not more than thirty yards, a distance that seemed fearfully short to the straining eyes of poor Mary. All parties were armed, the Indians both with gun and tomahawk, and Hugh with his rifle only. But, as it appeared, the firearms of the savages chanced not to have been loaded when they first set eyes on their victim. The weapon of the white hunter, fortunately, was in a different condition; and while he was still a considerable way from the cottage, he turned round, raised his rifle with instant and unerring aim, and the foremost of his pursuers tumbled on the sward a lifeless corpse.

Some time was lost by this act, rapidly executed as it was. In truth, the loss seemed likely to be fatal to the white hunter, who recommenced his flight with the distance between him and his surviving foes alarmingly diminished. But help was at hand, and from an unexpected source. Being more than six miles distant from any other settlers, and neither her father nor any others of the family being at hand, Mary Waters had spent some moments in maddening anxiety, hopeless of all aid, until she bethought her of one chance of help, such as it was. She flew to the place where her father's two dogs, for the reason noticed, had been temporarily shut up, freed them, and led them in the direction of the chase, exerting all the speed which her limbs were at the moment capable of. The faithful creatures, of a powerful breed, and accustomed to bear-hunting, speedily recognised the approach of strangers and enemies, and needed not the cries of the maiden to send them at full speed in the required direction. They reached the spot just as the Indians seemed to be gaining and closing on Hugh. The wily savages had not seen the advance of the dogs without some preparation for their reception. Poising his tomahawk with scarcely even a momentary abatement of his speed, the foremost of the two Indians threw the weapon at one of the advancing animals, when a few feet from him, and buried it in the creature's body. The other Indian was not so fortunate in a similar aim at

the other dog. The tomahawk missed its mark, and in an instant the animal had sprung at the throat of the savage, and pulled him to the ground.

A single glance behind him told Hugh that the dogs had effected a change, and rid him for the time of one pursuer. Panting and exhausted, he resolved to make a stand against his now single foe, and terminate the contest, if possible, by a struggle hand to hand, ere the prostrate savage could free himself from the dog, and come to his companion's aid. With this determination, he suddenly wheeled round, grasping the barrel of his musket with both hands. At this instant, the pursuing Indian was not ten yards distant. On seeing the white hunter's movement, the savage also made a sudden stop, and assumed the same attitude. Each equally fatigued, and with breasts heaving high with toil and excitement, the two adversaries stood gazing on each other, as if by mutual consent, to regain breath for the deadly struggle. Both of them were men of tall stature, and with forms combining, in an extraordinary degree, power with activity. After a pause, the men appeared at one and the same moment to think of loading their guns as the preferable mode of determining the contest, in the exhausted state in which they were. Their hands moved simultaneously to their powder-horns, and a most momentous trial of quickness in loading began. Both of them handled their arms with the dexterity of practised hunters. In the same second of time they rammed their cartridges, and threw their ramrods on the ground. With the quickness of lightning, the Indian applied his powder-horn to the priming, and in that moment of fearful import it is not surprising that his hand trembled, daring as he was. But Hugh did not apply his horn to the same use: he staked his life upon a chance. Striking the breech of his rifle violently upon the ground, he raised the weapon, aimed, and his bullet went through the heart of his enemy! By the plan he had adopted, he had trusted to his rifle priming itself, and the second of time which he had thus gained, had decided the

struggle. It was but a second that he had gained, for, as the Indian fell, the bullet from the mouth of his ascending rifle touched the very hairs upon Hugh's head!

All this had passed before the eyes of poor Mary, who had continued, in the unthinking agony of fear and love, to fly in the direction in which her lover's danger lay. She reached the scene of the contest we have described before Hugh had raised his eyes from the body of his fallen adversary, and she fell into his arms with an exclamation of mingled terror and joy. Her presence, which would have been fatal to both at an earlier moment, now reminded Hugh of the necessity of preparing his arms for the possibility of another encounter. He laid the insensible form of his mistress gently upon the grass, and loaded his gun carefully but quickly. Seeing no movement, however, on the part of the prostrate Indian, who lay at no great distance, he concluded that the faithful dog had mastered the savage, and held him still in its power. Hugh then applied himself to the task of recovering Mary from her swoon. She opened her eyes with a shudder, and on seeing the well-known countenance of her lover bending over her, she murmured: 'Has this been a dream-a fearful dream?"

