SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE. [See page 56.]

THE
CIRCUIT RIDER

A Tale of the Heroic Age,

BY

EDWARD EGGLESTON,

Author of "The Hoosier School-master" "The End of the
World," etc.

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness."—Isaiah.

"——Beginners of a better time,
And glorying in their vows."—Tennyson.

NEW YORK:
J. B. FORD & COMPANY
1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
J. B. FORD & COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.

TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS,
THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE
HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY,
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I.—[The Corn Shucking]
II.—[The Frolic]
III.—[Going to Meeting]
IV.—[A Battle]
V.—[A Crisis]
VI.—[The Fall Hunt]
VII.—[Treeing a Preacher]
VIII.—[A Lesson in Syntax]
IX.—[The Coming of the Circuit Rider]
X.—[Patty in the Spring-House]
XI.—[The Voice in the Wilderness]
XII.—[Mr. Brady Prophesies]
XIII.—[Two to One]
XIV.—[Kike's Sermon]
XV.—[Morton's Retreat]
XVI.—[Short Shrift]
XVII.—[Deliverance]
XVIII.—[The Prodigal Returns]
XIX.—[Patty]
XX.—[The Conference at Hickory Ridge]
XXI.—[Convalescence]
XXII.—[The Decision]
XXIII.—[Russell Bigelow's Sermon]
XXIV.—[Drawing the Latch-String in]
XXV.—[Ann Eliza]
XXVI.—[Engagement]
XXVII.—[The Camp-Meeting]
XXVIII.—[Patty and her Patient]
XXIX.—[Patty's Journey]
XXX.—[The Schoolmaster and the Widow]
XXXI.—[Kike]
XXXII.—[Pinkey's Discovery]
XXXIII.—[The Alabaster Box Broken]
XXXIV.—[The Brother]
XXXV.—[Plnkey and Ann Eliza]
XXXVI.—[Getting the Answer]

ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. [Spinning-wheel and Rifle] ... Frontispiece
2. [Captain Lumsden]
3. [Mort Goodwin]
4. [Homely S'manthy]
5. [Patty and Jemima]
6. [Little Gabe's Discomfiture]
7. [In the Stable]
8. [Mort, Dolly and Kike]
9. [Good Bye!]
10. [The Altercation]
11. [The Irish Schoolmaster]
12. [Electioneering]
13. [Patty in her Chamber]
14. [Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard]
15. [Patty in the Spring-House]
16. [Job Goodwin]
17. [Two to One]
18. [Gambling]
19. [A Last Hope]
20. [The Choice]
21. [Going to Conference]
22. [Convalescence]
23. [The Connecticut Peddler]
24. [Ann Eliza]
25. [Facing a Mob]
26. ["Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken"]
27. [The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge]
28. [The Reunion]
29. [The Brothers]
30. [An Accusing Memory]
31. [At the Spring-House Again]

PREFACE.

Whatever is incredible in this story is true. The tale I have to tell will seem strange to those who know little of the social life of the West at the beginning of this century. These sharp contrasts of corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild revivals; these contacts of highwayman and preacher; this mélange of picturesque simplicity, grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of abandoned wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those who know the country now. But the books of biography and reminiscence which preserve the memory of that time more than justify what is marvelous in these pages.

Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where my grandfather—brave old Indian-fighter!—had defended his family in a block-house built in a wilderness by his own hands, I grew up familiar with this strange wild life. At the age when other children hear fables and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen. Instead of imaginary giant-killers, children then heard of real Indian-slayers; instead of Blue-Beards, we had Murrell and his robbers; instead of Little Red Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with wild beasts on the very road we traveled to school. In many households the old customs still held sway; the wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut and made up in the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting, apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet fallen into disuse.

In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor the hunter is the center-piece, but the circuit-rider. More than any one else, the early circuit preachers brought order out of this chaos. In no other class was the real heroic element so finely displayed. How do I remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the old preachers, whose constitutions had conquered starvation and exposure—who had survived swamps, alligators, Indians, highway robbers and bilious fevers! How was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of rude experience—how was my imagination wrought upon by the recital of their hair-breadth escapes! How was my heart set afire by their contagious religious enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I bestrode the saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the heavy burden of emulating their toils! Surely I have a right to celebrate them, since they came so near being the death of me.

It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men without enthusiasm. But nothing has been further from my mind than the glorifying of a sect. If I were capable of sectarian pride, I should not come upon the platform of Christian union* to display it. There are those, indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I have frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of early Methodism. I beg they will remember the solemn obligations of a novelist to tell the truth. Lawyers and even ministers are permitted to speak entirely on one side. But no man is worthy to be called a novelist who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce the higher form of history, by writing truly of men as they are, and dispassionately of those forms of life that come within his scope.

* "The Circuit Rider" originally appeared as a serial in The Christian Union.

Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie, I could not treat the early religious life of the West otherwise than with the most cordial sympathy and admiration. And yet this is not a "religious novel," one in which all the bad people are as bad as they can be, and all the good people a little better than they can be. I have not even asked myself what may be the "moral." The story of any true life is wholesome, if only the writer will tell it simply, keeping impertinent preachment of his own out of the way.

Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with some good people by confessing in the start that, from the first chapter to the last, this is a love-story. But it is not my fault. It is God who made love so universal that no picture of human life can be complete where love is left out.

E. E.

BROOKLYN, March, 1874.

"NEC PROPTER VITAM, VIVENDI PERDERE CAUSAS."

THE CIRCUIT RIDER

A TALE OF THE HEROIC AGE.

CHAPTER I.
THE CORN-SHUCKING.

Subtraction is the hardest "ciphering" in the book. Fifty or sixty years off the date at the head of your letter is easy enough to the "organ of number," but a severe strain on the imagination. It is hard to go back to the good old days your grandmother talks about—that golden age when people were not roasted alive in a sleeping coach, but gently tipped over a toppling cliff by a drunken stage-driver.

Grand old times were those in which boys politely took off their hats to preacher or schoolmaster, solacing their fresh young hearts afterward by making mouths at the back of his great-coat. Blessed days! in which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked with starched dignity, and yet were not too good to drink peach-brandy and cherry-bounce with folks; when Congressmen were so honorable that they scorned bribes, and were only kept from killing one another by the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms. It was in those old times of the beginning of the reign of Madison, that the people of the Hissawachee settlement, in Southern Ohio, prepared to attend "the corn-shuckin' down at Cap'n Lumsden's."

There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment that opens the gayeties of the season. The shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage of being set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that were to follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and simple—parties alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.

Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown ridge five or six feet high. The Captain was not insensible to considerations of economy. He knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long run to have it husked by his own farm hands; the expense of an entertainment in whiskey and other needful provisions, and the wasteful handling of the corn, not to mention the obligation to send a hand to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the gratuitous labor. But who can resist the public sentiment that requires a man to be a gentleman according to the standard of his neighbors? Captain Lumsden had the reputation of doing many things which were oppressive, and unjust, but to have "shucked" his own corn would have been to forfeit his respectability entirely. It would have placed him on the Pariah level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who had bought a place farther up the creek, and who dared to husk his own corn, practise certain forbidden economies, and even take pay for such trifles as butter, and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf which he had killed. The propriety of "ducking" this Yankee had been a matter of serious debate. A man "as tight as the bark on a beech tree," and a Yankee besides, was next door to a horse-thief.

So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's. The "women-folks" turned the festive occasion into farther use by stretching a quilt on the frames, and having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in quilting and gossiping—the younger women blushing inwardly, and sometimes outwardly, with hope and fear, as the names of certain young men were mentioned. Who could tell what disclosures the evening frolic might produce? For, though "circumstances alter cases," they have no power to change human nature; and the natural history of the delightful creature which we call a young woman was essentially the same in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago, that it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern times. Difference enough of manner and costume—linsey-woolsey, with a rare calico now and then for Sundays; the dropping of "kercheys" by polite young girls—but these things are only outward. The dainty girl that turns away from my story with disgust, because "the people are so rough," little suspects how entirely of the cuticle is her refinement—how, after all, there is a touch of nature that makes Polly Ann and Sary Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and Blanche, and Mabel.

It was just dark—the rising full moon was blazing like a bonfire among the trees on Campbell's Hill, across the creek—when the shucking party gathered rapidly around the Captain's ridge of corn. The first comers waited for the others, and spent the time looking at the heap, and speculating as to how many bushels it would "shuck out." Captain Lumsden, an active, eager man, under the medium size, welcomed his neighbors cordially, but with certain reserves. That is to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth to each new comer, but brought his voice up at the last like a whip-cracker; there was a something in what Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his enunciation, which reminded the person addressed that Captain Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with politeness, as became an old Virginia gentleman, was not a man whose supremacy was to be questioned for a moment. He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy, Bill?" "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin', eh?" and "Hello, Bob, I thought you had the shakes—got out at last, did you?" Under this superficial familiarity a certain reserve of conscious superiority and flinty self-will never failed to make itself appreciated.

CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.

