The sailor does not lack for singing. He sings at certain parts of his work;—indeed, he must sing, if he would work. On vessels of war, the drum and fife or boatswain's whistle furnish the necessary movement-regulator. There, where the strength of one or two hundred men can be applied to one and the same effort, the labor is not intermittent, but continuous. The men form on either side of the rope to be hauled, and walk away with it like firemen marching with their engine. When the headmost pair bring up at the stern or bow, they part, and the two streams flow back to the starting-point, outside the following files. Thus in this perpetual "follow-my-leader" way the work is done, with more precision and steadiness than in the merchant-service. Merchant-men are invariably manned with the least possible number, and often go to sea shorthanded, even according to the parsimonious calculations of their owners. The only way the heavier work can be done at all is by each man doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the song. And here is the true singing of the deep sea. It is not recreation; it is an essential part of the work. It mastheads the topsail-yards, on making sail; it starts the anchor from the domestic or foreign mud; it "rides down the main tack with a will"; it breaks out and takes on board cargo; it keeps the pumps (the ship's,—not the sailor's) going. A good voice and a new and stirring chorus are worth an extra man. And there is plenty of need of both.

I remember well one black night in the mid-Atlantic, when we were beating up against a stiff breeze, coming on deck near midnight, just as the ship was put about. When a ship is tacking, the tacks and sheets (ropes which confine the clews or lower corners of the sails) are let run, in order that the yards may be swung round to meet the altered position of the ship. They must then be hauled taut again, and belayed, or secured, in order to keep the sails in their place and to prevent them from shaking. When the ship's head comes up in the wind, the sail is for a moment or two edgewise to it, and then is the nice moment, as soon as the head-sails fairly fill, when the main-yard and the yards above it can be swung readily, and the tacks and sheets hauled in. If the crew are too few in number, or too slow at their work, and the sails get fairly filled on the new tack, it is a fatiguing piece of work enough to "board" the tacks and sheets, as it is called. You are pulling at one end of the rope, but the gale is tugging at the other. The advantages of lungs are all against you, and perhaps the only thing to be done is to put the helm down a little, and set the sails shaking again before they can be trimmed properly.—It was just at such a time that I came on deck, as above mentioned. Being near eight bells, the watch on deck had been not over spry; and the consequence was that our big main-course was slatting and flying out overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying-pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all overhead was black with the flying scud. The English second-mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his ills misplaced, storming at the men:—"'An'somely the weather main- brace,—'an'somely, I tell you!—'Alf a dozen of you clap on to the main sheet here,—down with 'im!—D'y'see 'ere's hall like a midshipman's bag,—heverythink huppermost and nothing 'andy.—'Aul 'im in, Hi say!" —But the sail wouldn't come, though. All the most forcible expressions of the Commination-Service were liberally bestowed on the watch. "Give us the song, men!" sang out the mate, at last,—"pull with a will! —together, men!—haltogether now!"—And then a cracked, melancholy voice struck up this chant:

"Oh, the bowline, bully bully bowline, Oh, the bowline, bowline, HAUL!"

At the last word every man threw his whole strength into the pull,—all singing it in chorus, with a quick, explosive sound. And so, jump by jump, the sheet was at last hauled taut.—I dare say this will seem very much spun out to a seafarer, but landsmen like to hear of the sea and its ways; and as more landsmen than seamen, probably, read the "Atlantic Monthly," I have told them of one genuine sea-song, and its time and place.

Then there are pumping-songs. "The dismal sound of the pumps is heard," says Mr. Webster's Plymouth-Rock Oration; but being a part of the daily morning duty of a well-disciplined merchant-vessel,—just a few minutes' spell to keep the vessel free and cargo unharmed by bilge-water,—it is not a dismal sound at all, but rather a lively one. It was a favorite amusement with us passengers on board the —— to go forward about pumping-time to the break of the deck and listen. Any quick tune to which you might work a fire-engine will serve for the music, and the words were varied with every fancy. "Pay me the money down," was one favorite chorus, and the verse ran thus:—

Solo. Your money, young man, is no object to me.

Chorus. Pay me the money down!

Solo. Half a crown's no great amount.

Chorus. Pay me the money down!

Solo and Chorus. (Bis) Money down, money down, pay me the money down!

Not much sense in all this, but it served to man and move the brakes merrily. Then there were other choruses, which were heard from time to time,—"And the young gals goes a-weepin',"—"O long storm, storm along stormy"; but the favorite tune was "Money down," at least with our crew. They were not an avaricious set, either; for their parting ceremony, on embarking, was to pitch the last half-dollars of their advance on to the wharf, to be scrambled for by the land-sharks. But "Money down" was the standing chorus. I once heard, though not on board that ship, the lively chorus of "Off she goes, and off she must go,"—

"Highland day and off she goes, Off she goes with a flying fore-topsail, Highland day and off she goes."

It is one of the most spirited things imaginable, when well sung, and, when applied to the topsail-halyards, brings the yards up in grand style.

These are some of the working-songs of the sea. They are not chosen for their sense, but for their sound. They must contain good mouth-filling words, with the vowels in the right place, and the rhythmic ictus at proper distances for chest and hand to keep true time. And this is why the seaman beats the wind in a trial of strength. The wind may whistle, but it cannot sing. The sailor does not whistle, on shipboard at least, but does sing.

Besides the working-day songs, there are others for the forecastle and dog-watches, which have been already described. But they are seldom of the parlor pattern. I remember one lovely moonlight evening, off the Irish coast, when our ship was slipping along before a light westerly air,—just enough of it for everything to draw, and the ship as steady as Ailsa Crag, so that everybody got on deck, even the chronically sea-sick passengers of the steerage. There was a boy on board, a steerage passenger, who had been back and forth several times on this Liverpool line of packets. He was set to singing, and his sweet, clear voice rang out with song after song,— almost all of them sad ones. At last one of the crew called on him for a song which he made some demur at singing. I remember the refrain well (for he did sing it at last); it ran thus:—

"My crew are tried, my bark's my pride, I'm the Pirate of the Isles."

It was no rose-water piracy that the boy sang of; it was the genuine pirate of the Isle of Pines,—the gentleman who before the days of California and steamers was the terror of the Spanish Main. He was depicted as falling in deadly combat with a naval cruiser, after many desperate deeds. What was most striking to us of the cabin was, that the sympathy of the song, and evidently of the hearers, was all on the side of the defier of law and order. There was no nonsense in it about "islands on the face of the deep where the winds never blow and the skies never weep," which to the parlor pirate are the indications of a capital station for wood and water, and for spending his honeymoon. It was downright cutting of throats and scuttling of ships that our youngster sang of, and the grim faces looked and listened approvingly, as you might fancy Ulysses's veterans hearkening to a tale of Troy.

There is another class of songs, half of the sea, half of the shore, which the fishermen and coasters croon in their lonely watches. Such is the rhyme of "Uncle Peleg," or "Pillick," as it is pronounced,—probably an historical ballad concerning some departed worthy of the Folger family of Nantucket. It begins—

"Old Uncle Pillick he built him a boat On the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int; He rolled up his trowsers and set her afloat From the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int."

Like "Christabel," this remains a fragment. Not so the legend of "Captain Cottington," (or Coddington,) which perhaps is still traditionally known to the young gentlemen at Harvard. It is marked by a bold and ingenious metrical novelty.

"Captain Cottington he went to sea, Captain Cottington he went to sea, Captain Cottington he went to sea-e-e, Captain Cottington he went to sea."

The third verse of the next stanza announces that he didn't go to sea in a schoo-oo-ooner,—of the next that he went to sea in a bri-i-ig,—and so on. We learn that he got wrecked on the "Ba-ha-ha-hamys," that he swam ashore with the papers in his hat, and, I believe, entered his protest at the nearest "Counsel's" (Anglice. Consul's) dwelling.

For the amateur of genuine ballad verse, here is a field quite as fertile as that which was reaped by Scott and Ritson amid the border peels and farmhouses of Liddesdale. It is not unlikely that some treasures may thus be brought to light. The genuine expression of popular feeling is always forcible, not seldom poetic. And at any rate, these wild bits of verse are redolent of the freshness of the sea-breeze, the damps of the clinging fog, the strange odors of the caboose-cookery, of the curing of cod, and of many another "ancient and fish-like smell." Who will tell us of these songs, not indeed of the deep sea, but of soundings? What were the stanzas which Luckie Mucklebackit sang along the Portanferry Sands? What is the dredging-song which the oyster "come of a gentle kind" is said to love?

These random thoughts may serve to indicate to the true seeker new and unworked mines of rhythmic ore. We are crying continually, that we have no national literature, that we are a nation of imitators and plagiarists. Why will not some one take the trouble to learn what we have? This does not mean that amateurs should endeavor to write such ballad fragments and popular songs,—because that cannot be done; such things grow,—they are not made. If the sea wants songs, it will have them. It is only suggested here that we look about us and ascertain of what lyric blessings we may now be the unconscious possessors. Can it be that oars have risen and fallen, sails flapped, waves broken in thunder upon our shores in vain? that no whistle of the winds, or moan of the storm-foreboding seas has waked a responsive chord in the heart of pilot or fisherman? If we are so poor, let us know our poverty.

