The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper Page A

from his agitation to scan the person of his new companion. He now observed that he was a youth of some two or three and twenty years of age and rather above the middle height. Further observation was prevented by the rough overcoat which was belted close to his form by a worsted sash, much like the one worn by the old hunter. The eyes of the Judge, after resting a moment on the figure of the stranger, were raised to a scrutiny of his countenance. There had been a look of care, visible in the features of the youth, when he first entered the sleigh, that had not only attracted the notice of Elizabeth, but which she had been much puzzled to interpret. His anxiety seemed the strongest when he was enjoining his old companion to secrecy; and even when he had decided and was rather passively suffering himself to be conveyed to the village, the expression of his eyes by no means indicated any great degree of self-satisfaction at the step. But the lines of an uncommonly prepossessing countenance were gradually becoming composed; and he now sat silent, and apparently musing. The Judge gazed at him for some time with earnestness, and then smiling, as if at his own forgetfulness, he said:
    â€œI believe, my young friend, that terror has driven you from my recollection; your face is very familiar, and yet for the honor of a score of bucks’ tails in my cap, I could not tell your name.”
    â€œI came into the country but three weeks since,” returned the youth coldly, “and I understand you have been absent twice that time.”
    â€œIt will be five tomorrow. Yet your face is one that I have seen; though it would not be strange, such has been my affright, should I see thee in thy winding sheet walking by my bedside tonight. What sayst thou, Bess? Am I compos mentis or not?—Fit to charge a grand jury or, what is just now of more pressing necessity, able to do the honors of a Christmas Eve in the hall of Templeton?”
    â€œMore able to do either, my dear Father,” said a playful voice from under the ample enclosures of the hood, “than to kill deer with a smoothbore.” A short pause followed, and the same voice, but in a different accent, continued—“We shall have good reasons for our thanksgiving tonight, on more accounts than one.”
    The horses soon reached a point where they seemed to know by instinct that the journey was nearly ended, and bearing on the bits as they tossed their heads, they rapidly drew the sleigh over the level land which lay on the top of the mountain and soon came to the point where the road descended suddenly, but circuitously, into the valley.
    The Judge was roused from his reflections when he saw the four columns of smoke which floated above his own chimneys. As house, village, and valley burst on his sight, he exclaimed cheerfully to his daughter:
    â€œSee, Bess, there is thy resting place for life!—And thine, too, young man, if thou wilt consent to dwell with us.”
    The eyes of his auditors involuntarily met; and if the color that gathered over the face of Elizabeth was contradicted by the cold expression of her eye, the ambiguous smile that again played about the lips of the stranger seemed equally to deny the probability of his consenting to form one of this family group. The scene was one, however, which might easily warm a heart less given to philanthropy than that of Marmaduke Temple.
    The side of the mountain on which our travelers were journeying, though not absolutely perpendicular, was so steep as to render great care necessary in descending the rude and narrow path which, in that early day, wound along the precipices. The Negro reined in his impatient steeds, and time was given Elizabeth to dwell on a scene which was so rapidly altering under the hands of man that it only resembled, in its outlines, the picture she had so often studied with delight in childhood. Immediately beneath them lay a seeming plain, glittering without inequality