Oh! the waters,-the beautiful waters! Hark! the first singers of the season awake, for there is a balmy breath upon the morn, and the day star floats above the hilltops like a silver water-bird who dips his feathers in a ruby sea. I am there Miles, I am there. Should you save me the last, great danger is over. We shall go home."

Once more the sweet girl spoke, and now more plaintive, more tender was her voice. It was as if some lonely nightingale, transported from Oriental gardens to a frozen, hyperborean realm, were singing to itself its own glad recollections of the tuberose and the fragrant lily and all the thousand flowers of its distant birthplace. "Oh!" she murmured, “Oh! soul of my soul! With rosy children, clothed in garments woven of the first smiles of the morning, we balance in the perfumed air,—we dance where parterres of ever-springing flowers keep motion to the music of our hearts. This, this is the first beginning and the primal home. Yet here the joy of being is but a bliss of infancy; its language the sportive laughter of two halfformed essences wafted from blossom to blossom; a dream that melts and vanishes in its own delight. Oh! my beloved, my soul's beloved! Through earth and all its toils and sufferings, through overcoming of all impure desires, all thoughts that have their origin and end in self alone, returning, in the completed cycle of our being, we kneel together, once again, upon these purple hillsides. We are called the sons and daughters of the morning. Oh! my beloved,-my soul's beloved!" Now the voice, as a rose that closes up its petals and sleeps overpowered by its own sweetness, languished and was still. The charmed slumber was over.

"Kiss me, dearie," said gallant Hans to his coy bride, the two looking out from the dormer window over the high stoop, and listening to the sound of coming bells.

"Not a kiss, Hans, not a kiss,” pouted the laughing dam

sel, escaping from his arms. "Never shall it be said that a Dutch bride did a thing against old customs. You kiss the bridesmaid; I kiss the groomsman; then the groomsman and the bridesmaid kiss each other; that's for luck and another wedding. Then, Hans," and the full lips pouted, "then you may kiss me."

Twinkle, twinkle, shone the merry stars, as if they, gazing out on this frosty night, beheld the buxom lass, and lovingly approved the silent feeling of that good heart, fluttering with anxiety for its absent friend, and holding aloof from the kind breast on which it longed to nestle, till reässured that the lost was found.

But English Cupid just then, in his dove-drawn car, entered through the window, and, patting jolly Dutch Cupid, on the back, he whispered, and the two, arm in arm, as brothers should, began lovingly to converse together.

English Cupid said, "There they come." Dutch Cupid answered "Yah, yah," and flew to disappointed Hans, and tickled him under the ribs, and dashed a cloud of sunshine on the honest face, and puffed into the nostrils a breath of invisible smoke from the fragrant pipe-bowl, and Hans sneezed, and thought that he was taking cold, and ran after Katrina.

CHAPTER XL.

RESURGEMUS.

The horses' heads were turned toward Wiltsevleet. In the sleigh sat, first, Ambrose Quackenbush the constable, on the seat with the driver; then two jolly fellows, hired as special deputies, and, in the place of honor, a man of the law, side by side with the dark complexioned stranger, shivering in cloak and buffalo as if unaccustomed to the winters of the north. This was at half-past six, A. M.

Our friend, Miles Wallingford, is up early this morning enjoying the frosty, bracing air. The posse are still a good mile from Wiltsevleet, having stopped at Brom Vanbruggen's, the horses to cool and the bipeds to warm. They have driven fast since daylight. Here Wallingford meets them, he, too, rubbing his hands before the huge Franklin in the bar-room. The editor is well known by all the party except the bilious looking traveler in the cloak. An introduction soon takes place, whereupon our Charleston friend invites the company to the bar.

Miles abominates brandy, but touches the glass to his lips with the rest and then invites the Carolinian to a conference at the window. Honorable men have an instinct by which they recognize each other. Educated to look upon the black as an inferior race, born to service, it did not trouble the conscience of this son of a decayed planter to search out a runaway slave, but he would have scorned a lie and knocked down the man, instanter, who approached him with a bribe. Wallingford read the character at a glance, and

quietly remarked, "I am at present, Sir, acting as the friend and adviser of the person whom you have taken legal measures to arrest. I am not here to interfere with you in the discharge of your legal duty, but on the other hand will facilitate the process."

The Southerner waxed mellow under Miles' beamy look, and answered with a careless oath, "The blazes you are. What do you propose to do?"

WALLINGFORD, "Well, Colonel,”-it is always safe to address a Southerner as Colonel. You may slightly overshoot, but it is not safe to go below Major, and it is possible that he may rejoice in the epithet of General,—so, Colonel being the average, Miles took it. "Well, Colonel, I might have saved you a trifle of expense had I seen you yesterday. Madame Lorne, my client's owner, has executed her free papers. You are aware, that, should this be the case, any attempt to arrest her may subject you to a vexatious suit, and there are plenty of malicious persons to put you to a great deal of needless trouble."

Both were members of an ancient and honorable fraterternity. Wallingford took the stranger by the hand and added, "as a brother on the obligation of

and

I pledge you my word and honor that this is true to to my best knowledge and belief. I do not wish to disturb the quiet of the family in which Zulette has taken refuge.

If

you will do me the favor of accepting bachelor's fare, in my own house near at hand, for a day or two, a telegraphic despatch from Charleston will relieve you of all further responsibility. If you wish it I will bring the woman there and place her under charge of a family of old retainers; she will thus be under your own eye till the matter is adjusted.”

Southern blood is warm and quick. The stranger took Miles by the hand and shook it heartily with "Done like a planter. Do you play euchre? Let me send these fellows back."

At seven o'clock Miles shouted for Sambo and threw him the reins before the broad stoop of the Van Twiggles, introduced the stranger as his friend Col. Capers, and after breakfast drove him over to the old Manor House, having first sent the body servant as a courier. Col. Capers was treated like a prince for forty-eight hours. At the end of that time a despatch was received from Madame Lorne's attorney, stating in brief that Zulette was free.

In the snow, where, on the day preceding, the abductors of Charity had stationed their vehicle, one of the colored children about the place picked up a knife, bearing on the engraved plate in its horn handle the name Fred Hunter. Wallingford obtained it, recompensing the grinning urchin with a bright silver dollar, large and splendid in his eyes as a full moon.

The young man's soul was roused. He determined if it was possible to arrest and punish the villains, in the hope of discovering the movers of the plot, and, carelessly showing the knife to his Carolinian friend, remarked, "I picked this up: it has some fellow's name on it." The weapon was peculiar, made to be jerked open by the spring upon its back, the blade tough and keen as a stiletto.

Capers took it, picked his teeth with the sharp point, balanced his chair on its rear legs, turned his quid, aimed at the back log with a jet of tobacco juice and quietly replied, "That has seen service. I shouldn't wonder if I knew the fellow. Had him up on a charge of burglary, but he escaped. He is a swell cracksman. I can find him. There is a pigeon-roost of these birds in Orange street, New York. His pal is one Dan Howlitt. Sure as my name is Alf Capers, that's the way they found Zulette. It is an infernal scheme, the whole of it. Mr. Wallingford, I employed a man whom this Fred Hunter introduced to me to hunt up the mulattto woman. I see through it. They discovered a young lady who was pirated away by