such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice.
The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their
guest held his by instinct.

'The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget
him,' said the landlord, recovering himself. 'He sometimes nods his head
and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and agree together
pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard
by if he should be coming in good earnest.'

Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's
meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself
on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as
freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a
proud, yet gentle spirit--haughty and reserved among the rich and great;
but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like
a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of
the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading
intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they
had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and
chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode.
He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a
solitary path; for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept
himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions.
The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness
of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large,
which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no
stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled
the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple
mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free