a feeling of self-reliance, which inspired us with | the Far West" his description of the tragic end a consciousness of superior power; for we had of a trapper, one of whose adventures I narbreathed the pure atmosphere of the Great Prai-rated in my "Ride with Kit Carson." He says: ries until every nerve was braced, and every sinew strengthened to its fullest vigor.

"The rocky bed of a dry mountain torrent, whose waters were now locked up at their spring heads by icy fetters, was the only road up which they could make their difficult way; for the rugged sides of the gorge rose precipitously from the creek, scarcely affording a foothold to even the active Big Horn which occasionally looked down upon the travelers from the lofty summit. Logs of pine, uprooted by the hurricanes which sweep incessantly through the mountain defiles, and tossed headlong from the surrounding ridges, continually obstructed their way, and huge rocks and boulders, fallen from the heights and blocking up the bed of the stream, added to the difficulty, and threatened them every instant with destruction.

"During the past winter a party of mountaineers, flying from overpowering numbers of My story is told. From the broad Bay of San hostile Sioux, found themselves, one stormy evenFrancisco to the turbid waters of the rapid Mis-ing, in a wild and dismal cañon near the elevated souri, I have laid before the reader the inci- mountain valley called the New Park.' dents of my journey; but kind recollections of the rough yet true souled men who were my companions, ay and friends also, during this adventurous trip, have been revived in their preparation for the press, and I should do my own heart injustice if I neglected to pay the tribute of a few remarks to those who have warmed themselves by my camp fire and slumbered beside my bed. Frémont has written most truthfully when he says, in referring to the strength of this sympathy, that "men who have gone through such dangers and sufferings as we had seen become like brothers, and feel each other's loss; to defend and avenge each other is the deep feeling of all." The existence of these hardy mountaineers is one of continual peril and privation. Its rewards are vigorous health and strong excitement. Its end, in most cases, a violent death and an unknown grave; or, haply, a broken arrow, a shivered lance, and the disjointed fragments of a bleaching skeleton lie scattered upon the prairie, the sole relics left by the wolf and vulture to chronicle the fate of one who struggled until numbers overcame the resistance of despair.

I have spoken of the oftentimes violent termination of the mountain man's career. I will conclude by quoting from the pages of "Ruxton's Life in

"Toward sundown they reached a point where the cañon opened out into a little shelving glade or prairie, a few hundred yards in extent, the entrance to which was almost hidden by a thicket of dwarf pine and cedar. Here they determined to encamp for the night, in a spot secure from Indians, and as they imagined untrodden by the foot of man. What, however, was their astonishment, on breaking through the cedarcovered entrance, to perceive a solitary horse standing motionless in the centre of the prairie! Drawing near they found it to be an old grizzled

mustang, or Indian pony, with cropped ears and | Wharf, where, as it happened, no vessels were ragged tail (well picked by hungry mules), stand- moored. By the time Eliza had tied the glass ing doubled up with cold, and at the very last in its canvas case and shut the portico door gasp from extreme old age and weakness. Its her grandmother called her to dinner, with a bones were nearly through the stiffened skin, the shrill voice, which made Eliza answer loudly, legs of the animal were gathered under it, while "Coming!" But she went slowly, rubbing her its forlorn-looking head and stretched-out neck aquiline nose with an air of irritation, lost in an hung listlessly downward, almost overbalancing effort at guessing the reason of Ann Le Barron's its tottering body. The glazed and sunken eye, walking on the wharf in the middle of the day. the protruding and froth-covered tongue, the Eliza was mild, sensible, and twenty years old; heaving flank and quivering tail, declared its but her grandmother, with whom she had lived race was run; and the driving sleet and snow since the death of her parents, treated her as if and penetrating winter blast scarce made im- she were a wayward child; therefore when she pression upon its callous and worn-out frame. commenced her dinner with a preoccupied air One of the band of mountaineers was Marcellin, Mrs. Mason attacked her. and a single look at the miserable beast was sufficient for him to recognize the once renowned Nez-percé steed of old Bill Williams. That the owner himself was not far distant he felt certain, and searching carefully around the hunters presently came upon an old camp, before which lay, protruding from the snow, the blackened remains of pine logs. Before these which had been the fire, and leaning with his back against a pine trunk, and his legs crossed under him, halfcovered with snow, reclined the figure of the old mountaineer, his snow-capped head bent over his breast. His well-known hunting-shirt, of fringed elk-skin, hung stiff and weather-stained about him; and his rifle, packs, and traps were strewed around.

