I reflected a moment. A short time before, a passenger, walking the boat at night, mysteriously disappeared; his agonized family being put ashore the next morning penniless and without a protector. I must confess that, under the circumstances, I scarcely knew which to choose—the state-room with the stranger, or the open boat without the stranger, but concluded to take the former. So, returning together, and taking the upper of the tier of berths, I resolved to keep watch for the rest of the night, ready for any emergency. My unwelcome companion took the berth next below me. It was not hard to keep awake after the events of the evening; and yet the moments moved slowly. Full two hours passed, and I was deliberating whether or not to dismiss my suspicions and go to sleep, when weariness overcame me, and I dropped into a restless slumber. How long this continued I can not tell; but suddenly a hand glided across my chest, pausing at the very spot where the gold had been secreted. The feat was accomplished with surprising dexterity, and, glancing in the direction from which the hand came, I found myself gazing into the same eyes that had peered in at me from the half-opened door! But the expression! Never had I seen any thing so fiendish—such a look of murderous determination. The left hand was at the gold, while the right held a gleaming knife. I felt that my hour had come. And yet it was not the glittering blade that filled me with horror, so much as the pitiless, demoniac expression of those eyes glaring from out their deep sockets. The blood froze in my veins. All power of resistance or of motion was gone. I could even feel the keen point of the knife entering my quivering flesh, before, with one last, desperate effort, I succeeded in throwing off the deathlike stupor. Happily, that final effort availed, and, raising myself in the attitude of resistance, I awoke—awoke to hear my new friend, who yet remained peaceably in bed, make our room resound with certain nasal sounds, which, if not as musical as one could wish, were not just then wholly unwelcome. Morning dawned clear and beautiful, showing a more preposessing face on the person of my suspected room-mate. He was from the good city of Hartford, Conn., and, from motives similar to my own, had secured, as he supposed, a state-room to himself, and having "the key to the only empty state-room,"—"forty-nine,"—was as much astonished at finding it occupied, as I was at being intruded upon. "But," said he, laughing, "I had no objections to passing the night with you!" "Why not?" I asked. "Because I knew you to be an honest man!" "Ah, how did you know that?" "From your anxiety to be alone." DEATH ON THE PRAIRIE. THE long, terribly cold winter was nearly over, when my hibernating was enlivened by a caller,—a man of some note with us, having traits which mark the frontier chieftain.