perpetually giving occasion for warnings which they never heed,--as if in all ages roughness and fire had not been especial characteristics of the prophetic office. AKIN BY MARRIAGE. CHAPTER I. The railway traveller, journeying between Springfield and Hartford along the banks of the fair Connecticut, sees from the car window, far away to the eastward, across the broad level of intervening plains, a chain of purple hills, whose undulating crest-line meets the bending sky and forms the distant horizon. Just beyond the loftiest hummock of this range a fertile valley lies concealed; and near its centre, upon the smooth summit of a gently swelling ridge, which, extending north and south for miles, divides the valley lengthwise, stands Belfield, the shire town of the rural county of Hillsdale. Its fourscore white dwellings, scattered unevenly along the shady margins of a straight and ample street, are mostly large, substantial granges, each with its little suburb of dependencies making a hamlet by itself. But where the broad avenue, at midway, spreads still wider, forming a spacious square, are thickly clustered the public buildings of the town and county,--together with the meeting-houses, the taverns, the bank, the shops, and a few handsome dwellings, whose large dimensions and ornate style show them to be the abodes of people of wealth and consideration. The greensward in the middle of this square contains two or three elms of immemorial age, besides many thrifty trees of a later planting. The wooden barrier by which it is enclosed was once adorned with a coat of white paint, now nearly worn off. The topmost rails and post-heads of this fence have been so notched and gnawed by the jackknives of whittling idlers and the teeth of cribbing horses, that their original size and shape are matters concerning which the present generation are informed only by tradition.