-Immediately all the house was in an uproar. Frank turned over two chairs, kicked Hannibal (for obstructing the way) half across the room, and in ten minutes the whole household turned out en masse to scour the woods.

"She's in the mountains, squire, as sure as I stand here," said the Angler, "and she was out the blessed night through."

All immediately separated different ways-I riding by Fanny's bridle, and Wat Tyrril setting off with his long woodman's stride, determined “never to return without his little girl."

Before separating, it was agreed that if Kate was found, the successful party should kindle a fire on the mountain, when the smoke, if in the day, or the light after dark, would be seen.

Throughout the morning I kept by Fanny's bridle, and we wound through the mountain roads, inquiring at every farm house near for the lost child. No one had seen her, and without appetite we hastened through a mock dinner and resumed the search.

The shades of evening were drawing on, and no trace had been found-no fire yet seen. After skirting the base of the main mountain, we had come back nearly to the Ford. The grief of Fanny almost betrayed itself in tears.

As a last resort, we determined to tie our horses and ascend the Blue Ball," whose rugged

sides rose above us;-and mounting the slope, (if it can be called such,) farthest from the river, we gained after great toil the summit.

Nothing. Fanny was in despair. But suddenly turning a large rock, at the foot of a mossy oak, we saw the lost girl, half reclining on the ground, her basket escaped from her hands, and her disordered hair quivering with a storm of sobs.

Sully will never forget that moment, though as many years should come to him as to that flapping crow yonder in the old dead oak. With one scream Fanny ran to the child, and clasping her closely in her arms, burst into an overwhelming fit of crying. After a while this subsided, and turning to me, she said, laughing through her tears,

"I suppose you choose to think I am very foolish-but one can't expect any thing better from you."

Foolish!-if ever Sully was completely and unresistingly taken captive, it was on that identical occasion. He came near, then and there, making a downright fool of himself.

Kate's story was soon told. She had wandered into the deepest wilds of the Blue Ridge, and becoming lost, had spent the night in trying to find the path homeward. Morning found her as thoroughly lost as ever, and all that day she had wandered on crying until she unconsciously reached the top of the Blue Ball. The trees on that side, however, obscured the view, and she had abandoned herself to despair.

I had but one regret-that I was not in the valley to see that bonfire which we made of dead boughs and "pine-tags." Frank said it reminded him of the Scottish beacons, when the "redcross" streamed along the border to alarm the marches of Scotland.

Sully after the lapse of years, sees in this bonfire a nobler and more elevated poesy. It brought peace to an old man's torn and bleeding heart.

XI.

FRANK'S LIBRARY.

-Frank, Jr., never forgave his sister and myself for finding Kate; and his outrageous conduct on that occasion proved most conclusively that the Augler's daughter had made a conquest of him heart and soul. The Augler thanked us with simple dignity and disappeared with his daughter among the piues towards his lodge.

On the next day, when Frank had returned from his moruing ride, I reminded him of his promise to show me his Library.

"My books," said he, "can not properly be called a Library, friend Sully; though I believe

I have some tolerably rare and important works. | Princeton, but I never could read his interminaCome! we must mount. The machines, tele- ble details."

scope and books are near neighbors."

-"Friend Sully," said Frank, mournfully,

A dozen steps found us in the "Master of In-"you are a type of the new generation-as I glewood's" study-and a more curious apart- am of the antique and the obsolete. You have ment with its machines, fishing-rods, guns and a Froissart in your midst and you know him long-stemmed Indian pipes, to say nothing of the not." rows of antique volumes, never gratified the sight of a rambler.

-"Here, Sully," said Frank, taking down two small volumes, "this is Hakluyt, and you observe from the date-1582-that it is a pretty old work. It is an important authority in our history."

"Possibly. But I must own to you, Frank, that this way of employing u for v, and adding a superfluous e to every other word is a bore to me." "Pshaw!" laughed Frank, "it is the dust on the wine-bottle;—it smacks of age."

He passed on.

XII.

AN OLD-FASHIONED THINKER.

-I hear at this moment after years have elapsed, Frank's low, sad tones, as he commented on the "old things and the new."

"Friend Sully," said he, "they tell me I am old-fashioned, that my sentiments are those of a dead generation, which the present race of men have passed in their theories and ideas, long years ago. Be it so; but to those old ideas I will cling while the breath is in my nostrils. True, I am a waif, an estray, on the flood of the nineteenth century, out of place, unfit for the times. True, I am of the Past." "In what?"

