Nor was this anticipation disappointed. It was not long before the mountaineer, who seeing his dogs well on trail had now begun to pick his way with more deliberation amongst the huge fallen logs and boulders which strewed the side of the ravine, was gratified by the sharp crack of a rifle, quickly followed up with the shout which announces the success of the lucky stander.

“Jim Razor's rifle,” muttered he, “Jim Razor's holler; thar's ven'zon, certin. And yan crazy Phil. Sterlin' away off up yan mount'n, a-watchin' the sun rise an' not a-carin' whether the dogs is come in or not! Ef he 'd 'a' seen the sun rise as many times as I have, I scarselie think he 'd be leavin' a fresh trail an' climbin' the steepest bench this side o' old Smoky, for nothin' but that! But them blasted colleges 'll ru— what is old Ring a-doin' now?” said he, stopping short and listening.

Ring was the swifter of the two hounds: if both dogs had been on trail of the same deer, Ring should have arrived at the stand first;—he was still in full cry far down the ravine.

“Lem me look for sign,” muttered the curious driver, and bent himself close to the ground, attentively scanning the clear spots in various directions.

His suspicions were soon verified. “Each dog's got his deer, an' I 'll be dad-blasted ef old Ring aint a'ter the biggest buck in Smoky range! Whoop!”

With his customary yell the mountaineer turned and began rapidly ascending the side of the ravine in order to regain the road and make better time. Down this unobstructed path he struck out with huge strides. He hoped that, as sometimes happened when hard pressed, the stag had turned aside from the water with its deadly line of standers, and had run in among the farms of the cove, where the chase would be prolonged and would become intensely exciting. As he arrived at the foot of the ridge where the road turns off among the open meadows, away from the water, an animated scene met his eye. The standers, attracted by the continued and excited trailing of old Ring had all gathered here and were loading, firing, and talking as rapidly and as ineffectually as possible. Not a hundred and fifty yards distant, the stag, a noble, eight-pronged fellow, was swimming rapidly towards the opposite bank of the river, and was now more than half way to freedom.

The mountaineer joined his forces to the main army immediately and commenced to fire “at will.”

“Whar 'd he cross the line?” inquired he, as he rammed down his bullet.

“At Mr. Sterlin's stand!” replied some fiend in human shape.

“Why did n't you kill him, Mr. Sterlin'?” shouted Smallin in the ear of a well-dressed gentleman of forty-five or fifty, whose countenance wore that half-foolish, half-defiant expression that distinguishes the derelict stander; and who was loading and firing his double barrel energetically, although the deer was far out of his range, in the apparent sweet hope of drowning in noise and good intentions the memory of his unpardonable sin.

“Well, Smallin, the—the fact is,” wiping the powder-grime and perspiration from his eyes, “I,—I was reading, and upon my word”—hastily pouring down a handful of buck-shot—“I had no idea he was so near. Did you never lose a deer Mr. Smallin?” concluded John Sterling, defiantly carrying the war over the border, and at the same time discharging both barrels, with a roar like a salvo of artillery among the thin-cracking rifles. The victorious goddess reclined in the smoke of John Sterling's double-barrel. Cain Smallin was too indignant to reply.

“What's the canoe?” asked he, turning to the crowd that had gathered from the field at the unwonted firing.

“Jeems is gone up the creek a-fishin' in it!” replied one of those disagreeable-information-furnishers, of which every crowd boasts at least one.

“By Jove, what a pity to lose him!” said John Cranston, a tall, black-mustached, wicked-eyed man, guest of the Sterlings, and honored with this deer-drive.

“Hit's a maaster buck!” observed a native.

“The biggest I've seed sense I was in the Smoky!” echoed a second.

“How come he to git thru'?” inquired a late arrival, drawing upon his devoted head a bodeful look of undying revenge from John Sterling.

Amid all this confusion of questions and exclamations, which were uttered far more quickly than they have been read, the stag was gallantly breasting his way through the water unheeding the shots, which fell far wide of him. But who could have foretold Blücher? Suddenly the fortunes of the day changed. The dripping deer had emerged from the water and was in the act of taking his first leap toward his hills and liberty, when a puff of smoke floated from behind a bush a few yards from him, the crack of a rifle smote upon the ears of the disappointed hunters on the other side, and the poor buck, with a mighty bound, fell back upon his antlers and lay still.

“Good!” shouted he of the wicked eyes: “Blücher with his thirty thousand! And the day is ours!”

