CHAPTER X.

"Ah, whyShould we, in the world's riper years, neglectGod's ancient sanctuaries, and adore,Only among the crowd, and under roofsThat our frail hands have raised?"

Charley smiled dubiously, but held his peace. The crowd thickened with their advance. Horses were tethered in solid ranks to the trees; children straying frightfully near to their heels; wagons and carriages almost piled upon each other; and men, white and black, stood about everywhere. The driver reined up, twenty yards from the arbor erected under the trees.

"Drive up nearer, Tom!" said Carry.

"He cannot," replied Arthur, letting down the steps. "Look!"

There was a quadruple row of vehicles on three sides of the arbor, the fourth being, at considerable pains, left open for passage. Several young men dashed to the side of the carriage, with as much empressment as at a ball, and thus numerously attended, the girls picked their way through the throng and dust. No gentlemen were, as yet, in their seats, and our party secured a vacant bench midway to the pulpit.

"Don't sit next to the aisle," whispered Arthur.

"Why not?" questioned Ida, removing to the other extremity of the plank.

"Oh! it is more comfortable here. We will be with you again presently."

"That is not all the reason," remarked Carry, when he was gone. "This railing protects us from the press on this side; and our young gentleman will not permit any one to occupy the stand without, but themselves."

"Will they not sit down?"

"No, indeed! there will not be room. Then the aisles willbe filled with all sorts of people, and our dresses be liable to damage from boots and tobacco juice."

"Tobacco juice!" was she in a barbarous country! As Carry predicted, their three attendants worked their way, between the wheels and the people, to where they sat. Charley crawled under the rail, and planted himself behind them.

"I can keep my position until some pretty girl dislodges me," said he. "The denizens of these parts have not forgotten how to stare."

He might well say so. A battery of eyes was levelled upon them, wherever they looked. The tasteful dress and elegant appearance of the ladies, and their attractive suite, were subjects of special importance to the community at large. Although eclipsed in show by some present, theirs was a new constellation, and they must support observation as they could. They stood fire bravely; Ida was most unaccustomed to it, and she found so much to interest and divert her, that she became unconscious of the annoyance after a little.

"Are those seats reserved for distinguished strangers? have not we a right to them?" designating a tier in front of the speaker's stand.

"They are the anxious benches," returned Charley.

"Nonsense!"

"So I think. The brethren dissent from us. I am not quizzing. That is the name."

"The mourners—the convicted occupy them," said Carry.

"Are they here?" inquired Ida, credulously. It was preposterous to conceive such a possibility in this frivolous loud-talking assembly.

"Not now;" answered Charley. "But when they crowd on the steam, you will witness scores."

"Fie! Charley? it is wicked to speak so!"

"I am just as pious as if I did not, Carry. I'll wager my horse—and head too—that by to-night, Miss Ida will agree with me, that these religious frolics are more hurtful to the cause they are intended to advance, than fifty such harmless affairs, as we attended on Thursday night."

"I am not solemnised yet;" said Ida.

"You are as solemn as you are going to be. You may beexcited, or frightened into something like gravity. Two, three, four preachers! That's what I call a waste of the raw material. What a flutter of ribbons and fans! The congregation reminds me of a clover field, with the butterflies hovering over its gaily-colored, bobbing heads. Handsome ladies by dozens! This county is famed for its beauty, and but one tolerable-looking man in its length and breadth!"

"Why, there is Mr. Euston—what fault have you to find in him?"

"He is the honorable exception. Whom did you think I meant?" smiling mischievously at Carry's unguarded query. "Art. here, is passable. Modesty prevents my saying more, as we are daily mistaken for each other. The music strikes up;—rather quavering; they are not in the 'spirit' yet. They never get to the 'understanding.' I must decamp. Those fair ones are too bashful to look this way, while I am here."

He was on the outside of the rail, sedate and deacon-like, in a minute. Unsuited as his remarks were to the time and place, they were less objectionable than the whispers of the ladies who dispossessed him;—critiques upon Susan's beaux and Joseph's sweethearts; upon faces, dress and deportment; a quantity of reprobation, and very sparse praises.

