to Tennessee."

"Left Carolina for good and all, heh?"

"Yes--perhaps for ever. But we will not talk of it."

"Well, you're in a wild world now, 'squire."

"This is no strange region to me, though I have lost my way in it. I
have passed a season in the county of Gwinnett and the neighborhood,
with my uncle's family, when something younger, and have passed, twice,
journeying between Carolina and Tennessee, at no great distance from
this very spot. But your service to me, and your Carolina birth,
deserves that I should be more free in my disclosures; and to account
for the sullenness of my temper, which you may regard as something
inconsistent with our relationship, let me say, that whatever my
prospects might have been, and whatever my history may be, I am at this
moment altogether indifferent as to the course which I shall pursue. It
matters not very greatly to me whether I take up my abode among the
neighboring Cherokees, or, farther on, along with them, pursue my
fortunes upon the shores of the Red river or the Missouri. I have
become, during the last few days of my life, rather reckless of human
circumstance, and, perhaps, more criminally indifferent to the
necessities of my nature, and my responsibilities to society and myself,
than might well beseem one so youthful, and, as you say, with prospects
like those which you conjecture, and not erroneously, to have been mine.
All I can say is, that, when I lost my way last evening, my first
feeling was one of a melancholy satisfaction; for it seemed to me that
destiny itself had determined to contribute towards my aim and desire,
and to forward me freely in the erratic progress, which, in a gloomy