86 THE HAUNT OF THE FALLOW DEER. THE haunt of the Fallow Deer, Of the creature wild and free, By the waters flowing clear, And the stately forest tree, The bracken tall amid, And the Valley Lily holds her court, The haunt of the Fallow Deer, Nor echoes woodman's stroke; The haunt of the Fallow Deer, By the lonely woodland spring, Where the Bullrush lifts its spear, And the Honeysuckles cling; Where waves the feathery Fern, And the sunshine falls in gleams, That ever shift, and change, and turn, Like the shapes that people dreams. The haunt of the Fallow Deer, By the moorland spreading wide, Amid whose herbage sere The red Grouse loves to hide, Where the Fox barks from the hill, And the Owl hoots through the night, And the glossy Blackcock croweth shrill To hail the morning light. The haunt of the Fallow Deer, And mossy beds for rest; Oh, throbbing brows and troubled looks, Here cease your weary quest. THE HUGUENOT'S DAUGHTER.. A TALE Ог A RELIGIOUS procession was proceeding through the forests in the neighborhood of Nismes, when it suddenly came to an open space occupied by a cottage of humble appearance, but bearing about it evidences of taste in its occupants. The walls were covered with vines so thickly matted together as to resemble a solid mass of verdure, and the yard in front was surrounded by a hedge of evergreens, while within the inclosure bloomed a few late flowers. On a rustic portico in front of the cottage sat a girl of tender years, singing a psalm in a voice of clear, birdlike melody. She wore the common dress of the peasantry in that portion of the country; and the scarlet bodice, cut low in the neck, with short sleeves, showed the symmetry of a neatly-rounded form, though the smooth skin was browned to the hue of the berry. The soft black eyes and raven hair harmonized, however, with this complexion, and as she leaned against the dark background, made by the shining leaves of the ivy that covered the walls, she looked, in the gathering twilight, like a vivid picture of youthful joy, over whom the sad condition of her native land had not yet possessed the power to cast a shadow. She held a piece of work in her busy fingers, and as she bent her head over it, she was so intensely occupied that she heeded not the approach of the holy procession, until, at a sign from the abbot, it stopped in front of the cottage. The sweet melody continued to ring out clear and full until the voice of the priest, speaking in tones of stern anger, startled her from her unconsciousness. FRANCE. "Ask pardon for your crime in the name of holy Mother Church, or it shall go hard with you." She gained courage to murmur, "I have been taught to pray only in the name of Christ." "And is not He, then, the head and founder of our Church? Pooh! child, who has taught you such absurd distinctions? Do as I bid you, or I will find means to make your heretical parents suffer for having so badly trained you." This threat destroyed the little courage the girl had been able to summon. She faintly said, "Oh no―on me let your anger fall. Spare my good father and mother. They have often admonished me not to sing the psalms, but I love them so much, I forgot. Oh! Father Antoine, it was only my own heedlessness; it was no fault of my parents." "Then expiate your sin as I shall command, or take the consequences. Repeat after me a solemn recantation of the errors in which you have been reared; only on this condition will I pardon the breach of the laws of which you have been guilty. Refuse, and before the night has waned your whole family shall be cast into a dungeon, there to perish in their heresy, ruined in this world, and lost in the next." His words were addressed to a child of fourteen years, in mortal terror of his power, and he well calculated the effect they would produce. She glanced down the footpath leading to the cottage, but no form was approaching to sustain her sinking courage. She faltered, "And shall my parents be safe from your anger if I "Girl, are you not the daughter of Laval, the do this?" forester ?" She started, looked up, and at the sight of those before her, grew pallid as death; for, young as she was, she had learned to dread the appearance of the so-called vicegerents of Heaven as the prelude to bitter suffering to those that were dear to her. "They shall be; I promise it." Again she wavered, and in great anguish exclaimed, Oh, Father Antoine, if you force me to do this, my father will cast me from him as unworthy! He can never trust me again. I shall become an outcast from his heart. As you have mercy exact not this from me!" The priest grimly smiled, for he enjoyed her terror. "Weigh your fears of their anger against the certainty of the punishment I have threatened, and then decide. What seems hard in my conduct to you now, will in the future be regarded by you as a signal inter "I-I was so startled. Pardon