“I am likely to play a pretty part, I see." 'Play'! You'll find no play here, I guess, mister. Set down close, make no noise; and if you go to sneeze or cough, take right hold of your throat and let it go downward." Sybrandt obeyed his injunctions, and Timothy proceeded toward the lights, which appeared much farther off in the darkness than they really were, handling his paddle with such lightness and dexterity that Sybrandt could not hear the strokes. In this manner they swiftly approached the encampment until they could distinguish a confused noise of shoutings and hallooings, which gradually broke on their ears. in discordant violence. Timothy stopped his paddle and listened : "It is the song of those tarnil kritters the Utawas. They're in a drunken frolic, as they always are the night before going to battle. I know the kritters, for I've popped off a few, and can talk and sing their songs pretty considerably, I guess. So we'll be among 'em right off. Don't forget what I told you about doing as I do and holding your tongue." Cautiously plying his paddle, he now shot in close to the shore, whence the sounds of revelry proceeded, and made the land at some little distance, that he might avoid the sentinels, whom they could hear ever and anon challenging each other. They then drew up the light canoe into the bushes which here closely skirted the water. "Now leave all behind but yourself and follow me," whispered Timothy as he carefully felt whether the muskets were well covered from the damps of the night, and then laid himself down on his face and crawled along under the bushes with the quiet celerity of a snake in the grass. "Must we leave our guns behind?" whispered Sybrandt. "Yes, according to orders; but it's a plaguy hard case. Yet, upon the whole, it's best; for if I was to get a fair chance at one of these kritters, I believe in my heart my gun would go off clean of itself. But hush! shut your mouth as close as a powder-horn." After proceeding some distance, Sybrandt getting well scratched by the briars and finding infinite difficulty in keeping up with Timothy, the latter stopped short. "Here the kritters are," said he, in the lowest whisper. "Where?" replied the other, in the same tone. "Look right before you." "My brother does not talk," said Tim othy. "Is he dumb?" asked the chief of the Utawas. "No, but he has sworn not to open his mouth till he has struck the body of a longknife.' Good!" said the other; "he is wel come. Sybrandt followed the direction, and be- | comed him and handed the canteen, now alheld a group of five or six Indians seated most empty. round a fire, the waning lustre of which cast a fitful light upon their dark countenances, whose savage expression was heightened to ferocity by the stimulant of the debauch in which they were engaged. They sat on the ground, swaying to and fro, backward and forward and from side to side, ever and anon passing round the canteen from one to the other, and sometimes rudely snatching it away when they thought either was drinking more than his share. At intervals they broke out into yelling and discordant songs filled with extravagant boastings of murders, massacres, burnings and plunderings, mixed up with threatenings of what they would do to the redcoat long-knives on the morrow. One of these songs recited the destruction of a village and bore a striking resemblance of the bloody catastrophe of poor Timothy's wife and children. Sybrandt could not understand it, but he could hear the quick, suppressed breathings of his companion, who, when it was done, aspirated, in a tone of smothered vengeance, "If I only had my gun! Stay here a moment," whispered he as he crept cantiously toward the noisy group, which all at once became perfectly quiet and remained in the attitude of listening. After a pause he went on, at the same time eying Sybrandt with suspicion, though his faculties were obscured by the fumes of the liquor he still continued to drink and hand round at short intervals: "I don't remember the young warrior. Is he of our tribe?" 