were the sunshine and the shadow, looking as natural as life.

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My dear child, thou hast done wonders!" cried his mother. The good lady was in an ecstasy of delight.

And well she might be proud of her boy; for there were touches in this picture which old artists, who had spent a lifetime in the business, need not have been ashamed of.

Many a year afterward, this wonderful production was exhibited in the Royal Academy in London.

The site I had chosen for a shanty was near to a little brook, on the top of the main river's bank. In fine weather, no situation could be more beautiful; the brook was as clear as crystal, and fell in a small cascade into the river, which, broad and deep, ran beneath the bank with a swift but smooth current.

The forest up the river had not been explored above

a mile or two; all beyond was unknown wilderness. Some vague rumors of small lakes and beaver dams were circulated in the village, but no importance was attached to the information; save but for the occasional little torrents with which the rain sometimes hastily threatened to extinguish our fires, we had no cause to dread inundation.

The rain still continued to fall incessantly; the pools it formed in the hollows of the ground began, toward noon, to overflow their banks, and to become united. By and by something like a slight current was observed passing from one to another; but thinking only of preserving our fire, we no farther noticed this than by occasionally running out of the shanty into the shower, and scraping a channel to let the water run off into the brook or the river.

It was hoped that about noon the rain would slacken; but in this we were disappointed. It continued to increase, and the ground began to be so flooded, while the brook swelled to a river, that we thought it might become necessary to shift our tent to a higher part of the bank.

To do this, however, we were reluctant; for it was impossible to encounter the deluge without being almost instantly soaked to the skin; and we had put up the shanty with more pains than usual, intending it should serve us for a home until our house was comfortably furnished.

About three o'clock the skies were dreadfully darkened and overcast. I had never seen such darkness while the sun was above the horizon; and still the rain continued to descend in cataracts, but at inNo man who had not seen the like would credit the description.

tervals.

Suddenly a sudden flash of lightning, followed by an instantaneous thunder-peal, lightened up all the forest; and almost in the same moment the rain' came lavishing along as if the windows of heaven were opened, anon another flash, and a louder peal burst upon us, as if the whole forest were rending over and around us.

I drew my helpless and trembling little boys under the skirts of my greatcoat.

Then there was another frantic flash, and the roar of the thunder was augmented by the riven trees that fell, cloven on all sides in a whirlwind of splinters. But though the lightning was more terrible than scimitars, and the thunder roared as if the vaults of heaven were shaken to pieces and tumbling in, the irresistible rain was more appalling than either.

I pressed my children to my bosom, but I could not speak. At the common shanty, where there had been for some time an affectation of mirth and ribaldry, there was now silence; at last, as if with one accord, all the inhabitants rushed from below their miserable shed, tore it into pieces, and ran with

the fragments to a higher ground, crying wildly, "The river is rising!"

I had seen it swelling for some time, but our shanty stood so far above the stream that I had no fear it would reach us. Scarcely, however, had the axmen escaped from theirs and planted themselves firmly on the crown of the rising ground nearer to us, where they were hastily constructing another shed, when a tremendous crash and roar was heard at some distance in the woods, higher up the

stream.

It was so awful - I had almost said omnipotent in the sound, that I started to my feet and shook my treasures from me. For a moment the Niagara of the river seemed almost to pause it was but for a moment for, instantly after, the noise of the rending of weighty trees, the crashing and the tearing of the rooted forest rose around. The waters of the river, troubled and raging, came hurling with the wreck of the woods, sweeping with inconceivable fury everything that stood within its scope. A lake had burst its banks.

The sudden rise of the waters soon, however, subsided; I saw it ebbing fast, and comforted my terrified boys. The rain also began to abate. Instead of those dreaded sheets of waves which fell upon us as if some vast ocean behind the forest were heaving over its spray, a thick continued small rain came on;