the society of her daughter in order that the latter might enjoy the
advantages of an education which the city of New York could only offer
at that period. A few months afterward death had deprived him of the
remaining companion of his solitude; but still he had enough real
regard for his child not to bring her into the comparative wilderness
in which he dwelt, until the full period had expired to which he had
limited her juvenile labors. The reflections of the daughter were
less melancholy, and mingled with a pleased astonishment at the novel
scenery she met at every turn in the road.

The mountain on which they were journeying was covered with pines that
rose without a branch some seventy or eighty feet, and which
frequently doubled that height by the addition of the tops. Through
the innumerable vistas that opened beneath the lofty trees, the eye
could penetrate until it was met by a distant inequality in the
ground, or was stopped by a view of the summit of the mountain which
lay on the opposite side of the valley to which they were hastening.
The dark trunks of the trees rose from the pure white of the snow in
regularly formed shafts, until, at a great height, their branches shot
forth horizontal limbs, that were covered with the meagre foliage of
an evergreen, affording a melancholy contrast to the torpor of nature
below. To the travellers there seemed to be no wind; but these pines
waved majestically at their topmost boughs, sending forth a dull,
plaintive sound that was quite in consonance with the rest of the
melancholy scene.

The sleigh had glided for some distance along the even surface, and
the gaze of the female was bent in inquisitive and, perhaps, timid
glances into the recesses of the forest, when a loud and continued
howling was heard, pealing under the long arches of the woods like the