And now to bring these desultory remarks to a practical conclusion. I have written these seemingly trifling fragments with a serious purpose. It is to show that the seaman has little or no art or part in the poetry of the seas. I have put down facts, have given what experience I have had of some of the idiosyncrasies of the forecastle. The poetry of the sea has been written on shore and by landsmen. Falconer's "Shipwreck" is a clever nautical tract, written in verse,—or if it be anything more, it is but the solitary exception which proves and enforces the rule. Midshipmen have written ambitious verses about the sea; but by the time the young gentlemen were promoted to the ward-room they have dropped the habit or found other themes for their stanzas. In truth, the stern manliness of his calling forbids the seaman to write poetry. He acts it. His is a profession which leaves no room for any assumed feeling or for any reflective tendencies. His instincts are developed, rather than his reason. He has no time to speculate. He must be prepared to lay his hand on the right rope, let the night be the darkest that ever came down upon the waves. He obeys orders, heedless of consequences; he issues commands amid the uproar and tumult of pressing emergencies. There is no chance for quackery in his work. The wind and the wave are infallible tests of all his knots and splices. He cannot cheat them. The gale and the lee-shore are not pictures, but fierce realities, with which he has to grapple for life or death. The soldier and the fireman may pass for heroes upon an assumed stock of courage; but the seaman must be a brave man in his calling, or Nature steps in and brands him coward. Therefore he cares little about the romance of his duties. If you would win his interest and regard, it must be on the side of his personal and human sensibilities. Cut off during his whole active life from any but the most partial sympathy with his kind, he yearns for the life of the shore, its social pleasures and its friendly greetings. Captains, whose vessels have been made hells-afloat by their tyranny, have found abundant testimony in the courts of law to their gentle and humane deportment on land. Therefore, when you would address seamen effectively, either in acts or words, let it be by no shallow mimicry of what you fancy to be their life afloat. It will be at best but "shop" to them, and we all know how distasteful that is in the mouth of a stranger to our pursuits. They laugh at your clumsy imitations, or are puzzled by your strange misconceptions. It is painful to see the forlorn attempts which are made to raise the condition of this noble race of men, to read the sad nonsense that is perpetrated for their benefit. If you wish really to benefit them, it must be by raising their characters as men; and to do this, you must address them as such, irrespectively of the technicalities of their calling.



THE KINLOCH ESTATE, AND HOW IT WAS SETTLED.

CHAPTER I.

"Mildred, my daughter, I am faint. Run and get me a glass of cordial from the buffet."

The girl looked at her father as he sat in his bamboo chair on the piazza, his pipe just let fall on the floor, and his face covered with a deadly pallor. She ran for the cordial, and poured it out with a trembling hand.

"Shan't I go for the doctor, father?" she asked.

"No, my dear, the spasm will pass off presently." But his face grew more ashy pale, and his jaw drooped.

"Dear father," said the frightened girl, "what shall I do for you? Oh, dear, if mother were only at home, or Hugh, to run for the doctor!"

"Mildred, my daughter," he gasped with difficulty, "the blacksmith,—send for Ralph Hardwick,—quick! In the ebony cabinet, middle drawer, you will find——Oh! oh!—God bless you, my daughter!—God bless"——

The angels, only, heard the conclusion of the sentence; for the speaker, Walter Kinloch, was dead, summoned to the invisible world without a warning and with hardly a struggle.

But Mildred thought he had fainted, and, raising the window, called loudly for Lucy Ransom, the only female domestic then in the house.

Lucy, frightened out of her wits at the sudden call, came rushing to the piazza, flat-iron in hand, and stood riveted to the spot where she first saw the features on which the awful shadow of death had settled.

"Rub his hands, Lucy!" said Mildred. "Run for some water! Get me the smelling-salts!"

Lucy attempted to obey all three orders at once, and therefore did nothing.

Mildred held the unresisting hand. "It is warm," she said. "But the pulse,—I can't find it."

"Deary, no," said Lucy, "you won't find it."

"Why, you don't mean"——

"Yes, Mildred, he's dead!" And she let fall her flat-iron, and covered her face with her apron.

But Mildred kept chafing her father's temples and hands,—calling piteously, in hopes to get an answer from the motionless lips. Then she sank down at his feet, and clasped his knees in an agony of grief.

A carriage stopped at the door, and a hasty step came up the walk.

"Lucy Ransom," said Mrs. Kinloch, (for it was she, just returned from her drive,) "Lucy Ransom, what are you blubbering about? Here on the piazza, and with your flat-iron! What is the matter?"

"Matter enough!" said Lucy. "See!—see Mr."——But the sobs were too frequent. She became choked, and fell into an hysterical paroxysm.

By this time Mrs. Kinloch had stepped upon the piazza, and saw the drooping head, the dangling arms, and the changed face of her husband. "Dead! dead!" she exclaimed. "My God! what has happened? Mildred, who was with him? Was the doctor sent for? or Squire Clamp? or Mr. Rook? What did he say to you, dear?" And she tried to lift up the sobbing child, who still clung to the stiffening knees where she had so often climbed for a kiss.

"Oh, mother! is he dead?—no life left?"

"Calm yourself, my dear child," said Mrs. Kinloch. "Tell me, did he say anything?"

Mildred replied, "He was faint, and before I could give him the cordial he asked for he was almost gone. 'The blacksmith,' he said, 'send for Ralph Hardwick'; then he said something of the ebony cabinet, but could not speak the words which were on his lips." She could say no more, but gave way to uncontrollable tears and sobs.

By this time, Mrs. Kinloch's son, Hugh Branning, who had been to the stable with the horse and carriage, came whistling through the yard, and cutting off weeds or twigs along the path with sharp cuts of his whip.

"Which way is the wind now?" said he, as he approached; "the governor asleep, Mildred crying, and you scolding, mother?" In a moment, however, the sight of the ghastly face transfixed the thoughtless youth, as it had done his mother; and, dropping his whip, he stood silent, awe-struck, in the presence of the dead.

"Hugh," said Mrs. Kinloch, speaking in a very quiet tone, "go and tell Squire Clamp to come over here."

In a few minutes the dead body was carried into the house by George, the Asiatic servant, aided by a villager who happened to pass by. Squire Clamp, the lawyer of the town, came and had a conference with Mrs. Kinloch respecting the funeral. Neighbors came to offer sympathy, and aid, if need should be. Then the house was put in order, and crape hung on the door- handle. The family were alone with their dead.

On the village green the boys were playing a grand game of "round ball," for it was a half-holiday. The clear, silvery tones of the bell were heard, and we stopped to listen. Was it a fire? No, the ringing was not vehement enough. A meeting of the church? In a moment we should know. As the bell ceased, we looked up to the white taper spire to catch the next sound. One stroke. It was a death, then,—and of a man. We listened for the age tolled from the belfry. Fifty-five. Who had departed? The sexton crossed the green on his way to the shop to make the coffin, and informed us. Our bats and balls had lost their interest for us; we did not even ask our tally-man, who cut notches for us on a stick, how the game stood. For Squire Walter Kinloch was the most considerable man in our village of Innisfield. Without being highly educated, he was a man of reading and intelligence. In early life he had amassed a fortune in the China trade, and with it he had brought back a deeply bronzed complexion, a scar from the creese of a Malay pirate, and the easy manners which travel always gives to observant and sensible men. But his rather stately carriage produced no envy or ill-will among his humbler neighbors, for his superiority was never questioned. Men bowed to him with honest good-will, and boys, who had been flogged at school for confounding Congo and Coromandel, and putting Borneo in the Bight of Benin, made an awkward obeisance and stared wonderingly, as they met the man who had actually sailed round the world, and had, in his own person, illustrated the experiment of walking with his head downwards among the antipodes. His house had no rival in the country round, and his garden was considered a miracle of art, having, in popular belief, all the fruits, flowers, and shrubs that had been known from the days of Solomon to those of Linnaeus. Prodigious stories were told of his hoard of gold, and some of the less enlightened thought that even the outlandish ornaments of the balustrade over the portico were carven silver. Curious vases adorned the hall and side-board; and numberless quaint trinkets, whose use the villagers could not even imagine, gave to the richly-furnished rooms an air of Oriental magnificence. Tropical birds sang or chattered in cages, and a learned but lawless parrot talked, swore, or made mischief, as he chose. The tawny servant George, brought by Mr. Kinloch from one of the islands of the Pacific, completed his claims upon the admiration of the untravelled.

He was just ready to enjoy the evening of life, when the night of death closed upon him with tropic suddenness. He left one child only, his daughter Mildred, then just turned of eighteen; and as Mrs. Kinloch had only one son to claim her affection, the motherless girl would seem to be well provided for. Mildred was sweet-tempered, and her step-mother had hitherto been discreet and kind.

The funeral was over, and the townspeople recovered from the shock which the sudden death had caused. Administration was granted to the widow conjointly with Squire Clamp, the lawyer, and the latter was appointed guardian for Mildred during her minority.

