Lewis Rand

stretched a level of broom-sedge, bright ochre in the light of the setting sun. The road ran across this golden plain, and disappeared in a league-deep wood of pine. From an invisible clearing ca

h which the earth was strewn, then struck flint and steel, guarded the spark within the tinder, fanned the flame, and with a sigh of satisfaction stood back from the leaping fire. His father tossed him a bucket, and with it swinging from his hand, he made through the wood towards a music of water. Goldenrod and farewell-summer and the red plumes of the sumac

loured like young Narcissus, of whom he had never heard, but he observed it with interest. He was fourteen, and old for his years. The eyes reflected in the stream were brooding, the mouth had lost its boyish curves, the sanguine cheek was thin, the jaw settling square. His imagination, slow to quicken, had, when aroused, quite a wizard might. He sank deeper amid the ironweed, forgot his errand, and began to dream. He was the son of a tobacco-roller, untaught and unfriended, but he dreamed like a ki

stones rising from its bed, then with a light and steady foot crossed to the boy's side. He was a young man, wearing a fringed hunting-shirt and leggins and a coonskin cap,

" he sai

made a fire yonder beneath a black gum

e," answered the oth

ch. "I want to be a man! But I don't want

then, or come with me and make yourself King of the Mississippi! I've watched you,

ed the boy-"ambit

urally along, with woods in it, and Indians, and an elk or two at gaze, and a boat to get through the rapids, and a drop of kill-devil rum, and some shooting, and a petticoat somewhere, and a hand at cards,-just every c

leans and the Mississippi, and the French and the Spaniards, and the moss that hangs from the trees,

ng trees showed in strong relief; beyond that copper fretwork all was blackness. Out of the dark came the breathing of the horses, fastened near the tobacco-cask, the croaking of frogs in a marshy place, and all the stealthy, indefinable stir of the forest at night. At times the wind brought a swirl of dead leaves

rattling above our heads, and a panther screaming in a

e nigh

taws until we came to a high bluff, and saw the Mississippi before us, brown and full and marked with drifting trees, and up the river the white houses of Natchez. There we camped until we made out the flat-boat,-General Wilkinson's boat, all laden with tobacco and flour and bacon, and just a few Kentucks with muskets,-that the Spaniards at Natchez had been fools enough to let pass! We hailed that boat, and it came up beneath the cottonwoods, and I went aboard with the letters from Louisville, and on we went, down the river, past the great woods and the strange little towns, and the

deftly into a long cigar. The boy rose to throw more wood upon the fire, then sat agai

a! the Mississippi open from its source-and the Lord in Heaven knows where that may be-to the last levee! and not a Spaniard to stop a pirogua, and right to trade in every

rs and kings, and men with their fortune to make. I've read

ou wanted to

ould be a grea

'll hear a drum beat. They're restless, restless, yonder on the rivers! But they'll need the lawy

d coals of the fire. "Oh!" he cried, "from morn till night my father keeps me in the fi

, and liquor when I was in company, and money when I was gaming, and a woman when the moon was shining and I wished to

red the boy, "and I do not want to be

er among the Rands! I reckon yo

lly. "I reckon I do," he ass

go, once he had man or beast by the throat! Silent and holdfast and deadly to anger-t

y passionately. "If he doesn't keep

hat the Rands ever hunted have somehow got into their blood. Suppose you try a little unlearning? Great lawyers and great men

rse he's my father. But I never coul

and after a while nobody does get in hi

ddly,-"do you think I am really

erfully fond of you, Lewis,-and I never could abide a rattler! There's the moon, and it's a l

man's thoughts went back to the Mississippi, to cane-brakes and bay

nnounced, "I am going to find a place w

ross the fire. "There's another," he said. "Good Spanish! Buy your C?sars and y

d a waste of scrub and vine, low hills, and rain-washed gullies. Chinquapin bushes edged the road, the polished nut dark in the centre of each open burr; the persimmon trees showed their fruit, red-gold from the first frosts; the b

a climbing eye. What he loved was the black earth beneath the tobacco, and to walk between the rows and feel the thick leaves. For him it sufficed to rise at dawn and spend the day in the fields overseeing the hands, to come home at dusk to a supper of corn bread and bacon, to go to bed within the hour and sleep without a dream until cockcrow, to walk the fields again till dusk and supper-time. Church on Sunday, Charlottesville on Court Days, Richmond once a year, varied the monotony. The one passion, the one softness, showed in his love for horses. He broke the colts for half the county; there was no horse that he could not ride, and his great form and coal-black locks were looked for and found at every race. The mare that he was riding he had bought with his legacy, before he bought the land on the Three-Notched Road. He was now considering whether h

ired the crimson trailers that the dewberry spread across the road. When his gaze followed the floating down from a milkweed pod, or marked the scurry of a chipmunk at a white oak's root, or dwelt upon the fox-grape's swinging curtain, he would have said, if questioned, that life in the woods and in an Indian country taught a

ut Hills to th

oatmen

levee, dange

oatmen

ising, Indians

nor your father, nor his father, and I do not want to be like Adam Gaudylock. I want to be like my mother's folk. You've no right to keep me planting and suckering and cutting and firing and planting again, as though I were a negro! Negroes don't care, but I care! I'm not your slave. Tobacco! I hate the sight of it, and the smell of it! There's too much tobacco raised in Virginia. You fought the old King bec

n in New

an ora

he lappi

he old

g in the

s the gir

Gaudy

eter than

it is D

these appeared barns and stables and negro quarters, all very cheerful in the sunny October weather. Once they passed a schoolhouse and a church, and twice they halted at cross-road taverns. The road was no longer solitary. Other slow-rolling casks of tobacco with retinue of men and boys were on their way to Richmond, and there were white-roofed wagons from the country beyond Staunton. Four strong horses drew each wagon, manes and tails tied

een before upon that road; the other was recognized as a very able scout, hunter, and Indian trader, restless as quicksilver and d

ered Rand; and "Spain is not so blac

addressed, "that the Kentucki

rturbably. "The boot's on the other foot. Ten yea

and spoke to his horse. "Mr. Jefferson is in Richmond,

nd had died into an evening stillness, and the last rays of the sun were staining the autumn foliage a yet deeper red, they came by way of Broad Street into Richmond. The cask of bright leaf must be