The preacher was an unremarkable man, who delivered, in a sing-song tone, an unremarkable discourse; opposing no impediment to the sociability of the aforementioned damsels, except that they lowered their shrill staccato to a piano. The gentlemen whispered behind their hats, notched switches, and whittled sticks. The hearers from Poplar-grove, albeit they were gay, youthful, and non-professors, were the most decorous auditors in their part of the congregation. Another minister arose; a man not yet in his thirtieth year, his form stooped, as beneath the weight of sixty winters. The crowd stilled instantly. He leaned, as for support, upon the primitive desk; his attenuated hands clasped, his eyes moving slowly in their cavernous recesses, over the vast assemblage. "And what come ye out into the wilderness for to see?" he said, in a voice of preternatural sweetness and strength. "Aye! ye are come as to a holiday pageant, bedecked in tinsel and costly raiment. I see before me the pride of beauty and youth; the middle-aged, inthe strength of manliness and honor, the hoary hairs and decrepid limbs of age;—all trampling—hustling each other in your haste—in one beaten road—the way to death and judgment! Oh! fools and blind! slow-worms, battening upon the damps and filth of this vile earth! hugging your muck rakes while the glorious One proffers you the crown of Life!" The bent figure straightened; the thin hands were endowed with a language of power, as they pointed, and shook, and glanced through the air. His clarion tones thrilled upon every ear, their alarms and threatenings and denunciations; in crashing peals, the awful names of the Most High, and His condemnations of the wicked, descended among the throng; and those fearful eyes were fiery and wrathful. At the climax he stopped;—with arms still upraised, and the words of woe and doom yet upon his lips, he sank upon the arm of a brother beside him, and was led to his seat, ghastly as a corpse, and nearly as helpless.

A female voice began a hymn.

"This is the field, the world below,—Where wheat and tares together grow;Jesus, ere long will weed the crop,And pluck the tares in anger up."

The hills, for miles around, reverberated the bursting chorus,

"For soon the reaping time will come,And angels shout the harvest home!"

The ministers came down from the stand, and distributed themselves among the people; bowed heads and shaking forms marking their path;—a woman from the most remote quarter of the throng, rushed up to the mourner's seats, and flung herself upon her knees with a piercing cry;—another and another;—some weeping aloud; some in tearless distress;—numbers knelt where they had sat;—and louder and louder, like the final trump, and the shout of the resurrection morn, arose the surge of song;—

"For soon the reaping time will comeAnd angels shout the harvest home!"

Carry trembled and shrank; and Ida's firmer nerves were quivering. A lull in the storm, and a man knelt in the aisle, to implore "mercy and pardon for a dying sinner, who would not try to avert the wrath to come."

Sonorous accents went on with his weeping petition;—prayingfor "the hardened, thoughtless transgressors—those who had neither part nor lot in this matter; who stood afar off, despising and reckless." Again rolled out a chorus; speaking now of joyful assurance.

"Jesus my all to heaven has gone—(When we get to heaven we will part no more,)He whom I fix my hopes upon—When we get to heaven we will part no more.Oh! Fare-you-well! oh! fare-you-well!When we get to heaven we will part no more,Oh! Fare-you-well!"

Ida's eyes brimmed, and Carry sobbed with over-wrought feeling. Arthur bent over the railing and spoke to the latter. He looked troubled,—but for her: Lynn stood against one of the pillars which supported the roof; arms crossed, and a redder mantling of his dark cheek; Charley was cool and grave, taking in the scene in all its parts, with no sympathy with any of the phases of emotion. The tumult increased; shouted thankgivings, and wails of despair; singing and praying and exhorting, clashing in wild confusion.

"You had best not stay here," said Arthur to Carry, whose struggles for composure he could not bear to see.

"Suffer me to pass, Dr. Dana;" and a venerable minister stooped towards the weeping girl. "My daughter, why do you remain here, so far from those who can do you good? You are distressed on account of sin; are you ashamed to have it known? Do you not desire the prayer of Christians? I will not affirm that you cannot be saved anywhere; 'the arm of the Lord is not shortened,' but I do warn you, that if you hang back in pride or stubbornness, you will be lost; and these only can detain you after what you have heard. Arise, and join that company of weeping mourners, it may not be too late."

Carry shook her head.

"Then kneel where you are, and I will pray for you."

She dried her tears. "Why should I kneel, Mr. Manly? I do not experience any sorrow for sin."

"My child!"

"My tears are not those of penitence; I do not weep for my sinfulness; I can neither think nor feel in this confusion."

The good man was fairly stumbled by this avowal.

"Have younointerest in this subject?"

"Not more than usual, sir. My agitation proceeded from animal excitement."

"I am fearful it is the same in a majority of instances, Mr. Manly;" said Arthur, respectfully.

"You my perceive your error one day, my son; let me entreat you to consider this matter as binding up your eternal welfare; and caution you not to lay a feather in the way of those who may be seeking their salvation."

