Lois, over in the damp, fresh-smelling lumber-yard, sat coiled up in one of the creviced houses made by the jutting boards.  She remembered how she used to play in them, before she went into the mill.  The mill,—­even now, with the vague dread of some uncertain evil to come, the mill absorbed all fear in its old hated shadow.  Whatever danger was coming to them lay in it, came from it, she knew, in her confused, blurred way of thinking.  It loomed up now, with the square patch of ashen sky above, black, heavy with years of remembered agony and loss.  In Lois’s hopeful, warm life this was the one uncomprehended monster.  Her crushed brain, her unwakened powers, resented their wrong dimly to the mass of iron and work and impure smells, unconscious of any remorseless power that wielded it.  It was a monster, she thought, through the sleepy, dreading night,—­a monster that kept her wakeful with a dull, mysterious terror.

When the night grew sultry and deepest, she started from her half-doze to see her father come stealthily out and go down the street.  She must have slept, she thought, rubbing her eyes, and watching him out of sight,—­and then, creeping out, turned to glance at the mill.  She cried out, shrill with horror.  It was a live monster now,—­in one swift instant, alive with fire,—­quick, greedy fire, leaping like serpents’ tongues out of its hundred jaws, hungry sheets of flame maddening and writhing towards her, and under all a dull and hollow roar that shook the night.  Did it call her to her death?  She turned to fly, and then—­He was alone, dying!  He had been so kind to her!  She wrung her hands, standing there a moment.  It was a brave hope that was in her heart, and a prayer on her lips never left unanswered, as she hobbled, in her lame, slow way, up to the open black door, and, with one backward look, went in.

* * * * *

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

The publication, now brought to a close, of a new edition of the novels of Cooper[6] gives us a fair occasion for discharging a duty which Maga has too long neglected, and saying something upon the genius of this great writer, and, incidentally, upon the character of a man who would have been a noticeable, not to say remarkable person, had he never written a line.  These novels stand before us in thirty-two goodly duodecimo volumes, well printed, gracefully illustrated, and, in all external aspects, worthy of generous commendation.  With strong propriety, the publishers dedicate this edition of the “first American novelist” to “the American People.”  No one of our great writers is more thoroughly American than Cooper; no one has caught and reproduced more broadly and accurately the spirit of our institutions, the character of our people, and even the aspects of Nature in this our Western world.  He was a patriot to the very core of his heart; he loved his country with a fervid, but not an undiscerning love:  it was an intelligent, vigilant, discriminating affection that bound his heart to his native land; and thus, while no man defended his country more vigorously when it was in the right, no one reproved its faults more courageously, or gave warning and advice more unreservedly, where he felt that they were needed.