with them. He had a fine voice, and knew his «No. 2 (Moody and Sankey) from end to end. His features were regular, his teeth fine, his complexion was tanned even to the neck, like that of a soldier, and his hair tawny. Altogether he gave the impression of being a man who would do to tie to,» as they say in the woods.

He had walked in front of us the first day, generally silent, moderating his stride with some effort, threading his way through the forest, following no path, but only a "spotted trail, which he himself had formerly helped to spot. With rapid strokes he had cleared away a fallen tree or laid a sudden scaffolding of logs over a wet place. Carrying twice the load of any one else, he had left the ladies without apology to bear their own light burdens, and the men to toil under their unaccustomed packs. Questions he answered briefly; but he volunteered no remarks, and, while virtually taking our measure, gave no signs of it. Mrs. Willis, always frank and cordial, followed him up closely, questioned him about birds and beaver-dams, suggested new short-cuts, and was lighter footed and quicker witted than any of the party. Then followed the others, and last of all our pretty Martha, with her fair face looking childlike under a white Scotch cap that retained its immaculate whiteness in a way that seemed unaccountable. She had already grown intimate with Baptiste, our second guide, her Parisian French matching oddly with his dialect of Stratford-atte-Quebec, while his equally bewildering English formed an endless stream of narrative and of brag.

"Ah go in rear, he explained, «because Bert he like better ze front. Rear he danger, vraiment.»

«Danger of what, Baptiste?» asked Martha, anxiously.

«Mooch danger-lynk, moose, wolf (br-r-r!), Indian dev' he wuss as all.»

<< Indians? >>

«No, no; he wild-cat, Indian dev'; he in trees, spring like so much cat. Once near Quebec, ten, fifteen miles, prob'ly, my fader saw one spring forty feet from tree to groun'.» Even before striking into the woods we had once heard, or fancied that we heard, the howling of wolves at night; and we had heard also from lumbermen their traditions of the Indian devil, but we had been guaranteed against real danger. However, Baptiste's large stories had still the zest of novelty. "An' when I was ver' little boy my fader

saw-)

But here the exigencies of wood-chopping

interfered, and the wiry little blue-shirted Canadian was then at his best; namely, silent. «Where is your family, Baptiste?» asked Martha, when the walk was resumed. <«< He at Quebec, mees.»

«Have you a large family of children? » «No, no; no more as twelve, prob❜ly thirteen. Ah a'n't been got home these four months; don't know ex-act. My sister-she widow, four, five children-she in house, too, till she goin' get married. I know a man in Quebec he twenty-seven child of twentyseven child. Large family pretty well, a'n't it?» "Yes," said Martha, with an American. shudder.

Meanwhile at the forward end of the line Bert kept his route and his silence, answering Mrs. Willis's liveliest sallies with «Yes, 'm» and «No, 'm.» When we stopped for an occasional rest Martha still listened to Baptiste, but I saw her covertly sketching Bert Somers.

What a delight it had been, after that first laborious day, to come down into the valley where Bert had already, during our previous halt, got a great fire burning noisily! What a delight it was to assist in pitching the tents, open on one side to the flame; to learn how to make a luxurious couch of hemlock boughs; to take our first meal of pork and hard bread with trout caught near by (Bert again); then to sleep with our feet to the fire; drowsily to look upward as the fire waned, when we could see the keen stars looking down on us; and then, as Bert or Baptiste rolled great tree-trunks on the fire, to see the illumination fill all the air and the stars vanish! In the Adirondacks, where you sleep in closed tents, or did in those days, -there is no such delight as this; but in the boundless woods of Maine the tent is uniformly open on one side, and there is on earth no more luxurious slumber. The forest is so damp, moreover, that there is no fear of the fire's spreading, and the guides do not feel obliged, except in the very driest seasons, to put it out when they move on.

In the morning, as the mists cleared, the mountain we were nearing would sometimes come out as distinct as Vesuvius, and would look like that, volcanic in form. It stood magnificent and lonely in a sea of woods; it was square and jagged at the top, while a projecting shoulder on one side gave us a glimpse of its terrible basin or crater, the bare cliffs of which, one thousand feet high, we could see without a glass. The white slides were barer and nearer, and at the foot of one of them Bert pointed out the next night's camp

ing-ground. After all we had heard of the perpetual clouds and storms which were said to veil this mystic mountain home of the Indian Pomola, it seemed strange to see it so clear and unforbidding now. Moreover, which was for the moment more important, we had caught more than a hundred trout and other fish the night before for supper, and still had a supply to take with us. Also, we had camped in a moose path, and had heard the steady tread of a moose as it came down to drink from the lake. Life seemed that morning to be very full.