Arthur bowed silently; and the minister passed on.

Dr. Carleton retired early that evening with a headache. Mrs. Dana was getting the children to sleep; the young people had the parlor to themselves. Charley was at the piano, fingering over sacred airs; psalm tunes, sung by the Covenanters, in their craggy temples, or murmuring to an impromptu accompaniment, a chant or doxology. All at once he struck the chords boldly, and added the full powers of the instrument to his voice, in the fine old melody of Brattle Street. Lynn ceased his walk through the room, and united his rich bass at the second line; Arthur, a tenor; Carry and Ida were happy to be permitted to listen—

"While Thee I seek, protecting Power,Be my vain wishes stilled;And may this consecrated hourWith better hopes be filled.Thy love the power of thought bestowed,To thee my thoughts would soar;Thy mercy o'er my life has poured,That mercy I adore.In each event of life how clearThy ruling hand I see!Each mercy to my soul most dear.Because conferred by Thee.In every joy that crowns my days,In every pain I bear,My heart shall find delight in praise,Or seek relief in prayer.When gladness wings my favored hour,Thy love my thoughts shall fill;Resigned—when storms of sorrow lower,My soul shall meet Thy will.My lifted eye, without a tear,The gathering storm shall see;My steadfast heart shall know no fear,That heart will rest on Thee!"

"While Thee I seek, protecting Power,Be my vain wishes stilled;And may this consecrated hourWith better hopes be filled.

Thy love the power of thought bestowed,To thee my thoughts would soar;Thy mercy o'er my life has poured,That mercy I adore.

In each event of life how clearThy ruling hand I see!Each mercy to my soul most dear.Because conferred by Thee.

In every joy that crowns my days,In every pain I bear,My heart shall find delight in praise,Or seek relief in prayer.

When gladness wings my favored hour,Thy love my thoughts shall fill;Resigned—when storms of sorrow lower,My soul shall meet Thy will.

My lifted eye, without a tear,The gathering storm shall see;My steadfast heart shall know no fear,That heart will rest on Thee!"

"There!" said Charley, "there is more religion in that hymn than in all the fustian we have heard to-day; sermons, prayers and exhortations. Humbug in worldly concerns is despicable; in the church, it is unbearable."

"Consider, Charley, that hundred of pious people believe in the practices you condemn. Some of the best Christians I know were converted at these noisy revivals," said Carry.

"It would be miraculous if there were not a grain or two of wheat in this pile of chaff. I never attend one that I am not the worse for it. It is a regular annealing furnace; when the heat subsides you can neither soften or bend the heart again—the iron is steel. What does Miss Ida say?"

"That sin is no more hateful, or religion more alluring, for this Sabbath's lessons; still, I acquiesce in Carry's belief, that although mistaken in their zeal, these seeming fanatics are sincere."

"You applaud enthusiasm upon other subjects, why not in religion?" asked Lynn, "if any thing, it is everything. If I could believe that, when the stormy sea of life is passed, heaven—an eternal noon-tide of love and blessedness would be mine—a lifetime would be too short, mortal language too feeble to express my transport. There is a void in the soul which nought but this can satisfy. Life is fresh to us now; but from the time of Solomon to the present, the worlding has nauseated at the polluted spring, saying, 'For all his days are sorrow, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night.' I envy—not carp at the joys of those whose faith, piercing through the fogs of this lower earth, reads the sure promise—'It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.'"

"You do homage to the beauty of the Faith, by whomsoever professed. I note its practical effects; judge of its genuineness by its workings. For example, the Old Harry awoke mightily within me, in intermission, to see Dick Rogers preaching to Carry, threatening her with perdition—she, who never in her life, committed a tenth of the sin he is guilty of every day. He has been drunk three times in the last month; he is a walking demijohn; his hypocrisy a shame to his grey hairs. And James Mather—he would sell his soul for a fourpence, and call it clear gain. Sooner than lose a crop, he forces his negroes to work onSunday—can't trust the God of harvest, even upon His own day. The poor hands are driven on week-days as no decent man would do a mule;—he let his widowed sister go to the poor-house, and offered to lend John five thousand dollars, the next week at eight per cent. I have known him since I was a shaver, and never had a word from him upon the 'one thing needful,' except at church. And he was in the altar, this morning, shouting as though the Lord were deaf!"

"Charley! Charley!"

