University of Virginia Library

1. MY FIRST VISIT.

1. DAY THE FIRST.

It was a fine October evening when I was sitting on the back
stoop of his cheerful little bachelor's establishment in Mercer street,
with my old friend and comrade, Henry Archer. Many a frown of
fortune had we two weathered out together; in many of her brightest
smiles had we two revelled—never was there a stancher
friend, a merrier companion, a keener sportsman, or a better fellow,
than this said Harry; and here had we two met, three thousand
miles from home, after almost ten years of separation, just the same
careless, happy, dare-all do-no-goods that we were when we parted
in St. James's street,—he for the West, I for the Eastern World—
he to fell trees, and build log huts in the back-woods of Canada,—I
to shoot tigers and drink arrack punch in the Carnatic. The world
had wagged with us as with most others; now up, now down, and
laid us to, at last, far enough from the goal for which we started—
so that, as I have said already, on landing in New York, having
heard nothing of him for ten years, whom the deuce should I tumble
on but that same worthy, snugly housed, with a neat bachelor's menage,
and every thing ship-shape about him?—So, in the natural
course of things, we were at once inseparables.

Well—as I said before, it was a bright October evening, with
the clear sky, rich sunshine, and brisk breezy freshness, which indicate
that loveliest of the American months,—dinner was over,
and with a pitcher of the liquid ruby of Latour, a brace of half-pint
beakers, and a score—my contribution—of those most exquisite of
smokables, the true old Manilla cheroots, we were consoling the
inward man in a way that would have opened the eyes, with abhorrent
admiration, of any advocate of that coldest of comforts—
cold water—who should have got a chance peep at our snuggery.

Suddenly, after a long pause, during which he had been stimulating
his ideas by assiduous fumigation, blowing off his steam in
a long vapory cloud that curled a minute afterward about his temples,—“What

say you, Frank, to a start to-morrow?” exclaimed
Harry,—“and a week's right good shooting?”

“Why, as for that,” said I, “I wish for nothing better—but
where the deuce would you go to get shooting?”

“Never fash your beard, man,” he replied, “I'll find the ground
and the game too, so you'll find share of the shooting!—Holloa!
there—Tim, Tim Matlock.”

And in brief space that worthy minister of mine host's pleasures
made his appearance, smoothing down his short black hair, clipped
in the orthodox bowl fashion, over his bluff good-natured visage
with one hand, while he employed its fellow in hitching up a pair
of most voluminous unmentionables, of thick Yorkshire cord.

A character was Tim—and now I think of it, worthy of brief
description. Born, I believe—bred, certainly, in a hunting stable,
far more of his life passed in the saddle than elsewhere, it was not
a little characteristic of my friend Harry to have selected this piece
of Yorkshire oddity as his especial body servant; but if the choice
were queer, it was at least successful, for an honester, more faithful,
hard-working, and withal, better hearted, and more humorous
varlet never drew curry-comb over horse hide, or clothes-brush
over broad-cloth.

His visage was, as I have said already, bluff and good-natured,
with a pair of hazel eyes, of the smallest—but, at the same time, of
the very merriest—twinkling from under the thick black eye-brows,
which were the only hairs suffered to grace his clean-shaved countenance.
An indescribable pug nose, and a good clean cut mouth,
with a continual dimple at the left corner, made up his phiz. For
the rest, four feet ten inches did Tim stand in his stockings, about
two-ten of which were monopolized by his back, the shoulders of
which would have done honor to a six foot pugilist,—his legs,
though short and bowed a little outward, by continual horse exercise,
were right tough serviceable members, and I have seen them
bearing their owner on through mud and mire, when straighter,
longer, and more fair proportioned limbs were at an awful discount.

Depositing his hat then on the floor, smoothing his hair, and
hitching up his smalls, and striving most laboriously not to grin till
he should have cause, stood Tim, like “Giafar awaiting his master's
award!”

“Tim!” said Harry Archer—

“Sur!” said Tim.

“Tim! Mr. Forester and I are talking of going up to-morrow—
what do you say to it?”

“Oop yonner?” queried Tim, in the most extraordinary West-Riding
Yorkshire, indicating the direction, by pointing his right
thumb over his left shoulder—“Weel, Ay'se nought to say aboot
it—not Ay!”

“Soh! the cattle are all right, and the wagon in good trim, and
the dogs in exercise, are they?”

“Ay'se warrant um!”

“Well, then, have all ready for a start at six to-morrow,—put
Mr. Forester's Manton alongside my Joe Spurling in the top tray
of the case, my single gun and my double rifle in the lower,—and
see the magazine well filled—the Diamond gunpowder, you know,
from Mr. Brough's. You'll put up what Mr. Forester will want,
for a week, you know—he does not know the country yet, Tim;—
and, hark you, what wine have I at Tom Draw's?”

“No but a case of claret.”

“I thought so, then away with you! down to the Baron's and get
two baskets of the Star, and stop at Fulton Market, and get the best
half hundred round of spiced beef you can find—and then go up to
Starke's at the Octagon, and get a gallon of his old Ferintosh—
that's all, Tim—off with you!—No! stop a minute!” and he filled
up a beaker and handed it to the original, who, shutting both his
eyes, suffered the fragrant claret to roll down his gullet in the
most scientific fashion, and then, with what he called a bow, turned
right about, and exit.

The sun rose bright on the next morning, and half an hour before
the appointed time, Tim entered my bed-chamber, with a cup of
mocha, and the intelligence that “Measter had been up this hour
and better, and did na like to be kept waiting!—so up I jumped,
and scarcely had got through the business of rigging myself, before
the rattle of wheels announced the arrival of the wagon.

And a model was that shooting wagon—a long, light-bodied box,
with a low rail—a high seat and dash in front, and a low servant's
seat behind, with lots of room for four men and as many dogs, with
guns and luggage, and all appliances to boot, enough to last a
month, stowed away out of sight, and out of reach of weather. The
nags, both nearly thorough-bred, fifteen two inches high, stout,
clean-limbed, active animals—the off-side horse a gray, almost
snow-white—the near, a dark black, nearly chestnut—with square
docks setting admirably off their beautiful round quarters, high
crests, small blood-like heads, and long thin manes—spoke volumes
for Tim's stable science; for though their ribs were slightly visible,
their muscles were well filled, and hard as granite. Their coats
glanced in the sunshine—the white's like statuary marble; the
chestnut's like high polished copper—in short the whole turn-out
was perfect.

The neat black harness, relieved merely by a crest, with every
strap that could be needed, in its place, and not one buckle or one
thong superfluous; the bright steel curbs, with the chains jingling
as the horses tossed and pawed impatient for a start; the tapering
holly whip; the bear-skins covering the seats; the top-coats spread
above them—every thing, in a word, without bordering on the
slang, was perfectly correct and gnostic.

Four dogs—a brace of setters of the light active breed, one of
which will out-work a brace of the large, lumpy, heavy-headed
dogs,—one red, the other white and liver, both with black noses,
their legs and sterns beautifully feathered, and their hair, glossy
and smooth as silk, showing their excellent condition—and a brace

of short-legged, bony, liver-colored spaniels—with their heads
thrust one above the other, over or through the railings, and their
tails waving with impatient joy—occupied the after portion of the
wagon.

Tim, rigged in plain gray frock, with leathers and white tops,
stood, in true tiger fashion, at the horses' heads, with the fore-finger
of his right hand resting upon the curb of the gray horse, as
with his left he rubbed the nose of the chetsnut; while Harry, cigar
in mouth, was standing at the wheel, reviewing with a steady and
experienced eye the gear, which seemed to give him perfect satisfaction.
The moment I appeared on the steps.

“In with you, Frank—in with you,” he exclaimed, disengaging
the hand-reins from the turrets into which they had been thrust,—
“I have been waiting here these five minutes. Jump up, Tim!”

And, gathering the reins up firmly, he mounted by the wheel,
tucked the top-coat about his legs, shook out the long lash of his
tandem whip, and lapped it up in good style.

“I always drive with one of these”—he said, half apologetically,
as I thought—“they are so handy on the road for the cur dogs,
when you have setters with you—they plague your life out else.
Have you the pistol-case in, Tim, for I don't see it?”

“All roight, sur,” answered he, not over well pleased, as it
seemed, that it should even be suspected that he could have forgotten
any thing—“All roight!”

“Go along, then,” cried Harry, and at the word the high bred
nags went off; and, though my friend was too good and too old a
hand to worry his cattle at the beginning of a long day's journey—
many minutes had not passed before we found ourselves on board
the ferry-boat, steaming it merrily toward the Jersey shore.

“A quarter past six to the minute,” said Harry, as we landed at
Hoboken.

“Let Shot and Chase run, Tim, but keep the spaniels in till we
pass Hackensack.”

“Awa wi ye, ye rascals,” exclaimed Tim, and out went the high
blooded dogs upon the instant, yelling and jumping in delight about
the horses—and off we went, through the long sandy street of Hoboken,
leaving the private race-course of that stanch sportsman,
Mr. Stevens, on the left, with several powerful horses taking their
walking exercise in their neat body clothes.

“That puts me in mind, Frank,” said Harry, as he called my attention
to the thorough-breds, “we must be back next Tuesday for
the Beacon Races—the new course up there on the hill; you can
see the steps that lead to it—and now is not this lovely?” he continued,
as we mounted the first ridge of Weehawken, and looked
back over the beautiful broad Hudson, gemmed with a thousand
snowy sails of craft or shipping—“Is not this lovely, Frank? and,
by the by, you will say, when we get to our journey's end, you
never drove through prettier scenery in your life. Get away, Bob,
you villain—nibbling, nibbling at your curb! get away, lads!”

And away we went at a right rattling pace over the hills, and

through the cedar swamp; and, passing through a toll-gate, stopped
with a sudden jerk at a long low tavern on the left-hand side.

“We must stop here, Frank. My old friend, Ingliss, a brother
trigger too, would think the world was coming to an end if
I drove by—twenty-nine minutes these six miles,” he added, looking
at his watch, “that will do! Now, Tim, look sharp—just a
sup of water! Good day—good day to you, Mr. Ingliss; now for
a glass of your milk punch”—and mine host disappeared, and in a
moment came forth with two rummers of the delicious compound, a
big bright lump of ice bobbing about in each among the nutmeg.

“What, off again for Orange county, Mr. Archer? I was telling
the old woman yesterday that we should have you by before long;
well, you'll find cock pretty plenty, I expect; there was a chap by
here from Ulster—let me see, what day was it—Friday, I guess—
with produce, and he was telling, they have had no cold snap yet up
there! Thank you, sir, good luck to you!”

And off we went again, along a level road, crossing the broad
slow river from whence it takes its name, into the town of Hackensack.

“We breakfast here, Frank”—as he pulled up beneath the low
Dutch shed projecting over half the road in front of the neat tavern
—“How are you, Mr. Vanderbeck—we want a beef-steak, and a
cup of tea, as quick as you can give it us; we'll make the tea ourselves;
bring in the black tea, Tim—the nags as usual.”

“Aye! aye! sur”—“tak them out—leave t'harness on, all but
their bridles”—to an old gray-headed hostler. “Whisp off their
legs a bit; Ay will be oot enoo!”

After as good a breakfast as fresh eggs, good country bread—
worth ten times the poor trash of city bakers—prime butter, cream,
and a fat steak could furnish, at a cheap rate, and with a civil and
obliging landlord, away we went again over the red-hills—an infernal
ugly road, sandy, and rough, and stony—for ten miles farther to
New Prospect.

“Now you shall see some scenery worth looking at,” said Harry,
as we started again, after watering the horses, and taking in a bag
with a peck of oats—“to feed at three o'clock, Frank, when we
stop to grub, which must do al fresco—” my friend explained—
“for the landlord, who kept the only tavern on the road, went West
this summer, bit by the land mania, and there is now no stopping
place 'twixt this and Warwick,” naming the village for which we
were bound. “You got that beef boiled, Tim?”

“Ay'd been a fouil else, and aye so often oop t' road too,” answered
he with a grin, “and t' moostard is mixed, and t' pilot biscuit
in, and a good bit o' Cheshire cheese! wee's doo, Ay reckon.
Ha! ha! ha!”

And now my friend's boast was indeed fulfilled; for when we
had driven a few miles farther, the country became undulating,
with many and bright streams of water; the hill sides clothed with
luxuriant woodlands, now in their many-colored garb of autumn
beauty; the meadow-land rich in unchanged fresh greenery—for

the summer had been mild and rainy—with here and there a back-wheat
stubble showing its ruddy face, replete with promise of quail
in the present, and of hot cakes in future; and the bold chain of
mountains, which, under many names, but always beautiful and
wild, sweeps from the Highlands of the Hudson, west and south-wardly,
quite through New Jersey, forming a link between the
White and Green Mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, and
the more famous Alleghanies of the South.

A few miles farther yet, the road wheeled round the base of the
Tourne Mountain, a magnificent bold hill, with a bare craggy head,
its sides and skirts thick set with cedars and hickory—entering a
defile through which the Ramapo, one of the loveliest streams eye
ever looked upon, comes rippling with its crystal waters over bright
pebbles, on its way to join the two kindred rivulets which form the
fair Passaic. Throughout the whole of that defile, nothing can
possibly surpass the loveliness of nature; the road hard, and smooth,
and level, winding and wheeling parallel to the gurgling river,
crossing it two or three times in each mile, now on one side, and
now on the other—the valley now barely broad enough to permit
the highway and the stream to pass between the abrupt masses of
rock and forest, and now expanding into rich basins of green meadow-land,
the deepest and most fertile possible—the hills of every
shape and size—here bold, and bare, and rocky—there swelling up
in grand round masses, pile above pile of verdure, to the blue firmament
of autumn. By and by we drove through a thriving little
village, nestling in a hollow of the hills, beside a broad bright pond,
whose waters keep a dozen manufactories of cotton and of iron—
with which mineral these hills abound—in constant operation; and
passing by the tavern, the departure of whose owner Harry had so
pathetically mourned, we wheeled again round a projecting spur of
hill into a narrower defile, and reached another hamlet, far different
in its aspect from the busy bustling place we had left some
five miles behind.

There were some twenty houses, with two large mills of solid
masonry; but of these not one building was now tenanted; the roof-trees
broken, the doors and shutters either torn from their hinges,
or flapping wildly to and fro; the mill wheels cumbering the stream
with masses of decaying timber, and the whole presenting a most
desolate and mournful aspect.

“Its story is soon told,” Harry said, catching my inquiring glance
—“a speculating, clever, New York merchant—a water-power—
failure—and a consequent desertion of the project; but we must
find a berth among the ruins!”

And as he spoke, turning a little off the road, he pulled up on the
green sward; “there's an old stable here that has a manger in it
yet! Now, Tim, look sharp!”

And in a twinkling the horses were loosed from the wagon, the
harness taken off and hanging on the corners of the ruined hovels,
and Tim hissing and rubbing away at the gray horse, while Harry

did like duty on the chestnut, in a style that would have done no
shame to Melton Mowbray!

“Come, Frank, make yourself useful! Get out the round of beef,
and all the rest of the provant—it's on the rack behind; you'll find
all right there. Spread our table-cloth on that flat stone by the
waterfall, under the willow; clap a couple of bottles of the Baron's
champagne into the pool there underneath the fall; let's see whether
your Indian campaigning has taught you any thing worth
knowing!”

To work I went at once, and by the time I had got through—
“Come, Tim,” I heard him say, “I've got the rough dirt off this
fellow, you must polish him, while I take a wash, and get a bit of
dinner. Holloa! Frank, are you ready!”

And he came bounding down to the water's edge, with his New-market
coat in hand, and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, plunged
his face into the cool stream, and took a good wash of his soiled
hands in the same natural basin. Five minutes afterward we were
employed most pleasantly with the spiced beef, white biscuit, and
good wine, which came out of the waterfall as cool as Gunter could
have made it with all his icing. When we had pretty well got
through, and were engaged with our cheroots, up came Tim Matlock.

“T' horses have got through wi' t' corn—they have fed rarely—
so I harnessed them, sur, all to the bridles—we can start when you
will.”

“Sit down, and get your dinner then, sir—there's a heel-tap in
that bottle we have left for you—and when you have done, put up
the things, and we'll be off. I say, Frank, let us try a shot with
the pistols—I'll get the case—stick up that fellow-commoner upon
the fence there, and mark off a twenty paces.”

The marking irons were produced—and loaded—“Fire—one—
two—three”—bang! and the shivering of the glass announced that
never more would that chap hold the generous liquor—the ball had
struck it plump in the centre, and broken off the whole above the
shoulder—for it was fixed neck downward on the stake.

“It is my turn now,” said I—and more by luck, I fancy, than by
skill, I took the neck off, leaving nothing but the thick ring of the
mouth still sticking on the summit of the fence.

“I'll hold you a dozen of my best Regalias against as many of
Manillas, that I break the ring.”

“Done, Harry!”

“Done!”

Again the pistol cracked, and the unerring ball drove the small
fragment into a thousand splinters.

“That fotched 'um!” exclaimed Tim, who had come up to announce
all ready—“Ecod, measter Frank, you munna wager i' that
gate[1] wi' master, or my name beant Tim, but thou'lt be clean bamboozled.”

Well—not to make a short story long—we got under way again,
and, with speed unabated, spanked along at full twelve miles an
hour, for five miles farther. There, down a wild looking glen, on
the left hand, comes brawling, over stump and stone, a tributary
streamlet—by the side of which a rough track, made by the charcoal
burners and the iron miners, intersects the main road—and up this
miserable looking path—for it was little more—Harry wheeled at
full trot.

“Now for twelve miles of mountain, the roughest road and
wildest country you ever saw crossed in a phaeton, good master
Frank.”

And wild it was, indeed, and rough enough in all conscience—
narrow, unfenced in many places, winding along the brow of precipices
without rail or breast-work, encumbered with huge blocks of
stone, and broken by the summer rains! An English stage coachman
would have stared aghast at the steep zigzags up the hills—
the awkward turns on the descents—the sudden pitches, with now
an unsafe bridge, and now a stony ford at the bottom—but through
all this, the delicate quick finger, keen eye, and cool head of
Harry, assisted by the rare mouths of his exquisitely bitted cattle,
piloted us at the rate of full ten miles the hour—the scenery,
through which the wild track ran, being entirely of the most grand
and savage character of woodland—the bottom filled with gigantic
timber trees, cedar, and pine, and hemlock, with a dense undergrowth
of rhododendron, calmia, and azalia, which, as my friend informed
me, made the whole mountains in the summer season one
rich bed of bloom. About six miles from the point where we had
entered them we scaled the highest ridge of the hills, by three
almost precipitous zigzags, the topmost ledge paved by a stratum of
broken shaley limestone; and, passing at once from the forest into
well cultivated fields, came on a new and lovelier prospect—a narrow
deep vale scarce a mile in breadth—scooped as it were out of
the mighty mountains which embosomed it on every side—in the
highest state of culture, with rich orchards, and deep meadows, and
brown stubbles, whereon the shocks of maize stood fair and frequent
—and westward of the road—which, diving down obliquely to the
bottom, loses itself in the woods of the opposite hill-side, and only
becomes visible again when it emerges to cross over the next summit—the
loveliest sheet of water my eye has ever seen, varying
from half a mile to a mile in breadth, and about five miles long,
with shores indented deeply with the capes and promontories of the
wood-clothed hills, which sink abruptly to its very margin.

“That is the Greenwood Lake, Frank, called by the monsters
here Long Pond!—`the fiends receive their souls therefor,' as
Walter Scott says—in my mind prettier than Lake George by far,
though known to few except chance sportsmen like myself! Full
of fish—pearch of a pound in weight, and yellow bass in the deep
waters, and a good sprinkling of trout, toward this end! Ellis
Ketchum killed a five-pounder there this spring!—and heaps of
summer-duck, the loveliest in plumage of the genus, and the best

too, me judice, excepting only the inimitable canvass-back. There
are a few deer, too, in the hills, though they are getting scarce of
late years. There, from that headland, I killed one, three summers
since; I was placed at a stand by the lake's edge, and the dogs
drove him right down to me; but I got too eager, and he heard or
saw me, and so fetched a turn; but they were close upon him, and
the day was hot, and he was forced to soil. I never saw him till
he was in the act of leaping from a bluff of ten or twelve feet into
the deep lake, but I pitched up my rifle at him—a snap shot!—as I
would my gun at a cock in a summer brake—and by good luck sent
my ball through his heart! There is a finer view yet when we
cross this hill—the Bellevale mountain—look out, for we are just
upon it—there! Now admire!”

And on the summit he pulled up, and never did I see a landscape
more extensively magnificent. Ridge after ridge the mountain
sloped down from our feet into a vast rich basin ten miles at least
in breadth, by thirty, if not more, in length, girdled on every side
by mountains—the whole diversified with wood and water, meadow,
and pasture-land, and corn-field—studded with small white villages
—with more than one bright lakelet glittering like beaten gold in
the declining sun, and several isolated hills standing up boldly from
the vale!

“Glorious indeed! Most glorious!” I exclaimed.

“Right, Frank,” he said; “a man may travel many a day, and
not see any thing to beat the vale of Sugar-loaf—so named from
that cone-like hill, over the pond there—that peak is eight hundred
feet above tide water. Those blue hills, to the far right, are the
Hudson Highlands; that bold bluff is the far-famed Anthony's
Nose; that ridge across the vale, the second ridge I mean, is the
Shawangunks; and those three rounded summits, farther yet—
those are the Kaatskills! But now a truce with the romantic, for
there lies Warwick, and this keen mountain air has found me a
fresh appetite!”

Away we went again, rattling down the hills, nothing daunted at
their steep pitches, with the nags just as fresh as when they started,
champing and snapping at their curbs, till on a table-land above the
brook, with the tin steeple of its church peering from out the massy
foliage of sycamore and locust, the haven of our journey lay before
us.

“Hilloa, hill-oa he! whoop! who-whoop!” and with a cheery
shout, as we clattered across the wooden bridge, he roused out half
the population of the village.

“Ya ha ha!—ya yah!” yelled a great woolly-headed coal-black
negro. “Here 'm massa Archer back again—massa ben well, I
spect—”

“Well—to be sure I have, Sam,” cried Harry. “How's old
Poll? Bid her come up to Draw's to-morrow night—I've got a red
and yellow frock for her—a deuce of a concern!”

