Among the mountains, not far from the line which separates North from South Carolina, but on the side of the former State, stood, at the period of which I write, a house built after a fashion still prevalent in that region, and which is called a "double cabin." Two cabins, built of logs, are erected ten or twelve feet apart, and generally two stories high, and then connected under one roof, forming pleasant rooms, and also a cool passage between the cabins, where the members of the family usually spend their evenings during the summer months. In the house above mentioned lived Amos Kelford, a hardy mountaineer, with a wife and several children, of which Daniel, the hero of my tale, was the eldest.
This Daniel was a strange youth, and, although now only twenty years old, possessed a maturity of mind and a ripeness of intellect rarely to be met with in one of his age. Having been reared among mountains, those master efforts of Nature's handiwork, his ideas, even from childhood, had ever blended with the beautiful and sublime. A glance at his countenance, his broad pale forehead, his large and full blue eyes, and light sandy hair, was sufficient to show to a physiognomist that his intellectual predominated over his physical powers. His form was slight, but perfectly symmetrical, and his features, but for a bold and full developed line here and there, would have been considered feminine.
He had ever been considered an anomaly. From his earliest years, he had loved to sit upon some gray old rock and gaze upon the towering peaks around him, and see their summits glittering in the sun or wrapped in mist that enfolded them like mountain robes. This latter he liked best; for even then, in the sunny days of childhood, at an age when most children care for nothing but romp and play, he leaned to the darker side of Nature, and the blue mist, curling in a thousand fantastic forms, or settling like a pall around the lofty summits of giant peaks, had a charm for him which the sunshine failed to impart. He gazed upon the falling leaves of autumn rather than the bursting buds of spring, upon the gathering shades of night rather than the blushing beams of the morning sun.
As he grew up and learned to read, nothing accorded so well with his disposition as to take a volume and wander off beside some waterfall, or ascend some peak, or, when the sun was hot, to retire into some cave or crouch beneath some overhanging rock, and there read and ponder whole days together. There was a mystery thrown around him, a kind of indifference and a lack of interest in almost everything in which those of his age usually feel interested. His own parents looked upon him and sighed and wondered, but could not fathom the depths of his mind, nor learn the bent of his eccentric genius. He was ever mild, ever ready to render any assistance in his power to those in need, and ever obedient to the commands of his parents and teachers; but he obeyed, as he always acted, with a calm indifference, and without any show of interest. Rarely was he seen to smile; but sometimes, when wrapped in his own reflections and heedless of everything around him, his eyes would kindle, and a placid, but peculiar smile would play about his thin lips, indicating that pleasant thoughts were in his mind; but whether of past scenes or only of future imaginary joys none could tell. And oftentimes this smile would suddenly vanish as you gazed upon him, and a dark cloud would settle over his countenance. His brow would become contracted, his lips compressed, and the expression of his eyes sad and gloomy. Then, as if to seek solace, or a diversion of his thoughts, he would take up a book and wander off into some secluded spot and read and meditate, occasionally noting down with his pencil certain sentences from what he read, or recording certain ideas suggested thereby.