"Facts are obstinate things, Carry. Next to being hypocritical ourselves, is winking at it in others. The church keeps these men in her bosom; she must not complain, if she shares in the odium they merit. They are emphatically sounding brass."

"Let them grow together until the harvest," said Arthur. "It is a convincing proof of the truth of Religion, that there are careful counterfeits."

"I do not impeach the 'truth of Religion.' You need not speak so reproachfully, Arthur. I believe in the Christianity of the Scriptures. What I assail, is intermittent piety; springs, whose channels are dusty, save at particular seasons;—camp-meetings and the like; men, who furbish up their religion, along with their go-to-meeting boots, and wear it no longer. Their brethren despise them as I do; but their mouths are shut, lest they 'bring disgrace upon their profession.' It can have no fouler disgrace than their lives afford. I speak what others conceal; when one of these whited sepulchres lifts his Bible to break my head, for a graceless reprobate, I pelt him with pebbles from the clear brook. Look at old Thistleton! a mongrel,—porcupine and bull-dog;—pricking and snarling from morning 'till night. A Christian is agentleman; he is a surly growler. Half of the church hate, the other half dread him; yet he sits on Sabbaths, in the high places of the synagogues, leads prayer-meetings, and weeps over sinners—sanctified 'brother Thistleton.' He thunders the law at me; and I knock him down with a stout stick, St. John cuts ready to my hand;—'If a man say, I love God, and hate his brother, he is aliar!' I hush up Rogers, with—'No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom;' and Mather, with, 'You cannot serve God and Mammon.' They say I am ascoffer;—I don't care. Now"—continued this contrary being, passing into a tone of reverent feeling;—"There is my kind guardian. I don't believe he ever shouted, or made a public address in his life. Heliveshis religion; a child can perceive that the Bible is a 'lamp to his feet;' a pillar of cloud in prosperity; a sun in adversity. I saw it when a boy, and it did me more good than the preached sermons I have listened to since. He called me into his study the night before I left home, and gave me a copy of 'the book.' 'Charley, my son,' said he, 'you are venturing upon untried seas; here is the Chart, to which I have trusted for twenty years; and have never been led by it, upon a quicksand. Look to it, my boy!' I have read it, more, because he asked it, than for its intrinsic value; that is my failing, not his. I have waded through sloughs of theories and objections; but hold to it still. Especially, when I am here, and kneel in my old place at the family altar; hear the solemn tones, that quieted my boyish gayety; when I witness his irreproachable, useful life, I say, 'His chart is true; would I were guided by it!' No—no—Art.! I may be careless and sinful;—I am no skeptic."

"A skeptic" exclaimed Lynn. "There never was one! Voltaire was a fiend incarnate; a devil, who 'believed and trembled,' in spite of his hardihood; Paine, a brute, who, inconvenienced by a soul, which would not sink as low as his passions commanded, tried to show that he had none, as the easiest method of disembarrassing himself. That one of God's creatures, who can look up to the glories of a night like this, or see the sun rise to-morrow morning, and peep, in his insect voice, a denial of Him who made the world, is demon or beast;—often both. 'Call no man happy 'till he dies.' Atheists have gone to the stake for their opinions; but physical courage or the heat of fanaticism, not the belief, sustained them. We have yet to hear of the infidel, who died in his bed,

'As one who wraps the drapery of his couchAbout him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.'"

"It is a mystery that one can die tranquilly," said Carry.

"I have stood by many peaceful death-beds," returned Arthur. "I never wish so ardently for an interest in the Redemption, aswhen I watch the departure of a saint. One verse is in my mind for days afterwards. I repeat it aloud as I ride alone; and it lingers in my last waking thought at night:

'Jesus can make a dying bedFeel soft as downy pillows are;While on his breast, I lean my head,And breathe my life out sweetly there.'

"And why do you not encourage these feelings?" asked Charley, bluntly. "I call that conviction; a different thing from the burly of this morning. You want to be a Christian;—so do I sometimes; but you are a more hopeful subject."

"I am by no means certain of that. You would never abide with the half-decided, so long as I have done. You are one of the 'violent,' who would take the kingdom of Heaven by force."

"How strange!" said Charley, thoughtfully.

"What is strange?" inquired his brother.

"Here are five of us, as well-assured of the verity of Christianity, and God's revealed Word, as of our own existence; the ladies, practising every Christian virtue; Lynn, prepared to break a lance with infidelity in any shape; you, like Agrippa, almost persuaded; and I, stripping off the borrowed plumage of those who have a name to live;—yet we will be content to close our eyes in sleep, uncertain of re-opening them in life;—unfit for Death and Eternity!"

