then calm and placid, until the light of religious aspiration beamed from many a scarred face turned mildly up to heaven. The response came low and broken from the lips of the young novice, swelling up, like a sweeping wave, as one by one the deep musical tones of the captive Hurons joined it. "Ave Maria!" it came like the thought of a loving mother, like the memory of a holy love. Ave Maria! swelling up, in the wild forest, from captive hearts, from parched and feverish lips, calmed by its gentle murmurs, to the mother of the sorrowful, the mourning. Ave! like dew to the withered flower, was the sweet prayer to the stricken soul, and tears came down the swarthy cheeks of the Christian warriors.

Amazed, the Mohawks looked upon the scene; then they laughed aloud contemptuously at the faint-hearted braves who wept-wept in captivity.

66

66

Dogs! women!" they said, are the Hurons no warriors? Shall we go back to their tribes to carry off a brave to torture? Ye are women! our squaws will beat you with whips! Ye are not worthy of a warrior's death."

But the Christian Hurons prayed onSancta Maria!-their full, deep voices piercing up to heaven, heedless of the scorn and taunts and blows of their captors. At length a Mohawk approached the Jesuit.

"Does the word of the medicine turn the Huron warriors to women? He is a magician-let him he silent," and he struck him a blow in the face with his clenched hand. The blood gushed from the lips of the priest, and he bowed his head in silence.

In the forest from a thicket three figures, crouching low, glared fiercely out upon the scene; over the dark features of the chief of these flashed the fire of anger; his nostrils were dilated, his lips parted, his hand grasped his carabine convulsively. Then, as the priest bowed meekly to the blow, the warrior released his weapon and pressed his hands upon his brow as if to

shut out the scene; a low sigh escaped him, and he too knelt and prayed. But for the meek bearing of the priest, recalling the duty of the Christian to the heart of the chief, there surely had been death among the conquerors in that instant. Ahasistari knelt and prayed. The time for action had not yet come: it was not vengeance but deliverance that he sought.

The Jesuit bowed meekly to the blow; then raising his eyes up to heaven, while his arms were drawn back by the tight thong around his wrists, he prayed on in silence. In silence prayed the captives-but the still incense of their hearts floated upwards not less sweetly to the throne of God. It was the dedication of the forests of the Iroquois to the faith of Christ.

The Mohawks soon made their repast, and snatched a few moments of repose. The wretched remains of their dinner were thrown to the captives, whose hunger was left unsatisfied, while, from the tightness of their bands, they were unable to enjoy the momentary rest afforded by the halt. The line of march was soon formed again, and the Mohawks, refreshed by their repose, hurried on the tired captives at a rapid pace, urging the weary and the lagging with heavy blows. Many hours passed thus.

René Bourdoise was faint and weary, and his faltering step betokened that without rest his strength would soon give out. In that case a certain death awaited him ; for the captors would not pause or delay when a blow of the tomahawk could, in a moment, relieve them of their trouble.

A Mohawk warrior, perceiving his weariness, approached him, and, brandishing his weapon over his head, pointed forward to the route they were pursuing, and intimated, by a significant gesture, his fate in case he should be unable to keep up with the party. Thus incited, the young novice exerted himself anew, and, ever and anon, his tormentor, as his efforts seemed to flag, assumed a threatening posture, or struck him with a heavy stick which he had picked up on the march, or pricked

him forward with the point of his knife. The folds of his black robe were stiff with blood, yet the fainting novice toiled on patiently, turning up his eyes to heaven, and murmuring a gentle prayer for his tormentors. Father Laval, stronger and more accustomed to fatigue, looked in helpless agony upon the suffering of his young companion; he cheered him onward with words of hope, and then, as the cruelty of the savage increased, he consoled him with thoughts of holy comfort.

"Bear up, my son. Thou art the soldier of Jesus. Thou art scourged he was scourged. It is a glorious privilege to die in his service; heaven is the reward of the happy martyr."

"Pray for me, father, pray for me. Oh God!" continued the youthful novice, looking sadly up to heaven, "Oh God! grant me strength to endure this trial; grant me fortitude!"

The road became more difficult and the progress more painful. A powerful Huron marched near the delicate young Frenchman; no word had yet escaped his lips. At length he approached the sufferer, and, pressing his huge shoulder against him, said:

"Lean on me, my brother!"

At the same moment Kiohba, the relentless Mohawk, again pricked the bleeding novice with his knife. The youth started forward, and, with a deep groan, fell to the ground. There he lay unable to rise. The Iroquois grasped his tomahawk with a savage exclamation, and raised it over his head to strike the exhausted captive. It was a moment of agony. The tall Huron sprang forward; with a mighty effort he burst the cords that bound his wrists, and rushed between the Iroquois and his victim. On his left arm he caught the descending blow, which gashed deep into his brawny muscles; with his right he lifted up the light form of the novice, and, folding it to his powerful chest, while the pale face of the insensible youth rested gently on his dark red shoulder, strode sternly forward to the front of the group

of captives. Deep exclamations of satisfaction escaped the Iroquois ; but no one attempted to interrupt the warrior, for the Indian loves a bold deed.

