the rivers of this region to a distant town, which is
a centre of the lumber trade.

Cyrus and Neal were making across the clearing in the direction of the
camp-fire with revived spirits, when the American suddenly grabbed his
friend by the arm, and drew him behind a clump of low bushes.

"Hold on a minute!" he whispered. "By all that's glorious, there's Uncle
Eb singing his favorite song! It's worth hearing. You never listened to
such music in England."

"I don't suppose I ever did," answered Neal, suppressed laughter making
him shake.

Upon a gray pine stump, beside the blaze, which he was feeding with a
hemlock bough, sat a battered-looking yet lively personage. Had he been
standing upright upon the remnant of trunk, he would certainly, in the
bright but changeful firelight, have deceived an onlooker into believing
him to be a continuation of it; for the baggy tweed trousers which he
wore on his immense legs, and which partially hid his loose-fitting
brogans, or woodsman's boots, his thick, knitted jersey, his mop of
woolly hair, with the cap of coon's fur that adorned it, were a striking
mixture of grays, all bordering upon the color of the stump. His skin,
however, was a fine contrast, shining as he bent towards the flame like
the outside of a copper kettle. In daylight it would be three shades
darker, because the thick coral lips, gleaming teeth, and prominent,
friendly eyes of the individual, betrayed him to be in his own words, "a
colored gen'leman;" that is, a full-blooded negro, and a free American
citizen.

Beside him, squatting upon his haunches and wagging his shaggy tail, was
a good-sized dog, not of pure breed, but undoubtedly possessed of fire
and fidelity, as was shown by the eye he raised to his master. His red
coat and general formation showed that his father had been an Irish
setter, though he seemed to have other and fiercer blood in his veins,
mingling with that of this gentle parent.

To him the negro was chanting a war-song,--some lines by a popular
writer which he had found in an old newspaper, and had set to a curious
tune of his own composition, rendering the performance more inspiriting
by sundry wild whoops, and an occasional whacking of his teeth together.

Here are two verses, under the influence of which the dog worked himself
up to such excitement that he seemed to feel the ghosts of rabbits
slain--for he could smell no live ones--hovering near him:--

"I raise my gun whar de