daybreak he dozed off, forming schemes of vengeance against a certain publisher.

The next morning, in pursuance of his plan, he rose early, and found out by the directory in the next apothecary's shop, Mr. Brandon's address in Fifth Avenue. Then having adorned himself to the utmost of his ability, he posted off to Bella's new residence. It was truly a splendid mansion. Built of brown stone of a rich, sober hue, and flanked with conservatories, and stables that did not look like stables, so highly were they ornamented, it looked more like a palace, than the residence of a simple citi

zen.

Mynus could not make up his mind to enter, but thought he would walk up and down outside, and wait until he saw Bella at one of the windows. It was a fine spring day; the sun shone warmly, and a host of brilliantly dressed people issued forth from their houses, on their way to church. Mynus thought to himself, that the day would soon arrive when he would be as gay as the gayest among them. Presently Mr. Brandon's door opened, and a lady and gentleman came out. In the former. Mynus at the first glance recognized Bella; but how changed. In the short interval between her abduction from the theatre and the present moment, she had obtained by some means, inscrutable to poor people, an exquisite spring dress. Quiet in tone, but of the softest and most delicate materials. And so well did she wear it, so firmly did she step, that one could scarcely believe this fashionable looking girl, was the little actress, who, the night before, played the Maiden of the Polar Seas. She wore the brooch still on her bosom; and in the fine looking old gentleman on whose arm she leaned, Mynus recognized the original of the miniature.

They came towards him. He stepped half forward, with a beating heart, and a well conned congratulation on his lips. Her silk dress almost brushed his threadbare trousers, as with cold, expressionless eyes, she swept by, as if he had been an utter stranger. For a moment, Mynus was staggered; but then his spirit rose indignantly at the injustice he was near doing his dear Bella. She did not see him. The sun was in her eyes. She was dazzled, and as he did not speak, she passed him unwittingly. It must be so. He would try again. So crossing to the opposite side of the way, he ran a few blocks, crossed again, and stationed himself right in her path. On she came, with upright head, firm step, and level eyes. She passed unnoticed, his outstretched hand; she

passed unnoticed, his plaintive "Bella, don't you know me;" she passed him, as if he had never existed, and so on into God's temple, where she listened to the preaching of charity to all mankind.

Poor Mynus could doubt no longer. He leaned against a wall upon which the bright sunlight was falling, and while group after group of gayly dressed people passed, he wept silently over the ruin of his dreams. He had loved her so much. He was so willing to share with her the sunshine of his own life, whenever it shone for him. He had hoped so much from her, that it was very hard that she should forget him so completely in her prosperity. He would never put faith in woman again.

He went slowly home to his garret. The first thing he saw on his table was a slip of paper on which was written, Mr. B. Mynus, For value received,

To S. Isaacs, Dr.

$20 27

Received payment.

Poor Mynus shook his head hopelessly. All his dreams had vanished, and this reality alone remained. He saw no way out of it. Just at this climax of his despair, a voice which he recognized as that of Mrs. Isaacs, said outside his door, "Mr. Mynus! A letter for you, sir."

"A letter for me?" cried Mynus, astonished. For his correspondence was limited, having neither friends nor acquaintances. "Oh! tis from that scoundrel Tiddles, I suppose."

He took the letter and opened it. A long slip of paper was wrapped around a small note. The slip of paper was a check for a hundred dollars. The note contained the following words.

"Miss Brandon regrets that her acquaintance with Mr. Mynus must terminate. He has, however, her best wishes, and she trusts that the inclosed, will be of some service."

A red spot glowed for an instant on Mynus's cheek. To receive alms from her, who-the check was half crushed in his hand by the impulse, when his eye fell on the little account which lay on the table. He checked himself. The reader will no doubt think Mynus excessively mean; but perhaps if the reader were in Mynus's circumstances he would have done what he did, that is, put the check in his pocket, and burn the note. And thus Mr. Isaacs was paid his bill, and for three weeks, Mynus lived like a gentleman, uttering anathemas in his cups, against publishers and editors, in which he now also included managers and women.

CHAPTER L

THE BIRTHPLACE OF ISRAEL

THE 'HE traveller who at the present day is

content to travel in the good old Asiatic style, neither rushed along by a locomotive, nor dragged by a stage-coach; who is willing to enjoy hospitalities at far-scattered farmhouses, instead of paying his bill at an inn; who is not to be frightened by any amount of loneliness, or to be deterred by the roughest roads or the highest hills; such a traveller in the eastern part of Berkshire, Mass., will find ample food for poetic reflection in the singular scenery of a country, which, owing to the ruggedness of the soil and its lying out of the track of all public conveyances, remains almost as unknown to the general tourist as the inte

rior of Bohemia.

Travelling northward from the township of Otis, the road leads for twenty or thirty miles towards Windsor, lengthwise upon that long broken spur of heights which the Green Mountains of Vermont send into Massachusetts. For nearly the whole of the distance, you have the continual sensation of being upon some terrace in the moon. The feeling of the plain or the valley is never yours; scarcely the feeling of the earth. Unless by a sudden precipitation of the road you find yourself plunging into some gorge; you pass on, and on, and on, upon the crests or slopes of pastoral mountains, while far below, mapped out in its beauty, the valley of the Housatonic lies endlessly along at your feet. Often, as your horse gaining some lofty level tract, flat as a table, trots gayly over the almost deserted and sodded road, and your admiring eye sweeps the broad landscape beneath, you seem to be Boótes driving in heaven. Save a potato field here and there, at long intervals, the whole country is either in wood or pasture. Horses, cattle and sheep are the principal inhabitants of these mountains. But all through the year lazy columns of smoke rising from the depths of the forest, proclaim the presence of that half-outlaw, the charcoalburner; while in early spring added curls of vapor show that the maple sugar-boiler is also at work. But as for farming as a regular vocation, there is not much of it here. At any rate, no man by that means accumulates a fortune from this

thin and rocky soil; all whose arable parts have long since been nearly exhausted.

Yet during the first settlement of the country, the region was not unproductive. Here it was that the original settlers came, acting upon the principle wellknown to have regulated their choice of site, namely, the high land in preference to the low, as less subject to the unwholesome miasmas generated by breaking into the rich valleys and alluvial bottoms of primeval regions. By degrees, however, they quitted the safety of this sterile elevation, to brave the dangers of richer though lower fields. So that at the present day, some of those mountain townships present an aspect of singular abandonment. Though they have never known aught but peace and health, they, in one lesser aspect at least, look like countries depopulated by plague and war. Every mile or two a house is passed untenanted. The strength of the framework of these ancient buildings enables them long to resist the encroachments of decay. Spotted gray and green with the weather-stain, their timbers seem to have lapsed back into their woodland original, forming part now of the general picturesqueness of the natural scene. They are of extraordinary size, compared with modern farm-houses. One peculiar feature is the immense chimney, of light gray stone, perforating the middle of the roof like a tower.

On all sides are seen the tokens of an cient industry. As stone abounds throughout these mountains, that material was. for fences, as ready to the hand as wood, besides being much more durable. Consequently the landscape is intersected in all directions with walls of uncommon neatness and strength.

The number and length of these walls is not more surprising than the size of some of the blocks comprising them. The very Titans seemed to have been at work. That so small an army as the first settlers must needs have been, should have taken such wonderful pains to inclose so ungrateful a soil; that they should have accomplished such herculean undertakings with so slight prospect of reward; this is a consideration which gives us a significant hint of the temper of the men of the Revolutionary era.

Nor could a fitter country be found