Morning dawned, and the pleasant sunshine was flooding the world with beauty. Our Mary’s cousin was the first to awaken from slumber, when she encircled her bedfellow with her arms, and imprinted an affectionate kiss upon her lips; one moment more, and she was petrified with horror—for Mary Marlowe was numbered with the dead. On the third day after that of St. Valentine, the lover of the unhappy suicide returned to the city. He found not his beloved in the pleasant parlor of her father, but a sleeper in the voiceless and desolate tomb. The fatal valentine was found and submitted to his inspection. He avowed his utter ignorance of it, and having fallen into a settled melancholy, is now a raving maniac. As to the thoughtless and wicked man who wrote the foolish valentine, his name and purpose are alike unknown. Note.—The prominent features of this incident actually occurred in the city of New York in February, 1847. INDIAN LEGENDS. NOTE PRELIMINARY. The following romantic but authentic legends have been collected by the writer from a variety of sources, and are now presented to the public as an addition to the aboriginal lore, already published in his several books of travel. INDIAN LEGENDS. THE SHOOTING METEORS. Among the Indians who live upon the north-eastern shore of Lake Huron, a remnant of the Iroquois, it is believed that the heavens contain only four meteors which have the power of shooting through the sky. It is thought they severally occupy the four quarters of the compass, and that they never perform their arrowy journey excepting for the purpose of warning the Huron Indians of approaching war. The meteors in question, or Pun gung-nung, are recognized by their peculiar brilliancy, and universally considered the Manitoes or guardian spirits of the entire Indian race. They came into existence at the same period of time which witnessed the creation of Lake Huron itself, and the legend which accounts for their origin is distinguished for the wild and romantic fancies of the aborigines. I obtained it from a chief named _On qwa-sug_, or Floating Wood. It was the winter time, and an Indian with his wife and two children, a daughter and a son, were living in a wigwam on a bleak peninsula of the Great Lake. The game of that section of country had nearly all disappeared, and the fish were spending the season in such deep water, that it was quite impossible to secure any of them for food. Everything seemed to go wrong with the poverty-stricken Indian, and he was constantly troubled with the fear that the Master of Life intended to annihilate his family and himself by starvation. He expressed his anxiety to his wife, and was surprised to hear her answer him with a song.