es for their
respectability; while two or three log structures at back--representing
barn, stable, and other outbuildings--tell of land attached.

Of this class is the habitation referred to--the home of the widow
Clancy.

As already known, her widowhood is of recent date. She still wears its
emblems upon her person, and carries its sorrow in her heart.

Her husband, of good Irish lineage, had found his way to Nashville, the
capital city of Tennessee; where, in times long past, many Irish
families made settlements. There he had married her, she herself being
a native Tennesseean--sprung from the old Carolina pioneer stock, that
colonised the state near the end of the eighteenth century--the
Robertsons, Hyneses, Hardings, and Bradfords--leaving to their
descendants a patent of nobility, or at least a family name deserving
respect, and generally obtaining it.

In America, as elsewhere, it is not the rule for Irishmen to grow rich;
and still more exceptional in the case of Irish gentlemen. When these
have wealth their hospitality is too apt to take the place of a
spendthrift profuseness, ending in pecuniary embarrassment.

So was it with Captain Jack Clancy; who got wealth with his wife, but
soon squandered it entertaining his own and his wife's friends. The
result, a move to Mississippi, where land was cheaper, and his
attenuated fortune would enable him to hold out a little longer.

Still, the property he had purchased in Mississippi State was but a poor
one; leading him to contemplate a further flit into the rich red lands
of North-Eastern Texas, just becoming famous as a field for
colonisation. His son Charles sent thither, as said, on a trip of
exploration, had spent some months in the Lone Star State, prospecting
for the new home; and brought back a report in every way favourable.

But the ear, to which it was to have been spoken, could no more hear.
On his return, he found himself fatherless; and to the only son there
remains only a mother; whose grief, pressing heavily, has almost brought
her to the grave. It is one of a long series of reverses which have
sorely taxed her fortitude. Another of like heaviness, and the tomb may
close over her.

Some such presentiment is in the mother's mind, on this very day, as the
sun goes down, and she sits in her chamber beside a dim candle, with ear
keenly bent to catch the returning footsteps of her son.

He has been absent since noon, having gone deer-stalking