Old Samson had suffered more from his long tramp on foot than he was at first willing to confess, and a fit of illness was the consequence.  He was well cared for, however, by the Claxtons, who treated him as kindly as if he had been a relation.  He was grateful in his way; but it struck me that there was something hard and unsympathising in his character. He spoke of his fights with the Indians, of the scalps he had taken, of his hairbreadth escapes; but he never uttered a word which showed that he had any religious feeling.  Indeed, he seemed to me to be as much of a heathen as the Indians among whom he had lived so long.  It appeared strange to me that an old man should be so hardened.  I was not aware, at the time, that when people once begin to give up trusting God they go further and further from him; and thus, of course, as they advance in years they think less and less of their souls, and, in fact, become more dead with regard to all spiritual matters.