me, father! Yes, I am the daughter of the forester. My parents are away, and while I watched for them I sang. Oh, Father Antoine, pardon me! I had forgotten that we are for-position of Heaven in your favor.” bidden to sing the psalms; and indeed-indeed, I did The girl scarcely understood him, so bewildered were not see the holy emblems coming!" her faculties. Her parents, like all the Huguenots, had "Why do you not now kneel before them, wretched suffered deeply for their stedfast adherence to the relilittle heretic?" he thundered. "You know it is not per-gion they espoused, and threats of violence had often mitted to your people to sing at all when this holy pro- been used toward them. They lived in hourly dread cession passes by, and yet you dared run such a risk! that their humble position might not be able to protect Do you know that severe punishment is decreed against them from the pitiless wrath that swept as a whirlwind those who are guilty of such irreverent conduct ?" over the land, levelling alike the lordly tree and the humble flower that found shelter beneath its shadow. The girl, trembling in every limb, sunk upon her knees, and raised her clasped hand deprecatingly toward him. A sudden thought struck the priest. He said, in the same commanding tone, "Are you not the same girl to whom the Sisters of Mercy lately offered the advantages of a superior edu cation if you would abandon the errors inculcated by your parents?" "The Sisters did make me such an offer, but I could not leave my home. Oh! Father Antoine, if you are really a good man, you will see that it is right to honor my father and mother as the Bible commands." "And even to such as you the mysteries of that holy volume are laid bare by these sacrilegious heretics," said the priest, severely. "Girl, you have been badly trained by your parents, and it becomes my duty to remove you from their evil influence. Recant your errors as I command, or the strong arm of authority shall deal with those who have sinned against their duty toward you by risking the salvation of your immortal soul." By this time the child was so exhausted by fright that she was ready to obey any command he might give her. Of a highly nervous temperament, and easily excited; impressed from infancy with a deep dread of the power of the priesthood; a witness, as years advanced, of the ruthless use made of that power, poor little Lucille had not one spark of courage left in her palpitating heart to give life to a spirit of resistance. She could only falter, 'Holy Father, what shall I do to avert your anger?" "Repeat after me a renunciation of the errors in which you have been reared, and I promise you protection and advancement, such as your parents never dreamed of for a child of theirs." "Tell me, then, what I must say." The priest slowly repeated the form of words often dictated to children, and made by the laws binding upon them, even from the tender age of eight years. This recantation once uttered, the parents had no further power over them. They passed under the rule of the Church, and were trained in her dogmas, in defiance of all the opposition that could be offered by those to whom nature had alone given the right to control their opinions and form their characters. "O Lord, in whom I have trusted, thou hast not permitted this evil to fall on me! My own one, that I trained so carefully, to fall from grace in the first moment of temptation." The girl clung to his knees and piteously begged forgiveness; but he loosened her clasp as he said, "No, no; you have chosen your path, and you must walk in it. Henceforth I have no claim on you. Take her, priest; the renegade daughter will make a fitting follower of the great Moloch, into which you and such as you have turned the Church of the Most High God." Laval and his wife had approached the cottage by a pathway leading to the rear of the building, and until they entered its walls they were not aware of the scene acting in front. The mother, pallid and nearly sinking with agitation, stood in the doorway, holding in her arms an infant a few months old. Repulsed by her father, Lucille turned toward her, and she looked up imploringly in her face as her white lips muttered, "Mother, it was to save you all from the punishment due to my fault that I abjured. I forgot your warnings-I sang the psalms, as the procession came by, and incurred the penalty of imprisonment to us all. It was better to bear the punishment myself than have it fall on all alike. My baby brother would have died in the dungeon, shut out from the light of heaven. My father's strong arm would have become palsied, you would have perished, and my heedlessness the cause of all. Was it not better to avert these dire calamities, at any cost to myself?" "If your eternal welfare had not also been at stake," replied the agonized mother; "but with that, you