oxes, and watching the fire, from the paly blue border of
flame in the edge of the damp charcoal, to the reddening, glowing column
that shot with an arrowy stream of sparks up the wide-throated chimney.
How the dark rafters and nail-pierced roof grew ruddy as the white-hot
ploughshare or iron bar was drawn from the fire!--what alternations of
light and shadow! No painter ever drew figure in such relief as the
blacksmith presented in that wonderful light, with his glistening face,
his tense muscles, and his upraised arm.

Alas! the hammer is still; the wheel dashes no more the glittering spray;
the fire has died out in the forge; the blacksmith's long day's work is
done!

He settled in Innisfield when it was but a district attached to a
neighboring town. There were but three or four houses in the now somewhat
populous village. He came on foot, driving his cow; his wife following in
the wagon, with their little stock of household goods,--not forgetting his
hammer, more potent than Prospero's wand. The minister, the doctor, and
Squire Kinloch, who constituted the aristocracy, yielded precedence in
date to Ralph Hardwick, Knight of the Ancient Order of the Anvil.

So he toiled, faithful to his calling. By day the din of his hammer rarely
ceased, and by night the flame and sparks from his chimney were a Pharos
to all travellers approaching the town. Children were born to him, for
which he blessed God, and worked the harder. He attained a moderate
prosperity, secure from want, but still dependent upon labor for bread. At
length his wife died; he wept like a true and faithful husband as he was,
and thenceforth was both mother and father to his babes.

During all his life he kept Sunday with religious scrupulousness, and with
his family went to the house of worship in all weathers. From the very
first he had been leader of the choir, and had given the pitch with a fork
hammered and tuned by his own hands. With a clear and sympathetic voice,
he had such an instinctive taste and power of expression, that his song of
penitence or praise was far more devotional than the labored efforts of
many more highly cultivated singers. Music and poetry flowed smoothly and
naturally from his lips, but in uttering the common prose of daily life
his organs were rebellious. The truth must be spoken,--he stammered badly,
incurably. Whether it was owing to the attempt to overcome his impediment
by making his speech musical, or to the cadences of