idling, and at a spring in the sandstone took a drink. Here his dog also drank, and then barked as if hungry.

Continuing half an hour on farther, a turn in the road brought to view a comfortable farm settlement on a slope of the sluggish, verdant-rimmed Catoctin, which, on alternate sides, as it wound through the deep-cloven fields, slid beneath the exposed layers of stone. Upon that side, opposite such an exposure, where the bank rounded down to a level lawn, in which a stone spring-house shaded a cool spring at the roots of a great, skyey sycamore, stood, above the spring-house, at the top of a path, one of the large log-houses, whitewashed, which make at once the cheapest and most wholesome residences in this part of Maryland.

There had originally been a square, stern stone house in place of this, and it still remained against the southern gable of the log portion like an ice-house, always cool and perhaps dampish, its small, deep-walled windows taking an expression upon them like one of the hard Scotch-Irish race, who probably built it in the days when they needed such protection for their cruelties to Indians and each other.

But the peaceful German, in time crossing the Pennsylvania line, perhaps unconscious of a boundary, had bought his precursor out, sowed clover, reduced the stone to soil, and, as his family wants enlarged, became his own carpenter, calling his sons and neighbors together, and hewing in his own woods in winter, while farm-work languished, the native forest trunks to compose his addition. These, split in half and the faces smoothed, were called puncheons, and they were dragged to the side of the old stone block-house, and there fitted and framed together, and their chinks filled with plaster, while the family lived undisturbed in the stone castle.

This new and roomy dwelling, made of oak or chestnut, was set with its side to the road, propped on brick or stone foundations, and its roof, doors, and shutters were painted blue like winter cabbages.

These ideas went through Quantrell's brain as he caught sight of the long, homely farmer's dwelling standing on the hill, shaded there by maples and large willows, and to the north were a garden and small peach-orchard, and beyond that was a huge barn of logs, with a bridge leading to its main story, and cattle in the cow-yard and beneath its stone basement.

At sight of these cattle and of the dairy-house beneath the sycamore-tree, Lloyd exclaimed to his dog:

Thus stimulated or encouraged, Albion darted in the open gate of the house-yard, and trotted briskly up the path to the dwelling. He was almost there, when a growl arrested him.

A dog of about the same size, of cross-breeds, but with mastiff in him, appeared on the top of the hill, directing his attention to both dog and gunner.

For an instant Albion appeared to be meditating an attack, and raised his hair and showed his row of white molars. But, without any ceremony, the country dog, seeing this, came down the hill with a steady trot, increasing it to a run, and then at a bound ran under the pointer, upset him, and rolled down hill, and then started back for a second wrestle and fight.

The pointer now lost all show of self-possession, and crouched down and looked rapidly for escape; but before he could conclude which way to fly, the ugly animal was upon him, and only Albion's agility, as he jumped high in the air, aided by his opponent's clumsiness, saved his fine ears from being torn. He turned and fled down the path to the spring-house, and, darting in there, upset a pan of warm milk as it was just being placed in the stone spring trough beside others by a little lady.

"Wass hut'm g'faild? Here, Fritz!" cried the milk fairy to her dog, and in an instant he plunged in at the door and turned over into the cold-water trough, upsetting two other pans of milk, and Albion crouched at the mistress's feet, trembling and whining for protection.

Lloyd Quantrell, who had hurried after his dog, peeped into the spring-house door in time to see a beautiful, dark-eyed girl, with her arms bare and a finely modeled foot, extricating her gown from the pointer's hysterical paws. As she saw Lloyd standing there with a gun, he heard her murmur:

"Waer is ar, anyhow? Down, Fritz!”

She menaced her own dog with a large wooden butter-ladle, and, as he came out of the dairy, Lloyd spoke firmly and candidly to him:

"Fritz, my brave fellow! Did we spill his darling mistress's milk? Well, Fritz, we must pay her father for it.”

Admiration was instant and mutual in the young man and the girl. Her astonishment relaxed to the likeness of his ardent smile, and he said, without dropping his eyes:

"I thought it would be just my luck to stop where the prettiest girl in Frederick County lived!"

"You're sure you've found te right place, then?" spoke the girl, naturally, but blushing much.

"Won't you let me stop here and prove it?" said Lloyd. "What's your name? Mine's Lloyd."

"I'm Katy," said the girl, “Jake Bosler's Katy. I'm goin' on seventeen."

At this point the dog Albion, as if smarting under his recent discomfiture, grasped the situation: he saw Fritz being petted by his master, a thing to provoke his jealousy, and Fritz's mistress ready to apply the big wooden spoon to Fritz in case he violated any law of hospitality. Thought Albion, "It's a safe chance for intervention!"

So, with cool but, as it soon appeared, mistaken policy, Albion made a dart, after reconnaissance, upon Fritz's extended hinder leg, and, seizing it with his teeth, made an effort to hamstring his entertainer.

