any opening. I was bred to the law, and the law isn't of much value where every man takes it into his own hands."

"The law," returned Peleg, "is a pretty foundation for most things. With a proper knowledge of law a critter may whip his weight in wild cats, grin a'coon into fits, cow-hide the univarse, and stare creation out of face; but there's no call for him to practize it in the courts; let him take it into the buzzom of private life, and, mark my words, stranger, he'll make his account of it. Let the principles of law, as a lawyer understands 'em, govern his conduct day and night, and he'll soon make a clearin' of his own. As for a openin', there's openins everywheres. We're not so far west here to Arkopolis that we mayn't find more westerner parts yet. Now listen to me, stranger. I've taken a kinder fancy to you. I commiserate your poor soul, and am resolved to take it under my protection. You ain't got much money I reckon. Well, I'm pretty spry that way; though 'tain't altogether a fortin' as lines this here store; but I calkilate there's a way to make one out of it, kinder faster than drivin' bargins with the Cherokees and Osages, and that is to camp out further away across the prairie. I've heard tell of astonishin' doins to the Great Salt Lake, among my people the Mormons. If your feelins has a heavenward turn, and you don't object to the journey, I convene it will be for your spiritual welfare as well as for your airthly good to jine my little spekilation.'

I need not trouble you, governor, with any more of Peleg's arguments. I could see as plainly as he that he wanted some one to make the venture with him, though what that venture was he was too close to tell me.

"If I was to let on all at once," said he, when I questioned him rather narrowly on the subject, "you'd be scarified out of your believable fakilties; you'd think some everlastin' water power was a sweepin' you away along of it." So he left me to exercise my imagination, and make preparations for the journey.

"Cash," said Mr. Peleg S. Lyman, "ain't of no use in them parts; what's wanted is dry goods for barter and hardwares for use. Now, I can supply you with both from my stores: what dollars you have you can hand over to me, and I'll trade with you to the full amount in blankets and sperrit fixins, bread and pork doins in barrels,-spades, picks, and iron saucepans. Not a cent, stranger, will you be the wuss, as I

hope for Pisgah.”

I was not over anxious to part with all the coin I had managed to scrape together and get clear off with from Hopkinsville, but when I came to consider the nature of the country we were going to travel through, and what sort of a place we were bound for-Peleg S. Lyman having on one occasion partly let the cat out of the bag, when a little flushed with rum-I thought I couldn't do better than deal with him; and I was the more readily induced to do so from being aware that if the storekeepers of Arkopolis prided themselves upon one thing more than another, it was in what they called fixin' a stranger. As well, thought I, dance with a bear as dine with a wolf, so I gave Peleg the dollars and he supplied the goods. Of course I was taking care of my soul all the while, but as the subject had novelty to recommend it, I let Peleg talk on.

Some other time time, perhaps, I may tell you the sort of journey we had across the desert,-how we worked up to Jefferson, where we found a caravan of traders bound to Oregon, how we struck the old Missouri

track, following the course of the Platte River, and keeping between the forks, till we got to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, how we contrived to cross them, and how we finally got to the Mormon settlement, It wasn't the easiest life in the world, and I found when I got into the desert that I was little more my own master than if I had regularly taken service with Peleg as his help; for, having the stores under his control, and being, moreover, something of the "half-horse, half-alligator" breed, with a touch of the prairie buffalo in his composition, and a stronglymade raw-boned fellow withal, for whom I was no match in personal strength, I was obliged to knock under, and do his bidding without grumbling. All the property I had, except the beast I rode on, was under his charge; there was no chance of getting away a fellow might just as well have cast himself adrift, like a marine on a grating, in the middle of the Atlantic. Peleg S. Lyman always slept with one eye open, and could hit a trail as cleverly as a Pawnee Loup, so I put the best face on it I could and carried on, as the sailors say.

