"
(dollar) to buy a fish-line. It all came from my foolish offer to pay.
Gratitude is a sense of further benefits to be bestowed.

The place where the oil had been seen was near a conical rocky hill
called Grindstone Knob. We examined carefully and found no trace of it.
The geology of the country was unfavourable, much flint and conglomerate,
if I remember, and wanting in the signs of coal, shales, &c., and
"faults" or ravines. I may be quite wrong, but such was my opinion. No
one who lived thereabout had ever heard of "ile." Once I asked a rustic
if any kind of oil was found in the neighbourhood in springs. His reply
was, "What! _ile_ come up outer the ground like water! H---! I never
heard of sitch a thing." _There was no oil_.

At the foot of Grindstone Knob was a rather neat, small house, white,
with green blinds. We were somewhat astonished to learn from a negro
boy, who spoke the most astonishingly bad English, that this was the home
of Mas' --- ---. Yes, this was the den of the wolf himself, and I had no
doubt that he was not far off. There was a small cotton plantation round
about.

We entered, and were received by a good-looking, not unladylike, but
rather fierce-eyed young woman and her younger sister. It was Mrs. ---.
The two had been to a lady's seminary in Nashville, and played the piano
for us. I felt that we were in a strange situation, and now and then
walked to the window and looked out, listening all the time suspiciously
to every sound. It was easy enough for Mrs. ---, the brigand's wife, to
perceive from my untanned complexion that I had not been in the field,
and was manifestly no soldier. "_You_ look like an officer," she said to
Captain Colton, "and so does _that_ one, but what is _he_?" meaning me by
this last. We had dinner--roast kid--and when we departed I gave the
dame five dollars, having the feeling that I could not be indebted to
thieves for a dinner.

We had gone but a little distance when we saw two bushwhackers with guns,
and gave chase, but they disappeared in the bushes, much to the grief of
our men, who would have liked either to shoot them or to bring them in.
Then the corporal told us that while we were at dinner's "faithful
blacks" had informed his men that "Mas' had been at home ever since
Crismas"; that at eleven o'clock every night they assembled at the house
and thence went out marauding and murdering.

I paused, astonished and angry. It was almost certa