In the glare of the setting sun everything seemed indescribably wretched; but it was May, and night came on apace. The stars in the deep blue glowed like gems; and then the queen of night on her sable throne threw her glamour over the scene, and the stencil-marked ground became a fairy scene. High perched upon a mighty oak the mistress of the grove rained music on the cool night air,--first a twitter like a chaffinch, then an aria worthy of Patti, then the deep notes of the blackbird, then a whip-poor-will, then a grand chorus of all the night-birds. A short breathing-spell, and off on another chorus, and so the whole night through. When we awoke the music still poured from that wondrous throat of the American mocking-bird. How calm, how peaceful, was the scene, how pure the air! The lights went out from neighboring cots, and the heavenly hosts seemed to sing together once more the song of Bethlehem--but alas! Herod plots while angels sing. Not far off is another little house with its small outbuildings. This night it is occupied by a mother and three children. The father is away attending a religious meeting. The servant who usually sleeps in the house when the man is away gives a trifling excuse and sleeps in the shed. Before retiring she quietly unfastens the pin which holds the shutter. At midnight the mother is awakened from her troubled sleep and sees the shadow of a man, and then another shadow, and still another. The children shrink to the back of their bunk. Oh, what a triple crime was enacted under that peaceful sky! Morning came. The mocking-bird still sang, and cheered the returning husband. But alas, it was a mocking song for him; for instead of pleasant welcomes, he found his wife delirious, and his children cowering like hunted partridges in a neighbor's house. The frenzied husband, soon joined by friends made furious by the atrocious crime (so common in the South), soon hunted the ravishers of the little home; and when the moon arose the next night, the beauty of the scene was marred by three black corpses swinging from a bridge. X. THE NORTH-WEST. The first impression a man has of the North-west is like Pats in St. Patrick's Cathedral,--"Begorra, it's bigger inside than out."