“It is seldom I laugh,” quoth Brian, “but I could not help laughing at this odd little man; for it was not the beautiful blossoms, such as you delight to paint, that drew forth these exclamations, but the queer little plants, which he had rummaged for at the roots of old trees, among the moss and long grass.  He sat upon a decayed trunk, which lay in our path, I do believe for a long hour, making an oration over some greyish things, spotted with red, that grew upon it, which looked more like mould than plants, declaring himself repaid for all the trouble and expense he had been at, if it were only to obtain a sight of them.  I gathered him a beautiful blossom of the lady’s slipper; but he pushed it back when I presented it to him, saying, ’Yes, yes; ’tis very fine.  I have seen that often before; but these lichens are splendid.’

“The man had so little taste that I thought him a fool, and so I left him to talk to his dear plants, while I shot partridges for our supper.  We spent six days in the woods, and the little man filled his black wallet with all sorts of rubbish, as if he wilfully shut his eyes to the beautiful flowers, and chose only to admire ugly, insignificant plants that everybody else passes by without noticing, and which, often as I had been in the woods, I never had observed before.  I never pursued a deer with such earnestness as he continued his hunt for what he called ‘specimens.’

“When we came to the Cold Creek, which is pretty deep in places, he was in such a hurry to get at some plants that grew under the water, that in reaching after them he lost his balance and fell head over heels into the stream.  He got a thorough ducking, and was in a terrible fright; but he held on to the flowers which had caused the trouble, and thanked his stars that he had saved them as well as his life.  Well, he was an innocent man,” continued Brian; “a very little made him happy, and at night he would sing and amuse himself like a child.  He gave me ten dollars for my trouble, and I never saw him again; but I often think of him, when hunting in the woods that we wandered through together, and I pluck the wee plants that he used to admire, and wonder why he preferred them to the fine flowers.”

When our resolution was formed to sell our farm, and take up our grant of land in the backwoods, no one was so earnest in trying to persuade us to give up this ruinous scheme as our friend Brian B—–­, who became quite eloquent in his description of the trials and sorrows that awaited us.  During the last week of our stay in the township of H—–­, he visited us every evening, and never bade us good-night without a tear moistening his cheek.  We parted with the hunter as with an old friend; and we never met again.  His fate was a sad one.  After we left that part of the country, he fell into a moping melancholy, which ended in self-destruction.  But a kinder, warmer-hearted man, while he enjoyed the light of reason, has seldom crossed our path.