f, through her recollections, with its
hidden glassy lakes, its dark rolling stream, and its world of nature.

Turning from this view, our heroine felt her cheek fanned by a fresh and
grateful breeze, such as she had not experienced since quitting the far
distant coast. Here a new scene presented itself: although expected, it
was not without a start, and a low exclamation indicative of pleasure,
that the eager eyes of the girl drank in its beauties. To the north, and
east, and west, in every direction, in short, over one entire half
of the novel panorama, lay a field of rolling waters. The element was
neither of that glassy green which distinguishes the American waters
in general, nor yet of the deep blue of the ocean, the color being of a
slightly amber hue, which scarcely affected its limpidity. No land was
to be seen, with the exception of the adjacent coast, which stretched to
the right and left in an unbroken outline of forest with wide bays and
low headlands or points; still, much of the shore was rocky, and into
its caverns the sluggish waters occasionally rolled, producing a
hollow sound, which resembled the concussions of a distant gun. No sail
whitened the surface, no whale or other fish gambolled on its bosom, no
sign of use or service rewarded the longest and most minute gaze at its
boundless expanse. It was a scene, on one side, of apparently endless
forests, while a waste of seemingly interminable water spread itself on
the other. Nature appeared to have delighted in producing grand effects,
by setting two of her principal agents in bold relief to each other,
neglecting details; the eye turning from the broad carpet of leaves to
the still broader field of fluid, from the endless but gentle heavings
of the lake to the holy calm and poetical solitude of the forest, with
wonder and delight.

Mabel Dunham, though unsophisticated, like most of her countrywomen
of that period, and ingenuous and frank as any warm-hearted and
sincere-minded girl well could be, was not altogether without a feeling
for the poetry of this beautiful earth of ours. Although she could
scarcely be said to be educated at all, for few of her sex at that
day and in this country received much more than the rudiments of plain
English instruction, still she had been taught much more than was usual
for young women in her own station in life; and, in one sense certainly,
she did credit to her teaching. The widow of a field-officer, who
formerly