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hill, and beside a rattling brook. He was now a hunter of the forest. One evening the eye of the fond wife wandered wistfully over the features of her youthful mate, as he prepared to go to the wood. Fond creature! a strange prophetic fear came over her spirit. The night before she dreamed of the savage war-whoop, and heard the cry of death, and wakened with a scream. He comforted her in vain before he went away. He takes his arrows, bow, and hunter-spear: but ere he go-one salute of love to his forestdove, and one kiss to their little pledge of affection; and swift as an arrow from a warrior's bow, away he hies to the forest.

The shadows of evening began to fall-she looked towards the forest-entrance, but her lover comes not yet. The flowers are dim, the song of birds is gone-and still he is not near. The last daybeam which lingered on the twilight's garment-fringe is passed away, and darkness settles on the dun mountains of Alleghany.

The sun of her spirit too has gone down. With her child in her arms she wandered out by the bank of her own silver river-the murmuring Merrimak. It led her in the woodward path. The moon, the friend of mourners, shone on her wanderings, while the stars shed their sympathetic influence on her heart. The wandering breeze, and the bird of night, and the mournful owlet, alone disturbed her pensiveness. The deepening shadows of the distant trees often deceived her eye, and sported with her fancy; and more than once she deemed she saw a figure spring from out the forestbut it went away.

She had wandered a good way when she thought of returning, and turned towards her white cottage.-But, alas! what lurid light is this! her cabin is in flames. She began to run towards it, when lo! there stood before her the enemy of the white men, one of the panther-footed children of the wood. She clasped her babe in an agony. "My hunter boy, we shall meet again in the land of love." One hand of the Indian was raised, while the other held her by the hair-his war-knife was gleaming in the moon. He gazed in the pale face, and his arm fell down as if paralyzed and unable to strike the blow. She swooned away; and when she waked it was not beneath the moon, but in a lonely cave of glittering spar she lay with her babe at her breast like a panting deer far from the water-brooks. Over her was gazing in her face a dark man, leaning on his bow.

III.

But where is her love? As he returned homewards there rushed from a hiding-place a party of the Red Men. One seized his rifle, while with his tomahawk another struck him to the ground. After

recovering, he found himself lying beneath a walnut-tree. He looked up, and one of the enemy approached and addressed himwith compassion in his countenance. "Listen to me, and answer. When thou wast young, and couldst scarcely bend a sapling of a first season, was thy dwelling far away from this? and was there a little bird dwelt in thy bower-and was she young and beautiful as morn?"

The pale-face wept; for he remembered the dreams of youth, and her who was the Star of his cabin-" Alas!" said he, "beside the murmur of a far-off rill I spent my dreams of boyhood. 'Tis three suns' travel from this place; we called it the Valley of Flowers. And there was a little maiden there who was my light of life, and now she is the mate of my bosom. But, alas! I fear that when I am not near to help, your red band have stolen her away, with the little bird she cherished. O tell me if you know whether she is safe in her home?"

The Indian wondered at the love and truth of the spirit-wrung youth; he pitied him, and cut the shackles from his bleeding feet. "My wife!" exclaimed the husband in agony. "Thy bosombird," returned the Indian, "sits on another bough, and pines for thee. She shall briefly mourn. Go:-I will lead thee to her couch of loneliness. Ye shall sing the song of happy lovers there. I come to give thee eagle-wings and feet as of the panther.-But ere thou depart, listen to my tale. Now it is many, many moons ago -yon sturdy oak was then but a little child-when I, the son of Annawan, was driven to beggary. The storm-god shook the grapes at my door; there were no berries to gather in the moors, and our hunting-ground yielded no prey. I went to the cabin of the white chief; but with a face dark as Lake Huron in the day of storms, he would have driven me rudely from his door. He said, Thou art an Indian-we have no mercies for thee or thine :-go, labour!' How could we toil? we had no field; my wife and babe, what could they do but weep? But lo! beside a bank of flowers there played a little girl-a gentle forest-maid-a tender tree which would be beautiful in a few moons. She threw her tendril-arms around the white man's neck and wept, and prayed, to give us bread. A little boy also joined in the petition. They gave us to eat. The son of Annawan was fed; his dove, his babe, was fed. Thou art that gentle boy, and thy forest-dove is that gentle girl, who blessed the children of the wilderness, when they were tossed like red leaves in the waste. And dost thou think that a single crust of bread, a cup of water, a pitying tear from the pale face shall ever be blotted out from the records of gratitude? are they not all written on the green leaf of my memory? A single drop of mercy from thee hath

wiped away the remembrance of a thousand wrongs. And this hath saved thee in this hour of peril. Behold around thee the smoke of scattered cabins-list to the shrieking families-they cry for their young ones slaughtered in their sleep. Dark and deadly is the revenge of the Onondagas. It was I who burnt thy home for this I mourn. I knew not whose it was, till I made captive thy distracted bride, and discovered it was she who blessed me and mine ; -and now she is safe from all alarms, and waiteth for thee. Shall it be said I lifted my arm against the one that gave me a blessing ?Ye wiped those eyes that are the light of my cabin. Ye fed my boy who now bends the bow, and will delight in the war-cry on the hills, when his father is passed to the land of souls. But tremble not, O pale-face! for he shall not harm any of thine. Thou mayst leave thy lodge without a latch, and sleep sound as a little babe. Thou mayst plant thy corn, and when the leaves begin to fall, gather it in. Fear not the war-cry nor the twanging of bows. Thy arrows may rust and thy bow-strings rot in the mildew of sloth. Lo! the war-vulture shall depart, and the dove of peace dwell with thee. The son of Annawan, the fleet of foot, shall hurt thee when the birds cease to sing; and when the Great Star forgets to rise, the son of Annawan shall forget thee. Tell the Fair Hair-the Star of thy cabin, that it was a mourned hour when I set the fire-brand to her unknown bower; but the beaver-skin will soon be in its prime; and when the Flower-month passes, the otter shall be worth an arrow. Then from the wood shall I return in triumph with my Hunter boy; we shall bring our spoils to the Fair Hair; we shall repair her lodge and beautify her home."

