Dunker cap transparent at her little ears, "why don't you dress like Nelly?"

"I am not so peautiful," Katy said, looking down at her dark gown and white apron, "and, Lloyd, I want to love God, who has let you love me."

'My child," Lloyd said, not repelling some tears which came to his eyes, "why do you not see the wicked fellow I am and turn away from me? I am not worthy of your pure heart, Katy!"

'Yes, you are,” Katy said; "maybe I can pring you to God if I try hard. What else is woman for?"

The tears came again and yet again to the young man's eyes; at last they streamed upon his cheeks, and he felt them dropping like blood from a fresh wound into his hands, as he held his palms open and thought they would fill. It was the first mention of God, the first affection bestowed upon him, so hungry-hearted, since his Christian mother's death.

Katy threw her arms around him and drew his head upon her little neck.

"Tese is love-feast tears," she said. "Our Saviour made tem holy, darling, at his last supper. Come, take it with me to-day and pe happy."

He sobbed so hard he could not speak: a past world of love now faded in the grave, another world of fatherly affection he had sought but could not find; recollections of prayers long taught but long unuttered, of gentle feelings brutalized by coarse city contacts, of the sense of home not yet obliterated but blunted, and of being at this moment too well, too nobly, if humbly beloved, stirred all the nature of the young man up and melted into rills of tears the ice in caverns long denied the air.

'My God!" he spoke at last, "can love do this? Was I experimenting with love, and finding such religion?-Katy," he suddenly looked up and pushed her from him, "you must let me go!"

"Nefer, now," said Katy, looking with all her heart and great deep eyes upon him.- God, gif me this soul, and let it feed with me of thy supper and drink thy precious blood!"

Coming to the wagon to find Lloyd in tears and Katy clinging to him, Luther Bosler exclaimed:

"Wass treibsht olla weil? Are you two quarreling?"

66

No, Luther," answered Lloyd, wiping his eyes; "Katy is trying

to make something good out of me. Yonder mountains ought to be between us."

"Faith,'" observed Luther, mildly, "can remove mountains,' it says. Let us cross them together."

He took the reins, and Nelly Harbaugh sat by him, and so they slowly went up the pebbly mountain-road, old Jake going before in the buggy, with the parting words:

"Love-feast. Bi'm-by!"

Sitting with his arm around Katy, and with sweetly troubled feelings, yet manlier than he had ever known, Lloyd looked back into Catoctin Valley and remarked:

'Luther, why can't I see the houses and towns now?"

"Because te upper valley is hilly and tey puilt te houses py te springs petween te hills. But tey is all tere, Lloyd, and whoefer has pusiness with tem can find tem. When their country calls for tem, up will run te flag eferywheres and pe peautiful."

"We'll be there, Luther, won't we? This great, free Union is worth fighting for!"

66

'Yes, Lloyd. A pity it ain't free, too, and ten, I think, we should always have peace."

"What a singular Dutchman!" Lloyd thought to himself. "What he says seems eloquent, because he is so honest. How came he to be so grave and parental? I am not so. He is like a father to his father because, I suppose, he is so good a son. My father! Why will he not give me his confidence? Do I deserve it?"

"I live yonder where the hills are all rocky and wild, past Wolfsville," said Nelly Harbaugh, pointing north. "Mount Misery, where the counterfeiters had their cave in the Revolutionary War, is close by me. The Tories hid there, too, that were caught and hanged. I'm bad root, Lloyd," blushed Nelly, with a deep look on Luther.

The heart is the true rest," Luther said. and your pad ancestors will not trouble you. are those?'

"Keep that steady, But whose dogs

He pointed back, and coming together in the road were Fritz and Albion, the latter leading on, as if he had proposed the excursion; Fritz hanging back, yet looking at the carriage sturdily, as ready to take his reproof.

“Fritz, wo gaesht hee?" spoke Luther, without temper, to his dog, but looking serious, and stopping the horses on the mountaintop.

The Sugar-Loaf Mountain far away was peeping hazily over the giant ramparts of Catoctin, and up from the depths behind them followed the solemn green woods to where, upon this summit, lay ledges of sandstone, and the oak and chestnut trees shook with a coming tempest of wind and rain.

Fritz came straight up to the carriage, looked at Luther unhappily, and barked.

The city dog, with a vicious barking at Lloyd, took to the woodside and disappeared ahead in the road.

"Evil communications corrupt good manners, Luther," Lloyd said. "My dog has tempted yours away."

"Fritz," spoke Luther to his dog, shaking his head, “was not in the hapit of leafing home, where he is my friend and guard."

The dog came right up under the whip and barked with an excitement above apprehension, as if to say, "Whip me, but spare my pride!"

"Unfortunate dog!" exclaimed Luther, but more tenderly. “Can I do anything put send him home?"

The dog started back with head down, needing no further humiliation.

'Stop, Fritz!" Luther continued, his face lighting up, “does any person here speak for this tisopedient friend of mine, who has, perhaps, peen under pad atvice to-day?"

