ing about Secession in the hopes
of being Dukes, or Marquises, or Earls--High Keepers of His Majesty
Jeff. Davis's China Spittoons, or Grand Custodians of the Prince of
South Carolina's Plug Tobacco, when the Southern Confederacy gains its
independence."

"Well," said Abe, raising the Rebel's hat on the point of his bayonet,
and laying it across the corpse's face, "he's changed bosses much sooner
than he expected. Jeff. Davis's blood-relation, who presides over
the Sulphur Confederacy, will put on his shoulder-straps with a
branding-iron, and serve up his rations for him red-hot. I only wish he
had more going along with him to keep him company."

"Save your feelings against the Secessionists for expression with your
gun in the next fight, and come along. I'm getting thirstier every
minute."

They walked on rapidly for a couple or three hours, without finding much
encouragement in their search. The rugged mountain sides were but thinly
peopled, and the few poor cabins they saw in the distance they decided
were not promising enough of results to justify clambering up to where
they were perched. At last, almost wearied out, they halted for a little
while to rest and scan the interminable waves of summits that stretched
out before them.

"Ah," said Kent, rising suddenly, "let's go on. Hope dawns at last. I
smell apples. That's a perfume my nose never mistakes. We're near an
orchard. Where there's an orchard there's likely to be a pretty good
style of house, and where in Kentucky there's a good style of house
there's a likelihood of being plenty of good whisky. Now there's a train
of brilliant inductive reasoning that shows that nature intended me to
be a great natural philosopher. Come on, Abe."

The smell of apples certainly did grow more palpable as they proceeded,
and Abe muttered that even if they did not get any thing to drink they
would probably get enough of the fruit to make an agreeable change in
their diet.

They emerged from the woods into a cleared space where a number of
roads and paths focused. To the right was a little opening in the
mountain-side, hardly large enough to be called a valley, but designated
in the language of the region as a "hollow." At its mouth stood a couple
of diminutive log-cabins, of the rudest possible construction, and
roofed with "clapboards" held in place by stones and poles. A long
string of wooden troughs, supported upon props, conducted the water from
an elevated spring to