

It is an extremely difficult thing for a European to witness a devil-dance. As a mil! he must go disguised, and be must bo able to speak the language like a native bofore ho is likely to be admitted without suspicion into the charmed circle of tasciualed devotees, each eager to press near the possessed priest, to ask him questions about the future while the uivin'e aillatus is in its full force upon him. Lei, mo try onoe more to bring the whole scene vividly before the reader. Wight, starry and beautiful, with a broad low moon seen through palms.. A still, solemn night, with few sounds to mar silence, save the deep, muffled boom of breakers bursting on the coast full eight biles distant. A lonely hut, a huge solitary banyan tree, grim and gloomy, •All round spread interminable sands, the only vegetation on which is composed of lofty palmyran and a few stunted thorn trees and wild figs. In the midst of this wilderness rises, spectre-like, that aged enormous tree, the banyan, haunted by a most ruthless she-devil. Cholera is abroad in the land, and the natives know that it is she who has sent them the dreaded pestilence. The whole neighborhood wakes to the de termination that the malignant powor must be immediately propitiated in the most solemn and effectual manner. The iiupointod night arrives ; oat of village, and hamlet, and hut pours tiic wild crowd of urea, women, and children. In vain the .Brahmins tinkle their bells at the neigh boring temple ; the people know what they want, and the deity which they must reverence as supreme just now. On flows the crowd to that gloomy island in the starlit waste—that weird, hoary banyan. The cin-lo is formed ; the fire is lit; the offerings are got ready—goats and ft wls, and rico and pulse and sugar, and ghee, and honey, and white chaptets of oleander blossoms and jasmine buds. The tomtoms arc beaten more loudly and rapidly, the iiuai of rustic converse is stilled, and a:(■;; ■>■<:(■;; hush of awestruck expectancy holds the motley assemblage. Now* the low, ricketcy door of the hut is quickly dashed open. The devil-dancer staggers out. Between the hut and the ~ebon shadow of the sacred banyan lies a strip of moonlit sand, and as he passes, the. devotees can clearly see their priest He is a tall, haggard, pensive man, with deep sunken eye's and matted hair. His forehead is smeaivd with ashes, and there ;..?e streaks of vermilion and saffron over h\i face. He wears a high conical cap, white, with a red tassel Alongwhiterobe, or angi, shrouds him from neck to ankle. On it :ire worked, in red silk, representa tions o'i the gotl less of small-pox, murder, and cholera. Hound his ankles are massive silver spangles. In his right hand he holds a staff or spear, that jingles harshly every time the ground is struck by it. The same hand v.ho holds a bow, which, whentho strings are pullad or struck, emits a dull, booming sound. In the left hand the devil-priest carries his sacrificial knife, shaped like a sickle, with quaint devices engraved on its blade. The danger, with uncertain, staggering, motion, reels slowly into the centre of the crowd, and then seats himself. The assembled crowd show him the offerings they intend to present, but ho appears unconscious. He croons an Indian lay in a low, dreamy voice, with drooped eye- - lids, and head sunken on his breast. He sways slowly to and fro, from side to side. Look ! Yon can sco his fingers twitch nervously. His head begins to wag in a strange, uncanny fashion. His sides heave and quiver, and huge drops of perspiration exude from his skin, the tom toms are beaten faster, the pipes and reeds wail out more loudly. There is a suddon yell, a stinging, stunning, cry, an oar piercing shriek, a hideous, aboinipable gobble-gobble of hellish laughter, and the devil-dancer has sprung to his feet, with eyes protruding, mouth foaming, chest hearing, muscles quivering, _ and outstretched arms swollen and straining as if they wore crucified. Wow, over and anon, the quick, sharp words are jerked out of the saliva-choked mouth—' I am God; lam the true God!" Then all around him, since he and no idol is regarded as the present deity, reeks tho< blood of sacrifice. The _ devotees crowd round to offer oblations and to solict answers to their questions. ' Shall I die of cholera during this visitation ?" asks a grey-headed farmer of the neighborhood. " O God, bless this child and heal it, "cries a poor mother from the adjoining hamlet, as she holds forth her diseased babe towards the gyrat ing priest. Shrieks, vows, imprecations, prayers, and exclamations of thankful praise rise up, all blended together in one infernal hubbub. Above all, rises the gashtly, guttural, laughter of the devil dancer, and his stentorian howls —' lam God ! lam the only true God !" He cuts, and hacks himself, and not very un frsquently kills himself there and then. His answers to the queries put to him are generally incohorant. Sometimes he is sullen and silent, and sometimes while the blood from his wounds mingles freely with that of his sacrifice, he is most be nign, and showers his favours of health and prosperity all around him. Hours pass by. The trembling crowd stand rooted to the spot. Suddenly the dancer gives a great bound in the air ; when he decends he is motionless. The fiendish look has vanished from his eyes. His de moniacal laughter is still, . H.e speaks to ih^aud that neighbor quietly and, re.

