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unrest from the distant sea. The sands, that had seemed the golden dust of Pactolus, were of a sudden filled with flints and shards. All nature showed a change, and yet nowhere was change like that in the heart Marion Harleigh carried home from the little journey she had made to find her love.

The next morning Vance was awakened in the early dawn by the farmer's wife, who, standing at his bedside, laid a letter in his hand.

"It was brought by the Squire's man. He said you was to have it last night, but it was so late when he got here that we was all a-bed, and so he called again first thing this morning and made me come right up with it."

“Yes, thank you. That will do, Mrs. Brown," said Vance, who, holding the unopened letter, had turned of a sudden numb and chill, with a horrible, indefinite foreboding.

So soon as he was alone, he tore open the envelope with fingers almost too impatient and too tremulous to reach their object.

It contained the slip of parchment Marion had begged of him soon after their engagement, and a sheet of paper exhaling the violet perfume Marion loved, and with Marion's monogram at the top. It brought him this message:

"Your friend did not interpret the hieroglyph aright. This is my reading: "Behold me, who fancied myself the beloved of a king among men. He scorned me for a lesser love, and thus I lie.'"

In ten minutes Vance, with death at his heart, was on his way to her who thus summoned him. The early morning was fresh and sweet and delicate in its beauty as a young girl's first dream of love, but Vance knew it no more than Cain, who fled from the wrath of God and the eyes of man with a brand upon his brow.

Arrived at the cottage, and finding only the servants astir, he ordered Marion's maid to go and ask if she could see him in half an hour.

The woman went, and, when her shrill shriek rang through the house, one list

ener at least was neither startled or doubtful of its meaning.

Striding up the stair, and past the frightened servant who ran to call her master, he entered the chamber alone, and stood beside the bed where lay his mistress, royal in death. She had dress ed herself in the bridal robes, given her only a few days previously by her doting father, and magnificent in silk and lace and embroidery of oriental pearls. The bridal veil, fastened to her glorious coronal of hair, swept down at either side, but no flowers encircled it, or lay upon the quiet bosom, or were clasped in the icy fingers. No flower, no jewel, no ornament of any description entered into that strange bridal toilet, save such as formed part of the dress itself, and a necklace of golden scarabæi about the throat.

With a groan, such as the rack might at last wring from the strongest heart, Vance bent to examine this necklace, which had, as the merest glance showed, undergone some strange transformation.

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Strange, indeed! The beetles, no longer mere toys and images, appeared to have suddenly assumed life, and the power attributed to them by the men who worshipped them as gods. Standing erect upon the myriad legs hitherto folded unobserved beneath their bodies, with open wings, and upraised antennæ, with their diamond eyes flashing and glittering in the first ray of the rising sun, the creatures appeared so fearful and so unearthly that Vance drew back a pace in terror from the sight. covering his manhood almost instantly, however, he snatched at the necklace with the shrinking hate of human nature in presence of the fiend, and would have torn it from its resting-place, although too late, for its work was done. But with a strange, new thrill of horror, he found the effort in vain. Each of these thread-like legs ended in a minute claw, and each of these claws, fastened deep in the flesh beneath, held to its prey, still warm beneath its deadly grasp.

The household, alarmed and wondering, were by this time flocking into the

room; but Vance, turning upon them a pallid face, and strained, blood-shotten eyes, begged to be left yet a moment alone with the corpse of his promised wife. Only the father remained; and Vance, leading him to the bed, pointed at what lay there, saying, in a hard, cold voice,

"She dressed herself in these robes as a girl would naturally like to do, and she put this necklace about her neck. It was poisoned, as I told her when I gave it her, and warned her not to use it. She forgot my warning, and placed it about her throat, meaning, perhaps, to wear it as my gift when we should stand before the altar. I warned her, but she did not heed, and-there she lies."

