ly wondering
that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very
ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage and
occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for
unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap.

The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two when a pretty
young girl came along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how
her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry
kind of motion that caused--is there any harm in saying it?--her
garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth--if silk it
were--was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the
maple trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring.
Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a
gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose too, she was about to
make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper. A
monster of a bee had been wandering overhead--buzz, buzz, buzz--now
among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now
lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the
eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As
free-hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with
her handkerchief, brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the
maple shade. How sweet a picture! This good deed accomplished, with
quickened breath and a deeper blush she stole a glance at the youthful
stranger for whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air.

"He is handsome!" thought she, and blushed redder yet.

How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him that,
shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder and allow him
to perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile
of welcome brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul,
according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his
own, and whom in all his vague but passionate desires he yearned to
meet. Her only could he love with a perfect love, him only could she
receive into the depths of her heart, and now her image was faintly
blushing in the fountain by his side; should it pass away, its happy
lustre would never gleam upon his life again.

"How sound he sleeps!" murmured the girl. She departed, but did not
trip along the road so lightly as when she came.

Now, this girl's father was a thriving country merchant