aonably. He lays aside his garb, washes his face at the nearest rivulet, and walks soberly home, a modest, well-conducted man.



'In tho spring a youog man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,' sung the poet, and it was in the spring that Phil Faraday's fancy took that turn, when he first set eyes on pretty Dolly Oliver, all dimples and dancing eyes and ringlets, warm tints and generous outlines. While ho painted he could not forbear to make love. Ho had come fresh from a great city, where ladies in velvets and jewels, with fine manners and elegant surroundings, stood at his gates, crowded his stdio, sent him perfumed notes, besieged him with invitations, cheapened favor for him, flattersd and fawned about him, and perhaps turned his head if they did not tonch his heart. Was he to bewon by the poise of a pretty head, by the pensive trick of two brown eyes, by the tremor of a dimple, or the touch and go of a blush? Could he afford such an indulgence ? He recalled the handsome Eev. Mr, Santhers, who built up a church iv his bachelor days and converted sinners, bat who found the first crumbling about his ears, when he became a Benedick, and the last backsliding, not to say back biting : and Mr. Faraday trembled, Old Mrs. Oliver, Dolly's grandmother, was only the widow of a fisherman. Phil. Faraday should never have thought of looking for a wife among such people. Would Dolly know how to hold her own in the salons of his world P Would she, who seemed to belong to this innocent rural life as much as the daisies belonged to the fields, or tho water-lilly to the ponds —would nuo not be ill at ease and misplaced in a fashionable drawing-room? Should ho ncvor be ashamed of her as his wife ? Could he be certain that she would never offend in speech cr deed ? Could he bear to see the fine ladies wio called them selves hia friends condescend to her? Cou d he bear to have them criticise her ' un tutored mind,' as he knew they would ? Poor Dolly knew little or nothing about tho things with which his world was familiar, which the women with whom he mingled discussod as fluently as a sales man about his samples; she had never seen a play in her life, nor listened to a strain of musics conceived by a master mind and executed by a masi... : .kill ; had read such poets and novelists a* had come within her reack, but she had not learned to to talk abont, them in the jargon of the day, and the parlors and the aesthetic coterio3 to which Faraday belonged; neither had she learued to dissect hor emotions and motives, nor to distrust the hope of immortality, or the story, of the grand old gardener and his wife. It is even possible that she had never heard of Darwin and his school. What sort of figure would such a woman make in society ? Faraday asked himself, as he sat beside her, day after day, watched her about her homely tasks, taught her to handle a pencil, sang to her those 3weet German airs, full of love and melodious regret, developed her powers of thought and expression, set her beating in double measure, deepned the the wistful gleam of her eyos, and left the riddle unsolved, in the supreme happiness of the moment, and forgot tho future and prudence. He began to wish that lie had been born a rustic. If this was not love, perhaps it was as much like the tender passion as Faraday desired to experience. But the affair progressed in spite of his scruples, if he did not meet her in the afternoon in tho woods, ho spent the evening in her grandmother's porch, with the old lady nodding in the back ground behind hor spectacles, dreaming of the days when her husband came rowing home at sunset, with the ' caller herrin' and her little children clapped their hands and threw kisses across the wrinkled reach of sea. Polly shewed him all the fair, sequestered spots where Nature was at her best, all the solitudos the neighborhood afforded ; she showed him whero the tanagor built, where the maiden hair ferns and the rosy linner were at homo. They borrowed a wherry and went shooting along tho still ponds, among the fragrant water-lillio?, and the spicy wild azaleas, and followed tho windings of the inland river, shut in in sweet seclusion by its embowered banks and overreaching trees. What brief evenings waro those, when the still stream was only broken by the beat of thoir bars or the plunge of some magnificent pickerel, when all the constellations wero reflected in crystal depth, and they seemed to cut their way through a sea of stars, and found strange, delicious echoes in ambush on the shore jealous of their sougs and catches !

