“Well, ’squire, that’s just what pleases me now.  I like good company, and ’twill be more satisfaction to me, I reckon, than to you.  As for fatigue, that’s out of the question.  Somehow or other, I never feel fatigued when I’ve got somebody to talk to.”

“With such a disposition, I wonder, Forrester, you have not been more intimate with the young lady of the house.  Miss Lucy seems quite an intelligent girl, well-behaved, and virtuous.”

“Why, ’squire, she is all that; but, though modest and not proud, as you may see, yet she’s a little above my mark.  She is book-learned, and I am not; and she paints, and is a musician too and has all the accomplishments.  She was an only child, and her father was quite another sort of person from his brother who now has her in management.”

“She is an orphan, then?”

“Yes, poor girl, and she feels pretty clearly that this isn’t the sort of country in which she has a right to live.  I like her very well, but, as I say, she’s a little above me; and, besides, you must know, ’squire, I’m rather fixed in another quarter.”

They had now reached the chamber of our hero, and the servant having placed the light and retired, the parties took seats, and the conversation recommenced.

“I know not how it is, Forrester,” said the youth, “but there are few men whose looks I so little like, and whom I would more willingly avoid, than that man Rivers.  What he is I know not—­but I suspect him of mischief.  I may be doing wrong to the man, and injustice to his character; but, really, his eye strikes me as singularly malicious, almost murderous; and though not apt to shrink from men at any time, it provoked something of a shudder to-day when it met my own.  He may be, and perhaps you may be able to say, whether he is a worthy person or not; for my part, I should only regard him as one to be watched jealously and carefully avoided.  There is something creepingly malignant in the look which shoots out from his glance, like that of the rattlesnake, when coiled and partially concealed in the brake.  When I looked upon his eye, as it somewhat impertinently singled me out for observation, I almost felt disposed to lift my heel as if the venomous reptile were crawling under it.”

“You are not the only one, ’squire, that’s afraid of Guy Rivers.”

“Afraid of him! you mistake me, Forrester; I fear no man,” replied the youth, somewhat hastily interrupting the woodman.  “I am not apt to fear, and certainly have no such feeling in regard to this person.  I distrust, and would avoid him, merely as one who, while possessing none of the beauty, may yet have many of the propensities and some of the poison of the snake to which I likened him.”