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Well, that's what I call hard; but maybe it will please God to put our lives in danger-that's some comfort."

The knight now produced two Indian dresses, which he directed them to put on somewhat against the inclinations of friend Timothy, who observed that if he happened to see his shadow in the water, he should certainly mistake it for one of the tarnil kritters, and shoot himself. Sir William then with his own hand painted the face of Sybrandt so as to resemble that of an Indian-an operation not at all necessary to Timothy; his toilet was already made; his complexion required no embellishment. This done, the night having now set in, Sir William, motioning silence, led the way cautiously to one of the gates of Ticonderoga, which was opened by the sentinel, and they proceeded swiftly and silently to the high bank which hung over the narrow strait in front

of the fort. A little bark canoe lay moored at the foot, into which Sybrandt and Timothy placed themselves flat on the bottom, each with his mus ket and accoutrements at his side, and a paddle in his hand.

"Now," said Sir William, almost in a whisper, -"now, luck be with you, boys; remember, you are to return before daylight without fail."

"But, Sir William," said Timothy, coaxingly, "now, mayn't I take a pop at one of the tarnal kritters, if I meet 'em?"

"I tell you, No!" replied the other; "unless you wish to be popped out of the world when you come back. Away with you, my boys."

Each seized his paddle; and the light feather of a boat darted away with the swiftness of a bubble in a whirlpool.

"It's plaguy hard," muttered Timothy to himself.

"What?" quoth Sybrandt.

Why, not to have the privilege of shooting one of these varmints."

"Not another word," whispered Sybrandt; "we may be overheard from the shore."

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Does he think I don't know what's what?" again muttered Timothy, plying his paddle with a celerity and silence that Sybrandt vainly tried to equal.

The night gradually grew dark as pitch. All became of one colour, and the earth and the air were confounded together in utter obscurity, at least to the eyes of Sybrandt Westbrook. Not a breath of wind disturbed the foliage of the trees that hung invisible to all eyes but those of Timothy, who seemed to see best in the dark; not an echo, not a whisper disturbed the dead silence of nature, as they darted along unseen and unseeing, -at least our hero could see nothing but darkness.

"Whisht!" aspirated Timothy, at length, so low that he could scarcely hear himself; and after making a few strokes with his paddle, so as to shoot the boat out of her course, cowered himself down to the bottom. Sybrandt did the same, peering just over the side of the boat, to discover if possible the reason of Timothy's manœuvres. Suddenly he heard, or thought he heard, the measured sound of paddles dipping lightly into the water. A few minutes more and he saw five or six little lights glimmering indistinctly through the obscurity, apparently at a great distance. Timothy raised himself up suddenly, seized his gun and pointed it for a moment at one of the lights; but recollecting the injunction of Sir William, immediately resumed his former position. In a few minutes the sound of the paddles died away, and the lights disappeared.

"What was that?" whispered Sybrandt.

"The Frenchmen are turning the tables on us, I guess," replied the other. "If that boat isn't going a-spying jist like ourselves, I'm quite out in my calculation."

"What! with lights? They must be great fools."

"It was only the fire of their pipes, which the darkness made look like so many candles. I'm

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Why, did you ever hear so many Frenchmen | make so little noise ?"

This reply was perfectly convincing; and Sybrandt again enjoining silence, they proceeded with the same celerity, and in the same intensity of darkness as before, for more than an hour. This brought them, at the swift rate they were going, a distance of at least twenty miles from the place of their departure.

Turning a sharp angle, at the expiration of the time just specified, Timothy suddenly stopped his paddle as before, and cowered down at the bottom of the canoe. Sybrandt had no occasion to inquire the reason of this action; for, happening to look toward the shore, he could discover at a distance innumerable lights glimmering and flashing amid the obscurity, and rendering the darkness beyond the sphere of their influence still more profound. These lights appeared to extend several miles along what he supposed to be the strait or lake, which occasionally reflected their glancing rays upon its quiet bosom.

"There they are, the kritters," whispered Timothy exultingly; "we've treed 'em at last, I swow. Now, mister, let me ask you one question-will you obey my orders?"

"If I like them," said Sybrandt.

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sneeze or cough, take right hold of your throat, and let it go downwards."

Sybrandt obeyed his injunctions; and Timothy proceeded toward the lights, which appeared much farther off in the darkness than they really were, handling his paddle with such lightness and dexterity that Sybrandt could not hear the strokes. In this manner they swiftly approached the encampment, until they could distinguish a confused noise of shoutings and hallooings which gradually broke on their ears in discordant violence. Timothy stopped his paddle and listened.

