Jure as God lives, you shall be avenged. John Hallet shall feel the misery he has brought upon you. I will pull him down-down so low, that the very beggars shall hoot at him in the streets!"

"Oh! no; do not harm him! Leave him to God. He may yet repent!"

The long exertion had exhausted her, and she seemed to be sinking rapidly. I felt of her pulse-it scarcely beat; I passed my hand up her arm- -it was icy cold to the elbow! She was indeed dying. Giving her some of the cordial, I called her little boy.

When we entered, she took each of us by the hand, and said to Franky: "My child-your mother is going awayfrom you. Be a good boy-love this gentleman-he will take care of you!" Then to me she said: "Be kind to him, sir. He is a good child!"

"Have comfort, madam; he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!"

"Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing will be on you! The blessing of God-will be on you;-and if the dead can come back-to comfort those they love-I will come back —and comfort you!"

I do not know-I cannot know, till the veil which hides her world from ours is lifted from my eyes; but there have been times-many times-when Kate and I have thought she was keeping her word!

For a half hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in hers. Then, in a low tone-so low that I had to bend down to hear-she said:

"Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look!

oh, look! And my mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!"

The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the better land!

In a moment she said:

Then a

"Farewell, my friend-my child-I will low sound rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever.

Ir was five years after the events recorded in the previous chapter, when, one day late in October, I started on my annual tour among the Southern correspondents of the mercantile house of which I was then a member. Arriving at Richmond shortly after noon, I took a hasty meal at the wretched restaurant near the railway station, and seating myself in one of the rickety cars, proceeded on my journey. As the train moved off from the depot, a hand was placed on my arm, and a familiar voice said:

"Lord bless me! Kirke, is this you?"

Looking up, I saw Mr. Robert Preston-or, as he was known among his acquaintance, "Squire Preston of Jones"a gentleman whose Northern business I had transacted for several years. He had been on a visit to some Virginia relatives, and was returning to his plantation on the Trent, about twenty miles from Newbern. Though I had never been at his home, he had often visited mine, and we were well-in fact, intimately acquainted. I soon explained that I was on the way to New Orleans, and mentioned that I might, on my return, seek the route to his plantation. He urged me to visit it at

once, and I finally consented to do so. We rode on by the cars as far as Goldsboro, and there, after a few hours' rest, and a light breakfast of corn-cake, hominy, and bacon, took seats on the stage, which then was the only public conveyance to Newbern.

Preston was an intelligent, cultivated gentleman, and, at that time, appeared to be about thirty-three years of age. He was tall, athletic, and of decidedly prepossessing appearance; and, though somewhat careless in his dress, had a simple dignity about him that is not furnished by the tailor. The firm lines about his mouth, his strong jaw, wide nostrils, and large nose-straight as if cut after a bevel-indicated a resolute, determined character; but his large, dreamy eyes-placed far apart, as if to give fit proportion to his broad, overhanging brows-showed that his nature was as gentle and tender as a woman's. He spoke with the broad Southern accent, and his utterance was usually slow and hesitating, and his manner quiet and deliberate; but I had seen him when his words came like a torrent of hot lava, when his eyes flashed fire, his thin nostrils opened and shut, and his whole frame seemed infused with the power and energy of the steam engine.

Educated for the ministry, he had been in early life a popu lar preacher in the Baptist denomination, but at the date of which I am writing, he was devoting himself to the care of his plantation, and preached only now and then, when away from home, or when the little church at Trenton was without a pastor. Altogether he was a man to be remarked upon. A stranger casually meeting him, would turn back, and involuntarily ask: "Who is he?"

Only five of the nine seats inside the stage were occupied,

but as the day, though cold, was clear and pleasant, we mounted the box, and took the vacant places beside the driver. That worthy was a rough, surly character, with a talent for profanity truly wonderful. His horses were lean, half-starved quadrupeds, with ribs protruding from their sides like hoops from a whiskey barrel, and he accounted for their condition, and for the scarcity of fences on the highroad, by saying that the stage owners fed them on rails; but I suspected that the constant curses he discharged at their heads, had worried the flesh off their bones, and induced the fences to move to a less dangerous latitude.

On the top of the coach, coiled away on a pile of horse blankets, was a woman whose dress and appearance designated her as one of the species of "white trash" known in North Carolina as "clay-eaters." She was about thirty years of age, and, if her skin had been bleached, and her teeth introduced to a scrubbing brush, might have passed for being tolerably goodlooking. After a number of preliminary cracks of the whip, and sundry oaths and loud shouts administered to the "leaders," the driver got under way, and we were soon jolting—at a speed of about four miles an hour-over the "slews" and ruts made by the recent rains. Shortly after we started, the woman said to me:

I say, stranger, ye han't no 'backer 'bout ye, hev ye?" I was about to say I had none, when Preston handed her a paper of "Richmond Sweet." Without pausing to thank him, she coolly stuffed nearly a half of it into her mouth. My companion did not seem at all surprised, but I remarked:

"You do not smoke, then, madam ?”

"Oh! yas, I smokes; but I durned sight d'ruther chaw."