years since I first beheld the light of day. I was born in a wigwam-my father was a Canadian fur trader, my mother an Indian."

At these words both Isabel and myself gave an involuntary start, which could not escape his notice.

"Yes," he continued, "the blood of the red man, the first possessor of the soil, runs in my veins, and I am prouder of that title to native nobility, than if, like my gentle bride, I could trace my descent from one of the great Norman robbers. My father sent me to Paris for my education, but I soon wearied of books and sought to study men. A life of adventure such as rarely falls to the lot of an individual in modern times has been mine. I married when scarcely more than a mere boy, and my wife and son lived in luxury and splendour on a rich estate in one of the West India islands, while I- -no matter; this is not the time to speak of my course of life. My wife and son are both gone to a better world; I am now a lone and solitary man, but there is a debt due me which you, my gentle bride, must pay." His eye glared fiercely upon her as he spoke, but when Isabel raised her tearful eyes to his face, he banished all trace of his emotion as by a single effort, and with the sweet looks and honied words of lover-like blandishments, sought to soothe her troubled feelings. "Now tell me, Isabel," said he, after a pause, 66 are you still willing to wed the stranger, with the taint of Indian blood in his veins, and, for aught you know, the stamp of Cain upon his brow?"

"Walter Morton," replied Isabel, solemnly, as she stooped her lips to his broad forehead, "if the brand of Cain were written upon that brow in characters of blood, I would not believe your crimes had stamped it there."

For a moment Morton seemed touched and softened.

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"Come, my Isabel," said Tell me of your early

he, we are growing too serious; let us seek a gayer theme.

days; did you never meet with one whom you once loved even as you now love Walter Morton ?"

"Never."

"If this little cabinet of yours could be unsealed, Isabel, would it not tell some tales of lovers' yows!" asked Morton, as he laid his hand on her writing-desk.

"Look for yourself, Walter," said Isabel smiling, as she touched a spring and opened the desk.

Glad that the conversation had taken a gayer turn, I placed the cabinet on the table, and insisted that Isabel should examine and burn her love-tokens in the presence of her lover. With a gay laugh she consented, and as we tossed over many a letter which contained the genuine outpourings of affection, Isabel sketched many an amusing picture of the writers. We had already given many to the flames, when Colonel Morton took up a bundle of papers, tied together and labelled "Poetry." They were the verses of the unfortunate Ernest Leclerc, and fearing lest the painful story should be revived, I hurriedly threw them into Isabel's lap, but not before Morton had seen the handwriting. As Isabel flung them into the blazing pile Morton darted forward and snatched them from the flames. Seriously alarmed and vexed, Isabel strove to obtain them, but he was as resolute in retaining possession, until, dreading to excite his curiosity by her apparent desire to conceal them, Isabel promised to read them aloud if he would return them. Morton accordingly placed the scorched papers upon the table, and Isabel, drawing one from the parcel, commenced reading. But anxious to disarm Colonel Morton of any suspicions to which her anxiety to secure the papers might have given rise, she paused and drew a most ludicrous picture of her poetical lover. She depicted his timidity, his awkwardness, his exaggerated sentiment, his morbid sensibility; and while reading the poem, which happened to be his lament for his mother, she mimicked his nervous gestures and peculiar tone of voice. Shocked at her cruel mockery of the dead, I had not thought of Colonel Morton, but when I looked towards him, the expression of his countenance was almost demoniacal. Putting his handkerchief to his lip, which was bleeding profusely, for he had almost bitten it through, he pleaded sudden illness and withdrew, but the papers disappeared with him.

