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plexing, and incomprehensible sound we had ever heard.

In the midst of our wonderment and lack of counsel, up came a stout forest-boy, of twelve years, or thereabouts. He was a brown and wildlooking creature, like a very satyr of the woods: he was dressed in a suit of leather, had a belt → round his waist, in which he carried his woodknife, and on his back was a bundle of fagots. As he came up he seemed amazed to find two children, like the Babes in the Wood, seated hand in hand at the foot of an old tree, and made a pause to look at us. We were not alarmed at his strange appearance, for such figures, in such grotesque garbs, were familiar to us in our forest wanderings; so hailing him as a friend and counsellor, we demanded what was that strange, low voice, which we heard somewhere thereabout.

The boy looked at us for half a moment with a sort of grin, and then, with a sudden look of fear, half bending his body and speaking in a low but distinctly articulated whisper-"It's my Lord Vernon's bloodhounds," said he; "they are out hunting, and yon sounds are the chains which they drag after them!" and so saying he dashed off like a wild stag.

What a horror now fell upon us! The glade was like an enchanted forest: all at once the trees seemed to swell out to the most gigantic and ap

palling size; every twisted root seemed a writhing snake, and every old wreathed branch a downbending adder ready to devour us. The holly thickets seemed full of an increasing blackness, which, like a dreadful dream, appeared growing upon our imagination till it was too horrible to be borne. We felt as if hemmed in by a mighty wilderness of gloom that cut us off from our kindred, and still the chirr-r-chirr-r of the terrible hounds and their dragging chains sounded through the dreadful silence, and seeming to our affrighted senses to come nearer and nearer, well nigh drove us distracted. What, indeed, would have become of us I know not, had we been left to ourselves and our terrors; but our cry of "Father! father!" speedily brought him to us, and the enchantment fled with his presence. The laugh with which he heard our story dispelled the whole terror of it. "It is the grasshopper, and nothing more," said he, "which has caused all this foolish alarm;" and then listening for a moment, he traced it by its sound among the short, dry sunny grass, and then held it in his hand before us. "And yet he was a wicked boy," continued our father, "who told a falsehood to frighten you thus. But come, now you shall go to your dinner;" and so saying, and taking one by each hand, he led us from the enchanted glade to a woodman's cottage in the next dell.

BAD TEMPER.

BAD temper, go,

You never shall stay with me;
Bad temper, go,

You and I shall never agree.

For I will always kind and mild
And gentle pray to be,
And do to others as I wish

That they should do to me.
Temper bad

With me shall never stay;
Temper bad

Can never be happy and gay.

THE PET-LAMB.

THE dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink; I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature,

drink!"

And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied A snow-white mountain-lamb with a Maiden at its side.

Nor sheep nor kine were near; the lamb was all alone,

And by a slender cord was tether'd to a stone;

With one knee on the grass did the little Maiden

kneel,

While to that mountain-lamb she gave its evening

meal.

The lamb, while from her hand he thus his supper

took,

Seem'd to feast with head and ears; and his tail with pleasure shook.

"Drink, pretty creature, drink," she said in such

a tone,

That I almost received her heart into my own.

'Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty

rare;

I watch'd them with delight, they were a lovely pair!

Now with her empty can the Maiden turn'd away; But ere ten yards were gone her footsteps did she

stay.

Right towards the Lamb she look'd; and from that shady place

I unobserved could see the workings of her face: If nature to her tongue could measured numbers bring,

Thus, thought I, to her lamb that little Maid might sing:

"What ails thee, Young One? what? Why pull so at thy cord ?

Is it not well with thee? well both for bed and

board?

Thy plot of grass is soft, and green as grass can

be;

Rest, little Young One, rest; what is't that aileth thee?

"What is it thou wouldst seek? What is wanting to thy heart?

Thy limbs are they not strong? And beautiful thou

art:

This grass is tender

no peers;

grass; these flowers they have

And that green corn all day is rustling in thy ears?

"If the sun be shining hot, do but stretch thy woollen chain,

This beech is standing by, its covert thou canst gain;

For rain and mountain-storms! the like thou need'st not fear

The rain and storm are things that scarcely can come here.

"Rest, little Young One, rest; thou hast forgot the day

When my father found thee first in places far away; Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wert own'd by none,

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