Whether or not he was a prophet, he enjoyed about the country the reputation of one; and so soon as I dared say anything to him, I inquired whether or not it would rain that day. Turning his clear, deepblue eyes upon me, he replied, "A prophet has no honor in his own country; nevertheless I will tell you." And having leaned thoughtfully on his staff for a few minutes, he told me there would be rain about the fifth hour of the evening; and lifting up his eyes he continued: "Woe unto you, if you be a daughter of the faithless!"

I told him I believed; and though I perhaps exaggerated somewhat my credulity, I certainly felt a vague impression that to his strange deep eyes the future was more open than to most mortal men. Not a cloud was visible in the sky, but at noon they began to gather; and when at night I walked under the leafy arch of the gloomy road, I heard the rain pattering above me, and my faith was confirmed. Ever after that I designated the old man as father Christopher, a title which gave him the greatest satisfaction.

My schoolmates warned me in vain against tampering with the devil-the imputed necromancy had a charm for me; and in course of time a strange joy mingled with the tremor I felt, when I saw in the distance the red mantle of father Christopher fluttering in the winds; and perhaps I was the more willing to listen, from the fact that he often promised to bestow his prophetic powers upon me when he died. Sometimes if I met him as I was returning from school, and so at leisure, I would sit down on some log by the road-side, and listen till the stars came out to his curious talk, half mad and half inspired. Sometimes he saw funerals in the clouds, and more than once I remember that his predictions of death in the neighborhood were verified as he foretold-marriages also, and other occurrences of less importance. It was his delight, however, to wander in thought beyond the limits of this world, and bring back the lights and shadows that he met. The songs of the angels, the chariot of the Lord, the trumpet of Gabriel, death, and the death after death, were the themes of his highest eloquence. Many and many a time he told me that he had the day, or the night past, seen his angel wife, Mary-that he had been with her in Paradise; or that she had

come to his bedside in the night time, and given him a flower, or mingled on his pillow her golden locks with his white ones. She was beautiful when she lived in the world, he said, and now that she was an angel, he could not tell that she was more lovely than when long ago she sat by his fireside with their baby on her knees. Often he talked wildly-madly almost—of other things, making fearful combinations of light and darkness, love and hate; but when he talked of Mary, it was with the tenderness and pathos of a bereaved lover, and with consistency that impressed me very deeply. Her hair had the same golden brightness always- her hand the same lily beauty, and her eyes the unfathomable splendor of the blue midnight -her voice was always low and loving; and often he said to me, that no serpent ever crossed his garden for forty days after his beautiful Mary had been to his cabin. One time he took from his bosom a flower, which, he said, she had given him the last midnight, calling him softly out of sleep, and putting her arms about his neck as she did so; but if the flower were the gift of any Mary, it must have been years and years away; for it was withered almost to blackness.

I was grown quite to womanhood without having ever been to his house; though we were grown to be friends, and many times he had asked me to visit him. Gladly would I have done so, but was not permitted to go alone; and if I suggested any inclination to any of my friends, they were quick to say I was scarcely less crazy than old Christopher himself—and so they would tell me of the great black dog that was chained at his cabin door, to devour alive any one who dared go near it; and of the sword that shone against the wall, and with which it was supposed he had some time done a murder, about which he had gone crazy; and of the poison herbs that hung in bunches along his ceiling; and of other mysterious furnishings of his house at all of which I only laughed, and was accused of a disposition to tamper with things forbidden.

If I made inquiries about his history, I learned only the common and obvious facts: he was old crazy Christopher-supposed to have lost his reason in consequence of too much thought about the future; but nobody really knew or inquired

they regarded him as one of the belong

ings of the neighborhood, that could provide for its needs-giving him no more sympathy than they gave the worn-out horse turned loose to die. His own children sold from beneath his feet the ground his own hands had earned; for he had come, a widowed man, with three little children to our neighborhood a great while before I could remember-cleared the land, built him a home, planted an orchard, and digged a well; and while he was doing all this, the children he brought grew to maturity, and the once clear intellect of the father went blind, and knew them not; and they-O to the shame of humanity be it written!-forsook him; and to a strange hard man sold him, with the ground he had earned by the sweat of his brow.

It was not regarded as any very wicked transaction that I remember of; and with certain pieces of silver in their hands, the sons and the daughter of the mentally blind and doubly pitiable father took honorable leave of the neighborhood, to buy broader lands and build new roofs over their own heads, leaving the gray hairs of their father to bide the peltings of the storms. And so they did, for he refused to sleep beneath the roof of the oppressor, as he called the new proprietor of his estate; and building a small house of logs in the midst of the woods, retired, and lived thenceforward alone. That he was unconscious of the grievous wrong done him I was never satisfied, and sometimes questioned him as to the extent of his lands, the variety of his fruits, and the like; and the propriety and correctness of his replies persuaded me that, however bewildered, neither memory nor the light of reason was altogther lost.

