Our friend, Ben Dakin, pressed to the stand, and, with tears streaming down his cheeks, exceeded all others in the energy of his vociferations. Ben had just come from almost a fight with another slave-hunter, who had boasted a better-trained pack of dogs than his own; and had broken away to hurry to the camp-ground, with the assurance that he'd "give him fits when the preachin' was over;" and now he stood there, tears rolling down his cheeks, singing with the heartiest earnestness and devotion. What shall we make of it? Poor heathen Ben! is it any more out of the way for him to think of being a Christian in this manner, than for some of his more decent brethren, who take Sunday passage for eternity in the cushioned New York or Boston pews, and solemnly drowse through very sleepy tunes, under a dim, hazy impression that they are going to heaven? Of the two, we think Ben's chance is the best; for, in some blind way, he does think himself a sinner, and in need of something he calls salvation; and, doubtless, while the tears stream down his face, the poor fellow makes a new resolve against the whiskey-bottle, while his more respectable sleepy brethren never think of making one against the cotton-bale.

Then there was his rival, also, Jim Stokes,—a surly, foul-mouthed, swearing fellow,—he joins in the chorus of the hymn, and feels a troublous, vague yearning, deep down within him, which makes him for the moment doubt whether he had better knock down Ben at the end of the meeting.

As to Harry, who stood also among the crowd, the words and tune recalled but too vividly the incidents of his morning's interview with Dred, and with it the tumultuous boiling of his bitter controversy with the laws of the society in which he found himself. In hours of such high excitement, a man seems to have an intuitive perception of the whole extent and strength of what is within himself; and, if there be anything unnatural or false in his position, he realizes it with double intensity.

Mr. John Gordon, likewise, gave himself up, without resistance, to be swayed by the feeling of the hour. He sung with enthusiasm, and wished he was a soldier of somebody, going somewhere, or a martyr shouting victory in the fire; and if the conflict described had been with any other foe than his own laziness and self-indulgence—had there been any outward, tangible enemy, at the moment—he would doubtless have enlisted, without loss of time.

When the hymn was finished, however, there was a general wiping of eyes, and they all sat down to listen to the sermon. Father Bonnie led off in an animated strain. His discourse was like the tropical swamp, bursting out with a lush abundance of every kind of growth—grave, gay, grotesque, solemn, fanciful, and even coarse caricature, provoking the broadest laughter. The audience were swayed by him like trees before the wind. There were not wanting touches of rude pathos, as well as earnest appeals. The meeting was a union one of Presbyterians and Methodists, in which the ministers of both denominations took equal part; and it was an understood agreement among them, of course, that they were not to venture upon polemic ground, or attack each other's peculiarities of doctrine. But Abijah's favorite preacher could not get through a sermon without some quite pointed exposition of Scripture bearing on his favorite doctrine of election, which caused the next minister to run a vehement tilt on the correlative doctrines of free grace, with a eulogy on John Wesley. The auditors, meanwhile, according to their respective sentiments, encouraged each preacher with a cry of "Amen!" "Glory be to God!" "Go on, brother!" and other similar exclamations.

About noon the services terminated, pro tem., and the audience dispersed themselves to their respective tents through the grove, where there was an abundance of chatting, visiting, eating, and drinking, as if the vehement denunciations and passionate appeals of the morning had been things of another state of existence. Uncle John, in the most cheery possible frame of mind, escorted his party into the woods, and assisted them in unpacking a hamper containing wine, cold fowls, cakes, pies, and other delicacies which Aunt Katy had packed for the occasion.

Old Tiff had set up his tent in a snug little nook on the banks of the stream, where he informed passers-by that it was his young mas'r and missis's establishment, and that he, Tiff, had come to wait on them. With a good-natured view of doing him a pleasure, Nina selected a spot for their nooning at no great distance, and spoke in the most gracious and encouraging manner to them, from time to time.

"See, now, can't you, how real quality behaves demselves!" he said, grimly, to Old Hundred, who came up bringing the carriage-cushions for the party to sit down upon. "Real quality sees into things! I tell ye what, blood sees into blood. Miss Nina sees dese yer chil'en an't de common sort—dat's what she does!"

"Umph!" said Old Hundred, "such a muss as ye keep up about yer chil'en! Tell you what, dey an't no better dan oder white trash!"

"Now, you talk dat ar way, I'll knock you down!" said Old Tiff, who, though a peaceable and law-abiding creature, in general, was driven, in desperation, to the last resort of force.

"John, what are you saying to Tiff?" said Nina, who had overheard some of the last words. "Go back to your own tent, and don't you trouble him! I have taken him under my protection."

The party enjoyed their dinner with infinite relish, and Nina amused herself in watching Tiff's cooking preparations. Before departing to the preaching-ground, he had arranged a slow fire, on which a savory stew had been all the morning simmering, and which, on the taking off of the pot-lid, diffused an agreeable odor through the place.

"I say, Tiff, how delightfully that smells!" said Nina, getting up, and looking into the pot. "Wouldn't Miss Fanny be so kind as to favor us with a taste of it?"

Fanny, to whom Tiff punctiliously referred the question, gave a bashful consent. But who shall describe the pride and glory that swelled the heart of Tiff as he saw a bowl of his stew smoking among the Gordon viands, praised and patronized by the party? And, when Nina placed on their simple board—literally a board, and nothing more—a small loaf of frosted cake, in exchange, it certainly required all the grace of the morning exercises to keep Tiff within due bounds of humility. He really seemed to dilate with satisfaction.

"Tiff, how did you like the sermon?" said Nina.

"Dey's pretty far, Miss Nina. Der's a good deal o' quality preaching."

"What do you mean by quality preaching, Tiff?"

"Why, dat ar kind dat's good for quality—full of long words, you know. I spects it's very good; but poor nigger like me can't see his way through it. You see, Miss Nina, what I's studdin' on, lately, is, how to get dese yer chil'en to Canaan; and I hars fus with one ear, and den with t'oder, but 'pears like an't clar 'bout it, yet. Dere's a heap about mose everything else, and it's all very good; but 'pears like I an't clar, arter all, about dat ar. Dey says, 'Come to Christ;' and I says, 'Whar is he, any how?' Bress you, I want to come! Dey talks 'bout going in de gate, and knocking at de do', and 'bout marching on de road, and 'bout fighting and being soldiers of de cross; and de Lord knows, now, I'd be glad to get de chil'en through any gate; and I could take 'em on my back and travel all day, if dere was any road; and if dere was a do', bless me, if dey wouldn't hear Old Tiff a rapping! I spects de Lord would have fur to open it—would so. But, arter all, when de preaching is done, dere don't 'pear to be nothing to it. Dere an't no gate, dere an't no do', nor no way; and dere an't no fighting, 'cept when Ben Dakin and Jim Stokes get jawing about der dogs; and everybody comes back eating der dinner quite comf'table, and 'pears like dere wan't no such ting dey's been preaching 'bout. Dat ar troubles me—does so—'cause I wants fur to get dese yer chil'en in de kingdom, some way or oder. I didn't know but some of de quality would know more 'bout it."