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"It is the song of those tarnal kritters, the Utawas. They're in a drunken frolic, as they always are the night before going to battle. I know the kritters, for I've popped off a few, and can talk and sing their songs pretty considerably, I guess. So we'll be among 'em right off. Don't forget what I told you about doing as I do, and holding your tongue."

Cautiously plying his paddle, he now shot in close to the shore whence the sounds of revelry proceeded, and made the land at some little distance, that he might avoid the sentinels, whom they could hear ever and anon challenging each other. They then drew up the light canoe into the bushes, which here closely skirted the waters. "Now leave all behind but yourself, and follow me," whispered Timothy, as he carefully felt whether the muskets were well covered from the damps of the night; and then laid himself down on his face and crawled along under the bushes with the quict celerity of a snake in the grass. "Must we leave our guns behind," whispered Sybrandt.

"Yes, according to orders; but it's a plaguy hard case. Yet upon the whole it's best; for if I was to get a fair chance at one of these kritters, I believe in my heart my gun would go off clean of itself. But hush! shut your mouth as close as a powder-horn."

After proceeding some distance, Sybrandt getting well scratched by the briars, and finding infinite difficulty in keeping up with Timothy, the latter stopped short.

"Here the kritters are," said he, in the lowest whisper.

"Where?" replied the other, in the same tone. "Look right before you."

Sybrandt followed the direction, and beheld a group of five or six Indians seated round a fire, the waning lustre of which cast a fitful light upon their dark countenances, whose savage expression was heightened to ferocity by the stimulant of the debauch in which they were engaged. They sat on the ground swaying to and fro, backward and forward, and from side to side, ever and anon passing round the canteen from one to the other, and sometimes rudely snatching it away when they thought either was drinking more than his share. At intervals they broke out into yelling and discordant songs, filled with extravagant boastings of murders, massacres, burnings, and plunderings, mixed up with threatenings of what they would do to the red-coat long knives on the morrow.

One of these songs recited the destruction of a village, and bore a striking resemblance to the bloody catastrophe of poor Timothy's wife and children. Sybrandt could not understand it, but he could hear the quick suppressed breathings of his companion, who, when it was done, aspirated, in a tone of smothered vengeance, "If I only had my gun!"

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Stay here a moment," whispered he, as he crept cautiously toward the noisy group, which all at once became perfectly quiet, and remained in the attitude of listening.

"Huh!" muttered one, who appeared by his dress to be the principal.

Timothy replied in a few Indian words, which Sybrandt did not comprehend; and raising himself from the ground, suddenly appeared in the midst of them. A few words were rapidly interchanged; and Timothy then brought forward his companion, whom he presented to the Utawas, who welcomed him and handed the canteen, now almost empty.

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My brother does not talk," said Timothy.

"Is he dumb ?" asked the chief of the Utawas. "No; but he has sworn not to open his mouth till he has struck the body of a long knife.". Good," said the other; "he is welcome." After a pause he went on, at the same time eyeing Sybrandt with suspicion; though his faculties were obscured by the fumes of the liquor he still continued to drink, and hand round at short intervals.

"I don't remember the young warrior. Is he of our tribe ?"

"He is; but he was stolen by the Mohawks many years ago, and only returned lately."

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How did he escape?"

"He killed two chiefs while they were asleep by the fire, and ran away."

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Good," said the Utawas; and for a few moments sunk into a kind of stupor, from which he suddenly roused himself, and grasping his tomahawk started up, rushed toward Sybrandt, and raising his deadly weapon, stood over him in the attitude of striking. Sybrandt remained perfectly unmoved, waiting the stroke.

"Good," said the Utawas again; "I am satisfied; the Utawas never shuts his eyes at death. He is worthy to be our brother. He shall go with us to battle to-morrow."

"We have just come in time," said Timothy. "Does the white chief march against the red-coats to-morrow?"

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whole party, with the exception of Timothy, Sybrandt, and the chief, were fast asleep. In a few minutes after, the two former affected to be in the same state, and began to snore lustily. The Utawas chief nodded from side to side; then sunk down like a log and remained insensible to every thing around him, in the sleep of drunkenness.

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Timothy lay without motion for awhile, then turned himself over, and rolled about from side to side, managing to strike against each of the party in succession. They remained fast asleep. then cautiously raised himself, and Sybrandt did the same. In a moment Timothy was down again, and Sybrandt followed his example without knowing why, until he heard some one approach, and distinguished, as they came nigh, two officers, apparently of rank. They halted near the waning fire, and one said to the other in French, in a low tone:

"The beasts are all asleep: it is time to wake them. Our spies are come back, and we must march."

