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dotard's words their own, my brothers; let | resignation to the decrees of Fate which an Indian warrior ever exhibits when death is near; and each of the seven old men that perished thus barbarously drew his wolf-skin mantle around his shoulders and nodded his head, as if inviting the death-blow that followed.

them die for the crimes they have even now acknowledged. We know of none; our unsullied summers have nothing to blush for. It is they that have drawn this curse upon our people; it is for them that our vitals are consuming with anguish, while our strength wastes away in the search of sustenance we cannot find, or which, when found, we are compelled to share with those for whose misdeeds the Great Spirit hath placed it far from us. They have spoken: let them die. Let them die if we are to remain to appease the angry spirit, and the food that now keeps life lingering in their shrivelled and useless carcases may then nerve the limbs of our young hunters or keep our children from perishing. Let them die if we are to move hence, for their presence will but bring a curse upon our path; their worn-out frames will give way upon the march, and the raven that hovers over their corses will guide our enemies to the spot and scent them like wolves upon our trail. Let them die, my brothers, and because they are still our tribesmen let us give them the death of warriors, and that before we leave this ground;" and with these words the young barbarian, pealing forth a ferocious whoop, buried his tomahawk in the head of the old man nearest to him.

The infernal yell was echoed on every side; a dozen flint hatchets were instantly raised by as many remorseless arms, and the massacre was wrought before one of those thus horribly sacrificed could interpose a plea of mercy. But for mercy they would not have pleaded had opportunity been afforded them, for even in the moment that intervened between the cruel sentence and its execution they managed to show that stern

The parricidal deed was done, and it now became a question how to dispose of the remains of those whose lamp of life while twinkling in the socket had been thus fearfully quenched for ever. The act, though said to have been of not unfrequent occurrence among certain Indian tribes at similar exigences, was one utterly abhorrent to the nature of most of our aborigines, who from their earliest years are taught the deepest veneration for the aged. In the present instance, likewise, it had been so outrageous a perversion of their customary views of duty among this simple people that it was thought but proper to dispense with their wonted mode of sepulture and dispose of the victims of famine and fanaticism in some peculiar manner. They wished in some way to sanctify the deed by offering up the bodies of the slaughtered to the Master of Life, and that without dishonoring the dead. It was, therefore, agreed to decapitate the bodies and burn them; and, as the nobler part could not, when thus dissevered, be buried with the usual forms, it was determined to sink the heads together to the bottom of the lake.

The soulless trunks were accordingly consumed and the ashes scattered to the winds. The heads were then deposited singly in separate canoes, which were pulled off in a kind of procession from the shore. The young chief who had suggested the bloody

scene of the sacrifice rowed in advance, in order to designate the spot where they were to disburden themselves of their gory freight. Resting then upon his oars, he received each head in succession from his companions and proceeded to tie them together by their scalplocks, in order to sink the whole, with a huge stone, to the bottom. But the vengeance of the Master of Life overtook the wretch before his horrid office was accomplished, for no sooner did he receive the last head into his canoe than it began to sink; his feet became entangled in the hideous chain he had been knotting together, and before his horrorstricken companions could come to his rescue he was dragged, shrieking, to the bottom. The others waited not to see the water settle over him, but pulled with their whole strength for the shore.

The morning dawned calmly upon that unhallowed water, which seemed at first to show no traces of the deed it had witnessed the night before. But gradually, as the sun rose up higher, a few gory bubbles appeared to float over one smooth and turbid spot which the breeze never crisped into a ripple. The parricides sat on the bank watching it all the day, but sluggish as at first that sullen blot upon the fresh blue surface still remained. Another day passed over their heads, and the thick stain was yet there. On the third day the floating slime took a greener hue, as if colored by the festering mass beneath, but coarse fibres of darker dye marbled its surface; and on the fourth day these began to tremble along the water like weeds growing from the bottom or the long tresses of a woman's scalp floating in a pool when no wind disturbs it. The fifth morning came, and the conscience-stricken

watchers thought that the spreading scalpfor such now all agreed it was-had raised itself from the water and become rounded at the top, as if there were a head beneath it. Some thought, too, that they could discover a pair of hideous eyes glaring beneath the dripping locks. They looked on the sixth, and there indeed was a monstrous head floating upon the surface, as if anchored to the spot, around which the water, notwithstanding a blast which swept the lake, was calm and motionless as ever.

Those bad Indians then wished to fly, but the doomed parricides had not now the courage to encounter the warlike bands through which they must make their way in fleeing from their native valley. They thought, too, that, as nothing about the head except the eyes had motion, it could not harm them, resting quietly, as it did, upon the bosom of the waters. And, though it was dreadful to have that hideous gaze fixed for ever upon their dwellings, yet they thought that if the Master of Life meant this as an expiation for their frenzied deed they would strive to live on beneath those unearthly glances without shrinking or complaint.

But a strange alteration had taken place in the floating head on the morning of the seventh day. A pair of broad wings, ribbed like those of a bat and with claws appended to each tendon, had grown out during the night, and, buoyed up by these, it seemed to be now resting on the water. The water itself appeared to ripple more briskly near it, as if joyous that it was about to be relieved of its unnatural burden, but still for hours the head maintained its first position. At last the wind began to rise, and, driving through the trough of the waves, beneath

their expanded membrane, raise the wings from the surface and seemed for the first time to endow them with vitality. They flapped harshly once or twice upon the billows, and the head rose slowly and heavily from the lake.

