father, to the then half-known wilds of Ohio.
How she had been there a long time, and didn't
half like it, and had seen great changes, and
didn't half like them, and thought New Jersey
the true Eden upon earth.

Further, the good old maid related how Joe's
uncle had died of fever, and how Joe had
succeeded his father in the property, two years
before, while she had stayed to keep house for
him till he got a wife, being fully determined to
go back as soon as her nephew's marriage should
take place, and live on her savings, or, as she
called them, "money-scrapes," in her native
village.

Miss Esther was about sixty: angular, raw-
boned, with a hard-featured face puckered into
as many wrinkles as a withered apple, with keen
blue eyes, and brisk active movements. I had
seen many women in New England who might
have been her twin-sisters, and I knew the race
well — thrifty clean bustling busy-bodies, with a
supreme contempt for the dawdlers and slatterns
down South. A good cook was Miss Esther, a
good manager, a skilled sempstress, but a better
nurse. If she could do any one thing better
than another it was tending the sick, and I
believe she felt personally grateful to me for
giving her an occasion of exhibiting her
knowledge and adroitness. At any rate she was very
affable and chatty, and took the opportunity
of Joe's absence to sing her nephew's praises,
adding:

"Poor lad! poor lad! He's a heavy heart,
for all he tries to keep up a smilin' face. Drat
love and sentiment, sez I."

I started. Sure enough, my kind young host
had a melancholy look, unaccountable in one in
robust health, tolerably well off, and evidently
respected by his neighbours. I had noticed it
before, but my bruised limbs and throbbing
temples had put the matter out of court, until
Miss Esther's remark aroused my curiosity and
sympathy. Little pressing was needed to elicit
from the garrulous aunt what, after all, was no
secret. Joe Mallory had been for some time the
accepted lover of Susan Boone, only daughter
of Deacon Gabriel Boone, one of the most
comfortable farmers in the district, and who, as
Miss Esther said, was "rather uppish" about
family, being own cousin to the renowned
General Daniel Boone, the explorer of Kentucky.
The marriage had been unluckily postponed: a
circumstance due, I fancy, to Miss Esther's own
obstructiveness, since it was her desire that "a
good chist full of linen web" should be spun at
home previous to the establishment of the young
bride as mistress of the house. In the interval,
a new discovery had subverted the old order of
things. This was no other than the discovery of
the petroleum, or, as Miss Esther called it, the
"ile." It had been found, its value had been
greedily appreciated by a population not very
apt to let any source of profit slip through their
fingers, and the favoured tract of country, Ohio,
New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as Canada
West, had ever since been in a fever of speculation.
Here were diggings, not indeed auriferous,
but of a substance capable of transmutation into
five-dollar notes, brought home to the very
doors of the people. Of course property
maintained its rights; there was no scramble; but
some grew rich by finding wealth bubbling up at
their very thresholds, and among this number was
Deacon Boone, Susan's father.

One of the two "flowing wells" of rock oil
which had come to light in the parish of Sparta
was on Deacon Boone's land. Luckier than most
of his neighbours, almost all of whom had oil
beneath their fields, but oil only to be raised by
expensive pumping, after the spade and mattock had
done their work, the old deacon was proprietor
of an absolute spring of the odoriferous fluid,
which seemed inexhaustible. Thousands of
gallons, every drop of which had its market value,
daily spouted and splashed into the air, and an
immense per-centage of the produce was lost for
lack of barrels and labour. Under these
circumstances it is not wonderful that Deacon
Boone, always a weak vain man, lost his head,
and grew, as Miss Esther quaintly said, "most
too proud to dirty his shoes walkin'." This
elation was accompanied by coldness of
demeanour towards his old friends, whom he was
loth any longer to regard in the light of equals,
and by an ominous coldness of bearing towards
his intended son-in-law. Besides this, he had
dropped hints of the brilliant prospects in store
for his family: hints that struck poor Joe with
dismay, since his position was altered now. A
little while before, Joe, with a tidy farm and
a little sum in bank, had been a reasonably
good match for the daughter of a corn and
cattle factor; but he was become relatively poor
when compared with the fortunate owner of a
flowing well of wealth.

"And the young lady herself?" asked I, with
some interest; "is she as mercenary as her
father? As ready to give up a poor suitor,
in hopes of a better match afterwards, I
mean?"

Miss Esther answered rather slowly, as she
plied her knitting needles over the fast growing
stocking of unbleached wool,

"Wall! I hairdly know, sir. Young gals are
that flighty and flim, they don't know the differ
atween yes and no, sometimes. Susan likes
our Joe well enough, but her father and mother
are nouther of 'em over-stocked with sense, and
they go clack! clack! about how she's to be a
fine lady and that, and visit Europe, and keep
cumpny with grand folks, and wear sat'n and
lace, and mebbe the gal's little head's getting
turned. But I bel've, I do believe, her heart
air a good and tender one, as it had oughter,
seein' Joe desarves a good wife."

Joe, I must observe, was out just then, looking
after a "loping deer," which Terence, the
old Irish hired man who helped on the farm, had
caught a glimpse of in the corn: and therefore I
had time to hear a great deal about the Boone
family. Among other things was a story, the
moral of which was that Deacon Boone owed
Joe a debt of gratitude, which rendered his
present conduct in giving him the cold shoulder