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contrast betwixt them. The face of Colonel Morton was calm and smiling, but the smile it bore had a most murderous meaning. On the contrary, the countenance of Deaf Smith was stern and passionless as ever. A side view of his features might have been mistaken for a profile done in cast-iron. The one. too, was dressed in the richest cloth, the other in smoke-tinted leather. But that made no difference in Texas then, for the heirs of heroic courage were considered peers, the class of inferiors embraced none but cowards.

Presently two rifles exploded with simultaneous roars. Colonel Morton gave a prodigious bound upwards, and dropped to the earth a corpse. Deaf Smith stood erect, and immediately began to reload his rifle; and then, having finished his brief task, he hastened away into the adjacent forest.

Three days afterwards, General Houston, accompanied by Deaf Smith and ten more men, appeared in Austin, and without further opposition removed the state papers.

The history of the hero of the foregoing anecdote, was one of the most extraordinary ever known in the West. He made his advent in Texas at an early period, and continued to reside there until his death, which

happened some two years ago; but although he had many warm personal friends, no one could ever learn either the land of his birth, or a single gleam of his previous biography. When questioned on the subject, he laid his finger on his lip; and if pressed more urgently, his brow writhed, and his dark eye seemed to shoot sparks of livid fire! He could write with astonishing correctness and facility, considering his situation; and although denied the exquisite pleasure and priceless advantages of the sense of hearing, nature had given him ample compensation, by an eye quick and far-seeing as an eagle's, and a smell keen and incredible as that of a He could discover objects moving miles away in the far-off prairie, when others could perceive nothing but earth and sky; and the rangers used to declare that he could catch the scent of a Mexican or Indian at as great a distance as a buzzard could distinguish the odour of a dead carcass.

raven.

These were the qualities which fitted him so well for a spy, in which capacity he rendered invaluable services to Houston's army during the war of independence. He always went alone, and generally obtained the information desired. His habits in private life were equally singular. He could never be per

suaded to sleep under the

or even to use a tent cloth.

roof of a house, Wrapped in his

blanket, he loved to lie out in the open air, under the blue canopy of pure ether, and count the stars, or gaze with a yearning look at the melancholy moon. When not employed as a spy or guide, he subsisted by hunting, being often absent on solitary excursions for weeks and even months together in the wilderness. He was a genuine son of nature, a grown-up child of the woods and prairie, which he worshipped with a sort of pagan adoration. Excluded by his infirmities from a cordial fellowship with his kind, he made the inanimate things of the earth his friends, and entered by the heart's own adoption into brotherhood with the luminaries of heaven! Wherever there was land or water, barren mountains or tangled brakes of wild waving cane, there was Deaf Smith's home, and there he was happy; but in the streets of great cities, in all the great thoroughfares of men, wherever there was flattery or fawning, base cunning or craven fear, there Deaf Smith was an alien and an exile.

Strange soul! he hath departed on the long journey, away among those high bright stars which were his night lamps; and he hath either solved or ceased to ponder the

deep mystery of the magic word "life." He is dead-therefore let his errors rest in oblivion, and his virtues be remembered with hope.

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PERHAPS my reader may require enlightening as to how and why men should fight and hate each other for years, and spend a great deal of money in order to establish property

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