pressible joy of all, the sun at once broke out.

The light was

so sudden, that Hafed at first thought he must be struck with lightning, and actually put his hands up to his eyes, to see if they were safe.

9. He then clapped his hands over his eyes, till he could gradually bear the light. There was a splendor about the sun which he had never before seen; and it was intolerably hot. The air seemed like a furnace. "Ah!" said the owner of the cattle, "we must now scorch for it. My poor wool-ox must die at once! Bad luck, bad luck to us! The sun has come back much nearer than he was before. happen to go away again soon, and then happen to come back further off the next time."

But we hope he will

10. The sun was now pouring down his heat so intensely, that they were glad to go into the house for shelter, a miserable looking place indeed. Hafed could not but compare it with his own beautiful cottage. They invited Hafed to eat. On sitting down at table, he noticed that each one had a different kind of food, and that no two could eat out of the same dish.

11. He was told that it so happened, that the food which one could eat, was poison to another, and what was agreeable to one, was nauseating to another. Hafed rose from the table in anguish of spirit. He remembered the world where he had lived, and all that was past. He had desired to live in a world where there was no God; where all was governed by chance, so far as there was any thing that looked like government. Here he was, and here he must live.

12. He threw himself on a bed, and recalled the past, the beautiful world in which he had once lived; his ingratitude, his murmurings against the wisdom and the goodness of God. He wept like infancy. He would have prayed, and even began a prayer; but then he recollected that there was no God here, nothing to direct events, nothing but chance. He shed many and bitter tears of repentance. At last he wept himself asleep.

13. When Hafed again awoke, he was sitting under his

palm tree in his own beautiful garden. It was morning. At the appointed moment, the glorious sun rose up in the east; the fields were all green and fresh; the trees were all right end upwards, and covered with blossoms; the beautiful deer were bounding, in their gladness, over the lawn; and the songsters in the trees, which, in plumage and sweetness, might have vied with those that sang in Eden, were uttering their morning song.

14. Hafed arose, recalled that ugly dream, and then wept for joy. Was he again in a world where chance does not reign? He looked up, and then turned to the God of heaven and earth, the God of laws and of order. He gave glory to him, and confessed that his ways, to us unsearchable, are full of wisdom. He was a new man. Tears, indeed, fell at the graves of his family; but he now lived to do good to men, and to make others happy. He called a young and worthy couple, distant relatives, to fill his house. His home again smiled, and peace and contentment came back, and were his abiding guests.

LESSON LXVII.

ESCAPE FROM A PANTHER.
COOPER.

1. ELIZABETH TEMPLE and Louisaa had gained the summit of the mountain, where they left the highway, and pursued their course, under the shade of the stately trees that crowned the eminence. The day was becoming warm; and the girls plunged more deeply into the forest, as they found its invigorating coolness agreeably contrasted to the excessive heat they had experienced in their ascent. The conversation, as if by mutual consent, was entirely changed to the little incidents and scenes of their walk.

2. In this manner they proceeded along the margin of the precipice, catching occasional glimpses of the placid Otsego,

a Louisa (Loo-é-za). b Ot-sé-go; a small lake in Otsego county, New York.

or pausing to listen to the rattling of wheels and the sounds of hammers that rose from the valley, when Elizabeth suddenly started, and exclaimed, "Listen! there are the cries of a child on this mountain! Is there a clearing near us? or can some little one have strayed from its parents ?"

3. "Such things frequently happen," returned Louisa. "Let us follow the sounds; it may be a wanderer starving on the hill." Urged by this consideration, the females pursued the low, mournful sounds, that proceeded from the forest, with quick and impatient steps. More than once the ardent Elizabeth was on the point of announcing that she saw the sufferer, when Louisa caught her by the arm, and, pointing behind them, cried, "Look at the dog!"

a

4. The advanced age of Brave had long before deprived him of his activity; and when his companions stopped to view the scenery, or to add to their bouquets, the mastiff would lay his huge frame on the ground, and await their movements, with his eyes closed, and a listlessness in his air that ill accorded with the character of a protector. But when, aroused by this cry from Louisa, Miss Temple turned, she saw the dog with his eyes keenly set on some distant object, his head bent near the ground, and his hair actually rising on his body, either through fright or anger.

