impassive countenances of his native hearers and drew forth guttural expressions of approval. The meeting was closed by the members forming a circle in front of the building, and, after a prayer by a native clergyman, passing around the ring and shaking hands, after the fashion of the ancient Kee-toowha, a society which antedated the emigration of the tribe, and which, under the more modern name of the "Pins," served as a sort of Union League during the war. Then, as the level rays of the sinking sun gilded the glades of the forest, the riders mounted and rode off in every direction through the woods and over the prairie. We followed a guide through the woods to a cabin in a clearing, which was to be our quarters for the night. It may be taken as an average specimen of the home of a "full-blood," although others have much larger establishments. It was about fifteen feet square, with a cook-house or kitchen adjoining, and stood in a small enclosure of Virginia rail fence, and under the shelter of a dark wood, while a wide prairie glade stretched before it. The house was solidly built of logs and warmly chinked with clay, but was without windows. The floor was of puncheon, or split logs, and there was

a wide stone fireplace. A single bed, a case of drawers, and hide-bottomed chairs completed the furniture. The walls were decorated with pictures from illustrated newspapers and some gaudy religious prints. A rifle stood in a corner, and a bow and arrow, still used for rabbits and other small game, hung over the door. The room was carefully swept, and neat and clean, this being characteristic of the native people. Its owner was in comfortable circumstances, having considerable stock and enclosed fields sufficient to raise food for his family. The supper was served in the fire-lit kitchen, and was bountiful and well cooked, consisting of bacon, biscuits, and coffee, with milk, which is sometimes wanting in this country of cows. At night the bed was given to my companion and myself, as the couch of honor, while the other six male guests spread their blankets on the floor, with saddles for pillows, the women occupying quarters in the kitchen. I slept the sound sleep of fatigue, my senses passing to oblivion with the last impression of the fire-light flickering on the rafters and the sounds of animated voices keeping up a fire of jokes in a mixture of English and Cherokee.

ALFRED M. WILLIAMS.

EASTE

far end of the piazza, sallying from the dark portals of the Propaganda, clerical boys, Seminarists, setting off in file for a walk, their scarlet cassocks flying with their youthful, vigorous strides; and finally, adding to all the other confusion, there were the carriages drawn up for hire, that, at the first glimpse of a redcovered guide-book, broke ranks and dashed out by the half-dozen to circle around the forestieri.

Of the two ladies surveying this scene, one was young and pretty, the other pretty and old. The golden locks were adorned by a flaming satin bow, the silver hair was arranged in shining rolls under exquisite lace, and altogether, as they sat there beneath the awning, with a little table and dainty tea-service between them, they themselves made an interesting picture.

Suddenly in the dimness of the drawing-room behind them a voice said, "Rosalia, signore !"

"Rosalia? Well, she may come here, Antonio."

And she came, at the first glance, a poor little specimen of humanity, though at the second might be found some portion of that beauté du diable which for the French means the fleeting charm of freshness that even plain-featured girls may have for a season. She was very small, not looking her fifteen years, and painfully thin, but her eyes were bright, her hair grew prettily around her forehead, and there was a faint tinge of pink in her cheeks, as if youth were ready to assert itself could it but get a chance in that half-starved little body.

She brought some work which her mistress had done for the ladies, and while they expressed satisfaction, asked kindly questions, and tried to be encouraging, a bashful smile, or "Si, signora," and

"No, signora," just above her breath, were all that could be obtained from her.

"The other things must be finished soon," said the old lady at last. "You know we go away after Easter." "Si, signora." "And how about your going with us, Rosalia?"

This time she clasped her hands, and a pathetic "Oh, signora !" conveyed intense longing.

"Poor little soul, how she would like it!" exclaimed the young lady. They could say what they pleased in English: Rosalia understood not a syllable. "What can that uncle of hers be thinking of? Does he suppose we shall eat her? We should have to fatten her first. It is my

belief the child has never had a good meal in her life."

"Of course she hasn't," returned the grandmother. "But as to her uncle's objections, it is plain enough what they are: he is a priest and we are heretics. However, if he came here we might possibly understand each other. I could assure him I haven't the slightest intention of meddling with her faith, and I suppose he would see for himself that her temporal welfare would be furthered. You say your uncle is recovering, Rosalia: when will he be out of the hospital?" Soon, signora.'

"Then you must ask him to come and see me. I think perhaps he may yet agree to your being my little maid, if I tell him how much I want you,' she added smilingly, " and that you will come back to Rome with me every winter."

The color rose in the girl's eager face, and her eyes sparkled. "Oh, signora, if he would only consent!" she cried, almost forgetting her shyness.

"Nice child," said the old lady approvingly. It is always pleasant to feel one's benevolent intentions properly appreciated; and then she had really taken a fancy to the girl: it had occurred to her at once that Rosalia might fill the place of a maid who had just left her. "The creature hasn't the first idea of neatness or order, probably," she observed to her grand-daughter, "but I could teach her: she looks as if she would learn. And her being but fifteen is an advantage. When Edward takes you away, I shall still have a young face about me. And she will not be for marrying directly, like that thankless Lucy. She must stay with me ten years at least; then she shall have a dowry and settle comfortably."

