lies in the parlor or sits beside the General’s chair; always ready, too, to walk out with anybody so inclined.  Flora, a little black pony, is another four-footed favorite.  In the warm weather, the family dine in a large room on one side of the house, rough and rustic looking, with rude beams overhead.  There were evergreens hanging on the walls, and the figures 1776, also in evergreen, and a national flag suspended in one corner,—­the blue being made out of old homespun garments, the red stripes out of some of the General’s flannel wrappings, and the eagle copied from the figure on a half-dollar,—­all being the handiwork of the ladies, on occasion of the last Fourth of July.  It is quite a pleasant dining-hall; and while we were eating fruit, the deer, which is of a small and peculiar breed from the South, came and thrust its head into the open window, looking at us with beautiful and intelligent eyes.  It had smelt the fruit, and wished to put in its claim for a share.

Tuesday morning, before breakfast, E——­ and I drove three or four miles, to the summit of an intervening ridge, from which we had a wide prospect of hill and dale, with Monadnock in the midst.  It was a good sight, although the atmosphere did not give the hills that aspect of bulk and boldness which it sometimes does.  This part of the country is but thinly inhabited, and the dwellings are generally small.  It is said that, in the town of Temple, there are more old cellars, where dwellings have formerly stood, than there are houses now inhabited.  The town is not far from a hundred years old, but contains now only five or six hundred inhabitants.  The enterprising young men emigrate elsewhere, leaving only the least energetic portions to carry on business at home.  There appear to be but few improvements, the cultivated fields being of old date, smooth with long cultivation.  Here and there, however, a tract newly burned over, or a few acres with the stumps still extant.  The farm-houses all looked very lonesome and deserted to-day, the inhabitants having gone to the regimental muster at New Ipswich.

As we drove home, E——­ told a story of a child who was lost, seventy or eighty years ago, among the woods and hills.  He was about five years old, and had gone with some work-people to a clearing in the forest, where there was a rye-field, at a considerable distance from the farm-house.  Getting tired, he started for home alone, but did not arrive.  They made what search for him they could that night, and the next day the whole town turned out, but without success.  The day following, many people from the neighboring towns took up the search, and on this day, I believe, they found the child’s shoes and stockings, but nothing else.  After a while, they gave up the search in despair; but for a long time, a fortnight or three weeks or more, his mother fancied that she heard the boy’s voice in the night, crying, “Father! father!” One of his little sisters also heard this voice; but people supposed that the sounds must be those of some wild animal.  No more search was made, and the boy never was found.