om the wonderful shoe would fit. I figured them at last
descending to a little fellow six years old, or thereabouts, whose poor
little feet might possibly be planted in the centre of the boots, and
thus, in default of any other protection, be saved for a time from frost
and snow. My mind was divided between amusement at the final destination
of these celebrated relics, and regret that I had nothing more suitable
to send. I could only hope that this part of the poor fugitives' outfit
might be more successfully provided for from some other quarter.

Winter passed by; spring came, succeeded by long, hot mid-summer days of
the western summer. Our neighbors, for the most part, were scattered to
the North and East--gone to the lakes, to New-York, to Boston, or to
some summer resort upon the Atlantic coast--all who could, breaking the
long-continued and oppressive heat by a pleasant excursion to some
cooler clime. My friend, the minister's daughter, and most of our own
family, had gone like the rest, and I was left in a somewhat solitary
state to while away the long hours of those burning summer days, in the
monotony of a large and empty country-house.

One day at noon, I strolled to the door, seeking a breath of air. I
stood within the doorway, and looked out. Before me extended a level
tract of green grass, thinly planted with young shade-trees. At some
distance beyond, melting away in haze beneath the glowing sun, a little
wood extended toward the north-east, meeting at its extremity another
and denser wood of much greater extent. This first little wood had been
in our young days our favorite resort. We had explored every turn in it
again and again; we knew well every tree upon its outskirts, beneath
whose shade some little patch of green grass might serve for a
resting-place, or a pic-nic ground; we were familiar with every old
trunk with wide-extending roots, in whose protecting cavities that
little, speckled, pepper-and-salt-looking flower, the spring harbinger,
nestled, peeping forth toward the end of March, ere the ice and snow had
well melted, or any other green thing dared show itself. Deeper in the
shade lay the soft beds of decaying leaves, where somewhat later the
spring beauties would start forth, clothing the brown and purple tints
of the ground with touches of delicate pink. With them would come that
fair little wind-flower, the white anemone, and the blue and yellow
violets, soon to be followed by that lovelie