The traveller of the present day, as he enters the town of Guilford, on the southern confines of Vermont, will soon be struck with the peculiar appearance of many things around him. Few or no traces of a primitive forest are to be seen, while its place is supplied by a heavy second growth of woods, sixty or seventy years old, in the midst of which the remains of old enclosures and other indications of former habitations are not unfrequently observable. On the cleared farms, also, may often be seen three or four different clumps of aged fruit-trees, scattered about in the nooks and corners of the lot, and sometimes extending into the woods, in such a manner as to preclude the idea that they could have been planted under any thing like the present arrangements of the farm and its buildings. Near these old relics of former orchards may likewise generally be perceived some levelled spot, remains of old chimneys, traces of cellars, or other marks of dwellings long since removed, or fallen to decay. These, with many other peculiarities, give to the whole town an aspect nowhere else to be seen in Vermont, nor even, perhaps, in any part of New England. And if the traveller be of a fanciful turn, he will associate the place with the idea of some deserted country, resettled by a new race of men; and even if he be a mere matter-of-fact man, he cannot fail to perceive that the town must have been originally tenanted under a division of lands and an order of things quite different from those now existing. And either of these suppositions would be far better justified by the facts than most of the speculations of modern tourists made in their flying visits through the land, as will be seen by a recurrence to the early annals of this town, of which, for the purpose of insuring a full understanding of some scenes here about to be described, we must be permitted to give a brief outline.

The events connected with the first settlement of the town of Guilford, which afterwards became so noted as the stronghold of toryism and adherence to the New York supremacy, form a curious anomaly even in the anomalous history of Vermont. The territory comprising this township appears to have been granted, as early as 1754, to a company of about fifty persons, by a charter, which, unlike that of any other town, empowered the proprietors, in express terms, to govern themselves and regulate the concerns of their little community, by such laws as the majority should be pleased to enact, without being made amenable to any power under heaven, save that which might be exercised by the British Parliament. Being thus constituted a band of freemen and legislators, at the outset, they soon took possession of their chartered piece of wilderness, organized by the election of the proper officers of state, and assumed the title of an independent republic, which their charter, in fact, created, any control of the Parliament of England being as little to be apprehended, in their secluded retreat among the wilds of the Green Mountains, as that of the Great Mogul of Tartary. And as novel as was the idea of a republic at that early period, when “the divine right of kings” to govern all men was as little questioned as the divine right of Satan to afflict the pious Job of old, this enterprising little band of settlers, for many years, appear to have well sustained the character they had assumed, not only by carrying out, in all their public doings, that essential principle of a republic which makes the will of the majority supreme, but by the simplicity of their tastes and habits in private life, and their beautiful exemplification of the great law of love, that can only be fulfilled towards our neighbors by according to them equal rights and privileges with ourselves. At length, however, new doctrines began to prevail, and the independent character of our little republic was soon, in a good degree, forfeited; and that, too, by the very means, it would seem, which had been taken to make it flourish and increase. It had been one of the conditions of the charter that every grantee should become an actual settler, and, within five years, clear and cultivate five acres of land, for every fifty purchased. And in accordance with this cunning policy for insuring the actual and rapid settlement of the place, the township had been laid out in fifty and one hundred acre lots, except the governor's right of five hundred acres, which his excellency of New Hampshire, in granting Vermont lands, never forgot to reserve for his own use, in every township, but which the proprietors generally contrived, as in this instance, to have set off on the highest mountain in town, considering it but respectful and fitting, as they used waggishly to observe, that so elevated a personage should be honored with the most elevated location. And the effect of this policy, together with the low prices at which the lands were put, and other inducements held out to draw in settlers, soon became visible in the rapid increase of the population, and consequent improvement of the town. So unexampled in these new settlements was its progress, indeed, in both the particulars we have just named, that within twenty years from the time when the sound of the axe was first heard in its woody limits, the inhabitants were found to number nearly three thousand; while fields were every where opened in the wilderness, and buildings raised in such neighborly contiguity, that the whole town presented the appearance of a continuous village. It is not very surprising, therefore, that, through such an influx of settlers, coming from all parts of the country, and including many interested and active partisans of the York jurisdiction, a majority should soon be obtained, who were induced to depart from the views of the first settlers respecting the independence of their community, and adopt the more fashionable form of subordinate government, which prevailed in all the towns around them. And accordingly we find them, at their annual meeting in 1772, voting the district of Guilford, as they termed it, to belong to the county of Cumberland and province of New York, and thereupon proceeding to reorganize the town, agreeably to the laws of that province. This change, however, does not appear to have been followed by any material alteration of their internal polity, or to have been productive of any great civil discord, till about the time of the opening of the American revolution; when the town became the prey of contending factions, of so fierce and lawless a character as to convert this once Arcadian abode of virtue, simplicity, and rural happiness, into a theatre of violence and social disorganization, which never, perhaps, found a parallel within the limits of order-loving New England. Sometimes the York party and tories,—for, in this town, it so happened that the two were identical,—and sometimes the whigs and friends of the new state of Vermont, were in the ascendant; while scenes of such disorder and outrage were constantly occurring between the belligerent parties, that his honor, Judge Lynch, for many years, appears to have been not the least among the potentates of this notable republic. Nor was order restored to the ill-starred town till after the close of the war; when every refractory spirit, whether tory or Yorker, was punished or awed into submission by the fiery energy of the iron-heeled Ethan Allen, who, then being relieved from the pursuit of more important game, came thundering down upon the town with his hundred Green Mountain Boys, proclaiming to the disaffected, with demonstrations which they well knew how to interpret, that the peaceable and instant submission of the place to the new authorities of the land should alone save it from being “made as desolate as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah”.

