One night the halt was called in front of a low log house of two rooms, connected by an enclosed passage way, which served the purpose of an eating room. The mistress of the house was the wife of a steamboat captain, but owing to some irreconcilable difference of sentiment, she refused to live with him, and she was miserably poor. In pity to her sad case, her husband had sent, by my father, some articles of clothing which he hoped might be of use to her, and this errand served as our introduction. She was a tall, fine looking woman, and received and welcomed us with the air of a princess dwelling in a palace. She was a niece of James Fennimore Cooper, and her grand and stately mien, in the midst of such squalid poverty, would have been amusing, but for the pity of it. Her father, a very old man, lay dying of consumption in one of the rooms, and my little sister and I were assigned for the night to a bed directly opposite the death couch. The one tallow candle on the stand beside him, guttering down in its socket, the fitful light from the vast fireplace, which made strange fantastic shapes and shadows on the rough dark walls, and the clear cut profile of the dying man, with the erect dignified figure beside him, rising occasionally to arrange his pillow, or give him water, impressed us most painfully, effectually driving sleep from our eyes, which, under a kind of fascination, gazed intently on what they would fain not see. From time to time the dogs outside howled dismally, and this forced night-watch was made most hideous by the occasional hooting of an owl, or the prolonged baying of hungry wolves in the distance. We were very weary, and at last fell into a troubled slumber, but were haunted even in sleep by the ghastly face across the room and the weird shadows on the wall, 'till aroused by mother's morning kiss, and cheery call to breakfast, which banished all disturbing dreams, and waked us to the realities of a bright sunshiny morning, and the morning meal which our grand hostess had prepared for us to eat before we left this most uninviting caravansary. This repast consisted of potatoes boiled "au natural," and some kind of drink which she announced as coffee, and which she served with the grace of a queen, dispensing the delicacies of her table.