f the frosts than Shahweetah had
felt yet; there were broad belts of buff and yellow along the
mountain, even changing into sear where its sides felt the
north wind. On all that shore the full sunlight lay. The
opposite hills, on the east, were in dainty sunshine and
shadow, every undulation, every ridge and hollow, softly
marked out. With what wonderful sharp outline the mountain
edges rose against the bright sky; how wonderful soft the
changes of shade and colour adown their sloping sides; what
brilliant little ripples of water rolled up to the pebbles at
Elizabeth's feet. She stood and looked at it all, at one thing
and the other, half dazzled with the beauty; until she
recollected herself, and with a deep sighful expression of
thoughts and wishes unknown, turned away to find her path
again.

But she could not find it. Whereabouts it was, she was sure;
but the _where_ was an unfindable thing. And she dared not
strike forward without the track; she might get further and
further from it, and never get home to breakfast at all! --
There was nothing for it but to grope about seeking for
indications; and Miss Haye's eyes were untrained to wood-work.
The woodland was a mazy wilderness now indeed. Points of
stone, beds of moss, cat-briar vines and huckleberry bushes,
in every direction; and between which of them lay that little
invisible track of a footpath? The more she looked the more
she got perplexed. She could remember no waymarks. The way was
all cat-briars, moss, bushes, and rocks; and rocks, bushes,
moss and cat-briars were in every variety all around her. She
turned her face towards the quarter from which she had come
and tried to recognize some tree or waymark she could remember
having passed. One part of the wood looked just like another;
but for the mountains and the river she could not have told
where lay Mountain Spring.

Then a little sound of rustling leaves and crackling twigs
reached her ear from behind her.

"There is a cow!" thought Elizabeth; -- "now I can find the
path by her. But then! -- cows don't always --"

Her eye had been sweeping round the woody skirts of her
position, in search of her expected four-footed guide, when
her thoughts were suddenly brought to a point by seeing a two-
footed creature approaching, and one whom she instantly knew.

"It is Winthrop Landholm! -- he is going to Mountain Spring to
take an early coach, without his breakfast! -- Well, you fool,
what is it to you?