so he kept his counsel, only giving instructions to his astonished daughter to discourage any future attentions from the minister. He was fortunately saved from long uneasiness.

A few days later there was an afternoon service at the meeting-house, the workmen upon the frame of the spire having suspended their labors for the occasion. It was the lecture preparatory to the sacrament of the Lext LORD's day. The design of that simple yet touching ordinance was dwelt upon, and the state of mind with which the mystic emblems should be received was graphically described. The minister finished with touching pathos, and was about to sit down, when a bluff voice called out in the hearing of the startled congregation:

'COME DOWN FROM THAT PULPIT!'

Every eye was turned toward the intruder. A stout, burly-looking man, bearing the air of one in authority, was advancing up the broad-aisle as though expecting to be obeyed.

And who are you,' said the minister, that thus profane this house on this solemn occasion?' His words were bold, but his face was ashy pale, and his voice husky with terror.

It is you that profane the house!' said the stranger. As for my authority, you see the seal of Massachusetts. I arrest you in the name of the commonwealth !'

A loud murmur arose through the congregation. Deacon Wainsford fell on his knees in silent prayer, while his daughter leaned upon her mother, overpowered by a deadly faintness.

The officer with his pallid prisoner walked toward the vestibule, followed by the more curious part of the assembly. The crowd jostled somewhat in their eager haste, and the officer, finding his gouty toes in danger, shrank back involuntarily; out of the door sprang the ex-parson, knocking down several in his headlong flight. On he ran with the speed of a deer toward the western woods, with a crowd of angry men and yelling boys at his heels. But soon some returned out of breath, and reported that the fox had escaped. He had climbed a high wall in his way, they said; they pressed on and clambered over after him, but he was no where to be seen! Had the earth opened to receive him? Was he changed by Satanic aid into a viewless spirit, or did he slink away in the guise of some animal?

But a few, who were skeptical as to those apocryphal means of eluding pursuit, remained as sentinels. In a short time they caught glimpses of a man dodging from tree to tree; the alarm was given, and the chase was renewed with vigor. The fugitive was caught. He was panting for breath, and had slipped into a barn near which he passed, thinking his pursuers would sweep by; but it was not so ordered. A boy in the advance saw the door close, and the whole party speedily surrounded the barn. A few entered, and after a slight search the ex-minister was discovered to be upon the upper scaffold, to which there was no access save by a perpendicular beam through which short rounds were inserted to serve as a ladder. There he stood on the sheaves of rye next to the roof, brandishing a formidable pitchfork; he was puffing and trembling from fatigue, but the gleam of his eye and the compression of his thin lip told his parishioners that it would be dangerous to come within reach of

his

weapon.

It was resolved therefore to turn the attack into a siege, and starve the pugnacious runaway into submission. He saw that the case was hopeless, for the besiegers were numerous enough to relieve each other, and the result could not be doubtful.

But the first flush of fear was now past; the mask of sanctity had been rudely torn off; nothing was now at stake, and the volatile spirits of the mountebank parson returned. Selecting a familiar psalm, he lined and sung each distich, imitating with ludicrous accuracy the nasal twang with which the village chorister used to regale the congregation. Then taking a text, he began a sermon, using his pitchfork to give effect to the emphatic passages. For once he was a plain-spoken preacher; for the principal church members, both present and absent, were pointedly referred to in turn, and their several short-comings shown up in graphic style. The younger men listened with hardly-smothered glee at each biting sarcasın, unmindful of the rebukes of their elders, who would have crossed themselves if it were not popish, as they heard with dismay the ribald blasphemies which fell from the scaffold.

The officer took his prisoner into a distant county for trial. The villain was found guilty on various indictments, and was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. His ingenuity contrived an escape soon after, but to no purpose as before. At dusk he rowed toward a vessel that stood off the shore, and either perished in the storm that drove it with scores of staunch ships upon the rocky coast, or was swamped by the rising waves before reaching his destination. At all events, he was never heard of afterward.

All the incidents connected with this memorable epoch in the history of Innisfield were narrated and magnified for the hundredth time, until garrulity itself was exhausted by their repetition. The village, startled from its usual propriety, at length relapsed into quiet. The church thanked GoD for deliverance, and speedily set about procuring a new pastor. The wisdom of the elders was established beyond cavil, though it was observed that somehow their number was wonderfully increased after the arrest; and the enthusiasm of the ex-minister's former friends furnished ever after a palpable argument against them, when they would set up their opinions against the sagacity which had penetrated such a fairseeming disguise.

But among all the people who felt relieved by the exposure of the saintly hypocrite, none experienced such heart-felt joy as did the good Deacon Wainsford. He clasped his daughter again and again in his arms, and could not be grateful enough to the kind PROVIDENCE which had interposed so opportunely. The fair Mary had none of the sentimentalism of modern times, which would lament the punishment of a fascinating villain. The remembrance of his honeyed attentions, and of her reciprocal regard, (she never in her most secret soul confessed it to be love,) was a scar upon her heart. But the terrible pang which had inflicted it was past, and it caused not a regret or even a thought, save when rarely some rude touch of curiosity upon it would recall its existence and the associations slumbering beneath it.

