The idiot 'Lijah was welcome at his side, and the ancient yellow cur, that used to trot nimbly after him in the old days, rejoiced to limp feebly at his heels. He came over, one morning, and sat on the rickety little porch with Cynthia, and talked of her father and mother; but he had forgotten the mare, whose death she also mentioned, and the fact that old Suke's third calf was traded to M'ria Baker. His recollections were all vague, although at some reminiscence of hers he laughed jovially, and 'lowed that "in them days, Cynthy, ye an' me hed a right smart notion of keeping company tergether." He did not notice how pale she was, and that there was often a slight spasmodic contraction of her features. She was busy with her spinning-wheel, as she placidly replied, "Yes,--though I always 'lowed ez I counted on livin' single." It was only a fragmentary attention that he accorded her. He was full of his plans and anxious about rains, lest a rise in Caney Fork should detain him in the mountains; and he often turned and surveyed the vast landscape with a hard, callous glance of worldly utility. He saw only weather signs. The language of the mountains had become a dead language. Oh, how should he read the poem that the opalescent mist traced in an illuminated text along the dark, gigantic growths of Pine Mountain! At length he was gone, and forever, and Cynthia's heart adjusted itself anew. Sometimes, to be sure, it seems to her that the years of her life are like the floating leaves drifting down Lost Creek, valueless and purposeless, and vaguely vanishing in the mountains. Then she remembers that the sequestered subterranean current is charged with its own inscrutable, imperative mission, and she ceases to question and regret, and bravely does the work nearest her hand, and has glimpses of its influence in the widening lives of others, and finds in these a placid content. A-PLAYIN' OF OLD SLEDGE AT THE SETTLEMINT. "I hev hearn tell ez how them thar boys rides thar horses over hyar ter the Settlemint nigh on ter every night in the week ter play kyerds,--'Old Sledge' they calls it; an' thar goin's-on air jes' scandalous,--jes' a-drinkin' of apple-jack, an' a-bettin' of thar money."