Gaut Gurley

easure in the

pture in the

iety where n

the less, but

ize the voice of God in the rolling thunder, and his messengers in the swift-winged lightnings; to mark the forms of beauty and grandeur in every thing, from the humble lichen of the logs and rocks, to the high and towering pine of the plain and the mountain,-from the low murmurings of the quiet rivulet, to the loud thunderings of the headlong cataract,-and from the soft wh

wild borders of northerly New Hampshire, and shooting off in an irregular line some fifty miles northeasterly into the dark and unbroken forests of Maine, appear on the map, in their strangely shapeless forms and scattered locations,

the humble log cabin. The building had also been newly shingled, new doors supplied, the windows enlarged, the yard around leveled off, with other improvements, of a late date, betokening considerable ambition for appearance, and considerable outlay of means, for so new a place, to fit up a tidy and comfortable abode for the occupants. In the surrounding field were patches of growing maize, wheat, potatoes, and some of the common table vegetables; the hay crop for the winter sustenance of the only cow and yoke of oxen, the best friends of the new settler, having been just cut and stored in an adjoining log-building, as was evident from the fresh look of the stubble, and the stray straws hanging to the slivered stumps or bus

spacious log house erected, the year before, he had succeeded in purchasing it, for ready money, at a price which was much below its value, and which left him nearly half his little fund to be expended in more thoroughly clearing the land, getting in crops, making the house habitable, and felling an additional tract of forest. And with so much energy and resolution had he pursued his object of seeing himself and family once more united at a comfortable home, that, within three months from the time he commenced operations, which was in the first of the spring months

e long tow-frock and the other coarse garments in common use among the settlers. Nor had his physical appearance undergone a much less change. Instead of the pallid brow, leaden eye, fleshly look, and the red cheek of the wine-bibber and luxurist of the cities, he exhibited the embrowned, thin, but firm and healthy face, and the clear and cheerful complexion of the contented laborer of the country,-tell-tale looks both, which we always encounter with as much secret disgust in the former as we do with involuntary respect in the latter. He now paused in his labors, and stood for some time looking about the horizon, as if watching the signs of the weather; now noting the progress of the haze gathering in the south, and now turning his cheek first on

can be the reason why he does not return? He was

r a buck. I presume Claud may have joined him. There! hark! that sounded like Claud's piece," he added, as the distant report of a gun rose from the woods westward of the lake and died away in swelling echoes on the opposite shore. "And there, again!" he continued, as another and sharper report burst, t

yet quite divest myself of the idea that there may be danger in these wild scenes of the lakes and the

good burn; and it looks to me a good deal like rain. I wish to get the land cleared and ready to sow with winter w

fire will spread, or be blown

now, and will drive the fire only towards

ud may b

if it besets the path in the woods, he can come round some other way,

at he found it hard on his heels, or whirling in a hot cloud over his head, at every pause he made to throw in a new but now unnecessary torch, in his rapid and constantly quickened run through the slash. And when, after running some distance into the open field, to escape the stifling smoke and heat by which he was even there assailed, he turned round to note more fully the surprising progress that the terrible element he had thus let loose was making, he beheld all that part of the slash which he had a moment before passed through already enveloped, from side to side, in a continuous blaze, whose red, curling crest, mounting every instant higher and higher, was advancing with the seeming speed of a race-horse on its fiery destination. Half-appalled by the sight of such a sudden and unexpected outburst of the fire he had kindled, Elwood hurried on to his house, and joined his startled wife in the yard; when the two took station on an adjoining knoll, and looked down upon the conflagration in progress with increasing wonder and uneasiness,-so comparatively new was the scene to them both, and so far did it promise to exceed all their previous conceptions, in magnitude and grandeur, of any thing of the kind to be met with in the new settlements. And it was, indeed, a grand and fearful spectacle: For, with constantly increasing fury, and with the rapidity of the wind before which it was driving, still raged and rolled on the red tempest of fire. Now surging aloft, and streaking with its winding jets of flame the fiercely

ion had been beholding the scene, as soon as these indications of danger were thus brought to his very feet.

. "What is that rising from the shingl

reads of smoke were beginning to steal along the shingles. "Run, Alice, run with the pails for the brook, while I

ed the distressed wife and mother, as she fl

st break off here, to follow the young man just named, in the unexpected adventures which