onceive suspicion of thee again." These women be notional
things, he murmured to himself.

Spikeman took the hand.

"Now this is like thyself, Philip," he said--"a brave soldier--true as
a Toledo blade--one who loves his friend, and hates his enemy,
although this latter part should not be so. Thou art journeying, I
see, to the knight's place. Mayst thou find in him a patron, but it
will do no harm to say--be on thy guard; one old friend is better than
a dozen new."

He turned away, and the soldier, as he looked after him, said--

"There is truth in thy words, but thou art ignorant that the knight
and I were friends long before I knew thee."

CHAPTER VI.

Nature I court in her sequestered haunts,
By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell,
Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts,
And Health, and Peace, and Contemplation dwell.

SMOLLETT.

So long had the soldier been delayed by his interviews with Prudence
and the Assistant, that it was not until past noon that he reached the
knight's residence. It was a large, irregularly built log-cabin, or
cottage, covered with thatch, resembling somewhat, except in the last
particular, and in being larger, the log-cabins one meets in the new
settlements of the West, with a sort of piazza or porch, which seemed
to have been lately built, running across the front. Such was the rude
exterior; though the interior, as we shall presently see, when we
enter the building, was furnished in a style indicating both wealth
and refinement.

The house stood near the bottom of a hill, upon a piece of cleared
land of perhaps half a dozen acres, upon which not the vestige of a
stump was to be seen. The ground sloped gently away from the building
to the southeast, until it met a small stream, which meandered at the
base of the hill, and running in an easterly direction, was lost to
sight in the forest. In front of the house, at the distance of a rod,
bubbled up a bright spring, which, dashing down the declivity, fell
into the first-mentioned stream. Except this cultivated spot, which
had been an old corn-field of the natives, selected by them for the
fertility of the soil, its advantage of water, and the favorable slope
of the land, which enabled it to engross more than a common share of
the genial heat of the sun, and expedite the maturing of its harvests,
all was one unbroken extent of forest. In the soft autumnal days, when
the maize leaves rustled yell