moment, her breath came and went so fast through her open lips. At last she swallowed down something that seemed to be choking her. 'Now, go and tell your master how I answer him!' she said, and she drew back her shoulders with a quick, shuddering movement, and shut the door upon me before I could speak again. I told my master what occurred, and got a hearty threshing for my pains: it did n't seem to affect him much however, for he did n't cease his attentions in the least; only the next note went to the deacon himself, and I noticed after that that he began to take tea at the deacon's occasionally; it got to be pretty often after a while, and Miss Wiley seemed to pay more attention to his suit.

But though she did n't show her dislike to him quite so plainly, I know there were some things passed between the two that were not much to the doctor's liking, for he would come home some nights after he had been at the deacon's, in such a storm of rage, that I fairly expected to be murdered in some one of them. By the Almighty God!' he roared out as he tramped up and down by himself in the office, 'have her I will, dead or alive! Dr. Griffin is not a man to be cheated by a woman's freaks, or to be put off by a silly child's likes or dislikes! Let her look to it well! I have said it, and I will do it! The devil can't cheat me of her!' And so he began to follow her everywhere like her shadow: he was always at church; he would meet her at parties, at huskings, and the tea-drinkings around in the neighborhood; she could hardly stir into the street but the doctor was in a moment at her side, bowing in his strange, stiff way, and watching her with that wicked black eye of his; or if she cantered out alone on her little sorrel pony, the doctor, on Beelzebub, would shoot out upon her from some crossroad through the thicket, and stick close at her saddle till she dismounted at her gate.

And so he kept up his courtship for weeks, until Miss Wiley seemed fairly to consume and fade away under his blighting presence, like a morning flower under the hot noon sun. Her cheeks, though they grew pale and wan, would light up with a more beautiful color than they had ever had before; but then it was so different! bright red blushes would show themselves there at times; and then, her eyes that were of a dark and beautiful blue, and fringed with long lashes, glowed under them with a strange light that did n't seem to be of this world; I have thought sometimes, as I looked into them, that it was a part of the hot fire consuming within that streamed out through them, and it seemed almost as if they scorched me when they fell upon me for a moment. The pity of a poor black boy like me was n't of much use to such as she, and indeed I had a dog's life of it myself, and enough to look after for my own part; but I could n't help forgetting my own troubles a little- and I was always used to hard treatment, and could n't expect much better- but when I saw her, poor thing, fading and wilting away, day after day, and yet striving and struggling bravely GOD help you, Sir, it wasn't any use! and fighting against her fate so proudly, though every day the net was drawing closer and closer about her, and Dr. Griffin never let her for one mo

ment out of his power, nor took his villainous eye away from her; to see her dance as she did, like the gayest girl in the whole country, and laugh so -I had a deal rather hear her cry-it seemed so forced and hollow; she would laugh so sometimes in his very face, when he met her out at a quilting-frolic, but it was with such a start and a shiver as if an adder lay in her path; and that strange color, and the awful fire that burned in her eye, would come back when she laughed: it was enough almost to break one's heart to see her. She was trying to wear him out by her delay, and her scornful ways, and womanish humors; I could see that; but she might as well have tried to tire out the old stone block before her father's door. Dr. Griffin was just as quiet and cool in her presence, as persevering in his attentions, as ceaselessly constant in his watch over her, for all her insults and neglect, and her petulant freaks and her wayward, capricious, vexatious tricks. It was like a poor wild bird entrapped; she may scream, and flutter, and beat with her poor, silly, useless wings, but the strong wires of her cage are all about her; she can only sink down at last exhausted, panting and bleeding and helpless, and hopelessly captive.

'It was strange her father the deacon never noticed how she was going on; but he was a very upright man, and a great man in the church, and exceedingly active in Sunday-schools and missionary enterprises, which were just beginning to be talked about here; for I got to going to meeting a little more then, and heard a great many things which I should n't have found out else; and he laid all her strange ways to perverseness and woman's fickleness, and thought perhaps he . was doing his duty by her as a parent, not to notice these obstinate and unreasonable humors. But I knew enough to know that she was dying, and that my master was killing her; and it was n't such a new thing to me when people began to talk about Miss Wiley's dreadful cough, and to notice how thin and miserable she was getting; and at last her father and mother became frightened in real earnest, when, in one of those fearful fits of coughing, she raised a quantity of blood; and they sent off straight to the doctor my master, though she begged them not to do so, and protested it was nothing; she would soon be better. But she got no better after that: the winter was coming on; a blustering, stormy year it was, and she had to keep the house, and soon she could n't leave her room; the doctor would be there every day, but she would take none of his medicine, and would laugh when they told her how sick she was. I don't believe she wanted to get any better; but she kept on failing and fading away, and her beautiful hands, they said, got so thin you could see the light through them, and her pure, white brow, that I remember with the blue veins winding through it just beneath her broad, brown tresses, became as pale as marble itself; until early one morning my master came home it was the first fall of that winter's snow and said that Miss Wiley was dead.

