GRUL'S HOUR.

Though we were in a hot haste to get away, it was absolutely necessary first to bury the dead Indian, lest a hue and cry should be raised that might in volve and delay us. With my paddle, therefore, I dug him a shallow grave in the soft mud at the edge of the tide, which was then on the ebb. This meagre inhumation completed, I smoothed the surface as best I could with my paddle; and then we set off, resting easy in the knowledge that the next tide would smooth down all traces of the work.

It was by this close upon sunset, and I felt a little hesitation as to what we had best do. I had no wish to run through the settlement till after dark, nor was I anxious to push on against the furious ebb of the des Saumons, against which the strongest paddlers could make slow headway. But it was necessary to get out of the creek before the water should quite forsake us; and, moreover, Mizpah was in a fever of haste to be gone. She kept gazing about as if she expected the savage to rise from his muddy grave and point at her. We ran out of the creek, therefore, and were instantly caught in the great current of the river. I suffered it to sweep us down for half a mile, having noted on the way up a cluster of haystacks in an angle of the dyke. Coming to these, I pushed ashore at once, carried the canoe up, and found that the place was one where we might rest secure. Here we ate our black bread and drank new milk, for there were many cattle pasturing on the aftermath, and some of the cows had not yet gone home to milking. Then, hiding the canoe behind the dyke, and ourselves between the stacks, in great weariness we sought our sleep.

There was no hint of dawn in the sky when I awoke with a start; but the constellations had swung so wide an are that I knew morning was close at hand. There was a hissing clamor in the river-bed which told me the tide

was coming in. That, doubtless, was the change which had SO swiftly aroused me. I went to the other side of the stack, where Mizpah lay with her cheek upon her arm, her hair fallen adorably about her neck. Touching her forehead softly with my hand, I whispered:

"Come, comrade, the tide has turned!" Whereupon she sat up quietly, as if this were for her the most usual of awakenings, and began to arrange her hair. I went out upon the shadowy marsh and soon accomplished a second theft of new milk, driving the tranquil cow which furnished it into the corner behind the stacks, that our dairy might be the more conveniently at hand. Our fast broken (and though I hinted nought of it to Mizpah, I found black bread growing monotonous), I carried the canoe down to the edge of the tide. But Mistress Mizpah's daintiness revolted at the mud, whereupon she took off her moccasins and stockings before she came to it, and I caught a gleam of slim white feet at the dewy edge of the grass. When I had carried down the paddles, pole, and baggage, I found her standing in a quandary. She could not get into the canoe with that sticky clay clinging to her feet, and there was no place where she could sit down to wash them. Carelessly enough (though my heart the while trembled withiu me), I stretched out my hand to her, saying:

"Lean on me, comrade, and then you can manage it all right."

And so it was that she managed it: and so indifferently did I cast my eyes about, now at the breaking dawn, now at the swelling tide, that I am sure she must have deemed that I saw not or cared not at all how white and slender and shapely were her feet!

In few minutes we were afloat, going swiftly on the tide. The sky was all saffron as we slipped through the settlement, and a fairy glow lay upon the white cottages. The banks on either

ished nacre. To the door of one cottage, close by the water, came a man yawning, and hailed us. But I flung back a mere "Bon jour," and sped on. Not till the settlement was out of sight behind us, not till the cross on the spire of the village was quite cut off from view, did I drop to the even pace of our day-long journeying. When at length we got beyond the influence of the tide, des Saumons was a shallow, sparkling, with singing stream, its bed aglow ruddy-colored rocks. Here I laid aside my paddle and thrust the canoe onwards by means of my long pole of white spruce, while Mizpah had nought to do but lean back and watch the shores creep by. At the head of tide we had stopped to drink and to breathe a little. And there, seeing an old man working in front of a solitary cabin, I had deemed it safe to approach him and purchase a few eggs. After this we kept on till an hour past noon, when I stopped in a bend of the river, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff of red rock some seventy or eighty feet in height. Here was a thicket wherein we might hide both the canoe and ourselves if necessary. The canoe I hid at once, that being a matter of the more time. Then we both set ourselves to gathering dry sticks, for it seemed to me we might here risk the luxury of a fire, with a dinner of roasted eggs.

We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in the underbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah by the hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark and drooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff,-and I noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that I had forgotten to release Mizpah's hand.

The crashing noise, mingled with some outcries of rage and fear, continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw at the brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of a black and yellow cloak.

"Grül!" I whispered, in astonishment;

tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand.

A moment more and Grûl peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upper and lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end of which he had made fast to a stout birch-tree which leaned well out over the edge. "What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes.

"We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily.

The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappeared close to the brink. He carried. as lightly as if it had been a bundle of straw, the body of a man, SO bound about with many cords as to remind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of some black and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim was dressed in black. and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest.

"It is the Black Abbé, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; while Mizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies. "Grûl has come to his revenge!" I added.

In a business fashion Grûl knotted the end of his coil of rope about the prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile, nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathed and helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink, governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a jutting stump. There was something indescribably terrifying the sight of the fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings and twistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied him in spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she might not see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in a fascination.

in

For some moments Grûl gazed down in silence upon his victim.

I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but this was doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of my vision.

Suddenly the victim, his fortitude giving way with the sense of the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition of that gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperate entreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it, and Mizpah covered her ears.

"Oh, stop it! save him!" she whispered to me, with white lips. But I shook my head. I could not reach the top of the cliff. And moreover, I had small doubt that Grûl's vengeance was just. Nevertheless, had I been at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, I had certainly put a stop to it.

