ng pause.

"I guess you're traders," said the fiend at last.

"No, man."

"And what may you be, then?"

Our answer was followed by another long inspection of our persons and
physiognomies. He gazed at us for a couple of minutes or more, examining
us from head to foot; at last he spoke.

"And so you've a mind to go down the Mississippi?"

"Yes, in the Jackson, which starts to-morrow, we are told."

"Ah, the Jackson! a mighty good steamboat too--ain't it now? But I guess
you ain't a thinkin' of takin' that thing and your horse with you?"
continued the Yankee, pointing to our gig.

"Yes, we are."

"Oh, you are! Well.--You haven't seen two women in a dearborn on the
road, have you?"

"No, we have not."

"Well, then," continued the man in the same indifferent tone, "it's
a'most too late now to get to Bainbridge; and yet you might try it, too.
Better turn your horse round, and follow the road till you come to a big
walnut-tree; there it divides. Take to the right hand for half a mile,
till you come to neighbour Dims's hedge; then you must go through the
lane; and then, for about forty rods, right through the sugar-field;
keep to your left till you come to some rocks, but then turn to your
right, if you don't want to break your necks. There's a bit of a stream
there; and when you are over that, the left-hand road will take you
straight to Cox's ferry. You can't miss it," concluded he, in a
self-satisfied tone, striking his horse a blow with his riding-whip. The
animal broke into a smart trot, and in ten seconds our obliging friend
had disappeared into the fog.

My countenance, during the Yankee's interminable directions, must have
somewhat resembled that of a French recruit, to whom some scarred and
mustached veteran is relating his Egyptian campaigns, and telling him
wonderful stories of snakes and crocodiles at least half a mile
long--monsters who made nothing of swallowing a drum-major to their
breakfast, bearskin cap, cane, and whiskers, included. I was so
completely bothered and confounded with the rights and lefts, that the
metal-buttoned individual was out of sight and hearing before I thought
of explaining to him, that, dark as it then was, we should never be able
to find even the walnut-tree, let alone neighbour Dims's hedge and the
break-neck rocks. Patience is by no means one of my virtues; but the
man's imperturbable phlegm and deliberation, in the midst of the most
pouring rain that ever wetted poo