Before descending, the doctor looked about him, on the strange sight of a thriving uninhabited village. Everybody seemed to be out after the squirrel hunters. When, indeed, the higher ground near the Creek was attained, Dr. Sneyd perceived that Mr. Temple’s family was at home. On the terrace was the gentleman himself, walking backwards and forwards in his usual after-dinner state. His lady (Dr. Sneyd’s only daughter) was stooping among her flowers, while Ephraim, the black boy, was attending at her heels, and the figures of other servants popped into sight and away again, as they were summoned and dismissed by their master. The tavern, kept by the surgeon of the place, stood empty, if it might be judged by its open doors, where no one went in and out. Dods was not to be seen in the brick-ground; which was a wonder, as Dods was a hard- working man, and his task of making bricks for Mr. Temple’s grand alterations had been so much retarded by the late rains that it was expected of Dods that he would lose not a day nor an hour while the weather continued fair. Mrs. Dods was not at work under her porch, as usual, at this hour; nor was the young lawyer, Mr. Johnson, flitting from fence to fence of the cottages on the prairie, to gather up and convey the news of what had befallen since morning. About the rude dwelling within the verge of the forest, there was the usual fluttering of fowls and yelping of dogs; but neither was the half-savage woodsman (only known by the name of Brawn) to be seen loitering about with his axe, nor were his equally uncivilized daughters (the Brawnees) at their sugar troughs under the long row of maples. The Indian corn seemed to have chosen its own place for springing, and to be growing untended; so rude were the fences which surrounded it, and so rank was the prairie grass which struggled with it for possession of the furrows. The expanse of the prairie was undiversified with a single living thing. A solitary tree, or a cluster of bushes here and there, was all that broke the uniformity of the grassy surface, as far as the horizon, where the black forest rose in an even line, and seemed to seclude the region within its embrace. There was not such an absence of sound as of motion. The waters of the Creek, to which Dr. Sneyd and Temmy were proceeding, dashed along, swollen by the late rains, and the flutter and splash of wild fowl were heard from their place of assemblage,—the riffle of the Creek, or the shallows formed by the unevenness of its rocky bottom. There were few bird-notes heard in the forest; but the horses of the settlement were wandering there, with bells about their necks. The breezes could find no entrance into the deep recesses of the woods; but they whispered in their play among the wild vines that hung from a height of fifty feet. There was a stir also among the rhododendrons, thickets of which were left to flourish on the borders of the wood; and with their rustle