smouldering in some of the huts showed that | ceived a horrid wound from the woods. Brotheir occupants had but just left. A band of ken-down man jumped up and ran for dear life. the Indians were seen on the opposite side of We had all to stop in the rain, and rest for a the river, watching the proceedings of the sol- couple of hours. Then we mounted the wounddiers. Their suspense was of short duration. ed sergeant on a mule, with a man behind to Orders were given to shoot the horses, and set hold him on. The poor fellow groaned in fire to the huts; and in a moment all were in agony, and begged to be left behind to die. So flames, the light thatch blazing up like paper. fearful were his cries that the man with him on The sight of their burning homes decided the the mule grew nervous, and couldn't hold him course of the Indians, and they began to cross on. Then we stopped in the dark and made a the river, some distance up-stream, and ad- litter, and lugged the sergeant over the logs and vanced toward the troops. Then ensued a through the bushes. His head soon got under fight, which we must permit the Sergeant to tell the bar of the litter, and we had to stop again. in his own way: The Captain then took the wounded man upon his mule, and so carried him, in spite of cries, entreaties, and fainting fits. Once going up a mountain the saddle slipped, and all came to the ground. It was a terrible night marchmen every moment getting lost in the darkness. We made two and a half miles in five hours. "Next morning we managed to get to our camp. "Lieutenant D., face your company about, double quick, through the timber to the rear of the blankets! (We had left our packs behind when we rushed into the village.) Captain J., face your company to the left, double quick, Sir, for the timbered ridge. Advance-guard, forward!' shouted the Captain, making for the mound and ridge which covered the village. The Indians were pouring down upon us. From rock, tree, and mountain-spur rang their warwhoops and cracked their rifles. As we ran, the advance-guard, with which I was, met the guard who had been left behind with the packs. The Indians had come down upon them, and they didn't like to stay. We turned the fugitives back with us, and drove out the Indians who had taken possession of the mound. Lieutenant D. had reached the packs just in the nick of time to save them, drove off the Indians there, and helped us to 'give fits' to those who ran from the mound. Captain J. had a harder road to travel; he had to run two hundred and fifty yards up-hill, over bare ground, and the Indians got to his station before he did; but we helped him drive them out. Luckily these Coast Indians are bad shots, and though the balls flew about us, and cups, canteens, and clothes suffered some, we had but one man tumbled over, and he made no fuss. "When we had driven the Indians from this ridge, there was another mound which they still held. We turned this, and attacked them in front; and then the red scoundrels-(see how I abuse them for defending their village!)-ran down to the river, jumped into their canoes, and paddled off. Our position commanded the crossing, and we made out to kill three as they were crossing, besides the five that they left on our side of the river. Very likely we killed some on the opposite side, for we fired into the groups over there. One old woman kept up a terrible screeching. The guides said it was because we had killed her baby. "When all was over, we gathered up our packs, and commenced our march back to camp. Tired and hungry were we, for we had fought an hour and a half, after marching for six hours over the roughest road I ever saw-and I have seen some rough roads in my time. The wounded are getting well; and soon we shall have another turn with the Indians. It has rained nearly all the time, and we are about as dirty and tired a set as ever dug on a canal. "I can't help thinking," concludes the Sergeant, "that if a few adventurers will go so far ahead of all civilization, and scatter themselves through the labyrinths of these mountain fastnesses, where the elk, the grizzly bear, and the Indians have retired to make their last stand against gold-hunting, bear-shooting, and Indiankilling white men, that these said white men have no right to expect Government to send soldiers to war against such an awful country, and such well-wronged Indians. I wish Uncle Sam would end the war by putting all the goldhunters on a reservation, and paying them roundly to stay there, leaving this God-forsaken country to the Indians. As for the economy of paying the gold-hunters to stay away, our one company costs the country 800 dollars a day. You may reckon up what the whole thirtytwo companies now on the coast will cost at the end of the year-when this miserable Oregon War will hardly have begun! No one who has not traveled there can imagine the wilderness of mountains, jungles, and forests that covers all the country for hundreds of miles between the valleys of the Sacramento and the Willamette and the Pacific coast. Frémont had to go around it. There are no roads, and only here and there trails have been cut, where mining parties have found themselves near streams leading to the coast. They have spent months in cutting a track just wide enough for packmules. The names of some of the places will indicate the character of the country. There are 'Devil's Gulch, and 'Devil's Staircase,' and 'Jump-off-Joe,' and other break-neck designations. Ah, well; we poor soldiers have no votes, and must go where honor calls." Such is a single glance at "Soldiering in Oregon," as it seems to Sergeant Jones, on the "When the excitement of the fight was over, the men began to give out. One fellow fell behind, and the sergeant stopping to help him, re-spot. RIT BY CHARLES DICKENS. CHAPTER XXX.