298 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
This was spoken with a sort of petulance, m.ngled with 
solemnity ; and, as if declining further conversation, she urged 
on my horse and strode more rapidly, not forgetting her ten- 
der care of my leg, though she had dropped her head mooiily 
upon her breast. I was compelled into silence, of course, 
but this abrupt sort of manner roused my pride somewhat. 
I recalled the frequency with which she had spoken to me 
asa “boy,” “child,” &c., with some spleen, as I rode on in 
sulky silence, too. Why, I was a young man of twenty-one, 
and thought myself somebody! What was there entitling any- 
body to call me by diminutive names, in the stupid fact of my 
having got lost in a country of which I knew so little? “I 
dislike this sort of patronage, even if she has got some streaks 
of gray‘in her hair; she is not so oldish-looking after all, as 
to entitle her to speak like the mother of Methusaleh, even 
if she did drag me from under my horse when I was uncon- 
scious !’’ so I muttered to myself in a really childish spleen, 
the secret of which was mingled of mortified vanity, and baf- 
fled curiosity. As she remained silent, I was foolish enough to 
give way to this feeling at last. 
“Why do you persist in calling me ‘child,’ ‘boy,’ and the 
like names ?”’ 
“Because you are a child!” and she looked up into my 
face with a quick glance that had an expression of sternness 
in it, above that compressed mouth, that I shall never forget. 
“Mere boy as you are, you think you are a man!—you 
might pass well enough in the tinselled dens and reeking 
sinks of civilization! Perhaps you are a boy-man!” This 
was said with a slight sneer that cut me to the very core. 
“But, remember !—it requires something more than mere 
years—the vital breath of which has been poisoned—to make a 
man out here, in the presence of the ALMIGHTY, worthy to look 
up into his solemn Infinite, where Nature is the only delegated 
Presence! You must have wiser and riper experience, than 
those which caused a brave young man—no doubt !—to start 
