After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of her, but could get no clue. I heard that two cows had been struck by lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine. The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open common on Capitol hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow but my own--some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how many rumps or heads, or liver backs or white flanks I saw peeping over knolls or from behind fences or other objects that could belong to no cow but mine! Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low--was indeed on the point of going out altogether, when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and touching! JOHN BURROUGHS. LOVE'S MESSENGERS. Who will tell him? Who will teach him? Have you voices, merry birds? Then be voice for me, and reach him With a thousand pleading words. Sing my secret, east and west, Till his answer be confessed! Roses, when you see him coming, Light of heart and strong of limb, Make your lover-bees stop humming; Turn your blushes round to him-- Blush, dear flowers, that he may learn, How a woman's heart can burn! Wind--oh, wind--you happy rover! Oh that I were half as free-- Leave your honey-bells and clover, Go and seek my love for me. Find, kiss, clasp him, make him know It is _I_ who love him so! MARY AINGE DE VERE. THE HEAD OF HERCULES.