WOODLANDS, 63 



blue smoke worming their way up lazily into the cloudless at* 

 mosphere, a feeling of regret such as has often crossed my 

 mind before, when leaving any place wherein I have spent a 

 few days happily, and which I never may see more rendered 

 me somewhat indisposed to talk. 



Something or other it might with Harry, perhaps, have 

 been a similar train of thought caused both my comrades to 

 be more taciturn by far than was their wont ; and we had rat- 

 tled over five miles of our route, and scaled the first ridge of 

 the hills, and dived into the wide ravine ; midway the depth 

 of this the pretty village of Bellevale lies on the brink of the 

 dammed rivulet, which, a few yards below the neat stone bridge, 

 takes a precipitous leap of fifty feet, over a rustic wier, and 

 rushes onward, bounding from ledge to ledge of rifted rocks, 

 chafing and fretting as if it were doing a match against time, 

 and were in danger of losing its race. 



Thus we had passed the heavy lumber wagon, with Jem and 

 Garry perched on a board laid across it, and the four couple of 

 stanch hounds nestling in the straw which Tom had provided in 

 abundance for their comfort, before the silence was broken by 

 any sounds except the rattle of the wheels, the occasional ii> 

 terjectional whistle of Harry to his horses, or the flip of the 

 well handled whip. 



Ju?t, however, as we were shooting ahead of the lumber 

 wain, an exclamation from Torn Draw, which should have been 

 a sentence, had it not been very abruptly terminated in a long 

 rattling eructation, arrested Archer's progress. 



Pulling short up where a jog across the road, constructed 

 after the damnable mode adopted in all the hilly portions of the 

 interior^^in order to prevent the heavy rains from channelling 

 the descent, afforded him a chance of stopping on the hill, so as 

 to slack his traces. " How now," he exclaimed ; " what the 

 deuce ails you now, you old rhinoceros V 



"Oh, Archer, I feels bad; worst sort, by Judas 1 It's that 

 milk punch, 1 reckon ; it keeps a raising raising, all the time, 



" And you want to lay it, I suppose, like a ghost, in a sea 

 of whiskey ; well, I've no especial objection I Here, Tim, hand 

 the case bottle, and the dram cup ! No 1 no ! confound you, 

 pass it this way first, for if Tom once gets hold of it, we may 

 say good-bye to it altogether. There," he continued, after we 

 had both taken a moderate sip at the superb old Ferintosh) 



