Evenings at Donaldson Manor

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"All I know, Robert," he answered, with a smile at the boy's
earnestness.

"But did you never go fishing yourself, Mr. Arlington?"

"Not often, Robert; I like more active sports better--hunting--"

"Ah! do tell us about your hunting, Mr. Arlington; you must have had
some adventures in hunting in those great Western forests I have heard
you speak of."

"The greatest adventure I ever had, Robert," said Mr. Arlington, "was in
an _Eastern_ forest, and when I was the _hunted_, not the _hunter_."

"Indians, Mr. Arlington--were they Indians that hunted you?"

"No, Robert; my hunters were wolves."

"Oh! pray tell us about it, Mr. Arlington, will you not?"

"Certainly, with the ladies' permission."

The ladies' permission was soon obtained, and our little party listened
with the deepest interest to the thrilling recital which I have called

THE WOLF CHASE.[2]

During the winter of 1844, being engaged in the northern part of Maine,
I had much leisure to devote to the wild sports of a new country. To
none of these was I more passionately addicted than to skating. The deep
and sequestered lakes of this State, frozen by the intense cold of a
northern winter, present a wide field to the lovers of this pastime.
Often would I bind on my skates, and glide away up the glittering river,
and wind each mazy streamlet that flowed beneath its fetters on towards
the parent ocean, forgetting all the while time and distance in the
luxurious sense of the gliding motion--thinking of nothing in the easy
flight, but rather dreaming, as I looked through the transparent ice at
the long weeds and cresses that nodded in the current beneath, and
seemed wrestling with the waves to let them go; or I would follow on the
track of some fox or otter, and run my skate along the mark he had left
with his dragging tail until the trail would enter the woods. Sometimes
these excursions were made by moonlight, and it was on one of these
occasions that I had a rencontre, which even now, with kind faces around
me, I cannot recall without a nervous looking-over-my-shoulder feeling.

I had left my friend's house one evening just before dusk, with the
intention of skating a short distance up the noble Kennebec, which
glided directly before the door. The night was beautifully clear. A
peerless moon rode through an occasional fleecy cloud, and stars
twinkled from the sky and from every frost-covered tree in millions.
Your mind would wonder at the light that came glinting from ice, and
snow-wreath, and incrusted branches, as the eye followed for miles the
broad gleam of the Kennebec, that like a jewelled zone swept between the
mighty forests on its banks. And yet all was still. The cold seemed to
have frozen tree, and air, and water, and every living thing that moved.
Even the ringing of my skates on the ice echoed back from the Moccason
Hill with a startling clearness, and the crackle of the ice as I passed
over it in my course seemed to follow the tide of the river with
lightning speed.

I had gone up the river nearly two miles when, coming to a little stream
which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore its course. Fir
and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway
radiant with frost-work. All was dark within, but I was young and
fearless, and as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on
the borders of the stream, I laughed with very joyousness: my wild
hurrah rang through the silent woods, and I stood listening to the echo
that reverberated again and again, until all was hushed. I thought how
often the Indian hunter had concealed himself behind these very
trees--how often his arrow had pierced the deer by this very stream, and
his wild halloo had here rung for his victory. And then, turning from
fancy to reality, I watched a couple of white owls, that sat in their
hooded state, with ruffled pantalettes and long ear-tabs, debating in
silent conclave the affairs of their frozen realm, and was wondering if
they, "for all their feathers, were a-cold," when suddenly a sound
arose--it seemed to me to come from beneath the ice; it sounded low and
tremulous at first, until it ended in one wild yell. I was appalled.
Never before had such a noise met my ears. I thought it more than
mortal--so fierce, and amidst such an unbroken solitude, it seemed as
though a fiend had blown a blast from an infernal trumpet. Presently I
heard the twigs on shore snap, as though from the tread of some brute
animal, and the blood rushed back to my forehead with a bound that made
my skin burn, and I felt relieved that I had to contend with things
earthly, and not of spiritual nature--my energies returned, and I looked
around me for some means of escape. The moon shone through the opening
at the mouth of the creek by which I had entered the forest, and
considering this the best channel of escape, I darted towards it like an
arrow. 'Twas scarcely a hundred yards distant, and the swallow could
hardly excel my desperate flight; yet, as I turned my head to the shore,
I could see two dark objects dashing through the underbrush at a pace
nearly double in speed to my own. By this rapidity, and the short yells
which they occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much
dreaded gray wolf.

