r thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew
forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single
discharge. It was a flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed
upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot with
so many jests and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness
that they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few
hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the
recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their
souls in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still
slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung
over him nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was
withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's
repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which
many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred, now moved his lips
without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres
of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder
along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David's
slumber; and there was the stagecoach. He started up with all his
ideas about him.

"Halloo, driver! Take a passenger?" shouted he.

"Room on top!" answered the driver.

Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so
much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He
knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its
waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor
that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all
in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we
hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.
Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and
unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path,
there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render
foresight even partially available?

SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.

So! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand with
wearied knees--earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far,
far beyond me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith,
where man never breathed nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal
azure melts away from the eye and appears only a deepened shade of
nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and s