“Yah ha! yah ha ha yaah!” and amid a most discordant chorus
of African merriment, we passed by a neat farm-house shaded by

two glorious locusts on the right, and a new red brick mansion, the
pride of the village, with a flourishing store on the left—and
wheeled up to the famous Tom Draw's tavern—a long white house
with a piazza six feet wide, at the top of eight steep steps, and a
one-story kitchen at the end of it; a pump with a gilt pine-apple at
the top of it, and horse-trough; a wagon shed and stable sixty feet
long; a sign-post with an indescribable female figure swinging
upon it, and an ice house over the way!

Such was the house, before which we pulled up just as the sun
was setting, amid a gabbling of ducks, a barking of terriers, mixed
with the deep bay of two or three large heavy fox-hounds which
had been lounging about in the shade, and a peal of joyous welcome
from all beings, quadruped or biped, within hearing.

“Hulloa! boys!” cried a deep hearty voice from within the bar-room.
“Hulloa! boys! Walk in! walk in! What the eternal
h—ll are you about there?”

Well, we did walk into a large neat bar-room, with a bright
hickory log crackling upon the hearth-stone, a large round table in
one corner, covered with draught-boards, and old newspapers,
among which showed pre-eminent the “Spirit of the Times;” a
range of pegs well stored with great-coats, fishing-rods, whips,
game-bags, spurs, and every other stray appurtenance of sporting,
gracing one end; while the other was more gaily decorated by the
well furnished bar, in the right-hand angle of which my eye detected
in an instant a handsome nine pound double barrel, an old
six foot Queen Ann's tower-musket, and a long smooth-bored rifle;
and last, not least, outstretched at easy length upon the counter of
his bar, to the left-hand of the gang-way—the right side being more
suitably decorated with tumblers, and decanters of strange compounds—supine,
with fair round belly towering upward, and head
voluptuously pillowed on a heap of wagon cushions—lay in his
glory—but no! hold!—the end of a chapter is no place to introduce
—Tom Draw![2]

2. DAY THE SECOND.

Much as I had heard of Tom Draw, I was, I must confess,
taken altogether aback when I, for the first time, set eyes upon
him. I had heard Harry Archer talk of him fifty times as a crack
shot; as a top sawyer at a long day's fag; as the man of all others
he would choose as his mate, if he were to shoot a match, two
against two—what then was my astonishment at beholding this
worthy, as he reared himself slowly from his recumbent position?
It is true, I had heard his sobriquet “Fat Tom,” but, Heaven and
Earth! such a mass of beef and brandy as stood before me, I had
never even dreamed of. About five feet six inches at the very utmost
in the perpendicular, by six or—“by'r lady”—nearer seven,
in circumference, weighing, at the least computation, two hundred
and fifty pounds, with a broad jolly face, its every feature—well-formed
and handsome, rather than otherwise,—mantling with an
expression of the most perfect excellence of heart and temper, and
overshadowed by a vast mass of brown hair, sprinkled pretty well
with gray!—Down he plumped from the counter with a thud that
made the whole floor shake, and with a hand outstretched, that
might have done for a Goliah, out he strode to meet us.

“Why, hulloa! hulloa! Mr. Archer,” shaking his hand till I
thought he would have dragged the arm clean out of the socket—
“How be you, boy? How be you?”

“Right well, Tom, can't you see? Why confound you, you've
grown twenty pound heavier since July!—but here, I'm losing all
my manners!—this is Frank Forester, whom you have heard me
talk about so often! He dropped down here out of the moon,
Tom, I believe! at least I thought about as much of seeing the man
in the moon, as of meeting him in this wooden country—but here
he is—as you see—come all the way to take a look at the natives.
And so, you see, as you're about the greatest curiosity I know of
in these parts, I brought him straight up here to take a peep!
Look at him, Frank—look at him well! Now, did you ever see,
in all your life, so extraordinary an old devil?—and yet, Frank,
which no man could possibly believe, the old fat animal has some
good points about him—he can walk some!—shoot, as he says,
first best!—and drink—good Lord—how he can drink!

“And that reminds me,” exclaimed Tom, who with a ludicrous
mixture of pleasure, bushfulness, and mock anger, had been listening
to what he evidently deemed a high encomium—“that we
hav'nt drinked yet—have you quit drink, Archer, since I was to
York?—What'll you take, Mr. Forester? Gin?—yes, I have got
some prime gin! You never sent me up them groceries though,
Archer—well, then, here's luck! What, Yorkshire, is that you?
I should ha' thought now, Archer, you'd have cleared that lazy
Injun out afore this time!”

“Whoy, measter Draa—what 'na loike's that kind o' talk?—coom
coom now, where 'll Ay tak t' things tull?”

“Put Mr. Forester's box in the bed-room off the parlor—mine
up stairs, as usual,” cried Archer. “Look sharp and get the traps
out. Now, Tom, I suppose you have got no supper for us!”

“Cooper, Cooper!—you snooping little devil,” yelled Tom, addressing
his second hope, a fine dark-eyed, bright-looking lad of ten
or twelve years—“Don't you see Mr. Archer's come?—away with
you and light the parlor fire, look smart now, or I'll cure you!
Supper—you're always eat! eat! eat! or, drink! drink!—drunk?
Yes! supper—we've got pork! and chickens—”

“Oh! d—n your pork,” said I, “salt as the ocean I suppose!”
“And double d—n your chickens,” chimed in Harry, “old super-annuated
cocks which must be caught now, and then beheaded, and
then soused into hot water to fetch off the feathers; and save you
lazy devils the trouble of picking them. No, no, Tom! get us
some fresh meat for to-morrow; and for to-night let us have some
hot potatoes, and some bread and butter, and we'll find beef—eh,
Frank.? and now look sharp, for we must be up in good time to-morrow,
and, to be so, we must to bed betimes. And now, Tom,
are there any cock?”

“Cock!—yes, I guess there be—and quail, too, pretty plenty!—
quite a smart chance of them, and not a shot fired among them this
fall, any how!”

“Well, which way must we beat to-morrow? I calculate to
shoot three days with you here; and, on Wednesday night, when
we get in, to hitch up and drive into Sullivan, and see if we can't
get a deer or two! You'll go, Tom?”

“Well, well, we'll see any how; but for to-morrow, why, I
guess we must beat the 'Squire's swamp-hole first—there's ten or
twelve cock there, I know—I see them there myself last Sunday;
and then acrost them buck-wheat stubbles, and the big bog meadow,
there's a drove of quail there—two or three bevys got in one,
I reckon; least wise I counted thirty-three last Friday was a week—
and through Seer's big swamp, over to the great spring!”

“How is Seer's swamp? too wet, I fancy”—Archer interposed
—“at least I noticed, from the mountain, that all the leaves were
changed in it, and that the maples were quite bare.”

“Pretty fair, pretty fair, I guess,” replied stout Tom, “I harnt
been there myself though, but Jem was down with the hounds arter
an old fox t' other day, and sure enough he said the cock kept
flopping up quite thick afore him—but then the critter will lie,
Harry—he will lie like h—ll, you know; but somehow I concaits
there be cock there too; and then, as I was saying, we'll stop at
the great spring and get a bite of summat, and then beat Hell-hole;
you'll have sport there for sartin! What dogs have you got with
you, Harry?”

“Your old friends, Shot and Chase, and a couple of spaniels for
thick covert!”

“Now, gentlemen, your suppers are all ready.”

“Come, Tom,” cried Archer, “you must take a bite with us—
Tim, bring us in three bottles of champagne, and lots of ice, do you
hear?”

And the next moment we found ourselves installed in a snug
parlor, decorated with a dozen sporting prints, a blazing hickory
fire snapping and sputtering and roaring in a huge Franklin stove;
our luggage safely stowed in various corners, and Archer's double
gun-case propped on two chairs below the window.

An old-fashioned round table, covered with clean white linen of
domestic manufacture, displayed the noble round of beef which we
had brought up with us, flanked by a platter of magnificent potatoes,
pouring forth volumes of dense steam through the cracks in
their dusky skins; a lordly dish of butter, that might have pleased
the appetite of Sisera; while eggs and ham, and pies of apple,
mince-meat, cranberry and custard, occupied every vacant space,
save where two ponderous pitchers, mantling with ale and cider,
and two respectable square bottles, labelled “Old Rum” and
“Brandy—1817,” relieved the prospect. Before we had sat down,
Timothy entered, bearing a horse bucket filled to the brim with ice,
from whence protruded the long necks and split corks of three
champagne bottles.

“Now, Tim,” said Archer, “get your own supper, when you've
finished with the cattle; feed the dogs well to-night; and then to
bed. And hark you, call me at five in the morning; we shall want
you to carry the game bag and the drinkables; take care of yourself,
Tim, and good night!”

“No need to tell him that,” cried Tom, “he's something like
yourself; I tell you, Archer, if Tim ever dies of thirst, it must be
where there is nothing wet, but water?”

“Now hark to the old scoundrel, Frank,” said Archer, “hark to
him pray, and if he doesn't out-eat both of us, and out-drink any
thing you ever saw, may I miss my first bird to-morrow—that's
all! Give me a slice of beef, Frank; that old Goth would cut it an
inch thick if I let him touch it; out with a cork, Tom! Here's to
our sport to-morrow!”

“Uh; that goes good!” replied Tom with an eructation, which
might have preceded an eruption of Vesuvius, and which, by the
apparent gusto of the speaker, seemed to betoken that the wine
“had returned pleasant—“that goes good! that's different from
the damned red trash you left up here last time.”

“And of which you have left none, I'll be bound,” answered
Archer, laughing; “my best Latour, Frank, which the old infidel
calls trash.”

“It's all below, every bottle of it,” answered Tom: “I would n't
use such rot-gut stuff, no, not for vinegar. 'Taint half so good
as that red sherry you had up here oncet; that was poor weak stuff
too, but it did well to make milk punch of; it did well instead of
milk.”

“Now, Frank,” said Archer, “you won't believe me, that I
know; but it's true, all the same. A year ago, this autumn, I

brought up five gallons of exceedingly stout, rather fiery, young,
brown sherry—draught wine you know!—and what did Tom do
here, but mix it, half and half, with brandy, nutmeg, and sugar, and
drink it for milk punch!”

“I did so, by the eternal,” replied Tom, bolting a huge lump of
beef, in order to enable himself to answer—“I did so, and good
milk punch it made too, but it was too weak! Come, Mr. Forester,
we harnt drinked yet, and I'm kind o' gittin dry!”

And now the mirth waxed fast and furious—the champagne
speedily was finished, the supper things cleared off, hot water and
Starke's Ferintosh succeeded, cheroots were lighted, we drew
closer in about the fire, and, during the circulation of two tumblers
—for to this did Harry limit us, having the prospect of unsteady
hands and aching heads before him for the morrow—never did I
hear more genuine and real humor, than went round our merry
trio.

Tom Draw, especially, though all his jokes were not such altogether
as I can venture to insert in my chaste paragraphs, and
though at times his oaths were too extravagantly rich to brook repetition,
shone forth resplendent. No longer did I wonder at what
I had before deemed Harry Archer's strange hallucination; Tom
Draw is a decided genius—rough as a pine knot in his native woods
—but full of mirth, of shrewdness, of keen mother wit, of hard horse
sense, and last, not least, of the most genuine milk of human kindness.
He is a rough block; but, as Harry says, there is solid timber
under the uncouth bark enough to make five hundred men, as men
go now-a-days in cities!

At ten o'clock, thanks to the excellent precautions of my friend
Harry, we were all snugly berthed, before the whiskey, which had
well justified the high praise I had heard lavished on it, had made
any serious inroads on our understandings, but not before we had
laid in a quantum to ensure a good night's rest.

Bright and early was I on foot the next day, but before I had half
dressed myself I was assured, by the clatter of the breakfast things,
that Archer had again stolen a march upon me; and the next moment
my bed-room door, driven open by the thick boot of that worthy,
gave me a full view of his person—arrayed in a stout fustian
jacket—with half a dozen pockets in full view, and Heaven only
knows how many more lying perdu in the broad skirts. Knee
breeches of the same material, with laced half-boots and leather
leggins, set off his stout calf and well turned ankle.

“Up! up! Frank,” he exclaimed, “it is a morning of ten thousand;
there has been quite a heavy dew, and by the time we are
afoot it will be well evaporated; and then the scent will lie, I promise
you! make haste, I tell you, breakfast is ready!”

Stimulated by his hurrying voice, I soon completed my toilet, and
entering the parlor found Harry busily employed in stirring to and
fro a pound of powder on one heated dinner plate, while a second
was undergoing the process of preparation on the hearth-stone under
a glowing pile of hickory ashes.

At the side-table, covered with guns, dog-whips, nipple-wrenches,
and the like, Tim, rigged like his master, in half boots and leggins,
but with a short roundabout of velveteen, in place of the full-skirted
jacket, was filling our shot-pouches by aid of a capacious funnel,
more used, as its odor betokened, to facilitate the passage of gin or
Jamaica spirits than of so sober a material as cold lead.

At the same moment entered mine host, togged for the field in a
huge pair of cow-hide boots reaching almost to the knee, into the
tops of which were tucked the lower ends of a pair of trowsers,
containing yards enough of buffalo-cloth to have eked out the mainsail
of a North River sloop; a waistcoat and single-breasted jacket
of the same material, with a fur cap, completed his attire; but in
his hand he bore a large decanter filled with a pale yellowish
liquor, embalming a dense mass of fine and worm-like threads, not
very different in appearance from the best vermicelli.

“Come, boys, come—here's your bitters,” he exclaimed; and, as
if to set us the example, filled a big tumbler to the brim, gulped it
down as if it had been water, smacked his lips, and incontinently
tendered it to Archer, who, to my great amazement, filled himself
likewise a more moderate draught, and quaffed it without hesitation.

“That's good, Tom,” he said, pausing after the first sip; “that's
the best I ever tasted here—how old's that?”

“Five years!” Tom replied; “five years last fall! Daddy Tom
made it me out of my own best apples—take a horn, Mr. Forester,”
he added, turning to me—“it's first best cider sperrits—better a
d—n sight than that Scotch stuff you make such an etarnal fuss
about, toting it up here every time, as if we'd nothing fit to drink
in the country!”

And to my sorrow I did taste it—old apple whiskey, with Lord
knows how much snake-root soaked in it for five years! They may
talk about gall being bitter—but, by all that's wonderful, there was
enough of the amari aliquid in this fonte, to me by no means of
leporum, to have given an extra touch of bitterness to all the gall
beneath the canopy; and with my mouth puckered up, till it was
like any thing on earth but a mouth, I set the glass down on the
table; and for the next five minutes could do nothing but shake my
head to and fro like a Chinese mandarin, amidst the loud and prolonged
roars of laughter that burst like thunder claps from the huge
jaws of Thomas Draw, and the subdued and half respectful cachinnations
of Tim Matlock.

By the time I had got a little better, the black tea was ready, and
with thick cream, hot buck-wheat cakes, beautiful honey, and—as
a stand-by—the still venerable round, we made out a very tolerable
meal.

This done, with due deliberation Archer supplied his several
pockets with their accustomed load—the clean-punched wads in
this—in that the Westley Richards' caps—here a pound horn of
powder—there a shot-pouch on Syke's lever principle, with double
mouth-piece—in another, screw-driver, nipple-wrench, and the spare

cones—and, to make up the tale, dog-whip, dram-bottle, and silk
handkerchief in the sixth and last.

“Nothing like method in this world,” said Harry, clapping his
low-crowned broad-brimmed mohair cap upon his head—“take my
word for it. Now, Tim, what have you got in the bag?”

“A bottle of champagne, sur,” answered Tim, who was now employed
slinging a huge fustian game-bag, with a net-work front,
over his right shoulder, to counterbalance two full shot-belts which
were already thrown across the other—“a bottle of champagne,
sur—a cold roast chicken—t' Cheshire cheese—and t' pilot biscuits.
Is your dram bottle filled wi' t' whiskey, please, sur?”

“Aye, aye, Tim! Now let loose the dogs—carry a pair of
couples and a leash along with you; and mind you, gentlemen,
Tim carries shot for all hands; and luncheon—but each one finds
his own powder, caps, &c.; and any one who wants a dram, carries
his own—the devil-a-one of you gets a sup out of my bottle, or a
charge out of my flask! That's right, old Trojan, is n't it?” with
a good slap on Tom's broad shoulders.

“Shot! Shot—why Shot! do n't you know me, old dog?” cried
Tom, as the two setters bounded into the room, joyful at their release—“good
dog! good Chase!” feeding them with great lumps
of beef.

“A vast! there Tom—have done with that,” cried Harry;
“you'll have the dogs so full that they can't run!”

“Why, how'd you like to hunt all day without your breakfast—
hey?”

“Here, lads! here, lads! wh-e-ew!” and followed by his setters,
with his gun under his arm, away went Harry; and catching up
our pieces likewise, we followed, nothing loth, Tim bringing up the
rear with the two spaniels fretting in their couples, and a huge black
thorn cudgel, which he had brought, as he informed me, “all t' way
from bonny Cawoods.”

It was as beautiful a morning as ever lighted sportsmen to their
labors. The dew, exhaled already from the long grass, still glittered
here and there upon the shrubs and trees, though a soft fresh
south-western breeze was shaking it thence momently in bright and
rustling showers; the sun, but newly risen, and as yet partially enveloped
in the thin gauze-like mists so frequent at that season, was
casting shadows, seemingly endless, from every object that intercepted
his low rays, and chequering the whole landscape with that
play of light and shade, which is the loveliest accessory to a lovely
scene; and lovely was the scene, indeed, as e'er was looked upon
by painter's or by poet's eye—how then should humble prose do
justice to it?

Seated upon the first slope of a gentle hill, midway of the great
valley heretofore described, the village looked due south, toward the
chains of mountains, which we had crossed on the preceding evening,
and which in that direction bounded the landscape. These
ridges, cultivated half-way up their swelling sides, which lay mapped
out before our eyes in all the various beauty of orchards, yellow

stubbles, and rich pastures dotted with sleek and comely cattle,
were rendered yet more lovely and romantic, by here and there a
woody gorge, or rocky chasm, channelling their smooth flanks, and
carrying down their tributary rills, to swell the main stream at their
base. Toward these we took our way by the same road which we
had followed in an opposite direction on the previous night—but
for a short space only—for having crossed the stream, by the same
bridge which we had passed on entering the village, Tom Draw
pulled down a set of bars to the left, and strode out manfully into
the stubble.

“Hold up, good lads!—whe-ew—whewt!” and away went the
setters through the moist stubble, heads up and sterns down, like
fox-hounds on a breast-high scent, yet under the most perfect discipline;
for at the very first note of Harry's whistle, even when
racing at the top of their pace, they would turn simultaneously,
alter their course, cross each other at right angles, and quarter the
whole field, leaving no foot of ground unbeaten.

No game, however, in this instance, rewarded their exertions;
and on we went across a meadow, and two other stubbles, with the
like result. But now we crossed a gentle hill, and, at its base,
came on a level tract, containing at the most ten acres of marsh
land, overgrown with high coarse grass and flags. Beyond this, on
the right, was a steep rocky hillock, covered with tall and thrifty
timber of some thirty years' growth, but wholly free from underwood.
Along the left-hand fence ran a thick belt of underwood,
sumach and birch, with a few young oak trees interspersed; but in
the middle of the swampy level, covering at most some five or six
acres, was a dense circular thicket composed of every sort of thorny
bush and shrub, matted with cat-briers and wild vines, and over-shadowed
by a clump of tall and leafy ashes, which had not as yet
lost one atom of their foliage, although the underwood beneath
them was quite sere and leafless.

“Now then,” cried Harry, “this is the `Squire's swamp-hole!'
Now for a dozen cock! hey, Tom? Here, couple up the setters,
Tim; and let the spaniels loose. Now Flash! now Dan! down
charge, you little villains!” and the well broke brutes dropped on
the instant. “How must we beat this cursed hole?”

“You must go through the very thick of it, concarn you!” exclaimed
Tom; “at your old work already, hey? trying to shirk at
first!”

“Do n't swear so! you old reprobate! I know my place, depend
on it,” cried Archer; “but what to do with the rest of you!—
there's the rub!”

“Not a bit of it,” cried Tom—“here, Yorkshire—Ducklegs—
here, what's your name—get away you with those big dogs—
atwixt the swamp hole, and the brush there by the fence, and look
out that you mark every bird to an inch! You, Mr. Forester, go
in there, under that butter-nut; you'll find a blind track there,
right through the brush—keep that 'twixt Tim and Mr. Archer;

and keep your eyes skinned, do! there'll be a cock up before you're
ten yards in. Archer, you'll go right through, and I'll—”

“You'll keep well forward on the right—and mind that no bird
crosses to the hill; we never get them, if they once get over. All
right! In with you now! Steady, Flash! steady! hie up, Dan!”
and in a moment Harry was out of sight among the brush-wood,
though his progress might be traced by the continual crackling of
the thick underwood.

Scarce had I passed the butter-nut, when, even as Tom had said,
up flapped a woodcock scarcely ten yards before me, in the open
path, and rising heavily to clear the branches of a tall thorn bush,
showed me his full black eye, and tawny breast, as fair a shot as
could be fancied.

“Mark!” holloaed Harry to my right, his quick ear having
caught the flap of the bird's wing, as he rose. “Mark cock—
Frank!”

Well—steadily enough, as I thought, I pitched my gun up!
covered my bird fairly! pulled!—the trigger gave not to my finger.
I tried the other. “Devil's in it, I had forgot to cock my
gun!” and ere I could retrieve my error, the bird had topped the
bush, dodged out of sight, and off—“mark! mark!—Tim!” I
shouted.

“Ey! ey! sur—Ay see's um!”

“Why, how's that, Frank?” cried Harry. “Could n't you get a
shot?”

“Forgot to cock my gun!” I cried; but at the self same moment
the quick sharp yelping of the spaniels came on my ear. “Steady,
Flash! steady, sir! Mark!” But close upon the word came the
full round report of Harry's gun. “Mark! again!” shouted Harry,
and again his own piece sent its loud ringing voice abroad. “Mark!
now a third! mark, Frank!”

