o go away like a silent snow, to trouble you no
more, never!"

"Oh, sir, if you could! But I don't see how!"

"If mees was to see, it would not be to save her pain. I shall have him
to go by _magique_ to fiery land."

Fairy-land, probably. But Miss Lucinda did not perceive the _equivoque_.

"Nor yet shall I trouble Meester Israyel. I shall have the aid of myself
and one good friend that I have; and some night, when you rise of the
morning, he shall not be there."

Miss Lucinda breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"I am greatly obliged--I mean, I shall be," said she.

"Well, I'm glad enough to wash my hands on 't," said Israel. "I shall
hanker arter the critter some, but he's a-gettin' too big to be handy;
'n it's one comfort about critters, you ken git rid on 'em somehaow when
they're more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone,
excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He generally don't see fit."--_From
Somebody's Neighbors._

A GIFT HORSE.

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.

"Well, he no need to ha' done it, Sary. I've told him more'n four times
he hadn't ought to pull a gun tow'rds him by the muzzle on't. Now he's
up an' did it once for all."

"He won't never have no chance to do it again, Scotty, if you don't
hurry up after the doctor," said Sary, wiping her eyes on her dirty
calico apron, thereby adding an effective shadow under their redness.

"Well, I'm a-goin', ain't I? But ye know yerself 'twon't do to go so fur
on eend, 'thout ye're vittled consider'ble well."

So saying, he fell to at the meal she had interrupted, hot potatoes,
cold pork, dried venison, and blueberry pie vanishing down his throat
with an alacrity and dispatch that augured well for the thorough
"vittling" he intended, while Sary went about folding chunks of boiled
ham, thick slices of brown bread, solid rounds of "sody biskit," and
slab-sided turnovers in a newspaper, filling a flat bottle with whiskey,
and now and then casting a look at the low bed where young Harry
McAlister lay, very much whiter than the sheets about him, and quite as
unconscious of surroundings, the blood oozing slowly through such
bandages as Scott Peck's rude surgery had twisted about a gunshot-wound
in his thigh, and brought to close tension by a stick thrust through the
folds, turned as tight as could be borne, and strapped into place by a
bit of coarse twine.

It was a long journey paddling up the Racquette River, across creek and
carry, with the boat on his b