After a day or two Bert had quietly formed his opinion of the company, and had relaxed a little. All the ladies visibly took to him, except, perhaps, Martha, who rather laughed at him, as, indeed, she did at everybody, especially at the rather awkward woodland feats of her less experienced comrades. Of Baptiste and his legends she never tired, but sometimes attempted the art of suppression, which was, in truth, often needed. In general his squirrel chatter went on undisturbed.

«Prob❜ly, Mees Mart',» he would say, "you never saw more ol' man as my fader, prob'ly fifty, sixty. He ver' strong, almost strong as me. One time in Quebec, in freshet, when everybody was 'fraid but my fader and me-->>

<< Is that a rabbit under that log?» Martha would ask serenely, and avert the flood. But on the occasions, now growing more frequent, when Bert Somers would be tempted into story-telling, she would draw near, look upward with her clear blue eyes, and hint to the intrepid Mrs. Willis to ask for another. Nevertheless it was rather a surprise when, one evening, after the ladies' tent was pitched and the hemlock bedding spread, an incomprehensible little block of neatly carved wood was carefully laid on it, marked in pencil «Marthy's pillow.» Then it was remembered that the young lady had expressed, in Somers's hearing the day before, a devout wish for some such Japanese contrivance.

"I wish,» she had said sleepily, «that when they put me in my little bed they would provide something for me to rest my head upon besides shawls that slip away and pineneedles that get into my hair.»

It was remembered that the other ladies had expressed similar longings, but only «Marthy » got the wooden pillow.

Moreover, in the evening glees it was Martha's sweet soprano that Bert accompanied; and it gradually became the habit, when an extra rest was desired, or a partridge by way of dinner, to hint to Martha to suggest it to him. They seemed to talk a good deal

also, and he told her much about his sister; Martha was a sympathetic and domestic girl. So it had come to pass, in going down the mountain, the order of march was changed; and Baptiste was sent to the head, perhaps lest his favorite wolves and lynxes should cut off our retreat, while Somers brought up the rear, and sometimes lagged a little-at least when Martha became footsore after the long tramp, as, indeed, it was not strange that she did. Accordingly, on the last day, when they were to return through easy paths in the forest, it was not surprising if the whole party straggled, and if my last glimpse was of Martha with Bert at her side, he carrying frequent wreaths of fragrant Linnæa which he had gathered at her asking.

The sight recalled to me a remark which Mrs. Willis had one day made. It was drizzly weather, and she had still over her shoulders my great waterproof, which drooped about her slim figure.

« A misfit,» I said idly.

«Yes,» she said, «and not the only one in this forest.» And she glanced demurely forward, where Martha had perched herself upon the low crotch of a tree, and Bert leaned upon his ax looking up at her.

«These young hearts-» I began. «Nonsense!» she said; «You know better. Mere propinquity-the accident of a daythe misery of a lifetime.»>

«But surely, I said, «in this republican country->>

«I have been through it before,» she interrupted. «Did not my nephew Arthur, at Isle au Haut, fall in love with his skipper's daughter?» Was she pretty? »

«That was the theory. As she would have said, I presume likely.>>>

« What happened?»

«They have lived,» she continued, «on a clearing near Puget Sound. He had been the first marshal of his class at Harvard.» «Are they happy?»

a

«I presume likely.>»

"Ah, well, I said, "it is only a matter of few days, and at any rate nothing can be done about it.»

« Ah?» she said, and we moved on again. She said it with an air of placid impertinence that was, on the whole, rather becoming to her, but was apt to mean something like defiance. At any rate, I found myself, after a little meditation, inclined to recur to the subject.

«It never seems to be quite settled,» I remarked, «whether you or I ought to be at the head of this little picnic of ours.»>

«Is n't it?» she said. «I thought it was.» And on reflection I thought so too.

It is worth mentioning that, as Bert and Martha paired off together, Mrs. Willis addicted herself more and more to Jean Baptiste. She was fond of French dialects, soon picked up his patois, and encouraged him to go on more and more with his interminable yarns. She delighted by skilful flattery to build up from day to day the number of branches in a deer's horns or the weight of a salmon, in his tales, as a fancier educates certain attributes in a breed of dogs or pigeons. He, on his part, did so many good turns for her that I saw her, just before we parted that last day, give him some money. <<This, I said, is contrary to our agreement; I was to be sole treasurer.»

«La femme le veut,» she cried, and went off down the path with the others, waving a great sheaf of goldenrod over her head.

