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overhead at intervals-showing her a far distant blue serene. She yearned, at many times, for the rest which is not in camps or armies; and it is certain, that she ever combined with any plans or day-dreams of tranquillity, as their most essential ally, some aid derived from that dovelike religion which, at St. Sebastian's, as an infant and through girlhood, she had been taught so pro

the proportions of crime. Mere necessity obliges | stormy clouds that enveloped her in camps, opened man to create many acts into felonies, and to punish them as the heaviest offences, which his better sense teaches him secretly to regard as perhaps among the lightest. Those poor deserters, for instance, were they necessarily without excuse? They might have been oppressively used; but in critical times of war, no matter for the individual palliations, the deserter from his colours must be shot: there is no help for it: as in ex-foundly to adore. tremities of general famine, we shoot the man [alas! we are obliged to shoot him] that is found robbing the common stores in order to feed his own perishing children, though the offence is hardly visible in the sight of God. Only blockheads adjust their scale of guilt to the scale of human punishments. Now, our wicked friend the fanatic, who calumniates Kate, abuses the advantage which, for such a purpose, he derives from the exaggerated social estimate of all violence. Personal security being so main an object of social union, we are obliged to frown upon all modes of violence as hostile to the central principle of that union. We are obliged to rate it, according to the universal results towards which it tends, and scarcely at all, according to the special condition of circumstances, in which it may originate. Hence a horror arises for that class of offences, which is (philosophically speaking) exaggerated; and by daily use, the ethics of a police-office translate themselves, insensibly, into the ethics even of religious people. But I tell that sycophantish fanatic-not this only, viz., that he abuses unfairly, against Kate, the advantage which he has from the inevitably distorted bias of society; but also, I tell him this second little thing, viz., that upon turning away the glass from that one obvious aspect of Kate's character, her too fiery disposition to vindicate all rights by violence, and viewing her in relation to general religious capacities, she was a thousand times more promisingly endowed than himself. It is impossible to be noble in many things, without having many points of contact with true religion.

If you deny that, you it is that calumniate religion. Kate was noble in many things. Her worst errors never took a shape of self-interest or deceit. She was brave, she was generous, she was forgiving, she bore no malice, she was full of truth-qualities that God loves either in man or woman. She hated sycophants and dissemblers. I hate them; and more than ever at this moment on her behalf. I wish she were but here to give a punch on the head to that fellow who traduces her. And, coming round again to the occasion from which this short digression has started, viz., the question raised by the Frenchman-whether Kate were a person likely to pray under other circumstances than those of extreme danger? I offer it as my opinion that she was. Violent people are not always such from choice, but perhaps from situation. And, though the circumstances of Kate's position allowed her little means for realising her own wishes, it is certain that those wishes pointed continually to peace and an unworldly happiness, if that were possible. The

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Now, let us rise from this discussion of Kate against libellers, as Kate herself is rising from prayer, and consider, in conjunction with her, the character and promise of that dreadful ground which lies immediately before her. What is to be thought of it? I could wish we had a theodolite here, and a spirit-level, and other instruments, for settling some important questions. Yet no: on consideration, if one had a wish allowed by that kind fairy, without whose assistance it would be quite impossible to send, even for the spirit-level, nobody would throw away the wish upon things so paltry; I would not put the fairy upon any such errand: I would order the good creature to bring no spirit-level, but a stiff glass of spirits for Kate-a palanquin, and relays of fifty stout bearers-all drunk, in order that they might not feel the cold. The main interest at this moment, and the main difficulty-indeed, the open question" of the case-was, to ascertain whether the ascent were yet accomplished or not; and when would the descent commence? or had it, perhaps, long commenced? The character of the ground, in those immediate successions that could be connected by the eye, decided nothing; for the undulations of the level had been so continual for miles, as to perplex any eye but an engineer's, in attempting to judge whether, upon the whole, the tendency were upwards or downwards. Possibly it was yet neither way; it is, indeed, probable, that Kate had been for some time travelling along a series of terraces, that traversed the whole breadth of the topmost area at that point of crossing the Cordilleras, and which perhaps, but not certainly, compensated any casual tendencies downwards by corresponding reascents. Then came the question-how long would these terraces yet continue? and had the ascending parts really balanced the descending ?-upon that seemed to rest the final chance for Kate. Because, unless she very soon reached a lower level, and a warmer atmosphere, mere weariness would oblige her to lie down, under a fierceness of cold, that would not suffer her to rise after once losing the warmth of motion; or, inversely, if she even continued in motion, mere extremity of cold would of itself, speedily absorb the little surplus energy for moving, which yet remained unexhausted by weariness.