“Told you so, Smallin! Told you so, gentlemen!” said John Sterling. “If I hadn't let the buck pass, we wouldn't have had half as much sport!” and the guilty stander held up his head and waved his hand triumphantly, like one conscious of being a great public benefactor.

“Them blasted Injuns!” said Smallin, whose indignation, not yet subsided, seized upon the first vent-worthy object; “always a-sneakin' about an' a-eatin' of some other person's meat! Well, a fool for luck, they say!” with which comforting reflection the mountaineer wheeled away, and winded his horn with vigorous too-toos to fetch in the dogs.

Meanwhile the fortunate hunter on the other side, whose dress—of an old slouch hat, homespun shirt and trousers, and yellow moccasins—betokened his Indian blood, had glided from his place of concealment, and having “bled” the game stood quietly watching the red stream flow, when Philip Sterling and Rübetsahl joined the unsuccessful party. These two young gentlemen, having descended to the untranscendental common-level of humanity, suddenly became aware of the usual “forms” of life.

“My father,—Mr. Rübetsahl!”

Hand-shaking, and so on.

“My friend, Mr. Cranston,—Mr. Rübetsahl!”

Philip noticed that at the first mention of Rubetsahl's name John Cranston's face turned white, and his hand trembled a moment; but he quickly recovered himself, and expressed his high sense, as in duty bound, of the happiness which had fallen upon him in knowing Mr. Rübetsahl.

“And now, gentlemen,” cried John Sterling to his son and his two guests, “it's high breakfast-time; wherefore I move that we adjourn to my house and discuss a rib of the buck there, broiled as only old Ned can broil it.”

The hearty old gentleman led the way towards Thalberg; whither you, O 24,999, and I, albeit none of us are invited, may follow, for even if I failed to make you invisible, and John Sterling saw the whole crowd, he would welcome you every one,—so big, so big was his heart!

Now, I promise to quit apostrophizing when I get fairly into my tale; but while we're walking up this slope behind old John, indulge me, I pray ye, in a little of it done on mine own account. For how can I forget that jocund party of friends with whom, in the early fall of '60. I penetrated these mountains, on a camp-hunt?

Can I forget the mighty hunter of the black eye and beard whom in solemn convention we did dub (it was the time of the Japanese invasion!) the Grand Tycoon; or the six-footer uncle whom, being unfamiliar with the Japanese gradations, we assigned him as Deputy Tycoon; or old Ned, the French cook, whom the Deputy touched off; or Cricket, the dog, who climbed on old Ring's shoulders and stole the meat one night, as Ned averred? Can I forget how, one divine morning, when we had just returned to camp from the killing of a buck, and were taking our several ease (as Lorrie said), recubans sub tegmine of certainly the most patulæ fagi any of us ever saw, the Grand Tycoon, in his lordly way, suddenly exclaimed, “Get out of the way, old Ned, with your French fripperies; hand me the side of that buck, there!” and how the Grand Tycoon did then purvey him a long beechen wand with a fork on the end thereof, did insert the same in the ribbèd side of the deer, and did rest the whole upon a twig deftly driven in juxtaposition with a bed of glowing coals of the wood of hickory; and how the Grand Tycoon did stand thereover with his muscular right arm outstretched, like Hercules over the Lernean Hydra, save that our Hercules held in his right hand a bottle of diabolical hue wherefrom he ever and anon did drip upon the crisping ribs a curious and potent admixture of butter, hot water, lemon-juice, mustard, pepper, salt, and wine; and how, presently, the Grand Tycoon came to me and said, “Try that rib, ——!” and how I took hold of the rib with both hands, it being long as my arm, and near as large, and did forthwith, after the hyena fashion, bite into the same; and how as the meat, with its anointments and juices, did fare slowly down the passage appointed for such, the titillation thereof upon the uvula or palate was so exquisite that the world grew brighter upon a sudden, and methought even the brook that ran hard by did murmer a stave or two from the Drinking Song of Lucrezia?

Alas, and alas! O jocund hunters of the fall of 60, how hath the “rude imperious surge” of the big wars tossed us apart, hither and thither! The Grand Tycoon is sunken; he hath gone into a wood contract with railroads, and old Ned languisheth. The Deputy beareth scar of Gettysburg, and yet deeper scars beareth he; I scribble; and poor Lorrie, the ever-genial, went, I hear, at Shiloh, to the happy hunting-grounds!

Abiit ad plures; whither, I forget not, we also, O Tycoon and jocund hunters, go soon to join him!

“It is as if Liszt, in the rush of that storm-galop on the piano, should suddenly glide away into a peaceful Lied of Mendelssohn!” said Rübetsahl.

