hearing the voice of a Connecticut man as he was addressing a native trader.

"Tell you what, stranger," said he "I feel as mad as a meat axe, and I hope I may be darned to all darnation, if I wouldn't chaw up your ugly mummyised corpse, hair, hide, and hoof, this blessed minute, as quick as I would mother's dough-nuts, if I warn't afraid you'd pyson me with your atimy, I'll be dod drotted if I wouldn't."

Oh, how them homespun words, coarse as they were, cheered my drooping spirits, and the real Connecticut nasal twang with which they were uttered sounded like music to my ears; how it brought up home and far-off friends to my mind, and how it sent up a tear of mingled joy and sadness to my eye.

Peter was delighted. He slapped me on the back with a hearty good will, in a way nearly to deprive me of my breath, welcomed me anew, and invited us all to stay with him while the vessel remained there. Jessie replied in Gaelic, but so rapidly I could only follow her with great difficulty, for I had but a smattering of it, though I understood it better than I could speak it, having acquired it in a very singular

manner, as I will tell you by and bye. Offering her a chair, she took it and sat down after some hesitation, as if it was not her usual habit to associate with her father's visitors, and we were soon on very sociable terms. I asked the name of the trading post in the north-west where they had resided, and delighted her by informing her I had once been there myself on business of John Jacob Astor's New York Fur Company, and staid. with the Governor, who was the friend and patron of her father's. This was sufficient to establish us at once on something like the footing of old friends. When When she withdrew, Peter followed her out, probably to give some directions for our evening meal.

Well, well," said the Pilot, "if you don't beat all! I never could get a word out of that girl, and you have loosened her tongue in rale right down earnest, that's a fact."

Eldad," sais I, "there is two sorts of pilotage, one that enables you to steer through life, and another that carries you safely along a coast, and there is this difference between them: This universal globe is all alike in a general way, and the knowledge that is sufficient for one country will do for all the rest of it,

with some slight variations. Now, you may be a very good pilot on this coast, but your knowledge is no use to you on the shores of England. A land pilot is a fool if he makes shipwreck wherever he is, but the best of coast pilots when he gets on a strange shore is as helpless as a child. Now a woman is a woman all over the world, whether she speaks Gaelic, French, Indian, or Chinese; there are various entrances to her heart, and if you have experience, you have got a compass which will enable you to steer through one or the other of them, into the inner harbour of it. Now, Minister used to say that Eve in Hebrew meant talk, for providence gave her the power of chattyfication on purpose to take charge of that department. Clack then you see is natural to them, talk therefore to them as they like, and they will soon like to talk to you. If a woman was to put a Bramah lock on her heart, a skilful man would find his way into it if he wanted to, I know. That contrivance is set to a particular word; find the letters that compose it, and it opens at once. The moment I heard the Gaelic, I knew I had discovered the cypher-I tried it and succeeded. Tell you what, Pilot, love and skill laugh at locks, for them that can't be

opened can be picked. The mechanism of the human heart, when you thoroughly understand it, is, like all the other works of nature, very beautiful, very wonderful, but very simple. When it does not work well, the fault is not in the machinery, but in the management."

A CRITTUR WITH A THOUSAND VIRTUES. 89

CHAPTER IV.

A CRITTUR WITH A THOUSAND VIRTUES AND

BUT ONE VICE.

SOON after McDonald had returned and resumed his seat, a tall thin man, dressed in a coarse suit of homespun, entered the room, and addressing our host familiarly as Squire Peter, deposited in the corner a fishing-rod, and proceeded to disencumber himself of a large salmonbasket apparently well filled, and also two wallets, one of which seemed to contain his clothes, and the other, from the dull heavy sound it emitted as he threw it on the floor, some tools. He was about forty years of age. His head, which was singularly well formed, was covered with a luxuriant mass of bushy black curls. His eyes