Let us understand ourselves. When we speak of Captain Lumsden as an old Virginia gentleman, we speak from his own standpoint. In his native state his hereditary rank was low—his father was an "upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good blood," had made money by doubtful means. But such is the advantage of emigration that among outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole Virginny" was credential enough. Was not the Old Dominion the mother of presidents, and of gentlemen? And so Captain Lumsden was accustomed to tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip, while he alluded to his relationships to "the old families," the Carys, the Archers, the Lees, the Peytons, and the far-famed William and Evelyn Bird; and he was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled "Enroughty," while it is mysteriously and inexplicably pronounced "Darby," and to the "Tolivars," whose name is spelled "Taliaferro." Nothing smacks more of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling and pronouncing. In all the Captain's strutting talk there was this shade of truth, that he was related to the old families through his wife. For Captain Lumsden would have scorned a prima facie lie. But, in his fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal—little acorns of fact grew to great oaks of fable.

How quickly a crowd gathers! While I have been introducing you to Lumsden, the Captain has been shaking hands in his way, giving a cordial grip, and then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while calling out, "Ho, Tom! Howdy, Stevens? Hello, Johnson! is that you? Did come after all, eh?"

When once the company was about complete, the next step was to divide the heap. To do this, judges were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield, a slow-speaking man, who was believed to know a great deal because he said little, and looked at things carefully; and Jake Sniger, who also had a reputation for knowing a great deal, because he talked glibly, and was good at off-hand guessing. Butterfield looked at the corn, first on one side, and then on the end of the heap. Then he shook his head in uncertainty, and walked round to the other end of the pile, squinted one eye, took sight along the top of the ridge, measured its base, walked from one end to the other with long strides as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings with one eye shut, while the young lads stared at him with awe. Jake Sniger strode away from the corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who scorned to examine anything minutely. He pointed to the left, and remarked to his admirers that he "'low'd they was a heap sight more corn in the left hand eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed, and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz the leetle, flint, hominy corn, and had a right smart sprinklin' of nubbins." He "'low'd whoever got aholt of them air nubbins would git sucked in. It was neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even, and had orter be divided in the middle of the pile." Strange to say, Butterfield, after all his sighting, and pacing, and measuring, arrived at the same difficult and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence served to confirm the popular confidence in the infallibility of the two judges.

So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided exactly in the middle. A fence rail, leaning against either side, marked the boundary between the territories of the two parties. The next thing to be done was to select the captains. Lumsden, as a prudent man, desiring an election to the legislature, declined to appoint them, laughing his chuckling kind of laugh, and saying, "Choose for yourselves, boys, choose for yourselves."

Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was no better husker. He wanted to be captain on one side, but somebody in the crowd objected that there was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to Bill's shuckin."

"Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's the one they say kin lick me. I'd like to lay him out wunst."

"He ain't yer."

"That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks, I 'low," said Jake Sniger, as a tall, well-built young man came striding hurriedly through the stripped corn stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail fence, and cleared it at a bound.

"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a nephew of Captain Lumsden. "Couldn't many fellers do that eight-rail fence so clean."

"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came up taking off his wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping his forehead. "We thought you wuzn't a comin'. Here, you and Conkey choose up."

MORT GOODWIN.

"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy, and ready to give up such a distinction to others.

"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.

"Not a bit of it," said Mort. "You don't appreciate kindness; where's your stick?"

By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then passing the hand of one above that of the other, it was soon decided that Bill McConkey should have the first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the first choice of corn. The shuckers were thus all divided into two parts. Captain Lumsden, as host, declining to be upon either side. Goodwin chose the end of the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a desp'rate sight of nubbins." Then, at a signal, all hands went to work.

The corn had to be husked and thrown into a crib, a mere pen of fence-rails.

"Now, boys, crib your corn," said Captain Lumsden, as he started the whiskey bottle on its encouraging travels along the line of shuckers.

"Hurrah, boys!" shouted McConkey. "Pull away, my sweats! work like dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em all to thunder, er bust a biler, by jimminy! Peel 'em off! Thunder and blazes! Hurrah!"

This loud hallooing may have cheered his own men, but it certainly stimulated those on the other side. Morton was more prudent; he husked with all his might, and called down the lines in an undertone, "Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the breath he spends in noise we'll spend in gittin' the corn peeled. Here, you! don't you shove that corn back in the shucks! No cheats allowed on this side!"

Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his own men, where he could overlook them and husk, without intermission, himself; knowing that his own dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of two men. When one or two boys on his side began to run over to see how the others were getting along, he ordered them back with great firmness. "Let them alone," he said, "you are only losing time; work hard at first, everybody will work hard at the last."

For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping husks with unremitting eagerness; the heap of unshucked corn had grown smaller, the crib was nearly full of the white and yellow ears, and a great billow of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.

"Why don't you drink?" asked Jake Sniger, who sat next to Morton.

"Want's to keep his breath sweet for Patty Lumsden," said Ben North, with a chuckle.

Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never knew how near he came to getting a whipping.

It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers. McConkey had drunk rather freely, and his "Pull away, sweats!" became louder than ever. Morton found it necessary to run up and down his line once or twice, and hearten his men by telling them that they were "sure to beat if they only stuck to it well."

The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the side led by Goodwin would have given it up once if it had not been for his cheers; the others were so near to victory that they began to shout in advance, and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the battle,—for Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work in a way that set them wild by contagion, and for the last minute they made almost superhuman exertions, sending a perfect hail of white corn into the crib, and licking up the last ear in time to rush with a shout into the territory of the other party, and seize on one or two dozen ears, all that were left, to show that Morton had clearly gained the victory. Then there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a general expression of good feeling. But Bill McConkey vowed that he "knowed what the other side done with their corn," pointing to the husk pile.

"I'll bet you six bits," said Morton, "that I can find more corn in your shucks than you kin in mine." But Bill did not accept the wager.

After husking the corn that remained under the rails, the whole party adjourned to the house, washing their hands and faces in the woodshed as they passed into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the other half block-house fortification.

The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial supper was set in the apartment which was commonly used for parlor and sitting room, and which was now pressed into service for a dining room. The ladies stood around against the wall with a self-conscious air of modesty, debating, no doubt, the effect of their linsey-woolsey dresses. For what is the use of carding and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting and sewing to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?

CHAPTER II.
THE FROLIC.

The supper was soon dispatched; the huskers eating with awkward embarrassment, as frontiermen always do in company,—even in the company of each other. To eat with decency and composure is the final triumph of civilization, and the shuckers of Hissawachee Bottom got through with the disagreeable performance as hurriedly as possible, the more so that their exciting strife had given them vigorous relish for Mrs. Lumsden's "chicken fixin's," and batter-cakes, and "punkin-pies." The quilters had taken their supper an hour before, the table not affording room for both parties. When supper was over the "things" were quickly put away, the table folded up and removed to the kitchen—and the company were then ready to enjoy themselves. There was much gawky timidity on the part of the young men, and not a little shy dropping of the eyes on the part of the young women; but the most courageous presently got some of the rude, country plays a-going. The pawns were sold over the head of the blindfold Mort Goodwin, who, as the wit of the company, devised all manner of penalties for the owners. Susan Tomkins had to stand up in the corner, and say,

"Here I stand all ragged and dirty,
Kiss me quick, or I'll run like a turkey."

These lines were supposed to rhyme. When Aleck Tilley essayed to comply with her request, she tried to run like a turkey, but was stopped in time.

The good taste of people who enjoy society novels will decide at once that these boisterous, unrefined sports are not a promising beginning. It is easy enough to imagine heroism, generosity and courage in people who dance on velvet carpets; but the great heroes, the world's demigods, grew in just such rough social states as that of Ohio in the early part of this century. There is nothing more important for an over-refined generation than to understand that it has not a monopoly of the great qualities of humanity, and that it must not only tolerate rude folk, but sometimes admire in them traits that have grown scarce as refinement has increased. So that I may not shrink from telling that one kissing-play took the place of another until the excitement and merriment reached a pitch which would be thought not consonant with propriety by the society that loves round-dances with roués, and "the German" untranslated—though, for that matter, there are people old-fashioned enough to think that refined deviltry is not much better than rude freedom, after all.

Goodwin entered with the hearty animal spirits of his time of life into the boisterous sport; but there was one drawback to his pleasure—Patty Lumsden would not play. He was glad, indeed, that she did not; he could not bear to see her kissed by his companions. But, then, did Patty like the part he was taking in the rustic revel? He inly rejoiced that his position as the blindfold Justice, meting out punishment to the owner of each forfeit, saved him, to some extent, the necessity of going through the ordeal of kissing. True, it was quite possible that the severest prescription he should make might fall on his own head, if the pawn happened to be his; but he was saved by his good luck and the penetration which enabled him to guess, from the suppressed chuckle of the seller, when the offered pawn was his own.

At last, "forfeits" in every shape became too dull for the growing mirth of the company. They ranged themselves round the room on benches and chairs, and began to sing the old song:

"Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow—
Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow—
You nor I, but the farmers, know
Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.

"Thus the farmer sows his seed,
Thus he stands and takes his ease,
Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,
And whirls around and views his lands.

"Sure as grass grows in the field,
Down on this carpet you must kneel,
Salute your true love, kiss her sweet,
And rise again upon your feet."

