cent dancers, talked of their dusky loves as still sweeter than the forest nectar.

"It was at such a time and place that the father and Emma dismounted from their horses and joined us. It was, as if Diana had descended amidst the rustic assemblage. I no longer had indistinct visions of grace, and loveliness, and dignity, which all stood embodied before me. The time and the place added their charmed influence to the impression. The father named me to his daughter as one to whom he owed a debt of grateful obligation. At her home the maple was not found; and this scene, and the process of preparing the sugar, had for her all the charm of novelty. She seemed no ways disinclined to make the circuit of the camp with me, nor to repose herself on a rustic bench at a spring fountain, whence the whole gay scene was surveyed below, and which was beautifully illumined by the hundred bright fires.

Her

reserve wore away with mine; and I became bold, as she turned her melting eye upon me, as if to inquire, why a being as unlike the rest as herself, had been cast in these woods. I talked of the charming country, and of the unlimited selection in these fertile solitudes. I spoke of the peace of those who are far from the corroding passions and the venal motives of crowded cities, and who live in guileless peace, content, and privacy; and, I added, that the poet's song, in the days of primeval innocence, had peopled such scenes with gods and nymphs; but that I had not dreamed to find, as I now did, the fable true in these iron days. A smile slightly ironical gave me no omens of displeasure. We named over our stores of books; and in the course of this delightful evening she incidentally expressed the hope that our fathers might be acquainted. The song and the dance and our father's colloquy and ours ceased not until the moon in the centre of the concave told us, that it was the noon of night; and yet much remained for us both to say.

"Her father came for her, complaining, in the usual phrase, of the unperceived lapse of the hours. They mounted, and rode towards their home. I followed them with my eyes and my thoughts, as the yet unabated and boisterous mirth around rung upon my ear. The tempest of war had begun to rage along our immense line of frontier; and the fierce and ruthless northern savages were abroad among the commencing settlers of the Illinois plains. We began to hear of their desolations of fire and blood. I neither affirm nor deny the wisdom of believing in presentiment in the case of others. It may be I followed the leading of a new train of thoughts; but it seemed to me as if a mysterious intimation warned me to follow in their course. moved over the hills until our fires had faded upon my eye, and the mirth around them upon my ear. One height drew me on to another,

I

until I heard a sharp and piercing scream, preceded by a rifle shot, in a thicket but a little way before me. An instant brought me to the place. The father lay on the ground, apparently lifeless, and covered with his blood. A half-suppressed groan, as of one flying away among the fallen trees, directed me to the daughter. She, too, was on the earth; but whether in faintness or death, appeared not; though, reclined in her white dress, my dark thoughts viewed her as lying in her shroud. In springing to reach her, I stumbled over a fallen tree. It providentially saved me from the unerring aim of an Indian hatchet, which gleamed past the point, to which I should otherwise have advanced. The sender instantly after grasped me in deadly strife. Then first I knew by experience the fierce encounter of the red man. Providence or love endowed me with more than mortal powers. While I felt in the tremendous clutch of my adversary, as exerting the weak efforts of man against the brute and irresistible powers of nature, I had, I scarcely know how, inflicted such a wound, that I felt his spasmodic grasp relax. His arms sunk away nerveless; and the sternness of disappointed vengeance was sealed upon his grim brow in death.

"I need not prolong my tale. Water from a neighbouring spring restored Emma. She had fled unharmed, and fallen in faintness and terror. Her father had been wounded, but not severely, by a rifle shot. He was removed to my father's cabin; and nursed, I need not say, with tenderness. While a firm friendship grew up between the fathers, a compact of another sort had been unalterably ratified between their children. There was no glade, spring source, or cool and sequestered bower of the broad-leaved grape, that had not been consecrated by the repetition of our vows, and our words of love. The days fled, and we counted not how fast; for the sun, moon, stars, and seasons were not our remembrancers. Alas! the memory of these halcyon days alone remains to me; but even the memory is pleasant. It is like a calm and sweet dream in a feverish night of pain.

Our

"The time of our union was fixed. parents would not separate until it had taken place. Ample provision had been made for our commencing a farming establishment in rustic abundance and comfort. Earth can furnish no happier anticipations than were

ours.

