him to his bed. The re-action of the system which followed hastened to close the scene.

The glazed eye of the father was fixed upon the son; his lips moved, but his voice was unheard. Harvey bent down, and, with the parting breath of his parent, received his dying benediction. A life of privation, and of wrongs, embittered most of the future hours of the pedler. But under no sufferings, in no misfortunes, the subject of poverty and obloquy, the remembrance of that blessing never left him; it constantly gleamed over the images of the past, shedding a holy radiance around his saddest hours of despondency: it cheered the prospect of the future with the prayers of a pious spirit; and it brought the sweet assurance of having faithfully and truly discharged the sacred offices of filial love.

The retreat of Cæsar and the spinster had been too precipitate to admit of much calculation; yet they themselves instinctively separated from the skinners. After fleeing a short distance they paused, and the maiden commenced in a solemn voice

"Oh, Cæsar! was it not dreadful to walk before he had been laid in his grave! It must have been the money that disturbed him: they say Captain Kidd walks near the spot where he buried gold in the old war.'

"I neber t'ink Johnny Birch have such a big eye!" said the African, his teeth yet chattering with the fright.

"I'm sure 'twould be a botherment to a living soul to lose so much money. Harvey will be nothing but an utterly despisable, poverty-stricken wretch. I wonder who he thinks would be even his housekeeper!"

"Maybe a spooke take away Harvey too," observed Cæsar, moving still nearer to the side of the maiden. But a new idea had seized the imagination of the spinster. She thought it not improbable that the prize had been forsaken in the confusion of the retreat; and after deliberating and reasoning for some time with Cæsar, they determined to venture back, and ascertain this important fact, and, if possible, learn what had been the fate of the pedler. Much time was spent in cautiously approaching the dreaded spot; and as the spinster had sagaciously placed herself

in the line of the retreat of the skinners, every stone was examined in the progress in search of the abandoned gold. But although the suddenness of the alarm and the cry of Cæsar had impelled the freebooters to so hasty a retreat, they grasped the hoard with a hold that death itself would not have loosened. Perceiving every thing to be quiet within, Katy at length mustered resolution to enter the dwelling, where she found the pedler, with a heavy heart, performing the last sad offices for the dead. A few words sufficed to explain to Katy the nature of her mistake; but Cæsar continued to his dying day to astonish the sable inmates of the kitchen with learned dissertations on spookes, and to relate how direful was the appearance of that of Johnny Birch.

The danger compelled the pedler to abridge even the short period that American custom leaves the deceased with us; and, aided by the black and Katy, his painful task was soon ended. Cæsar volunteered to walk a couple of miles with orders to a carpenter; and, the body being habited in its ordinary attire, was left, with a sheet thrown decently over it, to await the return of the messenger.

The skinners had fled precipitately to the wood, which was but a short distance from the house of Birch, and once safely sheltered within its shades, they halted, and mustered their panic-stricken forces.

"What in the name of fury seized your coward hearts?" cried their dissatisfied leader, drawing his breath heavily.

“The same question might be asked yourself," returned one of the band, sullenly.

"From your fright, I thought a party of De Lancey's men were upon us. Oh! you are brave gentlemen at a race!”

"We follow our Captain."

"Then follow me back, and let us secure the scoundrel, and receive the reward."

"Yes; and by the time we reach the house, that black rascal will have the mad Virginian upon us: by my soul, I would rather meet fifty Cow-Boys than that single man.'

"Fool,” cried the enraged leader, “don't you know Dunwoodie's horse are at the Corners, full two miles from here?"

"I care not where the dragoons are, but I will swear that I saw Captain Lawton enter the house of old Wharton, while I lay watching an opportunity of getting the British Colonel's horse from the stable."

"And if he should come, won't a bullet silence a dragoon from the south as well as one from old England?"

"Ay, but I don't choose a hornet's nest about my ears; raise the skin of one of that corps, and you will never see another peaceable night's foraging again.'

"Well," muttered the leader, as they retired deeper into the wood, "this sottish pedler will stay to see the old devil buried; and though we cannot touch him at the funeral (for that would raise every old woman and priest in America against us), he'll wait to look after the moveables, and to-morrow night shall wind up his concerns.'

