Chapter XVI

"I bid you leave the girl, and think no more
About her from henceforth."

"Ah, I can leave
Her, sire;--but to forget will be, I fear,
A thing beyond my power."

It was midsummer, and the Hermit of the Cedars sat under his low piazza, curiously constructed of the enwreathed boughs and branches of evergreen trees. He held a volume in his attenuated hand, with the contents of which, he seemed intently occupied. His appearance was melancholy in the extreme. A pale, thin face;--deep sunken eyes, and a broad, high brow, by sorrow seamed with furrows long and wide; for she doth ever dig with deeper, harsher hand than time. A loose linen garment was wrapped around his tall, gaunt form, and a white handkerchief tied over his head to prevent the passing breezes from blowing his thin, straggling gray hair about his features.

So intent was he on the contents of his book that he did not notice the approach of the cheerer of his solitude. Edgar came along the narrow path with a step quicker and more impatient than was his wont, and there was an expression on his fine, manly face which had something of mortification and anger, but more of regret and sorrow. He threw his satchel on the ground, and sat down at the hermit's feet, who laid aside his volume, on beholding him in that position, and asked him if he was fatigued or ill.

"No," said the youth, "but I shall be glad when I am gone away from here to the university."

"Ah!" returned the hermit, "it is as I knew it would be when I placed you at the seminary. Your desire for fame and honor has returned, and you long to go forth in the great world and mingle in its st[illegible]."

"No," said Edgar, "I would rather live and die within the walls of this hermitage, than ever go beyond them again; but I'm resolved I will not do the foolish thing. I'll go forth, and if my life is spared, show those who call me a foundling, and a wild cub of the woods, that I am something more than they suppose me to be."

"Who has dared apply such epithets to you, my boy?" exclaimed the hermit, his pale cheeks glowing with anger.

"Do you know Major Howard of 'Summer Home?'" asked Edgar.

"That do I," answered the hermit; "and did he call you by these names?"

"Yes," returned Edgar.

"_He_ talk of foundlings!" said the hermit. "Why did you not slap him in the face, Edgar?"

"The words did not come directly from him to me," said the youth, wondering at his uncle's anger, which far exceeded his own.

"Ay, through a third person you obtained them? and that was"----

"His daughter, Florence Howard."

"Florence Howard!" repeated his uncle, "and what do you know of her?"

"I have been to school with her four or five months, and have assisted her in her Latin studies this summer," returned Edgar.

"And shall never behold her face again!" said the hermit, in a tone of angry vehemence, bringing his heavy sandalled foot down upon the wooden sill with a violence that made Edgar start from his lounging posture on the turf, and gaze with amazement upon the fierce workings of a face he had never seen flushed by an angry emotion before. He feared his uncle had suddenly gone mad, and stood indeterminate what course to pursue, when the countenance before him changed, the eyes closed, and the hermit fell heavily on the green sward in front of his door. Edgar, in his alarm, lifted the prostrate form in his strong, young arms, and bore him to the low, rough couch, which was their nightly resting-place. Then, taking a bottle from a [illegible] shelf above the huge, black fire-place, he poured its contents in a cup, and bathed the temples of the deathly-looking face till the eyes opened with recognition, and the lips moved, though inaudibly.

He watched by the bed-side several hours, and at length the hermit rose suddenly to his feet, and bade Edgar retire. He obeyed, and closed his eyes, but not to sleep. Opening them after a while, he beheld his uncle sitting before the table engaged in writing. Again the lids closed, and he fell into a light drowse, during which Florence Howard flitted before him in countless variety of forms. When again he looked around he was alone. The long summer twilight had deepened into evening, and Edgar rose and lighted a lamp. On the table he discovered a small, folded billet, addressed to him. He sank on his knees, opened it, and read. Various were the expressions that flitted over his features as he did so. When he had finished he refolded it carefully, and, drawing a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked a small box which sat on the table, placed the letter within, then relocked it and returned the keys to his pocket.

Then he extinguished the lamp and sat down in the window-nook to his watch of the stars.

But his thoughts were different from what they once were when he gazed on their glistening faces.

His soul-pinions had kissed the earth, and become fouled by contact with a grosser element; and heavy with a weltering weight of woe, that they could not soar aloft and hover over the casements of angelic homes, to rest at last on the glory-bright hills of heaven.