had no right to tamper. One soul is of more worth than the earthly existence of many bodies. I would sooner have seen you perish, true to your faith, than thus weakly to have resigned it." "Right, right, wife," said Laval, gloomily; then turnScarcely conscious of what she was doing, the fainting to the priest, he added, “ And you have wrung from voice of Lucille followed that of the priest, and when the fears of a weak child a recantation of all she has the fatal words were ended she fell forward with her been taught to consider sacred; you will proclaim her face upon the turf, in an agony of emotion that would have enforced conversion as a triumph of the true faith over touched any heart not utterly hardened by fanaticism. heretical doctrines. You have taken a cruel advantage Father Antoine said, of my absence to obtain from her terror what my daughter would never voluntarily have acknowledged. She is yet too young to be responsible for her own acts." "Rise, daughter of the true faith, and follow me to an asylum where care and tenderness shall compensate you for the separation from those who have trained you only in heresy and rebellion." "The law permits even younger children to choose the true faith," replied the abbot. "If she is old enough to comprehend error, she is also capable of following truth. Her choice is made, and she will not now be permitted to recoil from it: and learn farther, that only through forbearance, purchased by her submission, do I refrain from proceeding to extremities against you "It is false," said a loud voice, and a man of tall and powerful frame bounded through the open door of the cottage. His black eyes were blazing with excitement, and his lips were white and tremulous with emotion. He raised his daughter from the ground, and, facing the priest, asked with a sort of subdued desperation, "What does this mean? What have you done to and your wife for your irreverent conduct in the presfrighten this child so fearfully?" "I have received her renunciation of the errors in which she was reared," he coldly replied, "and you well know to what measures that must lead." ence of the sacred body of Christ. Come, girl, I have wasted too much time here; follow me, and take heed that you stray neither to the right nor to the left. I will place you at once with the Sisters of Mercy, where Laval relaxed his grasp upon the form of Lucille, and you will be well cared for." staggered back. He muttered in a broken voice, Lucille arose, and stretched arms imploringly toward her father. As if moved by an uncontrollable impulse, | altar which emulated pagan cruelties in the tortures inLaval rushed toward her, and pressed her with frantic flicted on its victims. force to his heart. His hand sought the handle of a knife he wore in his breast, and his fingers nervously clutched it, with the half-formed determination to take her life sooner than surrender her to the protection of the Church. The glittering blade was partly unsheathed, when Lucille comprehended his intention. She faintly said, "Kill me, then; it will be better to die in your arms than to follow that man." Her eyes were raised to his, and there was something in their expression that disarmed him. He groaned. "Oh, had this spirit only sustained you until I came, I could have saved you. I will do it yet, my child, or die in the attempt. You shall not be twice lost-to you earthly parent, and to your Father in heaven." He passionately kissed her cheek, lips, and brow, and then resigned her to her mother. "You should have died sooner than recant," said the latter; "but since it is so, you must go, and we may never meet you again. A blight has fallen on our humble home, and now a day, an hour may compass the destruction of us all." Madame Laval knew that in resigning her daughter to the priest, she lost her as effectually as if death had taken her from her arms; yet she parted from her with apparent calmness. Lucille pressed the soft cheek of her infant brother to her lips in a transport of anguish which was increased by the laughing glee with which the little fellow bounded to meet her caress. Then, with lingering steps, she went out of the little enclosure, and crossing her hands upon her breast, followed the procession with a world of suffering in the young heart lately so full of joyful hope and youthful happiness. She did not dare to give one backward glance to the home she was leaving, lest she should turn and fly again to the beloved ones whose hearts were riven with anguish at her loss. Laval's burning eyes were fixed upon her receding form with feelings no language can portray. Powerless to gain redress for this great outrage against the holiest tie of nature, all the fire of his impetuous soul was aroused by the very consciousness of his inability to assert his right to protect his dearly-cherished daughter. Though lowly