' Dolly, who loves you ?' ho called; and a dozen airy voices from beyond distance replied : —■

' You ! you ! you!'

' Do you think the echo is right, Dor othea P' he asked.

' How do I know?' she laughed. ' I'm willing to take the echo's word for it, however—only my name's not Dorothea, sir ; I'm called Dolly' if you please.' ' Dolly's a milkmaid's name ; it doesn't describe you, my rose in bloom.'

' I'm sorry you don't like it ; but you needn't use it so often,' and the echo caught the bubble, and all the hillside resounded with the attempted strain. ' Hark! the echo is laughing at you.' 'Let those laugh who win' said he, resting on his oars. ' I suppose this river finds the sea somewhere. What if we should follow ji, hftil some foreign-bound

ship, and count this side of the world well lost for each other ? It was in his mind, that if; would go easier with him to re nounce his hardly earned name and live an obscure life abroad than either to loose Dolly or prss through the ordeal of a m6 salliance, of introducing her to those who conldn,tsee her with eyes, and yet whose good opinion of his choice was neceasary to complete happiness, if he would live among them. ' What need of that ?' she answered him. simply. ' would you like to go to Venice, Dolly? 'I. don't know, What is it like? ' 'It would be like heaven there —with; you,' under his breath; 'but we won't* go there to-night,' turning the boat's head, "what is it like? It is a city of ruined' palaces and pictures ; the lion of St. Mrrk watches over it; its canals throng with dusky gondolas; it is a spot where one may live out the poem of life and love without a care for the world beyond the Adriatic. Would you like to go there with mo, Dolly ? Will you think about it? And Dolly did think about it. She used to dream of winding up long star sown streams to the murmur of music, be neath the shadows of marble ruins ; but she did not go to Venice. He brought her pictures of it, he read her books and poems about it, he fired her imagination with his word-painting, and then he. ' smiling put the question by,' and floated contentedly upon the little stream about Hedgoville, and fished in the pools, and sketched glimpses of Arcadia, as if there were no Venice, and no to-morrow, and no reckoning day. And by and by, when the leaves began to drop reluctantly, and the blackberry vines dressed up the stubble with knots and fringes of scarlet, he be thought himself that the summer was over and dnne. and a crisis was at hand.

No doubt there- was a great struggle be tween tho inclinations of his heart and his over regard for Mrs. Grundy and her family before he took that long, last row with Dolly upon the river, and made a dozen apologies for himself, which Dolly only comprehended later. He could not even deny himself that last tonder pressure of the little hand, nor the last lingering kins that sealed his resolve. .Next morn ing ho was up betimes, and away to his studio and his sisters, and Dolly was behind her easement, like poor Hannah. Only as day after day melted into the vast twilight abyss of the past did she como to comprehend that he had been free to lvie his life with or without her, and that be had chosen as worldly prudence dictated.

'Dolly,' he hid once said, not so very long ago, 'it would be too selfish for me to toll you all that is in my heart. This pleasant valley is your sphere ; you would pine in tho artificial atmosphere outside 1 should never forgive myself for bringing such trouble upon you for my sake.' . ' What baa come over the spirit of your dream, Faraday ?' a3kel Hardy, ono day —Hardy, who adored genius and beauty, and art, but who could neither wield a pencil nor sing a stave, who lacked the expressive eyes of Faraday and his voluble tongue. ('Hardy is all figures,' Faraday had once said, 'without enough sentiment to season a fliatatiou.') Faraday had been complaining that his Muso had deserted him. ' Change onough,'ho replied. 'I was never so harrassod in all my life.' • Dobts ?' suggested Hardy. ' There's my bank-book at your service.' 'No debt, thanks, that your check could pay. The fact is, Hardy, I own a divided heart,' 'Aha! I always thought you were made of asbestos—utterly fire-proof.' 'Yes, I left ,a little girl down in rifidijeville last year—who loved me.' 1 There are plenty of girls here, little and big, who dote on you. You needn't have gone out of your way to find one.'