Squire Clamp was an ill-favored man, heavy-browed and bald, and with a look which, in a person of less consequence, would have been called "hang- dog,"—owing partly, no doubt, to the tribulation he had suffered from his vixen spouse, whose tongue was now happily silenced. He was the town's only lawyer, (a fortunate circumstance,) so that he could frequently manage to receive fees for advice from both parties in a controversy. He made all the wills, deeds, and contracts, and settled all the estates he could get hold of. But no such prize as the Kinloch property had ever before come into his hands.

If Squire Clamp's reputation for shrewdness had belonged to an irreligious man, it would have been of questionable character; but as he was a zealous member of the church, he was protected from assaults upon his integrity. If there were suspicions, they were kept close, not bruited abroad.

He was now an almost daily visitor at the widow Kinloch's. What was the intricate business that required the constant attention of a legal adviser? The settlement of the estate, so far as the world knew, was an easy matter. The property consisted of the dwelling-house, a small tract of land near the village, a manufactory at the dam, by the side of Ralph Hardwick's blacksmith's shop, and money, plate, furniture, and stocks. There were no debts. There was but one child, and, after the assignment of the widow's dower, the estate was Mildred's. Nothing, therefore, could be simpler for the administrators. The girl trusted to the good faith of her stepmother and the justice of the lawyer, who now stood to her in the place of a father. She was an orphan, and her innocence and childlike dependence would doubtless be a sufficient spur to the consciences of her protectors. So the girl thought, if she thought at all,—and so all charitable people were bound to think.

How wearily the days passed during the month after the funeral! The shadow of death seemed to darken everything. Doors creaked dismally when they were opened. The room where the body had been laid seemed to have grown a century older than the other parts of the once bright and cheerful house, —its atmosphere was so stagnant and full of mould. The family spoke only in suppressed tones; their countenances were as sad as their garments. All this was terrible to the impressible, imaginative, and naturally buoyant temper of Mildred. It was like dwelling in a tomb, and her heart cried out for very loneliness. She must do something to take her mind out of the sunless vault,—she must resume her relations with the dwellers in the upper air. All at once she thought of her father's last words,—of Ralph Hardwick, and the ebony cabinet. It was in the next room. She opened the door, half expecting to see some bodiless presence in the silent space. She could hear her own heart beat between the tickings of the great Dutch clock, as she stepped across the floor. How still was everything! The air tingled in her ears as though now disturbed for the first time.

She opened the cabinet, which was not locked, and pulled out the middle drawer. She found nothing but a dried rose-bud and a lock of sunny hair wrapped in a piece of yellowed paper. Was it her mother's hair? As Mildred remembered her mother, the color of her hair was dark, not golden. Still it might have been cut in youth, before its hue had deepened. And what a world of mystery, of feeling, of associations there was in that scentless and withered rose-bud! What fair hand had first plucked it? What pledge did it carry? Was the subtile aroma of love ever blended with its fragrance? Had her father borne it with him in his wanderings? The secret was in his coffin. The struggling lips could not utter it before they were stiffened into marble. Yet she could not believe that these relics were the sole things to which he had referred. There must have been something that more nearly concerned her,—something in which the blacksmith or his nephew was interested.

CHAPTER II.

In order to show the position of Mrs. Kinloch and her son in our story, it will be necessary to make the reader acquainted with some previous occurrences.

Six years before this date, Mrs. Kinloch was the Widow Branning. Her husband's small estate had melted like a snow-bank in the liquidation of his debts. She had only one child, Hugh, to support; but in a country town there is generally little that a woman can do to earn a livelihood; and she might often have suffered from want, if the neighbors had not relieved her. If she left her house for any errand, (locks were but seldom used in Innisfield,) she would often on her return find a leg of mutton, a basket of apples or potatoes, or a sack of flour, conveyed there by some unknown hands. In winter nights she would hear the voices of Ralph Hardwick, the village blacksmith, and his boys, as they drew sled-loads of wood, ready cut and split, to keep up her kitchen fire. Other friends ploughed and planted her garden, and performed numberless kind offices. But, though aided in this way by charity, Mrs. Branning never lost her self-respect nor her standing in the neighborhood.

Everybody knew that she was poor, and she knew that everybody knew it; yet so long as she was not in absolute want, and the poor-house, that bugbear of honest poverty, was yet far distant, she managed to keep a cheerful heart, and visited her neighbors on terms of entire equality.

At this period Walter Kinloch's wife died, leaving an only child. During her sickness, Mrs. Branning had been sent for to act as nurse and temporary house-keeper, and, at the urgent request of the widower, remained for a time after the funeral. Weeks passed, and her house was still tenantless. Mildred had become so much attached to the motherly widow and her son, that she would not allow the servants to do anything for her. So, without any definite agreement, their relations continued. By-and-by the village gossips began to query and surmise. At the sewing- society the matter was fully discussed.

Mrs. Greenfield, the doctor's wife, admitted that it would be an excellent match, "jest a child apiece, both on 'em well brought up, used to good company, and all that; but, land's sakes! he, with his mint o' money, a'n't a-goin' to marry a poor widder that ha'n't got nothin' but her husband's pictur' and her boy,—not he!"

Others insinuated that Mrs. Branning knew what she was about when she went to Squire Kinloch's, and his wife was 'most gone with consumption. "'Twasn't a mite strange that little Mildred took to her so kindly; plenty of women could find ways to please a child, if so be they could have such a chance to please themselves."

The general opinion seemed to be that Mrs. Branning would marry the Squire, if she could get him; but that as to his intentions, the matter was quite doubtful. Nevertheless, after being talked about for a year, the parties were duly published, married, and settled down into the quiet routine of country life.

Doubtless the accident of daily contact was the secret of the match. Had Mrs. Branning been living in her own poorly-furnished house, Mr. Kinloch would hardly have thought of going to seek her. But as mistress of his establishment she had an opportunity to display her house-wifely qualities, as well as to practise those nameless arts by which almost any clever woman knows how to render herself agreeable.

The first favorable impression deepened, until the widower came to believe that the whole parish did not contain so proper a person to be the successor of Mrs. Kinloch, as his housekeeper. Their union, though childless, was as happy as common; there was nothing of the romance of a first attachment,—little of the tenderness that springs from fresh sensibilities, for she at least was of a matter-of-fact turn. But there was a constant and hearty good feeling, resulting from mutual kindness and deference.

If the step-mother made any difference in her treatment of the two children, it was in favor of the gentle Mildred. And though the Squire naturally felt more affection for his motherless daughter, yet he was proud of his step-son, gave him the advantages of the best schools, and afterwards sent him for a year to college. But the lad's spirits were too buoyant for the sober notions of the Faculty. He was king in the gymnasium, and was minutely learned in the natural history and botany of the neighborhood; at least, he knew all the haunts of birds, rabbits, and squirrels, as well as the choicest orchards of fruit.

After repeated admonitions without effect, a letter was addressed to his stepfather by vote at a Faculty-meeting. A damsel at service in the President's house overheard the discussion, and found means to warn the young delinquent of his danger; for she, as well as most people who came within the sphere of his attraction, felt kindly toward him.

The stage-coach that conveyed the next morning's mail to Innisfield carried Hugh Branning as a passenger. Alighting at the post-office, he took out the letter superscribed in the well-known hand of the President, pocketed it, and returned by the next stage to college. This prank only moved the Squire to mirth, when he heard of it. He knew that Hugh was a lad of spirit,—that in scholarship he was by no means a dunce; and as long as there was no positive tendency to vice, he thought but lightly of his boyish peccadilloes. But it was impossible for such irregularities to continue, and after a while Mr. Kinloch yielded to his step-son's request and took him home.

Next year it was thought best that the young man should go to sea, and a midshipman's commission was procured for him. Now, for the second time, after an absence of three years, Hugh was at home in all the dignity of navy blue, anchor buttons, glazed cap, and sword.

CHAPTER III.

"I have brought you the statement of the property, Mrs. Kinloch," said Mr. Clamp. "It is merely a legal form, embracing the items which you gave to me; it must be returned at the next Probate term."

Mrs. Kinloch took the paper and glanced over it.

"This statement must be sworn to, Mrs. Kinloch."

"By you?"

"We are joined in the administration, and both must swear to it."

There was a pause. Mrs. Kinloch, resting her hands on her knee, tossed the hem of her dress with her foot, as though meditating.

"I shall of course readily make oath to the schedule," he continued,—"at least, after you have done so; for I have no personal knowledge of the effects of the deceased."

His manner was decorous, but he regarded her keenly. She changed the subject.

"People seem to think I have a mint in the house; and such bills as come in! Sawin, the cabinet-maker, has sent his to-day, as soon as my husband is fairly under ground: forty dollars for a cherry coffin, which he made in one day. Cleaver, the butcher, too, has sent a bill running back for five years or more. Now I know that Mr. Kinloch never had an ounce of meat from him that he didn't pay for. If they all go on in this way, I sha'n't have a cent left. Everybody tries to cheat the widow"——

"And orphan," interposed Mr. Clamp.

