dead as I daared lick him--and then I'd make him eat up every darned
line of it! But come, come--breakfast's ready; and while we're getting
through with it, Timothy and Jem Lyn will fix the pig-box, and make the
deer all right and tight for traveling!"

No sooner said than done--an ample meal was speedily despatched--and
when that worthy came in to announce all ready, for the saving of time,
master Timothy was accommodated with a seat at a side-table, which he
occupied with becoming dignity, abstaining, as it were, in consciousness
of his honorable promotion, from any of the quaint and curious
witticisms, in which he was wont to indulge; but manducating, with vast
energy, the various good things which were set before him.

It was a clear, bright Sabbath morning, as ever shone down on a sinful
world, on which we started homeward--and, though I fear there was not
quite so much solemnity in our demeanor as might have best accorded with
the notions of over strict professors, I can still answer that, with
much mirth, much merriment, and much good feeling in our hearts, there
was no touch of irreverence, or any taint of what could be called sinful
thought. The sun had risen fairly, but the hour was still too early for
the sweet peaceful music of the church-going bells to have made their
echoes tunable through the rich valley. A merry cavalcade, indeed, we
started--Harry leading the way at his usual slap-dash pace, so that one,
less a workman than himself, would have said he went up hill and down at
the same break-neck pace, and would take all the grit out of his team
before he had gone ten miles--while a more accurate observer would have
seen, at a glance, that he varied his rate at almost every inequality of
road, that he quartered every rut, avoided every jog or mud-hole,
husbanded for the very best his horses' strength, never making them
either pull or hold a moment longer than was absolutely necessary from
the abruptness of the ground.

At his left hand sat I, while Tom, in honor of his superior bulk and
weight, occupied with his magnificent and portly person the whole of the
back seat, keeping his countenance as sanctified as possible, and
nodding, with some quaint and characteristic observation, to each one of
the scattered groups of country-people, which we encountered every
quarter of a mile for the first hour of our route, wending their way
toward the village church--but, when we reached the forest-mantled road
wh