constructing another shed, when a tremendous crash and roar was heard at some distance in the woods, higher up the stream. It was so awful, I had almost said so omnipotent, in the sound, that I started on my feet, and shook my treasures from me. For a moment the Niagara of the river seemed almost to pause-it was but for a moment-for, instantly after, the noise of the rending of weighty trees, the crashing and the tearing of the rooted forest, rose around. The waters of the river, troubled and raging, came hurling with the wreck of the woods, sweeping with inconceivable fury every thing that stood within its scope;-a lake had burst its banks.

The sudden rise of the waters soon, however, subsided; I saw it ebbing fast, and comforted my terrified boys. The rain also began to abate. Instead of those dreaded sheets of waves which fell upon us as if some vast ocean behind the forest was heaving over its spray, a thick continued small rain came on; and, about an hour after 'sunset, streaks and breaks in the clouds gave some token that the worst was over; it was not, however, so, for about the same time a stream appeared in the hollow, between the rising ground to which the axemen had retired, and the little knoll on which our shanty stood; at the same time the waters in the river began to swell again. There was on this occasion no abrupt and bursting noise; but the night was fast closing upon us, and a hoarse muttering and angry sound of many waters grew louder and louder on all sides.

The darkness and increasing rage of the river, which there was just twilight enough to show was rising above the brim of the bank, smote me with inexpressible terror. I snatched my children by the hand, and rushed forward to join the axemen; but the torrent between us rolled so violently, that to pass was impossible, and the waters still continued to rise.

I called aloud to the axemen for assistance; and, when they heard my desperate cries, they came out of the shed, some with burning brands and others with their

axes glittering in the flames; but they could render no help; at last, one man, a fearless backwoodsman, happened to observe, by the firelight, a tree on the bank of the torrent, which it in some degree overhung, and he called for others to join him in making a bridge. In the course of a few minutes the tree was laid across the stream, and we scrambled over, just as the river extinguished our fire and swept our shanty away.

This rescue was in itself so wonderful, and the scene had been so terrible, that it was some time after we were safe before I could rouse myself to believe that I was not in the fangs of the nightmare. My poor boys clung to me as if still not assured of their security, and I wept upon their necks in the ecstacy of an unspeakable passion of anguish and joy.

About this time the mizzling rain began to fall softer; the dawn of the morn appeared through the upper branches of the forest, and here and there the stars looked out from their windows in the clouds. The storm was gone, and the deluge assuaged; the floods all around us gradually ebbed away, and the insolent and unknown waters which had so swelled the river shrunk within their banks, and, long before the morning, had retired from the scene.

Need I say that anthems of deliverance were heard in our camp that night? Oh, surely no! The woods answered to our psalms, and waved their mighty arms; the green leaves clapped their hands; and the blessed moon, lifting the veil from her forehead, and looking down upon us through the boughs, gladdened our solemn rejoicing.-Lawrie Todd.

་་་་་ ་་་་འ་་་་་་་་་་

[JOHN WILSON. 1785-1854.]

A HIGHLAND SNOW STORM. ONE family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco-the families of two brothers-seldom visiting each other on working days, seldom meeting even on sabbaths, for theirs was not the same

parish kirk-seldom coming together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these are not so frequent as of yore; yet, all these sweet seldoms, taken together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two dwellings together,- -as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to another, each with its own secret nest. And nest-like both dwellings were. That in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered rock,-lone in all storms, -with greensward and garden on a slope down to a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once wofully reddened!) and growing, so it seems, in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge stones that overshadow it, out of the earth. That in Glencreran more conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, ---and dark indeed, even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old oak-like pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very sylvan; but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon, near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive. And, except this, old oaklike grove of pines, there is not a tree, and hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are kept by many a rill, there mingling themselves into one stream, in a perpetual lustre, that seenis to be as native to the grass, as its light is to the glow-worm. Such are the two huts-for they are huts and no more -and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your heart, and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth, not even in its most solitary places, have not swept from the scenes the beautified, the humble, but hereditary dwellings that ought to be allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay.

These huts belonged to brothers, and each had an only child – -a son and a daughter-born on the same day, and now blooming on the verge of youth. A year ago, and they were but mere children; but what wondrous growth of frame and spirit does nature at that season of life often present before our eyes! So that we almost see the very change going on between morn and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more and more in all our most sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins grown up before their parents' eyes-Flora Macdonald, a name hallowed of yore, the fairest, and Ronald Cameron, the boldest of all the living flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now their seventeenth birthday, and never had a Winter sun smiled more serenely over a knoll of snow. Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and Ronald to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the many precipitous passes to his parents' hut. It was the middle of February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged, so calm had been the weather and so continued the frost. At the same hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water glides by the little boat that in favouring breezes walks merrily along the sea. soon they met at the trysting place-a bank of birch trees beneath a cliff that takes its name from the eagles.

