or want of the lost
hairpin, perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of--Shame on such
fancies!--to wrong that supreme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush
of shining black hair, which, shaken loose, would cloud her all round,
like Godiva, from brow to instep! He was sure he had sat down before the
fissure or cave. He was sure that he was led softly away from the place,
and that it was Elsie who had led him. There was the hair-pin to show
that so far it was not a dream. But between these recollections came a
strange confusion; and the more the master thought, the more he was
perplexed to know whether she had waked him, sleeping, as he sat on the
stone, from some frightful dream, such as may come in a very brief
slumber, or whether she had bewitched him into a trance with those
strange eyes of hers, or whether it was all true, and he must solve its
problem as he best might.

There was another recollection connected with this mountain adventure.
As they approached the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom Mr.
Bernard remembered having seen once at least before, and whom he had
heard of as a cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard Venner, the
person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to speak, of Mr.
Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised, so
profoundly suspicious, that the young master felt in an instant that he
had an enemy in this handsome youth,--an enemy, too, who was like to be
subtle and dangerous.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no
enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or
later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a
scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole
armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him.
Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in
feeling that there might be some dangers in the way of his
investigations. Some rumors which had reached him about the supposed
suitor of Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate kind of fellow,
and whom some believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious,
romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and
psychological inquiries he was about instituting.

The afternoon on The Mountain was still upper-most in his mind. Of
course he knew the common stories--about fascination. He had once been
himself an eyewitn