effects, ready to land at the wharf towards which
we were rapidly gliding.

"Welcome, my dear sir, to Grand Gulf," said
my hospitable inviter; "it is but a small city,
but———"

Crack! The clear, sharp detonation of a rifle
cut Mr. Jones short in his civilities, and then
succeeded the bang, bang, of several fire-arms,
and a clamour of voices, and then a deathly
stillness. Mr. Jones looked at his friends;
there was a haggard intelligence, a lurking
apprehension, visible in every eye for a moment;
then the usual calmness of mien came back.
I heard a bystander remark, " Something amiss
in Grand Gulf, I guess;" and his friend said
something about "rowdies."

We went on shore. A couple of lean and
shabby German emigrants, with yellow hair and
sunburnt skins, were ready to load themselves
with the baggage of the party; but, with the
exception of these men, a couple of half-clad
black children, and a yawning book-keeper, the
wharf was deserted. Nor was there any stir or
sign of life among the timber-built stores and
taverns, the tall gaunt hotels over which waved
the stars and stripes, the wooden houses that
stood back from the road in their plots of
garden ground. It looked a mournful place, did
Grand Gulf; and I half regretted the Benjamin
Franklin, as she sidled off from the landing-
stage and snorted her course down stream.

Crack again! Bang again! and a hoarse
roar, inarticulate and menacing as the utterance
of a wild beast's wrath, broke upon our ears,
and then for a minute or two the rattle of
firearms was continuous.

"What's going forward?" asked Mr. Jones,
hastily.

The nearest of the German porters grinned
humbly as he replied: "It is a pad pusiness,
mein herr, put it is only a street affair. It is not
apout bolitics."

We were now in sight of a crowd of people,
eddying wildly to and fro, who were gathered
in front of a pretty house, whose smart verandah
and bright paint had an air of pretension
unusual in that wretched town.

"By Jehoshaphat!" exclaimed one of the
young men, excitedly, pointing out the scene,
"it's our boys the row is about."

"Keep cool, keep cool," answered Alphonso
P. C. Jones, who was pale but collected. " Step
out; push through them, but no running."

On they went, still accompanied by me,
though I was completely at a loss to account
for the popular fury or the turmoil. We reached
the crowd, and began to elbow through them.

"Who on airth may you be?" asked one
fierce-looking woodsman whom we jostled.

"More of the gang, I reckon," bawled a
farmer, in homespun.

I was hanging back, but one of the party
grasped my arm and urged me on, whispering,
in a husky tone, " Get in-doors, stranger, if you
don't want to cheat the insurance company."

We were now in the garden, the gay flowers
of which the mob were trampling down in a
reckless way. I could see that the windows
were open, but barrricaded with logs and furniture,
and that two or three gun-barrels were
peeping through the chinks. We got close up
to the door, and Mr. Jones knocked, uttering a
peculiar sharp cry at the same moment. I
Iooked round for our Germans with the luggage:
they were not to be seen. After the lapse of a
minute—the longest minute I ever spent—the
door was cautiously opened, but not to its full
extent. "Quick!" muttered a voice at my ear.
In we went. There was a shout and a rush:
the people surged up to the door, like an angry
sea; but the muzzles of two revolvers were thrust
into the faces of the foremost, and they fell back,
and we were inside and the door was closed.

I was now, to all appearance, in a besieged place,
and one of the beleaguered garrison. And yet
I knew nothing of the quarrel, and had no share
in it. Of all the strange spectacles this strange
continent had hitherto afforded me, this was the
most inexplicable. In the midst of the bustle
and feverish hurry, as bolts were shot, chains
linked, and bars slipped across the door again,
I asked repeatedly what was the matter, but in
vain: " Thank your stars, stranger, for a whole
skin," was all the reply I could elicit. And
then everybody went up-stairs. In a front room,
prettily decorated in French taste, we found
five men fashionably dressed, bejewelled, and
white-handed, like my inviters. But there was
a terrible confusion reigning there. The costly
furniture had been piled up as a barricade before
the windows, mixed with firewood, mattresses,
and portmanteaus. The five occupants of the
room were flushed and heated, with disordered
hair, and faces already smeared with black stains
of powder. An arsenal of weapons lay about;
guns, swords, pistols, ball-pouches, flasks, kegs,
bottles, saddles, whips, and boots, all in confusion.
One of the party was binding up his arm in an
awkward way, as heavy gouts of blood ran trickling
down his shirt-sleeve. The two gentlemen
who had admitted us came in along with us,
making a total of eleven, not reckoning myself.

"Phillips, what accursed folly has brought on
all this?" asked Mr. Jones, angrily.

"Keep your temper, Jones," answered the
man who had been hurt; " no need to quarrel
among ourselves, I guess. The Grand Gulf
vagabonds will have all our scalps before sundown."

Jones shrugged his shoulders.

"How did it happen?"

Another of the group answered, "Oh, the old
story; Phillips is so tarnation random. He
poIished off young Edmonds, and they got to
blows a few over the card-table, and Phillips
gave him a Kentucky pill, and has brought the
wasps about our ears."

" Young Edmonds! Do you mean the judge's
son?" asked Jones, with a long face.

"Yes," was the reply; " they've taken him
into the doctor's, with breath in him yet, and if
he recovers——"

"It's all U. P. with us, misters!" cried
another man, gazing from the window.

We—I say we, for I was getting a terrible