Peter Harleigh, shrewd and crafty man of the world, looked long and earnestly into the face of his son-in-law, then into the face of the corpse, hardly sterner, hardly whiter, than that of the man; and at last he said,

"There is a mystery, but I do not care to fathom it, lest I hate the man my daughter loved. The story you tell will answer. Go, now, and leave me with my dead.”

"I will take this; it is my right," said Vance, plucking away the necklace. Beneath it lay a livid band encircling the throat, and composed, as a close examination showed, of innumerable points or dots; but, even as they looked, this faded slowly from the surface, and, an hour later, the skin had become smooth and white as it had ever been.

No one saw Vance after this, until he stood with her father and cousin beside Marion Harleigh's open grave. When the services were ended, and the mourners, save themselves, dispersed, he turned to these two, and simply said,

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Juliette, uttering a faint moan, turned away; then, tottering, fell in a swoon like death.

Her uncle, pointing to her prostrate body, sternly met the eyes of the miserable man who stood staring gloomily before him, and said,

"Not her too, surely! Is not one enough?”

"If Juliette will marry me, you may set the day for yourself," said Vance, desperately.

"One year from to-morrow, if Juliette still wishes. Let my girl lie one year, one little year, in her grave first, and then her claims shall give way to those of the living," replied the old man bitterly; and Vance

"One year from to-morrow I will come back. Then, if Juliette will marry me, she shall.”

The year came round, and, with it, Vance. Juliette, who loved, and could not comprehend him, was ready to accept the sacrifice he offered instead of a heart, and they were married.

She is happy in her nursery and in her household, and she worships and deceives in a thousand little ways the husband she fears as much as she loves.

And he? Of his inner life we do not speak; of the outer let this fact suffice: where no eye but his own ever sees it, he hides a little Indian casket containing the Egyptian necklace. The scarabæi, no longer excited by contact with warm human flesh, lie in the quiescent state we first saw them, but the venom remains, the power remains; and Vance, looking at them, fancies often that they are but the outward symbols of the avenging memories that gnaw and sting his heart forever.

COTTON-PLANTING AT PORT HUDSON.

A GREAT many "contrabands" sought refuge at Port Hudson in the winter of 1863-64. I determined to turn their labor to account; and having obtained permission to cultivate the fields between the old Confederate line of works and the Federal cavalry pickets-the fields over which so many desperate charges had been made during the siege-I engaged one hundred and fifty hands, a force sufficient to plant a thousand acres in cotton. The freedmen were still called "contrabands," to their own great wonderment; but as their ideas crystallized, they began to call each other " citizens," ," and before the close of the war any one speaking of their " camps" in terms less respectful than the "citizens' quarters," was not considered friendly to the colored man.

We were located at Mt. Pleasant, about half a mile below the citadel of Port Hudson, where, during the previous autumn, I had built a large steam saw-mill to supply the quartermaster's department with lumber. At this point first touches the river the line of bluffs that frown upon the Mississippi at Port Hudson, Vicksburg, and Memphis, forming the eastern boundary of the delta, and of that great alluvial plain which extends from the mouth of Red River to above Cairo. The position was inside the cavalry picket-line; but, to guard against surprise and for the protection of the mill, a stockade-fort had been built, and was garrisoned by a company of soldiers.

I had arrived at Port Hudson in September, a few weeks subsequent to the capture; and after a couple of days spent in getting my military pass en règle for landing, was permitted to ascend the lofty bluff and enjoy the liberty of the post. What first struck my attention was some of the strange transformations effected by war. The brick walls of the church where the bread of life had been wont to be dis

pensed, were being converted into an immense oven for the soldiers. The Point Coupée Echo, which had taken refuge inside the fort, and had doubtless often encouraged the besieged to die in "the last ditch," was itself cast into the gutter.

