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CHAPTER XIII

The sun shining into my eyes next morning awoke me, and turning over I heard the rattle and rub of the brush as Reuben polished away on my boots, just outside the door.

“Reuben,” I yawned, “has Horace fed the horses?” Reuben came into the room, with one boot casing his arm up to the elbow, like an ill-shaped boxing glove, and the brush still flying up and down the shining instep.

“I d’no, sir, spec he has doe, st – too!” and he stopped to spit on the end of the brush, as if he wished to spit the hairs away, “he allays de fust one up on de plantash’n.”

“Well, as soon as you get through with the boots, tell him to hitch the gray horses to the spring wagon directly after breakfast; I am going to town; and tell him to put in my saddle and bridle, as I want to ride my horse back.”

“Which un, Marse John?” said Reuben, as he set the boots by my bedside, “how’s one horse gwine to pull de wagin back here agin?”

“Dry up, and go tell Horace what I said. It is a new horse I am going after, and you have got to attend to him for me, and you can ride him to water every day.”

“Golly, dat’s ‘lishus; won’t dese quarter niggers stand back,” and he ran down stairs, cutting an audible shuffle every third step.

I was just tying on my cravat when Reuben returned, with a lengthened visage and a woful tale.

“Unken Horris was a waterin’ de horses, and when I tole him, he said marster dun tole him, and dat was nough; and just cause I tole him to hurry up, he tuk and cut me mos’ in two with de carridge whip.”

“I expect you were impudent to him; but he ought not to have struck you when I sent you. I will see him about it after breakfast.”

This silenced but did not satisfy Reuben, who, like all negroes, was anxious enough to see swift punishment fall on one who had offended against himself, though he would have been full of sympathy for one who suffered for any offence, however grievous, against a white person.

As we drove into Goldsboro’, an hour afterwards, the whistle sounded, and the morning train came into sight, nodding up the track; the engine steamed by like a great hog rooting its way along; then the baggage car, its door open, and the baggage master leaning out; then the coaches, and, as they all came to a stop, amid the shouts of a dozen white aproned waiters, who were vowing that every passenger had plenty of time to eat the most delicious breakfast ever prepared, Frank and Ned, guns in hand, came down the car steps. I welcomed them warmly, being delighted to see Ned, and determined that I would crush every feeling of repugnance to Frank, and receive him with the hospitality of a Southern home. As we walked up to our wagon, where our grays were prancing and snorting at the train, Reuben came around from the hotel stables, whither I had sent him for my new horse, leading him by the halter. I almost forgot to breathe in my rapt admiration. He was the most perfect specimen of horse flesh I had ever seen. His color was the deepest chestnut or claret, and his hair looked as if it was just wound from the cocoon, and his large prominent eye had a soft intelligent expression that was almost human. His limbs were as delicate as a gazelle’s, yet had that peculiar turn of the rounded muscles that told of desert born ancestors. There was nothing of the charger about him – no thunder-clothed neck, nor trumpet-like nostril; all was dainty symmetry, but the symmetry of a form that could not know fatigue.

I could not tell whether he would drive or not, but I felt that it would almost be a sin to clog such superb motion with harness. I ordered Reuben to put the saddle and bridle on him, and turned to Ned and Frank, and asked their opinion of him.

“I’ll vow he’s a beauty, John,” said Frank, as we put the valises in the wagon; “let me ride him home for you, and find out his bad points, if he has any.”

I could not refuse, and with much chagrin and disappointment saw Frank gallop fleetly on ahead of the wagon, as we rattled on towards home. Ned and I had much to talk about, and almost before we were aware of it, were driving down the avenue.

Frank had waited for us to come up, and now cantered along by the side of the wagon, descanting the praises of my steed in unmeasured terms.

When we entered the house, and Ned and Frank were met by the family, I was really sorry for Lulie, so great was her embarrassment. She could not bear to torture me by greeting Frank with the cordiality their relations demanded, and she could not bear to hurt his feelings by treating him coldly without a cause. Frank noticed her confusion, and asked, in his free and easy way, “Why, Lulie, what is the matter with you. Have you become so rustic already as to be frightened out of your wits by the presence of gentlemen?”

