The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858

What do we mean by this? It is that curious nomenclature which from truck to keelson clothes the ship with strange but fitting phrases,—which has its proverbs, idioms, and forms of expression that are of the sea, salt, and never of the land, earthy. Wherever tidewater flows, goes also some portion of this speech. It is "understanded of the people" among all truly nautical races. It dominates over their own languages, so that the Fin and Mowree, (Maori,) the Lascar and the Armorican, meeting on the same deck, find a common tongue whereby to carry on the ship's work,—the language in which to "hand, reef, and steer."

Whence did it come? From all nautical peoples. Not from the Hebrew race. To them the possession of the soil was a fixed idea. The sea itself had nothing wherewith to tempt them; they were not adventurers or colonizers; they had none of that accommodating temper as to creed, customs, and diet, which is the necessary characteristic of the sailor. But the nations they expelled from Canaan, the worshippers of the fish-tailed Dagon, who fled westward to build Tartessus (Tarshish) on the Gaditanian peninsula, or who clung with precarious footing to the sea-shore of Philistia and the rocky steeps of Tyre and Sidon,—these were seafarers. From them their Greek off-shoots, the Ionian islanders, inherited something of the maritime faculty. There are traces in the "Odyssey" of a nautical language, of a technology exclusively belonging to the world "off soundings," and an exceeding delight in the rush and spray-flinging of a vessel's motion,—

"The purple wave hissed from the bow of the bark in its going."

Hence the Greek is somewhat of a sailor to this day, and in many a Mediterranean port lie sharp and smartly-rigged brigantines with classic names of old Heathendom gilt in pure Greek type upon their sterns.

But the Greek and Carthaginian elements of the ocean language must now lie buried very deep in it, and it is hard to recognize their original image and superscription in those smooth-worn current coins which form the basis of the sea-speech. It is not within the limits of a cursory paper like this to enter into too deep an investigation, or to trace perhaps a fanciful lineage for such principal words as "mast," and "sail," and "rope." In one word, "anchor," the Greek plainly survives,—and doubtless many others might be made out by a skilful philologist.

The Roman, to whom the empire of the sea, or, more properly speaking, the petty principality of the Mediterranean, was transferred, had little liking for that sceptre. He was driven to the water by sheer necessity, but he never took to it kindly. He was at best a sea-soldier, a marine, not brought up from the start in the merchant-service and then polished into the complete blue-jacket and able seaman of the navy. Nobody can think of those ponderous old Romans, whose comedies were all borrowed from Attica, whose poems were feeble echoes of the Greek, and whose architecture, art, and domestic culture were at best the work of foreign artists,—nobody can think of them at sea without a quiet chuckle at the inevitable consequences of the first "reef-topsail breeze." Fancy those solemn, stately Patricians, whose very puns are ponderous enough to set their galleys a streak deeper in the water, fancy them in a brisk sea with a nor'wester brewing to windward, watching off the port of Carthage for Admiral Hasdrubal and his fleet to come out. They were good hand-to-hand fighters,—none better; and so they won their victories, no doubt; but, having won them, they dropped sea-going, and made the conquered nations transport their corn and troops, while they went back to their congenial camps and solemn Senate-debates.

But Italy was not settled by the Roman alone. A black-haired, fire-eyed, daring, flexible race had colonized the Sicilian Islands, and settled thickly around the Tarentine Gulf, and built their cities up the fringes of the Apennines as far as the lovely Bay of Parthenope. Greek they were,—by tradition the descendants of those who took Troy-town,—Greek they are to this day, as any one may see who will linger on the Mole or by the Santa Lucia Stairs at Naples. At Salerno, at Amalfi, were cradled those fishing-hamlets which were to nurse seamen, and not soldiers. Far up the Adriatic, the storm of Northern invasion had forced a fair-haired and violet-eyed folk into the fastnesses of the lagoons, to drive their piles and lay their keels upon the reedy islets of San Giorgio and San Marco; while on the western side an ancient Celtic colony was rising into prominence, and rearing at the foot of the Ligurian Alps the palaces of Genoa the Proud.

Thus upon the Italian stock was begun the language of the seas. Upon the Italian main the words "tack" and "sheet," "prow" and "poop," were first heard; and those most important terms by which the law of the marine highway is given,—"starboard" and "larboard." For if, after the Italian popular method, we contract the words questo bordo (this side) and quello bordo (that side) into sto bordo and lo bordo, we have the roots of our modern phrases. And so the term "port," which in naval usage supersedes "larboard," is the abbreviated porta lo timone, (carry the helm,) which, like the same term in military usage, "port arms," seems traditionally to suggest the left hand.