It is not very different from the little children's play—an old rustic sport, I doubt not, that has existed in England from immemorial time. McConkey took the handkerchief first, and, while the company were singing, he pretended to be looking around and puzzling himself to decide whom he would favor with his affection. But the girls nudged one another, and looked significantly at Jemima Huddlestone. Of course, everybody knew that Bill would take Jemima. That was fore-ordained. Everybody knew it except Bill and Jemima! Bill fancied that he was standing in entire indecision, and Jemima—radiant peony!—turned her large, red-cheeked face away from Bill, and studied meditatively a knot in a floor-board. But her averted gaze only made her expectancy the more visible, and the significant titter of the company deepened the hue and widened the area of red in her cheeks. Attempts to seem unconscious generally result disastrously. But the tittering, and nudging, and looking toward Jemima, did not prevent the singing from moving on; and now the singers have reached the line which prescribes the kneeling. Bill shakes off his feigned indecision, and with a sudden effort recovers from his vacant and wandering stare, wheels about, spreads the "handkercher" at the feet of the backwoods Hebe, and diffidently kneels upon the outer edge, while she, in compliance with the order of the play, and with reluctance only apparent, also drops upon her knees on the handkerchief, and, with downcast eyes, receives upon her red cheek a kiss so hearty and unreserved that it awakens laughter and applause. Bill now arises with the air of a man who has done his whole duty under difficult circumstances. Jemima lifts the handkerchief, and, while the song repeats itself, selects some gentleman before whom she kneels, bestowing on him a kiss in the same fashion, leaving him the handkerchief to spread before some new divinity.

HOMELY S'MANTHY.

This alternation had gone on for some time. Poor, sanguine, homely Samantha Britton had looked smilingly and expectantly at each successive gentleman who bore the handkerchief; but in vain. "S'manthy" could never understand why her seductive smiles were so unavailing. Presently, Betty Harsha was chosen by somebody—Betty had a pretty, round face, and pink cheeks, and was sure to be chosen, sooner or later. Everybody knew whom she would choose. Morton Goodwin was the desire of her heart. She dressed to win him; she fixed her eyes on him in church; she put herself adroitly in his way; she compelled him to escort her home against his will; and now that she held the handkerchief, everybody looked at Goodwin. Morton, for his part, was too young to be insensible to the charms of the little round, impulsive face, the twinkling eyes, the red, pouting lips; and he was not averse to having the pretty girl, in her new, bright, linsey frock, single him but for her admiration. But just at this moment he wished she might choose some one else. For Patty Lumsden, now that all her guests were interested in the play, was relieved from her cares as hostess, and was watching the progress of the exciting amusement. She stood behind Jemima Huddleston, and never was there finer contrast than between the large, healthful, high-colored Jemima, a typical country belle, and the slight, intelligent, fair-skinned Patty, whose black hair and eyes made her complexion seem whiter, and whose resolute lips and proud carriage heightened the refinement of her face. Patty, as folks said, "favored" her mother, a woman of considerable pride and much refinement, who, by her unwillingness to accept the rude customs of the neighborhood, had about as bad a reputation as one can have in a frontier community. She was regarded as excessively "stuck up." This stigma of aristocracy was very pleasing to the Captain. His family was part of himself, and he liked to believe them better than anybody's else. But he heartily wished that Patty would sacrifice her dignity, at this juncture, to further his political aspirations.

PATTY AND JEMIMA.

Seeing the vision of Patty standing there in her bright new calico—an extraordinary bit of finery in those days—Goodwin wished that Betty would attack somebody else, for once. But Betty Harsha bore down on the perplexed Morton, and, in her eagerness, did not wait for the appropriate line to come—she did not give the farmer time to "stomp" his foot, and clap his hands, much less to whirl around and view his lands—but plumped down upon the handkerchief before Morton, who took his own time to kneel. But draw it out as he would, he presently found himself, after having been kissed by Betty, standing foolishly, handkerchief in hand, while the verses intended for Betty were not yet finished. Betty's precipitancy, and her inevitable gravitation toward Morton, had set all the players laughing, and the laugh seemed to Goodwin to be partly at himself. For, indeed, he was perplexed. To choose any other woman for his "true love" even in play, with Patty standing by, was more than he could do; to offer to kneel before her was more than he dared to do. He hesitated a moment; he feared to offend Patty; he must select some one. Just at the instant he caught sight of the eager face of S'manthy Britton stretched up to him, as it had been to the others, with an anxious smile. Morton saw a way out. Patty could not be jealous of S'manthy. He spread the handkerchief before the delighted girl, and a moment later she held in her hand the right to choose a partner.

The fop of the party was "Little Gabe," that is to say, Gabriel Powers, junior. His father was "Old Gabe," the most miserly farmer of the neighborhood. But Little Gabe had run away in boyhood, and had been over the mountains, had made some money, nobody could tell how, and had invested his entire capital in "store clothes." He wore a mustache, too, which, being an unheard-of innovation in those primitive times, marked him as a man who had seen the world. Everybody laughed at him for a fop, and yet everybody admired him. None of the girls had yet dared to select Little Gabe. To bring their linsey near to store-cloth—to venture to salute his divine mustache—who could be guilty of such profanity? But S'manthy was morally certain that she would not soon again have a chance to select a "true love," and she determined to strike high. The players did not laugh when she spread her handkerchief at the feet of Little Gabe. They were appalled. But Gabe dropped on one knee, condescended to receive her salute, and lifted the handkerchief with a delicate flourish of the hand which wore a ring with a large jewel, avouched by Little Gabe to be a diamond—a jewel that was at least transparent.

Whom would Little Gabe choose? became at once a question of solemn import to every young woman of the company; for even girls in linsey are not free from that liking for a fop, so often seen in ladies better dressed. In her heart nearly every young woman wished that Gabe would choose herself. But Gabe was one of those men who, having done many things by the magic of effrontery, imagine that any thing can be obtained by impudence, if only the impudence be sufficiently transcendent. He knew that Miss Lumsden held herself aloof from the kissing-plays, and he knew equally that she looked favorably on Morton Goodwin; he had divined Morton's struggle, and he had already marked out his own line of action. He stood in quiet repose while the first two stanzas were sung. As the third began, he stepped quickly round the chair on which Jemima Huddleston sat, and stood before Patty Lumsden, while everybody held breath. Patty's cheeks did not grow red, but pale, she turned suddenly and called out toward the kitchen:

"What do you want? I am coming," and then walked quietly out, as if unconscious of Little Gabe's presence or purpose. But poor Little Gabe had already begun to kneel; he had gone too far to recover himself; he dropped upon one knee, and got up immediately, but not in time to escape the general chorus of laughter and jeers. He sneered at the departing figure of Patty, and said, "I knew I could make her run." But he could not conceal his discomfiture.

LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.

When, at last, the party broke up, Morton essayed to have a word with Patty. He found her standing in the deserted kitchen, and his heart beat quick with the thought that she might be waiting for him. The ruddy glow of the hickory coals in the wide fire-place made the logs of the kitchen walls bright, and gave a tint to Patty's white face. But just as Morton was about to speak, Captain Lumsden's quick, jerky tread sounded in the entry, and he came in, laughing his aggravating metallic little laugh, and saying, "Morton, where's your manners? There's nobody to go home with Betty Harsha."

"Dog on Betty Harsha!" muttered Morton, but not loud enough for the Captain to hear. And he escorted Betty home.

CHAPTER III.
GOING TO MEETING.

Every history has one quality in common with eternity. Begin where you will, there is always a beginning back of the beginning. And, for that matter, there is always a shadowy ending beyond the ending. Only because we may not always begin, like Knickerbocker, at the foundation of the world, is it that we get courage to break somewhere into the interlaced web of human histories—of loves and marriages, of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of successes and disappointments, of gettings and havings, and spendings and losings. Yet, break in where we may, there is always just a little behind the beginning, something that needs to be told.

I find it necessary that the reader should understand how from childhood Morton had rather worshiped than loved Patty Lumsden. When the long spelling-class, at the close of school, counted off its numbers, to enable each scholar to remember his relative standing, Patty was always "one," and Morton "two." On one memorable occasion, when the all but infallible Patty misspelled a word, the all but infallible Morton, disliking to "turn her down," missed also, and went down with her. When she afterward regained her place, he took pains to stand always "next to head." Bulwer calls first love a great "purifier of youth," and, despite his fondness for hunting, horse-racing, gaming, and the other wild excitements that were prevalent among the young men of that day, Morton was kept from worse vices by his devotion to Patty, and by a certain ingrained manliness.

Had he worshiped her less, he might long since have proposed to her, and thus have ended his suspense; but he had an awful sense of Patty's nobility? and of his own unworthiness. Moreover, there was a lion in the way. Morton trembled before the face of Captain Lumsden.

Lumsden was one of the earliest settlers, and was by far the largest land-owner in the settlement. In that day of long credit, he had managed to place himself in such a way that he could make his power felt, directly or indirectly, by nearly every man within twenty miles of him. The very judges on the bench were in debt to him. On those rare occasions when he had been opposed, Captain Lumsden had struck so ruthlessly, and with such regardlessness of means or consequences, that he had become a terror to everybody. Two or three families had been compelled to leave the settlement by his vindictive persecutions, so that his name had come to carry a sort of royal authority. Morton Goodwin's father was but a small farmer on the hill, a man naturally unthrifty, who had lost the greater part of a considerable patrimony. How could Morton, therefore, make direct advances to so proud a girl as Patty, with the chances in favor of refusal by her, and the certainty of rejection by her father? Illusion is not the dreadfulest thing, but disillusion—Morton preferred to cherish his hopeless hope, living in vain expectation of some improbable change that should place him at better advantage in his addresses to Patty.

