"A wide watch to keep and little to be got by it, I fear," old Sylvester added.

"Not altogether idle, perhaps; we have sharp eyes in the West and see many strange things. Jane is confident she saw our Elbridge, making through Ohio, but two months after he left here; he was riding swiftly, and in her surprise and suddenness she could neither call nor send after him."

"You did not tell us of that," said the old man.

"No, I waited some further discovery."

"Be silent now, you may easily waken hopes to be darkened and dashed to the ground. Which way made the boy?"

"Southward."

During this discourse, as though he distinguished the sound of his young master's name and knew to what it related, Chanticleer walked slowly, and as if by accident or at leisure, up and down the garden-wall, keeping as near to the speakers as was at all seemly. When they stopped speaking he leaped gently to the ground and softly clapped his wings.

A moment after there came hurrying into the garden, in a wild excitement, and all struggling to speak first, little Sam Peabody in the lead, Robert, the flat-featured youth of thirteen, and Peabody Junior, (who, it should be mentioned, having found his way into a pantry a couple of minutes after his arrival with the Captain, and appropriated to his own personal use an entire bottle of cherry brandy, had been straightway put to bed, from which he had now been released not more than a couple of hours), and to announce as clamorously as they respectively could, that Brundage's Bull had just got into "our big meadow."

"Nobody hurt?" asked old Sylvester.

"Nobody hurt, grandfather, but he's ploughing up the meadow at a dreadful rate," said little Sam Peabody.

"Like wild," Peabody Junior added.

This statement, strongly as it was made, seemed to have no particular effect on old Sylvester. Oliver Peabody, on the other hand, was exceedingly indignant, and was for proceeding to extremities immediately, the expulsion of the Brundage bull, and the demanding of damages for allowing his cattle to cross the boundary line of the two farms.

Old Sylvester listened to his violence with a blank countenance; nor did he seem to comprehend that any special outrage had been committed, for it must be acknowledged that the only indication that the grandfather had come to his second childhood was, that, with his advancing years, and as he approached the shadow of the other world, he seemed to have lost all idea of the customary distinctions of rank and property, and that very much like an old apostle, he was disposed to regard all men as brethren, and boundary lines as of very little consequence.

He therefore promptly checked his son Oliver in his heat, and discountenanced any further proceedings in the matter.

"Brundage," he said, "would, if he cared about him, come and take his bull away when he was ready; we are all brethren, and have a common country, Oliver," he added, "I hope you feel that in the West, as well as we do here."

"Thank God, we have," Oliver rejoined with emphasis, "and we love it!"

"I thank God for that too," old Sylvester replied, striking his staff firmly on the ground, "I remember well, my son, when your great state was a wilderness of woods and savage men, and now this common sky—look at it, Oliver—which shines so clearly above us, is yours as well as ours."

"I fear me, father, one day, bright, beautiful, and wide-arched as it is, the glorious Union may fall," said Oliver, laying his hand upon an aged tree which stood near them, "may fall, and the states drop, one by one away, even as the fruit I shake to the ground."

As though he had been a tower standing on an elevation, old Sylvester Peabody rose aloft to his full height, as if he would clearly contemplate the far past, the distant, and the broad-coming future.

"The Union fall!" he cried. "Look above, my son! The Union fall! as long as the constellations of evening live together in yonder sky; look down, as long as the great rivers of our land flow eastward and westward, north and south, the Union shall stand up, and stand majestical and bright, beheld by ages, as these shall be, an orb and living stream of glory unsurpassable."

The children were gathered about, and watched with eager eyes and glowing cheeks, the countenance of the grandfather as he spoke.

"No, no, my son," he added, "there's many a true heart in brave Ohio, as in every state of ours, or they could not be the noble powers they are."

While old Sylvester spoke, Oliver Peabody wrenched with some violence, from the tree near which they stood, a stout limb, on the end of which he employed himself with a knife in shaping a substantial knob.

"What weapon is that you are busy with, Oliver?" old Sylvester asked.

"It's for that nasty bull," Oliver replied. "I would break every bone in his body rather than let him remain for a single minute on my land; the furtherance of law and order demands the instant enforcement of one's rights."

"You are a friend of law and order, my son."

"I think I am," Oliver answered, standing erect and planting his club, in the manner of Hercules in the pictures, head down on the ground.

"I hope you are, Oliver; but I fear you forget the story I used to tell of my old friend Bulkley, of Danbury, who, being written to by some neighboring Christians who were in sore dissension, for advisement, gave them back word:—Every man to look after his own fence, that it be built high and strong, and to have a special care of the old Black Bull; meaning thereby no doubt, our own wicked passions;—that is the true Christian way of securing peace and good order."

Oliver threw his great trespass-club upon the ground, and was on the point of asking after an old sycamore, the largest growth of all that country, which, standing in a remote field had, in the perilous times sheltered many of the Peabody family in its bosom—when he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Mopsey in a flutter of cap-strings, shuffling shoes, and a flying color in her looks of at least double the usual depth of darkness. It was just discovered that the poultry-house had been broken into over night, and four of the fattest hens taken off by the throat and legs, besides sundry of the inferior members of the domicile; as wicked a theft, Mopsey said, as ever was, and she hadn't the slightest hesitation in charging it on them niggers in the Hills, (a neighboring settlement of colored people, who lived from hand to mouth, and seemed to be fed, like the ravens by some mystery of providence.)

Oliver Peabody watched closely the countenance of the patriarch, not a little curious to learn what effect this announcement would have upon his temper.

"This is all our own fault," said old Sylvester, promptly. "We should have remembered this was thanksgiving time, and sent them something to stay their stomachs. Poor creatures, I always wondered how they got along! Send 'em some bread, Mopsey, for they never can do anything with fowls without bread!"

"Send 'em some bread!" Mopsey rejoined, growing blacker and more ugly of look as she spoke: "Send 'em whips, and an osifer of the law!—the four fattest of the coop."

"Never mind," said old Sylvester.

"Six of the ten'drest young'uns!"

"Never mind that," said old Sylvester.

"I'd have them all in the county jail before sundown," urged Mopsey.

"Oliver, we will go in to tea," continued the patriarch. "We have enough for tea, Mopsey?"