rushing down the
steep side of the mountain as with long and rapid strides, and taking
such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite
precipice. The family held their breath, because they knew the sound,
and their guest held his by instinct.

"The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget
him," said the landlord, recovering himself. "He sometimes nods his
head and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and agree
together pretty well, upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of
refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest."

Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's
meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed himself on
a footing of kindness with the whole family; so that they talked as
freely together as if he belonged to their mountain-brood. He was of a
proud yet gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich and
great, but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door and
be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the
household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the
pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth
which they had gathered when they little thought of it from the
mountain-peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic
and dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole life,
indeed, had been a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his
nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have
been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable,
had that consciousness of unity among themselves and separation from
the world at large which in every domestic circle should still keep a
holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic
sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart
before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him
with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not
the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?

The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted
ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to
hope, and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty that,
obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway,
though not, perhaps,