hed you
and me to join the corps of 'Injins?'"

"What answer did you make? Though I suppose it would hardly do for us to
go disguised and armed, now that the law makes it a felony, even while
our motive, at the bottom, might be to aid the law."

"Catch me at that act of folly! Why, Hugh, could they prove such a crime
on either of _us_, or any one connected with an old landed family, we
should be the certain victims. No governor would dare pardon _us_. No,
no; clemency is a word reserved for the obvious and confirmed rogues."

"We might get a little favour on the score of belonging to a very
powerful body of offenders."

"True; I forgot that circumstance. The more numerous the crimes and the
criminals, the greater the probability of impunity; and this, too, not
on the general principle that power cannot be resisted, but on the
particular principle that a thousand or two votes are of vast
importance, where three thousand can turn an election. God only knows
where this thing is to end!"

We now approached one of the humbler taverns of the place, where it was
necessary for those of our apparent pretensions to seek lodgings, and
the discourse was dropped. It was several weeks too early in the season
for the Springs to be frequented, and we found only a few of those in
the place who drank the waters because they really required them. My
uncle had been an old stager at Saratoga--a beau of the "purest water,"
as he laughingly described himself--and he was enabled to explain all
that it was necessary for me to know. An American watering-place,
however, is so very much inferior to most of those in Europe, as to
furnish very little, in their best moments, beyond the human beings they
contain, to attract the attention of the traveller.

In the course of the afternoon we availed ourselves of the opportunity
of a return vehicle to go as far as Sandy Hill, where we passed the
night. The next morning, bright and early, we got into a hired wagon and
drove across the country until near night, when we paid for our passage,
sent the vehicle back, and sought a tavern. At this house, where we
passed the night, we heard a good deal of the "Injins" having made their
appearance on the Littlepage lands, and many conjectures as to the
probable result. We were in a township, or rather on a property that was
called Mooseridge, and which had once belonged to us, but which, having
been sold, and in a great measure paid for by the occupants, no