e sprang to one side
freeing one of her hands on the sudden, and jumped down the
rock, muttering something very unintelligibly about
'breakfast.' But her other hand was fast still, and so was she
at the foot of the rock.

"Stop," said Winthrop, -- "we must take this basket along. -- I
don't know if there is anything very precious in it." --

He reached after it as he spoke, and then they went on; and by
the help of his hand her backward journey over rocks, stones,
and trunks of trees in the path, was easily and lightly made;
till they reached the little bit of meadow. Which backward
journey Elizabeth accomplished in about two minutes and a
quarter. There Winthrop transferred to his arm the hand that
had rested in his, and walked more leisurely.

"Are you in such a hurry for your breakfast?" said he. "I have
had mine."

"Had it! -- before you came out?"

"No," -- said he smiling, -- "since."

"Are you laughing at me? -- or have you had it?" said Elizabeth
looking puzzled.

"Both," said Winthrop. "What are you trembling so for?"

It hushed Elizabeth again, till they got quit of the meadow,
and began more slowly still, the ascent of the rough half-made
wheel-road.

"Miss Haye --" said Winthrop gently.

She paused in her walk, looking at him.

"What are you thinking of?"

"Thinking of! --"

"Yes. You don't look as happy as I feel."

"I am," -- she said.

"How do you know?"

What a colour spread over Elizabeth's face! But she laughed
too, so perhaps his end was gained.

"I was thinking," she said, with the desperate need of saying
something, -- "a little while ago, when you were helping me
through the woods, -- how a very few minutes before, I had been
so quite alone in the world."

"Don't forget there is one arm that never can fail you," he
replied gravely. "Mine may."

Elizabeth looked at him rather timidly, and his face changed.

"There was no harm in that," he said, with so bright an
expression as she had never before seen given to her. "What
will you say, if I tell you that I myself at that same time
was thinking over in my mind very much the same thing -- with
relation to myself, I mean."

Elizabeth's heart beat and her breath came short. That was
what she had never thought of. Like many another woman, what
_he_ was to her, she knew well; what _she_ might be to him, it had
never entered her head to think. It seemed almost a new and
superfluous addition to her joy, yet not superfluous fr