THE RING FETTER.


A NEW ENGLAND TRAGEDY.


There are long stretches in the course of the Connecticut River, where
its tranquil current assumes the aspect of a lake, its sudden bends cut
off the lovely reach of water, and its heavily wooded banks lie silent
and green, undisturbed, except by the shriek of the passing steamer,
casting golden-green reflections into the stream at twilight, and
shadows of deepest blackness, star-pierced, at remoter depths of night.
Here, now and then, a stray gull from the sea sends a flying throb of
white light across the mirror below, or the sweeping wings of a hawk
paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of
wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these
casual stirs of Nature, all is still, oppressive, and beautiful, as
earth seems to the trance-sleeper on the brink of his grave.

In one of these reaches, though on either side the heavy woods sweep
down to the shore and hang over it as if deliberating whether to plunge
in, on the eastern bank there is a tiny meadow just behind the
tree-fringe of the river, completely hedged in by the deep woods, and
altogether hidden from any inland road; nor would the traveller on the
river discover it, except for the chimney of a house that peers above
the yellow willows and seems in that desolate seclusion as startling as
a daylight ghost. But this dwelling was built and deserted and