She looked at him quietly; but he was imperturbable.

"We must begin to collect what is due," she continued.

"Did you refer to the notes from Ploughman?" asked Mr. Clamp. "He is perfectly good; and he will pay the interest till we want to use the money."

"I wasn't thinking of Ploughman," she replied, "but of Mark Davenport, Uncle Ralph Hardwick's nephew. They say he is a teacher in one of the fashionable schools in New York,—and he must be able to pay, if he's ever going to."

"Well, when he comes on here, I will present the notes."

"But I don't intend to wait till he comes; can't you send the demands to a lawyer where he is?"

"Certainly, if you wish it; but that course will necessarily be attended with some expense."

"I choose to have it done," said Mrs. Kinloch, decisively. "Mildred, who has always been foolishly partial to the young upstart, insists that her father intended to give up the notes to Mark, and she thinks that was what he wanted to send for Uncle Ralph about, just before he died. I don't believe it, and I don't intend to fling away my money upon such folks."

"You are quite right, ma'am," said the lawyer. "The inconsiderate generosity of school-children would be a poor basis for the transactions of business."

"And besides," continued Mrs. Kinloch, "I want the young man to remember the blacksmith's shop that he came from, and get over his ridiculous notion of looking up to our family."

"Oh ho!" said Mr. Clamp, "that is it? Well, you are a sagacious woman,"— looking at her with unfeigned admiration.

"I can see through a millstone, when there is a hole in it," said Mrs. Kinloch. "And I mean to stop this nonsense."

"To be sure,—it would be a very unequal match in every way. Besides, I'm told that he isn't well-grounded in doctrine. He even goes to Brooklyn to hear Torchlight preach." And Mr. Clamp rolled up his eyes, interlocking his fingers, as he was wont when at church-meeting he rose to exhort.

"I don't pretend to be a judge of doctrine, further than the catechism goes," said the widow; "but Mr. Rook says that Torchlight is a dangerous man, and will lead the churches off into infidelity."

"Yes, Mrs. Kinloch, the free-thinking of this age is the fruitful parent of all evil,—of Mormonism, Unitarianism, Spiritualism, and of all those forms of error which seek to overthrow"——

There was a crash in the china-closet. Mrs. Kinloch went to the door, and leading out Lucy Ransom, the maid, by the ear, exclaimed, "You hussy, what were you there for? I'll teach you to be listening about in closets," (giving the ear a fresh tweak,) "you eavesdropper!"

"Quit!" cried Lucy. "I didn't mean to listen. I was there rubbin' the silver 'fore you come. Then I didn't wanter come out, for I was afeard."

"What made the smash, then?" demanded Mrs. Kinloch.

"I was settin' things on the top shelf, and the chair tipped over."

"Don't make it worse by fibbing! If that was so, how came the chair to tip the way it did? You were trying to peep over the door. Go to the kitchen!"

Lucy went out with fallen plumes. Mr. Clamp took his hat to go also.

"Don't go till I get you the notes," said Mrs. Kinloch.

As she brought them, he said, "I will send these by the next mail, with instructions to collect."

While his hand was on the latch, she spoke again:—

"Mr. Clamp, did you ever look over the deed of the land we own about the dam where the mill stands?"

"No, ma'am, I have never seen it."

"I wish you would have the land surveyed according to this title," she said. "Quite privately, you know. Just have the line run, and let me know about it. Perhaps it will be as well to send over to Riverbank and get Gunter to do it; he will keep quiet about it."

Mr. Clamp stood still a moment. Here was a woman whom he was expecting to lead like a child, but who on the other hand had fairly bridled and saddled him, so that he was driven he knew not whither.

"Why do you propose this, may I ask, Mrs. Kinloch?"

"Oh, I have heard," she replied, carelessly, "that there was some error in the surveys. Mr. Kinloch often talked of having it corrected, but, like most men, put it off. Now, as we may sell the property, we shall want to know what we have got."

"Certainly, Mrs. Kinloch, I will follow your prudent suggestions,"—adding to himself, as he walked away, "I shall have to be tolerably shrewd to get ahead of that woman. I wonder what she is driving at."

CHAPTER IV.

Ralph Hardwick was the village blacksmith. His shop stood on the bank of the river, not far from the dam. The great wheel below the flume rolled all day, throwing over its burden of diamond drops, and tilting the ponderous hammer with a monotonous clatter. What a palace of wonders to the boys was that grim and sooty shop!—the roar of the fires, as they were fed by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling, or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles that flew when the trip-hammer fell; and the soft and glowing mass held by the smith's tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under his practised eye! How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish- spear! Still happier were they, when, at night, with his sons and nephew, they were allowed to huddle on the forge, sitting on the bottoms of old buckets or boxes, and watching the fire, from the paly blue border of flame in the edge of the damp charcoal, to the reddening, glowing column that shot with an arrowy stream of sparks up the wide-throated chimney. How the dark rafters and nail-pierced roof grew ruddy as the white-hot ploughshare or iron bar was drawn from the fire!—what alternations of light and shadow! No painter ever drew figure in such relief as the blacksmith presented in that wonderful light, with his glistening face, his tense muscles, and his upraised arm.

Alas! the hammer is still; the wheel dashes no more the glittering spray; the fire has died out in the forge; the blacksmith's long day's work is done!

He settled in Innisfield when it was but a district attached to a neighboring town. There were but three or four houses in the now somewhat populous village. He came on foot, driving his cow; his wife following in the wagon, with their little stock of household goods,—not forgetting his hammer, more potent than Prospero's wand. The minister, the doctor, and Squire Kinloch, who constituted the aristocracy, yielded precedence in date to Ralph Hardwick, Knight of the Ancient Order of the Anvil.

So he toiled, faithful to his calling. By day the din of his hammer rarely ceased, and by night the flame and sparks from his chimney were a Pharos to all travellers approaching the town. Children were born to him, for which he blessed God, and worked the harder. He attained a moderate prosperity, secure from want, but still dependent upon labor for bread. At length his wife died; he wept like a true and faithful husband as he was, and thenceforth was both mother and father to his babes.

During all his life he kept Sunday with religious scrupulousness, and with his family went to the house of worship in all weathers. From the very first he had been leader of the choir, and had given the pitch with a fork hammered and tuned by his own hands. With a clear and sympathetic voice, he had such an instinctive taste and power of expression, that his song of penitence or praise was far more devotional than the labored efforts of many more highly cultivated singers. Music and poetry flowed smoothly and naturally from his lips, but in uttering the common prose of daily life his organs were rebellious. The truth must be spoken,—he stammered badly, incurably. Whether it was owing to the attempt to overcome his impediment by making his speech musical, or to the cadences of his hammer beating time while his brain was shaping its airy fancies, his thoughts ran naturally in verse.

Do not smile at the thought of Vulcan's callused fingers touching the chords of the lyre to delicate music. The sun shone as lovingly upon the swart face of the blacksmith in his shop-door, as upon the scholar at his library-window. "Poetry was an angel in his breast," making his heart glad with her heavenly presence; he did not "make her his drudge, his maid-of- all-work," as professional verse-makers do.

Mr. Hardwick's younger sister was married to a hard-working, stern, puritanical man named Davenport, (not her first love,) who removed to a Western State when it was almost a wilderness, cleared for himself a farm, and built a log-house. The toil and privations of frontier life soon wrought their natural effects upon Mrs. Davenport's delicate constitution. She fell into a rapid decline and died. Her husband was seized with a fever the summer after, and died also, leaving two children, Mark and Anna. The blacksmith had six motherless children of his own; but he set out for the West, and brought the orphans home with him. He thenceforth treated them like his own offspring, manifesting a woman's tenderness as well as a father's care for them.

Mark was a comely lad, with the yellow curling hair, the clear blue eyes, and the marked symmetry of features that belonged to his uncle. He had an inborn love of reading and study; he was first in his class at every winter's school, and had devoured all the books within his reach. Then he borrowed an old copy of Adam's Latin Grammar from Dr. Greenfield, and committed the rules to memory without a teacher. That was his introduction to the classics.

But Mr. Hardwick believed in the duty and excellence of work, and Mark, as well as his cousins, was trained to make himself useful. So the Grammar was studied and Virgil read at chance intervals, when a storm interrupted out-door work, or while waiting at the upper mill for a grist, or of nights at the shop by the light of the forge fire. The paradigms were committed to memory with an anvil accompaniment; and long after, he never could scan a line of Homer, especially the oft-repeated

[Greek: Tou d'au Taelema chos pep numenos antion aeuda],

without hearing the ringing blows of his uncle's hammer keeping tune to the verse.

At sixteen years of age he was ready to enter college, though he had received little aid in his studies, except when some schoolmaster who was versed in the humanities chanced to be hired for the winter. But his uncle was not able to support him at any respectable university, and the lad's prospects for such an education as he desired seemed to be none of the best.

At this point an incident occurred which changed the course of our hero's life, and as it will serve to explain how he came to give his notes to Mr. Kinloch, on which the administrators are about to bring suit, it should properly be related here.