' Perhaps not; but I loveod her !—that is, I fancy so. Tho deuce take it, I believe my Mu«se has espoused her causo ; I'm not able to paint for| thinking of her.'

' Ah! sits the wind in that corner? If you love her, why in the name of common senso shouldn't you think of her ?' ' Boeause I have given her up.' ' Given her up ?' ' Heavens ! did you never hear of such a thing as solf-deuial ?'

' I've heard of it, but havo never seen much; there's a great deal of the counterfeit about.'

' Well, I have just denied myself the greatest luxury in life because she wouldn't bear transplanting from the rural districts to this hot-house existence of ours.'

• Brother ! Drop hifalutin, and tell us the trouble.'

'In plain words, then, my friends, be had never read a line of Shakspeare in her life, she didn't even know the names of the popular writers of her own age, and she was tho granddaughter of a fisher man !'

' I have heard of One who was the bosom friend of fishermen,' said Hardy, gravely. ' I've a curiosity to see this fisherman's grandchild, who has accom plished what our fine dames have failed to do —the reprisal of your heart, Faraday.' And Hardy made up his mind that, sooner or later, he would indulge himself in that pleasure.

And so it happened that it was Marius Hardy who had made bold to fill Faraday's place, next year, and forgot stocks and exchanges, and developed a latent talent for seneiment foi? which Faraday had neve* givea hify credit. If Hardy wen.t

to Hedgeville from curiosity, he staid for lore; but he never made known his ac quaintance with Faraday. One day l)olly asked him, shyly, and blushing finely, 'Have you ever seen a Mr. Faraday— a celebrated painter, I believe P' 'Often/ answered Hardy, shrinking a little. 'Then you know him ?' •Yes—a little.' 'Yes, I might hare known it'—wincing in view of the blow he was about to inflict. 'He must have painted your portrait* It; was the picture of his that made such a; talk last winter. Now I think of it. it| was your very wraith. Ho was offered no! end of money for it, and no wonder.' ' 'And —and'—-breathlessly—'did he sell ih ?' 'Oh, there was no dearth of purchasers,, believe me. Faraday's pictures don't go, begging. He sold it for a round sum. I forget the exact figures.' Marius had been the purchaser himself. I It made no odds to Hardy that Dolly' had no taste for the drama, and knew nothing of the late poets ; had not dream :ed of Spencer, nor laughed over the Pickwick Papers; he fell as deliberately in love with her as if she had boon another Helen, as learned as an Oxford professor, with a genealogical tree as big as a banyan. But Dolly's heart was not the unprotected fortress Faraday had fouud it, who had walked boldly into possession, while 'Hardy must sit down with all his armaments and equipments, and wait till it was starved into surrender. Faraday had taught Dolly suspicion of his sex and a spice of coquetry withal, and Hardy was new to love-making. One day> he put an end to his suspense, and asked her outright to marry him.

' I don't love you, Mr. Hardy/ she Said. ' No,- I suppose not; but, if you were my wife, 1 might help you to do so,'

'But what if you found me no apt scholar in love ? No, I'm not in humor to love anybody. I feel like a clod; as if I had no sensation. It wouldn't be fair"; and then I'm not fit for your wife. I used to think ouco that lore made all things equal, but it isn't so. I should make you blush for me, I'm so ignorant.'

'Blush for you! You! make rue blush when you suspect me of such a thing ! If ever you should change your mind, Miss Dolly, if ever you should think more kindly of me. if ever you'shouldne'ed me, you wilL make me happy by a word." And then he kissed'the tips of her fingers reverently, and went his way.

