Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1861-02-08
MISCELLANY Y.
Circumstance.

=
with sick neighbor,--those eastern wilds
of Maine in that epoch frequently making
neighbors and miles synonymous,-and SO
busy had she been with care and sympathy
that she did not at first observe the ap-
preaching night. But finally the level rays,
reddening the snow. threw their gleam upon
the wall, and, hastily donning cloak and
hood, she babe her friends farewell and sal
lied forth on her return. Home lay some
three miles distant, across copse, mead
ow, and piece Of woods,-the woods being
a fringe on the skirts of the great forests
that stretch far away into the North. That
home was one of dozen Lighthouses lying
a few furlongs apart from oach other, with
their half-cleared demesnes separating them
at the rear from wilderness untrodden
save by stealthy native or deadly panther
tribes.
/ She was in nowise exalted frame of
spirit,--on the contrary, rather depressed
by the pain she had witnessed and the fa-
tigue she had endured but in certain tenn
peraments such a condition throws open the
mental pores, SO 10 speak, and renders one
receptive of every influence. Through the
little copse she walked slowly, with her
cloak folded about her, lingering to imbibe
the sense of shelter, the sunset filtered in
purple through the mist of woven spray
and twig, the companionship of growth not
sufficiently dense to band against her the
sweet home-feeling of young and tender
wintry wood. II was therefore just on the
edge of the evening that she emerged from
the place and began to cross the meadow
land. AT one hand lay the forest to which
her path wound; at the other the evening
star hung over tide of failing orange that
slowly slipped down the earth's broad side
to sadden other hemispheres with sweet re-
gret. Walking rapidly now, and with her
eyes wde-open, she distinctly saw in the air
before her what was not there moment
ghastly, waved by the likeness of four wan
hands,-that rose with long initiation and
fell in rigid folds, while a voice, shaping
itself from the holowness above, spectral
and melancholy, sighed -" The Lord have
mercy on The people! The Lord have
mercy on the people!" Three times the
sheet with its eorpse-coverrng outline waved
beneath the pale hands, and the voice, aw-
full in its solemn and mysterious Depth sigh.
ed, .The Lord have mercy on the people =
Then all was gone, the place was cleai
again, the gray sky was obstructed by nc
deathIy blot she looked about her, shook
her shoulders decidedly, and pulling on hel
hood, went forward once more.
She might have been little frightened
by such an apparition, if she had led life
of less reality than frontier settlers ale ap
to lead; but dealing with hard fact doe;
not engender fiimsy habit of mind. ant
this woman was too sincere and earnest II
her character, and too happy in her situa
ton, TO be thrown by antagonism merely
upon superstitious fancies and chimeras o
the second-sight She did not even believe
herself subject to an hallunication, bu
: smiled simply, a little vexed that her though
e could have framed such glamour from tn
days occurrences, and not sorry to lit th'
boush of the warder of the woods and en-
ter and disappear in their sombre path.
she had been imaginative. she would hav'
hesitated at her first step into regio'
whose dangers were not visionary; but
suppose the thought of little child a
home would conquer that propensity in th
most habituated. So biting bit of spic,
birch, she went along Now and then sh
came to gap where the trees had beel
it partially felled, and here she found that tn
: lingering twilight was explained by that pc
s s culiar and perhaps electric film which some
+ + times sheathes the sky in diffused light TO
q very many hours before brilliant aurora
: Suddenly, swift shadow, like the fabulou
f fying-dragon, wriihed through the air be
'e fore her, and she felt herself Instant,
y seized and borne aloft. 1t was that wilt
. beast--the most savage and serpentine ant
il subtle and fearless of our latitudes-knowl
r by hunters as the Indian Devil, and he he'll
Il her in his clutches on the broad floor OF
!, swinging fir-bough. His long sharp claw
!, were caught in her clothing, he worrie'
r them sagaciously little, then, finding tina
I Intellectual to free them, he commenced
4 licking her bare white arm with his raspin;
e tongue and pouring over her the wild
: streams of his hot, fetid breath. So quicl
'e had this flashing action been that the wo
Il man had had no time for alarm moreover
: she was not of the screaming kind bu
$ now, as she felt him endeavoring TO olsen
: tansle his claws, and the horrid sense Q
II her fate smote her, and she saw instructive
J. ly the fierce plunge of those weapons, tn
/ long strips of living desh torn from he
h bones, the agony, the quiyerine disgust, itsel
" worse agony,-while by her side, an'
= holding her in his great 1.-THE embrace, tn