It was a keen, clear, pitiless winter day, that made the beast shiver and man seek the fire; at the close of which I found myself with a walk of two miles and a half before me--for I had been visiting for a day at my grandfather's house. I might shorten the distance for half a mile, I was told, by crossing the fields and woods; and as any shortening of the distance was desirable under the circumstances, I resolved to follow the directions which my friends had very carefully given for my guidance. I must follow the lane till I came to the woods, where I would find a path, in which I must keep till within sight of a designated barn-then I must cross a meadow toward a certain tree, at which place I VOL. VII.-3

would find a run, that for another indefinite distance would be my guide; but at a certain turn where a sycamore-tree had fallen, I must leave it, and strike into the woods, and by keeping a north-westerly course I would soon find myself in the main road-home nearly in sight-and besides the shorter journey, the woods, it was argued, would be a protection to me, as the wind must be a good deal broken by the trees. I shaped out the way very clearly, I thought, in my mind, and with a brisk step and the most perfect assurance in my ability to find my way, set forward. The sun was near the setting-the last rays glittering on the steep frosty gable of my grandfather's house as I looked back where the lane terminated in the woods, and before I emerged from their shadows, all was shadow. Such bitter and biting cold I never saw-the clear sky was like a dome of ice, and the meadow grass cracked beneath my feet as I went, so stiff was it frozen-and every track made by man or beast was crusted with a shell that cracked and rattled together in a mass as I passed along. The black, bare branches of the trees stood still-there was no voice of bird or fall of water, but all was as if everything had been frozen, or was freezing into silence.

I don't know how it was, but I failed to see the barn of which I had been told, and thinking I must have gone far enough in one direction, for the intense cold made every step painful, I resolved to be guided by my own apprehensions, and strike at once into the woods. The sun had already been down some time; there was no moon; and the stars that seemed shrunken by the cold, made only here and there a shiver of light through the darkness. Over fallen logs and around them I went, across ponds of ice, and along flat leafy distances, down into deep hollows and over steep hills, looking and looking to discern the light through the woods. In vain-it grew

in the house,) upou which stood a jug of water and a basket of apples. On a shelf at the head of the bed lay a Bible and a miniature case-the wall had many a chink through which the wind came, reminding us of the intense cold without. I need not linger over the aching and tingling in my fingers-over the strange sensations that possessed me on finding myself alone at midnight in the hut of a crazy man, shut out by woods and darkness from help, if danger there were. My suffering from the cold prevented fear, at first, and as I became sensible of new peril I suppressed its manifestation, and presently felt all the confidence I at first affected.

"They call me crazy," said Christopher, speaking at last," and you must be afraid to stay with me in this lonesome place," and he took my hand as he spoke and looked close in my eyes as though he would see down through them to my soul. I said, "No, you are a prophet, and why should I fear you-have you not foretold storms and deaths, and done me many favors without once harming me?" He smiled at my words, and as he stooped his face toward me I smoothed away the gray hair which fell over his eyes, and when he lifted himself up I saw that they were dim with tears. "No," he said, laying his withered and trembling hand on my head, "I am a prophet, and a wronged and injured old man, but not crazy-no, no, not crazy.' The light of a clear intelligence seemed shining in his face as he spoke, and I felt that he was, indeed, a wronged and injured old man, and to this day I believe that for the time the clouds passed from his intellect. While he sat sad and thoughtful at the fire, I took from the shelf the miniature, rather to divert the attention of my friend from the troubled mood in which he seemed to be settling than from any idle curiosity. It was the picture of a young and beautiful woman. Who could it be, I mused as I gazed upon it—

"Could any Beatrice see
A lover in that anchorite?"

and I turned from the picture to the miserable old-man in whose eyes the light of a clear memory seemed shining sorrowfully out. He took the miniature from my hand, and having kissed it reverently, placed it in his bosom, and with his eyes

fixed in the fire and quite forgetful of me, seemingly, he said :-"She loved me once I am sure she did-we were so happy in our beautiful home. I remember one summer night when her head lay on my arm and the rose-leaves blew in at the window and fell over her head and face-there was a bird singing near, and we had no light but the moonshine-let me see, we were not many months married then-well-would to God I had no darker memory-if she were dead-but she did not die-only the death which is worse than death-could she leave her baby in the cradle, and steal away in the dark with a human devil? No, no, it could not have been-and yet in my veins there is no traitor blood-it must have been from her the children drew their serpent natures-have they not stung me, each one, and after coiled themselves separately away-O, vile mother, and vile children, curses on you all! If I should wrong her- what a wrong it wereshe may have been spirited away-I have searched the world and could never find her grave. We were walking in the garden when the tempter appeared-we had been happy till then, but from that day it seemed as if there was a great gulf between us. When I came home next she was not waiting for me at the window, and though she smiled faintly when I spoke to her, it was as if her heart were otherwhere. One moonlight summer night I came with a quick anxious step, for something boded me evil; I knew not, felt not what it was, but a voice seemed to say to me, Haste, O haste. When I came within sight of the house I almost ran— there was no light at the window as there had always been till then. I opened the door with a trembling hand, for I heard no voice singing, and no footstep in the house-the moonlight streamed over bed and cradle, and the three children slept alone. With the burning lamp I searched the house, feeling at every step how useless was the search. I called aloud through all the house and in the garden-no voice replied-from that night my home was desolate, and more than that my heart was desolate. Once again I saw her like a golden shadow in the dark-what matters it when and where-I never sought to see her again, but with my children crossed the mountains, and with all the strength that was left in me tried to make a new

