immaterial things. The earliest flower of the spring (the shade-loving violet) images to the mind of most men a gentle, sweet, retiring spirit. The blushing rose, in its majesty of bloom, displays the pomp and fragrance of mature beauty. The clouds and the storms give us figures for the sorrows, the cares, and the disasters of life; and the spring and the winter, the dawning and the decline of day, shadow forth to our fancy youth and old age; while the rising sun pictures our birth into this life of active exertion, effort, toil, glory, and immortality; and the night, with the new dawn beyond it, the grave, and a life to come.
It was in the old age of the year, then--not the decrepit old age, but the season of vigorous, though declining, maturity; and in the childhood of the day--not the infancy of dawn, where everything is grey and obscure, but the clear, dewy childhood, where all is freshness, and elasticity, and balm--that three travellers took their way onward from the house of Mr. Prevost along a path which led toward the north-east.
Two other persons watched them from the door of the house, and two negro-men and a negro-woman gazed after them from the corner of the building, which joined on to a low fence, encircling the stable and poultry-yard, and running on round the well-cultivated kitchen garden.
The negro-woman shook her head, and looked sorrowful and sighed, but said nothing; the two men talked freely of the imprudence of "master" in suffering his son to go upon such an expedition.
Mr. Prevost and his daughter gazed in silence till the receding figures were hidden by the trees. Then the master of the house led Edith back, saying--
"God will protect him, my child. A parent was not given to crush the energies of youth, but to direct them."
In the meanwhile, Lord H---- and his guide--Captain Brooks, according to his English name, or Woodchuck in the Indian parlance--followed by Walter Prevost, made their way rapidly, though easily, through the wood. The two former were dressed in the somewhat anomalous attire which I have described in first introducing the the worthy captain to the reader; but Walter was in the ordinary costume of the people of the province of that day, except inasmuch as he had his rifle in his hand, and a large leathern wallet slung over his left shoulder; each of his companions, too, had a rifle hung across the back by a broad leathern band; and each was furnished with a hatchet at his girdle, and a long pipe, with a curiously-carved stem, in his hand.
Although they were not pursuing any of the public provincial roads, and they were consequently obliged to walk singly, the one following the other, yet Woodchuck, who led the way, had no difficulty in finding it, or in proceeding rapidly.