'They said my master had behaved like a brother to her; that he watched by her bed-side long nights; that not even her mother could have been more constant and tender in her care. The people all sympathized with him in his loss; they knew how ill his devotion had been

repaid he had been a wild young man, to be sure, and had played some terrible pranks if report spoke true, but he had reformed most nobly since he began to care for her, and then the patience and untiring love with which he had requited all her scorn, showed what a true and faithful heart he had in his bosom. My master went to her funeral in a complete suit of black, and with a wide crape-weed upon his hat; there was no mourner among them all so broken down under the heavy affliction; it seemed as if he never would get over it. They had to shovel away the drifted snow to dig her grave, and the white flakes fell thick upon her pall when they bore her out to bury her: after father and mother had looked their last and stepped back into the throng that pressed about her grave, the doctor still bent over the coffin and watched till the last heaping shovel-full had been thrown in: it seemed that he was inconsolable; they had to drag him away.

'But I do know this; there were many stormy days after that, and it seemed that, wrapped all up in the cold snow-drifts, and with the hard earth bound down tight about her, poor Miss Wiley might have rested in her coffin: but if they had gone with pick and spade but one short week after they laid her there, they would have found an empty shroud and a rifled coffin in the bottom of her grave.

'I do n't want to tell any more. God forgive me for knowing so much about such villainy! I could n't help it then I should have been murdered else; but I could n't have gone again into that little dark back-office after what I saw done there. I was nothing but a poor, ignorant black boy who had been beaten and kicked and cursed, and who had shared in many a deed before perhaps as dreadful, but never before, oh! never, was such accursed sacrilege: it will haunt me to the day I die. It was a great many years after, that I took down her poor bones and found the spot where she had been buried, and laid them again to rest; it was all I could do for her, poor black, ignorant devil that I was.'

Old Noll bent forward suddenly as he spoke, his grizzled head fell low upon his bosom, and his face he buried in his hard, black hands. There he crouched, sob-sobbing away, his great chest heaving and swelling, his brawny, uncouth frame all shaking with the struggle. We village idlers sat in astonishment looking on; the old man choked with the rebellious swelling in his throat, and groaned writhing in his chair; at last, with one throe of agony the tears burst forth, streaming between his horny, shrivelled fingers. The poor old wretch had dammed up those tears for a life-time; he must needs give way to them now. Stolen glances of wonder and awe went round from one lounger to another no one had ever dreamed of old Noll as any thing but the battered, limping, drudging hostler of the village, the companion of a fishing excursion, or the butt of a coarse bar-room jest; we watched him now with a dumb reverence, and unmolested let him give his pent-up feelings way.

At last he lifted himself up, swept his ragged sleeve once or twice nervously across his streaming eyes, seemingly to clear away the film that gathered in them, gazing far off across the room into the darkness,

as if he saw some happier vision there; for he grew calmer as he gazed, and drew his breath more freely after one or two gasping struggles, and a brighter light fell over his sooty, wrinkled face; the twitching movements of his lips passed by, he gave one more long sighing breath that came from the very bottom of his chest, and sat silent and calm in the red fire-light, as if in a dream. He roused himself at length.

'Don't mind me, gentlemen: it would come, and I feel better for it, now it's past. I never could tell what it was made me watch that poor young lady so, to follow her to church, and dangle after her a long way off in the streets, and try to get somewhere where I could see her at the parties and country frolics, up with the fiddlers or among the waiters, anywhere where I could be near her and watch her. I could n't dare to speak to her, and it would have been no use; but, dead or alive, I could n't get rid of her she was everywhere; in my dreams, and by me in my work; and when I have been so dull and stupid, and people have laughed at me for it, and made fun of me, and called me dreaming Noll, she was by me then, so pale and wo-begone, and wasted, and despairing: she has dogged me all through life, from the day I first saw her along with him in 'Squire Wiley's pew; never once took her scorching eyes from me: they burn me here, here, till it seems as if I carried that hell-fire about me in my bosom; as if it were burning my life and soul to ashes!