It was a dark and gloomy day in April, and the sleety storm was beating, in fitful gusts, against the broken and creaking casements, and the disjointed, loose, and leaky covering of an old, dilapidated log-house, standing by the road-side, in one of the thousand little dales, which, with their corresponding hills, so beautifully diversify the face of the town we have been describing. But as comfortless as this miserable hut was, and as poor and insufficient a protection from the elements as it afforded, even for the healthy and robust, it was now the only shelter of a sick and destitute woman, the widowed mother of Harry Woodburn. The hand of her son's persecutor, as it not unfrequently is seen to occur in the history of human oppression, was destined to fall even more heavily on her than on him for whom the blow was designed. The minion officer, selected by Peters for the purpose, had no sooner received his warrants, than, faithful to the cruel instructions of his employer, he had repaired post-haste to the residence of the absent Woodburn, of which he was authorized to take possession, and, with insults and abuse, rudely thrust the lone and unprotected occupant out of doors, in despite of all her entreaties for mercy, or delay till her son should return, or even for one day, to give her an opportunity to find some shelter for her now houseless head. He then, with the aid of the three or four ruffian assistants enlisted to accompany him, threw all the furniture out of the windows or doors into the mud and snow beneath where the whole, consisting of crockery and glasses, now half broken by the fall, and beds, linen, kettles, chairs, tables, and the like, soon lay piled promiscuously together. Having thus driven the terrified and distressed woman from the comfortable abode which had formerly cost her and her deceased husband so many years of toil to erect and furnish, and having, to add to the wrong, either injured or destroyed the greater part of her little stock of goods, by the wanton or careless manner in which they had been removed, this brutal officer next proceeded to the barn, and by virtue of his copias for costs, seized the cow and oxen, the last remaining property of the wronged and ruined young man, which, after intrusting the present keeping and defence of the premises to two of his band, he drove away to another part of the town, to be sold at the post, as soon as the forms of the law, respecting notice of the sale, could be complied with. The poor widow, half distracted at being thus suddenly bereft of house and home, spent the remainder of the day in vainly endeavoring to procure some tenement into which she could remove with her furniture, or with so much of it as might yet be saved. On the next day, however, as a last resort, she obtained and accepted the present use of the deserted cabin we have described, situated but a short distance from the house from which she had been ejected. And into this comfortless place, after several days of incessant toil and exposure, she succeeded in getting her damaged furniture, but not till her exertions, combined with her anxieties and grief, had given rise to a malady which, though not at first very threatening, became, each subsequent day, more and more alarmingly developed in her overtasked system. In this situation she was found by her son, who, being entirely ignorant that any judgment had passed against him, and, consequently, little dreaming what was taking place at home, had remained at Westminster nearly a week after the massacre, attending the public meetings, which, as we have before intimated, followed that event; when he returned to Guilford, and, with feelings bordering on desperation, learned the extent of his misfortunes. But the bitterness of his feelings, as great as it was, at being stripped of all his property through such a series of wrongs, soon became wholly merged in anxiety and grief for his sick and sorrow-stricken parent, and in the exasperating thought that her sickness and suffering proceeded from the same source with his other injuries. And close and unremitting had been his attentions to her, until the day previous to the one on which we have introduced her to the reader; when he had been induced to leave for Brattleborough, or other more distant towns, to try to obtain money to redeem his stock, which was now about to be sold, and which was worth more than double the amount, as he had recently ascertained, of the execution on which it had been seized. On the morning after his departure, she had become so much worse that she was compelled to take to her bed, and despatch her only attendant for a doctor. That attendant was Barty Burt, who had come down from Westminster with Woodburn, and had been engaged by the latter to remain with his mother during his absence. Having thus glanced over the events which had occurred previously to the opening of this new scene of our story, we will now return to the point we left to make the digression.