And as he spoke I caught the quick rush of his wing, and saw
him dart across a space, a few yards to my right. I felt my hand
shake; I had not pulled a trigger in ten months, but in a second's
space I rallied. There was an opening just before me between a
stumpy thick thorn-bush which had saved the last bird, and a dwarf
cedar—it was not two yards over—he glanced across it!—he was
gone—just as my barrel sent its charge into the splintered branches.

“Beautiful!” shouted Harry, who, looking through a cross glade,
saw the bird fall, which I could not. “Beautiful shot, Frank! Do
all your work like that, and we'll get twenty couple before night!”

“Have I killed him!” answered I, half doubting if he were not
quizzing me.

“Killed him? of course you have; doubled him up completely!
But look sharp! there are more birds before me! I can hardly keep
the dogs down, now! There! there goes one—clean out of shot of
me, though! Mark! mark, Tom! Gad, how the fat dog's running!”
he continued. “He sees him! Ten to one he gets him!
There he goes—bang! A long shot, and killed clean!”

“Ready!” cried I. “I'm ready, Archer!”

“Bag your bird then. He lies under that dock leaf, at the foot
of yon red maple! That's it—you've got him. Steady now, till
Tom gets loaded!”

“What did you do?” asked I. “You fired twice, I think!”

“Killed two!” he answered. “Ready, now!” and on he went,
smashing away the boughs before him, while ever and anon I heard
his cheery voice, calling or whistling to his dogs, or rousing up the
tenants of some thickets into which even he could not force his
way; and I, creeping, as best I might, among the tangled brush,
now plunging half thigh deep in holes full of tenacious mire, now
blundering over the moss-covered stubs, pressed forward, fancying
every instant that the rustling of the briers against my jacket was
the flip-flap of a rising woodcock. Suddenly, after bursting through
a mass of thorns and wild-vine, which was in truth almost impassable,
I came upon a little grassy spot quite clear of trees, and covered
with the tenderest verdure, through which a narrow rill stole silently;
and as I set my first foot on it, up jumped, with his beautiful variegated
back all reddened by the sunbeams, a fine and full-fed wood-cock,
with the peculiar twitter which he utters when surprised. He
had not gone ten yards, however, before my gun was at my shoulder
and the trigger drawn—before I heard the crack I saw him
cringe; and, as the white smoke drifted off to leeward, he fell
heavily, completely riddled by the shot, into the brake before me—
while at the same moment, whir-r-r! up sprung a bevy of twenty
quail, at least, startling me for the moment by the thick whirring
of their wings, and skirring over the underwood right toward
Archer. “Mark, quail!” I shouted, and, recovering instantly my
nerves, fired my one remaining barrel after the last bird! It was
a long shot, yet I struck him fairly, and he rose instantly right upward,
towering high! high! into the clear blue sky, and soaring
still, till his life left him in the air, and he fell like a stone, plump
downward!

“Mark him! Tim!”

“Ey! ey! sur. He's a de-ad un, that's a sure thing!”

At my shot all the bevy rose a little, yet altered not their course
the least, wheeling across the thicket directly round the front of
Archer, whose whereabout I knew, though I could neither see nor
hear him. So high did they fly that I could observe them clearly,
every bird well defined against the sunny heavens. I watched
them eagerly. Suddenly one turned over; a cloud of feathers
streamed off down the wind; and then, before the sound of the first
shot had reached my ears, a second pitched a few yards upward,
and, after a heavy flutter, followed its hapless comrade.

Turned by the fall of the two leading birds, the bevy again
wheeled, still rising higher, and now flying very fast; so that, as I
saw by the direction which they took, they would probably give
Draw a chance of getting in both barrels. And so indeed it was;
for, as before, long ere I caught the booming echoes of his heavy
gun, I saw two birds keeled over, and, almost at the same instant,
the cheery shout of Tim announced to me that he had bagged my

towered bird! After a little pause, again we started, and, hailing
one another now and then, gradually forced our way through brake
and brier toward the outward verge of the dense covert. Before
we met again, however, I had the luck to pick up a third woodcock,
and as I heard another double shot from Archer, and two single
bangs from Draw, I judged that my companions had not been less
successful than myself. At last, emerging from the thicket, we
all converged, as to a common point, toward Tim; who, with his
game-bag on the ground, with its capacious mouth wide open to
receive our game, sat on a stump with the two setters at a charge
beside him.

“What do we score?” cried I, as we drew near; “what do we
score?”

“I have four woodcock, and a brace of quail,” said Harry.

“And I, two cock and a brace,” cried Tom, “and missed another
cock; but he's down in the meadow here, behind that 'ere stums
alder!”

“And I, three woodcock and one quail!” I chimed in, naught
abashed.

“And Ay'se marked doon three woodcock—two more beside you
big un, that measter Draa made siccan a bungle of—and all t' quail
—every feather on um—doon i' t' bog meadows yonner—ooh! but
we'se mak grand sport o' t!” interposed Tim, now busily employed
stringing bird after bird up by the head, with loops and buttons in
the game-bag!

“Well done then, all!” said Harry. “Nine timber-doodles and
five quail, and only one shot missed! That's not bad shooting,
considering what a hole it is to shoot in. Gentlemen, here's your
health,” and filling himself out a fair sized wine-glass-full of Ferintosh,
into the silver cup of his dram-bottle, he tossed it off; and then
poured out a similar libation for Tim Matlock. Tom and myself,
nothing loth, obeyed the hint, and sipped our modicums of distilled
waters out of our private flasks.

“Now, then,” cried Archer, “let us pick up these scattering
birds. Tom Draw, you can get yours without a dog! And now,
Tim, where are yours?”

“T' first lies oop yonner in yon boonch of branchens, ahint t' big
scarlet maple; and t' other”—

“Well! I'll go to the first. You take Mr. Forester to the other,
and when we have bagged all three, we'll meet at the bog meadow
fence, and then hie at the bevy!”

This job was soon done, for Draw and Harry bagged their birds
cleverly at the first rise; and although mine got off at first without
a shot, by dodging round a birch tree straight in Tim's face,
and flew back slap toward the thicket, yet he pitched in its outer
skirt, and as he jumped up wild I cut him down with a broken
pinion and a shot through his bill at fifty yards, and Chase retrieved
him well.

“Cleverly stopped, indeed!” Frank halloaed; “and by no means

an easy shot! and so our work's clean done for this place, at the
least!”

“The boy can shoot some,” observed Tom Draw, who loved to
bother Timothy; “the boy can shoot some, though he doos come
from Yorkshire!”

“God! and Ay wush Ay'd no but gotten thee i' Yorkshire, measter
Draa!” responded Tim.

“Why! what if you had got me there?”

“What? Whoy, Ay'd clap thee iv a cage, and hug thee round
to t' feasts and fairs loike; and shew thee to t' folks at so mooch a
head. Ay'se sure Ay'd mak a fortune o' t!”

“He has you there, Tom! Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Archer.
“Tim's down upon you there, by George! Now, Frank, do fancy
Tom Draw in a cage at Borough-bridge or Catterick fair! Lord!
how the folks would pay to look at him! Fancy the sign board
too! The Great American Man-mammoth! Ha! ha! ha! But
come, we must not stay here talking nonsense, or we shall do no
good. Show me, Tim, where are the quail?”

“Doon i' t' bog meadow yonner! joost i' t' slack,[3] see thee,
there!” pointing with the stout black-thorn; “amang yon bits o'
bushes!”

“Very well—that's it; now let go the setters; take Flash and
Dan along with you, and cut across the country as straight as you
can go to the spring head, where we lunched last year; that day,
you know Tom, when McTavish frightened the bull out of the
meadow—under the pin-oak tree. Well! put the champagne into
the spring to cool, and rest yourself there till we come; we shan't
be long behind you.”

Away went Tim, stopping from time to time to mark our progress,
and over the fence into the bog meadow we proceeded; a
rascally piece of broken tussocky ground, with black mud knee-deep
between the hags, all covered with long grass. The third
step I took, over I went upon my nose, but luckily avoided shoving
my gun-barrels into the filthy mire.

“Steady, Frank, steady! I'm ashamed of you!” said Harry;
“so hot and so impetuous; and your gun too at the full cock;
that's the reason, man, why you missed firing at your first bird,
this morning. I never cock either barrel till I see my bird; and,
if a bevy rises, one only at a time. The birds will lie like stones
here; and we cannot walk too slow. Steady, Shot, have a care,
sir!”

Never, in all my life, did I see any thing more perfect than the
style in which the setters drew those bogs. There was no more of
racing, no more of impetuous dash; it seemed as if they knew the
birds were close before them. At a slow trot, their sterns whipping
their flanks at every step, they threaded the high tussocks. See!
the red dog straightens his neck, and snuffs the air.

“Look to! look to, Frank! they are close before old Chase!”

Now he draws on again, crouching close to the earth. “Toho!
Shot!” Now he stands! no! no! not yet—at least he is not certain!
He turns his head to catch his master's eye! Now his stern
moves a little—he draws on again!

There! he is sure now! what a picture—his black full eye intently
glaring, though he cannot see any thing in that thick mass
of herbage; his nostril wide expanded, his lips slavering from intense
excitement; his whole form motionless, and sharply drawn,
and rigid, even to the straight stern and lifted foot, as a block
wrought to mimic life by some skilful sculptor's chisel; and, scarce
ten yards behind, his liver-colored comrade backs him—as firm, as
stationary, as immovable, but in his attitude, how different! Chase
feels the hot scent steaming up under his very nostril; feels it in
every nerve, and quivers with anxiety to dash on his prey, even
while perfectly restrained and steady. Shot, on the contrary,
though a few minutes since he too was drawing, knows nothing of
himself, perceives no indication of the game's near presence, although
improved by discipline, his instinct tells him that his mate
has found them. Hence the same rigid form, stiff tail, and constrained
attitude, but in his face—for dogs have faces—there is none
of that tense energy, that evident anxiety; there is no frown
upon his brow, no glare in his mild open eye, no slaver on
his lip!

“Come up, Tom; come up, Frank, they are all here; we must
get in six barrels; they will not move—come up, I say!”

“And on we came, deliberately prompt, and ready. Now we
were all in line: Harry the centre man, I on the right, and Tom
on the left hand! The attitude of Archer was superb; his legs,
set a little way apart, as firm as if they had been rooted in the
soil; his form drawn back a little, and his head erect, with his eye
fixed upon the dogs; his gun held in both hands, across his person,
the muzzle slightly elevated, his left grasping the trigger guard;
the thumb of the right resting upon the hammer, and the fore-finger
on the trigger of the left hand barrel; but, as he had said, neither
cocked! “Fall back, Tom, if you please, five yards or so,” he said,
as coolly as if he were completely unconcerned, “and you come forward,
Frank, as many; I want to drive them to the left, into those
low red bushes—that will do—now then, I'll flush them—never
mind me, boys, I'll reserve my fire.”

And, as he spoke, he moved a yard or two in front of us, and under
his very feet, positively startling me by their noisy flutter, up
sprang the gallant bevy—fifteen or sixteen well grown birds,
crowding and jostling one against the other. Tom Draw's gun, as
I well believe, was at his shoulder when they rose; at least his
first shot was discharged before they had flown half a rood, and of
course harmlessly—the charge must have been driven through
them like a single ball; his second barrel instantly succeeded, and
down came two birds, caught in the act of crossing. I am myself
a quick shot, too quick if any thing, yet my first barrel was exploded
a moment after Tom Draw's second; the other followed,
and I had the satisfaction of bringing both my birds down handsomely;

then up went Harry's piece—the bevy being now twenty
or twenty-five yards distant—cocking it as it rose, he pulled the
trigger almost before it touched his shoulder, so rapid was the
movement; and, though he lowered the stock a little to cock the
second barrel, a moment scarcely passed between the two reports,
and almost on the instant two quail were fluttering out their lives
among the bog grass.

Dropping his butt, without a word, or even a glance to the dogs,
he quietly went on to load; nor indeed was it needed! at the first
shot they dropped into the grass, and there they lay as motionless
as if they had been dead, with their heads crouched between their
paws; nor did they stir thence till the tick of the gun-locks announced
that we again were ready. Then lifting up their heads,
and rising on their fore-feet, they sat half erect, eagerly waiting
for the signal.

“Hold up, good lads!” and on they drew, and in an instant
pointed on two several birds. “Fetch!” and each brought his
burthen to our feet; six birds were bagged at that rise, and thus
before eleven o'clock we had picked up a dozen cock, and within
one of the same number of fine quail, with only two shots missed.
The poor remainder of the bevy had dropped, singly, and scattered,
in the red bushes, whither we instantly pursued them, and where
we got six more, making a total of seventeen birds bagged out of a
bevy, twenty strong at first.

One towered bird of Harry's, certainly killed dead, we could
not with all our efforts bring to bag!—one bird Tom Draw missed
clean, and the remaining one we could not find again—another
dram of whiskey, and into Seer's great swamp we started—a large
piece of woodland, with every kind of lying. At one end it was
open, with soft black loamy soil, covered with docks and colts-foot
leaves under the shade of large but leafless willows, and here we
picked up a good many scattered woodcock; afterward we got into the
heavy thicket with much tangled grass, wherein we flushed a bevy,
but they all took to tree, and we made very little of them—and
here Tom Draw began to blow and labor—the covert was too thick,
the bottom too deep and unsteady for him.

Archer perceiving this, sent him at once to the outside; and
three times, as we went along, ourselves moving nothing, we heard
the round reports of his large calibre. “A bird at every shot, I'd
stake my life,” said Harry, “he never misses cross shots in the
open!”—at the same instant, a tremendous rush of wings burst from
the heaviest thicket—“Mark! partridge! partridge!” and as I
caught a glimpse of a dozen large birds fluttering up, one close upon
the other, and darting away as straight and nearly as fast as bullets,
through the dense branches of a cedar brake, I saw the flashes of
both Harry's barrels, almost simultaneously discharged, and at the
same time over went the objects of his aim; but ere I could get
up my gun the rest were out of sight. “You must shoot, Frank,
like lightning to kill these beggars—they are the ruffed grouse,
though they call them partridge here—see! are they not fine
fellows?”

Another hour's beating, in which we still kept picking up, from
time to time, some scattering birds, brought us to the spring head,
where we found Tim with luncheon ready, and our fat friend reposing
at his side, with two more partridge, and a rabbit which he
had bagged along the covert's edge. Cool was the Star champagne;
and capital was the cold fowl and Cheshire cheese; and
most delicious was the repose that followed, enlivened with gay
wit and free good humor, soothed by the fragrance of the exquisite
cheroots, moistened by the last drops of the Ferintosh qualified by
the crystal waters of the spring. After an hour's rest, we counted
up our spoil; four ruffed grouse, nineteen woodcock, with ten
brace and a half of quail besides the bunny, made up our score—
done comfortably in four hours.

“Now we have finished for to-day with quail,” said Archer,
“but we'll get full ten couple more of woodcock; come, let us be
stirring—hang up your game-bag in the tree, and tie the setters to
the fence; I want you in with me to beat, Tim—you two chaps
must both keep the outside!—you all the time, Tom; you, Frank,
till you get to that tall thunder-shivered ash tree; turn in there,
and follow up the margin of a wide slank you will see; but be
careful, the mud is very deep, and dangerous in places!—now then,
here goes!”

And in he went, jumping a narrow streamlet into a point of
thicket, through which he drove by main force. Scarce had he got
six yards into the brake, before both spaniels quested; and, to my
no small wonder, the jungle seemed alive with woodcock—eight or
nine, at the least, flapped up at once, and skimmed along the tongue
of coppice toward the high wood, which ran along the valley, as I
learned afterward, for full three miles in length—while four or five
more wheeled off to the sides, giving myself and Draw fair shots,
by which we did not fail to profit; but I confess it was with absolute
astonishment that I saw two of those turned over, which flew inward,
killed by the marvellously quick and unerring aim of Archer,
where a less thorough sportsman would have been quite unable to
discharge a gun at all, so dense was the tangled jungle. Throughout
the whole length of that skirt of coppice, a hundred and fifty
yards, I should suppose at the utmost, the birds kept rising as it
were incessantly—thirty-five, or, I think, nearly forty, being flushed
in less than twenty minutes—although comparatively few were
killed, partly from the difficulty of the ground, and partly from their
getting up by fours and fives at once. Into the high wood, however,
at the last we drove them; and there, till daylight failed us, we did
our work like men! By the cold light of the full moon we wended
homeward, rejoicing in the possession of twenty-six couple and a
half of cock, twelve brace of quail—we found another bevy on
our way home and bagged three birds almost by moonlight—five
ruffed grouse, and a rabbit. Before our wet clothes were well
changed, supper was ready, and a good blow-out was followed by
sound slumbers and sweet dreams, fairly earned by nine hours of
incessant walking!

3. DAY THE THIRD.

So thoroughly was I tired out by the effects of the first day's fagging
I had undergone in many months, and so sound was the
slumber into which I sank the moment my head touched the pillow,
that it scarcely seemed as if five minutes had elapsed between my
falling into sweet forgetfulness, and my starting bolt upright in
bed, aroused by the vociferous shout, and ponderous trampling—
equal to nothing less than that of a full-grown rhinoceros—with
which Tom Draw rushed, long before the sun was up, into my
chamber.

“What's this—what's this now?” he exclaimed; why the d—l
arn't you up and ready?—why here's the bitters mixed, and
Archer in the stable this half hour past, and Jem's here with the
hounds—and you, you lazy snorting Injun, wasting the morning
here in bed!”

My only reply to this most characteristic salutation, was to hurl
my pillow slap in his face, and—threatening to follow up the missile
with the contents of the water pitcher, which stood temptingly
within my reach, if he did not get out incontinently—to jump up and
array myself with all due speed; for, when I had collected my
bewildered thoughts, I well remembered that we had settled on a
fox-hunt before breakfast, as a preliminary to a fresh skirmish with
the quail.

In a few minutes I was on foot and in the parlor, where I found a
bright crackling fire, a mighty pitcher of milk punch, and a plate of
biscuit, an apt substitute for breakfast before starting; while, however,
I was discussing these, Archer arrived, dressed just as I have
described him on the preceding day, with the addition of a pair of
heavy hunting spurs, buckled on over his half-boots, and a large
iron-hammered whip in his right hand.

“That's right, Frank,” he exclaimed, after the ordinary salutations
of the morning.

“Why that old porpoise told me you would not be ready
these two hours; he's grumbling out yonder by the stable door,
like a hog stuck in a farm-yard gate. But come, we may as well
be moving, for the hounds are all uncoupled, and the nags saddled,
—put on a pair of straps to your fustain trowsers and take these
racing spurs, though Peacock does not want them—and now,
hurrah!”

This was soon done, and going out upon the stoop, a scene—it is
true, widely different from the kennel door at Melton, or the covert
side at Billesdon Coplow, yet not by any means devoid of interest or
animation—presented itself to my eyes. About six couple of large
heavy hounds, with deep and pendant ears, heavy well-feathered
sterns, broad chests, and muscular strong limbs, were gathered
round their feeder, the renowned Jem Lyn; on whom it may not

be impertinent to waste a word or two, before proceeding to the
mountain, which, as I learned, to my no little wonder, was destined
to be our hunting ground.

Picture to yourself, then, gentle reader, a small but actively
formed man, with a face of most unusual and portentous ugliness,
an uncouth grin doing the part of a smile; a pair of eyes so small
that they would have been invisible, but for the serpent-like vivacity
and brightness with which they sparkled from their deep sockets,
and a profusion of long hair, coal-black, but lank and uncurled
as an Indian's, combed smoothly down with a degree of care entirely
out of keeping with the other details, whether of dress or
countenance, on either cheek. Above these sleek and cherished
tresses he wore a thing which might have passed for either cap or
castor, at the wearer's pleasure; for it was wholly destitute of brim
except for a space some three or four inches wide over the eye-brows;
and the crown had been so pertinaciously and completely
beaten in, that the sides sloped inward at the top, as if to personate
a bishop's mitre; a fishing line was wound about this graceful and,
if its appearance belied it not most foully, odoriferous head-dress;
and into the fishing line was stuck the bowl and some two inches
of the shank of a well-sooted pipe. An old red handkerchief was
twisted ropewise about his lean and scraggy neck, but it by no means
sufficed to hide the scar of what had evidently been a most appalling
gash, extending right across his throat, almost from ear to ear,
the great cicatrix clearly visible like a white line through the
thick stubble of some ten days' standing that graced his chin and
neck.

An old green coat, the skirts of which had long since been
docked by the encroachment of thorn-bushes and cat-briers, with the
mouth-piece of a powder-horn peeping from its breast pocket, and a
full shot-belt crossing his right shoulder; a pair of fustian trowsers,
patched at the knees with corduroy, and heavy cowhide boots completed
his attire. This, as it seemed, was to be our huntsman; and
sooth to say, although he did not look the character, he played the
part, when he got to work, right handsomely. At a more fitting
season, Harry in a few words let me into this worthy's history and
disposition. “He is,” he said, “the most incorrigible rascal I ever
met with—an unredeemed and utter vagabond; he started life as a
stallion-leader, a business which he understands—as in fact he does
almost every thing else within his scope—thoroughly well. He got
on prodigiously!—was employed by the first breeders in the country!
—took to drinking, and then, in due rotation, to gambling, pilfering,
lying, every vice, in short, which is compatible with utter want
of any thing like moral sense, deep shrewdness, and uncommon
cowardice.

“He cut his throat once—you may see the scar now —in a fit of
delirium tremens, and Tom Draw—who, though he is perpetually
cursing him for the most lying critter under heaven, has, I believe,
a sort of fellow feeling for him—nursed him and got him well; and
ever since he has hung about here, getting at times a country stallion

to look after, at others hunting, or fishing, or doing little jobs
about the stable, for which Tom gives him plenty of abuse, plenty
to eat, and as little rum as possible, for if he gets a second glass it
is all up with Jem Lyn for a week at least.