"Not yet,” replied the other; "let them sleep an hour longer, and they will wake sober." They then passed on, and when their footsteps were no longer heard, Timothy again raised himself up, motioning our hero to lie still. After ascertaining by certain tests which experience had taught him that the Indians still continued in a profound sleep, he proceeded with wonderful dexterity and silence to shake the priming from each of the guns in succession. After this, he took their powderhorns and emptied them; then seizing up the tomahawk of the Utawas chief, which had dropped from his hand, he stood over him for a moment with an expression of deadly hatred which Sybrandt had never before seen in his or any other countenance. The intense desire of killing one of the kritters, as he called them, struggled a few moments with his obligations to obey the orders of Sir William; but the latter at length triumphed, and motioning Sybrandt, they crawled away with the silence and celerity with which they came; launched their light canoe and plied their paddles with might and main. "The morning breeze is springing up," said Timothy, "and it will soon be daylight. We must be tarnal busy."

And busy they were, and swiftly did the light canoe slide over the wave, leaving scarce a wake behind her. As they turned the angle which hid the encampment from their view, Timothy ventured to speak a little above his breath.

"It's lucky for us that the boat we passed coming down has returned, for it's growing light apace. I'm only sorry for one thing."

"What's that?" asked Sybrandt.

"That I let that drunken Utawas alone. If I had only bin out on my own bottom, he'd have bin stun dead in a twinkling, I guess."

"And you, too, I guess," said Sybrandt, adopting his peculiar phraseology; "you would have been overtaken and killed."

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length within sight of Ticonderoga, just as the red harbingers of morning striped the pale green of the skies. Star after star disappeared, as Timothy observed, like candles that had been burning all night and gone out of themselves, and as they struck the foot of the high bluff whence they had departed, the rays of the sun just tipped the peaks of the high mountains rising toward the west. Timothy then shook hands with our hero.

"You're a hearty kritter," said he, “and I'll tell Sir William how you looked at that tarnal tomahawk as if it had bin an old pipe-stem."

Without losing a moment, they proceeded to the quarters of Sir William, whom they found waiting for them with extreme anxiety. He extended both hands toward our hero, and eagerly exclaimed

"What luck, my lads? I have been up all night, waiting your return."

"Then you will be quite likely to sleep sound to-night," quoth master Timothy, unbending the intense rigidity of his leathern countenance. «I am of opinion if a man wants to have a real good

night's rest, he's only to set up the night before, and he may calculate upon it with sartinty."

"Hold your tongue, Timothy," said Sir William, good-humouredly," or else speak to the purpose. Have you been at the enemy's camp?" "Right in their very bowels," said Timothy.

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Sir William proceeded to question, and Sybrandt and Timothy to answer, until he drew from them all the important information of which they had possessed themselves. He then dismissed Timothy with cordial thanks and a purse of yellow boys, which he received with much satisfaction.

"It's not of any great use to me, to be sure," said he as he departed; "but somehow or other I love to look at the kritters."

"As to you, Sybrandt Westbrook, you have fulfilled the expectations I formed of you on our first acquaintance. You claim a higher reward; for you have acted from higher motives and at least equal courage and resolution. His majesty shall know of this; and in the mean time call yourself Major Westbrook, for such you are from this moment. Now go with me to the commanderin-chief, who must know of what you heard and saw."

DEATH IN THE COUNTRY.

FROM THE SAME.

THERE is to my mind and to my early recollections something exquisitely touching in the tolling of a church-bell amid the silence of the country. It communicates for miles around the message of mortality. The ploughman stops his horses to listen to the solemn tidings; the housewife remits her domestic occupations, and sits with the needle idle in her fingers, to ponder who it is that is going to the long home; and even the little thoughtless children, playing and laughing their way from

school, are arrested for a moment in their evening gambols by these sounds of melancholy import, and cover their heads when they go to rest.

KENTUCKY HOSPITALITY. FROM WESTWARD HO!

"You must know, colonel, not long after you went away there came a man riding along here that I calculate had just thrown off his moccasins, with another feller behind him in a laced hat, and for all the world dressed like a militia officer. Well, I hailed him in here, for you know I like to do as you would in your own house; and he came to like a good feller. But the captain, as I took him to be, hung fire and stayed out with the horses. So I went and took hold of him like a snappingturtle, and says I, Captain, one would think you had never been inside of a gentleman's house before.' But he held back like all wrath, and wouldn't take any thing. So says I, 'Stranger, I'm a peaceable man anyhow, but maybe you don't know what it is to insult a feller by sneaking away from his hospitality here in Old Ken

