Notwithstanding the exposure of a border life, she remained
feminine, attractive, and singularly youthful.
The reader will readily imagine the state of mind, with which such a being
watched the distant form of a husband, engaged in a duty like that we have
described. Notwithstanding the influence of long habit, the forest was
rarely approached, after night-fall, by the boldest woodsman, without some
secret consciousness that he encountered a positive danger. It was the
hour when its roaming and hungry tenants were known to be most in motion;
and the rustling of a leaf, or the snapping of a dried twig beneath the
light tread of the smallest animal, was apt to conjure images of the
voracious and fire-eyed panther, or perhaps of a lurking biped, which,
though more artful, was known to be scarcely less savage. It is true, that
hundreds experienced the uneasiness of such sensations, who were never
fated to undergo the realities of the fearful pictures. Still, facts were
not wanting to supply sufficient motive for a grave and reasonable
apprehension.
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