Ralph could not exactly comprehend the force of some of the objections urged by his companion to the character of Rivers:  those, in particular, which described his aversion to the sports common to the people, only indicated a severer temper of mind and habit, and, though rather in bad taste, were certainly not criminal.  Still there was enough to confirm his own hastily-formed suspicions of this person, and to determine him more fully upon a circumspect habit while in his neighborhood.  He saw that his dislike and doubt were fully partaken of by those who, from circumstance and not choice, were his associates; and felt satisfied—­though, as we have seen, without the knowledge of any one particular which might afford a reasonable warranty for his antipathy—­that a feeling so general as Forrester described it could not be altogether without foundation.  He felt assured, by an innate prediction of his own spirit, unuttered to his companion, that, at some period, he should find his anticipations of this man’s guilt fully realized; though, at that moment, he did not dream that he himself, in becoming his victim, should furnish to his own mind an almost irrefutable argument in support of that incoherent notion of relative sympathies and antipathies to which he had already, seemingly, given himself up.

The dialogue, now diverted to other topics, was not much longer protracted.  The hour grew late, and the shutting up of the house, and the retiring of the family below, warned Forrester of the propriety of making his own retreat to the little cabin in which he lodged.  He shook Ralph’s hand warmly, and, promising to see him at an early hour of the morning, took his departure.  A degree of intimacy, rather inconsistent with our youth’s wonted haughtiness of habit, had sprung up between himself and the woodman—­the result, doubtless, on the part of the former, of the loneliness and to him novel character of his situation.  He was cheerless and melancholy, and the association of a warm, well-meaning spirit had something consolatory in it.  He thought too, and correctly, that, in the mind and character of Forrester, he discovered a large degree of sturdy, manly simplicity, and a genuine honesty—­colored deeply with prejudices and without much polish, it is true, but highly susceptible of improvement, and by no means stubborn or unreasonable in their retention.  He could not but esteem the possessor of such characteristics, particularly when shown in such broad contrast with those of his associates; and, without any other assurance of their possession by Forrester than the sympathies already referred to, he was not unwilling to recognise their existence in his person.  That he came from the same part of the world with himself may also have had its effect—­the more particularly, indeed, as the pride of birthplace was evidently a consideration with the woodman, and the praises of Carolina were rung, along with his own, in every variety of change through almost all his speeches.