36 THE SMUGGLED. 



would have you fancy him a soft good man, while there is no 

 act of malevolence and iniquity that he does not practise. 

 The savage is true, at all events. The man who fractured 

 my skull with a blow of his tomahawk, made no pretence of 

 friendship or of right. He did it boldly, as an act customary 

 with his people, and would have led me to the stake and 

 danced with joy to see me suffering, had I not been rescued. 

 He was sincere at least: but how would the Englishman have 

 served me? He would have wrung my heart with pangs 

 insupportable, and all the time have talked of his great grief 

 to afflict me, of the necessity of the case, of justice being on 

 his side, and of a thousand other vain and idle pretexts, but 

 aggravating the act by mocking me with a show of generosity." 



" I fear my excellent friend that you have at some time 

 suffered sadly from man's baseness," said Osborn; "but yet 

 I think you are wrong to let the memory thereof affect you 

 thus. I, too, have suffered, and perhaps shall have to suffer 

 more ; but yet I would not part with the best blessings God 

 has given to man, as you have done, for any other good." 



"What have I parted with that I could keep?" asked the 

 other, sharply: " what blessings ? I know of none?" 



" Trust confidence," replied his young companion. " I 

 know you will say that they have been taken from you; that 

 you have not thrown them away, that you have been robbed 

 of them. But have you not parted with them too easily? 

 Have you not yielded at once, without a struggle to retain 

 what I still call the best blessings of God? There are many 

 villains in the world ; I know it but too well ; there are many 

 knaves. There are still more cold and selfish egotists, who, 

 without committing actual crimes or injuring others, do good 

 to none; but there are also many true and upright hearts, 

 many just, noble, and generous men; and were it a delusion 

 to think so, I would try to retain it still." 



" And suffer for it in the hour of need, in the moment of 

 the deepest confidence," answered Warde. " If you must 

 have confidence, place it in the humble and the low, in the 

 rudest and least civilized; ay, in the very outcasts of society; 

 rather than in the polished and the courtly, the great and 

 high. I would rather trust my life, or my purse, to the 

 honour of the common robber, and to his generosity, than to 

 the very gentlemanly man of fashion and high station. Now, 



