Jesse James, as a youth, had a round jovial face, and rather a pleasant expression of countenance. He was then the reverse of taciturn; had a merry laugh, and was "a fellow of infinite jest" among his comrades. In all his subsequent career he has been the Aaron to Frank. Jesse always does the talking yet, when they have occasion to communicate with strangers. In later years Jesse, too, has become reserved, not so taciturn as his brother, but still more silent than the average of men. Neither one of the brothers is given to boisterous merriment now-a-days, since life's shadows have fallen so darkly around them. CHAPTER V. AT THE SACK OF LAWRENCE, KANSAS. "Wherefore this tangle of perplexities, The trouble or the joys? the weary maze Of narrow fears and hopes, that may not cease, A chill falls on us from the skiey ways, Black with the night-tide where is none to hear The ancient cry, the wherefore of our days." The years come and go, and they give birth to bright and tender dreams, as well as to passions dark as Azrael's wing, and fierce as flames of Tophet. Yes, the years give joy and peace to some, and hope buds, as in the spring days the lilacs bloom. Yet time digs deep graves in which to bury our fondest hopes, and obliterates in indistinguishable night every earthly joy. It is better so. If we could draw aside the screen which hides from our ken the things of the future, who of us would enjoy the prospect? There was a time, perhaps, when Frank and Jesse James would shudder at the thought that they should become not only soldier-slayers of men, but robbers and murderers as well. And yet they were drifting down a rapid tide toward the great black gulf of evil. A few months calls the leaves from their buds, and dresses the forest in green--a few months more and the leaves and flowers wither before the North wind's breath and the beautiful flowers and the gay leaves become loathesome in the dust of decay. And so too, we imagine, are the changes of mind and the transformation of character. The James boys were in a school where the gentle law of mercy was never imparted; in a school where the instructors were incarnations of bitterness and hate, and every pupil devoted to the lessons they gave out. So the months rolled away and it was not long before they could listen unmoved to the last sigh of the dying victim, and send a foe before the aim of their unerring bullets, to challenge the sentinels on the farther shore of the river of death without a thought or tremor of remorse. They were fit now to take part in the most sanguinary warfare ever waged in this country--the Guerrilla warfare along the border of Missouri.