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 the heat makes me apprehensive. Reuben would say 'it means sumfin','" Eletheer returned, seating herself beside her companion.

"Well," retorted Mary, "if you know a cooler spot, I'll gladly follow to it; but did God ever create a more beautiful one?"

It was, indeed, a spot of rare beauty; such as must have inspired the cathedral-builders of old; great pines and hemlocks reared their lofty columns upward to be there crowned with a covering so dense as to admit scarcely a ray of sunshine. A solemn arcade indeed, whose cleft pillars were bound with brown withes of wild grape-vine. A brown carpet covered the floor and in this weird semi-*twilight, one almost expected to hear a solemn Te Deum echo from the crossing branches above. The day was one of unearthly stillness and there was such a downpour of heat outside that the very air seemed on fire. Even the scattered clumps of ferns and jack-in-the-pulpits hung their heads as if in exhaustion.