This transaction shows very clearly the hard and unfeeling character of David's parents.

When he reached the end of his journey, so many weary leagues from home, the only way by which he could return was to attach himself to some emigrant party or some company of teamsters, and walk back, paying for such food as he might consume, by the assistance he could render on the way.

There are few parents who could thus have treated a child of twelve years.
The little fellow, whose affections had never been more cultivated than those of the whelp of the wolf or the cub of the bear, still left home, as he tells us, with a heavy heart.

The Dutchman was an entire stranger to him, and he knew not what treatment he was to expect at his hands.
He had already experienced enough of forest travel to know its hardships.

A journey of four hundred miles seemed to him like going to the uttermost parts of the earth.