So it was all satisfactorily arranged, if only that priest had not made difficulties.

two pieces; for I dare say she would like to take one to the old thing she lives with." Rosalia had not understood that observation; but, if she had, the "old thing" would have got no cake. Not that the girl was greedy, but she knew the padrona, who would have accepted the offering without so much as grazieand consumed it, while the only real enjoyment in it would have come afterward, when, with a cunning smile on her thin lips, she would have said, Now they shouldn't need any supper.

Rosalia was rather simple for her years, but she knew the padrona through and through. And when a miserly, illtempered old woman takes a child to her bosom to feed and clothe and treat her like a daughter and consider herself repaid by filial services for this lavish sharing of her poverty with the orphan, is there need for us to go into minutiæ to get a clear idea of the situation? There was only one saving circumstance in it the priest who just now stood between Rosalia and good fortune had always stood, too, like a bulwark between her and the extremest consequences of the padrona's tender mercy. To that wretched old woman he seemed like a person of condition, although in fact he was far poorer than herself, and when he came to her attic dwelling she cringed before him in sweetness that became her worse than all her frowns. She lived in salutary fear of Rosalia's appealing to her uncle. It was less the shabby cassock that awed her, however, than a grave, sweet way its wearer had of talking about "the child" as if he thought the padrona really shared his solicitude for Rosalia's welfare, and when he had exhausted that topic, which to him represented all temporal concerns, he was as likely as not to enter on the abstract subject of another life, advising the padrona to fix her mind constantly upon it, for all the world as if she, poveretta! had not enough to do in this present existence to scrape coppers together and hide them in a mattress. He frightened her, the thin, hollow-eyed man. He gave her, too, a distinct impression that he was condescending when he waived her

VOL. V. N. S.-19

compliments and took the rickety chair she wiped for him.

Yet, in spite of his apparent superiority to sordid surroundings, he was used to them. He knew nothing else. Born in poverty, it was only through the ambition of his parents, and miracles of self-sacrifice on their part, that our priest had ever attained the sacerdotal dignity, and then, unhappily, no further miracles were wrought in his behalf. He had not distinguished himself in the seminary, he was not of the sort to be singled out and pushed forward for the credit of the Church at large; and, with neither money nor patronage to make up for the want of talent, he was naturally counted with the riff-raff that remains to be provided for in one way or another when the brilliant situations are filled and even the poorest little country parishes have all been given away. The provision made in his case was of the smallest,— -a daily mass to be said in an obscure church, for which he received just a sufficient number of soldi to keep body and soul together. That was as much as his superiors felt justified in doing for an absurdly timid and very commonplace youth who would evidently never amount to anything.

And he was grateful for that crumb of ecclesiastical bounty. No one could have a meaner opinion of him than he entertained of himself: he was ready to take the lowest place, though he magnified it, too, after a fashion. A simple, devout soul, he reverenced his office, and if his especial duty was merely one of those floating masses which serve as alms for the needy clergy, yet while he performed it he felt himself endowed with all the rights of the parish priest. As he put on the consecrated vestments, the shamefacedness of poverty fell away from him, and had royalty itself condescended to so poor a little sanctuary, the minister of the King of kings would still have uttered from the altar unabashed his salutation, "The Lord be with you!" The padrona was right,there was a certain distinction about him,

nothing that he was aware of, however it was simply that sort of prestige

which belongs to the foreigner: his daily walk was, as it had ever been, in the midst of squalor, only he lived elsewhere: there where "the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest," he, flitting to and fro in his sacred calling, as destitute of this world's goods as they, was at home, like them.

One can imagine how a single-minded man of that description, devoted to a system embodying for him all that was beautiful in this life and all hope of happiness in the next, would look at his niece's proposal to take up her portion with the heretics. To him it was nothing more nor less than that. He did not believe that the heretics had put up a certain aggressive-looking building, all red and white stripes, in the Via Nazionale, solely for their own edification. Under the auspices of the "Sardinian monarchy" they had, at last, obtained a foothold in the sacred city; the next thing would be to enlarge their borders, to gather in the young and simple and unwary. Nay, they were doing it already. In the campanile-the only pretty part of the heretical structure, to his thinking-there were bells that jangled melodies on Sundays and feastdays, and idle passers gaped into the air to see where the shower of joyous music came from, then lingered to watch the well-dressed folk going into their strange sanctuary, until finally, persuaded by the false brazen tongues and yielding to overpowering curiosity, they slipped in after. It was an American church, but then any yes-speaking people might attend it, and of course Rosalia's Inglese would take her there. It was of no use for the girl to tell him they were "so good and kind and gentle;" he was aware they might be all that, even though they worshipped in that striped temple,-and, poor things! if they knew no better, he would grant they were not to blame,but for her, a daughter of the true Church, to throw herself deliberately in the way of being perverted was quite another matter, and one on which their goodness and kindness had no sort of bearing. The circumstance that he himself felt the offer a temptation put him

