“I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford,” replied the Indian.

“And here are five more,” said the girl, “all aiming at the camp-meeting too.  You shall be one of us, for we travel with light hearts; and, as for me, I sing merry songs and tell merry tales and am full of merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so that there is never any sadness among them that keep me company.  But oh, you would find it very dull indeed to go all the way to Stamford alone.”

My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian would prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offered him; on the contrary, the girl’s proposal met with immediate acceptance and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation of enjoyment.

I now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whether it flowed naturally from this combination of events or was drawn forth by a wayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep music.  I saw mankind in this weary old age of the world either enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or, if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night with no hope but to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up life, among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil that had darkened the sunshine of today.  But there were some full of the primeval instinct who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest years by the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits and new associates, and cared little, though their birthplace might have been here in New England, if the grave should close over them in Central Asia.  Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits; unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre, they had come hither from far and near, and last of all appeared the representatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deer during thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the spirit-land.  Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woods had vanished around his path; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his foot of its fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind of their savage virtue and uncultured force, but here, untamable to the routine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road as of old over the forest-leaves,—­here was the Indian still.

“Well,” said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations, “here is an honest company of us—­one, two, three, four, five, six—­all going to the camp-meeting at Stamford.  Now, hoping no offence, I should like to know where this young gentleman may be going?”

I started.  How came I among these wanderers?  The free mind that preferred its own folly to another’s wisdom, the open spirit that found companions everywhere—­above all, the restless impulse that had so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments,—­these were my claims to be of their society.