Mark Davenport was at work on a farm a short distance from the village. He hoped to enter college the following autumn, and he knew no means to obtain money for a portion of his outfit except by the labor of his hands. He could get twenty dollars a month for the summer season. Sixty, or possibly seventy dollars!—what ideas of opulence were suggested by the sound of those words!

It was a damp, drizzly day; there was not a settled rain, yet it was too wet to work in the corn. Mark was therefore busy in picking loose stones from the surface of a field cultivated the year before, and now "seeded down" for grass. A portion of the field bordered on a pond, and the alders upon its margin formed a dense green palisade, over which might be seen the gray surface of the water freckled by the tiny drops of rain. Low clouds trailed their gauzy robes over the top of Mount Quobbin, and flecks of mist swept across the blue sides of the loftier Mount Elizabeth.

"What a perfect day for fishing!" thought Mark. "If I had my tackle here, and a frog's leg or a shiner, I would soon have a pickerel out from under those lilypads."

But he kept at work, and, having his basket full of stones, carried them to the pond and plumped them in. A growl of anger came up from behind the bushes.

"What the Devil do you mean, you lubber, throwing stones over here to scare away the fish?"

The bushes parted at the same time, showing Hugh Branning sitting in the end of his boat, and apparently just ready to fling out his line.

"If I had known you were there fishing," said Mark, "I shouldn't have thrown the stones into the water. But," he continued, while every fibre tingled with indignation, "I will have you to know that I am not to be talked to in that way by you or anybody else."

"I would like to know how you are going to help yourself," said Hugh, stepping ashore and advancing.

"You will find out, Mr. Insolence, if you don't leave this field. You a'n't on the quarter-deck yet, bullying a tar with his hat off."

"Bless me! how the young Vulcan talks!"

"I have talked all I am going to. Now get into your boat and be off!"

"I don't propose to be in a hurry," said Hugh, with provoking coolness, standing with his arms a-kimbo.

The remembrance of Hugh's usual patronizing airs, together with his insulting language, was too much for Mark's impetuous temper. He was in a delirium of rage, and he rushed upon his antagonist. Hugh stood warily upon the defensive, and parried Mark's blows with admirable skill; he had not the muscle nor the endurance of the young blacksmith, but he had considerable skill in boxing, and was perfectly cool; and though Mark finally succeeded in grappling and hurling to the ground his lithe and resolute foe, it was not until he had been pretty severely pommelled himself, especially in his face. Mark set his knee on the breast of his adversary and waited to hear "Enough." Hugh ground his teeth, but there was no escape; no feint nor sudden movement could reverse their positions; and, out of breath, he gave up in sullen despair.

"Let me up," he said, at length. Mark arose, and being by this time thoroughly sobered, he walked off without a word and picked up his basket.

Hugh, on the other hand, was more and more angry every minute. The indignity he had suffered was not to be tamely submitted to. He got into the boat and took his oar; he looked back and saw Mark commencing work again; the temptation was too strong. He picked up one of the largest of the stones that Mark had emptied into the shallow margin of the pond; he threw it with all his force, and hurriedly pushed off from shore without stopping to ascertain the extent of the mischief he had done. He knew that the stone did not miss, for he saw Mark fall heavily to the ground, and that was enough. The injury was serious. Mark was carried to the farm- house and was confined to his bed for six weeks with a brain fever, being delirious for the greater part of the time. Hugh Branning found the town quite uncomfortable; the eyes of all the people he met seemed to scorch him. He was bold and self-reliant; but no man can stand up singly against the indignation of a whole community. He went on a visit to Boston, and not long after, to the exceeding grief of his mother, entered the navy.

When Mark was recovering, Mr. Rook, the clergyman, called and offered to aid him in his college course, if he would agree to study for the ministry. But the young man declined the proposal, because he thought himself unfitted for the sacred calling.

"No," he added, with a smile, "I'm not made for an evangelist; not much like the beloved disciple at all events, but rather like peppery Peter,— ready, if provoked, to whisk off an ignoble ear."

Mr. Rook returned home sorrowful; and at the next meeting of the sewing- circle the unfortunate Mark received a full share of attention; for the offer of aid came partly from this society. When this matter had been the talk of the village for a day or two, Squire Kinloch made some errand to the house where Mark was. What passed between them the young man did not choose to relate, but he showed his Uncle Hardwick the Squire's check for two hundred and fifty dollars, and told him he should receive a similar sum each year until he finished his collegiate course.

The promise was kept; the yearly supply was furnished; and Mark graduated with honor, having given notes amounting to a thousand dollars. With cheerful alacrity he commenced teaching in a popular seminary, intending to pay his debts before studying a profession.

CHAPTER V.

It was Saturday night, and Mr. Hardwick was closing his shop. A customer was just leaving, his horse's feet newly rasped and white, and a sack of harrow-teeth thrown across his back. The boys, James and Milton, had been putting a load of charcoal under cover, for the wind was southerly and there were signs of rain. Of course they had become black enough with coal-dust,—not a streak of light was visible, except around their eyes. They were capering about and contemplating each other's face with uproarious delight, while the blacksmith, though internally chuckling at their antics, preserved a decent gravity, and prepared to go to his house. He drew a bucket of water, and bared his muscular arms, then, after washing them, soused his curly hair and begrimed face, and came out wonderfully brightened by the operation. The boys continued their sports, racing, wrestling, and putting on grotesque grimaces.

Charlotte, the youngest child, now came to the shop to say that supper was ready.

"C-come, boys, you've ha-had play enough," said Mr. Hardwick. "J-James, put Ch-Charlotte down. M-M-Milton, it's close on to S-Sabba'day. Now w- wash yourselves."

Just as the merriment was highest, Charlotte standing on James's shoulders, and Milton chasing them, while the blacksmith was looking on,— his honest face glistening with soap and good-humor,—Mildred Kinloch passed by on her way home from a walk by the river. She looked towards the shop-door and bowed to Mr. Hardwick.

"G-good evenin', M-Miss Mildred," said he; "I'm g-glad to see you lookin' so ch-cheerful."

The tone was hearty, and with a dash of chivalrous sentiment rarely heard in a smithy. His look of half-parental, half-admiring fondness was touching to see.

"Oh, Uncle Ralph," she replied, "I am never melancholy when I see you. You have all the cheerfulness of this spring day in your face."

"Y-yes, I hev to stay here in the old shop; b-but I hear the b-birds in the mornin', and all day I f-feel as ef I was out under the b-blue sky, an' rejoicin' with all livin' creaturs in the sun and the s-sweet air of heaven."

"I envy you your happy frame; everything has some form or hue of beauty for you. I must have you read to me again. I never take up Milton without thinking of you."

"I c-couldn't wish to be remembered in any p-pleasanter way."

"Well, good evening. I must hurry home, for it grows damp here by the mill-race. Tell Lizzy and Anna to come and see me. We are quite lonesome now."

"P-p'raps Mark'll come with 'em."

"Mark? Is he here? When did he come?"

"H-he'll be here t-to-night."

"You surprise me!"

"'Tis rather s-sudden. He wrote y-yes-terday 't he'd g-got to come on urgent b-business."

"Urgent business?" she repeated, thoughtfully. "I wonder if Squire Clamp"——

The blacksmith nodded, with a gesture towards his children, as though he would not have them hear.

"Yes," he added, in a low tone, "I g-guess that is it."

"I must go home," said Mildred, hurriedly.

"Well, G-God bless you, my daughter! D-don't forgit your old sooty friend. And ef ever y-you want the help of a s-stout hand, or of an old gray head, don't fail to come to the ber-blacksmith's shop."

"Thank you, Uncle Ralph! thank you with all my heart! Good-night!"

She walked lightly up the hill towards the principal street. But she had not gone half a dozen yards before a hand grasped her arm. She turned with a start.

"Mark Davenport!" she exclaimed, "Is it you? How you frightened me!"

"Yes, Mildred, it is Mark, your old friend" (with a meaning emphasis). "I couldn't resist the temptation of giving you a little surprise."

"But when did you come to town?"

"I have just reached here from the station at Riverbank. I went to the house first, and was just going to see Uncle at the shop, when I caught sight of you."

Mark drew her arm within his own, and noticed, not without pleasure, how she yet trembled with agitation.

"I am very glad to see you," said Mildred; "but isn't your coming sudden?"

"Yes, I had some news from home yesterday which determined me to come, and I started this morning."

"Quick and impetuous as ever!"

"Yes, I don't deliberate long."

There was a pause.

"I wish you had only been here to see father before he died."

"I wish I might have seen him."

"I am sure he would never have desired to put you to any trouble."

"I suppose he would not have troubled me, though I never expected to do less than repay him the money he was so good as to lend me; but I don't think he would have been so abrupt and peremptory as Squire Clamp."

"Why, what has he done?"

"This is what he has done. A lawyer's clerk, as I supposed him to be, called upon me yesterday morning with a statement of the debt and interest, and made a formal demand of payment. I had only about half the amount in bank, and therefore could not meet it. Then the clerk appeared in his true character as a sheriff's officer, drew out his papers, and served a writ upon me, besides a trustee process on the principal of the school, so as to attach whatever might be due to me."

