Chapter III

by James Fenimore Cooper

　　"All that thou see'st is Natures handiwork;Those rocks that upward throw their mossy brawlLike castled pinnacles of elder times;These venerable stems, that slowly rockTheir towering branches in the wintry gale;That field of frost, which glitters in the sun,Mocking the whiteness of a marble breast!Yet man can mar such works with his rude taste,Like some sad spoiler of a virgins fame." --Duo.

　　Some little while elapsed ere Marmaduke Temple was sufficientlyrecovered from his agitation to scan the person of his new companion.He now observed that he was a youth of some two or three and twentyyears of age, and rather above the middle height. Further observationwas prevented by the rough overcoat which was belted close to his formby a worsted sash, much like the one worn by the old hunter. The eyesof the Judge, after resting a moment on the figure of the stranger,were raised to a scrutiny of his countenance. There had been a lookof care visible in the features of the youth, when he first enteredthe sleigh, that had not only attracted the notice of Elizabeth, butwhich she had been much puzzled to interpret. His anxiety seemed thestrongest when he was en joining his old companion to secrecy; andeven when he had decided, and was rather passively suffering himselfto be conveyed to the village, the expression of his eyes by no meansindicated any great degree of self-satisfaction at the step. But thelines of an uncommonly prepossessing countenance were graduallybecoming composed; and he now sat silent, and apparently musing. TheJudge gazed at him for some time with earnestness, and then smiling,as if at his own forgetfulness, he said:

　　"I believe, my young friend, that terror has driven you from myrecollection; your face is very familiar, and yet, for the honor of ascore of bucks tails in my cap, I could not tell your name."

　　"I came into the country but three weeks since," returned the youthcoldly, "and I understand you have been absent twice that time."

　　"It will be five to-morrow. Yet your face is one that I have seen;though it would not be strange, such has been my affright, should Isee thee in thy winding-sheet walking by my bedside to-night. Whatsayst thou, Bess? Am I compos mentis or not? Fit to charge a grandjury, or, what is just now of more pressing necessity, able to do thehonors of Christmas eve in the hall of Templeton?"

　　"More able to do either, my dear father." said a playful voice fromunder the ample inclosures of the hood, " than to kill deer with asmooth-bore." A short pause followed, and the same voice, but in adifferent accent, continued. "We shall have good reasons for ourthanksgiving to night, on more accounts than one,"

　　The horses soon reached a point where they seemed to know by instinctthat the journey was nearly ended, and, bearing on the bits as theytossed their heads, they rapidly drew the sleigh over the level landwhich lay on the top of the mountain, and soon came to the point wherethe road descended suddenly, but circuitously, into the valley.

　　The Judge was roused from his reflections, when he saw the fourcolumns of smoke which floated above his own chimneys. As house,village, and valley burst on his sight, he exclaimed cheerfully to hisdaughter:

　　"See, Bess, there is thy resting-place for life! And thine too, youngman, if thou wilt consent to dwell with us."

　　The eyes of his auditors involuntarily met; and, if the color thatgathered over the face of Elizabeth was contradicted by the coldexpression of her eye, the ambiguous smile that again played about thelips of the stranger seemed equally to deny the probability of hisconsenting to form one of this family group. The scene was one,however, which might easily warm a heart less given to philanthropythan that of Marmaduke Temple.

