0}

"I haven't seen that ere crittur now"--Peter always spoke of the tree
as if it had animal life--"these three years. We think he doesn't like
the steamboats. The very last time I seed the old chap he was a-goin'
up afore a smart norwester, and we was a-comin' down with the wind in
our teeth, when I made out the 'Jew,' about a mile, or, at most, a mile
and a half ahead of us, and right in our track. I remember that I said
to myself, says I, 'Old fellow, we'll get a sight of your countenance
this time.' I suppose you know, sir, that the 'Jew' has a face just
like a human?"

"I did not know that; but what became of the tree?"

"Tree," answered Peter, shaking his head, "why, can't we cut a tree
down in the woods, saw it and carve it as we will, and make it last a
hundred years? What become of the tree, sir;--why, as soon as the 'Jew'
saw we was a-comin' so straight upon him, what does the old chap do but
shift his helm, and make for the west shore. You never seed a steamer
leave sich a wake, or make sich time. If he went half a knot, he went
twenty!"

This little episode rather shook Fuller's faith in Peter's accuracy;
but it did not prevent his making an arrangement by which he and the
old man were to take a cruise in quest of the tree, after having
fruitlessly endeavored to discover in what part of the lake it was just
then to be seen.

"Some folks pretend he's gone down," said Peter, in continuation of a
discourse on the subject, as he flattened in the sheets of a very
comfortable and rather spacious sailboat, on quitting the wharf of
Geneva, "and will never come up ag'in. But they may just as well tell
me that the sky is coming down, and that we may set about picking up
the larks. That 'Jew' will no more sink than a well-corked bottle will
sink."

{picking up the larks = "When the sky falls we shall catch larks" is an
old proverb, meaning that an idea or suggestion is ridiculous}

This was the opinion of Peter. Fuller cared but little for it, though
he still fancied he might make his companion useful in hunting up the
object of his search. These two strangely-assorted companions cruised
up and down the Seneca for a week, vainly endeavoring to find the
"Wandering Jew." Various were the accounts they gleaned from the
different boatmen. One had heard he was to be met with off this point;
another, in that bay: all believed he might be found, though no one had
seen him lately--some said, in many years.

"He'll