He turned again to the piano; Arthur quitted the room; Lynn gazed out of the window, with working features; Carry shaded her eyes with her hand; Ida felt a cold awe creeping over her. 'Death and Eternity!' had she heard the words before? how out of place in the bright warm life they were leading! Here were true friendships, tried and strengthened by years; young love, joying in his flowery course; refined and congenial spirits; the luxuries of wealth and taste;—how unwelcome the hand that lifted the drapery which enveloped the skeleton! 'Death and Eternity!' The spell was upon the scented air; the moon threw shadows upon the grass, as of newly heaped graves; and the vibrating cords spoke but of the one awful theme!

"Our last ride—can it be!" said Lynn, when the horses were brought to the gate, early in a September afternoon. Ida smiled faintly. The parting of the morrow, was, to her, the death of a summer's day, to be succeeded by wintry darkness. Not even Carry knew how the prospect oppressed her.

Lynn saw that his remark was injudicious, and endeavoured to atone for it, by the most delicate assiduity of attention. Their liking had matured into an attachment, which might have been predicated upon their consonance of feeling and sentiment. Her calmer judgment gave her the ascendancy, which belonged of right, to the masculine mind; he did not look up—she could not have respected him if he had; but he consulted and appealed to her, as a brother would ask counsel of an elder sister. She learned to imitate Charley, in curbing his impetuosity; and he chafed less at her soft touch upon the rein. No bantering checked the growth of their friendship; they were, for the time, members of one family; Lynn and Charley were no more to the disengaged young lady than Arthur.

Their excursion was to a splendid mansion, fifteen miles from Poplar-grove, lately completed, and not yet occupied by a wealthy landed proprietor, the Croesus of the county. Arthur had seen it, and carried home such a report of its stately grandeur, that a visit was forthwith projected. Nature was in one of her richest autumnal moods.

"She dies, as a queen should—in royal robes,"—said Lynn. "Note the purple haze upon those hills, and the yellow glory that bathes the foreground! I would sacrifice this right arm, could I first transfer that light to canvass. Loveliness like this maddens me with a Tantalus frenzy. To think that it must fade, when it should be immortal! I would have it ever before me."

"It lives in your memory. That is a pleasure, time nor distance diminishes."

"I am not satisfied with this selfish hoarding. A voice isever urging me on,—'Create! create!' it cries; and while my pencil moves, I am a creator; exulting in the pictures graven upon my soul, as no parent ever joyed over a beloved child. 'They are mine—mine!' I repeat in an ecstacy. I have wept above—almost worshipped them! Then comes the chill, grey light of critical reason, as when you awake at morning, and see things as theyare: the soul-pictures are beauteous still:—my copy the veriest daub!"

"The keenness of your disappointment is an augury of success. The lithography is perfect—you must not despond at the failure of one proof-impression. Your mortification is a greater triumph than the complacency with which a mediocre genius surveys his work."

"You remember Sheridan's maiden speech," said Charley.

"I have read of Demosthenes'," replied Lynn.

"Sheridan's was a similar case. He was hooted at for his presumption; his first and second attempts were wretched: and his friends advised him to retire from the rostrum forever. 'Never!' said he, striking his breast. 'It ishere, and shall come out!'"

"A glorious 'coming out' it was!" responded Ida. "What do you say now?"—to Lynn.

"That it ishere!" returning her bright look. "Was ever man more blessed in his friends? More fortunate than Adam, I take my guardian angels with me, from the Paradise I leave to-morrow."

"You must array one in a less questionable shape, if you would have men admit his angelic relationship," said Charley, with a grimace. "What are you looking at?"

Lynn did not reply. They were upon a hill; and some object in the valley beneath fastened his gaze. The pensive cast of his features bordered upon gloom, as they neared it. Ida saw only a graceful knoll, bounded, except towards the west, by a chain of more imposing eminences. A monarch oak stood in isolated sovereignty upon its summit; it had shaded a dwelling, for one chimney yet remained; and the sickly herbage of the slope was not the produce of a virgin soil. Lynn stopped. Not a word was spoken, his eyes were too full of tender sadness; the man—not the artist, looked from them.

"A lonely tree, and a desolate hearth-stone!" muttered he. "It is prophetic!"

"Is the spot known to you?" asked Ida, gently, as they rode on.

"It was my birth-place."

"I had forgotten;" said Charley. "You were very young when you left it."