At this stage of her progress, and whilst the agonising question seemed yet as indeterminate as ever, Kate's struggle with despair, which had been greatly soothed by the fervour of her prayer, revolved upon her in deadlier blackness. All turned, she saw, upon a race against time, and the arrears of the road; and she, poor thing!

how little qualified could she be, in such a condi- | house, has ceased (you suddenly think) to rise; yes! tion, for a race of any kind; and against two measured by a golden plummet, it is sinking beyond such obstinate brutes as time and space!

hour of the progress, this noontide of Kate's struggle, must have been the very crisis of the whole. Despair was rapidly tending to ratify itself. Hope, in any degree, would be a cordial for sustaining her efforts. But to flounder along a dreadful chaos of snow-drifts, or snow-chasms, towards a point of rock, which, being turned, should expose only another interminable succession of the same character-might that be endured by ebbing spirits, by stiffening limbs, by the ghastly darkness that was now beginning to gather upon the inner eye? And, if once despair became triumphant, all the little arrear of physical strength would collapse at once.

This a doubt, and the darlings of your household are saved. Kate faced round in agitation to her proper direction. She saw, what previously, in her stunning confusion, she had not seen, that, hardly two stones' throw in advance, lay a mass of rock, split as into a gateway. Through that opening it now became probable that the road was lying. Hurrying forward, she passed within the natural gates. Gates of paradise they were. Ah, what a vista did that gateway expose before her dazzled eye? what a revelation of heavenly promise? Full two miles long, stretched a long narrow glen, everywhere descending, and in many parts rapidly. All was now placed beyond a doubt. She was descending-for hours perhaps had been deOh! verdure of human fields, cottages of men scending insensibly, the mighty staircase. Yes, and women (that now suddenly seemed al! Kate is leaving behind her the kingdom of frost and brothers and sisters), cottages with children the victories of death. Two miles farther there around them at play, that are so far below-oh! may be rest, if there is not shelter. And very summer and spring, flowers and blossoms, to soon, as the crest of her new-born happiness, which, as to his symbols, God has given the gor- she distinguished at the other end of that rocky geous privilege of rehearsing for ever upon earth vista, a pavilion-shaped mass of dark-green his most mysterious perfection-Life, and the foliage-a belt of trees, such as we see in the resurrections of Life is it indeed true, that poor lovely parks of England, but islanded by a screen Kate must never see you more? Mutteringly (though not everywhere oocupied by the usurpashe put that question to herself. But strange tions) of a thick bushy undergrowth. Oh, verare the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep dure of dark-olive foliage, offered suddenly to faintfountains of human sensibilities. At this very ing eyes, as if by some winged patriarchal hermoment, when the utter incapacitation of despair ald of wrath relenting-solitary Arab's tent, rising was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden light- with saintly signals of peace, in the dreadful ening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost super- desert, must Kate indeed die even yet, whilst she natural, from the earliest effects of her prayer. sees but cannot reach you? Outpost on the A thought had struck her all at once, and this frontier of man's dominions, standing within life, thought prompted her immediately to turn round. but looking out upon everlasting death, wilt thou Perhaps it was in some blind yearning after the hold up the anguish of thy mocking invitation, only memorials of life in this frightful region, that only to betray? Never, perhaps, in this world she fixed her eye upon a point of hilly ground was the line so exquisitely grazed, that parts salvaby which she identified the spot near which the tion and ruin. As the dove to her dove-cot from three corpses were lying. The silence seemed the swooping hawk-as the Christian pinnace deeper than ever. Neither was there any phan- to Christian batteries, from the bloody Mahometan tom memorial of life for the eye or for the ear, corsair, so flow-so tried to fly towards the annor wing of bird, nor echo, nor green leaf, nor choring thickets, that, alas, could not weigh their creeping thing, that moved or stirred, upon the anchors and make sail to meet her the poor exsoundless waste. Oh, what a relief to this bur-hausted Kate from the vengeance of pursuing then of silence would be a human groan! Here seemed a motive for still darker despair. And yet, at that very moment, a pulse of joy began to thaw the ice at her heart. It struck her, as she reviewed the ground, that undoubtedly it had been for some time slowly descending. Her senses were much dulled by suffering; but this thought it was, suggested by a sudden apprehension of a continued descending movement, which had caused her to turn round. Sight had confirmed the suggestion first derived from her own steps. The distance attained was now sufficient to establish the tendency. Oh, yes, yes, to a certainty she had been descending for some time. Frightful was the spasm of joy which whispered that the worst was over. It was as when the shadow of mid-luck had ordered it, with her head screened by night, that murderers had relied on, is passing away from your beleagured shelter, and dawn will soon be manifest. It was as when a flood, that all day long has raved against the walls of your

