e Madame had her company.
Often the good Mr. Mason would come in to us (he cared little for the
parties), and talk to us of our day's doings. Nick had his lessons from
the clergyman in the winter time.

Mr. Mason took occasion once to question me on what I knew. Some of
my answers, in especial those relating to my knowledge of the Bible,
surprised him. Others made him sad.

"David," said he, "you are an earnest lad, with a head to learn, and you
will. When your father comes, I shall talk with him." He paused--"I knew
him," said he, "I knew him ere you were born. A just man, and upright,
but with a great sorrow. We must never be hasty in our judgments. But
you will never be hasty, David," he added, smiling at me. "You are a
good companion for Nicholas."

Nicholas and I slept in the same bedroom, at a corner of the long house,
and far removed from his mother. She would not be disturbed by the
noise he made in the mornings. I remember that he had cut in the solid
shutters of that room, folded into the embrasures, "Nicholas Temple, His
Mark," and a long, flat sword. The first night in that room we slept but
little, near the whole of it being occupied with tales of my adventures
and of my life in the mountains. Over and over again I must tell him of
the "painters" and wildcats, of deer and bear and wolf. Nor was he ever
satisfied. And at length I came to speak of that land where I had often
lived in fancy--the land beyond the mountains of which Daniel Boone had
told. Of its forest and glade, its countless herds of elk and buffalo,
its salt-licks and Indians, until we fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

"I will go there," he cried in the morning, as he hurried into his
clothes; "I will go to that land as sure as my name is Nick Temple. And
you shall go with me, David."

"Perchance I shall go before you," I answered, though I had small hopes
of persuading my father.

He would often make his exit by the window, climbing down into the
garden by the protruding bricks at the corner of the house; or sometimes
go shouting down the long halls and through the gallery to the great
stairway, a smothered oath from behind the closed bedroom doors
proclaiming that he had waked a guest. And many days we spent in the
wood, playing at hunting game--a poor enough amusement for me, and one
that Nick soon tired of. They were thick, wet woods, unlike our woods
of the mountains; and more than once we had excitement enough with the
snakes th