bush' of Billy Kirby: he is on the east end of the Ransom lot, making sugar for Jared Ransom. There is not a better hand over a kettle in the county, than that same Kirby. You remember, 'duke, that I had him his first season, in our own camp; and it is not a wonder that he knows some thing of his trade."
"He's a good chopper, is Billy," observed Benjamin, who held the bridle of the horse while the Sheriff mounted; "and he handles an axe, much the same as a forecastle-man does his marling spike, or a tailor his goose. They say he'll lift a potash kettle off the arch with his own hands, thof I can't say that I've ever seen him do it with my own eyes; but that is the say. And I've seen sugar of his making, which, maybe, was'nt as white as an old top-gallantsail, but which my friend Mistress Pretty-bones, within there, said, had the true molasses smack to it; and you are not the one, Squire Dickens, to be told that Mistress Remarkable has a remarkable tooth for sweet things in her nut-grinder."
The loud laugh that succeeded the wit of Benjamin, and in which he participated, with no very harmonious sounds, himself, very fully illustrated the congenial temper which existed between the pair. Most of its point was, however, lost on the rest of the party, who were either mounting their horses, or assisting the ladies to do so, at the moment. When all were safely in their saddles, the whole moved through the village in great order. They paused for a moment, before the door of Monsieur Le Quoi, until he could bestride his steed, and then, issuing from the little cluster of houses, they took one of the principal of those highways, that centered in the village.
As each night brought with it a severe frost, which the heat of the succeeding day served to
