Late on this afternoon a solitary traveler on horseback might have been seen winding slowly along the serpentine road that led over the hill above the falls. This traveler was David White. At his heart, were the same fierce and turbulent passions--the same dark thoughts and bad feelings--the same willful and perverse nature that dwelt there, when I left him, ten years ago, forsaking home and happiness; time had only served to deepen the impressions, and crime almost entirely to blot out the few remaining influences of a religious education, while the vicious impulses strengthened. But, in person, he was greatly changed. From the stripling he had become the man. A half sneer was on his countenance as in boyhood; and the same restless, wicked eye lighted up his features with an evil fire. It was a face that told the wily hypocrite--the man who could assume any character he chose--now, high-minded and honorable, and again, crime-seeking and fiendish, just as circumstances required. The cheeks were thin and sunken, and the deep pallor which had stolen away the rosy tints of health, plainly showed a course of continual dissipation. In person, he was somewhat above the standard height, and slender in his make, though his frame exhibited great powers of endurance, and no common share of muscular strength.
He wound slowly down the hill, stopped for a moment to gaze at the falls, adorned with huge, long icicles, and a shore of frozen foam; then moved on again, passed leisurely along the curving lane, and paused once more at the old bridge, to look up and down the river; after which he advanced a short distance into the magnificent grove of evergreens which skirted the road, and fastening his horse securely to one of the strongest pine saplings, bent his steps toward the home of his childhood. By this time the last flashing gleams of sunset were dying away in the west, and dark-hued twilight began to shroud the east in a mist-like dimness.
David White had been a wanderer in foreign lands. More than once had he stood amidst a field of the ghastly dead and shrieking wounded, when the tide of a great battle raged fiercest and strongest, his foothold bathed in the life-blood of his comrades. Such scenes ever tend to pervert the kinder tendencies of our nature, and to render the mind adamantine in its manifestations; nor were his less susceptible to these influences than others. When first he entered the ranks of the army, and joined in the death-dealing battle, he saw the daily commission of crimes which made his soul shrink even to contemplate; but, by degrees, he learned to look upon them merely as the amusements of a passing hour, and finally, to lend a ready hand to their accomplishment. Then his heart grew still colder and more feelingless. He thirsted for excitement, lawful or unlawful. He longed for the bloody onset to come; the deafening roar of the cannon was a music in his ears, and the murderous combat brought a restlessness that pleased him. But human nature is strange--passing strange. At intervals he was mild and gentle. Standing upon the battlefield, when night had drawn her silvery curtain over the ghastly and hideous spectacle, when the booming shot and frightful discord--the shriek, the groan, the shout, and ceaseless rush of angered men were passed away, he had looked round upon the cold and bloody scene, and wept--his sternness softened, and he became as other men. He brought water to the wounded and dying soldier; staunched the flowing blood; pillowed his head upon his knee, and as the body shuddered in the last fierce agony, and the enfranchised spirit went trembling up to God, tears fell like jewels on the pallid face of the dying, and thoughts, of which the good might have been proud, flashed through his mind. Who, at such moments, would recognize David White, the bold, dark, dangerous man? But thus it is; mirthful feelings will sometimes obtrude when the heavy clod is falling upon the coffin of a friend, and the grave closing over him forever; thoughts of the last agony, the bourne of death, and the curtained futurity, will sometimes come like a pall over our minds, when the dance is at its flush, and pleasure in its spring-time; and moments will sometimes roll round when a softness breathes upon the hearts of hardened men.