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Then call to remembrance the business transacted in those numerous, large, old-fashioned, square-galleried inn-yards; and reflect upon the hundreds who have been thrown out of bread. The high-roads and the way-side inns are now forsaken and silent.

We used some precaution in travelling, sleeping in the woods; but we kept moving by day as well as by night, and halting only when tired, and a good place offered. We were not very well off for food, though we brought a little from the fisherman's hut, and found quantities of winter-berries by the way-side.

Once we found a way-side camp of horse-dealers lounging by a pool, ready for a sale or a swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters shot down a hill on Indian ponies, their full creels banging from the high-pommelled saddle. They had been fishing, and were our brethren, therefore.

After a little more travel we came to another shanty made of poles and palm leaves, occupied by an American. He was a tall, raw-boned, cadaverous looking way-side renegade who looked as if the blood had all been pumped out of his veins, and he claimed to be sick. He said he was one of the Texas royal sons.

She dropped the book into her lap, clasped her hands tight, and said, half to herself, half to Grandmother, "Isn't it nice?" IT was the first of May; but May was in an April mood, half cloudy, half shiny, and belied her name. Sprinkles of silvery rain dotted the way-side dust; flashes of sun caught the drops as they fell, and turned each into a tiny mirror fit for fairy faces.

The man in Benham who stops by the way-side to scratch his head gets left behind. When we moved into this house a year ago looking through that window we were at the jumping-off place; now you see houses cropping up in every direction. It's going to be a big city. Pleased to have you stop to supper with us," he added with burly suavity as their visitor rose.

The manse was often a scene of such dissolute life that Malcolm shunned to bring his sister into the sight of it; the peel tower was the dwelling of savagery; the farm homestead either rude and lawless or in constant terror; the black spaces on many a brae side showed where dwellings had been burned; more than once they passed skeletons depending from the trees or lying rotting by the way-side.

In summer time the wide fields would have shown me new sights, and the way-side hedges blossomed with new flowers; now, everything was sere and sodden, and a general air of shiftlessness prevailed, which would have caused a New England farmer much disgust, and a strong desire to "buckle to," and "right up" things.

It is dangerous to disturb his slumbers, for his desire to do mischief immediately returns, and the slightest touch, or attempt to caress him, is repaid by a fatal wound. This should be a caution never to meddle with a sleeping dog in a way-side house, and, indeed, never to disturb him anywhere.

This place was selected for a residence because its distance from Prescott and its situation at the junction of the bridle-path and wagon-road made it an excellent location for a way-side inn.