ale, 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 everythin