As we walked about the plantation, its owner became quite communicative, even pointing out the spot where his wife's nephew had been shot dead, leaving him heir to five hundred head of cattle. He spoke of his differences with his neighbors, and assured us that nothing but lynch law would "go down" in their wild region, where, he said, no law existed. He had been a physician in his native state of Mississippi, but there were so many widows and orphans who could not pay his fees that he gave up his profession, and came to the Gulf coast of Florida, where he met a widow, who owned, with her nephew, one thousand head of cattle, which roamed through the savanna bottoms of the coast, requiring no care except an occasional salting. Having married the innocent woman, his first victim, he then, according to the testimony of his neighbors, hired a man to shoot his nephew, and had so become the sole owner of the whole herd of cattle, which roamed over thirty square miles of territory. Here was, indeed, a cheerful guide for two lone voyagers through the uninhabited wilds! Saddles and I made up our minds, however, to accept the inevitable gracefully, and at nine o'clock the next morning the boats were lashed into the wagon, and the retired physician, with two of his men on horseback, accompanied by Saddles and myself on foot, slowly left the clearing, and defiled along an almost undefined trail through the forest. I noticed that the men were well armed, and all on the alert. Occasionally one of the men would be sent off to the right or left to search for cattle signs, but our guide himself hung close to the wagon, seeming to consider prudence the better part of valor. Opening the conversation with this quondam physician, I asked his opinion in regard to several well-known remedies, and discovered that he used but three. The best medicine, he said, was CALOMEL, the next QUININE, and what they would not cure, GLAUBER'S SALTS would. In fact, he considered salts the specific for all diseases. Leading gently to the subject, I spoke of his nephew's death, when he assured me the cruel deed had been done by a settler named Bridekirk, who had squatted upon some land belonging to the young man, and though the intruder never had it conveyed to him by government, he considered it his own. Anxious to protect his nephew's interest, the physician took up the claim, and moved his family to the disputed territory. "Bridekirk," he said, "swore my nephew should never live on what he called HIS claim, and a short time afterwards took his revenge. I had sent the boy for a spur I left at a neighbor's, and when just outside my fence a man who was concealed in a thicket shot the poor fellow. I KNOW it was the devil Bridekirk who did it." "Did you find his trail?" I asked. "No," he answered; "we could not pick it up. It was all stamped out. No one could recognize it, but I know Bridekirk was the assassin. lie threatened my life too; but he's dead now."