having lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest
and displaying the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived
the solitary life of the woods, it was a strange thing for him to
meet a girl who had been bred in an entirely different way, who
had learned a thousand little reservations and dainty graces, and
whose very breath was coyness and reserve. Their mating was the
mating of the man of the forest with the woman of the sheltered
life.

Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything.
There was a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on
her side, probably thought she had found in him only the brute
which lurks in man. He, on the other, repelled and checked, at
once grasped the belief that his wife cared nothing for him
because she would not meet his ardors with like ardors of her own.
It is the mistake that has been made by thousands of men and women
at the beginning of their married lives--the mistake on one side
of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of too great
warmth of passion.

This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains
many things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a
direct bearing on the history of our country. A proud man, he
could not endure the slights and gossip of his associates. He
resigned the governorship of Tennessee, and left by night, in such
a way as to surround his departure with mystery.

There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when
he was next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had
long before adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and