frost.

And she reached them; staggering, fainting, reeling, she entered beneath the of canopy umbrageous trees. But, as oftentimes, the Hebrew fugitive to a city of refuge, flying for his life before the avenger of blood, was pressed so hotly that, on entering the archway of what seemed to him the heavenly city-gate, as he kneeled in deep thankfulness to kiss its holy merciful shadow, he could not rise again, but sank instantly with infant weakness into sleep-sometimes to wake no more; so sank, so collapsed upon the ground, without power to choose her couch, and with little prospect of ever rising again to her feet, the martial nun. She lay as

the undergrowth of bushes, from any gales that might arise; she lay exactly as she sank, with her eyes up to heaven; and thus it was that the nun saw, before falling asleep, the two sights that

upon earth are fittest for the closing eyes of a
nun, whether destined to open again, or to close
for ever. She saw the interlacing of boughs
overhead forming a dome, that seemed like the
dome of a cathedral. She saw through the fret-
work of the foliage, another dome, far beyond,
the dome of an evening sky, the dome of some
heavenly cathedral, not built with hands. She
saw upon this upper dome the vesper lights, all
alive with pathetic grandeur of colouring from a
sunset that had just been rolling down like a
chorus. She had not, till now, consciously ob-
served the time of day; whether it were morning,
or whether it were afternoon, in her confusion
she had not distinctly known. But now she
" and
whispered to herself" It is evening:
what lurked half unconsciously in these words
might be" The sun, that rejoices, has finished
his daily toil; man, that labours, has finished
his; I, that suffer, have finished mine." That
might be what she thought, but what she said
was, "it is evening; and the hour is come when
the Angelus is sounding through St Sebastians,"
What made her think of St Sebastians, so far
away in depths of space and time? Her brain
was wandering, now that her feet were not; and,
because her eyes had descended from the heavenly
to the earthly dome, that made her think of
earthly cathedrals, and of cathedral choirs, and
of St Sebastian's chapel, with its silvery bells that
carried the Angelus far into mountain recesses.
Perhaps, as her wanderings increased, she thought
herself back in childhood; became " pussy once
again; fancied that all since then was a frightful
dream; that she was not upon the dreadful Andes,
but still kneeling in the holy chapel at vespers ;
still innocent as then; loved as then she had
been loved; and that all men were liars, who said
her hand was ever stained with blood. Little
enough is mentioned of the delusions which
possessed her; but that little gives a key to the
impulse which her palpitating heart obeyed, and
which her rambling brain for ever reproduced in
multiplying mirrors. Restlessness kept her in
waking dreams for a brief half hour. But then
fever and delirium would wait no longer; the
killing exhaustion would no longer be refused;
the fever, the delirium, and the exhaustion, swept
in together with power like an army with banners;
and the nun ceased through the gathering twilight
any more to watch the cathedrals of earth, or the
more solemn cathedrals that rose in the heavens
above.

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All night long she slept in her verdurous St. Bernard's hospice without awaking, and whether she would ever awake seemed to depend upon an accident. The slumber that towered above her brain was like that fluctuating silvery column which stands in scientific tubes sinking, rising, deepening, lightening, contracting, expanding; or like the mist that sits, through sultry afternoons, upon the river of the American St. Peter, sometimes rarefying for minutes into sunny gauze, sometimes condensing for hours into palls of funeral darkness. You fancy that, after twelve hours of any sleep, she must have been refreshed;

better at least than she was last night. Ah! but sleep is not always sent upon missions of refreshment. Sleep is sometimes the secret chamber in which death arranges his machinery. Sleep is sometimes that deep mysterious atmosphere, in which the human spirit is slowly unsettling its wings for flight from earthly tenements. It is now eight o'clock in the morning; and, to all appearance, if Kate should receive no aid before noon, when next the sun is departing to his rest, Kate will be departing to hers; when next the sun is holding out his golden Christian signal to man, that the hour is come for letting his anger go down, Kate will be sleeping away for ever into the arms of brotherly forgiveness.

