will, Miss Harz, as surely as there is a sun in the heavens! 'and may I
be there to see!' as John Gilpin said, or some one of him--which was
it?"

And, whipping up his lagging steeds as we gained the open road, we
emerged swiftly from the shadows of the forest--between nodding
cornfields, already helmed and plumed for the harvest, and plantations
green with thrifty cotton-plants, with their half-formed bolls,
promising such bounteous yield, and meadows covered with the tufted
Bermuda grass, with its golden-green verdure, we sped our way toward
Lenoir's Landing.

This peninsula was formed by the junction of two rivers, between which
intervened a narrow point of land, with a background of steep hills,
covered with a growth of black-jack and yellow-pine to the summit. Here
was a ferry with its Charon-like boat, of the primitive sort--flat
barge, poled-over by negroes, and capable of containing at one time many
bales of cotton, a stagecoach or wagon with four horses, besides
passengers _ad libitum_.

This ferry constituted the chief source of revenue of Madame Grambeau,
an old French lady, remarkable in many ways. She kept the stage-house
hard by, with its neat picketed inclosure, its overhanging live-oak
trees and small trim parterre, gay at this season with various annual
flowers, scarce worth the cultivation, one would think, in that land of
gorgeous perennial bloom. But Queen Margarets, ragged robins, variegated
balsams, and tawny marigolds, have their associations, doubtless, to
make them dear and valuable to the foreign heart, to which they seem
essential, wherever a plot of ground be in possession.