The rough country dog, suspecting no assault, was maddened by the pain, and springing backward and turning in the air he locked his teeth in the first flesh he came to, which happened to be Albion's ear, and both dogs rolled into the spring-house fighting, the one from courage and the other for life. Little Katy could not beat them apart, and Lloyd Quantrell rushed in to seize them, and, losing his footing in the dark interior of the dairy, fell full length into the water, and came out wet to the skin.

The noise of fighting and howling dogs brought down the inmates of the log and stone house: a large, barefooted man with a great black, wide-brimmed hat, and homespun clothes all of the same gray color; and a younger man in a copy of the same dress; and a fine-looking blonde girl in brown homespun with flowers in her hat. "Flint?" exclaimed the farmer, looking at the gun; then looking at Lloyd, he added, “Yingling!" and cried out:

"Katy, wo fail's now?"

"Nothing's te matter, father," Katy replied, "but te dogs fought and te young man's wet his clothes."

As Lloyd came out, holding his fine dog up by main strength, they saw that one of the pointer's beautiful ears was gone. The humiliated beast, still in apprehension, ran to the feet of every person, cringing and whining with pain.

Lloyd Quantrell took a stick from the ground and whipped his dog till it seemed to lose all voice and spirit.

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'There," finished the gunner, coolly, "he'll have just ear enough after this for good, big, right game, and no more doves!"

None interrupted the flogging but little Katy, who kept saying: "Ganoonk! Enough! He won't do so any more."

"No," remarked Lloyd, “not if it can be flogged out of him.— Farmer Bosler "—he addressed the man, with ready memory and frankness-"I've been gunning, and one of your talkative neighbors has kept me out late. Can't you give me a bed and a dry suit or a blanket, for love or money?"

Yaw. Coom along!" the farmer said, asking no more questions, and the farmer's son took Lloyd's gun, saying:

"Take supper with us. It's a' ready."

Lloyd looked at the two girls, Katy with rich, dark eyes and dark hair, and small, supple figure, and the other girl, a full blonde, tall, large for her young age, and looking at Lloyd with bold, instant coquetry, as if she would not be anticipated in his conquest.

"Ha!" thought Lloyd, "it's well to have a choice, but I think that little Katy of Catoctin will do for me."

Katy, so happy and so startled that she did not know what she felt, replied to her female friend's suggestion, in the mountain Dutch patois, that Lloyd was "orrick shtuls," or "very proud-looking," by saying:

Sell is'n mistake; ar is orrick friendlich."

Lloyd grasped the meaning, and knew himself described as "very sociable."

The barefooted farmer walked up the steep grassy lawn to the establishment, which had three doors in its long front, one near each end of the log portion, and another in the older stone gable. "Luter," he said to his son," he sleeps py you."

Without any more words, farmer Jake Bosler seized a rope which communicated with a large bell on the top of the log-house, and rang it loud and clear for the farm-hands to come in, saying:

"Soon-down! Bi'm-by!"

As the clear bell sounded in the cool amber mountain evening out of the perfect rest of this soft valley, it seemed that Sunday entered in and the lately savage dogs began to agree. Fritz licked the place where Albion's lost ear had been, and Albion, defeated everywhere, permitted the attention like one always in the right, yet some

times put down. Lloyd Quantrell received the warm, admiring look of Katy's friend, but gave it back to little Katy.

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You sleeps py me," Luther Bosler said, leading the way up-stairs by the door in the stone-gabled front.

They entered a bare room of good size with a fireplace in the end, and there Katy's brother had hardly put some wood on two stones, when her father brought up a shovel of coals and set the wood on fire.

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'Here," said Luther Bosler, "git into tese clothes, Mister Yager."

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'No mister about me, Luther," answered the sociable Baltimorean, tenacious of a name; “my name's Lloyd Quantrell. You and Jake call me Lloyd!"

He looked audaciously at farmer Bosler, who, far from resenting the "Jake," now laughed.

"All right, Lloyd!" cried Jake. "Ha! ha! Luter, he's joost as plain as us ole Tunkers, ain't he?-Well, Lloyd, coom to supper. Bi'm-by!"

As father and son went down the stairs, Lloyd, slipping on the suit of coarse, clod-smelling clothes, and an old flannel shirt, lay on the bed, where he could find no cover but another feather-bed, and shut his eyes in the pleasurable tingle after a cold bath and by a now crackling fire. Night seemed to come and sit in the deep stone windows to warm at the fire, now brighter than the day.

"A Dutchman's guest!" he said to himself. "Well, well! The last Dutchman I met I stuck in the thigh with a shoemaker's awl for getting too near the polls. Can I ever respect a Dutchman? —even the father of little Katy of Catoctin?"

CHAPTER IV.

KATY "P'INTED."

WHEN he came down to supper, several plain, uncultivated-looking men were already at the table, where Lloyd was accommodated with a place between Katy and her friend, who was introduced by Katy, saying: