I care not for her, I. —Shakespeare.

It is a quarrel most unnatural,
To be revenged on him that loveth thee. —Shakespeare.

The instant Major Gordon was out of sight of Sweetwater, and had plunged into the forest that lay between it and his quarters, he gave vent to the angry emotions that had raged, like a suppressed volcano, in his bosom.

His first ebullition was directed against Aylesford. The insolent tone of the cousin, in recalling, galled him to the quick; and his hand instinctively sought the hilt of his sword, when he remembered that supercilious and confident look. A savage, almost murderous feeling took possession of him. He muttered between his teeth. “If I had him alone, here in the forest, with a clearing of but a dozen yards or so, he should answer for his conduct with his life.”

The angry lover felt that he could not return to the Forks as yet, where prying eyes might read his mortification, so he turned into a cross-road, which led into the heart of the wilderness, and, giving the rein to Selim, galloped till the panting beast was covered once more with foam. In this rapid motion the turbulence of his soul gradually found a partial vent. The first blind impulse of outraged love passed away, and he began to scrutinize the facts with comparative calmness.

He went over, mentally, the whole of the last fortnight. He recalled every word, gesture and look of Kate. Something almost like a groan burst from him, as he admitted to himself, after this review, that she had never given him cause to indulge the wild hopes he had entertained that morning. She had invariably been affable. But a woman in love, he had heard, was shy and timorous. She had boldly controverted his opinions, when they differed from her own. But if she had secretly loved him, she would have implicitly adopted them. Major Gordon reasoned in this way, not from experience, for he had never before been in love, and had enjoyed comparatively little female society, but from what he had read of the passion, in its effect on the sex, in the romances of the day: Clarissa Harlowe, Amelia, Tom Jones, and Sir Charles Grandison. It is no demerit, we hope, even in these days, for an honest man to be practically ignorant about such matters, when there is no way in which he can be informed, except by trifling with the happiness of trusting innocence.

Nor was this all. Kate’s social position, her large fortune, and the hereditary loyalty of her family, now rose before him, the barriers they really were to a union with a rebel officer, who had no income but that derived from his sword. Instead of repeating the charge of coquetry against Kate, he owned to himself that she had been frank throughout; for a new light was thrown upon him, in reference to their conversations respecting rank and descent. She had evidently intended, he saw, to put him upon his guard. “Into what a bit of folly has not my vanity led me,” he cried.

The day was drawing to its close before he returned to the Forks. As he emerged from the denser forest, he discovered that the obscuration in the sky, which he had noticed for some time, and which he had thought was smoke from the conflagration, was in reality a thunder-storm coming up. He quickened his pace at this, and reached his quarters just in time to escape a drenching.

For half the night he walked his chamber, his mood of mind alternating, as that of lovers will under similar circumstances. Now the first angry impulse against Kate would return. Now he would exonerate her from all intentional coquetry. Now he would recall her glance in the forest, when both considered death inevitable, and decide that there was some mystery, which, if understood, would explain satisfactorily her subsequent conduct.

In this mood he retired to bed. The rain still continued. It had been falling in torrents the whole evening, the huge drops rattling on the roof like shot. The water splashed like a small cataract, as it ran off from the eaves. The great buttonwoods about the house creaked in the gale; and the river, which ran close by, surged along with a wild, mournful sound, at times rising to a sullen roar, as if threatening a freshet. Amid such noises our hero fell asleep.

When he woke, the storm had ceased, the sun was shining brightly, and the birds sang as merrily as on a morning in spring. It was Sunday. The usual busy hum of the Forks was hushed, and everything breathed a Sabbath silence, made more eloquent by contrast with the tumult and rage of the preceding night. Not a leaf stirred; a thousand diamonds sparkled in the grass; the air was full of balm; and all was still, save the sound of a hymn that rose from a neighboring cottage, whose family was at morning worship. The sweet influences of the hour, combined with his late sleep, made Major Gordon heartily ashamed of his angry mood of yesterday. “What if Mr. Aylesford is preferred to me,” he said. “Is that a reason why I should seek his blood? It is nobler to forgive than to resent.”

In this mood he prepared to attend church. It was the first Sunday that services had been held since his arrival at the Forks; for, at that time, Sweetwater had no regular minister, but was compelled to rely on chance itinerants. The Methodist connexion, always a missionary church, but never more so than at that period, was then just beginning the great work, which has made it since such a bulwark of morality and religion in this republic. A new preacher, who had never visited the district, was to conduct the services.

The Major reached the edifice early. But the excitement of a strange minister and of the conflagration of yesterday had already collected an unusual crowd, at least for the period; for half the male population was absent in consequence of the war. Having tied his horse, as the rest had done, to the bough of a tree, our hero joined the principal group. He heard, as he had expected, that the storm had extinguished the fire, which otherwise, it was declared, might have swept the whole region, “down to Waldo itself,” as one of the men said.

While they were talking, Uncle Lawrence came up. It gratified Major Gordon to see the respect, almost reverence, in which the veteran was held. The conversation still continued to turn on the fire.

“I’ve often wondered,” said Uncle Lawrence, with quick sagacity, divining a scientific truth which has since been demonstrated, “if there wasn’t a connection between these great fires and the rains which nigh a’most always follow ‘em. I’ve observed, neighbors, nine times out of ten, that a fire in the woods brought a deluge of rain close on its heels.”

“That’s a fact, anyhow,” said one of his hearers, with a puzzled look, “though I never thought of it afore.”

“The Lord is always merciful,” continued Uncle Lawrence. “If he didn’t send these rains, I don’t know what would become of us, for mortal man couldn’t put out such a fire. It’s skeered the deer clear off their old haunts, for I met one at the crossing of the branch in the main road, as I came to meetin’.”

After awhile, Major Gordon left the group conversing and turned aside into the grave-yard, on the right of the church. It was a spot that might have been selected for an elegy as fittingly as that of Stoke-Pogis. There were few headstones in that humble cemetery; no pompous heraldic emblems; nothing of the usual vanities of life, that seem, in similar places, such a mockery of death. Good and true men, who, in their lowly walk, had lived more nobly than Pharaohs who now slumber beneath pyramids, or conquerors who repose under marble mausoleums, slept there unheralded, and forgotten by all, except by the descendants who still reverenced their virtues, and by that Omniscience in whose eyes the sainted poor are “beyond all price.” As the Major stood, thoughtfully regarding the graves, he heard a step behind him, and turning was accosted by Uncle Lawrence.

“A sweet, quiet spot, sir,” said the old man. “Just such a place as seems fit to lay this mortal body in, to await the resurrection. Some day, I shall sleep here myself. Yonder,” he continued, pointing to the right hand, close to the fence, and about half way down the little cemetery, “is the corner I should choose of all others. I have thought of it so often that I have got a sort of home feeling for the spot. I never could understand,” he added, “how folks can have grave-yards in cities; it seems kind of natural like, however, to be buried where the birds can sing, and the grass grows above you.”

“You view the grave with no horror, I see,” said his companion. “It is a noble state of feeling, and eminently Christian, for the old Pagans had nothing like it.”

“I bless God,” said the patriarch, “that I have no fear of death. It is but casting off this old garment of the flesh, and, when a little while has past, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, I shall be raised again.” And, leaning on his staff, he looked above, reminding his hearer, for the moment, of Elijah, when the prophet saw the chariot of fire.

If Major Gordon had retained any of his yesterday’s anger, its last traces vanished now. His mind was attuned by the calm yet elevated conversation of his companion to the services of the day, and the solemn thoughts they merited. In this mood he followed the veteran into the church.