108 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



pervading in the early spring, and which affects the 

 nerves after a severe illness with so acute a pain. The 

 buds seemed expanding with an inherent instinct, the 

 birds seemed arranging their social affairs with a high 

 intelligence, which had never struck her before. There 

 was a relation of one to another, a connection to herself, 

 and an apparentness of creation by that Higher Relative, 

 that had just raised her from her feeble bed, that seemed 

 never so plain or so beautiful as now. The more she 

 pondered and .examined, the greater seemed the field of 

 thought. She was not idle now. Body and mind grew 

 strong together. No one slighted her homely face in 

 the fields, and Avith what aid from books that could be 

 had, she wandered forth a thinking, happy, laboring, 

 achieving, student. At last a field was before her ; how 

 strange, it had been under her eyes from childhood ! 



The fire was kindled in the planter's house, for it was 

 a chilly night ; the rain commenced to fall immediately 

 after our return from the hunt, and from the pitch-pine 

 branches " the light fell off in hoary flakes," painting 

 bright the heavy furniture of the room, and belching 

 from the chimney above the house, as from a smelting 

 furnace. The room was adorned with implements of the 

 chase, antlers, and rude stores of goods, and yet there 

 were marks- of a gentler taste in the engraving primi- 

 tively framed, stuffed birds, and gracefully-disposed 

 Indian weapons, decorated the walls. The interior of the 

 mansion was more comfortable than its rough and dis- 

 mantled exterior promised ; and from its lonely situation, 