But while the Italian races were beginning their brief but brilliant career, there was in training a nobler and hardier race of seamen, from whose hands the helm would not so soon be wrested. The pirates of the Baltic were wrestling with the storms of the wild Cattegat and braving the sleety squalls of the Skager Rack, stretching far out from the land to colonize Iceland and the Faroes, to plant a mysteriously lost nation in Eastern Greenland, and to leave strange traces of themselves by the vine-clad shores of Narraganset Bay. For, first of all nations and races to steer boldly into the deep, to abandon the timid fashion of the Past, which groped from headland to headland, as boys paddle skiffs from wharf to wharf, the Viking met the blast and the wave, and was no more the slave, but the lord of the sea. He it was, who, abandoning the traditionary rule which loosened canvas only to a wind dead aft or well on the quarter, learned to brace up sharp on a wind and to baffle the adverse airs. Yet he, too, was overmuch a fighter to make a true seaman, and his children no sooner set foot on the shore than they drew their swords and went to carving the conquered land into Norman lordships. But where they piloted the way others followed, and city after city along the German Ocean and upon the British coasts became also maritime. For King Alfred had come, and the English oaks were felled, and their gnarled boughs found exceedingly convenient for the curved knees of ships. Upon the Italian stock became engrafted the Norman, and French, and Danish, the North German and Saxon elements. And so, after a century of crusading had thoroughly broken up the stay-at-home notions of Europe, the maritime spirit blazed up. Spain and Portugal now took the lead and were running races against each other, the one in the Western, the other in the Eastern seas, and flaunting their crowned flags in monopoly of the Indian archipelagos and the American tropics. Just across the North Sea, over the low sand-dykes of Holland, scarce higher than a ship's bulwarks, looked a race whom the spleeny wits of other nations declared to be born web-footed. Yet their sails were found in every sea, and, like resolute merchants, as they were, they left to others the glory while they did the world's carrying. Their impress upon the sea-language was neither faint nor slight. They were true marines, and from Manhattan Island to utmost Japan, the brown, bright sides, full bows, and bulwarks tumbling home of the Dutchman were familiar as the sea-gulls. Underneath their clumsy-looking upper-works, the lines were true and sharp; and but the other day, when the world's clippers were stooping their lithe racehorse-like forms to the seas in the great ocean sweepstakes, the fleetest of all was—a Dutchman.

But to combine and fuse all these elements was the work of England. To that nation, with its noble inheritance of a composite language, incomparably rich in all the nomenclature of natural objects and sounds, was given especially the coast department, so to speak, of language. Every variety of shore, from shingly beaches to craggy headlands, was theirs. While the grand outlines and larger features are Italian, such as Cape, Island, Gulf, the minuter belong to the Northern races, who are closer observers of Nature's nice differences, and who take more delight in a frank, fearless acquaintance and fellowship with out-door objects. Beach, sand, headland, foreland, shelf, reef, breaker, bar, bank, ledge, shoal, spit, sound, race, reach, are words of Northern origin. So, too, the host of local names by which every peculiar feature of shore-scenery is individualized,—as, for instance, the Needles, the Eddystone, the Three Chimneys, the Hen and Chickens, the Bishop and Clerks. The strange atmospheric phenomena, especially of the tropics, have been christened by the Spaniard and Portuguese, the Corposant, the Pampero, the Tornado, the Hurricane. Then follows a host of words of which the derivation is doubtful,—such as sea, mist, foam, scud, rack. Their monosyllabic character may only be the result of that clipping and trimming which words get on shipboard. Your seaman's tongue is a true bed of Procrustes for the unhappy words that roll over it. They are docked without mercy, or, now and then, when not properly mouth-filling, they are "spliced" with a couple of vowels. It is impossible to tell the whys and wherefores of sea-prejudices.

