But lo, a marvel! Such it seemed, at the first blush, to all the party. While they stood confounded and indecisive, undetermined in which way to move, a sudden flight of wings was heard, even from the center of the bay, at a little distance above the spot where they had striven for entrance. They looked up, and beheld about fifty buzzards - those notorious domestic vultures of the south ascending from the interior of the bay, and perching along upon the branches of the loftier trees by which it was overhung. Even were the character of these birds less known, the particular business in which they had just then been engaged was betrayed by huge gobbets of flesh which some of them had borne aloft in their flight, and still continued to rend with beak and bill, as they tottered upon the branches where they stood. A piercing scream issued from the lips of James Grayling as he beheld this sight, and strove to scare the offensive birds from their repast.

"The poor major! the poor major!" was the involuntary and agonized exclamation of the youth. "Did I ever think he would come to this!"

The search, thus guided and encouraged, was pressed with renewed diligence and spirit; and, at length, an opening was found through which it was evident that a body of considerable size had but recently gone. They followed this path, and, as is the case commonly with waste tracts of this description, the density of the growth diminished sensibly at every step they took, till they reached a little pond, which, though circumscribed in area, and full of cypresses, yet proved to be singularly deep. Here, on the edge of the pond, they discovered the object which had drawn the keen-sighted vultures to their feast, in the body of a horse, which James Grayling at once identified as that of Major Spencer's. The carcass of the animal was already very much torn and lacerated. The eyes were plucked out, and the animal completely disemboweled. Yet, on examination, it was not difficult to discover the manner of his death. Two bullets had passed through his skull, just above the eyes, either of which must have been fatal. The murderer had led the horse to the spot, and committed the cruel deed where his body was found. The search was now continued for that of the owner, but for some time it proved ineffectual. At length the keen eyes of James Grayling detected, amidst a heap of moss and green sedge that rested beside an overthrown tree, whose branches jutted into the pond, a

whitish, but discolored, object that did not seem native to the place. Bestriding the fallen tree, he was enabled to reach this object, which, with a burst of grief, he announced to the distant party was the hand and arm of his unfortunate friend, the wristband of the shirt being the conspicuous object which had first caught his eye. Grasping this, he drew the corse, which had been thrust beneath the branches of the tree, to the surface; and, with the assistance of his uncle, it was finally brought to the dry land. The head was very much disfigured; the skull was fractured in several places by repeated blows of some hard instrument, inflicted chiefly from behind. A closer inspection revealed a bullet hole in the abdomen, the first wound, in all probability, which the unfortunate gentleman received, and by which he was, perhaps, tumbled from his horse. The blows on the head would seem to have been unnecessary, unless the murderer whose proceedings appeared to have been singularly deliberate was resolved upon making "assurance doubly sure." But, as if the watchful Providence had meant that nothing should be left doubtful which might tend to the complete conviction of the criminal, the constable stumbled upon the butt of the broken pistol which had been found in Macleod's trunk. This he picked up on the edge of the pond in which the corse had been discovered, and while James Grayling and his uncle, Sparkman, were engaged in drawing it from the water. The place where the fragment was discovered at once denoted the pistol as the instrument by which the final blows were inflicted.

The jury, it may be scarcely necessary to add, brought in a verdict of "Guilty," without leaving the panel; and Macnab, alias Macleod, was hanged at White Point, Charleston, somewhere about the year 178-.

LIFE.

BY PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.

(From "Festus.")

[PHILIP JAMES BAILEY, the author of "Festus," was born in Nottingham, England, April 22, 1816. His first and best-known work, "Festus" (1839, 11th ed. 1887), was phenomenally successful, and its author was hailed as one of the

greatest poets of all time. It treats of philosophy and religion, and though extravagant and in some respects defective, contains much beauty and originality. His other poems include: The Angel World" (1850), "The Mystic" (1855), "The Age," a satire (1858), and "The Universal Hymn" (1867).]

Festus

Man hath a knowledge of a time to come;

His most important knowledge; the weight lies
Nearest the short end, this life; and the world
Depends on what's to be. I would deny

The present, if the future. Oh! there is
A life to come, or all's a dream.

Lucifer

And all

May be a dream. Thou seest in thine, men, deeds,
Clear, moving, full of speech and order. Why

May not, then, all this world be but a dream

Of God's? Fear not.

