ssical gymnasia, had trained its
pupils in all bodily exercises; and though the Will o' the Wisp was
swift for a clodhopper, he was no match at running for any youth who
has spent his boyhood in the discipline of cricket, prisoner's bar, and
hunt-the-hare. I reached him at length, and brought him to bay.

"Stand back!" said he, panting, and taking aim with his gun: "it is
loaded."

"Yes," said I; "but though you're a brave poacher, you dare not fire at
your fellow-man. Give up the gun this instant."

My address took him by surprise; he did not fire. I struck up the
barrel, and closed on him. We grappled pretty tightly, and in the
wrestle the gun went off. The man loosened his hold. "Lord ha' mercy! I
have not hurt you?" he said falteringly.

"My good fellow,--no," said I; "and now let us throw aside gun and
bludgeon, and fight it out like Englishmen, or else let us sit down and
talk it over like friends."

The Will o' the Wisp scratched its head and laughed.

"Well, you're a queer one!" quoth it. And the poacher dropped the gun
and sat down.

We did talk it over, and I obtained Peterson's promise to respect the
preserve henceforth; and we thereon grew so cordial that he walked home
with me, and even presented me, shyly and apologetically, with the five
pheasants he had shot. From that time I sought him out. He was a young
fellow not four and twenty, who had taken to poaching from the wild
sport of the thing, and from some confused notions that he had a license
from Nature to poach. I soon found out that he was meant for better
things than to spend six months of the twelve in prison, and finish his
life on the gallows after killing a gamekeeper. That seemed to me his
most probable destiny in the Old World, so I talked him into a burning
desire for the New one; and a most valuable aid in the Bush he proved
too.

My third selection was in a personage who could bring little physical
strength to help us, but who had more mind (though with a wrong twist in
it) than both the others put together.

A worthy couple in the village had a son, who, being slight and puny,
compared to the Cumberland breed, was shouldered out of the market of
agricultural labor, and went off, yet a boy, to a manufacturing town.
Now about the age of thirty, this mechanic, disabled for his work by
a long illness, came home to recover; and in a short time we heard of
nothing but the pestilential doctrines with which he was either shocking
or i