On the night appointed for the wedding a large and brilliant party was assembled. The apartments were decorated in a style of unparalleled magnificence, and everything displayed the union of wealth and taste. The clergyman who was to officiate on the occasion was already in waiting,--the bride and bridesmaids were attired in their costly array, the groomsmen had joined us in the ante-room, and nothing was wanting to complete the arrangements but the presence of the bridegroom. The hour appointed for the marriage was seven o'clock, but minute after minute passed, and still Colonel Morton did not appear. Eight o'clock came, and then the grooms

men sprang into a carriage and set off in search of him, while the minds of all present were filled with the most painful apprehensions. Isabel was almost wild with terror. Illness or death she deemed would alone detain him, and she sate with clasped hands and dilated eyes listening to every footfall. At length a carriage was heard driving at full speed to the door, and the next moment Colonel Morton entered the apartment. Overcome by her agitation, Isabel sprang forward and threw herself into his arms. Disengaging himself from her he led her to a seat, and while we stood in speechless wonder, he walked to the door and locked it; then, returning to his trembling bride, he looked down upon her with an expression Í shall never forget, as he exclaimed, "Isabel Athelstan, my revenge is complete !You love me even now you would forgive the shame I have put upon you, and wed your laggard lover. Yes, my debt is paid, and I leave to a life of lingering wretchedness her who doomed to the grave of a suicide my beloved son! Listen to me!" continued he, as with a wild cry Isabel started from her seat-"woman, listen to me! He whom your cruelty murdered was my son, the offspring of the only pure affection that ever filled my heart, the child of my love,-worshipped even as was his mother in the midst of crime. From the pollutions of my own dark life I rescued them. They never knew whence came the wealth which afforded them luxuries for which princes might seek in vain; they knew not why the husband and father left so oft his home of peace and splendour. My wife perished beneath the blighting touch of disease, and I laid her in the grave sadly but uncomplaining; but when my son was stricken down in the midst of his young hopes, I swore to be revenged on his murderess. Isabel, I could have pitied you-had you shown one womanly feeling or pitying tenderness towards his memory, I could have pitied you; but no! you mocked him whom you had slain ! Now go-and tell yon brilliant assemblage that Isabel Athelstan, the proud, beautiful, the high-born Isabel Athelstan, plighted her faith to Antoine Leclerc, the buccanier !—and was spurned like a reptile from his path!"

As he uttered these fearful words he strode away, and ere our cries could summon assistance he had made good his retreat. The whole house was, of course, a scene of confusion. Isabel was in strong hysterics, and we were too much overcome by the shock we had received to use much discretion in our details of the catastrophe. Before the next morning the whole town rung with the tale, and while Isabel lay between life and death, the story of her unprincipled coquetry and its fearful retribution was in the mouth of every one.

Colonel Morton, or rather Captain Leclerc, was never again seen in New York, but his black flag was long the terror of West India traders, and many an illfated ship vanished in flame from the waters over which his blood-stained bark careered.

What became of Isabel? you ask. She never again appeared in society. Bowed down by shame and sorrow, outraged in her pride as well as her affections, she took refuge in a distant country town, and in strict retirement endeavoured to conceal her disgrace. But it was not until time had destroyed her matchless beauty, and raised up another generation, to whom the events of her youth were but as legends of olden days, that she could feel herself free from the brand which stamped her fair brow with shame, or forget the blight which had fallen upon her young heart.

Brooklyn, L. I.

THE VILLAGE BLACK-LEG.
A Fragment.

BY A. L. STIMSON.

After a ride of fifty miles through piney woods, the stage stopped to change horses at one of those inns of which there are so many in Georgia, and which, with the exception of a flaming sign-board, swinging high aloft, so far in front of the house as to render the connection somewhat dubious, bear as much resemblance to an English inn as to the man in the moon. It was a building nearly new, two stories high, comfortable enough perhaps for ordinary purposes, but with an unpainted clap-board front, the sameness of which was only broken by three or four blindless

and shutterless windows of very economical dimensions, rude and unornamented, and glazed with glass which, when looked through, was as apt to represent the person looked at with his head under his elbow as any way. At the corner, opening above a step composed of a single log, was a door severely plain in its appearance and in no-wise relieving the naked and cheerless aspect of the outside. Had there been a tree or two in front, or some plants in the windows, or present even a few hangers-on, so common to most taverns, Henry could have endured it; but with not a thing to relieve the eye except the garish sign-post, he could only hope to find something more cheerful in-doors.