But there was one being on whom Daniel Kelford looked without his usual indifference, and for whom he felt a pure and lasting affection. This was Elinor Manvers, the daughter of one of the wealthier class of farmers, who resided about four miles from Mr. Kelford's. Elinor was sixteen years old, and as beautiful as the hour is that visit the Mussulman's dreams. Her sylph-like form, the classic regularity of her well-defined features, her large and languishing dark eyes, all bespoke a mind deeply imbued with the spirituel; but still she was a true-hearted woman, a sprightly and merry mountain lass. She loved to pour forth her wild gay songs, and hear the echoes of her finely-modulated voice among the tall cliffs of the mountains. Her step was as free and agile as that of the untamed deer; and to all except Daniel Kelford she was a lively companion, and could ring forth her clear laugh with all the free exuberance of feeling to which her nature seemed inclined; but when with him she was conscious of a mysterious and undefined awe settling upon her mind, and depriving her of the power of appearing gay and frolicsome. Her true nature was as yet undeveloped and unknown even to herself, and the influence which Daniel exerted over her, and was destined to exert, was the mould by which her soul was to be formed. There was something repulsive and yet attractive about him, and though she shrank from him, she could not deny to herself that she loved him, and the consciousness of her love was mingled with both pain and pleasure. Her feelings towards him were of two kinds, directly opposite to each other, and yet so mingling together that she could not entertain the one without admitting the other. She shuddered when she reflected upon the depth of her love, and yet she would not have torn it from her heart for worlds; for there was a satisfaction and a sense of bliss always blending, confusedly and unintelligibly, it is true, with the horror that darkened through her soul. In his presence, she felt ill at ease, and yet there was a vacuum created by his absence which nothing but his presence could fill. He had spoken to her of love, of its beauty and holiness, of its depth and power, but no vows had yet been interchanged; and although she would have preferred death to the certainty that he never would declare his love to her, yet she dreaded the declaration, and could not think with calmness on the moment when it was to be made. There was something in the earnest flashing of his eyes when he gazed upon her that startled and almost terrified her; and yet there was a charm in those looks that thrilled her inmost soul with pleasure, and she could have wished he might gaze thus for ever. His words, too, fell with a strange emphasis and a peculiar force upon her ears; but there was a music in them that sank into her heart and awakened a sense of joy that nothing else could stir.
The hand of destiny seemed to be guiding her to some awful fate, of which presentiment made her fully conscious; but the path to which was strewn with so many charms she willingly, ay anxiously, trod it, and would not have turned back if she could.
CHAPTER II.
Daniel Kelford had fitted him up a little study room, in which he spent most of his time. Books were his idols, and he worshiped them with more than a pagan zeal. His table was strewn with antique and curious volumes, many of them abounding in the wild and marvelous, and in these his whole soul seemed absorbed. The love-sick and sentimental had no charm for him; but he sought rather the abstruse and mysterious, bending all his energies to the comprehension of the one and the unraveling of the other. Vague dreams, as it were, flitted through his mind, highly colored by his diseased fancy, and all wearing a supernatural hue. Metaphysics was his darling study. He maintained that, as every particle of matter is dependent on those surrounding it, and as all are bound and held together by attraction, making one whole, and as it is impossible to conceive of one single particle existing independently and unconnected with any other, so every idea is linked with others forming one mind, and a single isolated idea is as impossible as a single and independent particle of matter; and that as various as are the shapes of objects constituted by the combination of particles, so various are the minds formed by the combination of ideas. And as idea linked with idea rose in his mind, he followed on, weaving a chain as incomprehensible to most minds as the inextricable windings of the Cretan labyrinth, until, at length lost in the mazy whirl of his own thoughts, the eye of fancy grew dim and reason tottered on her throne.
Reader, let me conduct you to that little study-room. We will look in at the window near which Daniel sits. It is night, a calm moonlit night of May, and the mingled notes of various night birds and innumerable insects, together with the chastened scenery of the surrounding mountains, as rock, and stream, and cliff, and waterfall appear in the softened beams, are enough to draw the most devoted of ordinary students from their books to contemplate the mighty book of nature, printed in the type of God, its sublime capitals rendering it legible to every observer. But for Daniel Kelford these things now possess no interest. They are unseen and unthought of; for every power of his soul is centered upon the contents of a small roll of manuscript which lies before him. He bends over it, takes up sheet after sheet, his interest increasing as he reads, until he has but one thought, one desire; and that is to understand and to reduce to practice the strange things there taught. Beside him dimly burns his untrimmed lamp, for he does not think to bestow any attention upon it. He has found embodied in words thoughts and ideas that have long floated like shapeless visions through his soul, but which he never could grasp, confine, and reduce to language.
The night wears on; it is late; he has read every page of that strange manuscript; but he reads it again and again, unmindful of the flight of time—a wild light sometimes flashing from his large eyes, and a mysterious expression gathering over his countenance. Were the aged man whose hand penned these words now alive, he could fall at his feet and worship him as a god.