We have now indicated the main sources of the ocean-language. As new nations are received into the nautical brotherhood, and as new improvements are made, new terms come in. The whole whaling diction is the contribution of America, or rather of Nantucket, New Bedford, and New London, aided by the islands of the Pacific and the mongrel Spanish ports of the South Seas. Here and there an adventurous genius coins a phrase for the benefit of posterity,—as we once heard a mate order a couple of men to "go forrard and trim the ship's whiskers," to the utter bewilderment of his captain, who, in thirty years' following of the sea, had never heard the martingale chains and stays so designated. But the source of the great body of the sea-language might be marked out on the map by a current flowing out of the Straits of Gibraltar and meeting a similar tide from the Baltic, the two encountering and blending in the North Sea and circling Great Britain, while not forgetting to wash the dykes of Holland as they go. How to distinguish the work of each, in founding the common tongue, is not here our province.

It would be difficult to classify the words in nautical use,—impossible here to do more than hint at such a possibility. A specimen or two will show the situation of the present tongue, and the blending process already gone through with. We need not dip for this so far into the tar-bucket as to bother (nauticè, "galley") the landsman. We will take terms familiar to all. The three masts of a ship are known as "fore," "main," and "mizzen." Of these, the first is English, the second Norman-French, the third Italian (mezzano). To go from masts to sails, we have "duck" from the Swedish duk, and "canvas" from the Mediterranean languages,—from the root canna, a cane or reed,—thence a cloth of reeds or rushes, a mat-sail,—hence any sail. Of the ends of a ship, "stern" is from the Saxon stearn, steering-place; "stem," from the German stamm. The whole family of ropes—of which, by the way, it is a common saying, that there are but three to a ship, namely, bolt-rope, bucket-rope, and man-rope, all the rest of the cordage being called by its special name, as tack, sheet, clew-line, bow-line, brace, shroud, or stay—the whole family of ropes are akin only by marriage. "Cable" is from the Semitic root kebel, to cord, and is the same in all nautical uses. "Hawser"—once written halser—is from the Baltic stock,—the rope used for halsing or hauling along; while "painter," the small rope by which a boat is temporarily fastened, is Irish,—from painter, a snare. "Sheet" is Italian,—from scotta; "brace" French, and "stay" English. "Clew" is Saxon; "garnet" (from granato, a fruit) is Italian,—that is, the garnet- or pomegranate-shaped block fastened to the clew or corner of the courses, and hence the rope running through the block. Then we find in the materials used in stopping leaks the same diversity. "Pitch" one easily gets from pix (Latin); "tar" as easily from the Saxon tare, tyr. "Junk," old rope, is from the Latin juncus, a bulrush,—the material used along the Mediterranean shore for calking; "oakum," from the Saxon oecumbe, or hemp. The verb "calk" may come from the Danish kalk, chalk,—to rub over,—or from the Italian calafatare. The now disused verb "to pay" is from the Italian pagare;—it survives only in the nautical aphorism, "Here's the Devil to pay,"—that is, to pitch the ship,—"and no pitch hot." In handing the sails, "to loose" is good English,—"to furl" is Armorican, and belongs to the Mediterranean class of words. "To rake," which is applied to spars, is from the Saxon racian, to incline;—"to steeve," which is applied to the bowsprit, and often pronounced "stave," is from the Italian stivare. When we get below-decks, we find "cargo" to be Spanish,—while "ballast" (from bat, a boat, and last, a load) is Saxon. A ship in ballast comes from the Baltic,—a vessel and cargo from the Bay of Biscay. Sailors must eat; but there is a significant distinction between merchant-seamen and man-o'-war's-men. The former is provided for at the "caboose," or "camboose," (Dutch, kombuis); the latter goes to the "galley," (Italian, galera, in helmet, primitively). This distinction is fast dying out,—the naval term superseding the mercantile,—just as in America the title "captain" has usurped the place of the more precise and orthodox term, "master," which is now used only in law-papers. The "bowsprit" is a compound of English and Dutch. The word "yard" is English; the word "boom," Dutch. The word "reef" is Welsh, from rhevu, to thicken or fold; "tack" and "sheet" are both Italian; "deck" is German. Other words are the result of contractions. Few would trace in "dipsey," a sounding-lead, the words "deep sea"; or in "futtocks" the combination "foot-hooks,"—the name of the connecting-pieces of the floor-timbers of a ship. "Breast-hook" has escaped contraction. Sailors have, indeed, a passion for metamorphosing words,—especially proper names. Those lie a little out of our track; but two instances are too good to be omitted:—The "Bellerophon," of the British navy, was always known as the "Bully-ruffian," and the "Ville de Milan," a French prize, as the "Wheel-'em-along." Here you have a random bestowal of names which seems to defy all analysis of the rule of their bestowal.

