!

projects its beam of light straight before us, yet shall leave the skiff itself and the hunters concealed in the outer darkness.

The weapon which we shall rely upon to-night is not the rifle - deadly only in good hands and a good light, backed by good eyes but our heavy doublebarreled fowling-piece, which can hardly send its charge of buck-shot amiss. While we charge that, Toney will get the skiff ready for the cruise.

The guide thinks it is not quite late enough yet to set out, and we of course defer in all questions of forest craft to his judgment. No one feels like talking, for all are oppressed by the deep silence of the place and the darkness that hides every face. The night is close and warm; not a star struggles forth, and the darkness is absolute, almost tangible. Even the white trunks of the spruces close to camp, which have been stripped of their leathery bark for our roof, are invisible. The outlines of the mountains just across the lake are blotted out in the all-expunging darkness, and the untroubled surface of the water itself throws back no reflection. We all crowd as closely as we can, for there is that in the darkness of this lonely spot which quickens the instinct of brotherhood; and venture only occasional whispers. A good hearty shout would break the oppressive stillness and scatter this nightmare. But no one feels in the mood to give a cheer, and beside, as hunters we think of those deer that are browsing just across the water. Fire, too, the ruddiest and cheeriest friend that gladdens a forest-camp, is 'tabooed' by Toney until the hunt is over. Save Toney, not a single one of us can point to the path by which we came, nor could we venture ten rods from the shore without getting lost.

I think no true sportsman can in his heart love this kind of hunting. There is none of the heart-rousing enthusiasm of the chase in it. All is done in cold blood, and we are stealing like tigers upon an unconscious quarry. It is not an open hunt, where the victim can tax and trust its agile limbs for life, but a mere trial of human craft to lure it to death by the force of its own treacherous curiosity.

Waiting finally has an end, therein as quietly as possible. the shore, and with a deft and upon the 'Cimmerian pool.'

and we grope to the skiff and bestow ourselves Toney at the stern, gives us an impulse from perfectly noiseless paddle, wafts the skiff out

We glide about in the seething darkness a seeming age, without a sight of a land-mark, for we have not yet lighted our 'reflector.' Not a word has yet been spoken, and the silence of the past half-hour has been strangely weird and oppressive. But now Toney intermits paddling, and we hearken for 'signs.' I suspect that the secret wish of each one of us was, that he was stretched out in camp with his feet toward a good cracking fire-but no one breathed so low an aspiration—and we continued to hearken. A faint splash, a muffled sound reaches the ear. It may be a fancy, after all. No! it is heard again, but it seems a great way off. The guide whispers that there are deer treading in the marsh. Now the torch is lighted and planted upon the prow. Toney whispers to the gunner, who lies prone upon the bottom of the skiff with his two barrels protruded like bow-chasers, to cock his piece, for the sharp click of the locks might by-and-by startle the game.

The torch now projects a narrow, stifled pencil of light ahead upon the inky water, but we are as much in the dark as ever. The sounds or steppings, still heard at intervals, had roused every body to a painful state of watchfulness, and it was a relief when the guide turned the skiff's prow in that direction, and we began to creep along the little rift of light projected by the torch. No more noises are audible, and Toney has not even those tokens by which to guide the craft. His deft paddle wafts us on, however, a few minutes longer. More stopping! Toney whispers, and for the hundredth time we strain our eyes. There at last! As far off as sight can reach, miles it seems, glow faintly twin sparks of light. The deer's eyes are riveted upon our torch, and have been fixed there the last half-hour. Inch by inch the skiff steals onward to those beacons. The tyros thought the deer at least forty or fifty rods off, and the guide's slow approach seemed an excess of caution. How were they startled, then, when after less than twenty strokes of the paddle, the dim outline of the victim emerged directly in the track of the light. There stood the deer, with head erect and feet rooted to the ground, as rigid and still as marble, while clearer and clearer the torch evolved his shape. The tension of excitement, coupled with long watching and our cramped positions in the boat, was exhausting. We waited in torture almost the word to fire. Not yet; still creeping on. He cannot be fifty feet from the muzzle that covers him. Why does he not wheel and bound away! I half-expected and half-hoped that he would.

