d brows with
the bright tender verdure of the tasseled larch, and the yet brighter
green of maple, mountain ash and willow--or the full flush of summer has
clothed their forests with impervious and shadowy foliage, while
carpeting their sides with the unnumbered blossoms of calmia,
rhododendron and azalea!--whether the gorgeous hues of autumn gleam
like the banners of ten thousand victor armies along their rugged
slopes, or the frozen winds of winter have roofed their headlands with
inviolate white snow! Not as their bowels teem with the wealth of mines
which ages of man's avarice may vainly labor to exhaust! but as they are
the loved abode of many a woodland denizen that has retreated, even from
more remote and seemingly far wilder fastnesses, to these sequestered
haunts. I love them, in that the graceful hind conceals her timid fawn
among the ferns that wave on the lone banks of many a nameless rill,
threading their hills, untrodden save by the miner, or the infrequent
huntsman's foot--in that the noble stag frays oftentimes his antlers
against their giant trees--in that the mighty bear lies hushed in grim
repose amid their tangled swamps--in that their bushy dingles resound
nightly to the long-drawn howl of the gaunt famished wolf--in that the
lynx and wild-cat yet mark their prey from the pine branches--in that
the ruffed grouse drums, the woodcock bleats, and the quail chirrups
from every height or hollow--in that, more strange to tell, the noblest
game of trans-atlantic fowl, the glorious turkey--although, like angels'
visits, they be indeed but few and far between--yet spread their bronzed
tails to the sun, and swell and gobble in their most secret wilds.

"I love those hills of Warwick--many a glorious day have I passed in
their green recesses; many a wild tale have I heard of sylvan sport and
forest warfare, and many, too, of patriot partisanship in the old
revolutionary days--the days that tried men's souls--while sitting at my
noontide meal by the secluded wellhead, under the canopy of some
primeval oak, with implements of woodland sport, rifle or shot-gun by my
side, and well-broke setter or stanch hound recumbent at my feet. And
one of these tales will I now venture to record, though it will sound
but weak and feeble from my lips, if compared to the rich, racy, quaint
and humorous thing it was, when flowing from the nature-gifted tongue of
our old friend Tom Draw."

"Hear! hear!" cried Frank, "the chap is