If the reader inclines to follow up the scent here indicated, we can add a hint or two which may be of service. We have shown the sources, which should, for purposes of classification, be designated, not as English, Italian, Danish, etc., but nautically, as Mediterranean, Baltic, or Atlantic. These three heads will serve for general classification, to which must be added a fourth or "off-soundings" department, into which should go all words suggested by whim or accidental resemblances,—such terms as "monkey-rail," "Turk's head," "dead-eye," etc.,—or which get the name of an inventor, as a "Matthew-Walker knot." More than that cannot well be given without going into the whole detail of naval history, tactics, and science,—a thing, of course, impossible here.

This brings us to another view of the subject, which may serve for conclusion. A great many people take upon themselves to act for and about the sailor, to preach to him, make laws for him, act as his counsel, write tracts for him, and generally to look after his moral and physical well-being. Now eleven out of every dozen of these are continually making themselves ridiculous by an utter ignorance of all nautical matters. They pick up a few worn-out phrases of sea-life, which have long since left the forecastle, and which have been bandied about from one set of landsmen to another, have been dropped by sham-sailors begging on fictitious wooden-legs, then by small sea-novelists, handed to smaller dramatists for the Wapping class of theatres, to be by them abandoned to the smallest writers of pirate and privateer tales for the Sunday press. And stringing these together, with a hazy apprehension of their meaning, they think they are "talking sailor" in great perfection. Now the sailor will talk with pleasure to any straightforward and perfectly "green" landsman, and the two will converse in an entirely intelligible manner. But confusion worse confounded is the result of this ambitious ignorance,—confusion of brain to the sailor, and confusion of face to the landsman.

For the sea has a language, beyond a peradventure,—an exceedingly arbitrary, technical, and perplexing one, unless it be studied with the illustrated grammar of the full-rigged ship before one, with the added commentaries of the sea and the sky and the coast chart. To learn to speak it requires about as long as to learn to converse passably in French, Italian, or Spanish; and unless it be spoken well, it is exceedingly absurd to any appreciative listener.

If you desire to study it philologically, after the living manner of Dean Trench, it will well repay you. If you desire to use it as a familiar vehicle of discourse, wherewith to impress the understanding and heart of the sailor, you undertake a very difficult thing. For though men are moved best by apt illustrations from the things familiar to them, _un_apt illustrations most surely disgust them.

But if you earnestly desire it, we know of but one certain course, which is best explained in a brief anecdote. An English gentleman, who was in all the agonies of a rough and tedious passage from Folkestone to Boulogne, was especially irritated by the aggravating nonchalance of a fellow-passenger, who perpetrated all manner of bilious feats, in eating, drinking, and smoking, unharmed. English reserve and the agony of sea-sickness long contended in Sir John's breast. At last the latter conquered, and, leaning from the window of his travelling-carriage, which was securely lashed to the forward deck of the steamer, he exclaimed,—"I say, d'ye know, I'd give a guinea to know your secret for keeping well in this infernal Channel." The traveller solemnly extended one hand for the money, and, as it dropped into his palm, with the other shaded his mouth, that no portion of the oracle might fall on unpaid-for ears, and whispered,—"Hark ye, brother, GO TO SEA TWENTY YEARS, AS I HAVE."

THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME

"And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."—TWELFTH NIGHT.

My friend Jameson, the lawyer, has frequently whiled away an evening in relating incidents which occurred in his practice during his residence in a Western State. On one occasion he gave a sketch of a criminal trial in which he was employed as counsel; the story, as developed in court and completed by one of the parties subsequently, made so indelible an impression on my mind that I am constrained to write down its leading features. At the same time, I must say, that, if I had heard it without a voucher for its authenticity, I should have regarded it as the most improbable of fictions. But the observing reader will remember that remarkable coincidences, and the signal triumph of the right, called poetical justice, are sometimes seen in actual life as well as in novels.

