“I will take off the skin for you,” said the doctor:  “you had better pack it in salt till you get to New York.  We will save that wild-cat’s skin, too:  it is a handsome pelt—­Felis rufus, the Southern lynx.”

“Well done!” cried Mr. Loud, who just then came out to the cart.  “That’s the biggest gobbler I have seen this year.  I must weigh that bird:  bring out the scales, Peter.  So—­eighteen pounds, and this other sixteen:  fine birds indeed!  Who killed them?”

“Colonel Vincent killed the largest, and I two of the others,” said Dr. Macleod of the Victoria.  “Captain Morris, I think, shot three turkeys and a deer; Mr. Weldon killed two deer; Halliday shot the steer and the cat, and the small game was pretty equally divided between us, I believe.”

We had that night a fine supper of venison steaks, roast ducks, stewed squirrels, oysters and fish, all well cooked by Mr. Loud’s old negro, who was really an artist.

S.C.  CLARKE.

THE LIVELIES.

IN TWO PARTS.—­II.

When Dr. Lively had accomplished his part toward relieving immediate suffering, when he saw system growing gradually out of the chaos, when he saw that he could be spared from the work, he began to consider his personal affairs.

“I can’t start again here,” he said to Mrs. Lively.  “Office and living rooms that would answer at all cannot be had for less than one hundred and fifty dollars a month, and that paid in advance, and I haven’t a cent.”

“What in the world are we going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about:  I met in the relief-rooms yesterday an old college acquaintance—­Edward Harrison.  He lives in Keokuk, Iowa, now—­came on here with some money and provisions for the sufferers.  He would insist on lending me a few dollars.  He’s a good fellow:  I used to like him at college.  Well, he told me of a place near Keokuk where a good physician and surgeon is needed—­none there except a raw young man.  It has no railroad, but it’s all the better for a doctor on that account.”

“No railroad!  How in the world do the folks get anywhere?”

“It’s on the Mississippi River, and boats are passing the town every few hours.”

“The idea of going from Chicago to where there isn’t even a railroad!  What place is it?”

“Nauvoo.”

“Nauvoo!  That miserable Mormon place?”

“Harrison says there is only an occasional Mormon there now—­that it’s largely settled by Germans engaged in wine-making.”

“Grapes?” asked Napoleon.

“That boy never comes out of his dreaming except for something to eat.  Dear me! the idea of living among a lot of Germans!” said Mrs. Lively, returning to the subject.

“There’s a French element there, the remnants of the Icarians—­a colony of Communists under Cabet,” the doctor explained.

“What! those horrid Communists that turned Paris upside down?” Mrs. Lively exclaimed.