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of the pines and hemlocks rose to such prodigious heights, that they were lost in the gathering gloom overhead, while occasionally a fallen branch stretched its huge length into obscurity. A strange breath filled these mysterious vaults. Mingled with the sweet-scented cedar was the damp odor of decaying wood. The fallen monarchs were the dead of by-gone ages, and those dark vaults, their trunks, while the silence was a solitude of a forgotten past.

Only the trampling of horses' feet on the ground disturbed the silence, save when the rumbling of distant thunder along the western horizon fell on their ears. The Coureur des Bois cast uneasy glances about him, and when an opening appeared in the forest, which was very seldom, he turned his gaze toward the west, now shrouded in the gloom of approaching night and storm. De Bray was a brave man and, for himself, little heeded the storm which threatened to burst on them; but when he considered his delicate charge, unaccustomed to a tempest in the forest, he could not repress a shudder.

Lost in a painful revery, Adele jogged along on her horse through the forest path, all unconscious of the dangers of a storm in the wilderness. She had never heard the crashing thunders reverberating in those gloomy old woods. She had

never seen a monarch splintered by the lightning's wrath, or heard the howling tempest tearing up monsters by their roots. The mind of the maid was on that face seen in chains and dungeons, and she asked herself again and again:

"Is he dead, or does he live?"

The storm which the Coureur des Bois had predicted was beginning to creep visibly over them. At first, a low and distant thunder gave warning of the approaching conflict of the elements; and then rapidly rushed above them the dark ranks of clouds. The suddenness of the storm had something almost preternatural about it.

Adele was startled from her painful revery, as a few large drops broke heavily among the boughs that overhung the path, and then, swift and intolerably bright, the forked lightning darted across their very eyes and was swallowed up by the increasing darkness.

"Swifter, good De Bray!" cried Adele to the Coureur des Bois. "The tempest is coming on rapidly."

The guide urged his hardy little horse to a swifter pace along the forest path. The clouds thickened; nearer and more near broke the thunder, while in the distance could be heard the dashing rain and roaring wind.

"Is the Mademoiselle afraid?" asked the guide.

"No.

How far are we from home?"

"A league and a half, at least," he answered.

"Darkness will soon overtake us.

"Verily, it will.”

"How will we see?"

"We shall light a pine knot."

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He did not have long to search among those woods before he found a knot, and with his tinder box he quickly lighted the torch; but the rain was falling in torrents, and no torch would long burn. In a few moments the torch was snuffed out by the gust of wind. A slave threw a cloak about the mademoiselle, to keep her from the rain. was pitch dark and to follow the road to Grand Pre was utterly impossible. In this dilemma, what was to be done? They were yet some distance from the house, and no aid seemed near.

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"There is," said the Coureur des Bois, "a hunter's cabin about a mile off. It has been long deserted; but I could find it, I am quite sure. can bring you there, where you might have shelter until the storm has passed."

"Take us there as soon as you can," said the mademoiselle.

The cavalcade started along the narrow path through the woods, but were compelled to grope their way.

The storm, as great storms usually do, lingered

in the distance, rumbling, roaring and threatening, as if to give every one an opportunity to escape its wrath. Already it had grown so dark that even the experienced eyes of the Coureur des Bois could not see the path through the wood, save when one of those vivid flashes of lightning painted the glare of perdition on the sky, the reflection of which gave to the forest a momentary brilliance greater than the noonday's sun.

De Bray continued to urge his jaded steed forward at a trot, and the others followed. The storm was coming on in their rear, and once more a volley of rain-drops fell among the leaves.

This was but the skirmish line of the storm. The heavy battle lines were not far in their rear. Just as the storm seemed gathering in all its fury in their rear, the guide uttered a shout, and a light suddenly burst on their view. It was not three hundred paces away, and De Bray cried:

on!"

Some one is stopping at the old hut! Come

Their horses, seeming to have regained new life, bounded forward at a gallop toward the light.

At this moment there came a tremendous crash overhead, and a hemlock, not thirty paces on the left of Adele, was shivered to splinters from its topmost branches to its roots. Her horse, stunned by the shock, for a moment quivered and sank

beneath her. She was powerless to urge the animal forward; but one of the servants struck the beast a sharp blow with his whip, which made it bound forward.

Adele was bewildered, hardly conscious of whither she was going, while crash after crash overhead and all about them made the earth tremble. Heaven's artillery had begun to play in earnest, and the giants of the forest were falling on every side.

answer.

She heard voices calling to her, but could not Her horse, mad with fright, leaped into the clearing, and was bounding past the hunter's cabin to the wood beyond, with the speed of the wind, when a tall man leaped suddenly from the door and at half a dozen bounds was at the side of the flying steed. The angry lightning, playing in spiral whirls about them, revealed the handsome features of a young man, dressed in garments once genteel, but now worn and shabby. His hand of iron seized the steed and hurled it to its haunches, while angry flames of electric fire flashed all about them, seeming to set the world ablaze.

She was partially conscious of falling, then of some one catching her in his arms, and of being carried tenderly into some sort of shelter, and all was a blank.

When she recovered consciousness, a pine knot,

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