eemed strange that she did
not, for they were surely her natural weapons of conquest. Her color did
not come and go like that of young girls under excitement. She had a
clear brunette complexion, a little sun-touched, it may be,--for the
master noticed once, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a
faint ring or band of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface
encircled her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation,
when she read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible
imperfection in articulating some of the lingual sounds,--just enough to
be noticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a few times heard.

Not a word about the flower on either side. It was not uncommon for the
schoolgirls to leave a rose or pink or wild flower on the teacher's desk.
Finding it in the Virgil was nothing, after all; it was a little delicate
flower, which looked as if it were made to press, and it was probably
shut in by accident at the particular place where he found it. He took
it into his head to examine it in a botanical point of view. He found it
was not common,--that it grew only in certain localities,--and that one
of these was among the rocks of the eastern spur of The Mountain.

It happened to come into his head how the Swiss youth climb the sides of
the Alps to find the flower called the Edelweiss for the maidens whom
they wish to please. It is a pretty fancy, that of scaling some
dangerous height before the dawn, so as to gather the flower in its
freshness, that the favored maiden may wear it to church on Sunday
morning, a proof at once of her lover's devotion and his courage. Mr.
Bernard determined to explore the region where this flower was said to
grow, that he might see where the wild girl sought the blossoms of which
Nature was so jealous.

It was on a warm, fair Saturday afternoon that he undertook his
land-voyage of discovery. He had more curiosity, it may be, than he
would have owned; for he had heard of the girl's wandering habits, and
the guesses about her sylvan haunts, and was thinking what the chances
were that he should meet her in some strange place, or come upon traces
of her which would tell secrets she would not care to have known.

The woods are all alive to one who walks through them with his mind in an
excited state, and his eyes and ears wide open. The trees are always
talking, not merely whispering with their leaves, (for every tree talks
to itsel