home. Sometimes there came a little light to me when my children played under the trees I had planted-but the serpent's egg hatches a serpent-they grew to maturity and sold me with my oxen and my land-well!"

I knew not then, and know not now, how much of this soliloquy was to be attributed to a wandering imagination; it impressed me like a fragment of truth; perhaps it was so, perhaps not. At daylight I made my way home; Christopher attending me till my path struck into the main road; gentle and loving he was so long as he stayed with me, but when we had been a few minutes divided and I turned to look for him, I heard his voice sounding angrily through the woods; he was fighting with the demons again.

Many years after this occurrence he continued to live his lonesome and isolated life, and was at length, after a colder night than the one I passed in his house, found dead by the fireless hearth: when or how he had gone no one knew; but when they dressed him for the grave, they found, lying close on his bosom, the picture of a fair-faced woman.

Whether or not she were his Mary I cannot tell; or if indeed it were not all a dream-if it were so, God grant the dream may have been only a prophecy, and that he knows now its bright fulfilment. For is not he our Father "who setteth an end to darkness and who searcheth out all perfection?"

[For the National Magazine.] LOVEST THOU ME?

BY LUTHER W. PECK.

"Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord: thou knowest that I love thee." John xxi, 15. JESUS in prayer conversed with God, While on the lonely mountain-side; And anxious crowds pursuing trod,

To spread his healing power wide; Then Peter follow'd near his Lord,

And oft his deeds of mercy told;
In temple, or in mount adored,

Jesus beholds his followers bold.
* Σίμων Ιωνά, φιλεῖς με ;
The answer, then, will surely be,
Σὺ οἶδας ὅτι φιλῶ σε.

The Greek lines may be rendered as follows:

"Son of Jonas, lovest thou me!
Thou knowest that I love thee."

When on the wild Gennesaret,

The laboring ship was tempest-toss'd; And with the dashing surges wet,

The trembling band gave all for lost; When rose along the blast a cry,

That seem'd to check the mighty wave:
"Fear not," said Jesus, "it is I;"
Then Peter, sinking, cried, "O save!"
Σίμων Ἰωνᾶ, φιλεῖς με ;

He answers from the billowy sea,
Σὺ οἶδας ὅτι φιλῶ σε.

Where tower'd proud Jerusalem,

From fragrant, grape-hung Olivet, Advanced the Prince, whose diadem

Was not with fading diamonds set;
But round his mild, unearthly brow
Heaven's dread imperial splendor hung;
Along his path were seen to bow
The hosts, from whom hosannas rung:
Σίμων Ἰωνᾶ, φιλεῖς με;

Jesus! though all forsake, and flee,
Σὺ οἶδας ὅτι φιλῶ σε.

The heavens are changed-the clouded sun Grows pale before his Maker's frown; Redemption's closing rite begun

Angels to earth are thronging down; Within a tyrant's judgment-hall,

The calm, unsinning Jesus stands;
Ah! terrors now all hearts appall,
And Christ is mock'd by hellish bands:
Σίμων Ἰωνᾶ, φιλεῖς με;

He answers, weeping bitterly,
Σὺ οἶδας ὅτι φιλῶ σε.

The rugged steep of Calvary,

The rending rocks, the rising dead, Attest that Jesus loveth thee,

As in his holy word is said; The awe-struck guard, the bursting tomb, The angels watching at the door, The day of death, the day of doom, Tell Jesus loveth evermore. Σίμων Ἰωνᾶ, φιλεῖς με;

In heaven the rapturous song shall be, Σὺ οἶδας ὅτι φιλῶ σε.

The friends of Jesus saw him stand,
All radiant, on the sunlit shore;
The nail's torn mark was in his hand,
Deep battle scars the conqueror bore;
The Lord of life, from heaven he came,
And stood by calm Gennesaret;
Though risen, he is still the same,
And his disciples loveth yet:
Σίμων Ἰωνᾶ, φιλεῖς με;
Forever more the answer be,
Σὺ οἶδας ὅτι φιλῶ σε.

THE VASTNESS OF DIVINE LOVE.-We stand upon the sea-shore, and survey with admiring delight the wide-extended ocean, whose distant waters lose themselves in the blue horizon. But what is this great abyss of waters compared to that ocean of Almighty love, which is without a bottom and a shore ?-Brooks.