"But I remember it. I could point out to you the very place where my mother taught me to walk;—a grass-plat before the door:—she upon the step, my father kneeling at a short distance, and each tempting me to undertake the journey from one to the other. They are gone! parents, brother, sisters! there is but one puny scion of a noble line remaining!"

Ida turned her face away. The sad story everywhere! Was there justice—there wasnotmercy—in thus rending away the sweetest comforts man can know,—while avarice, and pride and malevolence rioted in unharmed luxuriance. Earth was a cheat, and happiness a lie!

"This is a fine piece of road," said Charley, "and we are jogging over it, like Quakers going to market. I say! Art.!"

"Well!" answered his brother, who was some yards in advance.

"Don't you think your Rosinante would be benefitted by a taste of the spur?"

Oh! the delight of a sweeping gallop in the open country! the elate consciousness of strength and liberty, as the magnificent animal beneath you exerts every thew and sinew in obedience to your voice and hand; you and he together forming one resistless power, free as the rushing air—able to overleap or bear down any obstacle! The jocund tones wafted back by the breeze attested the efficacy of Charley's prescription.

"That bend hides 'the Castle;'" called out Arthur.

"I will be the first to see it!" exclaimed Carry, and as the turning was gained, she raised herself from the saddle. It was an unguarded moment;—the horse circled the bend in a run; and she was thrown directly in the road of the trampling hoofs behind. Charley's horse fell back upon his haunches;—there was giant might in the hand that reined him;—an inch nearer, and she was lost! for his fore-feet grazed her shoulder.

"My dearest love!" cried the agitated Arthur, raising her in his arms. "Thank God! you are not killed!"

"I am not hurt, dear Arthur! you are all so frightened! it was very careless in me. Indeed I do not require support—I am not injured in the least!"

"Are you sure?" questioned Ida, anxiously: "or do you say it for our sakes?"

"I was never more free from pain. And I am able and ready to go on!"

"You were her saviour!" Arthur griped his brother's hand, with a trembling lip.

"No thanks! I would not run down a cow or sheep if I could help it."

Arthur's even temper was tried by this speech, and the more, that it wounded Carry.

"Coarse! unfeeling!" thought Ida. She grudged him the eloquent affection of Lynn's glance. "I do not care to go further;" said she, when Carry was reseated.

"What! turn back within sight of the Promised Land?" said Carry. "Do not cause me to feel that I have spoiled your afternoon's pleasure! Oscar and I will not part company again so unceremoniously,—will we, old fellow? Allons!" and she shook the reins gaily. The rest followed with reluctance, and for awhile, very soberly. The thought of what might have been the result of the accident, she treated so lightly, precluded jest, and they would not speak of it seriously. By tacit consent, it was not referred to again. Lynn recovered himself first; he forgot everything but the fair domain they were entering; and his raptures awakened the others to its attractions. The house was a princely pile, rearing its towers from the midst of a finely-wooded park. The architecture was Gothic, and perfect in all its parts, even to the stained windows, imported, at an immense expense, from abroad. A village at the base of the hill, was peopled by the negroes, of whom there were more than an hundred connected with the plantation. The equestrians rode up the single street. Good humour and neatness characterised the simple inhabitants; children drew to one side of the road, with smiles and courtesies; the aged raised their bleared eyes, to reply to the respectful salutations of the young riders; through theopen doors were seen clean, comfortably-furnished rooms;—in most, the tables were spread for the evening meal, and the busy housewives preparing for their husband's return from field or forest.

"These are thy down-trodden children, O Africa!" said Ida, sarcastically.

Lynn fired up. "They are the happiest beings upon the globe."

"So far as animal wants are concerned," subjoined Arthur.

"I do not accept of that clause. They are happy! They have a kind and generous master; every comfort in health; good nursing when ill; their church and Bible, and their Saviour, who is also ours. What the race may become, I do not pretend to say. These are far in advance of the original stock; but their intellectual appetite is dull, and I dare affirm that in nine cases out of ten it is satisfied. I never knew a master who denied his servants permission to read, and many have them taught by their own children. The slave lies down at night, every want supplied, his family as well cared for as himself; not a thought of to-morrow! he is secure of a home and maintenance, without disturbing himself as to the manner in which it is to be obtained. Can the same be said of the menial classes in any other country under the sun?"

"American as ever!" smiled Carry.

"And Virginian as ever! The Old Dominion is my mother! he is not a loyal son who does not prefer her, with her infirmities and foibles, to a dozen of the modern 'fast' belle states. The dear old creature has a wrinkle or two that do not improve her comeliness, and adheres somewhat pertinaciously to certain obsolete ideas, but Heaven bless her! the heart is right and sound!"