The tale must begin in Saxony. Carl Proch was an honest farmer, who tilled a small tract of crown land and thereby supported his aged mother. Faithful to his duties, he had never a thought of discontent, but was willing to plod on in the way his father had gone before him. Filial affection, however, did not so far engross him as to prevent his casting admiring glances on the lovely Katrine, daughter of old Rauchen, the miller; and no wonder, for she was as fascinating a damsel as ever dazzled and perplexed a bashful lover. She had admiration enough, for to see her was to love her; many of the village youngsters had looked unutterable things as they met her at May-feasts and holidays, but up to this time she had received no poetical epistles nor direct proposals, and was as cheerful and heart-free as the birds that sang around her windows. Her father was the traditional guardian of beauty, surly as the mastiff that watched his sacks of flour and his hoard of thalers; and though he doted on his darling Katrine, his heart to all the world beside seemed to be only a chip from one of his old mill-stones. When Carl thought of the severe gray eyes that shot such glances at all lingering youths, the difficulty of winning the pretty heiress seemed to be quite enough, even with a field clear of rivals. But two other suitors now made advances, more or less openly, and poor Carl thought himself entirely overshadowed. One was Schönfeld, the most considerable farmer in the neighborhood, a widower, with hair beginning to show threads of silver, and a fierce man withal, who was supposed to have once slain a rival, wearing thereafter a seam in his cheek as a souvenir of the encounter. The other was Hans Stolzen, a carpenter, past thirty, a shrewd, well-to-do fellow, with nearly a thousand thalers saved from his earnings. Carl had never fought a duel,—and he had not saved so much as a thousand groschen, to say nothing of thalers; he had only a manly figure, a cheery, open face, the freshness of one-and-twenty, and a heart incapable of guile. Katrine was not long in discovering these excellences, and, if his boldness had equalled his passion, she would have shown him how little she esteemed the pretensions of the proud landholder or the miserly carpenter. But he took it for granted that he was a fool to contend against such odds, and, buttoning his jacket tightly over his throbbing heart, toiled away in his little fields, thinking that the whole world had never contained so miserable a man.

Hans Stolzen was the first to propose. He began by paying court to the jealous Rauchen himself, set forth his property and prospects, and asked to become his son-in-law. The miller heard him, puffed long whiffs, and answered civilly, but without committing himself. He was in no hurry to part with the only joy he had, and, as Katrine was barely eighteen, he naturally thought there would be time enough to consider of her marriage hereafter. Hans hardly expected anything more decisive, and, as he had not been flatly refused, came frequently to the house and chatted with her father, while his eyes followed the vivacious Katrine as she tripped about her household duties. But Hans was perpetually kept at a distance; the humming-bird would never alight upon the outstretched hand. He had not the wit to see that their natures had nothing in common, although he did know that Katrine was utterly indifferent towards him, and after some months of hopeless pursuit he began to grow sullenly angry. He was not long without an object on which to vent his rage.

One evening, as Katrine was returning homeward, she chanced to pass Carl's cottage. Carl was loitering under a tree hard by, listening to the quick footsteps to which his heart kept time. It was the coming of Fate to him, for he had made up his mind to tell her of the love that was consuming him. Two days before, with tears on his bashful face, he had confided all to his mother; and, at her suggestion, he had now provided a little present by way of introduction. Katrine smiled sweetly as she approached, for, with a woman's quick eye, she had read his glances long before. His lips at first rebelled, but he struggled out a salutation, and, the ice once broken, he found himself strangely unembarrassed. He breathed freely. It seemed to him that their relations must have been fixed in some previous state of existence, so natural was it to be in familiar and almost affectionate communication with the woman whom before he had loved afar off, as a page might sigh for a queen.

"Stay, Katrine," he said,—"I had nearly forgotten." He ran hastily into the cottage, and soon returned with a covered basket. "See, Katrine, these white rabbits!—are they not pretty?"

"Oh, the little pets!" exclaimed Katrine. "Are they yours?"

"No, Katrinchen,—that is, they were mine; now they are yours."

"Thank you, Carl. I shall love them dearly."

"For my sake?"

"For their own, Carl, certainly; for yours also,—a little."

"Good-bye, Bunny," said he, patting the head of one of the rabbits. "Love your mistress; and, mind, little whitey, don't keep those long ears of yours for nothing; tell me if you ever hear anything about me."

"Perhaps Carl had better come and hear for himself,—don't you think so, Bunny?" said Katrine, taking the basket.

The tone and manner said more than the words. Carl's pulses bounded; he seized her unresisting hand and covered it with kisses. "So! this is the bashful young man!" thought Katrine. "I shall not need to encourage him any more, surely."

