I looked at him with astonishment. The soigne man of fashion I had once known, was enveloped in a kind of hunter's frock, loose and large, and girded to his waist by a belt; his hat was exchanged for a cap of rich otter-skin; his pantaloons spread with a slovenly carelessness over his feet, and altogether there was that in his air which told me at a glance that he had renounced the world. Last had recovered his leanness, and after wagging out his joy, he couched between my feet, and lay looking into my face as if he was brooding over the more idle days in which we had been acquainted.
"And where are you bound?" I asked, having answered the same question for myself.
"Westward with the chiefs!"
"For how long?"
"The remainder of my life."
I could not forbear an exclamation of surprise.
"You would wonder less," said he, with an impatient gesture, "if you knew more of me. And by the way," he added, with a smile, "I think I never told you the first half of the story—my life up to the time I met you."
"It was not for the want of a catechist," I answered, setting myself in an attitude of attention.
"No! and I was often tempted to gratify your curiosity; but from the little intercourse I had with the world I had adopted some precocious principles, and one was, that a man's influence over others was vulgarism, and diminished by a knowledge of his history."
I smiled, and as the boat sped on her way over the calm waters of the Cayuga, St. John went on leisurely with a story which is scarce remarkable enough to merit a repetition. He believed himself the natural son of a western hunter, but only knew that he had passed his early youth on the borders of civilization, between whites and Indians, and that he had been more particularly indebted for protection to the father of Nunu. Mingled ambition and curiosity had led him eastward while still a lad, and a year or two of the most vagabond life in the different cities, had taught him the caution and bitterness for which he was so remarkable. A fortunate experiment in lotteries supplied him with the means of education, and with singular application in a youth of such wandering habits, he had applied himself to study under a private master, fitted himself for the university in half the usual time, and cultivated in addition the literary taste which I have remarked upon.