Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life\'s journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody out on the deep, will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was followed by a colt.

The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife, in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar, her elbows waggled to the mare\'s jog, and her voice was as flat as a duck\'s. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of the old song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," and I should be helpless to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--

"Why, yo\' name is Smith, to be sho\'! I thought you was jest a-tryin\' to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo\'n a half-ow ago. Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!"

But the wife was absorbed. "Yayse, seh," she was saying to the lieutenant, "and he told us about they comin\' in on the freight-kyahs f\'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin\' him all oveh with they kisses and goin\'s-on. He tol\' me he ain\'t neveh so enjoyed havin\' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy, ef on\'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o\' his\'n. And when he tol\' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he\'d sekyo\'ed for the ladies to travel in, s\' I, Majo\', that\'s all right! You jest go on whicheveh way you got to go! Husband and me, we\'ll ride into Brookhaven and bring \'em out to ow place and jest take ca\'e of \'em untel yo\' clerk is found."

"Miz Wall!" cried the husband--"She\'s busy talkin\'.--Miz Wall!--she don\'t hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh\'s Majo\' Harper\'s clerk, right now!"

"Law, you hain\'t!" cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. "If ............