ul, their boughs disposed in
the most graceful pagoda-like series of close terraces, thick and dark
with green crystalline leaflets. In spring the tender shoots come out of
a paler green, finger-like, as if they were pointing to the violets at
their feet. But when the trees have grown old, and their rough boles
measure a yard and more through their diameter, they are no longer
beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their own, too full of
meaning to require the heart's comment to be framed in words. Below, all
their earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splintered by
the weight of many winters' snows; above, they are still green and full
of life, but their summits overtop all the deciduous trees around them,
and in their companionship with heaven they are alone. On these the
lightning loves to fall. One such Mr. Bernard saw,--or rather, what had
been one such; for the bolt had torn the tree like an explosion from
within, and the ground was strewed all around the broken stump with
flakes of rough bark and strips and chips of shivered wood, into which
the old tree had been rent by the bursting rocket from the thunder-cloud.

--The master had struck up The Mountain obliquely from the western side
of the Dudley mansion-house. In this way he ascended until he reached a
point many hundred feet above the level of the plain, and commanding all
the country beneath and around. Almost at his feet he saw the
mansion-house, the chimney standing out of the middle of the roof, or
rather, like a black square hole in it,--the trees almost directly over
their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly as an architect would
draw a ground-plan of the house and the inclosures round it. It
frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock and old forest-growths
hung over the home below. As he descended a little and drew near the
ledge of evil name, he was struck with the appearance of a long narrow
fissure that ran parallel with it and above it for many rods, not
seemingly of very old standing,--for there were many fibres of roots
which had evidently been snapped asunder when the rent took place, and
some of which were still succulent in both separated portions.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he set forth, not to come back
before he had examined the dreaded ledge. He had half persuaded himself
that it was scientific curiosity. He wished to examine the rocks, to see
what flowers grew there, and perhaps