ters. An' they hev done lef' ye, what nare one o' the men would hev done." The girl burst into convulsive sobs, but the sight of her distress had no softening influence upon Wray. "I hev done it ter pay ye back fur what ye hev done ter me, an' I reckon ye 'll 'low now ez we air toler❜ble even. Ye tuk all I keered fur away from me, an' now I hev tuk all ye keer fur away from yer. An' I'm a-goin' now yander ter the Settlemint ter hev this hyar deed recorded on the book ter the court-house, like Lawyer Green tole me ter do right straight. I laid off, though, ter come hyar fust, an' tell ye what I hev been aimin' ter be able ter tell ye fur a year an' better. An' now I am a-goin' ter git this hyar deed recorded."

He replaced the sheet of scrawled legal-cap in his pocket, and rose to go; then turned, and, leaning heavily on the back of his chair, looked at her with lowering eyes.

"Ye're a pore little cre'tur," he said, with scathing contempt. "I dunno what ails Josiah nor me nuther ter hev sot our hearts on sech a little stalk o' cheat."

He went out into the enveloping mountain mist with the sound of her weeping ringing in his ears. His eyes were hot, and his angry heart was heavy. He had schemed and waited for his revenge with persistent patience. Fortune had favored him, but now that it had fully come, strangely enough it fell short of satisfying him. The deed in his breast-pocket weighed like a stone, and as he rode on through the cloud that lay upon the mountain top the sense of its pressure became almost unendurable. And yet, with a perplexing contrariety of emotion, he felt more bitterly toward her than ever, and experienced a delight almost savage in holding the possessions for which she had been so willing to resign him. "Jes' kicked me out'n the way like I war nothin' more 'n that thar branch o' pisen-oak fur a passel o' cattle an' sech like critters, an' a house an'

land, -'kase I don't count Josiah in. "T war the house an' land an' sech she war a-studyin' 'bout." And every moment the weight of the deed grew heav ier. He took scant notice of external objects as he went, keeping mechanically along the path, closed in twenty yards ahead of him by the opaque curtain of mist. The trees at the greatest distance visible stood shadow-like and colorless in their curious, unreal atmosphere; but now and then the faintest flake of a pale rose tint would appear in the pearly haze, deepening and deepening, till at the vanishing point of the perspective a gorgeous scarlet oak tree would rise, red enough to make a respectable appearance on the planet Mars. There was an audible stir breaking upon the silence of the solemn woods, the leaves were rustling together, and drops of moisture began to patter down upon the ground. The perspective grew gradually longer and longer, as the rising wind cleared the forest aisles; and when he reached the road that ran between the precipice and the steep hill above, the clouds were falling apart, the mist had broken into thousands of fleecy white wreaths, clinging to the fantastically tinted foliage, and the sunlight was striking deep into the valley. The woods. about the Settlement were all aglow with color, and sparkling with the tremulous drops that shimmered in the sun.

There was an unwonted air of animation and activity pervading the place. To the court-house fence were hitched several lean, forlorn horses, with shabby old saddles, or sometimes merely blankets; two or three wagons were standing among the stumps in the clearing. The door of the store was occupied by a coterie of mountaineers, talking with unusual vivacity of the most startling event that had agitated the whole country-side for a score of years, the winning of Josiah Tait's house and land at Old

the court-house yard and about the portal of that temple of justice, and Wray's approach was watched with the keenest interest.

He dismounted, and walked slowly to the door, paused, and turning as with a sudden thought threw himself hastily upon his horse; he dashed across the clearing, galloped heedlessly down the long, steep hill, and the astounded loiterers heard the thunder of the hoofs as

they beat at a break-neck speed upon the frail, rotten timbers of the bridge below.

Josiah Tait had put his troubles in to soak at the still-house, and this circumstance did not tend to improve the cheerfulness of his little home when he returned in the afternoon. The few necessities left to the victims of Old Sledge had been packed together, and were in readiness to be transported with him, his wife, and mother-in-law to Melinda's old home on Scrub-Oak Ridge, when her brother should drive his wagon over for them the next morning.

it.

They never knew how to account for While the forlorn family were sitting before the smoking fire, as the day waned, the door was suddenly burst open, and Budd Wray strode in impetuously. A brilliant flame shot up the chimney, and the deed which Josiah Tait had that day executed was a cinder among the logs. He went as he came, and the mystery was never explained.

There was, however, "a sayin' goin' 'bout the mounting ez how Josiah an' Melindy jes' 'ticed him, somehow 'nother, ter thar house, an' held him, an' tuk the deed away from him tergither. An' they made him send back the critters an' the corn what he done won away from 'em." This version came to his ears, and was never denied. He was more ashamed of relenting in his vengeance than of the wild legend that he had been worsted in a tussle with Melinda and Josiah.

And since the night of Budd Wray's barren success the playing of Old Sledge has become a lost art at the Settlement. Charles Egbert Craddock.