The spire was at length completed. The hypocrite, who had profaned the sacred pulpit, had drawn the plan, but its proportions were none the

less fair for that. The bell was suspended in the belfry, and a joyous peal was rung which was echoed from all the hills that hem in the valley. A gilded ball was prepared to cap the spire, but as it was about to be carried up, a most important item was found to have been forgotten. No vane had been prepared, and a spire without a vane would be preposterous. What would the envious sneerers of Greenbank and Campton say, if such a solecism were perpetrated? No, the scaffold must stand until a vane could be made. Already the blacksmith was preparing to shape a figure for the gilder, when a stranger reached town, and blandly informed the gaping master-builder that, having heard of the erection of a new steeple in the village, he had made bold to bring a slight offering to the church; he had brought them a brilliantly-burnished vane. Albeit the builder was not a little astonished at the coincidence and at the unusual shape of the vane, he yet thanked the donor politely for the very acceptable present. But the curiosity of the good man got the better of his breeding, and halfbashfully scratching his head, he asked the name, whereabouts and business of the stranger, who seemed to feel so much interest in the church.

'Jones is my name, David Jones,' said the stranger with gravity. 'I travel mostly, and as for my occupation, I am generally employed where there are dilapidated churches. Permit me to put up the vane, good Mr. Carpenter,' he added. 'It is of a peculiar construction, and I wish to see if it is properly poised.'

The stranger, though seeming to be at least forty-five, mounted the scaffolding with singular agility, and having reached the top of the spire, slipped the vane upon the rod and came down. The idlers of the village, seeing a man ascending the spire, gathered upon the green in considerable numbers by the time he reached the ground, all gazing upon the antique dress and weird visage of the stranger. A light breeze wandered idly by, and the vane creaked with a sharp tone, almost like a human cry.

'A little oil would make it turn more easily,' quoth the builder.

Ay, truly,' said the stranger; but a few turns upon the pivot will doubtless wear the joint smooth.'

Then, without heeding the astonishment of the crowd at his presence, the stranger, saying that he had business in the next town, mounted his sorry beast and rode on.

The workmen carried up the ball and screwed it upon the summit of the spire; but all their attempts to lubricate the vane upon its bearing were to no purpose: the joint was perfect, and the oil would not penetrate it. The scaffolding was taken down, and the vane, a symmetrical human figure, with the rod piercing the body where the heart should be, still kept up at intervals its dismal creaking.

And though these sounds are somewhat less frequent latterly, yet whenever a furious storm comes careering down from the hills, and the winds run riot among the clouds, causing them to frisk over the treetops, tossing their manes of feathery spray, then the old vane resumes its melancholy tone; and the listeners who live in sight of the spire, when they hear those sounds at the dead of night, are fain to wrap their heads in the bed-clothes, and shrink from the sight of the window. For 'auld-wives' in a whisper around the decaying embers tell with shivering affright of the ill-omened vane, the gift of the arch-fiend;

how that its legs on such fearful nights are seen to writhe as if in agony, and its head to wear the flowing locks of the wicked minister, while owls and bats and other shapes of dread flit about it, or sitting on its extremities career around, flapping their wings, exulting over the rage of the elements, and the doleful wails of the man that must swing till the day of doom!

TYRANTS IN TARTARUS.

BY C. D. STUART.

I HEARD a wild wind soughing
Across a wintry sea,
And foam and ice went roaring
In wild and thunder-glee;
And dark as night, and gloomy
As old Avernus' wave,
The clouds their stormy courses
Above the billows drave.

No star from heav'n was shining,
To light the awful gloom;
Like cold and ghostly shadows
Of furies from the tomb,
The shapes of foam went flying
In misty, spectral light,
And beat the icy mountains
Through all the fearful night.

And while I stood in terror,
Watching the wintry sea,
There came a mighty angel

And spake these words to me:
This is the doom of tyrants:
The dark and fearful fate
Of all, whose lives were bloody,
Or full of wrong and hate.

'They are the white foam flying
Against yon icy forms,
Where all their deeds of horror,
Commingled, breed but storms:
Cold, dark! in gloom eternal,
Save their own spectral light,
They shall confront and battle

Their deeds, through endless night.

'The wild wind, fiercely soughing,
Is but their ceaseless moan;
The clouds, on stormy coursers,
Are but the shades up-thrown
Of all their deeds of horror,

Of lust, and hate and wrong,
Which here shall bind for ever
Earth's bloody tyrant throng!'

STEAD FASTNESS.

NUR dem Ernst, den, keine Muhe bleichet,

Rauscht der Wahrheit tief versteckter Born.-SCHILLER

O THOU who in the ways

Of this rough world art faint and weary grown,
Thy drooping head up-raise,

And let thy heart be strong; for better days
Still trust that future time will unto thee make known.

As the soft breath of Spring

Robes in bright hues the dark old Earth again;
So would such purpose bring

Thee back the buoyancy of youth, and fling
Joy on thy aching heart, unfelt through years of pain.

Like the untrembling ray

Of some clear planet, sheening through the night,
Pursue thy steady way;

And, though through gloom and darkness it may lay,
Thou shalt at last emerge and tread a path of light.

But not by weak endeavor,
By fickle course, faint-heartedness and fear,
Canst thou expect to sever

The massy links of Error's chain; for never

Did they before aught else save stout strokes disappear.

To the steadfast alone

The matchless glory of her unveiled form

Does TRUTH make fully known:

Who would her perfect loveliness be shown,
His fixed design must bear unmoved in calm or storm.

Go then, and from the wells

Of ancient lore, from bards and sages old,
And from the chronicles

Of deeds heroic, gather potent spells,

Such as may nerve thy soul to action high and bold.

And thou at length shalt feel

That starry loftiness of soul which dares

The rack, the stake, the wheel,

'LUKE's iron crown or DAMIEN's bed of steel,' Nor in the darkest hour or wavers or despairs!

HORACE ROBLES