“Or like a sudden lull in a battle, during which one hears a Sister of Mercy praying over a man just killed!” said Philip.

“Aye, it is like a sunshiny Sabbath coming between twelve stormy week-days. It is my Valley Beautiful. Come, enter, Mr. Cranston. Mr. Rübetsahl, I had a fancy to call my house Thalberg, because it belongs equally to the mountain and the valley; and I bid you welcome to it very heartily,” said princely John Sterling.

And somehow it did not seem strange to anybody at Thalberg that Philip should have found this man wandering among the mountains at sunrise, in that lonely country. For Rübetsahl talked of mountains as he would talk of absent friends; he seemed to have peered into their ravines and nooks as if he were studying a friend's character, and to have slept upon them as on a friend's bosom.

An hour after supper on the night of that first day at Thalberg, John Sterling laid down his pipe, and, as he had been lost in that cloud of smoke he had puffed forth, sung out at the top of his voice,

“ ‘And where be ye, my merry, merry men?’ ”

“Here,” chorused voices in the music-room.

As he entered, Philip was turning over some music on a stand; Cranston was stretching a new E upon his violin, frowning savagely and breathing hard the while, as if he were strangling the poor instrument by the neck; and Rübetsahl and Felix Sterling were conversing composedly at the piano.

It was about this moment when Rübetsahl began to discover that he had mistaken the tall, gray-eyed girl with whom he was talking; that her coldness was rather a transparent purity like that of star-beams which seem cold to the hand but warm to the soul, and that her apparent unimpressibility was rather the veiled impressibility of an enthusiasm which was so strong that it feared itself. He had yet to find that music was the Moses-wand that could smite this crystalline rock into a soft refresher of the thirsty. For indeed the soul of Felix Sterling was like a sea, concealing in its immense translucency myriads of unknown things; but, when music was toward, it was as if a spirit plenipotentiary sailed down the wind and stood over the centre of this sea, and uttered some tremendous word at which all the sea-shapes, terrible and beautiful together, rose in strange shoals to the surface.

That day, at dinner, Rübetsahl had remarked that Frankfort-on-the-Maine was his birthplace; and Felix added that Mr. Cranston had passed some time at that place when he was in Germany; whereupon quick flashing glances were exchanged between Cranston and Rübetsahl; all of which Philip had detected, and he was puzzling over it, as he idly turned the leaves of his music.

“Come, Phil; your flute, man! I always begin my musicale with the flute, Mr. Rübetsahl: it is like walking in the woods, amongst wild flowers, just before you go into some vast cathedral. For the flute seems to me to be peculiarly the woods-instrument; it speaks the gloss of green leaves or the pathos of bare branches; it calls up the strange mosses that are under dead leaves; it breathes of wild plants that hide and oak-fragrances that vanish; it expresses to me the natural magic in music. Have you ever walked on long afternoons in warm sunny spots of the woods, and felt a sudden thrill strike you with the half-fear that a ghost would rise up out of the sedge or dart from behind the next tree and confront you, there in the broad daylight? That is the sensation Phil's solos — he won't have an accompaniment — always produce upon me.” Old John stopped: he was out of breath.

“Father, give me half a chance!” said Philip, already toot-tooting low flourishes and runs.

“ ‘How sharper than a serpent's tooth’ and so forth!” rejoined the father, holding up his hands in mock horror. “O filial impiety! But you will believe, Mr. Rübetsahl, that I love to hear it as much as I do to talk about it. Go on, Phil — age!”

A series of irregular modulations comes purl — purling along, like a rivulet shooting down smooth moss, then eddying over rough pebbles, and shooting and eddying again; straight lines and circles of notes, as it were. But he manages that through all the modulations a certain note is dimly but repeatedly presented to us. Presently he stops on this note, lingers there a moment, and then glides into a simple liquid adagio of sixteen notes. Comes suddenly a warbling movement in which the lower notes are fingered so rapidly that they make harmony instead of melody, and we quickly discover the adagio displaying itself in short upper notes struck between the lower ones, as the sky displays itself in patches, each with a faint star in it, through the crevices of an arabesque ruin. Then comes a thin clear romance, as if stealing from afar, in which the notes rise and fall, and complain and rejoice, and echo and answer, till one voice pours out a stream of tender appealings, which seem to prevail, and the piece ends with a long sigh of satisfied relief.

“Well, and what do you mean by it?” impatiently broke in Felix, “for your ‘descriptive music’ is all humbug unless you give us the idea!”