So saying, he led the white youth to the cave of glittering spar; and with eagle-gladness, he flew to the embrace of his wife and little child.

O pleasant now the cabin grows in which they dwell, and pleasant is that valley of the wilderness. Fearless now the hunter ranges the woods, where once the Red Men rushed forth. Buried is the knife and tomahawk, once whetted for him; and where the shriek of widows wailed, is heard the dance of maids-is waked the song of lovers. The flowery robe of the hills is not stained with blood, and the war-whoop is sleeping upon that Indian shore.

T. B. J.

BEGINNING THE WORLD.

It would be difficult to imagine a more unhappy animal, than he who is encumbered with an imposing establishment, while his supplies are uncertain and scanty. The truth of this I had occasion to experience some years ago, when I first began the world. The little fortune which my father left me, was all expended in obtaining a procuratorship, and in furnishing, after the best models, a flat in Queen street, where I placed two red-haired clerks upon a pair of three-legged stools of unusual elevation, and seated myself in a leather-encircled arm-chair, with the absurd expectation of being called upon by clients. Clients! Not the shadow of one darkened my beautiful white-washed walls. The glaring brassplate on the door (something about the size of a shovel,) with its hospitable" COME IN," was misanthropically disregarded. It seemed as if litigation had ceased with the opening of my rooms; and I began to think seriously of Edward Irving's millennium. To me, a client was as the mammoth among quadrupeds, or dodo among birds-extinct. I had not even the satisfaction of possessing a petrified one, nor could I trace the remains of any among all my curiosities.

To increase my embarrassments, I was on the eve of getting married. It is charitably said of the devil, that he finds work for the idle; so I, being utterly unemployed, was tempted to fall in love with a young lady belonging to Berwick. My last ten guineas were expended in paying her a visit, and in receiving her formidable "Yes."

"Next month is May, Arabella,” I said—(her name was Arabella Farquhar, and it seemed formed, with its number of Rs, to stifle the Berwickers)" It is unlucky, you know, to marry in May; but I cannot wait a day longer than the first of June."

"The glorious first of June,'" said she, smiling, for, in addition to her other attractions, she had a playful humour ;-" would you not, as a west-country radical, prefer the ever-memorable days of July ? »

"Nay, in love I have no politics."

"That is, you are im-politic in love."

"I am desperately in love, which is all I know," returned I, enforcing my affirmation with a kiss.

The respect which I paid to the old superstition regarding May marriages was occasioned by the circumstance, that I had no hopes of raising money for my purposes before the first of June. These hopes, as the reader will see, were built on a very questionable

foundation. The only relation left me in the world was my maiden aunt, Mrs Thomson, of Cockleshellhall, near Musselburgh. I call her maiden, for I cannot consider her in any other light, although it is undeniable that she had once been married. She was a woman of untold wealth and inconceivable parsimony. When young, her fortune was but forming, and her face was then even less attractive (if I may judge from a portrait taken at twenty) than when time had disguised it; so she was left to live to the alarming age of forty-five without an offer. At that period, however, her fortune, by dint of parsimony, having increased to a reverential amount-a certain Mr Thomson, compassionating her state of single blessedness, "threw himself at her feet," and was, to the infinite consternation of all her living relations, accepted.

The marriage of any young lady of forty-five furnishes food for scandal; but in this match there was nothing prominently absurd, indiscreet, or inappropriate. Mr Thomson was an ancient widower, of respectable character, and well to do in the world. He had been provost from time immemorial of the little burgh in which he resided, and was therefore happily distinguished from the innumerable tribe of Thomsons by his title of honour. Like Macbeth," he had no children," and considered himself to stand in need of a wife, to warm his slippers, when "fallen into the sere and yellow leaf." But Death interfered with his self-indulgent perspectives. Scarcely was the honeymoon over, with all its indescribable annoyances, when, one morning, after breakfast, as Provost Thomson was standing with his back to the fire, he stopped abruptly in the midst of a laugh at one of the quaint jokes for which he was famous, and sitting down in his chair, gave a groan, and expired. Apoplexy was the cause assigned for this appalling

event.

My poor aunt was exemplary as a widow, with her tears and her crape, even for a longer period than the rules of society demand; and her sympathising relations were, for several months, eager in watching any demonstration of connubial affection that might become visible under her weeds of woe. Their anxiety was absurd; for no one, with a notion of affinities, could outrage his imagination so far as to consider her, for a moment, in the light of a mother. She belonged naturally, constitutionally, and entirely to that highly respectable class of capitalists-old maids. It was but a presumptuous blunder of the Provost, to endeavour to remove her from the sphere where Providence had placed her; and though he had been Blue Beard himself, and lived half a century, he could never have moulded her to the accommodating shape, bearing, and appearance of a wife. the little month of con

As it was,

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