Not until the skiff had approached within thirty feet of the deer did the word come to fire. Then the suspense, grown too keen to be borne, was broken and relieved by a stunning report and a sudden blaze. All is uproar. The deer bounds crashing through the bushes back into the woods. At the same instant three or four others, not before seen, break frantically through the grass and bushes after him. Toney screams to the gunner to give them a charge; but he had let go both barrels at first fire, and we are greatly chagrined to believe it has proven fruitless. We give up all hopes of venisonsteaks for breakfast, and an instant return to camp is proposed.

However, while the torrent of blame was venting itself upon the beaten and luckless gunner, Toney brought the skiff to shore, and leaving the rest to stretch their cramped limbs, disappeared with the torch, to seek in the thicket some trace of the fugitive. He raises an exulting shout, and the next second the whole party is blundering through the bushes toward the light. Now comes the marksman's turn to retort the abuse just lavished upon him, and to glory over his first deer. There it lies dead enough! How it reached this spot is the wonder, for three of its legs are broken and several shot have passed through its body. The guide quickly divested it of its skin, and as we could not take it across to camp in our crowded boat, a stout sapling was bent down by our united strength, the venison fastened near the top, and the recoil of the tree carried it up beyond reach of prowling vermin.

The party took boat again, and Toney paddled them straight through the pitchy darkness to the camp. A cheerful fire was soon crackling. Then lying down upon the couch of hemlock twigs, with their feet toward the blazing logs, the travellers slept their first sleep upon the ground far in the dark forest.

'The morning hour hath gold in its mouth.' There are, indeed, invigorating and enlivening influences that go abroad of a morning, only to be enjoyed by the early riser, which are more conducive to health and longevity than all the prescriptions of medical science. What season more proper for contemplating the beauties of nature's handiwork and elevating the soul, by such communion with nature, to nature's GOD, than the early part of the day, when the mind, in its matin vigor, is naturally disposed to rumination and reverie; and when the clear judgment holds controlling rein over the brisk fancy, whose lively powers soar on the wings of the morning?

The approaching day has shown its dawn. I hasten forth from the drowsy embrace of slumber to the green fields. The balmy air, laden with the fresh odors of morning, whispers of the benefits in store for those who early court her. Nature, refreshed by rest, has shaken off the languor and sluggishness of the night; and in the consciousness of renewed existence, rejoices through her manifold being. How fragrant the perfumes of the dewy graces and flowers, and the scents of the wood! How blithe the carolling of the birds! How grateful the sounds of praise that ascend heavenward in harmonious notes from all creation!

On such a morning as I have described I formed the habit, which by an amiable moralist is reckoned a virtue, of taking a walk, in the coolness of early day, through the neighboring woods; away to its remote and secret recesses the green vistas stretch their inviting shades in mazy labyrinths; the leafy canopy, the sward, carpeted with summer verdure, are Nature's accommodations to her lover.

'O FOREST fair! for thee I yearn;
Alone I'll go, alone return:
There all is joyful, glad and gay,
And life a pleasant holiday.'

In one of these rambles, hidden in the silvan solitudes, I discovered a cave. Charmed with its seclusion and the loneliness of the surrounding place, I took possession of it, and dignified it as the Naturalist's Retreat. It was an opening made by some convulsion of nature in one of those ancient mounds which are associated, by the superstition of the illiterate, with grim traditions that always hallow the spot from the intrusion of the vulgar and ignorant.

The retreat is almost embowered amid the foliage of the trees, which hide it from ordinary observation. The wild vines grow in luxuriance around its

mouth, clamber the wrinkled trunks in sinewy wreathings, and disport their serpentine lengths in fantastic festoons and graceful contortions from the overhanging branches. The grove that surrounds the cave is the resort of feathered songsters, whose melodious strains enliven the listening forest and divert my musings into various and delightful reflections, while the grace and liveliness of their motions, and the aptness with which they imitate and master each other's notes, impress me with agreeable fancies of the sprightliness of their instinct. These gentle inhabitants of the thicket, accustomed to my presence, and secure from molestation on my part, make me the confident of their birdloves and hates, and no unconcerned spectator of their habits. At the approach of some wandering marauder in search of prey, intelligence of the event is chirped from one to the other, and the whole colony of warblers, in alarmed commotion, fly screaming to seek my friendly protection from danger. A squirrel community, of the ground species, have burrowed their nests in a clump of bushes nigh the mouth of the cave, and sometimes one of the inquisitive little animals will slily make his appearance; but at the least movement he nimbly scampers to his covert, while his cousin, the grey-squirrel, from his perch on the bough over-head, chatters his disapprobation of the entire proceedings.

