And ever and anon, in the pauses of the fearful conversation, the cataract howled below.

"I've no prayers to say," said the Hunter, in a dogged tone. "Comemurder me-if you like, I'm ready!"

There was something sublime in the courage of the Coward, who trembled as with an ague fit, as he said the words.

The words, the tone, the look of the man seemed to touch even the determined heart of the Sergeant.

"But you may have a wife, Isaac, or a child—” he faltered-" You may wish to leave some message?"

"I may have a wife and child and I may not," said the Hunter, quietly baring his throat. "Come, if you're goin' to murder me, begin!”

Then commenced a scene, whose quiet horror may well chill the blood in our veins, as we picture it.

The Sergeant advanced, seized the end of the grape-vine, and, while the wretch trembled in his grasp, knotted it firmly about his neck, gaunt and sinewy as it was.

The doomed man stood on the edge of the cliff.-Below him boiled the waters-above him smiled the sky. His deathsman was at his side.

For a moment, the Hunter turned toward the comrades of the Sergeant. "Kill him like a dog!" growled one of the soldiers.

"Remember the battle, and choke him until his eyes start!" exclaimed the other.

The eye of the miserable man wandered to the face of his Executioner. Calm and erect the Sergeant stood there; the only signs of agitation which he manifested, were visible in a slight tremulous motion of his lip, a sudden paleness of his cheek.

"Ain't there no pity?" whined the Hunter. "Ye see I'm not fit to die -the waterfall skeers me. No pity, did ye say?"

"None!" thundered the Sergeant, and with one movement of his arm pushed the doomed man from the rock.

Then-as the limb quivered with the burden of the fearful fruit which it bore-as the blackened face and starting eyes, and protruding tongue glowed horribly in the sunlight-as one long, deep cry of agony mingled with the roar of the cataract—the Sergeant seized the purse of guineas and hurled it far down into the darkness of the chasm.

"Let the traitor's gold go with his soul !" he cried, as the coin, escaping from the purse, sparkled like spray-drops through the air.

The level rays of the setting sun streamed over the dead man's face. All was desolate and silent in the forest-the Sergeant and his comrades had passed on their way-the deep anthem of the waterfall arose to the sunset Heaven.

There was a footstep on the fallen tree, and a boy of some twelve years,

He

bearing a burden on his back, came tripping lightly over the cataract. was roughly clad, in a dress of wild deer's hide, yet there was a frankness about his sunburnt face, a daring in his calm grey eye, which made you forget his uncouth attire. As he came bounding on, as fearlessly as though the floor of some quiet home were beneath him-the breeze tossed his brown hair aside from his face, until it waved in curls of glossy softness. "Father!" his young voice resounded through the woods, clear and shrill as the tones of careless boyhood. Father, do you sleep yet?" he cried,

66

as he crossed the tree. "You know I went this morning to the Indian's

wigwam to procure food and drink for you.

Here it is-I'm safe back

again. Father, I say!"

Again he called, and still no answer.

He stood on the astern side of the waterfall, near the forest arbor. "Ah! I know what you're about!" he laughed, with childish gaiety. "You want me to think you're asleep-you want to spring up and frighten me! Ha, ha, ha !"

And gaily laughing, he went through the foliage, and stood in the forest arbor-stood before the DEAD MAN.

His FATHER, hanging by the grape-vine to the oaken limb, his feet above the chasm, the sunset glow upon his face. That face as black as ink; the eyes on the cheek; the purpled tongue lolling on the jaw-his father! Every breath of air that stirred waved his grey hairs about his brow, and swayed his stiffened body to and fro.

The boy gazed upon it, but did not weep. traitor, murderer, but the son knew it not.

His father might be a thief, The old man was kind to him

-yes, treacherous to all the world, he loved his motherless child!

"Father!" the boy gasped, and the bread and bottle which he bore on his shoulders, fell to the ground.