In everything. Ah, this country and this age are so far from the freedom they boast, that unless you bow to the majesty of OPINION, your usefulness, your life is gone For what are the subjects on which I am old-fashioned, passé, iu my ideas? I think that the Virginia gentleman of the ancient régime is superior to the present race-in all things nearly superior."

"Then you approve of entails and baronial splendor in our Democratic Virginia ?”

-"I think I have seen that old history." "God forbid! There I am never understood. "It is a morsel for the literary epicure. Charles It is said that my predilections incline to the old Lamb never saw it;-that, friend Sully, is the colonial generation of men, with their powdered True travels, adventures and observations of heads, their liveried servants, their baronial esCaptain John Smith, in Europe, Asia, Africa and tates, and above all, their contempt of the lower America.' The remarkable work of a remarka-race of men-not as noble in source as themble man."

"It is a London edition ?"

"No. Printed at Richmond, but no one bought it. Doubtless the True travels' has ere now coated many a trunk."

“It is a shame to Virginia. But the next generation will right all this!"

selves. Could I find the strongest term of dislike, and even contempt, I should apply it to that race, though in them there was much of good. No, Sully! My ancestors were not of them ;-they fought with Bacon against Berkeley, and though they drove their lumbering chariot-and-six, they were altogether a different race; they never op

Frank shrugged his shoulders, with an expres-pressed the poor. You are told they lived on sion of countenance that spoke volumes.

Here is an Anacreon,' once Chancellor Wythe's, an Horatius,' from Baskerville's press, come hither through the Bermuda Isles, and there an old work containing a genuine signature of 'P. Henry.'"

"Indeed."

their farms and visited only in a certain circle of society. True; do I or you act differently?

Should I invite the rude overseers, and uneducated foreigners who have settled around me, to my parties and dinners? Not at all. They move in their circle, not in mine-they would not accept these courtesies. Just so in the old time. The true Virginia gentleman lived on his estate, was kind to his dependents and the poor, read his Arator,' and 'Gentleman's Magazine,' "A copy, you will recollect, wandered to and talked politics over his wine-God wot,

“Here is my Froissart, and there, near Johnston's Narrative,' is Kercheval's History of the Valley.' You have read him?"

"What's he doing?"

"May be returning thanks," said Frank. Then turning the glass he directed it towards the Massanutton.

they have many now got none to talk over. I placed my eye at the aperture, and on the "Well another race came to this honest, be- summit of the Blue Ball distinctly made out the nevolent, perhaps a little exclusive society-tall Indian figure of the Angler, leaning against another class planted themselves near them and a giant pine, near the spot where Kate had been said to them, ⚫ You shall not drive your coach, found. drink your wine, be served by your negroes in peace and quiet, for we have no chariot, or wine, or negroes.' That is what they said. What they did was different. They lived closely and scraped together, by industry and parsimony, a sum of money which they very kindly lent to this generous, hospitable, and prodigal race. The consequence? Why forced sales for cash, change of owners, and that last and most poignant of torments to man, poverty after riches, and not for themselves only, but their tenderly-nurtured wives and daughters. Ask the Tide-water if this is not true.

.

"There's the Fort Mountain," said he; "but we havn't the setting sun, and you can hardly see the trees on it."

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• What a poetical, dreamy looking ridge!" "It is surrounded by a colony of Dutchmen," said Frank, with his old quaint smile.

"By-the-bye, Frank, you are a walking cyclopædia of tradition-tell me this one of Old Powel,' which I have heard alluded to."

"It's not worth telling or hearing,” said Frank, lazily stretching himself in the sunshine, "but here it is as I have heard it.

"Is it a fiction that this old race is passing away and this new one coming? Is it a fiction that the old race is scouted and despised, the new race all that is great and powerful—' energetic,' "Old Powel was a Dutchman, who in the ' enterprising,' 'mighty?' Here am I on my old ancient colonial times came and settled on this ancestral acres, but poor enough, living in peace mountain, or rather in its embrace; for it clasps and quiet, loved by my servants, known to abhor with its two ramparts a rich and blooming vala deliberate wrong, and with an unkind feeling ley. He was not deterred by the fact that the toward no man on earth. Well! if I am sold Massanutton was then the great war-path of the out by a rich overseer to-morrow, I should be Delawares, but boldly built his 'Fort,' (as the 'another aristocrat turned adrift.' Perhaps in old settlers called well and strongly constructed my poverty, with Emily and Judith and Fanny, houses,) and defied the yelpings and hootings of forced to work in an obscure hovel, Mr. Smith these night-bird rascals. The pioneer having or Mr. Jones, the overseer, would honor little appropriated in this fearless manner the rich alFanny with a proposal of marriage; and should luvial of the valley, and owning large pastures I refuse this whiskey-drinking, unrefined, coarse to the west of the mountain, waxed great and admirer, why I am a haughty aristocrat! wealthy in the land. "Friend Sully, I am talking at random. These modes of thinking are my life—they cannot be changed. Well, the result of all? Why these men are successful and in the right. They will increase and their shadows wax so large, that this poor old dying race will be buried in obscurity, a scoff and a by-word. Wait a few years and they will be a myth, a dream!"