“He came to see me once in New York, when I was down upon
my back with a broken leg—I was lying in the parlor, about three
weeks after the accident had happened. Tim Matlock had gone
out for something, and the cook let him in; and, after he had sat
there about half an hour, telling me all the news of the races, and
making me laugh more than was good for my broken leg, he gave
me such a hint, that I was compelled to direct him to the cupboard,
wherein I keep the liquor-stand; and unluckily enough, as I had
not for some time been in drinking tune, all three of the bottles
were brimful; and, as I am a Christian man, he drank in spite of
all that I could say—I could not leave the couch to get at him—
two of them to the dregs; and, after frightening me almost to
death, fell flat upon the floor, and lay there fast asleep when Tim
came in again. He dragged him instantly, by my directions, under
the pump in the garden, and soused him for about two hours, but
without producing the least effect, except eliciting a grunt or two
from this most seasoned cask.

“Such is Jem Lyn, and yet, absurd to say, I have tried the fellow,
and believe him perfectly trustworthy—at least to me!

“He is a coward, yet I have seen him fight like a hero more than
once, and against heavy odds, to save me from a threshing, which I
got after all, though not without some damage to our foes, whose
name might have been legion.

“He is the greatest liar I ever met with; and yet I never
caught him in a falsehood, for he believes it is no use to tell me
one.

“He is most utterly dishonest, yet I have trusted him with sums
that would, in his opinion, have made him a rich man for life, and
he accounted to the utmost shilling; but I advise you not to try the
same, for if you do he most assuredly will cheat you!”

Among the heavy looking hounds, which clustered round this
hopeful gentleman, I quickly singled out two couple of widely different
breed and character from the rest; your thorough high-bred
racing fox-hounds, with ears rounded, thin shining coats, clean
limbs, and all the marks of the best class of English hounds.

“Aye! Frank,” said Archer, as he caught my eye fixed on them,
“you have found out my favorites. Why, Bonny Belle, good lass,
why Bonny Belle!—here Blossom, Blossom, come up and show your
pretty figures to your countryman! Poor Hanbury—do you remember,
Frank, how many a merry day we've had with him by
Thorley Church, and Takely forest?—poor Hanbury sent them to
me with such a letter, only the year before he died; and those,
Dauntless and Dangerous, I had from Will, Lord Harewood's huntsman,
the same season!”

“There never was sich dogs—there never was afore in Orange,”
said Tom. “I will say that, though they be English; and though

they be too fast for fox, entirely, there never was sich dogs for
deer”—

“But how the deuce,” I interrupted, “can hounds be too fast, if
they have bone and stanchness!”

“Stanchness be d—d; they holes them!”

“No earthstoppers in these parts, Frank,” cried Harry; “and as
the object of these gentlemen is not to hunt solely for the fun of
the thing, but to destroy a noxious varmint, they prefer a slow, sure,
deep-mouthed dog, that does not press too closely on Pug, but lets
him take his time about the coverts, till he comes into fair gunshot
of these hunters, who are lying perdu as he runs to get a crack at
him.”

“And pray, said I, “is this your method of proceeding?”

“You shall see, you shall see; come get to horse, or it will be
late before we get our breakfasts, and I assure you I don't wish to
lose either that, or my day's quail-shooting. This hunt is merely
for a change, and to get something of an appetite for breakfast,
Now, Tim, be sure that every thing is ready by eight o'clock at the
latest—we shall be in by that time with a furious appetite.”

Thus saying he mounted, without more delay, his favorite, the
gray; while I backed, nothing loth, the chestnut horse; and at the
same time to my vast astonishment, from under the long shed out
rode the mighty Tom, bestriding a tall powerful brown mare, showing
a monstrous deal of blood combined with no slight bone—
equipped with a cavalry bridle, and strange to say, without the
universal martingal; he was rigged just as usual, with the exception
of a broad-brimmed hat in place of his fur cap, and grasped in
his right hand a heavy smooth-bored rifle, while with the left he
wheeled his mare, with a degree of active skill, which I should certainly
have looked for any where rather than in so vast a mass of
flesh as that which was exhibited by our worthy host.

Two other sportsmen, grave, sober-looking farmers, whom Harry
greeted cheerily by name, and to whom in all due form I was next
introduced, well-mounted, and armed with long single-barrelled
guns, completed our party; and away we went at a rattling trot,
the hounds following at Archer's heels, as steadily as though he
hunted them three times a week.

“Now arn't it a strange thing,” said Tom,” “arn't it a strange
thing, Mr. Forester, that every critter under Heaven takes somehow
nat'rally to that are Archer—the very hounds—old Whino
there! that I have had these eight years, and fed with my own
hands, and hunted steady every winter, quits me the very moment
he claps sight on him; by the etarnal, I believe he is half dog
himself.”

“You hunted them indeed,” interrupted Harry, “you old rhinoceros,
why hang your hide, you never so much as heard a good
view-holloa till I came up here—you hunted them—a man talk of
hunting, that carries a cannon about with him on horseback; but
come, where are we to try first, on Rocky Hill, or in the Spring
Swamps?”

“Why now I reckon, Archer, we'd best stop down to Sam Blain's
—by the blacksmith's—he was telling t' other morning of an
etarnal sight of them he'd seen down hereaway—and we'll be there
to rights!—Jem, curse you, out of my way, you dumb nigger—out
of my way, or I'll ride over you”—for, travelling along at a strange
shambling run, that worthy had contrived to keep up with us,
though we were going fully at the rate of eight or nine miles in an
hour.

“Hurrah!” cried Tom, suddenly pulling up at the door of a neat
farm-house on the brow of a hill, with a clear streamlet sweeping
round its base, and a fine piece of woodland at the farther side.
“Hurrah! Sam Blain, we've come to make them foxes, you were
telling of a Sunday, smell h—ll right straight away. Here's
Archer, and another Yorker with him—leastwise an Englisher I
should say—and Squire Conklin, and Bill Speers, and that white
nigger Jem! Look sharp, I say! Look sharp, d—n you, else
we'll pull off the ruff of the old humstead.”

In a few minutes Sam made his appearance, armed, like the rest,
with a Queen Ann's tower-musket.

“Well! well!” he said, “I'm ready. Quit making such a
clatter! Lend me a load of powder, one of you; my horn's leaked
dry, I reckon!”

Tom forthwith handed him his own, and the next thing I heard
was Blain exclaiming that it was “desperate pretty powder,” and
wondering if it shot strong.

“Shoot strong? I guess you'll find it strong enough to sew you
up, if you go charging your old musket that ways!” answered Tom.
“By the Lord, Archer, he's put in three full charges!”

“Well, it will kill him, that's all!” answered Harry, very
coolly; “and there'll be one less of you. But come! come! let's
be bustling; the sun's going to get up already. You'll leave your
horses here, I suppose, gentlemen, and get to the old stands. Tom
Draw, put Mr. Forester at my old post down by the big pin-oak at
the creek side; and you stand there, Frank, still as a church-mouse.
It's ten to one, if some of these fellows don't shoot him
first, that he'll break covert close by you, and run the meadows for
a mile or two, up to the turnpike road, and over it to Rocky hill—
that black knob yonder, covered with pine and hemlock. There are
some queer snake fences in the flat, and a big brook or two, but
Peacock has been over over every inch of it before, and you may
trust in him implicitly. Good bye! I'm going up the road with
Jem to drive it from the upper end.”

And off he went at a merry trot, with the hounds gamboling
about his stirrups, and Jem Lyn running at his best pace to keep up
with him. In a few minutes they were lost behind a swell of
woodland, round which the road wheeled suddenly. At the same
moment Tom and his companions re-appeared from the stables,
where they had been securing their four-footed friends; and, after
a few seconds, spent in running ramrods down the barrels to see
that all was right, inspecting primings, knapping flints, or putting

on fresh copper caps, it was announced that all was ready; and
passing through the farm-yard, we entered, through a set of bars,
a broad bright buckwheat stubble. Scarcely an hundred yards
had we proceeded, before up sprang the finest bevy of the largest
quail I had yet seen, and flying high and wild crossed half-a-dozen
fields in the direction of the village, whence we had started, and
pitched at length into an alder brake beside the stream.

“Them chaps has gone the right way,” Tom exclaimed, with a
deep sigh, who had with wondrous difficulty refrained from firing
into them, though he was loaded with buckshot; “right in the
course we count to take this forenoon. Now, Squire, keep to the
left here, take your station by the old earths there away, under the
tall dead pine; and you, Bill, make tracks there, straight through
the middle cart-way, down to the other meadow, and sit you down
right where the two streams fork; there'll be an old red snooping
down that side afore long, I reckon. We'll go on, Mr. Forester;
here's a big rail fence now; I'll throw off the top rail, for I'll be
darned if I climb any day when I can creep—there, that'll do, I
reckon; leastwise if you can ride like Archer—he d—ns me always
if I so much as shakes a fence afore he jumps it—you've got the
best horse, too, for lepping. Now let's see! Well done! well
done!” he continued, with a most boisterous burst of laughter—
“well done, horse, any how!”—as Peacock, who had been chafing
ever since he parted from his comrade Bob, went at the fence as
though he were about to take it in his stroke—stopped short when
within a yard of it, and then bucked over it, without touching a
splinter, although it was at least five feet, and shaking me so
much, that, greatly to Tom's joy, I showed no little glimpse of
daylight.

“I reckon if they run the meadows, you'll hardly ride them,
Forester,” he grinned; “but now away with you. You see the
tall dark pin oak, it has n't lost one leaf yet; right in the nook there
of the bars you'll find a quiet shady spot, where you can see clear
up the rail fence to this knob, where I'll be. Off with you, boy—
and mind you now, you keep as dumb as the old woman when her
husband cut her tongue out, 'cause she had too much jaw.”

Finishing his discourse, he squatted himself down on the stool of
a large hemlock, which, being recently cut down, cumbered the
woodside with its giant stem, and secured him, with its evergreen
top now lowly laid and withering, from the most narrow scrutiny;
while I, giving the gallant horse his head, went at a brisk hand-gallop
across the firm short turf of the fair sloping hill-side, taking a
moderate fence in my stroke, which Peacock cleared in a style that
satisfied me Harry had by no means exaggerated his capacity to act
as hunter, in lieu of the less glorious occupation, to which in general
he was doomed.

In half a minute more I reached my post, and though an hour
passed before I heard the slightest sound betokening the chase,
never did I more thoroughly enjoy an hour.

The loveliness of the whole scene before me—the broad rich

sweep of meadowland lying, all bathed in dew, under the pale gray
light of an autumnal morning, with groups of cattle couched still
beneath the trees where they had passed the night; the distant
hills, veiled partially in mist, partially rearing their round leafy
heads toward the brightening sky; and then the various changes of
the landscape, as slowly the day broke behind the eastern hill; and
all the various sounds of bird, and beast, and insect, which each
succeeding variation of the morning served to call into life as if by
magic. First a faint rosy flush stole up the eastern sky, and nearly
at the self-same moment, two or three vagrant crows came flapping
heavily along, at a height so immeasurable that their harsh voices
were by distance modified into a pleasing murmur And now a little
fish jumped in the streamlet; and the splash, rifling as it was,
with which he fell back on the quiet surface, half startled me.

A moment afterward an acron plumped down on my head, and,
as I looked up, there sat, on a limb not ten feet above me, an impudent
rogue of a gray squirrel, half as big as a rabbit, erect upon his
haunches, working away at the twin brother of the acorn he had
dropped upon my hat to break my revery, rasping it audibly with
his chisel-shaped teeth, and grinning at me just as coolly as though
I were a harmless scare-crow.

When I grew tired of observing him, and looked toward the sky
again, behold the western ridge, which is far higher than the eastern
hills, had caught upon its summits the first bright rays of the yet
unseen day-god; while the rosy flush of the east had brightened
into a blaze of living gold, exceeded only by the glorious hues
with which a few slight specks of misty cloud glowed out against
the azure firmament, like coals of actual fire.

Again a louder splash aroused me; and, as I turned, there floated
on a glassy basin, into which the ripples of a tiny fall subsided,
three wood-ducks with a noble drake, that loveliest in plumage of
all aquatic fowl, perfectly undisturbed and fearless, although within
ten yards of their most dreaded enemy.

How beautiful are all their motions! There! one has reared
herself half way out of the water; another stretches forth a delicate
web foot to scratch her ear, as handily as a dog on dry land; and
now the drake reflects his purple neck to preen his ruffled wing,
and now—bad luck to you, Peacock, why did you snort and stamp?
—they are off like a bullet, and out of sight in an instant.

And now out comes the sun himself, and with him the accursed
hum of a musquitoe—and hark! hush!—what was that?—was it?
By Heavens! it was the deep note of a fox-hound! Aye! there
comes Harry's cheer, faintly heard, swelling up the breeze.

“Have at him, there! Ha-a-ve at him, good lads!”

Again! again! those are the musical deep voices of the slow
hounds! They have a dash in them of the old Southern breed!
And now! there goes the yell! the quick sharp yelping rally of
those two high-bred bitches.

By heaven! they must be viewing him! How the woods ring
and crash!

“Togather hark! Togather hark! Togather! For-ra-ard, good
lads, get for-a-ard! Hya-a-ara way!”

Well halloaed Harry! I could swear to that last screech, out of
ten thousand, though it is near ten years since I last heard it! But
heavens! how they press him! Hang it! there goes a shot—the
squire has fired at him, as he tried the earths! Now, if he have
but missed him, and Pan, the god of hunters, send it so, he has no
chance but to try the open.

“By Jove he has! he must have missed! for Bonny Belle and
Blossom are raving half a mile this side of him already. And now
Tom sees him—how quietly he steals up to the fence. There! he
has fired! and all our sport is up! No! no! he waves his hat and
points this way! Can he have missed? No! he has got a fox!—
he lifts it out by the brush—there must have been two, then, on
foot together. He has done well to get that he has killed away, or
they would have stopped on him!

Hush! the leaves rustle here beside me, with a quick patter—
the twigs crackle—it is he! Move not! not for your life, Peacock!
There! he has broken cover fairly! Now he is half across the
field! he stops to listen! Ah! he will head back again. No! no!
that crash, when they came upon the warm blood, has decided him
—away he goes, with his brush high, and its white tag brandished
in the sunshine—now I may halloa him away.

“Whoop! gone awa-ay! whoop!”

I was answered on the instant by Harry's quick—

“Hark holloa! get awa-ay! to him hark! to him hark! hark
holloa!”

Most glorious Artemis, what heaven stirring music! And yet
there are but poor six couple; the scent must be as hot as fine, for
every hound seems to have twenty tongues, and every leaf an hundred
echoes! How the boughs crash again! Lo! they are here!
Bonny Belle leading—head and stern up, with a quick panting
yelp! Blossom, and Dangerous, and Dauntless, scarcely a length
behind her, striving together, neck and neck; and, by St. Hubert,
it must be a scent of twenty thousand, for here these heavy Southrons
are scarcely two rods behind them.

But fidget not, good Peacock! fret not, most excellent Pythagoras!
one moment more, and I am not the boy to balk you. And
here comes Harry on the gray; by George! he makes the brush-wood
crackle! Now for a nasty leap out of the tangled swamp!
a high six-barred fence of rough trees, leaning toward him, and up
hill! surely he will not try it!

Will he not though?

See!—his rein is tight yet easy! his seat, how beautiful, how
firm, yet how relaxed and graceful! Well done, indeed! He
slacks his rein one instant as the gray rises! the rugged rails are
cleared, and the firm pull supports him! but Harry moves not in
the saddle—no, not one hair's breadth! A five foot fence to him is
nothing! You shall not see the slightest variation between his attitude
in that strong effort, and in the easy gallop. If Tom Draw

saw him now, he could have some excuse for calling him “half
horse”—and he does see him! hark to that most unearthly yell!
like unto nothing, either heavenly or human! He waves his hat
and hurries back as fast as he is able to the horses, well knowing
that, for pedestrians at least, the morning's sport is ended.

Harry and I were now almost abreast, riding in parallel lines,
down the rich valley, very nearly at the top speed of our horses;
taking fence after fence in our stroke, and keeping well up with
the hounds, which were running almost mute, such was the furious
speed to which the blazing scent excited them.

We had already passed above two-thirds of the whole distance
that divides the range of woods, wherein we found him, and the
pretty village which we had constituted our head quarters, a distance
of at least three miles; and now a very difficult and awkward
obstacle presented itself to our farther progress, in the shape of a
wide yawning brook between sheer banks of several feet in height,
broken, with rough and pointed stones, the whole being at least five
yards across. The gallant hounds dashed over it; and, when we
reached it, were half way across the grass field next beyond it.

“Hold him hard, Frank,” Harry shouted; “hold him hard, man,
and cram him at it!”

And so I did, though I had little hope of clearing it. I lifted him
a little on the snaffle, gave him the spur just as he reached the
brink, and with a long and swinging leap, so easy that its motion
was in truth scarce perceptible, he swept across it; before I had
the time to think, we were again going at our best pace almost
among the hounds.

Over myself, I cast a quick glance back toward Harry, who by
a short turn of the chase had been thrown a few yards behind me.
He charged it gallantly; but on the very verge, cowed by the
brightness of the rippling water, the gray made a half stop, but
leaped immediately, beneath the application of the galling spur; he
made a noble effort, but it was scarce a thing to be effected by a
standing leap, and it was with far less pleasure than surprise, that
I saw him drop his hind legs down the steep bank, having just
landed with fore-feet in the meadow.

I was afraid, indeed, he must have had an ugly fall, but, picked
up quickly by the delicate and steady finger of his rider, the good
horse found some slight projection of the bank, whereby to make a
second spring. After a heavy flounder, however, which must have
dismounted any less perfect horseman, he recovered himself well,
and before many minutes was again abreast of me!

Thus far the course of the hunted fox had lain directly homeward,
down the valley; but now the turnpike road making a sudden turn
crossed his line at right angles, while another narrower road coming
in at a tangent, went off to the south-westward in the direction
of the bold projection, which I had learned to recognize as Rocky
Hill; over the high fence into the road; well performed, gallant
horses! And now they check for a moment, puzzling about on the
dry sandy turnpike.

“Dangerous feathers on it now! Speak to it! speak to it, good
hound!”

How beautiful that flourish of the stern with which he darts away
on the recovered scent; with what a yell they open it once again!
Harry was right, he makes for Rocky Hill, but up this plaguey lane,
where the scent lies but faintly. Now! now! the road turns off
again far westward of his point! He may, by Jove! and he has
left it!

“Have at him then, lads; he is ours!”

And lo! the pace increases. Ha! what a sudden turn, and in the
middle too of a clear pasture.

“Has he been headed, Harry!”

“No! no! his strength is failing!”

And see! he makes his point again toward the hill; it is within
a quarter of a mile, and if he gain it we can do nothing with him,
for it is full of earths. But he will never reach it! See! he turns
once again; how exquisitely well those bitches run it; three times
he has doubled, now almost as short as a hare, and they, running
breast-high, have turned with him each time, not over-running it a
yard.

See how the sheep have drawn together into phalanx yonder, in
that bare pasture to the eastward; he has crossed that field for a
thousand! Yes! I am right. See! they turn once again. What
a delicious rally! An outspread towel would cover those four leading
hounds—now Dauntless has it; has it by half a neck.

“He always goes up, when a fox is sinking,” Harry exclaimed,
pointing toward him with his hunting whip.

Aye! he has given up his point entirely; he knew he could not
face the hill. Look! look at those carrion crows! how low they
stoop over that woody bank. That is his line. Here is the road
again! Over it once more merrily! and now we view him.

“Whoop! Forra-ard, lads, forra-ard!”

He cannot hold five minutes; and see, there comes fat Tom,
pounding that mare along the road, as if her fore-feet were of hammered
iron; he has come up along the turnpike, at an infernal
pace, while that turn favored him; but he will only see us kill
him, and that, too, at a respectful distance.

Another brook stretches across our course, hurrying to join the
greater stream along the banks of which we have so long been
speeding; but this is a little one; there! we have cleared it
cleverly. Now! now! the hounds are viewing him. Poor brute!
his day is come. See how he twists and doubles. Ah! now they
have him! No! that short turn has saved him, and he gains the
fence—he will lie down there! No! he stretches gallantly across
the next field—game to the last, poor devil! There!

“Who-whoop! Dead! dead! who-whoop!”

And in another instant Harry had snatched him from the hounds,
and holding him aloft displayed him to the rest, as they came up
along the road.

“A pretty burst,” he said to me, “a pretty burst, Frank, and a

good kill; but they can't stand before the hounds, the foxes here,
like our stout islanders; they are not forced to work so hard to
gain their living. But now let us get homeward; I want my
breakfast, I can tell you, and then a rattle at the quail. I mean to
get full forty brace to-day, I promise you!”

“And we,” said I, “have marked down fifteen brace already
toward it; right in the line of our beat, Tom says.”

“That's right! well, let us go on.”

And in a short half hour we were all once again assembled about
Tom's hospitable board, and making such a breakfast, on every
sort of eatable that can be crowded on a breakfast table, as sportsmen
only have a right to make; nor they, unless they have walked
ten, or galloped half as many miles, before it.

Before we had been in an hour, Harry once again roused us out.
All had been, during our absence, fully prepared by the indefatigable
Tim; who, as the day before, accoutred with spare shot and lots
of provender, seemed to grudge us each morsel that we ate, so eager
was he to see us take the field in season.

Off we went then; but what boots it to repeat a thrice told tale;
suffice it, that the dogs worked as well as dogs can work; that
birds were plentiful, and lying good; that we fagged hard, and
shot on the whole passably, so that by sunset we had exceeded
Harry's forty brace by fifteen birds, and got beside nine couple and
a half of woodcock; which we found, most unexpectedly, basking
themselves in the open meadow, along the grassy banks of a small
rill, without a bush or tree within five hundred yards of them.

Evening had closed before we reached the well known tavern-stand,
and the merry blaze of the fire, and many candles, showed us,
while yet far distant, that due preparations were in course for our
entertainment.

“What have we here?” cried Harry, as we reached the door—
“Race horses? Why, Tom, by heaven! we've got the Flying
Dutchman here again; now for a night of it!”

And so in truth it was, a most wet, and most jovial one, seasoned
with no small wit—but of that more anon!