　　The side of the mountain on which our travellers were journeying,though not absolutely perpendicular, was so steep as to render greatcare necessary in descending the rude and narrow path which, in thatearly day, wound along the precipices. The negro reined in hisimpatient steeds, and time was given Elizabeth to dwell on a scenewhich was so rapidly altering under the hands of man, that it onlyresembled in its outlines the picture she had so often studied withdelight in childhood. Immediately beneath them lay a seeming plain,glittering without in equality, and buried in mountains. The latterwere precipitous, especially on the side of the plain, and chiefly inforest. Here and there the hills fell away in long, low points, andbroke the sameness of the outline, or setting to the long and widefield of snow, which, without house, tree, fence, or any otherfixture, resembled so much spot less cloud settled to the earth. Afew dark and moving spots were, however, visible on the even surface,which the eye of Elizabeth knew to be so many sleighs going theirseveral ways to or from the village. On the western border of theplain, the mountains, though equally high, were less precipitous, andas they receded opened into irregular valleys and glens, or wereformed into terraces and hollows that admitted of cultivation.Although the evergreens still held dominion over many of the hillsthat rose on this side of the valley, yet the undulating outlines ofthe distant mountains, covered with forests of beech and maple, gave arelief to the eye, and the promise of a kinder soil. Occasionallyspots of white were discoverable amidst the forests of the oppositehills, which announced, by the smoke that curled over the tops of thetrees, the habitations of man and the commencement of agriculture.These spots were sometimes, by the aid of united labor, enlarged intowhat were called settlements, but more frequently were small andinsulated; though so rapid were the changes, and so persevering thelabors of those who had cast their fortunes on the success of theenterprise, that it was not difficult for the imagination of Elizabethto conceive they were enlarging under her eye while she was gazing, inmute wonder, at the alterations that a few short years had made in theaspect of the country. The points on the western side of thisremarkable plain, on which no plant had taken root, were both largerand more numerous than those on its eastern, and one in particularthrust itself forward in such a manner as to form beautifully curvedbays of snow on either side. On its extreme end an oak stretchedforward, as if to overshadow with its branches a spot which its rootswere forbidden to enter. It had released itself from the thraldomthat a growth of centuries had imposed on the branches of thesurrounding forest trees, and threw its gnarled and fantastic armsabroad, in the wildness of liberty. A dark spot of a few acres inextent at the southern extremity of this beautiful flat, andimmediately under the feet of our travellers, alone showed by itsrippling surface, and the vapors which exhaled from it, that what atfirst might seem a plain was one of the mountain lakes, locked in thefrosts of winter. A narrow current rushed impetuously from its bosomat the open place we have mentioned, and was to be traced for miles,as it wound its way toward the south through the real valley, by itsborders of hemlock and pine, and by the vapor which arose from itswarmer surface into the chill atmosphere of the hills. The banks ofthis lovely basin, at its outlet, or southern end, were steep, but nothigh; and in that direction the land continued, far as the eye couldreach, a narrow but graceful valley, along which the settlers hadscattered their humble habitations, with a profusion that bespoke thequality of the soil and the comparative facilities of intercourse,Immediately on the bank of the lake and at its foot, stood the villageof Templeton. It consisted of some fifty buildings, including thoseof every description, chiefly built of wood, and which, in theirarchitecture, bore no great marks of taste, but which also, by theunfinished appearance of most of the dwellings, indicated the hastymanner of their construction, To the eye, they presented a variety ofcolors. A few were white in both front and rear, but more bore thatexpensive color on their fronts only, while their economical butambitious owners had covered the remaining sides of the edifices witha dingy red. One or two were slowly assuming the russet of age; whilethe uncovered beams that were to be seen through the broken windows oftheir second stories showed that either the taste or the vanity oftheir proprietors had led them to undertake a task which they wereunable to accomplish. The whole were grouped in a manner that apedthe streets of a city, and were evidently so arranged by thedirections of one who looked to the wants of posterity rather than tothe convenience of the present incumbents. Some three or four of thebetter sort of buildings, in addition to the uniformity of theircolor, were fitted with green blinds, which, at that season at least,were rather strangely contrasted to the chill aspect of the lake, themountains, the forests, and the wide fields of snow. Before the doorsof these pretending dwellings were placed a few saplings, eitherwithout branches or possessing only the feeble shoots of one or twosummers growth, that looked not unlike tall grenadiers on post nearthe threshold of princes. In truth, the occupants of these favoredhabitations were the nobles of Templeton, as Marmaduke was its king.They were the dwellings of two young men who were cunning in the law;an equal number of that class who chaffered to the wants of thecommunity under the title of storekeepers; and a disciple ofAesculapius, who, for a novelty, brought more subjects into the worldthan he sent out of it. In the midst of this incongruous group ofdwellings rose the mansion of the Judge, towering above all itsneighbors. It stood in the centre of an inclosure of several acres,which was covered with fruit-trees. Some of the latter had been leftby the Indians, and began already to assume the moss and inclinationof age, therein forming a very marked contrast to the infantplantations that peered over most of the picketed fences of thevillage. In addition to this show of cultivation were two rows ofyoung Lombardy poplars, a tree but lately introduced into America,formally lining either side of a pathway which led from a gate thatopened on the principal street to the front door of the building. Thehouse itself had been built entirely under the superintendence of acertain Mr. Richard Jones, whom we have already mentioned, and who,from his cleverness in small matters, and an entire willingness toexert his talents, added to the circumstance of their being sisterschildren, ordinarily superintended all the minor concerns of MarmadukeTemple. Richard was fond of saying that this child of inventionconsisted of nothing more nor less than what should form thegroundwork of every clergymans discourse, viz., a firstly and alastly. He had commenced his labors, in the first year of theirresidence, by erecting a tall, gaunt edifice of wood, with its gabletoward the highway. In this shelter for it was little more, thefamily resided three years. By the end of that period, Richard hadcompleted his design. He had availed himself, in this heavyundertaking, of the experience of a certain wandering easternmechanic, who, by exhibiting a few soiled plates of Englisharchitecture, and talking learnedly of friezes, entablatures, andparticularly of the composite order, had obtained a very undueinfluence over Richards taste in everything that pertained to thatbranch of the fine arts. Not that Mr. Jones did not affect toconsider Hiram Doolittle a perfect empiric in his profession, being inthe constant habit of listening to his treatises on architecture witha kind of indulgent smile; yet, either from an inability to opposethem by anything plausible from his own stores of learning or fromsecret admiration, Richard generally submitted to the arguments of hisco-adjutor. Together, they had not only erected a dwelling forMarmaduke, but they had given a fashion to the architecture of thewhole county. The composite order, Mr. Doolittle would contend, wasan order composed of many others, and was intended to be the mostuseful of all, for it admitted into its construction such alterationsas convenience or circumstances might require. To this propositionRichard usually assented; and when rival geniuses who monopolize notonly all the reputation but most of the money of a neighborhood, areof a mind, it is not uncommon to see them lead the fashion, even ingraver matters. In the present instance, as we have already hinted,the castle, as Judge Templetons dwelling was termed in commonparlance, came to be the model, in some one or other of its numerousexcellences, for every aspiring edifice within twenty miles of it.