An agony of fear seized upon the gazing parricides, but the supernatural creation made no movement to injure them. It only remained balancing itself over the lake and casting a shadow from its wings that wrapped the valley in gloom. But dreadful was it beneath their withering shade to watch that terrific monster hovering like a falcon for the swoop and know not upon what victim it might descend. It was then that they who had sown the gory seed from which it sprung to life with one impulse sought to escape its presence by flight. Herding together like a troop of deer when the panther is prowling by, they rushed in a body from the scene. But the flapping of the demon-pinions was soon heard behind them, and the winged head was henceforth on their track, wheresoever it led.

In vain did they cross they cross one mountainbarrier after another, plunge into the rocky gorge or thread the mazy swamp to escape their fiendish watcher. The Flying Head would rise on tireless wings over the loftiest summit or dart in arrowy flight through the narrowest passages without furling its pinions, while their sullen threshing would be heard even in those vine-webbed thickets where the little ground-bird can scarcely make its way. The very caverns of the earth were no protection to the parricides from its presence, for scarcely would they think they had found a refuge in some sparry cell when, poised midway between

the ceiling and the floor, they would behold the Flying Head glaring upon them. Sleeping or waking, the monster was ever near; they paused to rest, but the rushing of its wings as it swept around their restingplace in never-ending circles prevented them from finding forgetfulness in repose; or if, in spite of those blighting pinions that ever fanned them, fatigue did at moments plunge them in uneasy slumbers, the glances of the Flying Head would pierce their very eyelids and steep their dreams in horror.

What was the ultimate fate of that band of parricides no one has ever known. Some say that the Master of Life kept them always young, in order that their capability of suffering might never wear out, and these insist that the Flying Head is still pursuing them over the great prairies of the Far West. Others aver that the glances of the Flying Head turned each of them gradually into stone, and these say that their forms, though altered by the wearing of the rains in the lapse of long years, may still be recognized in those upright rocks which stand like human figures along the shores of some of the neighboring lakes.

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THE SABBATH.

OW still the morning of the Less fearful on this day, the limping hare
Stops and looks back, and stops and looks

hallowed day!

Mute is the voice of rural

labor, hushed
The ploughboy's whistle and
the milkmaid's song;
The scythe lies glittering in

the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled

with fading flowers, That yester-morn bloomed waving in the breeze; Sounds the most faint attract the ear-the hum

Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating midway up the hill;
Calmness seems throned on yon unmoving
cloud;

To him who wanders o'er the upland leas
The blackbird's note comes mellower from

the dale,

And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song, the lulling

brook

Murmurs more gently down the deep-sunk glen,

on man,

Her deadliest foe; the toil-worn horse, set
free,

Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large,
And as his stiff, unwieldy bulk he rolls
His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning

ray.

But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys.
Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail-the poor man's
day.

On other days the man of toil is doomed.
To eat his joyless bread lonely, the ground
Both seat and board, screened from the win-
ter's cold

And summer's heat by neighboring hedge or

tree,

But on this day, embosomed in his home,
He shares the frugal meal with those he

loves;

With those he loves he shares the heartfelt joy

Of giving thanks to God-not thanks of form,

While from yon lowly roof, whose curling A word and a grimace, but reverently,

. smoke

O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.

With covered face and upward, earnest

eye.

Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day.

The pale mechanic now has leave to breathe With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village The morning air pure from the city's smoke;

broods:

The dizzy mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.

While wandering slowly up the river-side
He meditates on Him whose power he

marks

In each green tree that proudly spreads the Recall the soul from adoration's trance

bough

As in the tiny dew-bent flowers that bloom
Around the roots, and while he thus surveys
With elevated joy each rural charm

And fill the eye with pity's gentle tears.
Again the organ-peal, loud, rolling, meets
The hallelujahıs of the choir. Sublime
A thousand notes symphoniously ascend,

He hopes-yet fears presumption in the As if the whole were one, suspended high hopeIn air, soaring heavenward: afar they float, To reach those realms where Sabbath never Wafting glad tidings to the sick man's couch. ends.

But now his steps a welcome sound recalls:
Solemn the knell from yonder ancient pile
Fills all the air, inspiring joyful awe;
Slowly the throng moves o'er the tomb-paved
ground:

The aged man, the bowèd down, the blind,
Led by the thoughtless boy, and he who
breathes

With pain and eyes the new-made grave

well pleased,

These, mingled with the young, the gay, approach

Raised on his arm, he lists the cadence close,
Yet thinks he hears it still; his heart is

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In solitary paths where wild flowers blow, The house of God; these, spite of all their There would I bless His name who led me

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The people, rising, sing, "with harp, with It is not only in the sacred fane

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There is a temple, one not made with hands

The vaulted firmament.

Far in the woods,
Almost beyond the sound of city chime,
At intervals heard through the breezeless air,

While liquid whispers from yon orphan band When not the limberest leaf is seen to move

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