er
youth. 'I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and
they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the
ocean--that wide and nameless sepulchre?'

For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated
group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance, or
power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their
lips.

'The Slide! The Slide!'

The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and
sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot--where, in contemplation
of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had
quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway of destruction.
Down came the whole side of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin.
Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into two
branches--shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole
vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its
dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to
roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the
victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.

The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
had but gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would
shortly return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
left separate tokens, by which those who had known the family were made
to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? (The story
has been told far and wide, and Will forever be a legend of these
mountains.) Poets have sung their fate.

There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient
grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his
dream o