Miss Sophonisba made no opposition.

The three ascended the cellar stairs, but as they entered the room they paused terror-stricken, for across the floor, making, as it passed, a wild gesture of despair, swept the Shape, living yet dead.

“What was that?” said the clergyman, who was the first to recover himself, “It,” said Miss Sophonisba in a whisper.

“I have seen that face before,” said the sailor.  “Once on a stormy passage round the Cape we came upon a deserted wreck rolling helplessly upon the waves.  I, then a young midshipman, went in the boat which was sent to board her.  No living creature was there, but in the cabin we found a corpse, that of an old, old man.  The look of the Thing was so awful that I could not bear it and hid my face.  One of the sailors, however, took from the dead hand a paper covered with characters in cipher, which no one could read.  This paper afterward fell into my possession, and I submitted it in vain to several experts, all of whom failed to read it.  By an accident it was destroyed, and the secret, whatever it was, is hidden for ever; but the face of that corpse was the face I have just seen in this room.”

CLARA F. GUERNSEY.

The Blood Seedling.

In a bit of green pasture that rose, gradually narrowing, to the tableland that ended in prairie, and widened out descending to the wet and willowy sands that border the Great River, a broad-shouldered young man was planting an apple tree one sunny spring morning when Tyler was President.  The little valley was shut in on the south and east by rocky hills, patched with the immortal green of cedars and gay with clambering columbines.  In front was the Mississippi, reposing from its plunge over the rapids, and idling down among the golden sandbars and the low, moist islands, which were looking their loveliest in their new spring dresses of delicate green.

The young man was digging with a certain vicious energy, forcing the spade into the black crumbling loam with a movement full of vigor and malice.  His straight black brows were knitted till they formed one dark line over his deep-set eyes.  His beard was not yet old enough to hide the massive outline of his firm, square jaw.  In the set teeth, in the clouded face, in the half-articulate exclamations that shot from time to time from the compressed lips, it was easy to see that the thoughts of the young horticulturist were far from his work.

A bright young girl came down the path through the hazel thicket that skirted the hillside, and putting a plump brown hand on the topmost rail of the fence vaulted lightly over, and lit on the soft springy turf with a thud that announced a wholesome and liberal architecture.  It is usually expected of poets and lovers that they shall describe the ladies of their love as so airy and delicate in structure that the flowers they tread on are greatly improved in health and spirits by the visitation.  But not being