study in “Nature’s good old college,” under whose discipline all those qualities, mental and physical, which the absence of artificial restraint best developes, qualities with which he was from his birth largely gifted, attained their fullest growth. The Indians who occasionally visited the settlement, pleased with his quick perceptions, daring, and fortitude, taught him to find his way through the deepest intricacies of the forest by the sun, the stars, and the water-courses, and to follow the tracks of the deer, the panther, or the wolf, with unerring certainty. His skill in the management of a boat was unequalled on the lakes and in the wildest squalls,—his boat, which he had named the Mother Cary, rode the waves, as joyously as if she were one of the old witch’s chickens, while her young pilot stood fearless and unmoved as if he ruled the storm.
He was an admirable shot, and in all manly exercises and every sort of labour incident to the life of a backwoodsman, he was equally expert. He would hunt the moose through the fallen leaves of autumn or the deep snows of winter, with a fleet and unwearied foot, and never fail to bring him down at last; then he would seek out some hunter’s shanty, or some Indian wigwam, as a resting-place for the night, or, if the weather allowed, make his bed on the spot where his stately prize had fallen. Sometimes he would toil beside the hardy lumbermen for a long March day, his axe flashing as keen and bright, and his blows ringing as quick and true as theirs on the forest giants, against whom they were waging war, till the lofty stems would yield at length, and, one after another, come bowing, tumbling, crashing down on the frozen earth, leaving room for the advent of science and art—Genii more potent than those of the lamp and the ring, and waited on by more powerful and willing slaves; or he would help them to make their raft on the ice-bound river, which, when spring released it from bondage, was to bear them on its flood to the waters of the great lake, sharing their coarse fare and heavy slumbers.
Everything in which difficulty was to be overcome or peril braved, he sought out with the keenest avidity, and in such conflicts his courage and self-reliance were nourished and confirmed. Yet he was not altogether insensible to the charm of softer and gentler scenes. Often in the bush, and odorous refulgence of the summer-noon, he would lie in some shadowy hollow and gaze through the green leaves on the blue sky, from which fell golden showers of sunshine. The butterflies, beautiful as fairy creatures, glanced round him, bright-coloured birds softly fluttered among the boughs; quick-eyed squirrels peeped shyly down, and fragrant odours drawn from flower and tree by the noontide heat, floated round him, with a breath so soft, that he half believed the sweet airs which bore them had come from some diviner world than ours. In those quiet dreamy moments soft, tender fancies, pure and generous aspirations, vaguely felt and dimly understood, came thronging on his mind, faintly stirring the slumbering imagination and latent sensibilities, which far stronger impulses were required to rouse and awaken. At other times, when he was fishing in his skiff near the shore, and all heaven and earth were steeped in the glory of sunset, some brilliant line of light, or crimson shadow, would catch his eye, and he would gaze around him with a sudden recognition of the beauty of the scene. The long arrow-headed point, the crescent-shaped beach of glittering sand, the village lying among rich fields and orchards, the green knolls where many a snug homestead lay, the rocky promontory with its bold bare brow and dark plume of pines, formed at all times a lovely scene, but when painted by a summer evening’s radiant pencil, wore a magic light; the sun dropped behind the woods, leaving on the path he had trodden clouds of beautiful forms and varied hues, when every object on shore caught and reflected the bright tints that filled the heavens, and the calm, lake mirrored each tiny cloudlet and rosy hue till one by one the crimson and orange dyes faded away, and the pale clear amber of the west, paled still more before the grey of the gathering night, scarcely noticed till the peerless moon of America, threw it aside like a veil, and poured her stainless lustre around. Then as Keefe gazed he drank in deep, though scarce conscious draughts of ennobling and refining emotion, which for the time softened and subdued all that was harsh and rude in his spirit. But such pure and gentle feelings were brief with him as yet. The finer elements of his nature had never been cultivated or exercised, and the characters and habits of his associates and his own mode of life were only calculated to stifle and subdue them. He could not escape some contamination from the evil that was constantly before his eyes, but he had been so largely endowed by nature with good qualities, that hardly any unfavourable circumstances could have prevented their growth. His active courageous energies, delighting in labours and difficulties, preserved him from many of those vices in which the idle and listless find their only excitement; his bold undaunted temper saved him from the meanness of lying, and his natural good sense and self-respect taught him to feel so much contempt for the mingled idiotism and brutality which drunkenness produces, that he was never known to be intoxicated. Till he was nearly fourteen he remained ignorant even of reading and writing, his father being much too averse to such mental drudgery to teach him, and the settlement not possessing a schoolmaster; but, at that time, circumstances threw in his way one from whom he learned at least those simple elements of education. This was an Irishman, named O’Brien, who had been driven from his native land by the Rebellion of 1798. Well born, well educated, but restless and unprincipled, this man, after several years of wild adventures in the United States and Canada, came with a party of lumbermen to Long Arrow, and finding a school-house newly built there, and the settlers on the look-out for a schoolmaster, he undertook the office and remained there year after year teaching two or three days in the week, shooting or fishing the rest; and, somehow or other, exercising such an influence over most of the people as allowed him to perform his duties in whatever manner suited him best. But this influence did not extend to Keefe Dillon, who could not bear him. All his knowledge of the world, his skill in the wild sports and pleasures Keefe