His recreation he found with the young women of the
family, and their conversation was not always political. Sarah
Livingston, beautiful, sweet, and clever, was pensively in love; but
Kitty and Susan were not, and they were handsome and dashing. They were
sufficiently older than Alexander to inspire him with the belief that he
was in love with each in turn; and if he was constant to either, it was
to Kitty, who was the first to reveal to him the fascination of her
sex. But they did not interrupt the course of his studies; and in the
dawn, when he repaired to the Burial Yard Lot to think out his difficult
task for the day, not a living face haunted the tombstones.
And when winter came and he walked the vast black forests alone, the
snow crunching under his feet, the blood racing in his body, a gun on
his shoulder, lest he meet a panther, or skated till midnight under the
stars, a crystal moon illuminating the dark woods on the river's edge,
the frozen tide glittering the flattering homage of earth, he felt so
alive and happy, so tingling and young and primeval, that had his
fellow-inhabitants flown to the stars he would not have missed them.
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