answering glance, a suppressed smile on either side, and an understanding was established, an alliance completed, a tie more subtile than Freemasonry confessed.

In ten minutes Miselle and her new friend had conquered the lawless stove, had seated themselves before it, and were confiding to each other the mischances that had left them stranded upon the shore of Corry,—Miselle for the night, Melusina until two o'clock in the morning.

Tea-time surprised this interchange of ideas, and so sunny had Miselle's mood become that she was able to eat and drink, even though confronted by the baby and its youthful mother, whose knife impartially deposited in her own mouth and the infant's portions of beefsteak, potatoes, short-cake, toast, pie, and cake, varied with spoonfuls of hot tea, at which the wretched little victim blinked and choked, but still swallowed.

After tea, the infant, excited by refreshment nearly to the point of convulsions, was restored to its grandmother, while the mother played upon a mournful instrument called a melodeon, and sang various popular songs in a powerful, but uncultivated voice.

When she was done, Miselle persuaded Melusina to take her seat at the instrument, and straightway the house was filled with such melody of sweet German love-songs, operatic morcaux, and stirring battle-hymns, that the open doorway thronged with uncouth forms, gathering as did the monsters to Arion's harp. But when at last the clear voice rang out the melody of the "Star-Spangled Banner," the crowd took up the chorus, and rendered it with a heartfelt enthusiasm more significant than any music; for it was almost election-day, and the old query of "How will Pennsylvania go?" had all day been urged among every knot of men who gathered to talk of the country's prospects. Then came the good old "John Brown Song," and the "Marseillaise," which should be snatched from its Rebel appropriators, on the same principle by which Doctor Byles adapted sacred words to popular melodies.

The music over, the little crowd dispersed, and the baby, with its brace of mothers, gone to bed, the new friends sat cozily down and enjoyed an hour or two of feminine gossip, exchanged kisses, cards, and photographs, and so bade good-bye.

It seems a trifling matter enough in the telling, but to the lonely Miselle this chance encounter with a comrade was enough to change the whole aspect of affairs; and she sat down to breakfast the next morning, strong in the faith of a brilliant victory over bad roads, oily boats, and rapacious boatmen.

A plank walk from the hotel to the station elevates the foot-passenger in Corry above the mud of the streets, through whose depths flounders a crowd of wagons laden with crude oil for the refinery, with refined oil for the freight-trains, with carboys of chemicals, with merchandise, and with building materials for yet more houses.

Everything here is new. Not one of the thousand buildings is yet five years old; and of the four thousand people, not the most easily acclimated could yet tell how the climate agrees with him. Indeed, it is so absolutely new that it has not yet reached the raw barrenness of a new place.

Nature does not cede her royalty except under strong compulsion, and still does battle in the streets of Corry with the four thousand, who have not yet found time to get out the stumps of the hastily felled trees, to "improve" a wild water-course that dashes down from the bluff and crosses the main street between a tailor's shop and a restaurant, or even to trample to death the wildwood ferns and forest flowers which linger on its margin. When the Coriolanians have attended to these little matters, their city will look even newer than at present. Then shall their grandchildren bring other trees and set them along the streets, and dig wells and fountains, where Kuhleborn may rise to bemoan the desolation of his ancient domain.

Probably from sympathy with the bulk of their freight, the passenger-cars upon the Oil Creek Railway are so streaked with oil upon the outside, and so imbued with oil within, as to suggest having been used on excursions to the bottoms of the various wells; but uninviting as is their appearance, they are always crowded, and Miselle shared her seat with a portly gentleman, whom at the second glance she recognized as Viator Ignotus, and he, presently alluding to the fact of their having dined together the previous day, a conversation grew up, through which Miselle, much to her amusement, was initiated into the cabinet secrets of the two or three railway companies who divide the travel of the West, and who would appear to cherish very much the same jealousies and avenge their grievances in much the same manner as Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Brown with their neighborhood quarrels. Then Viator, producing from his pocket sundry maps and charts, foretold the career of railways yet unborn, and discoursed learnedly upon their usefulness, or, as he phrased it, their "paying prospects." Finally, the subject of railways exhausted, or rather run out, Viator paid his companion the compliment of inquiring of her the condition of public feeling in her native State as regarded the election; and the affairs of the nation were not yet completely arranged when the train arrived at Titusville, and Viator departed.

The city of Titusville is probably the most forlorn and dreary looking place in these United States. To describe the irregular rows of shanties bordering on impassable sloughs of mud, the scenery, the pigs, and the people, were a thankless task, as the most eloquent words would fall short of the reality. In one of the principal streets the blackened stumps still stand so thickly that the laden wagons meander among them as sinuously as the path which foxes and squirrels wore there only three years ago,—while in curious contrast with this avenue and the surrounding buildings stands a handsome brick church, with a gilded cross upon its spire, the one thing calm and steadfast in the dismal scene.

When the train again moved on, the seat vacated by Viator was taken by a young woman bound for Oil City, where her husband awaited her; but the homesickness epidemic among the female population of the Creek had already seized upon her so strongly as to unfit her for conversation; and Miselle devoted herself to the dismal landscape, privately agreeing with her companion that it was "the God-forsakenest-looking place she ever see."

On either side the road lay swamps, their gaunt trees festooned, or rather garroted, with vines, and draped with gray moss; while all about and among them lay their comrades already prostrate and decaying. On the higher lands fields had been fenced in, and cleared by burning the trees, whose charred skeletons still stood, holding black and fleshless arms to heaven in mute appeal against man's reckless abuse of Nature's dearest children.

Later Miselle took occasion to express her horror at the wholesale destruction of her beloved forests to a land-owner of the region. He laughed, and stared at the sentimental folly, and then said, conclusively,—

"Oh, but the land, you know,—we want to get at the land; and the quickest way of disposing of the trees is the best."

"But even if they must be felled, it is wicked to destroy them entirely, when so many people freeze to death every winter for want of fuel."

"Well, I suppose they do," said the land-owner, suppressing a yawn. "But we can't send them this wood, you know, or even get it down Oil Creek, where there is a market."

"At least, the poor people about here need never be cold. I suppose fuel is very cheap through all this country, isn't it?"

"Down the Creek we pay ten dollars a cord for all the wood, and a dollar a bushel for all the coal we burn, and both grow within a mile of the wells; but the trouble is the labor. Every man about here is in oil, somehow or another; and even the farmers back of