Thus it came about, to return to the beginning of my story, that Baptiste and I pushed off by ourselves that day. We struck the rapids almost at once, and my garrulous little comrade, in his faded blue shirt, was transformed instantly to a hero in that bow of a boat where he claimed, with bold emphasis, to have been born. The water, hitherto brown with the mellow tint of ages of submerged foliage, took on a wine-black and a glittering white as it swirled round dark rocks. Again and again the bateau was flung against those rocks with force that seemed resistless, when Baptiste sprang with his spiked pole and shoved it off, the peculiar structure of the boat helping him, since it drew no depth of water save at one narrow point amidships. I, meanwhile, in the stern, had only to guard the recoil of the bateau and keep it from the rocks as the bow moved. Sometimes I was almost jerked out of it, but gained more and more confidence as we went on. It was like standing on the back of a spirited horse. At other times we floated peacefully along through miles of smooth water, the shallows sometimes spreading into vast aquatic gardens of buck-bean in full blossom.

We stopped only once that day, for lunch, at a cold spring near the brook; and while I gladly took a delicious nap on pine-needles, Baptiste went a mile inland to Somers's house, coming back with a watermelon and a rather clumsy brown-paper parcel, which he tucked away among the packs in the bateau, offering no explanation, and so full of his chatter that he put all questions out of my head. When we reached the landing

he gathered up a pile of our belongings,. including the unexplained parcel (we had eaten the watermelon), and made his way up to Henderson's, which was perhaps half a mile off. I remained with the rest of the luggage, rather impatiently, for it seemed as exciting to get back to civilization as to leave it, and when he came we both proceeded to load ourselves with what was left. Making several pauses by the way, as the packs showed a great propensity to fall apart, we reached Henderson's door at last. Entering, we found a merry party gathered in the great, dimly lighted kitchen, and hardly recognized our rather dilapidated crew in the novel freshness of collar and cuffs. «Come in,>> said Mrs. Willis, cheerily; «why did it take you so long? Let me introduce you to two additions to our party-Mr. Lucas and Mr. Somers.>>

George Lucas was an old acquaintance. from Salem, Massachusetts; a quiet, steady fellow, a second cousin of Martha's, and reported to be an admirer, he had come all this distance to meet her and escort her home. He was modest and unobtrusive, with no very salient traits; what one would dismiss as «gentlemanly» in appearance; scrupulously well dressed, but not too well; essentially manly, yet not original or imaginative. But who was this exceedingly raw recruit whom he had brought with him? «Mr. Somers»? What Somers? We saw before us what seemed an overgrown, awkward youth in a suit of black broadcloth, wrinkled across the shoulders, hanging lankly at the sides, bulging at the knees, too short at elbows and ankles. He was burned to a brick color; his ears and hands seemed unnecessarily large. He rose from his chair, overturning it as he rose, and smiled. Suddenly it flashed upon me, in utter desolation, that this luckless wight was Bert.

The figure that had looked so manly in the forest was cramped and impoverished in this disguise; the fine bearing was gone; even the freedom, and almost the self-respect. Delilah had bound Samson (and this time unconsciously) in the green withes of «store clothes.» Never again would Martha see the picturesque woodman who had charmed her fancy-if charmed indeed it was-in his red shirt, with ax on shoulder. If Bert's most malicious enemy had conceived a project for Martha's disenchantment, surely it could have been no better done. Red-shirted he was a hero; well dressed, as he fondly deemed, he was so ill dressed that his case became absolutely hopeless. What could have put it into his head? Where did he get his clothes?

Surely he did not keep a suit of genteel disguise in every farm-house in Penobscot county; certainly they were not in his pack; besides, his pack was on my back just the moment before.

It seemed absolutely wicked, it seemed a satire upon humanity, that all the qualities of essential manhood should be merged for a moment in the miserable standard of presentable or unpresentable. And there was Martha listening, all cousinly smiles, to George Lucas, and hearing his store of gossip about Aunt Henrietta and Cousin Charlotte, and reading home letters with happy face-as remote from the free girl who had tramped through the forest as were our partridges and trout in the barn from the happy living creatures they had once been. As Lucas and I went out to the barn after tea to see our small spoils in the way of game (how good that first indoor meal had been, to be sure, and how delicious to come back to potatoes and «riz bread »!) I was struck with the cruel advantage that the cultivated man has, after all, in the way of adaptation. Lucas was not out of place among the hunters and the guides; he proved, when tested, to be a better shot than any of them, and when bantered on his smaller size showed them one or two gymnasium feats in the way of raising himself by one bent arm to a pole, or hanging from it by the back of his head, things which none of them could accomplish. Bert Somers, meanwhile, though too manly to be sulky, was too human to be altogether happy. We had a gay evening, as people always do on arrival from a woodland tramp, and danced Virginia reels to the music made by the man of all

work at Henderson's, who sang, «The Girl I left behind Me,» and drummed an accompaniment on a tin dust-pan. But I could never once lay aside the sad impression made by Bert's fatal miscalculation. I was, like all truly sympathetic souls, a match-maker by nature; and yet I had not raised a finger to promote his little romance, if romance it was. Perhaps I should not have dared any such interference; but now that it had perished, and by means so simple, I was almost ready to mourn over the outcome.

