“That we can, sir, and a party that shall have its good players. Miss Mary Wallace plays as good a hand at Whist, as a woman should, Mr. Worden; and a very pretty accomplishment it is, for a lady to possess; useful, sir, as well as entertaining; for anything is preferable to dummy. I do not think a woman should play quite as well as a man, our sex having a natural claim to lead, in all such things; but it is very convenient, sometimes, to find a lady who can hold her hand with coolness and skill.” “I would not marry a woman who did not understand Picquet,” exclaimed the Rev. Mr. Worden; “to say nothing of Whist, and one or two other games. But, let us be moving, since the hour is getting late.” Move on we did, and in due time we all reached the place at which we were to halt for the night. This looked like plunging into the wilderness indeed; for the house had but two rooms, one of which was appropriated to the use of the females, while most of us men took up our lodgings in the barn. Anneke and Mary Wallace, however, showed the most perfect good-humour; and our dinner, or supper might better be the name, was composed of deliciously fat and tender broiled pigeons. It was the pigeon season, the woods being full of the birds; and we were told, we might expect to feast on the young to satiety. About noon the next day, we reached the first clearing on the estate of Ravensnest. The country through which we were travelling was rolling rather than bold; but it possessed a feature of grandeur in its boundless forests. Our route, that day, lay under lofty arches of young leaves, the buds just breaking into the first green of the foliage, tall, straight columns, sixty, eighty, and sometimes a hundred feet of the trunks of the trees, rising almost without a branch. The pines, in particular, were really majestic, most of them being a hundred and fifty feet in height, and a few, as I should think, nearly if not quite two hundred. As everything grows towards the upper light, in the forest, this ought not to surprise those who are accustomed to see vegetation expand its powers in wide-spreading tops, and low, gnarled branches that almost touch the ground, as is the case in the open fields, and on the lawns of the older regions. As is usual in the American virgin forest, there was very little underbrush; and we could see frequently a considerable distance through these long vistas of trees; or, indeed, until the number of the stems intercepted the sight.