"He is brave," said one; "he is worthy of the stake."

"Yes, he is a warrior; he shall die by the torture!"

The Huron strode on with his helpless burden, as tenderly and gently guarding it as a father does the child he loves.

"Le Loup will bear his young white brother," he exclaimed.

Tears flowed down the cheeks of the Jesuit, and he raised his heart to heaven in thankfulness for the providential rescue of his companion.

At the same instant the cry of a hawk was heard in the forest, repeated thrice clearly and shrilly, then seeming to die away in the distance-a gleam of joy broke out on the bronzed face of the Huron, and with a firmer and lighter step Le Loup pressed onward. He knew by the signal that his chief was upon their trail, and that three of his tribe were near. The Iroquois listened suspiciously to the sound, but it was repeated no more.

The sun was sinking low in the west. The shades of the hills grew out lengthening. On the bosom of the river the red light fell in streams, sparkling from the summits of the little waves. Far down its waters, many a weary mile, a war canoe, urged on by a single Indian, made its way. Large drops of sweat stood upon the rower's brow. A moment he paused and gazed upon the setting sun, then, shaking his clenched hand towards the far south-west, bent sternly to his oar once

more.

At length he turned the bow of his canoe towards the shore; he reached it, and bounded on the beach. Then drawing his bark upon the sand, he stepped into the forest with his tomahawk in his hand, and began to examine the trees some distance from the water, and, finding no marks on them, notched several in a peculiar manner. As he went further

in, a figure stepped from behind a large oak which had hitherto concealed him, and, approaching the canoe, inspected it carefully, and afterwards bent over the footsteps of the young Indian. The person was dressed in a hunting shirt gathered close around his waist by a leathern belt, which also served to support a long curved knife and a small steel axe. A large powder horn and a ball pouch of deer skin were slung over his shoulder; his feet and legs were protected by moccasins and leggins of untanned skin, and his equipments were completed by a small black hair cap set jauntily on his head. He seemed satisfied with the result of his examination, and said half aloud as he arose: "Huron canoe-Huron moccasin-no Mohawk thief-and now Pierre for Mons. le sauvage."

Pierre had emigrated from France many years before, and with the aid of his son had made himself useful as a hunter to the smaller outposts of the French. He supplied them with game. In one of their excursions the Mohawks came upon them, and after a long chase succeeded in killing and scalping the young man. Henceforth Pierre considered the Mohawks as his deadliest enemies. He had served as a spy under the great Champlain-a man dreaded by the Indians of every tribe, and whose name had become a war-cry to the French. Pierre was an expert woodsman, and an indefatigable Indian fighter-well known and loved by the Hurons, who gave him the soubriquet of "L'Espion hardi."

The Frenchman laughed as he entered the forest to meet the Indian. "Ho, ho, Huron," he shouted as he strode carelessly along. Watook heard the voice, and springing to a tree, cast his rifle into rest; but the dress and language of the speaker told him it was a friend, and he came leaping towards him.

"Ugh! L'Espion hardi! The pale

face is the friend of the Huron," he said. "Very true, savage, very true." "Has the Frenchman found any Hu

rons here?" and he waved his hand around.

"None but yourself, Huron."

Then Watook told him of the sad misfortune which had befallen his party, and of the capture of the two Frenchmen, and how he had come thither to gather the scattered Hurons and attempt a rescue. Exclamations of anger escaped the hunter as he listened to the story, and his manner became more grave.

"The scalp of the son of the Daring Scout hangs in the Mohawk lodge. Is his knife rusty? Will he strike the trail of the Iroquois ?" said the Indian in conclusion.

Pierre drew the weapon from his belt and ran his finger across its glittering blade and his feeling deepened into fury as he remembered the sad day in which his son had perished.

"Huron," he said at length in a stern voice, "Huron! Daring Scout' will strike the Mohawk in his village ;" then, recovering his wonted equanimity, continued:

"The braves probably went deep into the forest before they struck off towards the rendezvous-they will be here yetfor the current of the river assisted you forward ahead of them; it is rapid now. Let us build a fire, and pass the night here. No Mohawks are outlying now; for the party you fell in with must have been a strong one, and it is not likely that there is another out. When the Hurons come in, we can strike off through the forest to the trail of your chief."

The counsel seemed wise to the Indian, and they prepared to bivouac upon the spot. About midnight the sound of a footstep struck upon the ear of the Frenchman, who kept watch, sitting at the foot of a tree shaded from the light of the fire.

"Qui va la," said the hunter, who still adhered somewhat to his old military habits: "Qui va la;" but the figure approached, and the next moment a Huron stalked up to the fire. Watook awoke, and greeted his comrade.

"The Hurons are scattered, and will

come in slowly, for they are very weary," said the stranger. He made no other allusion to their late defeat.

When morning dawned four or five warriors had collected, and the impatient Watook proposed to set out.

66

"No," said the Huron, who had first come in, more braves come-more braves."