XIII.

"But as he grew richer, Old Powel became more grasping, and it was soon said, that on a dark and stormy night, when the wind moaned through the pines of the Fort Mountain and lashed the winding thread of Passage Creek into foam, a blue light might be seen in the recesses of the glen where old Powel and His Majesty were at work. The fact is, he had had an interview with the Devil, and on certain well-understood conditions had engaged his services.

"After that, old Powel became a coiner of

OLD POWEL THE COINER, A TRADITION OF THE the genuine Carolus III. Dei Gratias'—Spanish

FORT MOUNTAIN.

dollars in a word; and assisted the specie currency' to such an enormous extent, that it was said he had scraped together every Carolus' in the whole Valley of Virginia.

"It was an elixir vita to the old pioneer to gaze on his golden stores, but Caroluses don't lengthen life, and Old Powel, in a storm of wind one awful night, went away with his master in honest fulfilment of his contract. People said he had barrelled up his gold and buried it, and a few years ago two Dutchmen and a negro were seen busily digging where they had seen a blue

light burning. In vain! Old Powel had bu- He was passionate, but generous and noble, ried his gold too deep for mortal spade to reach. and Frank wrote on the old edifice, which his "And now the place is haunted: to this day steward occupied, while he himself dwelt in a his spook is seen. Those who dig to find his gold cabin, "God rest him." Sully wrote, “Amen.” are confounded by strange sights, and the urchin, Old servants of the family still lived here, and riding schoolward, hurries by in affright, while one old woman related many things of "my the foliage is agitated by unseen hands, and Pas-lord" her master. He was generous, she said, sage Creek follows him with indignant murmurs; as the air-would throw a beggar his hat-full of the pines moan with horror, the cannibal buz-joes (gold coin,) aud none connected with his zards swoop above his head like saturnine guar- household ever knew what it was to want. dians of the buried treasure, and the old Kyd of the Valley himself, the largest and the boldest of them all, looks down upon the intruder with burning and flashing eyes. You have it all;this is the tradition of the Fort Mountain."

“A diabolic mixture truly of the grotesque, the ludicrous and the supernatural.”

"Yes. But yonder comes Tom Barry; and we will descend, friend Sully, to meet him."

-Frank tells us that some years ago $250 were here found in old cob-coin-square according to the fashion of that day, and bearing date as far back as 1730. Greenway Court re-echoed to the laughter of that pleasant summer party, and they left its ancient domain to visit another relic of the Past-Saratoga.

Near Millwood a girth broke, and Sully to this day sees the picture of a young girl, with laughing face and auburn curls, leaning on a mossclad rock, beside a clear stream fringed with grass and flowers. He held in his hand a little slipper, which the run had wetted, and the party laughed at his awkward dreamy air.

-Tom Barry came to accompany the girls, according to promise, on a visit to "Greenway Court"--the old residence of Lord Fairfax. This they had never seen, partly because of their long absence at Boarding School, partly from that strangest of all reasons for not seeing a curiosity, Fanny took it from his hand, and with the asthat they lived near it. A prophet is no prophet sistance of Tom Barry re-mounted; but once in his own country, and a “lion," physical or more with a glance at him. O, purblind Sully! natural, is no lion in his native county.

Fanny clapped her hands and cried that all should go, but-with a glance at Sully-that Mr. Tom Barry should be her especial cavalier. -Certainly she shows her taste, thought Sully, bitterly.

XIV.

GREENWAY COURT.

Riding through a fine and rich country of swelling hills and blooming meadows, that pleasant summer party, of which Sully was a member, came to Greenway Court.

This was, in days gone by, the residence of Lord Fairfax, that singular nobleman who, abjuring the splendor of the British court, came here, amid his immense possessions, to indulge his passionate love of the chase and colonize the wilderness. He was lord and master of a great portion of the ancient colony of the Old Dominion, for his grants embraced the entire region between the Potomac and the Rappahannock, to the well known" Fairfax stone."

XV.

THE ANGLER'S VIOLIN.

