Stronger and stronger blew the wind, louder and louder swelled the voice of the forest. Below, the wash of the river in its reeds, the dull groaning of branch grating against branch, the fall of leaf and acorn, the loud sighing of the pines, the cry of the owl, the panther and the wolf—above, the vast dome of the heavens and the fading stars. An effulgence in the oast: a silver crest, like the white rim of a giant wave, upon the eastern hills; a pale splendor mounting slowly and calmly upward—a dead world,—all her passion, all her pain, all toil and strife over and done with,—shining down upon a sadder earth. From beneath the shadowy banks there shot out into the middle of the broad moonlit stream a long canoe, followed by a second and a third, and turning, went swiftly down that long, bright, shimmering, rippling path. In the last and smallest of the three boats a man rose from his seat in the stern, and with his eyes upon the line of moon-whitened cliffs above him, raised his plumed hat with a courteous gesture, then bent and spoke to a cloaked and hooded figure sitting, still and silent, between him and a burlier form. This canoe was rowed by negroes, and as they rowed they sang. The wild chant—half dirge, half frenzy—that they raised was suited to that waste which they were leaving. The black lines upon the silver flood became mere dots, and the wailing notes came up the stream faintly and more faintly still. For a while the echoes rolled among the folded hills and the tall gray crags, but at length they died away forever. Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.