"It may be that, with speedy assistance, I might recover of my wound. "Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I have to live," he resumed. They slept beneath a hut of branches, and awoke at peep of light refreshed for the toils of another day. As if reflected in a mirror, its likeness was in Reuben's memory. Have you slain the deer and fallen asleep over him?" They conveyed him to the nearest settlement, which chanced to be that of his own residence.Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the bedside of her wounded lover, and administered all those comforts that are in the sole gift of woman's heart and hand. "Reuben, Reuben," said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and knelt down by the dying man. He next turned his eyes to the companion who reclined by his side. Your wounds are deep and your strength is failing fast; yet, if you hasten onward alone, you may be preserved. was the question by which her filial piety manifested itself. Reuben Bourne, however, was a neglectful husbandman; and, while the lands of the other settlers became annually more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same proportion. Nevertheless, Reuben can’t bring himself to tell the truth about leaving Roger Malvin alone to die.When I have taught torts, I always end the class with this story — largely because this story encapsulates the tension between rights and wrongs as decided by communities versus rights and wrongs as individualized.

At that moment the withered topmost bough of the oak loosened itself in the stilly air, and fell in soft, light fragments upon the rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben, upon his wife and child, and upon Roger Malvin's bones. The boy was loved by his father with a deep and silent strength, as if whatever was good and happy in his own nature had been transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it. "I came upon the camp of a hunting party before sunset of the same day. Dorcas nourished her apprehensions in silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke from an unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more perfectly than at any previous time. My boy has slain a deer!" Whatever our answer, as the story goes forward we get a picture that Reuben would not be held out of esteem by the community even by leaving Roger Malvin. Keeping her eyes on this object, however, it proved to be no more than the trunk of an oak fringed to the very ground with little branches, one of which, thrust out farther than the rest, was shaken by the breeze. On a tract of several acres around this rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees had supplied the place of the pines, which were the usual growth of the land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close beside the travellers.The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of sleep; for, so soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his recumbent posture and sat erect. One stout and shaggy steed, the bearer of all their wealth, did not shrink from the added weight of Dorcas; although her hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter part of each day's journey, by her husband's side. He spoke not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in the pillow. He even recognized the veins which seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters: everything remained the same, except that a thick covert of bushes shrouded the lowerpart of the rock, and would have hidden Roger Malvin had he still been sitting there. With one wild shriek, that seemed to force its way from the sufferer's inmost soul, she sank insensible by the side of her dead boy. They also have a child named Cyrus. Would his mother's voice arouse him? "There stands a noble tombstone above his head; and I would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he! The farm fails, his community begins to question his integrity, and eventually Reuben, Dorcas, and Cyrus leave the community.Cyrus is, by all accounts the embodiment of Cyrus of Persia, both in his ethic and his treatment of others. Her employment, diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to simmer over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year's Massachusetts Almanac, which, with the exception of an old black-letter Bible, comprised all the literary wealth of the family. The rude melody, the production of a bard who won no name, was descriptive of a winter evening in a frontier cottage, when, secured from savage inroad by the high-piled snow-drifts, the family rejoiced by their own fireside. They were the broken accents of a petition for his own happiness and that of Dorcas; and, as the youth listened, conscience, or something in its similitude, pleaded strongly with him to return and lie down again by the rock.

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