Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860

tune that is played oftener than the na

y property by-and-by."--"Mother's folks was wealthy."--"Twenty- three to twenty-five year old."--"He a'n't more'n twenty, or twenty-one at the outside."--"Looks as if

proud with the few who made advances to him. The young ladies called him handsome and romantic, but

over there at the Venners'?" said

ndictable at common law. Do you know, my dear, I think there is a

he had just listened to the verdict of th

ing against him?" sai

lows at the bar, and I have a fancy they all have a look belonging to them. The worst one I ever sentenced looked a

e person yo

e sort of people that live by their wits when they can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them, that we old law-doctors know just as well as the medical counselors know the marks of disease in a man's face. Dr. Kittred

or her in some way. I suppose it amuses her to have her cousin about the house. She rides a good deal since he has been

low- creatures. "I met them riding the other day. Perhaps Dudley is right, if it pleases her to have a companion. What will happen, though, if he makes

s her father. Some of them doubt whether she loves him. They doubt whether she can love anything human, except perhaps the old black woma

Judge changed color as she spoke, sighed deeply,

, I should say. I don't know what there is about Elsie's,--but do you know, my dear, I find myself curiously influenced by them? I have had to face a good many sharp eyes and hard ones,--murderers' eyes and pirates',--men that had to be watched in the bar, whe

er smiled

ie Venner and not observe it. There are a good many other st

dresses as she likes, and sends to the city for what she wants. What do you

Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let me tell you. She sends for the oddest patterns of stuffs, and picks out the most curious things at the jeweller's, whenever she goes to town with her father. They say the old Doctor tells him to let her have her way about all such matters. Afraid of her mind, if she is contradicted, I suppose.--You've heard about her going to school at that place,--the 'Institoot,' as those peop

h the troops of wan-hued law-books staring blindly out of their titles at them as they talked, like the ghos

under the title Fortification, where the terms just used are explained.] After the little adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated at once to his first parallel. Elsie loved riding,--and would go off with him on a gallop now and then. He was a master of all those strange Indian horseback-feats which shame the tricks of the circus-riders, and used to astonish and almost amuse her sometimes by disappearing from his saddle, like a phantom horseman, lying flat against the side of the bounding creature that bore him, as if he were a hunting leopard with his claws in the horse's flank and flattening himself out against his heaving ribs. Elsie knew a little Spanish too,

look which seemed to make the scars on his wrist tingle, went to her room, where she locked herself up, and did not come out again till evening,--old Sophy having brought her food, and set it down, not speaking, but looking into her eyes inquiringly, like a dumb beast trying to feel out his master's will in his face. The evening was clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at his chamber-window, looking at th

n poetical readings which the master conducted with the elder scholars. This gave Master Langdon a good chance to study her ways when her eye was on her book, to notice the inflections of her voice, to watch

ce; in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in its stony apathy, it seemed to him, the pathos which we find in the blind who show no film or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her to be lovely, and left out nothing but love. And yet the master could not help feeling that some instinct was working in this girl which was in some way leading her to seek his presence. She did not lift her glittering eyes upon him as at first. It seemed strange that she

all; it was a little delicate flower, that looked as if it were made to press, and it was probably shut in by accident at the particular place where he found it. He took it into his head to

f scaling some dangerous height before the dawn, so as to gather the flower in its freshness, that the favored maiden may wear it to church on Sunday morning, a proof at once of her lover's de

have owned; for he had heard of the girl's wandering habits, and the guesses about her sylvan haunts, and was thinking what the chances

riefs to the infinite listening Silences of the wilderness,--for the one deep inner silence that Nature breaks with her fitful superficial sounds becomes multiplied as the image of a star in ruffled waters. Strange! The woods at first convey the impression of profound repose, and yet, if you watch their ways with open ear, you find the life which is in them is restless and nervous as that of a woman: the little twigs are crossing and twining and separating like slender fingers that cannot be still; the stray leaf is to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the limbs sway and twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the rounded masses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time with long soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling of a few rain-drops which had lain hidden among the d

hen the trees have grown old, and their rough boles measure a yard through their diameter, they are no longer beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their own, too full of meaning to require the heart's comment to be framed in words. Below, all their earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splintered by the weight of many winters' snows; above, they are still green and full of life, but their summits overtop all the decid

or rather, like a black square hole in it,--the trees almost directly over their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly as an architect would draw a ground-plan of the house and the inclosures round it. It frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock and old forest- growths hung over the home below. As he descended a little and drew

be very convenient to hold down a crotalus with, if he should happen to encounter one. He knew the aspect of the ledge, from a distance; for its bald and leprous-looking declivities stood out in their nakedness from the wooded sides of The Mountain, when this was viewed from certain points of the village. But the nearer aspect of the blasted region had something frightful in it. The cliffs were water-worn, as if they ha

fragments of dress which women leave after them, whenever they run against each other or against anything else,--in crowded ballrooms, in the brushwood after picnics, on the fences after rambles, scattered round over every place that has witnessed an act of violence, where rude hands have been laid upon them. Nothing. Stop, though, one moment. That stone is smooth and polished, as if it had been somewhat worn by the pressure of human feet. There is one twig broken among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He put his foot upon the stone and took hold of the close-clinging shrub. In this way he turned a sharp angle

ad been often trodden, and by what foot he could not doubt. He rose up from his seat to look round for other signs of a woman's visits. What if there is a cavern here, where she has a retreat, fitted u

nothing which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,--the long, loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before man with her anesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies the mouse; the lion's first shake deadens the man's fear and feeling; and the crotalus paralyzes before he strikes. He waited as in a trance,-- waited as one that longs to have the blow fall, and all