"Awe-struck, the trappers approached the body, and found it frozen hard as stone, in which state it had probably lain there for many days or weeks. A jagged rent in the breast of his leather coat, and dark stains about it, showed he had received a wound before his death; but it was impossible to say whether to his hurt, or to sickness, or to the natural decay of age, was to be attributed the wretched and solitary end of poor Bill Williams.

"A friendly bullet cut short the few remaining hours of the trapper's faithful steed; and burying as well as they were able the body of the old mountaineer, the hunters next day left him in his lonely grave, in a spot so wild and remote that it was doubtful whether even hungry wolves would discover and disinter his attenuated corpse."

"Now do tell me, 'Liza, if you are going to eat these fritters in a dream ?" "No, grandma."

"You do torment me about your eating." "She's a solid girl, Nancy," said old Mr. Mason; "something keeps her alive."

"You know nothing about it, Mason; hold your tongue. Will you have a piece more of this beef?"

"Grandfather," said Eliza, brightening at some thought, "may I have Dick this afternoon to go to ride ?"

'No; you can't have him."

Now Mr. Mason meant "yes;" but his wife opposing him when he said "Yes," and when he said "No," his speech was contrary to his intention from principle.

"For mercy's sake, why can't she have Dick, who is eating his head off in idleness?"

Eliza smiled at her grandfather, who said again that she could not go to ride.

"Do you go," said Mrs. Mason to a shockheaded boy who was peeling potatoes in a corner of the kitchen, "and see if John is at the barn, and tell him to tackle Dick at two o'clock. Where are you going, 'Liza?"

"On the Neck."

"What for? Why don't you ride Ship Bay way? But if you will go the Neck road, stop at Mrs. Jones's, and get me some of her dried camomile flowers; they are the best in the world."

By two o'clock Eliza was jogging briskly along a leafy, narrow road, running through the neck of land which jutted into the sea on the side of the bay opposite the pleasant village of Shelby. The wild rose was in bloom, and the young briers crept over the rough stone walls to bask OW seeing Ann in the June sun. The paths that into the

66

A PARTIE CARÉE.

I.

"How is it that I am always to ing alate woody swamps were green with delicate moe

about her? What attracts me? She is neither talented, handsome, nor good. What is it to me how she looks or behaves? She is no example to follow. She is perplexing, for she lives in ambush; but what for?"

Eliza Mayhew shut up her grandfather's seaglass, through which she had peered seaward in the hope of discovering a sail-boat supposed to be somewhere in the bay. Instead of the boat she had seen Ann Le Barron walking, like a sentinel, back and forth at the end of Brown's

and pale, stalky plants, and Eliza stopping Dick, thrust her head out of the chaise, and looked into them with a vague delight. The fresh wind fluttered the leaves of the scrub oaks, and trembled in the birches, and broke into low sighs when it reached the dark unmoved pines that dotted the landscape. After riding several miles she struck into a steep cross road, gullied by rains which had washed the soil away, leaving a bed of rolling stones over which Dick was urged with a gay chirrup. The road came to

an end suddenly, as if it had just convinced it- | Her eyes falling on an old mahogany secretary self that there was little need of its going on to which stood in the chimney recess, a thought nowhere. She plunged boldly into a marshy occurred to her. She opened it, and took from meadow, guiding Dick by a row of stakes which one of its pigeon-holes a morocco case, containpointed toward a clump of ancient, storm-beat-ing the miniature likeness of a man with pale en fir-trees. Here she left the chaise, climbed eyes and a paler complexion, in a sky-blue coat a sandy hill, and saw a wide space of sea, and ruffled shirt. stretching westerly till lost in a misty distance. A boat was anchored in the lee of a little island, and on the boat she anchored her eyes.

"There they are, Dick!" she called.

Dick pricked up his ears comprehensively, although, from his position under the hill, he was precluded from a view of the cause of her exclamation.