4. DAY THE FOURTH.

When we had entered Tom's hospitable dwelling, and delivered
over our guns to be duly cleaned, and the dogs to be suppered, by
Tim Matlock, I passed through the parlor, on my way to my own
crib, where I found Archer in close confabulation with a tall raw-boned
Dutchman, with a keen freckled face, small 'cute gray eyes,
looking suspiciously about from under the shade of a pair of straggling
sandy eyebrows, small reddish whiskers, and a head of carrotty
hair as rough and tangled as a fox's back.

His aspect was a wondrous mixture of sneakingness and smartness,
and his expression did most villainously belie him, if he were
not as sharp a customer as ever wagged an elbow, or betted on a
horse-race.

“Frank,” exclaimed Harry as I entered, “I make you know
Mr. McTaggart, better known hereabouts as the flying Dutchman,
though how he came by a Scotch name I can't pretend to say; he
keeps the best quarter horses, and plays the best hand of whist in
the country; and now, get yourself clean as quick as possible, for
Tom never gives one five minutes wherein to dress himself—so
bustle.”

And off he went as he had finished speaking, and I, shaking my
new friend cordially by an exceeding bony unwashed paw, incontinently
followed his example—and in good time I did so; for I had
scarcely changed my shooting boots and wet worsteds for slippers
and silk socks, before my door, as usual, was lounged open by Tom's
massy foot, and I was thus exhorted.

“Come, come, your supper's gittin' cold; I never see such men
as you and Archer is; you're wash, wash, wash—all day! It's
little water enough that you use any other ways.”

“Why, is there any other use for water, Tom?” I asked, simply
enough.

“It's lucky if there aint, any how—leastwise, where you and
Archer is—else you'd leave none for the rest of us. It's a good
thing you han't thought of washing your darned stinking hides in
rum—you will be at it some of these odd days, I warrant me—why
now, McTaggart, it's only yesterday I caught Archer up stairs, a
fiddling away up there at his teeth with a little ivory brush; brushing
them with cold water—cleaning them he calls it! Cuss all
such trash, says I.”

While I was listening in mute astonishment, wondering whether
in truth the old savage never cleaned his teeth, Archer made his
appearance, and to a better supper never did I sit down, than was
spread at the old round table, in such profusion as might have well
sufficed to feed a troop of horse.

“What have we got here, Tom?” cried Harry as he took the

head of the social board; “quail-pie, by George—are there any
peppers in it, Tom?”

“Sartain there is,” replied that worthy, “and a prime rump-steak
in the bottom, and some first-best salt pork, chopped fine, and three
small onions; like little Wax-skin used to fix them, when he was
up here all last fall.”

“Take some of this pie, Frank;” said Archer, as he handed me a
huge plate of leafy reeking pie-crust, with a slice of fat steak, and
a plump hen quail, and gravy, and etceteras, that might have made
an alderman's mouth water; “and if you do n't say it's the very
best thing you ever tasted, you are not half so good a judge as I
used to hold you. It took little Johnny and myself three wet days
to concoct it. Pie, Tom, or roast pig?” he continued; “or
broiled woodcock? Here they are, all of them.”

“Why, I reckon I'll take cock; briled meat wants to be ate
right stret away as soon as it comes off the griddle; and of all
darned nice ways of cooking, to brile a thing, quick now, over hot
hickory ashes, is the best for me!”

“I believe you're right about eating the cock first, for they
will not be worth a farthing if they get cold. So you stick to the
pig, do you—hey, McTaggart? Well, there is no reckoning on
taste—holloa, Tim, look sharp! the champagne all 'round—I'm
choking!”

And for some time no sound was heard, but the continuous clatter
of knives and forks, the occasional popping of a cork, succeeded by
the gurgling of the generous wine as it flowed into the tall rummers;
and every now and then a loud and rattling eructation from
Tom Draw; who, as he said, could never half enjoy a meal if he
could not stop now and then to blow off steam.

At last, however—for supper, alas! like all other earthly pleasures,
must come to an end—“The fairest still the fleetest”—our
appetites waned gradually; and notwithstanding Harry's earnest
exhortations, and the production of a broiled ham-bone, devilled to the
very utmost pitch of English mustard, soy, oil of Aix, and cayenne
pepper, by no hands, as may be guessed, but those of that universal
genius, Timothy; one by one, we gave over our labors edacious, to
betake us to potations of no small depth or frequency.

“It is directly contrary to my rule, Frank, to drink before a good
day's shooting—and a good day I mean to have to-morrow!—but I
am thirsty, and the least thought chilly; so here goes for a debauch!
Tim, look in my box with the clothes, and you will find
two flasks of curaçao; bring them down, and a dozen lemons, and
some lump sugar—look alive! and you, Tom, out with your best
brandy; I'll make a jorum that will open your eyes tight before
you've done with it. That's right, Tim; now get the soup tureen,
the biggest one, and see that it's clean. The old villain has got
a punch bowl—bring half a dozen of champagne, a bucket full of
ice, and then go down into the kitchen, and make two quarts of
green tea, as strong as possible; and when it's made, set it to cool
in the ice-house!”

In a few minutes all the ingredients were at hand; the rind,
peeled carefully from all the lemons, was deposited with two tumblers
full of finely powdered sugar in the bottom of the tureen;
thereupon were poured instantly three pints of pale old Cognae;
and these were left to steep, without admixture, until Tim Matlock
made his entrance with the cold, strong, green tea; two quarts of
this, strained clear, were added to the brandy, and then two flasks
of curacao!

Into this mixture a dozen lumps of clear ice were thrown, and
the whole stirred up 'till the sugar was entirely suspended; then
pop! pop! went the long necks, and their creaming nectar was
discharged into the bowl; and by the body of Bacchus—as the
Italians swear—and by his soul too, which he never steeped in
such delicious nectar, what a drink that was, when it was completed.

Even Tom Draw, who ever was much disposed to look upon
strange potables as trash, and who had eyed the whole proceedings
with ill-concealed suspicion and disdain, when he had quaffed off a
pint-beaker full, which he did without once moving the vessel from
his head, smacked his lips with a report which might have been
heard half a mile off, and which resembled very nearly the crack
of a first-rate huntsman's whip.

“That's not slow, now!” he said, half dubiously, “to cell God's
truth now, that's first rate; I reckon, though, it would be better if
there wasn't that tea into it—it makes it weak and trashy like!”

“You be hanged!” answered Harry, “that's mere affectation—
that smack of your lips told the story; did you ever hear such an
infernal sound? I never did, by George!”

“Begging your pardon, Measter Archer,” interposed Timothy,
pulling his forelock, with an expression of profound respect, mingled
with a ludicrous air of regret, at being forced to differ in the least
degree from his master; “begging your pardon, Measter Archer,
that was a roommer noise, and by a vary gre-at de-al too, when
Measter McTavish sneezed me clean oot o't' wagon!”

`What's that?—what the devil's that?” cried I; “this
McTavish must be a queer genius; one day I hear of his frightening
a bull out of a meadow, and the next of his sneezing a man
out of a phaeton.”

“It's simply true!—both are simply true! We were driving
very slowly on an immensely hot day in the middle of August, between
Lebanon Springs and Claverack; McTavish and I on the
front seat, and Tim behind. Well! we were creeping at a foot's
pace, up a long, steep hill, just at the very hottest time of day; not
a word had been spoken for above an hour, for we were all tired
and languid—except once, when McTavish asked for his third
tumbler, since breakfast, of Starke's Ferintosh, of which we had
three two-quart bottles in the liquor case—when suddenly, without
any sign or warning, McTavish gave a sneeze which, on my honor,
was scarcely inferior in loudness to a pistol shot! The horses
started almost off the road, I jumped about half a foot off my seat,

and positively, without exaggeration, Timothy tumbled slap out of
the wagon into the road, and lay there sprawling in the dust, while
Mac sat perfectly unmoved, without a smile upon his face, looking
straight before him, exactly as if nothing had happened.”

“Nonsense, Harry,” exclaimed I; “that positively won't go
down.”

“That's an etarnal lie, now, Archer!” Tom chimed in; “leastwise
I don't know why I should say so neither, for I never saw no
deviltry goin on yet, that did'nt come as nat'ral to McTavish, as
lying to a minister, or”—

“Rum to Tom Draw!” responded Harry. “But it's true as the
gospel, ask Timothy there!”

“Nay it's all true; only it's scarce so bad i' t' story, as it was
i' right airnest! Ay cooped oot o' t' drag—loike ivry thing—my
hinder eend was sair a moonth and better!”

“Now then,” said I, “it's Tom's turn; “let us hear about the
bull.”

“Oh, the bull!” answered Tom. “Well you see, Archer there,
and little Waxskin—you know little Waxskin, I guess, Mister
Forester—and old McTavish, had gone down to shoot to Hell-hole
—where we was yesterday, you see!—well now! it was hot—hot,
worst kind; I tell you—and I was sort o' tired out—so Waxskin, in
he goes into the thick, and Archer arter him, and up the old crick
side—thinkin, you see, that we was goin up, where you and I
walked yesterday—but not a bit of it; we never thought of no such
thing, not we! We sot ourselves down underneath the haystacks,
and made ourselves two good stiff horns of toddy; and cooled off
there, all in the shade, as slick as silk.

“Well, arter we'd been there quite a piece, bang! we hears, in the
very thick of the swamp—bang! bang!—and then I heerd Harry
Archer roar out `mark! mark!—Tom, mark!—you old fat rascal,'—and
sure enough, right where I should have been, if I 'd
been a doin right, out came two woodcock—big ones—they looked
like hens, and I kind o' thought it was a shame, so I got up to go to
them, and called McTavish to go with me; but torights, jest as he
was a gittin up, a heap of critters comes all chasin up, scart by a
dog, I reckon, kickin their darned heels up, and bellowin like mad—
and there was one young bull amongst them, quite a lump of a bull
now I tell you; and the bull he came up pretty nigh to us, and
stood, and stawmped, and sort o' snorted, as if he did'nt know right
what he would be arter, and McTavish, he gits up, and turns right
round with his back to the critter; he 'd got a bit of a round jacket
on, and he stoops down till his head came right atween his legs,
kind o' straddlin like, so that the bull could see nothing of him but
his t'other eend, and his head right under it, chin uppermost, with
his big black whiskers, lookin as fierce as all h—l, and fiercer;
well! the bull he stawmped agin, and pawed, and bellowed, and I
was in hopes, I swon, that he would have hooked him; but jest then
McTavish, starts to run, goin along as I have told you, hind eend
foremost—bo-oo went the bull, a-boo-oo, and off he starts like a

strick, with his tail stret-on-eend, and his eyes starin, and all the
critters arter him, and then they kind o' circled round—and all
stood still and stared—and stawmped, 'till he got nigh to them, and
then they all stricks off agin; and so they went on—runnin and
then standin still,—and so they went on the hull of an hour, I'll be
bound; and I lay there upon my back laughin 'till I was stiff
and sore all over; and then came Waxskin and old Archer, wrathy
as h—l and swearin'—Lord how they did swear!

“They 'd been a slavin there through the darned thorns and briers,
and the old stinkin mud holes, and flushed a most almighty sight of
cock, where the brush was too thick to shoot them, and every one
they flushed, he came stret out into the open field, where Archer
knew we should have been, and where we should have killed a
thunderin mess, and no mistake; and they went on dammin, and
wonderin, and sweatin through the brush, till they got out to the
far eend, and there they had to make tracks back to us through the
bog meadow, under a brilin sun, and when they did get back, the
bull was jest a goin through the bars—and every d—d drop o' the
rum was drinked up; and the sun was settin, and the day's shootin
—that was spoiled!—and then McTavish tantalized them the worst
sort. But I did laugh to kill; it was the best I ever did see, was
that spree—Ha! ha! ha!”

And, as he finished, he burst out into his first horse laugh, in
which I chorused him most heartily, having in truth been in convulsions,
between the queerness of his lingo, and the absurdly grotesque
attitudes into which he threw himself, in imitating the persons
concerning whom his story ran. After this, jest succeeded
jest! and story, story! 'till, in good truth, the glass circling the
while with most portentous speed, I began to feel bees in my head,
and till in truth no one, I believe, of the party, was entirely collected
in his thoughts, except Tom Draw, whom it is as impossible for
liquor to affect, as it would be for brandy to make a hogshead drunk,
and who stalked off to bed with an air of solemn gravity that would
have well become a Spanish grandee of the olden time, telling us,
as he left the room, that we were all as drunk as h—l, and that we
should be stinkin in our beds till noon to-morrow.

A prediction, by the way, which he took right good care to defeat
in his own person; for, in less than five hours after we retired,
which was about the first of the small hours, he rushed into my
room, and finding that the awful noises, which he made, had no
effect in waking me, dragged me bodily out of bed, and clapping
my wet sponge in my face, walked off, as he said, to fetch the bitters,
which were to make me as fine as silk upon the instant.

This time, I must confess that I did not look with quite so much
disgust on the old apple-jack; and in fact, after a moderate horn, I
completed my ablutions, and found myself perfectly fresh and ready
for the field. Breakfast was soon despatched, and on this occasion
as soon as we had got through the broiled ham and eggs, the wagon
made its appearance at the door.

“What's this, Harry,” I exclaimed, “where are we bound for,
now?”

“Why, Master Frank,” he answered, “to tell you the plain
truth, while you were sleeping off the effects of the last night's re-gent's
punch, I was on foot inquiring into the state of matters and
things; and since we have pretty well exhausted our home beats,
and I have heard that some ground, about ten miles distant, is in
prime order, I have determined to take a try there; but we must
look pretty lively, for it is seven now, and we have got a drive of
ten stiff miles before us. Now, old Grampus, are you ready?”

“Aye! aye!” responded Tom, and mounted up, a work of no
small toil for him, into the back seat of the wagon, where I soon
took my seat beside him, with the two well-broke setters crouching
at our feet, and the three guns strapped neatly to the side rails of
the wagons. Harry next mounted the box. Tim touched his hat
and jumped up to his side, and off we rattled at a merry trot, wheeling
around the rival tavern which stood in close propinquity to
Tom's; then turning short again to the left hand, along a broken
stony road, with several high and long hills, and very awkward
bridges in the valleys, to the northwestward of the village.

Five miles brought us into a pretty little village lying at the
base of another ridge of what might almost be denominated mountains,
save that they were cultivated to the very top. As we paused
on the brow of this, another glorious valley spread out to our view,
with the broad sluggish waters of the Wallkill winding away, with
hardly any visible motion, toward the northeast, through a vast
tract of meadow-land covered with high, rank grass, dotted with
clumps of willows and alder brakes, and interspersed with large
deep swamps, thick-set with high grown timber; while far beyond
these, to the west, lay the tall variegated chain of the Shawangunk
mountains.

Rattling briskly down the hill, we passed another thriving village,
built on the mountain side; made two or three sharp ugly
turns, still going at a smashing pace, and coming on the level
ground, entered an extensive cedar swamp, impenetrable above
with the dark boughs of the evergreen colossi, and below with half
a dozen varieties of rhododendron, calmia, and azalia. Through
this dark dreary track, the road ran straight as the bird flies, supported
on the trunks of trees, constituting what is here called a
corduroy road; an article which, praise be to all the gods, is disappearing
now so rapidly, that this is the only bit to be found in
the civilized regions of New York—and bordered to the right and
left by ditches of black tenacious mire. Beyond this we scaled another
sandy hillock, and pulled up at a little wayside tavern, at the
door of which Harry set himself lustily to halloa.

“Why, John—hilloa, hillo—John Riker.”

Whereon, out came, stooping low to pass under the lintel of a
very fair sized door, one of the tallest men I ever looked upon; his
height, too, was exaggerated by the narrowness of his chest and
shoulders, which would have been rather small for a man of five foot

seven; but to make up for this, his legs were monstrous, his arms
muscular, and his whole frame evidently powerful and athletic,
though his gait was slouching, and his air singularly awkward and
unhandy.

“Why, how do, Mr. Archer? I had n't heerd you was in these
pairts—arter woodcock, I reckon?”

“Yes, John, as usual; and you must go along with us, and show
us the best ground.”

“Well, you see, I carn't go to day—for Squire Breawn, and Dan
Faushea, and a whole grist of Goshen boys is comin' over to the
island here to fish; but you carn't well go wrong.”

“Why not—are birds plenty?”

“Well! I guess they be! Plentier than ever yet I see them
here.”

“By Jove! that's good news,” Harry answered; “where shall
we find the first?”

“Why, amost anywheres—but here, jist down by the first bridge,
there's a hull heap—leastwise there was a Friday—and then you'd
best go on to the second bridge, and keep the edge of the hill right
up and down to Merrit's Island; and then beat down here home to
the first bridge again. But won't you liquor?”

“No! not this morning, John; we did our liquoring last night.
Tom, do you hear what John says?”

“I hear, I hear,” growled out old Tom, “but the critter lies like
h—l. He always does lie, d—n him.”

“Well, here goes, and we'll soon see!”

And away we went again, spinning down a little descent, to a
flat space between the hill-foot and the river, having a thick tangled
swamp on the right, and a small boggy meadow full of grass,
breast-high, with a thin open alder grove beyond it on the left. Just
as we reached the bridge Harry pulled up.

“Jump out, boys, jump out! Here's the spot.”

“I tell you there aint none; d—n you! There aint none never
here, nor haint been these six years; you know that now, yourself,
Archer.”

“We'll try it, all the same,” said Harry, who was coolly loading
his gun. “The season has been wetter than common, and this
ground is generally too dry. Drive on, Tim, over the bridge, into
the hollow; you'll be out of shot there; and wait till we come.
Holloa! mark, Tom.”

For, as the wagon wheels rattled upon the bridge, up jumped a
cock out of the ditch by the road side, from under a willow brush,
and skimmed past all of us within five yards. Tom Draw and I,
who had got out after Harry, were but in the act of ramming down
our first barrels; but Harry, who had loaded one, and was at that
moment putting down the wad upon the second, dropped his ramrod
with the most perfect sang-froid I ever witnessed, took a cap
out of his right-hand pocket, applied it to the cone, and pitching up
his gun, knocked down the bird as it wheeled to cross the road behind
us, by the cleverest shot possible.

“That's pretty well for no birds, anyhow, Tom,” he exclaimed,
dropping his butt to load. “Go and gather that bird, Frank, to save
time; he lies in the wagon rut, there. How now? down charge,
you Chase, sir! what are you about?”

The bird was quickly bagged, and Harry loaded. We stepped
across a dry ditch, and both dogs made game at the same instant.

“Follow the red dog, Frank!” cried Archer, “and go very slow;
there are birds here!”

And as he spoke, while the dogs were crawling along, cat-like,
pointing at every step, and then again creeping onward, up skirred
two birds under the very nose of the white setter, and crossed quite
to the left of Harry. I saw him raise his gun, but that was all;
for at the self-same moment one rose to me, and my ear caught the
flap of yet another to my right; five barrels were discharged so
quickly that they made but three reports; I cut my bird well down,
and looking quickly to the left, saw nothing but a stream of feathers
drifting along the wind. At the same time old Tom shouted on
the right—

“I have killed two, by George! What have you done, boys?”

“Two, I!” said Archer. “Wait, Frank, do n't you begin to
load till one of us is ready; there'll be another cock up, like enough.
Keep your barrel; I'll be ready in a jiffy!”

And well it was that I obeyed him, for at the squeak of the card,
in its descent down his barrel, another bird did rise, and was making
off for the open alders, when my whole charge riddled him;
and instantly at the report three more flapped up, and of course
went off unharmed; but we marked them, one by one, down in the
grass at the wood edge. Harry loaded again. We set off to pick
up our dead birds. Shot drew, as I thought, on my first, and pointed
dead within a yard of where he fell. I walked up carelessly, with
my gun under my arm, and was actually stooping to bag him, as I
thought, when whiz! one rose almost in my face; and, bothered
by seeing us all around him, towered straight up into the air.
Taken completely by surprise, I blazed away in a hurry, and
missed clean; but not five yards did he go, before Tom cut him
down.

“Aha! boy! whose eye's wiped now?”

“Mine, Tom, very fairly; but can that be the same cock I
knocked down, Archer?”

“Not a bit of it; I saw your's fall dead as a stone; he lies half a
yard farther in that tussoc.”

“How the deuce did you see him? Why you were shooting
your own at the same moment.”

“All knack, Frank; I marked both my own and yours, and one
of Tom's beside. Are you ready? Hold up, Shot! There! he
has got your dead bird! Was not I right? And look to! for, by
Jove! he is standing on another, with the dead bird in his mouth!
That's pretty, is it not?”

Again two rose, and both were killed; one by Tom, and one by
Archer; my gun hanging fire.

“That's nine birds down before we have bagged one,” said
Archer; “I hope no more will rise, or we'll be losing these.”

But this time his hopes were not destined to meet accomplishment,
for seven more woodcock got up, five of which were scattered
in the grass around us, wing-broken or dead, before we had even
bagged the bird which Shot was gently mouthing.

“I never saw any thing like this in my life, Tom! Did you?”
cried Harry.

“I never did, by George!” responded Tom. “Now do you think
there's any three men to be found in York, such darned etarnal
fools as to be willing to shoot a match agin us?”

“To be sure I do, lots of them; and to beat us too, to boot, you
stupid old porpoise. Why, there's Harry T—, and Nick
L—, and a dozen more of them, that you and I would have no
more chance with, than a gallon of brandy would have of escaping
from you at a single sitting. But we have shot pretty well to-day.
Now do, for heaven's sake, let us try to bag them!”

And scattered though they were in all directions, among the
most infernal tangled grass I ever stood on, those excellent dogs
retrieved them one by one, till every bird was pocketed. We
then beat on and swept the rest of the meadow, and the outer verge
of the alders, picking up three more birds, making a total of seventeen
brought to bag in less than half an hour. We then proceeded
to the wagon, took a good pull of water from a beautiful clear
spring by the road-side, properly qualified with whiskey, and rattled
on about one mile farther to the second bridge. Here we again
got out.

“Now, Tim,” said Harry, “mark me well! Drive gently to the
old barrack yonder under the west end of that woodside, unhitch
the horses and tie them in the shade; you can give them a bite of
meadow hay at the same time; and then get luncheon ready. We
shall be with you by two o'clock at farthest.”

