fast
and far through the western country, in hunger and distress, passing by
the very door of prosperous kinsfolk, but not tarrying a moment to seek
relief."

At this point Mrs. Jane Peabody glanced at her husband.

"And so by one stage and another, hastening on, he reached that great
city in the south, the metropolis of New Orleans; often, as he hoped, on
the very steps of his friend, but never overtaking him, with fortune at
so low an ebb that there he was well-nigh wasted in strength,
hunger-stricken, and tattered in dress; driven to live in hovels till
some chance restored him the little means to advance; so mean of person
that his dearest friend, his nearest kinsman, even his old playfellow
there," pointing to Mr. Tiffany Carrack, "who had wrestled with him in
the hayfield, who had sat with him in childish talk often and many a
time by summer stream-sides, would have passed him by as one unknown."

The glance which, in speaking this, he directed at Mr. Carrack, kindled
on that young gentleman's countenance a ruby glow, so intense and fiery
that it would seem as if it must have burned up the tawny tufts before
their very eyes, like so much dry stubble. There was a glow of another
kind in the Captain's broad face, which shone like another sun as he
contemplated the two young men, glancing from one to the other.

"The young man, bent on that one purpose as on life itself," he
continued, silencing his companion, who seemed eager to speak, with a
motion of his finger, "through towns, over waters, upon deserts, still
pursued his way; and, to be brief in a weary history, there, in the very
heart of that great region of gold, among diggers and searchers, and men
distracted in a thousand ways in that perilous hunt, to find his
simple-hearted friend, the preacher, in an out-of-the-way wilderness
among the mountains, exhorting the living, comforting the sick,
consoling the dying--and then, for the first time he learned, what his
friend had carefully concealed before, the motive of his self-banishment
to this distant country."

His companion would have spoken, but the young man hurrying on, allowed
him not a word.

"You who know his history," he continued, addressing the company at the
table--"know what calamity had once come upon the household of Mr.
Barbary, by the unlawful thirst for gold; that he held its love as the
curse of curses; he thought if he could but once throw himself in its
midst, where that passion rage