For the benefit of the ants, perhaps, she made little sand-mounds with her foot, while she indulged in a reverie, sentimental but allowable, for it was a happy and an innocent one. Presently she smiled, and shook her head with an expression of reproof as she said,

"Come, Dick, we will go back."

She was detained so long at Mrs. Jones's by questions concerning life "down to the shore" that it was five o'clock before she got home,

"What upon earth made you stay so?" her grandmother asked. "Dick has been wanted for a funeral."

"Why didn't you let Bill go instead?"

"Bill does not understand funerals. You know how he run back in the procession at old Mrs. Crosby's funeral, and what confusion there Dick takes to them naturally."

was.

"But he is buried safe, I suppose, without Dick."

"After tea you must sew; don't waste your time in reading."

After the sewing was finished Eliza read three chapters in "Thaddeus of Warsaw" and one in the Bible. As a corrective to the dissipation of the afternoon she imposed the penance of not looking out of any window, either down the main street, at the head of which the house stood, or over the bay which rolled before it.

II.

"I look like him," she soliloquized, rubbing the gold frame with her handkerchief. "He was aristocratic. But I remember seeing him only once, and then he wore a tarpaulin hat. He tossed me in his arms, and I cried, because he tumbled my frock."

She put the picture back in its place, and went to the glass to observe her own features, in which attitude her mother discovered her.

"Mother, how near to a Frenchman was father?"

Mrs. Le Barron, glancing at the secretary as if something there could answer the question better than herself, replied,

"His father was French, I believe."
"Am I like him?"
"Very much."

"I wish he had lived."

"He was very proud, and, I am afraid, not very happy; he couldn't bear any thing that wasn't genteel. But, Ann, you should be happy; although we are not rich, you have more than he had."

"How long may it last? The minute grandfather dies Uncle Tom will swoop up every thing, and turn you and me out of the house. You know it. You know that he is a rascal—a mean, dirty villain."

"Try on your dress," her mother said, shortly. "It is nearly tea-time; here comes father now."

Captain Green, a hale, bluff old salt, stormed in with a string of live fish, which he held up close to Ann, and demanded that they should be cooked immediately for his supper.

"Don't bring them up here, grandfather!" snapped Ann; "a chamber is not the place for fish!"

"Hity, tity, Miss! a sailor's daughter mustn't "Where can Eliza Mayhew be going?" said be so squeamish. But your mother has ruined Ann Le Barron, as she saw her pass from her you; she is weaker than dish-water. Where do chamber-window. you think I got 'em? The young lawyer prig "She rides often, you know," Mrs. Le Barron-what's-his-name? that comes to play cards answered. "Her grandfather has two horses, and she can afford it."

with you-gave them to me. I was on the wharf when he came in; he had a spanking

"I am sick of her praises of Dick; it is so breeze to round the pint in!" childish in her."

"Mr. Mason bought the horse, I remember, about two years after your father was lost. It will be fourteen years this fall since I heard the news. You might have had a horse too, if he had come home."

"No such luck! I wish you would alter that pink dress; I want to wear it this evening."

The widow went in search of the dress. Ann drummed on the pane, her eyes roving vacantly for some object of interest outside; but as the house stood on a back street there were few passers-by. It was empty, and she turned away.

"Mr. Allen, do you mean?"
"That's the man."

"What nice fish they are!" said Ann, with a coquettish voice. "I'll help you to fry them, mother."

"It's more than half past five," said Captain Green. "Shelby has had its supper; we are behindhand."

After the tea-things were put away the pink dress was donned, and Ann, lighting the astral lamp in the parlor, took a seat there, with a patient "will-you-come-into-my-parlor" aspect. The rays of the lamp, however, only attracted

two young ladies, who came in, possibly with the hope of meeting other visitors, for Ann's was a regular rendezvous. But none came, and the young ladies soon departed. Ann retired, and, while Eliza Mayhew was interested in Mary Beaufort and her “white muslin cloak," twisted her thin silky brown hair in papers. Her gaping mother was in waiting, for it was her duty to put out the light. Ann's fingers clutched a curl-paper in mid-air as she caught the tones of a manly voice, which came nearer and nearer, singing,

"We have been friends together!"

