Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again he cried, "Speak out, my worthy seamen!"-no voice, no sign replied; But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words met my

ear:

"God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear!"

A weight seemed lifted from my heart, -a pitying friend was nigh,

I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his eye; And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me, Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea:

"Pile my ship with bars of silver-pack with coins of Spanish

gold,

From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold,
By the living God who made me!-I would sooner in your

bay

Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away!"

"Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws!" Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's just applause.

"Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old,

Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold?"

I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half way drawn,
Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn;
Fiercely he drew his bridle rein, and turned in silence back,
And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his
track.

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul;
Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parch-

ment roll.

"Good friends," he said, "since both have fled, the ruler and the priest,

Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well released."

Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept round the silent

bay,

As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me go my way;

For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of the glen, And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men.

Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my

eye,

A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky,
A lovelier light on rock and hill, and stream and woodland lay,
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay.

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life!-to Him all praises be,
Who from the hands of evil men hath set His handmaid free;
All praise to Him before whose power the mighty are afraid,
Who takes the crafty in the snare, which for the poor is laid!

Sing, oh, my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight calm. Uplift the loud thanksgiving- pour forth the grateful psalm; Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the saints of old, When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter told.

And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty men of wrong, The Lord shall smite the proud and lay His hand upon the

strong.

Wo to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour!

Wo to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven and devour:

But let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart be glad,
And let the mourning ones again with robes of praise be clad,
For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the stormy wave,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to save!

+FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.*

AROUND Sebago's lonely lake

There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.

The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.

The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,

The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.

Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,

Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.

Yet green are Saco's banks below,

And belts of spruce and cedar show,

Dark fringing round those cones of snow.

The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer's wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.

He

* Polan, a chief of the Sokokis Indians, the original inhabitants of the country lying between Agamenticus and Casco bay, was killed in a skirmish at Windham, on the Sebago lake, in the spring of 1756. He claimed all the lands on both sides of the Presumpscot river to its mouth at Casco, as his own. was shrewd, subtle, and brave. After the white men had retired, the surviving Indians "swayed" or bent down a young tree until its roots were turned up, placed the body of their chief beneath them, and then released the tree to spring back to its former position

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks.

And odors from the springing grass,
The sweet birch and the sassafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.

Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.

But in their hour of bitterness,
What reck the broken Sokokis,

Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?

The turf's red stain is yet undried
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
Along Sebago's wooded side:

And silent now the hunters stand, Grouped darkly, where a swell of land Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.

Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
Save one lone beech, unclosing there
Its light leaves in the vernal air.

With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute, They break the damp turf at its foot, And bare its coiled and twisted root.

They heave the stubborn trunk aside, The firm roots from the earth divide The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.

And there the fallen chief is laid,
In tasseled garb of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid.

The silver cross he loved is pressed
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarred and naked breast.*

"T is done the roots are backward sent,
The beechen tree stands up unbent-
The Indian's fitting monument !

When of that sleeper's broken race
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place
Which knew them once, retains no trace;

O! long may sunset's light be shed
As now upon that beech's head
A green memorial of the dead!

There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree,

To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake

A solemn under-tone shall make !

And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature's younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast?

Deem ye that mother loveth less

These bronzed forms of the wilderness

She foldeth in her long caress?

As sweet o'er them her wild flowers blow,

As if with fairer hair and brow

The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.

The Sokokis were early converts to the Catholic faith. Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed to the French settlements on the St. François.