What is wanted just now for Kate, supposing Kate herself to be wanted by this world, is, that this world would be kind enough to send her a The simple little brandy before it is too late. truth was, and a truth which I have known to take place in more ladies than Kate, who died or did not die, accordingly, as they had or had not an adviser like myself, capable of giving so sound an opinion, that the jewelly star of life had descended too far down the arch towards setting, for any chance of re-ascending by spontaneous effort. The fire was still burning in secret, but needed to be rekindled by potent artificial breath. It lingered, and might linger, but would never culminate again without some stimulus from earthly vineyards.* Kate was ever lucky, though ever un

*Though not exactly in the same circumstances as Kate, or sleeping, à la belle etoile, on a declivity of the Andes, I have known (or heard circumstantially reported) the cases of many ladies besides Kate, who were in precisely the same critical danger of perishing for want of a littly brandy. A dessert spoonful or two would have saved them. Avaunt! you wicked" Temperance" medallist! repent as fast as ever you can, or, perhaps the next time we hear of you, anasarca and hydrothorax, will be running after you to punish your shocking excesses in water. Seriously, the case is one of constant recurrence, and constantly ending fatally from unseasonable and pedantic rigor of temperance. The fact is, that the medical profession composes the most generous and liberal body of men amongst us; taken generally, by much the most enlightened; but professionally, the most timid. Want of boldness in the administration of opium, &c., though they can be bold enough with mercury, is their besetting infirmity. And from this infirmity One instance I need hardly mention, females suffer most. the fatal case of an august lady, mourned by nations, with respect to whom it was, and is, the belief of multitudes to this hour, (well able to judge) that she would have been saved by a glass of brandy; and her attendant, who shot himself, came to think so too late-too late for her, and too late for himself. Amongst many cases of the same nature, which personally I have been acquainted with, twenty years ago, a man, illustrious for his intellectual accomplishments, mentioned to me that his own wife, during her first or second confinement, was suddenly reported to him, by one of her female attendants, (who slipped away unobserved by the medical people) as undoubtedly sinking fast. He hurried to her chamber, and saw that it was so. The presiding medical authority, however, was inexorable, "Oh, by no means," shaking his ambrosial wig, "any stimulant at this crisis would be fatal." But no authority could overrule the concurrent testimony of all symptoms, and of all unprofessional opinions. By some pious falsehood my friend smuggled the doctor out of the room, and immediately smuggled a glass. of brandy into the poor lady's lips. She recovered with magical power. The doctor is now dead, and went to his grave under the delusive persuasion-that not any vile glass of brandy, but the stern refusal of all brandy, was the thing that saved his collapsing patient. tient herself, who might naturally know something of the matter, was of a different opinion. She sided with the

