nd "Funeral Hymn." But Myrtle was in no
mood for these. She let off her ecstasy in "Balerma," and "Arlington,"
and "Silver Street," and at last in that most riotous of devotional
hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed by a saint who had a
cellar under his chapel,--"Jordan." So she let her wild spirits run
loose; and then a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself
into a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of "Dundee." And again
she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until she reached the
wooded region through which the river winds after leaving the "Broad
Meadows."

The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense and faculty
was awake to the manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of that
wonderful June night, The stars were shining between the tall trees, as
if all the jewels of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight sky.
The voices of the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like
the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft,
tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of
the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then
came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh
cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or
musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered
off in his quiet way to his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels were
just coming into bloom,--the yellow lilies, earlier than their fairer
sisters, pushing their golden cups through the water, not content, like
those, to float on the surface of the stream that fed them, emblems of
showy wealth, and, like that, drawing all manner of insects to feed
upon them. The miniature forests of ferns came down to the edge of the
stream, their tall, bending plumes swaying in the night breeze. Sweet
odors from oozing pines, from dewy flowers, from spicy leaves, stole out
of the tangled thickets, and made the whole scene more dream-like with
their faint, mingled suggestions.

By and by the banks of the river grew lower and marshy, and in place of
the larger forest-trees which had covered them stood slender tamaracks,
sickly, mossy, looking as if they had been moon-struck and were out
of their wits, their tufts of leaves staring off every way from
their spindling branches. The winds came cool and damp out of the
hiding-places among their dark recesses. The country people about h