My master kept up his steady habits after this, and became very devout in his attendance on the exercises of the sanctuary: their common affliction drew him and the deacon still closer together, and a little after the funeral the doctor came before the session and was accepted as a member of the church. His practice continued to thrive, and his wealth increased rapidly; he fixed up the old place, gave up his old habits, and settled down into a very steady, reputable, active man. He used to lend out money a good deal on bonds and mortgages, and was very strict and exact, so they said, in all his money-dealings. He took charge of a good many of Deacon Wiley's business transactions, and managed some of his law business for him; but I believe he did n't do very well at all events, it turned out, after a good many years, that the Wiley farm had to be sold under mortgage; and by some stroke of luck Dr. Griffin came to be possessor of it. Every body thought that now the doctor would show his gratitude, and his affection for the daughter's memory, by giving the old people at least a lifelease of the farm: they had no one else to care for, and they could have been comfortable there all their days. But, to the surprise and horror of every one, the doctor, as soon as he got the proper papers made out, gave the old folks notice to quit, saying that he intended to occupy the place himself.

This blow broke the old deacon sadly; he did n't live many months after leaving the old homestead: the doctor had it all painted and papered ready for himself, and was going to move into it; but while these changes were being made, he concluded to winter in his own quarters.

'It was one December night, the stormiest night but one I ever knew:

the doctor had shut himself up in his office, where he spent nearly all his time now, drawing up agreements and calculating interest, and doing a great many other things of that sort: I was in the room next by, darning together my old clothing, and shivering at the rain-blasts that dashed every now and then against the panes. It was such a night that no one would have ventured out; the darkness was pitch-black, and the rain drove in sheets against the weather-boards. The house creaked and rattled all over, and the sashes, as they shook in their frames, let in the wind at every crevice. I did n't dare to go up to my dark room at the top of the house, so I crept close to the fire in the great chimney-place, wrapping myself up as well as I could, and tried to sleep.

But the storm outside grew fiercer and fiercer, as the night drew on, and I had an uneasy feeling that would not let me sleep; so I lay listening and trembling, and trying to quiet myself by counting over and over again as far as I knew. As mid-night crept on, it grew to a hurricane: the old house rocked to-and-fro, and the floors and rafters trembled and groaned any moment I thought they might fall on me. I lay listening and shivering in my fright; just then there came to my ear, through the deafening uproar of the tempest, a faint and far-off cry: the next moment it was nearer, more distinct; it was drawing nearer and nearer, more clear, more certain every instant: it was the deep, low, sullen baying of a mastiff; the roar of the storm could n't drown it; it grew deeper; it came nearer every moment: my blood froze within me: I drew my blanket over my head, and lay shaking in deadly fear. The town-clock boomed twelve: the blast shrieked down the chimney and roared around the tottering walls: once more that dreadful howl close to the door: one crash, one burst of thunder: the old house reeled and quivered there was a blinding flash of light, a scream, a heavy fall; then one low, gurgling rattle, and all was still as death.

'When I came to myself in the morning, the sun was shining in at the window, and the sky over-head was blue and clear. I went out for a few moments to breathe the fresh air, and to try to forget my fearful dream. But the storm had worked terrible mischief on the old place; fences were blown down, and every tree lay up-rooted on the ground where the little office had stood against the side of the house, was a heap of smoking cinders: the old case still stood amidst the ruin, but the doors were rent apart, and old Giles Grimsby's grinning skeleton, low stooping to the ground, half-knelt upon the smoking hearth, the bony fingers clutched about a black, black something that lay reeking there!

One errand yet I had to do. Crushing the smouldering embers under foot I did it, wrapping my poor burden up tenderly in my blanket ; then I turned my back upon the place with a curse, and fled away. I sought for Beelzebub in the stable: Beelzebub was gone, and the stable a smoking heap. I fled over the hills: I hid in the bushes till night came on, and then, when my poor duty was finished, I wandered down into the village to find a home.'

December, 1855.

FRANK FANTOME.