houlders. Her shining hair was gathered into a satiny
brown coil at the back of her head and pinned with a silver arrow, while a
few naturally curling locks lay lightly on her forehead. The dark,
moss-grown rock was behind her; the softly waving plumy boughs of the
pine tree above her, a carpet of tender green beneath her feet.

"You are still trembling from the shock that I have given you," he said in
a tone of self-reproach, and noticing how the flowers quivered in her
grasp, "pray, pardon me and give me a handshake of welcome, or I shall
almost regret that I came."

She looked up frankly into his dark eyes, and laid her small hand
unhesitatingly in his.

"You are very welcome, Mr. Heath," she said, "and I am sure that papa will
be very glad to see you."

William Heath smiled at her words.

He felt sure that she, too, was glad to see him--that his coming was a
pleasant break in the monotony of her life; her varying color, the bright,
happy gleam of her eyes told him this.

Her wonderful beauty, so out of place in that wild region, thrilled him
strangely. Her queenly manner, her delicacy and refinement astonished him,
and he wondered more and more what mysterious circumstances could have
combined to drive two such cultivated people so far from civilization to
hide themselves in the rugged fastnesses of those dreary mountains.

Chapter IV.

A Mountain Ramble.

"You were reading," he remarked, stooping to pick up the book that had
fallen to the ground as she arose. "Tacitus!" he added, in a tone of
astonishment, as his eye fell upon the title page.

"Yes, I am reviewing; papa likes me to study a little every day, still,"
Virgie returned, quietly, while she examined her flowers with a critical
eye, and wondered that a gentleman could have arranged them so well.

He must be an artist, she thought, for no one save an artist, or a lover
of art, could have taken such pains to harmonize colors like that.

"I should suppose you would labor under serious difficulties in trying to
pursue your studies in such a place as this," Mr. Heath remarked.

"Oh, no, papa is a fine scholar, and he makes a most delightful teacher."

"And have you pursued a regular course under him?"

"Yes, partly. I left school when I was fifteen, but I have kept right on
the same as I should have done if I had remained, and I graduated two
years ago," she concluded, smiling archly at the idea of graduating in
that wild country.