“I fear,” said I, remarking how thin and pale he had become, “that this climate cannot agree with you.”

“Nor I with the climate.  Well, we shall soon be quits, for, to let you into a secret, I am now on my way to England.”

“Impossible!”

“It is true.”

“And the farm—­what have you done with it?”

“Sold it.”

“And your outfit?”

“Sold that too.”

“To whom?”

“To one who will take better care of both than I did.  Ah! such a country!—­such people!—­such rogues!  It beats Australia hollow; you know your customers there—­but here you have to find them out.  Such a take-in!—­God forgive them!  I never could take care of money; and, one way or other, they have cheated me out of all mine.  I have scarcely enough left to pay my passage home.  But, to provide against the worst, I have bought a young bear, a splendid fellow, to make my peace with my uncle.  You must see him; he is close by in the stable.”

“To-morrow we will pay a visit to Bruin; but tonight do tell us something about yourself, and your residence in the bush.”

“You will know enough about the bush by-and-by.  I am a bad historian,” he continued, stretching out his legs and yawning horribly, “a worse biographer.  I never can find words to relate facts.  But I will try what I can do; mind, don’t laugh at my blunders.”

We promised to be serious—­no easy matter while looking at and listening to Tom Wilson, and he gave us, at detached intervals, the following account of himself:—­

“My troubles began at sea.  We had a fair voyage, and all that; but my poor dog, my beautiful Duchess!—­that beauty in the beast—­died.  I wanted to read the funeral service over her, but the captain interfered—­the brute!—­and threatened to throw me into the sea along with the dead bitch, as the unmannerly ruffian persisted in calling my canine friend.  I never spoke to him again during the rest of the voyage.  Nothing happened worth relating until I got to this place, where I chanced to meet a friend who knew your brother, and I went up with him to the woods.  Most of the wise men of Gotham we met on the road were bound to the woods; so I felt happy that I was, at least, in the fashion.  Mr. —–­ was very kind, and spoke in raptures of the woods, which formed the theme of conversation during our journey—­their beauty, their vastness, the comfort and independence enjoyed by those who had settled in them; and he so inspired me with the subject that I did nothing all day but sing as we rode along—­

‘A life in the woods for me;’

until we came to the woods, and then I soon learned to sing that same, as the Irishman says, on the other side of my mouth.”

Here succeeded a long pause, during which friend Tom seemed mightily tickled with his reminiscences, for he leaned back in his chair, and from time to time gave way to loud, hollow bursts of laughter.