“Don’t let him tease you, Lulie,” said mother, coming to her aid; “Frank has mistaken the roses which our fresh air has given her for blushes at his presence.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Smith; I am too much of a connoisseur in ladies’ faces to mistake confusion for health. I will leave it to Miss Rurleston if Lulie wasn’t ashamed to meet us.”

But Carlotta, with her face all bright with animation, was deeply engaged in questioning Ned about Mr. and Mrs. Cheyleigh, and expressing her gratitude for their kindness, and did not hear his remark.

“Well, boys,” interrupted mother, “I suppose you are both dusty and warm, and wish to go to your rooms. John, show them up; and remember one thing, you came up here to enjoy yourselves; do so to the fullest extent. Everything on the premises that will serve your amusement is at your service; the house and furniture are old, so you need not fear to be as boisterous as you please. When you come down from your rooms your breakfast will be ready, or I will send it up, if you prefer it.”

“You are very kind,” said both, “we will soon be down.”

I had persuaded mother to fix the large room for us all three, so that we could enjoy ourselves more together than if formally separated.

As soon as we got into our room, and Frank had thrown off his duster and coat, he broke forth in his praises of Carlotta.

“I’ll vow she is superb; my life! what an eye she has! I had no idea, when I wrapped her up in our jackets on the beach, and she looked so cold and pitiful, that she was such a beauty. Ned, she seemed to tackle to you strongly. I could not make her hear me.”

“She was only asking me about home. You know she staid there several days before she came up to Col. Smith’s.”

“She’s devilish grave, though,” said Frank, pouring the basin full of water.

“Remember, Frank, what she has so recently passed through,” said I; “she is really bright when she can forget her bereavement; then, too, she is contrasted here with Lulie, who is all life and gaiety.”

“Ah!” said Frank, wiping the words out of his mouth with the towel, “Lulie is the star after all. If she just had Carlotta’s beauty she would break all your hearts. I wonder what she meant, though, by being so confoundedly sour towards me. I believe I’ll try a little game with Carlotta, any way, and see what grit she is made of, if for nothing more than to pique Lulie.”

“Frank, you forget Carlotta is my sister, now,” I said, gravely enough to let him see that I was in earnest, yet not enough so to offend him, as he was my guest.

“Pardons, mille pardons, monsieur,” he replied, folding a clean collar, and nodding to me gaily.

“Frank,” said Ned, dusting his hat, “you are terribly conceited. How do you know that your attentions to Miss Rurleston will pique Lulie?”

“Oh, that’s my biz, you know,” returned Frank, shutting one eye at him; “but I am afraid we are keeping Mrs. Smith’s breakfast waiting; let’s go down.”

As we reached the basement stairs Lulie called me out to the porch, while Ned and Frank went down. She was very much agitated as she said:

“John, I must go home to-morrow.”

“Go home, Lulie!”

“Yes; it will be a perfect torture to remain here with you and Frank. He does not know of anything having passed between us, and will be constantly rallying me about a confusion I cannot conceal, when I think that you are watching me and suffering with every smile I give him. Oh, John, I am very unhappy about it all.”

“And poor I am the cause of all. But, Lulie, you must not go. What will they all think of your leaving so suddenly, when you came up to spend the summer? I am afraid they will think there is something unpleasant between you and Carlotta or myself. Lulie, if you will only stay, I will promise not to be miserable, however loving you are to Frank, and I will endeavor to arrange all our plans so that you will not be placed in a single embarrassing situation.”

“Your motives are all kind, John, but I alone know how I will suffer by remaining here. I must return, and I have called you now to ask that you aid me to take my departure without any unpleasantness. I will make it all right with Carlotta, and I want you to assure Mrs. Smith that neither she nor any of the family have given me the slightest cause for leaving. If it will make your explanation easier, you can even hint at something between Frank and myself. Colonel Smith, you know, leaves day after to-morrow for Havana, and, as he has to go through Wilmington, I can go down with him.”

