gave way beneath his own impetus, and his horns
ploughed the snow. With a deep bellowing groan he rolled over on his
side, and the longing, and the dream of the pleasant pastures, faded
from his eyes. With a great spring the panther was upon him, and the
eager teeth were at his throat,--but he knew nought of it. No wild
beast, but his own desire, had conquered him.

When the panther had slaked his thirst for blood, he raised his head,
and stood with his fore-paws resting on the dead ox's side, and gazed
all about him.

To one watching from the lake shore, had there been any one to watch in
that solitude, the wild beast and his prey would have seemed but a speck
of black on the gleaming waste. At the same hour, league upon league
back in the depth of the ancient forest, a lonely ox was lowing in his
stanchions, restless, refusing to eat, grieving for the absence of his
yoke-fellow.

The Eye of Gluskap.

I.

It was close upon high tide, and the creek that wound in through the
diked marshes was rapidly filling to the brim with the swirling, cold,
yellow-gray waters of Minas. The sun, but half risen, yet lingered on
the wooded crest of the Gaspereau hills; while above hung a dappled sky
of pink and pale amber and dove-color. A yellow light streamed sharply
down across the frost-whitened meadows, the smouldering ruins of Grand
Pre village, and out upon the glittering expanse of Minas Basin. The
beams tinged brightly the cordage and half-furled sails of two ships
that rode at anchor in the Basin, near the shore. With a pitilessly
revealing whiteness the rays descended on the mournful encampment at the
creek's mouth, where a throng of Acadian peasants were getting ready to
embark for exile.

"Late grew the year, and stormy was the sea."

Already had five ships sailed away with their sorrowful freight,
disappearing around the towering front of Blomidon, from the straining
eyes of friends and kinsfolk left behind. Another ship would sail out
with the next ebb, and all was sad confusion and unwilling haste till
the embarkation should be accomplished. The ship's boats were loaded
down with rude household stuff, and boxes full of homespun linens and
woollens.

Children were crying with the cold, and a few women were weeping
silently; but the partings which had succeeded each other at intervals
throughout the last few weeks had dulled the edge of anguish, and most
of the Acadians wore an air of heavy resignati