I had never met with these animals, but from the description given of
them I had very little pleasure in making their acquaintance. Their
untameable fierceness, and the untiring strength which seems part of
their nature, render them objects of dread to every benighted traveller.

"With their long gallop, which can tire
The deer-hound's haste, the hunter's fire,"

they pursue their prey--never straying from the track of their
victim--and as the wearied hunter thinks he has at last outstripped
them, he finds that they but waited for the evening to seize their prey,
and falls a prize to the tireless pursuers.

The bushes that skirted the shore flew past with the velocity of
lightning as I dashed on in my flight to pass the narrow opening. The
outlet was nearly gained; one second more and I should be comparatively
safe, when the fierce brutes appeared on the bank directly above me,
which here rose to the height of ten feet. There was no time for
thought, so I bent my head and dashed madly forward. The wolves sprang,
but miscalculating my speed, sprang behind, while their intended prey
glided out upon the river.

Nature turned me towards home. The light flakes of snow spun from the
iron of my skates, and I was some distance from my pursuers, when their
fierce howl told me I was still their fugitive. I did not look back, I
did not feel afraid, or sorry, or glad; one thought of home, of the
bright faces awaiting my return, of their tears if they never should see
me, and then every energy of body and mind was exerted for escape. I was
perfectly at home on the ice. Many were the days that I had spent on my
good skates, never thinking that at one time they would be my only means
of safety. Every half minute an alternate yelp from my ferocious
followers made me only too certain that they were in close pursuit.
Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice
nearer still, until I could feel their breath and hear their snuffing
scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame were stretched to the utmost
tension.

The trees along the shore seemed to dance in the uncertain light, and my
brain turned with my own breathless speed, yet still they seemed to hiss
forth their breath with a sound truly horrible, when an involuntary
motion on my part turned me out of my course. The wolves close behind,
unable to stop, and as unable to turn on the smooth ice, slipped and
fell, still going on far ahead; their tongues were lolling out, their
white tusks glaring from their bloody mouths, their dark, shaggy breasts
were fleeced with foam, and as they passed me their eyes glared, and
they howled with fury. The thought flashed on my mind, that by this
means I could avoid them, viz., by turning aside whenever they came too
near; for they, by the formation of their feet, are unable to run on ice
except on a straight line.

I immediately acted upon this plan. The wolves, having regained their
feet, sprang directly towards me. The race was renewed for twenty yards
up the stream; they were already close on my back, when I glided round
and dashed directly past my pursuers. A wild yell greeted my evolution,
and the wolves, slipping upon their haunches, sailed onward, presenting
a perfect picture of helplessness and baffled rage. Thus I gained nearly
a hundred yards at each turning. This was repeated two or three times,
every moment the animals getting more excited and baffled.

At one time, by delaying my turning too long, my sanguinary antagonists
came so near, that they threw the white foam over my dress as they
sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together, like the spring of
a fox-trap. Had my skates failed for one instant, had I tripped on a
stick, or caught my foot in a fissure in the ice, the story I am now
telling would never have been told. I thought all the chances over; I
knew where they would first take hold of me if I fell; I thought how
long it would be before I died, and then there would be a search for the
body that would already have its tomb;--for oh! how fast man's mind
traces out all the dread colors of Death's picture, only those who have
been near the grim original can tell.

But soon I came opposite the house, and my hounds--I knew their deep
voices--roused by the noise, bayed furiously from the kennels. I heard
their chains rattle; how I wished they would break them! and then I
should have protectors that would be peers to the fiercest denizens of
the forest. The wolves, taking the hint conveyed by the dogs, stopped in
their mad career, and after a moment's consideration, turned and fled. I
watched them until their dusky forms disappeared over a neighboring
hill. Then, taking off my skates, wended my way to the house, with
feelings which may be better imagined than described.

But even yet, I never see a broad sheet of ice in the moonshine, without
thinking of that snuffling breath and those fearful things that followed
me so closely down the frozen Kennebec.

CHAPTER IX.