-THE WORD OF A GENTLEMAN. the door of the old house in the twilight, Jeremiah within a second of Affery, the stranger started back. "Death of my soul!" he exclaimed. "Why, how did you get here?" Mr. Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid the stranger's wonder in full. He gazed at him with blank astonishment; he looked over his own shoulder, as expecting to see some one he had not been aware of standing behind him; he gazed at the stranger again, speechlessly, at a loss to know what he meant; he looked to his wife for explanation; receiving none, he pounced upon her and shook her with such heartiness that he shook her cap off her head, saying between his teeth, with grim raillery, as he did it, "Affery, my woman, you must have a dose, my woman! This is some of your tricks! You have been dreaming again, mistress. What's it about? Who is it? What does it mean? Come! speak out or be choked! It's the only choice I'll give you." Supposing Mistress Affery to have any power of election at the moment, her choice was decidedly to be choked, for she answered not a syllable to this adjuration, but, with her bare head wagging violently backward and forward, resigned herself to her punishment. The stranger, however, picking up her cap with an air of gallantry, interposed in her behalf. "Permit me," said he, laying his hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah, who stopped, and released his victim. "Thank you. Excuse me. Husband and wife I know, from this playfulness. Ha, ha! always agreeable to see that relation playfully maintained. Listen! May I suggest that somebody up stairs in the dark is becoming energetically curious to know what is going on here?" This reference to Mrs. Clennam's voice reminded Mr. Flintwinch to step into the hall and call up the staircase, "It's all right, I am here, Affery is coming with your light." Then he said to the latter flustered woman, who was putting her cap on, "Get out with you, and get up stairs!" and then turned to the stranger, and said to him, "Now, Sir, what might you please to want?" "I am afraid," said the stranger, "I must be so troublesome as to propose a candle." "True," assented Jeremiah. "I was going to do so. Please to stand where you are while I get one." The visitor was standing in the doorway, but turned a little into the gloom of the house as Mr. Flintwinch turned, and pursued him with his eyes into the little room where he groped about for a phosphorus box. When he found it, it was damp, or otherwise out of order, and match after match that he struck into it lighted sufficiently to throw a dull glare about his groping face, and to sprinkle his hands with pale little spots of fire, but not sufficiently to light the candle. Meanwhile, the stranger, taking advantage of this fitful illumination of his visage, looked intently and wonderingly at him. Jeremiah, when he at last lighted the candle, knew he had been doing this, by seeing the last shade of a lowering watchfulness clear away from his face as it broke into the doubtful smile that was a large ingredient in its expression. "Be so good," said Jeremiah, closing the house door, and taking a pretty sharp survey of the smiling visitor in his turn, "as to step into my counting-house.-It's all right, I tell you!" petulantly breaking off to answer the voice up stairs, still unsatisfied, though Affery was there, speaking in persuasive tones. "Don't I tell you it's all right? Preserve the woman, has she no reason at all in her?" "Timorous," remarked the stranger. "Timorous?" said Mr. Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as he went before with the candle. "More courageous than ninety men in a hundred, Sir, let me tell you." "Though an invalid ?" "Many years an invalid. Mrs. Clennam. The only one of that name left in the House now. My partner." Saying something apologetically as he crossed the hall, to the effect that at that time of night they were not in the habit of receiving any one, and were always shut up, Mr. Flintwinch led the way into his own office, which presented a sufficiently business-like appearance. Here he put the light on his desk, and said to the stranger, with his wryest twist upon him, "Your commands." "My name is Blandois." "Blandois. I don't know it," said Jeremiah. "I thought it possible," resumed the other, "that you might have been advised from Paris-" "We have had no advice from Paris respecting any body of the name of Blandois," said Jeremiah. "No?" "No." Jeremiah stood in his favorite attitude, scraping his jaws. The smiling Mr. Blandois, opening his cloak to get his hand to a breast pocket, paused to say, with a laugh in his glittering eyes, which it occurred to Mr. Flintwinch were too near together: "You are so like a friend of mine! Not so identically the same as I supposed when I really did for the moment take you to be the same in the dusk-for which I ought to apologize; permit me to do so; a readiness to confess my errors is, I hope, a part of the frankness of my character-still, however, uncommonly like." "Indeed?" said Jeremiah, perversely. "But I have not received any letter of advice from any where, respecting any body of the name of Blandois." "Just so," said the stranger. "Just so," said Jeremiah. Mr. Blandois, not at all put out by this omission on the part of the correspondents of the house of Clennam and Co., took his pocket-book from his breast pocket, selected a letter from that receptacle, and handed it to Mr. Flintwinch. "No doubt you are well acquainted with the writing. Perhaps the letter speaks for