THE AID-DE-CAMP’S DISCOVERY.

There are few sights in the world as beautiful as an American mountain side, clothed with forest to the summit, when early frosts have begun to touch the leaves, and wake them into color.

In the midst of the wild mountains of Vermont, in those days almost deserted by human beings, a young man on horseback was pursuing his way at a smart trot along a narrow road that wound round the lower ridges, in a way that showed the ingenuity of the rustic engineers in economizing labor.

To all appearance there was not a creature in sight, save the wild animals and the lonely traveler, who pursued the path as if he knew it well. Once, when he stopped to water his horse at a stream, he startled a herd of deer who were coming to drink, and caused them to scurry away through the bushes in alarm.

The young traveler looked around him as the deer vanished in the thicket, with great admiration. He was in the midst of a small valley, hemmed in by rounded mountains, and through the midst of which ran a brown, brawling stream, in which the spotted trout played by hundreds. The mountains were clothed to the very summit with woods, and although it was not yet the end of August, light frosts had already been there, in the long nights on the mountain sides. Here and there amid the green blazed out the scarlet of a distant tree, half of whose foliage had been touched as with a fiery pencil, while the verdure of the rest looked fresher by contrast. Now and then the golden hue of a maple shed a glory of color over its vicinity, but there was, as yet, only enough of this to set off the somber green of the pines and the lighter foliage of the oak and birch.

The traveler was a young man, and handsome withal. His dress was, perhaps, the most picturesque in the annals of military history, for the youth was evidently a soldier, and an[Pg 14] officer at that. The towering fur cap, narrowing as it rose, and ornamented with gold cord and white plumes, the furred and braided jacket, hanging from his shoulder, the still more gorgeous dolman that fitted his slight form to a nicety, blazing with gold embroidery, all over the sky-blue ground of the breast, the light buck-skin breeches, with braided pocket-covers, and the scarlet morocco boots, rising mid-leg and tasseled with gold were unfailing indications to the eye practiced in military costume, that the wearer was an officer of some German corps of hussars, then at the zenith of their reputation under the great Frederick of Prussia. The young hussar was magnificently 

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