'No, my dearest Mary,' replied Hugh; it is no dream that you have been a preserving angel to me this day! It is no dream that you have snatched me from the brink of the grave!'

A glimpse of the dark body of the Indian did more than these words to bring back to the young maiden's mind a sense of the reality of the dreadful scene that had passed, and the remembrance was so terrible that for a time she relapsed into a state almost of insensibility.

While Hugh was endeavouring to restore her to perfect consciousness and composure, by the use of every endearing term that love and gratitude could suggest to him, a third party, breathless and exhausted, came up to the spot. This was Hugh's father, who had seen from a distance the danger of his son. The agitated parent's first question was, if Hugh 'was unhurt.'

"That I am alive at all, father,' was the reply, 'you have to thank, after Heaven, this dear girl's love for me, which made her regardless of her own life when mine was in danger.' 'I partly beheld what she did, and I do thank her,' said the elder Mayne, with tears in his eyes. 'May God bless her for this day's act! I have been unjust to her, and for her sake I will be the first to drown all unkindness between her father and myself.'

Mary Waters was sufficiently recovered by this time to hear these words, and a blush of pleasure suffused her cheek as she raised her head from the arm that had for a time sustained her.

Hugh had kept his eye occasionally on the spot where the dog and its adversary lay, and after the conversation with his father, the young man went up to the spot, with steps rendered cautious by his knowledge of the cunning of the savages. No motion appeared on the part of the Indian. In truth, he was dead. The dog also was lifeless, having been stabbed repeatedly with the long knife of the Red Man; yet even in death its teeth relaxed not their hold of the bare throat of the savage, who had been choked, as appeared from the ground, only after the most violent struggles. On ascertaining this fact, which put an end to all danger for the moment, Hugh Mayne and his father, at the desire of the latter, accompanied Mary Waters to her home. Her mother had passed the moments of Mary's absence in a state of great anxiety, proportionate to which was her relief when the happy result of the adventure was made known to her.

Her

husband, as has been said, was from home, but he returned before the elder Mayne's departure, and a reconciliation took place, which was a blissful sight to the youthful pair, to whose happiness the previous estrangement had been so obstructive.

No long time afterwards, Hugh Mayne was united to Mary Waters. To them, therefore, this perilous adventure with the Red Men became a still more memorable occurrence than it would otherwise have been, and was rendered a retrospect as much of joy as of terror.

THE TREASURE-FINDER OF MARSEILLE.

THE evil consequences of a superstitious belief in the supernatural, have been, in modern times, shewn up to mankind in many lights. The following story, however, seems to us to place the subject in a somewhat novel point of view, and to shew how widely and grossly justice might be perverted, in discussions relative to affairs of every kind, when its ministers were biassed by superstitious prejudices:

Honoré Mirabel, a young peasant of Pertuys, a small country district in the neighbourhood of Marseille, came -in the year 1726-before the judicial authorities of the city mentioned, and demanded justice for an injury that had been done to him. On being asked to narrate the particular grounds of his complaint, he did so to the following effect.-[The reader is to regard this as in the main a grave information laid before grave judges, though we preserve in part, for his amusement, the ironical style which the French writer employs in giving his report of the peasant's deposition.]-Honoré Mirabel stated, that he chanced, one night in May, about eleven o'clock, to be lying under an almond-tree, near the farmhouse where he was resident as a servant. From the spot where he lay, he saw, by the light of the moon, the figure of a man at the upper window of a neighbouring cottage, which was not five or six steps from him. This cottage was inhabited by a woman; and the sight of a man in that place surprised Mirabel. He thought himself necessitated to ask the man what he did there; but to all questions of this kind, the figure gave as little reply as the statue of St Peter on a holiday when his health is drunk. The obstinate silence of the man piqued Mirabel; with a Quixotish desire to redress wrongs, he resolved to penetrate the mystery. The door leading to the cottage was open; he entered, and mounted some steps leading