a tree, from whence he fell to the ground. When he strove to arise he found it was impossible to do so; and although in a half-stunned condition, he apprehended that the blow had broken his leg. This was put beyond any possibility of a doubt by an effort he made to stand upright; he distinctly felt the sundered bones grind together, which caused him. unspeakable agony.

This was indeed the "last straw." If a gleam of hope had lingered in his mind during the long hours, this fresh accident utterly extinguished it. Look which way he might, the prospect was unrelieved; his sun had undoubtedly gone down.

With the realization of his forlorn and hopeless circumstances came an unnatural calmness, almost akin to resignation, with which to meet the inevitable culmination of his night of disasters. He knew that he had "fought a good fight," even if he had failed at last. If a life's happiness were to elude his grasp at the moment he thought it lay almost within his grasp, the truest philosophy was to submit with fortitude. These were platitudes, doubtless, but our lives. are governed by platitudes. He even felt some relief that the uncertainty was over and the end within measurable distance. But the wild turmoil of the elements unnerved him, chilled his heart, and prevented him from dying in peace, as now he wished to do. If death must come he desired it to come as soon as possible, but quietly, peacefully-not amid such appalling accompaniments.

Up to this time the storm had lost none of its ferocity. Far overhead the wind roaring among the lofty branches. of the treetops sounded like the continued reverberations of a heavy surf

breaking upon breaking upon a rocky reef at sea.

Down in the dark depths of the forest there was a deathly stillness, amidst which the powdery, impalpable snow eddied and whirled, driven by fitful and noiseless gusts which blew from all the points of the compass at once.

Ronald was gradually sinking into a dull, painless stupor, probably superinduced by the deadly cold, when a far-off sound faintly reached his ear, which, as soon as its significance reached his brain, instantly awoke a thrill in every nerve in his body. Philosophy, resignation to the inevitable, the desire to die— all the feelings which had previously lulled him toward unconsciousness-immediately gave place to a wild terror which pervaded his entire being. Borne from the desolate aisles of some faraway fastness came echoing again the long-drawn melancholy howl of wolves. No one who has heard this awful cry at night in the forest will ever forget it. Ronald had often heard it, and realized to the full its dread purport. He could resign himself to death, but not in the form his imagination pictured if the wolves found him. That was too awful. It was no wonder, therefore, that his nerves gave way at last, and he burst into a passionate fit of sobbing. He was young, we must remember, and he had been tried beyond the experience of most mortals. But the fit passed quickly. Then he tried to ascertain if the fierce beasts were drawing any nearer. He quieted his sobs and listened attentively. The roar of the storm nearly drowned all the sounds, but he seemed to hear the long, melancholy cries from every point. of the compass at once.

It is a singular fact that if one's ears be kept at great tension for any consider

able length of time they become filled with imaginary sounds of all kinds, and in such cases one loses all power of discriminating a sound at a distance from one scarcely audible close by. Ronald became speedily a victim of this infirmity. He listened. for the wolves and he heard them on all sides. So intense did the hallucination become that he was led to believe the animals were almost upon him. Nearer and nearer their cries approached. With a last convulsive effort to escape being torn to pieces he tried to drag his maimed body a few paces toward his horse, which he knew had stopped close by. His object was to reach the animal and clasp his arms about its neck, then force it to carry him out of immediate danger. But the effort was too great, and he sank back upon the snow with a hopeless groan. The intense pain from the fractured leg, greatly augmented by the effort he had made to approach his horse, became too great to bear, and he sank gradually into insensibility, which mercifully relieved him from all suffering. Meanwhile the tempest continued its wild turmoil and the night drew toward its close.

IV.

The morning of the 6th of February dawned clear and cold upon Mrs. Mackenzie's dwelling. The three inmates were astir with the first gleam of light, and were cheered by observing that the snow had ceased to fall, and that the storm-clouds were rapidly rolling away. The sun soon uprose resplendent. What a scene was then revealed! White, sparkling and beautiful, in the brilliant light, lay the great drifts in the hollows

and valleys of the clearings; white, still, but without brilliancy, they slept in the Curves somber depths of the forest. and mounds and beautiful rounded hillocks replaced the harsh outlines of rock and stump and fallen trees. All the country was transformed, as by the wand of some mighty magician.