“So much the more reason for your not going. Father’s absence will make it lonely here, and we cannot spare you.”

“Do not, dear John, persuade me any longer. I am positively determined. Now, won’t you please help me to get off without so much surprise and resistance on the part of others,” and she twisted one little finger into the button-hole of my coat, and looked up at me with such earnest entreaty in her eyes, that I readily promised to give her all the aid in my power.

By way of fulfilling this promise, I sought an interview with mother, and, after a little confidence in regard to Frank and myself, and by hard persuasion, made her promise not to express more than conventional surprise and regret at the announcement of Lulie’s intention. I had a short talk with father to the same effect, while Lulie was alone with Carlotta, down under the arbor; so that at the dinner table, when Lulie proposed to accompany father to Wilmington, there was no great outcry against it.

All expressed regret. Ned vowed it was a shame for her to leave just as they reached here, and Frank simply smiled, but a smile so like a sneer I could not tell whether he was pleased or otherwise with the announcement.

After dinner we separated for our afternoon siesta, Frank, Ned and I going up to our cool, large room, where, drawing our beds between the windows, with a soft breeze playing over us, we enjoyed that prince of luxuries, an afternoon nap. When we awoke, bathed, dressed, and went down stairs, we found the sun quite low down the sky, and Ben Bemby out in the front porch, with Carlotta and Lulie, who were both laughing at his quaint remarks. I introduced my companions, Ned shaking him warmly by the hand, Frank saying carelessly, with a stare, “How are you?” and then, as they all proposed to go to the orchard for fruit, I excused myself for a ride. Once upon Phlegon, my beautiful courser, flying along through grass-bordered wood paths, now reining up on some hill to get a view of the sunset, now pausing at a gurgling branch, down in some valley, to see him lower his tapering neck and dip his spreading nostrils in the bubbling waters, then on again, with freshened speed and tighter rein, I almost forgot that Lulie did not love me.

That night, after the lamps were lit in the parlor, father came in and declared we must lay aside all dignity and have a real romp. As he agreed to join us we assented, and for hours the house sounded like bedlam. Carlotta, at mother’s request, participated, and her beauty was as much enhanced by the animation of the excitement as is a diamond when it is brought to the light.

What a delightful thing is a romp in the country, when you can make just as much noise as you please, and no one will care; when there is no nervous old lady over the way, to send over and beg that you be more quiet, as she has the headache; no simple minded policemen, to knock at the door and inquire if there is a fire; no next door neighbor to present you as a nuisance!

We fully enjoyed the rural privilege, and the old clock in the corner had rung out its warning many times unheeded, when our games were broken up, as far as the ladies were concerned, by the entrance of a bat, for there are few things they are more genuinely afraid of than a little leather-wing. Like the eyes of a well executed portrait, the bat seems to follow you wherever you crouch in the room, and dips with regular precision and nicety of distance at your head, however low you bow it. Verily, the woman who can stand the flutter of its dusky wings is a heroine, beside whom Daemeneta is insignificant! A broom and pair of tongs soon secured its expulsion, and allowed Carlotta and Lulie to return to the room. Taking up the lamp, and looking at the clock in the sitting room, we found it late, and, bidding each other “good night,” we went to our rooms.

“John,” said Frank, pushing off one boot with the toe of his other, “Miss Rurleston is your sister now, I know, but you must excuse me for saying she is superb. I’ll sw – vow her eyes set me crazy. Lulie ain’t a whiff to her. By the way,” he continued, getting up in his stocking feet and shirt sleeves to stand before the mirror, while he took off his collar and tie, “I wonder what put the little goose into the notion of going home?”

“Frank,” said Ned, from the bed, where he had thrown himself, half undressed, to cool off, “if you do claim Lulie as your sweetheart, you shan’t speak of her so disrespectfully. She is an old friend of mine, and I will defend her from any such epithets.”

