the exception
of a wide chimney of sun-baked brick, and in one corner a large wooden
slab partly imbedded in the ground.

"Don't tread upon that board," said the old man solemnly, as we
approached the slab to examine it; "it is holy ground."

"How holy ground?"

"There lies under it as brave a fellow as ever handled axe or rifle. He
it was built this blockhouse, and christened it the Bloody
Blockhouse--and bloody it proved to be to him. But you shall hear more
of it if you like. You shall hear how six American rifles were too many
for ninety French and Spanish muskets."

Carleton and I shook our heads incredulously. The Yankee took us both by
the arm, led us out of the blockhouse, and through the stockade to a
grassy projection of the hillock.

"Ninety French and Spanish muskets," repeated he in a firm voice, and
weighing on each word. "Opposed to them were Asa Nolins, with his three
brothers, his brother-in-law, a cousin, and their wives. He fell like a
brave American as he was, but not alone, for the dead bodies of thirty
foes were lying round the blockhouse when he died. They are buried
there," added he, pointing to a row of cotton-trees a short distance
off, that in the pale moonlight might have been taken for the spectres
of the departed; "under those cotton-trees they fell, and there they are
buried."

The old squatter remained for a short space in his favourite attitude,
his hands crossed on his rifle, and his chin resting on them. He seemed
to be calling together the recollections of a time long gone by. We did
not care to interrupt him. The stillness of the night, the light of the
moon and stars, that gave the prairie lying before us the appearance of
a silvery sea, the sombre forest on either side of the blockhouse, of
which the edges only were lighted up by the moonbeams, the vague
allusions our guide had made to some fearful scene of strife and
slaughter that had been enacted in this now peaceful glade--all these
circumstances combined, worked upon our imaginations, and we felt
unwilling to break the stillness which added to the impressive beauty of
the forest scene.

"Did you ever float down the Mississippi?" asked Nathan abruptly. As he
spoke he sat down upon the bank, and made sign to us to sit beside him.

"Did you ever float down the Mississippi?"

"No; we came up it from New Orleans hither."

"That is nothing; the stream is not half so dangerous there as above
Natchez." _We_ came down, six