The Scottish archers, however, did not long leave her to triumph in that sort. Seeing the danger in which their king stood, they came briskly forward, and, drawing their arrows to the head, daunted the lady's bowmen, for her sake, exposed as she was on the castle wall, from repeating the shower till his Highness was removed beyond their reach. This was, however, but a brief pause, for the lady again bade her men shoot, and fear not for her. Whereupon, what with the dust that rose from the dinting of the shafts on the walls and towers, together with the hail of arrows flying between the archers of the garrison and the assailants, the castle appeared as if it had been shrouded in mist.

Little blood was pierced on either side by this waste of quivers; but in the meantime some of the Scottish soldiers had hewn down several large trees and were bringing their trunks up for battering-rams, which the countess observing, ordered a great fire of all sorts of beams and brands to be kindled in the court of the castle, and when the Scots came with their engines under the defenses of the gates, she caused the burning faggots and rafters to be so hurled upon them that many threw down the huge timbers to save themselves, and thereby so crushed the feet and limbs of their fellows that on all sides frightful yells, and the cries of burnt and wounded men were heard amidst the shouts and confusion of fighting.

By this time the darkness of the night added to the terrors of that storm of wrath and weapons. The flames of the great fire within the court of the castle, rising red and high, shed a wild and dismal splendor on the towers, while the walls without were all in the blackness of shadow.

Then might you have seen the combatants: those of the castle were like dingy Moors, the light striking on their backs, their weapons flashing like torches round their heads as they ever and anon stooped forward to strike down the assailants; the Scots, with their upturned faces brightened by the light, appeared like fiery demons climbing and scaling out of the abysses of darkness; and the Lady Salisbury was seen standing on the corner of a tower like a bright and blazing beacon, which from some tall and leeward cliff overlooks the rage and weltering of the breaking waves.

The Scottish king, seeing that the castle was not to be so easily won as he had expected, after several vain attempts to burn the gates, called off his men for the night, resolved to renew the assault in the morning, thinking by that time the countess, having had leisure to reflect on the unequal odds with which she was contending, might be more disposed to treat with him. But what he regarded as the weakness of the fortress, a woman governor, proved its best strength; for her constancy of purpose and singular magnanimity did so

animate and encourage the garrison that the meanest servitor of the hall was as lordly in the bravery of his resolution as the proudest noble that sat at supper with the king.

Before the morning, however, news arrived that the English army was fast approaching, and the Scottish nobles, still anxious to preserve the spoil of Durham, instead of consenting to renew the attack, spoke only of returning home. In vain did the youthful son of the heroic Bruce remind them of the glories of their fathers' valor, their own hardiment, and the dishonor of making themselves, by avarice, so like fugitives before their ancient enemies; but all heroism was absorbed in their gain, in so much that, about noon, when King Edward arrived at Werk, he found no other traces of the Scottish army there than the broken weapons of the over-night assault the trunks of the trees which had been felled for engines—and here and there bodies of the few who had been slain in the conflict.

THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS

The harp that once through Tara's halls

The soul of music shed,

Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls

As if that soul were fled.

So sleeps the pride of former days,

So glory's thrill is o'er,

And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
Now feel that pulse no more.

No more to chiefs and ladies bright
The harp of Tara swells;

The chord alone, that breaks at night,

Its tale of ruin tells.

Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
The only throb she gives

Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives.

THE TORTOISE

A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little walled court belonging to the house where I am now visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November and comes forth again about the middle of April.

When it first appears in the spring it discovers very little inclination towards food, but in the height of summer it grows voracious, and then, as the summer declines, its appetite declines; so that for the last six weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sow thistles, are its favorite dish. In a neighboring village one was kept till, by tradition, it was supposed to be an hundred years old, an instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile.

On the first of November I remarked that the old tortoise, formerly mentioned, began to dig the ground in order to form its hybernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great turf of hepaticas.

It scrapes out the ground with its fore feet, and throws it over its back with its hind feet, but the motion of its legs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour hand of

a clock.

Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature, night and day, in scooping the earth, and forcing its great body into the cavity; but as the noons of that season proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually interrupted