"Hang me, if I haven't felt just so!" said Uncle John. "When they were singing that hymn about enlisting and being a soldier, if there had been any fighting doing anywhere, I should have certainly gone right into it; and the preaching always stirs me up terribly. But, then, as Tiff says, after it's all over, why, there's dinner to be eaten, and I can't see anything better than to eat it; and then, by the time I have drank two or three glasses of wine, it's all gone. Now, that's just the way with me!"

"Dey says," said Tiff, "dat we must wait for de blessing to come down upon us, and Aunt Rose says it's dem dat shouts dat gets de blessing; and I's been shouting till I's most beat out, but I hasn't got it. Den, one of dem said none of dem could get it but de 'lect; but, den, t'oder one, he seemed to tink different; and in de meeting dey tells about de scales falling from der eyes,—and I wished dey fall from mine—I do so! Perhaps, Miss Nina, now, you could tell me something."

"Oh, don't ask me!" said Nina; "I don't know anything about these things. I think I feel a little like Uncle John," she said, turning to Clayton. "There are two kinds of sermons and hymns; one gets me to sleep, and the other excites and stirs me up in a general kind of way; but they don't either seem to do me real good."

"For my part, I am such an enemy to stagnation," said Clayton, "that I think there is advantage in everything that stirs up the soul, even though we see no immediate results. I listen to music, see pictures, as far as I can, uncritically. I say, 'Here I am; see what you can do with me.' So I present myself to almost all religious exercises. It is the most mysterious part of our nature. I do not pretend to understand it, therefore never criticise."

"For my part," said Anne, "there is so much in the wild freedom of these meetings that shocks my taste and sense of propriety, that I am annoyed more than I am benefited."

"There spoke the true, well-trained conventionalist," said Clayton. "But look around you. See, in this wood, among these flowers, and festoons of vine, and arches of green, how many shocking, unsightly growths! You would not have had all this underbrush, these dead limbs, these briers running riot over trees, and sometimes choking and killing them. You would have well-trimmed trees and velvet turf. But I love briers, dead limbs, and all, for their very savage freedom. Every once in a while you see in a wood a jessamine, or a sweet-brier, or a grape-vine, that throws itself into a gracefulness of growth which a landscape gardener would go down on his knees for, but cannot get. Nature resolutely denies it to him. She says, 'No! I keep this for my own. You won't have my wildness—my freedom; very well, then you shall not have the graces that spring from it.' Just so it is with men. Unite any assembly of common men in a great enthusiasm,—work them up into an abandon, and let every one 'let go,' and speak as nature prompts,—and you will have brush, underwood, briers, and all grotesque growths; but, now and then, some thought or sentiment will be struck out with a freedom or power such as you cannot get in any other way. You cultivated people are much mistaken when you despise the enthusiasms of the masses. There is more truth than you think in the old 'Vox populi, vox Dei.'"

"What's that?" said Nina.

"'The voice of the people is the voice of God.' There is truth in it. I never repent my share in a popular excitement, provided it be of the higher sentiments; and I do not ask too strictly whether it has produced any tangible result. I reverence the people, as I do the woods, for the wild, grand freedom with which their humanity develops itself."

"I'm afraid, Nina," said Aunt Nesbit, in a low tone, to the latter, "I'm afraid he isn't orthodox."

"What makes you think so, aunt?"

"Oh, I don't know; his talk hasn't the real sound."

"You want something that ends in 'ation,' don't you, aunt?—justification, sanctification, or something of that kind."

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Meanwhile, the department of Abijah Skinflint exhibited a decided activity. This was a long, low booth, made of poles, and roofed with newly-cut green boughs. Here the whiskey-barrel was continually pouring forth its supplies to customers who crowded around it. Abijah sat on the middle of a sort of rude counter, dangling his legs, and chewing a straw, while his negro was busy in helping his various customers. Abijah, as we said, being a particularly high Calvinist, was recreating himself by carrying on a discussion with a fat, little, turnipy brother of the Methodist persuasion.

"I say," he said, "Stringfellow put it into you, Methodists, this morning! Hit the nail on the head, I thought!"

"Not a bit of it!" said the other, contemptuously. "Why, elder Baskum chawed him up completely! There wan't nothin' left of him!"

"Well," said Abijah, "strange how folks will see things! Why, it's just as clar to me that all things is decreed! Why, that ar nails everything up tight and handsome. It gives a fellow a kind of comfort to think on it. Things is just as they have got to be. All this free-grace stuff is drefful loose talk. If things is been decreed 'fore the world was made, well, there seems to be some sense in their coming to pass. But, if everything kind of turns up whenever folks think on't, it's a kind of shaky business."

"I don't like this tying up things so tight," said the other, who evidently was one of the free, jovial order. "I go in for the freedom of the will. Free Gospel, and free grace."

"For my part," said Abijah, rather grimly, "if things was managed my way, I shouldn't commune with nobody that didn't believe in election, up to the hub."

"You strong electioners think you's among the elect!" said one of the by-standers. "You wouldn't be so crank about it, if you didn't! Now, see here: if everything is decreed, how am I going to help myself?"

"That ar is none of my look-out," said Abijah. "But there's a pint my mind rests upon—everything is fixed as it can be, and it makes a man mighty easy."

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In another part of the camp-ground, Ben Dakin was sitting in his tent door, caressing one of his favorite dogs, and partaking his noontide repast with his wife and child.

"I declar'," said Ben, wiping his mouth, "wife, I intend to go into it, and sarve the Lord, now, full chisel! If I catch the next lot of niggers, I intend to give half the money towards keeping up preaching somewhere round here. I'm going to enlist, now, and be a soldier."