The night was coming on; Katrine remembered her father, and started towards the mill, whose broad arms could scarcely be seen through the twilight. Carl accompanied her to the gate, and, after a furtive glance upward to the house-windows, bade her farewell, with a kiss, and turned homeward, feeling himself a man for the first time in his life.

Frau Proch had seen the pantomime through the flowers that stood on the window-sill, not ill-pleased, and was waiting her son's return. An hour passed, and he did not come. Another hour, and she began to grow anxious. When it was near midnight, she roused her nearest neighbor and asked him to go towards the mill and look for Carl. An hour of terrible suspense ensued. It was worse than she had even feared. Carl lay by the roadside, not far from the mill, insensible, covered with blood, moaning feebly at first, and afterwards silent, if not breathless. Ghastly wounds covered his head, and his arms and shoulders were livid with bruises. The neighboring peasants surrounded the apparently lifeless body, and listened with awe to the frenzied imprecations of Frau Proch upon the murderer of her son. "May he die in a foreign land," said she, lifting her withered hands to Heaven, "without wife to nurse him or priest to speak peace to his soul! May his body lie unburied, a prey for wolves and vultures! May his inheritance pass into the hands of strangers, and his name perish from the earth!" They muttered their prayers, as they encountered her bloodshot, but tearless eyes, and left her with her son.

For a whole day and night he did not speak; then a violent brain-fever set in, and he raved continually. He fancied himself pursued by Hans Stolzen, and recoiled as from the blows of his staff. When this was reported, suspicion was directed at once to Stolzen as the criminal; but before an arrest could be made, it was found that he had fled. His disappearance confirmed the belief of his guilt. In truth, it was the rejected suitor, who, in a fit of jealous rage, had waylaid his rival in the dark, beat him, and left him for dead.

Katrine, who had always disliked Stolzen, especially after he had pursued her with his coarse and awkward gallantry, now naturally felt a warmer affection for the victim of his brutality. She threw off all disguise, and went frequently to Frau Proch's cottage, to aid in nursing the invalid during his slow and painful recovery. She had, one day, the unspeakable pleasure of catching the first gleam of returning sanity in her hapless lover, as she bent over him and with gentle fingers smoothed his knotted forehead and temples. An indissoluble tie now bound them together; their mutual love was consecrated by suffering and sacrifice; and they vowed to be faithful in life and in death.

When Carl at length became strong and commenced labor, he hoped speedily to claim his betrothed, and was waiting a favorable opportunity to obtain her father's consent to their marriage. The scars were the only evidence of the suffering he had endured. No bones had been broken, and he was as erect and as vigorous as before the assault. But Carl, most unfortunate of men, was not destined so soon to enjoy the happiness for which he hoped,—the love that had called him back to life. As the robber eagle sits on his cliff, waiting till the hawk has seized the ring-dove, then darts down and beats off the captor, that he may secure for himself the prize,—so Schönfeld, not uninformed of what was going on, stood ready to pounce upon the suitor who should gain Katrine's favor, and sweep the last rival out of the way. An officer in the king's service appeared in the village to draw the conscripts for the army, and the young men trembled like penned-up sheep at the entrance of the blood-stained butcher, not knowing who would be seized for the shambles. The officer had apparently been a friend and companion of Schönfeld's in former days, and passed some time at his house. It was perhaps only a coincidence, but it struck the neighbors as very odd at least, that Carl Proch was the first man drawn for the army. He had no money to hire a substitute, and there was no alternative; he must serve his three years. This last blow was too much for his poor mother. Worn down by her constant assiduity in nursing him, and overcome by the sense of utter desolation, she sunk into her grave, and was buried on the very day that Carl, with the other recruits, was marched off.

What new torture the betrothed Katrine felt is not to be told. Three years were to her an eternity; and her imagination called up such visions of danger from wounds, privations, and disease, that she parted from her lover as though it were forever. The miller found that the light and the melody of his house were gone. Katrine was silent and sorrowful; her frame wasted and her step grew feeble. To all his offers of condolence she made no reply, except to remind him how with tears she had besought his interference in Carl's behalf. She would not be comforted. The father little knew the feeling she possessed; he had thought that her attachment to her rustic lover was only a girlish fancy, and that she would speedily forget him; but now her despairing look frightened him. To the neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon the slightest whiff.

