A MAROONING pic-nic had been proposed and arranged by the young beaux and belles of the neighbouring plantations. The day proposed for the festive event was that following the disclosure of Lorenzo's difficulties. Every negro on the plantation was agog long before daylight: the morning ushered forth bright and balmy, with bustle and confusion reigning throughout the plantation,--the rendezvous being Marston's mansion, from which the gay party would be conveyed in a barge, overspread with an awning, to a romantic spot, overshaded with luxuriant pines, some ten miles up the stream. Here gay fˆtes, mirth and joy, the mingling of happy spirits, were to make the time pass pleasantly. The night passed without producing any decision in Lorenzo's mind; and when he made his appearance on the veranda an unusual thoughtfulness pervaded his countenance; all his attempts to be joyous failed to conceal his trouble. Marston, too, was moody and reserved even to coldness; that frank, happy, and careless expression of a genial nature, which had so long marked him in social gatherings, was departed. When Maxwell, the young Englishman, with quiet demeanour, attempted to draw him into conversation about the prospects of the day, his answers were measured, cold, beyond his power of comprehending, yet inciting. To appreciate those pleasant scenes-those scenes so apparently happy, at times adding a charm to plantation life-those innocent merry-makings in spring time-one must live among them, be born to the recreations of the soil. Not a negro on the plantation, old or young, who does not think himself part and parcel of the scene-that he is indispensably necessary to make Mas'r's enjoyment complete! In this instance, the lawn, decked in resplendent verdure, the foliage tinged by the mellow rays of the rising sun, presented a pastoral loveliness that can only be appreciated by those who have contemplated that soft beauty which pervades a southern landscape at morning and evening. The arbour of old oaks, their branches twined into a panoply of thick foliage, stretching from the mansion to the landing, seemed like a sleeping battlement, its dark clusters soaring above redolent brakes and spreading water-leaks. Beneath their fretted branches hung the bedewed moss like a veil of sparkling crystals, moving gently to and fro as if touched by some unseen power. The rice fields, stretching far in the distance, present the appearance of a mirror decked with shadows of fleecy clouds, transparent and sublime. Around the cabins of the plantation people-the human property-the dark sons and daughters of promiscuous families-are in "heyday glee:" they laughed, chattered, contended, and sported over the presence of the party;-the overseer had given them an hour or two to see the party "gwine so;" and they were overjoyed. Even the dogs, as if incited by an instinctive sense of some gay scene in which they were to take part, joined their barking