TWINKLE OF THE MOOSE'S EYE.

The red man came

The roaming hunter-tribes, warlike and fierce,
And the Mound-builders vanished from the earth.
All is gone;

All-save the piles of earth that hold their bones,
The platforms where they worshiped unknown gods,
The barriers which they builded from the soil
To keep the foe at bay-till o'er the walls
The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,

The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped
With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,

And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast.

Haply some solitary fugitive,

Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense

Of desolation and of fear became

Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.
Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind word
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors
Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose
A bride among their maidens.

BRYANT.

ANY centuries ago the tribe of Shawnee Indians,

Meceber of the
Μ

a member of the great nation of the Lenni-Lenape, were emigrating across the continent toward the Ocean of the Rising Sun. It was long before any paleface had ever trodden its western shores, or even ventured out on its trackless highways, and while yet the race of the Mound-builders still existed, unscared by these fierce hunter-tribes of the red Mongolians. This was the vanguard of that great ancient migration which swept them off the earth.

In that peerless valley which now immortalizes their name, the Miamis, their kindred, in a sacred and irrevocable alliance with them, had utterly extirpated the effeminate and fallen Mound-builders; and now their warriors were come to assist in the conquest of a certain noble and goodly valley, of which reports had brought them information. Luxurious, degenerate, and debased by an effete and horrible religion, the Mound-builders dwelt only in the valleys, which they had reddened with the blood of human sacrifices, while they had cowardly abandoned all the fortresses once maintained by them on the crowning summits. Beyond the river-ranges all the face of the earth was still somber with the ancient gloom of the forest, and penetrated only by the bear and the ferocious panther.

At length the Shawnee scouts announced their near approach to the valley. Leaving their squaws and papooses secreted in the recesses of the forest, they emerged cautiously upon the brow of a woody mountain, and looked down, with grim exultation, upon the valley which was theirs to conquer. Directly below them was one of those mysterious and ancient barrows which the Mound-builders elevate above their chieftains. The river here sweeps grandly around in a semicircle, and in the middle of this spacious plain they beheld a white-walled village, defended only by a feeble rampart of earth, crested with wooden palisades. In their indolent and pampered degeneracy, the Mound-builders of the east had ceased to fortify their cities with those imposing bulwarks of earth, the remains of which have lingered to this day in the valley of the Father of Waters.

All the inhabitants, for miles above and below, were gathering into this village in direful haste, for a messenger had just arrived with the heart-sickening tidings from

the Miami. As these fierce and cruel hordes stood and looked down with gleaming eyes upon their coming harvest of massacre, the smoke of burning habitations went up, and here and there a fleeing family were seen, with all their household goods in a wooden-wheeled cart, mothers and children crying as they went, over the ruin of their little homes, while the father goaded on his team of crooked-kneed, shaggy bisons.

The Shawnees gathered upon the brow of the mountain, and awaited the approach of sunset. As soon as the huge shadows of the mountains stretched full across the valley and commenced climbing the opposite side, they descended, and crouched in a gloomy ravine, until a scout, who had crawled to the summit of the barrow, brought word that all lights were extinguished in the village. Then their great prophet and medicine-man, with his drum, his snakeskin rattle, and his medicine-bag, advanced alone to the top of the sacred burial-mound, muttered a solemn invocation to the Most High God, took a magic arrow from his quiver, placed it in his good ashen bow, and sped it on a long and lofty flight through heaven toward the village. With an eager and a hungry motion the barbed arrow cleft the mellow air, slipping through the darkness on its curving course, until it reached its highest flight, when the heavens opened with an appalling glare, the arrow shone in a globe of white lightning, and terrifically the awful thunders roared in the valley. To the awe-stricken warriors, as the majestic figure of their prophet stood blackly out for an instant against the quivering heavens, there seemed to flicker around his head and uplifted bow a lambent, pale-blue halo. Then the solemn tones of the prophet were heard through the darkness,

"By the impious and horrible sacrifices of their bloody

religion our enemies have exhausted the long patience of Heaven. The thunders of the Most High God shall bring swift and terrible succor to their destroyers."

Then the Shawnees sent their allies, the Miamis, around in two bodies, above and below, to intercept any fugitives at the fords. This done, they themselves lay quiet till near daybreak, listening to the slow rumbling of the thunders.

When their watching eyes beheld the morning-star for one moment twinkle with a watery luster amid an oaktree on the mountain, they arose and rushed down across the plain, and in that self-same hour the arsenals of the Most High God were opened. With horrid and heart-sickening yells they leaped the phantom stockade, and the lurid lightnings guided their swift tomahawks not amiss. The Mound-builders yielded up their wretched lives like sheep before the slayer. Not more swiftly did the murderous stones descend upon the heads of unresisting victims than the quick and forked cross-lightnings hissed and hurtled from heaven. The torrents of warm rain which gurgled in the streets glared crimson beneath the continuous bolts, and all their purple bubbles winked like bloodshot eyes in the face of the lightnings. The tempest swept over and the thunders lulled, as if the vengeance of Heaven were palled and glutted, and yet the weary savages paused not, though forgetting even their yells of triumph, so that in all the village there was no sound but the dull and thudding crash of the tomahawk. Only when the great sun looked out, with his angry and lurid eye, through a chink in the morning clouds, did the village rest in silence, and the butchers cease, because there were no victims.

So great was the multitude of the Mound-builders! And after that the Shawnees gathered much plunder, and sent for their squaws to serve them, and they feasted,

they and their allies, and made merry. Afterward, it happened that a band of Shawnee warriors, wandering over the village, found a house wherein was a maiden hidden, and yet alive. And there was with her a young moose, which had been tenderly nourished by her hand, and now lingered about her hiding-place. Upon the approach of the Shawnees it ran a little way off, then returned, and darted into the house which secreted its mistress, and moaned piteously, and turned its pleading sad gaze upon the warriors, as if beseeching them to show mercy. Thus it revealed to them the hiding-place of the maiden, and she was dragged forth, lifeless with terror. As soon as it saw her, the little animal ran toward her with a plaintive cry, pressed its silken, glossy neck fondly against her, and cowered timorously beside her, looking piteously into her face for protection, and crying and moaning; then it looked again at its strange captors, and ran a little way off, then turned and gazed again, with such infinite pitifulness, toward its mistress, and such dumb, helpless wonder at the savage warriors; then ran to her again, and so, backward and forward. The dainty little foot-taps on the floor, as it trotted about its beloved mistress; its soft bleating; the sad and piteous terror of the poor innocent, as it turned its great, lustrous eyes upon its captors; the dear and tender caresses of its glossy neck against the insensible form of the maiden; the tremor of helpless terror along its velvety flanks-ah! could even the voice of the mistress have pleaded more eloquently?

Even the grim savages were touched,—all except one, who brutally struck the poor, crying innocent, and dashed it to the ground. They bore away the maiden, and left the stricken pet where it fell. But, after a time, it recovered, and, guided by the unerring instinct of its kind, limped away toward the river.