At first, Lumsden had left him in no uncertainty in regard to his own disposition in the matter. He had frowned upon Goodwin's advances by treating him with that sort of repellant patronage which is so aggravating, because it affords one no good excuse for knocking down the author of the insult. But of late, having observed the growing force and independence of Morton's character, and his ascendancy over the men of his own age, the Captain appreciated the necessity of attaching such a person to himself, particularly for the election which was to take place in the autumn. Not that he had any intention of suffering Patty to marry Morton. He only meant to play fast and loose a while. Had he even intended to give his approval to the marriage at last, he would have played fast and loose all the same, for the sake of making Patty and her lover feel his power as long as possible. At present, he meant to hold out just enough of hope to bind the ardent young man to his interest. Morton, on his part, reasoned that if Lumsden's kindness should continue to increase in the future as it had in the three weeks past, it would become even cordial, after a while. To young men in love, all good things are progressive.

On the Sunday morning following the shucking, Morton rose early, and went to the stable. Did you ever have the happiness to see a quiet autumn Sunday in the backwoods? Did you ever observe the stillness, the solitude, the softness of sunshine, the gentleness of wind, the chip-chip-chlurr-r-r of great flocks of blackbirds getting ready for migration, the lazy cawing of crows, softened by distance, the half-laughing bark of cunning squirrel, nibbling his prism-shaped beech-nut, and twinkling his jolly, child-like eye at you the while, as if to say, "Don't you wish you might guess?"

Not that Morton saw aught of these things. He never heard voices, or saw sights, out of the common, and that very October Sunday had been set apart for a horse-race down at "The Forks." The one piece of property which our young friend had acquired during his minority was a thorough-bred filley, and he felt certain that she—being a horse of the first families—would be able to "lay out" anything that could be brought against her. He was very anxious about the race, and therefore rose early, and went out into the morning light that he might look at his mare, and feel of her perfect legs, to make sure that she was in good condition.

"All right, Dolly?" he said—"all right this morning, old lady? eh? You'll beat all the scrubs; won't you?"

In this exhilarating state of anxiety and expectation, Morton came to breakfast, only to have his breath taken away. His mother asked him to ride to meeting with her, and it was almost as hard to deny her as it was to give up the race at "The Forks."

Rough associations had made young Goodwin a rough man. His was a nature buoyant, generous, and complaisant, very likely to take the color of his surroundings. The catalogue of his bad habits is sufficiently shocking to us who live in this better day of Sunday-school morality. He often swore in a way that might have edified the army in Flanders. He spent his Sundays in hunting, fishing, and riding horse-races, except when he was needed to escort his mother to meeting. He bet on cards, and I am afraid he drank to intoxication sometimes. Though he was too proud and manly to lie, and too pure to be unchaste, he was not a promising young man. The chances that he would make a fairly successful trip through life did not preponderate over the chances that he would wreck himself by intemperance and gambling. But his roughness was strangely veined by nobleness. This rude, rollicking, swearing young fellow had a chivalrous loyalty to his mother, which held him always ready to devote himself in any way to her service.

On her part, she was, indeed, a woman worthy of reverence. Her father had been one of those fine old Irish gentlemen, with grand manners, extravagant habits, generous impulses, brilliant wit, a ruddy nose, and final bankruptcy. His daughter, Jane Morton, had married Job Goodwin, a returned soldier of the Revolution—a man who was "a poor manager." He lost his patrimony, and, what is worse, lost heart. Upon his wife, therefore, had devolved heavy burdens. But her face was yet fresh, and her hair, even when anchored back to a great tuck-comb, showed an errant, Irish tendency to curl. Morton's hung in waves about his neck, and he cherished his curls, proud of the resemblance to his mother, whom he considered a very queen, to be served right royally.

But it was hard—when he had been training the filley from a colt—when he had looked forward for months to this race as a time of triumph—to have so severe a strain put upon his devotion to his mother. When she made the request, he did not reply. He went to the barn and stroked the filley's legs—how perfect they were!—and gave vent to some very old and wicked oaths. He was just making up his mind to throw the saddle on Dolly and be off to the Forks, when his decision was curiously turned by a word from his brother Henry, a lad of twelve, who had followed Morton to the stable, and now stood in the door.

"Mort," said he, "I'd go anyhow, if I was you. I wouldn't stand it. You go and run Doll, and lick Bill Conkey's bay fer him. He'll think you're afeard, ef you don't. The old lady hain't got no right to make you set and listen to old Donaldson on sech a purty day as this."

"Looky here, Hen!" broke out Morton, looking up from the meditative scratching of Dolly's fetlocks, "don't you talk that away about mother. She's every inch a lady, and it's a blamed hard life she's had to foller, between pappy's mopin' and the girls all a-dyin' and Lew's bad end—and you and me not promisin' much better. It's mighty little I kin do to make things kind of easy for her, and I'll go to meetin' every day in the week, ef she says so."

IN THE STABLE.

"She'll make a Persbyterian outen you, Mort; see ef she don't."

"Nary Presbyterian. They's no Presbyterian in me. I'm a hard nut. I would like to be a elder, or a minister, if it was in me, though, just to see the smile spread all over her face whenever she'd think about it. Looky here, Hen! I'll tell you something. Mother's about forty times too good for us. When I had the scarlet fever, and was cross, she used to set on the side of the bed, and tell me stories, about knights and such like, that she'd read about in grandfather's books when she was a girl—jam up good stories, too, you better believe. I liked the knights, because they rode fine horses, and was always ready to fight anything that come along, but always fair and square, you know. And she told me how the knights fit fer their religion, and fer ladies, and fer everybody that had got tromped down by somebody else. I wished I'd been a knight myself. I 'lowed it would be some to fight for somebody in trouble, or somethin' good. But then it seemed as if I couldn't find nothin' worth the fightin' fer. One day I lay a-thinkin', and a-lookin' at mother's white lady hands, and face fit fer a queen's. And in them days she let her hair hang down in long curls, and her black eyes was bright like as if they had a light inside of 'em, you know. She was a queen, I tell you! And all at wunst it come right acrost me, like a flash, that I mout as well be mother's knight through thick and thin; and I've been at it ever since. I 'low I've give her a sight of trouble, with my plaguey wild ways, and I come mighty blamed nigh runnin' this mornin', dogged ef I didn't. But here goes."

And with that he proceeded to saddle the restless Dolly, while Henry put the side-saddle on old Blaze, saying, as he drew the surcingle tight, "For my part, I don't want to fight for nobody. I want to do as I dog-on please." He was meditating the fun he would have catching a certain ground-hog, when once his mother should be safely off to meeting.

Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped his mother to mount, gallantly put her foot in the stirrup, arranged her long riding-skirt, and then mounted his own mare. Dolly sprang forward prancing and dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting would be a dull affair, if it were not for the fun of letting Dolly know who was her master. The ride to church was a long one, for there had never been preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than ten miles away. Morton found the sermon rather more interesting than usual. There still lingered in the West at this time the remains of the controversy between "Old-side" and "New-side" Presbyterians, that dated its origin before the Revolution. Parson Donaldson belonged to the Old side. With square, combative face, and hard, combative voice, he made war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and the grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in particular upon the exciting meetings of the Methodists. The great Cane Ridge Camp-meeting was yet fresh in the memories of the people, and for the hundredth time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian ministers who had originated this first of camp-meetings, and set agoing the wild excitements now fostered by the Methodists. He said that Presbyterians who had anything to do with this fanaticism were led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right in driving some of them out. As for Methodists, they denied "the Decrees." What was that but a denial of salvation by grace? And this involved the overthrow of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith. This is rather the mental process by which the parson landed himself at his conclusions, than his way of stating them to his hearers. In preaching, he did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the decrees logically involved the rest. He translated his conclusions into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted that these crazy, illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit riders were traitors to Protestantism, denying the doctrine of Justification, and teaching salvation by the merit of works. There were many divines, on both sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed justified any amount of unfairness. (But all that is past!)

Morton's combativeness was greatly tickled by this discourse, and when they were again in the saddle to ride the ten miles home, he assured his mother that he wouldn't mind coming to meeting often, rain or shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody every time. He thought it wouldn't be hard to be good, if a body could only have something bad to fight. "Don't you remember, mother, how you used to read to me out of that old "Pilgrim's Progress," and show me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon till his hide wouldn't hold shucks? If I could fight the devil that way, I wouldn't mind being a Christian."

Morton felt especially pleased with the minister to-day, for Mr. Donaldson delighted to have the young men come so far to meeting; and imagining that he might be in a "hopeful state of mind," had hospitably urged Morton and his mother to take some refreshment before starting on their homeward journey. It is barely possible that the stimulus of the good parson's cherry-bounce had quite as much to do with Morton's valiant impulses as the stirring effect of his discourse.

CHAPTER IV.
A BATTLE.

The fight so much desired by Morton came soon enough.

