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.

And here, in this primeval wildness, her silver beams revealed a low, thatched cottage standing in a narrow opening. Its walls were built of rough stones, piled one upon another in a rude, unartistical manner; and the heavy turf roof, which projected far over the sides, was sunken and overgrown with moss and lichens.

From this rough dwelling proceeded tones of mirth and hilarity. How strangely they sounded in the lone solitude of nature! Through an open window might be seen a group, seated round a small table, consisting of two young men, and an old woman in a high starched cap, with a huge pair of iron-bowed spectacles mounted on her Roman nose. A child was sleeping on a pallet in a corner of the room, and one of the young men passed the candle a moment over the low cot, and, gazing intently on the sleeper, asked in a lively, careless tone,

"Sacri, Aunt Patty! is that your baby, or the fair spirit that unrolls the destinies of mortals to your inspired vision?"

"She is neither one nor t'other," answered the old woman. "Now please to hold that candle up here close to my eyes."

"But I want to know who that is asleep there; for I've a notion she is more concerned in my destiny than anything you'll find in that old teacup."

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the woman musingly, as she continued to peer, with a mystic expression of countenance, into a small and apparently empty teacup, which she turned slowly round and round in her skinny hand, muttering at intervals in an ominous undertone.

"Well, Aunt Patty, out with it!" said the youth at length, tired of her long silence. "Isn't it clear yet? Here's another bit of silver; toss that in, and stir up again;" and he threw a shining half-eagle down on the table. The woman's face brightened as she clutched it eagerly.

"Come, now let's hear," continued the young man, "what's to be Mr. Lawrence Hardin's destiny."

"May be, if you saw all I see in this cup, you would not be so eager to know its contents," said the crone in a boding voice.

"What! Whew, old woman! croaking of evil when I've twice crossed your palm with silver! This is too bad."

"But don't you know the decrees of fate are unalterable?" said the woman, solemnly.

"O, law, yes! but I didn't know an old cracked saucer was so formidable."

"It is no saucer, sir; it is a cup, and your destiny is in it."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other young man; "pretty well wound up, Hardin, if your destiny is contained in a teacup."

"Hush!" exclaimed the crone in an angry tone. "More than his or yours, you noisy chatterer! The whole world's, I may say, is in the cup."

"In the _pot_, you mean," said the youth, knocking with his bamboo stick on the side of a small, black teapot, that stood at the old woman's right hand.

"Well, yes; in the pot, I should say, perhaps," added she in a softened tone.

"The world's destiny is in a teapot, and Aunt Patty Belcher pours it forth at her pleasure; that's it;" and here they all joined in a hearty laugh.

"That will do," said Hardin at length; "now read off, good Dame Belcher. Sumpter is digesting his fortune. Give me a more palatable one than his."

The old woman rubbed her long, peaked nose violently, and then raising her eyes slowly to the young man's face, said, "Thou art ambitious, Lawrence Hardin!"

"Wrong there, most reverend sorceress!" exclaimed the one called Sumpter.

"Now, hark ye!" exclaimed the old crone; "I won't be interrupted. I guess I know my own cups."

"Be quiet, be quiet, Jack!" said Hardin. "Why will you be so presumptuous as to gainsay a prophet's assertions! Go on, Aunt Patty; he will not disturb you again."

"Well, I tell you again," said the woman, casting a disdainful glance on Sumpter, who had withdrawn to a chair at the foot of the cot-bed, and was regarding attentively the tiny form lying there wrapped in tranquil sleep, "I tell you _again_, you are ambitious. You want to be thought great. You want to be first. You thirst for power for the sake of bowing others to your will. You have rich parents _now_, and are surrounded by all that heart could wish; but, mind ye, there's a dark cloud in the rear. It threatens tempest and desolation. Soon your parents will be dead, and you hurrying from your rich, splendid home to seek your fortune in a distant country. You will seem to prosper for a while, and then it blackens again. You can see yourself," she added, holding the cup before the young man's face, "that black clump in the bottom."

"I see only a few tea-grounds your turnings and shakings have settled together," remarked he, carelessly.

"Destiny placed them as they are, young men," said the hag, solemnly.

"May be so," he added; "but tell me, how long shall I live? Shall I be successful in love, and will my lady be handsome?"

"Thou wilt live longer than thou wilt wish; ay, drag on many years when thou wouldst fain be sleeping in the earth's cold bed! Thou wilt love,--thou wilt marry, and thy lady will be beautiful as the day-star."

"Enough, enough!" exclaimed the youth, starting to his feet. "Do you hear, Jack? Is not mine a brave fortune? I shall love, marry, and my wife will be a goddess of beauty."

"Yes," said the crone; "but mark, she will not love you."

"Whew! How is that? Not love me? And wherefore not, old woman?"

"Because she will love another," repeated the hag in a low, but firm, decided tone.

"But you are spoiling your fair pictures, Aunt Patty," said Hardin.

"Destiny is destiny," said she with a solemn look.

"Ay, yes; I forgot!" he exclaimed, laughing gayly. "Come, Sumpter, let's be off. I am afraid our good seeress will discover you and I fighting a duel in that ominous cup, or brewing a tempest in her teapot."

"Ha, ha, ha! it is not impossible," ejaculated Sumpter. "Now I believe she did say I would go out of the world in a terrible uproar, shooting somebody or getting shot myself. Which was it, dame?"

"Time will tell you soon enough, young man," returned the woman, in an angry, scornful tone.

"O, don't be cross, good Aunt Patty!" he said, noticing her dark looks; "don't mind my balderdash. Here's another piece of silver for you. Now, good-night, and long live Scraggiewood and the seeress, Madam Belcher!"

"Good-night, young men, and God bless ye, I say!" exclaimed the crone, her eye brightening at sight of the silver.

"Just tell me the name of the little sleeper," said Sumpter, lingering a moment, while Hardin turned the carriage which had brought them to the forest-cottage.

"What do you want to know her name for?" asked Aunt Patty.

"O, because she resembles a sister I lost," returned Sumpter after a brief hesitation.

"Well, it is my niece, Annie Evalyn."

"Ah! she lives with you?"

"Yes; ever since she was born a'most. Her father and mother died when she was a baby."

"Hillo, Sumpter!" said Hardin, from without, "trying to coax a prettier sequel to your fortune? Come on!"

Sumpter hurried forth, and the carriage rattled away over the rough road of Scraggiewood.