I take it, he has never been absent from a session for twenty years; for, if sick before, he is certain to get well in time for business, spite of his physician." The grim smile which disfigured still more the visage of Rivers at the ludicrous association which the proposed abduction of the lawyer awakened in his mind, was reflected fully back from that of his companion, whose habit of face, however, in this respect, was more notorious for gravity than any other less stable expression.

He carried out, in words, the fancied occurrence; described the lawyer as raving over his undocketed and unargued cases, and the numberless embryos lying composedly in his pigeonholes, awaiting, with praiseworthy patience, the moment when they should take upon them a local habitation and a name; while he, upon whom they so much depended, was fretting with unassuaged fury in the constraints of his prison, and the absence from that scene of his repeated triumphs which before had never been at a loss for his presence.
"But come--let us mount," said the landlord, who did not feel disposed to lose much time for a jest.

"There is more than this to be done yet in the village; and, I take it, you feel in no disposition to waste more time to-night.

Let us be off" "So say I, but I go not back with you, Wat.

I strike across the woods into the other road, where I have much to see to; besides going down the branch to Dixon's Ford, and Wolf's Neck, where I must look up our men and have them ready.