so smile, the wind so chime,
As quiristers of season, and the prime?
BEN JONSON.

Miss Haye, however, had never sent her fingers over the keys
with more energy, than now her feet tripped over the dry
leaves and stones in the path to Mountain Spring. She took a
very rough way, through the woods. There was another, much
plainer, round by the wagon road; but Elizabeth chose the more
solitary and prettier way, roundabout and hard to the foot
though it was.

For some little distance there was a rude wagon-track, very
rough, probably made for the convenience of getting wood. It
stood thick with pretty large stones or heads of rock; but it
was softly grass-grown between the stones and gave at least a
clear way through the woods, upon which the morning light if
not the morning sun beamed fairly. A light touch of white
frost lay upon the grass and covered the rocks with bloom, the
promise of a mild day. After a little, the roadway descended
into a bit of smooth meadow, well walled in with trees, and
lost itself there. In the tree-tops the morning sun was
glittering; it could not get to the bottom yet; but up there
among the leaves it gave a bright shimmering prophecy of what
it would do; it was a sparkle of heavenly light touching the
earth. Elizabeth had never seen it before; she had never in
her life been in the woods at so early an hour. She stood
still to look. It was impossible to help feeling the light of
that glittering promise; its play upon the leaves was too
joyous, too pure, too fresh. She felt her heart grow stronger
and her breath come freer. What was the speech of those light-
touched leaves, she might not have told; something her spirit
took knowledge of while her reason did not. Or had not leisure
to do; for if she did not get to Mountain Spring in good
season she would not be home for breakfast. Yet she had plenty
of time, but she did not wish to run short. So she went on her
way.

From the valley meadow for half a mile, it was not much more
or much better than a cow-path, beaten a little by the feet of
the herdsman seeking his cattle or of an occasional foot-
traveller to Mountain Spring. It was very rough indeed. Often
Elizabeth must make quite a circuit among cat-briars and
huckleberry bushes and young underwood, or keep the path at
the expense of stepping up and stepping down again over a
great stone or rock blocking up the whole way. Sometimes the
track was only marked over the grey lichens of an