al boundary that the
waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but a few feet from him. The
sun sank, deepening the gold of the river until it might have been the
stream of Pactolus itself. But Martin Morse had no imagination; he was
not even a gold-seeker; he had simply obeyed the roving instincts of the
frontiersman in coming hither. The land was virgin and unoccupied; it
was his; he was alone. These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with
less concern over his three thousand miles' transference of habitation
than the man of cities who had moved into a next street. When the
sun sank, he rolled himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and went
quietly to sleep.

But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could
not determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation. It was a deep
throbbing through the silence of the night--a pulsation that seemed even
to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay. As it came nearer
it separated itself into a labored, monotonous panting, continuous, but
distinct from an equally monotonous but fainter beating of the waters,
as if the whole track of the river were being coursed and trodden by a
multitude of swiftly trampling feet. A strange feeling took possession
of him--half of fear, half of curious expectation. It was coming nearer.
He rose, leaped hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank. The night
was dark; at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky
pierced with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars. Then there seemed
to be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical
constellation--a few red and blue stars high above the river, with
three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him and
apparently on his own level. It was almost upon him; he involuntarily
drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of where he stood, and
resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk, whose vagueness, topped by
enormous towers, was yet illuminated by those open squares of light
that he had taken for stars, but which he saw now were brilliantly lit
windows.

Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across the
meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen. But all this was
nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted curtains and
open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this strange and
wonderful spectacle. Elegantly dressed men and women moved through
brilliantly lit and elab