THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 299 
like a madman across the plains, merely because he considered 
himself lost,—without taking time to cut the throat of the 
deer he had just shot, or to cooly examine his immediate 
neighborhoed,—when, in that event, he might have seen me 
step forth, whose eye had been upon him, and relieve him 
from all trouble. You need to trust Nature more, and through 
her learn to trust yourself! She is full of amenities, and in 
the mild grandeur of her moods is merciful to all but human 
weakness. As she represents all that we know of God’s 
physical to us, we must trust her in such relations as we trust 
him in the spiritual. You are old enough and know enough 
to have found your way back to your friends, if you had 
stopped to think a moment. 
“You did not trust,—and though you might not have fled 
from mortal foe, you did fly from your own imaginations, for 
I was an unseen witness! I saw you scurry off, and before 
I understood the cause, you were beyond the reach of any 
sound I could produce. I laughed, and pitied you,—but 
found you this morning by accident.” 
“You are a strange person! What is the meaning of all 
these things you say to me?” 
“Meaning, boy? That you children of civilization imagine 
yourselves educated when you have talked with books in 
dingy closets, and grown pale in the stagnant air in which 
your morbid dreams are generated, along with dull diseases! 
You have only commenced the true life. Neither the physi- 
cal or spiritual are yet developed in you, although you may 
be what you call learned !” 
“That I disclaim!’ I could not help saying, with false 
and unnecessary modesty. 
“Then, it is nothing to your credit! One kind of learn- 
ing is as necessary as another !” she continued, with no change 
of intonation, but in a severe, rapid manner. 
“You should know books as well as Nature. One is God’s 
Book and the other man’s!” 
