seen.

floor, while he was nowhere to be found. She called, but there was no answer. The place seemed unusually silent, and there was no noise from the fowls. She went to the poultry-yard; no geese were to be She called them, as if to be fed; they did not come. She began to search, and then she found one poor goose stretched upon the ground, bloody and half dead. What did it mean? She took him up and carried him in, to revive him by the fire. Little did she dream that she bore her husband in her arms. She rubbed and caressed him till he came to himself, and then, for the first, did the old man know what had befallen him. He was changed to a gander; he tried to speak--a loud hiss alone issued from his mouth. He tried to gesticulate--he could only flap his wings. He walked hastily up and down; he pulled at the dame's frock, who was now busied with other things, and he thrust his bill in her lap, till she, alarmed at such proceedings, drove him from the house. How miserable was now his lot! how sorely he repented of his past wickedness! He approached other geese of the neighbors, but they either fled from him, or fell upon and beat him. He was compelled to remain solitary and miserable, with no one to whom he could confide his sorrows.

But the worst was to come. His wife, after won

dering what had become of her husband, concluded that "he was such an old goose he had got drowned in the creek;" and, as it was plucking-time, and she had nothing else to divert her mind, she determined to pluck the only one of the flock remaining. Oh, what dreadful torments did the poor gander endure, and from the hands of her he loved! How he shrieked! how he struggled! What agonizing efforts he made to speak, but in vain! The old woman, only too well accustomed to her business, held him fast, and tore out feather after feather; and, although she thought more blood than usual flowed from the wounds, she did not worry herself about that. It was now his turn to endure those tortures he had so often inflicted-tortures tenfold increased from the greater tenderness of his flesh. When the task was finished, he lay bleeding, and agonized, and scarce able to move. He waddled slowly down to the pond, and the cool water assuaged his wounds. But what was his dread, and his wife's delight, when he saw his feathers growing again with astounding rapidity! In two weeks they were quite large, and in two more he was in condition to pluck again. What a life was before him, to be doomed every month to excruciating sufferings, and that from one who was mourning for her husband at every pang she gave him.

But the dame grew rich. In her one goose she had an exhaustless treasure. He cost little to keep, and the more she plucked, the more there was for next month. She built a new house, and then, forgetting her husband, ideas of a fresh marriage suggested themselves to her. There was a young man soon found to marry her for her wealth, and what was her old husband's misery to think that his torments purchased her a new bridegroom! But this husband was a worthless fellow, much given to drink, and, in a fit of intoxication, he killed the old goose, from which all their luxuries flowed. Poverty came upon them, and, ere long, the dame had no feathers to sell, and was forced to dispose of her house and her land, pond included, and to take down the sign of

Whether this story is positively and literally true, I can not say of my own knowledge, not having been born till one or more centuries after it is supposed to have happened; but there are many pieces of corroborative evidence that go to maintain its entire accordance with fact. Whether the geese really spoke is to be doubted, and the conversation may have been merely a dream—the effect of a bad supper on a worse conscience-but that they flew away can not

be questioned, for the pond is there, and I have visited it often, and never saw a goose near it. It is well known that feathers are plucked from the living geese, and, as the sign is no longer up, it is fair to presume it must have been taken down. So, with the foundation of the pond, which still exists, to start upon, and with the absence of the sign and the admitted probability of the geese, we have a strong case without the positive assertion of my informant, who insisted she had been there, and whom I shrewdly suspected to be Dame Marrott herself, converted by glamourie from a Dutch vrow into an Irish crone. As this legend lends a double charm and greatly-enhanced value to the property in the neighborhood of the pond, the interests of my five acres and their owner could not permit it to be lost.

CHAPTER XV.

NUISANCES, INHUMAN AND HUMAN.-PETS-THE CHARM

OF COUNTRY LIFE.

"MUSQUITOES! You'll never be troubled

with them. You may be surprised to hear it, but musquitoes at Flushing never come into the house. They will often be plenty outside, but they disappear the moment your foot touches the piazza. Another strange thing about them is, that they may be abundant in the grass, and, as you walk through, may rise up in thousands, but they seem to be frightened at man, and fly away at once without waiting to bite. It is my opinion they get some other kind. of food, and are too well supplied to overcome the instinctive animal repugnance to a human being."

Thus remarked Weeville, in his usual enthusiastic way over every thing that "lives, moves, or has its being" in or about Flushing, and no one who heard him could doubt for a moment his firm conviction in the entire accuracy of his statements. Historic truth,