'He is, but he was stolen by the Mohawks many years ago, and only returned lately." "How did he escape?" "He killed two chiefs while they were asleep by the fire, and ran away." Good!" said the Utawas, and for a few moments sunk into a kind of stupor, from which he suddenly roused himself and, grasping his tomahawk, started up, rushed toward Sybrandt, and, raising his deadly weapon, stood over him in the attitude of striking. Sybrandt remained perfectly unmoved, "Huh!" muttered one, who appeared by waiting the stroke. his dress to be the principal. Timothy replied in a few Indian words which Sybrandt did not comprehend, and, raising himself from the ground, suddenly appeared in the midst of them. A few words were rapidly interchanged, and Timothy then brought forward his companion, whom he presented to the Utawas, who wel Good!" said the Utawas again; “I am satisfied: the Utawas never shuts his eyes at death. He is worthy to be our brother. He shall go with us to battle to-morrow. "We have just come in time," said Timothy. "Does the white chief march against the redcoats to-morrow?" "He does." "Has he men enough to fight them?" "They are like the leaves on the trees," said the other. By degrees Timothy drew from the Utawas chief the number of Frenchmen, Indians and coureurs de bois which composed the army, the time when they were to commence their march, the course they were to take, and the outlines of the plan of attack in case the British either waited for them in the fort or met them in the field. By the time he had finished his examination the whole party, with the exception of Timothy, Sybrandt and the chief, were fast asleep. In a few minutes after, the two former affected to be in the same state and began to snore lastily. The Utawas chief nodded from side to side, then sunk down like a log, and remained insensible to everything around him in the sleep of drunkenness. Timothy lay without motion for a while, then turned himself over and rolled about from side to side, managing to strike against each of the party in succession. They remained fast asleep. He then cautiously raised himself, and Sybrandt did the same. In a moment Timothy was down again, and Sybrandt followed his example without knowing why, until he heard some one approach, and distinguished, as they came nigh, two officers, apparently of rank. They halted near the waning fire, and one said to the other in French in a low tone, "The beasts are all asleep; it is time to wake them. Our spies are come back, and we must march." "Not yet," replied the other; "let them sleep an hour longer, and they will wake sober." steps were no longer heard, Timothy again raised himself up, motioning our hero to lie still. After ascertaining by certain tests which experience had taught him that the Indians still continued in a profound sleep, he proceeded with wonderful dexterity and silence to shake the priming from each of the guns in succession. After this he took their powder-horns and emptied them; then, seizing the tomahawk of the Utawas chief, which had dropped from his hand, he stood over him for a moment with an expression of deadly hatred which Sybrandt had never before seen in his or any other countenance. The intense desire of killing one of the kritters," as he called them, struggled a few moments with his obligations to obey the orders of Sir William, but the latter at length triumphed, and, motioning Sybrandt, they crawled away with the silence and celerity with which they came, launched their light canoe and plied their paddles with might and main. "The morning breeze is springing up," said Timothy, "and it will soon be daylight. We must be tarnil busy." And busy they were, and swiftly did the light canoe slide over the waves, leaving scarce a wake behind her. As they turned the angle which hid the encampment from their view Timothy ventured to speak a little above his breath: "It's lucky for us that the boat we passed coming down has returned, for it's growing light apace. I'm only sorry for one thing." What's that?" asked Sybrandt. "That I let that drunken Utawas alone. If I had only bin out on my own bottom, he'd have bin stud-dead in a twinkling, I They then passed on; and when their foot- guess." "And you, too, I guess," said Sybrandt, adopting his peculiar phraseology; "you would have been overtaken and killed." Who? I? I must be a poor kritter if I can't dodge half a dozen of these drunken varmints." A few hours of sturdy exertion brought them at length within sight of Ticonderoga just as the red harbingers of morning striped the pale green of the skies. Star after star disappeared, as Timothy observed, like candles that had been burning all night and gone out of themselves, and as they struck the foot of the high bluff whence they had departed the rays of the sun just tipped the peaks of the high mountains rising toward the west. Timothy then shook hands with our hero. "You're a hearty kritter," said he, "and I'll tell Sir William how you looked at that tarnil tomahawk as if it had bin an old pipestem." Without losing a moment they proceeded to the quarters of Sir William, whom they found waiting for them with extreme anxiety. He extended both hands toward our hero