time he's travellin' into the diggins most amazin' innocently," and then the pair enjoyed a regular guffaw!

"He's safe as a skin'd bar, then, Tom, and I'll spread his hide afore the Benton boys tomorrow-jest let them into the joke, and I allow, after that, his dandified aristocracy speeches won't have much effect in this section."

"Go it, Jedge," shouted Tom, "ef I aint thar to hear it, it'll be 'cause the breath'll leave me afore then-gin him goss without sweeten'- rumple his har, but don't spile the varmint !

After Hoss had stayed his stomach with a cold bite, he bade Tom good-day, and started for Benton, highly tickled with the success of his trick. As he neared the "saplin acre," he met Jim, who exhibited a full spread of his ivories, when Hoss inquired which road he had directed the gentleman before him.

"He gone into de swamp road, massa, but what de debil he want dar, 'cept he arter coon skins, dis niggah doesn't hab no idear whatsomdeber."

Allen passed on, assured that all was right, and as his horse leisurely ambled forward, he broke into singing a verse of a western ditty, which says—

"Thar aint throughout the western nation,
Another like old Hickory,

He was born jest fur his siteation—

A bold leader of the free."

As night spread her curtain over this wild district, Hoss neared Benton, and as his nag jogged up the principal street, he broke out into a louder strain, repeating the above verse, on hearing which, the "boys," who were expecting him and Edwards, turned out, and old Hoss was received with a cheer.

"Hello, Jedge! How are you, Old Hoss? Give us your paw, Governor! Here at last, Squire!" and sundry such expressions of familiar welcome were showered on Allen by the crowd. "Come in, and git a drink, old fellar, shouted one of the crowd," and forthwith all hands pushed for the hotel bar room, where sweetened corn juice was pushed about with vast liberality-at the candidate's expense of course.

"Whar did you leave the new fellar, Eddards?" was the general inquiry.

"Why, boys, I stopped to rest on the road, and he slid off to git ahead of me-I heered on him at the forks, and expected he was here. It's my opinion, boys, he's seen a bar on the road, and bein' too delicate to make the varmint clar the path, he's taken a long circuit round him!"

This raised a laugh among the crowd, and it was followed up by the general inquiries as to what Edwards looked like, but to these Hoss shook his head, remarking, as he raised his hands expressive of how they would be astonished-"Jest wait tell you see him yourselves, boys, and then you'll be satisfied."

Let us return to Judge Edwards, who had easily found his way past the "sapling acre," and by the aid of Jim's direction progressed into the swamp road, as easy as if it were his destination. Having travelled, as he thought, about ten miles, he began to look out for Benton, and every now and then uttered an expression of surprise, that they had located the town in such a swampy country; every rod he progressed became more and more obscure, the brush more thick and wild in growth, and the ground more moist and yielding. Night, too, that season for the rendezvous of underbrush and tangle-wood horrors, was fast gathering its forces in the depths of the forest, and beneath the shadows of the thick bushes, shrouding, as with a dark mist, each object on the earth's surface, creeping up the trunks of the old trees, and noiselessly stealing away the light in which they had proudly spread their green

VOL. I.

D

foliage, while in lieu of their showy garb he clad them in a temporary mourning. The song of the birds became hushed, while the cry of the startled wolf was borne upon the breeze to the ear of the affrighted traveller, interrupted occasionally by the sharp m-e-o-w! of the wild-cat, making together a vocal concert most unharmonious to the ear of the bewildered candidate. To sum up these horrors a myriad of mosquitoes, as musical as hunger and vigorous constitutions could make them, hummed and fi-z-z-zed around him, darting in their stings and darting away from his annoyed blows, with a pertinacity and perseverance only known to the Missouri tribe of insects.

Poor Edwards!-he was fairly in for itinto a swamp at that! Night was fast making all roads alike obscure, and with amazing rapidity covering our traveller in a mantle of uncertainty. The possibility of

his escape that night first became improbable, and then impossible. He hallooed at the highest pitch of his voice, but the wolf was the only live varmint that answered his cry, and a strange fear began to creep over his heart. He remembered well reading accounts of where hungry droves of these animals had eaten the horse from under the

saddle, the rider upon it, bones, hide, har and all, leaving scarce a vestige of the victims to mark the deed, and his hair grew uneasy on his cranium at the bare thought of such an unpolitical termination to his canvass. At this particular moment a yell, as of a thousand devils in his immediate neighbourhood, set his heart knocking against his ribs in a fearful manner. When he partially recovered from the shock, he tied his horse to one tree and quickly mounted another—whispering the hope to his heart, at the same time, that a meal on his horse would satisfy the gathering crowd of varmints, who were shouting their death song below him. Having seated himself astride a limb, the mosquitoes had a fair chance at him, and they put the Judge through as active an exercise as ever was inflicted on a recruit; there was this difference, however, between him and a recruit, that they are generally raw at the commencement of a drill, but poor Edwards was most raw at the end of his lesson. Every new yell of the swamp preemptioners, made him climb a limb higher, and each progression upwards appeared to introduce him to a fresh and hungrier company of mosquitoes; the trees in the swamp were like the dwellings in Paris, their highest