Long afterwards, he learned that his bride was again living among the Blackfeet;—­for it was Bloyse, and not Alixe, with whom he had galloped away to the fatal ferry, in the confusion of that terrible night.  It was poor Bloyse who went away from his arms down those crushing rapids.  It was Alixe, his bride, who shot back the bolts for the entrance of the Blackfeet.  She was secretly betrothed in the tribe, and it was her betrothed whom Walker shot down as he was rushing away in triumph with his supposed fiancee of the pale-faces.  She married another Indian of the tribe, however; for she was a savage woman at heart, and could live among savages only.

“Sisters may be as like as two walnuts, to look at,” said the old voyageur, when he had finished his narration.  “Take any two walnuts from a heap, at random, though, and, like as not, you’ll find one on ’em all heart and the other all hollow.”

“True,” replied I; “but these be wild adventures for one whose boyhood was passed in a peaceful and thoroughly whitewashed home on the banks of the St. Francois.”

“’Guess they be,” said the old voyageur.

* * * * *

THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER AND ITS EDITORS.

The families of Gales and Seaton are, in their origin, the one Scotch, the other English.  The Seatons are of that historic race, a daughter of which (the fair and faithful Catherine) is the heroine of one of Sir Walter Scott’s romances.  It was to be supposed that they whose lineage looked to such an instance of devoted personal affection for the ancient line would not slacken in their loyalty when fresh calamities fell upon the Stuarts and again upset their throne.  Accordingly, the Seatons appear to have clung to the cause of their exiled king with fidelity.  Henry Seaton seems to have made himself especially obnoxious to the new monarch, by taking part in those Jacobite schemes of rebellion which were so long kept on foot by the lieges and gentlemen of Scotland; so that, when, towards the close of the seventeenth century, the cause he loved grew desperate, and Scotland itself anything but safe for a large body of her most gallant men, he was forced, like all others that scorned to submit, to fly beyond the seas.  Doing so, it was natural that he should choose to take refuge in a Britain beyond the ocean, where a brotherly welcome among his kindred awaited the political prescript.  It is probable, however, that a special sympathy towards that region which, by its former fidelity to the Stuarts, had earned from them the royal quartering of its arms and the title of “The Ancient Dominion,” directed his final choice.  At any rate, it was to Virginia that he came,—­settling there, as a planter, first in the county of Gloucester, and afterwards in that of King William.  From one of his descendants in a right line sprang (by intermarriage with a lady