Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/72

 thicket. A bed of skins afforded him a place of repose, and the severity of his life distressed even the natives, who were accustomed to despise hardships and privation, Maurice was tall, and emaciated, clad in a rough mantle of skins, fastened round his loins with a strip of bark. At a distance he might be taken for a miserable Franciscan, and as he approached, the crucifix always borne around his neck, revealed the religion which he professed. It was the general opinion that the terrible penances which he endured, had been enjoined as an expiation for some unknown crime. It was remembered by the oldest inhabitants that he had been a warrior, and a hunter of athletic frame, and keen eye. Now, when a partridge rested near him, or a squirrel sprang from the branch where he stood, he had been observed to raise his arm involuntarily, as if to bend his bow, then dropping it suddenly to exclaim, "No! No! there is blood enough already." His feet were bare, and often wounded by thorns, and his white beard which he suffered not to be cut, rested upon his breast. Every autumn he disappeared, and was no more seen, until the opening spring permitted him to inhabit his cave, and resume his usual regimen. It was at length understood, that in his intervals of absence, he travelled to Canada, to visit the Jesuit who converted him, and to become confirmed in the faith which he had embraced. But the present winter he had omitted this stated journey. Some fancied that his be loved instructed was dead, but the majority concluded