Festus

I would it were so.

Some morning God may waken.

This life's a mystery.

The value of a thought cannot be told;

But it is clearly worth a thousand lives

Like many men's. And yet men love to live,

As if mere life were worth the living for.

Lucifer

Festus

What but perdition will it be to most?

Life's more than breath and the quick round of blood;
It is a great spirit and a busy heart.

The coward and the small in soul scarce do live.
One generous feeling, one great thought, one deed
Of good, ere night would make life longer seem
Than if each year might number a thousand days,
Spent as is this by nations of mankind.

BLIOTE

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Life's but a means unto an end; that end,

To those who dwell in Him, He most in them,

Beginning, mean, and end to all things, God.

The dead have all the glory of the world.
Why will we live, and not be glorious?
We never can be deathless till we die.

It is the dead win battles; and the breath

Of those who through the world drive like a wedge,
Tearing earth's empires up, nears death so close,

It dims his well-worn scythe. But no! the brave
Die never. Being deathless, they but change

Their country's arms, for more, their country's heart.
Give then the dead their due; it is they who saved us;
Saved us from woe and want and servitude.

The rapid and the deep; the fall, the gulf,
Have likenesses in feeling and in life;
And life so varied hath more loveliness

In one day, than a creeping century

Of sameness. But youth loves and lives on change,
Till the soul sighs for sameness; which at last
Becomes variety, and takes its place.

Yet some will last to die out thought by thought,
And power by power, and limb of mind by limb,
Like lamps upon a gay device of glass,
Till all of soul that's left be dark and dry;
Till even the burden of some ninety years
Hath crashed into them like a rock; shattered
Their system, as if ninety suns had rushed
To ruin earth, or heaven had rained its stars;
Till they become, like scrolls, unreadable,

Through dust and mold. Can they be cleaned and read?
Do human spirits wax and wane like moons?

Lucifer

The eye dims and the heart gets old and slow;
The lithe limbs stiffen, and the sun-hued locks
Thin themselves off, or whitely wither; still,
Ages not spirit, even in one point,
Immeasurably minute; from orb to orb,
Rising in radiance ever like the sun

Shining upon the thousand lands of earth.

Look at the medley, motley throng we meet;

Some smiling, frowning some; their cares and joys
Alike not worth a thought; some sauntering slowly,
As if destruction never could overtake them;
Some hurrying on, as fearing judgment swift

Should trip the heels of death, and seize them living.

THE PROCESSION OF LIFE.

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

[NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: American story-writer; born at Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804; died at Plymouth, N. H., May 19, 1864. His official positions, in the customhouse at Salem and as United States consul at Liverpool, furnished him with many opportunities for the study of human nature. His literary popularity was of slow growth, but was founded on sure permanencies. His most famous novels are "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), "The House of the Seven Gables" (1851), "The Blithedale Romance" (1852), "The Marble Faun" (1860), "Septimius Felton," posthumous. He wrote a great number of short stories, inimitable in style and full of weird imagination. "Twice-told Tales," first series, appeared in 1837; "The Snow Image and Other Twice-told Tales," in 1852; "Tanglewood Tales," in 1853.]

LIFE figures itself to me as a festal or funeral procession. All of us have our places and are to move onward under the direction of the chief marshal. The grand difficulty results from the invariably mistaken principles on which the deputy marshals seek to arrange this immense concourse of people, so much more numerous than those that train their interminable length through streets and highways in times of political excitement. Their scheme is ancient far beyond the memory of man, or even the record of history, and has hitherto been very little modified by the innate sense of something wrong and the dim perception of better methods that have disquieted all the ages through which the procession has taken its march. Its members are classified by the merest external circumstances, and thus are more certain to be thrown out of their true positions than if no principle of arrangement were attempted. In one part of the procession we see men of landed estate or moneyed capital gravely keeping each other company for the preposterous reason that they chance to have a similar standing in the tax-gatherer's book. Trades and professions march together with scarcely a more real bond of union. In this manner, it cannot be denied, people are disentangled from the mass and separated into various classes according to certain apparent relations; all have some artificial badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn to consider as a genuine characteristic. Fixing our attention on such outside shows of similarity or difference, we lose sight of those realities by which Nature, Fortune, Fate or Providence has constituted for every man a brotherhood wherein it is one great office of