scious of the admiration her beauty and wit excited. Among the gay throng was a young man about Ned's age, who was among the number of her devotees; seeing that his attentions were not distasteful, he made them more pointed, until he finally requested permission to visit her, and obtained a sufficient permission to warrant, in his own eyes at least, his so doing. Well, time passed on. Ned openly avowed to our little Fanny his feelings of love, which a lengthened acquaintance had given rise to. The other young man also continued his visits, and in a less open way declared to her that he felt she must be his, and made a formal avowal.

Wherever she went his basilisk eyes were upon her; it seemed as though she had lost all free-agency. Ned was almost wild, until one day in autumn he received his sentence from her own lips; she loved him well, but she loved another,' (he of the basilisk eye,) and on him she intended to bestow her hand.' 'Did her heart go too?' asked my little niece; she knew not she spoke of her own mother, so I answered not. I had dreaded the effects this announcement would have on his sensitive mind, (for I had been asked to take the message to him, but could not.) I had feared that the wild passions he possessed would burst from his Christian control; but no, he became unnaturally calm; no tear came to his relief; he hovered like a phantom around them, 'unseen, yet forever at hand;' then he silently withdrew to the vast solitudes in the far South-West. About this time our father died; my sister was married, ay, married, and to him who had driven Ned away, and was about to drive me. We could not live asunder, so I traced his course till I found him wasting away, a mere shadow, in a sea-port of the Gulf of Mexico. I watched with him till he died his last words were Take care of Fanny, shield her from harm, and never let her know who hastened my career. GOD have mercy on us all.' I have often thought, as I smoked the pipe of reflection, how much his career was like that same pipe, affording amusement and solace to those who appreciated him, and now his spirit departed as the delicate line of blue smoke vanishes into thin air, and where he once was, there now remain ashes, ashes, ashes!

But I shall soon finish. Over his grave I vowed a single life; and to forget the harrowing grief of his loss, plunged into mercantile pursuits. I was fortunate, and came home with enough to provide for my few wants. I discovered that Fanny's husband had been unsuccessful, retired to a neighboring city, and there died, leaving his wife the mother of two children, and unprovided for. I purchased a house and furnished it, and to it took my sister and her little charges.

They do not well recollect their father, and are to me a great comfort, happy in their ignorance of the shallowness of the world. Perhaps I am crusty, but not to them. I know I look older than I am, but exposure has caused that. Mayhap I did wrong to tell them the tale I have told you, even with names and places fictitiously supplied: one good thing which has been its fruit, I cannot but relate. My little Fanny had the courage to check a thoughtless lady who scornfully demanded: Did you ever see a broken-hearted man?'

TO THE SPRING

FLOWERS.

BY JACQUES MAURICE.

April, 1852.

O SPRING-TIME FLOWERS! with your light scented breath
And fairy shape, when will ye come?

Winter is well-nigh dumb,

For his brave voice is whispering now of death:
And the meek snow is going quietly,

Stealing away: see, yonder cloud

Its spirit doth enshroud;

The stars' cold twinkle is e'enmost laid by,
And CYNTHIA smiles among them lovingly
All the night long.

The Hut.

BY HENRY J. BRENT.

CHAPTER NINTH.

THERE is no echo to the rifle's quick discharge. It startles for an instant, as if it smote through a thin wall of glass, shivering it into splinters. The victim hears it not. The pathway of the ball and its effect is like the speed and the blow of the lightning. The flash and the bolt are mingled in a second's space, and the spirit, whose tabernacle it has riven, stands at once in the halls of the eternity. Death is always about in the woods, when the rifle sends its crackling yelp through its recesses. As unerring in a practised hand as cause and effect can be, it speaks but once, and as it speaks, destroys.

The American's rifle is a disease in itself, and when it has spread into an epidemic of war, wo to the most wary who come within its range. Once upon a time, in a far foreign city over the sea, I shot with some gentlemen, rifle the weapon, for a ruby ring. I won it in three shots, without a rest. I had scarcely ever before raised a loaded rifle to my shoulder, but I had talked some little, perhaps vain-glorious boasting, of our American skill with the toy, and I therefore was called upon to win. Had I failed, I almost fancy now that I would have declared that paralysis was hereditary in my family, and that I had had a sudden attack, and forthwith started for Australia to try the climate for the complaint. I however won the ruby ring, and confirmed my bragging stories of my Southern brethren. At that time I shot no more. In the eyes of those credulous foreigners my laurels have never faded, and probably to this day I am quoted as the great American shot. Heaven help the mark!

