overy, though carefully coupling the prefix to her name
while giving it utterance--"now, do you know Miss Lucy, friend, and will
you tell me where I can find her?"

"Do you think I will, and you may be looking arter her too? 'Drot my old
hat, strannger, but I do itch to git at you."

"Oh, now, Mr. Williams--"

"I won't answer to that name. Call me Chub Williams, if you wants to be
perlite. Mother always calls me Chub, and that's the reason I like it."

"Well, Chub,"--said the other, quite paternally--"I assure you I don't
love Miss Munro--and--"

"What! you don't love Miss Lucy. Why, everybody ought to love her. Now,
if you don't love her, I'll hammer you, strannger, off hand."

The poor pedler professed a proper sort of love for the young lady--not
exactly such as would seek her for a wife, however, and succeeded in
satisfying, after a while, the scruples of one who, in addition to
deformity, he also discovered to labor under the more serious curse of
partial idiocy. Having done this, and flattered, in sundry other ways,
the peculiarities of his companion, he pursued his other point with
laudable pertinacity.

He at length got from Chub his own history: how he had run into the
woods with his mother, who had suffered from the ill-treatment of her
husband: how, with his own industry, he had sustained her wants, and
supplied her with all the comforts which a long period had required; and
how, dying at length, she had left him--the forest boy--alone, to pursue
those toils which heretofore had an object, while she yielded him in
return for them society and sympathy. These particulars, got from him in
a manner the most desultory, were made to preface the more important
parts of the narrative.

It appears that his harmlessness had kept him undisturbed, even by the
wild marauders of that region, and that he still continued to procure a
narrow livelihood by his woodland labors, and sought no association with
that humanity which, though among fellow-creatures, would still have
lacked of fellowship for him. In the transfer of Lucy from the village
to the shelter of the outlaws, he had obtained a glimpse of her person
and form, and had ever since been prying in the neighborhood for a
second and similar enjoyment. He now made known to the pedler her place
of concealment, which he had, some time before this event, himself
discovered; but which, through dread of Rivers, for whom he seemed to
entertain an habitual fear, he ha