But in autumn, those gay northerners, the birds, return to their southern plantations.  The mountains are left bleak and sere.  Solitude settles down upon them in drizzling mists.  The traveller is beset, at perilous turns, by dense masses of fog.  He emerges for a moment into more penetrable air; and passing some gray, abandoned house, sees the lofty vapors plainly eddy by its desolate door; just as from the plain you may see it eddy by the pinnacles of distant and lonely heights.  Or, dismounting from his frightened horse, he leads him down some scowling glen, where the road steeply dips among grim rocks, only to rise as abruptly again; and as he warily picks his way, uneasy at the menacing scene, he sees some ghost-like object looming through the mist at the roadside; and wending towards it, beholds a rude white stone, uncouthly inscribed, marking the spot where, some fifty or sixty years ago, some farmer was upset in his wood-sled, and perished beneath the load.

In winter this region is blocked up with snow.  Inaccessible and impassable, those wild, unfrequented roads, which in August are overgrown with high grass, in December are drifted to the arm-pit with the white fleece from the sky.  As if an ocean rolled between man and man, intercommunication is often suspended for weeks and weeks.

Such, at this day, is the country which gave birth to our hero:  prophetically styled Israel by the good Puritans, his parents, since, for more than forty years, poor Potter wandered in the wild wilderness of the world’s extremest hardships and ills.

How little he thought, when, as a boy, hunting after his father’s stray cattle among these New England hills he himself like a beast should be hunted through half of Old England, as a runaway rebel.  Or, how could he ever have dreamed, when involved in the autumnal vapors of these mountains, that worse bewilderments awaited him three thousand miles across the sea, wandering forlorn in the coal-foes of London.  But so it was destined to be.  This little boy of the hills, born in sight of the sparkling Housatonic, was to linger out the best part of his life a prisoner or a pauper upon the grimy banks of the Thames.

CHAPTER II.

The youthful adventures of Israel.

Imagination will easily picture the rural day of the youth of Israel.  Let us pass on to a less immature period.

It appears that he began his wanderings very early; moreover, that ere, on just principles throwing off the yoke off his king, Israel, on equally excusable grounds, emancipated himself from his sire.  He continued in the enjoyment of parental love till the age of eighteen, when, having formed an attachment for a neighbor’s daughter—­for some reason, not deemed a suitable match by his father—­he was severely reprimanded, warned to discontinue his visits, and threatened with some disgraceful punishment