rear and plunge across her path. In the little shops she often found more or less of these ruffians, half-tipsy, with hair unkempt, and beards like cotton-cards, squirting tobacco-juice in every direction, and interlarding their conversation with oaths and curses. Every one that entered was hailed with the interrogatory, “Stranger, whar ar yer from?” If their answer indicated any place north of the Ohio, and east of the Mississippi, the response was, “Damn yer, holler-hearted Yankees! What business have you in these diggens? You’d better clar out, I tell yer.” On one of these occasions, a dirty drunken fellow said to Kate, “They tell me you are an all-fired smart woman. Are you pro-slave? or do you go in for the abolitionists?” Concealing the disgust she felt, she quietly replied, “I wish to see Kansas a Free State, because I have her prosperity at heart.” “Damn yer imperdence!” exclaimed the brute. “I should like to see you chained up with one of our niggers. I’ll be cussed if I would’nt help to do it.” And he finished by stooping down and squirting a quantity of tobacco-juice into her face. There was another Missourian in the shop, a tall burly looking cattle drover, with a long whip in his hand. He seized the other roughly by the arm, saying, “I tell you what, my boy, that’s puttin it on a little _too_ thick. I’m pro-slave. If you’re for a far fight with the Yankees, Tom Thorpe’s the man for yer work. But I’m down on all sich fixens. Let the woman alone!” The rowdy drew his bowie-knife, with a volley of oaths, and Katie darted from the shop, leaving her purchases uncompleted. When she returned, she found her mother busy about dinner, and Alice sitting at the window, making a coarse frock. She raised her head and smiled, when her cousin entered, but immediately looked out toward Mount Oread. When she first saw that verdant slope, she had fallen in love with its beauty; then she had been attracted by the classic name, conferred on it by a scholar among the emigrants. There was something romantic in thus transporting the Mountain Spirits of ancient Greece into the loveliest portions of this new Western World. William often quoted Leigh Hunt’s verses, about “The Oreads, that frequent the lifted mountains; * * * * * * * and o’er deep ravines Sit listening to the talking streams below.”