"What a noble forest!" cried Annie, as she gazed with rapturous
admiration on a noble specimen of the engraver's art--so noble, indeed,
that the absence of color seemed hardly to be felt. It was a
richly-wooded scene, with interesting figures forming a procession in
the centre and foreground of the landscape. The original might have been
painted by Ruysdael. "Those old oaks," she exclaimed, "with their
gnarled and crooked branches, look as though they might have formed part
of the Druidical groves whose solemn mysteries inspired even the
arrogant Roman with awe. This picture, however, belongs to a later
period--that of the Crusades, perhaps, for here is a procession in which
appear figures in the long robe of the monk, and I think I can discern a
cross on that banner borne at their head. But what, dear Aunt Nancy,
could you possibly find in our land of yesterday, to associate with such
a scene?"

"Our people may be of yesterday, Annie, but our land bears no marks of
recent origin. The most arrogant boaster of the Old World may feel
himself humbled as he stands within the shadow of our forests, and looks
up to trees which we might almost fancy to have waved over the heads of
'the patriarchs of an infant world?'"

"And you have seen some such forests, and on the branches of these old
trees 'hangs a tale' which you will tell us. Is it not so, Aunt Nancy?"

"I have seen such a forest, and I have a sketch of certain events
occurring within its circle. The narrative was given me by my friend,
Mrs. H., who was acquainted with the parties. You will find it in her
handwriting in the compartment of my desk from which you took the
engraving."

Annie found the paper, and I saw a quiet smile pass around as she read
aloud its title. Mr. Arlington, at my request, took the reader's place,
and we spent our evening in listening to

THE HISTORY OF AN OLD MAID.

It is an almost universal belief among those who have faith in man's
immortality, that when his spiritual nature has been divested of its
present veil--the bodily organization by which it at pleasure reveals or
conceals itself--it shall be manifested to all at a glance in the
unsullied beauty of holiness, or the dark deformity of vice. Shall our
vision extend further? Shall we read the soul's past history? Shall we
know the struggles which have given strength to its powers? The fears
which have shadowed, and the hopes which have lighted, its earthly path?
Shall we learn the unspoken sacrifices which have been laid on the altar
of its affections or its duty? Shall we see how a single generous
impulse has shaped the whole course of its being, and been as a heavenly
flame, to which every selfish desire and feeling have been committed in
noiseless devotion? If this be so, how many such records shall be
furnished by the life of woman? How often shall it be found, that from
such a flame has risen the light with which she has brightened the
existence of others!

Meeta Werner was the daughter of industrious, honest Germans, who had
emigrated to the western part of Pennsylvania when she was a child of
only seven years old. Only a quarter of a mile from the spot on which
Carl Werner had fixed his residence lived a brother German, Franz
Rainer. Franz was a widower, with one child, a son, named Ernest. He was
a hard, stern man, and the first smiles which had lighted the existence
of the young Ernest were caught from the sprightly Meeta and her
kind-hearted mother. The children became playfellows and friends. It was
a wild country in which they lived. A very short walk from their own
doors brought them into a forest which seemed to their young
imaginations endless; where gigantic trees interlaced their branches,
and with their green foliage shut out the sun in summer, or in winter
reflected it in dazzling brightness, and a thousand gorgeous colors,
from the icicles which cased their leafless branches and pendent twigs.
There was not a footpath, a sunny hill or flowery dell, for miles around
their homes, which had not been trodden together by Meeta Werner and
Ernest Rainer before their acquaintance was a year old. Now they would
come home laden with wood-flowers, and now they might be seen treading
wearily back from some distant spot, with baskets filled with
blackberries, or with the dark-blue whortleberries. There were no
schools in the neighborhood, but they had been taught by their fathers
to read and write their own language, and Ernest afterwards acquired
some knowledge of English from the good pastor who had accompanied the
emigrants from Germany, and who acted as their interpreter when they
required one. Having access to few books, they seemed likely to grow up
with little more learning than might be gathered from their own
observation of the world around them; but when Ernest was eighteen and
Meeta fifteen years of age, circumstances occurred which gave an
entirely new coloring to their lives.

