The Wonderful Story of Ravalette

the lambs were skipping homeward in the very excess of joy; while the cattle on the hills lowed and bellowed forth their thanksgiving to the viewless Lord of Glory. Man alone seemed unc

some few in pity, and all in something akin to surprise, for men of his appearance were rarely seen in that neighborhood. At last there came along three persons, two of whom were unmistakably Indians, and the third, a girl of such singular complexion, grace, form, and extrao

of the Indians or Anglo Saxon. Many years previous to that day, this girl, then a child of three or four months age, had been brought to the chief and left in his care for a week, by a woman clad in the garb of, and belonging to a wandering band of gipsies, who, attracted by the universal reputation of the New World, had left Bohemia and crossed the seas to reap a golden harvest. This band had held its headquarters for nearly a year on Cornhill, Utica, whence they had deployed about the country in a circle whose radius averaged one hundred and twenty miles. The woman never came back to claim the child, for the members of the band suddenly decamped after having financiered a gullible old farmer out of several thousands of dollars in gold, which they had persuaded him it was necessary that he should put in a bag and bury in the ground at a certain hour of a certain night, in order to the speedy discovery of a large mine of diamonds that wa

me she bore was marked on her clothing in Greek letters, which were afterwards rendered

. She was undisputed queen on the Reservation, not by right, but by quiet usurpation. She looked and acted the born Empress, and

young Beverly. Observing his sorrowful appearance, she placed her soft hand tenderly upon his head, and said in

ave, and then I returned, and received a considerable sum of money in the nature of a loan. This favor was granted me as a reward for my pains, time, and ruined health. I was to return it from the proceeds of a business to be immediately established. At that time I resolved to purchase a little home for those who depended on my efforts for the bread they ate, and so wrote to a man who called himself my friend, but who is the direct cause of most of the evil I have for ten years experienced. This fellow pretended to deal in lands. I put nine hundred dollars-half I had in the world-in this man's hands, to purchase a fine little place of a few acres, which place he took me to see. I was pleased with it, and saw a home for those who would be left behind me when I was dead. A few days thereafter this ghoul came to me again, and represented that gold bullion being down he could make considerable profit for me in three days, would I make the investment. I handed over the remainder of my money. The three days lengthened into years. Instead of being a capitalist he was a bankrupt-was not in the gold business, and had no more control of the land he showed me than he had of Victoria's crown. Meantime, my furniture was seized; I lost my name with the friend who advanced the sum; I became ill, and, in my agony, called this man a swindler. To silence me, he gave me a check on a bank. I presented it. 'No funds!' And yet he dared call himself an honest man. 'You have but to unsay the harsh things said about me,' said this semblance of a man to me one day, 'and I a

the impending fate of this wronger of the living and the dead, and it was clear to

e this ghoul, wormed themselves into my confidence, and then, when the

debtors to nature, and the price they pay for power is groans, tears, breaking hearts, and a misery that none but such doomed ones can either appreciate or understand

row will bring strength again. But, see! the golden sun is setting in the west.

d shine as brightly as he does to-day! He will shine even though dark clouds hide him from us; and though you and I may not behold his glories, some one else w

he very words uttered by the dead mother who bore me!

y depths of her eye, was about to ask

ood revealed the perfect incarnation of faith and hope, as if her upturned eyes met God's glance from Heaven. The old chief and the boy at his side said nothing, but each instinctively folded his hands in the attitude of confidence and prayer. The combined ef

to where this scene was being enacted. A few words sufficed for an introduction, and

meal at the old man's house. After the repast was over, the conversation took a philosophic turn, in which

p between them already something much warmer than friendship, yet which was not love. When they rose to enter the house, the last words uttered by the girl-uttered in the same singularly inspired strain observed on their first meeting-were, "Yes! I will love you; but not here, not now, perhaps not on this earth. Yet I will be your prop, your stay, though deep seas between us roll. Listen! When I

hat ran through my little farm, and raptly listened to the profoundest wisdom, the most exalted conceptions and descriptions of the soul, its origin, nature, powers, and its destinies-listened to metaphysical speculations that fairly racked my brain to comprehend, and all this from the lips of a man totally incapable of grappling successfully with the money-griping world of barter and of trade. Here was the most tremendous contradiction, in one man, that I had ever known or heard of. One who revelled in mental luxuries fit for an angel, yet had not forecast enough to foil a common trickster;-who blindly, and for years, reposed his whole trust in one whose sole aim was to rob him not only of his little competence, but of his character as a man-who suffered one near and dear to him to starve, literally starve to death, and then be buried, at the very moment that himself and his were luxuriating on the very money for which that

both sides of the grave, and, on the other shore of time, was known in its lower degrees as the Royal Order of the Foli, and, towering infinitely beyond and above that, was the great Order of the Neridii; and that whoever, actuated by proper motives, joined the fraternity on

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Evlambéah. "Bright-shining."-