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 indeed a fitting monument to the religious zeal of our ancestors."

"Is it not Emerson who says that all men are at heart religious?" Eletheer answered.

Mary made no reply, and they were soon climbing the steep, rocky incline near the entrance to the woods. It was known as the "Old Honk Falls' path." The day was excessively warm and strangely quiet. The Rondout creek tumbled musically over the rocks below, forming many beautiful cascades, and the girls stopped occasionally at some bend in the stream to watch the myriads of brilliant-hued dragon-flies glinting through the branches of some fallen tree; but in the oppressive afternoon heat even the birds seemed seeking a covert. The girls quickened their steps and soon disappeared into the woods beyond.

"Oh!" said Mary, as she sank on the carpet of fragrant pine-needles. "Talk of the 'murmuring pines and the hemlocks.' I fail to detect the slightest motion in these."

"It does seem unusually quiet, and that with