When we parted company with the caravan at Biddle Lake, we turned our heads south, while the traders stood northward, inviting us at the same time not to go and bury ourselves in the salt desert, but come and pick up a living on the Columbia River, I could not but remark with an inward sense of satisfaction, the gleam of triumph that shone in the eyes of Peleg, as he pointed in the direction of the Mormon settlement, and said that his spirit yearned not for the flesh-pots of Egypt.

"Ride on, brethren!" exclaimed Peleg-" ride on to the pleasant water-courses, where much fat and gladness abound. The vessels that are chosen must be filled-yea, with the fulness of plenty. The saints shall inherit the earth; they shall show a light to the nations, and much people shall flock to behold it. From the bowels of the earth shall come forth praise!"

The peltry-men shrugged their shoulders, and set down Peleg for “an everlastin' crack-brained gonney ;" and with mutual contempt for each other's prospects, the Mormon and the traders separated.

"Them critters," said Peleg, as we rode together along the banks of the White Mud River, which discharges itself into the Great Salt Lake "them critters ain't got no more sense than 'possums. They think they're goin' to make their fortins, at the very time they're turning their backs on the only way to 'em." And he laughed in his quiet, dry way, as if he greatly enjoyed his own joke.

The time was come, however, for him to speak out, for we were drawing near the district where the nature of our pursuits must speak for themselves; and though Peleg had made himself a hard master instead of a companion, he was not, I began to find, so bad a fellow after all. He had, probably, learnt to appreciate my character; and you, governor, know what that is, for I flatter myself it's not very unlike your own? You are not much in the habit of consulting your mental looking-glass, but when you do, you see a face that's not easily forgotten—ugly, but remarkable.

"Mister Baldwin," said Peleg, as we moved gently on-a shambling walk being the best pace our beasts could muster"what are your notions concernin' of this here spekilation as you've jined in?"

"Before I tell you that," I replied, "I must first of all know what the speculation itself is."

Peleg grinned.

"You hear them iron sarcepans a rattlin' agin each other in the packs, don't yer?"

"I think I do," answered I. "I've had to tighten the cords round them pretty often."

"Well," continued Peleg, "I suppose they wants to git right out

now."

"What for?" said I; "is there much to cook in these parts ?" Peleg grinned again.

"There's that to cook as you Britishers makes toothpicks on, as I've heerd tell; we free-born Americans uses the prongs of forks for that purpose, a whittling-knife, or the first thing handy." "I can't guess what you mean," said I; 66 you must speak a little plainer." "Then, squire," said the Mormon, "what do you think of gold?" "Gold!" I exclaimed-"cook gold-you must have lost your wits!" "If I have," said he, "'taint you that's found 'em. What I tell you is a fact-it's as true as everlastin' natur. Did think I was a-goin' to hunt on this trail without knowin' what sort of game was at the t'other end of it? I'm not such a 'coon. Few knows it yet, though many will afore long; but there's an Almighty power of gold in this country to be had for the trouble of stoopin'. I won't say whether it was re-vealed at Nauvoo, or whether it wasn't; but the Mormons has got the secret, they and the Ingines, who don't know the valley of it. We're a people what's blest, and our handyworks prospers."

you

Though I had had reason for suspecting that the 'cute backwoodsman had not come on a fool's errand, I was far from entertaining any idea of the real nature of his object; and it was some time before I could bring myself to believe that he was not poking fun into me. But what he said, with more particulars than there's any need for me to repeat, was fully confirmed when we got to the settlement. There we saw the gold itself -"gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold," as the man says in the play -not glittering exactly, but dull, lumpish, and heavy, just the colour of sister Jane's skin when she had the black jaundice, a kind of yellow, overlaid with dirt.

