he only one assigned to his cell.

The smile of God himself that solitary ray appeared to the diseased
spirit of the youth, and he grew strong in an instant. Talk of the
lessons of the learned, and the reasonings of the sage!--a vagrant
breeze, a rippling water, a glance of the sweet sunlight, have more of
consolation in them for the sad heart than all the pleadings of
philosophy. They bring the missives of a higher teacher.

Bunce was an active coadjutor with the lawyer in this melancholy case.
He made all inquiries--he went everywhere. He searched in all places,
and spared no labor; but at length despaired. Nothing could be elicited
by his inquiries, and he ceased to hope himself, and ceased to persuade
Ralph into hope. The lawyer shook his head in reply to all questions,
and put on a look of mystery which is the safety-valve to all swollen
pretenders.

In this state of affairs, taking the horse of the youth, with a last
effort at discoveries, Bunce rode forth into the surrounding country. He
had heretofore taken all the common routes, to which, in his previous
intercourse with the people, he had been accustomed; he now determined
to strike into a path scarcely perceptible, and one which he never
remembered to have seen before. He followed, mile after mile, its
sinuosities. It was a wild, and, seemingly, an untrodden region. The
hills shot up jaggedly from the plain around him--the fissures were rude
and steep--more like embrasures, blown out by sudden power from the
solid rock. Where the forest appeared, it was dense and
intricate--abounding in brush and underwood; where it was deficient, the
blasted heath chosen by the witches in Macbeth would have been no unfit
similitude.

Hopeless of human presence in this dreary region, the pedler yet rode
on, as if to dissipate the unpleasant thoughts, following upon his
frequent disappointment. Suddenly, however, a turn in the winding path
brought him in contact with a strange-looking figure, not more than five
feet in height, neither boy nor man, uncouthly habited, and seemingly
one to whom all converse but that of the trees and rocks, during his
whole life, had been unfamiliar.

The reader has already heard something of the Cherokee pony--it was upon
one of these animals he rode. They are a small, but compactly made and
hardy creature--of great fortitude, stubborn endurance, and an activity,
which, in the travel of day after day, will seldom subside from the
gallop. It