ow from shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed
hours in a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall
like balm from those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle
ether in her soul; or breathed into her listening ear immunity from the
forgotten past, and security for the present. If there was no dream of
the future in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much
the better. The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint
housekeeping, the brief companionship and coming and going of her young
host--himself at best a crystallized personification of the sedate and
hospitable woods--satisfied her feeble cravings. She no longer
regretted the inferior passion that her fears had obliged her to take
the first night she came; she began to look up to this young man--so
much younger than herself--without knowing what it meant; it was not
until she found that this attitude did not detract from his
picturesqueness that she discovered herself seeking for reasons to
degrade him from this seductive eminence.

A week had elapsed with little change. On two days he had been absent
all day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which,
thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was now
considered a safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire. On the first of
these occasions she received him with some preoccupation, paying but
little heed to the scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, and
retiring early under the plea of fatigue, that he might seek his own
distant camp-fire, which, thanks to her stronger nerves and regained
courage, she no longer required so near. On the second occasion, he
found her writing a letter more or less blotted with her tears. When it
was finished, she begged him to post it at Indian Spring, where in two
days an answer would be returned, under cover, to him.

"I hope you will be satisfied then," she added.

"Satisfied with what?" queried the young man.

"You'll see," she replied, giving him her cold hand. "Good-night."

"But can't you tell me now?" he remonstrated, retaining her hand.

"Wait two days longer--it isn't much," was all she vouchsafed to
answer.

The two days passed. Their former confidence and good fellowship were
fully restored when the morning came on which he was to bring the
answer from the post-office at Indian Spring. He had talked again of
his future, and had recorded his ambition to procure the ap