"And," said his wife, "Ben, just keep clear of Abijah Skinflint's counter, won't you?"

"Well, I will, durned if I won't!" said Ben. "I'll be moderate. A fellow wants a glass or two, to strike up the hymn on, you know; but I'll be moderate."

The Georgia trader, who had encamped in the neighborhood, now came up.

"Do you believe, stranger," said he, "one of them durned niggers of mine broke loose and got in the swamps, while I was at meeting this morning! Couldn't you take your dog, here, and give 'em a run? I just gave nine hundred dollars for that fellow, cash down."

"Ho! what you going to him for?" said Jim Stokes, a short, pursy, vulgar-looking individual, dressed in a hunting-shirt of blue Kentucky jean, who just then came up. "Why, durn ye, his dogs an't no breed 't all! Mine's the true grit, I can tell you; they's the true Florida blood-hounds! I's seen one of them ar dogs shake a nigger in his mouth like he'd been a sponge."

Poor Ben's new-found religion could not withstand this sudden attack of his spiritual enemy; and, rousing himself, notwithstanding the appealing glances of his wife, he stripped up his sleeves, and, squaring off, challenged his rival to a fight.

A crowd gathered round, laughing and betting, and cheering on the combatants with slang oaths and expressions, such as we will not repeat, when the concourse was routed by the approach of father Bonnie on the outside of the ring.

"Look here, boys, what works of the devil have you got round here? None of this on the camp-ground! This is the Lord's ground, here; so shut up your swearing, and don't fight."

A confused murmur of voices now began to explain to father Bonnie the cause of the trouble.

"Ho, ho!" said he, "let the nigger run; you can catch him fast enough when the meetings are over. You come here to 'tend to your salvation. Ah, don't you be swearing and blustering round! Come, boys, join in a hymn with me." So saying, he struck up a well-known air:—

in which one after another joined, and the rising tumult was soon assuaged.

"I say," said father Bonnie to the trader, in an undertone, as he was walking away, "you got a good cook in your lot, hey?"

"Got a prime one," said the trader; "an A number one cook, and no mistake! Picked her up real cheap, and I'll let you have her for eight hundred dollars, being as you are a minister."

"You must think the Gospel a better trade than it is," said father Bonnie, "if you think a minister can afford to pay at that figure!"

"Why," said the trader, "you haven't seen her; it's dirt cheap for her, I can tell you! A sound, strong, hearty woman; a prudent, careful housekeeper; a real pious Methodist, a member of a class-meeting! Why, eight hundred dollars an't anything! I ought to get a thousand for her; but I don't hear preaching for nothing,—always think right to make a discount to ministers!"

"Why couldn't you bring her in?" said father Bonnie. "Maybe I'll give you seven hundred and fifty for her."

"Couldn't do that, no way!" said the trader. "Couldn't, indeed!"

"Well, after the meetings are over I'll talk about it."

"She's got a child, four years old," said the trader, with a little cough; "healthy, likely child; I suppose I shall want a hundred dollars for him!"

"Oh, that won't do!" said father Bonnie. "I don't want any more children round my place than I've got now!"

"But, I tell you," said the trader, "it's a likely boy. Why, the keeping of him won't cost you anything, and before you think of it you'll have a thousand-dollar hand grown on your own place."

"Well," said father Bonnie, "I'll think of it!"

In the evening the scene on the camp-ground was still more picturesque and impressive. Those who conduct camp-meetings are generally men who, without much reasoning upon the subject, fall into a sort of tact, in influencing masses of mind, and pressing into the service all the great life forces and influences of nature. A kind of rude poetry pervades their minds, colors their dialect, and influences their arrangements. The solemn and harmonious grandeur of night, with all its mysterious power of exalting the passions and intensifying the emotions, has ever been appreciated, and used by them with even poetic skill. The day had been a glorious one in June; the sky of that firm, clear blue, the atmosphere of that crystalline clearness, which often gives to the American landscape such a sharply-defined outline, and to the human system such an intense consciousness of life. The evening sun went down in a broad sea of light, and even after it had sunk below the purple horizon, flashed back a flood of tremulous rose-colored radiance, which, taken up by a thousand filmy clouds, made the whole sky above like a glowing tent of the most ethereal brightness. The shadows of the forest aisles were pierced by the rose-colored rays; and, as they gradually faded, star after star twinkled out, and a broad moon, ample and round, rose in the purple zone of the sky. When she had risen above the horizon but a short space, her light was so resplendent and so profuse, that it was decided to conduct the evening service by that alone; and when, at the sound of the hymn, the assembly poured in and arranged themselves before the preaching-stand, it is probable that the rudest heart present was somewhat impressed with the silent magnificence by which God was speaking to them through his works. As the hymn closed, father Bonnie, advancing to the front of the stage, lifted his hands, and pointing to the purple sky, and in a deep and not unmelodious voice, repeated the words of the Psalmist:—

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy-work; day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."

"Oh, ye sinners!" he exclaimed, "look up at the moon, there, walking in her brightness, and think over your oaths, and your cursings, and your drinkings! Think over your backbitings, and your cheatings! think over your quarrellings and your fightings! How do they look to you now, with that blessed moon shining down upon you? Don't you see the beauty of our Lord God upon her? Don't you see how the saints walk in white with the Lord, like her? I dare say some of you, now, have had a pious mother, or a pious wife, or a pious sister, that's gone to glory; and there they are walking with the Lord!—walking with the Lord, through the sky, and looking down on you, sinners, just as that moon looks down! And what does she see you doing, your wife, or your mother, or sister, that's in glory? Does she see all your swearings, and your drinkings, and your fightings, and your hankerings after money, and your horse-racings, and your cock-fightings? Oh, sinners, but you are a bad set! I tell you the Lord is looking now down on you, out of that moon! He is looking down in mercy! But, I tell you, he'll look down quite another way, one of these days! Oh, there'll be a time of wrath, by and by, if you don't repent! Oh, what a time there was at Sinai, years ago, when the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, and the mountain was all of a smoke, and there were thunderings and lightnings, and the Lord descended on Sinai! That's nothing to what you'll see, by and by! No more moon looking down on you! No more stars, but the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat! Ah! did you ever see a fire in the woods? I have; and I've seen the fire on the prairies, and it rolled like a tempest, and men and horses and everything, had to run before it. I have seen it roaring and crackling through the woods, and great trees shrivelled in a minute like tinder! I have seen it flash over trees seventy-five and a hundred feet high, and in a minute they'd be standing pillars of fire, and the heavens were all a blaze, and the crackling and roaring was like the sea in a storm. There's a judgment-day for you! Oh, sinner, what will become of you in that day? Never cry, Lord, Lord! Too late—too late, man! You wouldn't take mercy when it was offered, and now you shall have wrath! No place to hide! The heavens and earth are passing away, and there shall be no more sea! There's no place for you now in God's universe."