WHEN Captain De Long was struggling through the morass of the Lena Delta, one of his men urged him to abandon or to bury the papers which the party were carrying and thus lighten their loads, but he refused; the records of the voyage should go with him to the end, and to the end they did go. It was the instinctive resolution of a brave man that the story of his endeavor should not be lost, even though it was a story of disaster and defeat. It is no doubt with a similar sentiment that Mrs. De Long has given to the world

1 The Voyage of the Jeannette. The Ship and Ice Journals of GEORGE W. DE LONG, Lieutenant-Commander U. S. N. and Commander of the Polar Expedition of 1879-1881. Edited by his

a full narrative of the expedition which her husband commanded.1 She has made it so full and complete that one feels, in reading it, here is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is the truth about the Jeannette which people want, and it is this truth which will give to the expedition and its commander a fame unmeasured by success or failure. The most imperishable monument to a brave man is that knowledge of his life and character which becomes the property of the world, and so passes into human thought and aspiration ; wife, EMMA DE LONG. With steel portraits, maps, and many illustrations on wood and stone. In two volumes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1883.

whatever may be the fortune of future expeditions, no results of research can dim the fame of this venture, because its fame rests not on what it accomplished, but upon the witness which it bore to the temper of men.

The bulk of the work before us is occupied with a transcript of Captain De Long's journals, and it was fit, therefore, that the first chapter should be a sketch of De Long's life before he took command of the expedition. The book is so far a memorial to him that his early life is not treated as an introduction, but as a constituent part of the narrative. It is curious to find that as a boy he was carefully defended by an over-anxious mother from all perils of the water, and that the bent of his nature was for a life the very opposite of that to which his training was addressed. There is just enough hint of his family circumstances given to suggest to the reader an irksome repression, but one easily believes that the direction which De Long's life took was not in a reaction from home influence, but in the growth of a will which was a significant inheritance from his mother. The manliness, the openness, and the obedience of the boy were qualities which do not accord with mere restlessness of temper, and the strength of his will is seen in his final persuasion of his parents, and not in insubordination.

The training which he received, however, in the vain effort of his parents to make a professional man of him, was of great value, for the journals bear testimony to the skill which he acquired as a writer. We doubt if it was his education at the Naval Academy, so much as his public school and his private exercises when a boy, which gave him an ease in expression; and we venture the opinion that if Annapolis and West Point gave more special attention to literary training, many an officer in the navy and in the army would chafe less under the limitations of his life, and our

literature would show a more admirable shelf of books written by such officers than it now does. Be this as it may, there was, no doubt, in De Long's case a predisposition to literature. “His spirit and energy," we are told, "hemmed in upon the adventurous side, found exercise in an intellectual ardor, and he was a fiery little orator and writer."

The manner in which he won over his parents to consent to his applying for admission to the Naval Academy, and then badgered everybody, including Mr. Benjamin Wood, the Representative to Congress from his district, and Secretary Welles, until he carried his point, is a boyish exhibition of an indomitable energy and winning faculty, which his after experience repeated in a variety of ways. Just as he had apparently got what he was after, and had gone to Newport, for it was in the early days of the war, when the Academy was established there, the officers at the Academy received a dispatch from the Secretary of the Navy, instructing them not to accept Mr. Wood's young man, for De Long had received the appointment in consequence of the unexpected failure in health of a cadet from Mr. Wood's district.

"Back to New York rushed De Long, and demanded of Mr. Wood the reason for the dispatch. Mr. Wood showed him a letter from the Secretary, by which it appeared that the nomination of De Long had been delayed, and that the cadet whose place he was to fill had recovered his health and been reinstated. 'So that ends the matter,' said Mr. Wood; but it did not at all end it in De Long's mind. He burst into a vigorous invective against the Department. It was all wrong. Mr. Wood had been imposed upon. It was because he was a Democrat that this injustice had been done, and the Republican Secretary was depriving the Congressman of his rights. He ought not to stand such treatment an hour. Mr. Wood was amused and

moved by the zeal of the young advocate, and finally said:

"Do you sit down, Mr. De Long, and write what you want to the Secretary. I will sign the letter, and you can take it to Washington yourself, if you

like.'

"The letter was written, and De Long set off at once to Washington. It was in the fall of 1861, when the trains were packed with soldiers, and the boy had to stand all the way from Philadelphia to Washington. He reached the city at six in the morning, and as soon as he could get something to eat presented himself at the door of the Secretary's office, and was ready when the hour came for business. He entered and handed Mr. Wood's letter to the Secretary. Mr. De Long often enjoyed telling of that interview; how he watched the various expressions of Mr. Gideon Welles's face as he read the tempestuous letter which the boy had written. When the Secretary finished, he pushed his spectacles up and looked at his visitor.

