a hut built, four miles from the nearest habitation, and the trees cut down were converted into rails, wherewith to fence in the cranberry-land.  At the time of my visit, the crop was just beginning to think of getting ripe, and the great lazy vines, each one creeping for several feet along the ground, were severally loaded with dozens of delicately-tinted berries, plump and fair as British beauties, which silently drew to themselves and absorbed the rays of the sun, turning them to color and succulent subacidulousness.  A most glorious sight that same hundred-acre bog must have been a couple of weeks later, when the berries had ripened, and a carpet of rosy redness blushed upwards to the waning sun!  Yet 1858 (the even year) was a bad season for cranberries,—­the yield was only sufficient to pay for the land and fencing, with a modicum over to begin 1859 with!

So cranberries grew to be institutions in the Pines, and all the bogs for miles around the site of the first experiment were hired by sanguine farmers.  But the cranberry-cultivator has one enemy, which is neither bird, nor worm, nor blight, but biped,—­a Rat, two-legged, erect, or moderately so, talking, even, in audible and intelligible speech,—­the Pine Rat, namely.  Few but New Jerseymen, and of them chiefly those who dwell about the forest, have heard of this human species; it has not yet had its Agassiz nor its Wyman,—­yet there it flourishes and repeats itself!

My friend, Mr. B., considerately undertook to initiate me into some of the mysteries of this race, which has proved minatory, though not destructive, to his blushing crop,—­and accordingly led me through brake and brier, past wild and gloomy cedar-swamps, over brooks insecurely bridged with fallen logs, or, perchance, with stepping-blocks of pine-stumps, far into the silent forest, and to a little dell or dingle,—­a natural clearing,—­where a couple of tents were pitched, and the smoke of a struggling fire told infallibly of human neighborhood.  The barking of a splenetic little terrier brought from one of the tents a man of some fifty years, lank and gaunt of visage, with matted hair, and wild, uncivilized eyes, dressed in a ragged jacket and what had once been a pair of trousers.  His face wore no expression of intelligence; but a look of intense, though animal cunning lurked in his eyes.  While I was gazing on this individual, who stood in silence by his tent, there emerged from the other an ancient female, who might have been eighty years of age, but who hobbled towards us with much briskness.

“Good evening, Hannah Butler,” said Mr. B.; “I’ve brought you some tomatoes from the Big House.  This is my friend, Mr. Smith of York.”

Mr. Smith of York (grimly repressing a smile, as his mischievous memory whispered something about Brooks of Sheffield) bowed gravely to Mrs. Butler.  Mr. B. whispers,—­“That’s the Queen of the Pine Rats!” Hannah meanwhile mumbles over one of the fleshy tomatoes.