Next morning as we drove away amid general cheers, Martha and the rest waving back their handkerchiefs, I saw Bert turn wearily to do up with sorrowful fingers a brown-paper parcel.

Suddenly the whole thing flashed upon me. The whole plot, if plot it was, had been skilfully concocted by a tco remorseless chaperon, appealing to the honest ambition of an inexperienced youth, who would fain show himself for once at least in social splendor to the object of his dreams. What an outrage and what success! That infamous brownpaper parcel! Could I have known what was in it, I would have thrown it into the stream, even if the fatal garments it contained had poisoned every fish in the Mattawamkeag.

Years have passed since then. By a curious coincidence, Bert Somers and George Lucas both fell at Gettysburg, the one as major of a Maine regiment, the other as aide-de-camp to a general. Mrs. Lucas still wore her widow's weeds when I saw her last. And when I once ventured to tax Mrs. Willis as having planned with deliberate intent the ruin of the littlewoodland idyl, she only answered, "I presume likely.»>

HE Mons Vaticanus is sometimes said to have received its name from Vaticinium, an oracle or prophecy; for tradition says that Numa chose the Vatican hill as a sacred place from which to declare to the people the messages he received from the gods. It is not, however, one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built, but forms a part of the ridge beginning with the Janiculus and ending with Monte Mario, all of which was outside the ancient limits of the city. In our day the name is applied only to the immense pontifical palace adjacent to, and connected with, the basilica of St. Peter's.

The present existence of this palace is principally due to Nicholas V, the builder pope, whose gigantic scheme would startle a modern architect. His plan was to build the church of St. Peter's as a starting-point, and then to construct one vast central «habitat» for the papal administration, covering the whole of what is called the Borgo, from the castle of Sant' Angelo to the cathedral. In ancient times a portico, or covered way supported on columns, led from the bridge to the church, and it was probably from this real structure that Nicholas began his imaginary one, only a small part of which was ever completed. That small portion alone comprises the basilica and the Vatican Palace, which together form by far the greatest continuous mass of buildings in the world. The Colosseum is 195 yards long by 156 broad, including the thickness of the walls. St. Peter's Church alone is 205 yards long and 156 broad, so that the whole Colosseum would easily stand upon the ground-plan of the church, while the Vatican Palace is more than half as large again.

Nicholas V died in 1455, and, the oldest parts of the present Vatican Palace are not

older than his reign. They are generally known as the Torre Borgia, from having been inhabited by Alexander VI, who died of poison in the third of the rooms now occupied by the library, counting from the library side. The windows of these rooms look upon the large square court of the Belvedere, and that part of the palace is not visible from without.

Portions of the substructure of the earlier building were no doubt utilized by Nicholas, and the secret gallery which connects the Vatican with the mausoleum of Hadrian is generally attributed to Pope John XXIII, who died in 1417; but on the whole it may be said that the Vatican Palace is originally a building of the period of the Renaissance, to which all successive popes have made additions.

The ordinary tourist first sees the Vatican from the square as he approaches from the bridge of Sant' Angelo. But his attention is from the first drawn to the front of the church, and he but vaguely realizes that a lofty, unsymmetrical building rises on his right. He pauses, perhaps, and looks in that direction as he ascends the long, low steps of the basilica, and wonders in what part of the palace the Pope's apartments may be, while the itinerant vender of photographs shakes yards of poor little views out of their gaudy red bindings, very much as Leporello unrolls the list of Don Giovanni's conquests. If the picture peddler sees that the stranger glances up at the Vatican, he forthwith points out the corner windows of the second story, and informs his victim that «Sua Santità» inhabits those rooms, and promptly offers photographs of any other part of the Vatican but that. The tourist looks up curiously, and finally gets rid of the vender by buying what he does not want, with the charitable intention of giving it to some dear, but tiresome, relative at home. And ever afterward, perhaps, he associates with his first impression of the Vatican the eager, cunning, scapegrace features of the man who sold him the photographs.

the mind, one must climb to the top of the To fix a general scheme of the buildings in dome of the church, and look down from

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