first murder had at that instant been enacted. His brother's blood seemed to cry to him from the ground. He sprang to his feet, as if he felt the hot brand searing his forehead, and fled from the spot like the guilty and conscience-stricken Cain.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SECOND APPARITION.

THE hermit of Shawmut had devoted a long summer's day to a solitary excursion in the wilderness. He felt no fear in rambling to and fro, either upon his bull, upon his feet, or in his boat, for he was regarded with considerable reverence by the natives, with whom he occasionally came in contact, and to whom his skill in pharmacy had often rendered essential service. He was indeed, as was natural, looked up to by those scattered and benighted creatures, as a being not belonging to earth, and possessed of superior attributes to mortals. His striking, and almost ethereal appearance, his solitary habits, and his abstracted and dreamy manner, contributed not a little to encourage this belief.

That morning, he had been tempted by a summer's breeze to put forth in his little skiff, which experience had taught him to manage with great adroitness. He had, after tossing about for an idle hour or two upon the billows of the cove, amused himself by entering the mouth of the river which discharges itself into the bay nearly opposite his abode.

The slow and tortuous Quinobequin, as the River Charles was then more properly called, which, as Captain John Smith had already informed the world, "doth pierce many days' journey into the entrails of that country," was a river whose calm, deep, almost stagnant, and at the same time highly erratic character, was singularly in harmony with that of the profound, wandering, gentle, unimpassioned hermit, who, first of civilized beings, then dwelt upon its banks. A brawling, shallow, headlong stream, now whirling through gravelly ravines, now dashing down preci

pices of granite, would have been no fitting companion for the exile. Blaxton thought, as he idly floated up the long reaches, or rowed himself against the lazy current, in the short, sudden coils, by which the river incessantly seemed doubling in its languid course, that the stream was a fit emblem of himself. Winding noiselessly and obscurely to and fro among the woods and meadows, the river flowed calmly along, with scarce an eddy upon its glassy surface, silent, but deep, hesitating, meandering, and yet, after leagues of its serpentine motion, accomplishing so little, that a child in a few bounds might measure the whole length of its actual progress towards its goal.

Still, within its unruffled depths were ever mirrored Nature's freshest charms. The forest-crowned hills came from afar to bathe themselves in its tranquil flood, the serene heaven, with its floating clouds, the silver majesty of the moon, the countless troops of stars, and even the effulgence of the day-god himself, were daily and nightly reflected in its placid bosom. And was not this a compensation for the absence of that restless energy which would have hurried it faster to the eternal sea, but would have shivered its transparent surface into a thousand fragments, and rendered its nature tumultuous and troubled?

Thus mused the contemplative solitary, as hour after hour he loitered in his bark along that solitary stream. Although gentle and quiet, there was still variety in his inland voyage. Here, the river coiled itself, like a silver snake, through a wide expanse of meadow, where, if he stepped ashore, the rank grass, unconscious of the scythe, grew higher than his breast. Anon, he floated into a more secluded reach, where the stream dilated for a moment to a mimic bay, where his oar would disturb a fleet of anchored wood-ducks. Again, as the river narrowed itself within its banks, a grey and decaying trunk of some fallen tree would almost obstruct his passage, from which the basking turtle would drop hastily and heavily into the stream, or the

headlong frogs dash themselves off in nimble and grotesque alarm. At times, his course lay through broad and level meadows, where grew only the ringletted and drooping elms, the most graceful, the most feminine, and the most fragile of trees; and which, sometimes like verdant fountains, sometimes like foliage-wreathed urns, sometimes like bending, graceful, suddenly metamorphosed nymphs, with their green tresses sweeping the ground, stood, singly or in detached and picturesque groups, along the moist and open meads.. Again, the river would lose itself beneath shadowy and deeply wooded banks, where the tangled forest grew close to the water's edge, where the various melody of summer birds was never silent, where the whir of the strong-winged partridge would fall suddenly upon the ear, where the slender deer would steal timidly forth to slake its thirst at the river's brink, or the grim figure of the brown, indolent bear would appear for an instant through the thick curtain of the midsummer foliage. There, the maple, the birch, the alder, and the oak, were all matted together, in intricate luxuriance, and the hermit would often pause to contemplate some Laocoonlike group of mighty trees, entangled, interlaced and suffocated in the vast coils of some serpent-like grape-vine. A thousand flowers of brilliant hues, decorated his lonely progress. Immense fields of the strong and tangled pickerel-weed, with its broad lotus-like leaves and flaunting flowers, now clogged his pathway; and now, a multitude of white and fragrant water-lilies thronging around his bark, like troops of amorous, odor-breathing water-nymphs, seemed to woo him to repose. The delicate arrow-head, with its spikes of pale and tender blossoms, the intensely brilliant cardinal flower, which looked as if it should be transplanted to some ancient cathedral window-pane, where placed upon the bosom of some gorgeous saint, its vivid crimson should reflect the sunlight for ages; the stately eupatorium, the fragrant azalea, the gaudy sunflower, and a host of other name

less weeds, grew in rank and tangled confusion along the oozy

bank.

The hermit moved slowly along his watery path, solacing himself with the accurate observation of nature, which was the business of his life, ever and anon pausing to cull his simples, to collect his herbs and flowers, with which his little canoe was already amply freighted; now losing himself in the vague reveries, which he so dearly loved, and now pausing under the shadow of some spreading tree, to take from his scrip and hastily to consume his slender repast.

"

Thus, upon noiseless wings, flew the golden hours of that summer's day. Towards nightfall, the solitary had returned from his excursion, and anchored his bark close to his cottage. Entering his humble dwelling-place, he busied himself a long time in assorting the additions which he had that day made to his collections of natural history. When he was at last wearied of his task, he knelt down and offered up a prayer of gratitude to Him who thus sustained his faltering steps in that remote solitude. He then turned over the leaves of his Bible, pondering as he read. The hours stole on, the slow-moving finger of his clock already pointed to midnight, his eyelids were already heavy with sleep, when the vast silence around him was suddenly broken by a fearful shriek. The hermit started to his feet, the scream seemed to pierce his heart. He hurried to the window and looked out upon the night. All was quiet, serene and starry. The scream was not repeated, and for an instant the solitary again strove to persuade himself that he had been deluded by his imagination. Sleep, however, had been scared for a season from his eyelids, and he sat listening to the loud beating of his own heart, and in anxious expectation of a repetition of the vision which had once before so much agitated him.

He was not mistaken. Within a very few minutes, which,