By this time there were tumultuous responses from the audience of groans, cries, clapping of hands, and mingled shouts of glory and amen!

The electric shout of the multitude acted on the preacher again, as he went on, with a yet fiercer energy. "Now is your time, sinners! Now is your time! Come unto the altar, and God's people will pray for you! Now is the day of grace! Come up! Come up, you that have got pious fathers and mothers in glory! Come up, father! come up mother! come up, brother! Come, young man! we want you to come! Ah, there's a hardened sinner, off there! I see his lofty looks! Come up, come up! Come up, you rich sinners! You'll be poor enough in the day of the Lord, I can tell you! Come up, you young women! You daughters of Jerusalem, with your tinkling ornaments! Come, saints of the Lord, and labor with me in prayer. Strike up a hymn, brethren, strike up the hymn!" And a thousand voices commenced the hymn,—

And, meanwhile, ministers and elders moved around the throng, entreating and urging one and another to come and kneel before the stand. Multitudes rushed forward, groans and sobs were heard, as the speaker continued, with redoubled vehemence.

"I don't care," said Mr. John Gordon, "who sees me; I'm going up! I am a poor old sinner, and I ought to be prayed for, if anybody."

Nina shrank back, and clung to Clayton's arm. So vehement was the surging feeling of the throng around her that she wept with a wild, tremulous excitement.

"Do take me out,—it's dreadful!" she said.

Clayton passed his arm round her, and, opening a way through the crowd, carried her out beyond the limits, where they stood together alone, under the tree.

"I know I am not good as I ought to be," she said, "but I don't know how to be any better. Do you think it would do me any good to go up there? Do you believe in these things?"

"I sympathize with every effort that man makes to approach his Maker," said Clayton; "these ways do not suit me, but I dare not judge them. I cannot despise them. I must not make myself a rule for others."

"But, don't you think," said Nina, "that these things do harm sometimes?"

"Alas, child, what form of religion does not? It is our fatality that everything that does good must do harm. It's the condition of our poor, imperfect life here."

"I do not like these terrible threats," said Nina. "Can fear of fire make me love? Besides, I have a kind of courage in me that always rises up against a threat. It isn't my nature to fear."

"If we may judge our Father by his voice in nature," said Clayton, "he deems severity a necessary part of our training. How inflexibly and terribly regular are all his laws! Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind, fulfilling his word—all these have a crushing regularity in their movements, which show that he is to be feared as well as loved."

"But I want to be religious," said Nina, "entirely apart from such considerations. Not driven by fear, but drawn by love. You can guide me about these things, for you are religious."

"I fear I should not be accepted as such in any church," said Clayton. "It is my misfortune that I cannot receive any common form of faith, though I respect and sympathize with all. Generally speaking, preaching only weakens my faith; and I have to forget the sermon in order to recover my faith. I do not believe—I know that our moral nature needs a thorough regeneration; and I believe this must come through Christ. This is all I am certain of."

"I wish I were like Milly," said Nina. "She is a Christian, I know; but she has come to it by dreadful sorrows. Sometimes I'm afraid to ask my heavenly Father to make me good, because I think it will come by dreadful trials, if he does."

"And I," said Clayton, speaking with great earnestness, "would be willing to suffer anything conceivable, if I could only overcome all evil, and come up to my highest ideas of good." And, as he spoke, he turned his face up to the moonlight with an earnest fervor of expression, that struck Nina deeply.

"I almost shudder to hear you say so! You don't know what it may bring on you!"

He looked at her with a beautiful smile, which was a peculiar expression of his face in moments of high excitement.

"I say it again!" he said. "Whatever it involves, let it come!"

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The exercises of the evening went on with a succession of addresses, varied by singing of hymns and prayers. In the latter part of the time many declared themselves converts, and were shouting loudly. Father Bonnie came forward.

"Brethren," he shouted, "we are seeing a day from the Lord! We've got a glorious time! Oh, brethren, let us sing glory to the Lord! The Lord is coming among us!"

The excitement now became general. There was a confused sound of exhortation, prayers, and hymns, all mixed together, from different parts of the ground. But, all of a sudden, every one was startled by a sound which seemed to come pealing down directly from the thick canopy of pines over the heads of the ministers.

"Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! To what end shall it be for you? The day of the Lord shall be darkness, and not light! Blow ye the trumpet in Zion! Sound an alarm in my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble! for the day of the Lord cometh!"

There was deep, sonorous power in the voice that spoke, and the words fell pealing down through the air like the vibrations of some mighty bell. Men looked confusedly on each other; but, in the universal license of the hour, the obscurity of the night, and the multitude of the speakers, no one knew exactly whence it came. After a moment's pause, the singers were recommencing, when again the same deep voice was heard.

"Take away from me the noise of thy songs, and the melody of thy viols; for I will not hear them, saith the Lord. I hate and despise your feast-days! I will not smell in your solemn assemblies; for your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers are greedy for violence! Will ye kill, and steal, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and come and stand before me, saith the Lord? Ye oppress the poor and needy, and hunt the stranger; also in thy skirts is found the blood of poor innocents! and yet ye say, Because I am clean shall his anger pass from me! Hear this, ye that swallow up the needy, and make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes? The Lord hath sworn, saying, I will never forget their works. I will surely visit you!"

The audience, thus taken, in the obscurity of the evening, by an unknown speaker, whose words seemed to fall apparently from the clouds, in a voice of such strange and singular quality, began to feel a creeping awe stealing over them. The high state of electrical excitement under which they had been going on, predisposed them to a sort of revulsion of terror; and a vague, mysterious panic crept upon them, as the boding, mournful voice continued to peal from the trees.

