shift with tubs, or stood up in various elegant
attitudes. There was a prodigious amount of talking, shouting, drinking,
and laughing going on; and my first feeling was, that I would rather
have been any where else than in that worshipful assembly. Richards,
however, stepped boldly forward, in spite of his bootless foot; and
luckily the men appeared disposed to be upon their best behaviour with
us. They pressed back right and left, forming a lane about a foot wide,
enclosed between living palisades, six feet and upwards in height,
through which we passed, subjected, as we did so, to a searching
inspection. Richards stepped smartly up to the table, then turned round,
and confronted the group of half-horse, half-alligator visages there
assembled.

"A hurra for old Alabama!" cried he, "and the devil take the Bainbridge
roadmaster!"

"Are you mad?" I whispered to him.

"May I be scalped if you don't soon feel the weight of these five bones
upon your carcass, stranger!" growled a voice, proceeding from a sort of
mammoth that had just filled itself a half-pint tumbler of Monongahela.
Before the double-jointed Goliath put his threat into execution, he
swallowed the whisky at a gulp, and then, striding forwards, laid his
open hand upon my companion's shoulder, with a force that threw the poor
fellow on one side, and gave him the appearance of being crooked. At the
same time the giant stared Richards in the face, with an expression
which the natural hardness of his features, and the glimmer of his
owl-like eyes, rendered any thing but agreeable.

"The devil take the Bainbridge roadmaster--I repeat it!" cried Richards,
half in earnest and half laughing, raising his muddy and bootless foot
as he spoke, and placing it on a chair. "See there, men! I may thank him
for the loss of my boot. The cursed swamp between here and the ferry was
kind enough to pull it off for me."

The roar of laughter that responded to these words would inevitably have
broken the windows, had there been any glass in them. Fortunately the
latter luxury was wanting; its place being supplied by fragments of old
inexpressibles, and of _ci-devant_ coats and waistcoats.

"Come, lads!" continued Richards, "I mean no offence; but of a surety I
have to thank your bad roads for the loss of my boot."

Richard's jest, exactly adapted to the society in which we found
ourselves, was the most fortunate _impromptu_ that could have been hit
upon. It seemed at once to