　　The house itself, or the " lastly," was of stone: large, square, andfar from uncomfortable. These were four requisites, on whichMarmaduke had insisted with a little more than his ordinarypertinacity. But everything else was peaceably assigned to Richardand his associate. These worthies found the material a little toosolid for the tools of their workmen, which, in General, were employedon a substance no harder than the white pine of the adjacentmountains, a wood so proverbially soft that it is commonly chosen bythe hunters for pillows. But for this awkward dilemma, it is probablethat the ambitious tastes of our two architects would have left usmuch more to do in the way of description. Driven from the faces ofthe house by the obduracy of the material, they took refuge in theporch and on the roof. The former, it was decided, should be severelyclassical, and the latter a rare specimen of the merits of theComposite order.

　　A roof, Richard contended, was a part of the edifice that the ancientsalways endeavored to conceal, it being an excrescence in architecturethat was only to be tolerated on account of its usefulness. Besides,as he wittily added, a chief merit in a dwelling was to present afront on whichever side it might happen to be seen; for, as it wasexposed to all eyes in all weathers, there should be no weak flank forenvy or unneighborly criticism to assail. It was therefore decidedthat the roof should be flat, and with four faces. To thisarrangement, Marmaduke objected the heavy snows that lay for months,frequently covering the earth to a depth of three or four feet.Happily the facilities of the composite order presented themselves toeffect a compromise, and the rafters were lengthened, so as to give adescent that should carry off the frozen element. But, unluckily,some mistake was made in the admeasurement of these material parts ofthe fabric; and, as one of the greatest recommendations of Hiram washis ability to work by the "square rule," no opportunity was found ofdiscovering the effect until the massive timbers were raised on thefour walls of the building. Then, indeed, it was soon seen that, indefiance of all rule, the roof was by far the most conspicuous part ofthe whole edifice. Richard and his associate consoled themselves withthe relief that the covering would aid in concealing this unnaturalelevation; but every shingle that was laid only multiplied objects tolook at. Richard essayed to remedy the evil with paint, and fourdifferent colors were laid on by his own hands. The first was a sky-blue, in the vain expectation that the eye might be cheated into thebelief it was the heavens themselves that hung so imposingly overMarmadukes dwelling; the second was what he called a "cloud-color,"being nothing more nor less than an imitation of smoke; the third waswhat Richard termed an invisible green, an experiment that did notsucceed against a background of sky. Abandoning the attempt toconceal, our architects drew upon their invention for means toornament the offensive shingles.