Mrs. Mackenzie's neighbors soon learned that Ronald had failed to reach home overnight, and naturally the conjectures were of various kinds. The majority believed, however, that the young man, fearing the gathering storm, had never started into the forest. No one believed, indeed, that he would face the terrible danger of being caught in the forest by a blizzard. No one, save his mother. Mrs. Mackenzie had no hesitation about the matter at all. "Ronald tried to come home," she said; "I know it because I saw him." This was so singular a statement that her neighbors simply stared and held their peace. But it was nothing to her outburst a moment later. "Friends," she cried, "ye know me well. I tell the truth. When I was waiting for the lad in the night I saw him staggering in the snowdrifts; I saw him look toward me as if asking me to help him; and then he sank down, down into the cruel snow. But I am going to find him-even if I go alone." Strong men, experienced in woodcraft, but knowing little or nothing of psychology, heard the strange words and marveled thereat, but observing that the mother evidently intended being as good as her word, now tried to turn her from her purpose. The only way, they found, that this could be done, was to organize a searching party among the best woodsmen in the settlement to scour the swamp. Then Mrs. Macken

zie consented to wait until they returned from their quest.

Most of the men who volunteered for this duty, it must be confessed, had no faith in it. The swamp was so vast in extent that a man might wander for days without coming very near a settlement. However, such was the respect entertained for Mrs. Mackenzie that all of them would gladly do what they could to save her from distress. So they cheerfully started off into the forest upon their forlorn search.

The

From an early hour in the morning friends and neighbors congregated at Mrs. Mackenzie's house, and tried in every way they possibly could to offer her comfort and save her from anxiety. The hours crawled along until midday, and none of the searchers had returned home to report tiding of the absent one, which, indeed, under the circumstances, could hardly be expected so soon. afternoon passed like the morning, the great old-fashioned clock in Mrs. Mackenzie's dining-room loudly and monotonously ticking off the moments, until the daylight was almost gone. It was close upon 6 o'clock, and still there had been no sign from the forest. Surely the searchers would soon appear now, as nothing could be accomplished in the darkness. Shortly, Mrs. Mackenzie raised her grief-stricken face from her hands, in which attitude she had passed the greater part of the day, and appeared more sensible of what was passing on around her than she had been for hours past. After a few moments she rose from her chair and walked slowly to the window, from whence a view of the great forest could be obtained. Suddenly she uttered an exclamation, and pointed with her finger out of the win

dow, and her face lighted up as it had not done all day long. Every one in the room hurried to her side, expecting at least to find some of the searching party returning. But to their very great surprise they could see nothing; no one was stirring to the very verge of the forest. What could she mean? Her excitement was very obvious; her eyes appeared to be bulging out of her head, and every nerve in her body was quivering. Her countenance assumed the same rapt expression of the previous night. Every one was watching her with startled curiosity. Some evidently thought the strain and distress had unbalanced her mind, and were waiting to see what new development her mood would take. A moment passed in dead silence; then deliberately the old clock broke upon their ears with a whirring sound of turning wheelwork, and then lazily began striking. One-two-three four-five-six, and stopped.

Every one

Before

the sound of the last stroke had died away. Mrs. Mackenzie suddenly turned, and, clasping Bessie Martin closely in her arms, burst into a tempest of sobs. "O Bessie, he's found! the poor laddie. They'll bring him home for you, won't they? Home, home, home! They'll bring the laddie home!"

The neighbors stood and stared at one another with bewildered faces. What did it all mean? Nothing had occurred within their range of vision that could possibly justify her words. Had she better eyes than theirs? Was she a witch? Had she dealings with the evil one? or was her mind unhinged? It was therefore with strangely mingled feelings of awe and curiosity that most of the party awaited the return of the

rescuers.

By whatever explanation the curious or skeptical student may seek to account for the strange fact, Mrs. Mackenzie proved to be right. Her mother's love, perhaps, had triumphed over time and space. At all events, it was true that at precisely 6 o'clock, long after sunset, when the forest had become dark, and the lanterns which they had carried with them had been lighted, the rescuing party were raising the young teacher's inanimate and half-frozen form from the snow where they had found it by the merest chance, or the dispensation of Providence, as you will, on their way back to the settlement, after they had given up the search for the day. They had at first perceived Ronald's riderless horse complacently cropping some tender shoots which grew not very far from the trail they were pursuing. Judging that Ronald would not be far off, they thereupon commenced a close and systematic search of the adjacent ground, with the result that they soon discovered the widow's son under quite a mound of snow, and protected by the fleecy covering from the extreme cold.