“Ay! ay! sur!”

And off he drove at a steady pace, while we, striking into the
meadow, to the left hand of the road, went along getting sport such
as I never beheld, or even dreamed of before. For about five hundred
yards in width from the stream, the ground was soft and miry
to the depth of some four inches, with long sword grass quite knee-deep,
and at every fifty yards a bunch of willows or swamp alders.
In every clump of bushes we found from three to five birds, and as
the shooting was for the most part very open, we rendered on the
whole a good account of them. The dogs throughout behaved
superbly, and Tom was altogether frantic with the excitement of
the sport. The time seemed short indeed, and I could not for a
moment have imagined that it was even noon, when we reached
the barrack.

This was a hut of rude unplaned boards, which had been put up
formerly with the intent of furnishing a permanent abode for some
laboring men, but which, having been long deserted, was now used
only as a temporary shelter by charcoal burners, hay-makers, or like

ourselves, stray sportsmen. It was, however, though rudely built,
and fallen considerably into decay, perfectly beautiful from its romantic
site; for it stood just at the end of a long tangled covert,
with a huge pin oak tree, leaning abruptly out from an almost precipitous
bank of yellow sand, completely canopying it; while from
a crevice in the sand-stone there welled out a little source of crystal
water, which expanded into as sweet a basin as ever served a Dryad
for her bath in Arcady, of old.

Before it stretched the wide sweep of meadow land, with the
broad blue Wallkill gliding through it, fringed by a skirt of coppice,
and the high mountains, veiled with a soft autumnal mist,
sleeping beyond, robed in their many-colored garb of crimson, gold,
and green. Beside the spring the indefatigable Tim had kindled
a bright glancing fire, while in the basin were cooling two long-necked
bottles of the Baron's best; a clean white cloth was spread
in the shade before the barrack door, with plates and cups, and
bread cut duly, and a travelling case of cruets, with all the other
appurtenances needful.

On our appearance he commenced rooting in a heap of embers,
and soon produced six nondescript looking articles enclosed—as
they dress maintenon cutlets or red mullet—in double sheets of
greasy letter paper—these he incontinently dished, and to my huge
astonishment they turned out to be three couple of our woodcock,
which that indefatigable varlet had picked, and baked under the
ashes, according to some strange idea, whether original, or borrowed
at second hand from his master, I never was enabled to ascertain.

The man, be he whom he may, who invented that plat, is second
neither to Caramel nor to Ude—the exquisite juicy tenderness of
the meat, the preservation of the gravy, the richness of the trail—
by heaven! they were inimitable.

In that sweet spot we loitered a full hour—then counted our bag,
which amounted already to fifty-nine cock, not including those with
which Tim's gastronomic art had spread for us a table in the wilderness—then
leaving him to pack up and meet us at the spot
where we first started, we struck down the stream homeward,
shooting our way along a strip of coppice about ten yards in breadth,
bounded on one side by the dry bare bank of the river, and on the
other by the open meadows. We of course kept the verges of this
covert, our dogs working down the middle, and so well did we
manage it, that when we reached the wagon, just as the sun was
setting, we numbered a hundred and twenty-five birds bagged, besides
two which were so cut by the shot as to be useless, six which
we had devoured, and four or five which we lost in spite of the excellence
of our retrievers. When we got home again, although
the Dutchman was on the spot, promising us a quarter race upon the
morrow, and pressing earnestly for a rubber to-night, we were too
much used up to think of any thing but a good supper and an early
bed.

5. DAY THE FIFTH.

Our last day's shooting in the vale of Sugar-loaf was over; and,
something contrary to Harry's first intention, we had decided, instead
of striking westward into Sullivan or Ulster, to drive five
miles upon our homeward route, and beat the Long-pond mountain
—not now for such small game as woodcock, quail, or partridge;
but for a herd of deer, which, although now but rarely found along
the western hills, was said to have been seen already several times,
to the number of six or seven head, in a small cove, or hollow basin,
close to the summit of the Bellevale ridge.

As it was not of course our plan to return again to Tom Draw's,
every thing was now carefully and neatly packed away; the game,
of which we had indeed a goodly stock, was produced from Tom's
ice-house, where, suspended from the rafters, it had been kept
as sound and fresh as though it had been all killed only on the
preceding day.

A long deep box, fitting beneath the gun-case under the front
seat, was now produced, and proved to be another of Harry's notable
inventions; for it was lined throughout, lid, bottom, sides and
all, with zine, and in the centre had a well or small compartment of
the same material, with a raised grating in the bottom. This well
was forthwith lined with a square yard, or rather more, of flannel,
into which was heaped a quantity of ice pounded as fine as possible,
sufficient to cram it absolutely to the top; the rest of the box was
then filled with the birds, displayed in regular rows, with heads
and tails alternating, and a thin coat of clean dry wheaten straw
between each layer, until but a few inches' depth remained between
the noble pile and the lid of this extempore refrigerator; this space
being filled in with flannel packed close and folded tightly, the box
was locked and thrust into the accurately fitting boot by dint of the
exertion of Timothy's whole strength.

“There, Frank,” cried Harry, who had superintended the storage
of the whole with nice scrutiny, “those chaps will keep there as
sound as roaches, till we get to young Tom's at Ramapo; you cannot
think what work I had, trying in vain to save them, before I hit
upon this method; I tried hops, which I have known in England to
keep birds in an extraordinary manner—for, what you'll scarce believe,
I once ate at Ptarmigan, the day year after it was killed,
which had been packed with hops, in perfect preservation, at
Farnley, Mr. Fawke's place in Yorkshire!—and I tried prepared
charcoal, and got my woodcock, down to New York, looking like
chimney sweeps, and smelling—”

“What the h—ll difference does it make to you now, Archer,
I'd be pleased to know?” interposed Tom; “what under heaven
they smells like—a man that eats cock with their guts in, like

you does, need'nt stick now, I reckon, for a leetle mite of a
stink!”

“Shut up, you old villain,” answered Harry, laughing, “bring
the milk punch, and get your great coat on, if you mean to go
with us; for it's quite keen this morning, I can tell you; and we
must be stirring too, for the sun will be up before we get to
Teachman's. Now, Jem, get out the hounds; how do you take
them, Tom?”

“Why, that d—d Injun, Jem, he 'll take them in my lumber
wagon—and, I say, Jem, see that you don't over-drive old roan—
away with you, and rouse up Garry, he means to go, I guess?”

After a mighty round of punch, in which, as we were now departing,
one half at least of the village joined, we all got under
way; Tom, buttoned up to the throat in a huge white lion skin
wrap-rascal, looking for all the world like a polar bear erect on its
hind legs; and all of us muffled up pretty snugly, a proceeding
which was rendered necessary by a brisk bracing northwest
breeze.

The sky, though it was scarcely the first twilight of an autumnal
dawn, was beautifully clear, and as transparent—though still somewhat
dusky—as a wide sheet of crystal; a few pale stars were
twinkling here and there; but in the east a broad gray streak
changing on the horizon's edge to a faint straw color, announced
the sun's approach.

The whole face of the country, hill, vale, and woodland, was
overspread by an universal coat of silvery hoar-frost; thin wreaths
of snowy mist rising above the tops of the sere woodlands, throughout
the whole length of the lovely vale, indicated as clearly as
though it were traced on a map, the direction of the stream that
watered it; and as we paused upon the brow of the first hillock,
and looked back toward the village, with its white steeples and
neat cottage dwellings buried in the still repose of that early hour,
with only one or two faint columns of blue smoke worming their
way up lazily into the cloudless atmosphere, a feeling of regret—
such as has often crossed my mind before, when leaving any place
wherein I have spent a few days happily, and which I never may
see more—rendered me somewhat indisposed to talk.

Something or other—it might with Harry, perhaps, have been a
similar train of thought—caused both my comrades to be more taciturn
by far than was their wont; and we had rattled over five miles
of our route, and scaled the first ridge of the hills, and dived into
the wide ravine; midway the depth of this the pretty village of
Bellevale lies on the brink of the dammed rivulet, which, a few
yards below the neat stone bridge, takes a precipitous leap of fifty
feet, over a rustic wier, and rushes onward, bounding from ledge
to ledge of rifted rocks, chafing and fretting as if it were doing a
match against time, and were in danger of losing its race.

Thus we had passed the heavy lumber wagon, with Jem and
Garry perched on a board laid across it, and the four couple of
stanch hounds nestling in the straw which Tom had provided in

abundance for their comfort, before the silence was broken by any
sounds except the rattle of the wheels, the occasional interjectional
whistle of Harry to his horses, or the flip of the well handled
whip.

Just, however, as we were shooting ahead of the lumber wain,
an exclamation from Tom Draw, which should have been a sentence,
had it not been very abruptly terminated in a long rattling
eructation, arrested Archer's progress.

Pulling short up where a jog across the road, constructed—after
the damnable mode adopted in all the hilly portions of the interior—
in order to prevent the heavy rains from channelling the descent,
afforded him a chance of stopping on the hill, so as to slack his
traces. “How now,” he exclaimed; “what the deuce ails you
now, you old rhinoceros?”

“Oh, Archer, I feels bad; worst sort, by Judas! It's that milk
punch, I reckon; it keeps a raising—raising, all the time, like—”

“And you want to lay it, I suppose, like a ghost, in a sea of
whiskey; well, I've no especial objection! Here, Tim, hand the
case bottle, and the dram cup! No! no! confound you, pass it this
way first, for if Tom once gets hold of it, we may say good-bye to
it altogether. There,” he continued, after we had both taken a moderate
sip at the superb old Ferintosh, “there, now, take your
chance at it, and for Heaven's sake do leave a drop for Jem and
Garry; by George now, you shall not drink it all!” as Tom poured
down the third cup full, each being as big as an ordinary beer-glass.
“There was above a pint and a half in it when you began,
and now there's barely one cup-full between the two of them.
An't you ashamed of yourself now, you greedy old devil?”

“It doos go right, I swon!” was the only reply that could be got
out of him.

“That's more a plaguy sight than the bullets will do, out
of your old tower musket; you're so drunk now, I fancy, that you
couldn't hold it straight enough to hit a deer at three rods, let
alone thirty, which you are so fond of chattering about.”

“Do tell now,” replied Tom, “did you, or any other feller, ever
see me shoot the worser for a mite of liquor, and as for deer,
that's all a no sich thing: there arnt no deer a this side of Duck-seedar's.
It's all a lie of Teachman's and that Deckering son of a
gun.”

“Holloa! hold up, Tom—recollect yesterday!—I thought there
had been no cock down by the first bridge there, these six years;
why you're getting quite stupid, and a croaker too, in your old
age.”

“Mayhap I be,” he answered rather gruffly; “mayhap I be,
but you won't git no deer to-day, I'll stand drinks for the company;
and if we doos start one' I'll lay on my own musket agin
your rifle.”

Well! we'll soon see, for here we are,” Harry replied, as after
leaving the high-road just at the summit of the Bellevale mountain,
he rattled down a very broken rutty bye-road at the rate of at least

eight miles an hour, vastly to the discomfiture of our fat host,
whose fleshy sides were jolted almost out of their skin by the concussion
of the wheels against the many stones and jogs which opposed
their progress.

“Here we are, or at least soon will be. It is but a short half
mile through these woods to Teachman's cottage. Is there a gun
loaded, Tim? It's ten to one we shall have a partridge fluttering
up and treeing here directly; I'll let the dogs out—get away Flash!
get away Dan! you little rascals. Jump out, good dogs, Shot,
Chase—hie up with you!” and out they went rattling and scrambling
through the brush-wood all four abreast!

At the same moment Tim, leaning over into the body of the
wagon, lugged out a brace of guns from their leathern cases; Harry's
short ounce ball rifle, and the long single barrelled duck gun.

“'T roifle is loaden wi a single ball, and 't single goon wi' yan of
them green cartridges!”

“Much good ball and buck-shot will do us against partridge;
nevertheless, if one trees, I'll try if I can't cut his head off for him,”
said Archer, laughing.

“Nay! nay! it be-ant book-shot; it's no but noomber three; tak'
haud on 't, Measter Draa, tak' haud on 't. It's no hoort thee,
mon, and 't horses boath stand foire cannily!”

Scarce had Fat Tom obeyed his imperative solicitations, and
scarce had Tim taken hold of the ribbands which Harry relinquished
the moment he got the rifle into his hands, before a most
extraordinary hubbub arose in the little skirt of coppice to our left;
the spaniels quested for a second's space at the utmost, when a tremendons
crash of the branches arose, and both the setters gave
tongue furiously with a quick savage yell.

The road at this point of the wood made a short and very sudden
angle, so as to enclose a small point of extremely dense thicket between
its two branches; on one of these was our wagon, and down
the other the lumber-wain was rumbling, at the moment when this
strange and most unexpected outcry started us all.

“What in t' fient's neam is you?” cried Timothy.

“And what the devil's that?” responded I and Archer in a
breath.

But whatever it was that had aroused the dogs to such a most
unusual pitch of fury, it went crashing through the brush-wood for
some five or six strokes at a fearful rate toward the other wagon;
before, however, it had reached the road, a most appalling shout
from Jem, followed upon the instant by the blended voices of
all the hounds opening at once, as on a view, excited us yet
farther!

I was still tugging at my double gun, in the vain hope of getting
it out time enough for action. Tom had scrambled out of the
wagon on the first alarm, and stood eye, ear, and heart erect, by
the off side of the horses, which were very restless, pawing, and
plunging violently, and almost defying Timothy's best skill to hold
them; while Harry, having cast off his box-coat, stood firm and

upright on the foot board as a carved statue, with his rifle cocked
and ready; when, headed back upon us by the yell of Lyn and the
loud clamor of his fresh foes, the first buck I had seen in America,
and the largest I had seen any where, dashed at a single plunge
into the road, clearing the green head of a fallen hemlock, apparently
without an effort, his splendid antlers laid back on his neck,
and his white flag lashing his fair round haunch as the fleet bitches
Bonny Belle and Blossom yelled with their shrill fierce trebles close
behind him.

Seeing that it was useless to persist in my endeavor to extricate
my gun, and satisfied that the matter was in good hands, I was
content to look on, an inactive but most eager witness.

Tom, who from his position at the head of the off horse, commanded
the first view of the splendld creature, pitched his gun to
his shoulder hastily and fired; the smoke drifted across my face,
but through its vapory folds I could distinguish the dim figure of
the noble hart still bounding unhurt onward; but, before the first
echo of the round ringing report of Tom's shot-gun reached my
ear, the sharp flat crack of Harry's rifle followed it, and at the self-same
instant the buck sprang six feet into the air, and pitched head
foremost on the ground; it was but for a moment, however, for
with the speed of light he struggled to his feet, and though sore
wounded, was yet toiling onward when the two English foxhounds
dashed at his throat and pulled him down again.

“Run in, Tom, run in! quick,” shouted Harry, “he's not clean
killed, and may gore the dogs sadly!”

“I've got no knife,” responded Tom, but dauntlessly he dashed in,
all the same, to the rescue of the bitches—which I believe he loved
almost as well as his own children—and though, encumbered by
his ponderous white top-coat, not to say by his two hundred and
fifty weight of solid flesh, seized the fierce animal by the brow-antlers,
and bore him to the ground, before Harry, who had leaped
out of the wagon, with his first words, could reach him.

The next moment the keen short hunting knife, without which
Archer never takes the field, had severed at a single stroke the
weasand of the gallant brute; the black blood streamed out on the
smoking hoar-frost, the full eyes glazed, and, after one sharp fluttering
struggle, the life departed from those graceful limbs, which
had been but a few short instants previous so full of glorious energy
—of fiery vigor.

“Well, that's the strangest thing I ever heard of, let alone seeing,”
exclaimed Archer, “fancy a buck like that lying in such a
mere fringe of coppice, and so near to the road-side, too! and why
the deuce did he lay here till we almost passed him!”

“I know how it's been, any heaw,” said Jem, who had by this
time come up, and was looking on with much exultation flashing in
his keen small eye. “Bill Speer up on the hill there telled me jist
now, that they druv a big deer down from the back-bone clear down
to this here hollow just above, last night arter dark. Bill shot at
him, and kind o' reckoned he hot him—but I guess he 's mistaken

—leastwise he jumped strong enough jist neaw!—but which on you
was 't 'at killed him?”

“I did,” exclaimed Tom, “I did by —!”

“Why you most impudent of all old liars,” replied Harry—while
at the same time, with a most prodigious chuckle, Tim Matlock
pointed to the white bark of a birch sapling, about the thickness of
a man's thigh, standing at somewhat less than fifteen paces' distance,
wherein the large shot contained by the wire cartridge—the best
sporting invention by the way, that has been made since percussion
caps—had bedded themselves in a black circle, cut an inch at least
into the solid wood, and about two inches in diameter!

“I ken gay and fairly,” exclaimed Tim, “'at Ay rammed an
Eley's patent cartridge into 't single goon this morning; and yonder
is 't i' t' birk tree, an Ay ken a load o' shot frae an unce
bullet!”

The laugh was general now against fat Tom; especially as the
small wound made by the heavy ball of Harry's rifle was plainly
visible, about a hand's breadth behind the heart, on the side toward
which he had aimed; while the lead had passed directly through,
in an oblique direction forward, breaking the left shoulder blade,
and lodging just beneath the skin, whence a touch of the knife dislodged
it.

“What now—what now, boys?” cried the old sinner, no whit
disconcerted by the general mirth against him. “I say, by gin! I
killed him, and I say so yet. Which on ye all—which on ye all
daared to go in on him, without a knife nor nothen. I killed him,
I say, anyhow, and so let's drink!”

“Well, I believe we must wet him,” Harry answered, “so get
out another flask of whiskey, Tim; and you Jem and Garry lend
me a hand to lift this fine chap into the wagon. By Jove! but this
will make the Teachmans open their eyes; and now look sharp!
You sent the Teachmans word that we were coming, Tom?”

“Sartin! and they've got breakfast ready long enough before
this, anyways.”

With no more of delay, but with lots more of merriment and
shouting, on we drove; and in five minutes' space, just as the sun
was rising, reached the small rude enclosure around two or three
log huts, lying just on the verge of the beautiful clear lake. Two
long sharp boats, and a canoe scooped out of a whole tree, were
drawn up on the sandy beach; a fishing net of many yards in length
was drying on the rails; a brace of large, strong, black and tan
foxhounds were lying on the step before the door; a dozen mongrel
geese, with one wing-tipped wild one among them, were sauntering
and gabbling about the narrow yard; and a glorious white-headed
fishing eagle, with a clipped wing, but otherwise at large,
was perched upon the roof hard by the chimney.

At the rattle of our arrival, out came from the larger of the cottages,
three tall rough-looking countrymen to greet us, not one of
whom stood less than six foot in his stockings, while two were
several inches taller.

Great was their wonder, and loud were their congratulations
when they beheld the unexpected prize which we had gained, while
on our route; but little space was given at that time to either; for
the coffee, which, by the way, was poor enough, and the hot cakes
and fried perch, which were capital, and the grilled salt pork, swimming
in fat, and the large mealy potatoes bursting through their
brown skins, were ready smoking upon a rough wooden board,
covered, however, by a clean white table cloth, beside a sparkling
fire of wood, which our drive through the brisk mountain air had
rendered by no means unacceptable.

We breakfasted like hungry men and hunters, both rapidly and
well; and before half an hour elapsed, Archer, with Jem and one
of our bold hosts, started away, well provided with powder, ball,
and whiskey, and accompanied by all the hounds, to make a circuit
of the western hill, on the summit of which they expected to
be joined by two or three more of the neighbors, whence they proposed
to drive the whole sweep of the forest-clad descent down to
the water's edge.

Tim was enjoined to see to the provisions, and to provide as good
a dinner as his best gastronomic skill and the contents of our portable
larder might afford, and I was put under the charge of Tom,
who seemed, for about an hour, disposed to do nothing but to lie
dozing, with a cigar in his mouth, stretched upon the broad of his
back, on a bank facing the early sunshine just without the door;
while our hosts were collecting bait, preparing fishing tackle, and
cleaning or repairing their huge clumsy muskets. At length, when
the drivers had been gone already for considerably more than an
hour, he got up and shook himself.

“Now, then, boys,” he exclaimed, “we'll be a movin. You Joe
Teachman, what are you lazin there about, d—n you? You go
with Mr. Forester and Garry in the big boat, and pull as fast as you
can put your oars to water, till you git opposite the white-stone
pint—and there lie still as fishes! You may fish, though, if you
will, Forester,” he added, turning to me, “and I do reckon the big
yellow pearch will bite the darndest, this cold morning, arter the
sun gits fairly up—but soon as ever you hear the hounds holler, or
one of them chaps shoot, then look you out right stret away for business!
Cale, here, and I'll take the small boat, and keep in sight
of you; and so we can kiver all this eend of the pond like, if the
deer tries to cross hereaways. How long is 't, Cale, since we had
six on them all at once in the water—six—seven—eight! well, I
swon, it's ten years agone now! But come, we mus'nt stand here
talkin, else we'll get a dammin when they drives down a buck into
the pond, and none of us in there to tackle with him!”

So without more ado, we got into our boats, disposed our guns,
with the stocks toward us in the bows, laid in our stock of tinder,
pipes, and liquor, and rowed off merrily to our appointed stations.

Never, in the whole course of my life, has it been my fortune to
look upon more lovely scenery than I beheld that morning. The
long narrow winding lake, lying as pure as crystal beneath the

liquid skies, reflecting, with the correctness of the most perfect
mirror, the abrupt and broken hills, which sank down so precipitously
into it—clad as they were in foliage of every gorgeous dye,
with which the autumn of America loves to enhance the beauty of
her forest pictures—that, could they find their way into its mountain-girdled
basin, ships of large burthen might lie afloat within a
stone's throw of the shore—the slopes of the wood-covered knolls,
here brown, or golden, and interspersed with the rich crimson of
the faded maples, there verdant with the evergreen leaves of the
pine and cedar—and the far azure summits of the most distant
peaks, all steeped in the serene and glowing sunshine of an October
morning.