“Well, parson,” returned Frank, sitting down on the other bed, “I will call her the madam, or her highness, if you desire, but I do think it is confounded shabby in her to leave us now. I’ll make up for it with the black eyes, though. Excuse me again, ‘brother’ John.”

I felt that I could not trust myself to reply, and there was a silence for a few minutes, during which Ned yawned, and slided off the bed to his knees to say his prayers.

“Oh, John, I forgot to tell you,” said Frank, “that long, tow-headed booby, who was here this evening, said he had a fine place for fishing to-morrow, and we promised to go with him, if it did not conflict with any of your plans.”

“Not at all,” said I, “but I must go down and tell mother, that she may have breakfast early.”

“No; she already knows about it, and promised to have us up at sunrise.”

“Of course, I am in for anything you all say.”

“Let’s go to sleep,” said Ned, as he got up from his prayers, and fell over on the bed. We let!

CHAPTER XIV

We were yet at the table when Reuben came in to announce that Mr. Bemby’s son had come. We went out to the porch, where he was sitting, his elbow on the railing, his chin on his elbow, his white wool hat, without a band, hanging down like the eaves of a barn over his wheat straw hair, his red fuzzy wrists, sticking about three inches out of his coarse flax coat sleeves, and his broad copper riveted shoes gaping so wide about his bony ankles that they seemed to have frightened his speckled pants half way up his legs; his poles, lashed together with old leather shoe strings, stood against the railing, and his bait-gourd sat on the bench at his side. He greeted us with a “good mornin’ to you,” and a smile, without any sound whatever. We all shook hands with him, Frank barely tipping his fingers, then went back into the house to get our hats and tackle. Reuben came out with our dinner in a large basket and we were about to start, when Frank ran back up stairs, and soon joined us, holding his coat over something against his side. As soon as we got into the lane he took out a large black bottle of whisky and a bundle of cigars. I said nothing, but I could see that Ned was disturbed that Frank should attempt to do the “fast” with us, for neither of us were yet sophisticated enough to smoke or drink. Ben, however, smiled, and prolonged his laugh as he shook the bottle and watched the bead.

“That’s fine as cat hair,” he said, returning the bottle to Frank. “Licker’s purtty much like er hole in the groun’; keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer; but less pearten er little; we got er right smart ways to walk now, an’ it’ll be hot enough presn’ly to curl er turckle’s shell.”

We accordingly walked on rapidly, Ned and I together, and Frank and Ben. Frank, however, had too much of the haughty about him for Ben, who soon fell back and gave us the benefit of his ever-going tongue.

“How far is the place where you expect to fish, Mr. Bemby?” inquired Ned.

“None er your misters for me; jus’ call me Ben,” said he, shifting his poles from one shoulder to another. “I’m er gwine to take you up to old Nancy Mucket’s hole.”

“Nancy who?” I asked. “What in the world do they call it by such a name, for?”

“‘Cause old Nancy Mucket got drownded there. I have heerd daddy tell ‘bout it er thous’n times. Old Nance was er mon’sus fisher, an’ old Dave Mucket tole her whatever she done not to tech his ash pole. Nance she tuck it right down an’ went to the creek. She never come back by night, an’ next day they drug the creek, and pulled her up from the bottom, where she was hung under er root. She had the very ash pole in her grip, and when the corrunner sot on her, ole Dave he come up and shuck his head mighty solemn like, and talks: ‘Nance, I tole you so; whenever wimmin gits to doin’ men’s doos they gits into trouble. God made ’em she folks fus, and they’ll have to stay she till the worl busts.’ Daddy mighty offen tells mo’er ‘bout it when she wants to go roun’ by herself or drive to town.”

“Is it a good place to fish?” asked Frank.

“Tain’t bad,” said Ben, laconically, at the same time throwing his legs, one after the other, over a low rail fence, and saying, “Here’s the place!”

We followed him over the fence, and through some tangled vines, and stopped at the water’s edge; the bank covered with short, thick grass, the shade perfectly dense, the yellow waters of the creek curdled with clear rings and ripples from a noisy branch, that bubbled limpidly from the coolest of springs over the whitest of pebbles.

