dreamy quality of the mind, some perpetual recollection as of things that had been, coming back to her in dim and scarcely distinct vibrations from the young, small part of her life. Her hair was nearly black, and yet not black. It was the hair of a blonde seen in twilight, or when the moon shines; and it fell in clusters, not school-girlish, upon her shoulders; and her shoulders fell like the sculptor's lines of beauty, until they were lost in patched-up rags and queer rig of dress, halfbaby's and half-woman's. Had she begged a ribbon from some village belle, or was that bunch of tasteful color, bark stripped from the autumn forest, or leaves from the red dog-wood and the silver maple? There were feeling and gentleness and gentle blood, in the very arrangement of that something of color, that trembled on her bosom with the beating of her heart. Keep a sun-bonnet on her face for a week, but let her go out into the air of the pleasant woods, and her skin, now brown, would be as pure as the japonica that the bride of yesterday bore in the hand, the hand she gave away in love. The years of this young fawn of the gladed woods were not more than sixteen, and her wild vigor of look and limb made me think that she could go on to be sixty and yet keep on with her loveliness. There was a grace in the few movements she had made, that told of a brave, good heart, that knew how to beat in keeping with her lithe young limbs when they stepped along the humble pathway of her daily work; and yet, after all, I saw in her but the daughter of a ruffian and his dam; but who has not seen the tiniest and the gentlest petaled flower glimmer in its purple wardrobe among the savage scenery of a rock-hemmed way? Hereafter I will have to refer frequently perhaps in these pages to this halfheroine of mine, and therefore will dwell no longer upon a description of her now. My pencil in this chapter has but feebly sketched those lineaments, that my pen has equally failed in bringing before my reader; all that I can add now is, that no novel that I have lately read has in its pages a being so full of all the things that would charm a novelist or a novel-reader, as this calico-gowned daisy, with the loving heart, whom I have made to sit to me for her portrait. If I could tell my public what she now says of all this, they would be induced to give to her, perhaps, more of real every-day sympathy than at this moment they are disposed to yield. Perhaps she is reading now these very lines GOD bless her.

that you are dwelling on.

So the maid stood up as if to obey the wishes of the priest.

'Did you wait for him to order you?' exclaimed the woman. 'You shall not come when he says so, but you shall come when I wish it. Come now, I tell you, and none of your high airs about it, either.'

As she spoke she rose from the floor, her eyes flashing and brow all flushed with fury; and stamped her foot, and with the gesture of a bedlam queen, uttered her command to the girl: 'Come to your father!'

The lips of the girl parted as if to speak; but she did not, and without a sign in answer, she walked with almost a sullen air across the room and approached the Indian, upon whose arm she laid her hand and pointed to the priest: Who struck him? Tell me, Oga-ka-nin, who struck the Father?'

The old Indian looked down upon the upturned face before him, and with an expressive meaning in his eyes, indicated without speaking who it was that had raised his hand against Father Thomas.

He wanted to take hold of me, Lizzie, and I would n't let him,' growled Rude Keller with a tone of vindication; and it struck me at the time that there was also a mixture of fear in his manner. Time told

me afterward that I was not mistaken.

'The bad white man lies. The servant of HIS GREAT SPIRIT never strikes. He would not even strike an Indian! Oga-ka-nin wants the bloody hand to go out of his wigwam. Stay here no longer, the door shall be opened, and the squaw, like a cat, can lead him in the dark! Look!' continued the Indian, as he pointed to a streaming ray of silvery light that fell across the floor; the moon makes the forest clear. Though your eyes are full of blood, Rude Keller, you can see!'

The girl listened to this command upon her companion with a look in which I thought I could trace some latent feeling of exultation; but the predominant sentiment, as exhibited upon her varying countenance, was that, as I have said before, of a wild and far-away character. She appeared almost to be walking amid these things, as if she was in a sleep, and only doing what she did in obedience to some vague force of mechanical necessity.

Before Rude Keller could reply to the command of the Indian to leave the cabin, the girl passed over to him and whispered something in his ear. The effect upon him was instantaneous, and his senses and powers seemed to return to him with all their former force. He sprang from the floor, and there was not one of us but felt for a moment that another desperate scene was to transpire. The apprehension was only momentary, for this strange being seemed no less under the spell of the girl's whisper than he was under that of the Indian. There was no longer fury in his look, but a something else that filled his bloodstained eyes with terror; and he shuffled over the floor, leading the girl by the hand, and followed by the woman. But as they were passing by where the priest and I were sitting, the girl loosened her hand from the ruffian's grasp, and without stopping him—indeed he evinced no disposition to tarry longer in the room-she came up to my companion and in a low sweet voice said: Will Father meet me at the Canaseraga stepping-stones to-morrow?'

'I will be there, my child, before noon. If you are there before me, wait,' and he placed his hand upon her head, and in the subdued custom of his Church, he asked the GOD of the heavens to bless the child of the wilderness. And so she went back to the two who were waiting for her at the threshold. The man put out his hand as she approached him and said, 'Come, Lizzie, come home with me. You are my angel as well as GOD's;' and then, as if he was ashamed to have given way to a sentiment so humble or so tender before persons whom his own bad passions made him look upon as enemies, he added in a loud, rough voice: There is one more to deal with now than before!' He shook his finger at old Sampson when he said this, and without another word from any one, he left the place.