Ida's eyes sparkled—

"'Where is the coward would not dareTo die for such a land!'

Is not this scenery English, Mr. Holmes? We seldom see so large a tract, under as high cultivation, in this quarter of the globe; and where will we find another palace and park like that?"

"Mr. Clinton intends to stock the park with deer," saidArthur. "That will bring before you yet more vividly the 'Homes of Merry England.'"

"If an English landscape, it is an Italian light that gilds it," replied Lynn. "The highlands upon the other side of the river are Scottish; and the tropical growth of the tobacco fields would not be out of place under the Equator."

"Shocking your gleanings, then, you return to what Charley calls 'the original proposition,' and pronounce it American scenery," concluded Arthur.

"Precisely. One need not go abroad in quest of natural beauties. The fairest are culled for his native land."

"What a romantic creek! thatisEnglish!" exclaimed Ida. "I have G. P. R. James for authority; a rocky ford; a steep bank on either side; tangled undergrowth—and actually, a rustic foot-bridge! Oh! for the solitary horseman!"

"There he is!" ejaculated Charley, and from the hazel-boughs emerged an old negro, mounted upon a shaggy donkey, a bag of corn behind him.

"There is but a step, etc.," said Ida, despairingly. "It is my fate always to take it."

With a hearty laugh, they wheeled their horses. Charley and Ida had the lead. Exhilarated by exercise and the scenes through which they had passed, and accustomed to chat familiarly with him, she ran on for some time without remarking that she received monosyllabic replies.

"You are tired," she observed.

"Not at all."

"Out of humor, then?"

"Do I look so?"

"Not when you smile; but you are not making yourself agreeable."

"I did not know that I had ever succeeded in doing so."

"What! when Mr. Holmes says you are the only man who is never otherwise!"

"He is partial. You can teach him better."

"The intimacy between you two mystifies me more and more. He is all fire and impulse; you—"

"A galvanised icicle! Do I freeze you!"

"No. That is most wonderful of all. I am not afraid of you—although I have a cowardly horror of being laughed at."

"A 'horror' you should overcome; it proceeds from vanity. Like most of us, you are not apt to do or say things which you consider particularly silly; and are offended that the public sees them in that light. Lynn is afflicted similarly, in a still greater degree. It will get him into trouble yet."

"He is too independent to vacillate on account of ridicule," said Ida.

"Men style the peevish resentment such dispositions exhibit, 'honor,'" returned Charley, with a half bitter emphasis. "It is one of the million misnomers with which they deceive themselves."

"Among the number I may place my mistaking conceit for sensibility?"

"And concealment of one's feelings forinsensibility," he added.

"You misunderstood me, Mr. Dana. I do not think you have a heart of adamant—"

"But that I havenone," he interrupted; his kind glance blunting the edge of his words. "We shall understand each other better by and by. You spoke of James a while ago; do you like him?"

"No. He has two defects which spoil everything he writes, at least to me—verbosity and affectation."

"Not to mention self-plagiarism; but that is a common fault. When an author has exhausted his capital, he had better suspend honorably and wait until he has funds in hands to recommence operations, than drag on, 'shinning it,' in mercantile phrase, until the reading world dishonors his notes. Instead of this, James, and a score more of our popular writers are palming off upon us, duplicates and re-duplicates of their earliest productions. We encounter continually some old acquaintance in a different attire, and under an 'alias.' Warmed-over dinners are good enough in their place, but when we pay the same price, we have a right to be dainty. Dickens, himself, is not free from this charge."

"Oh! do not say so! I will not hear a word against him. He says much that seems irrelevant, and occasionally a thingthat is provokingly absurd; but it is grand to see how, in the dénouement, he catches up these floating, apparently useless threads, and weaves them into the fabric. He works with less waste than any light author of the day; all is smooth and firm; no ragged edges or dropped stitches. And if his charming creations are set before us more than once, they can well bear a renewal of acquaintanceship."

"But not in a disguise which is less becoming than the dress in which we first knew them. When we cry 'encore,' we ask for a repetition, not an imitation—too often a burlesque."

"But," persisted Ida, warm in defence of her favorite Boz, "where shall we discover new phases of human nature? The fault is that so many men are copies of others; we must not censure the painter for lack of originality, who writes above his sketches, 'taken from life.' Who ever reads a new love story? and love is not the only passion which is the same the world over."

