ble. I remained four days longer,
expecting something would happen; but nothing did happen, then I left
the gaol.

I wrote out two notices informing the public that I was willing to
sell my real estate; one of these I pasted up at the Post Office, the
other on the bridge over the Aux Plaines River. Next day a German
from Chicago agreed to pay the price asked, and we called on Colonel
Smith, the Squire. The Colonel filled in a brief form of transfer,
witnessed the payment of the money--which was in twenty-dollar gold
pieces, and he charged one dollar as his fee. The German would have
to pay about 35 cents for its registration. If the deed was lost or
stolen, he would insert in a local journal a notice of his intention
to apply for a copy, which would make the original of as little value
to anybody as a Provincial and Suburban bank note.

In Illinois, transfers of land were registered in each county town.
To buy or sell a farm was as easy as horse-stealing, and safer.
Usually, no legal help was necessary for either transaction.

By this time California had a rival; gold had been found in
Australia. I was fond of gold; I jingled the twenty dollar gold
pieces in my pocket, and resolved to look for more at the
fountainhead, by way of my native land. A railway from Chicago had
just reached Joliet, and had been opened three days before. It was
an invitation to start, and I accepted it.

Nobody ever loved his native land better than I do when I am away
from it. I can call to mind its innumerable beauties, and in fancy
saunter once more through the summer woods, among the bracken, the
bluebells, and the foxglove. I can wander by the banks of the Brock,
where the sullen trout hide in the clear depths of the pools. I can
walk along the path--the path to Paradise--still lined with the
blue-eyed speedwell and red campion; I know where the copse is
carpeted with the bluebell and ragged robin, where grow the alders,
and the hazels rich with brown nuts, the beeches and the oaks; where
the flower of the yellow broom blazes like gold in the noontide sun;
where the stockdove coos overhead in the ivy; where the kingfisher
darts past like a shaft of sapphire, and the water ouzel flies up
stream; where the pheasant glides out from his home in the wood to
feed on the headland of the wheat field; where the partridge broods
in the dust with her young; where the green lane is bordered by the
guelder-rose or wayfaring tree, the ra