As he and his mother rode home by a "near cut," little traveled, Morton found time to master Dolly's fiery spirit and yet to scan the woods with the habitual searching glance of a hunter. He observed on one of the trees a notice posted. A notice put up in this out-of-the-way place surprised him. He endeavored to make his restless steed approach the tree, that he might read, but her wild Arabian temper took fright at something—a blooded horse is apt to see visions—and she would not stand near the tree. Time after time Morton drove her forward, but she as often shied away. At last, Mrs. Goodwin begged him to give over the attempt and come on; but Morton's love of mastery was now excited, and he said,

"Ride on, mother, if you want to; this question between Dolly and me will have to be discussed and settled right here. Either she will stand still by this sugar-tree, or we will fight away till one or t'other lays down to rest."

The mother contented herself with letting old Blaze browse by the road-side, and with shaping her thoughts into a formal regret that Morton should spend the holy Sabbath in such fashion; but in her maternal heart she admired his will and courage. He was so like her own father, she thought—such a gentleman! And she could not but hope that he was one of God's elect. If so, what a fine Christian he would be when he should be converted! And, quiet as she was without, her heart was in a moment filled with agony and prayer and questionings. How could she live in heaven without Morton? Her eldest son had already died a violent death in prodigal wanderings from home. But Morton would surely be saved!

Morton, for his part, cared at the moment far less for anything in heaven than he did to master the rebellious Dolly. He rode her all round the tree; he circled that maple, first in one direction, then in another, until the mare was so dizzy she could hardly see. Then he held her while he read the notice, saying with exultation, "Now, my lady, do you think you can stand still?"

Beyond a momentary impulse of idle curiosity, Morton had not cared to know the contents of the paper. Even curiosity had been forgotten in his combat with Dolly. But as soon as he saw the signature, "Enoch Lumsden, administrator of the estate of Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased," he forgot his victory over his horse in his interest in the document itself. It was therein set forth that, by order of the probate court in and for the county aforesaid, the said Enoch Lumsden, administrator, would sell at public auction all that parcel of land belonging to the estate of the said Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased, known and described as follows, to wit, namely, etc., etc.

"By thunder!" broke out Morton, angrily, as he rode away (I am afraid he swore by thunder instead of by something else, out of a filial regard for his mother). "By thunder! if that ain't too devilish mean! I s'pose 'tain't enough for Captain Lumsden to mistreat little Kike—he has gone to robbing him. He means to buy that land himself; or, what's the same thing, git somebody to do it for him. That's what he put that notice in this holler fer. The judge is afraid of him; and so's everybody else. Poor Kike won't have a dollar when he's a man."

"Somebody ought to take Kike's part," said Mrs. Goodwin. "It's a shame for a whole settlement to be cowards, and to let one man rule them. It's worse than having a king."

Morton loved "Little Kike," and hated Captain Lumsden; and this appeal to the anti-monarchic feeling of the time moved him. He could not bear that his mother, of all, should think him cowardly. His pride was already chafed by Lumsden's condescension, and his provoking way of keeping Patty and himself apart. Why should he not break with him, and have done with it, rather than stand by and see Kike robbed? But to interfere in behalf of Kike was to put Patty Lumsden farther away from him. He was a knight who had suddenly come in sight of his long-sought adversary while his own hands were tied. And so he fell into the brownest of studies, and scarcely spoke a word to his mother all the rest of his ride. For here were his friendship for little Kike, his innate antagonism to Captain Lumsden, and his strong sense of justice, on one side; his love for Patty—stronger than all the rest—on the other. In the stories of chivalry which his mother had told, the love of woman had always been a motive to valiant deeds for the right. And how often had he dreamed of doing some brave thing while Patty applauded! Now, when the brave thing offered, Patty was on the other side. This unexpected entanglement of motives irritated him, as such embarrassment always does a person disposed to act impulsively and in right lines. And so it happened that he rode on in moody silence, while the mother, always looking for signs of seriousness in the son, mentally reviewed the sermon of the day, in vain endeavor to recall some passages that might have "found a lodgment in his mind."

Had the issue been squarely presented to Morton, he might even then have chosen Patty, letting the interests of his friends take care of themselves. But he did not decide it squarely. He began by excusing himself to himself:—What could he do for Kike? He had no influence with the judge; he had no money to buy the land, and he had no influential friends. He might agitate the question and sacrifice his own hope, and, after all, accomplish nothing for Kike. No doubt all these considerations of futility had their weight with him; nevertheless he had an angry consciousness that he was not acting bravely in the matter. That he, Morton Goodwin, who had often vowed that he would not truckle to any man, was ready to shut his eyes to Captain Lumsden's rascality, in the hope of one day getting his consent to marry his daughter! It was this anger with himself that made Morton restless, and his restlessness took him down to the Forks that Sunday evening, and led him to drink two or three times, in spite of his good resolution not to drink more than once. It was this restlessness that carried him at last to the cabin of the widow Lumsden, that evening, to see her son Kike.

MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.

Kike was sixteen; one of those sallow-skinned boys with straight black hair that one sees so often in southern latitudes. He was called "Little Kike" only to distinguish him from his father, who had also borne the name of Hezekiah. Delicate in health and quiet in manner, he was a boy of profound feeling, and his emotions were not only profound but persistent. Dressed in buck-skin breeches and homespun cotton overshirt, he was milking old Molly when Morton came up. The fixed lines of his half-melancholy face relaxed a little, as with a smile deeper than it was broad he lifted himself up and said,

"Hello, Mort! come in, old feller!"

But Mort only sat still on Dolly, while Kike came round and stroked her fine neck, and expressed his regret that she hadn't run at the Forks and beat Bill McConkey's bay horse. He wished he owned such "a beast."

"Never mind; one of these days, when I get a little stronger, I will open that crick bottom, and then I shall make some money and be able to buy a blooded horse like Dolly. Maybe it'll be a colt of Dolly's; who knows?" And Kike smiled with a half-hopefulness at the vision of his impending prosperity. But Morton could not smile, nor could he bear to tell Kike that his uncle had determined to seize upon that very piece of land regardless of the air-castles Kike had built upon it. Morton had made up his mind not to tell Kike. Why should he? Kike would hear of his uncle's fraud in time, and any mention on his part would only destroy his own hopes without doing anything for Kike. But if Morton meant to be prudent and keep silence, why had he not staid at home? Why come here, where the sight of Kike's slender frame was a constant provocation to speech? Was there a self contending against a self?

"Have you got over your chills yet?" asked Morton.

"No," said the black-haired boy, a little bitterly. "I was nearly well when I went down to Uncle Enoch's to work; and he made me work in the rain. 'Come, Kike,' he would say, jerking his words, and throwing them at me like gravel, 'get out in the rain. It'll do you good. Your mother has ruined you, keeping you over the fire. You want hardening. Rain is good for you, water makes you grow; you're a perfect baby.' I tell you, he come plaguey nigh puttin' a finishment to me, though."

Doubtless, what Morton had drunk at the Forks had not increased his prudence. As usual in such cases, the prudent Morton and the impulsive Morton stood the one over against the other; and, as always the imprudent self is prone to spring up without warning, and take the other by surprise, so now the young man suddenly threw prudence and Patty behind, and broke out with—

"Your uncle Enoch is a rascal!" adding some maledictions for emphasis.

That was not exactly telling what he had resolved not to tell, but it rendered it much more difficult to keep the secret; for Kike grew a little red in the face, and was silent a minute. He himself was fond of roundly denouncing his uncle. But abusing one's relations is a luxury which is labeled "strictly private," and this savage outburst from his friend touched Kike's family pride a little.

"I know that as well as you do," was all he said, however.

"He would swindle his own children," said Morton, spurred to greater vehemence by Kike's evident disrelish of his invective. "He will chisel you out of everything you've got before you're of age, and then make the settlement too hot to hold you if you shake your head." And Morton looked off down the road.

"What's the matter, Mort? What set you off on Uncle Nuck to-night? He's bad enough, Lord knows; but something must have gone wrong with you. Did he tell you that he did not want you to talk to Patty?"

"No, he didn't," said Morton. And now that Patty was recalled to his mind, he was vexed to think that he had gone so far in the matter. His tone provoked Kike in turn.

"Mort, you've been drinking! What brought you down here?"

Here the imprudent Morton got the upper hand again. Patty and prudence were out of sight at once, and the young man swore between his teeth.

"Come, old fellow; there's something wrong," said Kike, alarmed. "What's up?"

"Nothing; nothing," said Morton, bitterly. "Nothing, only your affectionate uncle has stuck a notice in Jackson's holler—on the side of the tree furthest from the road—advertising your crick bottom for sale. That's all. Old Virginia gentleman! Old Virginia devil! Call a horse-thief a parson, will you?" And then he added something about hell and damnation. These two last words had no grammatical relation with the rest of his speech; but in the mind of Morton Goodwin they had very logical relations with Captain Lumsden and the subject under discussion. Nobody is quite a Universalist in moments of indignation. Every man keeps a private and select perdition for the objects of his wrath.

When Morton had thus let out the secret he had meant to retain, Kike trembled and grew white about the lips. "I'll never forgive him," he said, huskily. "I'll be even with him, and one to carry; see if I ain't!" He spoke with that slow, revengeful, relentless air that belongs to a black-haired, Southern race.

"Mort, loan me Doll to-morry?" he said, presently.

"Can you ride her? Where are you going?" Morton was loth to commit himself by lending his horse.

"I am going to Jonesville, to see if I can stop that sale; and I've got a right to choose a gardeen. I mean to take one that will make Uncle Enoch open his eyes. I'm goin' to take Colonel Wheeler; he hates Uncle Enoch, and he'll see jestice done. As for ridin' Dolly, you know I can back any critter with four legs."

