After crossing two more fields, she cleared a hedge so thick that he could not see what was on the other side; but he heard a tremendous crash, and was only conscious of being hurled with violence to the ground; slowly recovering his senses, he saw Rattling Bess lying a few yards from him, bleeding profusely; and his own ears were saluted by the following compassionate inquiry from the lips of a gardener, who was standing over him, spade in hand: "D-n your stupid outlandish head, what be you a doin' here?"

The half-stunned courier, pointing to Rattling Bess, replied: "She know her busi

ness."

The gardener, though enraged at the entire demolition of his melon-bed, and of sundry forced vegetables under glass, was not an illtempered fellow in the main; and seeing that the horse was half killed, and the rider, a foreigner, much bruised, he assisted poor Perrot to rise, and having gathered from him, that he was in the service of rich Squire Shirley, rendered all the aid in his power to him and

to Rattling Bess, who had received some very severe cuts from the glass.

When the events of the day came to be talked over at the Hall, and it proved that it was the Squire himself whom Perrot had so unceremoniously ridden over,—that the huntsman would expect some twenty guineas for the hounds, killed or maimed,—that the gardener would probably present a similar, or a larger account for a broken melon-bed and shivered glass, and that Rattling Bess was lame for the season, the Squire did not encourage much conversation on the day's sport; the only remark that he was heard to make, being "What a fool I was to put a frog-eating Frenchman on an English hunter!"

Monsieur Perrot remained in his room for three or four days, not caring that Mary should see his visage while it was adorned with a black eye and an inflamed nose.

Soon after this eventful chase, Reginald obtained his Uncle's leave to obey his father's wishes by visiting Paris for a few months; his stay there was shortened by a letter which he

received from his sister Lucy, announcing to him his mother's illness, on the receipt of which he wrote a few hurried lines of explanation to his Uncle, and sailed by the first ship for Philadelphia, accompanied by the faithful Perrot, and by a large rough dog of the breed of the old Irish wolf-hound, given to him by the Squire.

On arriving, he found his mother better than he had expected; and, as he kissed off the tears of joy which Lucy shed on his return, he whispered to her his belief that she had a little exaggerated their mother's illness, in order to recall him. After a short time, Ethelston also returned, and joined the happy circle assembled at Colonel Brandon's.

It was now the spring of 1797, between which time and that mentioned as the date of our opening chapter, a period of nearly two years, nothing worthy of peculiar record occurred; Reginald kept up a faithful correspondence with his kind uncle, whose letters showed how deeply he felt his nephew's abWhether Monsieur Perrot interchanged

sence.

letters with Mary, or consoled himself with the damsels on the banks of the Ohio, the following pages may show. His master made several hunting excursions, on which he was always accompanied by Baptiste, a sturdy backwoodsman, who was more deeply attached to Reginald than to any other being on earth; and Ethelston had, as we have before explained, undertaken the whole charge of his guardian's vessels, with one of the largest of which he was, at the commencement of our tale, absent in the West India Islands.

69

CHAPTER V.

AN ADVENTURE IN THE WOODS.-REGINALD BRANDON MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF AN INDIAN CHIEF.

It was a bright morning in April; the robin was beginning his early song, the wood-pecker darted his beak against the rough bark, and the squirrel hopped merrily from bough to bough among the gigantic trees of the forest, as two hunters followed a winding path which led to a ferry across the Muskingum river.

One was a powerful, athletic young man, with a countenance strikingly handsome, and embrowned by exercise and exposure; his dress was a hunting shirt, and leggings of deer-skin; his curling brown locks escaped from under a cap of wolf-skin; and his mocassins, firmly secured round the ankle, were made from the tough hide of a bear; he carried in his hand a