"Roger Malvin's Burial" is one of the lesser known short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, included in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse. It concerns two colonial survivors returning home after the battle known as Lovell's Fight.
The story begins in the year 1725, after Lovewell's Fight (Hawthorne uses the name Lovell's Fight), a battle in the French and Indian Wars. An elderly soldier, Roger Malvin and a young one, Reuben Bourne - survivors ...
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"Roger Malvin's Burial" is one of the lesser known short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, included in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse. It concerns two colonial survivors returning home after the battle known as Lovell's Fight.
The story begins in the year 1725, after Lovewell's Fight (Hawthorne uses the name Lovell's Fight), a battle in the French and Indian Wars. An elderly soldier, Roger Malvin and a young one, Reuben Bourne - survivors of the battle - try to get to a human settlement through the forest. However, since they are both wounded and weak, there is little hope that they will survive. They make a rest near a rock that looks like an enormous tombstone.
The older man asks Reuben, whom he treats as a son, to leave him to die alone, since his wounds are mortal. He is unable to go any further and, although Reuben insists that he will drag Malvin further, the old man knows that this would mean death for both of them. Malvin manages to convince Reuben finally, and the...
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