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tuck.' I held on to him all the while, or he'd have gone off like one of these plaguy precussionlocks that have just come into fashion. Captain,' says I, here's your health, and may you live to be a general.' Captain!' says the other, he's no captain; he's my servant." What!' says I,

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one white man be a servant to another! make a

nigger of himself! come, that's too bad!' and I began to feel a little savage. I asked one if he wasn't ashamed to make a slave of a feller-cretur, and the other if he wasn't ashamed to make a nigger of himself; and they got rather obstropolous. I don't know exactly how it came about, but we got into a fight, and I lick'd them both, but not till they got outside the door, for I wouldn't be uncivil anyhow. Well, what do you think? instead of settling the thing like a nigger, instead of coming out fine, I'll be eternally gentleman, the feller that had a white man for his

dern'd if he didn't send a constable after me. Well, I made short work of it, and lick'd him too, anyhow. But I can't stand it here any longer. Poor old Snowball* slipped her bridle the other day, and went out like a flash in the pan; so I'm my own master again, with nobody to stand in my way at all. I must look out for some place where a man can live independent, where there's no law but gentlemen's law, and no niggers but black ones. I sha'n't see you again, colonel, it's most likely, so good-by all. I expect you'll be after me soon, for I look upon it to be impossible for a man in his senses to live here much longer, to be hoppled like a horse, and not go where he pleases." And away he marched, with a heart as light as a feather, in search of a place where he might live according to his conscience.

A servant who had died.

TIMOTHY FLINT.

[Born 1780. Died 1840.]

TIMOTHY FLINT was born in Reading, | Massachusetts, and was educated at Harvard College, where he graduated when twenty years of age. After devoting two years to the study of theology, he was ordained as minister of the Congregational church in Lu- | nenburg, in the county of Worcester, where he continued until the summer of 1814. In the following year, hoping that travel and the milder airs of the south-west would improve his health, which had been impaired by sedentary habits, he became a missionary for the Valley of the Mississippi. The first winter was passed in Cincinnati, the following spring in making a tour through parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, and the summer in St. Louis. In September he arrived at St. Charles, where, occupied in the wide range of his missionary duties, he remained nearly three years. He then descended the Mississippi to Arkansas, but met with disappointments, and after a gloomy summer returned to the counties of Cape Girardeau and St. Genevieve; and in 1821 to his former residence at St. Charles, where, with nearly all the members of his family, he suffered severe and protracted illness. In 1822 he removed to New Orleans; in the following spring to the Florida side of Lake Ponchartrain, where he opened a school; in the autumn back to New Orleans; and in the summer of 1824 to Alexandria, on Red River, where he accepted the charge of a seminary, and continued until, at the end of the year, a broken constitution compelled him to suspend his labours and revisit the northern states.

Soon after his removal to Alexandria, Mr. Flint began to write his Recollections of Ten Years passed in the Valley of the Mississippi, which were published in Boston early in 1826. This was his first work, and its success was decided and immediate. Literature now became his profession. Francis Berrian, or the Mexican Patriot, which was probably commenced before he left the south, appeared in the following summer. It purports to be the autobiography of a New Eng

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land adventurer, who acted a conspicuous part in the first Mexican revolution, and in the overthrow of Iturbide. The events were too recent and familiar. Three years had not elapsed since the close of the drama, and several of the characters were still before the world. The novelist has not a right to transcend the possible. The condition of Mexico in 1822 presented no barriers to the invention of plots and counterplots as startling, and deeds as chivalrous, as he has described, had not the actors, by name or position, been historical. It seems to be difficult for the writers of romantic fiction to learn when their heroes are sufficiently heroical for necessary purposes. They are generally made to perform works of supererogation. The interest of Francis Berrian would not have been less if the hero had done nothing to startle the credulity of the reader. There is in the details an occasional want of keeping; the letters of Doña Martha are commonplace, and there are some faults of a minor kind. The style however is generally animated and picturesque, and the narrative, in spite of its improbabilities, is interesting.

The Geography and History of the Mississippi Valley was published at Cincinnati, in 1827. It was an original work, composed with great care and labour from original materials, principally collected by the author during his travels. It was subsequently reprinted with a condensed survey of the whole continent. It was at that time the most important contribution which had been made to American geography, and, with the Recollections, it embraces the most graphic and faithful descriptions of the scenery and physical aspect of the western states that has ever yet been written.

Arthur Clenning, a novel, in two volumes, appeared in 1828. The hero leaves the borders of Lake Champlain in his boyhood, and after various adventures is wrecked on an island of the southern ocean. A beautiful girl survives to share his solitude, and after a few years, when they escape to New Holland,

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