"A savage that we had deemed friendly, and who often brought us venison for sale, came in one evening, when a number of our neighbours were paying us a social visit. He begged my father to send some one to help him bring in a deer, which, he said, he had killed near the house. The greater number of the men, and I among them, improvidently set forth to see the game. An ambush of

hostile Indians rose between them and the house. The yells of the savages, the dying groans of our neighbours, the sharp reports of the rifles, all ring in my ears as I think of the past. I was stunned and struck down, remote from the rest, with a rifle blow. The fathers and mothers, the brothers and sisters, the husbands and wives fell together. Savage knives spilled the blood of the young infants. They exerted themselves even to kill our house dogs. To render the ruin complete, conflagration glared upon their murders. With horrid dexterity, they composed a pyramidal pile of bodies; the longer laid at the base, the shorter forming another tier, and the little infants, lying in their innocent blood, crowned the pile. By this pile they held their infernal orgies, dancing and yelling, as they circled round it, by the glare of the burning buildings. I should have made one, had they found me. I remained awhile insensible at a distance among the brush; and awoke to consciousness with this shocking scene in full view, though it was my fortune not to be myself discovered.

"In the midst of their horrid rites of blood and drunkenness, the clarion notes of the rangers' bugles awakened the night echoes. The murderous foe cowered and fled, like wolves from the sheepfold. Had it been heard an hour before, I had not passed from hope to despair; and many a brave heart had palpitated with the joy of welcome, which would now beat no more. The rangers soon came up in measured gallop, and, clad in steel, alighted to survey the work of death. I called them to my aid. They carried me to a cabin which the savages had spared; and I speedily recovered of my bruises. Revenge burned at my bosom, and for that alone I wished to live. Besides, the body of Emma had not been found among the dead. Might not the loved and forlorn orphan be a captive to these ruthless invaders? To seek for her, and to measure back to the murderers the cup of retaliation, these were motives for which to cherish life. All uncertainty touching Emma's fate, was soon dispelled. A single captive, with her, sole survivors of the massacre of my father's house, escaped them, rejoined our settlement, and reported, that they were carrying the lovely captive to Rock Fort, near Peonia of the Illinois.

"The rangers had gone on their ordered destination, in another direction. But, stimulated by the sympathy of common feelings, and urged by my despair, a few gallant friends from the vicinity joined me in pursuit of the captive. They were brave and determined spirits, who knew how to find a home in the forest, to whom rivers and forests, and prairies and distance, and danger and death were familiar objects. They were men of robust body and unconquerable mind. We mounted our horses, heedless of provisions, as long

as we had powder and lead, and as long as the prairies and the forests alike afforded food for our horses. We bounded away through

the wood, stream, prairie, and over hill and dale. On the third night of our march we saw the watch fires of our foe gleaming afar through the forests. So far away from the scene of their murders, without pursuit, they now reposed in reckless riot. Gorged with food, most of them slept in drunkenness. One trusty sentinel slept not; and his dismal, guttural song occasionaly chimed in with the hoot of the owls, the long dismal cry of the wolves, and the distant crash of trees, falling in the forests under the weight of time.

"I felt that my motives impelled me to confront the first dangers; and they detached me to reconnoitre, or, if I chose, to enter the camp in secret. I almost suppressed my breath, the beatings of my heart I could not suppress, as, panther-like, I crept upon the foe. The tall, grim sentinel, with half blinking eyes, nodded erect over a decaying fire. A fallen tree interposed on his flank, as a screen, and I crept undiscovered by him. Unheeded, as I crawled, I surveyed many a brawny warrior in deep sleep; and one, as I passed near him, half started up, and commenced a dozing note of his habitual 'Cheowanna! ha! ha! and sunk back to his visions. Providence, that watches over innocence, guided me to the very tent where Emma lay, feeding upon her sleepless tears. A start of joy marked her instant recognition. Hush! A word is death. Follow me.

We

are free, or fall together!' I waited in breathless impatience. In sounds inaudible by any but a lover's ear she whispered, 'I am bound.' I cut the vile bonds from her swollen and tender limbs. I felt at my heart the full and confiding pressure of her pledged hand. We stole away, as noiseless as the footstep of time. Our devious course was often changed by seeing a gigantic body, first in this direction, and then in that. More than one turned in his sleep as we passed, with half waking spasm, and settled back with a long drawn sigh to his repose again. The warrior sentinel seemed to have caught in his ear the rustle of our feet among the leaves; for he raised himself fully erect, and cast a keen and searching glance on every side. We sunk unmarked behind a briar tangle. Our hearts palpitated equally with love and terror during this suspense of horror. grim Argus, having scrutinized the whole scene with a detail of survey, stirred his fire, passed his dusky form twice around it, uttered in his most lugubrious tones, Cheowanna ha ha!' and, as if ashamed of his fears, seemed to court his former dozing apathy.