Franz Rainer had not always been so stern and hard as he now seemed. He
had married imprudently, in the world's acceptation of that term; that
is, he had made a portionless but lovely girl his wife, and in doing so
had incurred his father's lasting displeasure. He had been banished from
a home of plenty with a small sum, "to keep him from starving," he was
told. With that sum and a young delicate wife he sailed for America, and
found a home for himself and his boy, and a grave for his wife, in the
forests of Pennsylvania. Too proud to seek a reconciliation with those
who had cast him off, he had held no communication with his own family
after leaving Germany; and it was not till Ernest was, as we have said,
eighteen, that the silence of his home was broken by what seemed a voice
from the past. After many hindrances and delays, and passing through
many hands for which it had not been intended, a letter reached him from
a merchant in Philadelphia, who had been requested to institute a search
for Franz by his only brother. The old Rainer was dead, and the family
estate had descended to this brother, a scholar and a man of solitary
habits. Finding himself growing old in a lonely home, and retaining some
kindly memory of the brother in whose companionship his childhood had
been passed, he wished him to return to Germany, and again dwell with
them in the house of their fathers. To this Franz would by no means
consent. His nature was cast in too stern a mould to re-knit at a word
the ties which had been so violently sundered. He consented, however,
after some correspondence with his brother, to send Ernest to Germany,
to be educated there; at least, to receive such an education as could be
gained in four years; for he insisted that at the end of that time he
should return to America, and remain there while his father lived.
"After my death, if he choose to return to the home from which his
father was banished, he may," wrote the still resentful Franz.

And how was this change in all the prospects of his life received by the
young Ernest and his companion Meeta? By him with mingled feelings;
regret, joy, fear, hope, by turns ruled his soul. The regret was all for
Meeta and her mother; they were the sources of all his pleasant
memories; and as he gazed upon Meeta's hitherto bright face, now
clouded with sorrow, and kissed from her cheek the first tears he had
ever known her to shed for herself, he was ready to give up all his fair
prospects abroad and live with her for ever. Meeta herself, however,
gave a new direction to his thoughts, by generously turning from the
subject of her grief in parting, to dwell on the idea of the delight
with which they would meet again, and especially on her peculiar
pleasure in seeing Ernest come back "riding in a grand coach, with
servants following him on horseback, as she remembered to have seen in
Germany, and knowing enough to teach Parson Schmidt himself!" After
listening to such prophecies, Ernest no longer expressed any desire to
remain with Meeta; he contented himself, instead, with promising to
return as soon as he could, and with winning from her a promise that,
come when he might, she would be his wife. This was not a new thought or
a new word to either. They could scarcely tell themselves when the idea
had first arisen in their minds that they would one day live together,
and be what Carl Werner and his wife were to each other. They had even
chosen a site for their house; and Ernest had more than once of late
expressed the opinion that they were old enough to inform their parents
of their intentions; but the more timid Meeta objected. Now, however,
she could refuse Ernest nothing, and before the day of parting came they
had made a _confidante_ of Meeta's mother, and from her the two fathers
had learned the desires of their children. Carl Werner heard the story
with a smile; but a denser shadow gathered on the dark brow of Franz.
For a moment something of his father's pride was in his heart; but his
own blighted life arose before him, and he said, "The boy may do as he
pleases. No man has a right to control another on such a subject."

The sun had not yet risen, though its rays were gilding the few light
clouds that flecked the eastern sky, when Meeta and Ernest stood
together beneath an old oak which had long been their favorite
"trysting-tree," to say those words and give and receive those last
looks which are among life's most sacred treasures. Smiles and blushes
mingled with tears on Meeta's cheek as Ernest pressed her to his bosom,
kissed her again and again, and promised that his first letter from
Germany should be addressed to her, and that in exactly four years from
that date he would be again beneath that tree, to claim her promise to
be his for ever. The voice of Carl Werner, who was to accompany Ernest
the first stage of his journey, startled them in the midst of their
adieus; and bursting from the arms of her companion, Meeta plunged
deeper into the woods to escape her father's eye. When Carl returned in
the evening he handed her a small parcel, saying, "There's some foolery
that Ernest bought for you, Meeta. Silly boy! I hope they'll teach him
in Germany to take better care of his money!"

The parcel contained a very plain locket, with one of Ernest's dark
curls inclosed in it. Plain as it was, it seemed to Meeta, as it
probably had seemed to Ernest, a magnificent present; yet she valued
more the few simple words written on the paper which enveloped it: "For
Meeta, my promised wife." Four months passed away before Meeta heard
again of her lover. Then there came a letter to her, which was full of
the great cities through which Ernest had passed, the home to which he
had come, and the new life which was opening to him there. In his
descriptions his uncle seemed a very grand gentleman, and his uncle's
housekeeper almost as grand a lady. He told of the new wardrobe which
had been provided for him, the acquaintances to whom he had been
introduced, and the studies he had commenced. And in all this Meeta saw
but the first step towards that grandeur which she had predicted for
him, and she rejoiced.

