his backer near him, and it was commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally got into the house.  It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and death in those fever-stricken abodes—­a wan mother nursing one dying child, with perhaps another dead in the house.  My business, too, was not the most welcome.  I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase, for a payment which it was inconvenient or impossible to make.  There, in the corner, hung the wooden clock, the payment for which I was after, ticking off the last minutes of the sick child—­the only ornament of the poor cabin.  It was very painful to urge my business under such circumstances.  However, I succeeded, by kindness, in getting more money than I expected from our debtors, who would always pay when they could.  I recollect, one night, almost bewailing my success.  I had reached the entrance of a forest, at least nine miles through, and finding a little tavern there, concluded it was prudent to put up and wait till morning.  There were two rough-looking fellows around, hunters, with rifles in their hands, whose appearance did not please me, and I fancied they looked at each other significantly when the landlord took off my saddle-bags and weighted them, feeling the hundred dollars of silver I had collected.  I was put into the attic, reached by a ladder, and, barricading the trap-door as well as I could, went to sleep with one eye open.  Nothing, however, occurred, and in the morning I found my wild-looking men up as early as I, and was not a little disturbed when they proposed to keep me company across the forest.  Afraid to show any suspicion, I consented, and then went and looked at the little flint-pistol I carried, formidable only to sparrows, but which was my only defense.

“About two miles into the wood, my fierce-looking friends, after some exchange of understanding as to their respective ways and meeting-point, started off on different sides of the road in search of game, as they said, but, as I feared, with the purpose of robbing and perhaps murdering me at some darker spot in the forest.  I had gone perhaps two miles farther, when I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one side, saw a hand signaling me to stop.  Presently an eye came out behind the tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come.  But, keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my great relief, two fine deer, who appeared not at all disturbed by a man on horseback, though ready enough to fly from a gun, and began to suspect that the robber I was dreading was, after all, only a hunter in the honest pursuit of his living.  The crack of the rifle soon proved that the deer, and not my saddle-bags, were the game aimed at, and I found my imagination had for twelve hours been converting very harmless huntsmen into highwaymen of a most malicious aspect.”