Just where the clear and muddy water mingled, Ben affirmed the fish would bite best. We undid our poles and baited our hooks. Ben and Frank had a little unpleasantness, arising from Frank’s claiming a place for his pole to the detriment of Ben’s position. His manner and words were so insulting that Ben was about to strike him, when Ned and I interfered, and prevented blows.

We found, as Ben had said, it was a capital place to fish, for we were kept busily employed in attending to our poles. Ben, however, easily beat us all. He some way had a knack of fixing his bait and spitting on his hook, so that his line would scarcely touch the water before a fish would seize it.

The morning waned, however, and the sun had laid the shadows of the poles directly under them, when we all agreed that it was time for lunch.

We carried our basket up to the spring, which bubbled out of a large rock, and where Nature had spread us a table with a green velvet cloth. Ham sandwiches, with just enough mustard, broiled and devilled fowl, cold tongue, with the parsley between the slices, together with heaps of covered fruit pies, and mother’s especial boast, biscuit glacé, in the whitest of paper, to say nothing of a barrow full of peaches and melons which Reuben rolled down from the house, and placed to cool in a pond dammed up for the occasion; all were presented to appetites sharpened by the sport of the morning. Reversing the order of Aladdin’s feast, our viands disappeared with as wonderful celerity as his appeared. After we had fairly choked the branch with a mound of water-melon rinds and peach parings, we took our seats farther up on the grass, and left Reuben to clear up the table. Frank now drew forth his bottle of brandy and proposed that each one of us should tell a short story, entirely his own, and that he who could tell the most improbable, should have the bottle to himself. Ben stretched himself out on the grass, with his arm under his head, and said, drowsily, as he tore off with his teeth a large quid of tobacco from a twist he drew from his pocket:

“Blaze away wi’ yer lies. I’m a biled mullen stalk ef I can’t win at that game.”

Ned firmly declared he did not want any of the brandy, but said he would tell his story with the rest, merely to help out the fun. By request I was excused, that I might act as judge, and Frank, rapping on the bottle with his knife, asked Ned to begin. Ned reclined on one elbow, and said:

NED’S STORY

“I will tell you what happened in the western part of the State, for Frank’s benefit. Our family were summering at a small town near the mountains some years ago, when a circus passed through that section, stopping for a day at our town. Every wall of every house that presented surface enough had for weeks been spread over with the marvellous high colored illustrations of what were to be seen under that mighty, mystic canvas. They were the same pictures, or I should rather say works of art, combining the airy lightness and licensed fancy of Correggio with the Dutch fidelity of Rembrandt, which you have, perhaps, all seen at different times pasted, with weather-proof adherence, to any visible portion of public places. There were troops of monkeys, done in the blackest of colors, swinging from the greenest of trees, across the widest and bluest of rivers, by tails of impossible length and elasticity. There were ibexes leaping into bottomless abysses, thereby defeating the design of the artist, who would have them to alight upon their horns. There was the traditional polar bear, defending her cubs and leisurely lunching on a sandwich of two seals and a sailor. The actual bear in the circus, I have found by long experience, invariably dies at the previous stopping place, bequeathing, tenderly, its skin to the public of to-morrow, thereby undergoing a constancy of death and a multitude of bequests that would startle the profundity of a probate judge. There were pleasant side groups of men lassoing the giraffe and zebra, tripping the rhinoceros, and tearing off tigers from the very hams of elephants, on whose backs were huddled not quite a full regiment of soldiers in all stages of the manual of arms. But the chef d’œuvre was the centre-piece, as large as life, representing the clown, dressed in the American flag, with stars left out, with a hat reaching too infinite a point with its peak to be measured by any rule in conic sections, and cheeks too flamingly hectic for medical aid, handing, with the utmost gravity, a dish of boiled eggs to a sedate and diminutive mule, seated on its haunches, with its fore feet up on a barrel as its table – the only position, by the way, in which I think a mule could be safely approached with anything so far from its usual bill of fare as eggs.”

