The still, white features into rest, Silent and cold, without a breath

To stir the drapery on her breast Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang, The horror of the mortal pang,

The suffering look her brow had worn,
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone—
She slept at last in death!

"Oh, tell me, father, can the dead
Walk on the earth, and look on us,
And lay upon the living's head
Their blessing or their curse?
For, oh, last night she stood by me,
As I lay beneath the woodland tree!"

The Jesuit crosses himself in awe“Jesu! what was it my daughter saw ?”

"She came to me last night.

The dried leaves did not feel her tread; She stood by me in the wan moonlight, In the white robes of the dead!

Pale, and very mournfully

She bent her light form over me.

I heard no sound, I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death:
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days-
A sadness in their quiet glare,

As if love's smile were frozen there-
Came o'er me with an icy thrill;
Oh God! I feel its presence still!"

The Jesuit makes the holy sign-
"How passed the vision, daughter mine?

"All dimly in the wan moonshine,
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine,
And scatter, and melt into the light-
So scattering-melting on my sight,
The pale, cold vision passed;

But those sad eyes were fixed on mine
Mournfully to the last."

"God help thee, daughter, tell me why
That spirit passed before thine eye!"

"Father, I know not, save it be

That deeds of mine have summoned her
From the unbreathing sepulchre,
To leave her last rebuke with me.
Ah, woe for me! my mother died
Just at the moment when I stood
Close on the verge of womanhood,
A child in every thing beside;
And when my wild heart needed most
Her gentle counsels, they were lost.

"My father lived a stormy life,
Of frequent change and daily strife;
And-God forgive him! left his child
To feel, like him, a freedom wild;
To love the red man's dwelling place,
The birch boat on his shaded floods,
The wild excitement of the chase
Sweeping the ancient woods,
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore
Of the still lakes, the clear stream, where
The idle fisher sets his wear,

Or angles in the shade, far more
Than that restraining awe I felt
Beneath my gentle mother's care,
When nightly at her knee I knelt,
With childhood's simple prayer.

"There came a change. The wild, glad mood Of unchecked freedom passed.

Amid the ancient solitude

Of unshorn grass and waving wood,

And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in my ear,
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
Now far and faint, now full and near-
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.
A manly form was ever nigh,

A bold, free hunter, with an eye

Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake Both fear and love-to awe and charm; 'Twas as the wizard rattlesnake, Whose evil glances lure to harm— Whose cold and small and glittering eye, And brilliant coil, and changing dye, Draw, step by step, the gazer near, With drooping wing and cry of fear, Yet powerless all to turn away, A conscious, but a willing prey!

Fear, doubt, thought, life itself, ere long
Merged in one feeling deep and strong.
Faded the world which I had known,
A poor vain shadow, cold and waste,
In the warm present bliss alone

Seemed I of actual life to taste.
Fond longings dimly understood,
The glow of passion's quickening blood,
And cherished fantasies which press
The young lip with a dream's caress,-
The heart's forecast and prophecy
Took form and life before my eye,
Seen in the glance which met my own,
Heard in the soft and pleading tone,
Felt in the arms around me cast,
And warm heart-pulses beating fast.
Ah! scarcely yet to God above

With deeper trust, with stronger love
Has prayerful saint his meek heart lent,
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent,
Than I, before a human shrine,

As mortal and as frail as mine,

With heart, and soul, and mind, and form,
Knelt madly to a fellow worm.

"Full soon, upon that dream of sin,
An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold, at which I knelt
The idol of that shrine was gone;
A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Outcast, and spurned and lone,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning brain,
And tears that fell like fiery rain,

I passed a fearful time.

"There came a voice-it checked the tear-
In heart and soul it wrought a change;—
My father's voice was in my ear;
It whispered of revenge!

A new and fiercer feeling swept
All lingering tenderness away;
And tiger passions, which had slept
In childhood's better day,
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length
In all their own demoniac strength.

"A youthful warrior of the wild,
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled,
Of crime the cheated instrument,
Upon our fatal errands went.

Through camp and town and wilderness
He tracked his victim; and, at last,
Just when the tide of hate had passed,
And milder thoughts came warm and fast,
Exulting, at my feet he cast

The bloody token of success.

"Oh God! with what an awful power
I saw the buried past uprise,
And gather, in a single hour,

Its ghost-like memories!

And then I felt-alas! too late-
That underneath the mask of hate,

That shame and guilt and wrong had thrown
O'er feelings which they might not own,

The heart's wild love had known no change;
And still, that deep and hidden love,
With its first fondness, wept above
The victim of its own revenge!
There lay the fearful scalp, and there
The blood was on its pale brown hair!
I thought not of the victim's scorn,
I thought not of his baleful guile,
My deadly wrong, my outcast name,
The characters of sin and shame
On heart and forehead drawn ;

I only saw that victim's smile-
The still, green places where we met—
The moon-lit branches, dewy wet;

I only felt, I only heard

The greeting and the parting word

The smile the embrace-the tone, which made An Eden of the forest shade.

"And oh, with what a loathing eye,
With what a deadly hate, and deep,
I saw that Indian murderer lie

Before me, in his drunken sleep!
What though for me the deed was done,
And words of mine had sped him on !
Yet when he murmured, as he slept,
The horrors of that deed of blood,
The tide of utter madness swept
O'er brain and bosom, like a flood.
And, father, with this hand of mine "

"Ha! what didst thou?" the Jesuit cries,