So when Sampson and I heard the rifle-shot, we knew that something was going on, that probably after the scene we had been so recently engaged in, it would be better that we should look into. We had left the Indian, Rude Keller, and old Mike behind us. Keller was unarmed when he parted from us, and Mike's prayer-book was impotent even against a butterfly. Benny Brown had the weapon that could alone utter the shrill ring that had snapped against our ears; and as we hurried back upon our footsteps, conjectures rose in my mind as to the necessity that induced the old man to resort to his defence. That he had not offered an attack, I felt convinced.

We had left Mike, book in hand, seated, as he appears in the last chapter, beneath the time-stained rock, and the over-hanging autumntrees, with the wild leaves all around him, each imparting to him some tender sentiment that became, in the crucible of his religious temperament, a new theme of contemplation, a Gospel of his worship. The Cross of the SAVIOUR has no truer follower than the poor negro of our

Southern lands. Calvary, to his imagination, is an idea grand and awful, and HE who died upon its summit, gentle, oh! gentler far than the philosophies that have sprung from his unsophistic lips, would sometimes teach us to suppose.

This humble negro was no exception to a rule that runs parallel with social humility; but rather confirms the idea, that the simpler the creed and the closer it is allied to our natures, the simpler and more natural are the characters of those who profess it truly. In these days of so much popular error, it is not wrong, I think, in me, to add my humble convictions to the truth.

Dear old Mike had started to his feet, and with grievous apprehension depicted on his face, exclaimed, as we drew near:

'Master, there 's mischief about here!'

'Let us go and see what it is and where it is. It may be nothing more than the shot of old Benny at the snake-killer,' I answered, hoping for the best.

There's no deers bout now, young Massa, for they don't come where people quarrel and fight in the woods. Old Benny shot no deer then; and so we went on with hurried steps, trusting soon to arrive at the solution of the cause of our alarm.

A few moments and we had reached the spot where we had last seen the Indian; but he was no longer there. Farther on we went, and peering through the half-denuded branches, I could see no trace of him. All was still as death noiseless were the woods our hurrying steps alone, 'mid the withered leaves, disturbing the silence that wrapt the solemn scene.

The solemn scene was full of devilment.

Old Mike, Sampson, and I, went on. Mike leading, he of the book, like a missionary making smooth the path, showing clear the way, before the white and the black man alike. Toward the Indian's cabin we now directed our steps; for Mike, with great woodcraft, said he could see that Benny had passed along swiftly through the leaves, homeward bent. Was it for an asylum? We will find out by-and-by, for we will follow the man who had for our sakes incurred the malice of the ruffian.

No more gun-shots in the woods; no sound of fleeing feet; no cry of pain; no shout of triumph; all silent, and no clue to the sudden discharge of the fatal weapon. We will find the Indian's cabin, and there, perhaps, find out the meaning of it all. How glad was I, that I had brought the rifle with me; and how powerful did old Sampson look, striding as if with the vigor of his prime, and now and then waving, as he would a wand, the hawthorn club above his head.

Suddenly Mike stopped and examined the leaves with great care and attention. Two, three, four, bless us, there's four people more than Benny in the trail.' These are running tracks, Massa, and they all goes one way, straight after the Indian,' exclaimed the old man, after he had finished his scrutiny. Then we will hurry on and make it equal,' I said; and on we went, my two sable companions exhibiting an energy and speed in the pursuit that showed they felt the necessity of the extra exertion, and also a firm determination to stand by their red brother in his hour of need.

We had been running on for ten or fifteen minutes when, through an opening in the woods, I caught sight of the cabin we were in search of. All about it was as hushed as if no human being had inhabited it for years; but Mike assured us that the Indian had just passed over the path, and I concluded that he was safely lodged within his fortress. We all stopped at once, in order to take those observations natural to us under the emergency.

For myself, I looked for some signal from the inmate; listened to hear the bark of the inevitable Indian dog; to see the thin veil of smoke issuing from the culinary column; but none of these signs were manifested, and the deepest silence, and the most perfect absence of life, slept over the place. I then looked around for some evidences of the neighborhood of Rude Keller, and those others whom he had doubtless called to his assistance in his scheme of mischief. No out-house was there to conceal them. The trees with their huge trunks, might have afforded them shelter, and the luxuriant undergrowth was ample screen for their concealment; yet there were no movements that I could detect of persons watching us from the convenient ambush of the tree