The dog had stopped, and when both Katy and Lloyd cried "Yes, do forgive him!" and Luther replied, "Very well, then," the dog took his place meekly under the wagon, and they entered the summit forest.

The winding road-track through the fallen chestnut-leaves and stone-heaps reminded them of Atzerodt's story, as they saw the pale, lemon-yellow leaves twirl in the rising gust like witches in a circle, and the squirrels run when mischievous lightning chased them from tree to tree. The clean trunks arose smoothly from stony ledges, and, ever young in form and foliage, though in their autumn days, the chestnut forest had an appearance pleasing even now in the grasp of coming storm. Something of the light and straight nature of the French was in it, tender in greenness, comely in maturity, engaging in the burr, and toothsome in the nut. However lofty the mighty shafts might rise, though monarchs of the forest, they had the complaisance and sentiment of kings in France.

Nothing crossed their way but wood-cutters' paths barely trace

able through the translucent goldness of the trees and litter, and the rail-splitters' piles and chips seemed only larger yellow leaves and ferns that strewed the vistas. A cool, small cedar-tree occasionally appeared, like a green parasol in the bright sunshine; but nothing of man or domestic beast broke the Sabbath stillness of the mountaintops-hardly the eagle yonder, so near overhead he almost touched the trees, like Jove taking his jealous watch and throwing from his eyes upon the woods below the citron glisten of Olympus.

'See!" whispered Nelly Harbaugh to Luther, “yonder are men -negroes-runaway slaves. There's money for catching them, Luther! Quick!"

Across the road, not fifty yards before, passed two black men, one carrying the other.

The younger was barefooted and had no coat, and limped as he labored under the older man's weight.

The old man seemed in the palsy of fear, or age, or disease, and, as he saw the carriage coming and women in it, a habit of courtesy, too old to be forgotten, made him take off the old straw hat he wore and bow almost idiotically and make a chattering noise.

Attracted by the movement, the young man turned and saw the carriage, and at a run, still limping, he bore the old man into the woods, flying to the north.

"Oh!" cried Nelly, "they're gone; we might have caught them. Along this mountain they travel at nights. It's hardly thirty miles across Maryland to the free State. We have got people here who live by catching them and get hundreds of dollars reward."

"And a millstone it will pe around their necks," exclaimed Luther.

“I reckon so, too,” Lloyd said.

"Niggers oughtn't to run away, but let somebody else than me do the catching."

At this moment the pointer-dog, Albion, reappeared out of the place in the woods where the fugitives first emerged, and his delicate brown kid nose was trailing something.

"Hist!" cried Lloyd;

come here, Albion!"

Raising his head only to bark ill-naturedly, and striving to lick his torn ear once, the white and yellow pointer dropped to the scent again and darted into the opposite woods, barking.

"I hope he won't petray those poor fellows," Luther said, "but we can't stop for him, for te rain is coming hard, and tere's no shelter till we get to Smoketown."

"Oh,” cried Nelly Harbaugh, "stop there at the fortune-teller's!" The storm now burst in half-sunny nonchalance upon the mountain they were on, and yet, while its lightnings leaped vengefully here, the parallel mountain, beyond the gorge they were overhanging, seemed to be serene as Sabbath, and through the mist of sheetrain, at pauses, they could see its happy countenance of chestnut woods and sulphur-tinted leaves, waiting like one beatified martyr for another to pass through his fires.

With cool, executioner-like method, the spirits of the storm whipped the longer mountain's back with rods of forked fire until it smoked, and the sound of riven trees beneath the thunderbolts seemed like the broken rods of Pilate's soldiery shivered upon the unanswering Pioneer. Yet, sometimes red as blood, the electric current flowed along the hairy woodlands till rain, like floods of tears from heaven, streamed down to cool the mountain's anguish, and groans, from none knew where, feebly or wail-like accompanied the tempest.

The road grew black; the steady gray wagon-horses shrank as if they would crawl upon their bellies; dust and water, thunder and flame mutinied against each other in their common purpose, and fought together without proceeding, while the great dike of the Blue Ridge Mountain buried itself in mystery or melted away.

'Why, this is hell, or the portent of it!" Lloyd Quantrell spoke, covering Katy with his body and arms.

"Say 'Te Words,' Lloyd," he heard her whispering, "and we will pe happy."

66

Steaty, Jim! Steaty, Sam! Holt steaty, poys!" Luther Bosler's voice spoke calmly; "it will soon pe ofer."

A scream from Nelly Harbaugh at this moment, and the horses leaping in their harness and striving to break from the driver's practiced hands, were occasioned by a sight in the road which seemed almost supernatural: a strange, half-transparent, rose-colored mist, like lava dissolved in wine, sprang up as if the lightning had been distilled and held a long moment in atmospheric solution, and through it were seen at the horses' heads two men and two large hounds, gazing up at the carriage, and themselves surprised as much as its occupants.

The men were burly, coarse-looking, neither good nor evil of countenance, and clearly people of this world.

While the occupants of the carriage gazed at them for a period