The bar-room, which served also as travellers'-room, was rather small, and from its every side-floor, walls, and ceiling-clean, plain, red-pine stared him in the face. Even the bar, which rose with an unbroken front as high as a common man's chin and thence was continued (when temporarily closed, as was now the case) by slats, to the ceiling, was composed of the same material. Three or four of the plainest kind of high-backed, white-oak chairs were disposed stiffly about the apartment; a small toyish looking-glass was the only show of ornament, and a little fire was burning in a very large fire-place. As Henry entered this most unsociable and cheerless of all bar-rooms, he was greeted with a familiar nod from a dapper little man, whom at a glance he had noticed hastily adjusting a pair of frowsy yellow ear-locks under the greasy brim of a sugar-loaf shaped hat, once genteel perhaps, but now broken and discoloured. This gentleman, (who might be thirty or thereabouts,) so far from being superannuated like his venerable castor, communicated to it something of his own juvenile spirit, and it really had a jaunty air-something of the Beau Shatterly order, though, as it inclined over his right eye, and on the bridge of a nose which, in itself, without taking into account the vivacious co-operation of a twain of little, twinkling, speculative, grey eyes, was the very embodiment of pertness. It was not large, it was even squab, but it possessed character-more than its owner, it may be, for a blush mantled its slightly elevated terminus, occasioned, it is quite probable, by his too frequent potations of that kind of whiskey, better known in these parts as rot-gut. His chin turned upwards, too, but its inclination to soar was far less natural than that of the proboscis, it being artificially boosted by a high stock, the bristles of which displayed themselves in several places, in rivalry of the semi-circle of deep yellow whiskers above them. Neither collar nor shirt was apparent to the naked eye, and over the chunky breast (rather prone, like the periphery below, to corpulency) was buttoned what had been perhaps a fashionable black, broad-cloth, dress coat; and which still, despite its greasy collar, holey elbows, and distained whole, was not only buckish but (with the aid of three or four brass buttons of different patterns) even swellish in its ruin. Supplementary to this, was a pair of walnut-dyed cotton pantaloons, of much less aristocratic origin than the coat, but in much better repair; a fact which compensated in some measure for their extreme adhesiveness to the wearer's legs, threatening the vital circulation therein, and for being so brief that they barely reached an inch or two below the top of the boots,-which last, by the way, would have better answered for summer wear, being thoroughly ventilated on the sides.

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Light light, sir!" said this worthy, in the idiom of the country, and with a confident air intended to pass for bluff hospitality, at the same time rubbing his hands together nervously, and indicating a seat to Henry. Our friend disliked this familiarity, coming as it did from one of whose worthless character a single glance had acquainted him, but he made no comment and sat down in silence. These twain were at present the only occupants of the room, Henry being the only passenger, and the landlord and the driver being engaged in the stable.

After walking the floor uneasily for a minute or two, fondling the yellow locks, scanning his own figure now and then in the glass as he passed it, or glancing furtively at that of our friend, he stopped suddenly before the latter and said, with the rapid utterance and suavity which seemed peculiar to him,—

"Stranger, take a little brandy and water?"

Now notwithstanding that this question, in nine cases out of ten in which it might be put at random, would be considered anything but annoying, Henry did feel annoyed. In the first place he did not like the liberty which the man had taken, and lastly it rudely dissolved some dreamy castles then in process of erection in his imagination. His rejoinder was accordingly a little stern.

"Are you the landlord of this inn, sir?" said he, leaving the rebuke to be inferred. "No, stranger, no-I tried the civil, that's all !" replied the other in a manner in which there was a mixture of nonchalance and apology.