Charley leaned forward to brush a fly from his horse's ear.

"Are there no peculiarities in your lot?" he inquired.

"Perhaps so," she replied, startled by the home-thrust.

"Your character is not the reflected image of another's; you have never seen one who felt, thought, and acted exactly as you do; or who would have been your prototype, had your outward circumstances been alike. The Great Original is not a servile copyist."

The sun's rim was below the horizon, as they passed Lynn's birth-place; but a parting ray shot through the western gap upon the knoll—the solitary bright spot in the landscape. They went rapidly by; but Ida was grateful that his recollection of it should be linked with that fragrant eve, and gleaming farewell smile.

"It is singular that in our rides we should not have taken this road before," said Charley. "It is, just here, a mere bridle path, but I thought we had scoured the country."

"Did you know Mr. Holmes when he lived there?"

"No. He was fourteen years old when we met at school."

"The homestead is a pitiable wreck," continued Ida. "'A lonely tree and a desolated hearth!' he said. Those mournful words will haunt me."

"His is a sad story. His parents died within a month ofeach other—one by the hand of violence, the other of a broken heart. He had lost a sister previously; a year later his brother went to sea, and ship nor passengers reached the port. It is now three years since the death of a younger sister, a lovely girl, of consumption. This train of misfortunes hangs upon Lynn's mind and heart. He will have it that he belongs to a doomed race. But for his warm social sympathies, and devotion to his art, the superstition would become a monomania."

"You say his father died by violence; was he murdered?"

"In cold blood."

"Horrible! And the assassin?"

"Walks the earth, anhonourableman! The sword of justice has no point for the duellist."

"This heathenish practice is a disgraceful stain upon the escutcheon of our State," said Ida. "The laws are not in fault; popular prejudice does not sustain them."

"If they would make me autocrat for one year I would pledge myself to abolish this system of double murdering," returned he.

"How?"

"Hang the survivor—"

"What naughty words are you saying?" questioned Lynn, from Ida's elbow.

"A slip of the tongue, which Miss Ida would not have noticed, but for your officiousness," answered Charley. "Did I tell you of Art.'s professional call last night? We were awakened by an uproarious hallooing at the gate.

"'Who's there?' hailed Arthur.

"'O doctor! for massy's sake, come to see my old woman! she's dyin'—I'm Jeemes Stiger—make haste—I reckon she's most done dead by this time;' and the poor fellow blubbered out.

"'I'll be there in a minute,' said Art. 'Don't wait.'

"In three minutes and a half his horse's hoofs were clattering down the road, as though Tam O'Shanter's witch were upon the crupper. I had confidence in his skill, and did not doubt he would try whatever could relieve 'Mrs. Jeemes Stiger,' but it was a ticklish case; the entire contents of his saddle-bags could not rescue her from the jaws of death, if he had indeed clamped her.I had resolved to postpone compassion for the bereaved husband, to the morning, and was forgetting everything in a doze, when the trampling of a horse aroused me. I threw up the window. It was Art. in as hot haste as when he set out. 'What is to pay?' said I, as he came in. 'Forgotten any thing—or is the woman dead?'

"'Confound her!'

"I knew he must be pretty 'tall' to say that.

"'Never be a doctor, Charley.'

"'I wont, my dear boy; but what is the matter?'

"Why nothing—just nothing!' beginning to laugh. 'I galloped two miles like a race-rider, and ran into the house, expecting a scene of distress—perhaps of death. 'Mrs. Jeemes' was sitting up, rocking herself back and forth. I felt her pulse and inquired her symptoms.'

"'You see,' stuttered Stiger, 'she's been sort o' poorly and droopy for three weeks, and better. I've been 'lotting to go for you, but thought maybe she mought be able to pick up after awhile. To-night I was so hungry myself that I didn't notice her at supper. She was mighty poking all the evenin', and jest now, she waked me. 'Jeemes,' says she, 'when folks' appetites gives out, they dies—don't they?'

"'Yes, honey,' says I.

"'Then farewell,' says she; 'I'm a-goin'. I wouldn't say nothin' about it at first, but I couldn't die without tellin' you I was a-departin'.'

"'O, Susan!' says I; 'how come you to think you are dyin'.

"'Jeemes,' says she, solemn as could be; 'I couldn't eat no supper, 'cept one herring and a pone of bread, and one cup of coffee.'

"'Doctor! you think she'll live 'till day? Oh! if I had a-gone for you three weeks ago!'"[1]

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