“Well, I'll tell you. One day, at college, I had just read this magnificent line:—“Or Lady of the LakeLone sitting by the shores of old Romance!”when a messmate broke into the room, and swore our ham was out and the mess fund was dry, and begged my assistance in an expedition then organizing in my mess to steal the President's turkeys, that night! I didn't go with 'em, but played that piece, in defense of my poor, lonely Lady of the Lake!”

Even the ridiculous could not cloud the sparkle that was now shining in the eyes of Felix Sterling.

“O,” cried she, “I see, I see. Romance, —‘Fresh as a spouting spring amongst the hills,’ seeks to clear itself of the vile commonplace ‘cares that have rilled into it,’ and asserts itself and exhibits its beauty, and pleads and prevails and becomes pure again! It was too beautiful, brother Phil, and I'll kiss you this night, and there's my hand on it!”

“Good!” cried old John, and laughed, and bravoed uproariously at the girl's sally.

“Himmel!” said Rübetsahl. “Friend Philip, you are a poet: Miss Sterling, you are a poem!”

Whereat “Bravissimo!” from old John again, while Cranston sat still, with wicked eye, and lip just curling into the semblance of a sneer.

“Well,” said John Sterling when he had subsided, “My time now, eh, Phil? And I do protest, Mr. Rübetsahl” (“Bless my life, what a listener that German Rübetsahl was!” old John used to say after Paul had gone to the wars), “I wonder how it is that many good American people even now consider music a romantic amusement, rather than a common necessity, of life! When surely, of all the commonplaces, none is more broadly common or more inseparable from daily life. Music! It is as common as — as — as — Phil, I'll thank you for a simile! — as —”

When Cranston thought of virtue and such things, he formed to himself a vague idea that the earth was a mysterious wild-cat bank, doing a very inflated business by brazenly issuing, every day, multitudes of irredeemable bills in the shape of hypocritical men; and in his heart Cranston was certain that the teller of this bank had long ago robbed its vaults of all the virtue, or bullion, and absconded to very unknown parts. A brave, nervous-souled boy, strong of limb, strong of passion, unboundedly energetic, unconquerably persevering, with an acute intellect to guide these qualities; but thoroughly selfish, and without even the consciousness that this last was his bad trait — John Cranston was capable of building up many things; but his life was nothing more than a continuous pulling down of all things.

A terrible mêlée of winged opposites is forever filling the world with a battle din which only observant souls hear: Love contending with Impurity; Passion springing mines under the calm entrenchment of Reason; scowling Ignorance thrusting in the dark at holy-eyed Reverence; Romance deathfully encountering the attack of Sentimentality on the one side and Commonplace on the other; young Sensibility clanging swords with gigantic maudlin Conventionality, whose reliance is upon main strength and awkwardness, — and a thousand more. I have seen no man who did not suffer from the shock of these wars unless he got help from that One Man whom it is not unmanly to acknowledge our superior.

Cranston was too proud, that is to say, too selfish, to get any help: he became impure, not loving; he was unreasonable, passion firing him; he did no reverence, being ignorant of its objects; he despised romance, foolishly confounding it with sentimentality; he killed and utterly destroyed conventionality, instead of merely disarming and subduing it.

Allusion has been made to an occasion in the life of the elder Cranston when he did not precisely foresee the result of certain actions. Twenty-two or three years afterwards, he involved himself in a similar uncertainty. Which is to say, he hung a golden chain about the neck of his young lion-cub, and turned him loose upon Germany.

At Frankfort-on-the-Maine, people said young John was like Goethe. He had Lucifer-eyes; he spoke French and German and English; he walked like a young god; he played them mad with his violin; he accepted invitations with little return-poems that breathed sweetly a satanic despair; he was six feet one; — what more should one want to make one a lion at Frankfort-on-the-Maine?

“No less a necessity than the fitness of things. Fair greeting to a fair woman; like to like!”

“But we Germans say, like cures like; and so your last compliment destroys your first.”

“And that is well, too; otherwise the embarras de richesses would cause the Fraulein to suffer.”

“Again! Herr Cranston reminds me of the good maiden in the fairy-tale, from whose mouth, whenever she spoke, there dropped either a pearl or a diamond.”

“If it be so, then you are the fairy that has conferred this gem-gift upon me!”

“Du Himmel!” cried Ottilie, and seizing a Chinese parasol from the étagère, spread it out between herself and Cranston. “One might as well be killed with a shower of hail-stones as of diamonds; it is but death after all.”

“Thou rose! No shower would ever disturb one petal of thine, save to pelt a perfume out of it.”

