I reckon, Abiram, you could glean a living among the grasshoppers: you ar' an active man, and might outrun the nimblest skipper of them all." "The country will never do," returned the other, who relished but little the forced humour of his kinsman; "and it is well to remember that a lazy traveller makes a long journey." "Would you have me draw a cart at my heels, across this desert for weeks,--ay, months ?" retorted Ishmael, who, like all of his class, could labour with incredible efforts on emergencies, but who too seldom exerted continued industry, on any occasion, to brook a proposal that offered so little repose.

"It may do for your people, who live in settlements, to hasten on to their houses; but, thank Heaven! my farm is too big for its owner ever to want a resting-place." "Since you like the plantation, then, you have only to make your crop." "That is easier said than done, on this corner of the estate.

I tell you, Abiram, there is need of moving, for more reasons than one.

You know I'm a man that very seldom enters into a bargain, but who always fulfils his agreements better than your dealers in wordy contracts written on rags of paper.

If there's one mile, there ar' a hundred still needed to make up the distance for which you have my honour." As he spoke, the squatter glanced his eye upward at the little tenement of cloth which crowned the summit of his ragged fortress.