"They are already two days' march before us," said Watook; but Pierre coincided with the first. By the hour of noon about fifteen warriors had assembled,

some of them wounded, and all wearied. Compelled by stern necessity, that night they passed at the place of rendezvous, and on the following morn set out, through the forest, to strike on the trail of the Iroquois.

Night and morn came and went, night and morn the captors and their captives toiled on through the pathless forest. Still on-on went the weary march; still on the rear of the conquering Mohawks hovered three dusky forms-stern, silent, watchful.

Sybil, or the Two Nations. By B. D'Israeli, Esq., M. P.

UCH is the title of a book published a few months since, and appearing amid the class of novels. It is, indeed, in structure, one of that class, and had it not been for the views and sketches of life contained in it, would not be fittingly reviewed here.

As it is, it is a political novel; and throwing off the supernumerary characters, its substance can be shortly given.

The two nations are the rich and the poor; the principal representatives of the last nation are Gerard, the overseer of a factory; Morley, a disciple of Fourier, and Sybil, the daughter of Gerard, like her father, a Catholic, and brought up in a convent; besides these, there is one Hatton, of Woodgate. These are all of the people, all desirous to raise the people, or see them raised from the miserable condition to which long years of tyranny had reduced them from the happy state they enjoyed three centuries ago.

Each, however, sought a different way to effect this. Gerard wished to accomplish it by giving the poor all political privileges enjoyed by the rich, and in this way to effect their happiness by political equality. Morley, however, is the advocate of community, of moral force, who seeks by reasoning to make men truly neighbors.

Looking, then, on a ruined monastery, Gerard sees the monument of the time when the rich and great overthrew the monks, the only bulwark of the people; when the people struggled in vain to retain that body, coming, in a great measure, from themselves, possessing large estates which they leased on easy terms, thus compelling the lay landholders to be also moderate; Gerard saw, in the destruction of the three thousand one hundred and eighty-five monasteries, hospitals, colleges, and chapels, but the annihilation of the only human barrier the poor ever possessed against the encroachments of the rich. Morley, however, looked upon it in a different light; he sighed over the destruction of the most perfect system of community which ever existed.

d

But Sybil, gazing on them, beheld a memorial of the epoch when, in England, religion ceased to direct the every action of our life, in the king on the throne, and the laborer in his cot. She saw, indeed, that the monasteries afforded the poor protection against the assaults of the great; but she saw, too, in their possessions, proofs that the rich then loved the poor; that before that the great had often endowed the monasteries and hospitals, which, in that day, afforded shelter and relief as well to those whom misfortune had deprived of food and raiment as to those whom malady had stricken; to her mind, then, happiness for the poor was inseparable from the re-establishment of a religion which had produced such happiness; for she saw that from the day when England's rulers departed from the faith, no buildings for the poor, no homes for the unfortunate had ever been built from the property of the rich. To support this we have Woodgate, and its representative, Hatton, introduced; a place free from oppressive landlords, head lessees, and factories, but inhabited by industrious mechanics who labor each on his own account. No church is here, and the people degraded, ignorant, and brutal.

This, then, is the moral; this the design of the tale, to teach the lesson, too long forgotten, that religion is not a word, but a living, acting, directing principle; one, too, which nothing inherent in our own nature can supply. And further, that no people can be truly happy, unless directed, guided, and supported by religion.

Here is the hope for England. What succeeded the Catholic faith at the reformation in England is not religion, but a mere phantom, unsubstantial, producing no effects to show a divine origin. This must vanish, and be succeeded by the Catholic faith.

Once more must a power exist, whose sway is acknowledged by all, which shall teach the rich that he is but a steward for those of his brethren to whom God has

given less of worldly wealth; a faith to teach the proud to be humble, the poor to be contented with their lot.

When this power is acknowledged as in her ancient day, then, and not till then, can we expect to see the condition of the poor improved; then the power which for so many years caused the houses of refuge for the poor and afflicted to arise in every quarter of England, will bid her wealthier children forget not those less fortunate than they, till those houses again fill the land with joy. It will not be the work of a day, but of years, and not of man, but of God, and in God's own time; for no longer must we essay to do the work of God in man's time, or after man's fashion. The church has never perished in England, though reduced almost to nothing by the storms of the period of the reformation; it has ever stood, and from the moment of the passing away of the cloud of civil war, advanced, drawing, year by year, her highest dignitaries from among those who, weary with treading far from the paths of truth, sought the fold from which the hand of violence had torn their fathers; from the martyred Campian, the first, we may say, of those put to death, with all the formality of law, under the law of Elizabeth, who had passed from the university of Oxford to the seminary of Doway, down to our own day, when we see them, not singly, but in throngs, following the path which a Gother and a Challoner trod.

Two millions of Catholics now tread the English land, and churches are scattered over the face of the kingdom; there are colleges too, and convents. And though the law will cripple the means of the convents, and limit their power of beneficence, still even in their limited sphere will they teach all around them that their faith is not a dead faith, that the religion which causes them to leave their families, their homes, all earthly advantages to devote themselves to the service of God and their neighbor, is far different from what the ideas and notions