That austerity of manner which was thought to
mark a sense of a fallen and probationary state, was early taught; for,
among a people who deemed all mirth a sinful levity, the practice of
self-command would readily come to be esteemed the basis of virtue. But,
whatever might have been the peculiar merit of Mark Heathcote and his
household in this particular, it was likely to be exceeded by the
exhibition of the same quality in the youth who had so strangely become
their captive.
We have already said, that this child of the woods might have seen some
fifteen years. Though he had shot upwards like a vigorous and thrifty
plant, and with the freedom of a thriving sapling in his native forests,
rearing its branches towards the light, his stature had not yet reached
that of man. In height, form, and attitudes, he was a model of active,
natural, and graceful boyhood. But, while his limbs were so fair in
their proportions, they were scarcely muscular; still, every movement
exhibited a freedom and ease which announced the grace of childhood,
without the smallest evidence of that restraint which creeps into our
air as the factitious feelings of later life begin to assert their
influence.
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