mong the rushes by the last high tide.

"You see my new road and the key to my intentions?" said the Major,
forgetting all about his witch, and flourishing his geological hammer,
while standing thus at his "nucleus." "To understand all, you have only
to stand here. You see those leveling posts, adjusted with scientific
accuracy. You see all those angles, calculated with micrometric
precision. You see how the curves are radiated--"

"It is very beautiful, I have no doubt; but you can not have Uncle Sam's
gift of machinery. And do you understand every bit of it yourself?"

"Erema, not a jot of it. I like to talk about it freely when I can,
because I see all its beauties. But as to understanding it, my dear, you
might set to, if you were an educated female, and deliver me a lecture
upon my own plan. Intellect is, in such matters, a bubble. I know good
bricks, good mortar, and good foundations."

"With your great ability, you must do that," I answered, very gently,
being touched with his humility and allowance of my opinion; "you will
make a noble town of it. But when is the railway coming?"

"Not yet. We have first to get our Act; and a miserable-minded wretch,
who owns nothing but a rabbit-warren, means to oppose it. Don't let us
talk of him. It puts one out of patience when a man can not see his
own interest. But come and see our assembly-rooms, literary institute,
baths, etc., etc.--that is what we are urging forward now."

"But may I not go first and look for my strange namesake? Would it be
wrong of me to call upon her?"

"No harm whatever," replied my companion; "likewise no good. Call fifty
times, but you will get no answer. However, it is not a very great
round, and you will understand my plans more clearly. Step out, my dear,
as if you had got a troop of Mexicans after you. Ah, what a fine turn
for that lot now!" He was thinking of the war which had broken out, and
the battle of Bull's Run.

Without any such headlong speed, we soon came to the dwelling-place of
the stranger, and really for once the good Major had not much overdone
his description. Truly it was almost tumbling down, though massively
built, and a good house long ago; and it looked the more miserable now
from being placed in a hollow of the ground, whose slopes were tufted
with rushes and thistles and ragwort. The lower windows were blocked up
from within, the upper were shattered and crumbling and dangerous,
with blocks of cracked stone jutt