peculiarities to their successors, that when he appeared before them, it was not as a stranger, but rather as an old acquaintance. Dressed in the fashion which prevailed at the time he left his native province, twenty years before, and which at present helped to set off with more striking effect the oddities of his body and mind, he was, as before, an object of peculiar attraction to the mischievous propensities of the juvenility of his neighborhood. One of them, still fresh from the university, where he had won academical honors, availed himself, in order to display the powers of his muse, of Cadillac's re-appearance at home, composed a ballad which he called, "The Return of the Iroquois Chief," and which was a parody of a celebrated one, well known as "The Knight's Return from Palestine." It met with great success, and was sung more than once under the Gothic windows of Cadillac's tower. But he listened to the sarcastic composition with a smile of ineffable contempt. "Let them laugh at my past misfortunes," he would say to himself, "the future will avenge my wrongs, and my enemies will be jaundiced with the bile of envy. I am now gov ernor of Louisiana, of that favored land, of which so many wonders are related. This is no longer the frozen climate of Canada, but a genial region, which, from its contiguity, must be akin to that of Mexico, where the hot rays of the sun make the earth teem with gold, diamonds, and rubies! " Working himself into a paroxysm of frenzied excitement, he struck passionately, with the palm of his hand, the wall of the room he was pacing to and fro, and exclaimed, “() venerable pile, which derision calls Cadillac's Rookery, I will yet make thee a tower of strength and glory! I will gild each of thy moss-coated stones, and thou shalt be a tabernacle for men to wonder at and to worship!" As he spoke, his eyes became suffused with tears, and there was so much feeling and pathos in his action, and in the expression of his aspirations, that, for the first time in his life, not only he momentarily ceased to be ridiculous, but, to one who had seen him then, would have appeared not destitute of a certain degree of dignity, and perhaps not unworthy of respectful sympathy. Such is the magic of deep sentiment ! When Cadillac landed on the bleak shore of Dauphine or Massacre Island, what he saw was very far from answering his expectations. From the altitude of flight to which his imagination had risen, it is easy to judge of the rapidity of its precipitate descent. The shock received from its sudden fall was such as to produce a distraction of the mind, bordering on absolute madness. As soon as Cadillac recovered from the bewildered state of astonishment into which he had been thrown, he sent to the minister of the marine department a description of the country, of which I shall only give this short abstract: "The wealth of Dauphine Island," said he, "consists of a score of fig trees, three wild pear trees, and three apple trees of the same nature, a dwarfish plumtree, three feet high, with seven bad looking plums, thirty plants of vine, with nine bunches of halfrotten and half-dried-up grapes, forty stands of French melons, and some pumpkins. This is the terrestrial paradise of which we had heard so much! Nothing but fables and lies!" Cadillac came at last to the conclusion that he was in a sorry predicament. Sancho, when assailed with the cares of his insular government, never felt the tenth part of his embarrassment. So much so, that Cadillac deeply regretted that he could not be for ever asleep; because, when awake, he could not but be aware that he had spent all the funds he could command, and had no more left to consecrate to his favorite scheme. The sad reality stared him in the face :-his purse was empty, and his Canadians were gone. But when he was asleep, his dreams beggared the wonders of the Arabian Nights. Then Queen Mab would drive, four in hand, her tiny cobweb carriage through his brain: some merry elf of her for more funds to court would tickle his nose with a feather from a humming-bird's tail, and instantly Cadillac would see a thousand fairy miners, extracting from the bowels of the earth and heaping upon its surface enormous piles of gold and silver, having a fantastic resemblance to those Indian mounds which, in our days, make such strong appeals to our curiosity. Heated by those visions, Cadillac addressed himself to Duclos, the king's commissary, prosecute his researches after the precious metals for which he thirsted. Duclos replied, that the treasury had been pumped dry. 66 Borrow," "answered Cadillac. "I cannot," observed Duclos. "Well, then!" said the governor very pithily, "what is the use of your being a financier, if you cannot raise money by borrowing, and what is the use of my being a governor, if I have no funds to carry on the purposes of my government!" THE SKELETON HAND. BY JOHN G. DUNN, ESQ. Rap, tap! rap, tap! at the door of the heart; Oh, who is it raps at the door of the heart, "Tis I 'tis I, who knocketh without, Rap, tap! rap, tap!-I have startled thee up Rap, tap! rap, tap!-I have startled thee up |