His property increased in a tenfold ratio, and he was already ranked among the most wealthy and important of his countrymen.
To inherit this wealth he had but one child—the daughter whom we have introduced to the reader, and whom he was now conveying from school to preside over a household that had too long wanted a mistress.
When the district in which his estates lay had become sufficiently populous to be set off as a county, Mr. Temple had, according to the custom of the new settlements, been selected to fill its highest judicial station.
This might make a Templar smile; but in addition to the apology of necessity, there is ever a dignity in talents and experience that is commonly sufficient, in any station, for the protection of its possessor; and Marmaduke, more fortunate in his native clearness of mind than the judge of King Charles, not only decided right, but was generally able to give a very good reason for it.
At all events, such was the universal practice of the country and the times; and Judge Temple, so far from ranking among the lowest of his judicial contemporaries in the courts of the new counties, felt himself, and was unanimously acknowledged to be, among the first.
We shall here close this brief explanation of the history and character of some of our personages leaving them in future to speak and act for themselves.
CHAPTER III
“All that thou see’st is Natures handiwork;
Those rocks that upward throw their mossy brawl
Like castled pinnacles of elder times;
These venerable stems, that slowly rock
Their towering branches in the wintry gale;
That field of frost, which glitters in the sun,
Mocking the whiteness of a marble breast!
Yet man can mar such works with his rude taste,
Like some sad spoiler of a virgin’s fame.” —Duo.
Some little while elapsed ere Marmaduke Temple was sufficiently recovered from his agitation to scan the person of his new companion.
He now observed that he was a youth of some two or three and twenty years of age, and rather above the middle height.
Further observation was prevented by the rough overcoat which was belted close to his form by a worsted sash, much like the one worn by the old hunter.
The eyes of the Judge, after resting a moment on the figure of the stranger, were raised to a scrutiny of his countenance.
There had been a look of care visible in the features of the youth, when he first entered the sleigh, that had not only attracted the notice of Elizabeth, but which she had been much puzzled to interpret.
His anxiety seemed the strongest when he was en joining his old companion to secrecy; and even when he had decided, and was rather passively suffering himself to be conveyed to the village, the expression of his eyes by no means indicated any great degree of self-satisfaction at the step.
But the lines of an uncommonly prepossessing countenance were gradually becoming composed; and he now sat silent, and apparently musing.
The Judge gazed at him for some time with earnestness, and then smiling, as if at his own forgetfulness, he said:
“I believe, my young friend, that terror has driven you from my recollection; your face is very familiar, and yet, for the honor of a score of bucks’ tails in my cap, I could not tell your name.”
“I came into the country but three weeks since,” returned the youth coldly, “and I understand you have been absent twice that time.”
“It will be five to-morrow.
Yet your face is one that I have seen; though it would not be strange, such has been my affright, should I see thee in thy winding-sheet walking by my bedside to-night.
What say’st thou, Bess?
Am I compos mentis or not?
Fit to charge a grand jury, or, what is just now of more pressing necessity, able to do the honors of Christmas eve in the hall of Templeton?”
“More able to do either, my dear father.” said a playful voice from under the ample inclosures of the hood, “than to kill deer with a smooth-bore.”
A short pause followed, and the same voice, but in a different accent, continued.
“We shall have good reasons for our thanksgiving to night, on more accounts than one.”
The horses soon reached a point where they seemed to know by instinct that the journey was nearly ended, and, bearing on the bits as they tossed their heads, they rapidly drew the sleigh over the level land which lay on the top of the mountain, and soon came to the point where the road descended suddenly, but circuitously, into the valley.
The Judge was roused from his reflections, when he saw the four columns of smoke which floated above his own chimneys.
As house, village, and valley burst on his sight, he exclaimed cheerfully to his daughter:
“See, Bess, there is thy resting-place for life!
And thine too, young man, if thou wilt consent to dwell with us.”
The eyes of his auditors involuntarily met; and, if the color that gathered over the face of Elizabeth was contradicted by the cold expression of her eye, the ambiguous smile that again played about the lips of the stranger seemed equally to deny the probability of his consenting to form one of this family group.
The scene was one, however, which might easily warm a heart less given to philanthropy than that of Marmaduke Temple.
The side of the mountain on which our travellers were journeying, though not absolutely perpendicular, was so steep as to render great care necessary in descending the rude and narrow path which, in that early day, wound along the precipices.
The negro reined in his impatient steeds, and time was given Elizabeth to dwell on a scene which was so rapidly altering under the hands of man, that it only resembled in its outlines the picture she had so often studied with delight in childhood.
Immediately beneath them lay a seeming plain, glittering without in equality, and buried in mountains.
The latter were precipitous, especially on the side of the plain, and chiefly in forest.
Here and there the hills fell away in long, low points, and broke the sameness of the outline, or setting to the long and wide field of snow, which, without house, tree, fence, or any other fixture, resembled so much spot less cloud settled to the earth.
A few dark and moving spots were, however, visible on the even surface, which the eye of Elizabeth knew to be so many sleighs going their several ways to or from the village.
On the western border of the plain, the mountains, though equally high, were less precipitous, and as they receded opened into irregular valleys and glens, or were formed into terraces and hollows that admitted of cultivation.
Although the evergreens still held dominion over many of the hills that rose on this side of the valley, yet the undulating outlines of the distant mountains, covered with forests of beech and maple, gave a relief to the eye, and the promise of a kinder soil.
Occasionally spots of white were discoverable amidst the forests of the opposite hills, which announced, by the smoke that curled over the tops of the trees, the habitations of man and the commencement of agriculture.