For hours we lay there, our little vessel floating as the occasional
breath of a sudden breeze, curling the lake into sparkling
wavelets, chose to direct our course, smoking our cigars, and chatting
cozily, and now and then pulling up a great broad-backed yellow
bass, whose flapping would for a time disturb the peaceful
silence, which reigned over wood, and dale, and water, quite unbroken
save by the chance clamor of a passing crow—yet not a
sound betokening the approach of our drivers had reached our
ears.

Suddenly, when the sun had long passed his meridian height,
and was declining rapidly toward the horizon, the full round shot
of a musket rang from the mountain top, followed immediately by
a sharp yell, and in an instant the whole basin of the lake was filled
with the harmonious discord of the hounds.

I could distinguish on the moment the clear sharp challenge of
Harry's high-bred foxhounds, the deep bass voices of the Southern
dogs, and the untamable and cur-like yelping of the dogs which the
Teachmans had taken with them.

Ten minutes passed full of anxiety, almost of fear.

We knew not as yet whither to turn our boats' head, for every
second the course of the hounds seemed to vary, at one instant they
would appear to be rushing directly down to us, and the next instant
they would turn as though they were going up the hill again.
Meantime our beaters were not idle—their stirring shouts, serving
alike to animate the hounds and to force the deer to water, made
rock and wood reply in cheery echoes; but, to my wonder, I caught
not for a long time one note of Harry's gladsome voice.

At length, as I strained my eyes against the broad hill-side, gilt
by the rays of the declining sun, I caught a glimpse of his form
running at a tremendous pace, bounding over stock and stone, and
plunging through dense thickets, on a portion of the declivity where
the tall trees had a few years before been destroyed by accidental
fire.

At this moment the hounds were running, to judge from their
tongues, parallel to the lake and to the line which he was running
—the next minute, with a redoubled clamor, they turned directly
down to him. I lost sight of him. But half a minute afterward,
the sharp crack of his rifle again rang upon the air, followed by a

triumphant “Whoop! who-whoop!” and then, I knew, another
stag had fallen.

The beaters on the hill shouted again louder and louder than before—and
the hounds still raved on. By heaven! but there must
be a herd of them a-foot! And now the pack divides! The English
hounds are bringing their game down—here—by the Lord!
just here—right in our very faces! The Southrons have borne
away over the shoulder of the hill, still running hot and hard in
Jolly Tom's direction.

“By heaven!” I cried, “look, Teachman! Garry, look! There!
See you not that noble buck?—he leaped that sumach bush like a
race-horse! and see! see! now he will take the water. Bad luck
on it! he sees us, and heads back!”

Again the fleet hounds rally in his rear, and chide till earth and
air are vocal and harmonious. Hark! hark! how Archer's cheers
ring on the wind! Now he turns once again—he nears the edge
—how glorious! with what a beautiful bold bound he leaped from
that high bluff into the flashing wave! with what a majesty he
tossed his antlered head above the spray! with how magnificent
and brave a stroke he breasts the curling billows!

“Give way! my men, give way!”

How the frail bark creaks and groans as we ply the long oars in
the rullocks—how the ash bends in our sturdy grasp—how the boat
springs beneath their impulse.

“Together, boys! together! now—now we gain—now, Garry,
lay your oar aside—up with your musket—now you are near
enough—give it to him, in heaven's name! a good shot, too! the
bullet ricochetted from the lake scarcely six inches from his nose!
Give way again—it's my shot now!”

And lifting my Joe Manton, each barrel loaded with a bullet
carefully wadded with greased buckskin, I took a careful aim and
fired.

“That's it,” cried Garry; “well done, Forester—right through
the head, by George!”

And, as he spoke, I fancied for a moment he was right. The
noble buck plunged half his height out of the bright blue water,
shaking his head as if in the death agony, but the next instant he
stretched out again with vigor unimpaired, and I could see that my
ball had only knocked a tine off his left antler.

My second barrel still remained, and without lowering the gun,
I drew my second trigger. Again a fierce plunge told that the
ball had not erred widely; and this time, when he again sank into
his wonted posture, the deep crimson dye that tinged the foam
which curled about his graceful neck, as he still struggled, feebly
fleet, before his unrelenting foes, gave token of a deadly wound.

Six more strokes of the bending oars—we shot alongside—a
noose of rope was cast across his branching tines, the keen knife
flashed across his throat, and all was over! We towed him to the
shore, where Harry and his comrades were awaiting us with another
victim to his unerring aim. We took both bucks and all

hands on board, pulled stoutly homeward, and found Tom lamenting.

Two deer, a buck of the first head, and a doe, had taken water
close beside him—he had missed his first shot, and in toiling over-hard
to recover lost ground, had broken his oar, and been compelled
inactively to witness their escape.

Three fat bucks made the total of the day's sport—not one of
which had fallen to Tom's boasted musket.

It needed all that Tim's best dinner, with lots of champagne and
Ferintosh, could do to restore the fat chap's equanimity; but he at
last consoled himself, as we threw ourselves on the lowly beds of
the log hut, by swearing that by the etarnal devil he 'd beat us both
at partridges to-morrow.

6. DAY THE SIXTH.

The sun rose broad and bright in a firmament of that most brilliant
and transparent blue, which I have witnessed in no other
country than America, so pure, so cloudless, so immeasurably distant
as it seems from the beholder's eye! There was not a speck
of cloud from east to west, from zenith to horizon; not a fleece of
vapor on the mountain sides; not a breath of air to ruffle the calm
basin of the Greenwood lake.

The rock-crowned, forest-mantled ridge, on the farther side of
the narrow sheet, was visible almost as distinctly through the medium
of the pure fresh atmosphere, as though it had been gazed at
through a telescope—the hues of the innumerable maples, in their
various stages of decay, purple, and crimson, and bright gorgeous
scarlet, were contrasted with the rich chrome yellow of the birch
and poplars, the sere red leaves of the gigantic oaks, and with the
ever verdant plumage of the junipers, clustered in massy patches on
every rocky promontory, and the tall spires of the dark pines and
hemlock.

Over this mass of many-colored foliage, the pale thin yellow light
of the new-risen sun was pouring down a flood of chaste illumination;
while, exhaled from the waters by his first beams, a silvery
gauze-like haze floated along the shores, not rising to the height of
ten feet from the limpid surface, which lay unbroken by the smallest
ripple, undisturbed by the slightest splash of fish or insect, as
still and tranquil to the eye as though it had been one huge plate
of beaten burnished silver; with the tall cones of the gorgeous
hills in all their rich variety, in all their clear minuteness, reflected,
summit downward, palpable as their reality, in that most perfect
mirror.

Such was the scene on which I gazed, as on the last day of our
sojourn in the Woodlands of fair Orange, I issued from the little
cabin, under the roof of which I had slept so dreamlessly and deep,
after the fierce excitement of our deer hunt, that while I was yet
slumbering, all save myself had risen, donned their accountrements,
and sallied forth—I knew not whither—leaving me certainly alone,
although as certainly not so much to my glory.

From the other cottage, as I stood upon the threshold, I might
hear the voices of the females, busy at their culinary labors, the
speedily approaching term of which was obviously denoted by the
rich savory steams which tainted—not, I confess, unpleasantly—the
fragrant morning air.

As I looked out upon this lovely morning, I did not—I acknowledge
it—regret the absence of my excellent though boisterous
companions; for there was something which I cannot define in the
deep stillness, in the sweet harmonious quiet of the whole scene
before me, that disposed my spirit to meditation far more than to

mirth; the very smoke which rose from the low chimneys of the
Teachmans' colony—not surging to and fro, obedient to the fickle
winds—but soaring straight, tall, unbroken, upward, like Corinthian
columns, each with its curled capital—seemed to invite the soul of
the spectator to mount with it toward the sunny heavens.

By-and-bye I strayed downward to the beach, a narrow strip of
silvery sand and variegated pebbles, and stood there long, silently
watching the unknown sports, the seemingly—to us at least—unmeaning
movements, and strange groupings of the small fry, which
darted to and fro in the clear shallows within two yards of my feet;
or marking the brief circling ripples, wrought by the morning swallow's
wing, and momently subsiding into the wonted rest of the
calm lake.

How long I stood there musing, I know not, for I had fallen into
a train of thought so deep that I wa sutterly unconscious of everything
around me, when I was suddenly aroused from my reverie by
the quick dash of oars, and by a volley of some seven barrels discharged
in quick succession. As I looked up with an air, I presume,
somewhat bewildered, I heard the loud and bellowing laugh
of Tom, and saw the whole of our stout company gliding up in two
boats, the skiff and the canoe, toward the landing place, perhaps a
hundred yards from the spot where I stood.

“Come here, darn you,” were the first words I heard, from the
mouth of what speaker it need not be said—“come here, you lazy,
snortin, snoozin Decker—lend a hand here right stret away, will
you! We've got more perch than all of us can carry—and Archer's
got six wood-duck!”

Hurrying down in obedience to this unceremonious mandate, I
perceived that indeed their time had not been misemployed, for the
whole bottom of the larger boat was heaped with fish—the small
and delicate green perch, the cat-fish, hideous in its natural, but
most delicious in its artificial shape, and, above all, the large and
broad-backed yellow bass, from two to four pounds weight. While
Archer, who had gone forth with Garry only in the canoe, had
picked up half a dozen wood-duck, two or three of the large yellow-legs,
a little bittern, known by a far less elegant appellative
throughout the country, and thirteen English snipe.

“By Jove,” cried I, “but this is something like!—where the
deuce did you pick the snipe up, Harry—and above all, why the
deuce did you let me lie wallowing in bed this lovely morning?”

“One question at a time,” responded he, “good master Frank;
one question at a time! For the snipe, I found them very unexpectedly,
I tell you, in a bit of marshy meadow just at the outlet of
the pond. Garry was paddling me along at the top of his pace,
after a wing-tipped wood duck, when up jumped one of the long-billed
rascals, and had the impudence to skim across the creek under
my very nose—`skeap! skeap!' Well, I dropped him, you may
be sure, with a charge, too, of duck shot; and he fell some ten yards
over on the meadow; so leaving Garry to pursue the drake, I landed,
loaded my gun with No. 9, and went to work—the result as you

see; but I cleared the meadow—devil a bird is left there, except
one I cut to pieces and could not find for want of Chase—two went
away without a shot, over the hills and far away! As for letting
you lie in bed, you must talk to Tom about it; I bid him call you,
and the fat rascal never did so, and never said a word about you,
till we were ready for a start, and then no master Frank was to
the fore.”

“Well, Tom,” cried I, “what have you got to say to this?”

“Now, cuss you, do n't come foolin' about me,” replied that
worthy, aiming a blow at me, which, had it taken place, might well
have felled Goliah; but which, as I sprang aside, wasting its energies
on the impassive air, had well nigh floored the striker. “Dont
you come foolin' about me—you knows right well I called you, and
you knows, too, you almost cried, and told me to clear out, and let
you git an hour's sleep! for by the Lord you thought Archer and I
was made of steel!—you could n't and you would n't—and now you
wants to know the reason why you warn't along with us!”

“Never mind the old thief, Frank,” said Archer, seeing that I
was on the point of answering, “even his own aunt says he is the
most notorious liar in all Orange County—and Heaven forbid we
should gainsay that most respectable old lady!”

Into what violent asseveration our host would have plunged at
this declaration, remains, like the tale of Cambuscan bold, veiled in
deep mystery; for as he started from the log on which he had been
reposing while in the act of unsplicing his bamboo fishing pole, the
elder of the Teachmans thrust his head out of the cabin nearest to
us—“Come, boys, to breakfast!”—and at the first word of his welcome
voice, Tom made, as he would have himself defined it, stret
tracks for the table. And a mighty different table it was from that
to which we had sat down on the preceding morning. Timothy—
unscared by the wonder of the mountain nymphs, who deemed a
being of the masculine gender as an intruder, scarce to be tolerated,
on the mysteries of the culinary art—had exerted his whole skill,
and brought forth all the contents of his canteen! We had a superb
steak of the fattest venison, graced by cranberries stewed with
cayenne pepper, and sliced lemons. A pot of excellent black tea,
almost as strong as the cognac which flanked it; a dish of beautiful
fried perch, with cream as thick as porridge, our own loaf sugar, and
Teachman's new laid eggs, hot wheaten cakes, and hissing rashers
of right tender pork, furnished a breakfast forth that might have
vied successfully with those which called forth, in the Hebrides,
such raptures from the lexicographer.

Breakfast despatched—for which, to say the truth, Harry gave
us but little time—we mustered our array and started; Harry and
Tom and I making one party, with the spaniels—Garry, the Teachmans,
and Timothy, with the setters, which would hunt very willingly
for him in Archer's absence, forming a second. It was scarce
eight o'clock when we went out, each on a separate beat, having
arranged our routes so as to meet at one o'clock in the great
swamp, said to abound, beyond all other places, in the ruffed grouse

or partridge, to the pursuit of which especially we had devoted our
last day.

“Now, Frank,” said Harry, “you have done right well throughout
the week; and if you can stand this day's tramp, I will say for
you that you are a sportsman, aye, every inch of one. We have got
seven miles right hard walking over the roughest hills you ever
saw—the hardest moors of Yorkshire are nothing to them—before
we reach the swamp, and that you'll find a settler! Tom, here,
will keep along the bottoms, working his way as best he can;
while we make good the uplands! Are your flasks full?”

“Sartain, they are!” cried Tom—“and I've got a rousin big
black bottle, too—but not a drop of the old cider sperrits do you git
this day, boys; not if your thirsty throats were cracking for it!”

“Well! well! we won't bother you—you'll need it all, old porpoise,
before you get to the far end. Here, take a hard boiled egg
or two, Frank, and some salt, and I'll pocket a few biscuits—we
must depend on ourselves to-day!”

“Ay! ay! Sur,” chuckled Timothy, “there's naw Tim Matlock
to mak looncheon ready for ye a' the day. See thee, measter
Frank. Ay'se gotten 't measter's single barrel; and gin I dunna
ootshoot measter Draa—whoy Ay'se deny my coontry!”

“Most certainly you will deny it then, Tim,” answered I, “for
Mr. Draw shoots excellently well, and you—”

“And Ay'se shot mony a hare by 't braw moon, doon i' bonny
Cawoods. Ay'se beat, Ay'se oophaud[4] it!” So saying, he shouldered
the long single barrel, and paddled off with the most extraordinary
expedition after the Teachmans, who had already started,
leading the setters in a leash, till they were out of sight of
Archer.

“They have the longest way to go,” said Harry, “by a mile at
the least; so we have time for a cheroot before we three get under
way.'

Cigars were instantly produced and lighted, and we lounged
about the little court for the best part of half an hour, till the report
of a distant gunshot, ringing with almost innumerable reverberations
along the woodland shores, announced to us that our companions
had already got into their work.

“Here goes,” cried Harry, springing to his feet at once, and
grasping his good gun; “here goes—they have got into the long
hollow, Tom, and by the time we've crossed the ridge, and got upon
our ground, they'll be abreast of us.”

“Hold on! hold on!” Tom bellowed, “you are the darndest
critter, when you do git goin—now hold on, do—I wants some rum,
and Forester here looks a kind of white about the gills, his whatdye-call,
cheeroot, has made him sick, I reckon!”

Of course, with such an exhortation in our ears as this, it was impossible
to do otherwise than wet our whistles with one drop of the
old Ferintosh; and then, Tom having once again recovered his good

humor, away we went, and “clombe the high hill,” though we
“swam not the deep river,” as merrily as ever sportsmen did, from
the days of Arbalast and Longbow, down to these times of Westley
Richards' caps and Eley's wire cartridges.

A tramp of fifteen minutes through some scrubby brushwood,
brought us to the base of a steep stony ridge covered with tall and
thrifty hickories and a few oaks and maples intermixed, rising so
steeply from the shore that it was necessary not only to strain every
nerve of the leg, but to swing our bodies up from tree to tree, by
dint of hand. It was indeed a hard and heavy tug; and I had
pretty tough work, what between the exertion of the ascent and
the incessant fits of laughter, into which I was thrown by the grotesquely
agile movements of fat Tom; who, grunting, panting,
sputtering, and launching forth from time to time the strangest and
most blasphemously horrid oaths, contrived to make way to the
summit faster than either of us—crashing through the dense underwood
of juniper and sumach, uprooting the oak saplings as he
swung from this to that, and spurning down huge stones upon
us, as we followed at a cautious distance. When we at last
crowned the ridge, we found him, just as Harry had predicted,
stretched in a half-recumbent attitude, leaning against a huge gray
stone, with his fur cap and double-barrel lying upon the withered
leaves beside him, puffing, as Archer told him, to his mighty indignation,
like a great grampus in shoal water.

After a little rest, however, Falstaff revived, though not before
he had imbibed about a pint of applejack, an occupation in which
he could not persuade either of us, this time, to join him. Descending
from our elevated perch, we now got into a deep glen, with a
small brooklet winding along the bottom, bordered on either hand
by a stripe of marshy bog earth, bearing a low growth of alder
bushes, mixed with stunted willows. On the side opposite to that
by which we had descended, the hill rose long and lofty, covered
with mighty timber-trees standing in open ranks and overshadowing
a rugged and unequal surface, covered with whortleberry, wintergreen,
and cranberries, the latter growing only along the courses
of the little runnels, which channelled the whole slope. Here,
stony ledges and gray broken crags peered through the underwood,
among the crevices of which the stunted cedars stood thick set, and
matted with a thousand creeping vines and brambles; while there,
from some small marshy basin, the giant Rhododendron Maximum
rose almost to the height of a timber tree.

“Here, Tom,” said Harry, “keep you along this run—you'll
have a woodcock every here and there, and look sharp when you
hear them fire over the ridge, for they can't shoot to speak of, and
the partridge will cross—you know. You, master Frank, stretch
your long legs and get three parts of the way up this hill—over the
second mound—there, do you see that great blue stone with a
thunder splintered tree beside it? just beyond that! then turn due
west, and mark the trending of the valley, keeping a little way

ahead of me, which you will find quite easy, for I shall have to beat
across you both. Go very slow, Tom—now, hurrah!”

Exhorted thus, I bounded up the hill and soon reached my appointed
station; but not before I heard the cheery voice of Archer
encouraging the eager spaniels—“Hie cock! hie cock! pu-r-r-h!”
—till the woods rang to the clear shout!

Scarce had I reached the top, before, as I looked down into the
glen below me, a puff of white smoke, instantly succeeded by a
second, and the loud full reports of both his barrels from among the
green-leafed alders, showed me that Tom had sprung game. The
next second I heard the sharp questing of the spaniel Dan, followed
by Harry's—“Charge!—down Cha-arge, you little thief—down to
cha-arge, will you!”

But it was all in vain—for on he went furious and fast, and the
next moment the thick whirring of a partridge reached my excited
ears. Carefully, eagerly, I gazed out to mark the wary bird; but
the discharge of Harry's piece assured me, as I thought, that further
watch was needless; and stupidly enough I dropped the muzzle
of my gun.

Just at the self-same point of time—“Mark! mark, Frank!”
shouted Archer, “mark! there are a brace of them!”—and as he
spoke, gliding with speed scarcely inferior to a bullet's flight upon
their balanced pinions, the noble birds swept past me, so close that
I could have struck them with a riding whip.

Awfully fluttered was I—I confess—but by a species of involuntary
and instinctive consideration I rallied instantly, and became
cool. The grouse had seen me, and wheeled diverse; one darting
to the right, through a small opening between a cedar bush and a
tall hemlock—the other skimming through the open oak woods a
little toward the left.

At such a crisis thought comes in a second's space; and I have
often fancied that in times of emergency or great surprise, a man
deliberates more promptly, and more prudently withal, than when
he has full time to let his second thought trench on his first and mar
it. So was it in this case with me. At half a glance I saw, that if I
meant to get both birds, the right-hand fugitive must be the first,
and that with all due speed; for but a few yards further he would
have gained a brake which would have laughed to scorn Lord Kennedy
or Harry T—r.

Pitching my gun up to my shoulder, both barrels loaded with
Eley's red wire cartridge No. 6, I gave him a snap shot, and had
the satisfaction of seeing him keeled well over, not wing-tipped or
leg-broken, but fairly riddled by the concentrated charge of something
within thirty yards. Turning as quick as light, I caught a
fleet sight of the other, which by a rapid zig-zag was now flying
full across my front, certainly over forty-five yards distant, among
a growth of thick-set sapplings—the hardest shot, in my opinion,
that can be selected to test a quick and steady sportsman. I gave it
him, and down he came too—killed dead—that I knew, for I had
shot full half a yard before him. Just as I dropped by butt to load,

the hill began to echo with the vociferous yells of master Dan, the
quick redoubled cracks of Harry's heavy dog-whip, and his incessant
rating—`Down, cha-arge! For sha-ame! Dan! Dan! down
cha-arge! for sha-ame!”—broken at times by the impatient oaths of
Tom Draw, in the gulley, who had, it seems, knocked down two
woodcock, neither of which he could bag, owing to the depth and
instability of the wet bog!

“Quit! quit! d—n you, quit there, leatherin that brute! Quit,
I say, or I'll send a shot at you! Come here, Archer—I say, come
here!—there be the darndest lot of droppins here, I ever see—full
twenty cock, I swon!”

But still the scourge continued to resound, and still the raving of
the spaniel excited Tom's hot ire.

“Frank Forester!” exclaimed he once again. “Do see now—
Harry missed them partridge, and so he licks the poor dumb brute
for it. I wish I were a spannel, and he'd try it on with me!”

“I will, too,” answered Archer, with a laugh; “I will, too, if
you wish it, though you are not a spaniel, nor any thing else half
so good. And why, pray, should I not scourge this wild little imp!
he ran slap into the best pack of partridge I have seen this two
years—fifteen or sixteen birds. I wonder they're not scattered—
it's full late to find them packed!”

“Did you kill ere a one?” Tom holloaed; “not one, either of
you!”

“I did,” answered Harry, “I nailed the old cock bird, and a
rare dog he is!—two pounds, good weight, I warrant him,” he
added, weighing him as he spoke. “Look at the crimson round
his eye, Frank, like a cock pheasant's, and his black ruff or
tippet—by George! but he's a beauty! And what did you do?”
he continued.

“I bagged a brace—the only two that crossed me.”