in station, and dependent on labor for his support, the forester, in spite of the religious persecution that raged around him, had enjoyed happiness in his humble home. The bright face, the sweet voice of his beautiful child, were his solace for every evil; and now she was torn from him to be placed under the powerful influence of that Church which never scrupled to use any means by which the minds of the young could be influenced. He knew Lucille to imaginative and full of enthusiasm: when trained by the subtle intellects that would have entire control over her, what might be her future career? In imagination he beheld her the persecutor of the faith in which she had been reared trampling under foot its simple and pure teachings, while she bowed in reverence before the blood-stained This picture was more than the father could bear; and uttering a fierce cry, with one bound he cleared the yard, as a bend in the pathway shut his daughter from his sight, and with fleet steps went in pursuit of her. He did not pause to reflect on the consequences—he only felt that he could die sooner than permit his darling child to be thus ruthlessly torn from him. The abbot walked with slow and dignified motion, mechanically repeating his Aves, followed by the others, and the enraged father soon overtook them. The acolytes, apparently unmoved by the scene they had witnessed, swung their censers as accurately as ever, and the attendant priest also mumbled scraps of Latin which he dignified with the name of prayers, when Lucille walked after them with tears streaming over her pale features, yet no thought of rebelling against the cruel decision that tore her from her home had entered her heart. In this she only practised that submission to the higher powers which the Huguenots sedulously inculcated in all things that did not conflict with their duty to the Supreme Ruler. Suddenly the strong arms of her father were thrown around her, and she was borne away as lightly and as easily as if she had been an infant. Instinctively she clung to him and buried her head in his bosom to shut out the threats and anathemas uttered by the priests when they became aware of the daring act perpetrated by the peasant. Laval was deaf to them all; he sped backward without one glance toward his persecutor, who smiled with a malignant consciousness of the power he possessed to bring speedy vengeance upon him, and he quickened his pace that he might reach Nismes and send the myrmidons of the law to execute his will against the defenceless family. Laval reached his own door, and placing his daughter upon the floor, he sternly said, "Now, Annette, let us make ready as quickly as we may to go out in the hills, for yon priest will lose no time in sending the dragoons to ferret us out. We must find a secure hiding-place before they come, or no sun will ever again rise on earth for you or me." The mother cast a pitiful glance at the helpless infant she carried in her arms, but she said nothing. Laval understood the look, and his voice was slightly husky as he replied to it. "He is a young sufferer in the cause of Christ; but he had better now perish in his innocence than be trained by priestly influence to become a persecutor of the faithful.” "Dear father," said Lucille, throwing herself upon her knees before him, "my weakness and disobedience has brought all this suffering upon you. Let me follow the priest, and avert his anger from you. I deserve the punishment, and I can bear it." "Rise, my child, and help your mother to put up our scanty possessions. No evil to me could be so great as to suffer you to fall under the rule of that man. Comfort yourself, girl, for some pretext for tearing you from me would soon have been found, even if the innocent | unwarlike aspect was mounted on him, and his mind pastime of singing psalms in praise of our Creator had was evidently occupied with thoughts which had little not afforded one to the wily priest." to do with his present "whereabout." He was crooning a portion of the thirty-third psalm. Thus comforted, the poor girl, still trembling with agitation, followed her mother into the house: it consisted of two small rooms, divided by a plank partition, and contained such articles as were barely necessary to enable them to live; but all were neat and well-kept. A bundle of clothing and such food as the cottage contained were hastily collected, and rolled in the blankets from the beds. These Laval tied with a cord and slung them over his shoulder, while his wife took the infant in her arms and prepared to follow him. With stern and bitter hearts they bade adieu to the home which had sheltered them so many years; and as Lucille passed out, she plucked a spray from the ivy that clustered over the poor walls, to be kept as a momento of her childhood's home. They made their escape in time; for when they had ascended