his companion. "Here is enough to
last us two or three days."

"But you don't mean to keep on the river so long as that?"

"I mean to stick to the boat as long as the navigation will permit,"
replied Ben, with more energy than he had before manifested, for he
was recovering from the perturbation with which the crime he had
committed filled his mind.

"There is a factory village, with a dam across the river, six or seven
miles below here."

"I know it; but perhaps we can get the boat round the dam in the night
time, and continue our voyage below. Don't you remember that piece in
the Reader about John Ledyard--how he went down the Connecticut River
in a canoe?"

"Yes; and you got your idea from that?"

"I did; and I mean to have a first rate time of it."

Ben proceeded to describe the anticipated pleasures of the river
voyage, as he munched his bread and cheese; and Harry listened with a
great deal of satisfaction. Running away was not such a terrible
thing, after all. It was both business and pleasure, and his
imagination was much inflated by the brilliant prospect before him.
There was something so novel and exciting in the affair, that his
first experience was of the most delightful character.

He forgot the crime his companion had committed, and had almost come
to regard the burning of the squire's barn as a just and proper
retribution upon him for conspiring against the rights and privileges
of young America.

My young readers may not know how easy it is even for a good boy to
learn to love the companionship of those who are vicious, and disposed
to take the road which leads down to moral ruin and death. Those lines
of Pope, which are familiar to almost every school boy, convey a great
truth, and a thrilling warning to those who first find themselves
taking pleasure in the society of wicked men, or wicked boys:

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated, needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

Now, I have not represented my hero, at this stage of the story, as a
very good boy, and it did not require much time to familiarize him
with the wickedness which was in Ben's heart, and which he did not
take any pains to conceal. The transition from enduring to pitying and
from that to embracing was sudden and easy, if, indeed, there was any
middle passage between the first and last stage.

I am sorry to say tha