Hope, the consoler, hovered over the path of the young
wanderers, long after she had ceased to whisper comfort to the desolate
hearts of the mournful parents.
Of all that suffered by this sad calamity, no one was more to be pitied
than Louis Perron: deeply did the poor boy lament the thoughtless folly
which had involved his cousin Catharine in so terrible a misfortune. "If
Kate had not been with me," he would say, "we should not have been lost;
for Hector is so cautious and so careful, he would not have left the
cattle-path; but we were so heedless, we thought only of flowers and
insects, of birds, and such trifles, and paid no heed to our way." Louis
Perron, such is life. The young press gaily onward, gathering the flowers,
and following the gay butterflies that attract them in the form of pleasure
and amusement; they forget the grave counsels of the thoughtful, till they
find the path they have followed is beset with briers and thorns; and a
thousand painful difficulties that were unseen, unexpected, overwhelm and
bring them to a sad sense of their own folly; and perhaps the punishment of
their errors does not fall upon themselves alone, but upon the innocent,
who have unknowingly been made participators in their fault.
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