I promise you it wasn't long we staid in New Nauvoo, but as soon as we had swapped away a few tools for pretty nigh their weight in gold, off we set for the "diggius "-you'll have heard tell of them by this time. A blessed scramble we had till we got to the river Sacramento, 400 miles across a desert, salt enough, as Peleg said, to corn creation. Whenever any of the number dropped off, and died on the journey, Peleg consoled the rest by telling them they would serve as land-marks on the road back, in case any returned that way; that their bodies were cured as well as their souls, with other remarks, which were, of course, extremely gratifying. Well, at last we got to the " diggins," and wouldn't the firm have liked to have been there too! I think I see old Snatchem, with his hawk-nose, and long thin claws, jealous of the very dirt that sticks to his nails; I fancy I behold Sharper, that cross between a London rat and a country fox, with the quick eye and astute smellers of the one, and the red hair and stealthy pace of the other. I fancy him up to his knees in the Sacramento, diving into every dark hole, and grinding his face against

every stone, in search of gold dust; and, sight most pleasing, most gratifying of all, I picture to myself you, Governor, grimed with mud, lanky, unshaven, worn and wasted; your black knee-breeches torn to tattersyour blue worsted stockings worn to shreds-your spectacles clouded with dust and perspiration, with your elbows squared, your shirt sleeves tucked up to your shoulders, and no end to the bend in your back, laying down to the work as if you'd been born to the task of grubbing up gold—as, indeed, you were, though in a different way. You couldn't work harder than you do now, and you'd all be less mischievous.

Much the sort of thing that I've described in fancy's sketch of the operations of the firm, has been the daily business of Peleg S. Lyman and your son Baldwin Grab, since located in the diggins, about three months back. We're partners now in real earnest; I'm no longer his help, as I was coming over the prairie; but all we get we store in a cache, as the Canadians call an out-of-door savings-bank. The hardest thing to get is belly-timber; but that we manage to pick up without paying for it, just waiting till the early birds have gone abroad to the diggins, and then making free with all we can lay our hands on. Sometimes we

don't go to the stream ourselves, but hunt in couples in the mountains, and if we meet a stranger with a well-lined blanket, as will sometimes happen, why Peleg's bowie-knife, or my revolver, save him the trouble of carrying a useless weight of uncoined bullion about him.

Peleg and I were calculating last night, in a rough way, how much we had made since we came to the diggins, and we settled that it wasn't far short of 80,000 dollars a-piece. I have one lump of gold as big as an apple, with a nail driven through a hole in the middle, and I wear it for a breast-pin of an evening, when we smoke and drink swizzle, for mint-juleps or sherry-cobbler are not to be had.

But we want hands; and that's the reason of my writing. Do what you will, the firm can't make in ten years as much as may be gathered here in ten days, to say nothing of casualties, which are sure to fall in the way of those who look out for them. Therefore, I recommend you to ship yourselves off, the whole lot, to this place; nobody will miss you except your clients, and they won't grieve over-much. As I'm a rich man now, you've only to mention my name when you land, and every attention will be paid you. Mind you bring me out that sixbladed knife that you took from me when I came home from Birmingham that time. Give my love to my brothers and sisters, and remember me to the firm. Peleg desires "kinder compliments."

Your dutiful son,

BALDWIN GRAB.

P.S. November 2.-That eternal scoundrel, Peleg S. Lyman, has robbed the cache-hasn't left the worth of a cent. They say he's up the San Joaquin. I'm after him.

gone

The Galveston Gazette of the 3rd of January, which has just reached us, contains, as we imagine, the sequel to the above narrative. In an article detailing the latest proceedings in California, we find that "an

Englishman, named Grab, underwent the extreme penalty of Lynch law, for setting fire to a hut and suffocating the inmate, an eminent Mormon preacher, named Peleg S. Lyman. Grab was caught in the ruins, which he revisited the next day for the sake of plunder, the unfortunate Mormon being supposed by the incendiary to possess a small quantity of gold. We have it from a quarter on which we can confidently rely, that not a grain of dust was discovered among M. Peleg S. Lyman's remains."

We have ourselves read an advertisement in the Times, announcing that the good-will (if there be such a thing) of an eminent legal firm in Bedford Row, is to be disposed of, the members of it intending to "operate in another sphere." We sincerely hope that the firm alluded to is not that of Messrs. Snatchem, Grab and Sharper, for if their operations are intended for California, we fear they will arrive too late.