Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/402

364 "As you will naturally infer, the warm friendship between us strengthened as time passed. We were all the world to each other; and yet he never confided to me, or mentioned in any way, in my hearing, any of his secrets; nor did he at any time remove the mask which veiled his identity. In fact he was uncommunicative concerning the past, and all I could feel any certainty about—judging by his carriage, his general deportment, and his methods—was that he had been a soldier and had seen active service in places where only the brave dare venture. More than this, nothing was certain, save that he had been a man of the world; that he had known and associated with men and women of culture, and was impelled in nearly all things by an influence which is born of the church and is nursed by the teachings of a good home.

"All this, however, was only a possible or probable clue to the man and his history. It argued nothing! It was a conclusion based upon premises which I may or may not have been justified in establishing. The motive was still undivineable. Why should a young man of promise renunciate the world and all its attractions for the companionship of beasts and birds, the whispering pines of the mountain, and the murmuring song of the brook? This was the one question, and the more I canvassed it the more perplexed I became, and all I could say was that my strange companion was at least a lover of nature; that he never tired of lonely rambles in the forest or of exploring my rambling course. Neither did he weary of books or art, a good share of his time being spent in reading and sketching.

"In justice to the detail which I am giving I should now say that he was a botanist and taxidermist—whether a professor or amateur I am unqualified to determine—and from time to time preserved some fine specimens of the floral and animal life which surrounded him. This peculiarity—as well as those heretofore mentioned—caused my opinion to fluctuate at times, and led me to suspect that he was a graduate of some college or seminary of learning, and had withdrawn from the world for a time for the purpose of private study and investigation in matters which he purposed to teach or write upon. The theory here advanced seemed the more probable of the many, from the fact that he was greatly interested, at certain seasons of the year, in geology, and made some collections of rock and other substances which he had an idea belonged to the glacial period. It seems to me now, pilgrim traveler, that even you have become interested in this strange man. In fact, I divine that you are a good deal puzzled; that you have no idea who he will prove to be, if, peradventure, it should turn out that I have the sequel.

"Well, to continue, he was not great as a conversationalist. At least this was my estimate of him; but I may have been deceived in this particular, for, as you will note on second thought, he had no neighbors with whom he might converse. He could not talk with the mountains and forests, for they were—like too many men and women—but an echo, nor with me, for, for the most part, I am only a murmurer. But I am wrong when I say he had no neighbors. He had the best—beasts and birds! They are not talkers, but they are very discreet. They are not bores; they ask no impertinent questions, and they tell no secrets. Moreover, they are never concerned in scandal, and they never attack character by innuendo. If by accident or otherwise they overhear the recital of a private history or public wrong the world is none the wiser for it. They make no pretensions or promises; they have no code, moral or otherwise; they are bound by no written or unwritten law; they are obligated to no sacred or secular altar, and yet you may put implicit faith in