hange him into a stag, as I did Actaeon,
if he peeps from behind the trees!"

"Me take his scalp!" cried the Indian chief, brandishing his tomahawk,
and cutting a great caper in the air.

"I'll root him in the earth with a spell that I have at my tongue's
end!" squeaked Moll Pitcher. "And the green moss shall grow all over
him, before he gets free again!"

"The voice was Miles Coverdale's," said the fiendish fiddler, with a
whisk of his tail and a toss of his horns. "My music has brought him
hither. He is always ready to dance to the Devil's tune!"

Thus put on the right track, they all recognized the voice at once, and
set up a simultaneous shout.

"Miles! Miles! Miles Coverdale, where are you?" they cried. "Zenobia!
Queen Zenobia! here is one of your vassals lurking in the wood.
Command him to approach and pay his duty!"

The whole fantastic rabble forthwith streamed off in pursuit of me, so
that I was like a mad poet hunted by chimeras. Having fairly the start
of them, however, I succeeded in making my escape, and soon left their
merriment and riot at a good distance in the rear. Its fainter tones
assumed a kind of mournfulness, and were finally lost in the hush and
solemnity of the wood. In my haste, I stumbled over a heap of logs and
sticks that had been cut for firewood, a great while ago, by some
former possessor of the soil, and piled up square, in order to be
carted or sledded away to the farmhouse. But, being forgotten, they
had lain there perhaps fifty years, and possibly much longer; until, by
the accumulation of moss, and the leaves falling over them, and
decaying there, from autumn to autumn, a green mound was formed, in
which the softened outline of the woodpile was still perceptible. In
the fitful mood that then swayed my mind, I found something strangely
affecting in this simple circumstance. I imagined the long-dead
woodman, and his long-dead wife and children, coming out of their chill
graves, and essaying to make a fire with this heap of mossy fuel!

From this spot I strayed onward, quite lost in reverie, and neither
knew nor cared whither I was going, until a low, soft, well-remembered
voice spoke, at a little distance.

"There is Mr. Coverdale!"

"Miles Coverdale!" said another voice,--and its tones were very stern.
"Let him come forward, then!"

"Yes, Mr. Coverdale," cried a woman's voice,--clear and melodious, but,
just then, with something unnatural in its chord,--"you are