about peonies to last a lifetime! There's a fair
to-morrow, and of course I must go: more left hands: although now, I
confess, they swim round me in a cloud of vexation and peonies, which
makes me never want to lay eyes on one of them again;" and she gave a
groan, ending in a long yawn. However, the next morning, with patience
and energies renewed by sleep, she rose early, like a phoenix from her
ashes, and accompanied Mrs. Blackwell to the fair. Anne, again in her
skiff, went up the river. She rowed to the glen where she had lost the
dragon-fly. Here she rested on her oars a moment. The river still
haunted her. "He went away in a boat," had not been out of her mind
since it first came to her. "He went away in a boat," she now thought
again. "Would he, then, have rowed up or down the stream? If he had
wished to escape from the neighborhood, he would have rowed down to the
larger river below. He would not have rowed up stream unless he lived
somewhere in this region, and was simply going home, because there is no
main road in this direction, no railway, nothing but farms which touch
each other for miles round. Now, as I believe he was _not_ a stranger,
but a resident, I will suppose that he went up stream, and I will follow
him." She took up her oars and rowed on.

The stream grew still narrower. She had been rowing a long time, and
knew that she must be far from home. Nothing broke the green solitude of
the shore until at last she came suddenly upon a little board house,
hardly more than a shanty, standing near the water, with the forest
behind. She started as she saw it, and a chill ran over her. And yet
what was it? Only a little board house.

She rowed past; it seemed empty and silent. She turned the skiff, came
back, and gathering her courage, landed, and timidly tried the door; it
was locked. She went round and looked through the window. There was no
one within, but there were signs of habitation--some common furniture, a
gun, and on the wall a gaudy picture of the Virgin and the Holy Child.
She scrutinized the place with eyes that noted even the mark of muddy
boots on the floor and the gray ashes from a pipe on the table. Then
suddenly she felt herself seized with fear. If the owner of the cabin
should steal up behind her, and ask her what she was doing there! She
looked over her shoulder fearfully. But no one was visible, no one was
coming up or down the river; her own boat was the only thing that moved,
swayin