CHAPTER I.
"Sweetly wild
Were the scenes that charmed me when a child;
Rocks, gray rocks, with their caverns dark,
Leaping rills, like the diamond spark;
Torrent voices thundering by,
When the pride of the vernal floods swelled high,
And a quiet roof, like the hanging-nest,
'Mid cliffs, by the feathery foliage drest."
October's harvest-moon hung in the blue ether. Brightly fell her golden beams on the tall, old forest trees, that pointed spar-like toward the starry heaven, and down, through their interlacing branches, upon gray, mossy rocks and uprooted trunks, over which wild vines wreathed in untrained exuberance; and dim, star-eyed flowers reared their slender heads among the rank undergrowth of bush and shrub.