"Then I will not drink with you," was the quiet contemptuous rejoinder. In a moment after, the landlord entered, looking as much like a landlord as his house did like an inn, and with his domicile his cold, unassuming, unsociable demeanor tallied well. Like most tavern-keepers in this part of the country, so far from showing any of that obsequiousness so common to landlords out of the United States, he was the last man that would have been taken for the host by those unacquainted with him. It was enough for him, he thought, to sport a sign-post and denominate his house a hotel; for the rest, "his customers," -as he once said to a stranger who had rallied him on his deficiencies,-" must look out for themselves; this was a free land and he did'nt car to make himself a drudge for nobody; and if they did'nt like it, he'd jist as lives they'd lump it. He'd hams enough in his smoke-house, (in this country every man cures his own bacon,) chickings enough in his yard, and corn enough in his crib, and he did'nt ux not no favours never!"

Such was the man who, at Henry's request, sluggishly opened his cage-like bar, and made him a peach-brandy-toddy. Our friend had despatched his drink, and fallen once more to musing, and the gentleman in the walnut-dyed pants, and habit more pursy than his pockets, nothing daunted by his late repulse, was whistling snatches of Jim-along-Josey in an under key, walking restlessly to and fro, his hands when not employed on his hair, exciting each other as if on tenter-hooks, for the lack of something to do, and his face expressive of the pleasing consciousness that he could do many very clever things if he only had the opportunity, for which he was itching with the liveliest desire, when rather abruptly he ceased in his perambulation, and walking up to our friend, whose manner did anything but court such philanthropic attentions, he exclaimed with the air of one who felt that he was doing a deed devilish good-natured, and could'nt help feeling a little patronising on that account:

"Stranger, der yer want ter make four hunderd dorlars? cause if yer do, jist yer put up a hunderd dorlars forfut, an stay here all night, that's all; an I can put yer in the way of makin four hunderd dorlars."

Henry looked up to admire for a moment the fellow's impudence. That benevolent individual was posted close to him, directly in front; his aged castor located more jauntily than ever above the radiant earlocks, the upper part of his body inclining towards his auditor, its equilibrium gracefully maintained by his left leg, which was stuck out on an angle of forty-five degrees, as was also his left hand, on the palm of which were placed three of his dexter digits; the more forcibly to bring his hearer's fancy to the quadruple hundred of which he spoke. But his face-the eloquent persuasiveness of that, as, in response to the uninviting stare of Henry, the ambitious philanthropist repeated his proposition as if perfectly aware of its immensity, at the same time that he felt pleasingly and proudly assured he could fully substantiate his charitable position, was beyond description.

"Yes," said he, raising his right hand as he did so, and then replacing his fingers again very impressively upon the imaginary bank-notes in the hollow of his sinister paw, "if yer want ter make four hunderd dorlars, jist yer put up a hunderd dorlars forfut, and stay here all night, and I'll put yer in the way o' makin' four hunderd dorlars!" And he looked as if he thought that if the person whom he addressed could withstand that temptation, he was not the man he took him for, that's all. Nor was he, for seeing at once through the flimsy artifice of the Village Black-leg, (which was to detain him for the purpose of play,) Henry, laughing in his sleeve at the fellow's appearance and address, said to him in the same contemptuous tone which he had before used:

"Hang your confounded place! Stay here? You could'nt tempt me to stop here all night for four hundred dollars! It is more than the whole village is worth." "Never you mind !-if yer want to be put in the way of makin' four hunderd dorlars, jist you put up fif

دو

"Stage ready!" cried the driver, who after a delay of ten minutes in substituting fresh horses for the jaded ones, was now ready to start again; and leaving the pertinacious gambler to complete the proposition, solo, Henry sprang into the coach. Whip was mounting his box, and our friend was congratulating himself upon being released from the importunities of the little philanthropist, when the latter shouted, Stop, driver! I'll take a chance in that!" Accordingly, much to the chagrin of Henry, who felt that, being the only other occupant of the stage, he was exclusively the material to which the operations of the bore would for the present be confined, the man was admitted, and with an expression of the most congratulatory opinion of both himself and fellow-passenger, took a seat opposite him.