"I have come up to bed too soon," she said. Mrs. Le Barron stopped gaping, and swung one foot over the other while she listened; but the voice passed on and was soon out of hearing, and the light in Ann's cold blue eyes faded.

III.

The singer in the street, Henry Allen, went on his way to his room in the Montgomery Hotel, which stood at the lower end of Main Street. As he passed Mr. Mason's square white house, whose inhabitants were undoubtedly wrapped in slumber, he said to himself, "Nice girl! but how strict they keep her;" and hummed,

"You may break, you may ruin the vase, if you will." In the hotel he met his father, Judge Allen, of Belford, a town twenty miles inland. He had sent Henry from his own office to practice law in the marine locality of Shelby, and was now come to visit him as a judge and as a father.

"You smoke too much, Henry," was his greeting.

that the amount of Henry's legal earnings for his first year in Shelby, now just ended, was forty dollars. He confessed that he had bought a boat with the money. The Judge admitted that boating might be pleasant. Henry thought the admission was a gain, and grew eloquent on the topic, when his father interrupted him and went on with his practical remarks. In time a moderate but steady practice might be obtained in Shelby, and he advised him to stay. Henry hastily affirmed that he would. Both were satis fied with this arrangement; Judge Allen because he had a suspicion that the vocation of Henry was not that of a lawyer, and Henry because he was sure that he could never come up to his father's ideas of sharp practice. The Judge reasoned within himself that it would not matter if he should not rise in the profession; it would at least give his mind a dignified bent, and add to the respectability of his position.

"I think," said Henry to himself, after the Judge had retired, "that father despises ingenuity. Mechanical skill is below a lawyer's skill, of course. But my motto is 'Ne quid nimis.' Tra-la-la, Tra-la-la," he sang, proceeding to brush his young whiskers into curl. He was so tall that the top of his head rose above the top of the small ancient mirror he was contemplating his visage in. "By Jove, this glass must be fixed!" He found a bit of wood, which he whittled into a cleat and fastened the glass to it slantingly, standing before it to observe its effect. It reflected a good-humored, regularfeatured face with no particular meaning; and if it had been large enough, would also have

Henry threw away his cigar. "How is my reflected an agile, slender, well-shaped figure, mother, Sir ?"

Henry laughed. "Yes, Sir-a sailor's-rights case; but they are such a rascally set it is hard to get at the truth of a trespass at sea."

"Read your Story, Sir."

"Come up stairs and see how my books are thumbed." On the way they met Tripp, the landlord, who informed Henry that a solemn gent had come from Boston with lots of Ingyrubber cloth, on a fishing lay, he expected.

"That's pleasant," said Henry.

with long, narrow white hands, and long, narrow feet.

66

'I say," said Tripp, opening the door without knocking, "are you going fishing to-mor row?"

"Not if my father is here."

"When you do go, I wish you'd make up to that feller that's just come."

"Introduce us to-morrow and I'll settle it.”
"What does the old man say of Shelby?"
"He likes it."

'Good, you'll stay then and court some of our belles. There's Miss Mayhew."

"You mustn't interrupt my studies, Tripp." "Oh no, by no means; I hope they won't consume you." And Tripp vanished.

IV.

"How's pickerel in your parts, Judge?" inquired Tripp, clattering down stairs without waiting for an answer. The Judge entered the chamber, which, besides the ordinary furniture, was adorned with several stuffed birds (Henry was his own taxidermist), and pictures whose frames were his handiwork also. When the Judge saw on a small table some workman's tools and a work-box in the process of construction, he said "Pish!" but Henry, quickly screw-ger who had arrived the evening before, and ing up the lamp, directed his attention to the whom he introduced as "Mr. Bassett, come to open books around it, and said, "This is the Shelby for his health." He left the room imway the midnight oil goes." mediately after the introduction, with the air

Judge Allen went home the next day, and Henry resumed his mechanical labors, which were interrupted by Tripp's bringing the stran

"I hope so," answered the Judge, taking a of having made an unwonted concession to good judicial seat on the sofa.

"Now for a pump," thought Henry.

A long conversation ensued upon family and business matters, in which the Judge discovered

manners.

Henry laid down his tools to observe his visitor, whose manners were so cool, and whose countenance was so serious. He discerned no