hat the will was a forgery, there was no immediate prospect of
proving it such.

Under these circumstances, Mr. Faxon felt compelled to advise obedience
to the instructions of the will. The journey to the North could do no
harm, and was, perhaps, advisable, under the state of feeling which
would follow the publicity of the will. Emily, painful as it was to
leave the home of her childhood at such a time, acquiesced in the
decision of her clerical friend. But there was a feeling in her heart
that she was wronged,--that she should go forth an exile from her _own_
Bellevue.

On the following week, Jaspar and Emily proceeded to New Orleans, in the
family carriage, to take a steamer for Cincinnati.

CHAPTER VI.

"Day after day, day after day,
We stuck,--nor breath, nor motion,--
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."

ANCIENT MARINER.

It was about the time of the events related in the preceding chapters,
at the close of a variable day, in which the storm and sunshine seemed
to struggle for the ascendency, that a plain-looking, home-made sort of
man might have been seen attempting to effect a safe transit of the
steamboat levee at New Orleans. This personage was no other than Mr.
Nathan Benson, commonly called at home "Uncle Nathan." He was one of the
better class of New England farmers, an old bachelor, well to do in the
world, and was now engaged in the laudable enterprise of seeing the
country.

Uncle Nathan, though he laid no claims to gentility in the popular
signification of the term, was, nevertheless, a gentleman,--one of
Nature's noblemen. He was dressed scrupulously neat in every particular,
though a little too rustic to suit the meridian of fashionable society.
He presented a very respectable figure, in spite of the fact that the
prevailing "mode" had not been consulted in the fashioning of his
garments. His coat was, without doubt, made by some village tailoress,
for many of the graces with which the masculine artist adorns his
garments were entirely wanting in those of our worthy farmer. His hat
was two inches too low in the crown, and two inches too broad in the
brim, for the style; still it was a good-looking and a well-meaning hat,
for it preserved the owner's phiz from the burning rays of the sun much
better than the "mode" would have done. His boots, though round-toed and
very wide, were nicely polished when he commenced the passage of the
levee, but were