"Hear, oh ye rebellious people! The Lord is against this nation! The Lord shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness? For thou saidst, I will ascend into the stars; I will be as God! But thou shalt be cast out as an abominable branch, and the wild beasts shall tread thee down! Howl, fir-tree, for thou art spoiled! Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars! for the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the land! The Lord shall utter his voice before his army, for his camp is very great! Multitudes! multitudes! in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision! The sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars withdraw their shining; for the Lord shall utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and earth shall shake! In that day I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and darken the whole earth! And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and your songs into lamentation! Woe to the bloody city! It is full of lies and robbery! The noise of a whip!—the noise of the rattling of wheels!—of the prancing horses, and the jumping chariot! The horseman lifteth up the sword and glittering spear! and there is a multitude of slain! There is no end of their corpses!—They are stumbling upon the corpses! For, Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord, and I will make thee utterly desolate!"

There was a fierce, wailing earnestness in the sound of these dreadful words, as if they were uttered in a paroxysm of affright and horror, by one who stood face to face with some tremendous form. And, when the sound ceased, men drew in their breath, and looked on each other, and the crowd began slowly to disperse, whispering in low voices to each other.

So extremely piercing and so wildly earnest had the voice been, that it actually seemed, in the expressive words of Scripture, to make every ear to tingle. And, as people of rude and primitive habits are always predisposed to superstition, there crept through the different groups wild legends of prophets strangely commissioned to announce coming misfortunes. Some spoke of the predictions of the judgment-day; some talked of comets, and strange signs that had preceded wars and pestilences. The ministers wondered, and searched around the stand in vain. One auditor alone could, had he desired it, make an explanation. Harry, who stood near the stand, had recognized the voice. But, though he searched, also, around, he could find no one.

He who spoke was one whose savage familiarity with nature gave him the agility and stealthy adroitness of a wild animal. And, during the stir and commotion of the dispersing audience, he had silently made his way from tree to tree, over the very heads of those who were yet wondering at his strange, boding words, till at last he descended in a distant part of the forest.

After the service, as father Dickson was preparing to retire to his tent, a man pulled him by the sleeve. It was the Georgia trader.

"We have had an awful time, to-night!" said he, looking actually pale with terror. "Do you think the judgment-day really is coming?"

"My friend," said father Dickson, "it surely is! Every step we take in life is leading us directly to the judgment-seat of Christ!"

"Well," said the trader, "but do you think that was from the Lord, the last one that spoke? Durned if he didn't say awful things!—'nough to make the hair rise! I tell you what, I've often had doubts about my trade. The ministers may prove it's all right out of the Old Testament; but I'm durned if I think they know all the things that we do! But, then, I an't so bad as some of 'em. But, now, I've got a gal out in my gang that's dreadful sick, and I partly promised her I'd bring a minister to see her."

"I'll go with you, friend," said father Dickson; and forthwith he began following the trader to the racks where their horses were tied. Selecting, out of some hundred who were tied there, their own beasts, the two midnight travellers soon found themselves trotting along under the shadow of the forest's boughs.

"My friend," said father Dickson, "I feel bound in conscience to tell you that I think your trade a ruinous one to your soul. I hope you'll lay to heart the solemn warning you've heard to-night. Why, your own sense can show you that a trade can't be right that you'd be afraid to be found in if the great judgment-day were at hand."

"Well, I rather spect you speak the truth; but, then, what makes father Bonnie stand up for 't?"

"My friend, I must say that I think father Bonnie upholds a soul-destroying error. I must say that, as conscience-bound. I pray the Lord for him and you both. I put it right to your conscience, my friend, whether you think you could keep to your trade, and live a Christian life."

"No; the fact is, it's a d——d bad business, that's just where 't is. We an't fit to be trusted with such things that come to us—gals and women. Well, I feel pretty bad, I tell you, to-night; 'cause I know I haven't done right by this yer gal. I ought fur to have let her alone; but, then, the devil or something possessed me. And now she has got a fever, and screeches awfully. I declar, some things she says go right through me!"

Father Dickson groaned in spirit over this account, and felt himself almost guilty for belonging ostensibly and outwardly to a church which tolerated such evils. He rode along by the side of his companion, breaking forth into occasional ejaculations and snatches of hymns. After a ride of about an hour, they arrived at the encampment. A large fire had been made in a cleared spot, and smouldering fragments and brands were lying among the white ashes. One or two horses were tied to a neighboring tree, and wagons were drawn up by them. Around the fire, in different groups, lay about fifteen men and women, with heavy iron shackles on their feet, asleep in the moonlight. At a little distance from the group, and near to one of the wagons, a blanket was spread down on the ground under a tree, on which lay a young girl of seventeen, tossing and moaning in a disturbed stupor. A respectable-looking mulatto-woman was sitting beside her, with a gourd full of water, with which from time to time she moistened her forehead. The woman rose as the trader came up.

"Well, Nance, how does she do now?" said the trader.

"Mis'able enough!" said Nance. "She done been tossing, a throwing round, and crying for her mammy, ever since you went away!"

"Well, I've brought the minister," said he. "Try, Nance, to wake her up; she'll be glad to see him."

The woman knelt down, and took the hand of the sleeper.

"Emily! Emily!" she said, "wake up!"

The girl threw herself over with a sudden, restless toss. "Oh, how my head burns!—Oh, dear!—Oh, my mother! Mother!—mother!—mother!—why don't you come to me?"

Father Dickson approached and knelt the other side of her. The mulatto-woman made another effort to bring her to consciousness.

"Emily here's the minister you was wanting so much! Emily, wake up!"

The girl slowly opened her eyes—large, tremulous, dark eyes. She drew her hand across them, as if to clear her sight, and looked wistfully at the woman.

"Minister!—minister!" she said.

"Yes, minister! You said you wanted to see one."

"Oh, yes, I did!" she said, heavily.

"My daughter!" said father Dickson, "you are very sick!"

"Yes!" she said, "very! And I'm glad of it! I'm going to die!—I'm glad of that, too! That's all I've got left to be glad of! But I wanted to ask you to write to my mother. She is a free woman; she lives in New York. I want you to give my love to her, and tell her not to worry any more. Tell her I tried all I could to get to her: but they took us, and mistress was so angry she sold me! I forgive her, too. I don't bear her any malice, 'cause it's all over, now! She used to say I was a wild girl, and laughed too loud. I shan't trouble any one that way any more! So that's no matter!"

The girl spoke these sentences at long intervals, occasionally opening her eyes and closing them again in a languid manner. Father Dickson, however, who had some knowledge of medicine, placed his finger on her pulse, which was rapidly sinking. It is the usual instinct, in all such cases, to think of means of prolonging life. Father Dickson rose, and said to the trader:—

"Unless some stimulus be given her, she will be gone very soon!"

