iends, and begged me not to desert him.

"It would be too long a story to tell you all the trouble I had to get
him on board ship with me; but, sir, that little boy is now in the
waggon where you handed him."

"Your wife!" exclaimed I, affecting surprise, and really greatly
interested. "But when did she disclose her sex to you?"

"Why, sir, there was no great need of disclosure after we once got to
sea; her cowardice told her story, but I kept her secret till we arrived
at Philadelphia, where we married; and in the lower part of this State
we have lived ever since quietly enough, until lately."

"And what, at your age, could induce you to cross the mountains, my
friend?"

"Why, sir, work was scarce in our country place, and I'm told there's a
heap of building raising about Pittsburg, that's one reason; but the
truth is that our politics have changed a good deal in Pennsylvania of
late. In a scuffle at the bar of our hotel, this last election, I got
knocked down and trodden on; my arm was broken, and I a good deal hurt;
and my poor woman took such a horror of the little bit of mobbing we had
that she would make me pull up stakes, and here we are on our last
move."

We walked on side by side, until the waggon was left far behind and the
coach came up. We had a long talk on the subject of politics; and,
although a stanch American and a republican, I found my friend was
opposed to "the removal of the deposits,"--the universal test of the
day,--and by no means a whole-hog man. But he said, "It is a fine
country and a fine people; I am a citizen, have lived here forty years,
and hope to die here."

Wishing that his desire might have a late fulfilment, I shook the honest
veteran's hand; and we parted for ever, after an intercourse of three
hours had created a sort of fellowship between us. Here was an humble
chapter from the romance of real life, gleaned, where such an adventure
was least expected, in one of the passes of the Alleghanies.

The walk up this hill was, independent of the good companionship I
enjoyed, in itself fine: the road circling about dark ravines, from
whose thickly-wooded deeps rose the hollow murmur of closely-pent
currents, whose waters had rarely reflected the rays of the sun; and in
other places clinging to the steep precipice, from whose side it had
been cut, and which was yet burthened with the half-burnt trunks of
hundreds of noble trees that had fallen to make place for it. The view,
too,