Slowly, to the suffering invalid, rolled the sad hours away, as with thick and labored breathing, she lay tossing upon her rude couch, standing behind a blanket-screen, in one corner of her cheerless abode. Occasionally she would raise her fevered head from the pillow, and seem to listen to catch the sounds of expected footsteps, and her languid eye would turn anxiously towards the door; when, after thus exerting her senses in vain a few moments, she would sink back upon her bed, with a long-drawn, sighing groan, which told alike of disappointment and bodily anguish. At length, however, footsteps were heard approaching, the door opened, and Barty Burt stilly glided into the apartment, and approached the bedside of the sufferer.

“You have come at last, then,” said she, lifting her dim eyes to meet the face of the other. “It seemed as if you never would arrive. But where is the doctor?”

“He will be on afore long, mistress; but I've had a time on't in getting round, I tell ye!” replied Bart.

“I am very sorry, if you have had any unexpected trouble on my account,” meekly observed the invalid; “but what has befallen you?”

“O, nothin,” answered the former—“nothin, at least, but what I was willing to bear for Harry's sake, who invited me home here till I got business, or for yours, who let me be. Though to be stopped and bothered, when one is going for the doctor, is worse than I ever thought of humans before. But it shows their character—dum 'em!”

“Did they really stop you, knowing your errand?”

“Yes, that they did, mistress. As I was going by the tavern, a mile or two up the road yonder, three or four of them torified Yorkers came out, and told me I couldn't go for the doctor, nor nowhere else, without a pass from one of their committee. So I had to post back more than half way, to Squire Ashcrafts, and there had to be questioned a long while before he would give me any pass at all. And then again, when I got to the doctor's, he said he wanted a pass, too; for he darsent go to see a whig woman without one, which I must go and get him from Squire Evans, another committee man. Well, finding there was no other way to get him started, I went, feeling all the time just between crying and fighting. And as soon as I got the bit of paper into the doctor's hands, I put for home, leaving him fixing to come horseback, which is the reason of my getting here first.”

“These are, indeed dreadful times,” sighed the widow. “But they cannot always remain; for, though God may chastise us a while for our sins, yet the rods of the oppressors will surely be broken.”

“I'd rather see their necks broken,” responded Bart, dryly “When we left Westminster, I thought, as much as could be, the tories were all used up; but I find 'em down here thicker than ever now, and as sarcy and spiteful as a nest of yellow jackets that, like them, have been routed in one place and got fixed in another. Blast their picturs, how I hate 'em!”

“That is not right, Barty. You should love your enemies. Evil wishes, towards those who injure us, are both wicked and foolish.”

“I don't understand, mistress.”

“Why, Barty, to love is to be happy, as far as circumstances will permit; and to hate is but to feel disquieted and miserable. So when we keep the command to love our enemies, we obtain a reward which often outbalances the evil they inflict on us, or, at least, enables us the better to bear it; while, on the contrary, when we hate those who injure us, we receive a double evil—the wrong they inflict, and the unhappiness created by the exercise of our revengeful passions. Did you ever think of that, Barty?”

“No, mum; Harry talks kinder that way, sometimes; but I can't understand it, no how.”

“With your means of moral instruction, perhaps it is not surprising that you should not; so I will drop the subject, and ask you if you heard any thing of Harry, while you were gone.”

“No, mistress; didn't see nobody that knew he was gone.”

“O, when will he return? He has now been gone two long, long days; but I must not repine.”

“Why, mistress, I kinder guess he'll be along to-night, unless so be he's met with considerable bother to get the money, or somethin. He must be here afore to-morrow afternoon, when the sale is, you know.”

“Yes, I knew the sale was delayed till town meeting day, which is to-morrow, I believe; though for what reason they put it off I never heard. Harry felt so bitter about the affair, that I thought I would not disturb his feelings by making any allusions to the subject. But there appeared to be something about it that I didn't understand. Why didn't the sale take place last week, as first appointed?”