"And you are Mr. De Long, are you? Well, well, this is a very strange state of affairs. Mr. Wood seems very much excited; but he is laboring under a delusion. We have no intention of slighting him in any way. You can return to the Academy. I will give the necessary orders for your reception there, and please say to Mr. Wood that he shall not be deprived even of his imaginary right.""

De Long completed his term at the Naval Academy without further interruption, and entered active service. His high spirits, his curiosity, and his resolute will are sketched in a number of entertaining and suggestive incidents; but the event which most distinctly foretold his career was the boat-expedition which he made with a small party, when he was lieutenant on the Juniata, a steamer sent to the coast of Greenland to search for the missing Polaris. De

Long volunteered to take the steamlaunch and explore Melville Bay, and the narrative of his daring adventure, told in his own words, gives one a keen sense of the courage and prudence which characterized him. He went to the full length of his powers, but there was an absence of mere recklessness, and that in such affairs counts for as much as courage.

The boat-journey gave him that taste of Arctic adventure which is sure to whet the appetite of a high-spirited man. To say that De Long caught the Arctic fever then, and was uneasy until he was again in high latitudes, would be true, but might give a false view of the controlling motive of his career. A craving for mere adventure, the love of excitement, the restless desire for peril, are after all rather physical than high mental or moral inspirations, and the natures which obey such impulses have not the stuff out of which real heroism is made. If there were no other evidence, the power of silent, cheerful endurance of disappointment which De Long and his party showed would intimate that they were sustained by some higher motive than a desire to achieve adventure. There is other evidence, for the whole tenor of De Long's own words concerning the expedition and the comprehensiveness of his preparations indicate how completely he threw his whole life into the enterprise, and with what generous purpose he conceived the adventure.

The expedition was linked with the historical Arctic explorations of America in an interesting fashion.

"When the Juniata was ordered to the coast of Greenland, Lieutenant De Long called upon Mr. Henry Grinnell, of New York, to obtain from him any information which his long connection with Arctic explorations could afford. Mr. Grinnell offered the use of charts which had been employed on the several expeditions he had fitted out, and

upon the return of the Juniata Lieutenant De Long restored these charts to Mr. Grinnell, and acquainted him with his own experience. The two held a long talk upon Arctic subjects, and shortly after Lieutenant De Long dined at Mr. Grinnell's in company with Dr. Bessells and other Arctic voyagers. At this dinner Mr. De Long asked Mr. Grinnell:

"Why do you not fit out an expedition to the North Pole? I should like much to take command of one and solve the problem. You have tried so often you ought to try again.'

"I am too old a man,' replied Mr. Grinnell, and I have done my share. Younger men must take the matter in hand. There is Mr. James Gordon Bennett. He is the man to undertake such an expedition. You should apply to him.'"

Mr. De Long did apply, and found Mr. Bennett already thinking of the scheme. Thus it was that the power which had essayed to solve the African problem and had achieved so much success was the one to attack the Polar problem. Nations and commerce have had their turn in discovery; it remains for the fourth estate to organize further victories, with this advantage that, its power of making known its discoveries is as great as its power to endow research, and, moreover, that the very reason of its being leads to the fullest, most detailed report.

It was nearly six years before the plans then conceived were so far consummated that the Jeannette sailed out of San Francisco harbor on her voyage of discovery; and though the time was not all expended in direct preparation, it may be said that De Long never lost sight of his great purpose. A naval officer in time of peace finds little in the service to call out his highest qualities, and De Long was not the man to be satisfied with a life of routine. He did good work meanwhile in connection with

the school-ship St. Mary, and he made acquisitions in science which qualified him for observation and speculation when he confronted the perplexing problems of the Arctic Ocean.

The actual preparation for the expedition was arduous, and De Long threw himself into the labor with all his impetuous and steady might. His oversight extended to the minutest particular, and backed as he was by a man who had great resources and a generous confidence in him, he spared no pains to make the best use of whatever was available. The combination of advantages was certainly very great. Mr. Bennett had money, influence, and a liberal zeal. Captain De Long had experience, enthusiasm, a cool head, and special training, while the United States lent the powerful aid of her naval organization and discipline. It seems pitiful that at the last moment, when every hour was precious, some inexplicable economy or churlishness upon the part of the government should have compelled Captain De Long to lose a fortnight at least, if not more, from the necessity of taking along to Alaska a schooner for consort, instead of a gov

ernment steamer.

The whole story, indeed, is one of mournful might have beens. The delay at the start was lengthened by the errand in search of tidings of Nordenskjöld. That prosperous voyager was calmly making his way through summer seas, while De Long was anxiously exploring the coast about Behring Strait for tidings of him. Of course it was all right, and there was no help for it, and De Long only did a humane duty; but the pity of it! A month in the summer of 1879 spent in comparatively low latitudes contains all manner of possibilities in the way of progress northward. It is impossible to say what parallel he might have made if he had sighted Herald Island on August 4th instead of September 4th. He might sim