All that had happened five years ago, when Faraday met a Miss Delgardo at Old Orchard beach, and that volcano, his heart, which he believed extinct and long ago burned out, in the bitter days that follow ed hi 3 renunciation of love and Dolly Oliver, began to give iadieations of becoming active again.'

' I don't know how it is,' he said to her, one evening, as they loitered on the sand, ' but I feel as if I had known you before. It must have been in some previous state 6f existence, when I was a poet, perhaps.'

' And I a princess, perhaps,' laughed Miss Delgardo, all the rich color shifting in her check, her velvet eyes shining out softly as twin pansies through the star brimmed dusk, as she turned them upon him.

'There, just now you remind me of a dear little girl I.once knew out in the backwoods, in the outskirts of civilization, whence I spent a sumnjer recruiting and sketching.'

' How you flatter me ! One of your extinetflames, I suppose?' 1 Fiames ? Well, yes, perhaps so ; one has many a ilanio in one's green and salad days that do one no great credit. She was very sweet, though, or —'

' She would not have kindled your verdant affections. Tell me about her. What were her spells ?'

' What spells would you expect of a fisherman's granddaughter, though she wero pretty as Hebe ? You shall see her picture, some day, and judge for yourself.' ' Then you keep it yet ? Ah ? I fear the original struck deeper than you care to own.'

' I keep the first rough sketch only.'

1 Enough for memory and imagination to fill out ?'

' The finished portrait made such a hue-and-cry that I fancied myself famous for the nonce r-1

1 Because it was painted by inspiration.' ' You may call it that. It added a fine figure to my bank account. Inspiration reducible to dollars and cents.'

'Oh.! Y^ou bartered sentiment, then!' 'Do you call a passing fancy sacred sentiment, Miss DelgardoP'

' Ok ! then you didn't make real serious love to Miss Milkmaid ?'

' Well, like all very young people, I thought it was sericus enough at the time. I thought I should never recover, you know, and all that nonsense.'

'I wonder she didn't like you.' 'Do you, indeed■? Now it is your turn to flatter.'

' Being from the rural districts, I mean she must have thought she had a dolphin in her net.'

' Perhaps she did, and didn't care to laud it, dolphins being unmarketable.'

' Was she a mercenary .little wretch ?'

'Not in the least. I, went down to her place, to tell you the truth, a few years after, just to see if I had grown wiser ; but the bird had flown. The old grandmother, who used to nod over the mending of the net, had gone to sleep in the rustic church yard, with a whits stone at her head. But nobody could tell me anything of Dolly, The old folks were dead, and the

young ones had forgotten, if they « * knew.' ' Ver ' I should like to ask why you \ 6 k l f in the first place ?' said Misa I)eW/ r 1 She was a fisherman's granddautrlit °! •Oh, sure enough! And so kg*" I suppose ; ao match for a great andr ing artist, and quite out of her elenwJ here at a fashionable beach.' "' I weren't looking into your e y»« T should think you were laughing at J, It's an odd subject for us to talk aW I let us change it.' l!

' But first tell me have you evA* 1j regrets?' r 'Not since I met Miss DeWi | Hark! the band is playing Yon wl Shall we join the throng?' " eber' | , As: they passed into the dancing M couple brushed by them in the circle the waltz, and Faraday saw MissDeWf flush with a sudden pleasure. .'Manus Hardy, upon my word" s^ Faraday. ' m t 'Yes,' said Miss Delgardo, 'he arrired .just after tea, while you were at billiard ' Do you know him ?' -"«««. ■ ' I should think so! Didn't we m e e f 9f Chamounx ?—on, the rale of Chamonn i and didn't we do the Mer de Glace and «T Flegere to-gether ? Didn't dilllgence to Geneva, and didn't n dilligence break down, and obW n,T walk two miles to the nearest inn? w couldn't have got along at all without M,' Hardy—Aunt Agnes and I : he Zl invaluable.' Wa3 'You speak with unction. I wish f heaven that I had been in his shoes to f ; you a good turn and earn such gratitude° Hardy's a lucky dog.' • ' I 'Is he? Every dog has his day, j OII ; know.' Faraday made the most of / 0 long summer days, either among tS • spray or reading some poem, sitting !» .the feet of Miss Delgido &$&& recesses of the pine groves. ' listenim, 1 the singing sea and the wind pte delicious arias among the spicy boughs 'the only drawback beingT the it invariable presence of Mr. Hardy; j i, Gan't he. see that he. is de trojj!' cfi'ed Faraday on one occasion* when lie hafli secured Miss Delgardo'a undividedl •attention for half an hour, Hardyl harm? I iUeen called away to make up,, a game I croqiief. 'Blessed be the nan M invented croquet,' sighed' Mr. Faraday \ picking up the book that lay : discarded f among the pine needles ; for hoimn.sf 'man read love, sonnets'.to his'svfeetheaifc |! in the presence of a rival ? He openedttfl ! book at random and read :