“Ah, well! one way remains. I will, in the woman's way, conquer you by surrendering to you. So; I announce myself tired of compliments, Herr Cranston, and I long for some music. See, there is your violin, which your servant brought an hour ago!”

Cranston unlocked the case.

“Poor violin! Take him up tenderly out of his dark case, Herr Cranston. Ah, when life has played its long tune upon me, and locked me up in my grave-case, I hope the Great Musician will take me out so, and draw a divine love-melody from me. Is not a violin wonderfully like a man? It can be heavenly, it can be earthy, it can be fiendish! It can make lark-music that draws our eye towards heaven, it can make dance-music that keeps our feet moving upon the earth, and it can make Circe-music that allures us to —”

“To hell, Fraulein?”

“Yes.”

“Which of these styles does the Fraulein prefer?” said Cranston, gravely arranging his bow.

“O, Mephistopheles! play what pleases thy satanic fancy.”

Who, being led to the edge of a precipice, has not felt the insidious and alluring desire to leap over it rising stronger and stronger within him, until he draws back, shuddering?

There are some unaccountable moments when one is wild with insane longing to leap from the rock of what is fixed and known as virtuous, into the terrible mist of the unknown and bad, floating below.

It was this desire that sparkled in Ottilie —'s eyes, and drew her to the very brink.

“Sound me,” said she, “some strains from thy native Hades. I do not want any brimstone and agitato and thunder, and all that traditional infernal-music; but something beautiful and wicked and very sweet.”

“As if tawny Cleopatra peered wickedly at you over Godiva's white shoulder?”

“So; and play, thou Satan in chains, till I bid thee stay!”

Let it be said only, that this music which John Cranston improvised was like a rose, with the devil lying perdu in its red heart; was like a soft, gray eye, with a voluptuous sparkle in it; was like a silver star-beam, only not cold, but hot with intoxicating perfumes.

Gretchen packed, the bankers received instructions under secrecy, and the two thickly-veiled women took departure by night for America.

To the sick soul, rapid physical motion is like a sea-breeze to fevered men.

“Gretchen,” said Ottilie, as the steam — good genius of our day! — bore them bounding along, “I think I know why the world and the stars move. And the sea — must it not be happy, since it is forever in motion? Poor, unhappy trees on the shore, there — they cannot move. They seem to thank the good kind breeze with swelling whispers and sighs of delight, when it but shakes their unwieldy arms! Motion forever, for me! Gretchen, what is thine idea of heaven?”

“It is to sink into the Everlasting Arms and be at rest.”

“And mine is, to dash about like lightning, my soul being unclogged by dull old sins; to move through thousands of worlds, wherever I list, with unlaborious motion which is but the result of a mere volition, yes, to think myself along through the Paradises! Perhaps I would stop, sometimes, and dream on meditative wing, feeling myself well and buoyantly upborne by nothing grosser than the atmosphere of sunlight which I breathed. Once I could almost do this; but now — Gretchen, look at that sea-bird, yonder! he can hardly fly for the weight of the fish he is carrying in claws and beak; and it is so with us on earth; we cannot make a flight, without being dragged down by some fleshly provision-for-the-morrow.”

Sorrow makes poets. Memnon's statue sang when the morning-light struck it, but I think men and women sing when the darkness draws on. Nevertheless those are the best poets who keep down these cloudy sorrow-songs and wait until some light comes to gild them with comfort.

The two women arrived at New York, and travelled on, through Virginia and Tennessee. Ottilie had glimpses of the mountains occasionally. These blue distant hills enticed her to them, as the blue distant skies entice a lark upward.

At Knoxville, even patient Gretchen must needs confess she was a little tired.

“Well,” exclaimed Ottilie, with a sudden resolution, “yonder are the mountains — they look lonely. Let us stop here, and go to them. I yearn to plunge myself into that blue ocean of loneliness over yonder. What a color is blue, Gretchen! I will wear it hereafter. The sea is blue, the mountains are blue, the heavens are blue. One might think blue was good for sick souls as for weak eyes.”

The road from the Knoxville depot into the city is a perilous one. As Ottilie's hack started, the horses became frightened. In vain coachee cracked whip and jerked rein. The animals became unmanageable, and reared; in another instant they would have backed the carriage over the precipitous embankment, when a tall Indian, in slouch hat and moccasins, who, with folded arms and stolid countenance had been watching the passengers emerge from the train, seized the bridles with strong arm, turned the back into the road, and at length succeeded in quieting the horses.