"Oh, Mark, were you treated so?"

"Just so,—entrapped like a wild animal. To be sure, it was a legal process, but one designed only for extreme cases, and which no gentleman ever puts in force against another."

"I don't know what this can mean. Squire Clamp is cruel enough, I know; but mother, surely, would never approve such conduct."

"After all, the mortification is the principal thing; for, with what I have, and what Uncle can raise for me, I can pay the debt. I have said too much already, Mildred. I don't want to put any of my burdens on your little shoulders. In fact, I am quite ashamed of having spoken on the subject at all; but I have so little concealment, that it popped out before I thought twice."

They were approaching the house, both silent, neither seeming to be bold enough to touch the tenderer chords that thrilled in unison.

"Mildred," said Mark, "I don't know how much is meant by this suit. I don't know that I shall be able to see you again, unless it be casually, in the street, as to-night, (blessed accident!)—but remember, that, whatever may happen, I am always the same that I have been to you."

Here his voice failed him. With such a crowd of memories,—of hopes and desires yet unsatisfied,—with the crushing burden of debt and poverty,— he could not command himself to say what his heart, nevertheless, ached in retaining. Here he was, with the opportunity for which during all his boyhood he had scarcely dared to hope, and yet he was dumb. They were at the gate, under the dense shade of the maples.

"Good-night, dear Mildred!" said Mark.

He took her hand, which was fluttering as by electrical influence, and raised it tenderly to his lips.

"Good-night," he said again.

She did not speak, but grasped his hand with fervor. He walked away slowly towards his uncle's house, but often stopped and looked back at the slender figure whose outlines he could barely see in the gateway under the trees. Then, as he lost sight of her, he remembered with shame the selfish prominence he had given to his own troubles. He was ashamed, too, of the cowardice which had kept him from uttering the words which had trembled on his lips. But in a moment the thought of the future checked that regret. Gloomy as his own lot might be, he could bear it; but he had no right to involve another's happiness. Thus he alternated between pride and abasement, hope and dejection, as many a lover has done before and since.

CHAPTER VI.

Sunday was a great day in Innisfield; for there, as in all Puritan communities, religion was the central and engrossing idea. As the bell rang for service, every ear in town heard it, and all who were not sick or kept at home by the care of young children turned their steps towards the house of God. The idea that there could be any choice between going to hear preaching and remaining at home was so preposterous, that it never entered into the minds of any but the openly wicked. Whatever might be their inclinations, few had the hardihood to absent themselves from meeting, still less to ride out for pleasure, or to stroll through the woods or upon the bank of the river. A steady succession of vehicles— "thorough-braced" wagons, a few more stylish carriages with elliptic springs, and here and there an ancient chaise—tended from all quarters to the meeting-house. The horses, from the veteran of twenty years' service down to the untrimmed and half-trained colt, knew what the proprieties of the day required. They trotted soberly, with faces as sedate as their drivers', and never stopped to look in the fence-corners as they passed along, to see what they could find to be frightened at. Nor would they often disturb worship by neighing, unless they became impatient at the length of the sermon.

Mr. Hardwick and his family, as we have before mentioned, went regularly to meeting; Lizzy and Mark sat with him in the singers' seats, the others in a pew below. The only guardian of the house on Sundays was a large ungainly cur, named Caesar. The habits of this dog deserve a brief mention. On all ordinary occasions he followed his master or others of the family, seeming to take a human delight in their company. Whenever it was desirable to have him remain at home, nothing short of tying him would answer the purpose. After a time he came to know the signs of preparation, and would skulk. Upon setting out, Mr. Hardwick would tell one of the boys to catch Caesar so that he should not follow, but he was not to be found; and in the course of ten minutes he would be trotting after his master as composedly as if nothing had ever happened to interrupt their friendly relations. It was impossible to resist such persevering affection, and at length Mr. Hardwick gave up the contest, and allowed Caesar to travel when and where he chose. But on Sunday he sat on the front-door step, erect upon his haunches, with one ear dropping forward, and the other upright like the point of a starched shirt-collar; and though on week-days he was fond of paying the usual courtesies to his canine acquaintances, and (if the truth must be told) of barking at strange horses occasionally, yet nothing could induce him either to follow any of the family, or accost a dog, or chase after foreign vehicles, on the day of rest. Once only he forgot what was due to his character, and gave a few yelps in holy time. But James, with a glance at his father, who was stoutly orthodox, averred that Caesar's conduct was justifiable, inasmuch as the man he barked at was one of a band of new-light fanatics who worshipped in the school- house, and the horse, moreover, was not shod at a respectable place, but at a tinker's shop in the verge of the township. A dog with such powers of discrimination certainly merits a place in this true history.

The services of Sunday were finished. Those who, with dill and caraway, had vainly struggled against drowsiness, had waked up with a jerk at the benediction, and moved with their neighbors along the aisles, a slow and sluggish stream. The nearest friends passed out side by side with meekly composed faces, and without greeting each other until they reached the vestibule. So slow and solemn was the progress out of church, that merry James Hardwick averred that he saw Deacon Stone, a short fat man, actually dozing, his eyes softly shutting and opening like a hen's, as he was borne along by the crowd. The Deacon had been known to sleep while he stood up in his pew during prayer, but perhaps James's story was rather apocryphal.

Mark Davenport, of course, had been the object of considerable attention during the day, and at the meeting-house-door numbers of his old acquaintances gathered round him. No one was more cordial in manner than Squire Clamp. His face was wrinkled into what were meant for smiles, and his voice was even smoother and more insinuating than usual. It was only by a strong effort that Mark gulped down his rising indignation, and replied civilly.

Sunday in Innisfield ended at sunset, though labor was not resumed until the next day; but neighbors called upon each other in the twilight, and talked over the sermons of the day, and the affairs of the church and parish. That evening, while Mr. Hardwick's family were sitting around the table reading, a long growl was heard from Caesar at the door, followed by an emphatic "Get out!" The growls grew fiercer, and James went to the door to see what was the matter. Squire Clamp was the luckless man. The dog had seized his coat-tail, and had pulled it forward, so that he stood face to face with the Squire, who was vainly trying to free himself by poking at his adversary with a great baggy umbrella. James sent away the dog with a reprimand, but laughed as he followed the angry man into the house. He always cited this afterwards as a new proof of the sagacity of the grim and uncompromising Caesar.

"S-sorry you've had such a t-time with the dog," said Mr. Hardwick; "he don't g-ginerally bark at pup-people."

"Oh, no matter," said the Squire, contemplating the measure of damage in the skirt of his coat. "A good, sound sermon Mr. Rook gave us to-day. The doctrines of the decrees and sovereignty, and the eternal destruction of the impenitent, were strongly set forth."

"Y-yes, I sp-spose so. I d-don't profit so m-much by that inst-struction, however. I th-think more of the e-every-day religion he u-usually preaches."—Mr. Hardwick trotted one foot with a leg crossed and with an air which showed to his children and to Mark plainly enough how impatient he was of the Squire's beginning so far away from what he came to say.

"Why, you don't doubt these fundamental points?" asked Mr. Clamp.

"No, I don't d-doubt, n-nor I don't th-think much about 'em; they're t-too deep for me, and I ler-let 'em alone. We shall all un-know about these things in God's goo-good time. I th-think more about keepin' peace among n-neighbors, bein' kuh-kindly to the poor, h-helpin' on the cause of eddication, and d-doin' ginerally as I would be done by."—Mr. Hardwick's emphasis could not be mistaken, and Squire Clamp was a little uneasy.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Hardwick," he replied, "all the town knows of your practical religion." Then turning to Mark, he said, blandly, "So you came home yesterday. How long do you propose to stay?"

The young man never had the best control of his temper, and it was now rapidly coming up to the boiling-point. "Mr. Clamp," said he, "if you had asked a pickerel the same question, he would probably tell you that you knew best how and when he came on shore, and that for himself he expected to get back into water as soon as he got the hook out of his jaws."

"I am sorry to see this warmth," said Mr. Clamp; "I trust you have not been put to any trouble."

"Really," said Mark, bitterly, "you have done your best to ruin me in the place where I earn my living, but 'trust I have not been put to any trouble'! Your sympathy is as deep as your sincerity."

"Mark," said Mr. Hardwick, "you're sa-sayin' more than is necess-ssary."

"Indeed, he is quite unjust," rejoined the lawyer. "I saw an alteration in his manner to-day, and for that reason I came here. I prefer to keep the friendship of all men, especially of those of my townsmen and brethren in the church whose piety and talents I so highly respect."

"S-sartinly, th-that's right. I don't like to look around, wh-when I take the ker-cup at the Sacrament, and see any man that I've wronged; an' I don't f-feel comf'table nuther to see anybody der-drinkin' from the same cup that I think has tried to w-wrong me or mine."

"You can save yourself that anxiety about Mr. Clamp, Uncle," said Mark. "He is not so much concerned about our Christian fellowship as he is about his fees. He couldn't live here, if he didn't manage to keep on both sides of every little quarrel in town. Having done me what mischief he could, he wants now to salve the wound over."