When Port Hudson fell, there was but little to savor except mule-meat and a few cow-peas. Yet several thousand barrels of the finest rock-salt, in large crystal masses from the wonderful mine of Petite Anse Island, were captured in transitu to the Confederacy, at a time when salt was more of a king than cotton. Scattered all about were the spoils of war, the great guns mounted on the bluff, grim and sullen, the park of light-artillery which the Confederates had used to defend their long lines, the pieces broken and bruised by Federal. shot, and thousands of small-arms that were hardly worth preserving.

Still more interesting to me were the old camps occupied by the Federals during the siege. They were outside the zigzag Confederate works, on the crests of those terrible ravines which with their underbrush and fallen timber rendered the approaches to Port Hudson so formidable. The artillery had been removed, but the great piles of cotton bales of which the batteries, unlike the mythical cotton breastworks of General Jackson in New Orleans, had mainly been built, were still remaining. Most of the camps had been pitched in the woods, and it was curious to notice how many little things the men had improvised for their convenience. Here a horseshoe had been nailed against a tree over which to throw the reins, or the prostrate trunk of a tree had been hollowed out for a feed-trough; there a rude earth-oven had been built, and along the ravines little caves had been dug in the hillsides that served as shelters against both the elements and the bullets of the enemy.

Many of the soldiers had in leisure moments carved their names on the tall magnolias, that were to be their only memorial. Temporary hospitals had been made within brush enclosures, and soft couches prepared by opening on the ground bales of cotton. Several weeks had elapsed, but the rains had not sufficed to wash out the purple stains, and wild forget-me-nots had bloomed where blood had so recently flowed. In the tumult and labor of the siege but few head-boards were placed over the dead; and of perhaps three thousand graves, few can now be identified. Who, alas! shall deck with flowers the graves of these unknown, patriotic dead!

We began to plough about the middle of February, and in a few days forty-five teams were at work, very much as when breaking up for spring crops in "God's country," with the exception that the ground is thrown up into narrow ridges, or "cotton-beds." The fields, or rather the open plain-for of fences there were none left within several miles-was covered with a tall growth of dry weeds that burned like tinder. Sometimes the fire communicated to the great canebrakes in the ravines, and by night furnished the semblance of a battle. Vast clouds of smoke would roll in sullen splendor above the sheets of flame. The newlycaught cane would crackle sharply, like a discharge of firearms, while now and then one of Farragut's monster unexploded shells, ignited by the searching heat, boomed, and sent its fragments whizzing through the air.

On the first day of April we began to plant, and-for a good omen-my wife committed the first seed to the ground -the first, also, ever tended by emancipated labor in that part of Louisiana. A slight furrow is opened on the "cotton-bed" with a rude implement which my Irish overseer called an "eye-opener." Over this furrow the cotton-seed is scattered by the women, and imperfectly covered by means of a light harrow drawn by a single mule. Before the war it was customary to re-plant nearly all the cotton-seed obtained from

the crop-equal to three times the weight of the cotton itself-in order to enrich the land. Many a fastidious epicure now dresses his salad with deodorized “oil of cotton-seed," under the innocent delusion that it came from the rich olive-presses of Italy.

When we began to plant, the Southern spring was already far advanced. The tops of the lofty cypresses,

"The green-robed senators of the mighty woods," were the first to put on the verdure of spring. The cotton-woods, which spring in pigmy groves from the slimy ooze deposited along the river-bank, as if to conceal its deformity, and rise from the battures in immense, successive waves of foliage, were next sprinkled with green. Gum, locust, and oak were soon clad in the livery of spring. The beech-trees had already lost their bloom. The long hedges between the plantations were white with flowers, but the magnolia, the pride of the Southern forest, had not yet opened its creamy, lemon-perfumed petals.