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fortunate; and the world, being of my opinion that childhood on this dreadful frontier, sacred to winKate was worth saving, made up its mind about half-ter and death, they understood the case at once. past eight o'clock in the morning to save her. Just at They dismounted: and with the tenderness of that time, when the night was over, and its sufferings women, raising the poor frozen cornet in their were hidden-in one of those intermitting gleams arms, washed her temples with brandy, whilst that for a moment or two lightened the clouds of one, at intervals, suffered a few drops to trickle her slumber, Kate's dull ear caught a sound that within her lips. As the restoration of a warm for years had spoken a familiar language to her. bed was now most likely to be successful, they What was it? It was the sound, though muffled lifted the helpless stranger upon a horse, walking and deadened, like the ear that heard it, of horse- on each side with supporting arms. Once again men advancing. Interpreted by the tumultuous our Kate is in the saddle; once again a Spanish dreams of Kate, was it the cavalry of Spain, at Caballador. But Kate's bridle-hand is deadly whose head so often she had charged the bloody cold. And her spurs, that she had never unIndian scalpers? Was it, according to the legend fastened since leaving the monastic asylum, hung of ancient days, cavalry that had been sown by as idle as the flapping sail that fills unsteadily her brother's blood, cavalry that rose from the with the breeze upon a stranded ship. ground on an inquest of retribution, and were racing up the Andes to seize her? Her dreams that had opened sullenly to the sound waited for no answer, but closed again into pompous darkness. Happily, the horsemen had caught the glimpse of some bright ornament, clasp, or aiguillette, on Kate's dress. They were hunters and foresters from below; servants in the household of a beneficent lady; and in some pursuit of flying game had wandered beyond their ordinary limits. Struck by the sudden scintillation from Kate's dress played upon by the morning sun, they rode up to the thicket. Great was their surprise, great their pity, to see a young officer in uniform stretched within the bushes upon the ground, and perhaps dying. Borderers from factious body around her bed, (comprehending all beside the doctor) who felt sure that death was rapidly approaching, barring that brandy. The same result in the same appalling crisis, I have known repeatedly produced by twenty-five drops of laudanum. An ob stinate man will say "Oh, never listen to a nonmedical man like this writer. Consult in such a case your medical adviser." You will, will you? Then let me tell you, that you are missing the very logic of all I have been saying for the improvement of blockheads, which is that you should consult any man but a medical man, since no other man has any obstinate prejudice of professional timidity. N.B.-I prescribe for Kate gratis, because she, poor thing! has so little to give. But from other ladies, who may have the happiness to benefit by my advice, I expect a fee-not so large a one considering the service-a flowering plant, suppose the second best in their collection. 1 know it would be of no use to ask for the very best, (which else I could wish to do) because that would only be leading them into little fibs. I don't insist on a Fucca gloriosa, or a Magnolia speciosissima, (I hope there is such a plant)-a rose or a violet will do. I am sure there is such a plant as that. And if they settle their debts justly, I shall very soon be master of the prettiest little conservatory in England. For, treat it not as a jest, reader; no case of timid practice is so fatally frequent.

This procession had some miles to go, and over difficult ground; but at length it reached the forest-like park and the chateau of the wealthy proprietress. Kate was still half-frozen and speechless, except at intervals. Heavens! can this corpse-like, languishing young woman be the Kate that once, in her radiant girlhood rode with a handful of comrades into a column of two thousand enemies, that saw her comrades die, that persisted when all were dead, that tore from the heart of all resistance the banner of her native Spain? Chance and change have "written strange defeatures in her face." Much is changed; but some things are not changed: there is still kindness that overflows with pity; there is still helplessness that asks for this pity without a voice: she is now received by a Senora, not less kind than that maternal aunt, who, on the night of her birth, first welcomed her to a loving home; and she, the heroine of Spain, is herself as helpless now as that little lady who, then at ten minutes of age, was kissed and blessed by all the household of St. Sebastian.

Last month, reader, I promised, or some one promised for me, that I should drive through to the end of the journey in the next stage. But, oh, dear reader! these Andes, in Jonathan's phrase, are a "severe" range of hills. It takes "the kick" out of any horse, or, indeed, out of any cornet of horse, to climb up this cruel side of the range. Rest I really must, whilst Kate is resting. But next month I will carry you down the other side at such a flying gallop, that you shall suspect me (though most unjustly) of a plot against your neck. Now, let me throw down the reins; and then, in our brother Jonathan's sweet sentimental expression, "let's liquor."

(To be concluded in our next.)

NIGHT THOUGHTS.

THERE are times when thoughts of the past rush o'er
The rapt mind like a heavy sea,
And like drifted weed from some distant shore
Come regrets for what might not be.

Such thoughts are abroad when the silent skies
Look down on a world at rest;
And the pallid moon on the dark night lies,
Like the fair on Othello's breast!

Then crowd on the mind the once-loved face,
And the long-forgotten tone,

Till the brooding mem'ry fills all space,
And we live in the past alone.

Then the thoughts which the busy present wakes,
And which haunt the gairish day,

Like ghosts when the light of morning breaks,
Hide their faces and shrink away.