He approached and gazed upon the body of the dead man, You might see a twitching of the muscles of his young face, a strange working of the mouth, an elevation and depression of the eye-brows, but his grey eyes were undimmed by a tear. There was something terrible in the silent sternness with which the child gazed into his murdered father's face.

'There was a paper pinned to the breast of the dead man, a rough paper scrawled with certain uncouth characters. The boy took the paper-he could not read-but carefully folding it, he placed it within the breast of his jacket, near to his heart.

Twenty years afterward, that paper was the cause of a cold-blooded and horrible murder, wild and unnatural in its slightest details.

Long and earnestly the boy stood gazing upon that distorted face. The same sunbeam that shone upon the visage of the dead, lighted up the singular countenance of the boy.

At last, approaching the edge of the cliff, he took his father's hands within his own. They were very cold. He placed his hands upon the old man's

face. It was clammy and moist.

The boy began to shudder with a fear hitherto unknown to him. For the first time, he stood in the presence of Death.

His broken ejaculations were calculated to touch the hardest heart. "Father!" he would whisper, "you aint dead, are you? If you are dead what'll I do? Come, father, and tell me ye aint dead? say, father!"

Father! I

As the sun went down, that cry quivered through the woods. The moon arose. Still by her pale light, there on the verge of the cliff, stood the boy, gazing in his father's face.

"I'll cut him down, that's what I'll do !" he said, taking a hunter's knife from his girdle.

Standing on tip-toe he hacked the grape-vine with the knife; it snapped with a sharp sound: she boy reached forth his arms to grasp his father's body; for a moment he held it trembling there, the blackened face silvered by the light of the moon.

But his grasp was feeble, compared to the weight which it sustained, and the body passed from his hands. There was a hissing sound in the air-a dead pause a heavy splash in the waters below.

The boy knelt on the rock and gazed below. I confess, as I see him kneeling there, the light of the moon upon his waving locks-the silence of night only broken by the eternal anthem of the cataract,-that I cannot contemplate without a shudder, that sad and terrible picture:

The Boy, leaning over the rock, as he gazes with straining eyes, far down into the darkness of the abyss, for the DEAD BODY Of his Father!

XVI.-THE SON OF THE HUNTER-SPY.

THE gleam of the hearthside taper flashed far over the valley of the Brandywine. From the upper window of that peaceful home, it flamed a long and quivering ray of golden light.

The old house stood alone, some few paces from the road, at least an hundred yards from the waters of the Brandywine. A small fabric of dark grey stone, standing in the centre of a slope of grassy sod, with steep roof, narrow windows, and a rustic porch before the door. On either side of the grassy slope, the woods darkened, thick and luxuriant; above, the universe of stars shed their calm, tranquil light, over the slumbering valley; from afar, the musical murmur of the waves, rolling over their pebbled bed, broke the deep silence of the night.

Let us look through the darkness, and by the clear starlight, behold this small two-storied fabric, in all its rustic beauty, while yonder, not twenty yards distant, a hay-rick rises from the level of the sod. All is still around this home of Brandywine,-the house, the gently-ascending slope, the conical hay-rick, the surrounding woods, present a picture of deep repose.

We will enter the home, yes, into the upper room, from whose narrow window the ray of the fireside taper, gleams along the shadowy valley.

An old man, sitting easily in his oaken arm-chair, the glow of the candle upon his wrinkled face and snowy hairs. The smoke of his pipe winds around his face and head; his blue eyes gleaming with calm light, and composed features, and attitude of careless ease, all betoken a mind at peace with God and man.

On one side you behold his couch, with its coverlid of unruffled white; yonder a rude table, placed beneath a small mirror, with a Bible, old and venerable, laid upon its surface. There is a narrow hearth, simmering with a slight fire of hickory faggots; beside the hearth, you see the door of a closet, its panels hewn of solid oak, and darkened into inky blackness by the touch of time.

In the centre of the room, his calm face glowing in the light of the candle, sits the old man, coat and vest thrown aside, as he quietly smokes his grateful pipe. As he knocks the ashes from the bowl, you may see that he is one-armed; for the right arm has been severed at the shoulder: the sleeve dangles by his side.