above the valley, the little party turned and looked back toward the spot occupied by their late Lome. Night by this time had fallen, and the red glare from a fire was thrown upon the darkened air. Laval pointed toward it and said, Laval stepped forward, laid his hand on the bridle of the rapt singer, and with his sonorous voice repeated another verse from the same psalm. Thus arrested, the rider seemed slightly startled, but he instantly resumed his composure as he looked upon the forester. "Laval, are you too in hiding, my good man? You do not recognize me, though it is scarcely a year since I administered the rites of baptism to your infant son, at the imminent risk of being seized and imprisoned." "My pastor! God be thanked that I meet you thus, for we are both in greater danger than you are aware of. Pardon my forgetfulness, but to-night I have had much to bewilder me. What brings you here, in the very lion's mouth in such perilous times as these?” "My duty to my poor, suffering people. I must come at stated periods to see after their welfare, to give them such consolations as they sorely need, to keep stedfast the wavering, and show them how insignificant is all worldly suffering in comparison with the reward pre "Behold, the priest has lost no time-our cottage is pared for those who are faithful to the end." in flames!" The pathway chosen by Laval, by which to escape from his enemies, was a narrow defile leading into the heart of the Black Mountains. Walls of rock hemmed it in on either side, and the road was encumbered with fragments which had fallen from the cliffs above, and obstructed their progress at every step. Laval well knew that they would be pursued; but he trusted for deliverance to the difficulty of mounted horsemen following the precipitous path he had preferred. He also knew many secret places in these mountain solitudes, in which a small party could conceal themselves, and elude any search that was not systematically and minutely made. They had nearly reached a spur in the mountain road which jutted across the pathway, when the clatter of approaching hoofs was heard. The three paused, and Laval bent his head and listened attentively; he then spoke to the tremblers beside him in a calm tone, "It is only one horseman who approaches. He comes slowly, as if weary or uncertain of his locality. Take the boy, Lucille, and you and your mother stand behind the projection of the hill there, while I watch the approach of this person, and see if he is to be feared." They obeyed him in silence, and Laval stood erect, with his muscular form against the dark background afforded by a clump of cedars which grew from the crevices in the rocky wall. The road here had widened into a gap, and the starlit sky shone peacefully over it; they were above the region of night vapors, and the atmosphere was perfectly clear. A pathway opened from the gap on the left hand, and from that side came the uneven sound of stumbling steps, evidently from a tired animal. Presently the head of a mule was seen, and soon his whole body appeared, panting with the fatigue of the ascent. A small man of very Some strong emotion seemed to shake the soul of Laval, and he knelt upon the road, and reverently placing the thin hand of the pastor upon his own head, he said, "Give me your blessing, father; and ask the Holy One, whose true evangelist you are, to give me a portion of your meek and long-suffering spirit. Oh! I need it-I need it this night, above all others of my life!" With solemn earnestness, the blessing was given. A few hundred yards from the spot on which they had met there was a narrow ravine, the entrance to which was nearly concealed by a low undergrowth of vines and bushes. Through this Laval led the way, holding back the matted branches that the mule might pass through without trampling down the natural screen, which served to conceal it from observation. After scrambling through this, a few paces beyond the ravine terminated in an abrupt precipice. The party paused, and the forester again parted the underwood on the right side, and revealed a pathway winding around the face of the hill that overhung an apparently interminable depth, from which vapors of darkness seemed to rise. Come, my good wife, I will help you on. The mule is sure-footed, and can be trusted to go on alone. Hark! there come the soldiers, by Heaven!" Each one of the little party stifled their very breathing to listen to the clatter of horses' feet, as a party of mounted men swept over the road they had so lately left. They came to a sudden halt. In another instant they dashed on, and Laval drew a long breath. "There is no alternative now, Antoinette; you must go on or perish. Lucille, walk in your mother's steps while I sustain her." His wife staggered up, nerved as much by the consciousness that her child must be followed at all hazards, |