“Dog gone yo circus picturs!” interrupted Ben, raising up on one elbow to spit a stream of tobacco juice several yards behind us, “I c’n see them might’ nigh every year stuck ‘gin the warehouse over in town; go on wi yo yarn.”

“Well,” continued Ned, kindly taking no affront at Ben’s abrupt interruption, “I will hasten on. I merely wished to show how public expectation was worked up to a high pitch. After awhile the day came, and with it the circus – wagon after wagon, with tent poles and furniture; then the cages with the animals, all closed except the little lattice at the top, through which could now and then be heard the scream of a monkey or the cough of a lion, and then the gorgeous, gilded band chariot, with its music. Negroes, and boys, of which I was one, were almost crazy with excitement; we danced and shouted along the sidewalk in a promiscuous throng, ever keeping up with the long train of plumed horses drawing after them the gilded dragon, with its backful of brazen melody. But our glee was hushed into a very silence of admiration as we saw coming far behind the band chariot, with solemn grandeur, the great elephant, its broad ears waving like dusky fans, and its proboscis twisting, like a great serpent cut in two, slowly from side to side as he came on, looming like a gigantic tower, through the dust. As he approached and passed us, his small eyes twinkling so knowingly on the crowd, his keeper on a dappled horse, pacing along so fearlessly by his ponderous foreleg, and his dog trotting carelessly under his curling trunk, the open mouths of the crowd must have relieved him to a considerable extent of the dust he seemed to deprecate so much by his fanning ears.

“Well, to hurry on without so much detail, the canvas was pitched, the keeper carried the elephant to the river to cool out, and then brought him up, and tied him to one of the posts of the market house, which was near the pavilion, till the afternoon performance should commence. At the hour he went round, decked in his Oriental costume, and undid the fastening, and spoke in some unknown tongue to his mammoth charge. The elephant started, made a step forward and stopped, with a shrill cry of pain. The keeper looked up surprised, then uttering a few genuine American oaths, ordered him to move. Again the elephant made a great effort, and again stood still, with a prolonged scream. The keeper, now furious, approached, and drove his short training spike into him again and again. With each stab the poor creature would shriek and strain to the uttermost its cumbrous limbs, but all in vain, it could not move from where it stood. There was something so new in this apparent obstinacy that the keeper commenced to examine his position. He found one of the market house posts nearly pulled from its place, and the elephant’s tail, stretched to its last tenacity, sticking out straight as a poker towards the post, though not touching it by several inches, and having no visible connection whatever with it. Again he urged the animal forward, and again the elephant did his best to move. Just before his tail pulled out by the roots the post gave way, and tumbling over, hung dangling at the elephant’s heels. The keeper took the post in his hands, and, looking closely, found that a little spider had spun a web from the elephant’s tail to the post, and that this invisible thread had held him stronger than a chain of steel. Such a crowd had now gathered that the keeper found the elephant was drawing more people than the circus proper (or improper), and ordered him to move, that he might carry him under the canvas. The elephant obeying, moved forward, but the motion of his body set the post to swinging like a pendulum, which, increasing in its oscillation, at last commenced to thump him in the side harder than he fancied was comfortable. The thumps became more violent as he increased his speed, till, at last becoming frenzied with the blows, and the shouts, and hootings of the crowd, he broke away from the keeper, and ran hither and thither in the streets as fast as his unwieldy body could move, knocking over signs and boxes, breaking racks, frightening horses, and occasionally jostling over a clumsy man or two. At last he plunged through the great wide door of the court house, scraping his back against the brick arch as he did so. The post here fortunately got across the door and checked him. He pulled frantically, but the little web would not break; he then bent himself around as far as an elephant might, and tried to tear it off with his proboscis. The web, however, was so fine that it cut into even his tough trunk, and burying itself under the skin, held his proboscis fast to his tail. In his efforts now to disengage himself he fell, and lay helpless on the ground, and at last had to be rolled with an immense handspike over and over, like a very large hoop, till he got to the tent, or canvas, under which he was rolled, and perhaps unfastened.

