The house was a neat, though a lowly one. It bore traces of newness; for the bark on the trunks which supported the little veranda, had not yet mouldered away. Nevertheless, it was not built by his own hands; for when he came there, he had much to learn in the rougher arts of life. But with a carpenter, from a village some nine miles off, he had aided to raise the building, and directed the construction by his own taste. The result was satisfactory to him; and, what was more in his eyes, was satisfactory to the two whom he loved best--at least, so it seemed; although those who knew them, even not so well as he did, might have doubted, and yet loved them all the better.
There is one sort of hypocrisy, and only one, which is lovable, which is noble, and perhaps they practised it: certainly if they saw a defect in anything that had been done, they would not have admitted it even to their own hearts; for their father had done it: if they ever felt a want, they never confessed it in their inmost thoughts; for their father had provided all that his means allowed.
Love, even earthly love, has a saving grace in it that keeps many a heart from destruction; and if, when a fit of gloom or sadness came upon him, the father felt that it was wrong to repine at anything which Heaven's will inflicted, he felt it the more bitterly wrong when he remembered the blessing which two such children were, even under the most adverse fate. He laid down the pen, then, with a sigh; and, in that sigh, self-reproach had a share, as well as sorrow.
Hardly was the ink dry upon the paper, when the sound of a horse's feet was heard without, beating with a slow and measured pace upon a part of the narrow road where the rock had been uncovered. It was a sound seldom heard in that little, lonely house; and the master thereof hastily put by the book in which he had been writing, and asked himself, "What now?"
[CHAPTER II.]
The door of the house was open, and custom admitted every visitor freely, whatever was his errand. It was a strange state of society, in which men, though taught by daily experience that precaution was necessary, took none. They held themselves occasionally ready to repel open assault, which was rare, and neglected every safeguard against insidious attack, which was much more common. They were frank and free spirits in those olden times; and, though it be now the custom to sneer at the state of society, and the habits both of thought and action, in days long gone, methinks it might have been better, while we polished away the coarseness of our ancestors, and remedied some of the evils of their early state, to have striven hard to retain their higher and finer qualities, their generous confidence, and that expansiveness of heart which the world so seldom sees in an age of mere material conveniences.
The door stood open, and it was the custom of the few who visited that secluded spot, to enter without ceremony, and to search in any or every room in the house for some one of the inhabitants. But, on this occasion, the horse that came up the road stopped at the gate of the little fence, and the traveller, when he reached the door, after dismounting, knocked with his whip before he entered.
The master of the house rose and went to the door. He was somewhat impatient of ceremony in a place where ceremony had long ceased; and his thoughts had not been of a tranquillizing nature; but the aspect and demeanor of his visitor were not of a kind to nourish any angry feeling. The latter was a young and very handsome man, probably not more than thirty years of age, sinewy, and well formed in person, with a noble and commanding countenance, a broad, lofty brow, and a keen, but tranquil eye. His manner was courteous, but grave; and he said, without waiting to have his errand asked--
"I know not, sir, whether I shall intrude upon you too far in asking hospitality for the night; but the sun is going down, and I was told by a lad whom I met in the woods just now, that there is no other house for ten miles farther, and, to say the truth, I am very ignorant of the way."
"Come in," said the master of the cottage; "we never refuse to receive a visiter here; and, indeed, have sometimes to accommodate more than the house will well hold. We are alone, however, now, and you will not have to put up with the inconveniences which our guests are sometimes obliged to encounter. Stay, I will order your horse to be taken care of."