must have been a screw loose somewhere, for bad debts accumulated and
losses were incurred which finally brought the firm to the ground, and
left its dissevered partners to begin the world over again!

After this poor Jack Robinson fell into low spirits for a time, but he
soon recovered, and bought a small piece of land at a nominal price in a
region so wild that he had to cut his own road to it, fell the trees
with his own hand, and, in short, reclaim it from the wilderness on the
margin of which it lay. This was hard work, but Jack liked hard work,
and whatever work he undertook he always did it well. Strange that such
a man could not get on! yet so it was, that, in a couple of years, he
found himself little better off than he had been when he entered on his
new property. The region, too, was not a tempting one. No adventurous
spirits had located themselves beside him, and only a few had come
within several miles of his habitation.

This did not suit our hero's sociable temperament, and he began to
despond very much. Still his sanguine spirit led him to persevere, and
there is no saying how long he might have continued to spend his days
and his energies in felling trees and sowing among the stumps and hoping
for better days, had not his views been changed and his thoughts turned
into another channel by a letter.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE LETTER, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

One fine spring morning Jack was sitting, smoking his pipe after
breakfast, at the door of his log cabin, looking pensively out upon the
tree-stump-encumbered field which constituted his farm. He had
facetiously named his residence the Mountain House, in consequence of
there being neither mountain nor hill larger than an inverted wash-hand
basin, within ten miles of him! He was wont to defend the misnomer on
the ground that it served to keep him in remembrance of the fact that
hills really existed in other parts of the world.

Jack was in a desponding mood. His pipe would not "draw" that morning;
and his mind had been more active than usual for a few days past,
revolving the past, the present, and the future. In short, Jack was
cross. There could be no doubt whatever about it; for he suddenly, and
without warning, dashed his pipe to pieces against a log, went into the
house for another, which he calmly filled, as he resumed his former
seat, lit, and continued to smoke for some time in sulky silence. We
record this fact because it was quite