And

On their meeting, seemed not to them the whole of nature suddenly inspired with joy and beauty? Insects, unheard by them before, hummed and glittered in the air; from tree roots, where the snow was thin, little flowers, or herbs flowerlike, now for the first time were seen looking out as if alive; the trees themselves seemed budding, as if it were already Spring; and rare as in that

rocky region are the birds of song a faint thrill for a moment touched their ears, and the flutter of a wing, telling them that somewhere near there was preparation for a nest. Deep down beneath the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills unreached by the frost, and merry, thought they, was the music of these contented prisoners. Not Summer's self, in its deepest green, so beautiful had ever been to them before, as now the mild white of Winter; and as their eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they ever seen before a sky of such perfect blue, a sun so gentle in its brightness, or altogether a week-day in any season so like a sabbath in its stillness, so like a holiday in its joy? Lovers were they, although as yet they scarcely knew it; for from love only could have come such bliss as now was theirs, -a bliss, that while it beautified was felt to come from the skies.

Flora sang to Ronald many of her old songs, to those wild Gaelic airs that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the branches of storm-tossed trees, when the subsiding tempest is about to let them rest. Monotonous music! but irresistible over the heart it has once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it breathesa mournfulness brooding and feeding on the same note, that is at once its natural expression and sweetest aliment, of which the singer never wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the time is haunted by all that is most piteous, --by the faces of the dead in their paleness returning to the shades of life, only that once more they may pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears! How merry were they between those mournful airs! How Flora trembled to see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of great battles fought in foreign lands, far across the sea -tales which he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of blood!

"The sun sat high in his meridian tower." But time had not been with the youthful

lovers, and the blessed beings believed that 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they had met in the prime of the morn!

The boy starts to his feet, and his keen eye looks along the ready rifle-for his sires had all been famous deer-stalkers, and the passion of the chase was hereditary in his blood. Lo! a deer from Dalness, hound-driven, or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, then away-away! The rifle-shot rings dully from the scarce echoing snowcliffs, and the animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but not sudden death-wound. Oh! for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring and lumbering heavily along, the snow spotted as he bounds with blood, the huge animal at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. "Follow me, Flora!" the boy-hunter cries: and, flinging down their plaids, they turn their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain girl; and Ronald, as he ever and anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired her lightsome motion as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and more heavily trampled, as they winded round the rocks. Yonder is the deer, staggering up the mountain, not a half mile off--now standing at bay, as if before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the terror of the forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd while their antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora, rest! while I fly to him with my rifle - and shoot him through the heart!"

Up-up-up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding round many a jutting promontory and many a castellated cliff, the red-deer kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then for some hundreds of yards just beyond, rifle-shot; while the boy, maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of

T

same as in earth. The will of God they thought of just as they thought of their parents' will, and the same was their living obedience to its decrees. If she was to die, supported now by the presence of her brother, Flora was utterly resigned; if she was to live, her heart imaged to itself the very forms of her grateful worship. But all at once she closed her eyes, she ceased breathing-and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the gloom that fell around them like blindness, Ronald almost sunk down, thinking that she was dead.

"Wretched sinner that I am !-my wicked madness brought her here to die of cold!" And he smote his breast, and tore his hair, and feared to look up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm.

All at once, without speaking a word, Ronald lifted Flora in his arms, and walked away up the glen, here almost narrowed into a pass. Distraction gave him supernatural strength, and her weight seemed that of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly remembered, were but a short way off; whether or not they had any roof he had forgotten,-but the thought even of such a shelter seemed a thought of salvation. There it was-a snow-drift at the opening that had once been a door -snow up the holes once windows-the wood of the roof had been carried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was all trampled, as by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low lintel, he saw the place was filled with a flock that had foreknown the hurricane, and that, all huddled together, looked on him as on the shepherd, come to see how they were faring in the storm.

And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb apparently dying in his arms. All colour, all motion, all breath seemed to be gone; and yet something convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, but across an angle of the walls some pine-branches had been flung, as a sort of shelter for

the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in cruel weather-some pinebranches left by the wood-cutters, who had felled the yew trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there, with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of his distracted heart might be felt by her, who was as cold as a corpse. The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock, and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place in which it seemed possible that she might revive, miserable as it was with the mire-mixed snow, and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And she did revive, and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be not yet lifedeserted. It was yet but the afternoon,night-like though it was,—and he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red returned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to drive death away.

"Oh! father, go seek for Ronald, for I dreamt to-night that he was perishing in the snow. "Flora, fear not,-God is with us.' "Wild swans, they say, are come to Loch Phoil. Let us go, Ronald, and see them; but no rifle for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful?" Over them where they lay, bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way beneath the increasing weight: but there it still hung, though the drift came over their feet, and up to their knees, and seemed stealing upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am overcome with drowsiness, and fain would he allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me-and what noise is this in our house?" "Fear not, fear not, Flora,-God is with us.' "Mother! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm. Oh, I have had a most dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as these Flora again relapsed into that perilous sleep, which soon becomes that of death.

Night itself came, but Flora and Ronald knew it not; and both lay motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions, though earth-born, heavenly all-pity, and grief,