The

"This dreadful suspense elapsed, we fled; and I safely brought back the captive orphan to my friends. We saw most clearly that the

foe was too numerous for prudent attack. We whispered a moment in earnest debate. Having secured the chief object of pursuit, we concluded to return with all possible speed to our settlement. We commenced our march by the uncertain light of the moon, now dimmed by clouds and mists. Morning dawned upon our forest march in crimson splendour and dewy freshness. The glad sounds of matin music shewed that every living thing rejoiced in the renovated day but ourselves. We would have chosen the sheltering darkness that was the scourge of Egypt; for, from the hills behind us, the Indian yell of pursuit was heard. Behind us was this loud and appalling war song of the foe; before us a prairie, gay with flowers, dripping and sparkling in the freshness of morning dew, but measureless to vision, and offering only the unsheltered nakedness of a level plain.

"To fight, retreat, or seek shelter, were our only alternatives. The foe outnumbered us ten to one. Their horses were fresh; ours fatigued. We were unwilling that the rescued orphan should sustain the same chance from their rifles as ourselves. One of those immense elliptical, concave basins, so common on the verge of the western prairies, offered itself before us. The general voice was to descend the basin, take down our horses, and, if we might, lie there concealed until the storm of pursuit should be past. If the foe had not tracked us, our chances were good. The basin was a hundred feet in perpendicular depth; and the descent so prone, that our 'horses slid from the summit to the base. Briars and thorns and bushes and small shrubs sheltered the rim as a kind of hedge. At the base a cool spring trickled across the limestone floor.

"Here we stood in breathless suspense, while Emma clung fast to my side. Alas! we soon heard the measured trample of their horses at hand; and, as if to preclude all chances of concealment, our horses, scenting theirs, neighed vehemently, and were instantly answered by theirs. Our basin was surrounded in a moment. The rifle's sharp clang was heard, again and again, followed by the heavy sigh of my falling comrades; while our return fire upon those who stood high above, and showed only their heads at the moment of discharge, took little effect. Emboldened by impunity, and impatient at the slowness of their work, the foe soon came howling down the basin. Then we fought at bay, and with desperation; and the blood of more than one of their number mingled with ours. Emma fell on my bosom. 'Henry,' said she, 'we die together.' Stout frames, and noble minds, and fearless hands availed nothing against numbers. Emma was slain in my arms; and her last look mingled in strange union love, terror,

and death. Darkness came over my own eyes; and the last sensation of a heavy and iron sleep, was, that our released spirits were making the last journey together.

"But life returned to me, and brought with it bitter and distinct consciousness, and rayless despair. The morning sun had just emerged from the mists when we entered this basin. It was now burning noon. I lay on the stone floor. The pale, cold face of Emma was near me. Her eye, lately so piercing, was fixed and glassy. I was bound in various points by thongs, which a giant could not have broken. I struggled madly with them, until I was exhausted, and nature would go no further. Then I cried to Heaven from the depths, and called aloud on God for mercy. When I paused in the intervals of my groans, what a spectacle! There were my companions, lying as they fell. My brain began to madden. I strove to dash my head on the stone floor. Bright, broad gleams of light, in all the colours of the prism, filled the heavens in my view, and I fondly hoped that my last hour had come. But I was not permitted thus to lay down my loathed life.

But

"The sun seemed, for a whole age, to remain suspended high in the heavens only to concentre his radiance on my head. after the scorching of that long period, the burning orb declined. I was in darkness, wet with the chill dews of night, and constantly enduring the benumbing torture of my cords. First I heard the hooting of owls. The panther's harsh scream next grated on my ear. The sharp bark and the hungry howl of the wolves commenced, and still drew nearer. I soon heard their menacing growl, and their stealthy and cat-like tread. Immediately after a whole troop, emboldened by numbers, rushed down the den, licking their greedy jaws, as they fell at once upon their horrid feast. The bodies were torn, and in their rabid eagerness, they often turned their rage upon each other. Could they have instantly destroyed my own life, I had been content. But, when I saw them tearing the form of my beloved, all my associations with life arose; and I unconsciously raised such a cry of horror, as drove the satiated and coward prowlers in rapid retreat from the den.

