Alice Wilde: The Raftsman's Daughter. A Forest Romance

								

and he safely lodged in the bed, which took up the greater portion of
Pallas' "settin'-room," off her kitchen, she stole out to the corner
of the house to "spy out the land," in Bible language, which, to her,
sheltered the deed from opprobrium. Pallas was no mischief-making
listener; she considered herself entitled to know all that transpired
in the family, whose secrets she kept, and whose welfare she had in her
heart.
"My! my! they make a pretty pictur' sittin' dar' in de light ob de
moon," she thought, peeping at the group, now gathered outside of the
door, enjoying the glory of a most brilliant August moon. The young
stranger was telling some story of foreign adventure, his fine face
and animated gestures showing well in the pure light, while the old
raftsman smoked his pipe to keep away musquitoes, as he said--though
they were not particularly troublesome in that neighborhood--and Alice
sat on the step at his feet, her arms folded over his knee, her eager,
girlish face lifted to the story-teller.
"He sartainly belongs to our family of Moores, ef he ain't no nearer
than a forty-second cousin," whispered Pallas to herself. "Masser don't
know 'em, root and branch, as well as I do, else he'd see it right
away. How that pickaninny is a watchin' of him talk! Laws! nobody knows
what their doing in dis yere worl', or we'd all act different."
As she stood there, taking observations, she thought she saw a person
in the shade of the great elm on the bank; and not being afraid of any
thing but "gosstesses" and "sperits," she went back to the kitchen for
a bucket, as an excuse for going down to the river and finding out who
it was.
"Ef it's that yer young Perkins, won't I let him know what a fool he's
making of hisself--he, indeed! Gorry! I'll give a scolding 'at'll
las' him his lifetime." But she had no opportunity of venting her
indignation, as the form, whosever it was, slipped down the bank, and
ran away along the wet sand, taking shelter behind a ledge of rock,
before she could recognize it.
"My! my! dis ole bucket full of silber," she ejaculated, as she lifted
it out of the river, glittering in the moonlight. "Dis yere ribber
looks lubly as de stream of life dat's flowin' round de streets ob
Paradise, to-night;" and the good old creature stood watching the
burnished ripples. The rush of waters and the murmur of the pine-forest
were sweet even to her ears.
"It's a bad night for young folks to be sittin' out-o'-doors," she
reflected, shaking her yellow turban suggestively, as she looked at the
two by the cabin-door.
But let us go back a little way with our story.

CHAPTER III.
REJECTED ADDRESSES.

Through the spacious lengths of a suite of richly-furnished rooms,
a woman was wandering, with that air of nervous restlessness which
betokens a mind ill at ease. The light, stealing in soft tints through
the curtains, fell upon many pictures and objects of taste and art,
and all that lavish richness of plenishing to which wealthy Gothamites