or other, to come of it. When other people dance and frolic, he
stands apart, with scorn in his face, and his black brows gathering
clouds in such a way, that he would put a stop to all sport if people
were only fools enough to mind him. For my part, I take care to have
just as little to say to him as possible, and he to me, indeed; for he
knows me just as well as I know him: and he knows, too, that if he only
dared to crook his finger, I'm just the man that would mount him on the
spot."

Ralph could not exactly comprehend the force of some of the objections
urged by his companion to the character of Rivers: those, in particular,
which described his aversion to the sports common to the people, only
indicated a severer temper of mind and habit, and, though rather in bad
taste, were certainly not criminal. Still there was enough to confirm
his own hastily-formed suspicions of this person, and to determine him
more fully upon a circumspect habit while in his neighborhood. He saw
that his dislike and doubt were fully partaken of by those who, from
circumstance and not choice, were his associates; and felt
satisfied--though, as we have seen, without the knowledge of any one
particular which might afford a reasonable warranty for his
antipathy--that a feeling so general as Forrester described it could not
be altogether without foundation. He felt assured, by an innate
prediction of his own spirit, unuttered to his companion, that, at some
period, he should find his anticipations of this man's guilt fully
realized; though, at that moment, he did not dream that he himself, in
becoming his victim, should furnish to his own mind an almost
irrefutable argument in support of that incoherent notion of relative
sympathies and antipathies to which he had already, seemingly, given
himself up.

The dialogue, now diverted to other topics, was not much longer
protracted. The hour grew late, and the shutting up of the house, and
the retiring of the family below, warned Forrester of the propriety of
making his own retreat to the little cabin in which he lodged. He shook
Ralph's hand warmly, and, promising to see him at an early hour of the
morning, took his departure. A degree of intimacy, rather inconsistent
with our youth's wonted haughtiness of habit, had sprung up between
himself and the woodman--the result, doubtless, on the part of the
former, of the loneliness and to him novel character of his situation.
He was cheerless and melan