re him, from the sea, a bold
romantic point of land, uplifting a crown of rich evergreen and forest
trees over shores of perpendicular rock. This is Orr's Island.

It was not an easy matter in the days of our past experience to guide a
horse and carriage down the steep, wild shores of Great Island to the
long bridge that connects it with Orr's. The sense of wild seclusion
reaches here the highest degree; and one crosses the bridge with a
feeling as if genii might have built it, and one might be going over it
to fairy-land. From the bridge the path rises on to a high granite
ridge, which runs from one end of the island to the other, and has been
called the Devil's Back, with that superstitious generosity which seems
to have abandoned all romantic places to so undeserving an owner.

By the side of this ridge of granite is a deep, narrow chasm, running a
mile and a half or two miles parallel with the road, and veiled by the
darkest and most solemn shadows of the primeval forest. Here scream the
jays and the eagles, and fish-hawks make their nests undisturbed; and
the tide rises and falls under black branches of evergreen, from which
depend long, light festoons of delicate gray moss. The darkness of the
forest is relieved by the delicate foliage and the silvery trunks of
the great white birches, which the solitude of centuries has allowed to
grow in this spot to a height and size seldom attained elsewhere.

It was this narrow, rocky cove that had been chosen by the smuggler
Atkinson and his accomplices as a safe and secluded resort for their
operations. He was a seafaring man of Bath, one of that class who always
prefer uncertain and doubtful courses to those which are safe and
reputable. He was possessed of many of those traits calculated to make
him a hero in the eyes of young men; was dashing, free, and frank in his
manners, with a fund of humor and an abundance of ready anecdote which
made his society fascinating; but he concealed beneath all these
attractions a character of hard, grasping, unscrupulous selfishness, and
an utter destitution of moral principle.

Moses, now in his sixteenth year, and supposed to be in a general way
doing well, under the care of the minister, was left free to come and go
at his own pleasure, unwatched by Zephaniah, whose fishing operations
often took him for weeks from home. Atkinson hung about the boy's path,
engaging him first in fishing or hunting enterprises; plied him with
choice p