The trader produced from his pocket a flask of brandy, which he mixed with a little water in a cup, and placed it in father Dickson's hand. He kneeled down again, and, calling her by name, tried to make her take some.

"What is it?" said she, opening her wild, glittering eyes.

"It's something to make you feel better."

"I don't want to feel better! I want to die!" she said, throwing herself over. "What should I want to live for?"

What should she? The words struck father Dickson so much that he sat for a while in silence. He meditated in his mind how he could reach, with any words, that dying ear, or enter with her into that land of trance and mist, into whose cloudy circle the soul seemed already to have passed. Guided by a subtle instinct, he seated himself by the dying girl, and began singing, in a subdued plaintive air, the following well-known hymn:—

The melody is one often sung among the negroes; and one which, from its tenderness and pathos, is a favorite among them. As oil will find its way into crevices where water cannot penetrate, so song will find its way where speech can no longer enter. The moon shone full on the face of the dying girl, only interrupted by flickering shadows of leaves; and, as father Dickson sung, he fancied he saw a slight, tremulous movement of the face, as if the soul, so worn and weary, were upborne on the tender pinions of the song. He went on singing:—

By the light of the moon, he saw a tear steal from under the long lashes, and course slowly down her cheek. He continued his song:—

Oh, love of Christ! which no sin can weary, which no lapse of time can change; from which tribulation, persecution, and distress cannot separate—all-redeeming, all-glorifying, changing even death and despair to the gate of heaven! Thou hast one more triumph here in the wilderness, in the slave-coffle, and thou comest to bind up the broken-hearted.

As the song ceased, she opened her eyes.

"Mother used to sing that!" she said.

"And can you believe in it, daughter?"

"Yes," she said, "I see Him now! He loves me! Let me go!"

There followed a few moments of those strugglings and shiverings which are the birth-pangs of another life, and Emily lay at rest.

Father Dickson, kneeling by her side, poured out the fulness of his heart in an earnest prayer. Rising, he went up to the trader, and, taking his hand, said to him,—

"My friend, this may be the turning-point with your soul for eternity. It has pleased the Lord to show you the evil of your ways; and now my advice to you is, break off your sins at once, and do works meet for repentance. Take off the shackles of these poor creatures, and tell them they are at liberty to go."

"Why, bless your soul, sir, this yer lot's worth ten thousand dollars!" said the trader, who was not prepared for so close a practical application.

Do not be too sure, friend, that the trader is peculiar in this. The very same argument, though less frankly stated, holds in the bonds of Satan many extremely well-bred, refined, respectable men, who would gladly save their souls if they could afford the luxury.

"My friend," said father Dickson, using the words of a very close and uncompromising preacher of old, "what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

"I know that," said the trader, doubtfully; "but it's a very hard case, this. I'll think about it, though. But there's father Bonnie wants to buy Nance. It would be a pity to disappoint him. But I'll think it over."

Father Dickson returned to the camp-ground between one and two o'clock at night, and, putting away his horse, took his way to the ministers' tent. Here he found father Bonnie standing out in the moonlight. He had been asleep within the tent; but it is to be confessed that the interior of a crowded tent on a camp-ground is anything but favorable to repose. He therefore came out into the fresh air, and was there when father Dickson came back to enter the tent.

"Well, brother, where have you been so late?" said father Bonnie.

"I have been looking for a few sheep in the wilderness, whom everybody neglects," said father Dickson. And then, in a tone tremulous from agitation, he related to him the scene he had just witnessed.

"Do you see," he said, "brother, what iniquities you are countenancing? Now, here, right next to our camp, a slave-coffle encamped! Men and women, guilty of no crime, driven in fetters through our land, shaming us in the sight of every Christian nation! What horrible, abominable iniquities are these poor traders tempted to commit! What perfect hells are the great trading-houses, where men, women, and children are made merchandise of, and where no light of the Gospel ever enters! And when this poor trader is convicted of sin, and wants to enter into the kingdom, you stand there to apologize for his sins! Brother Bonnie, I much fear you are the stumbling block over which souls will stumble into hell. I don't think you believe your argument from the Old Testament, yourself. You must see that it has no kind of relation to such kind of slavery as we have in this country. There's an awful Scripture which saith: 'He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, so that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?'"

The earnestness with which father Dickson spoke, combined with the reverence commonly entertained for his piety, gave great force to his words. The reader will not therefore wonder to hear that father Bonnie, impulsive and easily moved as he was, wept at the account, and was moved by the exhortation. Nor will he be surprised to learn that, two weeks after, father Bonnie drove a brisk bargain with the same trader for three new hands.

The trader had discovered that the judgment-day was not coming yet a while; and father Bonnie satisfied himself that Noah, when he awoke from his wine, said, "Cursed be Canaan."

*         *         *          *         *         *         *         *         *         *

We have one scene more to draw before we dismiss the auditors of the camp-meeting.

At a late hour the Gordon carriage was winding its way under the silent, checkered, woodland path. Harry, who came slowly on a horse behind, felt a hand laid on his bridle. With a sudden start, he stopped.

"Oh, Dred, is it you? How dared you—how could you be so imprudent? How dared you come here, when you know you risk your life?"

"Life!" said the other, "what is life? He that loveth his life shall lose it. Besides, the Lord said unto me, Go! The Lord is with me as a mighty and terrible one! Harry, did you mark those men? Hunters of men, their hands red with the blood of the poor, all seeking unto the Lord! Ministers who buy and sell us! Is this a people prepared for the Lord? I left a man dead in the swamps, whom their dogs have torn! His wife is a widow—his children, orphans! They eat and wipe their mouth, and say, 'What have I done?' The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are we!"

"I know it," said Harry, gloomily.

"And you join yourself unto them?"

"Don't speak to me any more about that! I won't betray you, but I won't consent to have blood shed. My mistress is my sister."

"Oh, yes, to be sure! They read Scripture, don't they? Cast out the children of the bond-woman! That's Scripture for them!"

"Dred," said Harry, "I love her better than I love myself. I will fight for her to the last, but never against her, nor hers!"

"And you will serve Tom Gordon?" said Dred.

"Never!" said Harry.

