the activity of the moment before. At last, with a sob like that of a
frightened child who flies from some imagined evil lurking in darkness,
he darted back to the white birches and started anew. This time
he trusted to blind instinct; his feet knew the path, and, left to
themselves, they took him through the tangle of dry bushes straight to
his--

It had vanished!

Nothing but ashes remained to mark the spot,--nothing but ashes! And
these, ere many days, the autumn winds would scatter, and the leafless
branches on which they fell would shake them off lightly, never dreaming
that they hid the soul of a home. Nothing but ashes!

Poor Tom o' the blueb'ry plains!

THE NOONING TREE.

The giant elm stood in the centre of the squire's fair green meadows,
and was known to all the country round about as the "Bean ellum." The
other trees had seemingly retired to a respectful distance, as if they
were not worthy of closer intimacy; and so it stood alone, king of the
meadow, monarch of the village.

It shot from the ground for a space, straight, strong, and superb,
and then bust into nine splendid branches, each a tree in itself, all
growing symmetrically from the parent trunk, and casting a grateful
shadow under which all the inhabitants of the tiny village might have
gathered.

It was not alone its size, its beauty, its symmetry, its density of
foliage, that made it the glory of the neighborhood, but the low grown
of its branches and the extra-ordinary breadth of its shade. Passers-by
from the adjacent towns were wont to hitch their teams by the wayside,
crawl through the stump fence and walk across the fields, for a nearer
view of its magnificence. One man, indeed, was known to drive by the
tree every day during the summer, and lift his hat to it, respectfully,
each time he passed; but he was a poet and his intellect was not greatly
esteemed in the village.

The elm was almost as beautiful in one season as in another. In the
spring it rose from moist fields and mellow ploughed ground, its tiny
brown leaf buds bursting with pride at the thought of the loveliness
coiled up inside. In summer it stood in the midst of a waving garden of
buttercups and whiteweed, a towering mass of verdant leafage, a shelter
from the sun and a refuge from the storm; a cool, splendid, hospitable
dome, under which the weary farmer might fling himself, and gaze upward
as into the heights and depths of an emerald heaven. As for the bird