TO ALTHEA Adam Gaudylock came, when his leisure served him, to Fontenoy as he went everywhere, by virtue of his quality of free lance and golden-tongued narrator of western news.

The stress of thought at the moment was to the West and the empire that had been purchased there; and a man from beyond Kentucky, with tales to tell of the Mississippi Territory, brought his own welcome to town, tavern, and plantation.

If this were true of all, it was trebly true of Adam, who had been born open-eyed.

As the magnet draws the filings, so he drew all manner of tidings.

News came to him as by a thousand carrier pigeons.