and eagerly exclaimed, "What luck, my lads? I have been up all night waiting your return." "Then you will be quite likely to sleep sound to-night," quoth Master Timothy, unbending the intense rigidity of his leathern countenance. "I am of opinion, if a man wants to have a real good night's rest, he's only to set up the night before and he may calculate it with sartinty." upon "Hold your tongue, Timothy," said Sir William, good-humoredly, "or else speak to the purpose. Have you been at the enemy's camp?" othy. Right in their very bowels," said Tim Sir William proceeded to question, and Sybrandt and Timothy to answer, until he drew from them all the important information of which they had possessed themselves. He then dismissed Timothy with cordial thanks and a purse of yellow-boys, which he received with much satisfaction. "It's not of any great use to me, to be sure," said he as he departed, "but somehow or other I love to look at the kritters." "As to you, Sybrandt Westbrook, you have fulfilled the expectations I formed of you on our first acquaintance. You claim a higher reward, for you have acted from higher motives and at least equal courage and resolution. His Majesty shall know of this; and in the mean time call yourself 'Major Westbrook,' for such you are from this moment." JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. ANACREON. NACREON was born at Teos, a seaport ANA of Ionia, B. c. 532. When Harpagus, the general of Cyrus the Elder, invaded the Ionian cities, Anacreon migrated to Abdera in Thrace, and afterward repaired to the court of Polycrates, monarch of Samos, whence he was invited to Athens by Hipparchus, who sent a galley of fifty oars to convey him across the Ægean Sea. When Hipparchus was slain, in the conspiracy of Harmodius, Anacreon returned to Teos, whence he was again driven by the revolt of Histiæus, and removed once more to Abdera, where he died. He is said by Pliny to have been choked by a grape stone, which he swallowed in a draught of | pretended that these odes had not the Attic new wine-a close of poetical justice to a life propriety. The latter does not seem to have passed, according to the traditional accounts intended any particular slight to the genius of him, in one protracted fever of intemper- of Anacreon, as his slashing system of critical ance. His statue in the citadel of Athens paradox equally proscribed Homer, Plato and represents him in the character of a drunken Aristotle, the odes of Horace and the Æneid old man: As a confirmed voluptuary, it of Virgil as fabrications of the monks of the was not to be expected that he should escape thirteenth century. Never had the cowled vices of a deeper dye: his amorous deprav- head been so overshadowed with laurels. ities were, indeed, the vices of his age; but Anacreon has not, like Horace, his redeeming excellences, nor do I know that he has left on record one solitary sentiment that might subserve the interests of virtue. The drinking-songs of Anacreon have all "O'er the dread feast malignant Chemia scowls, Darwin. His amatory pieces are airy, graceful and delicately fanciful. His style is a model of classic simplicity-elegant, not florid, without studied ornaments or ambitious figures, natural in sentiment and pure from witty conceit. The genuineness of Anacreon's odes has been singularly called in question by two men of learned celebrity-by Petrus Alcyonius, and by Father Hardouin. The former JAMES CHARLES ABRAHAM ELTON. JAMES GRAHAME. JAMES GRAHAME, the author of "The Sabbath," was the son of a respectable attorney in Glasgow, and was born in that city on the 22d of April, 1765. He was educated at the excellent public schools of that city, and had a very early and strong desire to enter the clerical profession; but it was the long-cherished wish of his father that he should be bred to his own calling. Accordingly, our poet sacrificed his own wishes to those of his parent, and studied the law. Many irksome years-the best years of his life—were wasted in this to him most uncongenial pursuit, and it was finally abandoned. For many years, however, he toiled on in it, and, from a sense of what he owed his family, he gave it all the attention of which a mind devoted to higher purposes was capable. In 1804 he published anonymously his poem "The Sabbath." He had kept from all his friends, and even from his wife, who was possessed of a fine literary taste, all knowledge of what he had been engaged in, and laid a copy of his poem on his parlor-table as soon as it appeared. Mrs. Grahame was led by curiosity to examine it, and while doing so he was walking up and down the room await |