well. When he came back to an English country, to wharves and stores, to
halls and porches of great houses and parlors of lesser ones, to the
streets and ordinaries of Williamsburgh, he pulled on jack boots, shrugged
himself into a coat with silver buttons, stuck lace of a so-so quality at
neck and wrists, wore a cocked hat and a Blenheim wig, and became a figure
alike grotesque and terrible. Two thirds of the time his business caused
him to be in the forests that were far away; but when he returned to
civilization, to stare it in the face and brag within himself, "I am lot
and part of what I see!" he dwelt at the crossroads ordinary, drank and
gamed with Paris the schoolmaster and Darden the minister, and dreamed (at
times) of Darden's Audrey.

The miles to Williamsburgh were long and sunny, with the dust thick
beneath the feet. Warm and heavy, the scented spring possessed the land.
It was a day for drowsing in the shade: for them who must needs walk in
the sunshine, languor of thought overtook them, and sparsity of speech.
They walked rapidly, step with step, their two lean and sinewy bodies
casting the same length of shadow; but they kept their eyes upon the long
glare of white dust, and told not their dreams. At a point in the road
where the storekeeper saw only confused marks and a powdering of dust
upon the roadside bushes, the half-breed announced that there had been
that morning a scuffle in a gang of negroes; that a small man had been
thrown heavily to the earth, and a large man had made off across a low
ditch into the woods; that the overseer had parted the combatants, and
that some one's back had bled. No sooner was this piece of clairvoyance
aired than he was vexed that he had shown a hall-mark of the savage, and
hastily explained that life in the woods, such as a trader must live,
would teach any man--an Englishman, now, as well as a Frenchman--how to
read what was written on the earth. Farther on, when they came to a
miniature glen between the semblance of two hills, down which, in mockery