tting
kindness and perfect delicacy in a season of unexampled suffering. "I
cannot," wrote she, "leave the island, dearly associated as it is with
days of happiness, and now more painfully attached to my heart by
the most terrible of afflictions, without tendering to the kindest of
physicians my last words of gratitude." The whole, conveyed in lines
of strictly conventional use, gave no evidence of anything beyond a due
sense of courtesy, and the rigid observance of a fitting etiquette. It
was very polished in style, and elegant in phraseology; but to have
been written amid such scenes as she then lived in, it seemed a perfect
marvel of unfeeling conduct.

"That 'ere woman riles me con-siderable," said Quackin-boss; "she
doesn't seem to mind, noways, what has happened, and talks of goin' to a
new clearin' quite uncon-sarned like. I ain't afraid of many things,
but I 'm darned extensive if I 'd not be afeard of her! What are you
a-por-ing over there?"

"It is the handwriting. I am certain I have seen it before; but where,
how, and when, I cannot bring to mind."

"How could you, sir? Don't all your womankind write that sort of
up-and-down bristly hand, more like a prickly-pear fence than
a Christian's writin'? It's all of a piece with your Old-World
civilization, which tries to make people alike, as the eggs in a basket;
but they ain't like, for all that No, sir, nor will any fixin' make 'em
so!"

"I have certainly seen it before," muttered Layton to himself.

"I 'm main curious to know how your father found out the 'pyson,'--ain't
it all there?"

"Oh, it was a long and very intricate chemical investigation."

"Did he bile him?"

"Boil him? No," said he, with difficulty restraining a laugh;'
'certainly not."

"Well, they tell me, sir, there ain't no other sure way to discover it.
They always bile 'em in France!"

"I am so puzzled by this hand," muttered Alfred, half aloud.

Quackinboss, equally deep in his own speculations, proceeded to give an
account of the mode of inquiry pursued by Frenchmen of science in cases
of poisoning, which certainly would have astonished M. Orflla, and was
only brought back from this learned disquisition by Layton's questioning
him about "Peddar's Clearings."

"Yes, sir," said he, "it is con-siderable of a tract, and lies between
two rivers. There 's the lines for a new city--Pentacolis--laid down
there; and the chief town, 'Measles,' is a thriving location. My cousin,
O. B. Q