e a
successful movement, and in passing him, General Taylor, as commanding
officer of the division to which he was attached, said, "that was well
done, Captain," and perhaps he never spoke to him afterwards.

When our delightful sojourn with the kind friends at Fort Crawford
came to an end, we started in our open vehicle, which had been made as
comfortable as possible for our long ride of several days to our final
destination, and, as there were no public houses on the road, our
dependence for accommodations, was upon the thinly scattered settlers,
who for the most part were "roughing it," and had few conveniences,
scarcely any comforts to offer the weary traveler.

One night the halt was called in front of a low log house of two
rooms, connected by an enclosed passage way, which served the purpose
of an eating room.

The mistress of the house was the wife of a steamboat captain, but
owing to some irreconcilable difference of sentiment, she refused to
live with him, and she was miserably poor. In pity to her sad case,
her husband had sent, by my father, some articles of clothing which he
hoped might be of use to her, and this errand served as our
introduction. She was a tall, fine looking woman, and received and
welcomed us with the air of a princess dwelling in a palace. She was a
niece of James Fennimore Cooper, and her grand and stately mien, in
the midst of such squalid poverty, would have been amusing, but for
the pity of it.

Her father, a very old man, lay dying of consumption in one of the
rooms, and my little sister and I were assigned for the night to a bed
directly opposite the death couch. The one tallow candle on the stand
beside him, guttering down in its socket, the fitful light from the
vast fireplace, which made strange fantastic shapes and shadows on the
rough dark walls, and the clear cut profile of the dying man, with the
erect dignified figure beside him, rising occasionally to arrange his
pillow, or give him water, impressed us most painfully, effectually
driving sleep from our eyes, which, under a kind of fascination, gazed
intently on what they would fain not see. From time to time the dogs
outside howled dismally, and this forced night-watch was made most
hideous by the occasional hooting of an owl, or the prolonged baying
of hungry wolves in the distance. We were very weary, and at last
fell into a troubled slumber, but were haunted even in sleep by the
ghastly face across the room and the