“The prominent gentlemen of the town obtained part of the web, and forwarded it, with proper credentials, to several scientific societies for analysis. They each gave a different opinion in regard to the cause of its wonderful tenacity, but the people about the town always believed, and with very good reason, too, that the spider which spun it had been feeding on the beef brought to that market; and thus accounting for it, they ceased to wonder at the toughness of the web.”

“Ned, that’s a jolly good yarn,” said Frank, tossing the serpentine paring of a peach over his shoulder, and puffing out one jaw with a large section of the luscious fruit.

“Less hear the lord juke tell his’n,” said Ben, nodding towards Frank, and pushing himself up backwards by his hands to a large tree, against which he leaned, and folded his arms around one doubled-up knee; “should’n be suppris’n ef he can tell a buster, he’s in such good practice.”

“Well,” replied I, “we will leave all discussion of the merits of each one’s story to the umpire, and proceed. Frank, it is your time next.”

FRANK’S STORY

“I hardly know what to tell,” he said, taking aim at Ben’s foot with the peach stone he had been sucking. “Ned has fairly taken the wind out of my sails. Let me see; I believe I’ll tell you what happened to me once when I was very small. I was out one day in the mountains bird-nesting – a wicked employment, by the way, which perhaps accounts for my mishap – and found a very large hawk’s nest. It was in the very top of a ragged old pine, that grew upon the edge of the most frightful precipice in the country. It was a sheer descent of five or six hundred feet, looking almost perpendicular, though in some places it bulged out with rugged rocks, and in others retreated into caves. All down the face of the cliff were little scrubby bushes, which grew straight out for an inch or two, then suddenly turned up in their course, as if determined to see beyond the great rocky wall that towered so far above them. The old pine had endured the agony of fear for centuries, for though its gnarled trunk leaned far over the abyss, the limbs had all turned toward the firm earth, and stretched their hard, knotty hands appealingly to the surrounding forest. Rain after rain had washed away the soil and left the roots exposed, till half the foundation stood over the precipice and added its weight to the leaning trunk. It was not without much hesitation and debate with myself that I prepared to ascend. I reasoned, however, that if it had stood that long through wind and storm it would not take such a still, calm day to fall; and then, even if its foundation was precarious, my weight would be so infinitely small, compared with its own, that it would never make a perceptible addition. The temptation, too, was a great one, for I had seen the hawk, one of the largest kind, fly away as I approached, and then the climbing was very easy, for a ladder-like vine wound its leafy folds clear up to the top, like a great green serpent seeking the eggs. I took off my jacket and commenced to ascend. With well rubbed pants and an irritating quantity of pine bark next to my skin I reached the first limb, where I rested; then went on to the top, like going up stairs. At last I reached the nest, and there – rich reward for my trouble – lay four brown splotched eggs. Before I proceeded to take them out and tie them in my handkerchief I took a glance at my position. One look satisfied me, and made me faint and dizzy. From my standpoint the tree seemed to stretch out horizontally over the chasm which yawned hungrily below, and, looking at it as I did, through the branches of the tree, it seemed far deeper and more awful than it really was. Far down at the bottom, where the trees and shrubs shrank to the level of a green plush-looking surface, two or three cows were grazing, and they appeared just the size of the toy cows in my Noah’s ark. As I had to descend to the level of the valley on my way home, I could not resist the boyish temptation to throw my hat out into the air and let it float down; I accordingly balanced it nicely and let it go. It sank steadily for a little while, then began to rock from side to side, and finally relapsed into the regular spiral descent, twisting down and down till my eyes could not follow the tiny speck. While gazing down to discover it, if possible, I was startled by a sharp crack near the foot of the tree; another and another followed, and I looked in terror at the roots, to find that the ground was rising slowly upward in a slanting direction from me. The tree was giving way, and gradually sinking more and more swiftly over that hell of destruction. I heard the tearing up of the roots and the sh – sh of the foliage through the air, and I knew no more.