After listening for some moments, with a sort of pleasant attention, to the victim's ravings, Grûl lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out over the brink, and reached down a long arm. I saw the gleam of a knife in his darting hand; and I drew a quick breath of relief.

"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had not done, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming had ceased before the knife touched him.

at last, exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at his persecutor with the silence of despair. Presently Grûl spoke,-for the first time, as far as we knew.

"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbé, I suppose," he remarked, in tone of placid courtesy.

"I know you, François de Grûl," came the reply, gasped from a dry mouth.

"Then further explanation, I think you will allow, is not needed. I will bid you farewell, and a pleasant journey," went on the same civil modulations of Grûl's voice. At the same moment he reached down with his shining blade as if to sever the rope.

"I did not do it! I did not do it!" screamed the abbé, once more clutching convulsively at the smooth rock. "I swear to you by all the saints!"

Grûl examined the edge of his knife. He tested it with his thumb. I saw him glance along it critically. Then he touched it, ever so lightly, to the rope, so that a single strand parted. "Swear to me," he said, in the mild

l'Abbé, that you had no part in it.

And then I saw that Grûl had merely cut the cord which bound his captive's hands. The abbé was swiftly freeing himself; and Grûl, meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When the unhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentor secured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shoulders leaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.

The abbé with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, and the cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the cliff foot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, ne clutched at the smooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. It was pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face above looking down upon them with unimpassioned interest; till

l'Abbé!"

But the abbé was silent.

"Swear me that oath now, good abbé," repeated the voice, with a kind of courteous insistence.

"I will not swear!" came the ghastly whisper in reply.

At this an astonishing change passed over the face that peered down from the brink. Its sane tranquillity became a very paroxysm of rage. The grotesque cap was dashed aside, and Grûl sprang to his feet, waving his arms, stamping and leaping, his gaudy cloak a-flutter, his long white hair and beard twisting as if with a sentient fury of their own. He was so close upon the brink that I held my breath, expecting him to be plunged headlong. But all at once the paroxysm died out as suddenly as it had begun; and throwing himself down in his former position, Grûl once more touched the knife edge

time, but when I had leisure of a moonlight night I knew where to find him. When he would come aboard of the boat he would call out cheery to the boathands, all of whom he knew by name, "Howdy, boys, howdy!" As a curious fact, lame as he was, he preferred standing by the boat rail or leaning over it to sitting down. When he reached the Philadelphia side of the river the hill at Market Street would require twenty minutes to climb. He did this for exercise. When we would part he would say: "Good-night; good-night! It has been a good meeting."

... I used to see a spouted coach-dog and a cat about his house. They both seemed to have an understanding with him; at all events, they were all on good terms. The dog and cat would sit at his feet and peer into his face by the hour. Sometimes he would throw a ball of cord or cotton twine on the floor and the cat would roll it back to him. This he and she would do for hours at a time. He would sit three or four hours with this cat and the ball of twine for his companion, and not speak a word. Then, of a sudden, he would pick up a pen (one was always at hand on the window sill) and write for a time on a tablet which lay upon his knee. He sometimes wrote on scraps of paper, on the inside of envelopes addressed to him, on the backs or on unwritten portions of letters received by him, and on paper received around packages; in fact, on anything that would carry ink. His manuscript was like Joseph's coat, of many colors. Sometimes he used half-a-dozen kinds of paper on which to complete one poem-a verse or two on each, and then he would pin them to gether. His poems he worked over and over again. He would roll a completed poem, or a book, or an article, up, wrap it about with a piece of twine, and throw it in the corner of his room. In his bedroom were packages of manuscripts in baskets, in bundles, or in piles. Some of them were mixed up with the lot of short, cut pine wood, which he kept to fire up his sheet-iron stove. He used the crook on his cane to hook out what he wanted from the pile on the VOL. XIII. 673

LIVING AGE.

floor. Usually, before sending a poem or a manuscript to a paper, or away, he had it set up in type and sent it to the publisher printed. I asked him who did this work for him. He laughed and answered, "Oh, an old fellow of my acquaintance." I often wondered if he did not go to a case somewhere in Camden and set them up himself. In most cases he used a pen-a huge Gillott or Falcon, but sometimes a pencil.

Mr. Whitman worked in a desultory manner. For days he would not write. He received and read many newspapers and current miscellany, including magazines. He cut slips from newspapers or periodicals, put them away, and used them in many cases for subjects. He would pin them to bits of paper and make notes of them. He read very few books. I asked him why. He replied, "A man who wants to have original ideas wants to let other people's alone.” Sometimes poets sent him copies of their books. Many of these he gave away, with his autograph. I carried an offer to him for a poem of three verses, on "The Mill," for a monthly industrial publication. He was to receive twentyfive dollars for it. He told me, when I asked him to hurry it up, as the people wanted it, that he had tried, and tried again, but that it wouldn't come. "You know, in writing poetry, the machine won't always work. Mine won't in this case, and usually I have to wait until it does." The poem was never written. He always seemed to me to be thoroughly honest in whatever he did.

Mr. Whitman, for many years prior to 1862, had been a noticeable figure in New York or Brooklyn as an outside stage or omnibus rider, and always, no matter what kind of weather, by the driver's side (omnibuses did not leave Broadway, New York, until about 1881), so he was a familiar figure. and was pointed out as the author of "Leaves of Grass." Mr. Whitman's love of nature and out-of-door life, and the moving panorama on a crowded thoroughfare. would naturally suggest to him an outside seat with a stage driver. I chatted with him about this odd fancy. "I suppose," he replied,