At all times my retreat is filled with the sound of a cascade that comes leaping down a neighboring height in laughing murmurs, breaking on the rocks in mimic spray, forming tiny pools, in whose pellucid depths the birds of the grove take their morning baths, and finally losing itself mysteriously in the under-brush, to appear a purling rill meandering at my path-side. I love to seclude myself from the world in this sequestered place, where secure from interruption, I may hold sweet communion with nature, and venture to admire, wonder, or speculate as suits my changeful mood. I particularly delight, from my Naturalist's Retreat, which commands a view of the out-spreading country, to enjoy the peculiar effects of sun-rise on the landscape, and behold the shades of night retire before the effulgence of its beams. Darkness has resigned its supremacy before the swift advances of the coming day, and morning, rosy with victory, dawns over the eastern hills. As the glow in the east deepens into the rich mantling of a blush on the grey edge of the horizon, South Mountain looms in bold prominence, the asperities of its woody eminences relieved against the sky; and as the shadows of the earth shorten toward the equinox, and the fervid rays of the sun dissipate the morning mists, like a majestic picture maturing into life, beauty and completeness under the magic touches of a glorious artist, the varied prospects unfold their ample charms; the wide plain undulating in gentle slope from the base of the mountain, studded with the farmer's picturesque homestead, diversified by woodland, clearing, and hills crowned with thickets, and intersected by small streams, which glisten like threads of silver in the hazy distance.

CARL ALMENDINGER'S OFFICE:

O R, THE MYSTERIES O F CHICAGO.

A STORY OF THE PRESENT WAR.

ONE of the most striking characteristics of the population of our Western States is their heterogeneous origin. An emigrant from New-England, or the South, where all are comparatively 'to the manor born,' is surprised at the nomadic character of the Western people. He no longer meets with the boasted autochthones of his former home, whose heraldry is supplied by family traditions, preserved in the public records, or inscribed on the monumental stone; he sees every where strange and diverse peoples New-England Roundhead and Southern cavalier, Celt and Teuton, Magyar and Sclave.

Be not surprised, therefore, if we tell you, reader, that our hero, Carl Almendinger, drew his first breath in the town of Pesth, on the eastern bank of the Danube. He was born in Hungary at a time when Austrian rule was more than usually oppressive; and the House of Rodolph-Hapsburg had long since disdained to support the Constitution of St. Stephen, that ancient Magna Charta of Hungarian liberties. In early manhood, his proud Magyar spirit was wont to chafe at the humiliation of his native land, even as the wild bird frets, when he beats his soaring pinion against the bars of his cage.

a man

Though of good descent, Carl was poor; so at an early age his parents placed him in the service of a nobleman. Subsequently his master without principle · was arrested on a criminal charge, when to procure his release, being favored by circumstance, he turned State's evidence, and accused Carl of complicity, and of being principal offender. Carl was accordingly thrown into prison. Naturally sensitive, and feeling himself forever disgraced, he at one time contemplated suicide, as a riddance from troubles too grievous to be borne; but this design was never carried into execution, as shortly after, his accuser, on his beath-bed, exculpated Carl, and avowed himself the criminal. Carl was accordingly liberated, and restored to the society and favor of his friends.

In personal appearance Almendinger indicated that type which renders the Magyar almost as recognizable as the Jew. His head was nearly round, his forehead low, the external angle of his eyes slightly elevated, nose small, mouth large, yet the whole handsome withal. The foretaste of prison-life he had already experienced prepared him for that long immurement as a political offender, which he was destined to undergo, some years after, in the fortress of Buda, whose grim, dark towers frowned over his delightful and liberty-loving Pesth. He had often, when a boy, gazed indignantly at that hated cynosure of tyranny; and now, when a young man, full of high hopes and lofty endeavor, with the proud Magyar blood coursing in his veins, he was to be shut out from the pure light of heaven in those very dungeons, and hear the clank of his own and his comrades' chains.