　　After much deliberation and two or three essays by moonlight, Richardended the affair by boldly covering the whole beneath a color that hechristened "sunshine," a cheap way, as he assured his cousin theJudge, of always keeping fair weather over his head. The platform, aswell as the caves of the house, were surmounted by gaudily paintedrailings, and the genius of Hiram was exerted in the fabrication ofdivers urns and mouldings, that were scattered profusely around thispart of their labors. Richard had originally a cunning expedient, bywhich the chimneys were intended to be so low, and so situated, as toresemble ornaments on the balustrades; but comfort required that thechimneys should rise with the roof, in order that the smoke might bccarried off, and they thus became four extremely conspicuous objectsin the view.

　　As this roof was much the most important architectural undertaking inwhich Mr. Jones was ever engaged, his failure produced a correspondentdegree of mortification At first, he whispered among his acquaintancesthat it proceeded from ignorance of the square rule on the part ofHiram; but, as his eye became gradually accustomed to the object, hegrew better satisfied with his labors, and instead of apologizing forthe defects, he commenced praising thc beauties of the mansion-house;he soon found hearers, and, as wealth and comfort are at all timesattractive, it was, as has been said, made a model for imitation on asmall scale. In less than two years from its erection, he had thepleasure of standing on the elevated platform, and of looking down onthree humble imitators of its beauty. Thus it is ever with fashion,which even renders the faults of the great subjects of admiration.

　　Marmaduke bore this deformity in his dwelling with great good-nature,and soon contrived, by his own improvements, to give an air ofrespectability and comfort to his place of residence. Still, therewas much of in congruity, even immediately about the mansion-house.Although poplars had been brought from Europe to ornament the grounds,and willows and other trees were gradually springing up nigh thedwelling, yet many a pile of snow betrayed the presence of the stumpof a pine; and even, in one or two instances, unsightly remnants oftrees that had been partly destroyed by fire were seen rearing theirblack, glistening columns twenty or thirty feet above the pure whiteof the snow, These, which in the language of the country are termedstubs, abounded in the open fields adjacent to the village, and wereaccompanied, occasionally, by the ruin of a pine or a hemlock that hadbeen stripped of its bark, and which waved in melancholy grandeur itsnaked limbs to the blast, a skeleton of its former glory. But theseand many other unpleasant additions to the view were unseen by thedelighted Elizabeth, who, as the horses moved down the side of themountain, saw only in gross the cluster of houses that lay like a mapat her feet; the fifty smokes that were curling from the valley to theclouds; the frozen lake as it lay imbedded in mountains of evergreen,with the long shadows of the pines on its white surface, lengtheningin the setting sun; the dark ribbon of water that gushed from theoutlet and was winding its way toward the distant Chesapeake--thealtered, though still remembered, scenes of her child hood.

　　Five years had wrought greater changes than a century would produce incountries where time and labor have given permanency to the works ofman. To our young hunter and the Judge the scene had less novelty;though none ever emerge from the dark forests of that mountain, andwitness the glorious scenery of that beauteous valley, as it burstsunexpectedly upon them, without a feeling of delight. The former castone admiring glance from north to south, and sank his face againbeneath the folds of his coat; while the latter contemplated, withphilanthropic pleasure, the prospect of affluence and comfort that wasexpanding around him; the result of his own enterprise, and much of itthe fruits of his own industry.

　　The cheerful sound of sleigh-bells, however, attracted the attentionof the whole party, as they came jingling up the sides of themountain, at a rate that announced a powerful team and a hard driver.The bushes which lined the highway interrupted the view, and the twosleighs were close upon each other before either was seen.