"Well, I guess you can have Dolly," said Morton, reluctantly. He knew that if Kike rode Dolly, the Captain would hear of it; and then, farewell to Patty! But looking at Kike's face, so full of pain and wrath, he could not quite refuse. Dolly went home at a tremendous pace, and Morton, commonly full of good nature, was, for once, insufferably cross at supper-time.

"Mort, meetin' must 'a' soured on you," said Henry, provokingly. "You're cross as a coon when it's cornered."

"Don't fret Morton; he's worried," said Mrs. Goodwin. The fond mother still hoped that the struggle in his mind was the great battle of Armageddon that should be the beginning of a better life.

Morton went to his bed in the loft filled with a contempt for himself. He tried in vain to acquit himself of cowardice—the quality which a border man considers the most criminal. Early in the morning he fed Dolly, and got her ready for Kike; but no Kike came. After a while, he saw some one ascending the hill on the other side of the creek. Could it be Kike? Was he going to walk to Jonesville, twenty miles away? And with his ague-shaken body? How roundly Morton cursed himself for the fear that made him half refuse the horse! For, with one so sensitive as Kike, a half refusal was equivalent to the most positive denial. It was not too late. Morton threw the saddle and bridle on Dolly, and mounted. Dolly sprang forward, throwing her heels saucily in the air, and in fifteen minutes Morton rode up alongside Kike.

"Here, Kike, you don't escape that way! Take Dolly."

"No, I won't, Morton. I oughtn't to have axed you to let me have her. I know how you feel about Patty."

"Confound—no, I won't say confound Patty—but confound me, if I'm mean enough to let you walk to Jonesville. I was a devlish coward yesterday. Here, take the horse, dog on you, or I'll thrash you," and Morton laughed.

"I tell you, Mort, I won't do it," said Kike, "I'm goin' to walk."

"Yes, you look like it! You'll die before you git half-way, you blamed little fool you! If you won't take Dolly, then I'll go along to bury your bones. They's no danger of the buzzard's picking such bones, though."

Just then came by Jake Sniger, who was remarkable for his servility to Lumsden.

"Hello, boys, which ways?" he asked.

"No ways jest now," said Morton.

"Are you a travelin', or only a goin' some place?" asked Sniger, smiling.

"I 'low I'm travelin', and Kike's a goin' some place," said Morton.

When Sniger had gone on, Morton said, "Now Kike, the fat's all in the fire. When the Captain finds out what you've done, Sniger is sure to tell that he see us together. I've got to fight it out now anyhow, and you've got to take Dolly."

"No, Morton, I can't."

If Kike had been any less obstinate the weakness of his knees would have persuaded him to relent.

GOOD-BYE!

"Well, hold Dolly a minute for me, anyhow," said Morton, dismounting. As soon as Kike had obligingly taken hold of the bridle, Morton started toward home, singing Burns's "Highland Mary" at the top of his rich, melodious voice, never looking back at Kike till he had finished the song, and reached the summit of the hill. Then he had the satisfaction of seeing Kike in the saddle, laughing to think how his friend had outwitted him. Morton waved his hat heartily, and Kike, nodding his head, gave Dolly the rein, and she plunged forward, carrying him out of sight in a few minutes. Morton's mother was disappointed, when he came in late to breakfast, to see that his brow was clear. She feared that the good impressions of the day before had worn away. How little does one know of the real nature of the struggle between God and the devil, in the heart of another! But long before Kike had brought Dolly back to her stall, the exhilaration of self-sacrifice in the mind of Morton had worn away, and the possible consequences of his action made him uncomfortable.

CHAPTER V.
A CRISIS.

Work, Morton could not. After his noonday dinner he lifted his flint-lock gun from the forked sticks upon the wall where it was laid, and set out to seek for deer,—rather to seek forgetfulness of the anxiety that preyed upon him. Excitement was almost a necessity with him, even at ordinary times; now, it seemed the only remedy for his depression. But instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot everything but Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it impossible to absorb himself in hunting. For when a frontierman loves, he loves with his whole nature. The interests of his life are few, and love, having undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion. After two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he started a deer, but did not see at in time to shoot. He had tramped through the brush without caution or vigilance. He now saw that it would be of no avail to keep up this mockery of hunting. He was seized with an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her once more before the door should be closed against him. He might strike the trail, and reach the settlement in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the Captain was away from the house. His only chance was to see her in the absence of her father, who would surely contrive some interruption if he were present.

So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return was about half accomplished he ran headlong into the very midst of a flock of wild turkeys. They ran swiftly away in two or three directions, but not until the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down two glossy young gobblers. Tying their legs together with a strip of paw-paw bark, he slung them across his gun, and laid his gun over his shoulder, pleased that he would not have to go home quite empty-handed.

As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn afternoon, he is such a man as one likes to see: quite six feet high, well made, broad, but not too broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose litheness indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled away somewhere for an emergency. His walk is direct, elastic, unflagging; he is like his horse, a clean stepper; there is neither slouchiness, timidity, nor craftiness in his gait. The legs are as much a test of character as the face, and in both one can read resolute eagerness. His forehead is high rather than broad, his blue eye and curly hair, and a certain sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his Scotch-Irish mother. His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him the look of a hunter. The homespun "hunting shirt" hangs outside his buckskin breeches, and these terminate below inside his rawhide boots.

The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well enough by this time, but, like a policeman on duty, Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect his function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at the gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air of surly vigilance. The young man hails him with a friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old fellow smooths his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical enough if Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.

Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the old cabin portion of the building, used for a kitchen and loom-room. The monotonous rise and fall of the wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder and louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then slacking, then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new climax—this cadenced hum, as he hears it, is made rhythmical by the tread of feet that run back across the room after each climax of sound. He knows the quick, elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead entrance to the house, and passes round to the kitchen door. It is Patty, as he thought, and, as his shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very act of urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it till it roars, and at the same time nods merrily at Morton over the top of it; then she trips back across the room, drawing the yarn with her left hand, which she holds stretched out; when the impulse is somewhat spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty catches the wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle, and turns to the door. She changes her spinning stick to the left hand, and extends her right with a genial "Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."

"Yes, one for you and one for mother."

"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."

"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill, doffing his coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead with his red handkerchief. "Go on with your spinning, Patty, I like to see you spin."

"Well, I will. I mean to spin two dozen cuts to-day. I've been at it since five o'clock."

Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin. He was, in his present perplexed state, willing to avoid all conversation except such broken talk as might be carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.

Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure as did the old spinning-wheel. Patty's perfect form was disfigured by no stays, or pads, or paniers—her swift tread backwards with her up-raised left hand, her movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her agile figure in lithe action. If plastic art were not an impossibility to us Americans, our stone-cutters might long since have ceased, like school-boys, to send us back from Rome imitation Venuses, and counterfeit Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and stagey Washingtons on stage-horses;—they would by this time have found out that in our primitive life there are subjects enough, and that in mythology and heroics we must ever be dead copyists. But I do not believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat there in the October evening sun and watched the little feet, yet full of unexhausted energy after traveling to and fro all day. He did not know, or care, that Patty, with her head thrown back and her left arm half outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject for a statue. He had never seen marble, and had never heard of statues except in the talk of the old schoolmaster. How should her think to call her statuesque? Or how should he know that the wide old log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast fireplace, wherein sit the two huge, black andirons, and wherein swings an iron crane on which hang pot-hooks with iron pots depending—the old kitchen, with its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are festooned strings of drying pumpkins—how should Morton Goodwin know that this wide old kitchen, with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured, fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two dozen cuts of yarn in a day, would make a genre piece, the subject of which would be good enough for one of the old Dutch masters? He could not know all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet treading swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and as he saw the fine face, ruddy with the vigorous exercise, looking at him over the top of a whirling wheel whose spokes were invisible—he did know that Patty Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he shuddered when he remembered that to-morrow, and indefinitely afterward, he might be shut out from her father's house.

It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's broken patches of sprightly talk and the monotonous symphony of her wheel, that Captain Lumsden came into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around to the kitchen door.

"Hello, Morton! here, eh? Been hunting? This don't pay. A young man that is going to get on in the world oughtn't to set here in the sunshine talking to the girls. Leave that for nights and Sundays. I'm afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and late. Eh?" And the captain chuckled his hard little laugh.

Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon vanish, as he rose to go. He laid the turkey destined for Patty inside the door, took up the other, and was about to leave. Meantime the captain had lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his thirst.

"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary way, between his sips of water—and Morton felt his face color at the first mention of Kike. "I saw Kike crossing the creek on your mare. You oughtn't to let him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet. Here comes Kike himself. I wonder where he's been to?"

Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he opened the gate, evidence of deep passion; but Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking for anything remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.

"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached, while Watch faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've you been cavorting on that filley to-day? I told Mort he was a fool to let a snipe like you ride that she-devil. She'll break your blamed neck some day, and then there'll be one fool less." And the captain chuckled triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting the thing. "Don't kick the dog! What an ill-natured ground-hog you air! If I had the training of you, I'd take some of that out."

"You haven't got the training of me, and you never will have."

Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.

"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man," chuckled Captain Lumsden.

"I don't know what you call impudence," said Kike, stretching his slender frame up to its full height, and shaking as if he had an ague-chill; "but you are a tyrant and a scoundrel!"