For six months Schönfeld wisely kept away; that period, he thought, would be long enough to efface any recollection of the absent soldier. Then he presented himself, and, in his usual imperious way, offered his hand to Katrine. The miller was inclined to favor his suit. In wealth and position Schönfeld was first in the village; he would be a powerful ally, and a very disagreeable enemy. In fact, Rauchen really feared to refuse the demand; and he plied his daughter with such argument as he could command, hoping to move her to accept the offer. Katrine, however, was convinced of the truth of her former suspicion, that Carl was a victim of Schönfeld's craft; and her rejection of his proposal was pointed with an indignation which she took no pains to conceal. The old scar showed strangely white in his purple face, as he left the mill, vowing vengeance for the affront.

Rauchen and his daughter were now more solitary than ever. The father had forgotten the roaring stories he used to tell to the neighboring peasants, over foaming flagons of ale, at the little inn; he sat at his mill-door and smoked incessantly. Katrine shunned the festivities in which she was once queen, and her manner, though kindly, was silent and reserved; she went to church, it is true, but she wore a look of settled sorrow that awed curiosity and even repelled sympathy. But scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek, it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the larger share of its attention. The village girls looked first with pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion, upon the gentle and unfortunate Katrine. Careless as she was with regard to public opinion, she saw not without pain the altered looks of her old associates, and before long she came to know the cause. A cruel suspicion had been whispered about, touching her in a most tender point. It was not without reason, so the gossip ran, that she had refused so eligible an offer of marriage Schönfeld's. The story reached the ears of Rauchen, at last. With a fierce energy, such as he had never exhibited before, he tracked it from cottage to cottage, until he came to Schönfeld's housekeeper, who refused to give her authority. The next market-day Rauchen encountered the former suitor and publicly charged him with the slander, in such terms as his baseness deserved. Schönfeld, thrown off his guard by the sudden attack, struck his adversary a heavy blow; but the miller rushed upon him, and left him to be carried home, a bundle of aches and bruises. After this the tongues of the gossips were quiet; no one was willing to answer for guesses or rumors at the end of Rauchen's staff; and the father and daughter resumed their monotonous mode of life.

The three years at length passed, and Carl Proch returned home,—a trifle more sedate, perhaps, but the same noble, manly fellow. How warmly he was received by the constant Katrine it is not necessary to relate. Rauchen was not disposed to thwart his long-suffering daughter any further; and with his consent the young couple were speedily married, and lived in his house. The gayety of former years came back; cheerful songs and merry laughter were heard in the lately silent rooms. Rauchen himself grew younger, especially after the birth of a grandson, and often resumed his old place at the inn, telling the old stories with the old gusto over the ever-welcome ale. But one morning, not long after, he was found dead in his bed; a smile was on his face, and his limbs were stretched out as in peaceful repose.

There was no longer any tie to bind Carl to his native village. All his kin, as well as Katrine's, were in the grave. He was not bred a miller, and did not feel competent to manage the mill. Besides, his mind had received new ideas while he was in the army. He had heard of countries where men were equal before the laws, where the peasant owed no allegiance but to society. The germ of liberty had been planted in his breast, and he could no longer live contented with the rank in which he had been born. At least he wished that his children might grow up free from the chilling influences that had fallen upon him. At his earnest persuasion, Katrine consented that the mill should be sold, and soon after, with his wife and child, he went to Bremen and embarked for America.

* * * * *

We must now follow the absconding Stolzen, who, with his bag of thalers, had made good his escape into England. He lived in London, where he found society among his countrymen. His habitual shrewdness never deserted him, and from small beginnings he gradually amassed a moderate fortune. His first experiment in proposing for a wife satisfied him, but in a great city his sensual nature was fully developed. His brutal passions were unchecked; conscience seemed to have left him utterly. At length he began to think about quitting London. He was afraid to return to Germany, for, as he had left Carl to all appearance dead, he thought the officers of the law would seize him. He determined to go to Australia, and secured a berth in a clipper ship bound for Melbourne, but some accident prevented his reaching the pier in season; the vessel sailed without him, and was never heard of afterwards. Then he proposed to buy an estate in Canada; but the owner failed to make his appearance at the time appointed for the negotiation, and the bargain was not completed. At last he took passage for New York, whither a Hebrew acquaintance of his had gone, a year or two before, and was established as a broker. Upon arriving in that city, Stolzen purchased of an agent a tract of land in a Western State, situated on the shore of Lake Michigan; and after reserving a sum of money for immediate purposes, he deposited his funds with his friend, the broker, and started westward. He travelled the usual route by rail, then a short distance in a mail-coach, which carried him within six miles of his farm. Leaving his luggage to be sent for, he started to walk the remaining distance. It was a sultry day, and the prairie road was anything but pleasant to a pedestrian unaccustomed to heat and dust. After walking less than an hour, he determined to stop at a small house near the road, for rest, and some water to quench his thirst; but as he approached, the baying hounds, no less than the squalid children about the door, repelled him, and he went on to the next house. He now turned down a green lane, between rows of thrifty trees, to a neat log-cabin, whose nicely-plastered walls and the regular fence inclosing it testified to the thrift and good taste of the owner. He knocked; all was still. Again, and thirsty as he was, he was on the point of leaving, when he heard a step within. He waited; the door opened, and before him stood–Katrine!

