le afresh in her eyes, and the old woman's sleep would
grow restless again,--for she knew, that, so long as the glitter
was fierce in the girl's eyes, there was no trusting her impulses or
movements.

At last, when the veins of the summer were hot and swollen, and the
juices of all the poison-plants and the blood of all the creatures that
feed upon them had grown thick and strong,--about the time when the
second mowing was in hand, and the brown, wet-faced men were following
up the scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass, (falling as
the waves fall on sickle-curved beaches; the foam-flowers dropping
as the grass-flowers drop,--with sharp semivowel consonantal
sounds,--frsh,--for that is the way the sea talks, and leaves all pure
vowel-sounds for the winds to breathe over it, and all mutes to the
unyielding earth,)--about this time of over-ripe midsummer, the life of
Elsie seemed fullest of its malign and restless instincts. This was
the period of the year when the Rockland people were most cautious of
wandering in the leafier coverts which skirted the base of The Mountain,
and the farmers liked to wear thick, long boots, whenever they went
into the bushes. But Elsie was never so much given to roaming over
The Mountain as at this season; and as she had grown more absolute and
uncontrollable, she was as like to take the night as the day for her
rambles.

At this season, too, all her peculiar tastes in dress and ornament came
out in a more striking way than at other times. She was never so superb
as then, and never so threatening in her scowling beauty. The barred
skirts she always fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous muslins;
the diamonds often glittered on her breast as if for her own pleasure
rather than to dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet hardly left her arm.
She was never seen without some necklace,--either the golden cord she
wore at the great party, or a chain of mosaics, or simply a ring of
golden scales. Some said that Elsie always slept in a necklace, and that
when she died she was to be buried in one. It was a fancy of hers,--but
many thought there was a reason for it.

Nobody watched Elsie with a more searching eye than her cousin, Dick
Venner. He had kept more out of her way of late, it is true, but there
was not a movement she made which he did not carefully observe just so
far as he could without exciting her suspicion. It was plain enough to
him that the road to fortune was before