But to the terrors of fire,
Sandie was as immovable as he was to the imaginary groans of the
barren wife of Laird Laurie; and he held his wife, and threatened
the weight of his right hand--and it was a heavy one--to all who
ventured abroad, or even unbolted the door. The neighing and prancing
of horses, and the bellowing of cows, augmented the horrors of the
night; and to any one who only heard the din, it seemed that the
whole onstead was in a blaze, and horses and cattle perishing in
the flame. All wiles, common or extraordinary, were put in practice
to entice or force the honest farmer and his wife to open the door;
and when the like success attended every new stratagem, silence
for a little while ensued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh
wound up the dramatic efforts of the night. In the morning, when
Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing against one of
the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned into
something like human form, and which skilful people declared would
have been clothed with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon him
by elfin adroitness for his wife, had he admitted his visitants.
A synod of wise men and women sat upon the woman of timber, and
she was finally ordered to be devoured by fire, and that in the
open air. A fire was soon made, and into it the elfin sculpture
was tossed from the prongs of two pairs of pitchforks. The blaze
that arose was awful to behold; and hissings, and burstings, and
loud cracklings, and strange noises, were heard in the midst of
the flame; and when the whole sank into ashes, a drinking-cup of
some precious metal was found; and this cup, fashioned no doubt
by elfin skill, but rendered harmless by the purification with
fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie Macharg and his wife drink
out of to this very day. Bless all bold men, say I, and obedient
wives!"

A RAFT THAT NO MAN MADE.

BY ROBERT T. S. LOWELL.

I am a soldier: but my tale, this time, is not of war.

The man of whom the Muse talked to the blind bard of old had grown
wise in wayfaring. He had seen such men and cities as the sun shines
on, and the great wonders of land and sea; and he had visited the
farther countries, whose indwellers, having been once at home in
the green fields and under the sky and roofs of the cheery earth,
were now gone forth and forward into a dim and shadowed land, from
which they found no backward path to these old haunts, and their
old loves