is meditations; and while his servant was wondering how
he could see to read by the dim light which came in at the window--more
dim each day, as the snow-heap there rose higher--or by the fitful flame
of the fire, his thoughts were far away, beating about amidst the
struggle then probably going on in Saint Domingo; or exploring, with
wonder and sorrow, the narrow and darkened passages of that mind which
he had long taken to be the companion of his own; or springing forward
into the future, and reposing in serene faith on the condition of his
people when, at length, they should possess their own souls, and have
learned to use their human privileges. Many a time did Mars Plaisir,
looking off from a volume of the Philosophical Dictionary, which yielded
no amusement to him, watch the bright smile on his master's face, and
suppose it owing to the jokes in the Racine he held, when that smile
arose from pictures formed within of the future senates, schools,
courts, and virtuous homes, in which his dusky brethren would hereafter
be exercising and securing their lights. Not ungratefully did he use
his books the while. He read and enjoyed; but his greatest obligations
to them were for the suggestions they afforded, the guidance they
offered to his thoughts to regions amidst which his prison and his
sufferings were forgotten.

At times, the servant so far broke through his habitual deference for
his master as to fling down his book upon the table, and then beg
pardon, saying that they should both go mad if they did not make some
noise. When he saw the snow falling perpetually, noiseless as the dew,
he longed for the sheeted rains of his own winter, splashing as if to
drown the land. Here, there was only the eternal drip, drip, which his
ear was weary of months ago.

"Cannot you fancy it rain-drops falling from a palm-leaf? Shut your
eyes and try," said his master.

It would not do. Mars Plaisir complained that the Commandant had
promised that this drip should cease when the frosts of winter came.

"So it might, but for our stove. But then our ears would have been
frozen up, too. We should have been underground by this time--which
they say we are not now, though it is hard, sometimes to believe them.
However, we shall hear something by-and-by that will drown the drip.
Among these mountains, there must be thunder. In the summer, Mars
Plaisir, we may hear thunder."

"In the summer!" exclaimed Mars Plaisir, covering his