“For as good a reason as ever a tory officer had for doing any thing—or not doing any thing, may be, I should say—in the world,” replied Bart with a knowing look.

“What was it?”

“Why, when the day come, he couldn't find any cattle to sell.”

“What had become of them?”

“Well, mistress, I don't know how much it is best to say about that, considering. But I shouldn't be surprised,” continued the speaker, while a sly, roguish expression stole over his usually grave, impenetrable countenance, “that is, not much surprised, if it turned out that two or three of Harry's friends got the cattle out of the barn where they were keeping, one dark night, and driv 'em off into the woods, near the top of Governor's Mountain, and then backed up hay enough to keep 'em a spell; while the company took turns, for a few days, in going a hunting over the mountain, so as to come round, once in a while, to fodder and see to the creters, for which old Bug-Horn paid in milk, on the spot. Now, mind, I haven't said I knew this was so, but was only kinder guessing at it; for all that's really known about it—that is, out loud—is, that Fitch and his men found the cattle up there; and the way they found them was by following up the trail made by the hay straws that some one, after a while, grew careless enough to scatter from his back-load along the path.”

“Did my son have any hand in this affair?” asked the widow, anxiously.

“No, mistress; Harry is so kinder notional about some things, that we thought—that is, I guess some thought—it wasn't best to say any thing to him about the plan till his cattle were fairly saved.”

“I am glad to hear it. I should rather see him deprived of his last penny than do a questionable act. We should never do wrong because others have done wrong to us.”

“There is a differ between your think and mine, I see, mistress. If they did wrong in getting away Harry's cattle so, as every body knows they did, then the tother of that—getting them back again—must be right. But you needn't tell any body what I've said, mistress; for they might, perhaps, have Bill Piper and me up, and try to make barglary out of it—or simony, I don't know but the law folks would call it—the breaking into a log-barn. But hush! Somebody's coming. It is the doctor.”

Doctor Soper, who now entered, was a small, pug-nosed, chubby man, of ostentatious manners, and high pretensions to skill and knowledge in his profession; though, in fact, he was but a quack, and of that most dangerous class, too, who dip into books rather to acquire learned terms than to study principles, and who, consequently, as often as otherwise, are found “doctoring to a name,” which chance has suggested, but which has little connection with the case which is engaging their attention.

“Ah, how do you find yourself, madam?” said the doctor, throwing off his dripping overcoat, and drawing up a chair towards the head of the patient's bed.

“Very ill, doctor,” replied the other. “Not so much on account of the loss of strength, as yet, as the deeply-seated pain in the chest, which, for the last twenty-four hours, has caused me great suffering; though, for the last half hour, not so severe.”

“Indeed, madam! Well, now for the diagnosis of your disease. I pride myself on diagnostics. Your wrist, madam, if you please,” said the doctor, proceeding to feel the pulse of his patient, with an air intended for a very professional one. “Tense—frequent—this pulse of yours, madam; showing great irritability. Your tongue, now. Ay—rubric—dry and streaked; usual prognostics of neuralgy. Pretty much made up my mind about your complaint coming along, madam, having learned from your lad here something of your troubles and fright on losing your home. And I was right, I see. It is neuralgy—decidedly a neuralgy.”

“What is that, doctor?”

“Always happy to explain, madam, so as to bring my meaning within the comprehension of common minds. Neuralgy madam, is a derangement of the nerves. Your disease, precisely.”

“Why, I am not at all nervous, sir,” responded the patient, looking up in surprise.

“You may not think so, madam. Few do, in your case.”

“And then, doctor, I have an intense inward fever,” persisted the other, “and my lungs seem much affected.”

“Nervous fever, madam,” returned the doctor, too wise to be instructed, “and lungs sympathetically affected—that's all. Quiet and strengthen the nerves, and all will be right in a short time. I shall prescribe Radix Rhei, in small doses, assafoetida, quinine, and brandy bitters of my own pieparing. These, with nourishing food, as soon as you can bear it, will speedily restore you, madam.”

Having dealt out the prescribed medicines, calculated rather to increase than check the poor woman's malady, which was inflammation of the lungs, the self-satisfied doctor, swelling with his own importance, departed, leaving his patient now to contend with two evils, instead of one—a dangerous disease, and the more dangerous effects of a quack's prescription.