Was it because my age made me more liable to sympathize with the sweet young creature who had gone away from us like a good thought, that I then ceased to think of any thing but her? I could not help it, for all the interest that a naturally ardent and speculative nature could experience, was excited within me, not within my heart, O gentle lady! reader now of this doubtful confession; but how could I avoid looking toward the priest, and drawing him away even from the inoffensive hearing of our poor ignorant friends, to ask him something more about her than I had already heard? In answer to my question, he said he knew nothing farther than that she was the daughter of Rude Keller, and that she was a good and gentle girl, and worshipped with a simple heart, and in all things acted as if she was some exiled child from a prince's hall; and that she bore the servitude her mother put upon her, a servitude of hard and heartless imposition, with a spirit of such patience that, said the priest smiling, her conduct would add another verse to Job's part of the Bible.'

And so that was all I could hear of her; but I made up little plans about her, not of marriage, gentle madam, or of wooing, gentle maiden ; but of how, when I came into the full ownership by title-deeds of all my new lands and woods lying around about there, and scattered everywhere by hill-side and stream-side; how I would, out of my humble means that would be left me after I had paid for my purchase, buy her books that she could see poetry in print as well as upon the painted leaves of trees; and how I would win Rude Keller from his evils, and his wife from her devils; and that then I would send over to their cottage it should be a cottage then, thought I — a grand piano or a meek guitar, and have my lawyer in the city send me some poor lone man whose cunning hand could touch the keys and strings of instruments; and have him tarry with me in the summer months, and send him day by day upon my brave horse across the running river and through the woods, to where my pet was living, to teach her how to make music in her home from other things than her own pure lips and wild young innocent tongue; and how the priest would help me in my scheme; nor did I think that he would say me, No, should I ask him to take the books in his portmanteau, and in his wanderings call by and leave them with her, and stop and teach her how to feel the force of history's great lessons and the bard's high mission. And thus I sat weaving my garland of pleasant blossoms, until my lonesome heart was cheerful in the odor that came from the bright flowers that, as I weaved them, I almost feared would fall from my garland to my feet.

It was old Sampson that wakened me from this dream of the maiden in the Indian's cabin, by asking me if I would not go back with him to the Hut. It was now after nine o'clock, but the distance was not great, and the moon was bright and the air was sweet, and I really longed to get back to the old tower and see old Mary again, and my horse; and I knew that she too wanted her black lord to come back to her lonely side; for she would be at least uneasy should he tarry away all night. She might perhaps be like other wives I know of, who sometimes make objections to late returns of supper-sipping husbands. And

when the priest joined old Sampson in his proposal, I readily consented, and then when I found that the priest would lead his horse through the forest and go on with me to the Hut, I could tarry no longer, but was glad to start at once.

Mike would stay all night with the Indian, and where there is a fire with plenty of wood in the corner, a negro will sleep, as seldom eider-downed kings repose. A cricket on the hearth is not more comfortable than an old negro gentleman, one of the old school, on a cricket by the hearth. I shook the Indian's hand, this Oga-ka-nin chief, and with a warm adieu to Mike, who promised soon to come down to the Hut and mend the sash in the turret-window, and fix up the gardenfence a little, in case I bought, we left the place and struck into the woods. And thus was my first day passed upon the land I longed for; and when we got fairly among the pines and oaks, and we stirred the crisp leaves that had fallen from their branches, while the priest hummed some hymn to the Virgin from the vesper service of his Church,

my mind forgot the crashing tree that had fallen among the lawless gang, the bloody face that had glared upon us in the cabin, the furious tiger-cat in petticoats that spattered by the fallen bravo's side, and only saw the long locks of the young woman who had kissed the hand that was helping her to heaven. And thus we wandered on, passing at the crossing by the old mill- the Canaseraga stepping-stones it was, where Lizzie had made her rendezvous for the morrow-by the meadows and the white rock that shimmered in the moon, until we reached the Hut. We approached it from the river side, and I looked up at it as it stood between the moon and us. It was a rare old turret Hut of rare device,' and frost and moon-beam made it glitter like a jewelled pile. See it, my reader, as it stood before us in all its pride of log and light; and we entered by the door, and by my side entered the priest and Sampson, and the Past and the Present; and the Present took the form of the poor Lizzie, then perhaps wandering toward her gloomy home with the man she called her father and the woman who did not look as if she could be her mother. But Lizzie, though she was the Present, did not enter the old Hut's door as its young master's bride; no, there was no thought of that. And now I have finished the First Book of this Story, and I pray you all to wish me well in what I have to write of it hereafter: and with your good leave, I will now call Sampson to my room, to read to him, as I always do, the manuscript from which these sheets are printed. Good night to all, till warm July shall come.

End of First Book of the Put.

TARDY SPRING.

STERN Winter quakes upon his tottering throne,
Yet heads his legions from the stormy north:
And Spring, the uncrowned princess, seeks her own;
The loyal willow hangs his banner forth,
First, 'mid the frowning ranks of haughty peers;
While, by the brooklet, creeping all about,
The cottage children, roaming, with their shears
Cut cress and dandelion — to help out
Their simple meal. Lo! thundering on his path
The usurper-king prolongs his tyrant reign:
Yet timid FLORA, trembling at his wrath,

Still slow and sure, her rightful rule doth gain:
But when rich music stirs the nested tree,
And insect-life exults shall I be there to see ?

Hartford, (Conn.,) April 17, 1857.

L. B. 3.