es to cheer him, rendered
him, if that were possible, darker and gloomier, and more mournful.

The spirits of the departed seemed to hover about him, forbidding him
ever again to admit hope or joy as an inmate to his desolate heart;
and, wrapt in these dark phantasies, with his brow bent, and his eyes
downcast, he wandered from terrace to terrace through the garden,
until he reached its farthest boundary, and then passed out into the
park, through which he strolled, almost unconscious whither, until he
came to the great deer-fence of the utmost glen, through a wicket of
which, just as the sun was setting, he entered into the shadowy
woodland.

Then a whole flood of wild and whirling thoughts rushed over his brain
at once. He had strolled without a thought into the very scene of his
happy rambles with the beloved, the faithless, the lost Melanie.
Carried away by a rush of inexplicable feelings, he walked swiftly
onward through the dim wild-wood path toward the Devil's Drinking Cup.
He came in sight of it--a woman sat by its brink, who started to her
feet at the sound of his approaching footsteps.

It was Melanie--alone--and if his eyes deceived him not, weeping
bitterly.

She gazed at him, at the first, with an earnest, half-alarmed,
half-inquiring glance, as if she did not recognize his face, and,
perhaps, apprehended rudeness, if not danger, from the approach of a
stranger.

Gradually, however, she seemed in part to recognize him. The look of
inquiry and alarm gave place to a fixed, glaring, icy stare of unmixed
dread and horror; and when he had now come to within six or eight
paces of her, still without speaking, she cried, in a wild, low voice,

"Great God! great God! has he come up from the grave to reproach me! I
am true, Raoul; true to the last, my beloved!"

And with a long, shivering, low shriek, she staggered, and would have
fallen to the earth had he not caught her in his arms.

But she had fainted in the excess of superstitious awe, and perceived
not that it was no phantom's hand, but a most stalwort arm of human
mould that clasped her to the heart of the living Raoul de St. Renan.

[_Conclusion in our next._

THE BLOCKHOUSE.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

Upon yon hillock in this valley's midst,
Where the low crimson sun lies sweetly now
On corn-fields--clustered trees--and meadows wide
Scattered with rustic homesteads, once there st