ry glad
to get the latest news from the park. He said that Evans told him that
it would be most difficult for any one of them to take me down to the
Plains, but that he would go, which is a great relief. According to
the Scotch proverb, "Better a finger off than aye wagging," and as I
cannot live here (for you would not like the life or climate), the
sooner I leave the better.

The solitary ride to Evans's was very eerie. It was very dark, and the
noises were unintelligible. Young Lyman rushed out to take my horse,
and the light and warmth within were delightful, but there was a
stiffness about the new regime. Evans, though steeped in difficulties,
was as hearty and generous as ever; but Edwards, who had assumed the
management, is prudent, if not parsimonious, thinks we wasted the
supplies recklessly, and the limitations as to milk, etc., are
painfully apparent. A young ex-Guardsman has come up with Evans, of
whom the sanguine creature forms great expectations, to be disappointed
doubtless. In the afternoon of yesterday a gentleman came who I
thought was another stranger, strikingly handsome, well dressed, and
barely forty, with sixteen shining gold curls falling down his collar;
he walked in, and it was only after a careful second look that I
recognized in our visitor the redoubtable "desperado." Evans
courteously pressed him to stay and dine with us, and not only did he
show the most singular conversational dexterity in talking with the
stranger, who was a very well-informed man, and had seen a great deal
of the world, but, though he lives and eats like a savage, his manners
and way of eating were as refined as possible. I notice that Evans is
never quite himself or perfectly comfortable when he is there; and on
the part of the other there is a sort of stiffly-assumed cordiality,
significant, I fear of lurking hatred on both sides. I was in the
kitchen after dinner making rolled puddings, young Lyman was eating up
the relics as usual, "Jim" was singing one of Moore's melodies, the
others being in the living-room, when Mr. Kavan and Mr. Buchan came
from "up the creek" to wish me good-bye. They said it was not half so
much like home now, and recalled the "good time" we had had for three
weeks. Lyman having lost the ow, we have no milk. No one makes bread;
they dry the venison into chips, and getting the meals at all seems a
work of toil and difficulty, instead of the pleasure it used to be to
us. Evans,