"Tut! tut! Kike, you're crazy, you little brute. What's up?"

"You know what's up. You want to cheat me out of that bottom land; you have got it advertised on the back side of a tree in North's holler, without consulting mother or me. I have been over to Jonesville to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my gardeen."

"Colonel Wheeler? Why, that's an insult to me!" And the captain ceased to laugh, and grew red.

"I hope it is. I couldn't get the judge to take back the order for the sale of the land; he's afeard of you. But now let me tell you something, Enoch Lumsden! If you sell my land by that order of the court, you'll lose more'n you'll make. I ain't afeard of the devil nor none of his angels; and I recken you're one of the blackest. It'll cost you more burnt barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and sheep than what you make will pay for. You cheated pappy, but you shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike. I'll turn Ingin, and take Ingin law onto you, you old thief and—"

THE ALTERCATION.

Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised his cowhide. "I'll teach you some manners, you impudent little brat!"

Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or foot. "Hit me if you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and they'll be blood betwixt us then. You hit me wunst, and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year. You or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."

Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all about her two dozen a day, and stood frightened in the door, near Morton. Morton advanced and took hold of Kike.

"Come, Kike! Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.

"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike, shaking loose. "I've got an account to settle, and ef he tetches a thread of my coat with a cowhide, it'll be a bad day fer both on us. We'll settle with blood then."

"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled the captain. "I know well enough who put Kike up to this. I'll settle with both of you, some day." Then, with an oath, the captain went into the house, while the two young men moved away down the road, Morton not daring to look at Patty.

What Morton dreaded most had come upon him. As for Kike, when once they were out of sight of Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame was terrible. He sat down on a log and cried with grief and anger.

"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances, Mort," said he.

And Morton did not reply.

CHAPTER VI.
THE FALL HUNT.

Morton led Kike home in silence, and then returned to his father's house, deposited his turkey outside the door, and sat down on a broken chair by the fire-place. His father, a hypochondriac, hard of hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at him steadily a moment, and then said:

"Sick, Mort? Goin' to have a chill?"

"No, sir."

"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as he stuffed his pipe full of leaf tobacco which he had chafed in his hand, and sat down on the other side of the fire-place. "I feel a kind of all-overishness myself. I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this year. Hey?"

"I don't know, sir."

"What?"

"I said I didn't know." Morton found it hard to answer his father with decency. The old man said "Oh," when he understood Morton's last reply; and perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on the awful consequences that might result if "the fever," which was rumored to have broken out at Chilicothe, should spread to the Hissawachee bottom. Mrs. Goodwin took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and she began to hope more than ever that he might prove to be one of the elect. Indeed, she thought it quite probable that a boy so good to his mother would be one of the precious few; for though she knew that the election was unconditional, and of grace, she could not help feeling that there was an antecedent probability of Morton's being chosen. She went quietly and cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin corn-meal dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the hoe in its place before the fire, setting the sassafras tea to draw, skimming the milk, and arranging the plates—white, with blue edges—and the yellow cups and saucers on the table, and all the while praying that Morton might be found one of those chosen before the foundation of the world to be sanctified and saved to the glory of God.

The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible breaking out of the fever, and the meditation of his wife about the hopeful state of her son, and the painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break with Captain Lumsden—all three set agoing primarily by one cause—were all three simultaneously interrupted by the appearance of the younger son, Henry, at the door, with a turkey.

"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.

"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."

"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father. "Well, the captain's feeling clever, I 'low."

"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said it was with Miss Patty's somethin' or other—couplements, Bob called 'em."

"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton, smiling. "Well, you're gettin' on there mighty fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to send a turkey?" The mother looked anxiously at her son, seeing he did not evince any pleasure at so singular a present from Patty. Morton was obliged to explain the state of affairs between himself and the captain, which he did in as few words as possible. Of course, he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the turkey was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional pain.

"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe again, after supper. "Quarreled with Lumsden! He'll drive us off. We'll all take the fever"—for every evil that Job Goodwin thought of immediately became inevitable, in his imagination—"we'll all take the fever, and have to make a new settlement in winter time." Saying this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth, rested his elbow on his knee, and his head on his hand, diligently exerting his imagination to make real and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from this new and improved stand-point of despair.

But the wise mother set herself to planning; and when eight o'clock had come, and Job Goodwin had forgotten the fever, having fallen into a doze in his shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that the best thing for him and Kike would be to get out of the settlement until the captain should have time to cool off.

"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything desperate. We want some meat for winter; and though it's a little early yet, you'd better start off with Kike in the morning," she said.

Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown pain and forebodings in some excitement, Morton did not need a second suggestion from his mother. He feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he had little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he had an eager desire to forget his trouble in a chase after bears and deer. He seized his cap, saddled and mounted Dolly, and started at once to the house of Kike's mother. Soon after Morton went, his father woke up, and, finding his son gone out, complained, as he got ready for bed, that the boy would "ketch the fever, certain, runnin' 'round that away at night."

THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.

Morton found Kike in a state of exhaustion—pale, angry, and sick. Mr. Brady, the Irish school-master, from whom the boys had received most of their education and many a sound whipping, was doing his best to divert Kike from his revengeful mood. It is a singular fact in the history of the West, that so large a proportion of the first school-masters were Irishmen of uncertain history.

"Ha! Moirton, is it you?" said Brady. "I'm roight glad to see ye. Here's this b'y says hay'd a shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a toiched him with his roidin'-fwhip. An' I've been a-axin ov him fwoi hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times, sayin' oive lathered him with baich switches. I didn't guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay wuz, sure. Else I'd a had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd a venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was the bayginnin'. Hay moight a busted me impty pate for tellin' him that A wusn't B."

It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling at the good old fellow's banter. Brady was bent on mollifying Kike, who was one of his brightest and most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and Morton in scholarship though much younger.

Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was much troubled to see him in so dangerous a passion. "I wish he was leetle-er, ur bigger," she said.

"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair madam?" asked the Irishman.

"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I could whip it outen him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't be sich a fool. Boys is allers powerful troublesome when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween—nary man nor boy. They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n they used to be, that they think theirselves men, and talk about shootin', and all sich like. Deliver me from a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid acrost your lap, and larnt what's what. Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y he's got a oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like his pappy afore him, and he's one of them you can't turn. An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I would be glad ef he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like Kike to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden. Nobody but God A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an' it's a blessed comfort to me that I'll meet him at the Jedgment-day. Nothin' does my heart so much good, like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle then, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake a mortgage in his face. It's the on'y rale nice thing about the Day of Jedgment, akordin' to my thinkin'. I mean to call his attention to some things then. He won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families thar, I 'low."

Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's; and even Kike smiled a little, partly at his mother's way of putting things, and partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.

Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he and Kike should leave early in the morning, on the fall hunt. Kike felt the first dignity of manhood on him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand with his uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a rare one, and killing a bear would be almost as pleasant to his boyish ambition as shooting his uncle.

"I don't want to run away from him. He'll think I've backed out," he said, hesitatingly.

"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you put out and git some bear's ile for your noice black hair. If the cap'n makes so bowld as to sell ye out of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile ye're gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git back. The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit. It'll burn a dale better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad. An', as for the shootin' part, practice on the bears fust! 'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the captain, and him ye're own dair uncle, ye know. He'll keep till ye come back. If I say anybody a goin' to crack him owver, I'll jist spake a good word for ye, an' till him as the captin's own affictionate niphew has got the fust pop at him, by roight of bayin' blood kin, sure."

Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation of the matter; and while he hesitated, his mother said he should go. She'd bundle him off in the early morning. And long before daylight, the two boys, neither of whom had slept during the night, started, with guns on their shoulders, and with the venerable Blaze for a pack-horse. Dolly was a giddy young thing, that could not be trusted in business so grave.

CHAPTER VII.
TREEING A PREACHER.

Had I but bethought myself in time to call this history by one of those gentle titles now in vogue, as "The Wild Hunters of the Far West," or even by one of the labels with which juvenile and Sunday-school literature—milk for babes—is now made attractive, as, for instance, "Kike, the Young Bear Hunter." I might here have entertained the reader with a vigorous description of the death of Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands of the triumphant Kike, and of the exciting chase after deer under the direction of Morton.

After two weeks of such varying success as hunters have, they found that it would be necessary to forego the discomforts of camp-life for a day, and visit the nearest settlement in order to replenish their stock of ammunition. Wilkins' store, which was the center of a settlement, was a double log-building. In one end the proprietor kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets, cheap ribbons, and artificial flowers, a small stock of earthenware, and cheap crockery, a little homespun cotton cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks of yarn and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco for "chawing," a little "store-tea"—so called in contra-distinction to the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in general use—with a plentiful stock of whisky, and some apple-brandy. The other end of this building was a large room, festooned with strings of drying pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted by one small window with four lights of glass. In this room, which contained three beds, and in the loft above, Wilkins and his family lived and kept a first-class hotel.

In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to Diana and Bacchus. Our young friends visited the settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not because they wished to rest, but because they had begun to get lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to find some frolic in progress, and in making new acquaintances, fifty miles from home, they would be able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games at cards, and other social enjoyments.

Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined store and tavern at ten o'clock in the morning, and found the expected crowd of loafers. The new-comers "took a hand" in all the sports, the jumping, the foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the "wras'lin'," the target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and were soon accepted as clever fellows. A frontierman could bestow no higher praise—to be a clever fellow in his sense was to know how to lose at cards, without grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to be always ready to change your coon-skins into "drinks for the crowd," and to be able to hit a three-inch "mark" at two hundred paces without bragging.

Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a little, there walked up to the tavern door a man in homespun dress, carrying one of his shoes in his hand, and yet not seeming to be a plain backwoodsman. He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an acute observer might have guessed from his face that his life had been one of daring adventure, and many vicissitudes. There were traces also of conflicting purposes, of a certain strength, and a certain weakness of character; the melancholy history of good intentions overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations was written in his countenance.

ELECTIONEERING.

"Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet," said one of Morton's companions.

The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke to each one as though he had known him always. He proposed "the drinks" as the surest road to an acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger paid the score, not in skins but in silver coin.

"See here, stranger," said Morton, mischievously, "you're mighty clever, by hokey. What are you running fer?"

"Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time. I 'low to run for sheriff next heat," said the stranger, who affected dialect for the sake of popularity.

"What mout your name be?" asked one of the company.

"Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home. I live at Jenkinsville. I sot out in life a poor boy. I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that my shoes hurts my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand most of the time."

Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the stranger with perfect seriousness said, dryly: "Well, Mr. Burchard, I never heard that speech so well done before. We're all goin' to vote for you, without t'other man happens to do it up slicker'n you do. I don't believe he can, though. That was got off very nice."

Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh which this sally produced, and to make friends with Morton, who was clearly the leader of the party, and whose influence was worth securing.

Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and play, and as evening drew on, the crowd tired even of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of funny anecdotes—little stories that had been aired in the same order at every other tavern and store in the county. From sheer ennui it was proposed that they should attend Methodist preaching at a house two miles away. They could at least get some fun out of it. Burchard, foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself. He wished he might enjoy the sport, but he must push on. And "push on" he did. In a closely contested election even Methodist votes were not to be thrown away.

Morton and Kike relished the expedition. They had heard that the Methodists were a rude, canting, illiterate race, cloaking the worst practices under an appearance of piety. Mr. Donaldson had often fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt almost sure that they could count on his apostolic approval in their laudable enterprise of disturbing a Methodist meeting.

The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest type. His speech was full of dialectic forms and ungrammatical phrases. His illustrations were exceedingly uncouth. It by no means followed that he was not an effective preacher. All these defects were rather to his advantage,—the backwoods rhetoric was suited to move the backwoods audience. But the party from the tavern were in no mood to be moved by anything. They came for amusement, and set themselves diligently to seek it. Morton was ambitious to lead among his new friends, as he did at home, and on this occasion he made use of his rarest gift. The preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up" with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude metaphors to the right and left, and the audience was fast coming under his influence, when Morton Goodwin, who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of Mr. Brady's school, now began to squeak like a rat in a trap, looking all the while straight at the preacher, as if profoundly interested in the discourse. The women were startled and the grave brethren turned their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the young men. In a moment the squeaking ceased, and there began the shrill yelping of a little dog, which seemed to be on the women's side of the room. Brother Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request that the dog should be removed, when he began to suspect from the sensation among the young men that the disturbance was from them.

"You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies will bark, even when they walk on two legs instid of four."

This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no permanent advantage to the preacher, for Morton, being a stranger, did not care for the good opinion of the audience, but for the applause of the young revelers with whom he had come. He kept silence now, until the preacher again approached a climax, swinging his stalwart arms and raising his voice to a tremendous pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem sufficiently terrible to his hearers. At last, when he got to the terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically, "What are these awful sounds I hear?" At this point he made a pause, which would have been very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.

"Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a crow.

"Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung and breeze-shaken over that pit that has no bottom."

"Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Mr. Mellen now ceased preaching, and started toward the part of the room in which the young men sat, evidently intending to deal out summary justice to some one. He was a man of immense strength, and his face indicated that he meant to eject the whole party. But they all left in haste except Morton, who staid and met the preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence. Mr. Mellen was perplexed. A disembodied voice wandering about the room would have been too much for Hercules himself. When the baffled orator turned back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in an aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr. Mellen's inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!"

And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon him, the scoffer was already fleeing through the door.

CHAPTER VIII.
A LESSON IN SYNTAX.

The young men were gone until the latter part of November. Several persons longed for their return. Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to feel a strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and died in the woods. He was also very sure that each succeeding day would witness some act of hostility toward himself on the part of Captain Lumsden; and as each day failed to see any evil result from the anger of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any tidings of disaster to Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully carried forward the dark foreboding with compound interest to the next day. He abounded in quotations of such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's days were few and full of trouble. The book of Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial fountain of misery—he delighted to found his despairing auguries upon the superior wisdom of Solomon. He looked for Morton's return with great anxiety, hoping to find that nothing worse had happened to him than the shooting away of an arm. Mrs. Goodwin, for her part, dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of hunting. She feared lest Morton should fall into the bad habits that had carried away from home an older brother, for whose untimely death in an affray she had never ceased to mourn.

And Patty! When her father had on that angry afternoon discovered the turkey that Morton had given her, and had sent it home with a message in her name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that she was. She held her head aloft; she neither indicated pleasure nor displeasure at her father's course; she would not disclose any liking for Morton, nor any complaisance toward her father. This air of defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired. It showed her mettle, he said to himself. Patty would almost have finished that two dozen cuts of yarn if it had cost her life. She even managed to sing, toward the last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine o'clock, she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,—drawing a sigh of relief when the reel snapped,—and hung her twelve hanks up together, she seemed as blithe as ever. Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand, with wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked approvingly on Patty's achievement. Patty showed her good blood, was the mother's reflection.

PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.

But Patty? She did not hurry. She put everything away carefully. She was rather slow about retiring. But when at last she went aloft into her room in the old block-house part of the building, and shut and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the high, old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she looked at herself in the little looking-glass and did not see there the face she had been able to keep while the eyes of others were upon her. She saw weariness, disappointment, and dejection. Her strong will held her up. She undressed herself with habitual quietness. She even stopped to look again in self-pity at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on her night-cap. But when at last she had blown out the candle, and carefully extinguished the wick, and had climbed into the great, high, billowy feather-bed under the rafters, she buried her tired head in the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once admitting to herself what she was crying about.

And as the days wore on, and her father ceased to speak of Kike or Morton, and she heard that they were out of the settlement, she found in herself an ever-increasing desire to see Morton. The more she tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied to herself the existence of the feeling, the more intense did it become. Whenever hunters passed the gate, going after or returning laden with game, she stopped involuntarily to gaze at them. But she never failed, a moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of countenance and to rebuke herself for curiosity so idle. What were hunters to her?

But one evening the travelers whom she looked for went by. They were worse for wear; their buckskin pantaloons were torn by briers; their tread was heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty, peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse, did not fail to recognize old Blaze, burdened as he was with venison, bear-meat and skins, nor to note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse of herself. That look of Morton's sent a blush of pleasure over her face, which she could not quite conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a younger brother a minute later. But when she saw her father gallop rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the young men, her sense of pleasure changed quickly to foreboding.

Morton and Kike had managed, for the most part, to throw off their troubles in the excitement of hunting. But when at last they had accumulated all the meat old Blaze could carry and all the furs they could "pack," they had turned their steps toward home. And with the turning of their steps toward home had come the inevitable turning of their thoughts toward old perplexities. Morton then confided to Kike his intention of leaving the settlement and leading the life of a hermit in the wilderness in case it should prove to be "all off" between him and Patty. And Kike said that his mind was made up. If he found that his uncle Enoch had sold the land, he would be revenged in some way and then run off and live with the Indians. It is not uncommon for boys now-a-days to make stern resolutions in moments of wretchedness which they never attempt to carry out. But the rude life of the West developed deep feeling and a hardy persistence in a purpose once formed. Many a young man crossed in love or incited to revenge had already taken to the wilderness, becoming either a morose hermit or a desperado among the savages. At the period of life when the animal fights hard for supremacy in the soul of man, destiny often hangs very perilously balanced. It was at that day a question in many cases whether a young man of force would become a rowdy or a class-leader.

When once our hunters had entered the settlement they became more depressed than ever. Morton's eyes searched Captain Lumsden's house and yard in vain for a sight of Patty. Kike looked sternly ahead of him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded of his uncle's existence. And when, five minutes later, they heard horse-hoofs behind them, and, looking back, saw Captain Lumsden himself galloping after them on his sleek, "clay-bank" saddle-horse, their hearts beat fast with excitement. Morton wondered what the Captain could want with them, seeing it was not his way to carry on his conflicts by direct attack; and Kike contented himself with looking carefully to the priming of his flintlock, compressing his lips and walking straight forward.

"Hello, boys! Howdy? Got a nice passel of furs, eh? Had a good time?"

"Pretty good, thank you, sir!" said Morton, astonished at the greeting, but eager enough to be on good terms again with Patty's father. Kike said not a word, but grew white with speechless anger.

"Nice saddle of ven'son that!" and the Captain tapped it with his cow-hide whip. "Killed a bar, too; who killed it?"

"Kike," said Morton.

"Purty good fer you, Kike! Got over your pout about that land yet?"

Kike did not speak, for the reason that he could not.