 with steps that
were between a walk and a trot. At each movement he made, his body lowered
several inches, his knees yielding with an inclination inward; but as the sleigh
turned at a bend in the road, the youth cast his eyes in quest of his old
companion, and he saw that he was already nearly concealed by the trunks of the
trees, while his dogs were following quietly in his footsteps, occasionally
scenting the deer track, that they seemed to know instinctively was now of no
farther use to them. Another jerk was given to the sleigh, and Leather-stocking
was hid from view.
 

                                   Chapter II

 »All places that the eye of Heaven visits,
 Are to a wise man ports and happy havens: -
 Think not the king did banish thee;
 But thou the king. -«
                                               Richard II, I.iii.275-76, 279-80.
 
An Ancestor of Marmaduke Temple had, about one hundred and twenty years before
the commencement of our tale, come to the colony of Pennsylvania, a friend and
co-religionist of its great patron. Old Marmaduke, for this formidable prenomen
was a kind of appellative to the race, brought with him to that asylum of the
persecuted, an abundance of the good things of this life. He became the master
of many thousands of acres of uninhabited territory, and the supporter of many a
score of dependents. He lived greatly respected for his piety, and not a little
distinguished as a sectary; was entrusted by his associates with many important
political stations; and died, just in time to escape the knowledge of his own
poverty. It was his lot to share the fortune of most of those, who brought
wealth with them into the new settlements of the middle colonies.
    The consequence of an emigrant into these provinces was generally to be
ascertained by the number of his white servants or dependents, and the nature of
the public situations that he held. Taking this rule as a guide, the ancestor of
our Judge must have been a man of no little note.
    It is, however, a subject of curious inquiry at the present day, to look
into the brief records of that early period, and observe how regular, and with
few exceptions how inevitable, were the gradations, on the one hand, of the
masters to poverty, and on the other, of their servants to wealth. Accustomed to
ease, and unequal to the struggles incident to an infant society, the affluent
emigrant was barely enabled to maintain his own rank, by the weight of his
personal superiority and acquirements; but the moment that
