hem all that the European world could
present; and so sacred seemed the thought of that wonder of nature which
could form such a talisman, that the broad hat was insensibly lifted
from his brow as he caught the first new glimpse, and he stood before
the Fall fairly uncovered as he might have done on the crest of the
Judean hills, overlooking the first-seen Jerusalem.

The dark and rugged Canadian shore was full in view on the other side of
the river, with the Clifton House and the Museum glimmering brightly in
the morning sunlight, and the red-cross flag waving sluggishly from both
as if in defiance of the great nation that lay so near and yet could
not possess the little patch of land over which it floated. The
Horse-Shoe Tower stood as of old, still unconquered by the fierce rapids
striving to undermine it; and around base and balcony swarmed visitors
who seemed like pigmies not so much on account of the distance as
because they were dwarfed and belittled in the presence of the immense
and the immeasurable. All these things lay broadly in sight of the
journalist on that glorious Sunday morning, and perhaps at another time
he might have seen and attempted to describe them; but not _then_. He
for the moment failed to see what was before him, and he saw something
else not revealed to every eye.

Tom Leslie was either the master or the slave of a powerful imagination.
Some who knew him said the one, and some the other. But all agreed as to
the possession of the faculty; and it was not always that his soberest
and most conscientious relations (in type) were received without a shade
of suspicion on that account. It may have been that the loneliness of
the night before had not quite worn away, and that it left him sadder
and more impressible than usual; and it may have been that the one
element before wanting in his nature, that of earnest and undivided
human love, had changed him when it was supplied. At all events, there
was a something in that wondrous scene, that came to him that morning as
he had never before known it--something that came to him from
dream-land, and made the sight of his eyes only the exercise of a
secondary faculty. He saw, with this peculiar sight, all the features of
the scene that we have noted, and another and one strikingly unusual, in
a shipwreck in the rapids.

Two days before, on the Fourth, and in honor of the day, a knot of gay
fellows had procured an old schooner, hoisted white streamers a