y perceived that, whenever he said anything, he seemed to say
something else, and that his weeping appeared to be laughter, and that,
if he stayed there a moment longer, he would surely get a whipping. So
he started to run, with the owner of the oxen shouting at his heels.

"There! take that for being saucy to an old man!" cried the farmer,
fetching him a couple of sharp cuts across the back. Then he returned to
his oxen, and drove them away; while Andy got off from the fallow as
soon as he could, weeping as if his heart would break.

Seeing not far off a beautiful field of clover, the boy thought he would
go and lie down in it, and rest.

He had never seen such clover in his life. It was all in bloom with blue
and red and white flowers, which seemed to glow and sparkle like stars
among the green leaves. How it waved and rippled and flashed in the
sunshine, when the wind blew! Andy almost forgot his grief; and surely
he had quite forgotten that nothing was now any longer what it appeared,
when he waded knee-deep through the delicious clover, and laid himself
down in it. No sooner had he done so than he saw that what he had
mistaken for a field was a large pond, and he had plunged into it all
over like a duck.

Strangling and gasping for breath, and drenched from head to foot, Andy
scrambled out of the water as fast as he could. His hair was wet; and
little streams ran into his eyes and down his cheeks. His ears rang with
the water that had got into them. He was so frightened that he hardly
knew what had happened. And in this condition he sat down on the shore
to let his clothes drip, and to empty the water out of his shoes.

_J. T. Trowbridge._

(_To be continued._)

OUR COUNTRY NEIGHBORS.

We have just built our house in rather an out-of-the-way place,--on the
bank of a river, and under the shade of a little patch of woods which is
a veritable remain of quite an ancient forest. The checkerberry and
partridge-plum, with their glossy green leaves and scarlet berries,
still carpet the ground under its deep shadows; and prince's-pine and
other kindred evergreens declare its native wildness,--for these are
children of the wild woods, that never come after plough and harrow has
once broken a soil.

When we tried to look out the spot for our house, we had to get a
surveyor to go before us and cut a path through the dense underbrush
th