Gretchen was half-dead with terror; but Ottilie, who had been looking on with a half-smile of admiration at the quivering muscles and magnificent attitudes of the rearing horses, called to the driver to stop, and beckoned their preserver, who had again resumed his position of apparent indifference, to approach. Possibly her eyes grew more eloquent, as she thought of the melancholy remnant of the fine old Cherokees that once bounded over these hills, while the Indian, a majestic, brawny man, was walking up to her carriage: at any rate, those great orbs beamed in upon the half-tamed soul of the fellow like a beautiful gray dawn. Half-shamefully, Ottilie offered him money. Believe that this Indian was in love at first sight: he refused it!

“Do you live here?” asked Ottilie.

“No. Way over yonder!”

“When do you return?”

“To-morrow mornin'. We carry books to Obadiah. Obadiah our preacher.”

“Listen, Gretchen. Let us go with him!”

“I go with you, Fraulein, anywhere.”

“What is your name?” asked Ottilie, addressing the Indian.

“Me? Jim Saggs!”

“O Gretchen, what a name for that magnificent creature! He says he lives beyond — what did you call the mountain?”

“Chilhowee.”

“Beyond Chilhowee. Let us call him that. I like good names.

“Chilhowee, come to the hotel at twelve, to-day. I wish to make arrangements to be guided by you over to the mountains, where you live. Will you come?”

“Yes.”

The arrangements were made, and after infinite trouble, the two women got themselves transported to a small “cove” in the mountains, a few miles from John Sterling's Valley Beautiful. Here they fitted up a cabin with a piano and a few books and pictures, retaining Chilhowee in their service to supply them with game and be guard for the house. The sparse population of simple mountaineers at first regarded with much wonder the two lone women who never visited, and were always riding and walking about the mountains; but the wonder soon settled into a vague feeling of suspicion and dislike, which vented itself in “them stuck-up creeturs over yan on the hill,” and other the like epithets. News does not travel fast in these mountains, and Chilhowee, possessing all the proverbial taciturnity of his race, never tattled. The Thalberg family knew nothing of these singular visitors.

So, the mountains received the lost. To Ottilie, a majestic maternity dwelt in the broad bosoms of these hills. They seemed to have swelled and heaved, long ago, in a mighty love-sigh, and been petrified into eternal symbols of an eternal passion. With a delicious abandon she plunged into the deep ferny ravines, or sat upon rocky heights and sung to opposing rocks across the foaming streams far below. If the stern, pure rocks upbraided her with their seams and furrows, got in resisting so long the temptations of the wanton winds, she had only to turn to the trees, that ever lifted their arms toward Heaven, obeying the injunction of the Apostle, praying always: the great uncomplaining trees, whose life is surely the finest of all lives, since it is nothing but a continual growing and being beautiful; the silent, mysterious trees, most strong where most gnarled, and most touching when wholly blasted, for gnarling is but another name for conquering, and they were blasted only by wayward lightnings, for no sin.

Wretched men and women in this world, wretched with the only wretchedness that deserves that name, which is the suffering of one's own transgressions, — have ye ever been “alone with God in His mountains?”

Up along those broad ascents one's thought glances straight to Heaven. These be the kings that fling to the plains kingly largesse of water that is better than gold coins. Here come breezes right from the sea, that have not been low enough to get the reek of the cities nor the malaria of the valleys upon their wings. Here salutes the sun, in the morning like a brother with dewy-pure blessing, in the evening like a lover with warm, passionate caresses. Here grow the strong sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins' hearts. Here is the baby-hood of the rivers. Here wave the ferns, and cling the mosses, and clamber the reckless vines. Here Falstaff-beeches stand rollicking by straight Puritan-pines and substantial Flemish burgher-oaks, while the mosses and ashes, forest dandies, pose in nonchalant attitudes.

Here old giant Convulsion, horrible ogre that wont to swallow up so many young things, is tamed and humanized into deep and benign Repose.

And here one's soul may climb as upon Pisgah, and see one's land of peace — seeing Christ, who made all these beautiful things.

Cranston shook his head, as who should say, “Tempting, but I'm looking for something else.” And so, amid a confused intermingling of sounds and faces, he at length managed to fix his attention upon the face of Rübetsahl, until a full recollection of the whole last scene in the music-room shone before him.

Perhaps anger is the most complex deceit of them all, shifting its wrath from one's self, richly deserving, to some other self, undeserving, upon the most pitiful excuses. Indignation may be just; but anger forever cheats for a victim. And so, John Cranston, instead of cursing his own crime, or gnashing his teeth over the insane folly which had prompted him to betray himself, cursed Rübetsahl instead, and snarled at him.

