two brace
and two brace, and hung in festoons round the inside rails of the front
seat and body, while about thirty hares dangled by their hind legs, with
their long ears flapping to and fro, from the back seat and baggage
rack. The wagon looked, I scarce know how, something between an English
stage-coach when the merry days of Christmas are at hand, and a
game-hunter's taxed cart.

The business of re-packing had been scarce accomplished, and Harry and
myself had just retired to change our shooting-jackets and coarse
fustians for habiliments more suitable for the day and our destination--
New York, to-wit, and Sunday--when forth came Tom, bedizened from top to
toe in his most new and knowing rig, and looking now, to do him justice,
a most respectable and portly yeoman.

A broad-brimmed, low-crowned, and long-napped white hat, set forth
assuredly to the best advantage his rotund, rubicund, good-humored phiz;
a clean white handkerchief circled his sturdy neck, on the voluminous
folds of which reposed in placid dignity the mighty collops of his
double chin. A bright canary waistcoat of imported kerseymere, with vast
mother-of-pearl buttons, and a broad-skirted coat of bright blue cloth,
with glittering brass buttons half the size of dollars, covered his
upper man, while loose drab trousers of stout double-milled, and a pair
of well-blacked boots, completed his attire; so that he looked as
different an animal as possible, from the unwashed, uncombed, half-naked
creature he presented, when lounging in his bar-room in his every-day
apparel.

"Why, halloa, Guts!" cried Archer, as he entered, "you've broken out
here in a new place altogether."

"Now quit, you, callin' of me Guts," responded Tom, more testily than I
had ever heard him speak to Harry, whose every whim and frolic he seemed
religiously to venerate and humor; "a fellow doesn't want to have it
'Guts' here, and 'Guts' there, over half a county. Why, now, it was but
a week since, while 'lections was a goin' on, I got a letter from some
d--d chaps to Newburg--`Rouse about now, old Guts, you'll need it this
election?'"

"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted Harry and I almost simultaneously, delighted at
Tom's evident annoyance.

"Who wrote it, Tom?"

"That's what I'd jist give fifty dollars to know now," replied mine
host, clinching his mighty paw.

"Why, what would you do," said I, "if you did know?"

"Lick him, by George! Lick him, in the first place, till he was as nigh