only the more on his guard. The Inglese were rich, Rosalia would be well fed, well clothed, well paid; she could lay up money as a dowry to begin life with if she married, or as a provision for later years if she did not. And what were her prospects with the padrona? The understanding was simply that she was to have a home, and that the old woman should teach her all she knew and take the child's services in return, which latter part of the contract had been so faithfully carried out that Rosalia did nearly the whole of the sewing by which her mistress earned a living and added to her hidden stores. That had been the best the poor priest could do for his little orphan niece, the only relative he had left in the world, and on whom he expended a truly tender affection; that had been the best he could do at first, when her parents died and left her destitute; but it was not the sort of arrangement that ought to be permanent, and still, as time went on, he saw no means of doing better for her. What he would have liked was some place in a family of her own faith and nation, even though it were far from being so brilliant a situation as this with the forestieri; only, young and small as she was, and all but in rags, who would think, to look at her, that poor little Rosalia was worth anything more than her "keep"? He saw that, even while he felt sure the child would do herself credit if she got a chance. A pity it was only the English who could afford to take fancies!

While he was still in the difficulties of decision, and more moved by Rosalia's entreaties and his own longing for her temporal welfare than he dared let her see, he was, one day, run over by a carriage, and taken to the hospital with various broken bones.

Rosalia adored her uncle, and could not conceive of doing anything that he disapproved, only she hoped he might be brought to approve of such a glorious outlook for her future. All the way home she was thinking what she could say to persuade him, and when, arrived at the top of the five steep flights of

stairs, she opened the door of the disorderly kitchen and found the padrona had gone out, she was delighted to have the place to herself and continue her reflections a little longer. First, however, she peeped into the yet more disorderly bedroom, to make sure she really was alone, then examined the work laid ready for her, tossed it back on the table, and stepped out on the tiny balcony, which was the only part of the padrona's dwelling in the least to Rosalia's mind: it was from thence, by an ingenious arrangement of bucket, rope, and pulley, that water was obtained from the well in the court below, and nothing pleased Rosalia better, of all her domestic avocations, than this drawing of water. Imagine, for instance, that some of the neighbors in the three other lofty, dingy houses that backed on the court came out on their balconies at the same time with her it became quite social at once; she, as a child, did not join in the calling back and forth, the lively observations and compliments of the day that were sure to be exchanged from house to house during the water-drawing process, but she took care to be deliberate enough in her movements to get the full benefit of it all. And even if stillness reigned and the place seemed dead when she sent her bucket down with a splash into the stone-bordered basin, something might easily happen before she got it up again; a man came into the court, perhaps, and a girl put her head out of a window, and then what joyous salutations and gay chatter! the young mason, bepowdered from his work, looking up with flashing eyes and showing all his white teeth, and his innamorata, conscious of disorder in her array, holding herself together at the throat with one hand and settling her hair with the other, but nothing embarrassed, and readily promising to meet him on Sunday, for the interview ended with," Domenica, allora !"-"Si, domenica!" and "Addio !"-"A rivederci!" Then hardly had the young man turned away and the girl disappeared, before he was back with a little, shrill whistle, he had forgotten some

thing, and she beamed out on him once more, and they went through it all again, down to "Domenica" and the prolonged farewells.

Or, at another time and another window, a woman leaned out over a parcel of children who were flying bits of paper as improvised kites, and, as she withdrew, laid her hand on one of the curly heads and pulled it back for a kiss, as if no opportunity of bestowing caresses ought to be wasted. One can fancy the orphan looking on at that, resting her bucket on the rail of the balcony, quite lost to what she was about! No danger but that she would be recalled to it soon enough by the padrona's squalling “Rosalia!" in a way to make her start and slop the water into her shoe, as she lifted it down and tugged it into the kitchen, there to be asked if she had drawn the fountain dry, an ancient joke, of the sort that is meant for only one to laugh at.

On the afternoon in question, however, Rosalia had no attention to give to the neighbors: she wanted to get out of the gloomy kitchen, and to her lofty little perch in mid-air, with the spring breezes frolicking around her, and the blue overhead, only to pursue her reflections and dream of joys that might be hers. It would be happiness, she thought, just to walk about the grand apartments of her English ladies, with their softly-carpeted floors and magnificence of satin and gilding. What a palace! What glory to occupy even a modest nook there! She saw herself tripping around, prettily dressed,-for they would not want her looking so !— zealous in her attendance on the lovely ladies, ready to do everything they told her in their kind, sweet tones. And then the idea of going with them far away!-to come back again, however: she was glad of that. She should not lose sight of uncle; and when they were in foreign lands, Antonio, the old servant, who smiled at her always now so pleasantly, would doubtless be a sort of father to her.

After she had it all so beautifully pictured, she merely stood there, swaying