"The morn returned. The hot sun once more illumined the summit of the basin. Corruption had commenced its appropriate work; and a new evil, more insupportable than all the rest, crowned my miseries. I burned with the mad thirst of fever, and my mouth and throat were as parchment. Then I knew the truth of all that I had heard of the agony of thirst. Mere physical thirst expelled all horrors of the mind, and reigned sole object of my thoughts. Drink! Give me drink! I cried, till I heard the wild echoes calling for drink. I had no conception of any misery but thirst, or of any joy in earth or heaven,

but to quaff water for ever from a cool spring.

"Then I felt that time is a relation of the mind, and the creation of thought. I looked up at the sun. Roll on, I cried in my despair; roll on, and bring me death. But it seemed as though the voice that suspended his course in Ajalon had renewed the mandate. Worn down and exhausted, I slept, as I knew by a waking start, that broke off a dream that myself and my beloved had passed our mortal agonies and were safe landed in heaven. The cool evening was drawing on, convincing me, that in joy or sorrow, time never stands still. I had long seen the carrion vultures wheeling their droning flight above the basin, allured by the scent of carnage. The effluvia now directed them to their mark. They settled down by hundreds. "But God, who is rich in mercy, heard my cry in the bottom of this deep basin. The of mounted rangers was scouring the corps prairie in search of the bodies of their friends. Their practised eyes were directed in a moment, by the wheeling circles of these birds of evil omen. They found me; and in the madness of my thirst, I struggled with them in wrath, to be allowed to quaff my fill, and drink death at the spring. But by kindly violence they held me back. Some washed my swollen limbs, while others with manly tears committed decently to the earth the mangled remains of my friends.

"All my purposes and affections were now concentered in the insatiate desire of retaliation and vengeance. At the head of a volunteer corps of rangers, I vowed to the shade of Emma, that I would expiate her murder by copious libations of Indian blood. I faithfully redeemed my pledge. When a daring assault was to be made on one of their villages, or a body of their warriors, I was the first in attack, and the last to spare. My companions saw that I took no counsel from distance, toil, exposure, or danger. My only inquiry was, where is the foe? My corps emulated my example; and many a burning village testified to the deluded miscreants that we knew how to retaliate. So terrible had my name become to them, that I bore in their language an appellation which imports Indian Fighter.

"At length we met the same band that destroyed my father's family and Emma. They retreated, after a short fight, to the same basin where she fell. It was filled with the high grass of autumn. We sent down flames among them, and drove them howling upon the plain. We destroyed many of them there. The remnant fled before us to their lair, their summer residence near the Illinois. Here were their wives and children, and the mounds that contained the bones of their forefathers. Here they turned and stood at bay. Why should I recal these scenes of vengeance and

All had

blood? Their warriors agreed to kill their women and children, and then despatch each other. We heard the aged warriors singing the death song, as the work of destruction went on. Our rangers were affected, and the reports of their rifles ceased. fallen but the leader of the band. He fired the village, and came forth. 'Indian Fighter,' he said to me, I killed thy father and mother. I killed the maiden of thy love. If thou art indeed a warrior, and a warrior's son, seek thy revenge now.' Nor was I one to refuse that invitation. We struggled long for mastery, for life and death. These scars remain, as durable memorials of that strife. But as I was weak with loss of blood, I shouted Emma! and my arm was renerved. rolled on the grass, and I saw, not without a strange feeling of respect, the look of defiance and the denial of triumph fixed on his stern brow, after his spirit had passed.

He

"Peace has revisited these plains many years past; and it is not long since I made a pilgrimage to the ruins of the Indian village. I should say to thee, stranger, that I trust I have long since become a Christian. Anger, revenge, despair are alike merged in my immortal hopes, and the new tempers of a better mind. I stand amazed at myself, and ask, is this quiet and forgiving bosom the same, where such a whirlwind of vengeance and wrath so lately raged? I shed tears of pity and forgiveness over these affecting ruins. There were the scathed peach and plum trees. There were the dilapidated remains of the few cabins that had escaped the fire. There were the clumps of hazel bushes covered with the wild hop. There were patches of the green velvet sward of blue grass, indicating that human habitancy had introduced it among the wild grass of the prairies. I remembered to have seen this sward covered with the business and bustle of life. I remembered the bench at the head of the village, where I had beheld the aged council chiefs smoking their calumets in silent gravity. Their bones were now bleaching around me. In their sculls the ground rattlesnake had gathered up his coil, and waited for his prey. But the robin redbreast and the purple cardinal, birds that love the shorn sward of blue grass, picked their seeds upon it, and now and then started a few mellow notes, as if singing the dirge of the dead.