'Fool, join not madness to mistake• v: Thou kno west she loved thee not a whit* Only that she thy heart might break t , ' She wasted it.' J .uM

Vis that so, Miss Dolores ?'

'Is what so, prithee, Mr. Faraday ?' I 'See, isn't this a kind of sortiieg^br < divination ? Do you want my Heart only to break it ?' , , . : •. ~.. ~..,4; 'To the contrary, I don't want it at aU. Don't be sentimental, or I shall insist 6)1 Mr. Hardy's return. I dare- say you were, never sentimental in your life with out regretting it.' . .'. ~+ ' |

' Never, till to-day.'/ .. , -■;, .-,i'j' * And to-mqrrow you will regret Ms.' ' Do you think me so fickle,' Dolores ?'., 'Don't let us be so personal/ ' Well, be a good fairy, or a fair w,itdi, and grant me three wishes.' , !i;"

' Certainly, if you deserve them. Here,'! f a hazel wand to fetch them. JSqw Cross my palm.' ;; „_ \ 'I wish that my wife should be'well-1 born.'

'Row so? That she should not1 be I club-footed, nor cross-eyed, nor hunch- j back ?' ,;::"[ 1 • That she shall be of gentle birth.7 I ' Not a milkmaid or fisherman's grand* ' daughter ? Gfood. Granted.' .

' She shall be ®f your color, with a \ dimple in her chin.' •' 1 'She shall; there are plenty such,';! waving her wand toward the group of 1 croquet players. 'And her name shall beDoloresiV ' Dolores ? That's but a dolorau* nkinep they used to call mo Dolly when t was '] younger. Her name shall be Dolores, and it pleases you.' . ~ ' Her name shall be Dolore3 Delgardo/J he pursued. 'Ah! I promised to grant only ihrM i wishes.' \ " ■ "*ci3" I

'But you will promise this, s^l Dolores you will be my wife ?' he pleaded. I 'Don't ask nae, Mr. Faraday; it is iw if possible. I don't fulfill your requirements in a wife.' .'. " ■ f °«| . You! You are all my fancy paint". You"1 are the day-dream of niy life. You are; beautiful, accomplished, high-bora.' 'I ? I am a fisherman's grand-daughter,- '■■ Mr. Faraday.' 8 ■■■ «*tr<em

•Your-. ■• ■ jj 'My mother married a Spanish sailor, \ Delgardo, and died early.! My father svas : lost at s>ea; ho was the wild sondt'aj wealthy and well^descehded house, to be | sure. My grandmother me, a baby; j and cared for me while she mended tMJ nets. 'They called me Dolly; I was always called Dolly Oliver, while grandma f lived, because I seemed her child, [ the fisher-people found -Delgardo a stamb- / ling-block and an offense. When" Grand" mh Oliver had to leave me, my father's sister, Agnes, found me out, took me away from the fishing village, sent me to convents and what not, till my s^e might perhaps deceive the very elect, and no one would recognize Dolly Oliver in j the 'accomplished and high-born' Dolores Delgardo. In o, thank you, Mr. Faradajj I catinQfc be your wife, I promised M

Evening Star Sapplement, A-Hgnast 1O» 187e