“Good God! Good God!” he said, setting his teeth and stretching out his hands as he sank back on the bed. “He struck me—in her presence—in presence of them all! The miserable scoundrel—to take advantage of me when the sherry had unsteadied my nerves! And now, I suppose, he'll blab every thing to make capital for himself; and add from his own invention, until he gets capital enough to buy the whole family!”—with a bitter laugh. “And he struck me; he struck me; he struck me!” An idea hard to grasp!

“I can see the whole tale he'll tell. ‘He heard of my—adventure with this Frankfort friend of his; she had no father or brother; he determines to avenge her’—the dear, chivalrous knight of damsels in distress—; ‘he will devote his life to this sacred cause; he thinks he will likely find me in America; he comes over, nay, 'gad, he rushes over, flies over, inquires for me, tracks me here, and if he can find me again,’—for the fool will know that I'm going to leave to-night—‘he'll—play the devil,’ and so forth, and so on. He's probably gone through the whole tale by this time.

“But, by God,” said he, jumping from the bed, a maniac in eyes and face and hair, “and by the devil and all, I'll kill him,—I swear it,—I'll kill him this day!”

Cranston walked to his window, and examined the ground outside. It was an easy leap. He turned, and glanced round the room, which was one that Philip Sterling had occupied. Opposite the bed hung two swords, which had been wont to serve his young friend in the peaceful capacity of dream-provocatives, or reverie-superinducers, the said swords being respectively a long, two-handed, naked blade like Richard Cœur de Lion's, and a delicate rapier such as a gallant might wear at court. This huge brand, that looked grim as a battle, and this dainty rapier, that could make one think of nothing but waving plumes and arras and lovely women, seemed strangely opposed, as if war and love had married: a lion lying down with a lamb. Many a long, delicious hour had Philip spent over these two relies of chivalric days; as the Lily Maid of Astolat watched the shield of absent Lancelot:—“And made a pretty history to herselfOf every dint a sword had beaten in it,And every scratch a lance had made upon it,Conjecturing when and where: this cut is fresh:That, ten years back: this dealt him at Caerlyle:That, at Caerleon: this, at Camelot:And ah!—God's mercy!—what a stroke was there!And here a thrust that might have killed, but GodBroke the strong lance, and rolled his enemy down,And saved him: so she lived in fantasy.” And so had Philip wound his fine dreams, like silken scarfs, about his swords.

But John Cranston, bent on destroying the greatest of all dreams—life—cared little for idler reveries of romantic boys; and, taking down the rapier, whose use was nearly all he had learned at college, he leaped from the window and strode up the abruptly swelling knoll, as if, upon some height, he could better see what course to pursue.

Like a tear upon an eyelid, wept in a dream, glittering, tremulous, ready to drop, hung the morning-star upon the fringed horizon. A white mist, which had sought shelter in the water-valley for the night, was beginning to wake and ruffle wing for another day's journey.

Cranston had stopped and smiled a bitter smile, that such peaceful things should dare to go on in the world when he was angry. As he turned to mount the knoll, the morning-star was suddenly obscured by a tall form which uprose as if by magic out of the earth, and which loomed gigantically in the dim light before him. All the blood in his frame rushed backward toward his heart, as the reflection flashed across his mind that it was Rübetsahl, waiting for him. For one moment, the consciousness of being in the wrong subdued his natural bravery, and he fairly staggered with the weakness of relaxation.

But his vengeful anger restored his courage and heated his soul. Unsheathing the beautiful taper blade which he carried, and throwing the scabbard as far as he could hurl it, in emphatic token of war to the death, he advanced rapidly toward his opponent, speaking, as he went, in passionate jerks and crowding eddies of words.

“Aha, you—you waylay me in the darkness, do you?” O Cranston! was it waylaying a man to rise up in front of him and stand still with folded arms as this tall figure did? “Not content with taking advantage of a moment when I was—was—” (he has objections to the word drunk), “when my nerves were unsteadied, you—you wait all night to ambush me, do you?” The said ambuscade being on the top of a bare knoll, which would reveal a cricket against the sky, to one ascending!

“I suppose you've told 'em all how it was by this time, and got your maw full of praise for your—your heroism and your devotion, you dear good man, you sweet constant man, you—you damned contemptible scoundrel!” thundered he in an irrepressible flood of fury, and leapt forward to thrust, forgetting to put himself en garde even.