Dred stood still a moment. Through an opening among the branches the moonbeams streamed down on his wild, dark figure. Harry remarked his eye fixed before him on vacancy, the pupil swelling out in glassy fulness, with a fixed, somnambulic stare. After a moment, he spoke, in a hollow, altered voice, like that of a sleep-walker:—

"Then shall the silver cord be loosed, and the golden bowl be broken. Yes, cover up the grave—cover it up! Now, hurry! come to me, or he will take thy wife for a prey!"

"Dred, what do you mean?" said Harry. "What's the matter?" He shook him by the shoulder.

Dred rubbed his eyes, and stared on Harry.

"I must go back," he said, "to my den. 'Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests,' and in the habitation of dragons the Lord hath opened a way for his outcasts!"

He plunged into the thickets, and was gone.

CHAPTER XXIV. LIFE IN THE SWAMPS.

Our readers will perhaps feel an interest to turn back with us, and follow the singular wanderings of the mysterious personage, whose wild denunciations had so disturbed the minds of the worshippers at the camp-meeting.

There is a twilight-ground between the boundaries of the sane and insane, which the old Greeks and Romans regarded with a peculiar veneration. They held a person whose faculties were thus darkened as walking under the awful shadow of a supernatural presence; and, as the mysterious secrets of the stars only become visible in the night, so in these eclipses of the more material faculties they held there was often an awakening of supernatural perceptions.

The hot and positive light of our modern materialism, which exhales from the growth of our existence every dewdrop, which searches out and dries every rivulet of romance, which sends an unsparing beam into every cool grotto of poetic possibility, withering the moss, and turning the dropping cave to a dusty den—this spirit, so remorseless, allows us no such indefinite land. There are but two words in the whole department of modern anthropology—the sane and the insane; the latter dismissed from human reckoning almost with contempt. We should find it difficult to give a suitable name to the strange and abnormal condition in which this singular being, of whom we are speaking, passed the most of his time.

It was a state of exaltation and trance, which yet appeared not at all to impede the exercise of his outward and physical faculties, but rather to give them a preternatural keenness and intensity, such as sometimes attends the more completely-developed phenomena of somnambulism.

In regard to his physical system there was also much that was peculiar. Our readers may imagine a human body of the largest and keenest vitality to grow up so completely under the nursing influences of nature, that it may seem to be as perfectly en rapport with them as a tree; so that the rain, the wind, and the thunder, all those forces from which human beings generally seek shelter, seem to hold with it a kind of fellowship, and to be familiar companions of existence.

Such was the case with Dred. So completely had he come into sympathy and communion with nature, and with those forms of it which more particularly surrounded him in the swamps, that he moved about among them with as much ease as a lady treads her Turkey carpet. What would seem to us in recital to be incredible hardship, was to him but an ordinary condition of existence. To walk knee-deep in the spongy soil of the swamp, to force his way through thickets, to lie all night sinking in the porous soil, or to crouch, like the alligator, among reeds and rushes, were to him situations of as much comfort as well-curtained beds and pillows are to us.

It is not to be denied, that there is in this savage perfection of the natural organs a keen and almost fierce delight, which must excel the softest seductions of luxury. Anybody who has ever watched the eager zest with which the hunting-dog plunges through the woods, darts through the thicket, or dives into water, in an ecstasy of enjoyment, sees something of what such vital force must be.

Dred was under the inspiring belief that he was the subject of visions and supernatural communications. The African race are said by mesmerists to possess, in the fullest degree, that peculiar temperament which fits them for the evolution of mesmeric phenomena; and hence the existence among them, to this day, of men and women who are supposed to have peculiar magical powers. The grandfather of Dred, on his mother's side, had been one of these reputed African sorcerers, and he had early discovered in the boy this peculiar species of temperament. He had taught him the secret of snake-charming, and had possessed his mind from childhood with expectations of prophetic and supernatural impulses. That mysterious and singular gift, whatever it may be, which Highland seers denominate second sight, is a very common tradition among the negroes; and there are not wanting thousands of reputed instances among them to confirm belief in it. What this faculty may be, we shall not pretend to say. Whether there be in the soul a yet undeveloped attribute, which is to be to the future what memory is to the past, or whether in some individuals an extremely high and perfect condition of the sensuous organization endows them with something of that certainty of instinctive discrimination which belongs to animals, are things which we shall not venture to decide upon.

It was, however, an absolute fact with regard to Dred, that he had often escaped danger by means of a peculiarity of this kind. He had been warned from particular places where the hunters had lain in wait for him; had foreseen in times of want where game might be ensnared, and received intimations where persons were to be found in whom he might safely confide; and his predictions with regard to persons and things had often chanced to be so strikingly true, as to invest his sayings with a singular awe and importance among his associates.

It was a remarkable fact, but one not peculiar to this case alone, that the mysterious exaltation of mind in this individual seemed to run parallel with the current of shrewd, practical sense; and, like a man who converses alternately in two languages, he would speak now the language of exaltation, and now that of common life, interchangeably. This peculiarity imparted a singular and grotesque effect to his whole personality.

On the night of the camp-meeting, he was as we have already seen, in a state of the highest ecstasy. The wanton murder of his associate seemed to flood his soul with an awful tide of emotion, as a thunder-cloud is filled and shaken by slow-gathering electricity. And, although the distance from his retreat to the camp-ground was nearly fifteen miles, most of it through what seemed to be impassable swamps, yet he performed it with as little consciousness of fatigue as if he had been a spirit. Even had he been perceived at that time, it is probable that he could no more have been taken, or bound, than the demoniac of Gadara.

After he parted from Harry he pursued his way to the interior of the swamp, as was his usual habit, repeating to himself, in a chanting voice, such words of prophetic writ as were familiar to him.

The day had been sultry, and it was now an hour or two past midnight, when a thunder-storm, which had long been gathering and muttering in the distant sky, began to develop its forces.

A low, shivering sigh crept through the woods, and swayed in weird whistlings the tops of the pines; and sharp arrows of lightning came glittering down among the darkness of the branches, as if sent from the bow of some warlike angel. An army of heavy clouds swept in a moment across the moon; then came a broad, dazzling, blinding sheet of flame, concentrating itself on the top of a tall pine near where Dred was standing, and in a moment shivered all its branches to the ground, as a child strips the leaves from a twig. Dred clapped his hands with a fierce delight; and, while the rain and wind were howling and hissing around him, he shouted aloud:—

"Wake, O arm of the Lord! Awake, put on thy strength! The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars—yea, the cedars of Lebanon! The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire! The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh! Hailstones and coals of fire!"

