"Hallo, stranger!" cried the man, raising himself for the first time out of his lounging position on the saddle. "Guess you're gettin' wolfish. I'm for you--stick, fist, or whiphandle, rifle or bowie-knife. Should like to see the man as could leather Isaac Shifty!" "The road, the road, Mister Isaac Shifty!" interrupted friend Richards in a conciliating tone. There was another long pause. "I guess you're traders," said the fiend at last. "No, man." "And what may you be, then?" Our answer was followed by another long inspection of our persons and physiognomies. He gazed at us for a couple of minutes or more, examining us from head to foot; at last he spoke. "And so you've a mind to go down the Mississippi?" "Yes, in the Jackson, which starts to-morrow, we are told." "Ah, the Jackson! a mighty good steamboat too--ain't it now? But I guess you ain't a thinkin' of takin' that thing and your horse with you?" continued the Yankee, pointing to our gig. "Yes, we are." "Oh, you are! Well.--You haven't seen two women in a dearborn on the road, have you?" "No, we have not." "Well, then," continued the man in the same indifferent tone, "it's a'most too late now to get to Bainbridge; and yet you might try it, too. Better turn your horse round, and follow the road till you come to a big walnut-tree; there it divides. Take to the right hand for half a mile, till you come to neighbour Dims's hedge; then you must go through the lane; and then, for about forty rods, right through the sugar-field; keep to your left till you come to some rocks, but then turn to your right, if you don't want to break your necks. There's a bit of a stream there; and when you are over that, the left-hand road will take you straight to Cox's ferry. You can't miss it," concluded he, in a self-satisfied tone, striking his horse a blow with his riding-whip. The animal broke into a smart trot, and in ten seconds our obliging friend had disappeared into the fog.