“What time is it now, Barty?” asked the invalid, with a deep sigh, as she awoke from a troubled slumber, into which she had fallen after the doctor's departure.

“Why, don't know exactly, mistress,” answered Bart, rousing himself from the dreamy abstraction in which he had been indulging, as he sat looking into the decaying fire—“don't know, exactly; but it has got a considerable piece into the night. About nine o'clock, guess; may be more.”

“Nine o'clock at night, and Harry not yet returned!” sighed the invalid. “Well, well, I will complain no more.”

“Can I do any thing for you, mistress?” asked her untutored attendant, touched at the sad and despondent tone of the other.

“You may bring me in a pitcher of fresh, cold water, with some ice in it, if you will, Barty,” replied the former. “It seems to me as if this inward heat was consuming my vitals, since I took the doctor's medicines.”

The youth, with noiseless step, then disappeared with his pitcher, and, in a few moments, returned with it filled with water and several pieces of clear, pure ice, which were heard dashing against its sides.

“How grateful!” said the sick woman, as she took from her lips the wooden cup which had been filled and handed her by her attendant, and from which she had eagerly drained nearly a pint of the cooling beverage at a single draught. “There, now, set the pitcher on the table yonder, and raise the largest piece of ice up in sight, so, as I lie here, I can look at it. The mere sight of it seems to do me good.”

Another dreary hour rolled away in silence, which was broken only by the restless motions and occasional suppressed groans of the invalid within, and the wailing of the winds and the pattering of the rain against the windows without, when a slow, heavy step was heard coming up to the house.

“That is he—that is his step!” faintly exclaimed the sick woman, partially raising herself in bed, and gazing eagerly towards the door; while her pain-contracted features were, for the moment, smoothed by the smile of affection and pleasure that now broke over them, like the faint electric illumining of a weeping cloud.

The quick ears of the afflicted mother had not deceived her. The next instant Harry Woodburn entered the room, and, with a gloomy, abstracted air, proceeded to divest himself of his wet coat and muddy boots, without uttering a word, or bestowing any thing more than a casual glance towards the bed, to which he supposed his mother had just retired, as was usual with her, about this hour, and not suspecting that she was more indisposed than when he left her. But as he now turned and approached the fire, his eyes fell, for the first time, on her haggard features when, stopping short, with a look of surprise and lively concern, he exclaimed,—

“Mother! are you worse, mother?”

“Yes, Harry, I am very, very sick; and O, how glad I am that you are come.”

For several moments he said nothing, but stood gazing at her with the distressed and stupefied air of one struggling to shut out painful apprehensions. At length, however, he aroused himself, and made a few hasty inquiries relative to her disorder, and what had been done for her; and, having been informed of all that had occurred in his absence, and now appearing fully to comprehend the danger of her situation, he sat down by her bedside, when his lip soon began to quiver, and his strong bosom heave with tumultuous emotions, while bitter tears flowed down his manly cheeks, as this crowning blow to his misfortunes was brought home to his feelings.

“Had they been content,” he said, struggling hard, but vainly, to master his feelings—“had they but been content with robbing me of my property, I could have borne it; but to be the means, also, of murdering my only parent, is more than I can endure. God help me, or I shall go mad!”

“Do not—do not be so distressed, my son,” said the mother deeply touched at this exhibition of feeling, accompanied as it was with such a proof of filial affection in her idolized son, and anxious to soothe and divert his mind. “I shall recover, if God wills it. Let us, then, bow in resignation to his dispensations, and not disturb our feelings with unavailing regrets. Come, my dear son, cheer up, and tell me how you have succeeded in the object of your journey.”

“No success,” he replied, gloomily. “No; I have been running from town to town since yesterday morning, and have not been able to obtain a single dollar. So the cattle must go to satisfy the stolen judgment of that insatiable Peters.”

At this moment the conversation was arrested by a low rap at the door, when, after the customary walk in had been pronounced by Woodburn, the door was gently opened, and a tall robust young man, with a frank, open countenance, hesitatingly entered.

“Good evening, folks,” he said, in a suppressed tone. “I didn't exactly know what to do about calling to-night, on account of disturbing your mother, Harry; but wishing to know whether you had got home, and hear the news if you had, I thought I would venture to rap. What is going on up country?”

“Nothing very new, I believe, Mr. Piper.”

“Well, what luck about the money, Harry?”

“None—none whatever.”

