the
minister,--with such keen and exhilarating sense of God's goodness, of
trust in Him, of hope, as was not invariably wakened by the sermons of
her Benjamin.

On the evening of which we speak, the father and son walked down the
orchard alone. The birds sang their merriest as day closed in; and as
they turned upon their walk, and the good man saw through the vista of
garden and orchard a bright light flitting across an upper window of
his house, the mad hope flashed upon him for an instant (such baseless
fancies will sometimes possess the calmest minds) that she had
waked,--his Rachel,--and was there to meet him. The next moment the
light and the hope were gone. His fingers gave such a convulsive grip
upon the hand of his little boy that Reuben cried out with pain, "Papa,
papa, you hurt me!"

The parson bent down and kissed him.

ANCIENT MINING ON THE SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR.

In the month of March, 1848, Samuel O. Knapp and J.B. Townsend
discovered, from tracks in the snow, that a hedgehog had taken up his
winter-quarters in a cavity of a ledge of rocks, about twelve miles from
Ontonagon, Lake Superior, in the neighborhood of the Minnesota Copper
Mine. In order to capture their game, they procured a pick and shovel,
and commenced an excavation by removing the vegetable mould and rubbish
that had accumulated about the mouth of what proved to be a small cavern
in the rock. At the depth of a few feet they discovered numerous stone
hammers or mauls; and they saw that the cavern was not a natural one,
but had been worked out by human agency, and that the stone implements,
found in great profusion in and about it, were the tools used in making
the excavation. Further examination developed a well-defined vein of
native copper running through the rock; and it was evidently with a view
of getting this metal that this extensive opening had been made.

This was the first instance where "ancient diggings"--as they are
familiarly called in the Lake Superior region--were ever recognized as
such; and this artificial cavern presents the most conclusive proofs
that a people in the remote past worked those mines. Upon the discovery
of this mine, attention was at once directed to numerous other cavities
and depressions in the surface of the earth at this and other points,
and the result was that nearly a hundred ancient pits were found, and in
all of them mining-tools of various kinds. These ancient mines or pits
are not