That whole race is wasting away about me, like the ice in the vernal brooks. I shall soon be with them. But, stranger, when thou goest thy way, say to those that come after me, that it is wise, as well as christian, to stay the storm of wrath, and leave vengeance to Him, who operateth by the silent and irresistible hand of time, and will soon subdue all our enemies under our feet."

"I tell you, Eugenius," said she, in a voice of mingled sorrow and reproof, "I tell you that you are entangled in his toils! He has you at this moment in his power! He is

Broke with the lambent purity of planetary light, And an intellectual beauty, like a light within a vase, Touched every line with glory of her animated face. Her mind with sweets was laden like a morning breath in June,

And her thoughts awoke in harmony like dreamings of a tune,

And you heard her words like voices that o'er the waters creep,

Or like a serenader's lute that mingles with your sleep.

She had an earnest intellect-a perfect thirst of mind, And a heart by elevated thoughts and poetry refined, And she saw a subtle tint or shade with every careless look,

And the hidden links of nature were familiar as a book.

She's made of those rare elements that now and then appear,

As if removed by accident unto a lesser sphere, For ever reaching up, and on, to life's sublimer things,

As if they had been used to track the universe with wings.

THE MERMAID'S SONG.

BY G. W. REEDER.

I LOVE to sit on the sea-girt shore,

Where the blue waves lash and the billows roar,
To hear the zephyr-wafted sigh,
And sing the mariner's lullaby.
When the storm is up, and the lightnings glare
My coursers start from their conch-shell lair;
Like fiery steeds, my dolphins leap,
And away we speed o'er the boiling deep.
When the storm is o'er, and the stars appear,
I catch the mournful sea-bird's tear,

My bark I fill with the amber drops,
And away I skim on the white wave's tops;
Then come with me o'er the bright blue sea,
And songs I'll sing 'neath the coral tree;

My lute of pearl I'll touch for thee,
As away we glide in the bright blue sea!

THE DATURA FASTUosa.
[CONCLUDED.]

MARGARET's horror of the stranger had affected Eugenius strongly, and excited his indignation against Dame Helms, to whom he ascribed it all. When he entered the room, as soon as she had commenced to speak, he interrupted her with a torrent of invective, accusing her of filling the girl's head with idle

tion! Renounce him, Eugenius!-abandon his works 'tis your mother who imploreswho conjures you".

"What would you have?" interrupted he, bitterly. "Must I bury myself for ever within these dreary walls! Must I sacrifice the bloom and the flower of life? Are the innocent enjoyments of the world works of the evil one'?"

At this moment Margaret came in to say, that supper was waiting. It passed over silent and gloomy, each feeling too deeply to venture upon conversation.

On the following morning a black servant brought a note from the Spaniard, complaining that Eugenius had not ventured into the garden; and, at the same time, assuring him that he would be anxiously expected that evening.

The thought acted like a spell npon Eugenius. The sound of that magic voice which echoed from the grove still rung upon his ear: his heart throbbed with expectation, and he forgot all his late displeasure in the prospect. At table he was as communicative as he had been reserved before. He told them where he had been the preceding night-describing in the most rapturous terms, the beauty of what might well seem an enchanted spot: and appearing to count the moments till the hour for meeting his friend Fermino should arrive. It came at last, and he rose to leave the house. The mother, whose anxiety was increasing every day, cried out, almost despondingly,

"Alas! alas! the gate of destruction is open! The minister stands ready to receive the victim!"

"Oh, yes," cried Margaret eagerly, "did you not perceive that it was a black man who brought the note this morning!"

"Oh, then, it must have been Lucifer, or perhaps his prime minister!" said Eugenius, laughing. "Margaret, Margaret, are you still afraid of the chimney-sweeper?"

The girl blushed; and he hurried away to his appointment without waiting for more. He found on his arrival, that his expectations had fallen far short of the reality. He could not speak for a time, in astonishment at the splendour which met his eye on all sides.