This garment of snow probably saved his life. When he was first lifted up he was to all appearances already dead. Restoratives were at once given him, a rude stretcher was at once improvised, upon which he was placed, and between the horses he was very quickly conveyed to the village, which was only three or four miles distant. The hot spirits poured into his stomach, and the rapid jolting of the horses over the rough track, together, tended to start the almost congealed blood in his body into languid. circulation; and so, when they laid him on a warmed bed in his mother's house, the doctor, to his joy and surprise, de

tected signs of returning animation. He hovered long, however, on the brink of the dark abyss before he was finally brought back to life.

The part Mrs. Mackenzie had taken in this strange episode naturally excited much wonder and conjecture in the settlement. No one tried to explain it by natural means, and a good many attributed it to the interposition of Providence, and dismissed the matter from their minds. Mrs. Mackenzie herself never tried to explain the occurrence, nor would she allow herself to be questioned on the subject, her mind evidently shrinking from any reflection upon the painful ordeal it had undergone.

As for Ronald himself, he was married in due course, and taught the village school for many years thereafter. But he says that the awful experience through which he passed had laid its impress upon him for life.

TWO OF THEM.

A man who had just finished a comfortable meal at a restaurant the other evening suddenly rose from his chair, caught up his hat and an umbrella that stood against the wall, and rushed out of the building.

"Stop him!" exclaimed the proprietor. "That fellow went out without paying!"

"I'll stop him!" said a determinedlooking man, who rose up hastily from a table near where the other had sat. "He took my gold-headed umbrella! I'll stop him, and I'll bring him back in charge of a police officer, the scoundrel!"

Without a moment's pause he dashed out of the house in hot pursuit of the conscienceless villain. And the proprietor, a cold, hard, unsympathetic kind of a man, has somehow began to suspect that neither of them will ever come back.

"There are tse-tse flies here," he said; "we must turn back."

"Very well," I answered, "you go on, but I must get a shot first at these elephants which have given me so much. trouble."

The mother and her calf had meanwhile disappeared but, before I made my way back I was so lucky as to shoot two of the herd. Unfortunately my horse, whose name was Tempus, had been stung by the poisonous flies, and shortly after our return, at the commencement of the rainy season, it sickened and died.

When quite a youth I encountered a tiger or panther. My Uncle Theunis, his son and I were hunting antelope, or elands, near Tijgerfontein Farm, in the neighborhood of Ventersdorp, and we soon found an antelope in the cover. My cousin rode in front and my uncle followed him; there was a distance of about forty yards between them. Suddenly, a panther appeared and made for us at a furious rate, although we had given him no provocation whatever. He overtook my uncle; but the latter's wellaimed shot brought the panther to the ground at the very moment when he was leaping on the horse which my uncle was riding.

A big lion-hunt, in which several of us took part, gave me the opportunity of witnessing a remarkable instance of canine fidelity. We had a whole pack of hounds with us. When they had found the herd of lions, they surrounded it, barking furiously. One of the hounds. would go no further from us than about

twenty paces. There he stood barking; but nothing could induce him to join the pack: he was too frightened to do that, and too faithful to leave us. One of the lions made for us and then the poor terrified hound was the only one that did not run away. He stuck to his post. He trembled and howled with fear, to say nothing of more visible signs of distress, and every second he looked round. anxiously at his master to see if he were still there, hoping, I dare say, that he would fly, and that the dog might follow at his heels. But the master stayed and so the dog stayed. The lion was within. ten paces of the dog when we shot him. And even now the timid dog was the only one of all the noisy pack that attacked him as he fell under our fire. He nearly died for fear, but remained at his post for love of his master.

In the year 1845, my two brothers Douw and Theunis, Douw's wife, my own wife and I were making a halt near Secucuni's town, not far from the place where the Spekboom River joins the Steenpoort River, in the north of the Transvaal. We outspanned, and I went, in the course of the day, on the veldt to shoot some game. I was mounted, and carried my old big four-poun-ler. After about an hour's ride, I came across a rhinoceros and shot at it. But I only succeeded in wounding the animal, and it fled into the wood. I dismounted quickly, ready to shoot again, but moved only a few steps away from my horse, lest the rhinoceros should turn and attack me, in which case it would be necessary to remount at once. I succeeded in getting a