-That evening Frank, Jr., burst into the dining-room, crammed to the muzzle with indignation, and every particular hair of his yellow locks standing on end upon his head. Behind him in perspective was little Kate crying piteously.

Frank, Jr., immediately exclaimed that the rascal of a sheriff had come to sell out Wat Tyrril, and appealed to the whole company to know if it wasn't shameful to treat a man in that way, who would'nt ask favor or complain?

Kate had indeed come up without the Angler's knowledge, and that child of the wilderness was indeed too proud to ask assistance.

Frank and the whole party, girls and all, immediately set out for the Island.

On arriving opposite the Angler's lodge, a mournful sight was before their eyes. The old hunter's effects, bag and baggage, were bundled He crossed the Blue Ridge to this valley, when out and scattered broadcast over the ground, it was one unbroken forest, (or broken, as the while he himself sat forlornly on a rock at some old settlers inform us, only by immense prairies,) distance playing "Lucy Neal" for the last time engaged surveyors to lay off the land, (among on his violin, which must go with the rest. The whom was a youth, GEORGE WASHINGTON,) and myrmidons of the sheriff meanwhile were sackhaving built, cleared, and lived a greater hunter ing the old cabin and scattering its contents over before the Lord than Nimrod himself, was gath- the beach. ered in course of time to his fathers. He sleeps beside Morgan in the old Lutheran church.

The party with Kate crossed in the canoe; the Angler taking no notice of us yet. At last

he rose, and coming towards us, bowed and said, |erence to Tom Barry's. Inglewood was no lonas he placed his fiddle on a pile of nets,

"It's all over, squire; my fiddle which I never thought would leave me must go with the rest, and we are turned out at last."

Fauny's pity threw Sully's in the shade. "Poor Wat! They shall not take Kate though. She shall go with me," said Fanny, putting her arms around the child.

“Of course not," said Frank, calmly, “that is out of the question. Friend Smith, what is the amount due ?"

"Fifty-nine dollars, sir."

ger a place for his peace of mind.

-So that evening he announced his intended departure; and a great sensation, (his vanity whispered,) was caused thereby. Questions, protestations, entreaties—yes, entreaties from all but Fanny, were showered on his devoted head. No! He was determined. He had business of importance; he could not pleasure always; Remain,"

“Better than that," said Sully; "they shall not he must go." Fanny did not say, sell out the Angler." or he could not have left them. Alas! those much looked for words of entreaty were never uttered; and as a longer stay would bring but unhappiness to him, he one morning mounted his little horse, bade them all a mournful adieu, (Fanny last,) and with many backward looks for a relenting glance, took his way through the great valley slowly toward the south, with the leaves and the wind following him with their "multitudinous laughter," and whispering, “No more-no more!"

"A mere nothing," said Frank, coolly, but the Angler was not to be tricked in that way.

"Squire," said he, I can't take the money, for I couldn't repay it."

"Pshaw friend Wat, it's small."

Squire I am poor, but I'm honest."

Frank looked worried, then thoughtful; at last, taking the hunter by the button,

66

Angler," said he, "have you not been to the western country?"

"Yes, Squire."

..

Taken by the Indians and kept captive?" "Seven mortal months, Squire, and suffered like a Christian man. But what of that?"

Why, you can pay me again."

Squire, I don't understand!"

"Friend Smith, come to Inglewood to-morrow, and I will discharge this claim. Now, Angler," said Frank, when the men of law had departed in their boat, "sit down some day and dictate to friend Sully here, who is a literary man, the particulars of your sufferings and adventures."

64

64

For what, Squire ?"

XVII.

RETURN.

One day Sully stood on the portico of the Capitol with two letters in his hand: one from a lawyer of the West, relating to his great wasteland possessions, and demanding his presence there; the other in these words from Frank:

-"Come, Sully! your Christmas should not drag by in the city, amid brick and glare and annoyance. Come to Inglewood, where a blazing fire of logs awaits you, and old-fashioned country laughter."

So I went, and on a cool, clear day of winter, I met at the Inglewood road the whole family come to welcome me. There they were--Frank, Emily, Judith, Fanny, and Frank, Jr., and until

Why to print them, Angler. You'll be his-bed-time Sully's arm had no rest. tory-history, do you hear?"

-And with the sound of the Angler's fiddle roaring joyously in our ears, to the inspiriting air of "Killecrankie," we departed, while little Kate was sitting down crying for joy, and Fanny was taking to herself publicly all the glory and honor of our united achievement in freeing "Angler's Rest" from jeopardy.