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a rapid motion and something leaped five-and-twenty feet through the air, in Mr. Bernard's direction. In an instant he felt a ring, as of a rope or thong, settle upon his shoulders. There was no time to think, he would be lost in another second. He raised his pistol and fired, not at the rider, but at the horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound and fell lifeless, shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his saddle, and his last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth, where he lay motionless, as if stunned.

In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse, was trying to extricate himself,-o - one of his legs being held fast under the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth. He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if he were coming to his senses, he struggled violently to free himself.

"I'll have the dog, yet," he said,-“ only let me get at him with the knife!"

He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready to spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and, looking up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay-fork, within an inch of his breast.

"Hold on there! What 'n thunder 'r' y'abaout, y' darned Portagee?" said a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, but sharp and resolute.

Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy, plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect that of one all ready for mischief.

"Lay still, naow!" said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man; "'f y' don't, I'll stick ye, 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive! I been aäfter ye f'r a week, 'n' I got y' naow! I knowed I'd ketch ye at some darned trick or 'nother 'fore I 'd done 'ith ye!" Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he 6

VOL. VII.

was crippled and helpless, thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr. Richard Venner, would be done for.

"Let me up! let me up!" he cried, in a low, hurried voice,—"I'll give you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,- don't you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up! I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the spot, and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own hands!"

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"Y''r' hurt, y'rself, I tell ye," said Abel; "'n' the''s been a murder, pooty nigh."

Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his hands up, found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to slacken it.

By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He found it lying near him, cocked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat unsteadily, towards the two men,

who were keeping their position as still as if they were performing in a tableau. "Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had. heard the click of cocking the pistol, and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me that pistil, and yeou fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I'll have this here fellah fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."

Mr. Bernard did as Abel said, - stupidly and mechanically, for he was but half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick's head.

"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while this man puts the rope raound y'r wrists."

Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of twists and knots.

"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his feet.

"Who's hurt? What's happened?" asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his memory having been completely jarred out of him for the time.

"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' stan' aäskin' questions over 'n' over;'t beats all! ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"

As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.

"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that 'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute, Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter 's good for."

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r'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,off that way, will ye?-'n' I'll hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."

He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.

"Wal, naow, yeou be a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a hoss on th' full spring at t'other eend!"

He looked at him from head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg which had been caught under the horse.

"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r boot?"

It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly relieved him of.

The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's house, Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in silence, still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust into his hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland, or whether he had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he could not as yet have told.

They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.

"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.

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have you got there? and what's all this noise about?"

"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero of Lake Erie in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"

The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.

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"Richard Venner!" the Doctor exclaimed. What is the meaning of all this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"

Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head. "My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall. Oh, yes!- wait a minute and it will all come back to me."

"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it. Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or two, will come right by to-morrow.”

"Been stunded,” Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."

Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of cavalry and infantry and its results, none slain, one captured.

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"Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they 're scared, and put the fellah's j'int in as quick as you like. I'll resk him, j'int in or out."

"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in quick enough."

"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;-"do what you like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go, I can walk, and I'll

The Doctor looked at the prisoner be off from this place. There's nobody through his spectacles.

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hurt but I. Damn the shoulder!- let me go! You shall never hear of me again!” Mr. Bernard came forward.

"My friends," he said, "I am not injured,-seriously, at least. Nobody need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."

The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had the bone replaced in a very few moments.

"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends and neighbors, leave this young man to me."

"Colonel Sprowle, you 're a justice of

the peace," said Deacon Soper, "and you know what the law says in cases like this. I a'n't so clear that it won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no.”

"I guess we 'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel Sprowle, — which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually settled the question.

"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy, and, I 'll answer for it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I can tell you, whatever else they are."

The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left the prisoner with him.

Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door, with the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the moonlight. The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night, out of the limits of the State. "Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.

"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah's Squire Venner's relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while, till I come back? The''s a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead hoss that 's layin' daown there in the road, 'n' I guess the' a'n't no use in lettin' on 'em spile, -so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em along. I kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n' hide off to-night, — 'n' the' won't be much iron on that hoss's huffs an haour after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."

"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard;"I feel as if I could get along well enough now."

So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by a message that Master Langdon was shot

Dick told him the secret of his golden through the head by a highway-robber, belt.

but had learned a true version of the

"Where shall I send your trunk after story by this time. His voice was at that you from your uncle's?"

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moment heard above the rest, sharp, but thin, like bad cider-vinegar.

"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that 's on him. Hiram! jest slip off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring down a pair of pinchers and a file, and-stop-fetch a pair of shears, too; there 's hoss-hair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster

with."

"You let that hoss alone!" spoke up Colonel Sprowle. "When a fellah goes out huntin' and shoots a squirrel, do you think he 's go'n' to let another fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he 's got a double-berril gun, and t'other berril ha'n't been fired off yet! I should like to see the mahn that 'll take off that

Abel was not in the habit of question- seddle 'n' bridle, excep' the one th❜t hez ing the Doctor's decisions.

a fair right to the whole concern !"

Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham's kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina, as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise as undertaking to carry out his employer's orders in the face of the Colonel's defiance.

Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together.

"Here they be," said the Colonel. "Stan' beck, gentlemen!"

Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment.

All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval. He took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse which had led him so suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him; the sudden appearance of the Doctor's man, but for which he might yet have been lost; and the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy.

"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said," and no wonder. A beautiful, wild-looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and have them carried to Mr. Dudley Venner's. If he does not want them, you may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that old beechtree will be a good place. You'll see to it, won't you, Abel?”

Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with wine.

Following Mr. Bernard's wishes, Abel at once took off the high-peaked saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with the aid of two or three others, he removed him to the place indicated. Spades and shovels were son procured, and before the moon had set, the wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in the

It was all past now, and a feeling of far village among the hills of New Engpity rose in Mr. Bernard's heart.

land.

THE TEST.

Musa loquitur.

I HUNG my verses in the wind;

Time and tide their faults may find.

All were winnowed through and through;

Five lines lasted sound and true;

Five were smelted in a pot

Than the South more fierce and hot.

These the Siroc could not melt,

Fire their fiercer flaming felt,

And their meaning was more white

Than July's meridian light.

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor Time unmake what poets know.
Have you eyes to find the five

Which five thousand could survive?

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