H. M. A.

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DEEP in the centre of a sycamore grove-where the peccan and the turtle-berry flourish in open glades, where the deer come at even-tide to water, and where the wild turkey gobble in the due season, thickly dight with wild grave vines, and other creeping plants-is Peccan Spring, a locality celebrated, far and wide, with the hunters and trappers who frequent the borders of the Red River. It is a sweet and retired spot, a very woodland retreat, where fays and sprites might be supposed to dwell and dance by the blue light of a summer moon, leaving mark and sign upon the rich prairie grass; butwhich, in the land of the Anglo-American, knows no other associations but those connected with the copper-coloured aboriginals, who sometimes visit it, for a draught of fresh water, and to rest after the chase. Many a sound of savage feast, and many a wail of war victims had been heard there in its day, and many a tale of wild interest and bloody event was connected with its history.

Around, as far as the eye could reach, was prairie-a level surface of boundless extent, swelling here and there like wavelets of the sea, but to the roving eye flat and anvaried. The wood, which in part was filled with trees of different species, covered many miles of ground, reaching to the border of a small but muddy stream, in part fed by the spring which made the locality so desirable.

The sun had gone angrily to rest, setting in a flood of blood red light that yet illumined the western horizon, a few ragged and scattered clouds were gradually increasing in numbers, and threatening an overcast and stormy night, when a mounted traveller came trotting up towards the centre of the grove. He was a young man of goodly mien and stalwart frame, clothed in a complete suit of hunting clothes, with flannel shirt, buckskin trousers, untanned boots, shot-pouch, bag, and a rifle of heavy calibre-in all no small load for a horse of the dimensions i seen in the prairies. The animal seemed to scent the water, for without hesitation it trotted towards the small open glade, where it bubbled forth, and came to a dead halt.

"Well done, old girl," said the traveller. "I conclude you recollect last fall, when the bloody Sioux were outlying for our skins, and we camped about these diggens. But softly, mare, down below is your location, leave this green sward for your betters. Come a-head, Kelly." "Got the spring?' growled a deep voice, at some dis

tance.

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| tended to render all the less agreeable. He looked the very man to hug a bear, eat an Indian, and whip a panther round his head, as he would swing a cat, by the tail. "We shall do very well, I expect," replied James Wharton, the first speaker.

"We're bound to do war I am. We've meat and water, we've fire and 'baccy, what more can a man ax?'' Wharton laughed, and without answering, having hoffled his horse, began collecting dry sticks, while Kelly with a huge axe felled some large branches suited to the purpose of a roaring fire.

"It's 'nation cold; " said Kelly, "and darn me if I mind the Ingines. I'll have a fire that 'ull speak, I'm bound.

"As you please, I trust to you," smiled Wharton complacently, with a look which plainly said "to save trouble, not because you know any better."

"You're wise, I reckon," growled Kelly.

It was not long, ere by the side of the Peccan Spring which gently bubbled up through a bed of fine sand, there sparkled a huge and speaking blaze, making merry the night air, and chasing away all semblance of the storm. Then down sat the pair to provide the evening mealmost welcome to the traveller in the wilds, after a day's journey with a bracing wind in his teeth. This concluded, both loaded their pipes, and leaning against a friendly and convenient log enjoyed the luxury of a smoke.

"How many more days do you reckon to Little Rock?'' said Wharton, clearing away a dense cloud of smoke by the motion of his hand.

"Good ten, and long chalks at that too," replied Kelly, without removing his pipe which was doing goodly service; "but you ain't tired are you?"

"Not I; ripe for a month."

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"Well then keep first watch, while I snooze,' continued the other with a laugh; and rolling himself along, he stretched his huge limbs athwart the fire, and in five minutes gave evident token of being in a state of somnolency.

James Wharton remained alone, and glancing round noticed that deep night had set in, and that the heavens were more and more overcast and lowering: but he cared not. Born in the haunts of civilisation, and amid the educated of his fellow men, a roving taste had led him to venture amid the wildest scenes, and to depend for days and weeks, nay months, upon his gun for subsistence; to lie down in peace with the wolf, the bear, even with the Indian close at hand—and had taught him to feel no anxiety for his scalp as long as it was upon his head. Rain and wind, heat and cold, had become alike indifferent; and he cared not so that there happened not, the great scourges of the prairies, hunger or thirst. The gusts came constant and heavy amid the trees, and the howl of the caiotoe, an American wolf, was distinct and near, in search of scraps left about by the traveller.

"Hist!" whispered Wharton to himself, as he sank beside his comrade in the act of listening, the gentle but still perceptible sound of a foot fall on the dry sticks be

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