She did not know him; but he had not forgotten that voluptuous figure nor those melting blue eyes. He preferred his requests, looking through the doorway at the same time to make sure that she had no protector. Katrine brought the stranger a gourd of water, and offered him a chair. She did not see the baleful eyes he threw after her as she went about her household duties. Stolzen had dropped from her firmament like a fallen and forgotten star. Secure in her unsuspecting innocence, she chirruped to her baby and resumed her sewing.

That evening, when Carl Proch returned from his field, after his usual hard day's labor, he found his wife on the floor, sobbing, speechless, and the child, unnoticed, crying in his cradle. His dog sat by the hearth with a look of almost intelligent sympathy, and whined as his master entered the room. He raised Katrine and held her in his arms like a child, covered her face with kisses, and implored her to speak. She seemed to be in a fearful dream, and shrunk from some imagined danger in the extremest terror. Gradually her sobs became less frequent, her tremors ceased, and she smiled upon the manly face that met hers, as though she had only suffered from an imaginary fright. But when she felt her hair floating upon her shoulders, saw the almost speaking face of the dog, Bruno, and became conscious of the cries of the neglected child, the wave of agony swept over her again, and she could utter only broken ejaculations. As word after word came from her lips, the unhappy husband's flesh tingled; his hair stiffened with horror; every nerve seemed to be strung with a new and maddening tension. There was for him no such thing as fatigue, no distance, no danger,—no law, no hereafter, no God. All thought and feeling were drowned in one wild desire for vengeance,—vengeance swift, terrible, and final.

He first caressed the dog as though he had been a brother; he put his arms about the shaggy neck, and shook each faithful paw; he made his wife caress him also. "God be praised, dear Katrine, for your protector, the dog!" said he. "Come, now, Bruno!"

Katrine saw him depart with his dog and gun; but if she guessed his errand, she did not dare remonstrate. He walked off rapidly,—the dog in advance, now and then baying as though he were on a trail.

In the night he returned, and he smiled grimly as he set down the rifle in its accustomed corner. His wife was waiting for him with intense anxiety. It was marvellous to her that he was so cheerful. He trotted her upon his knee, pressed her a hundred times to his bosom, kissed her forehead, lips, and cheeks, called her his pretty Kate, his dear wife, and every endearing name he knew. So they sat, like lovers in their teens, till the purpling east told of a new day.

The luggage of one Stolzen, a stagecoach passenger, remained at the tavern uncalled-for, for nearly a year. No one knew the man, and his disappearance, though a profound mystery, was not an uncommon thing in a new country. The Hebrew broker in New York received no answers to his letters, though he had carefully preserved the post-office address which Stolzen had given him. He began to fear lest he should be obliged to fulfil the duty of heirship to the property deposited with him. To quiet his natural apprehensions in view of this event, he determined to follow Stolzen's track, as much of it as lay in this world, at least, and find out what had become of him. Upon arriving in the neighborhood, the Jew had a thorough search made. The country was scoured, and on the third day there was a discovery. A man walking on the sandy margin of a river, about two or three miles from Carl's house, saw a skull before him. As the steep bluff nearly overhung the spot where he stood, he conjectured that the body to which the skull belonged was to be found above on its verge. He climbed up, and there saw a headless skeleton. It was the body of Stolzen, as his memorandum-book and other articles showed. His pistol was in his pocket, and still loaded; that fact precluded the idea of suicide. Moreover, upon examining more closely, a bullet-hole was found in his breast-bone, around which the parts were broken outwardly, showing that the ball must have entered from behind. It was clear that Stolzen had been murdered.