"My young friend, what is the reason of this heat?" asked Mr. Clamp, mildly.

"I don't care to talk further," Mark retorted. "I might as well explain the pathology of flesh bruises to a donkey who had maliciously kicked me."

Mr. Clamp wiped his bald head, on which the perspiration was beginning to gather. His stock of pious commonplaces was exhausted, and he saw no prospect of calming Mark's rage, or of making any deep impression on the blacksmith. He therefore rose to depart. "Good evening," said he. "I pray you may become more reasonable, and less disposed to judge harshly of your friend and brother."

Mark turned his back on him. Mr. Hardwick civilly bade him good-night. Lizzy and Anna, who had retreated during the war of words, came back, and the circle round the table was renewed.

"Yer-you'll see one thing," said Mr. Hardwick. "He'll b-bring you, and p'r'aps me, too, afore the church for this talk."

"The sooner, the better," said Mark.

"I d'no," said Mr. Hardwick. "Ef we must live in f-fellowship, a der- diffi-culty in church isn't per-pleasant. But 'tis uncomf'table for straight wood to be ker-corded up with such ker-crooked sticks as him."

[To be continued.]



A PERILOUS BIVOUAC.

It is a pleasant June morning out on the Beauport slopes; the breeze comes laden with perfume from shady Mount Lilac; and it is good to bask here in the meadows and look out upon the grand panorama of Quebec, with its beautiful bay sweeping in bold segments of shoreline to the mouth of the River St Charles. The king-bird, too lazy to give chase to his proper quarry, the wavering butterfly, sways to and fro upon a tall weed; and there, at the bend of the brook, sits an old kingfisher on a dead branch, gorged with his morning meal, and regardless of his reflected image in the still pool beneath. The goguelu[1] rises suddenly up from his tuft of grass, and, having sung a few staves of his gurgling song, drops down again like a cricket-ball and is no more seen. Smooth-plumaged wax-wings are pruning their feathers in the tamarac-trees; and high up over the waters of the bay sails a long-winged fish-hawk, taking an extended and generally liberal view of sundry important matters connected with the fishery question.

[Footnote 1: This name is given by the French Canadians to the bobolink or rice bunting. It is an old, I believe an obsolete, French word, and means "braggart."]

Many a year has gone by since I last looked upon this picture, and then it was a winter scene; for it was near the end of March, which is winter enough in this region, and the blue water of the bay there was flagged over with a rough white pavement of crisp snow. I think I see it now, faintly ruled with two lines of sapins, or young fir saplings,—one marking out the winter road to the Island of Orleans, and the other that from Quebec to Montmorency; and this memory recalls to me how it fell upon a certain day, the incidents of which are expanding upon my mind like those dissolving views that come up out of the dark, I set up a camp-fire just where that wood-barge nods drowsily at anchor, about a mile this side of the town. It was a sort of bivouac a man is not likely to forget in a hurry; not that it makes much of a story, after all,—but a trifling scratch will sometimes leave its mark on a man for life. I was quartered in Quebec then; didn't go much into society, though, because I devoted much of my young energies to shooting and fishing, which were worth any expenditure of energy in those days. And so I restricted my evening rounds of duty to one or two houses which were conducted on the always-at-home principle, walking in and hanging up my wide-awake when it suited me, and staying away when it didn't,—which was about the oftener.

In the winter of eighteen hundred and no matter what, I got three months' leave of absence, with the intention of devoting a great portion of it to a long-planned expedition, an invasion of the wild mountain-region lying north of Quebec, towards the head-waters of the Saguenay,—a district seldom disturbed by the presence of civilized man, but abandoned to the semi-barbarous hunter and trapper, and frequented much by that prince of roving bucks, the shy but stately caribou. I need not go into the details of my two-months' hunt. It was like any other expedition of the sort, about which so much information has already been given to the world in the pleasant narratives of the wandering family of MacNimrod. I succeeded in procuring many hairy and horned trophies of trap and rifle, as well as in converting myself from some semblance of respectability into the veriest looking cannibal that ever breakfasted on an underdone enemy. The return from the chase furnished the little adventure I have alluded to,—a very small adventure, but deeply impressed upon a memory now a good deal cut up with tracks and traces of strange beasts of accidents, quaint "vestiges of creation," ineffaceably stamped upon what poor Andrew Romer used to call the "old red sandstone," in playful allusion to what his friends well knew was a heart of hearts.

The snow lay heavy in the woods, wet and heavy with the breath of coming spring, as I tramped out of them one March morning, and found myself on the queen's highway, within short rifle-shot of the rushing Montmorency, whose roar had reached us through the forest an hour or two before. In the early days of our hunt I had been so lucky as to run down and kill a large moose, whose antlered head was a valuable trophy; and so I confided it to the especial charge of my faithful follower, Zachary Hiver, a brule or half-breed of the Chippewa nation, who had hunted buffaloes with me on the plains of the Saskatchewan and gaffed my salmon in the swift waters of the Mingan and Escoumains. I had promised him powder and lead enough to maintain his rifle for the probable remainder of his earthly hunting- career, if he succeeded in safely conveying to Quebec the hide and horns of the mammoth stag of the forest. These he had concealed, accordingly, in a safe hiding-place, or cache, to be touched at on our return; and now as he emerged from the dark pine copse, with his ropy locks tasselling his flat skull, and a tattered blanket-coat fluttering in ribbons from his brown and brawny chest, his interest in the venture appeared in the careful manner in which he drew after him a long, slender tobaugan, heavily packed with the hard-won proceeds of trap and gun. Foremost among these were displayed the broad antlers of the moose of my affections, whose skin served as a tarpaulin for the remainder of the baggage, round which it was snugly tucked in with thongs of kindred material.

We halted on a broad ledge of rock by the western verge of the bay of the Falls, glad of an opportunity of enjoying my independence to the last, unfettered by the conventionalities for which I was beginning to be imbued with a savage contempt. Here we set up a primitive kitchen-range, and, having feasted upon cutlets of the caribou, scientifically treated by a skewer process with which Zach was familiar, we lounged like "lazy shepherds" in the sun, and the eye of the Indian flashed as I produced from the folds of my sash a leather-covered flask which did not look as if it was meant to contain water. During the weeks of the chase I had been very careful to conceal this treasure from Zach, knowing how helpless an Indian becomes under the influence of the "fire-water"; and as I had had a pull at it myself only two or three times, under circumstances of unusual adversity and hardship, there still remained in it a very respectable allowance for two, from which I subtracted a liberal measure, handing over the balance to Zach, who gulped down the skiltiwauboh with a fiendish grin and a subsequent inhuman grunt. As I lit my pipe after this satisfactory arrangement, the roar of the mighty Montmorency, whirling down its turbulent perpendicular flood behind a half-drawn curtain of green and azure ice, sounded like exquisite music to my ears, and I looked towards Quebec and blinked at its fire-flashing tin spires and house-tops burning through the coppery morning fog, until my mind's eye became telescopic, and my thoughts, unsentimental though I be, reverted to civilized society and its agrements, and particularly to a certain steep-roofed cottage situated on a suburban road, in the boudoirs of which I liked to imagine one pined for my return. If memory has its pleasures, has it not also its glimpses of regret?—and who can say that the former compensate for the latter? Even now I see her as she used to step out on the veranda,—the lithe Indian girl, rivalling the choicest "desert- flower" of Arabia in the rich darkness of her eyes and hair, and in the warm mantling of her golden-ripe complexion,—unutterably graceful in the thorough-bred ease of her elastic movements,—Zosime MacGillivray, perfect type and model of the style and beauty of the brulee. She was the only child of a retired trader of the old North-West Fur Company and his Indian wife; had been partly educated in England; possessed rather more than the then average Colonial allowance of accomplishments; and was, altogether, so much in harmony with my roving forest-inclinations, that I sometimes thought, half seriously, how pleasant and respectable it would be to have one such at the head of one's camp-equipage, and how much nicer a companion she would be on a hunt than that disreputable old scoundrel, Zach Hiver.

"Pack the tobaugan, Zach! The sun will come out strong by and by, and the longer we tarry here, the heavier the snow will be for our stretch to the Citadel. Up, there! leve-toi, cochon!" shouted I, in the elegant terms of address which experience had taught me were the only ones that had any effect upon the stolid sensibilities of the half-breed,—at the same time administering to him a kick that produced a thud and a grunt, as if actually bestowed on the unclean quadruped to which I had just likened him. The ragamuffin was very slow this time in getting the traps together on the tobaugan, and, if I had not attended to the matter myself, the moose trophy, at least, would in all probability have been left to perish, and would never have pointed a moral and adorned a tale, as it now does, in its exalted position among the reminiscences of things past. At length we got under way, and, as a walk over the open plain offered a pleasing variety to a man who had been feeling his way so long through the dim old woods, I determined to descend from the ridge of Beauport, and proceed over the snow-covered surface of the bay, in a bird's-eye line, to our point of destination. Winding down the almost perpendicular declivity, sometimes sliding down on our snow-shoes, with the tobaugan running before us, "on its own hook," at a fearful pace, and sometimes obliged to descend, hand under hand, by the tangled roots and shrubs, we soon found ourselves on the great white winter-prairie of the grand St. Lawrence, upon which I strode forward with renewed energy, steering my course, like the primitive steeple-chasers of my boyhood's home, upon the highest church-tower looming up from the heterogeneous huddle of motley houses that just showed their gable-tops over the low ring of mist which mingled with the smoke of the Lower Town.

