tender suffusive radiance of the afterglow of a sunken sun.

The road fell quickly into disuse after the abandonment of the work.
In the storms of winter, trees were uprooted and thrown athwart the
way; overhanging rocks, splitting in the freeze, precipitated
obstructive avalanches upon the dim serpentine convolutions; the wind
piled drifts of dead leaves above the turns; and in the spring grass
began to grow in the tracks of the wheels.

It held no woeful memories now for Narcissa. She loved to sit on the
step of the stile and watch through the leafless sunlit trees the
silver haze shimmering in the valley, where the winter wheat was all
of an emerald richness, and the blue mountains afar off so near akin
to the aspect of heaven that one might hardly mark where the horizon
line merged the sweet solitudes of earth into the solitary sky. Many
a day, the spring, loitering along the shadow-flecked vistas, with the
red maple-blooms overhead and violets underfoot, was the only traveler
to be seen on the deserted road. And the pensive dusk was wont to
deepen into the serene vernal night, sweet with the scent of the
budding wild cherry, and astir with timorous tentative rustlings as of
half-fledged breezes, and illumined only with the gentle lustre of the
white stars; for never again was the darkness emblazoned with that
haggard incandescence so long the mystery of Witch-Face Mountain.

TAKING THE BLUE RIBBON AT THE COUNTY FAIR.

Jenks Hollis sat on the fence. He slowly turned the quid of tobacco in
his cheek, and lifting up his voice spoke with an oracular drawl:--

"Ef he kin take the certif'cate it's the mos' ez he kin do. He ain't
never a-goin' ter git no premi-_um_ in this life, sure 's ye air a
born sinner."

And he relapsed into silence. His long legs dangled dejectedly among
the roadside weeds; his brown jeans trousers, that had despaired of
ever reaching his ankles, were ornamented here and there with
ill-adjusted patches, and his loose-fitting coat was out at the
elbows. An old white wool hat drooped over his eyes, which were fixed
absently on certain distant blue mountain ranges, that melted tenderly
into the blue of the noonday sky, and framed an exquisite mosaic of
poly-tinted fields in the valley, far, far below the grim gray crag on
which his little home was perched.

Despite his long legs he was a light weight, or he would not have
chosen as his favorite seat so rickety a fence. His interlocutor