Now, although I had never given credence to these exact proportions, I still remained under the impression that there was a peculiarity in the negro foot, that the heel was somewhat more protuberant than in the European foot, and rather broad, it might also well be supposed to be, in its natural and unpinched condition.  The whole scene came vividly before my imagination; the unfortunate family handing round in dismay those exquisite French boots, vainly striving, one after another, to insert their toes into them, but finding among their number no Cinderella whom the wonderful shoe would fit.  I figured them at last descending to a little fellow six years old, or thereabouts, whose poor little feet might possibly be planted in the centre of the boots, and thus, in default of any other protection, be saved for a time from frost and snow.  My mind was divided between amusement at the final destination of these celebrated relics, and regret that I had nothing more suitable to send.  I could only hope that this part of the poor fugitives’ outfit might be more successfully provided for from some other quarter.

Winter passed by; spring came, succeeded by long, hot mid-summer days of the western summer.  Our neighbors, for the most part, were scattered to the North and East—­gone to the lakes, to New-York, to Boston, or to some summer resort upon the Atlantic coast—­all who could, breaking the long-continued and oppressive heat by a pleasant excursion to some cooler clime.  My friend, the minister’s daughter, and most of our own family, had gone like the rest, and I was left in a somewhat solitary state to while away the long hours of those burning summer days, in the monotony of a large and empty country-house.

One day at noon, I strolled to the door, seeking a breath of air.  I stood within the doorway, and looked out.  Before me extended a level tract of green grass, thinly planted with young shade-trees.  At some distance beyond, melting away in haze beneath the glowing sun, a little wood extended toward the north-east, meeting at its extremity another and denser wood of much greater extent.  This first little wood had been in our young days our favorite resort.  We had explored every turn in it again and again; we knew well every tree upon its outskirts, beneath whose shade some little patch of green grass might serve for a resting-place, or a pic-nic ground; we were familiar with every old trunk with wide-extending roots, in whose protecting cavities that little, speckled, pepper-and-salt-looking flower, the spring harbinger, nestled, peeping forth toward the end of March, ere the ice and snow had well melted, or any other green thing dared show itself.  Deeper in the shade lay the soft beds of decaying leaves, where somewhat later the spring beauties would start forth, clothing the brown and purple tints of the ground with touches of delicate pink.  With them would come that fair little wind-flower, the white anemone, and the blue