n
their stated order with a sublime precision, affording to man one of the
noblest of all the occasions he enjoys of proving the high powers of
his far-reaching mind, in compassing the laws that control their exact
uniformity, and in calculating their never-ending revolutions.

Centuries of summer suns had warmed the tops of the same noble oaks and
pines, sending their heats even to the tenacious roots, when voices were
heard calling to each other, in the depths of a forest, of which the
leafy surface lay bathed in the brilliant light of a cloudless day
in June, while the trunks of the trees rose in gloomy grandeur in the
shades beneath. The calls were in different tones, evidently proceeding
from two men who had lost their way, and were searching in different
directions for their path. At length a shout proclaimed success, and
presently a man of gigantic mould broke out of the tangled labyrinth
of a small swamp, emerging into an opening that appeared to have been
formed partly by the ravages of the wind, and partly by those of fire.
This little area, which afforded a good view of the sky, although it was
pretty well filled with dead trees, lay on the side of one of the high
hills, or low mountains, into which nearly the whole surface of the
adjacent country was broken.

"Here is room to breathe in!" exclaimed the liberated forester, as soon
as he found himself under a clear sky, shaking his huge frame like a
mastiff that has just escaped from a snowbank. "Hurrah! Deerslayer; here
is daylight, at last, and yonder is the lake."

These words were scarcely uttered when the second forester dashed
aside the bushes of the swamp, and appeared in the area. After making
a hurried adjustment of his arms and disordered dress, he joined his
companion, who had already begun his disposition for a halt.

"Do you know this spot!" demanded the one called Deerslayer, "or do you
shout at the sight of the sun?"

"Both, lad, both; I know the spot, and am not sorry to see so useful
a fri'nd as the sun. Now we have got the p'ints of the compass in our
minds once more, and 't will be our own faults if we let anything turn
them topsy-turvy ag'in, as has just happened. My name is not Hurry
Harry, if this be not the very spot where the land-hunters camped the
last summer, and passed a week. See I yonder are the dead bushes of
their bower, and here is the spring. Much as I like the sun, boy, I've
no occasion for it to tell me it is noon; this