When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had grown slack in their search of him, and that the coast was comparatively clear, he determined to start on his distant expedition to the Far West. Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he sought and obtained a last interview with Mary Brand. "Mary," said he, "I'm about to break. They're hunting me like a fall buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't think any more about me, for I shall never come back." Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her head on the table near which she sat. When she again raised it, she saw La Bonté, his long rifle upon his shoulder, striding with rapid steps from the house. Year after year rolled on, and he did not return. CHAPTER III |A FEW days after his departure, La Bonté found himself at St. Louis, the emporium of the fur-trade, and the fast-rising metropolis of the precocious settlements of the West. Here, a prey to the agony of mind which jealousy, remorse, and blighted love mix into a very puchero of misery, he got into the company of certain rowdies, a class that every western city particularly abounds in; and anxious to drown his sorrows in any way, and quite unscrupulous as to the means, he plunged into all the vicious excitements of drinking, gambling, and fighting, which form the every-day amusements of the ris-. ing generation of St. Louis. Perhaps in no other part of the United States--where, indeed, humanity is frequently to be seen in many curious and unusual phases--is there a population so marked in its general character, and at the same time divided into such distinct classes, as in the above-named city. Dating, as it does, its foundation from yesterday, *--for what are forty years in the growth of a metropolis?--its founders are now scarcely past middle life, regarding with astonishment the growing works of their hands; and whilst gazing upon its busy quays, piled with grain and other produce of the West, its fleets of huge steamboats lying tier upon tier alongside the wharves, its well-stored warehouses, and all the bustling concomitants of a great commercial depot, they can scarcely realize the memory of a few short years, when on the same spot nothing was to be seen but the miserable hovels of a French village--the only sign of commerce being the unwieldy bateaux of the Indian traders, laden with peltries from the distant regions of the Platte and Upper Missouri. * He means as an American city. St. Louis was founded by the French in 1764; transferred to the United States in 1804. (Ed.) 1804. (Ed.)