n many directions, and there are drives and
bridle-paths all through the dense, sad, Northern woods which still
savagely clothe the greater part of the island to its further
shores, where there are shelves and plateaus of rock incomparable for
picnicking.

One need ask nothing better, in fact, than to stroll down the sylvan
road that leads to the Owen, past the little fishing-village with its
sheds for curing herring; and the pale blue smoke and appetising savour
escaping from them; and past the little chapel with which the old
Admiral attested his love of the Established rite. On this road you may
sometimes meet a little English bishop from the Provinces, in his apron
and knee-breeches; and there is a certain bridge over a narrow estuary,
where in the shallow land-locked pools of the deeply ebbing tide you may
throw stones at sculpin, and witness the admirable indifference of those
fish to human cruelty and folly. In the middle distance you will see
a group of herring weirs, which with their coronals of tufted saplings
form the very most picturesque aspect of any fishing industry. You may,
now and then find an artist at this point, who, crouched over his easel,
or hers, seems to agree with you about the village and the weirs.

But Alice Pasmer cared little more for such things than her mother did,
and Mrs. Pasmer regarded Nature in all her aspects simply as an adjunct
of society, or an occasional feature of the entourage. The girl had
no such worldly feeling about it, but she found slight sympathy in the
moods of earth and sky with her peculiar temperament. This temperament,
whose recondite origin had almost wholly broken up Mrs. Pasmer's faith
in heredity, was like other temperaments, not always in evidence, and
Alice was variously regarded as cold, of shy, or proud, or insipid, by
the various other temperaments brought in contact with her own. She
was apt to be liked because she was as careful of others as she was of
herself, and she never was childishly greedy about such admiration as
she won, as girls often are, perhaps because she did not care for it.
Up to this time it is doubtful if her heart had been touched even by the
fancies that shake the surface of the soul of youth, and perhaps it was
for this reason that her seriousness at first fretted Mrs. Pasmer with a
vague anxiety for her future.

Mrs. Pasmer herself remained inalienably Unitarian, but she was aware of
the prodigious-growth which the Church had be