more ruddy, than it used to be; but the
new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing
neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and
overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here!
Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And
Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest
of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, he
was a better man than he seemed.

The summer had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the
valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our
friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the
drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking
rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and
half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once.
It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been
unusually trying; as soon as the frost came, the ague would vanish; the
water was the best in the world, to be sure, and the air the purest.

Hobert was ploughing a piece of low ground for wheat, cutting a black
snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with
water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to
frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the
voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and
clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of
his farm,--for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful
shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had
from his arm; and the fine bridle with the silver bit, hanging on the
wall at home, would not have been afforded for any other creature in the
world. Hobert often said he would never sell her as long as he lived;
and in the seasons of hard work he favored her more than he did himself.
She had been named Fleetfoot, in honor of her successful achievement
when her master had intrusted to her carrying the treasure of his life;
but that name proving too formal, she was usually called Fleety. She
would put down her forehead to the white hands of little Jenny, four
years old and upward now, and tread so slow and so carefully when she
had her on her back! Even the white dress of Johnny Hobert had swept
down her silken side more than once, while his dimpled hands clutched