5. "Brave!" said she, "be quiet, Brave! what do you see, fellow?" At the sound of her voice, the rage of the mastiff, instead of being at all diminished, was very sensibly increased. He stalked in front of the ladies, and seated himself at the feet of his mistress, growling louder than before, and occasionally giving vent to his ire by a short, surly barking. "What does he see?" said Elizabeth; "there must be some animal in sight."

6. Hearing no answer from her companion, Miss Temple turned her head, and beheld Louisa, standing with her face whitened to the color of death, and her finger pointing upward, with a sort of flickering, convulsed motion. The quick eye

a Bouquet (boo-ka); a bunch of flowers.

of Elizabeth glanced in the direction indicated by her friend, where she saw the fierce front and glaring eyes of a female panther, fixed on them in horrid malignity, and threatening instant destruction.

7. "Let us fly!" exclaimed Elizabeth, grasping the arm of Louisa, whose form yielded like melting snow, and sunk lifeless to the earth. There was not a single feeling in the temperament of Elizabeth Temple, that could prompt her to desert a companion in such an extremity; and she fell on her knees, by the side of the inanimate Louisa, tearing from the person of her friend, with an instinctive readiness, such parts of her dress as might obstruct her respiration, and encouraging their only safeguard, the dog, at the same time, by the sounds of her voice.

8. "Courage, Brave!" she cried, her own tones beginning to tremble, " courage, courage, good Brave!" A quartergrown cub, that had hitherto been unseen, now appeared, dropping from the branches of a sapling, that grew under the shade of the beech which held its dam. This ignorant but vicious creature approached near toe dog, imitating the actions and sounds of its parent, but exhibiting a strange mixture of the playfulness of a kitten with the ferocity of its

race.

9. Standing on its hind legs, it would rend the bark of a tree with its fore paws, and play all the antics of a cat, for a moment; and then, by lashing itself with its tail, growling, and scratching the earth, it would attempt the manifestations of anger that rendered its parent so terrific. All this time, Brave stood firm and undaunted, his short tail erect, his body drawn backward on his haunches, and his eyes following the movements of both dam and cub.

10. At every gambol played by the latter, it approached nearer to the dog, the growling of the three becoming more horrid at each moment, until the younger beast, overleaping its intended bound, fell directly before the mastiff. There was a moment of fearful cries and struggles; but they ended almost as soon as commenced, by the cub appearing in the air,

hurled from the jaws of Brave, with a violence that sent it against a tree so forcibly as to render it completely senseless.

11. Elizabeth witnessed the short struggle, and her blood was warming with the triumph of the dog, when she saw the form of the panther in the air, springing twenty feet from the branch of the beech to the back of the mastiff. No words of ours can describe the fury of the conflict that followed. It was a confused struggle on the dried leaves, accompanied by loud and terrible cries, barks, and growls.

12. So rapid and vigorous were the bounds of the inhabitant of the forest, that its active frame seemed constantly in the air, while the dog nobly faced his foe at each successive leap. When the panther lighted on the shoulders of the mastiff, which was its constant aim, old Brave, though torn with her talons, and stained with his own blood, that already flowed from a dozen wounds, would shake off his furious foe, like a feather, and, rearing on his hind legs, rush to the fray again, with his jaws distended, and a dauntless eye.

13. But age, and his pampered life, greatly disqualified the noble mastiff for such a struggle. In every thing but courage, he was only the vestige of what he had once been. A higher bound than ever, raised the wary and furious beast far beyond the reach of the dog, which was making a desperate but fruitless dash at her, from which she alighted, in a favorable position, on the back of her aged foe.

14. For a single moment, only, could the panther remain there, the great strength of the dog returning with a convulsive effort. But Elizabeth saw, as Brave fastened his teeth in the side of his enemy, that the collar of brass around his neck, which had been glittering throughout the fray, was of the color of blood, and, directly, that his frame was sinking to the earth, where it soon lay prostrate and helpless.

15. Several mighty efforts of the wild-cat to extricate herself from the jaws of the dog, followed; but they were fruitless, until the mastiff turned on his back, his lips collapsed, and his teeth loosened; when the short convulsions and stillness that succeeded, announced the death of poor Brave.