“Even so, my child,” said her father. “Those who look around them
now, and see the loads of produce that issue out of every wild path in
these mountains during the season of travelling, will hardly credit
that no more than five years have elapsed since the tenants of these
woods were compelled to eat the scanty fruits of the forest to sustain
life, and, with their unpracticed skill, to hunt the beasts as food
for their starving families.”

“Ay!” cried Richard, who happened to overhear the last of this speech
between the notes of the wood-chopper’s song, which he was endeavoring
to breathe aloud; “that was the starving-time,* Cousin Bess. I grew
as lank as a weasel that fall, and my face was as pale as one of your
fever-and-ague visages. Monsieur Le Quoi, there, fell away like a
pumpkin in drying; nor do I think you have got fairly over it yet,
monsieur. Benjamin, I thought, bore it with a worse grace than any of
the family; for he swore it was harder to endure than a short
allowance in the calm latitudes. Benjamin is a sad fellow to swear if
you starve him ever so little. I had half a mind to quit you then,
‘Duke, and to go into Pennsylvania to fatten; but, damn it, thinks I,
we are sisters’ children, and I will live or die with him, after all.”

* The author has no better apology for interrupting the interest of a
work of fiction by these desultory dialogues than that they have ref-
erence to facts. In reviewing his work, after so many years, he is
compelled to confess it is injured by too many allusions to incidents
that are not at all suited to satisfy the just expectations of the
general reader. One of these events is slightly touched on in the
commencement of this chapter.