The storm, which howled around him, bent the forest like a reed, and large trees, uprooted from the spongy and tremulous soil, fell crashing with a tremendous noise; but, as if he had been a dark spirit of the tempest, he shouted and exulted.

The perception of such awful power seemed to animate him, and yet to excite in his soul an impatience that He whose power was so infinite did not awake to judgment.

"Rend the heavens," he cried, "and come down! Avenge the innocent blood! Cast forth thine arrows, and slay them! Shoot out thy lightnings, and destroy them!"

His soul seemed to kindle with almost a fierce impatience, at the toleration of that Almighty Being, who, having the power to blast and to burn, so silently endures. Could Dred have possessed himself of those lightnings, what would have stood before him? But his cry, like the cry of thousands, only went up to stand in waiting till an awful coming day!

Gradually the storm passed by; the big drops dashed less and less frequently; a softer breeze passed through the forest, with a patter like the clapping of a thousand little wings; and the moon occasionally looked over the silvery battlements of the great clouds.

As Dred was starting to go forward, one of these clear revealings showed him the cowering form of a man, crouched at the root of a tree, a few paces in front of him. He was evidently a fugitive, and, in fact, was the one of whose escape to the swamps the Georgia trader had complained of the day of of the meeting.

"Who is here, at this time of night?" said Dred, coming up to him.

"I have lost my way," said the other. "I don't know where I am!"

"A runaway?" inquired Dred.

"Don't betray me!" said the other, apprehensively.

"Betray you! Would I do that?" said Dred. "How did you get into the swamp?"

"I got away from a soul-driver's camp, that was taking us on through the states."

"Oh, oh!" said Dred. "Camp-meeting and driver's camp right alongside of each other! Shepherds that sell the flock, and pick the bones! Well, come, old man; I'll take you home with me."

"I'm pretty much beat out," said the man. "It's been up over my knees every step; and I didn't know but they'd set the dogs after me. If they do, I'll let 'em kill me, and done with it, for I'm 'bout ready to have it over with. I got free once, and got clear up to New York, and got me a little bit of a house, and a wife and two children, with a little money beforehand; and then they nabbed me, and sent me back again, and mas'r sold me to the drivers,—and I believe I's 'bout as good 's die. There's no use in trying to live—everything going agin a body so!"

"Die! No, indeed, you won't," said Dred; "not if I've got hold of you! Take heart, man, take heart! Before morning I'll put you where the dogs can't find you, nor anything else. Come, up with you!"

The man rose up, and made an effort to follow; but, wearied, and unused as he was to the choked and perplexed way, he stumbled and fell almost every minute.

"How now, brother?" said Dred. "This won't do! I must put you over my shoulder as I have many a buck before now!" And, suiting the action to the word, he put the man on his back, and, bidding him hold fast to him, went on, picking his way as if he scarcely perceived his weight.

It was now between two and three o'clock, and the clouds, gradually dispersing, allowed the full light of the moon to slide down here and there through the wet and shivering foliage. No sound was heard, save the humming of insects and the crackling plunges by which Dred made his way forward.

"You must be pretty strong!" said his companion. "Have you been in the swamps long?"

"Yes," said the other, "I have been a wild man—every man's hand against me—a companion of the dragons and the owls, this many a year. I have made my bed with the leviathan, among the reeds and the rushes. I have found the alligators and the snakes better neighbors than Christians. They let those alone that let them alone; but Christians will hunt for the precious life."

After about an hour of steady travelling, Dred arrived at the outskirts of the island which we have described. For about twenty paces before he reached it, he waded waist-deep in water. Creeping out, at last, and telling the other one to follow him, he began carefully coursing along on his hands and knees, giving, at the same time, a long, shrill, peculiar whistle. It was responded to by a similar sound, which seemed to proceed through the bushes. After a while, a crackling noise was heard, as of some animal, which gradually seemed to come nearer and nearer to them, till finally a large water-dog emerged from the underbrush, and began testifying his joy at the arrival of the new-comer, by most extravagant gambols.

"So, ho! Buck! quiet, my boy!" said Dred. "Show us the way in!"

The dog, as if understanding the words, immediately turned into the thicket, and Dred and his companion followed him, on their hands and knees. The path wound up and down the brushwood, through many sharp turnings, till at last it ceased altogether, at the roots of a tree; and, while the dog disappeared among the brushwood, Dred climbed the tree, and directed his companion to follow him, and, proceeding out on to one of the longest limbs, he sprang nimbly on to the ground in the cleared space which we have before described.

His wife was standing waiting for him, and threw herself upon him with a cry of joy.

"Oh, you've come back! I thought, sure enough, dey'd got you dis time!"

"Not yet! I must continue till the opening of the seals—till the vision cometh! Have ye buried him?"

"No; there's a grave dug down yonder, and he's been carried there."

"Come, then!" said Dred.

At a distant part of the clearing was a blasted cedar-tree, all whose natural foliage had perished. But it was veiled from head to foot in long wreaths of the tillandsia, the parasitic moss of these regions, and, in the dim light of the approaching dawn, might have formed no unapt resemblance to a gigantic spectre dressed in mourning weeds.

Beneath this tree Dred had interred, from time to time, the bodies of fugitives which he had found dead in the swamps, attaching to this disposition of them some peculiar superstitious idea.

The widow of the dead, the wife of Dred, and the new-comer, were now gathered around the shallow grave; for the soil was such as scarcely gave room to make a place deep enough for a grave without its becoming filled with water.

The dawn was just commencing a dim foreshadowing in the sky. The moon and stars were still shining.

Dred stood and looked up, and spoke, in a solemn voice.

"Seek him that maketh Arcturus and Orion—that turneth the shadow of death into morning! Behold those lights in the sky—the lights in his hands pierced for the sins of the world, and spread forth as on a cross! But the day shall come that he shall lay down the yoke, and he will bear the sin of the world no longer. Then shall come the great judgment. He will lay righteousness to the line and judgment to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep away the refuges of lies."

He stooped, and, lifting the body, laid him in the grave, and at this moment the wife broke into a loud lament.

"Hush, woman!" said Dred, raising his hand. "Weep ye not for the dead, neither bewail him; but weep ye sore for the living! He must rest till the rest of his brethren be killed; for the vision is sealed up for an appointed time. If it tarry, wait for it. It shall surely come, and shall not tarry!"