“Did you, though?” exclaimed Archer, with no small expression
of surprise; “did you, though?—that's prime work—it takes a
thorough workman to bag a double shot upon October partridge!
But come, we must go down to Tom; hark how the old hound keeps
bawling!”

Well, down we went. The spaniels quickly retrieved his dead
birds, and flushed some fifteen more, of which we gave a clean account—Harry
making up for lost time by killing six cock, right and
left, almost before they topped the bushes—seven more fell to me,
but single birds all of them—and but one brace to Tom, who now
began to wax indignant; for Archer, as I saw, for fun's sake, was
making it a point to cut down every bird that rose to him, before he
could get up his gun; and then laughed at him for being fat and
slow. But the laugh was on Tom's side before long—for while we
were yet in the valley, the report of a gun came faintly down the
wind from beyond the hill, and as we all looked out attentively, a
partridge skimmed the brow, flying before the wind at a tremendous
pace, and skated across the valley without stooping from his
altitude. I stood the first, and fired, a yard at least ahead of him—

on he went, unharmed and undaunted; bang went my second
barrel—still on he went, the faster, as it seemed, for the weak
insult.

Harry came next, and he too fired twice, and—tell it not in Gath
—missed twice! “Now, Fat-Guts!” shouted Archer, not altogether
in his most amiable or pleasing tones; and sure enough up
went the old man's piece—roundly it echoed with its mighty
charge—a cloud of feathers drifted away in a long line from the
slaughtered victim—which fell not direct, so rapid was its previous
flight, but darted onward in a long declining tangent, and struck
the rocky soil with a thud clearly audible where we stood, full a
hundred yards from the spot where it fell!

He bagged, amid Tom's mighty exultation, forward again we went
and in a short half hour got into the remainder of the pack which
we had flushed before, in some low tangled thorn cover, among
which they lay well, and we made havoc of them. And here the
oddest accident I ever witnessed in the field took place—so odd,
that I am half ashamed to write to it—but where's the odds, for it
is true?

A fine cock bird was flushed close at Tom's feet, and went off to
the left, Harry and I both standing to the right; he blazed away,
and at the shot the bird sprung up six or eight feet into the air, with
a sharp staggering flutter. “Killed dead!” cried I; well done
again, fat Tom.” But to my great surprise the partridge gathered
wing, and flew on, feebly at first, and dizzily, but gaining strength
more and more as he went on the farther. At the last, after a long
flight, he treed in a tall leafless pine.

“Run after him, Frank,” Archer called to me, “you are the
lightest; and we'll beat up the swale till you return. You saw
the tree he took?”

“Aye! aye!” said I, preparing to make off.

“Well! he sits near the top—now mind me! no chivalry,
Frank! give him no second chance—a ruffed grouse, darting
downward from a tall pine tree, is a shot to balk the devil—it's
full five to one that you shoot over and behind him—give him no
mercy!”

Off I went, and after a brisk trot, five or six minutes long, reached
my tree, saw my bird perched on a broken limb close to the
time-blanched trunk, cocked my Joe Manton, and was in the very
act of taking aim, when something so peculiar in the motion of the
bird attracted me, that I paused. He was nodding like a sleepy
man, and seemed with difficulty to retain his foot-hold. While I
was gazing, he let go, pitched headlong, fluttered his wings in the
death-struggle, yet in air, and struck the ground close at my feet,
stone-dead. Tom's first shot had cut off the whole crown of the
head, with half the brain and the right eye; and after that the
bird had power to fly five or six hundred yards, and then to cling
upon its perch for at least ten minutes.

Rejoining my companions, we again went onward, slaying and
bagging as we went, till when the sun was at meridian we sat down

beside the brook to make our frugal meal—not to-day of grilled
woodcock and champagne, but of hard eggs, salt, biscuit, and
Scotch whiskey—not so bad either—nor were we disinclined to
profit by it. We were still smoking on the marge, when a shot
right ahead told us that our out-skirting party was at hand.

All in an instant were on the alert; in twenty minutes we joined
forces, and compared results. We had twelve partridge, five rabbits,
seventeen woodcock; they, six gray squirrels, seven partridge,
and one solitary cock—Tim, proud as Lucifer at having led the field.
But his joy now was at an end—for to his charge the setters were
committed to be led in leash, while we shot on, over the spaniels.
Another dozen partridge, and eighteen rabbits, completed our last
bag in the Woodlands.

Late was it when we reached the Teachmans' hut—and long
and deep was the carouse that followed; and when the moon had
sunk and we were turning in, Tom Draw swore with a mighty
oath of deepest emphasis—that since we had passed a week with
him, he'd take a seat down in the wagon, and see the Beacon
Races. So we filled round once more, and clinked our glasses to
bind the joyous compact, and turned in happy.

7. DAY THE SEVENTH.

Once more we were compelled to change our purpose.

When we left Tom Draw's, it had been, as we thought, finally
decided that we were for this bout to visit that fair village no more,
but when that worthy announced his own determination to accompany
us on our homeward route, and when we had taken into consideration
the fact, that, independent of Tom's two hundred and fifty
weight of solid flesh, we had two noble bucks, beside quail, partridge,
woodcock, and rabbit, almost innumerable to transport, in
addition to our two selves and Timothy, with the four dogs, and
lots of luggage—when we, I say, considered all this, it became apparent
that another vehicle must be provided for our return. So
during the last jorum, it had been put to the vote and unanimously
carried that we should start for Tom's, by a retrograde movement,
at four o'clock in the morning, breakfast with him, and rig up some
drag or other wherein Timothy might get the two deer and the
dogs, as best he might, into the city.

“As for us,” said Harry, “we will go down the other road,
Tom, over the back-bone of the mountain, dine with old Colonel
Beams, stop at Paterson, and take a taste at the Holy Father's potheen—you
may look at the Falls if you like it, Frank, while we're
looking at the Innishowen—and so get home to supper. I'll give
you both beds for one night—but not an hour longer—my little cellar
would be broken, past all doubt, if old Tom were to get two
nights out of it!”

“Ay'se sure it would,” responded Timothy, who had been listening,
all attention, mixing meanwhile some strange compound of
eggs and rum and sugar. “Whoy, measter Draa did pratty nigh
drink 't out yance—that noight 'at eight chaps, measter Frank,
drank oop two baskets o' champagne, and fifteen bottles o' 't breawn
sherry—Ay carried six on 'em to bed, Ay'se warrant it—and yan
o' them, young measter Clark, he spoilt me a new suit o' liveries,
wi' vomiting a top on me.”

“That'll do, Timothy,” interposed Archer, unwilling, as I
thought, that the secret mysteries of his establishment should be
revealed any further to the profane ears which were gaping round
about us—“that'll do for the present—give Mr. Draw that flip—
he's looking at it very angrily, I see! and then turn in, or you'll
be late in the morning; and, by George, we must be away by
four o'clock at latest, for we have all of sixty miles to makes to-morrow,
and Tom's fat carcase will try the springs most consumedly,
down hill.”

Matters thus settled, in we turned, and—as it seemed to me,
within five minutes, I was awakened by Harry Archer, who stood
beside my bed full dressed, with a candle in his hand.

“Get up,” he whispered, “get up, Frank, very quietly; slip on

your great-coat and your slippers—we have a chance to serve Tom
out—he's not awake for once! and Timothy will have the horses
ready in five minutes!”

Up I jumped on the instant, hauled on a rough-frieze pea-jacket,
thrust my unstockinged feet into their contrary slippers, and followed
Harry, on the tips of my toes, along a creaking passage,
guided by the portentous ruckling snorts, which varied the profundity
of the fat man's slumbers. When I reached his door, there
stood Harry, laughing to himself, with a small quiet chuckle, perfectly
inaudible at three feet distance, the intensity of which could,
however, be judged by the manner in which it shook his whole person.
Two huge horse-buckets, filled to the brim, were set beside
him; and he had cut a piece of an old broomstick so as to fit exactly
to the width of the passage, across which he had fastened it, at
about two feet from the ground, so that it must most indubitably
trip up any person, who should attempt to run along that dark and
narrow thoroughfare.

“Now, Frank,” said he, “see here! I'll set this bucket here
behind the door—we'll heave the other slap into his face—there he
lies, full on the broad of his fat back, with his mouth wide open—
and when he jumps up full of fight, which he is sure to do, run you
with the candle, which blow out the moment he appears, straight
down the passage. I'll stand back here, and as he trips over that
broomstick, which he is certain to do, I'll pitch the other bucket on
his back—and if he does not think he's bewitched, I'll promise not
to laugh. I owe him two or three practical jokes, and now I've
got a chance, so I'll pay him all at once.”

Well! we peeped in, aided by the glare of the streaming tallow-candle,
and there, sure enough, with all the clothes kicked off him,
and his immense rotundity protected only from the cold by an exceeding
scanty shirt of most ancient cotton, lay Tom, flat on his
back, like a stranded porpoise, with his mouth wide open, through
which he was puffing and breathing like a broken-winded cab-horse,
while through his expanded nostrils he was snoring loudly
enough to have awaked the seven sleepers. Neither of us could
well stand up for laughing. One bucket was deposited behind the
door, and back stood Harry ready to slip behind it also at half a
moment's warning—the candlestick was placed upon the floor,
which I was to kick over in my flight.

“Stand by to heave!” whispered my trusty comrade—“heave!”
and with the word—flash!—slush!—out went the whole contents
of the full pail, two gallons at the least of ice-cold water, slap in
the chaps, neck, breast, and stomach of the sound sleeper. With
the most wondrous noise that ears of mine have ever witnessed—a
mixture of sob, snort, and groan, concluding in the longest and
most portentous howl that mouth of man ever uttered—Tom started
out of bed; but, at the very instant I discharged my bucket, I put
my foot upon the light, flung down the empty pail, and bolted.
Poor devil!—as he got upon his feet the bucket rolled up with its
iron handles full against his shins, the oath he swore at which encounter,

while he dashed headlong after me, directed by the noise I
made on purpose, is most unmentionable. Well knowing where it
was, I easily jumped over the stick which barred the passage. Not
so Tom—for going at the very top of his pace, swearing like forty
troopers all the time, he caught it with both legs just below the
knees, and went down with a squelch that shook the whole hut to
the rooftree, while at the self-same instant Harry once again soused
him with the contents of the second pail, and made his escape unobserved
by the window of Tom's own chamber. Meanwhile I had
reached my room, and flinging off my jacket, came running out
with nothing but my shirt and a lighted candle, to Tom's assistance,
in which the next moment I was joined by Harry, who rushed
in from out of doors with the stable lanthorn.

“What's the row now?” he said, with his face admirably cool
and quiet. “What the devil's in the wind?”

“Oh! Archer!” grunted poor Tom, in most piteous accents—
“them d—d etarnal Teachmans—they've murdered me right out!
I'll never get over this—ugh! ugh! ugh! Half drownded and
smashed up the darndest! Now aint it an etarnal shame! Curse
them, if I doos n't sarve them out for it, my name's not Thomas
Draw!”

“Well, it is not,” rejoined Harry, “who in the name of wonder
ever called you Thomas? Christened you never were at all, that's
evident enough, you barbarous old heathen—but you were certainly
named Tom.”

Swearing, and vowing vengeance on Jem Lyn, and Garry, and
the Teachmans—each one of whom, by the way, was sound asleep
during this pleasant interlude—and shaking with the cold, and
sputtering with uncontrollable fury, the fat man did at length get
dressed, and after two or three libations of milk punch, recovered
his temper somewhat, and his spirits altogether.

Although, however, Harry and I told him very frankly that we
were not merely the sole planners, but the sole executors, of the
trick—it was in vain we spoke. Tom would not have it.

“No—he knew—he knew well enough; did we go for to think he
was such an old etarnal fool as not to know Jem's voice—a bloody
Decker—he would be the death of him.”

And direful, in good truth, I do believe, were the jokes practical,
and to him no jokes at all, which poor Jem had to undergo, in expiation
of his fancied share in this our misdemeanor.

Scarce had the row subsided, before the horses were announced.
Harry and I, and Tom and Timothy, mounted the old green drag;
and, with our cheroots lighted—the only lights, by the way, that
were visible at all—off we went at a rattling trot, the horses in
prime condition, full of fire, biting and snapping at each other, and
making their bits clash and jingle every moment. Up the long
hill, and through the shadowy wood, they strained, at full ten miles
an hour, without a touch of the whip, or even a word of Harry's
well-known voice.

We reached the brow of the mountain, where there are four

cleared fields—whereon I once saw snow lie five feet deep on the
tenth day of April—and an old barn; and thence we looked back
through the cold gray gloom of an autumnal morning, three hours
at least before the rising of the sun, while the stars were waning in
the dull sky, and the moon had long since set, toward the Greenwood
lake.

Never was there a stronger contrast, than between that lovely
sheet of limpid water, as it lay now—cold, dun, and dismal, like a
huge plate of pewter, without one glittering ripple, without one
clear reflection, surrounded by the wooded hills which, swathed in
a dim mist, hung grim and gloomy over its silent bosom—and its
bright sunny aspect on the previous day.

Adieu! fair Greenwood Lake! adieu! Many and blithe have
been the hours which I have spent around, and in, and on you—and
it may well be I shall never see you more—whether reflecting the
full fresh greenery of summer; or the rich tints of cisatlantic
autumn; or sheeted with the treacherous ice; but never, thou
sweet lake, never will thy remembrance fade from my bosom, while
one drop of life-blood warms it; so art thou intertwined with memories
of happy careless days, that never can return—of friends,
truer, perhaps, though rude and humble, than all of prouder seeming.
Farewell to thee, fair lake! Long may it be before thy rugged
hills be stripped of their green garniture, or thy bright waters[5]
marred by the unpicturesque improvements of man's avarice!—for
truly thou, in this utilitarian age, and at brief distance from America's
metropolis, art young, and innocent, and unpolluted, as when
the red man drank of thy pure waters, long centuries ere he dreamed
of the pale-faced oppressors, who have already rooted out his race
from half its native continent.

Another half hour brought us down at a rattling pace to the village,
and once again we pulled up at Tom's well-known dwelling,
just as the day was breaking. A crowd of loiterers, as usual, was
gathered even at that untimely season in the large bar-room; and
when the clatter of our hoofs and wheels announced us, we found
no lack of ready-handed and quick-tongued assistants.

“Take out the horses, Timothy,” cried Harry, “unharness them,
and rub them down as quickly and as thoroughly as may be—let

them have four quarts each, and mind that all is ready for a start
before an hour. Meantime, Frank, we will overhaul the game, get
breakfast, and hunt up a wagon for the deer and setters.”

“Do n't bother yourself about no wagon,” interposed Tom, “but
come you in and liquor; else we shall have you gruntin half the
day; and if old roan and my long pig-box wont carry down the
deer, why I'll stand treat.”

A jorum was prepared, and discussed accordingly; fresh ice produced,
the quail and woodcock carefully unpacked, and instantly
re-stowed with clean dry straw, a measure which, however, seemed
almost supererogatory, since so completely had the external air
been excluded from the game-box, that we found not only the lumps
of ice in the bottom unthawed, but the flannel which lay over it stiff
frozen; the birds were of course perfectly fresh, cool, and in good
condition. Our last day's batch, which it was found impossible to
get into the box, with all the ruffed grouse, fifty at least in number,
were tied up by the feet, two brace and two brace, and hung in
festoons round the inside rails of the front seat and body, while
about thirty rabbits dangled by their hind legs, with their long ears
flapping to and fro, from the back seat, and baggage rack. The
wagon looked, I scarce know how, something between an English
stage-coach when the merry days of Christmas are at hand, and a
game-huxter's taxed cart.

The business of re-packing had been scarce accomplished, and
Harry and myself had just retired to change our shooting-jackets
and coarse fustians for habiliments more suitable for the day and
our destination—New York, to-wit, and Sunday—when forth came
Tom, bedizened from top to toe in his most new and knowing rig,
and looking now, to do him justice, a most respectable and portly
yeoman.

A broad-brimmed, low-crowned and long-napped white hat, set
forth assuredly to the best advantage his rotund, rubicund, good-humored
phiz; a clean white handkerchief circled his sturdy neck,
on the volumnious folds of which reposed in placid dignity the
mighty collops of his double chin. A bright canary waistcoat of
imported kerseymere, with vast mother-of-pearl buttons, and a
broad-skirted coat of bright blue cloth, with glittering brass buttons
half the size of dollars, covered his upper man, while loose drab
trousers of stout double-milled, and a pair of well-blacked boots,
completed his attire; so that he looked as different an animal as
possible from the unwashed, uncombed, half-naked creature he presented,
when lounging in his bar-room in his every-day apparel.

“Why, halloa Guts!” cried Archer, as he entered, “you've
broken out here in a new place altogether.”

“Now quit, you, callin of me Guts,” responded Tom, more testily
than I had ever heard him speak to Harry, whose every whim and
frolic he seemed religiously to venerate and humor; “a fellow
doos n't want to have it `Guts' here, and `Guts' there, over half a
county. Why now it was but a week since, while 'lections was a

goin' on, I got a letter from some d—d chaps to Newburg—`Rouse
about now, old Guts, you'll need it this election!”'

“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted Harry and I almost simultaneously, delighted
at Tom's evident annoyance.

“Who wrote it Tom?”

“That's what I'd jist give fifty dollars to know now,” replied
mine host, clinching his mighty paw.

“Why, what would you do,” said I, “if you did know?”

“Lick him, by George! Lick him, in the first place, till he was
as nigh dead as I daared lick him—and then I'd make him eat up
every darned line of it! But come, come—breakfast's ready; and
while we're getting through with it, Timothy and Jem Lyn will
fix the pig-box, and make the deer all right and tight for travelling!”

No sooner said than done—an ample meal was speedily despatched—and
when that worthy came in to announce all ready,
for the saving of time, master Timothy was accommodated with a
seat at a side-table, which he occupied with becoming dignity, abstaining,
as it were in consciousness of his honorable promotion,
from any of the quaint and curious witticisms, in which he was wont
to indulge; but manducating with vast energy the various good
things which were set before him.

It was a clear, bright Sabbath morning, as ever shone down on a
sinful world, on which we started homeward—and, though I fear
there was not quite so much solemnity in our demeanor as might
have best accorded with the notions of over strict professors, I can
still answer that with much mirth, much merriment, and much good
feeling in our hearts, there was no touch of irreverence, or any taint
of what could be called sinful thought. The sun had risen fairly,
but the hour was still too early for the sweet peaceful music of the
church-going bells to have made their echoes tunable through the
rich valley. A merry cavalcade, indeed, we started—Harry leading
the way at his usual slap-dash pace, so that one, less a workman
than himself, would have said he went up hill and down at the
same break-neck pace, and would take all the grit out of his team
before he had gone ten miles—while a more accurate observer
would have seen almost at a glance, that he varied his rate at
almost every inequality of road, that he quartered every rut, avoided
every jog or mud hole, husbanded for the very best his horses'
strength, never making them either pull or hold a moment longer
than was absolutely necessary from the abruptness of the ground.

At his left hand sat I, while Tom, in honor of his superior bulk
and weight, occupied with his magnificent and portly person the
whole of the back seat, keeping his countenance as sanctified as
possible, and nodding, with some quaint and characteristic observation,
to each one of the scattered groups of country-people, which
we encountered every quarter of a mile for the first hour of our
route, wending their way toward the village church—but, when we
reached the forest-mantled road which clombe the mountain, making

the arched woods resound to many a jovial catch, or merry
hunting chorus.

Mounted sublime on an arm-chair lashed to the fore-part of the
pig-box, sat Timothy in state—his legs well muffled in a noble
scarlet-fringed buffalo skin, and his body encased in his livery top-coat—the
setters and the spaniels crouching most meekly at his
feet, and the two noble bucks—the fellow on whose steaks we had
already made an inroad, having been left as fat Tom's portion—
securely corded down upon a pile of straw, with their sublime and
antlered crests drooping all spiritless and humble over the back-board,
toward the frozen soil which crashed and rattled under the
ponderous hoofs of the magnificent roan horse—Tom's special
favorite—which, though full seventeen hands high, and heavy in
proportion, yet showing a good strain of blood, trotted away with
his huge load at full ten miles an hour.

Plunging into the deep recesses of the Greenwoods, hill after hill
we scaled, a toilsome length of stony steep ascents, almost precipitous;
until we reached the back-bone of the mountain ridge—a
rugged, bare, sharp edge of granite rock, without a particle of soil
upon it, diving down at an angle not much less than forty-five degress
into a deep ravine, through which thundered and roared a
flashing torrent. This fearful descent overpast, and that in perfect
safety, we rolled merrily away down hill, till we reached Colonel
Beam's tavern, a neat, low-browed, Dutch, stone farm-house, situate
in an angle scooped out of a green hill-side, with half a dozen
tall and shadowy elms before it—a bright crystal stream purling
along into the horse-trough through a miniature acqueduct of hollowed
logs, and a clear cold spring in front of it, with half a score
of fat and lazy trout floating in its transparent waters.

A hearty welcome, and a no less hearty meal having been here
encountered and despatched, we rattled off again, through laden
orchards and rich meadows; passed the confluence of the three
bright rivers which issue from their three mountain gorges, to form
by their junction the fairest of New Jersey's rivers, the broad Passaic;
reached the small village noted for rum-drinking and quarter
racing—hight Pompton—thence by the Preakness mountain, and
Mose Canouze's tavern—whereat, in honor of Tom's friend, a
worthy of the self-same kidney with himself, we paused awhile—
to Paterson, the filthiest town, situate on one of the loveliest rivers
in the world, and famous only for the possession, in the person of
its Catholic priest, of the finest scholar and best fellow in America,
whom we unluckily found not at home, and therefore tasted not, according
to friend Harry's promise, the splendid Innishowen which
graces at all times his hospitable board.

Eight o'clock brought us to Hoboken, where, by good luck, the
ferry boat lay ready—and nine o'clock had not struck when we
three sat down once again about a neat small supper-table, before a
bright coal fire, in Archer's snuggery—Tom glorying in the prospect
of the races on the morrow, and I regretting that I had brought
to its conclusion

MY FIRST WEEK IN THE WOODLANDS.