d, under the impression that this
gypsying sort of life, was just the one of all others he should most
like to live.

The following morning, the path of our traveller struck through a
broad reach of the melancholy, weird desolation, called a burnt
district. He rode out, suddenly, from the dewy greenness and
balm-breathing atmosphere of the unblighted forest, into sunshine that
poured down in torrents from the sky, falling on charred, shining
shafts and stumps of trees, and a brilliant carpet of fireweed.

It is nearly impossible to give one who has not seen something of the
kind, an adequate impression of the peculiar appearance of such a
region. The strange, grotesque-looking stems, of every imaginable
shape, left standing like a company of black dwarfs and giants
scattered over the land, some of them surmounted with ebony crowns;
some, with heads covered like olden warriors, with jetty helmets;
some with brawny, long arms stretched over the pathway as if to seize
the passer by, and all with feet planted, seemingly in deep and
flaming fire. How quickly nature goes about repairing her desolations!
So great in this case is her haste to cover up the black, unseemly
surface of the earth, that, from the strange resemblance of the weed
with which she clothes it to the fiery elements, it would seem as if
she had not yet been able to thrust the raging glow out of her fancy,
and so its type has crept again over the blighted spot.

John rode on over the glowing ground, the black monsters grimacing and
scowling at him as he passed. What a nice eerie place this would be
thought he for witches, wizards, and all Satan's gentry, of every
shape and hue, to hold their high revels in. And he actually began to
shout the witches song--

"Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray".

At which adjuration, Caesar, doubtless knowing who were called upon,
pricked up his ears and started on a full run, probably not wishing to
find himself in such company just at that time.

An establishment similar to the one that had sheltered him the night
previous, proffered its entertainment at the close of our adventurer's
second day. The third day in the wilderness was signalized by an
incident, which excited such triumphant emotions as to cause it to be
long remembered. About an hour subsequent to his noon halt, as he and
Caesar were proceeding along at a moderate pace, he heard a rustling,
crackling noise on the right side of the pa