With this threat they withdrew to one of their usual places of resort, until darkness should again give them an opportunity of marauding on the community without danger of detection.

THE family at the Locusts had slept, or watched, through all the disturbances at the cottage of Birch, in perfect ignorance of their occurrence. The attacks of the skinners were always made with so much privacy as to exclude the sufferers, not only from succour, but frequently, through a dread of future depredations, from the commiseration of their neighbours also. Additional duties had drawn the ladies from their pillows at an hour somewhat earlier than usual; and Captain Lawton, notwithstanding the sufferings of his body, had risen in compliance with a rule from which he never departed, of sleeping but six hours at a time. This

was one of the few points, in which the care of the human frame was involved, on which the trooper and the surgeon of horse were ever known to agree. The doctor had watched, during the night by the side of the bed of Captain Singleton, without once closing his eyes. Occasionally he would pay a visit to the wounded Englishman, who, being more hurt in the spirit than in the flesh, tolerated the interruption with a very ill grace; and once, for an instant, he ventured to steal softly to the bed of his obstinate comrade, and was near succeeding in obtaining a touch of his pulse, when a terrible oath, sworn by the trooper in a dream, startled the prudent surgeon, and warned him of a trite saying in the corps, "that Captain Lawton always slept with one eye open." This group had assembled in one of the parlours as the sun made its appearance over the eastern hill, dispersing the columns of fog which had enveloped the low land.

Miss Peyton was looking from a window in the direction of the tenement of the pedler, and was expressing a kind anxiety after the welfare of the sick man, when the person of Katy suddenly emerged from the dense covering of an earthly cloud, whose mists were scattering before the cheering rays of the sun, and was seen making hasty steps towards the Locusts. There was that in the air of the housekeeper which bespoke distress of an unusual nature, and the kind-hearted mistress of the Locusts opened the door of the room with the benevolent intention of soothing a grief that seemed so overwhelming. A nearer view of the disturbed features of the visitor confirmed Miss Peyton in her belief; and with the shock that gentle feelings ever experience at a sudden and endless separation from even the meanest of their associates, she said hastily

"Katy, is be gone?"

"No, ma'am," replied the disturbed damsel with great bitterness, "he is not yet gone, but he may go as soon as he pleases now, for the worst is done. I do verily believe, Miss Peyton, they haven't so much as left him money enough to buy him another suit of clothes to cover his nakedness, and those he has on are none of the best, I can tell you."

"How!" exclaimed the other, astonished, "could any one have the heart to plunder a man in such distress?"

"Hearts!" repeated Katy, catching her breath; "men like them have no bowels at all. Plunder and distress, indeed! Why, ma'am, there were in the iron pot, in plain sight, fifty-four guineas of gold, besides what lay underneath, which I couldn't count without handling; and I didn't like to touch it, for they say, that in sight, there wasn't less than two hundred guineas, besides what might have been in the deer-skin purse. But Harvey is little better now than a beggar, and a beggar, Miss Jeanette, is the most awfully despisable of all earthly creatures.”

"Poverty is to be pitied, and not despised," said the lady, still unable to comprehend the extent of the misfortune that had befallen her neighbour during the night. "But how is the old man: and does this loss affect him much?"

The countenance of Katy changed, from the natural expression of concern to the set form of melancholy, as she answered

"He is happily removed from the cares of the world; the chinking of the money made him get out of his bed, and the poor soul found the shock too great for him. He died about two hours and ten minutes before the cock crowed, as near as we can say;" she was interrupted by the physician, who, approaching, enquired, with much interest, the nature of the disorder. Glancing her eye over the figure of this new acquaintance, Katy, instinctively adjusting her dress, replied

""T was the troubles of the times, and the loss of property, that brought him down; he wasted from day to day, and all my care and anxiety were lost; for now Harvey is no better than a beggar, and who is there to pay me for what I have done?"

"God will reward you for all the good you have done," said Miss Peyton, mildly.

"Yes," interrupted the spinster hastily, and with an air of reverence that was instantly succeeded by an expression that denoted more of worldly care; "but then I have left my wages for three years past in the hands of Harvey, and how am I to get them? My brothers told me, again and again, to ask for my money, but I always thought accounts between relations were easily settled."

The Spy.

9