Telie clasped her hands in despair:  “I shall never be happy here, nor anywhere.  But take me,” she added eagerly, “take me for your own sake;—­for it will be good for you to have me with you in the woods,—­it will, indeed it will.”

“It cannot be,” said Edith, gently.  But the maiden would scarce take a refusal.  Her terrors had been dissipated by her having ventured so far on speech, and she now pursued her object with an imploring and passionate earnestness that both surprised and embarrassed Edith, while it increased her sympathy for the poor bereaved pleader.  She endeavoured to convince her, if not of the utter folly of her desires, at least of the impossibility there was on her part of granting them.  She succeeded, however, in producing conviction only on one point.  Telie perceived that her suit was not to be granted; of when, as soon as she was satisfied, she left off entreaty, and rose to her feet with a saddened and humbled visage, and then, taking up the candle, she left the fair stranger to her repose.

In the meanwhile, Roland also was preparing for slumber; and finding, as indeed he could not avoid seeing, that the hospitality of his host had placed the males of the family under the necessity of taking their rest in the open air on the porch, he insisted upon passing the night in the same place in their company.  In fact, the original habitation of the back-woodsman seldom boasted more than two rooms in all, and these none of the largest; and when emigrants arrived at a Station, there was little attempt made to find shelter for any save their women and children, to whom the men of the settlement readily gave up their own quarters, to share those of their male visitors under the blanket-tents which were spread before the doors.  This, to men who had thus passed the nights for several weeks in succession, was anything but hardship; and when the weather was warm and dry, they could congratulate themselves on sleeping in greater comfort than, their sheltered companions.  Of this Forrester was well aware, and he took an early period to communicate his resolution of rejecting the unmanly luxury of a bed, and sleeping like a soldier, wrapped in his cloak, with his saddle for a pillow.  In this way, the night proving unexpectedly sultry, he succeeded in enjoying more delightful and refreshing slumbers than blessed his kinswoman in her bed of down.  The song of the katydid and the cry of the whippoorwill came more sweetly to his ears from the adjacent woods; and the breeze that had stirred a thousand leagues of forest in its flight, whispered over his cheek with a more enchanting music than it made among the chinks and crannies of the wall by Edith’s bed-side.  A few idle dreams,—­recollections of home, mingled with the anticipated scenes of the future, the deep forest, the wild beast, and the lurking Indian,—­amused, without harassing, his sleeping mind; and it was not until the first gray of dawn that he experienced any