After a progress of about five miles, I found I had very materially widened the distance between myself and Zach, who, encumbered by the baggage, and by the spring snow which each moment accumulated in wet heavy cakes upon his snow-shoes, was now a good mile in my rear. This I was surprised at, as he generally outwalked me, even when carrying on his back a heavy load, with perhaps a canoe on his head, cocked-hat fashion, as he was often obliged to do in our fishing-excursions to the northern lakes. It now occurred to me, however, that I had incautiously left the brandy- flask in his charge, and when he came up with me I gathered from his fishy eye, and the thick dribblings of his macaronic gibberish,—which was compounded of sundry Indian dialects and French-Canadian patois, coarsely ground up with bits of broken English,—that the modern Circe, who changes men into beasts, had wrought her spells upon him; a circumstance at which I was terribly annoyed, as foreboding an ignominious entry into the city by back-lane and sally-port, instead of my long- anticipated triumphal progress up St. Louis Street, bearded in splendor, bristling with knife and rifle, and followed by my wild Indian coureur- des-bois, drawing my antlered trophies after him upon the tobaugan as upon a festival car.

"Kaween nishishin! kaw-ween!" howled the big monster, in his mixed-pickle macaronio,—"je me sens saisi du mal-aux-raquettes, je ne pouvons plus. Why you go so dam fast, when hot sun he make snow for tire, eh? Sacr-r-re raquettes! il me semble qu'ils se grossissent de plus en plus a chaque demarche. Stop for smoke, eh?—v'la! good place for camp away there, kitchee hogeemaus endaut, big chief's house may-be!" grinned he, as he indicated with Indian instinct and a wavering finger a structure of some kind that peered through the fog at a short distance on our left.

We were now within about a mile of Quebec. The Indian's intoxication had increased to a ludicrous extent, so that to have ventured into the town with him must have resulted in a reckless exposure of myself to the just obloquy and derision of the public; while, on the other hand, if I left him alone upon the wide world of ice, and dragged the tobaugan to town myself, the unfortunate brule must inevitably have stepped into some treacherous snow-drift or air-hole, and thus miserably perished. So I made up my mind for a camp on the ice; and, diverging from our course in the direction pointed out by the Indian, we soon arrived at the object indicated by him, which proved to be a stout framework about twelve feet square, constructed of good heavy timber solidly covered with deal boarding, and conveying indubitable evidence, to my thinking, of the remains of one of the cabanes or shanties commonly erected on the ice by those engaged in the "tommy-cod" fishery,—portable structures, so fitted together as to admit of being put up and removed piecemeal, to suit the convenience of their proprietors. I blessed mentally the careless individual who had thus unconsciously provided for our especial shelter; and as the wind had now suddenly arisen sharp from the west, driving the fog before it with clouds of fine drifting snow, I was glad to get under the lee of the providential wall, in the hospitable shelter of which, before two minutes had elapsed, "Stephano, my drunken butler," was snoring away like a phalanx of bullfrogs, with his head bolstered up somehow between the great moose-horns, and his brawny limbs rolled carelessly in the warm but somewhat unsavory skin of the dead monarch of the forest. I gloried in his calm repose; for the day was yet young, and I flattered myself that a three-hours' snooze would restore his muddled intellects to their normal mediocrity of useful instinct, and that I might still achieve my triumphal entry into the city,—a procession I had been so much in the habit of picturing to myself over the nocturnal camp-fire, that it had become a sort of nightmare with me. Indeed, I had idealized it roughly in my pocket-book, intending to transfer the sketches, for elaboration on canvas, to Tankerville, the regimental Landseer, whose menagerie of living models, consisting of two bears, one calf-moose, one loup-cervier, three bloated raccoons, and a bald eagle, formed at once the terror and delight of the rising generation of the barracks.

Having got up a small fire with the assistance of the chips and scraps of wood that were plentifully scattered around, I placed my snow-shoes one on top of the other, and sat down on them,—a sort of preparatory step in my transition to civilization, for they had somewhat the effect of a cane- bottomed chair minus the legs and without a back. Then I filled my short black pipe from the seal-skin tobacco-pouch, the contents of which had so often assuaged my troubled spirit when I brooded over griefs which then were immature, if not imaginary. It was a very pleasant smoke, I recollect,—so pleasant, that I rather congratulated myself upon my position; the only drawback to it being that I was shut out from a view of the town, as the wind and drift rendered it indispensable for comfort in smoking that I should keep strictly to leeward of my bulwark. Tobacco is notoriously a promoter of reflection; there must be something essentially retrospective in the nature of the weed. I retired upon the days of my boyhood, my legs and feet becoming clairvoyant of the corduroys and highlows of that happy period of my existence, as the revolving curls of pale smoke exhibited to me, with marvellous fidelity, many quaint successive tableaux of the old familiar scenes of home,—sentimental, some of them,—comic, others,—like the domestic incidents revealed with exaggerations on the hazy field of a magic-lantern. I thought of my poor mother, and of the excellent parting advice she gave me,—but more particularly of the night-caps with strings, which she extracted such a solemn promise from me to wear carefully every night in all climates, and which, on the second evening of my sojourn in barracks, were so unceremoniously reduced to ashes in a noisy auto-da-fe. These retrospective pictures were succeeded by others of more modern date, coming round in a progressive series, until I had painted myself up to within a few weeks of my present position, the foreground of my existence. Then I remembered promises made by me of contributions to a certain album,—further contributions,—for I had already furnished several pages of it with food for mind and eye in the form of melancholy verses and "funny" sketches, with brief dramatic dialogues beneath the latter, to elucidate the "story." I particularly recollected having volunteered a translation or imitation of a pretty song in Ruy Blas; and as the fit was upon me, I produced my pocketbook, to commit to paper a version of it which I had mentally devised. The leaves of my book were all filled, however; some with memoranda,—a sort of savage diary it was,—some with sketches of scenes in the wilderness: there was not a corner vacant. Turning towards the planking of my bulwark, I perceived that it was smoothly planed and clean, and to work on it I went, pencil in hand. First I wrote "Zosime MacGillivray," in several different styles of chirography, flourished and plain, and even in old text. Then I sketched out a rough design for an ornamental heading, with a wreath of flowers encircling the words "To Zozzy," and beneath this work of Art I inscribed the effort of my muse, which ran thus:—

Fields and forests rejoice In their silver-toned throng; I hear but the voice Of the bird in thy song!

In April's glad shower Flash petals and leaves, Less bright than the flower Round thy heart that weaves!

Stars waken, stars slumber, Stars wink in the sky, Bright numberless number; But none like thine eye!

For bird-song and flower And star from above Combine in thy bower; Their union is love!

My mind being considerably relieved by this gush of sentiment, I felt myself entitled to unbend a little, and, turning my attention to artistic pursuits, principally of a humorous character, I developed successively many long-pent-up imaginings in the way of severe studies of sundry garrison notables. There was "Bendigo" Phillips, with boxing-gloves fearfully brandished, appearing in the attitude in which he polished off young Thurlow of the R.A., under the pretence of giving him a lesson in the noble art of self-defence, but in reality to revenge himself upon him for an ill-timed interference in a certain affaire du coeur. The agony of young Thurlow, pretending to look pleased, was depicted by a very successful stroke of Art. To the extreme right you might have beheld Vegetable Warren, the staff-surgeon, slightly exaggerated in the semblance of a South-Down wether nibbling at a gigantic Swedish turnip. Written lampoons of the fiercest character accompanied the illustrations. But my boldest effort was an atrocious and libellous cartoon of the commandant of the garrison, popularly known as "Old Wabbles,"—I believe from the preternatural manner in which his wide Esquimaux boots vacillated about his long, lean shanks. This chef d'oeuvre was executed upon a rather large scale, and I imparted considerable force and breadth to the design by "coaling in" the shadows with a charred stick. Then calling color to my aid, as far as my limited means admitted, I scraped from the edges of the moose-hide a portion of the red-streaked fat, and, having impasted therewith the bacchanalian nose of my subject, I stepped back a few paces to contemplate the effect. So ludicrous was the resemblance, that I laughed outright in the pride of my success,—a transient hilarity, nipped suddenly in the bud by the loud boom of a cannon, accompanied rather than followed by a rushing sound a few feet above my head, and a thundering bump and splutter upon the ice some thirty or forty yards beyond me, as the heavy shot skipped and ricochetted away with receding bounds to its vanishing-point somewhere in the neighborhood of the Island of Orleans. Two strides to the front, and a glance at the broad, black ring emblazoned on the hitherto disregarded face of my bulwark, and the truth flashed upon my staggering senses.