You will confess that it is but a quiet, nay, a tame picture, which I have drawn for you-an old and one-armed man, smoking his evening pipe, ere he retires to rest, his wrinkled face melowed with unspeakable content, his blue eyes gleaming from beneath the thick grey eye-brows, as with the light of blessed memories.

And yet this scene, placed beside another scene which will occur ere an hour passes, might well draw tears from a heart of granite.

Suddenly the old man places his hand against his brow, his mild blue eye moistens with a tear. His soul is with the past-with the wife who now sleeps the last slumber, under the sod of the Quaker graveyard-with the scenes of battle in the dim forests, where the rifle-blaze streams redly over the leaves, and the yell of the Indian mingles with the war of the

cataract.

All at once there comes a memory which blanches the old man's cheek, fills with wild light his calm blue eye. Looking back into time, he beholds a dim recess of the forest, perched above the waters of the cataract, the sunbeam playing over its moss, while the face of a dead man glares horribly in the last flush of the sunset hour.

The old man rises, paces the floor, with his only hand wipes the moisture from his brow.

"It was right," he murmurs" He had betrayed a thousand brave men to death, and he died !”

And yet, look where he might, through that quiet room, he beheld a dead man, suspended to the limb of a forest oak, with the sunlight-that last red flush of sunset, which is so beautiful-playing warmly over the livid features. This you will confess, was a terrible memory, or a strange frenzy. An

old man whose life for at least twenty years, had been spent in the scenes of a quiet home, to behold a livid face, working convulsively in death, wherever he turned !

"I know not why it is, but wherever I turn, I seem to see—yes, I do see-a dead man's face! And whenever I try to think of my dead wife, I hear a voice repeating this night, this night you die!"

As the old man spoke, resuming his pipe, a slight sound disturbed the silence of the room. He turned, and there, like a picture framed by the rough timbers of the doorway, beheld the form of a young girl, clad slightly, in her night-dress with a mass of brown hair about her neck and shoulders. One hand was raised, the finger to her lip, and the round white arm, gleaming in the light; the other grasped the handle of the door.

There was something very beautiful in the sight.

Not that her dress was fashioned of silk or purple, or that her white neck shone with the gleam of diamonds or pearls. Ah, no! Her dress was made of coarse homespun cloth; it left her arms, and neck, and feet, bare to the light. Still there was a beauty about her young face, which glowed on the lips and cheeks, with the warmth of a summer dawn, and shone in the deep blue eyes, with the tranquil loveliness of a starlight night.

Her hair too; you cannot say that it gathered in curls, or floated in tresses; but to tell the sober truth, in color it was of that rich brown which deepens into black, and waving from her white forehead, it fell in one glossy mass, down to the white bosom, which had never been ruffled by a thought of sin.

With regard to the young form, whose outlines gleamed on you, even from the folds of her coarse dress, you could not affirm that it rivalled the dream of the Sculptor, the Venus de Medici, or burst forth in all the majestic beauty of one of Raphael's Painted Poems. It was but the form of a Peasant Girl, reminding you in every hue and outline, of a wild forest rose, that flourishing alone amid large green leaves, trembles on the verge of its perfect bloom; not so gorgeous as a hot-house plant, still very warm, and very loveable, and very beautiful.

And she stood there, even on the threshold, her finger to her lip, gazing with a look of wild alarm, upon the wrinkled face of her father, the onearmed schoolmaster of Brandy wine.

66

Mary!" the old man exclaimed, his eyes expanding with wonder. "Hush, father! Do you not hear the tread of armed men? Listen! Do you not hear the rattling of arms? Hark! That deep-toned whisper, coupled with an oath- Mayland the spy-break the door-arrest, and bear him to the British camp!"

And while the word trembled on her lip, a dull, heavy sound broke like a knell upon the air. It was the crashing of a musket-stock against the door of the schoolmaster's home.