The flocks of robins and troops of swallows, so numerous in the short winter, had long ago migrated northward with the airy shoals of waterfowl. Quails whistled cheerfully from their glossy coverts, great flocks of buzzards wheeled high in air, and now and then, from the river-bluff, one caught sight of a stately crane or a pair of snowwhite pelicans. Birds of song and of brilliant plumage were not abundant, but one could often catch the gleam of a cardinal-bird flashing through the air, and by day and night the wild weird carols of the mocking-bird were so constant, that for sleep I had to drive them from the branches overhanging our window. By night, also, the swamps resounded with a batrachian chorus, varied now and then by a dissonant croak, deep, heavy, and of such roaring volume as to deceive Taurus himself. Mingled with these was an occasional bellow from an alligator making its lonely night-rounds of the swamps, or traversing, with wallowing gait, the narrow strip of land between the river and Lake Fontana.

Our cottage stood on the steep bluff, from which one could toss an apple on board the great steamboats that came thundering by, looking, as they approached in the darkness-the light gleaming from the open furnaces on deck-like some monstrous Cyclops with an eye of fire. The great spring torrents of the Mississippi were pouring down with the accumulated driftwood of half a continent, and many an hour, like the Federal sentinel standing guard along the "Father of Waters," have I watched by moonlight the dim processions of mighty forest-trees, wrested from far-off forests on the slopes of the Alleghanies or the Rocky Mountains, and hurried silently and phantom-like down the turbid flood, as the ghostly dead were hurried down the river of Lethe.

The commanding general frequently rode out to Mt. Pleasant with his staff to see about lumber for the works at Port Hudson, or to enjoy a gallop over the cotton-fields. Among the officers was a brother, or cousin, of Prince Ghika, late hospodar of the Danubian principalities, of whom I had known on the lower Danube during the campaign of Omer Pacha, and also a brave Hungarian, a relative to Kossuth, who had unsheathed his sword in several European wars. Our rides over the cottonfields brought back many reminiscences of the plains of Hungary and Wallachia. Their being here illustrated how deeply the great American conflict had excited the European mind, and drawn multitudes of its most liberal spirits to the theatre of strife, just as the Eastern war gathered on the plains of the lower Danube the armies of civilized Europe, the picturesque hordes of Asia, and dusky legions from Africa.

The military lines were closed, but I soon learned that a Federal cavalryofficer was deeply enamored of a rebel maiden outside, so ineffectual were picket-guards and the rage of war to intercept the shafts of love. Such planters outside the lines as were willing to take the oath, were permitted to visit Mt. Pleasant. I also sometimes

accompanied a reconnoissance into the country. Southern society I find is not more homogeneous than in the North; yet I am surprised at that marvellous peculiarity of American civilization which enables it, here as well as there, to engraft, appropriate, absorb foreign elements and mould them into a strong and vigorous nationality.

When I was a student at Vienna, Hyrtl, the great anatomist, used to show us on his brawny forearm a little plantation of human hairs transplanted many years before from the bodies of dear friends. Here was one from Humboldt, here one from the renowned Von Hammer Purgstall, there one from a distinguished poet, a noted actress, from his Transparency a Minister of the Court, or from a famous Hungarian general. It was strange to hear the professor eloquently descant upon the virtues of departed friends who to a certain extent were yet living in his own body. What, indeed, are the limitations of this subtle theory? May not the single cell in which one life originated, transmitted mysteriously, but always imperishable in the world of atoms, be, at last, the nucleus of a resurrected body? The extraordinary vitality of American society always reminds me of Hyrtl's capillary plantation.

It is now the first of May. The seed has come up, and the process of "scraping" has begun. The earth is taken from both sides of the row with a proper implement drawn by a mule. Then come the hands, cutting out the superfluous plants with the hoe, yet leaving until the next working more than are actually necessary, in order to insure a "stand."

The freedmen are doing well, and every thing goes on merrily. The outer fields are some distance from Mt. Pleas ant, and the ploughmen take the women behind them on their mules as they go out in the morning and return at night. It is as peaceful and quiet as if there were no enemy within a thousand miles. The sentinel's musket gleams in the sunshine as he paces his solitary round

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