rage, throwing the spray high into the air.  This, freezing as it fell, encrusted the rough sides of the beetling crags with icy layers, covering them all over with plates like silver, and hanging them with stalactites.  Right in front, and separated only by the narrow pass from the ledge on which they stood, still higher than which it rose, towered a huge rock, perpendicularly, to a height of ninety or one hundred feet above the cataract.  Its foam-beaten base, just above the water, was encased in icy incrustations, higher up, gray moss overspread its flat side, and tufts of cedar struggled through the fissures, whilst its top was canopied with hemlocks and savins, and white oaks.  Looking towards the left, the eye swept over the green hill-side, along which they had walked, and, glancing over the islands in the Yaupaae, followed the winding coarse of the river, catching here and there on ground, that sloped to the stream, the sight of white buildings, with green blinds, till the surrounding hills shut in the view.

They both stood silent, as they looked, she, unwilling, by an exclamation, to break the charm; and he, with his mind full of the lovely creature before him.  Surely, never so angelic a being gazed upon that scene!  As, with kindling countenance and suspended breath, her dark eyes flashing with enthusiasm, her soul drank in the sublimity and sparkling radiance that enveloped her, she seemed no being of mortal mould, but some celestial visitant.  The rapt expression of her face gradually settled into awe, and she softly murmured these lines, of the Russian poet, Derzhavin—­

  “God! thus to Thee my lowly thoughts can soar,
  Thus seek thy presence, Being wise and good,
  ’Midst Thy vast works, admire, obey, adore;
  And when the tongue is eloquent no more,
  The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude.”

The tears were indeed standing in her eyes, as she turned and placed her hand in that of Bernard.

“You must think it strange,” she said, “that I, to whom all this is no novelty should be thus affected.  It is a weakness from which I shall never recover.”

“Not weakness, dear Faith,” said Bernard, “but the impressibility of a poetical temperament.  Only an insensible heart could be unmoved.”

“If these rocks could speak, what legends they might tell of vanished races,” said Faith.  “There is something inexpressibly sad in the fate of those who once were the masters of these woods and fields, and streams.

“They but submit to the common fate, which compels the inferior to make way for the superior race, as my father says.”

“How beautiful,” she continued, “must this goodly land have seemed to the Indian hunter, when, after the day’s chase, he dropped the deer upon the ground, and, from this high point, looked over the green forests and shining stream.  I should not wonder, if now, in the voice of the cataract, he fancies he hears the groans of his ancestors, and the screams of demons.”