and 'specially to them twenty-five men ez elected me over Boggs! I ain't goin' to let ye pass. I've been on this yer hunt, up and down this cañon, all night. Hevin' no possy, I reckon I've got to die yer in my tracks. All right! But ye'll git into thet wagon over my dead body, Jack,— over my dead body, sure."

Even as he spoke these words he straightened himself to his full height,-which was not much, I fear, and steadied himself by the tree, his weapon still advanced and pointing at Gabriel, but with such an evident and hopeless contrast between his determination and his evident inability to execute it that his attitude impressed his audience less with his heroism than its half-pathetic absurdity.

Mr. Hamlin laughed. But even then he suddenly felt the grasp of Gabriel relax, found himself slipping to his companion's feet, and the next moment was deposited carefully but ignominiously on the ground by Gabriel, who strode quietly and composedly up to the muzzle of the sheriff's pistol.

"I am ready to go with ye, Mr. Hall," he said, gently, putting the pistol aside with a certain large, indifferent wave of the hand, " ready to go with ye,-now,—at onct! But I've one little favor to ax ye. This yer pore young man, ez yur wounded unbeknownst," he said, pointing to Hamlin, who was writhing and gritting his teeth in helpless rage and fury, "ez not to be tuk with me, nor for me! Thar ain't nothin' to be done to him. He hez been dragged inter this fight. But I'm ready to go with ye now, Mr. Hall, and am sorry you got into the troubil along o' me."

PRELUDE TO "AMONG THE HILLS."

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

[Whittier stands too high in the ranks of American poets to require more than a passing comment at our hands; and as a philanthropist and reformer he occupies as elevated a position before the American people. Of wholly estimable modern characters the "Quaker Poet" and Ralph Waldo Emerson may be named in connection, as men who stand at the high-tide mark of moral elevation. But, while Emerson dwelt to some extent in the clouds, and looked down on the world from afar, Whittier has always lived on the human level, with a heart overflowing with sympathy and touched by all the woes and wants of man. His best poems are all marked by deep feeling, while in poetic power they are often of the highest grade of merit. There is nowhere in poetry a more clean-cut and sharply-outlined word-picture than that of the "Life without an Atmosphere," in the poem given below. Whittier was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1808. His family belonged to the denomination of Friends, in which religious community he has always remained. He early identified himself with the anti-slavery party, edited a newspaper in its interest, and was one of the most earnest advocates of the cause, in favor of which many of his poems were written. His poems are nearly all of a lyrical character, and are instinct with the true spirit of the lyric.]

ALONG the road-side, like the flowers of gold
The tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers
Hang motionless upon their upright staves.
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,
Wing-weary with its long flight from the south,
Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,
Confesses it. The locust by the wall
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.
A single hay-cart down the dusty road

Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill,
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,
The sheep show white, as if a snow-drift still
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door
A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope,
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette-
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends
To the pervading symphony of peace.

No time is this for hands long overworn
To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise
Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain

Of years that did the work of centuries

Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more

Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters

Make glad their nooning underneath the elms
With tale and riddle and old snatch of song,

I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn.

The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,

And human life, as quiet, at their feet.

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son,

Proud of field-lore and harvest-craft, and feeling
All their fine possibilities, how rich
And restful even poverty and toil

Become when beauty, harmony, and love

Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat

At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man
Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock
The symbol of a Christian chivalry

Tender and just and generous to her

Who clothes with grace all duty,—still, I know

Too well the picture has another side,—
How wearily the grind of toil goes on
Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear
And heart are starved amidst the plenitude
Of nature, and how hard and colorless
Is life without an atmosphere. I look
Across the lapse of half a century,

And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower
Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds,
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock, in the place
Of the sweet door-way greeting of the rose
And honeysuckle, where the house-walls seemed
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine

To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves
Across the curtainless windows from whose panes
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness;
Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed
(Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless
Save the inevitable sampler hung

Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,

A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath
Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth
Bristling with faded pine boughs half concealing
The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back;
And, in sad keeping with all things about them,
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men,
Untidy, loveless, old before their time,
With scarce a human interest save their own
Monotonous round of small economies,
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood;
Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed,
Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet;

For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink
Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves;
For them in vain October's holocaust

Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills,
The sacramental mystery of the woods;
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,
But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent,
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls
And winter pork with the least possible outlay
Of salt and sanctity; in daily life
Showing as little actual comprehension
Of Christian charity and love and duty
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been

Outdated like a last year's almanac :
Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields,
And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless,
The veriest straggler limping on his rounds,
The sun and air his sole inheritance,
Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes,
And hugged his rags in self-complacency!

Not such should be the homesteads of a land
Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state,
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make
His hours of leisure richer than a life
Of fourscore to the barons of old time.
Our yeoman should be equal to his home
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple-walled,
A man to match his mountains, not to creep
Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain
In this light way (of which I needs must own,
With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings,
"Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!")