“I am sorry for that. No, I won't lie, now; I am not sorry, Harry; and I will tell you why, hereafter. All I wanted to know to-night was, whether you had got the wherewith to redeem the cattle, to-morrow being the last chance for doing it, you know.”

“Yes, I was aware of it, friend Piper; and many thanks for the interest you take in my misfortunes. But I cannot redeem the stock. It must go: nothing more can be done to save it.”

“Well, I don't quite know about that, Harry. I don't know about standing by, and seeing a neighbor's property snatched away from him on such smuggled papers. But let that turn as it may, the subject brings to mind a certain circumstance, which I will name, after first asking a question; and that is, whether Peters has not been hung?”

“Peters hung? Why, no; the prisoners are not to be tried till the new court we have been appointing at Westminster holds its first session, some weeks hence. But why do you ask so strange a question?”

“Well, Harry, by way of answer, I will tell you the circumstance I alluded to, which was this: Last night, as I was crossing about town drumming up friends to attend the meeting tomorrow, seeing we are expecting a hard tussle, I met a man that I could have sworn was John Peters, if I had not known the fellow was close in Northampton jail; and as it was, I could swear it was his exact shape and appearance. Well, knowing it could not be him bodily, it soon struck me that they had been hanging off a parcel of them there, Peters among the rest, and that this was his ghost, kinder hovering about here to see if his affairs were fixed up to his liking.”

“Your notion of a ghost, Piper, if you are serious about it, is all nonsense,” said Woodburn, who had listened with lively interest to the singular story of the other. “Yes, that is nonsense; but it has brought to mind a rumor which reached Brattleborough yesterday, that all the prisoners at Northampton had been liberated by habeas corpus from the chief justice of New York, and were now at large. Although this was not credited, yet, if you saw Peters here last night, as I begin to fear, the story must have been true. And he appears here, at this time, for the double purpose of seeing, as you said, whether his orders have been carried into execution, and of being present to use his corrupting influence at town meeting to-morrow.”

“Well, Harry, that's about what I meant; for I saw him sure enough, and knew, at once, that we had got to have him against us at town meeting, which makes our case rather doubtful. We felt quite sure, before this, of being able to carry a majority; and in that case, some of us counted on getting a vote to rescue your cattle, or, at least, putting them into the hands of our sheriff. [Footnote: During the period of anarchy, change, and discord, in this distracted town, each of the belligerent parties had their sheriff, or constable, and other town officers, and would yield obedience to the officers of their opponents only on compulsion, though the officers of the majority were not generally resisted, except, perhaps, in matters purely political.] And either of these ways would be the means, we thought, of saving your property, and, at the same time, be a plaguy sight more lawful than any authority they have for selling them. But now there's no saying how it will go. I expect hot work there to-morrow; and that minds me to ask if you heard whether help from the towns up the river is coming down to join us on the occasion?”

“Yes, Tom Dunning came down with me, and he informed me that several others were on the way.”

“Good. Tom himself, in matter of managing, will be almost a match for Peters, whether ghost or no ghost. But where is he?”

“He stopped back at the Liberty Pole tavern.”

“All happens right, then. I am bound there myself. We are going to hold a little meeting at the Pole, after folks are to bed, to make up our plans and arrangements for to-morrow. You can't go, I suppose.”

“No, I must not think of it.”

“But you will be at town meeting to-morrow?”

“Quite uncertain. In the first place, I ought not to leave my sick mother; and in the next, my feelings are in such a state of bitterness, that I dare hardly trust myself in such a scene, lest I should do that which would cost me months of painful regret. No, Piper, in mercy to a desperate man, let me keep away. But here is Bart to go, if he choose, both to-night and tomorrow.”

“Bart is agreeable to that, if Harry and mistress don't want him,” said the person just named, rousing up from the long-silent reverie in which he had been sitting before the fire apparently inattentive to the conversation of the others, which had been carried on in a low tone, at the opposite side of the room. “So here goes for the Pole to-night, and meeting to-morrow,” he added, taking down his gun from the pegs on which it was suspended, near the ceiling above,

“What do you want to do with that, Bart?” asked Woodburn.

“I want it for lining to my coat,” replied Bart. “If our coats had all been lined in that fashion, the first night there, at Westminster, we needn't have had to attend French's funeral, nor you been troubled about the papers they got out when you was in jail.”

“Bravo, Bart. You see that my coat is not wanting of that kind of lining, don't you?” said Piper, throwing open his greatcoat and displaying a rifle, as the two now left the house together, on their way to the rendezvous of the liberty party.