, as a necessary prelude to the labours of the day; and the
rude meal being quickly and satisfactorily despatched, and little Peter
receiving his due share, the companions, without further delay, seized
their arms, and recommenced their journey. Crossing the river at the
buffalo-ford above, and exchanging the road to which it led for wilder
and lonelier paths traced by smaller animals, they made their way through
the forest, travelling with considerable speed, which was increased, as
the warmth of exercise gradually restored their native suppleness to the
soldier's limbs.

And now it was, that, as the opening of a glorious dawn, flinging
sunshine and life over the whole wilderness, infused still brighter hopes
into his spirit, he began to divide his thoughts between his kinswoman
and his guide, bestowing more upon the latter than he had previously
found time or inclination to do. His strange appearance, his stranger
character, his sudden metamorphosis from a timid and somewhat
over-conscientious professor of the doctrines of peace and good-will,
into a highly energetic and unremorseful, not to say, valiant man of war,
were all subjects to provoke the soldier's curiosity; which was still
further increased when he pondered over the dismal story Nathan had so
imperfectly told him on the past day. Of those dreadful calamities which,
in Nathan's own language, "had made him what he was," a houseless
wanderer of the wilderness, the Virginian would gladly have known more;
but his first allusion to the subject produced such evident disorder in
Nathan's mind, as if the recollection were too harrowing to be borne,
that the young man immediately repressed his inquiries, and diverted his
guide's thoughts into another channel. His imagination supplied the
imperfect links in the story: he could well believe that the same hands
which had shed the blood of every member of the poor borderer's family,
might have struck the hatchet into the head of the resisting husband and
father; and that the effects of that blow, with the desolation of heart
and fortune which the heavier ones, struck at the same time, had
entailed, might have driven him to the woods, an idle, and perhaps
aimless, wanderer.

How far these causes might have operated in leading Nathan into those
late acts of blood which were at such variance with his faith and
professions, it remained also for Roland to imagine; and, in truth, he
imagined they had operated deeply and far;