He
looked at the spot, as a hound gazes at a master who has been so long
lost as even to deaden his instinct; and at times, as his companions
endeavored to aid his faint images, it would seem as if memory were
likely to triumph, and all those deceptive opinions, which habit and
Indian wiles had drawn over his dull mind, were about to vanish before
the light of reality. But the allurements of a life in which there was so
much of the freedom of nature mingled with the fascinating pleasures of
the chase and of the woods, were not to be dispossessed so readily. When
Faith artfully led him back to those animal enjoyments of which he had
been so fond in boyhood, the fantasy of her brother seemed most to waver;
but whenever it became apparent that the dignity of a warrior, and all
the more recent and far more alluring delights of his later life, were to
be abandoned ere his being could return into its former existence, his
dull faculties obstinately refused to lend themselves to a change that,
in his case, would have been little short of that attributed to the
transmigration of souls.
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