itself, and requires no advice. You are a far more competent judge of such affairs than I am. It is my misfortune to be, not so much a man of business, as what the world calls (arbitrarily) a gentleman." "I dispense with style!" said Mr. Blandois, waving his hand. "Do me the honor to show me the house, and introduce me there (if I am not too troublesome), and I shall be infinitely obliged." Mr. Flintwinch took the letter, and read, un- | far, I can recommend; but there's no style der date of Paris, "We have to present to you, about it." on behalf of a highly-esteemed correspondent of our Firm, M. Blandois, of this city," etc., etc. "Such facilities as he may require, and such attentions as may lie in your power," etc., etc. "Also have to add that if you will honor M. Blandois's drafts at sight to the extent of, say Fifty Pounds sterling (£50)," etc., etc. Mr. Flintwinch, upon this, looked up his hat, and lighted Mr. Blandois across the hall again. As he put the candle on a bracket, where the dark old paneling almost served as an extin "Very good, Sir," said Mr. Flintwinch. "Take a chair. To the extent of any thing that our house can do-we are in a retired, old-guisher for it, he bethought himself of going up fashioned, steady way of business, Sir-we shall to tell the invalid that he would not be absent be happy to render you our best assistance. I five minutes. observe from the date of this that we could not yet be advised of it. Probably you came over with the delayed mail that brings the advice." “Oblige me,” said the visitor, on his saying so, "by presenting my card of visit. Do me the favor to add, that I shall be happy to wait on Mrs. Clennam, to offer my personal compliments, and to apologize for having occasioned any agitation in this tranquil corner, if it should suit her convenience to endure the presence of a stranger for a few minutes after he shall have changed his wet-clothes and fortified himself with something to eat and drink.” "That I came over with the delayed mail, Sir," returned Mr. Blandois, passing his white hand down his high-hooked nose, "I know to the cost of my head and stomach-the detested and intolerable weather having racked them both. You see me in the plight in which I came out of the packet within this half hour. Jeremiah made all dispatch, and said, on his I ought to have been here hours ago, and then return, "She'll be glad to see you, Sir; but, I should not have to apologize-permit me to being conscious that her sick room has no atapologize for presenting myself so unseasona-tractions, wishes me to say that she won't hold bly, and frightening-no, by-the-by, you said you to your offer, in case you should think better not frightening; permit me to apologize again of it." -the esteemed lady, Mrs. Clennam, in her invalid chamber above stairs." "To think better of it," returned the gallant Blandois, "would be to slight a lady; to slight Swagger and an air of condescension do so a lady would be deficient in chivalry toward the much, that Mr. Flintwinch had already begun sex;" here he kissed his fingers; "and chivalry to think this a highly gentlemanly personage. toward the sex is a part of my character!" Thus Not the less unyielding with him on that ac-expressing himself, he threw the draggled skirt count, he scraped his chin and said, what could he have the honor of doing for Mr. Blandois to-night, out of business hours? "Faith!" returned that gentleman, shrugging his cloaked shoulders, "I must change, and eat and drink, and be lodged somewhere. Have the kindness to advise me, as a total stranger, where, and money is a matter of perfect indifference, until to-morrow. The nearer the place, the better. Next door, if that's all." Mr. Flintwinch was slowly beginning, "For a gentleman of your habits, there is not in this immediate neighborhood any hotel-" when Mr. Blandois took him up. "So much for my habits! my dear Sir," said he, snapping his fingers. "A citizen of the world has no habits. That I am, in my poor way, a gentleman, by Heaven! I will not deny, but I have no unaccommodating prejudiced habits. A clean room, a hot dish for dinner, and a bottle of not absolutely poisonous wine, are all I want to-night. But I want that much without the trouble of going one unnecessary inch to get it." "There is," said Mr. Flintwinch, scraping his jaws with more than his usual deliberation, as he met, for a moment, Mr. Blandois's shining eyes, which were restless; "there is a coffee-house and tavern close here, which, so of his cloak over his shoulder, and accompanied Mr. Flintwinch to the tavern; taking up on the road a porter, who was waiting with his portmanteau on the outer side of the gateway. The house was kept in a homely manner, and the condescension of Mr. Blandois was infinite. It seemed to fill to inconvenience the little bar in which the widow landlady and her two daughters received him; it was much too big for the narrow wainscoated room with a bagatelle-board in it, that was first proposed for his reception; it swamped the little private holiday sittingroom of the family, which was finally given up to him. Here, in dry clothes and scented linen, with sleeked hair, a great ring on each forefinger, and a massive show of watch-chain, Mr. Blandois waiting for his dinner, lolling on a window-seat with his knees drawn up, looked, for all the difference in the setting of the jewel, painfully and wonderfully like a certain Monsieur Rigaud who had once so waited for his breakfast, lying on the stone ledge of the iron grating of a cell in a villainous dungeon at Marseilles. His greed at dinner, too, was closely in keeping with the greed of Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting all the eatables about him, and devouring some with his eyes, while devouring others with his mound of damped ashes; the grate with its second little mound of ashes; the kettle, and the smell of black dye; all as they had been for fif jaws, was the same manner. His utter disre- | if attired for execution; the fire topped by the gard of other people, as shown in his way of tossing the little womanly toys of furniture about, flinging favorite cushions under his boots for a softer rest, and crushing delicate cover-teen years. ings with his big body and his great black head, had the same brute selfishness at the bottom of it. The softly moving hands that were so busy among the dishes had the old wicked facility of the hands that had clung to the bars. And when he could eat no more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers, one by one, and wiping them on a cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of vine-leaves to finish the picture. On this man, with his mustache going up and his nose coming down in that most evil of smiles, and with his surface eyes looking as if they belonged to his dyed hair, and had had their natural power of reflecting light stopped by some similar process, Nature, always true, and never working in vain, had set the mark, Beware! It was not her fault if the warning were fruitless. She is never to blame in any such instance. Mr. Blandois, having finished his repast and cleaned his fingers, took a cigar from his pocket, and, lying on the window-seat, again smoked it out at his leisure, occasionally apostrophizing the smoke as it parted from his thin lips in a thin stream, to this effect: "Blandois, you shall turn the tables on society, my little child. Ha, ha! Bah, you have begun well, Blandois! At a pinch, an excellent master in English or French; a man for the bosom of families! You have a quick perception, you have humor, you have ease, you have insinuating manners, you have a good appearance; in effect you are a gentleman! A gentleman you shall live, my small boy, and a gentleman you shall die. You shall win, however the game goes. They shall all confess your merit, Blandois. You shall subdue the society which has grievously wronged you, to your own high spirit. Death of my soul. You are high-spirited by right and nature, Blandois!" To such soothing murmurs did this gentleman smoke out his cigar and drink out his bottle of wine. Both being finished, he shook himself into a sitting attitude, and with the concluding serious apostrophe, "Hold, then! Blandois, you ingenious one, have all your wits about you!" arose and went back to the house of Clennam and Co. He was received at the door by Mistress Affery, who, under instructions from her lord, had lighted up two candles in the hall and a third on the staircase, and who conducted him to Mrs. Clennam's room. Tea was prepared there, and such little company arrangements had been made as usually attended the reception of expected visitors. They were slight on the greatest occasion, never extending beyond the production of the China tea-service, and the covering of the bed with a sober and sad drapery. For the rest, there was the bier-like sofa with the block upon it, and the figure in the widow's dress, as Mr. Flintwinch presented the gentleman commended to the consideration of Clennam and Co. Mrs. Clennam, who had the letter lying before her, bent her head and requested him to sit. They looked very closely at one another. That was but natural curiosity. "I thank you, Sir, for thinking of a disabled woman like me. Few who come here on business have any remembrance to bestow on one so removed from observation. It would be idle to expect that they should have. Out of sight, out of mind. When I am grateful for the exception, I don't complain of the rule." Mr. Blandois, in his most gentlemanly manner, was afraid he had disturbed her by unhappily presenting himself at such an unconscionable time. For which he had already offered his best apologies to Mr.- he begged pardon, but by name had not the distinguished honor-" "Mr. Flintwinch has been connected with the House many years." Mr. Blandois was Mr. Flintwinch's most obedient humble servant. He entreated Mr. Flintwinch to receive the assurance of his profoundest consideration. "My husband being dead," said Mrs. Clennam, “and my son preferring another pursuit, our old House has no other representative in these days than Mr. Flintwinch.” "What do you call yourself?" was the surly demand of that gentleman. "You have the head of two men." "My sex disqualifies me," she proceeded, with merely a slight turn of her eyes in Jeremiah's direction, "from taking a responsible part in the business, even if I had the ability, and therefore Mr. Flintwinch combines my interests with his own, and conducts it. It is not what it used to be, but some of our old friends (principally the writers of this letter) have the kindness not to forget us, and we retain the power of doing what they intrust to us as efficiently as we ever did. This, however, is not interesting to you. You are English, Sir?" 'Faith, madam, no; neither born nor bred in England. In effect, I am of no country," said Mr. Blandois, stretching out his leg and smiting it, "I descend from half a dozen countries." "You have been much about the world?" "It is true. By Heaven, madam, I have been here and there and every where!" "You have no ties, probably. Are not married?" "Madam," said Mr. Blandois, with an ugly fall of his eyebrows, "I adore your sex, but I am not married-never was." Mistress Affery, who stood at the table near him pouring out the tea, happened in her dreamy state to look at him as he said these words, |