er the Falls?"

"I was staying at the Clifton House, then," said Ralston, "and I came
down to Table Rock, alone, just after midnight, and sat there from the
beginning to the end of the obscuration. You should have seen"--and here
his undeniable though repressed poetical temperament began to show
itself in his cheek and eye--"you should have seen the dull, dismal
shadow gradually creeping over the rapids as the disk grew smaller,
every flashing wave seeming to be touched with a ghastly reflection that
said: 'Daylight and moonlight are both gone forever--the last darkness
is creeping on--the end of all things is at hand.' The spray below the
cataract seemed dun and lead-colored, as if it might have been the
sulphurous smoke rolling up from a battle-field. All was splendidly
dismal, let me tell you!--such a spectacle as few men see and no man who
sees ever forgets!"

"And what was the appearance of the moon when fully obscured?" asked
Leslie, almost breathless with interest at the strangely graphic words
of the Virginian, and no longer wondering, after those words, that there
should have been a connection between the mysterious "red woman" and one
who seemed so nearly of her mental kin.

"It was _no_ moon," answered Ralston, and his dark eyes seemed to lose
all their fierceness and grow inexpressibly sad and solemn as he spoke.
"It was _no_ moon! It was a mere unreal shadow and mockery--the dead
ghost of a moon that had been, perished long ago, and embodying all the
griefs and all the sorrows that had weighed down the heart of man since
the Creation. The waters of Niagara lay beneath it, as if under a pall
that had settled over a dead world!"

"I should have liked to see it--I would have travelled a thousand miles
to see it, had I thought so far!" said Leslie, with the earnestness of a
lover of Nature under all her aspects.

"Would you?" said Ralston. "Well, it was something to see _once_: I
should scarcely like to trust the brain of the man who saw it much
oftener. I must leave you, but I hope I shall meet you again. Here boy!"
beckoning to one of the lounging hack-drivers at the hotel-end of the
bridge, "Drive me to the Monteagle. Good-bye!" and away he whirled,
leaving Leslie to look after him until out of sight, and to say to
himself as he walked up the esplanade over the rapids:

"I thought that _I_ was an oddity and a contradiction, but that fellow
can _discount_ me! I don't know half as much about him now, as