Chapter 28

Thou barraine ground, whom winter's wrath hath wasted,
Art made a mirror to behold my plight:
Whilome thy fresh spring flower'd: and after hasted
Thy summer prowde, with daffodillies dight;
And now is come thy winter's stormy state,
Thy mantle mar'd wherein thou maskedst late.
SPENSER.

Although the soldier may regard danger and even death with
indifference in the tumult of battle, when the passage of the soul
is delayed to moments of tranquillity and reflection the change
commonly brings with it the usual train of solemn reflections;
of regrets for the past, and of doubts and anticipations for the
future. Many a man has died with a heroic expression on his lips,
but with heaviness and distrust at his heart; for, whatever may be
the varieties of our religious creeds, let us depend on the mediation
of Christ, the dogmas of Mahomet, or the elaborated allegories of
the East, there is a conviction, common to all men, that death is
but the stepping-stone between this and a more elevated state of
being. Sergeant Dunham was a brave man; but he was departing for
a country in which resolution could avail him nothing; and as he
felt himself gradually loosened from the grasp of the world, his
thoughts and feelings took the natural direction; for if it be true
that death is the great leveller, in nothing is it more true than
that it reduces all to the same views of the vanity of life.

Pathfinder, though a man of peculiar habits and opinions, was always
thoughtful, and disposed to view the things around him with a shade
of philosophy, as well as with seriousness. In him, therefore,
the scene in the blockhouse awakened no very novel feelings. But
the case was different with Cap: rude, opinionated, dogmatical,
and boisterous, the old sailor was little accustomed to view even
death with any approach to the gravity which its importance demands;
and notwithstanding all that had passed, and his real regard for
his brother-in-law, he now entered the room of the dying man with
much of that callous unconcern which was the fruit of long training
in a school that, while it gives so many lessons in the sublimest
truths, generally wastes its admonitions on scholars who are little
disposed to profit by them.

The first proof that Cap gave of his not entering so fully as those
around him into the solemnity of the moment, was by commencing a
narration of the events which had just led to the deaths of Muir
and Arrowhead. "Both tripped their anchors in a hurry, brother
Dunham," he concluded; "and you have the consolation of knowing
that others have gone before you in the great journey, and they,
too, men whom you've no particular reason to love; which to me,
were I placed in your