“Why you kill me?” said the Indian; for it was Chilhowee. He had slept until his light slumbers had been broken by the sound of approaching footsteps. He quickly recognized the man with whom he had in vain sought an interview the day before.

Cranston dropped his sword with an oath, as he saw the mistake into which his blind rage had led him, and took from the Indian's hand a piece of paper which he was silently holding out.

“For me?”

“Yes.”

“From whom?”

“No tell.”

B. Chauncey Flemington, a gay representative of a big plantation in Mississippi, is drawing on the left individual of a pair of boots, whose yellow “insides” he has caused to be cut and pulled over, after the manner of the boots that Pizarro wears in the theatre.

John Briggs, whom nor I nor anybody know, except that he was the best fellow in the English language, is tying a blue ribbon round his knee to fasten a flesh-colored long stocking, such as the genteel shepherd wears in the theatre. Alf. Aubrey is tying the thong of a Roman sandal upon his foot, occasionally pausing to glance at an open Shakespeare lying on the table, after each glance throwing back his head and shutting his eyes, while his lips move slowly, as if he were repeating in silent enjoyment the words of the master.

Boots, towels, trunks, trunk-trays, cologne-bottles, and a thousand miscellanea of the masculine toilet, lie scattered in inextricable confusion about the floor of No. 93.

“John,” said Flemington, giving a last hitch to his boots, “I wish to direct your serious attention to Aubrey, there. I,” — regarding the right boot with intense gaze, — “I wish to remind you that I have known Aubrey from — I may say, from his youth up, or, I should say, in view of his present course of life, from his youth down. Now, during all this amazing stretch of time that I have known Aubrey there, it has never been my lot to see him read any book whatever; but adhering with great consistency to his belief that books were theoretical things, he has continued to study human nature in the light of the sternly-practical, without the assistance of written help. I wish to direct your serious attention (after this short preamble) to the fact that from a period nearly contemporaneous with the first hints that were given of this fancy-ball to-night, my friend Aubrey there, discarding that rigorous practicality which has hitherto distinguished him, has become nothing more nor less than a — bookworm! The singularity of this change is heightened by the fact that this worm crawls only in one book, — that book, Shakespeare: only on one page of that book, — that page, the page where occurs the ninth scene of the third act of Antony and Cleopatra, about the middle of the left-hand column, beginning with the words — with the words,” — and with an adroit movement, Flemington snatched the book off the table before Aubrey could interpose, and assuming a tragic attitude, continued: — “with the words, I naturally imagine, which my friend Aubrey there has marked in brackets with a pencil, to wit: —‘Antony . . . Egypt, thou knewest too wellMy heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings,And thou should'st tow me after: o'er my spiritThy full supremacy thou knewest, and thatThy Beck —’ I entreat you to believe, Briggs, that the capital B which commences this word ‘beck’ is Aubrey's and not Shakespeare's, —. . . ‘and thatThy Beck might from the bidding of the GodsCommand me.’

“John Briggs, have I your serious attention?”

“At your request, I have concentrated my serious attention, like the nozzle of a fire-engine, upon our friend Aubrey there. It is now spirting against him, full steam. If you do n't relieve it shortly, I have no doubt it'll knock him out of the window!”

“It is well. I wish you to retain this quotation, marked in brackets by my friend Aubrey there, in your mind, while I relate a little circumstance that befell, a matter of ten days ago. While I was one day reading Shakespeare at the big oak out yonder, the sun crawled round and shone too warmly for me, insomuch that I was fain get behind the tree and lie down on the grass, leaving my book open on the bench. In this situation I fell asleep. Being presently awakened by the sound of voices, I perceived a gentleman and lady approaching, down the walk, and my attire being somewhat disordered, I lay still, hoping not to be discovered. It is hardly necessary for me to state that the gentleman was my friend Aubrey there,” — Aubrey leaned his face upon his hands — “and it is almost equally unnecessary for me to state that the lady was the mother of Rebecca Parven, whom Aubrey has been adoring in sight of everybody for a month or more. They sat down on the bench.

“ ‘And so, my dear Mr. Aubrey,’ Mrs. Parven said, ‘Beck and I (I call my daughter Rebecca, Beck, — you know ‘call me pet names, dearest’ — ah!), Beck and I concluded that we would bring you into our little plot for having something recherche in the way of costumes for the ball; because we want your advice about the dresses, and we wish that you'd get up a little speech to make the characters go off natural like, you know, and so on. Now, Beck wants to come as Cleopatra, because Beck, you know, is a brunette, and Cleopatra was a brunette, wasn't she, Mr. Aubrey?’