A GUSTY September day was drawing to a close; and the propect from the little cabin on the seacoast, where our story opens, was unusually bleak for the season. The house was situated in a nook, at the foot of a range of high hills, which bounded the view on three sides, while on the fourth nothing met the eye but the monotonous ocean, for ever rolling its surges to the shore. The hills, behind the cabin, were sandy and barren, and afforded scanty nourishment to the dwarf pines and cedars which clothed their ridgy sides. Whatever soil of a more fertile kind once covered them, had been washed by many a storm to the area below, which was enclosed and cultivated as a vegetable garden,

and yielded hardly enough to pay the laborer for his toil.

The day in question was blustering and cold, and contrasted strongly with the previous one, when not a breath of wind had mitigated the fervor of the sun, which glared on the burning waters and sparkling sands, till the air quivered like the atmosphere of a furnace, and objects seen through it had a vibratory and dazzling appearance. But with that suddenness of change so frequent in our climate, this sultry day was succeeded by one uncomfortably cold, and a person might almost fancy he had passed in a night from September to January, or from the torrid to the frigid zone. A dense volume of smoke poured from the chimney of the little cabin, and diffusing itself over the hill in the rear, added to the indistinctness of the dusky landscape. The ocean was roughened by billows, which, at a distance, leaped and tumbled in multitudinous confusion, and as they approached the shore, extended into long curling ridges, which rolled up and broke upon the beach, with a sullen and melancholy roar. The sky was overcast, and a driving scud floated so low that it seemed to touch the summit of the hills as it hurried by. As night approached, the wind grew more chilly, and it had that damp and clammy feeling which characterizes our easterly storms.

At some distance to the left of the cabin, a group of seamen sat on the beach, under the lee of a spur or projection of one of the hills. At anchor, opposite to them, just beyond the break of the surf, lay

a small schooner, the size and model of which, her taunt, raking masts, sharp bows, and general trig appearance, showed she was one of those fine seaboats, in which our hardy pilots cruise off for weeks together, and brave all the vicissitudes and perils of the sea. She lay rolling and heaving in the swell with an easy motion, and floated on the surface, as light and buoyant as a cork. A small boat, painted in the same fashion with the schooner, was hauled up, and turned bottom upwards on the beach, furnishing a rest against which some of the men carelessly leaned, while others trimmed a fire, the smoke of which rolled up from the midst of the circle.

"We shall have a gale to-night," said one of them, as he eyed the weather, and held the back of his skinny hand to the wind, with the knowing air of an experienced seaman; "it will blow great guns before morning."

"Yes, and I'm thinking,” said another, turning his eyes seaward," that yonder black privateer-looking craft in the offing had better stand out for searoom, instead of backing and filling round here, like a cooper round a water-cask. If she don't mind her weather-helm, she'll be slap ashore before she's much older."

"She's a regular beauty, any how," observed a third. "She's as trim as a lady, and sets the water like a duck. She stays like a top, too, and lays dead up in the wind's eye. Now do but mind her spring her luff."

"She's a suspicious craft, though; d-n my

chainplates, if she isn't," said the first speaker, who was a rough, red-faced man, somewhat stricken in years, with small gray eyes, that twinkled deep in their sockets, and a mouth like a mackerel's; "I hauled my wind, and ran under her counter; but she didn't want a pilot-no, not she!-and didn't even tip me a thank'e for my pains."

"What thundering short tacks she makes!" said another of the group. "There, she's heaving about again. Ay, that's the way to rub her copper bright, and keep all hands busy, like the devil in a gale of wind."

"They'll have business enough on their hands, if old Chase gets the word I sent up," replied the elderly man. "If the cutter only runs down to take a look at that brig, she'll bring her to in short order, and make her sing small."

"Here's a hulabaloo!" said the one who had before spoken of the beauty of the craft, which furnished the theme of conversation. "Can't a vessel lie off-and-on for a day or two, waiting, perhaps, for some word from her owner or consignee, without being suspected as a pirate ?"

"Pirate or no pirate, you mind my words," said the old man; "if the cutter comes down, yonder black and rakish-looking chap will be off like a shot off a shovel."

"I wish the honest fellows aboard of her could hear your palaver, Bill Sneering; if they wouldn't clew up your jaw-tacks, I'm mistaken. They'd

show you their papers, and you mightn't find it easy

to read them, either."

"Honest fellows, do you say?-honest devils! A set of piratical rogues, I'll engage, with fingers like fish-hooks that hold all they touch. And see, yonder's the fellow that has been staying at Jim Fisher's cabin these three days past-just the time that the queer-looking craft has been dodging about. I shouldn't wonder if he had something do with her."

"Small helm, Bill, small helm! What's the use of yawing about in that style? There's no telling which way you'll drive next. What has the young man done, that you must let fly a shot at him?”

"What? why what is he doing here, alone, and without any acknowledged business? Why does he bear away when any one sheers alongside of him, as if he was afraid to show the cut of his jib? And why does he keep such a bright lookout for that brig from morning to night, tacking when she tacks, and watching all her motions, as close as a shark does a Guinea-ship? I tell you what, that 'mawphrodite yonder is either a smuggler or pirate, and that young fellow has more to do with her than he cares to have known."

66 Come, side out for a bend!" said one of the group, rising to his feet. "Avast, Bill Sneering, and take a turn o' that. Come, lads, let's freshen the nip all round, and then be off. It is time we were

under way.

So saying, he drew from underneath the boat a