Four or five such letters were received by Meeta, each full of her
lover himself; but they came at lengthening intervals, and during the
third year she received from him only messages sent through his father,
though every message still conveyed a promise to write soon. The letters
of Ernest showed that he had made great advances in scholarship during
his residence in Germany, and to all but Meeta herself, and perhaps her
mother, they gave equal evidence that his heart was not with the home or
the friends he had left in America. But no shadow ever passed over the
transparent face of Meeta. Ernest was to her still the frank, ardent,
simple-hearted boy whom she had loved so long and so truly. She was
still his promised wife. Her quick sensibility to all which touched him
made her feel that there was a change in the tone with which her father
named him, and an expression, half of anger, half of pity, on his face
when she alluded to him. It was an expression which gave her pain,
though she did not understand its meaning; and she ceased to speak of
Ernest, lest she should call it up; but his locket lay next her heart,
his letters were well-nigh worn away with frequent reading, and no day
passed in which she did not visit the oak beneath which they had parted,
and beneath which she fondly believed they were to meet again.

During the fourth year of Ernest's absence his letters to his father
became more frequent, and sometimes inclosed a few lines to Meeta. To
both he expressed a strong desire to stay one more year abroad, alleging
that to interrupt his studies now would be to render all his past labors
unavailing. There was hardly a struggle in Meeta's mind in yielding her
almost matured hopes to what seemed so reasonable a wish of Ernest; but
the elder Rainer was not so easily won to compliance. Urgent
representations from his brother as well as Ernest, did at length,
however, induce him to consent to the absence of his son for another
year.

This was an important year to Meeta. It brought her an acquaintance
through whom her dormant intellect was aroused, and her manners fitted
for something more than the rude life by which she had been hitherto
surrounded. This was Mrs. Schwartz, the wife of a young pastor, who had
come to assist Mr. Schmidt in those duties to which his advancing years
rendered him unequal. Mrs. Schwartz was a woman of no ordinary stamp.
Highly educated, with an intense enjoyment of every form of beauty and
grace, she saw something of them embellishing the homeliest employments
and most common life with which a sentiment of duty was connected.
Severe illness had confined her to her bed for many weeks soon after her
arrival, and before she had been able to establish that perfect domestic
economy, which renders the daily and hourly inspection and interference
of the mistress of a mansion needless to the comfort of its inmates.
During this period, Meeta, whose sympathies had been deeply interested
in the stranger, nursed her, and planned for her, and worked for her,
until she made herself a place in her heart among her life-friends. As
Mrs. Schwartz saw her moving around her with such busy kindness, the
thought often arose in her mind, "What can I do for her?" This is a
question we seldom ask ourselves of any one sincerely without finding an
answer to it.

We have said that Meeta had access to few books in early life; we might
have added that she had little opportunity of hearing the conversation
of persons more cultivated than herself. Thus were the two great sources
of intellectual development sealed to her. She had a thoughtful, earnest
mind. She loved the beautiful world around her, and the GREAT BEING who
made and sustained that world. But if the contemplation of these things
awakened thoughts of a higher character than the daily baking and
brewing, milking and scrubbing in her father's house, she had no
language in which to clothe them, and vague and undefined, they fleeted
away like the morning mists, leaving no impress of their presence. Her
acquaintance with Mrs. Schwartz, and the conversation she sometimes
heard between her and her husband, gave to these shadows substance and
form, and awakened a new want in Meeta's soul--the want of knowledge. As
in all else, Ernest was present in this. He would doubtless be
intelligent, wise, like Mr. Schwartz, and how could she be his
companion? Something of these new experiences in Meeta was divined by
Mrs. Schwartz, and with a true womanly tact she became her teacher
without wounding her self-love. The road to knowledge once opened to
Meeta, her advance on it was rapid. How could it be otherwise, when
every step was bringing her nearer to Earnest! The elevation and
refinement of mind which Meeta thus acquired impressed themselves on her
agreeable features. Her dark eyes became bright with the soul's light,
and her whole aspect so attractive, that her old friends exclaimed, as
they looked upon her, "How handsome Meeta Werner grows, she who used to
be so plain!"

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