s the

'Forsaken, woful, solitary maid,
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,'

set on by the 'ramping beast;' and for the knight? why, it would be easy
to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington,
into a lover and deliverer, whose 'allegiance and fast fealty' had bound
him to my trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for
fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if
no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream
near Davis's, crossing the way, which we were told was called 'Nancy's
Brook.' We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all
ended in one source--man's perjury and woman's trust. A poor girl, some
said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived
with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and 'singing to him,' no
doubt, 'when she his evening food did dress,' till he grew tired, and
one day went forth and did not come back; and day after day she waited,
but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the
brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic
tale.

The sun was set to us behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached
the 'Willey Slide,' and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the
'Mountain Notch.' Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we
were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian
traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels,
sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from
Alice's, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that
passed before he disappeared in the forest.

'Are you frightened?' said Alice; 'this is a lonely road; shall I hail
the wagon?'

'Oh! no,' I replied.

'But,' she urged, 'this may be some fugitive from justice.'

'Nonsense, Alice; don't you see by his air that he is a gentleman?'

'No,' she saw nothing 'but that he was light of foot, and anxious to
escape observation.'

I had seen more; I had seen, or my mind being prepossessed by one image,
I had shaped the reality to the imagination, as ghost-seers do, and in
the pedestrian had seen that form that henceforward is to me as if it
had passed the bourne whence no traveler returns. It was a mere fancy.
Alice--she is a cautious little woman--was continually looking back,
from fear; and I--I may as well confess it--from hope; but we saw
nothing more