"Why, then, do you like it better to be
here?"

"Because here I am free. In Germany I
cannot say at all how I shall be governed.
They govern the people with soldiers. They
tried to make me a soldier too, but I run
away."

Here is Mr. Olmsted's picture of a German
emigrant now dead, Otto von Bahr, who was
found at work in his log-house upon a
meteorological table, from which he was
called away to settle a dispute between
neighbours. "He was partly bald, but
seemed to have an imperturbable and happy
good fortune that gave him eternal youth.
A genial cultivation beamed from his face.
He had been a man of marked attainments
at home (an intimate associate with
Humboldt, and a friend of Goëthe's Bettina), and
kept up here a warm love for nature. His
house was the very picture of good-nature,
science, and backwoods. Romances and
philosophies were piled in heaps in a corner
of the logs. A dozen guns and rifles, and a
Madonna, in oils, after Murillo, filled a blank
on the wall. Deer skins covered the bed,
clothes hung about upon antlers, snake-skins
were stretched to dry upon the bedstead,
barometer, whiskey, powder-horns, and specimens
of Saxony wool occupied the table."

At the house of another man, who had
been highly educated both in Germany and
England, had held good social position, been
a popular leader during the days of Revolution,
and for a time been at the head of the
government of his Duchy, the travellers
joined a party of neighbours, who with the
help of a fine piano passed an evening with
Mozart's music, waltzing, and patriotic songs.
There was not a man of the company not
under political ban, condemned to death, or
to imprisonment for life. "I was looking in
a room here," Mr. Olmsted tells us, "at some
portraits of gentlemen and ladies."

"'Those are some of my relatives that
remain in Germany.'

"'And who are these?' I asked, pointing
to a collection on the opposite wall of
lithograph and crayon-sketched heads.

"'These are some of my friends. That one
—and that one—and that one—have been
shot; that one—and that one—are in prison
for life; that one—poor fellow—is in Siberia;
and that one—he has been made to suffer
more than all the others, I am afraid.'"

As we are talking about fugitives we may
as well go back to the American slave-owners
in Texas, for the purpose of adding to what
we have already said concerning them, that
their slaves are extremely apt to run to
Mexico. The Mexicans and negroes have not
any antipathy for one another, and among
the Mexicans an escaped negro is always
harboured and befriended. This makes it
somewhat difficult to push the border of the
slave country farther west. The ground
already annexed never was thickly peopled;
to annex more would be to annex together
with the soil a numerous population of
Mexicans with whom it would be difficult for
slave-owners to deal.

THE DEAD SECRET.

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH—APPROACHING
THE PRECIPICE.

TRAVELLING from London to Porthgenna,
Mr. and Mrs. Frankland had stopped, on the
ninth of May, at the West Winston station.
On the eleventh of June they left it again, to
continue their journey to Cornwall. On the
twelfth, after resting a night upon the road,
they arrived, towards the evening, at
Porthgenna Tower.

There had been storm and rain all the
morning; it had lulled towards the afternoon;
and, at the hour when they reached
the house, the wind had dropped, a thick,
white fog hid the sea from view, and
sudden showers fell drearily from time to time
over the sodden land. Not even a solitary
idler from the village was hanging about the
west terrace, as the carriage containing Mr.
and Mrs. Frankland, the baby, and the two
servants who were with them, drove up to
the house. No one was waiting with the
door open to receive the travellers; for all
hope of their arriving on that day had been
given up, and the ceaseless thundering of
the surf, as the stormy sea surged in on the
beach beneath, drowned the roll of the
carriage-wheels over the terrace road. The
driver was obliged to leave his seat, and
ring at the bell for admittance. A minute
or more elapsed before the door was opened.
With the rain falling sullen and steady
on the roof of the carriage, with the raw
dampness of the atmosphere penetrating
through all coverings and defences, with the
booming of the surf sounding threateningly
near in the dense obscurity of the fog,
the young couple waited for admission to
their own home, as strangers might have
waited who had called inopportunely.

When the door was opened at last, the
master and mistress, whom the servants
would have welcomed with the proper
congratulations, on any other occasion, were now
received with the proper apologies instead.
Mr. Munder, Mrs. Pentreath, Betsey, and Mr.
Frankland's man, all crowded together in the
hall, and all begged pardon confusedly for not
having been ready at the door, when the
carriage drove up. The appearance of the baby
changed the conventional excuses of the
housekeeper and the maid into conventional
expressions of admiration; but the men remained
grave and gloomy, and spoke of the miserable
weather apologetically, as if the rain and
the fog had been of their making. The
reason for their persistency in dwelling on
this one dreary topic, came out while Mr.
and Mrs. Frankland were being conducted
up the west staircase. The storm of the
morning had been fatal to three of the