Henry wrapped himself retiringly in his cloak, and assumed an aspect which he thought best calculated to check the slightest communication from the other, who, on his part, for the lack of something more substantial to wrap his own person in, hugged himself in his own good-natured self-conceit, apparently with the liveliest satisfaction. In this way they had proceeded a mile or two and not a single word had been uttered by either, when Henry's co-traveller abruptly broke the icy silence :

"I am, prehaps," said he, "the greatest man to play a game at seven-up in all Scriven !”

Now this announcement of his superiority to all in his country, at this very popular game of cards, elsewhere known as Old Sledge, or all-fours, (a game of which to be ignorant, was in his opinion to be uncivilized,) was, he thought, an implied challenge to play, altogether too "tauntingly-temptatious,"-to use a phrase of his own, for the other to resist. To his surprise, his fellow-passenger evinced not the least indication, either for or against the claim which he had so tantalizingly advanced to so exalted a position above the "human" Scriven. By nature persevering, however, he repeated his bold assertion, but with no better effect than before. He whom he addressed said not a word, nor looked as if he intended to for sometime to come. His appearance usually stern, and now more so than ever, awed the adept at "seven-up," into a, to him, most unsatisfactory silence, and allowed our friend again to lose himself in thought. Though this was very pleasant to the dreamer, his companion took it as uneasily as a fish out of water. He fidgetted about, attempted several times to whistle his favourite "Jim-along-Josey," and as often let it die on his lips as soon as commenced, played with his ear-locks, brushed his hat affectionately with his coat-sleeve, fingered nervously something in his pocket, and at last after they had progressed another brace of miles without a word having been said, he broke silence again and brought back Henry's mind from its wool-gathering. The remark was not materially different from the one formerly made, but the man of Scriven did it with more deliberate emphasis than at first; at the same time bending, looking up to Henry's face, and raising his right hand a little and bringing it slowly and emphatically down upon the seat which intervened, while his voice, though bland, expressed, as indicated by his closed teeth, a deal of half-suppressed energy.

"Yes, I am, prehaps," (and he dwelt upon this qualification rather sarcastically,) "the greatest man, to play a game at seven-up-in all Scriven!" and he looked wistful for immediate opportunity to make good his assertion.

"Look here, my friend," said Henry, "if you are riding here to get me to play with you, you will be disappointed!"

The other's jaw fell a little. "But wont you play one game?" he cried coaxingly, "jist for enough to make it interestin'!" at the same time producing a pack of cards from the pocket in which he had been feeling so uneasily, and handling them in the playfully expert manner common to old players immediately preceding a game. "Once for all,-I will not play with you!" was the response.

"Only for a quarter!" (quarter-dollar,) cried the other, persuasively.

"Hallo, driver!" shouted Henry.

"What's the fracture?" asked that personage, as he pulled up.

"Put this man out!" was the brief and stern reply.

"Oh, I'll get out, if you wont play!" said the little man, with an air deprecating any violence, and "more in sorrow than in anger,"- "But wont you try a small game of seven-up ?-jist a small game !-'twont take long!-we can play it while he stops! -only for a quarter!" and the eccentric gambler dealt off the cards affectionately on to the seat in front of him,-eyeing them with a half-subdued enthusiasm which he wondered the other did not share. But our friend was inexorable, and the driver impatient, and consequently the village black-leg was bundled out rather unceremoniously, and left to retrace on foot his way three or four miles to the tavern, which he had left so unprofitably.

Laughing heartily at this incident, in a few moments after he had resumed his journey thus interrupted, our traveller had the curiosity to look after his quondam companion. His merriment was increased at discovering that individual seated by the roadside on a large flat rock, on which he was earnestly playing his cards, doubtless with some imaginary partner. At the commencement of a descent ten or twelve rods further on, the driver stopped to lock his wheels, and taking this occasion to look back again in the direction of the player, whose person was now hid from view by a bush, he saw an old negro driving from out a field of cotton near by, a team of